Existential knowledge foundation is an attempt to understand the existential quality of knowledge- the eternal, the universal and the immediate. This is an exploration for deschooling and re connecting with the existential aspects of knowing and being. The focus will be on recovering the biologically rooted cognitive system (tools, process and structure) and existential qualities of humility, innocence, openness etc. Naturally there will be Deep study on cognition, Cognitive space, Study on the formation of beingness in human, Cognition and communication, beauty etc.
About us
A group of passionate, grounded people who have questioned the current paradigm of living and learning. People who want to learn, implement and share their learning in order to improve the quality of life and make it more meaningful and fulfilling for all involved. People who believe in learning from nature , learning by being and learning as a way of life.
Jinan KB
Jinan has spent more than 25 years researching on learning process, cognition, aesthetic sense, children, traditional knowledge system, design and architecture education. He believes that introduction to text in early childhood years damages our cognitive abilities. He draws his learnings from researching, living and working with indigenous communities.
"My enquiry has been rooted in experience. I stopped reading in 1990 or so and this re wired my cognitive process and stopped reasoning as a way for comprehension. My cognitive source shifted from books/ words to the world. observation/ attention/ awareness/ experience became by cognitive process and self organizing became the process of comprehension. Automatically reasoning stopped functioning with in me.
This means understanding began to happens! Nature, children and the 'illiterate' are my teachers/ guides in this journey"
Amol Gajewar
An engineer by education, Amol has worked extensively in the field of ecology, water conservation, the re imagining learning project. His interests include in-depth understanding of learning, language, sculpting, carpentry and living naturally.
"Breathing rural and tribal life. Grown up in a town where roads to the school and colleges have always passed from farms, rivers and small hamlets. Never able to adjust with artificial appearance of modern education and profession. Strongly bonded with earth. Driven by being, Present by attention. Ably tasted the essence of CHILD in NATURE".
Ranjana Baji
While working 20 years in a regular social organisation for rural people , she lately started realising the damage schooling is doing to children, especially village children.
After leaving that organisation now she stays in kurunji, a small village 70 kms away from pune city ,2-3 days a week. she is trying to understand the dynamics of the community there, how they are bound by traditional festivals, how they BE in nature , how they lead harmonious, contended and peaceful life.
Zoe
"I am an American who, in essence, stumbled into Sadhana School where I met Jinan, Ranjana and Amol for the first time. Through the course of my time there, my carefully guarded ideas about education, children, learning, and knowledge (the list goes on) were abruptly uprooted. Since then, I have been re-designing my life experiences and beliefs to rediscover what I thought I knew. Amol incidentally is now my husband and we are raising our 2.5 year old son outside of Pune without the intention to "school" him. Simultaneously, I am training to become a "modern" midwife (a professional birth assistant) and am very passionate about childbirth experiences and natural birth".
Narendra
Narendra's association with indigenous communities and ecology goes back to over 30 years when he undertook extensive field-research spread over 1980-85 in Abujhmad region of Bastar on a United Nations University and CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi) field-research project, Tribal Perceptions and the Modern World. Though the project formally concluded in 1985, he continues work on the thematic to-date through similar field study activities in Bastar on issues of adivasi traditional modes and institutions of governance, notions of forests and wilds, ecological-cultural expressions, Adivasi survival in market economy, ecology, knowledge and learning, and livelihood as also the strength thereof for sustainability.
He ran an unregistered, informal organization in Bastar, DoE (Dialogue from the Other End). It is an attempt to nurture and revitalize pristine Adivasi ecological-social-cultural traditions, practices and skills and help meet the awesome challenge of Modernity on the strengths of their own ecological-cultural worldview and practises. Such an attempt has necessarily to reach out deeper and in ways that may not register in visible dramatic ways. It is rather an attempt at strengthening and continuing some subterranean, slow and small ecological-cultural processes in the community. Above all, to re-create the disappearing conversations on land, water, forest and social-ecological cohesions in everyday living that sustained the unique Adivasi way of life.
A group of passionate, grounded people who have questioned the current paradigm of living and learning. People who want to learn, implement and share their learning in order to improve the quality of life and make it more meaningful and fulfilling for all involved. People who believe in learning from nature , learning by being and learning as a way of life.
Jinan KB
Jinan has spent more than 25 years researching on learning process, cognition, aesthetic sense, children, traditional knowledge system, design and architecture education. He believes that introduction to text in early childhood years damages our cognitive abilities. He draws his learnings from researching, living and working with indigenous communities.
"My enquiry has been rooted in experience. I stopped reading in 1990 or so and this re wired my cognitive process and stopped reasoning as a way for comprehension. My cognitive source shifted from books/ words to the world. observation/ attention/ awareness/ experience became by cognitive process and self organizing became the process of comprehension. Automatically reasoning stopped functioning with in me.
This means understanding began to happens! Nature, children and the 'illiterate' are my teachers/ guides in this journey"
Amol Gajewar
An engineer by education, Amol has worked extensively in the field of ecology, water conservation, the re imagining learning project. His interests include in-depth understanding of learning, language, sculpting, carpentry and living naturally.
"Breathing rural and tribal life. Grown up in a town where roads to the school and colleges have always passed from farms, rivers and small hamlets. Never able to adjust with artificial appearance of modern education and profession. Strongly bonded with earth. Driven by being, Present by attention. Ably tasted the essence of CHILD in NATURE".
Ranjana Baji
While working 20 years in a regular social organisation for rural people , she lately started realising the damage schooling is doing to children, especially village children.
After leaving that organisation now she stays in kurunji, a small village 70 kms away from pune city ,2-3 days a week. she is trying to understand the dynamics of the community there, how they are bound by traditional festivals, how they BE in nature , how they lead harmonious, contended and peaceful life.
Zoe
"I am an American who, in essence, stumbled into Sadhana School where I met Jinan, Ranjana and Amol for the first time. Through the course of my time there, my carefully guarded ideas about education, children, learning, and knowledge (the list goes on) were abruptly uprooted. Since then, I have been re-designing my life experiences and beliefs to rediscover what I thought I knew. Amol incidentally is now my husband and we are raising our 2.5 year old son outside of Pune without the intention to "school" him. Simultaneously, I am training to become a "modern" midwife (a professional birth assistant) and am very passionate about childbirth experiences and natural birth".
Narendra
Narendra's association with indigenous communities and ecology goes back to over 30 years when he undertook extensive field-research spread over 1980-85 in Abujhmad region of Bastar on a United Nations University and CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi) field-research project, Tribal Perceptions and the Modern World. Though the project formally concluded in 1985, he continues work on the thematic to-date through similar field study activities in Bastar on issues of adivasi traditional modes and institutions of governance, notions of forests and wilds, ecological-cultural expressions, Adivasi survival in market economy, ecology, knowledge and learning, and livelihood as also the strength thereof for sustainability.
He ran an unregistered, informal organization in Bastar, DoE (Dialogue from the Other End). It is an attempt to nurture and revitalize pristine Adivasi ecological-social-cultural traditions, practices and skills and help meet the awesome challenge of Modernity on the strengths of their own ecological-cultural worldview and practises. Such an attempt has necessarily to reach out deeper and in ways that may not register in visible dramatic ways. It is rather an attempt at strengthening and continuing some subterranean, slow and small ecological-cultural processes in the community. Above all, to re-create the disappearing conversations on land, water, forest and social-ecological cohesions in everyday living that sustained the unique Adivasi way of life.