December 15, 2009

William James, Frederic Myers, Alfred North Whitehead, Sri Aurobindo, Jean Gebser, & Ernst Cassirer

The core of this conference consists of a group of scientists from the University of Virginia who have been studying the question of survival of consciousness after death and the evidence for reincarnation since 1968. Their research continues a long scientific tradition going back to William James and Frederic Myers in the nineteenth century. [...]
Since the beginning of the scientific revolution, work on the areas covered in this book has been rare. The ideas offered in this book sketch out a new way of approaching the understanding of the actual world. While these ideas have a lineage - they are drawn from the works of Alfred North Whitehead, Sri Aurobindo, Jean Gebser, Ernst Cassirer and many other thinkers - nonetheless they will be unfamiliar to many of my readers. Also, those of my readers who know some of these authors well will find their ideas used in unfamiliar ways. There is no way to open up new territory like this without new ideas and new language.
Finally, though this book was very much inspired by my work at the Esalen Center for Theory and Research, this book is my own, and is not reflective of any consensus of our working group. Eric Weiss The Long Trajectory: Reincarnation and Life After Death
Aurobindonian Yoga Som P. Ranchan
Publisher Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd. Published In 1993 Bibliography pp. viii + 76, Index Our Price $ 4.32 Categories Philosophy Psychology Yoga & Meditation About the Book

The book is the first of its kind which attempts a lucid exposition of Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, rescues it from Aurobindonian Bhaktas and expounders alike and outlines new ways of making it relevant, using psychology, alchemy and literature. It also reviews integral yoga to demystify it and suggests how to link it to oneself existentially and to culture, Indian or otherwise.The presentation is terse, with not a sliver of fat in it. The book is of use, not merely to students of Yoga, but also to litterateurs, psychologists, and the lay readers interested in Sri Aurobindo. Through the metaphysical insight it offers into Yoga as a system designed to keep body and soul in harmony, the book presents. PrintsAsia - Aurobindonian Yoga by Som P. Ranchan | Sri Aurobindo As a Political Thinker: An Interdisciplinary Study | Anatomy of Indian Psyche 

Transcending the Age
by longsword on Mon 14 Dec 2009 01:36 PM CST Permanent Link Cosmos

What is called "postmodern" is only the self-consciousness, and also symptom, of the Era itself in its declining phase. But this Era has been in process of dissolution since the First World War shattered the dreams of a Universal Reason, of the Age of Reason, and of the hopes of the European Enlightenment. I'm not entirely certain who to credit with anticipating this end of the era. Blake anticipated it. Nietzsche foresaw its coming self-destruction in the trends of his own time. For various reasons, I've become partial to dating it from the publication of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Perhaps it's because the whole story came to him in a dream that he recorded in three feverish days of writing, that I credit it with the character of the prophetic. It's witness to "the profound duplicity of life" is a direct contradiction of the optimism of the Enlightenment which looked forward to "the infinite perfectibility of man" through reason. Moreover, it was Dr. Jekyll's alter-ego, Mr. Edward Hyde, who literally exploded onto the historical scene with the World War and as fascist man, and was subsequently named by Carl Jung "The Shadow".
The echo overtakes the voice, the fact represses the truth, the image eclipses the reality, and the shadow devours the very light upon which it depends for its own existence (which is why Jekyll and Hyde were fated to die together). "Welcome to the desert of the real", spoke Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix. Welcome to nihilism. But that convulsive recognition on Neo's part (initially denialism) was also the beginning of his awakening to "the moment of truth". [...]

