Sri Aurobindo's name as a freedom fighter has faded into oblivion

The End of the History? by Mishel and Andrea   Thursday, 30 December 2010

Debashish Banerji immersed in the works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother came with the theme - The European Enlightenment... and the Divinization of the Human - on 28th of December to participate in the second set of inter action series on Mutation II. From the philosophical point of view participants were diving into the subjects. Many common aspects emerged, but also many unanswered questions. Event was organized by Sri Aurobindo Centre for Studies. India and the World Bharat Nivas. 

Integral Leadership by Mari   Wednesday, 29 December 2010

Today's interview is with Partho, after a three days retreat with a group of approximately 20 Aurovilians that are involved in different fields of activities. Integral Leadership was the main team, and in his talk Partho shares with us what was the main idea in this workshop, what was the content and how did he felt after this experience. We also remember that today starts the Twilight Festival. And talking about festival, Auroville Film Festival has an appeal to the community: they need movies suggestions that are align with Auroville's ideal.

AurovilleRadio - Sharing Auroville`s life and spirit

For two days - tonight and tomorrow - at Sri Aurobindo Auditorium at Bharat Nivas film lovers will come on their expense by festival of short films of ... Short Film by Miriam   Tuesday, 28 Dec

Twiglight 10, a festival of short films it will be held at Bharat Nivas on 29th and 30th of Decmeber, and we would have a chance to see some excellent work of students from Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication in New Dehli. Before the screening on both nights will be panel discussions, and at Galerry Square Circle, Kale Kendra tonight at 4pm is an inauguration of photography exhibition. At Arka library tonight at 7pm and also on Thursday children and puppet theater lovers can see classical fairy tale "Goldilocks” by KOEKLA puppet theater from Holland. Read more

Towards the Rebirth of India: Introducing Sri Aurobindo's Creative ... By Aju Mukhopadhyay
In the face of huge publicity and propaganda in favour of some freedom fighters whose names are the main thrust of some political party, making them cult figures, Sri Aurobindo's name as a freedom fighter has faded into oblivion. ...

'God is supernatural' Express Buzz Subhakeerthana S Express News Service 28 Dec 2010

Acclaimed musician Bharat Sundar believes that there are different ways of cultivating control over one's mind: […] Meditation and awakening

I am not a temple traveller but I love visiting Pondicherry and Auroville. Meditation is important to everyone as it sets a path of self-realisation. It is said that the deeper the meditation, the deeper would be the healing. The mind and  body are intimately connected, and the relationship of the mind to the body in meditation is very interesting. The mind creates a situation in which we see the body as peaceful and beautiful.

Stress-free, hassle-free Hindustan Times New Delhi, December 28, 2010

The school, which is based on teachings of Sri Aurobindo, scores high on almost every parameter considered on the survey. The teachers at Mother's ...

However, some parents feel that sometimes Mother’s gets carried away in trying to keep its traditions alive.

“Students at Mother’s lead a sheltered, almost utopian existence till they graduate whereas in 21st century you need to be a little street smart to survive,” said Sharma. “That go-getter attitude is lacking in students here and the school needs to think of how to change with changing times while keeping its philosophy intact.” It’s also one of the few schools in the city where selection of prefects is not a result of academic achievement alone — leadership skills and co-curricular activities are vital too. 

The school counts sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan, cricketer Gautam Gambhir and writer Khushwant Singh among its alumni.

For Sri Aurobindo, the ultimate social agency remained Spirit

Dealing with Modern Times Through Spirit By Adam Dietz

In his relation to modernity Aurobindo is a powerful thinker. He shows the many of the same tendencies that historically permeate the traditions of Hinduism: diligent commitment to the highest realms of human existence, a supreme all pervading Divinity within all creation, discipline in uniting with the Divinity, furthering the relationship of others to the Divinity through sympathy, and intense inner concentration upon the various realms of consciousness, these among many other similarities. However, Aurobindo becomes the exemplar of the Hindu tradition, an ambassador to modernity by expanding its ideas, refocusing the emphasis, while adhering to the tradition of welcoming new ideas innovations. Aurobindo incorporates evolution, secular materialism, social and political concern into the vast tradition. […]

For Aurobindo the ultimate act of social concern was immersion in spirit and the manifestation of spirit in all realms. In union with spirit, guided by spirit, one would naturally find the best course to take when confronted with strange and difficult modernization. For Aurobindo, the ultimate social agency remained Spirit, and the propagation of Spirit in others. This union with Spirit, Spiritual teaching and its manifestation was the One ultimate, incorruptible answer to all social concerns past, present and future. Posted by Adam Dietz at 5:35 AM

Integral Consciousness: Sri Aurobindo's Yoga and how Haridas Chaudhuri brought it to the West by Mark Kitchell (Director) | Format: DVD

Integral Consciousness is the story of a spiritual philosophy developed by one of the great sages of the 20th Century, Sri Aurobindo - and how his yoga was brought to the West by Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri.

