Debashish, nice article. DB: “Today, following the excesses of nationalism in a post-World War II era, ideas such as that of nation soul are likely to look more suspicious than they would have in an era of anti-colonial resistance. Nevertheless, Sri Aurobindo’s idea of the nation soul needs to be understood not as a chauvinistic or ahistorical essence but more properly as a cultural palimpsest, an accumulated subjectivity forming the intimate discursive basis of a living culture and seeded with its invisible preferential forms and questions of communication, expression and growth.” Even if one conceives of a nation soul as a spiritual reality in some collectivized sense analogous to an individual soul, that would therefore imply it is quite difficult to genuinely contact it and make it manifest in outer life, and that whatever its unique individuality, it remains fully based on conscious oneness with other souls, as well as with universal and transcendent reality. In any event as you point out Sri Aurobindo’s emphasis at the beginning of the 20th century (during his politically active work for Indian independence), on the nation soul of India, can have a different ring at the beginning of the 21st century. The seductive risk of mistaking an aggressive national ego for a national soul has been amply demonstrated. DB: “…a penetrating and informed assimilation and questioning of tradition and its engagement with aspects of contemporary global culture or civilizational values and lifestyles.” Yes, this is what (one hopes) an ordinary university education will stress. Integral education wants to bring much more to bear, but should not neglect this “penetrating and informed assimilation and questioning of tradition” and direct engagement with contemporary intellectual currents. It could be said for example that although students educated at the Ashram often demonstrate highly impressive psychological qualities that they likely would not have acquired elsewhere, one can also often sense an intellectual insularity and inflexibility of interpretive thinking. This deficiency has been shown to have consequences. Surely training in wideness of mind and thought, including what comes from a certain exposure to the clash and competition of ideas, is a useful preliminary for experience and expression of the higher ranges of knowledge that Sri Aurobindo's yoga is based on. DB: “…the insular and insulated nature of such a setting tends to distance the faculty from contemporary currents in thinking, having an effect of making the courses anachronistic and ahistorical, thus diluting the potential for students emerging from such a system to become creative agents for civilizational change in the contemporary world.” Exactly. DB: “…a postsecular social consciousness which embraces a universal spirituality based on an integral model of reality and personality and an openness to a transformation in the source and instrumentation of human knowledge.” Very well said.