The Aurobindian initiative is becoming more important in India, especially in Orissa

Integral Practice, Integral Esotericism - Part Six Alan Kazlev

6-xiii. Integral Education

Integral Education is the philosophy and practice of education for the whole child: body, emotions, mind, soul, and spirit. Two versions of Integral Education have been independently developed, Waldorf Education system based on the teachings or Rudolf Steiner, and found in Steiner schools all over the world, and the teachings in education of Sri Aurobindo and especially The Mother, and taught and refined over half a century at the Sri Aurobindo International Center of Education in Pondicherry.

The Aurobindonian initiative is becoming more important in India, especially in Orissa. The work of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo in Orissa began in 1948 when two Study Circles were established. Central in this initiative was Babaji Sri Ramakrishna Das, who had joined the Sri Aurobindo Ashram several years earlier, in 1945. The first phase of work included organisation of Study Circles, Student Associations, Women's Study Circle, zonal and state level Study Circle Meetings. In the next phase, Integral Education Centres, Relics Centres with experiments in collective living were started. Currently the New Life Education Trust oversees a wide chain of Sri Aurobindo Integral Education Centres in Orissa, a state in India. Most of these are secondary schools in rural areas, set up with local initiative. As of August 2006 there were 8970 Sri Aurobindo Study Circles, 429 Integral Education Centres, and 101 Centres with Hostels, 57 Agricultural Farms, and 40 Dairy Farms, all of which represent integral philosophy in action[42].

In 1994, Prapanna Smith, was sent to the Indian State of Orissa by Babaji Sri Ramkrishna Das, and visited the Sri Aurobindo Marg in Cuttack and nine rural Integral Education schools. Profoundly inspired by what he saw and experienced there, Prapanna founded the Center for Integral Education in 1998. Today the Center for Integral Education runs the first two Integral Education Schools in the USA, both located in San Diego, California: the Rainbow Kids Integral Preschool and the Integral Elementary School of La Jolla[43].

The other great branch of Integral education, Waldorf education, is a worldwide system of education based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner and his Anthroposophy movement. As with . The Mother and Sri Aurobindo's education philosophy, the aim of Waldorf education is to educate the "whole child". It does this by incorporating a balance of physical activity, artistic creativity and academic work against the backdrop of stages of development. In Steiner's esoteric system this is interpreted in terms of the progressive process of incarnation of the child's soul and spirit, although Wilber's developmental stages are very similar. As of 2005 there are over 900 established independent Waldorf schools located in about sixty different countries throughout the world, as well as many younger initiatives, making this the largest independent nondenominational school system in the world[44].

As with Art, Education is again one of the spheres where Wilberian thought, with its integral politics, integral ecology, etc, is completely lacking. The reason would seem to be that the highly theoretical, impersonalised, and over-intellectualised Wilberian system would imply no real point of contact with practicalities such as teaching and raising children. And obviously the demographics of Wilber and most of his supporters (who are either baby boomers like Wilber or else in their early to mid twenties) also figure in this[45].

[42] See the blog posts by Tusar N. Mohapatra, Mother's Work in Orissa http://savitrieralearningforum.blogspot.com (November 11, 2005), and Sri Aurobindo's Action in Orissa http://savitrieralearningforum.blogspot.com (August 27, 2006)