New light and force and life

from:  Jitendra Sharma aurofrance@gmail.com to:      "Tusar N. Mohapatra" tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date:          22 June 2012 12:33 subject:         Ref.: Court Grants Injunction On Not Disturbing Radhikaranjan’s Classes

The environment should be conducive to learning, allowing the pupils sufficient space and liberty to interact with a teacher. If the chemisty is not good between staff, administration and pupils, what kind of teaching  will take place? In a tension-ridden atmosphere, only by Puducherry Court’s  interim injunction and under police protection, how will a teacher impart knowledge?

Have we forgotten Mother’s words? 
"Sri Aurobindo is present in our midst, and with all the power of his creative genius he presides over the formation of the University Centre which for years he considered as one of the best means of preparing the future humanity to receive the Supramental Light that will transform the elite of today into a new race manifesting upon earth the new light and force and life." - Inaugural Message of the Mother, 24th April, 1951

                                    - Dr. Jitendra Sharma

Gender differences between men and women | Integral Yoga of Sri ... Posted on June 21, 2012 My email : wp.san777 at gmail

Someone inquired if Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had made any remarks on differences between men and women.  This is a compilation of remarks that I was able to find right now.  It addresses topics such as: What are the cosmic origins of gender?  Are women less polyamorous than men? Are women better at Yoga?  Can gender change across incarnations?  If I find more remarks, I will add them in the comments section to this blog post. (Since Sri Aurobindo lived in seclusion for much of his life from 1926-1950, disciples had to communicate with him via letters.  This has the unexpected benefit of leaving written records for later generations.)

(Women might get understandably outraged by Sri Aurobindo’s remark above that submissive women can have “abhimana”(ego).  It is not known what he was referring to but one can hazard a guess.  He might be alluding to the fact that people who have sacrificed something reluctantly make demands in other spheres of life as a form of compensation.   In Indian joint families, for instance, mothers who have sacrificed for their son feel entitled to control the life of their daughter-in-law and often do so.)

(Since Sri Aurobindo refused to admit any clear-cut gender differences, Nirodbaran decided to ask the Mother!   This is the advantage of having two Gurus.  You can play their remarks against each other.  Read on…) Related Posts

1. The transmutation of sexual energy
2. Sublimation of the sexual urge through Yoga
3. The foundation of spiritual relationships
4. Further remarks on sexuality
5. What exactly is a “crush” or “love at first sight”?
6. Four stages of human love
7. How to choose the right life-partner
8. Should women dress modestly? 

ned says:November 22, 2011 at 1:25 pm

These kinds of questions can’t be addressed without applying a feminist framework in our day and age. I would argue that the reason why men find it so hard to stop sexualizing women (even when women are not trying to attract them) is because there is an actual social and cultural infrastructure (involving things like: a certain type of patriarchal marriage, prostitution, widespread access to pornography, a hypersexualized media, a particular way in which male-female relations are ordered) in most societies that encourages men to view women as little more than sexual objects and/or baby machines. Of course ultimately there are occult forces at work, but what are the cultural structures that perpetuate the kingdoms of these vital forces? And how can we build newer cultural structures that stop doing so?

Feminists have argued that sexuality has been specifically constructed to keep women politically subordinated to men and dehumanized throughout the ages, because women are seen as the objects of sexuality while men are seen as the agents of it. The sexual liberation movement in the West has almost totally watered down the original noble aims of feminism. The early feminists in the 1970s were actually totally opposed to this movement because they knew that sexual liberation, in practice, could never lead to anything other than the political and social degradation of women because of the historically and systemically unequal nature of male-female relations. And they were right.

By the way, if you look at some rare pre-patriarchal, woman-centered hunter-gatherer cultures in the world, where this sort of sophisticated patriarchal infrastructure does not exist (you could say these are pre-civilizational cultures), you find that women are often roaming around wearing very little clothing, but the men are not in a constant state of sexual excitement because of it. In fact they hardly seem to notice that the women aren’t wearing much. This sort of anthropological work has led me to conclude that the excessive sexualization of women by men is largely culturally constructed and not inherent to male nature at all.

