Our Vision
An Integral Education which enables every individual, institution, and nation to realise their highest potential — this is the vision of SAFIER. We work towards making this vision a living reality, inspired and guided by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
For Individuals: To prepare individuals to grow towards their own highest perfection, becoming a conscious force for building the earth’s luminous future.
For Institutions: To radically transform education by reshaping the collective institutional culture, creating spaces for self-discovery and growth.
For Nations and the World: To build a happier world rooted in unity and enriched by diversity, where every nation thrives in its true cultural essence in harmony with all others.
Every one has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of strength and perfection in however small a sphere, which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it, use it. The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use.
- Sri Aurobindo
India has or rather had the knowledge of the Spirit, but she neglected matter and suffered for it.
The West has the knowledge of matter but rejected the Spirit and suffers badly for it.
An integral education which could, with some variations, be adapted to all the nations of the world, must bring back the legitimate authority of the Spirit over a matter fully developed and utilised.
- The Mother
5200+
Teachers
5200+ Lights Guiding the Way
300+
Workshops Conducted
Workshops that Inspire, Empower, Transform
Our Mission
To share the knowledge, principles, and practices of Integral Education with individuals and communities across the globe, facilitating holistic growth and conscious learning for all who seek it.
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SAFIER engages in inspiring School management, in-service teachers, parents & educationists in creating a better future for children through residential long-term and short-term workshops.
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Helping in initiating a transformation first in the facilitators, and then in children they engage with, through interactions, intensive workshops and any other suitable means.
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Engaging with educational institutes on a long term basis, in creating a sustainable environment for a transformative education.
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Conducting Children’s Workshops to inspire a group of children by facilitating a soul-centred environment to foster a development in the physical, emotional and mental being of the child; providing an integral development which is not focused upon the conventional system of syllabus-centred education.
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Facilitating Publications & Audio-Visuals by creating content for educational materials, compilations, by making Films, facilitating in the creation of a general awareness & deeper study in the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother—the founders of Integral Education.
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To catalyze a transformative shift in India’s educational landscape by consciously & creatively integrating technology with Indian psychological wisdom and the finest global practices in teaching.
The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught.
The second principle is that the mind has to be consulted in its own growth.
The third principle of education is to work from the near to the far, from that which is to that which shall be.
- Sri Aurobindo
Education to be complete must have five principal aspects corresponding to the five principal activities of the human being: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual. Usually, these phases of education follow chronologically the growth of the individual; this, however, does not mean that one of them should replace another, but that all must continue, completing one another until the end of his life.
- The Mother
An Overview
Sri Aurobindo Society is a Registered Society under Societies Registration Act, 1860 (Now West Bengal Societies Registration Act 1961). It is an international not-for-profit NGO. It was founded in 1960 by the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry, and she is also its Executive President.
The Mother, Co-Founder of Integral Education, and Executive President of Sri Aurobindo Society
Sri Aurobindo Institute of Research in Social Sciences (SAIRSS) is an autonomous institution set up by Sri Aurobindo Society and reports to the Department of Science & Technology (DST).
SAIRSS is the Research Wing of Sri Aurobindo Society.
Sri Aurobindo Foundation for Integral Education and Research (SAFIER) is one of the Projects under this Research Wing, started in the year 1986. Currently Shivakumar is the Project Manager of SAFIER.
Contributions to SAFIER, Sri Aurobindo Society, are eligible for tax benefit u/s 80G as well as u/s 35(1)(iii) of the Indian Income-Tax Act
Organisational structure
Other Educational Initiatives
We collaborate with schools and educational institutions committed to bringing aspects of Integral Education into their learning environments. Through customised workshops—offered at both introductory and advanced levels—we co-create meaningful learning experiences that reflect each institution’s unique vision and needs.Here is a list of educational institutes which we have collaborated recently and/or are in collaboration with:
Collaborators
Priti Umamahesvaram
Teacher Trainer & Research Associate, SAFIER
Priti is a graduate of Commerce from Gujarat University. She also holds a diploma in ‘Early Childcare and Education’ from IGNOU university and a certificate in ‘Early Childhood and Care’ and ‘Teaching Yoga to Children’ from Mirambika Research Centre, New Delhi. Having an interest in Fine Arts, she explored the world of Fine Arts in diverse ways – exploring furniture design, animation, printmaking, sculpture, painting and drawing, and has become a practicing amateur artist with one solo show in paintings and drawings at Ahmedabad behind her.
Priti embarked on an inner journey which led her to the world of integral education practiced at Mirambika. She rendered services as a full time volunteer at Mirambika, a free progress School under the aegis of Sri Aurobindo Ashram — Delhi Branch. This period of working has helped her to be a part of an evolving, philosophical and spiritual organisation, in the area of education as envisioned by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
Her understanding of integral education helped her to be part of private schools that are aspiring practitioners of integral education in Delhi’s NCR region. In one of the schools, she helped train teachers in the everyday understanding of implementing integral education via project method.
Priti also has been trained to teach Yoga to children and adults, and aspires to practice Integral Yoga in her daily life.
Shivakumar
Project Manager, SAFIER
Shivakumar has been engaged in bringing about a deeper change in the field of Education since 2001. He conducts Workshops and Camps on Integral Education for principals, educationists, teachers, parents and students, and also coordinates several projects related to education, at the Society.
Growing up in Kerala, Shivakumar was always fascinated with technology and its role in making lives better. He started his career with an Engineering degree in the Mechanical field and as a Computer Aided Design Engineer, worked in the industrial world for 5 years, engaging in design, quality assurance and technical liaison with clients.
Along with his interest in technology, another interest started developing right from his college years, that of spirituality. After his 5-year stint in the corporate world, he decided to take a break from work and started engaging himself in full-time study and practice of Indian spirituality, especially the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It was at this time that he came into contact with Sri Aurobindo Society and decided to join it and be part of its objective of working towards a global spiritualised society as envisioned by Sri Aurobindo. He moved into Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry) in 2001 for this.
He is also the National Director of AuroYouth, the Youth Wing of Sri Aurobindo Society.