Sri Aurobindo shows the inner evolution at work

Facts and Values Apropos of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo « Mirror of ...

Looking at the Lives's remark that Savitri is a “fictional creation”, we must say that it actually becomes a question of facts and values in poetry. One may scour for ... Facts and Values Apropos of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by RY Deshpande The upshot of this entire 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 [...]

"Aurobin Dogos" in the book “The Lost Footsteps”

Let us see what the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, who was a long time ... But he had never read Sri Aurobindo's name, he only heard it, and he wrote it in a ...

WRITINGS FROM SRI AUROBINDO « Daksha Acharya

It is from the Divine that a spiritual seeker receives peace, a peace quite independent from outward circumstances. Turn more towards the Divine, aspire for the ..

Unity: An open letter to those who despair of their country from The Mother India by The Mother India Team

With such Siren song do you slay the hearts of those who have still force and courage to strive against Fate and would rescue our Mother out of the hands of destruction. Yet I would willingly believe that matricides though you are, it is in ignorance. Come therefore, let us reason calmly together. [Incomplete] P.S Taken from Bande Mataram Newspaper and written by Freedom Fighter Sri Aurobindo Ghose!

Onto-Cartography, OOO, and Politics: A Reply to Judith Halberstam and Cameron from Larval Subjects

Analytic political philosophy seeks to understand these mechanisms so it can intervene and change these circumstances.  Examples of analytic political philosophers are thinkers such as Marx, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari.  These thinkers don’t tell us a whole lot about what ought to be done, but instead analyze power and the functioning of power that gives social assemblages the persistent form that they have.  Analytic political philosophy tries to map the structure and mechanisms of power so that we might figure out both why oppression takes the form that it has and therefore what needs to be changed or where we need to intervene.  Clearly analytic political questions are guided by normative commitments (emancipation, for example), but there can be no effective normative political engagement without a map of the territory and how it functions.

CARL SCHMITT AND AMERICA’S LIBERAL WARS Posted by Vijay Vikram Dec 26 This is remarkable when one considers that the first edition of The Concept of the Political was published in 1927 …

I suppose my motivation in writing this post was to question the ethics of the dominant mode of Western politics – Democracy with its passion for the discourse of “Rights” – both in the West and the non-West. The political doctrine of democracy is posited as the highest ethical peak that any people can hope to reach. But if we take the ultimate ethic as the ethic of good government – i.e. a government that allows for the material and spiritual well-being of its people – democracy may find itself wanting.

Henri Bergson [Stanford]

His first scholarly publication was in 1886, in the Revue Philosophique; “On Unconscious Simulation in States of Hypnosis” concerns the results of his observations at sessions of hypnosis. Notice that Freud and Breuer's Studies on Hysteria did not appear until 1896… Creative Evolution appeared in 1907. It was the beginning of the “Bergson legend,” as well as of numerous, lively academic and public controversies centering on his philosophy and his role as an intellectual. The beginning of the next decade is the apex of the “Bergsonian cult” (“le Bergson boom”). Creative Evolution was translated into English. Bertrand Russell (who publishes an article entitled “The Philosophy in Bergson” in The Monist in 1912) objects that Bergson wants to turn us into bees with the notion of intuition.

History of Yoga – part 2 | Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother - June 15, 2012 [My name is Sandeep. I am *not* affiliated with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry. This blog primarily discusses the Integral Yoga] This article is a continuation of the previous post and covers a few more interesting tidbits from the book “History of Yoga” edited by Satya Prakash Singh…

Sri Aurobindo’s views on intuition seem more convincing to me, probably because his spiritual experience was more comprehensive than that of the Nyaya-Vaishesika seers described above.  Sri Aurobindo proposed four ways of awakening the intuitive mind using either the Sahasrara Chakra above the head or the psychic being within the heart. This was covered in a previous article…

Sri Aurobindo used to keep a diary (now published as the “Record of Yoga”) in which he recorded the manner in which various siddhis (occult powers) developed in him over a period of 10-12 years.  Reading this diary might leave you puzzled as to why it took so many years for these siddhis to stabilize. In chapter 33 of the “History of Yoga”, we might have a clue to this puzzle… Sri Aurobindo’s program of yoga, known as the Sapta Chatusthaya, is different from that of Tirumular but it is possible that there were somewhat similar reasons as to why he needed a similar amount of time to stabilize his occult powers…

In the Record of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo analyzes the variety of reasons that errors can crop up in the workings of intuition.  In some cases, it is because our will interferes with our intuitive perception and distorts the result. There are also cases where we glimpse a possibility which may not be successfully realized in the future, because there are other forces which may cancel it out.  In the higher planes of consciousness, there are multiple destinies gradually taking shape and not all of them manifest on Earth. See here for a picture and brief overview.

Dr. Yogendra Yadav's Comments - GandhiTopia

On one of my MA essays I wrote about Sri Aurobindo and Joanna Macy's contribution to spiritual revolutionary social justice and deep ecology, and felt all along ...

Religion: Dishta of Pondicherry TIME
She told Mr. Matthews that she was very happy after three years as a sadhak (follower) of an Indian religious teacher, Sri Aurobindo. Said she: "In fact, ...

