A post-modern cosmic explanation for the avatar

Re: Re: 09: Her Mortal Birth by Debashish

on Sat 21 Apr 2007 11:24 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link

Rich, I agree with you here that the issue is not so much whether Sri Aurobindo considered the role of the avatar significant in the cosmic evolution - which he did - but the hermeneutuc method proper to a readership or reception space. The absence of "avatar" in the LD is explainable in this light which simultaneously casts its illumination on its targeted audience - the public space of modern philosophy brought into engagement with a Vedantic discourse with its own history and established methods, conventions (doxa) and aims (nomos). Every address is constrained by temporal and cultural discursive limits - not fixed but fuzzy and continuously negotiable and negotiated.

• Since the writing of the Life Divine have these discursive limits changed for the same public space?

The simplistic assumption of an exclusive human agency in post-human evolution is a too easy submission to the prevailing doxa of this space just as the acceptance of the post-Vedantic doxa of the avatar is such a submission to an alternate but equally self-referential canon.

• Can we extend Sri Aurobindo's views on evolution into a post-modern cosmic explanation (not necessity) for the avatar?

As for the question of whether Sri Aurobindo was an avatar, I agree that one may try to prove or disprove the point, but all this is of interest mainly to the establishment of a religious figurehead. If instead it is a matter of integral knowledge, that will arise by its own means through the development of internal means of knowledge and neither need the persuasive rhetoric of apologetics for its conviction nor the need to publicize the knowledge in public discourse. It may however share this knowledge or intuition in a discursive space not so much of believers as one marked by principles of internal validation and trans-personal development. DB

by Rich on Sun 22 Apr 2007 08:58 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

Deb: Can we extend Sri Aurobindo's views on evolution into a post-modern cosmic explanation (not necessity) for the avatar?

Rich: Well in the current epoch it would seem to make sense if one is to posit a rupture with human agency to explain the advent of the post-human, to remain vigilant in keeping the avataric trace under erasure. This would seem to me necessary whether engaging with the public sphere of philosophy of with individual internal validation during trans-personal development