So it’s all well and good to ask if women should dress modestly or not, and maybe in certain cultures they do have to dress up in a certain way as a pragmatic compromise with reality, but I think the real question is: how do you dismantle a (virtually universal) cultural infrastructure that, in the service of gender inequality, encourages men to see women as sexual objects, and encourages women to perform as sexual objects for men? And here the sexually libertarian culture in the West and the socially conservative culture in the Middle East and Asia strike me as being pretty much two sides of the same misogynistic coin that sees women, not as human beings, agents, and subjects, but as nothing more than sexual objects.

M. Alan Kazlev - 08:05  -  http://www.sfu.ca/dean-gradstudies/blog/studentprofiles/NehdiaSameen.html

Though we never met in person (only via the miracle of the internet), Ned quickly became one of my closest friends, a constant inspiration to me, a hope to the world, a powerhouse of yogic transformation, and the most spiritually evolved human being i have ever had the privilege to know. This is a terrible terrible loss. :-( 

from: Tusar N. Mohapatra tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date: 21 June 2012 06:36 subject: Re: nehdia sameen

Oh so sad. She was young, yet so knowledgeable and perceptive. And her acute political stance. She remains a challenge and leaves an inspiring memory. [TNM55]

Note the following words—“presumably”, “does not seem”, “seems to have”, “may have”, “would have”. Is this history or guesswork? is this History or Speculation? Krish Patwardhan

Goodbye Ned

In Memoriam: Nehdia Sameen, Psychology - Simon Fraser University June 19, 2012

Nehdia Sameen, a PhD student in psychology, was born in Pakistan and completed her bachelor's degree (Honours) in computer science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

She received a Fulbright award to pursue a master's degree in psychology at New York University. When she applied to SFU's PhD program, one of her NYU supervisors called her "the single most talented student I have worked with in my career thus far."

She began her studies at SFU in Fall 2011, and displayed an exceptional passion for her work and its potential to make the world a better place. In her own words, she hoped "not merely to fully comprehend the human animal from a scientific perspective, but also to guide the development of balanced, civilized societies with sustainable institutions around the world."

We're deeply sorry to report that Nehdia passed away suddenly on Friday, June 15, of a brain haemorrhage.

Dr. Tim Racine, her graduate supervisor, says:

Nehdia Sameen embodied the sort of balance between head and heart that is critical in any person of excellence. She was also a consummate scholar who was not confined to one narrow research area or particular way of looking at things. What struck me the most about her was how much she had interwoven her personal and professional life.

I became fond of Nehdia quite quickly; her passion for her work and the world around us is a rare and beautiful thing. Nehdia leaves behind a variety of finished and unfinished work of very high quality. The people in my Department who knew and worked closely with Nehdia in the last year will miss her sorely. The people who had not yet become acquainted with Nehdia have lost the opportunity to know an exceptional human being.

AUM friends | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Darlene Joy, Nehdia Sameen, Bill Flick, Rahul Balusu, Aubrey Hornsby, Shari Hindman, and Catherine Scrivens stop for a group photo at AUM 2008.

Who is the Mother? What is her Work? What she really said? - Savitri Era Devotees

A Primer on Advaita Vedanta, or Non-Dualist Hinduism: Or, Why Atman is Brahman, And Why We Should Care from Networkologies by chris

While such comparativist discussions are necessarily oversimplifying, they do allow for the potential to see the overall projects of Sufism, Advaita Vedanta, and Buddhism as having many strong commonalities, something which has been advocated and recognized by figures within these traditions, such as the famed Vedantic scholars Swami Vivekananda and Ananda Coomaraswamy, Sufi scholars like Seyyed Hossain Nasr, western Sufi converts such as Rene Guenon and Frithjof Schuon… Then again, it does seem that the only reason why Brahman would have for giving rise to the world of maya would be precisely to lead it to liberation from its limitations, and the work of Sri Aurobindo, a Neo-Vedantist, works to integrate Vedantism with an evolutionary approach to the world.

Henri Bergson, Henry Ford, and In defence of hypocrisy

The Right to Reject Our Rulers – An Angry Ashramite from Critique of The Lives

We certainly need a change in the present administration of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram… Imagine in the near future the wily and crooked Matriprasad as the Managing Trustee, Nirmal (the Ashram lawyer, or is it broker?) and Prabhou (the commission agent) among the other four Trustees: what an unbeatable gang would it be with a no holds barred attitude towards selfish gain in terms of money, power and sex! Not that there will be no “good guys” in the administration such as Dilip Mehtani or Batti (Prabhakar Pantulu). But they will be mere figureheads (as indeed they are now) in order to please the public’s desire to see honest men in the highest seats of power. 

