Savitri Era Learning Forum

The Mother’s pre-Ashram years

2012-01-25T19:11:00.001+05:30

Publication of ‘The Mother: The Birth and Growth of a Flame’ byAnurag Banerjee

Overman Foundation has published itsseventh book ‘The Mother: The Birth and Growth of a Flame’ on 8 January 2012.Written by Anurag Banerjee and with a preface by Dr. Ananda Reddy (Director,Sri Aurobindo Centre for Advanced Research, Pondicherry), this book is a detailed accountof the Mother’s pre-Ashram years and covers the cou... from Overman Foundation - Jan 25, 2012

Publication of ‘Sri Aurobindo and Rabindranath Tagore’.

It gives me immense pleasure to announce that on 31December 2011 Overman Foundation has published its sixth book ‘SriAurobindo and Rabindranath Tagore’—a bilingual anthology of articles written onthe two great luminaries of the bygone century. This book—which is a tribute toRabindranath Tagore on the occasion o... from Overman Foundation - Jan 23, 2012

Sri Aurobindo: His Political Life and Activities—A Review byDeepali Gupta

Published by Overman Foundation, Kolkata.Price—E-copy: Rs. 200. (Hard-copy: Rs. 450). “Sri Aurobindo: His Political Lifeand Activities” by Anurag Banerjee presents to the reader a well researchedaccount of Sri Aurobindo’s life as a nationalist, a political revolutionary, aneducationist in the truest sense, and an inspirer of the youth and co... from Overman Foundation - Jan 20, 2012

Sri Aurobindo on Ethics—A Review by Deepali Gupta

Published by Overman Foundation, Kolkata.Price—E-copy: Rs. 20. (Hard-copy: Rs. 60). “The outward work can never be smallif the inward one is great, and the outward work can never be great or good ifthe inward is small or of little worth.”— Meister Eckhart. The above quotewonderfully weaves the ideas of Karma and Dharma to give us a right vie... from Overman Foundation - Jan 10, 2012

Publication of ‘Sujata Nahar: Loving Homage.’

It gives me immense pleasure to announce that on 12December 2011 Overman Foundation has published its fifth book, SujataNahar: Loving Homage. Edited by Nirmal Nahar and Anurag Banerjee with aforeword by Samir Kanta Gupta, this tri-lingual book is a collection oftributes paid to Sujata Nahar, the noted authoress... from Overman Foundation - Dec 23, 2011

Sri Aurobindo on Ethics and Sri Aurobindo: His Political Lifeand Activities: A Review by Dr. Prema Nandakumar

Published by Overman Foundation, Kolkata.Price— E-copy: Rs. 20. (Hard-copy: Rs. 60). Sri Aurobindo: His Political Lifeand Activities: compiled and edited by Anurag Banerjee with a preface by Prof.Kittu Reddy. Published by OvermanFoundation, Kolkata. Price—E-copy: Rs.200. (Hard-copy: Rs. 450). Anurag Banerjee rightly refers to “the ocean of ... from Overman Foundation - Dec 19, 2011

Sri Aurobindo on Ethics, The Alipore Bomb Trial Judgment andSri Aurobindo: His Political Life and Activities: A Review by Surendra SinghChouhan

Published by Overman Foundation, Kolkata.Price— E-copy: Rs. 20. (Hard-copy: Rs. 60). The Alipore Bomb Trial Judgment:Compiled and edited by Anurag Banerjee. Published by Overman Foundation,Kolkata. Price—E-copy: Rs. 50. (Hard-copy: Rs. 150). Sri Aurobindo: HisPolitical Life and Activities: Compiled and edited by Anurag Banerjee with aprefac... from Overman Foundation - Dec 13, 2011

The Tale of MyExile: Twelve Years in the Andamans — Barindra Kumar Ghose

ISBN: 978-81-7058-991-4 Publisher: Sri AurobindoAshram Publication Department, Pondicherry.Binding: Soft Cover, Pages: 143, Price: Rs 95

Barindra Ghose, Sri Aurobindo’s younger brother, wassentenced to death in 1909 in the Alipore Bomb Case, a sentence later commutedto transportation for life in the Cellular Jail at Port Blair in the Andamans.He was released from there in January 1920 as part of a general amnesty. Toldwith honesty and humour, this book is the story of his imprisonment with someof his fellow revolutionaries, from the Alipore Jail to the hold of the SSMaharaja to the Cellular Jail and a hard life of deprivation, forced labour,and humiliation by the prison authorities. Translated from the original Bengaliinto English by Nolini Kanta Gupta and first published in 1922, this newedition includes an introduction and editorial notes.

Anandamath —Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

ISBN: 978-81-85289-13-7 Publisher: Ashir Prakashan, Saharanpur. Binding: SoftCover, Pages: 203, Price: Rs 200

The famous Bengali novel Anandamath was firstpublished in 1882. It is set in Bengal duringthe famine of 1770 and tells the story of an armed band of Sannayasis who leada rebellion against the British East India Company. The book later became asymbol for the struggle for independence and its well-known hymn Bande Matarama rallying cry for the freedom movement. Bankim’s writing was much admired bySri Aurobindo, and his translation of the Prologue and the first thirteenchapters of Part I of Anandamath first appeared in the Karmayogin. The rest ofthe work was translated by his brother Barindra. This book is a reprint of anearlier edition which contained both their translations.

Asian Philosophy Edited by JeeLoo Liu

2012-01-09T16:17:00.000+05:30

Indian Philosophy (3,654 | 2,283)Christian Coseru

Protophilosophy (24 | 1)

Vedic Philosophy (6)

Upanisadic Philosophy (17)

Protophilosophy, Misc (0)

Orthodox/Astika Philosophy (1,057 | 2)

Mimamsa (44)

Samkhya (68)

Nyaya (134)

Vaisesika (29)

Vedanta (309)

Yoga (469)

Orthodox/Astika Philosophy, Misc (2)

Heterodox/Nastika Philosophy (105)

Therevada Buddhist Philosophy (14)

Mahayana Buddhist Philosophy (43)

Buddhist Logic (34)

Jain Philosophy (7)

Carvaka Philosophy (6)

Heterodox/Nastika Philosophy, Misc (1)

Theistic Indian Philosophy (30 | 17)

Saiva Siddhanta Philosophy (2)

Kashmiri Saivism (0)

Vaisnavite (3)

Theistic Indian Philosophy, Misc (8)

Indian Linguistic Philosophy (16 | 8)

Vyakarana/Grammar (6)

Nirukta/Etyomology (0)

Indian Linguistic Philosophy, Misc (2)

Indian Aesthetics (1)

Indian Logic (44 | 40)

Buddhist Logic (34)

Indian Logic, Misc (4)

Indian Ethics (42)

Indian Political Philosophy (7)

Modern Indian Philosophy (30)

Indian Philosophy, Misc (16)

Sri Aurobindo traces the potential journey of the soul

2011-10-13T11:58:00.001+05:30

Internatal Journey of the Soul Through Vital Or Mental Worlds - Sri Aurobindo Studies on 13/10/2011 3:26 AM
At the time of the separation of consciousness from the physical body at the time of death, there is the soul and its formed mental and vital sheaths which now become free of the physical impediment. Sri Aurobindo traces the potential journey of the soul through a series of planes or worlds that successively become more subtle and refined as they move further away from the physical and into the vital and mental ranges that have been developed as capacities during the physical embodiment.

The first possibility is for the soul to move temporarily into what Sri Aurobindo calls the “subtle-physical” which has many of the characteristics of the physical world, but without the limitations imposed by physical existence. There are also life-worlds which embody the vital principle that helped to form and fix the vital life and personality of the embodied soul. In the life-worlds one would see the vital power predominant and not limited by the physical limitations. The vital forces which held the attention of the evolutionary soul in life will clearly have strong influence on the direction and focus after death, and the soul may, for a time, get caught up in one of these vital realms as a result. Eventually the soul, however, cannot be totally limited by the physical or vital sheaths. To the extent there was a strong mental or mental-spiritual development, the soul may spend some time in one of the corresponding worlds between births. One may also find that the soul traverses some of these worlds but cannot consciously participate in them if there was insufficient vital, mental or spiritual development in the immediately past lifetime to create a capacity of resonance with what is going on in those worlds. “Any residence of the soul in annexes or in its own constructions could be only a transitional stage of the consciousness in its passage from the physical to the supraphysical state; it must pass from these structures into the true worlds of supraphysical Nature.” The driving force will in any case be the “influences which have shaped his earthly existence…” Eventually all of these intervening stages must be overpassed so that the soul can move to its next evolutionary phase.

Powerful Words: Bennett - Larval Subjects 12/10/2011 10:35 PM
In The Enchantment of Modern Life Bennett addresses some of the less attractive problems that emerge from the project of secularization, enlightenment, and disenchantment. ...

Bennett’s worry is that the project of disenchantment generates a sense of meaninglessness (so nicely described by Nietzsche in The Gay Science when he discusses the death of God) where it becomes impossible to be ethically and politically committed to anything. What she seeks is a form of secular enchantment, of captivation with the world, that might propel and motivate us to ethically and politically engage with the world. In short, her idea is that ethical and political engagement require certain affects to be efficacious. Even Kant, in the Critique of Practical Reason had to appeal to a peculiar sort of affect (respect for the moral law) to account for our obedience to that law.

Ultimate questions of existence and causality

2011-10-12T17:02:00.001+05:30

UNIVERSITY | 2:30 p.m. | Oct. 11, 2011 | By Clinton Wang
Philosophy conference questions everything
Philosophy professor Michael Della Rocca, who organized the conference, said the idea behind it emerged over coffee between physics professor Priyamvada Natarajan and theology professor Denys Turner “after we had walked out of yet another disappointing interdisciplinary talk.” They decided to create a new dialogue that would connect experts from their fields as well as philosophy, based on ultimate questions of existence and causality that shape all three fields, Della Rocca said.
“The hope is to initiate a significant and vital encounter among the three great magisteria dedicated to the pursuit of fundamental truth,” read the official statement.
The guests discussed the origin and nature of the Universe, time and creation, and whether their efforts to address these topics were futile.
By the end of the conference on Sunday, no verdict had been reached.
“But the absence of a consensus is a sign of a successful conference as are the connections between fields and people that were forged,” said Della Rocca.

Imagination as a Creative Force For Post ... - Sri Aurobindo Studies
sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com/.../imagination-as-a-creative-force-for- ...
Sri Aurobindo elucidates another possible location for the soul's sojourn after death, at least temporarily, and that is to reside in an artificial construct built by ...

Heidegger and Sri Aurobindo on Technology and Evolution

2011-08-25T20:31:00.000+05:30

UHU Fall Semester On-Campus courses 2011 (Sep 14 - Dec 19) Start: September 14, 2011, 5:00 pm - End: December 19, 2011, 6:30 pm

1. Every Monday, 4.00 - 5.00 pm (18.09 – 19.12.2011) - Technology and Evolution - By Daniel Goldsmith, Professor of Philosophy, Dawson College, Quebec
The twelve-week course will take a multidisciplinary approach (using history, philosophy, anthropology, and film (2001: A Space Odyssey)) as a way of starting a dialogue about humanity's present and future relation to technology. We will see that technology is an excellent way to highlight the connections between the western humanistic tradition and Sri Aurobindo, and ask how technology is related to Integral Yoga and the future evolution of mankind. Along the way, we will use Martin Heidegger's thoughts on the subject to see just how difficult it is to approach this topic. We will explore Heidegger’s approach of “phenomenologically reducing” this issue, and consider its parallels in the Indian philosophical tradition. Finally, we will also discuss several controversial viewpoints on technology as a way of raising questions of individual responsibility in an increasingly technologized world. Prior background in philosophy is helpful, though not required.

2. Every Monday, 5.15 - 6.15 pm (18.09 – 19.12.2011) - An Introduction to Metaphysics: Heidegger and Sri Aurobindo, by Rod Hemsell

In this course we will review the basic concepts of metaphysics in the light of Heidegger and Sri Aurobindo. Both philosophers approached the understanding of truth and being from in-depth studies of their respective classical traditions: Greek and Sanskrit. And both arrived at remarkably similar concepts of the soul and of the importance of gnosis, as opposed to logical thought. We will follow their paths as closely as possible, without necessarily having a background in the classical languages, in order to learn about the basic structures of knowledge, truth, consciousness, and the methods of philosophy.

The primary texts will be Heidegger’s The Essence of Truth (1931-32) and Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine (Pt. Two, 1939-40).

3. Every Wednesday, 5.00 – 6.00 pm (14.09 - 14.12.2011) - The Studies of the Bhagavad Gita: Karma Yoga by Vladimir Yatsenko:

This is a thorough study of the first six chapters of the Bhagavad Gita known as Karma Yoga. In these chapters the whole vision of the Karma Yoga is unfolded by Sri Krishna step by step. The ancient secret of the Sacrifice and the Psychology of Yoga of Works are revealed and explained in detail. The basic knowledge of Sanskrit and Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation are required for the better understanding and appreciation of the fundamentals of Yoga of Works.

Indra Sen, Kishore Gandhi, Madhusudan Reddy, Haridas Chaudhuri, & C.R. Goswami

2011-08-21T13:12:00.000+05:30

INSTITUTE FOR INTEGRAL YOGA PSYCHOLOGY :: About Us > THE INSTITUTE :: Publications - Institute will have special emphasis on publications of research and scholarly work on Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's psychological system, The following are the list of publication activities. ...

