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The Mother and the importance of physical education in Integral
Yoga

Lakshman Sehgal

Abstract
The aim of Integral Yoga is to transform human nature so the body cannot be ignored. A healthy
and conscious body is essential if humanity is ever to attain supermanhood. This article, written
by one of the early Sri Aurobindo Ashram schoolchildren, reverberates, through the experiences of
his upbringing in Pondicherry, in the value of physical education for accomplishing the supreme
aim of all earthly existence.

Editor’ s note
Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga, being all-encompassing, includes the body in its ambit of divine
realisation. As The Mother put, “I have already told you several times that the artist infuses a very
great consciousness into his hands, as the intellectual does into his brain. But these are, as it were,
local phenomena, whereas the action of physical culture is more general. And when one sees the
absolutely marvellous results of this culture, when one observes the extent to which the body is capable
of perfecting itself, one understands how useful this can be to the action of the psychic being which
has entered into this material substance. For naturally, when it is in possession of an organised and
harmonised instrument which is full of strength and suppleness and possibilities, its task is greatly
facilitated (1).”

The body too must eventually realise its divine possibility just like other parts of our being. The body too
must be infused with the psychic and spiritual states of consciousness. It is with this aim in view that the
Mother gave importance to the Department of Physical Education. The author of this article had the unique
privilege and opportunity to be among those students who were actively engaged in physical education
during the days of its early inception. He is kind enough to share with us his personal experience with
physical education as a student of the Ashram School (SAICE) and thereafter. His personal experience
lends credence and a unique perspective with a field that is hardly considered as having much importance
in spiritual life except for good health. The insights he received and shares with us will surely be quite
beneficial to all. It must however be understood that this is one part, albeit the most distinguishing
aspect, of Sri Aurobindo’s vast and many-sided Integral Yoga whose core is the discovery of the Divine
and, having discovered the Divine within, helping in the divine Manifestation outside and in the world
and humanity at large.

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