SRI AUROBINDO GHOSH’S PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

Aurobindo Ghosh, the great educationist of India, is known by the name Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo has set forth his philosophy in the life Divine. He bases his philosophy on the original Vedanta of the Upanishadas. He holds that intuition must be corrected by a more perfect intuition and never by a logical reasoning. Realization of the sublime truth is the sum mum bonum of his philosophy, which can be achieved through intuition, spirituality, creativity, intellectuality, integral view of life being a superman and Gnostic individual. Sri Aurobi9ndo believes that earlier Vedanta represent and integral or balanced view of life. It implies healthy integration of God and the man or world, renunciation and enjoyment, freedom of the soul and action of nature, being and becoming, the one and many, Vidya and Avidya, knowledge and works, and birth and release. He says that fellowship between God and man generates in ‘man' an idea of new birth and a new ideal of work. The fellowship with God can be achieved only by disinterested action in society, by never ending meditation, by self for-getting devotion and by feeling a kind of unity of all things in God. Sri Aurobindo is not a fatalist. He believes that man is the maker of his own destiny. Even heredity and environment are determined by the present and past actions of man. Man reaps the consequences not of his actions alone, but sometimes he shares the results of the action, of others and vice versa, because all existence is continuous. There is continuity between deferent births. On the whole the doctrine of karma is valid. Even the thoughts and feelings have their corresponding results, though action has the greatest amount of result, as life consists more of actions. Moreover it is on actions that man exercises more control than on thoughts and feelings. To Aurobindo, Education of values was the most important. He believed that the best thing in man in his spirituality. He recommended that system of education which aimed at