Sri Aurobindo and Mother on Education
Only those years that are passed uselessly make you grow old.
A year spent uselessly is a year during which no progress has been accomplished, no growth in consciousness has been achieved, no further step has been taken towards perfection.
Consecrate your life to the realisation of something higher and broader than yourself and you will never feel the weight of the passing years.
- The Mother
21 February 1958
The second principle is that the mind must be consulted in its own growth. It is a barbarous superstition to hammer a child into a preconceived shape. The educator’s task is to help the growing soul find and develop its own unique, divine potential (dharma). Forcing a nature against its own law mutilates its perfection and harms the nation by replacing genuine strength with an artificial, second-rate product.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo says: " When we have passed beyond
enjoying, then we shall have Bliss. Desire was the helper; desire is the bar."
The third principle of education is to work from the near to the far, from that which is to that which shall be. The basis of a man’s nature is almost always, in addition to his soul’s past, his heredity, his surroundings, his nationality, his country, the soil from which he draws sustenance, the air which he breathes, the sights, sounds, habits to which he is accustomed. They mould him not the less powerfully because insensibly. From that then we must begin.
Sri Aurobindo
Let the Truth be your master and your guide.
We aspire for the Truth and its triumph in our being and our activities.
Let the aspiration for the Truth be the dynamism of our efforts.
O Truth! We want to be guided by Thee. May Thy reign come upon earth.
- The Mother
16 December 1967
CONVERSATIONS
With one or two teachers of the Centre of Education
STUDENTS’ PRAYER
Make of us the hero warriors we aspire to become.
May we fight successfully the great battle of the future that is to be born,
against the past that seeks to endure;
so that the new things may manifest and we may be ready to receive them.
- The Mother
6 January 1952
One must say, "Since I want only the Divine, my success is sure, I have only to walk forward in all confidence and His own Hand will be there secretly leading me to Him by His own way and at His own time." That is what you must keep as your constant mantra. Anything else one may doubt but that he who desires only the Divine shall reach the Divine is a certitude and more certain than two and two make four. That is the faith every sadhak must have at the bottom of his heart, supporting him through every stumble and blow and ordeal. It is only false ideas still casting their shadows on your mind that prevent you from having it. Push them aside and the back of the difficulty will be broken.
Sri Aurobindo
If the growth of consciousness were considered as the principal goal of life, many difficulties would find their solution. The best way of not becoming old is to make progress the goal of our life.
The Mother
When a child lives in normal conditions, it has a spontaneous confidence that all it needs will be given to it.
This confidence should persist, unshaken, throughout life; but the limited idea, ignorant and superficial, of its needs which a child has, must be replaced progressively by a wider, deeper and truer conception which culminates in the perfect conception of needs in accordance with the supreme wisdom, until we realise that the Divine alone knows what our true needs are and rely upon Him for everything.
The MotherOne must learn always not only intellectually but also psychologically, one must progress in regard to character, one must cultivate the qualities and correct the defects; everything should be made an occasion to cure ourselves of ignorance and incapacity; life becomes then tremendously interesting and worth the trouble of living it.
The Mother
Since the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the
possibility of manifesting a ray of consciousness, I was there.
- The Mother
Lord, we pray to Thee:
May we understand better why we are here,
May we do better what we have to do here,
May we be what we ought to become here,
So that Thy will may be fulfilled harmoniously.
The Mother
My mind does not become peaceful, I think, because I do not study hard. Studying does not give me much pleasure.
One does not study for the sake of pleasure — one studies to learn and to develop one’s brain.
-The Mother
Courage outside, peace inside and a quiet unshakable trust in the Divine’s Grace.
The Mother