Friday, January 29, 2010

Stagnation in the Ashram and the chaos in Auroville

From 'The Infinite and the Detail' by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (1989), posted IN FULL at http://circumsolatious.blogspot.com/2010/01/infinite-and-detail.html.

[Integration and harmonisation of the consciousness-being] can only come about when in your consciousness you create that cosmos, when you establish that Point which is the new base of life that Sri Aurobindo described. For that an entirely new dimension of the psychic realisation has to come into being. And that is the focus of my work. You see, until 1971 nothing was really known of all this. But let us look at the facts: in 1970 the Mother completed her work in terms of dealing with DETAILS within the parameters prescribed for her Incarnation. The original plan of the Temple was the proof that this firstordering had taken place and that her Yoga had made that possible. The City is the physical representation of that Cosmos, which is ‘held together’ by the Temple, which, in turn, is that central Point, the core-point of the cosmos that ‘holds it together’. In this light you can understand quite easily why the actual shape of Auroville was designed by the original architect as a galaxy, and how perfectly accurate that was. The only problem with the physical reality that is the Auroville we know is that there is no central Point that is capable of ‘holding the city-consciousness together’. Hence there is only chaos there as a result. But this was no fault of the Mother, insofar as she did give the key to the true foundation of the City. And here we have used that key in our work, with accurate and measurable results.

A further point is that the Matrimandir was described as ‘the soul’ of the City. And this provides another clue to the process I am describing. You see, as stated, when you are dealing with matter this question of DETAIL comes to the fore. At the same time, when dealing with matter the question of the soul’s role is immediately introduced, because the soul is the nexus of being in material creation.

Now with this you can perhaps begin to draw certain important correlations: the soul, the Individual Divine, the Third member of the Solar Line, the Temple, the question of ‘perfection in detail’. All of this begins to make very logical and coherent sense. We understand fully why the Descent was arranged the way it has been and why, at this stage, we are faced with the question of Measure in the first place, why the Mother insisted on ‘accurate measurements’ and that she wanted ‘only an engineer’ and not an architect because accuracy was of the utmost importance. And we also realise why this was so hotly combated in Auroville: we are dealing with the ‘mire of detail’ in this issue. It is like the city of New York: from above it is clean and pristine and an exquisite creation of man; but when we descend we see the other side, and we may be appalled. The same applies to the City and the Temple. In the plan stage these were impeccable creations; the Mother’s original plan of the Chamber is unparalleled, it is a perfect cosmos and a replica of the Soul in Matter as the binding nexus of a material creation.

But when in the process of bringing that perfect Vision into the material plane – that is, in EXECUTING the plans the Mother left – then we are confronted with those unpleasant facts which we would rather ignore: the murkiness of the detail, with all the knots that have come into being in this material plane because Supermind has not been the overt ruling Principle in creation. This can explain why the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and our present contribution is always so entangled, so difficult, so obstructed. We are working through those knots in the course of our collective endeavour. There is no ‘sunlit path’ here; there is only one direction. And that is through the entire wheel and all its various ‘points’. Precisely because we are dealing with an INTEGRAL REALISATION. …

…‘[To] help you out of the impasse, all you need to do is to observe the ACTUAL and REAL course Sri Aurobindo’s yoga and work have taken.... You see, if you ignore this, then the stagnation in the Ashram and the chaos in Auroville and the split between those two bodies of their work would not make sense at all. But when you do see those ‘disasters’ on the background of this larger vision and fuller knowledge, then it is perfectly clear and ‘all is as it should be.’ (from            Lori Tompkins 360lotus@gmail.com to  "Tusar N. Mohapatra" tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date    29 January 2010 06:24 subject another SEOF submission) The New Way: A Study in the Rise and Establishment of a Gnostic Society (Two Volumes in One), The Gnostic Circle. A Synthesis in the Harmonies of the Cosmos, The hidden manna, being the Revelation called Apocalypse of John the Divine with complete text and commentaries, Time & Imperishability, The Magical Carousel & Commentaries (2 vol set), Symbols and the Question of Unity
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Sunday, January 10, 2010