Two concepts of hypocrisy from Love of All Wisdom by Amod Lele

Three years ago I wrote a post entitled In defence of hypocrisy… The point is key to the appeal of chastened intellectualism. The key point about the hypocrisy of weakness, as I tried to emphasize before, is that the advocacy of virtue remains a good thing in the face of the practice of vice… Most would say it is too much to expect of politicians that they be noble or consistent. That is likely true. But the actions of weak and genuinely repentant politicians – those who, when caught in their weakness, take full responsibility for it and leave public life gracefully and apologetically – are not part of that problem. They are, it seems to me, part of the solution. La Rochefoucauld is quoted saying “Hypocrisy is the homage that vice plays to virtue.” The question in my mind is whether that homage is sincere. Are we aiming at virtue while falling into vice, or are we merely pretending to aim at a virtue we don’t really care about?

The Fallacy of Inclusive Growth from Centre Right India by Ranjan Sreedharan

Henry Ford succeeded in America because soon after he started with the Model T, he could discontinue assembly by hand and switchover to mass production techniques, redeploying and rationalising his operations and work-force the way he thought fit.

Susan Sontag and the stresses of reading from The Middle Stage by Chandrahas

But over time this cine-system had been broken down, on the supply side, by the cynical formulae and simplifications of capitalist production, which had eliminated the tension between cinema as industry and cinema as art, and on the reception side, by the sheer proliferation of images in the modern world and the expansion of private home viewing. “The reduction of cinema to assaultive images,” Sontag writes, “and the unprincipled manipulation of images (faster and faster cutting) to be more attention-grabbing, have produced a disincarnated, lightweight cinema that doesn’t demand anyone’s full attention.”  These observations could profitably be applied to the story of Indian own popular cinema.

[Henri Bergson (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) - Bergson's constant suspicion of language; for Bergson language is equivalent to symbols. And, symbols divide the continuity of the duration, leading us into illusions.] Tusar N. Mohapatra said this on June 15, 2012 at 12:03 pm

• not sure what you’re getting at here, but potentially interesting pathway, few people talk about Bergson’s approach to language, I’m curious… chris said this on June 15, 2012 at 6:13 pm
• Yes, except why call that illusion? Why not call that alternate presentation? Because if idempotent representation is impossible, i.e., we never experience a thing-in-itself, then why define knowledge as something that we can never have nor should want? Rather, ask the question what the consequences of various symbolic systems are. Jason Hills said this on June 15, 2012 at 6:42 pm

Sweeping generalization about freedom of speech

Good Morning telegraph India Hello It's Sunday , June 17 , 2012. Reading from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri by C.S. Mukherji at Nijantik, 9/1 Lower Rawdon Street, 5pm.

The Hindu : NATIONAL  TAMIL NADU : Chennai today

Sri Aurobindo Society: Meeting, 5, Smith Rd., Anna Salai, 10.30 a.m.

The Hindu : NATIONAL  TAMIL NADU : Coimbatore today

Sri Aurobindo Devotees Prayer Centre: Prayer, Sasi Balika Vidya Mandir, R.S. Puram, 9.30 a.m.; Annai Meditation Centre, 4 p.m.

Mind-Body Medicine and Beyond Ramesh Bijlani Date: Jun 23, 2012 Venue: VAN NIWAS Himalayan Centre of Sri Aurobindo Ashram -- Delhi Branch Bara Patthar NAINITAL Love: the key to health and happiness Date: Jun 24, 2012

Integral Knowledge Study Center Rand Hicks (Pensacola, Florida) 

Mihir Jha ‏@Mihirkumarjha - @malviyamit: An open Letter to Rama Chandra Guha 

Mr. Guha, would you please care to tell me if matters of faith are dogmas,” Why the hell parliamentarians and all Judges swear in the name of GOD”?  This in itself, I think, is enough to say how many nuggets of wisdom lie there in that book.

