global oneness project Bridging Theory and Experience I had the privilege of growing up in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India, which is a spiritual community now perhaps more than 70 years old Sraddhalu Ranade - Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India - Scientist, Educationalist, Scholar in which as a community of about 2,000 people there is no exchange of money within the community. As a social framework of living, it's an unusual experiment. But more important, there is a school there which is built along these lines, on the recognition of a deeper spiritual basis of the human identity and purpose, where from kindergarten to graduation through college, we have no exams and the whole learning system is centered around encouraging the innate thirst for knowledge and the joy of learning and assisting the personality to unfold, constantly centered on a deeper sense of identity. So having been through such an approach to education which touches all parts of our nature--the mind, the emotions, and even the physical body training-- when I had my first contact with the rest of the world outside the community, which was at a pretty late age, after the age of maybe around 25-- it was the first time I really went out and looked at things outside-- it was a bit of a shock to see how different most people were and how different society was. And the expectations and motivations of society seemed so alien, so unnatural. And it's been, for me, an interesting journey to understand what sustains society in this artificiality--I would even say falsehood-- because the human being innately reacts against falsehood. We innately shrink from falsehood and are drawn to truth and beauty and love. So what can sustain so powerfully a distortion in the human expression in society for so long? And then I worked on this to some extent, not only recognizing those very tendencies for distortion within me, as in all human beings, and also the other side which is constantly trying to bring forward a deeper unity and a deeper harmony. Then there is being in a spiritual community the journey of introspection and inner experiences and realizations which, of course, bring one closer to that reality. So all of this has been kind of a base of experience which has constantly reflected a deeper study and thinking of these ideas which are also part of the community where I've grown up. Sri Aurobindo is the founder of this community, and he wrote extensively on education and various other human issues-- social development, political development, philosophical framework of the cosmos and things like that. But for me, it has always been an attempt to bridge what I read with something of the experience. www.globalonenessproject.org