Centre of International Research in Human Unity (CIRHU) - Track 8

King Lear is a man of attachments, petty attachments, vital attachments, who expects so much from his daughters that ultimately he gets disillusioned and becomes mad. It’s a tragedy arising out of the pettiness of the attachments to which you reduce yourself to and then how you are ruined. It’s a great lesson for humanity: how not to be attached in this way, and to rise above it.

So I would like these four stories somewhere in the series. I already collected a number of stories which I shall present to you in the next workshop on this book that we shall arrange. I’ll request Alain to arrange when I come next, we can have all those of you who are interested and who can bring treasures from your own knowledge to this banquet. We shall be very happy to receive good stories from you think can go into this collection.

I’ll bring whatever collections I have made so far and exchange our views on them and see how they can be arranged.

So this is the project that is already on and I want to develop it. And you can see that these stories, once you combine them, how useful it will be to the teachers of Auroville and to the children of Auroville. You will have good material, a new kind of material and new kind of education.

And then I want to start already the next book which, provisionally, I have entitled Ideas. It’s about mental education. And the title of the book will be Ideas. Just as vital education is basically through stories, so mental education will be mainly through ideas. It’s very difficult to find stories to illustrate ideas because, most often, the stories are written around our vital impulses and our vital emotions. You don’t easily find stories which can illustrate ideas. But if you can find stories that can illustrate ideas, I’d be very happy. In any case, I would like to have short statements which are clear and which, when presented to the children, their own mind becomes clear – so a statement of clear ideas, so the children understand what is clarity. In fact, Descartes said that clarity is a sign of truth. An idea which is clear and precise, it’s a definition of truth, according to him. So I would like to have examples of clear ideas, stated clearly. Then I want ideas which are subtle. Children should know what is subtlety. And children should have the experience of what may be called complex ideas. We should be able to give an anthology of ideas which are complex in character and, finally, ideas which are global in character. I want a compilation of clear ideas, subtle ideas, complex ideas, and global ideas. So think about it. It may come to us after two years perhaps, this particular programme, in the meantime kindly collect in your own mind, in your own notebooks, ideas which can illustrate these four themes: clarity, complexity, subtlety and globality.

And then I want to come to the fourth book: psychic and spiritual education. And I have not yet reflected upon it, so I’ll not yet be able to tell you how I think of planning about it. But here also I invite you all to think about it and see how best we can collect materials which are pertaining to psychic and spiritual education.

I would like to register you all in this programme, whether you like it or not, because I am really very, very keen to harvest – because I know that you are well-read, have thought a lot and are interested in education. You’ve had the benefit of very high education in your own life, so you can make a very good contribution. So I would like to register you all. Afterward you can retire if you don’t like but in my registration I would request Alain at least to put down the names of everybody who is present now and open the register: from Auroville, anyone who wants to register himself or herself or anyone whom you want to suggest; if a person does not come forward, I would like to go to him or to her and request him or her to participate in this programme.

To my mind, this is a programme of CIRHU, the Centre of International Research in Human Unity, because these books are ultimately targeted toward unity of mankind. Through this kind of educational material, the basic theme is unity of mankind.

And I want international research, that is to say, people of both East and West to be engaged, to be brought together in this research work. And once we start this work, I will say to myself, “CIRHU has started”, under the trees, benign shadow under which we are sitting today. In fact, I would say this is the inauguration of CIRHU, because we’ve already started here. I would like to register your names, as researchers, and I want your help.

This is one important programme of CIRHU. And, before we disperse, I would like to introduce to you the second programme that I would like you to participate in, you and others who are not here, but who can.

In this paper I have written, I have spoken of one central faculty and seven subsidiary faculties. The conception I put forward is that the Centre of International Research in Human Unity will be a kind of an open institution, or no institution at all; it will be No School, basically.

This centre is actually to be conceived as No School, in which the method will be not the method of schooling but the method of research. Even the students who will learn will learn through the method of research. And whatever is learned, even through lectures, through books, many other things which are normally connected with schooling, will be subsidiary. At a certain stage, I had written a statement about higher education. And I had made ten points.