Beastie Boys, Mandalas, Vision: Joel Thome in the perfect circle ... DigitalJournal.com
I immediately started sketching the initial ideas for my extended work SAVITRI:TRAVELLER OF THE WORLDS (nominated for a Pulitzer), inspired by Sri Aurobindo ...

VKNARDEP : Newsletter May 2012 - by Vivekananda Kendra

In the session on wisdom we have three savants: Elisabet Sahtouris a Systems biologists provides a comparison between the emerging systems view of life and how it resonates with ancient wisdom traditions. Sri Aurobindo shows the inner evolution at work in the dynamic canvass of nature. Then nature photographer and theosophist John Van Mater shows how evolution takes life and intelligence to the next plane. You can download our newsletter and read it all by clicking here

Existence, Consciousness and Delight of the Spirit « Sri Aurobindo ...

To be and to be fully is Nature's aim in us…” Sri Aurobindo points out however, that focusing on the “pure Existent” without incorporating Consciousness, Force ...

The power of heartfelt intention - The Times of India › Opinion THE SPEAKING TREE Roy Posner | Jun 16, 2012, 12.00AM IST

Life responds to our intention. When we really want something to occur, life tends to move towards us, fulfilling our aspiration. If ourintention is full — if our energies are intensely directed towards the pursuit of a specific goal over time — life not only responds, but does so rapidly, fulfilling that deepest aspiration… When we have clear knowledge of what we want to accomplish, and our emotions fully support it, then our intention takes shape. If we then make a determined, persevering effort to carry out our heart`s desire, we generate an irresistible power that quickly attracts it. If we look around, we will see that life is always responding to our intentions…

One interesting aspect of human aspiration or intention is that it can express itself at various levels, from a mild interest in a subject, to a desire to accomplish something, to the intense need to bring about our heart's desire. And yet, life can instantly respond to our intention at any of these levels: even to a passing fancy!

As we see, even a passing fancy will attract corresponding response, as long as there is a modicum of interest involved. You have just thought about a subject you hadn't thought of for decades, and then two minutes later, there is discussion on that very topic on television! That is dramatic enough, but when you have never seen that subject referred to in a lifetime of TV-watching, then you know something profound is at work! The writer is a scholar researching Sri Aurobindo.

Baudrillard takes the negative path. Deleuze creates anew

5m   Savitri Era Party ‏@SavitriEraParty Reaching airport along with 3 ministerial colleagues to receive Ramdev is perhaps the most demeaning event in Pranab's long public life. TNM Expand

chris on June 9, 2012 at 7:43 pm [In reply to the response post linked above at 'Radical Denial':] Bio: Christopher Vitale

I agree, Baudrillard is another path. I left him and Badiou out of my post, simply because they diverged too far from my target, which was deconstruction. But Baudrillard is much maligned, yet doing very similar things to the rest. I don’t know why philosophers don’t read him that often, perhaps it is because his later works aren’t written as systematically as philosophers like.

I agree also that one needs to ‘feel’ the metaphors of a given thinker. Deleuzian optimism can rub the wrong way. That said, it’s ethos of creation is hardly polyanna-ish, to truly commit to creation is a hard path which will eventually strip the ego of its beloved yet paranoid limitations as radical mutation sets in. So long as radical mutation is in the service of life, and not merely the new for its own sake, I think this is a hard yet ultimately rewarding path towards liberation, collective and otherwise.

Baudrillard takes the negative path. He wants to go through the simulacra by intensifying it. You lie more intensely than the others, becoming so fake you almost become real. Almost. Underneath, it’s quite Nietzschian, in that ‘truth and lies’ kind of way.

My issue with Baudrillard, like most of the post-structuralists, however, is that he gets caught in the danse macabre, and points beyond, but doesn’t take the step himself into new creation. Deleuze does this, he creates anew. Baudrillard’s concepts tend to exist for the purpose of unravelling rather than constructing. I’d like to see a creative Baudrillardism, perhaps….

Individuals and the Whole in Process Ontology - Footnotes to Plato This is a response to some recent posts on process philosophy in America by Jason/Immanent Transcendence. The status of individuals in a process ontology is something I’ve explored in connection with Harman’s object-oriented ontology (HERE and HERE). Harman points to process ontologists like Whitehead and says they ignore the irreducible individuality of things (as withdrawn objects) in favor of the flux between them. Read more

John Elwyn Kimber June 15, 2012 at 4:23 AM Thank you for publishing this interview. It is regrettable that those who wish to find fault seize forensically upon every word which might serve to reinforce a pre-existent prejudice. Even with far more experience of the processes it would be difficult to judge these extraordinary experiments in human transformation objectively – remembering that The Mother too was reduced to a state of dependency as she attempted to ‘unlearn’ the body’s conventional wisdom. They may have been landmark developments or they may have been false starts, but neither the Mother’s nor Satprem and Sujata’s critics have the necessary knowledge to make an informed judgment at this stage. You might as well criticise a marathon-runner for showing signs of exhaustion. It would be wiser to read, absorb the information, and reserve judgment.

