Bindu, Thanks a lot for your comment. Let me try to engage with a few of your thoughts: B: I'd like to begin with by framing our conversation with the idea that "Integral Education" as envisioned by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother has little to do with the academia--Indian or Western. It's purpose, I believe, is to prepare the individual to open out fully to the manifesting Spirit. The process of education then is closely related to the practice of Integral Yoga. DB: Let's leave aside the idea of "academia" for the present. The notion of the Academy is very different in different times and places; in today's world it has taken a certain form serving the systemic knowledge project of the Enlightenment. But what is common to all these institutional forms of pedagogy is their embeddedness in a social form - that is, they serve to acculturate individuals as members of a certain kind of society with certain hidden assumptions regarding what it means to be human, individually, collectively and teleologically (ie the question of human destiny). Integral Education, as I have tried to theorize it in this essay, is no different - it is embedded in an Integral Yoga habitus and serves it. As such, I feel its offering is not only "the preparation of the individual to open out fully to the manifesting Spirit," but to make possible the social conditions for the practice of the Integral Yoga. Interestingly, as I also try to bring out in the essay (perhaps not too clearly), the Mother did not impose the study of the Integral Yoga for students undertaking Integral Education. The idea was more that the form of the pedagogy and the habitus in which it was embedded would enhance the social psychology of the Integral Yoga. I believe it is the disappearance from view of this social dimension and its replacement with an exclusively psychological dimension which has something to do with the lack of contemporary relevance of the ashram implementation of the Integral Yoga. Of course, this point needs elaboration, but it may suffice to state it here as a door to further questioning or reflection. B: While I fully advocate the importance of mentoring, I feel that the phrase "the mind has to be consulted in its own growth" refers more to the need of self-reflection than of the need for an external mentor. Also keeping in mind :-) that the mind itself is in a process of developmental change, a mind that is continually consulted in its growth, (that is a person who constantly engages and broadens out in self-reflection) would eventually lead one to the plane of the Supermind. DB: I agree and I believe I may have underplayed this central aspect of self-reflection in Integral Education by focusing on the role of the teacher. But mind you, Sri Aurobindo's text where he is calling for the mind to be consulted in its growth, is his program for national education, where this "consultation" is being addressed to the teacher not the student. These three principles are all principles of pedagogy addressed to the teachers of national education. Thus the mentorship function as a form of co-creation or part of a participative spirituality is how I interpret this precept. Again seeing education as a social habitus, we may say that the student does not enter this process with a predilection towards self-reflection but the mentorship process itself can socialize such skills. This interpretation of "the consultation of the mind" in terms of the role of the teacher was also brought home to me in my conversations on the subject with Kireet Joshi, who worked closely with the Mother in formulating practical implementations of the Integral Education. On the issue of the self-reflection process being a means to the development of the mind leading to the supermind, this is certainly one direction in which such a process may lead in the Integral Education - a deepening of self-reflection into a jnana yoga opening to sources of discrimination, intuition, vision, inspiration and finally knowledge by identity. B: One of the biggest dangers in Integral Yoga/Education as currently practiced (and I have experienced this) is in the realm of vital education: Here, subjective notions of say, Beauty, in our current state of Avidya, are interpreted and privileged by those in power, with unfortunate consequences that greatly restrict the freedom of artists in a community of Integral Yoga practitioners. DB: Well put and I completely agree here. It is a privileged content which is usually made normative by acts of power in cases of both ethical and aesthetic education. Here is where it is necessary to be very careful in probing rather, in each case, what are the conditions under which the beautiful and the sublime are experienced; or the good emerges as an aspiration. Such "natural" conditions, whether based on cultural preference or prenatal factors, need then to be explored and engaged in a growth process towards universality, rather than the transference of privileged content. B: I like your idea of having a small co-inquiring group of learning community..... But the point is I feel that one way to progress from our current dualistic limitations of Avidya to the unity knowledge of Vidya is to deeply engage with and reflect on one's experiences. These reflections, can then, in the online medium be subject to the reflections of the group, thereby perhaps providing, if necessary, a corrective to the individual's experience and growth. What I am suggesting is a constant dance between the subjective and the objective and through that engagement one continually deepens one understanding of the "object" . . . and having a group participate/witness in this dance, to some degree, would helps correct self-delusions (narcissism and self-delusional grandeur is rife in new age spirituality). DB: This (dance between deeper and deeper self-reflection and collegiate co-inquiry) is precisely what I had in mind. You have expressed it much better than I did in the essay. B: one needs to develop authentic means of assessment. In the Integral Sustainability program that I work for, students self-assess themselves and their peers. Also, there are novel categories of assessment such as "embodiment of knowledge" and "risk-taking or going beyond one's comfort zone." Thank you again for this offering. DB: The issue of assessment is again one I have hardly touched on in this essay, but it goes without saying that assessment methods adequate to an Integral Education must be developed. A combination of the student's self-assessment and the reflection of a group of co-inquirers and mentors could form a dynamic which facilitates conscious progress, again if the habitus succeeds in socializing the conditions for the practice of the Integral Yoga through the Integral Educational process.