Open Letter To Kanchan Gupta storified demystified

I hope you have some stake in Bengal but i do not know what is your knowledge about Sri Aurobindo, in-spite of being a bengali, but as far as Mihir Kumar Jha is ... What was the book in discussion? Any idea? How much do you know about this book, curios. [The Lives of Sri Aurobindo] Was Harini Calamur aware of the book? Has she read that book?  Read this tweet here? Kanchan Gupta ‏@KanchanGupta - @Great_Gujarati What he did is heinous. He abused @calamur and he denigrated the 'OM' icon he uses as his DP. End of story.

General Editor June 16, 2012 10:45 AM Comment by Jadunandan Samal:

The present situation demands the organisation to be reformed. As such the benificiaries (particularly the Ashramites) should courageously deal with the matter without fear. The change is indispensable and it should be based on democracy with good will for the spiritual growth of the Ashram. The present authorieties are expected to decide in its favour. J N Samal.

General Editor June 16, 2012 10:54 AM Comment by Ritwik Banerjee: THE NEED FOR ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

Though Mother didn’t give value to administered justice, we may think over it in a different perspective for society. What does society expect from the Ashram and especially its managers and trustees if not to be living examples and beacon lights for its educators, law-makers, leaders, business entrepreneurs and new generation members for an evolution towards a collective perfection? Spirituality will ensue inevitably as a flowering naturally thereafter. In the present context, this Ashram has both blind and seeing devotees in its ambit spread all over the world. There may be fake types also who do not bother about the Ideal. When Mother and Sri Aurobindo were in their physical bodies and guiding disciples, there was no problem. They decided in their light in each case. Now it is all a complex business. We have read in books that when Vatel, a domestic help in the early years in the Ashram, was in danger and in a dire situation, his wife wept for his life and Sri Aurobindo’s compassion saved his life from the dire consequences of his “small” mistake with which he had threatened life in the Ashram! But here, Peter Heehs and his wife, if he has one, are not praying or weeping before the Master and the Mother for a reprieve but claiming it from us as a right to his freedom. That he can have always, by all means. But how should he have it in the name of “Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga”? This is the point. (R. Banerjee)

H Acharya June 16, 2012 7:54 PMA change is inevitable:

The despotism of the present group of trustees is not healthy for Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Current events around the world show the fall and replacement of despots by a movement towards democracy. By their mis-management during the recent years, the trustees have amply proved themselves incompetent for the trust and love of devotees and Ashramites. Hence, they should willingly step down in a peaceful process, and extend their helping hands to reconstitute the board with new faces who are trustworthy and caring. The Mother will bless them for doing so. Otherwise, the writings are on the wall for all to see. They may be replaced with more unpleasant and violent means, as is the trend worldwide.
This is not the time for the Ashramites to give room to fear. With faith in the Mother’s name, may they proceed ahead on the path for reformation and a new order. As we understand, some courts have suggested that the members of charitable trusts should change every 5/7 years. Long-entrenched trustees are not healthy for the Ashram, unless they have the personality and heart to stay clear of petty ego.

Fabulation function, subliminal self, and social assemblages

The Gurus Of Ancient India, Their Essential Teachings, The CRAP Of Today – and Caste: Take #2 from ANTIDOTE by Sauvik

Hindu society was "reformed" by many great men in British times - who realised that we had a lot to imbibe from the superior West. Raja Ram Mohun Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj and championed education in Western sciences and arts - while opposing Sanskrit - which is why he is known as the "father of modern India." I have an old post on this great man here. Compare what you read about him with any BJP "Hindu leader" of today.

Raja Ram Mohun Roy wrote Precepts of Jesus. He knew Arabic and Persian - and thus, Islam as well. Today, the so-called 'brahmins" - they are all the bureaucrat-professors of the State. Manmohan Singh is one of these - and they are all "Intellectual Bodyguards of the House of Nehru." They "profess" no "faith" - other than The State, which is their God.

The socialist State has thus re-established an ossified, petrified, brutalised, ignorant, and exploitative society - one that is far worse than anything either the Mughals or the Brits found when they arrived here. De-civilisation all around - including the destruction of every city and town. Capital consumption as well as the erosion of savings - both on a colossal scale. The British trained all the Rajput princes - so they were no longer "predatory."