Pauline Cardozo June 15, 2012 at 3:11 PM Anyway the procces of transformation the Mother and Sri Aurobindo started is going on . No matter if we beliefe it or not. Satprem said this very clearly. I feel so gratefull to belong to the persons who have knowledge of this.

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. 

Sri Aurobindo’s vision of Space and concept of Man

Aryan Invasion Theory: Neo-colonial captive minds – Devan Nair » Devan Nair (1923-2005) was a former President of Singapore and follower of Sri Aurobindo. Posted on June 13, 2012 by IS. Here Michael Danino quotes Sri Aurobindo: “Dayananda seized justly on the Veda .... (Sri Aurobindo, the Origins of Aryan Speech, in The Secret of the Veda, op…

“How prophetic”, writes Danino, “if we consider that this was written some twenty year before the growth of Nazism with its claims to ‘Aryan kinship’! In his Secret of the Veda, which started appearing from 1914, Sri Aurobindo called on his fellow countrymen not to be ‘haunted by the unfortunate misconstruction of the Veda which European scholarship has imposed on the modern mind.’” (The Secret of the Veda, op. cit., p 193).

francois gautier: What is a miracle?

“But God,” writes Sri Aurobindo, “works all his miracles by an evolution of secret possibilities which have been long prepared, at least in their elements, and in...

Buried in the Sands of Time: The Gospel according to Thomas scribd.com

Applying the psychological approach which has led Sri Aurobindo to re-discover the esoteric meaning of the Rig Veda, the author elucidates the inner meaning...

Sri Aurobindo and Einstein's theory of relativity Review - Nikhil Kumar, Department of English, Veer Kunwar Singh University, Arrah, Bihar, India, Pin-802301, India. E-mail: drnikhilkumar@rediffmail.com ; drnikhilkumar18@gmail.com  Accepted 12 January, 2012

Sri Aurobindo is a poet and yogi of the unknown eternal heights. In his epic Savitri which he has written from a very high plane of yogic consciousness he finds ‘Space’ as ‘a vast experiment of the soul, the soul which is a portion of the Divine in the constitution of the being of man, more to say, the individual poise of the Supreme Divine at the centre of the being of man. Since the plane of yogic consciousness exists above the plane of the intellectual consciousness, such a vision of Sri Aurobindo in the epic is explored and investigated in this paper to know that the scientific mind is evolving into it. Einstein has demolished the concept of Newton that Space and Time are the two incompatible realities as he discovers the existence of four-dimensional plane where exists Space and Time integrally. Such a discovery of Einstein has paved the way for coming closer to Sri Aurobindo’s vision of Space. We come to realize such a movement of Science towards Sri Aurobindo when the great scientist says very categorically that the three-dimensional plane of existence where Space and Time appear as the two incompatible realities is the projection of the four-dimensional plane of existence in the same manner in which shadow is a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional object. In view of this, energy which, according to the theory of relativity, creates Matter comes to be a projection of something essential or fundamental of the four-dimensional plane of existence, the four-dimensional plane which is transcendent to the plane of three-dimensional existence. Thus, a spiritual reality emerges, and we are in need of going deeper with the light of the yogic consciousness of Sri Aurobindo to arrive at the ultimate Truth. Such an exploration is sure to establish the truth that Science requires to evolve to the plane of higher consciousness which is essentially spiritual from where the higher literature like Savitri is produced in order to discover the ultimate Truth.

REVIEW OF “CONCEPT OF MAN IN SRI AUROBINDO'S POETRY” BY SHRUTI BIDWAIKAR Savitri Era Devotees

The Concept of Man in Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry by Dr. Jitendra Sharma is an admiration of and reflection on Sri Aurobindo’s poetic genius… Sri Aurobindo’s poetry evolved through first expressing his experiences of his growing contact with the West and then with India. His poetry grew from musings over the adolescent adventures to philosophic expressions canvassing his readings and then his ever growing inner growth and spiritual experiences. Dr. Sharma takes up all the stages in the life of Sri Aurobindo and deliberates upon them…

As there are abundant quotes from Sri Aurobindo’s poems, the reader gets a very refreshing reading of some of the most important lines on Sri Aurobindo’s  concept and vision of man – a theme which is central to Sri Aurobindo’s  vision of the future!

Ethics and Innocence from Critical Animal by Scu

So, I have some links about my last post on flat ethics: Levi has a response up here, and Peter has an extension here (particularly useful to read in terms of my discussion on innocence), Alex Reid has more thoughts on flat ethics (always worth reading), Jeremy Trombley has more thoughts here (entitled, wonderfully, constructing ethics. Constructivist Ethics has been the recent name I have been giving to my ethical work), Adam Robberts has some thoughts on ethics (similar thread, but not as specific on the issue of flat ethics), also not completely on point but useful is this post by Andre Ling, Craig has a follow up post here (sometimes I think I miss out by not being on twitter, also go read Craig),  Levi has a round up and more ideas here, and lastly Claire O'Farrell has a great little post up on Badiou's Ethics (which also isn't directly related, but I think important to all these present discussions). And I bet while I write this, there will be more posts.
I don't have the time right now to respond to everyone (particularly Levi), but maybe soon. Instead, here is a side discussion about ethics (both flat and otherwise).
This post will still be on my work about ethics, but this is a slightly different route. Karl Steel (whose book, How to Make a Human is really quite wonderful, hopefully more on that later) recently brought me up over at the blog In the Middle… Agamben and Esposito seem to condemn every complex ethical choice as being the return of nazism. Every time there is some proposition that the complexity of plants is somehow a unique ethical challenge for vegetarians and vegans, innocence is at fault there. I could go on, but much of this also very much in line with what Tim, following Hegel, calls the beautiful soul syndrome. However, I certainly can understand Eileen's recoiling of my attacks on innocence, and her fear that I am somehow claiming we are post-evil (I am not trying to claim that). My focus against innocence, and for ethics, is not a cure all. Just like Deleuze and Guattari warning us to "[n]ever believe that a smooth space will suffice to save us", never believe that critiquing innocence will suffice to give us ethical thinking.

