Mental effort has had an immense effect on the earth life in carrying humanity from the status of a mere human animal to what it is now with its ideal of organised power, the cult of reason, the interpretation of life by a critical intellectual thought and the last outcome of this inspiration is the government of life by Science. The ideal education is an ill-lighted purposeful training of mind to grow through its conscious stress of material and economic life, a constructed half-rightness mixed with much that is wrong and unlovely and unhappy, half automatic use of opportunities with many blunders, lapses, relapses and apparent discords in Ignorance which can succeed in mechanisation of the system but cannot change or recreate it from within. On the one side ideal education may be richer, fuller, more rationally plausible and externally effective pursuit of ideal truth, good and beauty but it cannot create and construct anything that goes beyond the Nature. Scientific knowledge is itself a construction of mind, a mass of formulas, masterful in the process of knowledge, a creation of apt machinery but ignorant of the individual Self and the world-Self and cannot utilise their influence in perfecting the nature and the life. The serious obstacle to the mind’s endeavour towards perfection is that mind cannot wholly mentalise life and matter; there are still considerable part of life and body which remain in the realm of submental, subconscient and inconscient control. Ideal education unduly limits the pupils’ scope of learning by overdoing and exclusiveness and ignores the highest and the largest possibility and missed the full pursuit of its own object. The other danger is that the ideals constructed by the human mind are selective and relative and to shape the students’ nature rigidly according to them is to limit their growth into larger, wider and higher being. Despite all these limitations, the mind and life are the Soul’s only instrumentation until a higher instrumentation develops and free harmonious play of life and mind is essential for the highest growth of Ideal Education.  

Objective of Ideal Education:

            The objective of ideal education in the language of India’s ancient tradition is to foresee limited human perfection and to produce sattwic man with limited knowledge, light, happiness, peace, love, freedom and sense of beauty. The characteristic of Sattwic man is identified in the Gita more vividly than any other available written truth.

            Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas are three Gunas born of the movement of Prakriti and they bind the Soul to the Apara-prakriti. Sattwa is the giver of illumination, calmness, equality, order, accomplished harmony and well-being. It binds the Soul by attachment to limited happiness and limited knowledge. When through all the doors of the body, light of knowledge shines forth, there is increase of Sattwa and it imposes on itself an impersonal ethical, social and religious law, a Dharma, a Shastra, right understanding and a disinterested search of truth. When in Sattwa one leaves the body, he attains the spotless worlds of the knowers of the Highest. In this state fruit of the work is rightly and naturally enjoyed. Those who dwell in Sattwa, their consciousness rise upward and knowledge are gained. Sattwic man offers sacrifice to God or partial Godhead. This true sacrifice is extended according to the right principle, without desire for fruit, with a mind concentrated and fixed on the truth of things. The food that augments life, vitality, strength, health, joy and cheerfulness, which are succinct, soft, sustaining and agreeable, are dear to sattwic persons. Askesis done with faith and with no desire for fruit is said to be sattwic. Serenity of mind, gentleness, silence, self-control and purity of feeling are called sattwic askesis of mind. The writing/oration which gives no offence, truthful, pleasant and beneficial and regular study and practice of Shastra are sattwic askesis of the vital/speech. The true sattwic Askesis of the body is done through purity, straightforwardness, virginity, non-violence and the worship offered to Godhead, Teacher, Wise and the twice born Soul. When the gift is given for the sake of giving to one from whom no benefit in return is expected, and in the right place, at the right time and to the right person, that gift is said to be sattwic. When one Imperishable Being is seen in all Beings and one indivisible Being is realised among the multiplicities of divisions, know that knowledge as sattwic. An action which is rightly regulated by renouncing the fruit of action, attachment and without liking and disliking, know that work as sattwic action. When one performs rightly regulated action by renouncing attachment of action and fruit of action, know that as sattwic renunciation. One who is free from attachment, egoless, endowed with steadfastness and zeal, unaffected by success and failure, he is a sattwic doer. ‘The sattwic doer is free from all this attachment, this egoism, this violent strength or passionate weakness; his is a mind and will unelated by success, undepressed by failure, full of a fixed impersonal resolution, a calm rectitude of zeal or a high and pure and selfless enthusiasm in the work that has to be done.’¹⁹ That which knows in essence action and withdrawal from action, what ought to be done and what ought not to be done, fear and fearlessness, bondage and liberation, clarity of mind, that understanding is sattwic. That unwavering persistence by which one controls the activities of mind, life and senses, know that persistence of mastering intelligence as sattwic. That happiness which seems like a poison initially but ends as nectar, that happiness is said to be sattwic born out of clear understanding. A Student whose mind is concentrated on his studies, relates rightly with the surrounding world and is aware constantly of his objective aim of life, know him as Sattwic in Nature. A Teacher concentrated in his profession, loves the students genuinely without attachment and takes the responsibility of their inner and outer health, know him as Sattwic in Nature. An Institution/School with un-corrupt and dedicated management, teachers with attitude of giving self-less service to the Divine through educating the pupils, general cleanliness and manifestation of beauty in the outward surrounding, know that institution as Sattwic in Nature.