Psychology itself has undergone several shifts. The place of spirituality in human psyche is being increasingly acknowledged. With the popularity of the transpersonal school in psychology, spiritual, mystic and occult perspectives are becoming subject-matters that need not only to be understood but also to be transfigured in practical terms. In this context, Sri Aurobindo's psychological thought implicit in his yoga (named Integral Yoga) needs a special and distinctive consideration because it is a departure from the traditional ways of thinking as well as a departure from the ascetic tradition in spirituality. Moreover, it brings as a central theme the concept of evolution of Consciousness. [12:52 PM]

IYP explores the ranges and depths of consciousness, its planes and parts, so as to construct an integral structure and model of human being capable of evolutionary growth. In the process it studies the hierarchy of consciousness as represented in the human being as well as in nature, the different beings in our depths, the aspects of personality and impersonality, time and timelessness, ego and beyond - ego principles. The emergent perspective not only helps us to understand the structure of the being but also to study psychopathology at different levels with the possibility of devising concomitant therapeutic modalities.

IYP's standpoint is that as its field and matrix is consciousness in its most global perspective, it cannot ignore the variegated pursuits of the human mind in its quest towards truth. Thus it not only studies spirituality and religion but also include in its ambit the psychological foundations of occultism, parapsychology and metapsychology. IYP will study the practical implications of the consciousness paradigm in ...

PREDECESSORS

Our predecessors are stalwart-scholars and yogis who had the vision and foresight of acknowledging the inherent psychological insights in Sri Aurobindo’s thought. This illustrious list begins with the late Prof. Indra Sen, who published as early as 1944 an article entitled “A psychological Appreciation of Sri Aurobindo’s System of Integral Yoga” and culminates in Dr. A. S. Dalal’s landmark publication of “A Greater Psychology” in 2001.

Dr. Indra Sen used the term “Integral Psychology” in 1960 to denote Sri Aurobindo’s Psychological system but as Robert Gerard (in 1982) and Ken Wilber (in 2000) have been using the term for other things, the nomenclature “Integral Yoga Psychology” has evolved. Other predecessors include the late Kishore Gandhi who had been using class notes on this theme since 1966 at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the late Madhusudan Reddy whose book on Integral Yoga Psychology was published in 1988, Jobst Muhling who differentiated conventional Western Psychology from Sri Aurobindo’s psychology in 1960, the late Haridas Chaudhury who with F. Spiegelberg in 1960 published a Commemorative Symposium proceedings where the term “Integral Psychology” was first used, C. R. Goswami who used this term in 1989 and Lloyd Fellows who established an Institute for Integral Psychology in USA during 1970s under the inspiration of Late M. P. Pandit.

Syncretism in Sri Aurobindo’s thought – part 2 Posted on March 18, 2010 by Sandeep

One of the pleasures of reading Sri Aurobindo’s works is that such contradictions do not exist because he resolves every contradiction by tracing it to its Divine origin and reconciling it as part of a larger Truth. He explicates how every principle has it’s play in a certain context but if we over-generalize, then it loses its value. […]

What can we glean from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the Nature versus Nurture debate? We are given the understanding that nature and nurture can be reconciled in the greater spiritual truth, that there is an soul within Man evolving towards Divinity. This soul persists across incarnations, puts forth its own distinct personality in every life and is also influenced by the genetic makeup of the parents as well as by the prevailing Zeitgeist. […]

Intelligent Design raises valid questions about abiogenesis (i.e. how life arises out from inorganic matter) and speciation (i.e. how do new species arise) but is unable to satisfactorily answer them with a suitable teleology, other than to posit the existence of an extra-cosmic entity which must be managing the Universe.

On the other hand, Neo-Darwinism only examines the superficial evolution of forms, and remains unaware of the greater aeonic evolution of souls as they are reborn in progressively more complex forms, (plant, animal and human) as determined by the evolution of soul consciousness.

We present the synthesis of the above ideas as discovered in the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Speciation is explained by the fact that consciousness precedes form in evolution [12].

Passing away of Ranajit Sarkar and K.D. Sethna

2011-08-19T21:20:00.000+05:30

Editorial 15 August, 2011

We have chosen to name this anniversary number a special issue on the Social and Political Writings of Sri Aurobindo as the bulk of the papers, with a few exceptions, concentrates on this theme. Readers will find special interest in the article by Paul Richard on Sri Aurobindo, taken from his book The Dawn of Asia published by Ganesh & Co. of Madras in 1919. The article has been translated by Sri Aurobindo himself.

In the intervening period since our last publication in April, we have witnessed the passing away of two of Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s dear children – Ranajit Sarkar in far away Amsterdam and KD Sethna, better known to all as Amal Kiran. Ranajit Sarkar, too, was a product of the Ashram and was its inmate for a long time before he moved and settled in the Netherlands. Readers may remember the excellent series on the Urvashi theme he penned for Sraddha, in which he compared the works of Madhusudan Dutt, Tagore and Sri Aurobindo on that particular subject. A person of great erudition and learning and a man of admirable human qualities, Ranajit-da was most humble, modest and self-effacing.

Amal Kiran, born in Nov 1904, passed away peacefully in the Ashram Nursing Home on 29 June at the ripe old age of 106. He lived a long and full life. He joined the Ashram in 1927 at the young age of 23 and was christened ‘Amal Kiran’ or the ‘Clear Ray’ by Sri Aurobindo himself. One of the foremost sadhaks, a literary stalwart and a multi-faceted genius, his publications covered more than 50 books spread over a variety of subjects, notably literature and literary criticism. His voluminous correspondence with Sri Aurobindo on Savitri can be rated as the high-water mark of what true literary analysis ought to be. Like his Guru, Amal Kiran, too, possessed a keen and a wonderful sense of humour. ‘Age could not wither him nor custom stale his infinite variety’.

Notes On Authors (Includes names of only those writers whose writings have not appeared in this journal before)

Ajai R. Singh M.D. i s a Psychi a t r i s t and Edi tor , Mens Sana Monogr aphs , (http://www.msmonographs.org) He has written extensively on issues related to psychiatry, philosophy, bioethical issues, medicine, and the pharmaceutical industry

Aparna Banerjee is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Calcutta. She is the Author of the book Explanation and Understanding in the Social Sciences (2002). Her research papers on Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy have appeared in reputed Journals and Books. One such paper entitled ‘Yoga and Knowledge’ is due for publication in PHISPC, Centre for Studies in Civilisation, New Delhi. She has also completed a UGC research Project on the Indian Caste System in 2007.

Monica Gupta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Elementary Education, Gargi College, University of Delhi. She is also the academic Coordinator (honorary), International Centre for Integral Studies, Gnostic Centre, New Delhi. She is deeply influenced by the life and works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. She is in her research, teaching and personal practice engaged with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s vision of a future society and creation of new modes of knowing and being.

Neeltje Huppes was born in the Netherlands. An inner urge brought her to India and Pondicherry. She lived for 15 years in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Delhi Branch where she founded, together with Matthijs Cornelissen, a Research Centre for Integral Education, focusing mainly on teacher education. The urge for a more intense inner quest brought her back to Pondicherry where she is presently teaching in the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. She wrote Psychic Education, a Workbook, New Delhi, 2001. She has lectured in India and abroad on various aspects of Integral Psychology. In February 2006 she opened together with Matthijs Cornelissen the Indian Psychology Institute.

Paul Antoine Richard was born on 17 June 1874 at Masillargues in Languedoc, Southern France. After finishing school, he enlisted in the army, and in October 1892 was sent to North Africa, where he served for four years. Richard received his law degree from the Academie de Lille in July 1908. Before long he became a barrister at the Paris Court of Appeals. In February 1910 he joined the Ligue de Defense et de Propagande Republicaine Raddicale et Radicale-Socialiste. It was probably this party that sent Richard to Pondicherry in March 1910 on an electioneering campaign on behalf of Paul Bluysen, a candidate from French India to the Chamber of Deputies in Paris. It was in 1914 that he met Sri Aurobindo for the first time. Paul Richard wrote a few books some of which were Au Japon, To the Nations, The Lord of the Nations, The Scourge of Christ, The Dawn Over Asia, The Challenge of the Future, To India: The Messages of the Himalayas (1921), New Asia (1922), Messages from the Future, The Eternal Wisdom, The Seven Steps to the New Age. In November 1920, he left Pondicherry and went to Chandernagore; then he became a sannyasi and spent some time in the Himalayas. In 1967 Paul Richard breathed his last.

Radharaman Chakrabarti Formerly, Vice-Chancellor, Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata. Currently Project Director, UNESCO Programme on ‘International Understanding’ at Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Golpark, Kolkata Shakuntala A. Singh Ph.D. is Principal, Reader and Head, Dept of Philosophy, K.G. Joshi College of Arts and N.G. Bedekar College of Commerce. She is also Deputy Editor of MSM. Her areas of interest are Indian philosophy, bio-ethics, logic, and the philosophy of science.

Index To Authors And Articles In Sraddha, August 2010 – April 2011

Authors

Alok Pandey Aug.’10, p.34, Feb.’11, p.17

Amal Kiran Apr.’11, p.15

Amalendu De Aug.’10, p.120

Anirvan, Srimat Nov.’10, p.11, Feb.’11, p.47

Anuradha Choudry Nov.’10, p.62

Arun Chatterjee Nov.’10, p.92

Asoka Ganguli Feb.’11, p.139

Dalal, AS Apr.’11, p. 139

Dasharathi Sengupta Aug.’10, p.103

Debashsish Banerji Aug.’10, p.67, Feb.’11, p.53, Apr.’11, p.18

Deshpande, RY Apr.’11, p.63

Kireet Joshi Aug.’10, p.14

Krishnaprem Feb.’11, p.11

Kundan Singh Aug.’10, p.128

Larry Seidlitz Nov.’10, p.120

Makarand Paranjape Feb.’11, p.73

Mathijs Cornelissen Feb.’11, p.118

Mother Feb.’11, p.7

Narad (Richard Eggenberger) Apr.’11, p.55

Pratyagatmananda Saraswati, Swami Aug.’10, p.10

Prema Nandakumar Aug.’10, p.41, Nov.’10, p.23, Feb.’11, p.39, Apr.’11, p.46

Prithwindra Mukherjee Nov.’10, p.134

Ramesh Chandra Pradhan Nov.’10, p.35

Ranajit Sarkar Aug.’10, p.168, Nov.’10, p.188, Feb.’11, p.14, Apr.’11, p.73

Richard Hartz Aug.’10, p.52, Apr.’11, p.98

Sachidananda Mohanty Nov.’10, p.165

Sampadananda Mishra Nov.’10, p.81S´

Sandeep Joshi Nov.’10, p.111

Sarnath Basu Nov.’10, p.17

Saurendranath Basu Aug.’10, p.181

Shraddhavan Nov.’10, p.174, Feb.’11, p.105

Sonia Dyne Aug.’10, p.95, Feb.’11, p.87

Sri Aurobindo Aug.’10, p.7, Nov.’10, p.7, Apr’11, p.7

Srinivasan, MS Nov.’10, p.152

Sunayana Panda Apr.’11, p.121

Tapan Banerjee Nov.’10, p.46

Usharanjan Chakraborty Feb.’11, p.131

Vladimir Iatsenko Apr.’11, p.24

Vrekhem, Georges van Aug.’10, p.142, Apr. ’11, p.126

Articles

Analytical Assessment of Death – Savitri Debate, An (Usharanjan Chakraborty) – Feb’11, p,131

Aswapati’s Yoga (Anirvan, Srimat) – Feb’11, p.47

Beyond Mind: A New Paradigm of Psychology…(Kundan Singh) – Aug.’10, p.128

Biographical Aspect of Savitri, A ( RY Deshpande) – Apr.’11, p.63

Bird-Image in Savitri, The (Ranajait Sarkar) – Apr.’11, p.73

Charles Darwin and Sri Aurobindo… (Tapan Banerjee) – Nov.’10, p.46

Country and Nationalism, The (Sri Aurobindo) – Aug.’10, p.7

Descent of Knowledge in Savitri, The (Sonia Dyne) – Feb.’11, p.87

Emotion and its Transformation (Larry Seidlitz) – Nov.’10, p.120

Epistemology of Perception (Sandeep Joshi) – Nov.’10, p.111

Everlasting Yes, The: Savitri, the Epic of Affirmation (Richard Hartz) – Apr.11, p.98

Five Martyrs of Bengal (Amalendu De) – Aug.’10, p.120

Genius of Civilisation (MS Srininvasan) – Nov.’10, p.152

Love and Death (Debashish Banerji) – Feb.’11, p.53

Lexicon of an Infinite Mind (Narad – Richard Eggenberger) – Apr.’11, p.55

Modes and Aspects of Self in Hindu Philosophy… (Arun Chatterjee) – Nov.’10, p.92

Mother and Her Work, The (Sunayana Panda) – Apr.’11, p.121

Mother’s Savitri Translations, The (Shraddhavan) – Feb.’11, p.105

Nation and Beyond – Aspects of Sri Aurobindo’s Political Vision (Dasharathi Sengupta) – Aug.’10, p.103

Newness of Savitri: an Interpretation (Asoka Ganguli) – Feb.’11, p.139

On Savitri – A Talk to a Young Disciple (Mother) – Feb.’11, p.7

On Savitri (Sri Aurobindo) – Apr.’11, p.7

Onward She Passed… Rejection as Described in Savitri (Matthijs Cornelissen) – Feb.’11, p.18

Path of Nachiketa, The (Alok Pandey) – Aug.’10, p. 34

Psychic Being, The: A Gift of Grace (AS Dalal) – Apr.’11, p.139

Rabidranath and Sri Aurobindo… (Saurendranath Basu) – Aug.’10, p.181

Reflections on Jouissance as Ananda (Prithwindra Mukherjee) – Nov.’10, p.134

Reviving the Vedic Aryan (Anuradha Choudry) – Nov.’10, p.62

Sadhana and Sahitya: the Early Years in Pondicherry (Richard Hartz) – Aug.’10, p.52

Sanskrit: A Language of Integral Perfection (Sampadananda Mishra) – Nov.’10, p.81

Savitri (Krishnaprem) – Feb.’11, p.11

Savitri and Satyavan: the Path to Immortality (Vladimir Iatsenko) – Apr.’11, p.24