Troll, trolley, and Tweedledee

On Sam Harris and the Limits of Conversational Intolerance from ~C4Chaos 

It’s interesting to see that my posts on Sam Harris’s FB page got deleted. Lately I’ve been highly critical of Sam ever since he posted on his blog his support for racial/religious profiling. So aside from my own critique I’ve been posting articles on Sam’s page with a common theme: the War on Terror is a never-ending pretense and Sam’s BIGGEST BLIND SPOT is the National Security State…

But I will still be watching you, Sam, and I will continue to passionately and compassionately point out your intellectual blind spot if the situation calls for it. Good thing I have my own blog which cannot be censored by Sam or his intellectual groupies.

Curving Spacetime Inside the Human Brain: Holographs, Spacetime Curvature, and Quantum Intensivity from Networkologies by chris

Language is a sort of collective brain, and the internet truly producing collective intelligence. But just as particles, molecules, cells, and organs had to evolve to work together to produce the freedom from constraint which is the virtual reality machine of the brain, so human societies have to learn to cooperate if we are to evolve to higher levels of complexity, and with this, freedom for any and all. Only when parts and whole interpenetrate, and work as systems which exceed the sums of their parts, is the emergence of complexity, and with this, the evolution of something like the brain, possible. There are ethical lessons to be learned from studying the emergence of complexity, the evolution of life and thought, and the seeming attempt to bring freedom into matter, from quantum to the brain and beyond.

On the ethics of robots from Love of All Wisdom by Amod Lele

Last week the Economist ran a cover story on a philosophical topic: the ethics of robots. Not just the usual ethical question one might ask about the ethics of developing robots in given situation, but the ethics of the robots themselves. The Economist is nothing if not pragmatic, and would not ask such a question if it weren’t one of immediate importance. As it turns out, we are increasingly programming machines to make decisions for us, such as military robots and Google’s driverless cars… These sorts of questions lend appeal to studying the ethics of the trolley problem, beyond the pedagogical uses I recommended before. 

Running away from the trolls - Hindustan Times New Delhi, June 09, 2012 Namita Bhandare @namitabhandare

There’s another category of Twitter user. It’s the dedicated party line follower. There are the Congressis, but considerably more vocal and energetic on Twitter are Hindutva loyalists. These are not politicians (Sushma Swaraj, @SushmaSwarajBJP, for instance) or journalists who make no secret about their affiliations. Oh no. These tweeters describe themselves as ‘right wing fanatic’, ‘Modi fan’ or, a bit more subtly, ‘deshbhakt’. He (and the rarer she) prefers Bharat to India, though he is often located in the US and loves the words, ‘paid media’, ‘Congressi agent’ and ‘Hindu warrior’. And they tweet from anonymous handles that make it easier for them to heap vile abuse…

It’s hard to explain the psychology of trolls. The worst are guided by a vile ideology of hate, hunting in packs, venomous in their rants and secure behind their anonymity. They follow each other, call out to each other and encourage each other to collectively attack a common ‘enemy’… But when Twitter dwindles to a platform for abuse it loses its sheen.

Who let the trolls in? by Kanchan Gupta - Welcome to the New Virtual World Order!

Trolls, we were told by way of introduction to these supernatural beings, traced their origin to Norse mythology. They were not particularly handsome in their appearance, lived in mountain caves and had their own social code. Human beings steered clear of them as they did of human beings… Meeting a troll in the misty mountains of Hobbitland would have been a thrilling, if not delightful, experience. Meeting a ‘troll’ on an online forum, especially an open forum like Twitter, can prove to be neither thrilling nor delightful… In the virtual world of social media, it’s absurd to feel angry or violated, not the least because the millions out there give a damn about your feelings.

Is technology good for religion? from The Immanent Frame by David Sloane

At The Washington Post, Lisa Miller argues that, contrary to the beliefs of religious figures and political pundits, technology is good for religion.

A Wake-Up Call to the Nation - Centre Right India Sunday, June 10, 2012 Jaideep Prabhu · 5 Comments The following article is a spoof on a similar, recent article. The point is to show how easily an argument can be framed if the burden of evidence is not placed on it. We should be careful of what we say. But for now, just chuckle along!