            After exploring the limitation of tamasic mind and rajasic mind Savitri came across ‘a brilliant ordered Space’⁴⁵ of Sattwic mind. Here we observe a reason’s balanced reign, ‘adamant walls of law,’ ‘a small world or rule and line,’ and limited freedom.
           
             Here, the sattwic mind is divided into three parts of schoolman mind, fixed mind and outer mind. They three are of having three characteristics of fear, doubt and impatience respectively and through these attributes they limit the Illimitable.
           
            Schoolman mind occupies life’s large space, fixed pillars of thought, lives in its dreams. Its thoughts are ‘an army ranked and disciplined.’⁴³ It does not dare to pursue ‘great and difficult’ adventure,’⁴³ does not call down the ‘flaming god;’⁴³ cannot ‘set the world ablaze with the inner Fire.’⁴⁴ It limits the Soul with narrow ideal, adores an exclusive God, meditation is done to realise a narrow end; shuts its door to Divine Love and dries the heart with a rational religion. Its sacrifice is cold and flameless, Shastra is a sealed book devoid of Spiritual influence.
           
             Fixed mind is a quiet country where sense hunger is partly quenched, doubt is replaced with fixed faith. This is a firm and settled space of intelligence where all things are kept in their proper place. This fixed mind appears to be the creator of this apparent world, substitute of the mighty Soul. Aspirant of limited perfection, limited truth and limited harmony. This is the home of elite who are satisfied with their exclusive achievement, victory of single truth, clarity of the sword of limited Light. It does not want to go beyond itself to discover the Psychic being. Fixed mind is satisfied with truth’s rounded outcome and ordered knowledge of apparent things. This is the world of artists, scientists, writers, philanthropists who are satisfied with their single achievement and do not show interest to go beyond their exclusive confident life and maimed achievements. 
           
Then Savitri came to world of outer mind, where all are in haste and all are impatient to save the God’s world. Here no Divine Light and mystic Voice are received. Outer mind cannot receive the Divine messengers of subliminal world. It is not aware of waking trance, dreams of unborn Reality and strange goddesses with deep pooled magical eyes.
           
Savitri book gives the message that those who are deeply dissatisfied with the limitations of schoolman mind, fixed mind and outer mind can trace their Psychic being and subsequently their Spiritual being. This is identified as rebirth of an Ideal Teacher or new birth of integral Teacher.

              Living teacher or guru or representative influence occupies a larger place in the life of students. In India a great authority and high reverence is attached to the guru, the traditional teacher ‘who has received the Shastra by tradition and realized it in practice guides the disciples along the immemorial tracks’ ⁵. The modern age replaced it by ideal teacher who guides the student along the well established track of fixed, mechanised and mundane perfection which is conceived as something outward, social, rational dealing with the fellow beings, a better and more efficient citizenship with discharge of duties, harmonious associated enjoyment of the opportunities of existence, an expansion and refinement of the intellect and knowledge and action based on utilitarian, technical and scientific skill and he will try to harmonise and implement the old virtues and ideals in order to make up the deficiencies of existing set up. He ignores all that other greater Spiritual element of our being, opposes any very great upward change and leaves it either undeveloped or insufficiently satisfied. An ideal Teacher examines only one side of the existence, only one province or district of truth and leaves all the rest unexplained and without any special significance.

             The ‘elementary virtues’²⁴ of an ideal Teacher with Sattwic Nature as indicated in the Gita²³ is fearlessness, purity of temperament, steadfastness in the aim of life, giving, self-control, sacrifice, concentration on the study material, askesis, candour, straightforwardness, harmlessness, truth speaking, absence of wrath, self-denial, calm, absence of fault finding, compassion to all beings, absence of greed, gentleness, modesty, freedom from restlessness, affirmative energy, forgiveness, patience, clearness, absence of envy and pride. The passage from ideal Teacher to integral Teacher opens through Sattwic renunciation, Sattwic concentration, Sattwic askesis and Sattwic consecration. The Gita²⁶ further hints that a Sattwic man, Jijnasu, or ideal Teacher becomes Yogi or traditional realised Teacher after many births of Spiritual preparation and a Yogi becomes an integral Yogi or integral Teacher after many births of Spiritual Self-discipline.

             In principle an integral Teacher is more a learner of endless truth ⁴² and Spiritual influence and less a teacher and instructor. He is primarily a servant, slave and follower of the Divine’s limitless Consciousness and secondarily a leader, path finder and mentor of limiting Consciousness represented by students. If an integral Teacher has to replace the traditional realised and contemporary ideal Teacher then he has to call down all the large and consummating wisdom and universalise the individual Divine realisation of traditional guru and the ego born of individual liberation is annulled by the possession of universal and transcendent Divine; he will not reject anything that is essential in the mundane perfection pursued by the contemporary ideal Teacher, but enlarges it, finds and lives in its greater, wider and truer values now hidden from it, transfigures it from a limited, earthly and mortal thing to a figure of Infinite, Immortal values and Divine perfection. His main business will be to reconcile the World, the Self and the God through his dynamic Supracosmic Influence and Presence which will be subordinated by the truth of cosmic Spiritual influence or Spiritual endeavour and individualised psycho-physical instructions and guidance.

