Feminine Principle, the Earth, and the Becoming

Robert Wilkinson - robtw@sprynet.com - 11:58 PM, November 11, 2007 Dear Ned,

WIE is typical of an old patriarchal consciousness that evolved from the pressures of mind trying to exceed itself some 2500 years ago. The limitations inherent in the Mental consciousness when Buddha and others of that period made their discoveries could not admit of anything higher than a dissolution of the nexus of consciousness which held them in the world. Buddha called his experience of dissolution “Nirvana” - a state of pure Being, equanimity and peace. The Nirvanic realization, we are told, has the quality of an infinite Zero, or Emptiness without form that grants liberation from this so-called ‘illusory world of becoming’.
It is certainly no coincidence that Lao Tze, the Chinese sage who lived around the same time as Buddha expressed his ‘spiritual’ realization in much the same vein calling it, “The Nothing that is All.” We find this same language later on in the teachings of Shankara, founder of the Advaita Vedanta school, who described his realization as ‘Moksha’ or liberation, where one does not feel oneself any longer to be an individual with a name or form, but an infinite, eternal, space-less consciousness.
This drive toward Transcendence completely negated the Feminine Principle, the Earth and the Becoming. And for the last 2000 years we have suffered the consequences of that negation. Many who revere Sri Aurobindo, like Ken Wilber, make no distinction between his yoga and the old path of Transcendence. To them the Mother holds no special place of significance in the Supramental Descent. The Supramental Yoga is in fact very much like the Elusinian Mysteries. It is not until you understand and embrace the Feminine that you are qualified for the higher initiation.

Wilber and Aurobindo: A reply to Joe Perez, Alan Kazlev – integral world M. Alan Kazlev is a self-taught esotericist and metaphysician, science fiction writer ... His website is at kheper.net and he can be contacted at akazlev at bigpond dot com

In keeping with academic convention, I use surname as mode of address in this essay – e.g. “Wilber”, “Perez”. I make an exception with “Sri Aurobindo” because that is the name he requested to be addressed as (as opposed to just “Aurobindo”).

Wilber's interpretation of Sri Aurobindo here and elsewhere is deeply flawed, as Brant Cortright (Psychotherapy and Spirit: Theory and Practice in Transpersonal Psychotherapy, SUNY 1997, p78), Rod Hemsell ("Ken Wilber and Sri Aurobindo: A Critical Perspective") and I (“Ken Wilber and Sri Aurobindo” - and “An Aurobindonian vision”) have all shown.

There can be little doubt that the root of this problem lies with Wilber's own misunderstanding of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual philosophy. As Rod Hemsell has shown, this is apparent even in the earlier phases of his work (Atman Project – Wilber II). Wilber himself is certainly not to be blamed for this, as there is so much knowledge in the world today that it is simply not possible for one human being, no matter how intelligent or how competent a speed reader, to understand the whole world (see “Insufficient Study and Contemplation results in Superficial Understanding of Specialized Knowledge”). And to properly understand Sri Aurobindo and The Mother's Yoga requires tremendous sincerity and aspiration, not just a brief skim reading. The reading itself has to be a meditation, the pages returned to time after time. Just as with any authentic spiritual tradition.

Wilber's error here was then compounded through the memetic (sensu Dawkins) dispersal of his well-meaning misinterpretations, through his own work and that of others who have been influenced by him. As a result, more people are adopting a false version of what Sri Aurobindo taught and achieved. That he is, so Wilber informs us, a “theorist” (someone who spent forty years in intense practical yoga was a theorist?). That he ignores the “lower quadrants” (what about The Human Cycle, or his studies of Indian culture?). That his profound Synthesis of Yoga is just another version of Nondualism, and his Supramentalisation just another representation of the “Clear Light” (the last three chapters of The Life Divine and the entire Synthesis of Yoga says otherwise). To say nothing of the striking absence of any reference to Sri Aurobindo's co-worker, whom he advised all his own disciples to consider the physical incarnation of the Divine (hence Mirra's title “The Mother” - for more see Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, Collected Works Vol.25, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram) by Wilber and his students.

from: Tusar N. Mohapatra tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com to:  debanjan nag debanjannag@gmail.com date: 26 June 2012 10:34 subject: Re: Revenge of Theosophy through Ken Wilbur

Wilber, by now it's clear, is setting up a cult and so he churns out new books but finds Sri Aurobindo's writings a stiff competition. With Theosophy he shares the common ancestry of Buddhism which is a known adversary of Sri Aurobindo's system of Yoga. Hence, nothing surprising in this war for supremacy. [TNM55]