Ibn al-Dunya 23 hours ago in reply to Prashanth K.P. Sir, you take the article too seriously :-) If you are a regular reader of CRI, you would have noticed another article (http://centreright.in/2012/06/...) I wrote in response to the article I am spoofing in this one. Someone can basically turn that around on this one, except that I am joking in this one whereas the original article was real. Hence, all your points are acknowledged, and I point out again that this article is a spoof :-)

Develop a spine: The ethical energy involves choice

In Which the Racist Psychoanalyst Needs Treatment –Part 1 from The Rediscovery of India by Sandeep B

The purveyors of secular “discourse” in India come in several flavours:

• The shrill drumbeaters whose “discourse” constitutes loud barking
• The “all religions are equally evil but Hinduism is the evillest” variety
• The majority-is-always-wrong variety
• The minority-must-be-mollycoddled-even-if-they-are-wrong variety
• The patronizers—this one usually sits abroad and wears cultivated smiles and accents, which are intact when running down the “natives.”
• The high-brow scholars with mile-long, fancy alphabets suffixed to their names who write stuff that nobody understands or cares for but yet go on to win awards and respectability.

Gurcharan Das and the Liberal Hindu by Sandeep B

But I sincerely appreciate his interest in and love for the Mahabharata and his desire that our children learn that from an early age. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that he quotes Sukhtankar, a scholar close to my heart. However, Das’s real failing is that he is trapped by the secularism-as-the-only-solution-to-all-our-problems mantra and is unable to see beyond it… I’m truly astounded that a person who has read the Mahabharata for six years has failed to even investigate one word that occurs thousands of times in the epic: Dharma. Even a cursory investigation would’ve revealed how hollow, and most importantly, why secularism is unsuited to India.

Rediscovery of India by Sandeep B Feb 2, 2010

It’s been about 10 years since I started this blog and this post is a personal stock-taking of sorts… To give it some shape, here are a few broad (and probably vague) themes:

• Repudiate the Nehruvian “idea” of India
• Examine issues, ideas, and policies by scrutinizing/comparing it with similar work our ancients had done
• Examine everything in the context of its applicability to native Indian traditions
• Revive traditions that have timeless relevance
• Discard any ugly traditions that exist
• Revitalize Indian art, sculpture, music, dance, and literature. The value this has in keeping India together is intangible but infinitely more significant than most of us realize.
• Stop jerking off to the fact that one of the greatest strengths of India, for all its flaws (sic), is that it’s a democracy. What we have is a sham.
• Develop a spine: we don’t need to seek the West’s (or the whole world’s) approval for everything we do. 

Some thoughts on flat ethics from Critical Animal by Scu

For William James the ethical act has no meaning unless it is chosen out “of several, all equally possible” acts. Ethics “must sustain the arguments for the good course and keep them ever before us, to stifle our longing for more flowery ways, to keep the foot unflinching on the arduous path, these are the common ethical energies. The ethical energy par excellence has to go even further and choose which interest, out of several equally coercive, shall be supreme” (Principles of Psychology, p. 191).  The ethical energy involves choice, not passivity…

“Philosophers should be able to resist the temptation to justify the sacrifice, the exclusion of other ideals. They should accept that the victims haunt the interstices of their adherence to an ideal. They should accept to let their experience throb with the complaint of those who were sacrificed in the name of what they define as moral.” (Isabelle Stengers, Thinking with Whitehead, p. 334)

Philosophy, society, politics and the decline of America | Footnotes to Plato Posted by Matthew David Segall on June 7, 2012

I was frustrated by the content of our conversation, even though the form was cordial enough. It’s made me realize that political discourse is way messier than most ontologies let on. I think the panexperiential process ontology I’ve been trying to develop on this blog with help from Schelling and Whitehead certainly has political implications [see Adam/Knowledge-Ecology's recent post on panpsychism and politics], but how am I to justify these implications to someone who could care less about the abstract forms of reasoning characteristic of metaphysics? … I think the philosophically-inclined political activist’s best bet is something like what Bruno Latour is doing with “political art.” As Schelling argued long ago, art is the eternal organon of philosophy, since only it is capable of making reason sensuous and mythology rational.

Institutional Change within the limits of a rational impulse to understand

Two Lectures from Azim Premji University worth sparing time for by PB Mehta and BN Patnaik from Offstumped - Commentary on Indian Politics 

It may be academic at times and the English can difficult to keep up with but this Pratap B. Mehta talk is worth a patient listen. Far from the world of polarizing arguments it provokes the kind of questions that need to be asked, answered, deliberated on how we bring about long term Institutional Change within the constraints of intractable problems or as he calls them – wicked problems.

This talk on Dharma in an Odia version of Mahabharata is a good listen as well. Brings a refreshing native perspective to the discourse. Especially the Q&A part.

Baboos, bibis and the Bangals of Kolkata from Agent Provocateur by Kanchan Gupta

There used to be a popular perception south of Ballygunge, not entirely ungrounded in facts which now belong to the realm of history, that the north was all about dissolute baboos and their lonely bibis, sort of a real life version of Bimal Mitra’s Saheb Bibi Golam. “Oraa paayra oraai, baaiji naachaye…” went a line in a popular Bengali film song, luridly suggesting that the baboos spent their days racing pigeons and their nights frolicking with nautch girls…

Amitav Ghosh documents the tragic story of one such zamindar, Raja Neel Rattan Halder, in Sea of Poppies, the first volume of his trilogy on the opium trade. Others made a pile of money and built gorgeous neo-Victorian houses; their sons squandered their inherited wealth on, as the cliché goes, wine, women and music.