            A Teacher of Integral Education is simultaneously a Sadhaka of integral Yoga and he will turn his aspiration always to the height beyond the ideal aim of mind which imperfectly and fragmentarily attempts only his poor and rigid travesty of spontaneous and illimitable integral perfection. He is directed to act by the pressure from new suggestions from the Infinite. The concentration of an ideal Teacher is on the object of education which is identified as perfection of outer living while concentration of an integral Teacher goes behind the objective education to the Lord of Education and goes beyond the fragmentary knowledge to complete self-knowledge in all things and all moments and the mantra of an ideal Teacher intending to become an integral Teacher is in biblical language, “My zeal for the Lord has eaten me up” ¹³. The personality of an ideal teacher is restricted by an isolated entity within ‘the inefficient mental ideal of brotherhood’ ⁶ whereas the personality of an integral Teacher is not limited by a separative individuality; he universalizes the brotherhood to realize ‘unity of all’ ⁷ and develops seven-fold ecstatic Divine personality²⁴ that of entire love and tenderness of the Mother, of total compassion of the Father, of complete patience of the Teacher, of tireless action of the Divine Master, of full joy of the Playmate, of unprecedented help of the Friend and of the everlasting affirmation of the Divine Lover and he will consider his student as  uninterrupted seeker of eternal Knowledge, child God, growing God and the future Godhead of the race.

               In the Integral Education the complete triune unity and knowledge on the World, the Self and the God is the sure foundation of the perfection and this perfection is extended towards fullness of Being, Consciousness and Life. The subjectively-objective doctrine of Integral Education is to pursue the subjective and objective development of the students with the help of inner aids, which is again helped and subordinated by outer aids. Integral education is a knowledge of the truth of all sides of existence, inner and outer training, a disappearance of limitation, a breaking down of separativeness, an overpassing of boundaries, a recovery of our essential and whole Reality of Self and Nature and a reconciliation of the apparently opposite terms of One and Many, Form and the Formless, Finite and the Infinite. Integral Education replaces the knowledge that can be learned by constructing mind of confused crab-motion of Ideal Education by a rapid, conscious and self-directed evolution; so the success of the former can come when the Integral Teacher transcended far beyond the capacity of exclusive concentration of Ideal Teacher and is capable of developing essential, multiple and integral Concentration which is the extension of partial mental consciousness towards the Infinite extending over multiple subtle worlds or he becomes at once the centre of large Subliminal action, universal action and of limitless transcendent action. The perfection foreseen in Integral Education is to take up all the truth of instrumental existence of mind, life and body and give them the orientation of oneness, integration and harmony and this perfection is a sovereignty and self-effectuation of the Spiritual Reality into all the elements of our nature. The perfection of Integral Education can come when the Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental influence of the integral Teacher would create the order of Spiritual freedom, an authentic, automatic and plastic order and harmony which is extended towards the outer world.

                Healthiness of an Integral Education Centre is dependent on harmonious combination of all the developmental faculties, striving to contribute the best in proportion to their capacity. This healthiness is further enforced through regular study circle, an external aid to substitute the more profound inner aid of the Soul, in which the commerce between the Divine, the Lord of Integral Education, Dharma, the law and principles of Integral Education and Sangha, the collectivity which includes teachers, students and guardians are worked out and its effective dynamisation brings abundant Divine Grace, Ananda and swift Evolution. Regular study circle for school children within the school premises is meant to make them aware of higher mental and Spiritual life and initiate their Soul through the cultivation of their Soul faculties, diksha, which complements their routine and regular surface mental, vital and physical education, siksha.

                Study circle has other objectives of elevating common man to the need of Spiritual life. It cannot insist but make aware of the professional teacher to increase his capacity by renunciation, self-concentration and self-consecration and turn into a devotee. Since a devotee has received Divine’s touch so he has the possibility of becoming Integral Yogi or constant union with the Divine either in this life through gradual intensification of faith, sincerity and surrender or arrives at the same status  after succession of many births. So if a devotee after receiving the Divine’s touch on the surface of his Nature remains satisfied with this unequal concentration of Consciousness in his whole being, then he will feel secured to remain as an eternal devotee through part self-giving or on the other hand if he can direct the gained Divine touch sufficiently inward beyond the surface nature, then he can spread and experience equal concentration of Consciousness on all the parts of his Being and Nature and thus he multiplies the capacity of Self-surrender and intensity of Divine union in this life. As an immediate remedy a growing devotee seeking liberation of Soul is made aware of becoming Ashramite by consecrating his outer life entirely to the Divine. Since an Ashramite has received the Divine’s Call to lead a Divine Life, he is made aware to become a Sadhaka by rejecting all earthly enjoyments and old earth-bound association and turn his effort towards purification, concentration and identity and manifesting in him the norms of Integral Yoga. A Sadhaka is made aware to turn into a consecrated Child by entire self giving of inner and outer life to the Divine and outer law of integral Yoga is substituted by inner Psychic and Spiritual Law. A Child is made aware to become Integral Yogi and becomes the living Supramental channel of the Divine. Thus The Mother’s saying that a Teacher must be a Yogi is realised in order to experience the extreme enhancement of his existing capacity in terms of God’s Omnipotence and Omniscience. Integral Yoga foresees the perfection and universalisation of this direct Divine faculty of God the Teacher and the personality of guru force or the Nameless Divine Influence develops as one ascends in the path of Integral Jnana Yoga.

