Ashram surely deserves to benefit from democracy

Manmohan is best Prez candidate as he doesn't use his brain: Azam Khan India Today‎ - Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan says his party has suggested the name of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as President.

Democracy Sans Politics - by Aspirant JUN 15, 2012 A critique of the book "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" by Peter Heehs committed to objective, academic, respectful and honest discussions What You Can Do

The Trustees need not be brilliant, smart, intellectual, dynamic persons. They need not even be good administrators. They just need to be sincere to the values shown to us by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The brains and ability for administration are far less important and can be provided by people who are employed or chosen to assist them.

Politics is undesirable, true. But among human beings not yet ‘supramentalised’ and not even ego-free yet, democracy is desirable. There is a progress towards democracy all over the world. We definitely did not want democracy when the Mother was directly running the Ashram and She had the total, egoless, Divine power. But that does not mean that the same should be the case now. Circumstances are very different and the organization needs to be different too. We need not be afraid of change. It is possible to have democracy without politics. It is easily possible if the current authorities decide in its favour, and it is possible with some difficulty if they don't co-operate.

In a spiritual organization, the ideal is that the top organizers are people who did not try to or care about being the leaders but happen to do it because the karma has come to them. True, some of the current Trustees did get the post handed to them without trying, but as pointed out, they were chosen for their special quality of being a 'yes-man' to the top one…

If democracy can be suitable anywhere, the Ashram surely deserves to benefit from it. Most of the Ashramites are at least a little conscious and know at least to some extent their fellow-Ashramites. There can be democracy without politics. Politics arises when there is a person or a group that strives to get a position, even with the avowed intention of serving the community. By Aspirant S. Posted by General Editor at 6/15/2012 06:06:00 AM 

Partyless Democracy: Remembering Mahatma Gandhi and JP Mainstream weekly, OCTOBER 2, 2010 Shree Shankar Sharan. The author is the Convenor of Lok Paksh, Patna/Delhi. He can be contacted at shankarsharan77@ gmail.com - A seminar on partyless democracy at Allahabad has put me wise to the growing disenchantment with party governments, party elections and party regimentation of MPs and MLAs that deals a blow at genuine people-led and controlled democracy…

JP’s later ideas, evolved in course of the JP movement, are more relevant and worthwhile, namely, an electoral college of panchayat mukhiyas to select a candidate unanimously and becoming the people’s candidate with whom the parties could compete.

The biographical in Savitri (25) from Savitri The upshot of this enntire discussion is simple: to dismiss the specious argument that The Lives of Sri Aurobindo is based on facts, facts gathered from various sources over a period of time, even scraping the containers where the official records are kept. Of course it will be ridiculous to look for these in a creative work such as Savitri, a notion wrongly harboured by the biographer. In the process, he has further exposed himself by calling Savitri a fictional ceation. This collection of facts may be a laudable piece of work, but perhaps has absolutely no relevance with the life of a spiritual person, here Sri Aurobindo the Yogi.

But even in the world of facts there are issues. Selection of facts from reams of papers is never a straightforward process and subjective decisions are never uncommon. So, the situation is like this: the author himself dismisses the aspects of values which is tantamount to dismissing them from his life; presentation of facts gets tailored to suit the biases of the writer making these again false and fake, counterfeit if one looks at them with sufficient care. We feel extremely sorry that such a book on Sri Aurobindo should have come out with the official permission from the Ashram authorities for the use of the copyright material. This must be revoked.

The Spiritual Stage of Evolution from Sri Aurobindo Studies Based in a mental viewpoint, we tend to give most credence and reality to the external world and its powes and actions; and to provide a lesser reality and substance to the inner, spiritual essence of existence. This is opposite to the reality that the spiritual essence is primary and creates the outer manifestation.

Esalen and CIIS, a Conversation with Michael Murphy and Robert McDermott from Footnotes to Plato by Matthew David Segall. President Emeritus Robert McDermott and creator of Esalen Michael Murphy in conversation on June 1st at CIIS in San Francisco.  

The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age from The Immanent Frame In her new publication, The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age, Martha C. Nussbaum discusses the growing issue of intolerance and analyzes the fear that fuels this problem.