"It's all in your mind!"

The last project week I've joined the group going to Varanasi to work with the NGO "Alice Project". Alice Project runs a school in Sarnath, a town 10 km away from the city, which has a very distinct philosophy behind it.

"Alice Project is a research project for the education of children and teachers.It is based on the integration of our inner and outer worlds, the transcendence of borders we artificially create, and the awakening and nurturing of the understanding of self.
The methods used tap the most powerful potential we possess - the potential to be wise and kind." (Alice Project website)

The experience was wonderful. First, I got to know many new people that although I've leaved with them for the last few months we never had the chance to talk and actually get to know each other. I think we fall into our 'safe area' of friend in muwci too easily. There is something so comfortable in just being with the few people you already know so well. However, every time I go out of my ‘safe zone’ and spend time with new people I enjoy it so much.

But that is not actually what I wanted to talk about. We spent our project week mostly in the school, interacting with the students, observing classes and talking to teachers and the founder and director of the place – Valentino. We attended his ‘daily teaching of Valentino’s philosophy for older students’ and also had the chance of talking to him personally, trying to challenge his ideas.

“Our mind thinks and creates. Whatever we see, hear, smell, touch, imagine is but a product of our mind. The products of our mind cannot be considered as really existing. Indeed, they exist only as mental outputs and cannot be found beyond the mind itself.” (Valentino’s writing)

It’s at once very easy and very hard to agree with this idea. We know that everything we see, for example, was processed in our brain (it is biologically proven). But to get from that to the conclusion that nothing outside our mind actually exist is a bit hard to understand. How is it, then, that if I stand with a group of people in a certain place and we all look at the same place, we will all see a tree? The image of the tree might be different in every person’s mind, but we can still converse between us and talk about the tree. Yes, you may say that the whole bunch of people and the conversation between us is also in my mind. I don’t think I can actually prove that it isn’t so, but it is just too scary to actually believe in it, isn’t it? Does it mean that I’m the only person to exist? Or, wait, no – I’m also a creation of my own mind… then what actually does exist?

I can understand the importance of introducing a philosophy like this to those students, whose lives are not easy at all. Valentino uses this idea to convince them that all the suffering they are going through is only a creating of their mind, If so, it is their own choice weather to suffer of not.

Furthermore, he is trying to convince them that most of the subjects they learn at school – math, science, etc. are… well, crap. He states that none of those things will lead them to happiness. He criticized the western idea of getting good grades, a job and money as the way to happiness. He argues that getting money only makes people want more and more money, and thus they will never reach true happiness. The only way to reach happiness is to understand your own mind/soul – through meditation and god. Here comes into the whole picture the idea of religion, which I still didn’t quite understand how it fits in. But I guess I can keep the issue of religion for another post, because I have a lot of thoughts about the subject.

The school was certainly a fascinating place. We could all observe the difference in the students in compare to other government school we observed and any school we saw before in India and in our home countries. I’m still not quite sure what, of all the special aspects of the school, create this difference. It is certainly a place I would love to visit again and investigate more.