Cultivating Higher Order Faculties of the Mind was a one-and-a-half-day hybrid (including online and in person participants) workshop organised by NAMAH with Lopa Mukherjee as the facilitator.

We were introduced to many of Sri Aurobindo’s concepts and experiences about the Mind based on the reading of extracts from Savitri and Synthesis of Yoga. We were exposed to the historical progress in the domain of Education Systems and Knowledge Systems focused on mental development culminating into an introduction to The Mother’s five-phased programme for mental education.

Subsequently, during rest of the workshop, many impactful and engaging exercises and practices were incrementally introduced to address all the five phases of Mother’s programme for mental education. Many exercises encouraged group discussion and sharing of out-of-the-box ideas originating from both in person and online participants. Many topical issues were also discussed, such as pros and cons of rapid mass-scale digitalisation and declining educational standards due to diminishing investments in the educational sector and poor choice of educational and testing methods.

Lopa taught us an impactful creativity tool called mind-mapping, using two illustrative examples of mind maps on ‘Mind’ and ‘Justice’ as the central ideas. Based on a strong interest from some of the participants, she also introduced us to multiple methods for silencing the mind, which will go a long way in preparing our mind well enough to pursue the development of higher order faculties, which in turn serve as a foundation for us to take the leap into higher ranges of our mind.

To end the workshop, she equipped us with an excellent set of to-dos to cultivate mental habits in our daily living, which can facilitate our mental development.  As a food for our ongoing mental development needs, she recommended a few celebrated book authors including Sri Aurobindo and book titles related to non-fiction, fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and magic realism domains. Her recommendation also included a few movies which showcase success of out-of-the-box methods in the field of education. She also encouraged participants to invoke the author in themselves to translate their own fantasies into stories which can serve as tools for mental growth of their own children.

Feedback:

 “Wonderful. There are so many things still to discover in the mind space.”

“Yes, it was very well done.”

“Yes, how after going to the higher levels, we can see the overall perspective and live in harmony”.

“More of such workshops would be helpful.”

“Very enriching and full of learning.”

Practical examples followed by demonstrations.”

‘Very well thought out and articulated.”

[Practical take-homes] Practices of silencing the mind. Lateral thinking, imagination increasing.”

“(1) Meditation techniques.

 (2) List of books and other resources

(3) Tools to educate the mind.”

“Levels of mind, learning abour taxonomy and the Mother’s principlesof education.”