Savitri, Bk I, Canto I: The Symbol Dawn (Debashsish Banerji) – Apr.’11, p.18

Savitri, Bk VI, Canto II: The Way of Fate and … (Makarand Paranjape) – Feb.’11, p.73

Savitri: The Song of The Infinite (Alok Pandey) – Feb.’11, p.17

Science and Religion (Georges van Vrekhem) – Aug.’10, p.42

‘Seer Deep-Hearted’: A Metrical Fragment.. (Shraddhavan) – Nov.’10, 174

Spirituality and the Crisis in Contemporary… (Sachidananda Mohanty) – Nov.’10, p.165

Sri Aurobindo and the Bengal Renaissance (Debashsish Banerji) – Aug.’10, p.67

Sri Aurobindo and the Mystery of Death (Anirvan, Srimat) – Nov.’10, p.11

Sri Aurobindo and the Veda (Kireet Joshi) – Aug.’10, p.14

Sri Aurobindo, Namaste (Pratyagatmananda Swaraswati, Swami) – Aug.’10, p.10

Sri Aurobindo on ‘The Two Negations’… (RC Pradhan) – Nov.’10, p.35

Sri Aurobindo’s Concept of Freedom (Sonia Dyne) – Aug.’10, p.95

Sri Aurobindo’s Commentary on Kenopanishad (Sarnath Basu) – Nov.’10, p.17

Theme of Urvashi in the Indian Renaissance, The (Ranajit Sarkar)- Aug.’10, p.168, Nov.’10, p.188

To Savitri, the Wonderful Epic (Ranajit Sarkar) – Feb.’11, p.14

Veda Vyasa’s Mahabharata in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri (Prema Nandakumar) – Aug,’10, p.41, Nov.’10, p.23, Feb.’11, p.39, Apr.’11, p.46

What Arjuna saw: the Dark Side of the Force (Georges van Vrekhem) – Apr.’11, p.126

What Basically is Savitri? (Amal Kiran) – Apr.’11, p.15

What is the Significance of the Name ‘Arya’? (Sri Aurobindo) – Nov.’10, p.
http://motherorissa.com/Files/magazine/Sraddha%20Apr'11.pdf

SR/OOO as alternative to Creationism and Nihilism

2011-08-16T19:26:00.000+05:30

sifting the important from the unimportant from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman)

For my own part, I’ve been fairly straightforward about showing my cards, both in my published works and here on this blog. As is well known, my orientation is basically “continental,” and basically Husserl/Heidegger-oriented at bottom– though in an unorthodox manner, and with quite a bit of Whiteheadian and especially Latourian influence. Unless you’re very skeptical of continental philosophy in general, or unless you’re one of those continentals who think all recent French philosophy is sophistry, I think it’s hard to escape the conclusion that in the post WW-II period Paris has been a unique dynamo, generating new figures and ideas at a dizzying rate. It’s not a question of worshipping that process; I happen to think that Heidegger still hasn’t been surpassed.

In any case, this sort of situating of the reputations of various authors is not a minor aspect of what we do, nor is it something to be passed over in polite silence so as to avoid invidious comparisons. It’s the very heart of critical intellectual life, as well as the very key to how we go about deciding what (among the thousands of books surrounding us) to read first and in greatest depth, and what we decide to skim and what to ignore completely. All of us are wrong in these decisions at times. All of us evolve over the years and change our tastes in one way or another. But there’s no avoiding the decisions. None of us load all philosophy books into an empty drum and choose our summer’s reading at random. We all have some sense, one that is constantly in development, of what we need to read and learn most urgently.

To turn now away from Berendzen and towards those who think Laruelle is more important than I have reason to think so far, there’s plenty of blog and journal room available to make your case. Let’s hear that case, rather than complaints about the messenger.

Philosophy Blogging, OOO/SR, Nihilism, and God « Footnotes to Plato 28 Jul 2011 – Posted by Matthew David Segall

The democratization of information has now become at least technologically feasible, if not politically actual. I don’t think the rise of the blog signals the end of the university (or at least I should hope not), but it does mean that the individual is now shouldering a good deal more of the weight of human knowledge than before.

I am in graduate school myself, though I attend CIIS, an academically marginalized school started by an Indian yogi in the middle of the New Age capital of the world (Watts was once on the faculty). It is impossible for me to escape this context, even though I aim to think individually much in the spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

SR/OOO and Nihilism: a response to Harman and Bryant « Footnotes ... 13 Jul 2011 – Posted by Matthew David Segall

When I suggested in an earlier post that SR/OOO needs to unpack its theological and anthropological implications, I did so with the hopeful expectation that, were an object-oriented theology, psychology, or anthropology developed, it might provide a viable alternative to the philosophical exaggerations of Creationism and Nihilism alike. […]

I think Whitehead was struggling to secularize theology, such that science and religion–the study of nature and the worship of divinity–could mutually enhance one another, rather than being placed in irremediable conflict on either side of a universe bifurcated between Nature and Spirit. Bryant questions whether any good evidence exists for believing in God, but it seems that he is imagining a God who issues decrees and determines the future course of the universe in advance. Whitehead’s God has no such power, but rather is alike in kind to all other actual entities. God is with the world, not above it. God does not guarantee anything but the possibility of relevant and meaningful experience to every actual occasion. It is up to each actual occasion to decide upon its future based on its own subjective ends. There is little scientific evidence for the existence of a transcendent, law imposing God like the one Bryant is critiquing (I say “little” evidence only because of the way some physicists remain rutted in a non-historical paradigm that conceives of physical laws as arbitrarily imposed upon nature from beyond nature); but from Whitehead’s panentheistic perspective, the evidence for God is aesthetic and moral, not just scientific.
That there is a Cosmos at all, rather than chaos, is evidence of Beauty’s participation in bringing the cosmic democracy of objects into (a still evolutionary and open-ended!) harmonization. That human beings are capable of struggling for Justice (even if it remains largely an ideal imperfectly realized) is evidence that God’s infinite love for each and every entity is ingredient in our more limited experience of entities. And finally, that human beings are capable of doing metaphysics and philosophy so as to reveal the inner workings of reality is evidence that a deeper Intelligence is involved in bringing forth both the knower and the known.

In League With Sri Aurobindo's Vision And Integral Yoga - Editorial ...
There is not the slightest doubt that our society will have to undergo a reconstruction which may amount to revolution, but it will not be for Europeanisation as the ...

Sri Aurobindo is a golden Vessel

2011-08-10T14:58:00.000+05:30

5.0 out of 5 stars Our Future Self, July 26, 2011 By John Pellicci (Palm Beach Gardens, United States) - See all my reviews - (REAL NAME) This review is from: The Life Divine - U.S. edition (Hardcover)

Aurobindo is a golden Vessel. His words convey thoughts of the most sublime and supreme that a human is given to think and become. His depth of realization and breadth of learning continues to leave me aghast. This magnum opus dethrones and perfects the intellect, opens the being to higher ranges and transmissions to the effect of developing the necessary mental architecture for the radical uplift and trans-human amplification.

50 of 50 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Look at yourself and the world from a different angle, October 10, 2005 By Yajnavalkya "Tim" (Hetfordshire, UK) - See all my reviews This review is from: The Life Divine (Paperback)

This is a difficult book to read. Let us be under no illusions about that. It is verbose, repetitive and massive in its scope: tackling virtually the entire gamut of issues that philosophy traditionally deals with. But by the time you have finished reading the book (it took me three months to finish) it would have transformed the way you live your life. You may not agree with Aurobindo, and in fact, he probably does not want you to blindly agree with him, he would much rather that you think things out for yourself; but one thing that he certainly does is to question the 'commonsense' view of the world: the view of the world that we build up using bits of unexamined,untested, received, 'truths'. Take just one such 'truth': We believe--or at least we have done so ever since Descartes--that Matter and Consciousness are two separate things. Aurobindo puts forward the suggestion that the two are actually one and the same entity, only they are in different states being: somewhat like Ice and Steam being different states of water. If we concede that matter may be a form of consciousness, only in an inert state, all sorts of consequences would follow: especially with regard to our attitudes towards the environment.
As I had said earlier, the scope of the book is massive. Its three parts can be roughly divided into Ontology (where he discusses the Nature of the Cosmos), Epistemology (where he discusses the nature of Knowledge (& Ignorance), and the problem of Evil--which he attributes to Ignorance: a consequence of Ahamkara or ego-centricism) and finally, in the last part, he provides a broad, general direction for living our lives in accordance with our revised view of the world (Ethics). However, the book is not tightly structured (If you are looking for a book like Wittgenstein's Tractatus you will find yourself truly frustrated) it is loose, repetitive, and disjointed. Possibly because it was originally written as a series of essays and published monthly in a magazine called the Arya (between 1914 to 1919). He must have had to repeat himself because his original audience would have forgotten a point that he would have made five years ago. But the cumulative effect of the repetitions is that his ideas have a tendency to gradually seep in and sink into your mind, rather than strike you as a sort of brilliant epiphany.
Aurobindo's philosphy is ultimately rooted in ancient Hindu Vedic thought. In the course of the book, Aurobindo tackles Marx, Darwin, Nietzche, Freud, Hegel, Feurbach, (plus a whole range of European philosophers) and his idea is to adapt their philosophy to the 'Truth' as expressed by the Seers of the ancient Vedas. Does he succeed in doing so? I don't know. That is for professional philosophers to decide. For me, the book has been a revelation, the scales have dropped from my eyes: I see things differently now. Hopefully, I will continue to do so for a while before the snares of living in a modern city finally engulf me once again. Haven't they said that we can't stand to face the truth for too long?

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece meant for everyone, October 5, 2005 By Tusar N. Mohapatra "Savitri Era of those who ... (Indirapuram, India) - See all my reviews This review is from: The Life Divine (Paperback)

It is a difficult read, no doubt, but this is one book which each and every educated person must read; doesn't matter if it takes a lifetime. If one reads three pages a day, it'll take one year to finish the book; that is the kind of patience the book demands, but it's worth it and extremely rewarding. Logistics overcome, comes the barrier of prejudice; several of them: India, Hindu, Ashram, Philosophy, Spirituality, New-Age etc. But what is needed is an absolutely open mind and the book becomes a pure Life's User Manual.

The book itself is a Univeresity that breathes universality. During the course of reading, one gets attuned to many related areas and ideas by way of allusions and comparisions. It also solves progressively one's long-held doubts and discords. Besides, in whichever profession one is, it helps to improve on the practical aspects. Further, the poetic beauty of the text enhances the sheer pleasure of reading even while the insights gained expands one's sense of mundane existence. Two other booklets, "The Mother" and "The Mind of Light" or "The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth" are essential supplements, lest one's understanding of the author is prone to be lopsided.

Increasing meaningful uploading.

2011-08-06T14:52:00.000+05:30

How computers can cure cultural diabetes - opinion - 05 July 2011 - New Scientist The networked computer offers an antidote to the junk culture of broadcasting. Why not choose the healthy option, says Peter Lunenfeld

All animals download, but only a few upload anything besides faeces and their own bodies. Beavers build dams, birds make nests and termites create mounds, yet for the most part, the animal kingdom moves through the world downloading. Humans are unique in their capacity to not only make tools but then turn around and use them to create superfluous material goods - paintings, sculpture and architecture - and superfluous experiences - music, literature, religion and philosophy. Of course, it is precisely these superfluous things that define human culture and ultimately what it is to be human. Downloading and consuming culture requires great skills, but failing to move beyond downloading is to strip oneself of a defining constituent of humanity. […]

The challenge the computer mounts to television thus bears little similarity to one format being replaced by another in the manner of record players being replaced by CD players. It is far more profound than that, because it can bring about a radical break from the culture of television and a shift from a consumption model to a production model.

This is a historic opportunity. Fifty years of television dominance has given birth to an unhealthy culture. Created like fizzy drinks and burgers by multinational conglomerates, the junk culture of broadcasting has turned us into intellectual diabetics. The cure is now in our collective grasp. It involves controlling and rationing our intake, or downloading, and increasing our levels of activity - uploading. Not to break it down too much, watching is ingesting is downloading and making is exercising is uploading.

Sri Aurobindo gave him the emblem with a Garuda

2011-08-02T17:54:00.000+05:30

Finding a New Gandhi in the Book 'Great Soul' Miller-McCune.com By Sameer Pandya August 2, 2011

“If there is a single seminal experience in his intellectual development,” Lelyveld writes, it occurs in 1894 when Gandhi receives a copy of Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You. The book is Tolstoy’s late-life confession “of a passionate Christian creed, founded on individual conscience and a doctrine of radical nonviolence.” Gandhi’s embrace of Tolstoy’s ideas would later lead the Bengali revolutionary Sri Aurobindo to quip that Gandhi “is a European — truly a Russian Christian in an Indian body.”

Study on Bharati The Hindu

Bharati's association with VVS Aiyer and Aurobindo went a long way in strengthening his will to pursue his goals — a casteless society; the uplift of the downtrodden; and the emancipation of women. Bharati's early years, his marriage at an early age ...

Exposition of the Gita The Hindu

The book, which has a brief introduction to each chapter, provides cross-references to the Upanishads and commentaries by Acharyas like Adi Sankara and other eminent men such as Gandhiji, Tilak and Aurobindo. The book makes a wholesome reading. ...

The Hindu secularists : Liberals or Hypocrites? | The Chakra News

These are the set of people who have never read even the bhagvad-Gita, the works of the world famous scholar Sri Aurobindo or the testimonials of the famous ...

A Christian Response to the Continued Atrocities Against ... Francis Vellanikaran

Sri Aurobindo, in his inspiring poem Savitri, emphasises the need to undergo the pain in order to redeem the other sufferers as follows. ...

Madhusudan Dutt: Master of Bangla drama - Logo

In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "All the stormiest passions of man's soul he [Madhusudan] expressed in gigantic language." Madhusudan Dutta's major works ...