Objective of integral Education:

              “The aim of education is not to prepare a man to succeed in life and society, but to increase his perfectibility to its utmost.”²⁷

              So the objective of integral education is to attain integral perfection which in the language of India’s ancient tradition is to create a Spiritual Man with unlimited opening towards Divine knowledge, light, happiness, peace, love, freedom and sense of beauty. This perfection has been further extended in integral Yoga as Gnostic Soul and Bliss Soul.

Spiritual Man: A Spiritual man or a developed Soul needs nothing external for completeness of his existence and his approach towards God is primarily Impersonal and secondarily adoration of personal aspect of monotheistic and polytheistic Deities. His objective is primarily realisation of the eternal and immutable Self and secondarily to establish a true relation between eternal Self and the mutable existence. He realises Divine primarily as fundamental Being of highest state of Turiya and secondarily as effectual becoming of sleep Self, dream Self and waking Self. For him Divine is primarily ineffable, unmanifest and secondarily as His manifestation of infinite being, consciousness and bliss embracing the universe and its play. He moves primarily in essential, universal, eternal and comprehensive Truth of Being, infinite Power of being, infinite Delight of Being and secondarily with finite aspect of applications, sequences, harmonies and the potentialities of the truths of Being. He experiences time primarily as continuity of manifestation from past successive lives to future forthcoming lives, is aware of timeless being, Eternal’s manifestation in time through successive many planes of Consciousness and secondarily as concentration on the limitation of present time of succession of moments and pragmatic surface reality. His vision of things is primarily a derivative of Omniscience, a vision from above the head, from within the heart and from Occult subliminal plane and secondarily the discord of present external facts, phenomena and appearance. His will and action is primarily a derivative of Omnipotence, action from dominating height of Divine Will with longer movement in time and large range of potencies and secondarily a personal will and action from three modes of Nature. His Consciousness moves primarily in between Kshara and Akshara Purusha or in between Psychic and Spiritual Being and secondarily in between tamas, rajas and sattwa.  He lives primarily in the freedom of the universal, Transcendence and in God in all beings and things and secondarily shuts himself in limiting ego, mind’s abstractions and intellectual constructions. His mind, life and body lives primarily in the infinity of the Spirit with their right value, place and purpose and secondarily accepts and records their limitation. He primarily ceases to judge other men and things by their outward appearance and delivers himself and others from any hostile and contradictory ideas and emotions; for he sees, seeks and finds the Soul everywhere and all other inferior relations are of secondary importance and are not having any absolute values in them. He does good of all creatures primarily by extension of his Spiritual realisation and secondarily by diminutive mental effort. He lives alone with the Divine in the fortress of the Self within and his outer life must be sealed against the vibration and influence of the surrounding world through some secured Spiritual Fortress without. Again for a Spiritual movement dependency will be more on the subtle action than any external machinery and few can spread and expand Consciousness without the support of outward means. So he must station himself within a strong fence of protection and infrastructure of collective living. Integral Yoga asks strong Spiritual Being to be subordinated by strong Mental Being and all primary Spiritual faculties and secondary mental faculties suffer equal Divine transformation by invasion of dynamic Spirit into kingdom of mind, life and body. A Spiritual man’s evolution is decreed towards evolution of Gnostic Soul where even the widest mental Spirituality of one-sided, exclusive and imperfect power of self-expression of life is transcended.

Gnostic Soul: The transition from Manomaya Purusha of Spiritual Man to Vijnanamaya Purusha of Gnostic Soul is a great and decisive transition of integral Yoga. It is the middle or link plane of creative wisdom, power and joy and not the highest plane of Consciousness. The ultimate transition is the change of Consciousness from Vijnanamaya Purusha of Gnostic Soul to Anandamaya Purusha of Bliss Soul.