The Top 10 Hindi Movies About Politics from Centre Right India by Vikas Saraswat

Hindi cinema, among the various cinemas worldwide, is one of the most prolific in terms of output but it rates rather poorly when one is scanning for socio cultural themes in it. Films based on political themes or Political cinema, as one would call it, is even rarer.

Garam Hawa – Based on a short story by Ismat Chugtai, this 1973 M S Sathyu film is generally regarded as the first Hindi film in political genre. Sootradhar  – The story of a young man full of idealism venturing into politics to seek change but ending up as the same beast he had set out to slay is a story we find aplenty in real life politics. Mere Apne –  This Gulzar film is a tale of frustrated educated unemployed. With no sense of purpose and direction, street quarrels over petty issues is what life for the youth has been reduced to. Shatranj Ke Khiladi  – This is one rare Hindi film by Satyajit Ray. Based on a short story by legendary Munshi Premchand, the film is set in Nawab Wajid Ali Shah’s (Amjad Khan) Awadh. Kissa Kursi Ka  – This Amrit Nahata film does not make it to the list on the strength of technical finesse or outstanding performances. Gulal – Rated by some as one of the finest political movies, Gulal is about the Rajput vainglory which many an erstwhile Rajputs still wear on them despite having lost their Kingdoms and Principalities. Manthan – If most political cinema portrays anger, frustrations and general pessimism, this film is a pleasant departure from the norm. Benegal’s Manthan is a success story from Gujarat. Aaj Ka MLA – Should you be considering this humorous take on politics starring Rajesh Khanna with the casualness for a fun and frivolity filled masala film, think twice. Real life politics and politicians seem to have aped the tricks and mannerisms of the protagonist to the hilt, even exceeding him in many cases.

poor theory from Marx Club by anirban

“Poor theory puts the stress neither on knowledge nor on ignorance, but on finding a relationship to what we do not know. It takes seriously the possibility that fascination can be turned into a critical method. Poor theory proceeds with fascination and urgency, instead of mastery, and a recognition that the critical tools we have at hand have their limits. It recognizes, for instance, the limits of archival preservation (from the inherent aging of media and materials to a lack of funding or political will), the limits of legibility (given the opacities of translation), the limits of a rational impulse to understand and thus fix the meaning of a messy problem or situations characterized by excess. But, nonetheless, we proceed, armed with the awareness of these limits, tinkering, working against and around them.” Abbas & Phillip – Poor Theory 

UNSETTLING THE PAST: D.D. KOSAMBI AND ROMILA THAPAR from permanent black 

Kosambi's famous falling out with Homi Bhabha at the TIFR (they got on fine initially) was in part because, at a time when scientists were debating the relative advantages of solar and nuclear energy, Kosambi argued for the sun whereas Bhabha preferred uranium and had the backing of Jawaharlal Nehru…At another point in the same essay, Kosambi seems to anticipate modern objections to the anti-science aspect of Ashis Nandy's worldview: […]

Romila Thapar's THE PAST BEFORE US Historical Traditions of Early North India begins by acknowledging an intellectual debt to Kosambi (one of Thapar's mentors).

Historians in a bubble from Centre Right India by Dosabandit

Some of our historians do not understand ancient languages such as Sanskrit… These oral traditions have strict and rigid rules to adhere to when learning and performing. But there is general skepticism towards such traditions among historians.

History is more than study of records kept by Jesuits in India. Much of our history is among the people, in traditions and languages that the Jesuits did not understand. Much of our history lives and breathes among the native people. It is but natural that a large amount of history of our land can be found among our own people. Such an important source of input is shunted out of the “scientific study”. Our historians have been diligently guarding their sanitized bubble from which convenient hypotheses are postulated and propagated for consumption.

Book Review of "Krishna - The Man and His Philosophy" by Osho - Adventures of a Traveller Scribbled by Shekhar at 6:50 AM 

Constant parallels are drawn with Buddha, Mahavir, Christ and Mohammed. What is refreshing to see is that Osho doesn’t just extol the virtues of any one of these great personalities. He points out the ideologies of each of them, leaving for us to decide which “path” we choose to seek. Seekers such as Diogenes, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Tagore and Krishnamurthy are also spoken of. Enjoyable, memorable and hence, recall-worthy anecdotes about each of them are scattered throughout the book.

Sri Aurobindo of Pondicherry (whose identity I was initially confused about since Osho kept referring to him simply as ‘Aravind’), however, comes in for severe criticism. What made the book most enjoyable was the fact that Osho keeps narrating one anecdote after another to drive home his point. Albeit these sometimes simplify the message to a great degree, they are nonetheless essential for a beginner (like myself) to understand the core of what Osho is trying to convey. A great book, if for nothing else but for its ability to force you to think (rethink?) about religious and spiritual stand-points. An absolute must-read.