Motto and mission - Professional Resource Forum - Chartered ...

C. S. Shastri, a Chartered Accountant from Chennai went to Sri Aurobindo and ... In reply to this request, Sri Aurobindo gave him the emblem with a Garuda, ...

Stealing The World With Paper 1/4 | Estater

As you mention Germany's example and Nazi time: Read Sri Aurobindo and his book, the Human Cycle. It describes quite well why Germany was falling into ...

Hobbes, Hegel, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari

2011-07-21T16:22:00.000+05:30

Comment on Study of science as an aid in Yoga by Sandeep from Comments for Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother by Sandeep

In the context of this post (how the pursuit of science can help in yoga), there are certain points that Binu Mukherjee made in a recent talk which deserve to be enumerated here. Binu Mukherjee grew up in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and is currently Emeritus Professor of Physics at Royal Military College of Canada.

1) Science develops the power of reasoning. It makes the mind modest, aware of its limitations, and makes it refrain from entering into regions beyond its ken. The mind becomes a willing partner in quietening itself and opening to higher methods of getting to the truth

2) Science is a co-operative exercise. Papers are written in first person plural. Your work builds on previous work. This reduces personal ego.

3) One realizes the impossibility of making strictly correct measurements and knowing the truth. One comes face to face with the nature of uncertainties in the physical world. Furthermore, in Quantum mechanics, one learns that the process of measuring itself disturbs the quantity being measured. As a result, one discovers that Nature is not real but an illusion. The fundamental particles in empty space give the illusion of solidity, liquidity, etc There is an inherent unknowability which parallels the hidden truth that always exists behind the the phenomenal world.

4) Science develops the quality of detachment. One learns to have an open mind without preconceptions or predilections, and to think independently of the baggage of one’s personal history.

5) A developed mind is able to discern between the revealed truth and the lower parts of the mind, and learns to appreciate the universality of truth.

6) The inner discipline which is instilled through Yoga makes one impervious to external evaluation or peer pressure which arises in the field of science. Binu discovered that the “more he offered his work to the Mother, the more successful he became”.

This is not an entirely accurate transcription but I think I have captured the gist of it. The talk is on youtube

Style « Larval Subjects 25 Apr 2008 – Hopefully I have enough “cred” to inveigh against “difficult books” (I am, after all, mired in the work of figures such as Deleuze, Lacan, Hegel, etc., who are the worst of the worst), but I have increasingly found myself suspicious of the “difficult work”. On the one hand, I read texts in the sciences that express extremely complex ideas in very basic prose. Somehow I’m just unwilling to concede that what Hegel is trying to talk about is any more difficult or complex than what the biologist, complexity theory, economic social theorist, ecologist, or quantum physicist is attempting to articulate. This leads to my concern. I wonder if terribly dense styles such as we find in figures like Deleuze, Lacan, Hegel, Derrida, etc., etc., etc., aren’t a form of intellectual terrorism.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not referring to the quality of their concepts or arguments. What I am referring to is a general writing strategy that demands so much work on the part of the reader in the art of interpretation, that by the time you’ve managed to make heads or tails of what Lacan is arguing or Hegel is seeking to articulate or Deleuze is seeking to theorize, you have so much invested that you simply cannot think critically about that figure. …

Does this mean I cease to read such figures or reject them out of hand? No. I do believe they hide secrets. … I’ve spent my fair amount of time defensively defending the writing style of figures such as Lacan, Derrida, Heidegger, Deleuze, etc., etc., etc. What I realize is that what I was defending was not their style but the value of their concepts and arguments despite their style. 12:19 PM

And Now, The PONDICHERRY SPIKES Begin... And It's GROUND ZERO, Folks from ANTIDOTE by naturalorder@gmail.com (Sauvik)

Pondicherry, all endowed with "natural religion" and "natural honesty," … I spent three happy years in my youth, and where my "intellectual journey" began, … It was here that I first discovered that a "natural order" exists.

My intellectual journey has been a long and pleasant one. It began by doubting Thomas Hobbes' dictum in Leviathan that, without a State, there would ensue "a war of each against all" and life would be "nasty, poore, brutish, and short." I have carefully studied this book. Many years ago, I published its refutation in the Times of India, under the title "Hobbes' Mistake: The Rational Case for Anarchy." This article has been preserved here.

Appeal to people's self-interests, never to their mercy or gratitude. The 48 laws of power books.google.co.in Robert Greene, Joost Elffers - 2000 - 452 pages - Preview Cunning, instructive, and amoral, this controversial bestseller distills 3,000 years of the history of power into 48 well-explicated laws. The 48 Laws of Power - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Laws 1:28 PM

Sleep as a state of consciousness in Advaita Vedānta - Page 136 books.google.com Arvind Sharma - 2004 - 181 pages - Preview

It might be appropriate to close this investigation with precisely such an example, drawn from the writings of Sri Aurobindo. “But I do not insist on everybody passing through my experience or following the Truth that is its consequence. ...”

Re: Union with our Inner Being MICHAEL MIOVIC mmiovic@...

For those who are open, Greece is still a treasure trove of mystical experience, and one can still experience the so-called "ancient" Gods in their inner or yogic reality in many spots--Delphi, Cape Sounion, at the Parthenon, Olympia, some islands, and many other spots both natural and man-made. The re-discovery of these Gods and Goddesses still awaits the birth of the next cycle of European civilization.

Comment on Kundalini in ancient Greek and other non-Indian cultures by Jason Wingate from Comments for Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother by Jason Wingate

Well a student of Glenn’s talks about it here, but only in practice terms. The proof being experiential. Of course to get Glenn’s pov you can read his books — the first two being the most important — which are very well-researched but not fully cited in line. The rest is down to actual practices, but those are not the same as the ones recommended by Aurobindo.

Comment by Sandeep Thomas McEvilley’s talk on ‘The Shape of Ancient Thought’

(title unknown) from enowning - John D. Caputo on Martin Hägglund‘s Radical Atheism, from The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 11.2.

Badiou‘s use of St. Paul, whom he interprets in terms of the truth-making event, while dismissing the actual content this event (the resurrected Christ) provides a more recent example. This leads to the question of which came first, the religious form of life or the philosopheme, the ontology or the "unavowed" theology. It was considerations of just this sort that led Derrida to speak of a religion without the doctrines and dogmas of religion, and this lay behind his musings on the relative priority of the messianic and the concrete messianisms or the "unavowed theologemes" that lay behind philosophy.

Sri Aurobindo was impressed by the Christian ideals of equality and fraternity

2011-07-19T21:21:00.000+05:30

Hinduism as a Missionary Religion books.google.com Arvind Sharma - 2011 - 176 pages - Preview

Reconsiders whether Hinduism can be considered a missionary religion.

The World's Religions: A Contemporary Reader - Page 309 books.google.com Arvind Sharma - 2010 - 392 pages - Preview

There are the teachings of great saints—Shri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, Shri Ramak- rishna, Shri Swami Rama, Shri Yogananada, Mahesh Yogi, Maata Amrita, and Aanandamayi— whose thoughts and work lead us now in this critical period. ...

Hindu narratives on human rights - Page 153 books.google.com Arvind Sharma - 2010 - 167 pages - Preview

“SàvitrX tells Death she must follow her dead husband because such is the immemorial custom of the wife,” so Peter Heehs, “The Centre of the Religious and Cultural Nationalism in the Work of Sri Aurobindo,” in Antony Copley, ed.,...

Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought: Toward a Fusion of Horizons - Page 177 books.google.com Rita DasGupta Sherma, Arvind Sharma - 2008 - 249 pages - Preview

2. 4 Ved ̄anta De ́sika, ̄I ́s ̄av ̄asyopanis.adbh ̄as.ya, p. 6. 5 Aurobindo, The Upanishads. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1973, p. 63. 6 Olivelle, The Early Upanis.ads. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. ...

Neo-Hindu views of Christianity - Page 200 books.google.com Arvind Sharma - 1988 - 217 pages - Preview

Let me start by saying that Sri Aurobindo is definitely of the opinion that Christianity is more a moral and ... Sri Aurobindo is so impressed by the Christian ideals of equality and fraternity that he has commented on it on more than ...

Our religions books.google.com Arvind Sharma - 1993 - 536 pages - Snippet view

This is not to say that the works of a Rammohun Roy (1772/74-1833) or a Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) or even a Gandhi are acceptable as part of the sacred literature of Hinduism, though one must wonder whether the writings of Srl Aurobindo ...

Indian literature: Volume 26 books.google.com Sāhitya Akademi - 1983 - Snippet view

Arvind Sharma in the second part of the book depicts the contemporary scenario with a fair deal of objectivity despite ... The role of Swami Dayanand and Mahatma Gandhi and above all of Tagore and Aurobindo Ghosh, in promoting humanism, ...

World faiths insight: Volumes 5-7 books.google.com World Congress of Faiths, Temple of Understanding (U.S.) - 1982 - Snippet view

RELIGIOUS FERMENTS IN MODERN INDIA: Hal W. French and Arvind Sharma: St. Martin's Press, NY 1981. x + 185 pp. ... Sharma points to Aurobindo Ghosh as the outstanding exception to this, but more, he notes that Hinduism sets no ultimate ...

Sleep as a state of consciousness in Advaita Vedānta - Page 136 books.google.com Arvind Sharma - 2004 - 181 pages - Preview

Activate hidden potentialities of consciousness and manifest in corporate life

2011-07-18T20:24:00.000+05:30

Workshop on "Management by Consciousness" at - Auro University About the Workshop on 21 & 22 July 2011: Management by Consciousness

'Sri Aurobindo Foundation for Integral Management' (SAFIM) is a centre of Excellence in Management, established by Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry. ...

Session Themes

1. Relevance of Consciousness in Today's Business

2. Concept of Integral Management

3. Present Scenario of Management Education in

India

4. Understanding Consciousness and Self

5. The Power of Understanding

6. The Power of Action

It is interesting to note that all the secret human potentialities for achievement, success or excellence lie in our consciousness. The main objective of the workshop we are presenting here is to consciously activate these hidden potentialities of consciousness and manifest them in every activity of corporate life. The Topics are based on some pressing needs of the contemporary corporate world. But our approach will be very different from the traditional workshops. Our approach will be “within outward” relying mainly on the inner powers of consciousness to bring the outer result. This workshop will explore the deeper sources of every need, function and activity and will seek to consciously fulfil the same in the outer activity. The topics would be contemporary and the approach would be non-traditional.

Duration : Two Days. Date: 21 & 22 July 2011 Participants: Faculty Members/ Corporates/ Entrepreneurs/ Learners Interested in Integral Management. Fees: Rs.1000/- participant

Venue: Auro University, Hazira Road, Opp. ONGC, Surat, Gujarat-394510

Prof. Jonaki Mahajan : 09925200328 Dr. Rana Singh : 0886697110

Online courses on Sri Aurobindo & The Mother

2011-07-11T12:13:00.000+05:30

Comment on Central Being (Jivatman) by Sandeep from Comments for Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother by Sandeep - You can enroll for online courses at either:

1. SACAR
2. Gnostic Centre
3. University of Human Unity

Online Courses (Click to view)

The Studies of the Rig Veda in the light of Sri Aurobindo (in three parts) by Vladimir Yatsenko

World in Transition: Climate justice between efficiency and sufficiency by Dr. Otto Ulrich

Studies of the Gita: The Karma Yoga by Vladimir Yatsenko

The Philosophy of Language in the Light of Sri Aurobindo by Vladimir Yatsenko

Philosophy of Evolution by Rod Hemsell

The Poetry of Sri Aurobindo by Rod Hemsell

A Sanskrit Grammar Course for beginners by Vladimir Yatsenko & Nishtha Muller

Practice of Sanskrit Grammar byGitanjali J B

A Body Awareness Course by Hans Baren

Scientific Approach to Knowledge by Keka Chakraborty

An Introduction to Musicology byLadislav Brozman

The Studies of the Rig Veda, Hymns to Brihaspati by Nishtha Muller

International Centre for Integral Studies (ICIS) Admissions open: Programmes starting 8 Aug'2011 - www.integralstudiescentre.org

The International Centre for Integral Studies (ICIS) is a research centre for Higher Education engaged in the process of discovering an entirely new and unmapped road towards a teaching and learning that combines academic study and rigour with the growth of consciousness, based on the underlying philosophy of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

It came into existence on 21st February, 2002. It has been engaged in offering growth of consciousness courses - both on-site as well as postgraduate online courses. The Online courses are accredited by IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University), New Delhi.

The Gnostic Centre brings out a journal focused on self-development, called 'The Awakening Ray' (since 1997). Each issue focuses on a new theme relevant for application of Integral Yoga concepts in one's daily life and work.

Courses Offered in August 2011- Open to all Interested Learners

SACAR PROGRAMMES ONLINE CLASSROOMS OUR FORMAL DEGREE PROGRAMMES IN PARTNERSHIP WITH IGNOU

Certificate in Integral Social Development

Classrooms for Certificate Programme:
Introduction to Sri Aurobindo Studies

Certificate Programme:
Introduction to Sri Aurobindo Studies

Certificate in Indian Cultural Studies

Classrooms for all other Courses and Programmes

PG Diploma in Studies in Indian Culture

FACILITATORS’ PROFILES

Certificate in Integral Education

PG Diploma in Integral Education

RECENT UPDATES

Certificate in Integral Management

MA in Sri Aurobindo Studies

New Race: A Journal of Integral Studies

Certificate in Integral Yoga Psychology

MĀSA : Monthly E-newsletter

M.Phil in Sri Aurobindo Studies

Certificate in Essentials of the Gita

Talks by Dr. Ananda Reddy

Ph.D. in Sri Aurobindo Studies

Ind. Study Option & Mentored Research

Video of SACAR IGNOU MOU signing

SACAR Programmes with Other Universities

John Paul's theology is very much like Sri Aurobindo's

2011-07-08T23:26:00.000+05:30

Living and Loving in the Real World FRIDAY, JULY 08, 2011 GAGDAD BOB

When I speak of "evolution" on the human plane, I mean it in exactly the sense John Paul does in this letter to a friend in 1957:

"I am convinced that life is a constant development toward that which is better, more perfect -- if there is no stagnation within us." He adds that it is a great achievement "to see values that others don't see and to affirm them," but an even greater one "to bring out of people values that would perish without us. In the same way, we bring our values out in ourselves."