Madhav-ji, you say that Superman is not needed to steer the Ashram and its people in the right direction

pranab, we should stir ourselves before things cross the brink 25 Mar 2009 the response was a valuable correspondence between sri madhav pandit and pranab-da, both leaders in their own right and in their respective fields carrying influence and impact which is more than evident. ...
the present administration is or feels powerless to arrest ... 25 Mar 2009 well, pranab, i have done for the moment. i have trodden many a path in these matters and have acutely realised where and how i could and should have done vastly better. But lost opportunities do not come again—at any rate in the same form. I have a deep feeling that the Mother is offering us opportunities to vindicate the truth of Her life. With much love, Yours affectionately, Madhav 28.11.91
Pranab - Pranab Bhattacharya has been a resident and highly influential member of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram since 1945. From an early period during this stay, he was made responsible for the Physical Education
Overview  ... (“Narad”) to Ashram trustees, 1 October 2008 (RE) Notice by Kittu Reddy (“Pranab’s Proposal”) , mass email dated 11 October 2008 (KR) These materials...
Pranab's Proposal - Notice by Kittu Reddy displayed on the Ashram's notice board and mass emailed on 11 October 2008. PRANAB'S PROPOSAL By writing the book "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo", Peter Heehs ha
Email from Ananda Reddy to Pavitra  ... asuric forces to raise their heads once again. The first shots of this battle were heard in 1986-87 when Pranabda and Jugalda had raised their voices against such tendencies in the works coming out o...
The Strange Case of Dr. M and Mr. S  ... he supported a movement which has called for such acts? He should at least have protested against “Pranab’s Proposal,” posted in the Ashram in October 2008, which demanded, among ot...
hee-hee – hah-hah & co 28 Dec 2008 the line which (pranab) bhattacharya accuses of deleting was deleted by aurobindo himself.” ' saaba states that this is a blatant lie by hee-hee – hah-hah & co and is the product of their fertile imaginations. ...
a decade ago we campaigned against power mongers within sri ... 30 Jun 2008 pranab bhattacharya, the ashram's physical education director, points out in his book i remember “the editor must have thought, himself to be very clever in avoiding one line and bringing changes perhaps thinking that it could change ...
pournaprema, the mother's granddaughter 27 Oct 2008  dada [pranab kumar bhattacharya] told everyone not to speak a word about it. it was not declared until dawn.” we discussed some other matters after that; after a while, pournaprema asked me: “how many people do you know in the ashram? 
today is sujata-di's second death anniversary 3 May 2009 after the mother left her body pranab said certain things which were absolutely rubbish because in mother's agenda, there were certain instructions related to the mother's cataleptic trance which might look like death. 
all of you all along knew all about this book but slept over it 17 Oct 2008 - 07.07.87 by pranab bhattacharya did not bring any result , most relevant excerpt of which runs as follows : peter is an ashramite, eating ashram food, staying here on ashram expenses and enjoying all its facilities.
peter's life has become a high security risk for the ashram 15 Nov 2008 subject my letter to pranab.pranab is our only hope. his timely action on peter has brought great confidence in us.
heehs has used several passages from unpublished manuscripts 7 Sep 2009 subject sri aurobindo you can put in blog or your domain. 09.09.09. mr. pranab bhattacharjee ...
why don't you come over and take a fresh mandate 1 May 2009 it is really strange that despite him being involved with such controversies for so long, involving a long drawn court case as well, he is being considered indispensable,…despite respected veterans like pranab da and jugal da pointing ...
pranab is our only hope 16 Feb 2009 pranab is our only hope. sex harrasment, ashram adv's role in legal work. for the prosecution of peter. auroville today; banish ph by narad ...
manoj das gupta camouflages his complicity 17 Oct 2008 by Tusar N Mohapatra it is not easy to decipher what prompted manoj das gupta to undergo the trouble of writing his reply to pranab in long hand; to stress humility and subordination on his part, perhaps; and to camouflage his complicity. ... savitri era party disapproves pranab's talibanistic diktat 12 Oct 2008   
when one thought that the controversy over peter heehs has petered out during the festivities, comes this fatwa signed by pranab on 10-10-2008 to “destroy” the book, the lives of sri aurobindo. savitri era party, however, ...
morals or money? 2 Feb 2009
that manoj could muster temerity to defy pranab is now part of mythology. but whether the driving force was morals or money is not that clear as banerji seems to imply. [tnm]
savitra smites 2 May 2009   
whether the exit of dk roy and barin da was really graceful is a matter for historians to adjudicate. savitra's "proposal" however is no less pernicious than that of pranab. [tnm] at 12:42 pm.
savitri era party is thankful to all those who have participated ... 4 Jun 2009
the party, therefore, defends the book in toto as a work of art and disapproves pranab's proposal for destroying the same. the party, further, is against the govt. order prohibiting the publication and distribution of the book in india ...
Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya « The Mother's Lasso
Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya was born on 18.10.23, in a family of respectable lineage staying at ....
Pranab passes on January 8, 2010 9 Jan 2010  
Mirror of Tomorrow Re: Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya (Dada) 18 October 1922—8 January 2010
all orissa sri aurobindo study circle conference souvenir 2007 27 Apr 2007  this was what dada (sri pranab kumar bhattacharya) had recently expressed as he gently replied to a query by prasad and nirakar as to what attitude we should take in the present circumstances. pranabda's other advice was “harmony at ...
udar's immense enthusiasm and commitment to the mother's work 7 Feb 2009 these forty-two songs, written and composed by pranab bhattacharya over the course of many years beginning around 1967, appear in their original bengali with english translations. musical notations have also been provided. ...
practical suggestions for an experimental institution of integral ... 2 Nov 2007 pranab kumar bhattacharya publisher: sri aurobindo ashram publication department, pondicherry binding: soft cover pages: 81 price: rs 55. this book offers five different exercise programmes, each designed to give ...
from the road it seems that the sea has gone further down. no one ... 13 Jun 2008 shyam sundar reminisced that the mother with pranab graced each. dredging and shifting and littoral drifting. gradually narrowed the beach, a precious thing. stormy and raging sea was the result of terrible tsunami ...
Aurora Mirabilis: Even if it takes a thousand years Auroville will be Pranab has been the instrument for my moving to Auroville, twenty-five years ago: he did not accept my small child to attend the Ashram kindergarten because of my relationship with Auroville . ...
the Orchid and the rOse: Pranab: A royal death! [Savitri Era of those who adore, Om Sri Aurobindo & The Mother.] Director, Savitri Era Learning Forum. [SELF posits a model of counselling and communicative ...
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Andrew Cohen has paid little true respect to those who have preceded him


