August 25, 2008

Cause for pause and reflection on the status of Integral Yoga in 2008

If one does not find cause for pause and reflection on the status of Integral Yoga in 2008, a Yoga that while Sri Aurobindo's lived claimed not to be a religion, yet has become wholly infiltrated by religion; a Yoga which claimed not to be political, yet has been appropriated by politicians, then this whole conversation is unimportant... by Rich on Fri 15 Aug 2008 09:07 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link [at 9:53 AM]

Unfortunately a closer inspection of this path, reveals it to be one not heading toward a new future, but rather one bound to the endless repetitions of the past... what remains are only dysfunctional Institutions which attempt to fan the flames of a sacred candle whose sacrificial smoke has already vanished in the heavens...

Although I find my inspiration in the texts of Sri Aurobindo and have derived inexplicable revelations from them, I do so in honoring the secular tradition I have grown up in - and which Sri Aurobindo endorsed as the best course for contemporary polity - by Rich on Sun 24 Aug 2008 10:13 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link [7:59 AM]

What about the assertion that Aurobindo was an avatar? I can’t say that the question interests me very much. Aurobindo never claimed the distinction for himself, and I don’t think anyone alive is in a position to say one way or the other. The Aurobindo that interests me is the one who turned from a life of hectic action to a life of contemplation, but was able, during his forty-year retirement, to write a shelf full of books on philosophy, political theory, and textual criticism, along with thousands of letters and, yes, that epic in iambic pentameter. People will continue to differ about the significance of his work, but its very mass is there for all to see. His life as a yogi and spiritual leader is more difficult to quantify, but it certainly will not be forgotten soon. -- Peter Heehs, Posted at the Columbia University Press in CUP Permanent Link

For me, these 30 volumes are no less part of his continuing occult action. What else he did in "his occult action" any of us may or may not be privy to. Our life is a growth of consciousness in which faith, intuition and experience play their part to expand its horizons. But those "more visible expressions" are the "more visible doors" leading to such growth of consciousness and for me they certainly represent part of the "direct action" which the Mother is talking about...

What Sri Aurobindo brings here is the vision and the power of a new faith based on a new experience - more powerfully integral than anything that has gone before, and able to order these earlier orientations, put them in place. What he also brings is a new method replacing the purely "rational." This is his disciplinary revision of human systems of knowledge-seeking...

My reading of Sri Aurobindo convinces me that he was consciously relating to these systems and engaging them through revisionary hermeneutics and that he was doing this not just to fuel "the happy pastimes" of future readers. by Debashish on Sun 10 Aug 2008 11:37 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link Re: Sri Aurobindo and the Future of Humanity

I try to point out that Sri Aurobindo's written work bears the mark of an integrality which is not constructed and which orders the partial truths of the human search for meaning attempted in the past. Such a darshan is to me as much a decisive action direct from the Supreme. Trying to assert what is primary and what is secondary or worse, irrelevant, is a play of mental judgement which is not very interesting except to theologians. To acknowledge the incomprehensible and derive what insight we can in our growth towards its consciousness, is what matters. by Debashish on Wed 13 Aug 2008 07:15 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

I am not referring to everything written by him. In the article, the text for which this claim is made is that of his philosophical darshan - ie. The Life Divine. by Debashish on Fri 15 Aug 2008 06:59 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

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