Put them together, and you have a life devoted to awakening and articulating the latent values that lay dormant in people, in the effort to help them evolve toward that which is better. This is only possible in light of the "perfect," i.e., the Absolute, without which there could be no hierarchy or gradations of quality. But in reality, man is always -- what's the word, Jeeves? Asymptotically? -- "on the way" to perfection. Man is surely a bridge, but not to nowhere, as he must be for the materialist.

As we have discussed in the past, this was the proper meaning of evolution before the word was appropriated and redefined by Darwin. Taken literally, evolution is precisely what cannot happen under metaphysical Darwinism. Rather, only horizontal change may occur. Notice, for example, how Darwinian fundamentalists are always so quick to cut man down to size, insisting in various ways that he is "just an animal." But I don't get my truth from animals -- with the exception of certain partial truths about animality.

In their worldview, it is as philosophically absurd to suggest that man is superior to animals as it is to say that blue is better than the key of C. It's just pure nonsense, because "better" can only be understood in the context of a hierarchy of transcendent values.

As you all know by now -- actually, maybe you don't. But I'll be brief so as to not bore. When I made the formal decision to enter the spirituality racket -- to dive into the deep end of the cosmos -- it was initially as a disciple of the Indian sage, Sri Aurobindo, whose theology I felt at the time to be the most "capacious" and see-worthy.

Probably because he was raised in the west from a very young age -- and was educated at elite places such as Cambridge by professors such as Whitehead -- he assimilated much of this environment into his theology and metaphysics after returning to India in his 20s. I don't know that it was intentional, but the end result was a "Christianization" of Hindu metaphysics, which was itself an evolutionary leap in what had theretofore been a less sophisticated theology.

Interestingly, I came upon a passage that said as much in God and the World, a book length interview with then Cardinal Ratzinger. Hmm.... Lotta good stuff in here. Getting distracted. Pay attention! Right. Here it is: "We can already see how, by way of Indian intellectuals, the leaven of Christianity has found a way into Hinduism. The number of Indians who revere and love Jesus is extraordinarily great, far greater than the number of Christians, even if in this case Christ is simply counted in among a series of other saviors."

I don't remember when it was -- a few years back, anyway... charter Raccoon Will seemed to have already realized it -- but it dawned on me that Aurobindo's whole spiritual project was a kind of Christianized Vedanta, for several reasons. First, its focus was on this world. In contrast to the traditional view -- which regards the world as a kind of deception -- Aurobindo regarded it as important in its own right. You might say that the world is worthy of our being in it, which is saying a lot.

This led to a particular appreciation of the body, even the "divinization of the body," which essentially comes down to the idea that his is a descending path, in contrast to the ascendingones of Hindu tradition. In other words, instead of escaping up and out "into God," the spiritual vector is reversed, and the emphasis is placed upon bringing God down "into the world."

Call it "incarnation" if you like. Or sanctification. In this regard, our earthly spiritual "evolution" is exactly as John Paul describes it above -- an adventure of consciousness from what we are towardwhom we ought to be; or toward whom we truly are, which always includes an element of relationship (which in turn imbues the relative with a kind of absoluteness, more on which in a subsequent post).

Now, John Paul's theology is very much like Aurobindo's, in the sense that its purpose is to encompass everything, i.e., every plane of being from the lowest to the highest, and yet, bring the highest into the lowest, so to speak, in order to appreciate it in a new Light. Jesus is obviously the quintessence of this, in that he represents the highest-made-lowest in order to "redeem" the latter -- not just man, but the entire cosmos. (Ratzinger notes that a better translation is "God so loved the cosmos...")

In practical terms, what it means is that -- at least from this Raccoon's point of view -- virtually everything can and must be bobtized and divinized. This is how his "theology of the body" is to be understood. But it doesn't just apply to sex and marriage. Rather, the priest's duty is "to help make God present in the world," not just in "official" ways, such as the celebration of Mass, but, as did Jesus, "to live with people, everywhere they are, to be with them in everything but sin." new. POSTED BY GAGDAD BOB AT 7/08/2011 08:14:00 AM

Churn the abstract thought of Sri Aurobindo

2011-06-22T22:23:00.000+05:30

Philosophy News in India

Centre for Sri Aurobindo Studies, Ambala City

Centre for Sri Aurobindo Studies, Jadavpur University Co-ordinator Of Centre: Prof. INDRANI SANYAL Ph.: 2414-6666 (O) Extn:2638

Sri Aurobindo Centre for Advanced Research, Pondicherry

SRI AUROBINDO CENTRE FOR CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES

SRI AUROBINDO STUDIES CENTRE, Lucknow University, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Giant strides in Science and Technology, mass political awakening, increasing interaction among people of diverse faiths, cultures and value systems, globalization of economy creating greater social and economic mobility during the last century have released new forces in the process of evolution which need to be channelised and harnessed fruitfully for constructive purposes. This requires concurrent transformation in the inner dimensions of human personality by horizontal and vertical expansion of consciousness levels. Education, refashioned remodelled and re envisioned, to meet the needs of emerging trends, has to play a seminal role in the future destiny of man on earth.

The University of Lucknow believes that the philosophic base provided by Sri Aurobindo, is fertile enough for the saplings of present and future Indian Education. What is required today is to plough the field. There is a need of a platform on which scholars of diverse disciplines assemble and churn the abstract thought of Sri Aurobindo and bring out an educational plan and sound research base where experiments in theory and practice of education on lines of Sri Aurobindo may be done and tested. Keeping this in mind a centre of Sri Aurobindo Studies was established in the year 2008 under the auspices of U.G.C. scheme of epoch making social thinkers. Coordinator: Prof. Subodh Kumar. Assistant Coordinator: Dr. Amita Bajpai

Purpose of the Centre

1. The centre will act as a nodal centre devoted to collection, conservation and preservation of primary and secondary sources of information and to collect the research studies and projects as completed so far on Sri Aurobindo.

2. The centre will act as a platform for interaction and exchange of ideas of the scholars belonging to divergent fields of knowledge and higher level thinking and critique.

3. The centre will also endeavour to find out possibilities to infuse Sri Aurobindo’s thought at various plug points in the Under Graduate and Post Graduate courses as well as the curricula of various Social Science and Teacher Education Programmes run by different University Departments.

4. The purpose of the centre will also be to formulate research projects and implement the same.

Sri Aurobindo Chair of Integral Studies, Sardar Patel University

VISION: Integral Development and growth of an individual through an in depth study and understanding of life, as a result of the true synthesis of all encompassing information, native purpose of learning and the wisdom, enabling one to attain perfection and transformation into an enlightened being.

MISSION: To bring to the students and the staff an opportunity to arrive at the understanding of the fundamental principles of Integral Education in the Light of Sri Aurobindo, the prophet of modern philosophy, and the founder of National Education Concept.

ESTABLISHMENT: 24^th November, 1995. E-Magazines

CHAIRPERSON OF SRI AUROBINDO CHAIR

1. DR. H. MAHESHWARI: 24th November 1995 to 19th November, 1997

2 DR. DEVKINANDAN SRIVASTAVA: 3^rd July 1998 to 15^th April 2001

3. DR. DILAVARSINH JADEJA : 17th April 2001 to 26^th June 2003

4. DR. DAYASHANKAR MISHRA : 1^st September 2003 to 31^st August 2006.

5. DR. PRADEEPKUMAR SINGH : 1^st September 2006 to 31^st Augst 2008

6. DR. BHALENDU VAISHNAV : 1^st December 2008 onwards

Science and Atheism | SpeakingTree By: Prabir Bhattacharjee on Jun 22, 2011

Coming to naturalists, they have a dismissive way of answering almost anything. To the believer, creation of life on earth is one of the manifestations of God in nature. To a naturalist, this is nothing but an accident of evolutionary processes; life simply evolved out of matter. But, as Sri Aurobindo pointed out, if the naturalists were asked how life could evolve out of matter or why evolutionary processes acted this way instead of any other, they would be in difficulty. A satisfactory answer is possible only if we accept the Upanishadic view that life is already present in matter in a dormant or veiled form. In the Geeta, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna, "Basudevah sarbamiti", that is, everything in the universe is impregnated with divinity. […]

It will therefore be more consistent with the universal trend to hope, as Sri Aurobindo did, that the same process that planted life in matter and mind in life will some day develop higher and higher levels of consciousness in us to realize, or should we say to be one with, God. Finally, to end this brief reverie, evolution is a long-drawn-out process. To reassure those who are impatient and are not prepared to wait that long, it can be said that they can attain within their life-time the same goal by their revolutionary individual efforts, as Lord Buddha did. So, there is no reason for despair. [The above is based, in parts, on some ideas taken from Sri Aurobindo's "The Life Divine"] Sri Aurobindo's Writings - The Mother's Collected Works [Human quest for unity and harmony: A psycho-spiritual approach in the light of Sri Aurobindo (Sri A.B. Patel memorial lectures) H Maheshwari, Sri Aurobindo and His Contemporary ThinkersIndrani Sanyal, Understanding Thoughts of Sri Aurobindo Sanyal; INdrani and Krishna Roy]

Chapter by Chapter psychological understanding of The Life Divine

2011-06-20T14:55:00.000+05:30

The Life Divine - By Dr. Soumitra Basu

The Life Divine, the magnum opus of Sri Aurobindo is the agenda of the New Age, the log book of the trajectory of Consciousness that aims to manifest the Highest Truth in its totality of Knowledge and Power in the present world of imperfection and chaos.

Is that possible? How can we be free from the chains of ignorance, suffering, falsehood and death in earthly life itself?

Religions have given solutions in other worlds. The Semitic traditions promised heavenly berths for virtuous lives. Shankaracharya opined that the world of human transactions was false and the Absolute was the only Truth that could be perceived. Buddhists agreed that the world was false but they considered that the perception of the Absolute was false too. For both the traditions, the only solution was not to be born again.

The world had to wait for a solution in earthly life itself. Sri Aurobindo for the first time gives that solution in The Life Divine. In the process, he charts a new, untrodden map of consciousness that leads to an evolutionary growth manifesting new and latent powers embodied in higher models of the human being.

He not only conceptualized the manifestation of a new species of homo sapiens that surpasses the present mental consciousness but also used his Yogic powers to activate the process so that we do not , miss the chance of evolutionary growth due to our own folly, ignorance and obstinacy.

In the process he triggers off the development of new schools of Yoga, Psychology, Development, Ethics, Metaphysics and Philosophy. He explains for the first time satisfactorily how the Infinite beyond Space and Time manifests as the finite within the constraints of Space and Time. He opens up a new trajectory of Consciousness.

ONGOING ACTIVITIES

The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo's magnum opus and His blue-print for the human race is one of the most serious world-literature to study, deduce implications in life, yoga as well as in applied research. In status, it is a veritable Veda, a consummation of the human spiritual quest impregnated with the potentiality of the future. This book has been so long approached from philosophical, theological, mystical and spiritual perspectives. IIYP has undertaken a Chapter by Chapter psychological understanding of The Life Divine. No doubt this is a very difficult task as metaphysical concepts have to be manifested in psychological fields. This can only be possible because The Life Divine is not a mere theoretical construct but an experiential reality

List of the Articles Available

1. A psychological Approach to Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine : SET – I Dr. Soumitra Basu Old

2. A psychological Approach to Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine : CHAP V Dr. Soumitra Basu Old

3. A psychological Approach to Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine : CHAPTER V Post Script – I to IV Dr. Soumitra Basu Old

7. A psychological Approach to Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine : CHAPTER VI Dr. Soumitra Basu Old

8. A psychological Approach to Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine : CHAPTER VI POST SCRIPT – I Dr. Soumitra Basu Old

DOWNLOADS

No. Article Author Status Download

1. Nomenclature Apropos of Sri Aurobindo's Psychological System : A historical Note and Reappraisal (Published in Mother India , Vol. LVIII, No. 10 , 2005. in Sri Aurobindo Ashram journal Dr. Soumitra Basu and Dr. K. Krishna Mohan Old

2. Non - Local Research and Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy (Published in "I nit iat ion - Spiritual Insights on Life, Art, and Psychology" by "Sri Aurobindo Society, Hyderabad" : First Edition, 2004) Michael Miovic New

3. The Organismic Psychology of Andras Angyal in Relation to Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy of Integral Nondualism (Published in "The Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - A Commemorative Symposium Edited by Haridas Chaudhuri and Frederic Spiegelberg" by GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.) RICHARD P. MARSH New

4. Psychotherapy - a spiritual approach Dr. Alok Pandey New

5. The Amazing phenomenon of extra-sensory perception of nuclear structure and subatomic particles Dr. Mahadeva Srinivasan New

6. WHITE SHADOW-PERSONA: WITH A COMMENTARY ON THE DA VINCI CODE David Johnston New

7. The Caste System Of India - An Aurobindonian Perspective Dr. Soumitra Basu New

8. Time and Health

9. Summary of The National Workshop Dr. Soumitra Basu New

INSTITUTE FOR INTEGRAL YOGA PSYCHOLOGY :: Life Divine Chapters ...
MIRRAVISION TRUST is named after Mirra Alfassa, the Mother of Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram, Pondicherry who is the executrix of Sri Aurobindo’s vision as well as his spiritual collaborator in the new evolutionary world of manifesting future models of human being. Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry has graciously allowed MIRRAVISION TRUST to use as a logo for the Institute for Integral Yoga Psychology, an emblem (a modified Sri Aurobindo’s symbol) designed by the Mother Herself and given to Dr. A.S. Dalal for a new defunct center in East Africa.