'Being and Becoming' by Lori Tompkins

The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and Thea has been relentlessly aimed at dismantling the negative relationship with and view of our material existence – the negative view and experience of our Becoming within the confining framework or womb of time and space. Separately and as a triadic consciousness-force and action in the world these mahayogis have reminded humanity that the Vedic Journey or evolution towards a fully divine material existence is a reality, not a superstition or primitive myth conjured up by primitive people at all, but rather the natural and inevitable unfolding (Becoming) of the One Self of All Selves (the Being).
‘The pure existent is then a fact and no mere concept; it is the fundamental reality. But, let us hasten to add, the movement, the energy, the becoming are also a fact, also a reality. The supreme intuition and its corresponding experience may correct the other, may go beyond, may suspend, but do not abolish it. We have therefore two fundamental facts of pure existence and of world-existence, a fact of Being, a fact of Becoming. To deny one or the other is easy; to recognize the facts of consciousness and find out their relation is the true and fruitful wisdom.’ – Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 86
 
So [Andrew] Cohen seems to be at least somewhat on the right track in his new teachings, trying to wean people out of a negative relationship with the Becoming; but regrettably nowhere in his talk did he refer to those who have preceded and at least somewhat informed his own conception on the matter. He has paid little true respect to those who through their difficult yoga have made epic, heroic and fruitful efforts towards restoring in our modern times the Vedic conception and consciousness of a divinely intertwined Being and Becoming. Rather when discussing the question of the relationship between Being and Becoming (the Absolute and the Relative), which many have come to think of as somehow separate, he says:
'This teaching I have is really the only, in terms of the enlightenment teachings, is the only clear, unambiguous answer to the question, because as I was saying before, God is Being ... and God is Becoming.'
The Gnostic Circle  Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet 
The Essential Aurobindo: Writings of Sri Aurobindo Robert A. McDermott, Sri Aurobindo
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Monday, January 4, 2010

Nothing belonging to the Old Story can be a spring-board to jump into the New One

