Transformative Learning Pedagogy for an Integral Living
A soul-centered education to liberate your full potential by restoring relationships with self, society, and Nature. Learn-by-doing with a rich ecosystem of practitioners creating a whole new world.
To know is good, to live is better, to be, that is perfect.
The Mother, Founder of Auroville
A Pedagogy Based on Integral Yoga Psychology
Designing a learning process requires an in-depth understanding of the consciousness of the learner. Our pedagogy is based on the principles of evolution of consciousness as developed by Sri Aurobindo (1872 - 1950) who has done extensive yogic research to map consciousness and its evolutionary process. His ideas were taken up by the Indian psychologist Indra Sen, (1903–1994) in the 1940s and 1950s, who was the first to use the term Integral Psychology which he contrasted with Western Psychology, to describe the model of psychology found in Sri Aurobindo’s writings. These ideas were further developed by Haridas Chaudhuri (1913–1975), a philosopher and academic who founded in 1968 the California Institute of Integral Studies.
In India, Sri Aurobindo International University Centre was started in 1952 by the Mother, the collaborator of Sri Aurobindo as a centre for educational research. In 1959 it was renamed Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. Further, she founded Auroville in 1968, the city of dawn, as a laboratory for research in unending education and constant progress. Purnam is based in Auroville and our pedagogy is based on integral yoga psychology community’s research and experimentation spanning more than a century.
The Aims of Our Pedagogy for Life
Inner Discovery
-
The first necessity is the inner discovery in order to know what one truly is behind social, moral, cultural, racial and hereditary appearances.
-
At the center, there is a being free, vast, and knowing, who awaits our discovery and who ought to become the active center of our being and our life.
-
It is this inner discovery that brings forth the flame of our aspiration for constant progress and lifelong learning.
-
It is this inmost being that integrates all parts of our being into a harmonious whole person capable of living in harmony with self, society, and Nature.
-
It is this inmost being that reveals the purpose and meaning of our life and aligns our individual life and work with the collective purpose.
Integral Development
To grow as an integral person education must have five principal aspects corresponding to the five principal activities of the human being:
-
Physical - development of a strong, supple, well-formed and healthy body;
-
Vital - development and refinement of the senses, abundance of steady positive energy of vitality for action, and unselfish, generous and mature emotional nature constituting the character.
-
Mental - development of mental intelligence and will for observation, analysis, synthesis, multiple perspectives, suppleness, and steady will. The capacity for deep inner silence so that one can open to higher consciousness.
-
Psychic - the discovery and development of the true individual behind the physical, vital, and mental instrumental layers. This is the key integral development.
-
Spiritual - Going beyond the individual being to the universal being that we are in our essence and development of corresponding faculties of consciousness like intuition that is lying dormant within us. This opens the doors to our evolutionary future as a species.
Unending Education
-
Education must continue throughout life to thrive in a rapidly changing world.
-
The ability to always remain open to learning is a fundamental capacity we must develop.
Our Methodology
-
Learn by doing - knowledge gets grounded when your body knows how to do it.
-
Learn from life - the context of life is where learning happens the best.
-
Learn with practitioners - it is a transference of inspiration, not mere knowledge.
-
Learn your own way - each individual is unique and has a unique trail to follow.