Development Report for Kuyliapalayam

DEVELOPMENT REPORT FOR KUYLIAPALAYAM Psychological raison d’être of the Report

In this report we deliberately introduce an educational system based upon Sri Aurobindo’s psycho- philosophy of the Four Minds. In a world torn by conflicting theories on education it is an act of faith that one method can be found and testes which answers all the problems both factual and psychological if only we have the freedom and the courage to implement it. This method of education is not just another method of applied principles but a system of proved working; thoroughly tested over nearly half a century of time. Other Free Progress methods have been attempted in most countries of the West but none have been able to fully reconcile the opposing factors of discipline and freedom. The psychology of the Four Minds tackles this fundamental problem from the very outset and in the most natural manner acceptable to both inner and outer growth and progress. The physical mind in children only feels secure when there is discipline; it demands order in its action of growth and is only truly happy when it can act in a fully controlled and healthy body. The vital mind in children demands the right to enjoy every possible form of self-expression through music, painting, poetry, drama, dance, and all forms of art expression in life. This is the vital’s most urgent need in the young and if it is frustrated its tremendous power and life-energy is diverted into destructive movements which takes a long time to recover or rehabilitate. If not stabilised before the period of adolescence this vital and emotional essence quickly enters into chaos and is thereby misdirected into channels of the animal nature, of hungers and desires, from which bottomless pit it hardly ever recovers, for they are never fulfilled in life. One enters the usual life pursuing pleasure but never joy or true happiness. The mental mind in children begins to be active around the ages of ten to twelve. If the other two mind centres are undisciplined, frustrated and in chaos at this crucial time of adolescence and mental opening, the chaos is only stressed by the mixture coming into contact with the sudden demand of growth from the glandular centres of the body. These gland centres, it must be remembered, are both physiological and psychological centres. The unpreparedness and lack of understanding of the importance education should give to the adolescent change in children is one of the great tragedies of our present system of education. If, however, the child has been prepared for this change in his body and mind by sympathetic understanding and through an intelligent appreciation of the needs of the physical and vital minds, then when the mental mind blossoms into its search for light, for knowledge, though curiosity and discovery, wonder and delight of thinking, it can be given the freedom to discover for itself the wonders of the universe, and life becomes a great adventure filled with great expectations. It is in this climate of true discovery and search for knowledge and the innate truth in things that the student comes into contact with the last of the Four Minds. The psychic mind in children is the centre of truth within each individual child. In very little children it is often most apparent, being untouched by vital distortion or mental arrogance, it has that quality of wonder for the beauty and vastness of the world and the universe which is so often lost to older children. It is from the psychic mind centre that all individual potential originates, all excellence in truth comes from there, all possible genius is there dormant, all future greatness must issue from that one source which is the true Self, of the individual. It would be easy enough to repeat what others have done in the past by merely enumerating the physical needs of a village community like this of Kuyliapalayam, but it would not solve any of the problems for the future because my merely seeing to the material needs of the people without 1 taking into account the psychological change needed to make full progressive use of those needs would only be repeating the stupidities of the past. The rehabilitation of the people of the village of Kuyliapalayam is in the nature of a test case and could serve as a model for future ventures entailing the urgency of educational recovery, health as organised therapy, social and labour rehabilitation which goes deep to the roots of a people whose culture has hardly moved in over a thousand years.

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P.S.: The Union of Experimenting Colleges and Universities in the U.S.A. can be approached to bring about a mutual Project of educational research in: educational methods, psychological approach to rural educational problems, and a philosophical appreciation of educational needs in general. Sri Aurobindo’s psycho-philosophy introduced as an answer to the many problems in today’s social, educational environmental and political life and man’s search for the ideal of human unity can be the basis for such an educational project.

N.C. D.