Forty years' practice of yoga produces a Peter Heehs

Members of Parliament Seek Clarifications from Ashram Trustees
Sri Aurobindo is a national and international figure widely recognised as a freedom fighter, national leader, yogi, philosopher and poet. Over the last hundred ... from Critique of The Lives The mismanagement of the Heehs affair by the Ashram Trustees has become a national issue ever since Heehs’ deportation order was discussed in the national media…

Inebriated with their extreme arrogance, the present Trustees have lost all sense of propriety and basic values. They are trying to deal with Members of Parliament with the same high-handedness with which they deal with Inmates of the Ashram. Perhaps the years of exercising absolute power on utterly dependent and meek Ashramites has caused these Trustees to lose touch with reality. Having entrenched their autocratic rule in the Ashram, they want that the whole of India also must bow down to their whims and fancies in the same manner as Ashramites are being forced to do every day for the last 20 years! 

About Peter Heehs My name is Peter Heehs and I am a historian based in Pondicherry, India... Although uninterested in conventional religion, I found much of interest in writings that are usually regarded as religious, and I wrote several articles and one book on Indian religious traditions. In my research into the political and religious history of Indian history, I have been forced to confront various problems of Indian historiography and have published several articles on the subject in American and Indian journals. Recently I have become interested in the global history of ideas. My next two books will be explorations in this area.

I live most of the time In Pondicherry, south India, but also spend time in the United States and Europe. Apart from writing, my interests include sports (particularly running and swimming) and other forms of exercise, such as asanas. I do a lot of reading, primarily books and articles related to my work interests, but also novels (American, English and Indian). I also listen to music a lot, primarily Western classical, but also jazz and classic rock. I love to spend time with friends and recently gave in and joined a social networking service. My chief interest remains the practice of yoga, but this is something I speak about rarely even with my friends.  Contact information - In the News - History of ideas and historiography

The history of ideas or intellectual history is the study of the development of ideas or modes of thinking across time. My next book, and one currently in the planning stage, will be explorations of themes in the global history of ideas.

Historiography is the study of the writing of history, the history of history so to speak. Several of my papers, published in History and Theory, Postcolonial Studies and other journals, explore historiographic themes. Historiographers question the assumptions and practices of older as well as more recent historians in an attempt to avoid the biases of culture and era. Postcolonial historiographers, for instance, question the assumptions of the historians of the colonial era, although, as I have shown, this does not exempt them from biases of their own.

the most absurd of all critiques of OOO from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman)

When OOO speaks of individuals, it is speaking of many different layers of individuality. That includes atoms, it includes bodily tissues and organs, it includes individual people, and it also includes societies and (why not?) social classes. It’s a very inclusive sense of “individual.”

A phenomenology of online fights - practical tips from An und für sich by Adam Kotsko

It is a well-known fact that online forums tend to produce bitter fights more often than in-person discussions do. Someone who would never dream of yelling and name-calling in person may easily become very combative online — and interestingly, this often happens in response to perceived offence from others, giving the combatant a feeling of aggrieved self-righteousness that renders all their invective totally justified… Hence I propose that if we feel angry or aggrieved by a blog post or comment, we should take a break and do some push-ups before responding.

@ibogost: Savitri Era Party [RT @ibogost: Just ordered Katherine Hayles's new book, "How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis," http://t.co/wbngRMmu]

Five reasons why Manmohan Singh is ‘guilty’ from churumuri by churumuri

After tearing down every one of Manmohan Singh‘s ministers, “Team Anna” has trained its guns on the prime minister himself, calling him “shikhandi”, accusing him of turning a blind eye while his colleagues were making merry, and charging him of presiding over the coal scam. In a piece in The Hindu, Singh’s former media advisor Harish Khare offers a backhanded defence of his ex-boss.