              A Gnostic Soul shakes off the last hold of cosmic Ignorance. He establishes a firm foundation in truth of things, in a Consciousness eternal and infinite and is untouched by obscurity, falsehood, suffering and error. He sees through direct self-illumining process of Supramental vision which is the very centre and pouring fount of truth, directly grasps the truth of things and penetrates to its original and eternal nature. His sense gets into relation with things by an unveiled oneness and identity. He has no need of any truth seeking and self-discipline and possesses the body of truth and light spontaneously, constantly and easily. He is capable of knowing all things simply, convincingly and directly without the aid of sense organ. All his action is free from doubt, self-evident, self-existent, unanswerable and absolute. In him mental imagination is replaced by truth-inspiration, mental judgement is replaced by self-luminous discernment, uncertain mental memory is replaced by a memory at once of past, present and future. He dominates time by a subtle link of past, present and future and not by a mental perception of succession of moments. His knowledge does not recognise any real division and dwells in unity; he knows finite things only in their relation to infinite. He pours out on the existence in the form of wealth of Divine Knowledge, Divine Will and Divine Ananda.  In his Consciousness, truths of the eternal are not in conflict with each other and all opposite things of this imperfect world are happily fused. A gnostic Soul creates a voluntary limitation for his world action and movement of knowledge and he is even having a particular luminous aura of his being in which he moves and yet he identifies with all beings and all existences.

Bliss Soul: The Taittiriya Upanishad speaks us that beyond Vijnanamaya Purusha there exists the Anandamaya Purusha. In Ananda, our Spirit will discover its highest Self, essential Consciousness and absolute Power of the existence. The highest goal of a Gnostic Spirit is the bliss of absolute Infinities. In this ascension of Consciousness, the powers and personalities of the Gnostic Soul does not disappear but rather he undergoes a change and the Soul is carried up into reaches of his own supreme Bliss, last and absolute liberation and infinite perfection from which he descends into intermediate Gnostic plane to link the creation of lower hemisphere. Thus one can experience boundless Ananda in material, vital, mental and Gnostic plane but in the lower creation this Ananda is diluted and ‘turns into a poor thinness wonderful to lower consciousness,’¹⁸ but it cannot be compared with its true and original intensity.

              A Bliss Soul transcends the Gnostic Soul in the sense that he does not suffer voluntary limitation or imposed circumstances and for him all are one equal being and one identical Spirit everywhere. He has no mansion of his own, aniketa, and accepts all the creation and things as his single and many mansions. All other Selves are realised as his own Bliss-self in action and essence. He is one in bliss-Consciousness with all the world play. He lives in the absolute truth of things which is deformed here in this material world by contrary phenomena. The Bliss Soul lives in every plane of our existence and fills them with its own light and power and delight. He is not ‘incapable of a world play or self-debarred from any expression of its glories.’²¹ The more he possesses this Ananda, all the rest are transformed into superior value and richer expression of the Real. The supreme Bliss Soul is neither attached to birth nor attached to non-birth, neither limits himself to manifestation, form and action nor limits himself to non-manifestation, neither moves by the desire of Knowledge nor harassed by the fear of Ignorance, neither despises ascent from lower plane to higher nor fears to descend down of highest Consciousness to material birth. The time for arrival of Bliss Soul to earth’s atmosphere has not yet come or is very rare.

              The new Supramental race will manifest the Bliss Nature or his Bliss Sheath will be built strongly by right relation and union of Anandamaya Purusha with Anandamaya Kosha. A fully evolved Soul is rightly related with his multiple Selves through static and dynamic Divine union whose effect is the realisation of intense and illimitable Bliss Consciousness. The Bliss Soul will arrive at the realisation of Bliss oneness through the gates of sublimation of human love, expansion of universal love and its transformation into Divine Love and at its summit he will realise inconceivable beauty, sweetness and splendour. He will be united with the world through bliss Consciousness and there will be banished forever the sorrow, fear, hunger, pain, darkness and discord of our lower existence. 

              “The physical being could only endure, if by some means its physical causes of decay and disruption could be overcome and at the same time it could be made so plastic and progressive in its structure and its functioning that it would answer to each change demanded of it by the progress of the inner Person; it must be able to keep pace with the soul in its formation of self-expressive personality, its long unfolding of a secret spiritual divinity and the slow transformation of the mental into the divine mental or spiritual existence.”³³

                We have two physical substances, one that of the gross body, bound by its past evolution in Matter and the other is that of subtle physical existence which provides the substance for our physical, vital and mental sheaths and at the core of subtle physical sheath there is true physical being. Subtle physical in us is open towards the universal force-formation of cosmic Matter. The learning capacity of the body is less than the learning capacity of the true physical being, the annamaya Purusha.

                The true physical education lies behind the surface physical education which is to train the physical substance to its utmost strength, capacity, plasticity and vigour. The outward character of the body has two deficiencies; firstly, that of limitations in terms of its capacity and secondly, it has a subconscient consciousness of its own which is an obstinate fidelity to past habits and past nature and automatically opposes and obstructs any very great upward change and radical transformation of the whole nature. The physical substance is our base and foundation and if we ignore it or belittle it for any higher Spiritual quest then we do not become perfect but only shift the field of our imperfection.

                The aim of true physical education is firstly, discovery of surface physical self, the true physical, annamaya Purusha, the Divine stationed in the physical sheath, secondly purification and transformation of Physical sheath, subtle physical, the annamaya kosha and finally the perfection of physical sheath.

              The perfection of body are of four types that of a greatness of sustaining force, mahattva, an abounding strength, energy  and puissance of outgoing and managing force, bala, a lightness, swiftness and adaptability of the nervous and physical being, laghuta and a holding and responsive power in the whole physical machine and its driving springs, dharana-samarthya.