PORTRAITS, RELICS AND MEDICAMENTS

May be it’s good to remember, about Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s portraits, that also if the Mother knew very well the need for many sadhaks of keeping some of these portraits at home as a help for their personal sadhana, she never encouraged an exhibition of the same portraits in public places. Why? Because such exhibition, like every other exhibition of portraits of saints or “realized” people all over the world, can only invite the sadhak or the believer to “adore” or to depend on the “embodied being” there represented, to ask him for some miracle. In other words, that would help the Old Story to continue, with its religious way of approaching the Divine. When Sri Aurobindo and the Mother came for a completely New Story.
It’s much easier to adore than to transform oneself, we know that. But when our mind is at the command of our being, i.e. when there is separation (from our Source, the Divine inside), the inevitable result is exactly that: the need to address something outside which could help us. And everything – everything – can help us if we trust it. But only to a certain point. The same point which the Old World is still stranded in and doesn’t want to give up. The point from which Sri Aurobindo’s integral yoga starts. Just at the end of all the other previous attempts – and realizations too.
(By the way, there is a strong movement in these days in Italy to remove the traditional Crucified hung in public places like school-rooms, tribunals, etc. - not bakeries anyway.)
Of course, to address a familiar Mother’s portrait for our peace is one thing, and to contact the Transcendent’s Power (the “Divine Mother”) inside ourselves and let it work is another one. If the first attitude belongs to the Old Story, the second one requires a transcendence of all the three traditional Yogas - karma, bhakti and Jnana -, where separation is still there.
We have to realize that nothing belonging to the Old Story can be a spring-board to jump into the New One. And until we resort to old means we delay endlessly the beginning of the New Story, which starts by a quantum leap integrating all the previous three yogas in something else. Something requiring a deeper surrender to the Now (whatever it can be), only possible if our psychic being is at the command of our being, when we fully inhabit our body (something that the mind cannot catch at all, as it needs always to grasp something outside). Only then transformation can start – and, step by step, can last, because our matter, at the end, is touched, as there is no more separation. This is the “miracle” which has to become “a common act”, as Sri Aurobindo wrote in Savitri.
What before we were believing in as a miracle, was only magic. And magic cannot really change our Matter, because it cannot unroot the problem. It can only feed magicians, priests or witches. Behind separation, in fact, there is always an ego (also a spiritual one) – with its interest on some power (“I don’t hold powers” was saying the Mother, who was the last iconoclast, a living example of perfect surrender to Divine Will).
Whenever we resort to something outside for our healing, we resort to magic. (We can remember here how the hint given by Christ to his disciples to make them to get a glimpse of the Consciousness of Unity in Multiplicity was inevitably translated by human mind into a cannibalistic ritual). So, it’s just a matter of good taste not to mix in such a process of magic the relics of somebody who spent his/her life for something else. To label some manufactured articles with the name of Auroville, or to distribute them officially in Auroville because they are “sanctified” or “charged” by those relics, would mean only to degrade the Town of the Future by pointing out to the world that Auroville has missed the point.
 “And above all, don’t make a religion” (the Mother).
                                                                                           Paola De Paolis
from    Paola De Paolis depaolis.paola@gmail.com
to         tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com
date     4 January 2010 03:49
subject            article by Paola De Paolis
Mr. Tusar,
I am in Italy now but I have known that you published my article ("Portraits, relics and medicaments") in your website. Unfortunately, you published the version already published by Deshpande in his review, that is a version which is not the integral one (that you can find here attached).
I would like to underline that this article was meant for Auroville, as I wrote it because of something wretched happening there in these last times: the more or less "official" distribution of "medicaments" manufactured with relics of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo (!).
So, if all reference to that specific issue is suppressed, the same article cannot really stand and lends itself to useless comments by readers who are unaware of all that.
I thank you very much for your attention, wishing you a happy 2010,
Paola De Paolis    

from    Paola De Paolis depaolis.paola@gmail.com
to         "Tusar N. Mohapatra" tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com
date    5 January 2010 21:48
subject            Re: article by Paola De Paolis
Dear Tusar,
it was not my intention, with my article, to convince anybody. I don't need to convince anybody. Each one is FREE to experience what he needs to experience, religion or not religion. But as an Aurovilian (and my article was meant for Auroville), I needed and I had to express my feelings towards an "expedient" using Auroville for something not belonging to Auroville's spirit - which is open to every new experience, i.e. every experience not repeating the past. That's all.
Paola De Paolis

from    Paola De Paolis depaolis.paola@gmail.com
to         "Tusar N. Mohapatra" tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com
date    6 January 2010 15:07
subject            Re: article by Paola De Paolis
Inside Auroville I respect the choices which respect Auroville and its founders.
You are free not to catch the discrepancy of the "expedient" in question, but I am free to feel it and to express it.
Paola De Paolis
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