Abstract

The decade Maria Montessori spent in India was one of the most enriching periods of her life. During that phase, she wrote and published The Absorbent Mind Of The Child, as well as a number of fundamental books in her career. In The Education of Human Potentialities, she developed the principles of the "Cosmic Education", a curriculum which she adapted for elementary students. Invited in 1939 to give lectures by the president of the Theosophical Society, Maria Montessori and her son were trapped by the outbreak of World War II and its subsequent development. She was 69 when she arrived to madras. She stayed ten years. There was a Maria Montessori before India, and a much deeper one later. When she returned to Europe, when asked what she had done in India, she declared, "I think I've learned how to learn, as if I were a Child".

Keywords: The Absorbent Mind; the spiritual embryo; Cosmic Education; Theosophy; War and Peace; l human potential; Citizen of the World; Children's House