               Physical substance requires training to overcome the states of constant obscure parts, moments of unconsciousness, long obstinate habit, temporary inclination of weak resignation, dull acceptance, constitutional feebleness, movements of fatigue, negligence and indolence, lapses into ignorance, incapacity, depression and fear, cowardly recoil, submission to the environment and to the pressure of the men and events and forces. In its place physical substance attains calm passivity, immobile tranquility, dynamic peace and silence. This opens the passage through subtle physical to discover the true physical being. This discovery helps the physical substance to experience purification, transformation and perfection of subtle physical substance and gross physical substance, the annamaya kosha

              The perfection of the body foreseen in ideal education is attained mechanically by physical exercises and other corporeal means. This can attain more flexibility with the assistance of Hathayoga, but still mechanically by Asana and Pranayama. In Integral Education these physical trainings, right use and control of physical things would exist, not for any inferior enjoyment and pleasure but as expression of the truth of the Spirit and beauty and delight of physical existence and a regulation of the physical life-force which liberated them from some of the ordinary physical habits or so-called laws thought by physical science to be inseparable from life in the body. In Integral Education the perfection of the true and gross physical substance can be attained by three methods; firstly, by development of the will in mind and widely opening itself to and potently calling down the universal pranic Shakti and holding and fixing its more powerful working in the body. Secondly, by the will in mind opening itself rather to the Spiritual power above the head and calling in higher Spiritual pranic energy from above, the Spiritual pranic energy; thirdly, the final step is the opening towards highest Supramental will of the Spirit and it will enter in and take up directly the perfection of the body.

               The three stages through which integral Education proposes to train the body is that firstly, it considers the body as a mutable dress to be replaced repeatedly in all life and the body must develop the perfect capacity to hold whatever Spiritual energy without spilling, wasting or getting itself cracked and it is considered as foundation of our highest development without entering any attachment towards it; secondly, the body consciousness is to be transcended and exceeded of its limitations and subjection to death, decay and suffering and this faculty of holding higher Spiritual energy, dharana shakti, is considered as important achievement of the perfection of the body and to consider the body as an instrument and minor outward formation of Self; thirdly, the bodily consciousness is universalised to feel its physical oneness with all material existence. 

              The universalisation of physical consciousness has three stages in which firstly, the body is identified with universal suffering and pain and bears a part of the earthly burden, secondly, gradual transformation of this universal suffering into Delight and lastly, achieving the state of absolute Delight from which all earthly sufferings are instantly healed and universal order and harmony are restored.

            “It is only if the inner or true vital being replaces the outer life-personality that the drive of the vital ego can be wholly overcome and the life-force become the servant of the soul and a powerful instrumentation for the action of our true spiritual being.”³¹

            ‘It is when there is this death of desire and this calm equal wideness in the consciousness everywhere, that the true vital being within us comes out from the veil and reveals its own calm, intense and potent presence. For such is the true nature of the vital being, pranamaya purusa; it is a projection of the Divine Purusha into life, — tranquil, strong, luminous, many-energied, obedient to the Divine Will, egoless, yet or rather therefore capable of all action, achievement, highest or largest enterprise. The true Life-Force too reveals itself as no longer this troubled harassed divided striving surface energy, but a great and radiant Divine Power, full of peace and strength and bliss, a wide-wayed Angel of Life with its wings of Might enfolding the universe.’³⁵

            The perfection of the vital, prana is of four types that of fullness, purnata, clear purity and gladness, prasannata, equality, samata, capacity of calling down higher Spiritual energy for possession and enjoyment, bhoga-samarthya. The perfection of emotion, citta is of four types that of sweetness and mildness, saumya, strength and force, raudra, faith, kalyana-sraddha, illimitable widest and intensest capacity to call down and hold the Divine Love, prema-samarthya.

            Vital substance requires training for overcoming its emotions, governed by egoistic passion, blind instinctive affections, all the play of the life-impulses with their imperfections, perversions, often sordid degradations, a heart besieged and given over to the lusts, desires, wraths, intense or fierce demands or little greed and mean pettiness of an obscure and fallen life-force and debased by its slavery to any and every impulse. One enters the passivity, immobility and silence of the emotive heart and sensational hungering vital either by ordinary method of artistic and aesthetic activities or through Yogic practices. So behind the subtle physical sheath one enters subtle vital sheath and in the innermost chamber of the subtle vital sheath, the true vital Being is discovered. This discovery helps to purify, transform and perfect the subtle vital sheath, pranamaya kosha.