But today, even the municipalities are predatory! So what can we say about the police? And the leader of the lower castes hates the traders! I recommend my latest work: For Civilisation, Against Politics: Arguments for an Intellectual-Moral Revolution.

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

On the one hand, I don’t think the cultural-linguistic turn in theory is able to adequately deal with ecology due to its tendency to treat everything as socially constructed, thereby ignoring the real differences that things contribute independent of signification.  On the other hand, I don’t think that we can adequately understand social assemblages without taking into account the role that nonhumans play in structuring power relations within those assemblages.  This project does not consist in excluding, for example, the questions of identity formation in feminist, queer, and post-colonial theory that Halberstam refers to, but in expanding the sorts of actants we consider when investigating power-relations in social assemblages… Ecological thinking is thinking in terms of relations between entities, investigating their hierarchies, as well as the positive and negative feedback relations that exist between these entities. 

Frederic William Henry Myers (1843–1901) was a poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research.^[1] The SPR was founded in 1882 in London by a group of eminent thinkers including Edmund Gurney, Frederic William Henry Myers,William Fletcher Barrett, Henry Sidgwick and Edmund Dawson Rogers.^[2] The SPR was the first organisation of its kind in the world, its stated purpose being "to approach these varied problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind, and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned enquiry which has enabled science to solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated."^[3]

Myers was interested in psychical research and was one of the founder members of the Society for Psychical Research in 1883.^[7][8][9]He became the President in 1900.^[10] In 1893 Myers wrote a small collection of essays, Science and a Future Life.^[11]

In 1903, after Myers's death, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death was compiled and published. It was two large volumes at 1,360 pages in length, which presented an overview of Myers's research into the unconscious mind.^[9][12][13] Myers believed that a theory of consciousness must be part of a unified model of mind, which derive from the full range of human experience, including not only normal psychological phenomena but also the wide variety of abnormal and "supernormal" phenomena.^[12][13]

Frederic Myers may be regarded as an "important early depth psychologist", and his significant influence on colleagues like William James, Pierre Janet, and Théodore Flournoy and also Carl G. Jung has been well documented.^[14]

Myers speculated on the existence of a deep region of the unconscious (collective unconscious) or what he termed the “subliminal self” which he believed could account for paranormal events. He also proposed the existence of a “metetherial world,” which he wrote to be a world of images lying beyond the physical world. He wrote that apparitions are not hallucinations but have a real existence in the metetherial world which he described as a dream-like world.^[15] Myers’ belief that apparitions occupied regions of physical space and had an objective existence was in opposition to his contemporaries views such as Edmund Gurney and Frank Podmore who wrote that apparitions were hallucinations.^[16] [From Wikipedia]

The two sources of morality and religion [Stanford]

Yet, although Kant's categorical imperative is supposed to be universal, it is not, according to Bergson. It is limited and particular. Closed morality really concerns the survival of a society, my society. Therefore, it always excludes other societies. Indeed, for Bergson, closed morality is always concerned with war. And static religion, the religion of closed morality, is based on what Bergson calls the “fabulation function.” The fabulation function is a particular function of the imagination that creates “voluntary hallucinations.” The fabulation function takes our sense that there is a presence watching over us and invents images of gods. These images then insure strict obedience to the closed morality. In short, they insure social cohesion.

But, there is another kind of morality and religion, according to Bergson. The open morality and dynamic religion are concerned with creativity and progress. They are not concerned with social cohesion, and thus Bergson calls this morality “open” because it includes everyone. The open morality is genuinely universal and it aims at peace. It aims at an “open society.” The source of the open morality is what Bergson calls “creative emotions.” The difference between creative emotions and normal emotions consists in this: in normal emotions, we first have a representation which causes the feeling (I see my friend and then I feel happy); in creative emotion, we first have the emotion which then creates representations. So, Bergson gives us the example of the joy of a musician who, on the basis of emotion, creates a symphony, and who then produces representations of the music in the score. We can see here that Bergson has also finally explained how the leap of an intuition happens. The creative emotion makes one unstable and throws one out of the habitual mode of intelligence, which is directed at needs. Indeed, in The Two Sources, Bergson compares creative emotions to unstable mental states as those found in the mad. But what he really has in mind is mystical experience. 

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.