Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872. At the age of seven he was taken to England for education. There he studied at St. Paul's School, London, and at King's College, Cambridge. Returning to India in 1893, he worked for the next thirteen years in the Princely State of Baroda in the service of the Maharaja and as a professor in Baroda College. During this period he also joined a revolutionary society and took a leading role in secret preparations for an uprising against the British Government in India.

In 1906, soon after the Partition of Bengal, Sri Aurobindo quit his post in Baroda and went to Calcutta, where he soon became one of the leaders of the Nationalist movement. He was the first political leader in India to openly put forward, in his newspaper Bande Mataram, the idea of complete independence for the country. Prosecuted twice for sedition and once for conspiracy, he was released each time for lack of evidence.

Sri Aurobindo had begun the practice of Yoga in 1905 in Baroda. In 1908 he had the first of several fundamental spiritual realisations. In 1910 he withdrew from politics and went to Pondicherry in order to devote himself entirely to his inner spiritual life and work. During his forty years in Pondicherry he evolved a new method of spiritual practice, which he called the Integral Yoga. Its aim is a spiritual realisation that not only liberates man's consciousness but also transforms his nature. In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, the Mother, he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Among his many writings are The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and Savitri. Sri Aurobindo left his body on 5 December 1950.

Sri Aurobindo

Nothing can be taught

“The first principle of true teaching is that ‘nothing can be taught’. The teacher is not an instructor or taskmaster, he is a helper and a guide. His business is to suggest and not to impose. He does not actually train the pupil’s mind, he only shows him how to perfect his instruments of knowledge and helps and encourages him in the process. He does not impart knowledge to him, he shows him how to acquire knowledge for himself. He does not call forth the knowledge that is within; he only shows him where it lies and how it can be habituated to rise to the surface. The distinction that reserves this principle for the teaching of adolescent and adult minds and denies its application to the child, is a conservative and unintelligent doctrine”

Sri Aurobindo

In practical terms, this means that the teacher, above all, must create learning situations and environments that elicit inner knowledge. They should offer a wealth of stimulating learning materials without providing explicit instructions on how to use them. Instead, the teacher collaboratively builds understanding with the child. There is nothing to 'stuff in,' but rather, everything to 'draw out' from what is already within.

A teacher is a participant, and helper and is learning together with children
From focusing on the content to focusing on the development
Offering a variety of learning materials and experiences
From a single method of learning to guiding unique individual learning processes
From judging children to a non-judging and respecting attitude
From playing the role of a teacher to demonstrating the psychic presence

The mind has to be consulted in its own growth

The second principle is that ‘the mind has to be consulted in its growth’. The idea of hammering the child into the shape desired by the parent or teacher is a barbarous and ignorant superstition. To force nature to abandon its dharma is to do it permanent harm, mutilate its growth and deface its perfection. It is a selfish tyranny over a human soul and a wound to the nation, which loses the benefit of the best that a man could have given it. Sri Aurobindo

Each child is unique and has a particular temperament and the teacher must identify that and offer those learning opportunities in which the child can blossom as per his or her svabhava.

From content-based to development-based
From a pre-set curriculum to allowing children to choose what to learn
Moving away from the conventions of society and culture to allow the flowering of the svadharma
From adjusting to social and imposed value systems to values based on the truth of the child’s being

Work from near to far

The third principle of education is to ‘work from the near to 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 his sustenance, the air which he breathes, the sights, sounds, habits to which he is accustomed. They mold him not the less powerfully because insensibly, and from that then we must begin.... If anything has to be brought in from outside, it must be offered, not forced on the mind.”

- Sri Aurobindo

The integral facilitator guides the child from that which is ‘real’ to her and that which is available in her immediate environment to abstraction. From teaching a general textbook to widening the mind starting from the child’s experiences, from being a teacher ‘I know more and better because I am a teacher” to respecting and understanding a child’s natural way of progress and education.

From teaching a textbook to widening the mind i.e. to start from that which is available in the immediate environment
To start from the child’s context, his or her world
To offering learning opportunities and never to make a ‘policy’ or introduce an ‘imposed’; discipline

A progress guided by the soul and

not subjected to habits, conventions or preconceived ideas.

– The Mother

A ‘free’ progress education is an education that is free of conventions, rules, imposed ideas and theories about life and different subjects. ‘Free’ here essentially refers to the soul or the psychic being, the in most or the innermost part of our being that is not subjected to second hand information or beliefs. The whole idea is for the child to grow in his or her freedom, away from culture, society, parents influence, habits, language, immediate environment amongst other influences.

Integral education works on a curriculum that attempts to evolve a worldview based on the essential interconnectedness of life and the universe. Globally, modern science and traditional philosophy are both converging to the same understanding. To be honest, such a curriculum will not come from experts or so-called technologists or big universities or some abstract learning theory or model, the focus here is to get the curriculum out of every child’s heart, his or her deep hidden interest and curiosity. This is what makes Integral education radically and profoundly different from any other learning model or theory.