Tweets ritpra ‏@ritpra - @madhukishwar no I hve read Aurobindo enough to understand what a secularism has dne/though REAL Christian phil revere's Mother Mary too! 

Anshuman Kumar ‏@AnshumanSunny - nw wth even parties like DMK n left agreeing to LKA's proposal.. what that fella has to say who was saying Advani is doing this fr attention?

The Hindu - Opinion: The knives are out For Mr. Gadkari, it was a hard choice. Either he allowed Mr. Modi to rub his nose in the ground or he settled for a deal whereby he would get a second term as chief in return for unreservedly acknowledging Mr. Modi as the future leader.

Marx, Mazzini, and Maniktola

Marxist Encounters with Science from Centre Right India by Aravindan Neelakandan

Marxism has always been marketed by Marxists as a scientific method of understanding society… Like any closed theological system, Marxism wants science to be a hand maiden of theory – ‘the Theory’… Marxists have is a closed system of dialectical materialism and they want the nature to fall in line with their ‘Theory’… If Marx envisioned Marxism as a holistic social science integrated with physical sciences, by 1913 Lenin presented Marxism in rapturous, religious glory rich in Euro-centrism…

Marxism thus differs from other philosophical systems in not just being rooted in materialism, but in considering itself true and omnipotent and rejecting anything its adherents perceive as contrary to it, as reactionary, superstitious, or a defence of bourgeois oppression. It is in this aspect that Marxism is simultaneously dangerously similar to and many times more efficient than medieval Christendom.

The Alipore Bomb Trial Judgment: A Review by Dr. Larry Seidlitz from Overman Foundation ‘The Alipore Bomb Trial Judgment’: Editor, Anurag Banerjee. Publisher: Overman Foundation. Number of pages: 144. Price: Rs. 190.

This book presents the full verdict in the Alipore Bomb case that was delivered on 6 May 1909 by C.P. Beachcroft. It runs 137 pages in length… Beachcroft’s verdict is interesting in that it weighs all the evidence concerning all the various accused. As such, the reader learns quite a bit about the actual details of the activities of these revolutionaries who were led by Sri Aurobindo’s brother Barindra. I was struck by what appeared to be a reasonable and dispassionate assessment of the evidence. 

In Sri Aurobindo’s case, the judge ruled that there was only weak and insufficient evidence linking him to the conspiracy, including some brief notes which may have planted by government spies. The judge also notes that Sri Aurobindo’s writings did not advocate violence, sometimes repudiated violent revolution, and typically advocated nonviolent means. He indicated that if Sri Aurobindo were involved in the conspiracy, it would be a contradiction of his own writings on political action. The book presents a document of significant historical interest.]

Comment on Paul Richard’s Tribute to Sri Aurobindo. by Tulsi Bhandari from Comments for Overman Foundation by Tulsi Bhandari

Thanks for this piece from history. Dilip Kumar Roy’s meeting and conversation with Paul Richard is also heart rending. You may decide to publish it some day.

The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - Page 434 - V. P. Varma - 1990 - 494 pages - Preview There are several points of similarity between Aurobindo's system and the works of other thinkers and scholars such as Heraclitus, Plato, Dante, Kant, Hegel, Mazzini, Nietzsche, Karl Lamprecht, Bergson, Dayananda, Vivekananda, Tilak and others.

The Importance of the Right Word from Centre Right India by Jaideep Prabhu

Or maybe, the advent of social media and the pernicious notion of “sound bytes” served as a catalyst to raise it to epidemic proportions… What I am rambling about is the wanton abuse and molestation of the English language and of History by political commentators in India. With complete disregard for meaning or context, words like “fascist,” “Nazi,” and “storm trooper” are thrown about…

Commentators on all points of the political spectrum hurl words they simply do not understand as insults – fascist, liberal, Nazi, secular. Usually, it only proves how obtuse the commentator is. It is an exercise in histrionics, sadly reciprocated by the other side (lest there be a stupidity gap, no doubt). It demeans the analyst and lowers the standard of analysis; it puts intelligent observers off and inflames the hoi polloi, who would even otherwise be swayed by something as simple as even a party symbol. It is a cheap, populist trick and is indicative of about the same level of IQ, and most importantly, it bores those of us who were actually looking for a meaningful discourse.

El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha – versión de medios sociales from Offstumped - Commentary on Indian Politics Twitter to some degree has created a make believe world not entirely dissimilar, awakening the Don Quixote in all of us in search of a Digital Adventure. 

Oneness and Harmony

Surveiller et punir from Centre Right India by Jaideep Prabhu

A critical leap Foucault makes in Discipline and Punish is the shifting of the subject of the punishment from the body to the soul… A corollary of this is that power is now firmly in the hands of a few elites that could delineate the normative discourse for society… Foucault’s assertion makes power far more intangible. Its dissociation from any entity and appearance in the dynamic relationship between entities makes it more difficult to influence it. Thus, Foucault’s power paradigm becomes a prison for society.