            The perfection of ideal education, through vital training is arts, songs, music, painting, dance and various outer enjoyments. These can be refined and subtilised by the ancient psycho-physical science of Hathayoga, psychic science of Rajayoga and spiritual science of traditional Bhakti Yoga or as proposed in Integral Yoga is to combine the two methods of Sankhya and Yoga or the method of witness Purusha with the method of consecrated action before integrating the emotional and vital part of the Bhakti Yoga. In Integral Education these arts and crafts would exist not for any inferior mental or vital amusement, entertainment, excitement and pleasure but for the expression and means of the truth of the Spirit, the manifestation of love, beauty and delight of vital existence. Life would be no longer tyrannous masters demanding for their satisfaction but means of expression of the power of the Spirit. Integral Education proposes three methods for perfection of subtle and gross vital substance; firstly that of awakening the emotion in mind and vital sensation of mind towards universal divine Love and experience purification of Nature through the universal Pranic Shakti, which supports emotional and vital activities; secondly, the emotional and vital part are opened towards higher Spiritual Love or higher Spiritual Pranic Shakti, which descends from the Supramental plane; thirdly, the final step is to call down the Supramental Love that meets successfully all human contacts and takes the responsibility of perfecting the vital being and vital sheath.

            “For we have two minds, one the surface mind of our expressed evolutionary ego, the superficial mentality created by us in our emergence out of Matter, another a subliminal mind which is not hampered by our actual mental life and its strict limitations, something large, powerful and luminous, the true mental being behind that superficial form of mental personality which we mistake for ourselves.”³²

            “The soul, the psychic entity, then manifests itself as the central being which upholds mind and life and body and supports all the other powers and functions of the Spirit; it takes up its greater function as the guide and ruler of the nature. A guidance, a governance begins from within which exposes every movement to the light of Truth, repels what is false, obscure, opposed to the divine realisation: every region of the being, every nook and corner of it, every movement, formation, direction, inclination of thought, will, emotion, sensation, action, reaction, motive, disposition, propensity, desire, habit of the conscious or subconscious physical, even the most concealed, camouflaged, mute, recondite, is lighted up with the unerring psychic light, their confusions dissipated, their tangles disentangled, their obscurities, deceptions, self-deceptions precisely indicated and removed; all is purified, set right, the whole nature harmonised, modulated in the psychic key, put in spiritual order.”²⁸

            “A light descends and touches or envelops or penetrates the lower being, the mind, the life or the body; or a presence or a power or a stream of knowledge pours in waves or currents, or there is a flood of bliss or a sudden ecstasy; the contact with the superconscient has been established. For such experiences repeat themselves till they become normal, familiar and well understood, revelatory of their contents and their significance which may have at first been involved and wrapped into secrecy by the figure of the covering experience. For a knowledge from above begins to descend, frequently, constantly, then uninterruptedly, and to manifest in the mind’s quietude or silence; intuitions and inspirations, revelations born of a greater sight, a higher truth and wisdom, enter into the being, a luminous intuitive discrimination works which dispels all darkness of understanding or dazzling confusions, puts all in order; a new consciousness begins to form, the mind of a high wide self existent thinking knowledge or an illumined or an intuitive or an overmental consciousness with new forces of thought or sight and a greater power of direct spiritual realisation which is more than thought or sight, a greater becoming in the spiritual substance of our present being; the heart and the sense become subtle, intense, large to embrace all existence, to see God, to feel and hear and touch the Eternal, to make a deeper and closer unity of self and the world in a transcendent realisation.”²⁹

            “Only the supermind can thus descend without losing its full power of action; for its action is always intrinsic and automatic, its will and knowledge identical and the result commensurate: its nature is a self-achieving Truth-consciousness and, if it limits itself or its working, it is by choice and intention, not by compulsion; in the limits it chooses its action and the results of its action are harmonious and inevitable.”³⁰

               The Supramental or Purushottama Consciousness is having no hand and yet this Consciousness is all embracing towards His creation. He is having no feet to move yet the movement of this Truth Consciousness is all pervading and all-inclusive and possesses all the multiple subtle worlds. ‘His hands and feet are extended on every side...and we live in His universal embrace.’¹⁷

               The Subconscient is defined as the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious. It sustains and reinforces all that is animal in us that clings most and refuses to transform, our mechanical recurrence of unintelligent thought, feeling, sensation and our uncontrolled fixities of character.

               The aim of Subconscient education is primarily the discovery of the Subconscient Self, the Divine stationed in the Subconscient Sheath, secondarily purification and transformation of Subconscient Sheath and finally the perfection of Subconscient Sheath.
               Subconscient Sheath is below the physical sheath and above the inconscient sheath and all dark and untransformed forces rise from inconscient to physical through Subconscient Sheath. After the discovery of the Supramental Self, the Supramental force and light penetrates the Subconscient Sheath for its purification, transformation, establishes a control and uncovers the veiled Subconscient Self. After the discovery of the Subconscient Self, it engages itself of greater action of transformation of lower hemisphere including the Subconscient sheath which is indispensable for the completeness of higher life.  

               Inconscient Sheath is recognised as the home of Ignorance, Falsehood, Suffering and Death and they rule the earth with their firm kingdom. After the discovery of the Supramental Self, by its pressure the Divine force enters the Subconscient and Inconscient sheaths and uncovers the veiled innermost chamber of Inconscient Self, whose discovery is recognised as great transforming action in the world. Through unveiling of Inconscient Self direct and most potent Divine action is activated in all the planes of lower hemisphere including the Inconscient sheath. The dark Law of the Inconscient can disappear by out burst of greater consciousness from the direct Divine Power of Inconscient Self, at present concealed within the inconscient sheath. 