"The Organismic Psychology of Andras Angyal in Relation to Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy of Integral Nondualism".

MIRRAVISION FOOD AND HERBALS

Mirravision food and herbals is a food-unit manufacturing healthy farm-based food products (jams, pickles , vegetable sauces) whose profits will support Mirravision Trust (the sponsor of Institute for Integral Yoga Psychology)

The Life Divine, in status, is a veritable Veda

The Life Divine, the magnum opus of Sri Aurobindo is the agenda of the New Age, ... The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo's magnum opus and His blue-print for the ...

Train of thoughts halts at Cantonment IBNLive.com Indian Express Posted on Jun 20, 2011

While the first concentrates on the earlier and formative years, the latter represents his teachings and morals along with his decision on attending the Parliament of Religion in Chicago, in 1893. His address at the Parliament of Religion is also framed.

The board at the far end of the second coach summons the exhibition with Swami Vivekananda’s signature and one-liners from personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sri Aurobindo.

Welcome to 'Sri Aurobindo Kapali Sastry Institute of Vedic Culture'

S A K S I is a Spiritual movement. The aim is to spread the message of Veda and SriAurobindo, which imparts awarenessto lead a beautiful, harmonious, creative and happy life, individually and collectively. SAKSI News Letter is bi-monthly. March - April 2011

AurovilleTV
AurovilleTV is a visual reflection of the life in Auroville. It is an experiment in visual communication. For general information about Auroville please visit us at www.auroville.org

Sri Aurobindo's Writings - The Mother's Collected Works

We change the world by changing ourselves

2011-06-18T12:45:00.000+05:30

Moderator's comment: sbicitizen : Message: SECOND INDEPENDENCE -- IMPORTANT SUGGESTIONS RELEASED BY DR. LEO REBELLO IN 2004.

Dr. Rebello would change the future by resurrecting a four year old programme. The discussion on the previous post initiated by him makes no dent on his approach. The second independence is the freedom from our little selves - we change the world by changing ourselves. Baba Ramdev is a case of point. He started with the strong advantage of four ministers waiting for his arrival at the airport, that is how seriously the government took his agitation, but blew it up by placing himself above his cause. As a teacher of the ancient wisdom, he should have known better. Anna Hazare is discovering to his chagrin the stonewalling capacity of the established interests that do not want change. The problem is age old. The Indian establishment also resisted Sri Aurobindo: Aurobindo’s Opposition

A response to fundamentalism: Posted by ADMIN | Published: NOVEMBER 12, 2009 http://mirrorofdayaftertomorrow.wordpress.com/

There are a few web site that have so distorted the truth of issues surrounding the Lives of Sri Aurobindo as to be almost comical in their presentation of events. The blog Savitri Era which acts as the apologist for the worst fundamentalist tendencies in a fraction of the "Mother's devotees" is perhaps better called the Savitri Scandal Era due to its editorial policy. In spite of its mostly incoherent posts Savitri Era perhaps best qualifies to be called the scandal sheet of Integral Yoga because of the new lows that it sinks to on an almost daily basis in mounting personal attacks on individuals. But even the Savitri Era hardly matches the audacity of conceit and muddled thinking of the blog called the Mirror of Tomorrow (MOT). Posted in Purna Yoga/Praxis | 1 Comment

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

Welcome to 'Sri Aurobindo Kapali Sastry Institute of Vedic Culture'

SAKSI has its own library, having available commentaries on Vedas and treatises pertaining to the Vedas, works of Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, Ramana Maharshi. Sri Vasishtha Ganapati Muni, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Swamy Vivekananda, Sri T. V. Kapali Sastry, Sri M. P. Pandit, etc., apart from many research papers on the philosophy and yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Provision is made for those who are interested in spirituality and culture to avail of the facility of reference, in house. SAKSI News Letter is bi-monthly. March - April 2011

The Hindu : NATIONAL - TAMIL NADU : Annai Women's College(Arts ... 18 Jun 2011

Annai Women's College (Arts&science) TNPL Road, Punnamchathram Karur was established in the academic year 2007-2008 by the Annai Sri Aurobindo Educational Trust, Karur. …Sri Aurobindo College of Nursing which functions in the same campus offers B.Sc., Nursing, GNM & Post basic B.Sc., Nursing courses. Both the Institutions are approved by the Government of Tamil Nadu and Government of India

Sri Aurobindo Institute of Management & Science Indore - Sri ...
Sri Aurobindo Institute of Management & Science Indore, in Madhya Pradesh, conducts MBA, PGDM, and PGDM (HM) programmes.

Sri Aurobindo Institute of Technology
Sri Aurobindo Institute of Technology. Bus Route No. -6 (NEW BUS). Driver -. ( WEF from: 22/11/2010). Note: 1. Please reach atleast 05 minutes before the ...

AurovilleTV
AurovilleTV is a visual reflection of the life in Auroville. It is an experiment in visual communication. For general information about Auroville please visit us at www.auroville.org

Sri Aurobindo's Writings - The Mother's Collected Works

We feel safest to learn this lesson from Sri Aurobindo

2011-06-14T12:20:00.000+05:30

Shiva Vangara has left a new comment on your post "Tara Jauhar's new book The Mother: Selected Photos...": My dear other self Tushar,

I've just seen these two volumes last night....they are compiled with deep love and great treasure for her true children...

Loven'1ness
Shiva
Posted by Shiva Vangara to Plain & Simple at 9:58 AM, June 14, 2011

From Joy Roy Choudhury

Paul Gauguin’s The Seed of Areoi (1892): A Higher Bodhi Embodiment of the Radiant Phalanxes of the Sun

http://artcritique.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/paul-gauguins-the-seed-of-areoi-1892-a-higher-bodhi-embodiment-of-the-radiant-phalanxes-of-the-sun/

New Consciousness Analogue: French Painter Paul Gauguin & Friedrich’s The Monk by the Sea (1808-10): Self-Meditative Reflexes of the Consciousness in Art & Beyond

http://artcritique.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/friedrichs-the-monk-by-the-sea-1808-10-self-meditative-reflexes-of-the-consciousness-in-art-beyond/

We will shine: transparent futures of consciousness - from rmit.edu.auJ Gidley - 2011 - researchbank.rmit.edu.au

... 2 When you understand how Steiner did his research, it is also not surprising that his description of the multi-layered human being, from the most material layer to the most spiritual layer is very similar to that given by renowned Indian master, Sri Aurobindo Ghose. ...

Similarities between neurological and yogic models of human memory - from namahjournal.com S Joshi - Journal of New Approaches to Medicine and Health, 2011 - namahjournal.com

... of memory. In recent times, Sri Aurobindo has classified human memory into three types. In ... cerebellum (8). Now we will examine the yogic view of memory as described by Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo's view of memory. The ...

Spirituality as Faith in Relation to Management MJ Thompson - Spirituality and Ethics in Management, 2011 - Springer

... Virtuous work is that which is done, in the words of Sri Aurobindo, “without vanity or crude
self-assertion or claim for position or prestige, [it is] done for the sake of the Divine alone and
at the command of the Divine” (Aurobindo, 1993: p. 129). ... Aurobindo, Sri. ...

Spirit-centered, rajashi leadership SK Chakraborty - Spirituality and Ethics in Management, 2011 - Springer

... Logical positivism has taught us to repudiate any reality or truth above our conventional sensual grasp. Now, for a definition of spirituality we shall turn to Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950). ... We feel safest to learn this lesson from Sri Aurobindo: “Consciousness is not ... ...

Spirituality as Faith in Relation to Management FB Spirituality - Spirituality and Ethics in Management, 2011 - books.google.com

... Virtuous work is that which is done, in the words of Sri Aurobindo,“without vanity or crude
self-assertion or claim for position or prestige, [it is] done for the sake of the Divine alone and
at the command of the Divine” (Aurobindo, 1993: p. 129). ... Aurobindo, Sri. ...

Savitri Book I, Canto I The Symbol Dawn D Banerji - Sraddha, 2011 - motherorissa.com

... in the course of history—in short, a Grace of the Eternal, which can only be received and never demanded as a right and which has been offered to terrestrial evolution by the birth of the Divine Mother amongst us, side by side with that of Sri Aurobindo the Supramental Avatar. ...

Reason and Rationality in Hindu Studies - from oxfordjournals.orgJ Frazier - The Journal of Hindu Studies, 2011 - jhs.oxfordjournals.org

... it was perhaps the relinquishing of systematicity as a goal in religious and philosophical thinking in favour of a more free and individual style of reflection, by prominent 'modern' Hindu thinkers such as Swami Vivekananda, Dayananda Sarasvati, and Sri Aurobindo, that led to ...

DARWIN AND THE HINDU TRADITION:“DOES WHAT GOES AROUND COME AROUND?” DL Gosling - Zygon®, 2011 - Wiley Online Library

... Before considering the reformer who incorporated Darwinism most decisively into Vedānta, we briefly mention Sri Aurobindo, who made extensive use of Darwin's theory, but who is difficult to evaluate on account of the complexity of his philosophy and the fact that he appears to ...

Religion and Violence in Hindu Traditions JD Long - 2011 - Wiley Online Library

... This is in contrast with the politically charged stance of Hindu national- ists and their intellectual forebears, like Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Sri Aurobindo, who view violence as at times necessary to defend Hindu dharma. ... Ghose , Aurobindo (Sri Aurobindo) ( 1972 ). ...

Bruteau's philosophy of spiritual evolution and consciousness: foundation for a nursing cosmology MP McCarthy - Nursing Philosophy, 2011 - Wiley Online Library

... As a scholar of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) and Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950)
she examines societal evolution, contemporary social inequalities, and defines an inclusive
futuristic vision of human reality in both cosmic and social contexts. ...

Sociology as a Quest for a Good Society - AK Giri - Journal of Human Values, 2011 - jhv.sagepub.com

... The advocates of spirituality can acknowledge this theoretically by referring to the vision
and practice of experimenters in human history such as Sri Aurobindo (1970) who talks
about the Life Divine and building of spiritual communities. ...

4 Western Hindutva C Jaffrelot… - … and Globalization in South Asia and Its …, 2011 - books.google.com

... the Ramakrishna Mission, founded in 1897 by Swami Vivekananda; the Divine Life Society,
created in 1936 by Swami Shivananda; the Chinmaya Mission, founded in 1953 by Swami
Chinmayanand (one of the founding fathers of the VHP); the Sri Aurobindo Society, initiated in ...

BR Ambedkar's challenge to the Puranic past - N Jabbar - Postcolonial Studies, 2011 - informaworld.com

... until his nation needs him by Edward Burne-Jones in The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon, one of
Woodroffe's favourite paintings, was therefore an apt analogy for the judge's tireless work amongst the Orientalists.58 The obvious unanswered question raised by Aurobindo is who or ...

Sri Aurobindo’s Evolutionary Ontology of Consciousness

2011-06-11T20:13:00.000+05:30

Gurus guide a passage to supremacy Matt Wade June 11, 2011 Sydney Morning Herald
Hindu holy men such as Sri Aurobindo, Vinoba Bhave and Mahatma Gandhi have played a powerful role in Indian politics for more than a century. Modern-day swamis, including Ramdev, follow in this tradition. The former prime minister Indira Gandhi relied...

Enter the Godmen Business Standard

Sri Aurobindo was a freedom fighter, a revolutionary and a political activist jailed for his political views even while he embarked on his great spiritual journey. Swami Vivekananda concerned himself with not only inner growth and personal evolution ...

How Sanatana Dharma unites India Indian Weekender

Sri Aurobindo Ghosh had said that the “Hindu religion is really the eternal religion because it embraces all others”. But it was only a way of life that is emphasised, the righteous way, so it is referred to as the 'Sanatana Dharma'. ...

2011 June 06 « Sri Aurobindo Studies

Integral Yoga realizes the One in the Many & unity in the undifferentiated Self & the infinite diversity of manifestation. ...

Cornelissen, R. M. Matthijs (2006). Yoga as research tool: Towards rigorous research in the subjective domain

This article tries to explain how first-person, yoga-based research can be made rigorous and reliable.

Cornelissen, R. M. Matthijs (2004). Sri Aurobindo’s Evolutionary Ontology of Consciousness

In this article a comparison is drawn between Sri Aurobindo's evolutionary conceptualization of consciousness and the concepts of consciosuness more commonly encountered in contemporary consciousness sudies. A number of ontological and epistemological questions arising out of this comparison are discussed.

Dr. Mangesh Nadkarni’s reply to Ameeta Mehra (Gnostic Centre) regarding the impact of Relics on the larger collective atmosphere, 31 May 2007

This mountaineer scales poverty and Everest IBNLive.com

I wanted to spread the message of spiritual leader Sri Aurobindo and I have done it,â€ he said. Narrating his experience, he said he had suffered snow blindness and frostbite and had to be air-lifted to Kathmandu during his return trek. ...

Pilgrims pray for peace on top of the world Church Times

A primary-school teacher, Jogabyasa Bhoi, from Orissa, India, seeks to spread the message of the Indian revolutionary Sri Aurobindo by making the climb. Mr Bhoi told Ecumenical News International: “Aurobindo believed India would have spiritual ...

Thousands join Ramdev IBNLive.com

Members of Patanjali Yoga Samiti, Gayatri Parivar, Sai Samiti, Prajapita Bramha Kumaris, Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh and Sri Aurobindo Ashram from Pottangi, Nandapur, Sunabeda, Damanjodi, Kotpad, Jeypore, Laxmipur and Boriguma participated in the ...

Five minutes to healing Deccan Herald

Sri Aurobindo enlightens us with this insight: “Self-justification is always a sign of ego and ignorance. Insensitivity is the result or sign of an inflated ego.” Remember these words so that you're never led astray by your lower self. ...