In a sense, Foucault continues Nietzsche’s assertion that the world is merely a system that the Übermensch can rise above, but he then proceeds to declare that it is impossible to escape Max Weber’s iron cage of society, an all-encompassing institution Foucault calls the carceral system. Since power can be defined only by technocrats and exercised by bureaucrats, it is impossible for the individual to access the nodes of power, and those who rise in the ranks of the technocrats or bureaucrats will have no incentive to reform, as Herbert Marcuse argued in One-Dimensional Man, because they themselves will have the most to lose.

An interesting deviation from Enlightenment thinkers is Foucault’s pessimism regarding individuality. Foucault sees the individual as a social construct created by a power discourse. Through mass technology the individual is constantly eulogised, but in reality, this created individual is merely an efficient cog in the system’s wheel. To not be an individual is not to follow the prescribed norm, and that is subversive and therefore bad. These non-individuals are then the subjects of the new prison, to be moulded into useful functionaries in the carceral system.

Discipline and Punish thus outlines a whole mode of existence with the prison at its centre as a metaphor. Foucault reveals the power relations between individuals and institutions and emphasises the difficulties in bringing change. However, Foucault reifies neither power nor society. Instead, Foucault’s aim (with a healthy superimposition of Weber) is to explain that economic “intelligence” of the day demanded that more work be crammed into less time. This basic “value” has led to our society today. Change in society must therefore necessarily come from change in values people hold since power lies at the nodes of interaction between people and the institutions they represent.

Impact of Gnostic Beings on Earth Evolution from Sri Aurobindo Studies 

In the previous post we discussed the interaction of gnostic beings with the earth evolution and raised various questions that can arise as a result. Past attempts to define an advanced evolutionary form, after all, have been more or less unmitigated disasters, whether we look at the Nietschean “superman” or the “master race” of the Third Reich, or a government of an aristocracy of knowledge as Plato speculated, or an aristocracy of money power as we see in operation in today’s world; or other formulations that simply inflated human ambition and capabilities without effecting the spiritual transformation and consequent standpoint of Oneness and Harmony that are the basis of the gnostic evolutionary action. The past formulations saw the need for an ongoing evolutionary action, but were limited by human powers based on the fragmentation, separation and smallness of the mental, vital and physical powers in manifestation. As a consequence, they each failed to solve the riddle of the evolutionary action.

Comment on Paul Richard’s Tribute to Sri Aurobindo. by Nilanjan Chatterjee from Comments for Overman Foundation by Nilanjan Chatterjee

Consecrating to this name: AUROBINDO GHOSE is the YOUNIVERSE.

At that early 20th Century Paul Richard demarcated the Two Supermen – Nietzschean and Aurobindean- the first one is Political and Finite and the second one Spiritual and Infinite.

Sri Aurobindo was a poet, journalist, political campaigner, revolutionary, seer and philosopher

From revolutionary to yogi Telegraph Friday, June 1, 2012 RUDRANGSHU MUKHERJEE The Lives of Sri Aurobindo By Peter Heehs, Columbia, $55.

The political ideas that Aurobindo began to explore in Baroda and subsequently in Calcutta had as their core the project of building up a secret revolutionary sect to which young men would devote their lives and work to violently overthrow British rule in India. Aurobindo emerged as a major critic of the moderates within the Indian National Congress and was among the first to advocate complete freedom from British rule. This made him a champion of the extremists. Heehs writes in detail about the battle between these two factions of the Congress and about Aurobindo’s role in it.

Aurobindo’s political ideas were articulated in the columns of a journal that he edited, Bande Mataram. During the Swadeshi Movement, he worked closely with the National Council of Education. He was also advising his brother, Barin, on various revolutionary and terrorist activities. This led to his arrest in the Maniktola Bomb Case. He was jailed but acquitted after the trial. Heehs notes very rightly that there was some irony in this since all the charges brought against Aurobindo were valid but the court did not find the evidence presented to it to adequate for a conviction…

Heehs’s research leaves many aspects unexplored. In his early days in Pondicherry, Aurobindo was desperately poor, yet he lived in rented accommodation (one of the houses was rented at Rs 100 a month.) What were the sources of funds? Aurobindo’s needs were simple but he had an entourage to maintain. Heehs glosses over Aurobindo’s treatment of his wife, Mrinalini, whom he never looked after. Aurobindo smoked and occasionally drank but he insisted on celibacy. Why? Most importantly, how did he reconcile his profound immersion in the Upanishads with his advocacy of violence to gain political ends? He never did abjure this belief in violence.

Heehs relies too heavily on Aurobindo’s own words without standing back to make an evaluation. He is perhaps uneasy with the more obscure aspects of Aurobindo’s spiritual and mystical experiences and thus leaves these at the level of description in Aurobindo’s own terms. He notes the transition from Aurobindo to Sri Aurobindo, from a human to a divine figure. How did the man himself react to this? Aurobindo was a man of laughter and humour. Had these disappeared when he began to wear the mantle of divinity?

Aurobindo was a poet, journalist, political campaigner, revolutionary, seer and philosopher. He had made himself a man of inner calm and strength. Heehs brings out all these aspects and does so lucidly and in some detail. Yet the book leaves behind a sense of dissatisfaction: for the devotee it is not reverential enough, for the sceptic it is too unquestioning.