               The Ideal Education represents the mental vision, the Soul’s dream of the moon light, whose main doctrine is objectively-subjective that prepares the difficult ascent of life through outer aids and efforts and Integral Education represents the supremely optimistic Supramental vision, the Soul’s vision of the Sun Light, whose main doctrine is subjectively-objective that confirms the sure progress and intends to manifest by the inner aids and spontaneous direct pressure from the Infinite. Ideal Education fulfils the first necessity of transforming the lower mental, vital and physical life into higher mental harmony through turning its gaze downward towards earth bound sattwic perfection and around towards awareness of limited universal fulfilment of life. Integral Education fulfils the second necessity of integration by turning its gaze up ward towards the Supramental harmony and inward towards that which is Occult, Subliminal and Psychic.

               Psychic, Spiritual, Supramental, Subconscient and Inconscient Education, are least dependent on external machinery. School children are not directly associated with these educations but indirectly get some touch and influence of them in proportion to their opening towards these planes. These higher types of Education of fine, delicate and subtle realm are directly related with integral Yoga responsible for building and densifying the subtle and causal body of the perfected vessel. Integral Education foresees the inclusion of all students to the exposure of higher Subliminal, Psychic and Spiritual education and they can follow and verify in themselves deeper Spiritual experiences, only when they have acquired the capacity to follow the inner method and verification as they have trained now their mind to follow the mathematics and difficult scientific truths. Spiritual force can take possession of the mere students and Truth shall dictate their life, thought, effort, endeavour and action.

               The theory of complete education pursued through all life or long succession of rebirths can be realised through synthesis of Education which has four legitimate motives, that of firstly a period of education and preparation based on the basic needs and requirement of life; secondly a period of normal living to satisfy the human desires and interests under the moderating rule of ethical and intellectual part in us; thirdly a period of subjective turn of the mind and Spiritual preparation and lastly the period of complete fulfilment of Supramental living, fulfilling and perfecting the objective living by transforming and Divinising it.

              So we can define education in its totality beginning with the surface mental, surface vital and surface physical education which builds strong material foundation. Behind it there is large ocean of subtle mental, subtle vital and subtle physical education extending over all life. At its core there is true mental, true vital and true physical being. Then behind these planes there are still greater planes of Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental worlds, whose dynamisation can lead towards entry into the Subconscient Sheath and discovery of Subconscient Self, which is identified as another important achievement ‘whose priceless value could have saved the world.’⁹ Then subsequently entry in to Inconscient Sheath and discovery of Inconscient Self is identified as the one of the last and most profound Spiritual experience, ‘the grand solution’¹⁰ in which the height of mortal effort end. All these worlds and planes have their influence on our earthly substance and can mould the earthly living into Divine living and Divine perfection. Our objective in education is to explore all the planes of Consciousness and call down their full manifestation in our earthly life. So behind the veil of ideal Education, this integral Education is revealed to few fit, capable and strong Souls. In this context the present approach of surface education can be considered as right beginning.

               Behind the true mental, true vital and true physical education there is surface mental, surface vital and surface physical education which are obligatory for all the students of The Mother’s Ideal Integral School as per the precious directive of the Government of Odisha and pioneering effort of New Life Education Trust who is responsible for the expansion and introduction of comprehensive vision of Integral Education (in Odisha) in large scale. The Government machineries must be aware of an ‘increasing mechanisation, a standardisation, a fixing of all into a common mould in order to ensure harmony is the mental method,’³⁹ and this trend would obstruct the evolution of Spiritual Law and higher freedom of the race. The great hope with which the school functions are divided into following four categories. The most of the outgoing students of this School receive training and education, Sikhya, to enable them to fit and accommodate themselves in the main stream of present world order with some basic mental knowledge on World, Self and God. They receive Divine’s brief touch which is not sufficient to change their outer life. Some of them hold and preserve the rare and sweet Psychic memory which they do not repeat from the existing hostile, dangerous and asuric world; few of them receive initiation of the Soul, Dikhya, to lead an inner disciplined life by holding the (Divine) Mother in their heart and serving Her in this life. It is believed that those who discover their Psychic Being in the heart centre, their entire outer life become secured and uncorrupted. It is believed that those who discover their Spiritual being above the head their entire outer life experience without narrowness and without attachment. Very few of them are privileged to extend the initiation of Soul to reconcile the Material and Spiritual life. Thus, Integral Education provides an awareness of higher life without enforcing and creates an opportunity for each student to choose either of the life based on satisfaction of desire and egoistic enjoyment as ruling motive of life or a life aimed at dedication, tyaga, concentration, samyama, askesis, tapasya, self-consecration, yajna and endless unfolding of the Spirit. It is only for the realisation and fulfilment of the latter objective the former responsibilities of mass education are undertaken with emphasis from The Mother, “It is not a number that we want—it is a selection; it is not brilliant students that we want, it is living souls.”⁴⁰