The Spirit of Modern India - Page 303 - Robert A. McDermott, V. S. Naravane - 2010 - 338 pages - Preview

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Ashram, for the following selections from the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (1970-1973): "The Sevenfold Chord of Being," 18: 262-270; Sri Aurobindo on Dharma, 13: 163; Sri Aurobindo on Karma-yoga,...

Explorations In Modern Bengal, C. 1800-1900: Essays On Religion, ... - Amiya P. Sen - 2010 - 256 pages - Preview

This book examines a regional culture as it was subjected to acute interpretative stress for much of the nineteenth century.

Altered Destinations: Self, Society, and Nation in India - Page 193 - Makarand Paranjape - 2009 - 214 pages - Preview

Aurobindo, Sri. 1972. The fifteenth of August 1947. In Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library. Vol. 26. ... Aurobindo, Sri and the Mother. 1995. A new education for a new consciousness. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. ...

Whitehead’s revisionist take on God

2011-06-04T17:33:00.000+05:30

Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory Patrick Wilcken (Hardcover - Oct 7, 2010) In the years that Lévi-Strauss published these pioneering works, Wilcken observes, tribal societies seemed to hold the answers to the most profound questions about the human mind. Following the great anthropologist from São Paulo to the Brazilian interior, and from New York to Paris, Patrick Wilcken's Claude Lévi- Strauss is both an evocative journey and an intellectual biography of one of the twentieth-century's most influential minds.

Art and Responsibility: A Phenomenology of the Diverging Paths of Rosenzweig and Heidegger Jules Simon (Hardcover - Mar 24, 2011) Compares the philosophies of Rosenzweig and Heidegger to elucidate their diverging ethical paths and to indicate philosophical consequences. Jules Simon is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Philosophy, and Director of the Center for Science, Technology, Ethics, and Policy, at the University of Texas at El Paso, USA.

Mythology, Madness, and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism Markus Gabriel, Slavoj Zizek (Hardcover - Dec 1, 2009) Engaging with three central figures of the German idealist movement, Hegel, Schelling and Fichte, Gabriel and Zizek, who here shows himself to be one of the most erudite and important scholars of German idealism, ask how is it possible for Being to appear in reflection without falling back into traditional metaphysics. By applying idealistic theories of reflection and concrete subjectivity, including the problem of madness and everydayness in Hegel, this hugely important book aims to reinvigorate a philosophy of finitude and contingency, topics at the forefront of contemporary European philosophy.

Thinking with Whitehead: A Free and Wild Creation of Concepts - Isabelle Stengers (Author), Michael Chase (Translator), Bruno Latour (Foreword) She demonstrates that the implications of Whitehead’s philosophical theories and specialized knowledge of the various sciences come yoked with his innovative, revisionist take on God. Whitehead’s God exists within a specific epistemological realm created by a radically complex and often highly mathematical language. Isabelle Stengers teaches philosophy of science at the Free University of Brussels. Bruno Latour is Professor at the Center for the Study of Innovation at the School of Mines, Paris.

The Primacy of Grammar (Bradford Books) Nirmalangshu Mukherji (Hardcover - Mar 5, 2010) A proposal that the biolinguistic approach to human languages may have identified, beyond the study of language, a specific structure of the human mind. Nirmalangshu Mukherji is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Delhi.

Theory after Derrida: Essays in Critical Praxis Kailash Baral (Editor), R. Radhakrishnan (Editor) The central question that it asks is whether we should dismiss Derrida as a thinker who espoused an extreme form of relativism, bordering on nihilism, or has he something fundamental to contribute to the future of theory. Could it be that deconstruction is not destruction but a possibility that casts doubts on whether the present can have faith in future? Professor and Director, EFL Centre, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong

Interpretation and Transformation: Explorations in Art and the Self. (Value Inquiry Book S.) Michael Krausz (Paperback - Feb 21, 2007) explores philosophical issues of interpretation and its cultural objects. It also addresses commensuration and understanding among languages, conceptual schemes, symbol systems, reference frames, and the like.

From Political Theory to Political Theology: Religious Challenges and the Prospects of Democracy (Continuum Resources Religion & Poltcal Cult) Peter Losonczi, Aakash Singh (Paperback - May 18, 2010) The relationship between religion and politics is both fascinating and challenging, and recent years have seen substantial changes in the way this relationship is studied. Aimed at undergraduates studying in this area, titles in this series look specifically at the key topics involved in the relationship between religion and politics, taking into account a broad range of religious perspectives, and presenting clear, approachable texts for students grappling with often complex concepts. Peter Losonczi is Associate Professor at the Institute for Intercultural Studies at teh University of West Hungary (Szombathely), Hungary.

Aakash Singh is Research Professor at the Centre for Ethics and Global Politics at Luiss University of Rome, Italy.

Wronging Rights?: Philosophical Challenges for Human Rights (Ethics, Human Rights and Global Political Thought) Aakash Singh Rathore (Editor), Alex Cistelecan (Editor) This book brings together two of the most powerful and relevant philosophical critiques of human rights: the post-colonialist and the post-Althusserian

Reading Hegel: The Introductions (Transmission) G. W. F. Hegel (Author), Aakash Singh (Editor), Rimina Mohapatra (Editor) This book provides the opportunity to discern how the ideas of these later thinkers may have originally germinated in Hegel's writings, as well as to penetrate Hegel's worldview in his own words, his grand architecture of the journey of the Spirit.

Indian Political Thought: A Reader Aakash Singh (Editor), Silika Mohapatra (Editor) (Paperback - Aug 19, 2010) Presenting a canon of names and offering a framework for further research within the broad thematic categories, this is a timely and invaluable reference tool, indispensable to both students and scholars. Silika Mohapatra is Research Scholar in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Delhi, India.　

Eros Turannos: Leo Strauss & Alexandre Kojeve Debate on Tyranny Aakash Singh (Paperback - Oct 26, 2005) Eros Turannos analyzes the debates between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojeve. Their debates are contextualized through the Platonic notion of a likeness between the psuche (soul) and the polis (city). This classical notion is updated through contemporary philosopher William Desmond's linked accounts of eros and tyranny.

Prepare to be addicted by your own curiosity

2011-06-03T12:59:00.000+05:30

Great Non-Fiction: Learn About Everything! A Listmania! list by Christopher Vitale (Brooklyn, NY)

The list author says: "So the following books make you smarter with every turn of the page, and yet they're so much fun, you get your geek on while having a great time. These books were such a joy to read, yet also total brain food (and most are pretty affordable in paperback). That's why I decided to make the list, when you find good stuff, you've just gotta share!

For anyone who loves to learn about everything and anything, learning just for the sheer joy of it, these books are total finds. I've read each one, almost all of them cover-to-cover, and I'm a big geek, so these are ones that totally remained with me, even years after I read them. But beware, prepare to be addicted by your own curiosity!"

1. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond - 2005

The list author says: "WORLD/ANCIENT HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY: Amazing, couldn't put it down. Why did some societies come to dominate the earth, and not others? By showing how some societies got to 'guns, germs, and steel' before others, Diamond gives a short history of early civilization and its relation to tons of issues."

2. Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another by Philip Ball - 2006

The list author says: "SYSTEMS THEORY, POLITICS: If you want to understand how what used to be chaos/'complex systems theory' can explain everything from biological to political systems, this is the book for you. My students love it, one even said their dad started reading it when it was laying around the house and couldn't stop."

3. The Evolution of God (Back Bay Readers' Pick) by Robert Wright - 2010

The list author says: "EVOLUTION, RELIGION: A whirlwind tour of how religions came about, from hunter-gatherers to the 'religions of the book', not from the perspective of a believer, but based on what the historical/archaeological evidence seems to support. If human culture can be thought of as evolving, might our idea of God evolve with it? Recommended this to friends for pleasure reading, they loved it."

4. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright - 2001

The list author says: "EVOLUTION, HISTORY, TECHNOLOGY: Another great book from Wright, shows how what's known as 'game theory' can be used to understand human history, and where it might be going. In the process, he touches on so many different topics in human history, making sense of widely disparate points in human social and technological evolution. Great stuff."

5. Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century by Howard K. Bloom - 2007

The list author says: "SYSTEMS THEORY, BIOLOGY: Another 'complex systems' book, this one shows how everything from the earliest forms of life to wikipedia can be understood as complex networks. Wide-ranging, smart, and fun to read. If you're interested in everything from bacterial colonies to primate social behavior, you'll love this."

6. Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric D. Beinhocker - 2007

The list author says: "ECONOMICS: Best general book on economics I've ever read, and with none of the jargon or math. Uses evolutionary and complex systems theories (no prior experience necessary!) to show how evolution and economics aren't all that different. In the process, you'll learn about stock markets, theories of evolution, robotics, fractals, Toyota, power grids, and lots of other cool stuff."

7. Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler - 2006

The list author says: "LANGUAGE, HISTORY: If you're a language geek, there's SOOOO much in here: what makes some language spread, even when the people who created it lose battles, culture wars, etc? Ostler examines every language that has ever come to dominate part of the world, from Egyptian to Sanskrit to English."

8. The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention by Guy Deutscher - 2006

The list author says: "LINGUISTICS: How did languages evolve? What do linguists study, and how do they do it? If you ever wondered where verbs came from, and want to enjoy the process, this is a great book."

9. Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra by John Derbyshire - 2007

The list author says: "MATH: I never thought a book on the history of math could be so much fun. This book's about a LOT more than just algebra, it's a whirlwind tour of how match changed in history. Tons of cool stories, and no difficult symbols. Anyone can read this and learn a ton."

10. Why Beauty Is Truth: The History of Symmetry by Ian Stewart - 2008

The list author says: "MATH, PHYSICS: Ian Stewart is such a great writer, all his books are amazing. This one introduces the notion of symmetry, and how it can be used to understand, well, just about anything. You'll go from ancient Babylon to quantum theory, no math background required!"

11. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross - 2008

The list author says: "MUSIC: If twentieth century music totally baffles you, and you want to understand it, it's history, why and how and where, this is the book for you. And you get a tour of the early twentieth century in the process. Lots of fun, well written, a joy to read."

12. About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution by Paul Davies - 1996

The list author says: "RELATIVITY THEORY, QUANTUM PHYSICS: Clearest explanation you'll ever find of relativity and quantum physics, all packaged with bits from the life story of Albert Einstein. Tons of cool paradoxes, written a a relaxed, talky, laidback style that everyone can understand, even on this difficult stuff! A really great book."

13. The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients by Irvin D. Yalom - 2003

The list author says: "PSYCHOLOGY, THERAPY: If you ever wondered how or why therapy works, or what it's like to be a therapist, read this book. Yalom shows how therapy can be an ethical practice for life. Incredible."

14. Body And Soul: The Making Of American Modernism by Robert Morse Crunden - 2000

The list author says: "MODERNISM: The roaring twenties in art, literature, music, and culture comes to life in this excellent read."

15. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chauncey - 1995

The list author says: "QUEER/GENDER STUDIES, NYC: This great book describes worlds most people have no idea ever existed, from the cabarets of Harlem to the drag balls at Madison Square Garden to the lives of sailors on the bowery. A great intro to queer theory, lgbt history, the roaring twenties, and the history of nyc."

16. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by Bell Hooks - 1994

The list author says: "EDUCATION, PEDAGOGY: Best book written about teaching that I've ever read. Deeply ethical, practical, intense. Also a great intro to thinking about race, class, gender, and sexuality and how they relate to the classroom."

17. Experience And Education by John Dewey - 1997

The list author says: "EDUCATION, PEDAGOGY: What should we teach, and how? Dewey shows how education is all about form over content, and he does it in plain English. Great stuff."

18. The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft by Anne Friedberg - 2009

The list author says: "ART: A great history of art from the easel painting to laptops, with tons of film theory, discussions of perspective, window making, and other cool visual storylines. A bit more 'scholarly' than some of the others, but still well written and accessible to all."

19. Hidden Unity in Nature's Laws (English and English Edition) by John C. Taylor - 2001

The list author says: "SCIENCE, HISTORY: A really great history of the development of science, up to and including quantum physics and the theory of relativity. Has some basic math, but nothing above HS level. Does a great job of explaining why and how major breakthroughs came about."

20. A Universe Of Consciousness How Matter Becomes Imagination by Gerald M. Edelman - 2001

The list author says: "THE BRAIN: Explains how the brain works, pure and simple. Really smart, and pretty easy to read. And after this, you'll understand why your neocortex is like a network . . ."

21. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio R. Damasio - 2005

The list author says: "THE BRAIN, EMOTION: Damasio's a great writer, and with tons of examples, he shows why emotions are central to what it means to think, throwing in a lot of the architecture of the brain in the process."

22. The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain by Terrence W. Deacon - 1998

The list author says: "THE BRAIN, LANGUAGE: How did our brain and language coevolve? Slightly more technical than some of the others, but still a good read. And so much in here! You'll learn about the evolution of so many different parts of the brain, how they taught chimps human language using language-boards, and so much more."

23. Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes by Charles Seife - 2007

The list author says: "INFORMATION THEORY: Every wondered what information theory is? Here's a totally accessible book to explain it to you, with tons of scientific tidbits thrown in."

24. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means by Albert-László Barabási - 2003

The list author says: "NETWORKS: If you wanna know more about why the study of networks is hot these days, check this book out."

25. Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life by Steven H. Strogatz - 2004

The list author says: "SYSTEMS THEORY: Another great pop-sci systems theory book. If you wanna get why order evolves from chaos, often by itself, starting from how crickets come to flash in sync, look no further. And it's a fun read."

26. In Search of the Multiverse: Parallel Worlds, Hidden Dimensions, and the Ultimate Quest for the Frontiers of Reality by John Gribbin - 2010

The list author says: "MULTIPLE UNIVERSES: Ever wonder about why scientists argue that there could be many univeres? All explained, and its lots of fun."