The Christian teaching of "forgiveness" has the same aims as the dharma of Buddhist "non-attachment" and non-identification, and aims for the same result -- "liberty to the captive". This is also the meaning of losing the human form -- an overcoming even of the instinct for "self"-preservation that Nietzsche likewise considered necessary for effecting self-overcoming. "Become what you are" is Nietzsche's formula for transcendence and self-overcoming -- for shedding the human form (overcoming narcissism) and effectuating the transhuman. How one brings off that outcome and effects this "metanoia" is what I now want to turn my attention towards -- this metanoia being equally Sri Aurobindo's "supramental consciousness". The Dark Age Blog :: Transcending the Age By longsword
Sri Aurobindo as we have seen, presents a more workable division of Material Vital, Central Vital, Emotional, and Mental-Vital sub-levels ("Vital" here obviously being equivalent to Psychic or Astral or Affective, not to "prana", which is included in the Etheric sublevel of the Physical Plane). [...]
Seven Faculties and Irradiations
Building on Sri Aurobindo's theory of types based on three evolutionary purushas, I would like to propose here a psychology based on seven "vertical" faculties or individual irradiations, each of which in the individualisation of the universal prakriti of that hypostasis. I interpret the "purushas" as the self-sufficient (Proclus uses the term authypostaton) inner-pure-consciousness or aspect of pure noetic being. Originally I played with the idea of four principles (which could be equated with Theon's four-fold system) but felt this was insufficient to account for all the psychological gradations. [...]
My own analysis of the nature of consciousness, using an Aurobindonian-Assagiolian paradigm, results in the following map of consciousnsess: ... Following Sri Aurobindo, there are three purushas that constitute the inner being and represent the three centers of organisation (of mind, affect, and body). These are not normally experienced, except in deep mystical states. They are in turn organised by a fourth purusha, the Divine Soul ("Psychic Being", or what Jung would call the Archetype of the Self). contact me content by M.Alan Kazlev page last modified 27 November 2005 what's new
Around March 2009, the SCIY supporters of Heehs made a solemn collective statement on the larger issues behind the “The Lives of Sri Aurobindo” controversy. Laying the broad outlines of how the Integral Yoga should not be practised
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. it becomes like that. In the end you feel as if you had no body but were spread out in the vastness of space as an infinite consciousness and existence – or as if the body were only a dot in that consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo Studies. Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga. « The True Role of the Mind. The Supermind At Work in Mind, Life and Matter. By sriaurobindostudies. In our review of Mind and Supermind, we saw that a truer perspective for ...
My Grey Fog: Pinter's CARETAKER in Auroville By Charudatta Prabhudesai-Goa.
The caretaker was performed in Auroville on the 11th,12th and the13th of Dec. Norman Bowler, a 75 years old theatre veteran in his maiden directorial venture did an excellent job of it. Whatever may be the other merits of the director, ...
Connecting Inner Power with Global Change: The Fractal Ladder (Response Books)
by Pravir Malik Price: $22.45 How Fractals can help you save the world, December 11, 2009 Reviews Written by Bhavana Dee "Bhavana" (Lantana, Florida, USA)
Here's a sincere but informal sort of introduction to a new book, Connecting Inner Power to Global Change, by Pravir Malik who has been a teacher at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram School in India, as well as a very successful big business consultant in America. [...]
An encouraging sign of the truth of what is being proposed by this book is that the ideas of evolutionary spirituality, conscious evolution, and integral progress are now widespread among the thinking young worldwide. They know about Sri Aurobindo, they know about Teilhard de Chardin, they have Barbara Marx Hubbard, Andrew Cohen, Ken Wilber teaching them and they are not only connecting the dots, they have their own powerful experiences and sense of evolution within them, driving them. When they write and speak, they are not overawed devotees, but co-creators of the new world foreseen by the older visionaries. There are numerous websites offering downloadable talks, and on-line week- and month-long seminars bring in 15,000+ participants. They can already see the evidences of the new consciousness coming into focus in quantum physics and microbiology, in alternative technologies and renewable energies, in complementary currencies and ecological businesses, in social networking on the internet and the plethora of grassroots movements... Connecting Inner Power to Global Change is part of this blossoming, addressing particularly the business community, which is a crucial niche. Comment Permalink
Amazon.com: Profile For Bhavana Dee: Reviews Age of Reunion and Auroville, December 11, 2009 Aurobindonians will recognise this immediately.
So, what Charles Eisenstein offers the Aurovilian/Aurobindonian is a brilliantly worked out detail about the times of change we are in. What Sri Aurobindo, writing in the 20s-40s, could only describe in its broad outlines, Charles can see in its manifestation, and this intellectual insight and description can help us through the catastrophic times ahead. And what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in their written legacy and Auroville in its living manifestation offer to Eisenstein is a profound context of spiritual vision and 40 years of facing the enormous practical difficulties of trying to be open to that change of consciousness which he seems to assume will be quite automatic.
I am facing here a problem which i find both Eisenstein and Aurobindo avoid by writing long erudite works - when the ideas are put too simply, they sound "new-agey", a bit too Pollyanna-ish for our sceptical, down-to-earth minds, the very minds which are being invited to consider changing.... alas, what to do? I want to recommend to Aurovilians and students of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, that they will find reading Charles Eisenstein really heartening, I want to invite Mr. Eisenstein and his followers to take a look at the writings of Sri Aurobindo and to visit Auroville...perhaps there are some really interesting ways we could work together. Comment Permalink The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein
And suddenly, there are people, tourists largely, thronging the narrow roads. We take the opportunity to cycle to the market, buy stuff, grab lunch. The markets are chock-a-block, there is little space to move amid another sea of people vying with one another for shopkeepers’ attention. They buy food, shirts, utensils, shoes.
The huddled mass tells me why the Indian economy is growing — and why it will continue to grow. This growth, however, is leaving scars of wealth on the once laidback town, now bustling city of Pondicherry. This is a town that along with Auroville in Tamil Nadu and about 8 km from here is possibly the spiritual base of the world. Wealth has a role but a subservient one — not the overwhelming dominance that it has everywhere else I’ve been and seen.
Back in the balcony and writing this piece makes me wonder just what in hell’s name am I upto analysing a paper in the middle of my vacation, my teerth-yatra? Posted by Gautam Chikermane on Monday, December 14, 2009 at 7:42 pm blogs.hindustantimes.com

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