27. What Is Thought? (Bradford Books) by Eric B. Baum - 2006

The list author says: "WHAT IS THOUGHT?: Unlike the other books, this book is difficult, but there's nothing here that requires a math or science background, he explains everything. Introduces everything from the DNA to computer science to artificial intelligence, etc. Amazing."

28. A Geometry of Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice (Oxford Studies in Music Theory) by Dmitri Tymoczko - 2011

The list author says: "MUSIC AND MATH: If you're ever wondered what music and math have in common, this book is for you. It's not the easiest going, but it does explain almost all the music theory you'll need as you go along. And this is the first book that really brings music theory and modern mathematics (ie: group theory) together. A little more difficult than some of the other texts on the list, but amazing."

Sri Aurobindo & Hassidism

2011-06-02T10:22:00.000+05:30

Forum :: Integral Yoga :: Vishwa Dharma Mandalam
Sri Ramakrishnananda Integral Yoga May 28, 2011 07:25AM

The Sanskrit word purna means ‘complete’, ‘total’ or ‘integral’. Purna-yoga simultaneously opens different doors for us to discover and integrate ourselves: the doors of action, body, breathing, heart, energy, mind, sex, observation, sound and word, among others.

Through integral yoga, our different facets as human beings can be harmonized, unified, and ultimately, transcended through a process that includes the path of action, through karma-yoga; the emotional, through bhakti-yoga; the mental, through raja-yoga, the way of self-inquiry, to which jñana-yoga invites us, and many others. It can be said that purna-yoga is a synthesis of the immense and ancient wisdom of ViSva-dharma.

Any system unconcerned with our totality, and directed only to a part or a particular aspect, will merely increase our suffering and our conflicts. Purna-yoga refers to the process of integrating each and every one of our aspects, so that we can reunite in turn with the Whole and be elevated to the plane of divine existence.
It is a movement that leads us above the intellect, allowing us to transcend the intellectual judgments executed by the prism of the mind, so that we may perceive the light of intuition. In this way, our actions, emotions and sense perceptions become “intuitivized”.

Rather than struggling against the darkness, or investing time and energy to bring the sun into our room, this path suggests that we simply open our windows and make ourselves accessible, so that the golden rays of sunlight may enter and warm our frozen heart. There is no other way to dispel the darkness. Opening doors and windows means shedding all our defenses, to let what is impossible to achieve through effort, happen. In integral yoga, renunciation of the body is not essential to reach the soul. If enlightenment is the realization of totality, our aspiration must be inclusive; never exclusive.

Our longing must be rooted in the integration of all values, whether classified as material or spiritual, for any such division is illusory. Matter is not the counterpart of spirit; the manifested retains within itself the unmanifested, and spirit lies in the depths of the material.

Yoga is not to flee from the earthly, but to integrate it with the divine; its intention is not only the transcendence of illusion, or mundane consciousness, but to manifest the celestial in this world, to create a paradise on earth. Into dark ignorance, yoga brings the power of light.

Sri Aurobindo refers to his integral yoga as “having God descend to the mundane”. In Hassidism we find very similar idea, expressed in Hebrew as “laasot lo dira ba tajtonim” or “make Him a dwelling place below”. If we go deeper, we will discover that the descent of heaven to earth is actually nothing more than the revelation that any division of material from spiritual —or above from below—has no existence beyond our egoic perspective, and that there is no need to make anything descend, because heaven is much closer than we believe, and God dwells within us.

Philip Goldberg | Feathered Pipe Ranch May 31st, 2011

CABLE CARS TO INDIA: THE BAY AREA’S EAST-WEST TRANSMISSION – PHILIP GOLDBERG

One of the most important figures in the development of Bay Area spirituality was a giant of India who never set foot in

America

and died in 1950. Sri Aurobindo, whose blend of Vedantic philosophy and modern scientific insights remains a marvel of intellectual prowess, has impacted millions who never heard his name. In a sense, that includes anyone who has ever taken a workshop at Esalen. That’s because Esalen cofounder, Michael Murphy, was inspired by his reading of Sri Aurobindo and his sojourn at the Aurobindo Ashram in South India to create an institute that combines the best of East and West to explore the higher reaches of human potential. Esalen has been doing that for nearly 60 years now, and some of its earliest presenters were progressive thinkers who advanced our understanding of human development: Huston Smith, Joseph Campbell, Ram Dass, and importantly, Abraham Maslow and other pioneers of psychology who made the Bay Area the fulcrum of the revolution that gave us humanistic and transpersonal psychologies. The gauntlet was thrown down at Grace Cathedral on January 6, 1966, when Maslow gave a lecture titled “Toward a Psychology of Religious Awareness.”

It is no coincidence that the institutions most responsible for integrating psychology and spirituality are in the Bay Area: JFK University, Saybrook, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and the California Institute of Integral Studies. CIIS, it should be noted, was founded (under an earlier name) by the philosopher Haridas Chaudhuri, who also established the still-functioning Cultural Integration Fellowship across the street from Golden Gate Park on Fulton. Dr. Chaudhuri was sent by Sri Aurobindo himself to join the startup faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies (AAAS).

Philip Goldberg is a spiritual counselor and the author of many books, including his latest, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the West.

Sri Aurobindo was pragmatically plural; for him human harmony lay not in effacing differences

2011-06-01T11:15:00.000+05:30

Back to caste count Sri Lanka Guardian by Sam Rajappa (June 01, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian)

Sri Aurobindo, in his essay Un-Hindu Spirit of Caste Rigidity, wrote: "The baser ideas underlying the degenerate perversions of the caste system, the mental attitude which bases them on superiority, depending on the accident of birth of a fixed and intolerant inequality, are inconsistent with the supreme teaching, the basic spirit of Hinduism which sees the one invariable and indivisible divinity in every individual being." …

A comprehensive caste census is not only impractical but also against the spirit of the Constitution. It would reduce India from a democracy of citizens to an oligarchy of communities… The way to transcend caste is not by reinforcing its identity, but by stressing citizenship of the nation. The writer is a veteran journalist and former Director, Statesman Print Journalism School

Recent Additions 21 May 11: Review by Amiya P. Sen

However, though what Heehs’s work seems to lack is a willingness to situate Sri Aurobindo within contemporary Indian thought. Ideally, a biography, especially that of a thinker and philosopher like Sri Aurobindo, also ought to be a history of ideas. I have the feeling that Aurobindo shares with Swami Vivekananda many more things than Heehs concedes, the most important of which are, first, the attempt to bring out the deepest subjectivities in man and second, the belief that social transformation began with the individual. The first Vivekananda called anubhav, human subjectivity that Aurobindo related to sadhana which was anchored in praxis, not textuality. […]

The other question is whether or not Aurobindo may be counted among the Hindus... Perhaps those who strongly deny his ‘Hindu’ credentials are as much in error as those who insist on it. For one, I am not aware of Aurobindo’s categorically denying or disowning his identity as a Hindu. It would be reasonable to claim therefore, that at least culturally, he remained a Hindu. Though of a non-conformist Brahmo lineage he chose to marry a Hindu girl but more importantly, his entire cultural hermeneutics was deeply anchored in Hindu religion and mythology. This sets him apart from near contemporary figures like Krishna Mohan Bandopadhyay or Brahmabandhab Upadhyay who underwent a formal change of faith and though greatly interested in Hindu religion and philosophy, began to see these from a visibly altered perspective. I am also persuaded to say that neo-Hindu thinkers of the late nineteenth compounded the identity question somewhat by trying to adopt a universalistic posture which, practically, they found hard to sustain. To call Vedanta universalistic, culturally neutral and an effective surrogate to the word ‘Hinduism’, as indeed was done since the days of Rammohun Roy, is a good instance of this false consciousness. Rammohun’s The Universal Religion (1929) is almost entirely based on Hindu-brahminical sources.

On the other hand, it will have to be admitted that Sri Aurobindo was not a Hindu in the ordinary sense of the term; the reader has only to turn to his essay ‘Two Hinduisms’ (Epistles from Abroad: 1910) to learn what kind of Hinduism he would have personally preferred . This leads me to conclude that an active dissociation from the politics of the Hindu Right need not ipso facto undermine one’s self-understanding as a Hindu. I would fervently hope that one is not contingent upon the other. Sri Aurobindo rejected Hindu nationalism and looked to a Utopia where human consciousness could rise above social and cultural ascriptions. At the same time, he was pragmatically plural; for him, if I have been able to understand him at all, human harmony lay not in effacing differences but in trying to felicitously live with them. Amiya P. Sen, Jamia Millia Islamia

Sri Aurobindo on Hinduism 12 Aug 2010

Sri Aurobindo made a clear distinction between two types of ...

Sri Aurobindo's Writings - The Mother's Collected Works

Reasoning and logic are a mask; conclusions spring from preferences, prejudices and passions

2011-05-29T12:10:00.000+05:30

Sri Aurobindo: On Original Thinking

We have, most of us, our chosen explanation of this dolorous phenomenon [of the decline of Indian civilisation]. The patriot attributes our decline to the ravages of foreign invasion and the benumbing influences of foreign rule; the disciple of European materialism finds out the enemy, the evil, the fount and origin of all our ills, in our religion and its time-honoured social self-expression. Such explanations, like most human thoughts, have their bright side of truth as well as their obscure side of error; but they are not, in any case, the result of impartial thinking.

Man may be, as he has been defined, a reasoning animal, but it is necessary to add that he is, for the most part, a very badly reasoning animal. He does not ordinarily think for the sake of finding out the truth, but much more for the satisfaction of his mental preferences and emotional tendencies; his conclusions spring from his preferences, prejudices and passions; and his reasoning and logic paraded to justify them are only a specious process or a formal mask for his covert approach to an upshot previously necessitated by his heart or by his temperament. When we are awakened from our modern illusions, as we have been awakened from our mediaeval superstitions, we shall find that the intellectual conclusions of the rationalist, for all their pomp and protest of scrupulous enquiry, were as much dogmas as those former dicta of Pope and theologian, which confessed without shame their simple basis in the negation of reason....

It is always best, therefore, to scrutinise very narrowly those bare, trenchant explanations which so easily satisfy the pugnacious animal in our intellect; when we have admitted that small part of the truth on which they seize, we should always look for the large part which they have missed. INDIA'S REBIRTH- Part II

Comment posted by: Sandeep: Re: 15 August: an Eternal Birth—the Mother explains its significance

I tend to leave aside some of these high-brow observations made by the Mother like this one about the significance of 15th August. Thats because I don't possess the consciousness she had when she spoke of these things, so it makes no sense to interpret it intellectually.

Tusar N. Mohapatra Says: May 21, 2011 at 8:24 am

[Principles of the Evolutionary Process from Sri Aurobindo Studies

Sri Aurobindo has outlined this very succinctly in this chapter: [...]

Rod on Issues of inclusion v exclusion in Auroville

Standing on the head of reason is Adwaita. I don't think the law of parsimony gets that far at all and probably has little to do with spirituality; something like the idea can probably be found in Nyaya and Mimamsa which said about everything possible concerning causality. I am mentioning the idea in this context because it is very tempting to ascribe "spiiritual" and "occult" causes for things that are actually quite concrete and present, such as class discrimination. There, Marxist criticism and psychology is probably the best authority

Vrinda Estela Pujals on Issues of inclusion v exclusion in Auroville - Keka on Issues of inclusion v exclusion in Auroville - Vladimir on Issues of inclusion v exclusion in Auroville - Rod on Issues of inclusion v exclusion in Auroville - Vladimir on Some thoughts on the Vedic gods : Sri Aurobindo's Writings - The Mother's Collected Works

University of Human Unity invites participation in Public-Interactive Forums

2011-05-26T15:02:00.000+05:30

You are invited to participate in The Newly Designed Public Forums

Start: May 21, 2011, 9:32 am End: May 31, 2012, 9:32 am

The Newly Designed Public-Interactive Forums got published!

University of Human Unity invites you to participate in it.

You may also be invited as an author to post new forum topics in due course.

Please click here to visit our Interactive Forums.

Issues of inclusion v exclusion in Auroville

Comment by Rod in reply to philippe Last Updated: May 15, 2011

One of the results of this pattern, which can be seen in Auroville, is a kind of mass paranoid psychosis. Instead of addressing the behaviors of people in a direct and rational way, people are overcome by their fears and their righteous delusions, etc. I prefer using Occam's razor, if possible. The law of parsimony was effectively used to combat religious obscurantism during his time as well.

Comment by Rod in reply to Rod Last Updated: May 15, 2011

larvalsubjects Says: May 21, 2011 at 8:16 pm Ross,

if you’re looking for an orthodoxy here you won’t find it. I find some things of value in Marx just as I do in the case of a number of other philosophers. I also think he’s mistaken on certain points. As for the Frankfurt school I largely see these thinkers as a catastrophic betrayal of Marxist materialism and attempt to domesticate his thought back in the fold of bourgois idealism.

larvalsubjects Says:May 21, 2011 at 10:51 pm

This is a fair point and the sorts of demystification that we find in Lucretius and Spinoza (two of my personal heroes), differ substantially from the sort of demystification I’m talking about. These sorts of demystifications reveal not the human in everything, but precisely that the human isn’t in everything (which is part of what makes Marx’s dissertation such a hoot and complete misreading of Lucretius).

When I evoke the concept of demystification I’m thinking specifically of 20th century critical projects where the aim is always to reveal some hidden human force behind what we take to be out there in the world. The Frankfurt school would, of course, be included in this, but also psychoanalysis, deconstruction, Foucault’s analyses of power, Zizek’s critiques of ideology, etc., etc., etc.

Let me be clear: I am not suggesting these modes of demystification aremistaken. All of these modes of critique reveal something real and important. The problem is their overstatement. There’s a marked tendency to see all material beings as disguised reflections of the human, ignoring the positive contributions of nonhuman agencies that can’t be reduced to the human.