The film includes a history of Integral Yoga, from Sri Aurobindo's origins as a revolutionary leader determined to free India from British rule, to his founding an ashram at Pondicherry and the beginnings of Auroville. 

The story also tells of Dr. Chaudhuri's twenty-five years in America, bringing together east and west. The film presents pivotal figures in America including Alan Watts and Michael Murphy, and recounts the birth of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), the Esalen Institute, and the Cultural Integration Fellowship (CIF). 

The second part of the film is a concise explication of Integral Yoga and key concepts like the Psychic Being, the Supermind, and Conscious Evolution. Archival material of Dr. Chaudhuri is featured as well as interviews with highly regarded luminaries including Debashish Banerji, Hilary Anderson, Michael Murphy, Aster Patel, Brant Cortright and Rama Jyoti Vernon.

This 55-minute film is the result of a grassroots effort by alumni of CIIS and CIF who wanted to preserve the legacy of Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri and spread the word about integral yoga. Highly respected documentary filmmaker Mark Kitchell (Berkeley in the Sixties) was engaged to write and direct the project.

Integral Consciousness was shot in Pondicherry and Auroville, India, and in San Francisco, California. Portions of the film were nationally televised in the United States in April 2009. Proceeds from this film are helping to make a new film, now in production, featuring the evolution of consciousness and conscious evolution. 

This is the dawning of the Age of Integral Consciousness... And everyone should see this important and engaging film!

Entertaining and educational, April 23, 2010 By  JGarcia "JGarcia" (San Francisco, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

I really like this film... with sensitivity and maestry it unites interviews with great scholars on the history and philosophy of Integral Yoga by Sri Aurobindo. 

The film is entertaining and educational. It is extremely useful for those who are familiar with the subject and those who are curious about the spiritual ideas of Sri Aurobindo. 

Anthropology must explore the cognitive, aesthetic and ethical universals

Kant’s relevance for anthropology today from The Memory Bank by Keith Hart

Kant held that humanity’s hardest task was the administration of justice worldwide. In the meantime, anthropology must explore the cognitive, aesthetic and ethical universals on which such an idea of human unity might be founded. The categorical imperative to be good (“do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) provided a moral link between individuals and this emergent inclusive order.

Kant’s cosmopolitan project

Immanuel Kant started out as a geography lecturer in the Baltic port of Königsberg. He published his first book at the age of 57, the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), and it marked his arrival as a philosopher. Kant is the source for the notion that society may be as much an expression of individual subjectivity as a collective force out there. Copernicus solved the problem of the movement of the heavenly bodies by having the spectator revolve while they were at rest, instead of them revolve around the spectator. Kant extended this achievement for physics into metaphysics. In his Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason he writes:

“Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects…. but what if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge?” (Kant 2008:22)

In order to understand the world, we must begin not with the empirical existence of objects, but with the reasoning embedded in our experience and in all the judgments we have made. This is to say that the world is inside each of us as much as it is out there. Our task is to unite the two poles as subjective individuals who share the object world with the rest of humanity. Knowledge of society must be personal and moral before it is defined by laws imposed on us from above.

Kant published Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view in 1798. The book was based on lectures he had given at the university since 1772. His aim was to attract the general public to an independent discipline whose name he more than anyone contributed to academic life. Remarkably, histories of anthropology have rarely mentioned this work, perhaps because the discipline has evolved so far away from Kant’s original premises. But it would pay us to take his Anthropology seriously, if only for its resonance with our own times.

Shortly before, Kant wrote To perpetual peace: a philosophical sketch (1795). The last quarter of the eighteenth century saw its own share of “globalization” — the American and French revolutions, the Napoleonic wars, the rise of British industry and the international movement to abolish slavery. Kant knew that coalitions of states were gearing up for war, yet he responded to this sense of the world coming closer together by proposing how humanity might form society as world citizens beyond the boundaries of states. He held that “cosmopolitan right”, the basic right of all world citizens, should rest on conditions of universal hospitality, that is, on the right of a stranger not to be treated with hostility when he arrives on someone else’s territory. In other words, we should be free to go wherever we like in the world, since it belongs to all of us equally.

“The peoples of the earth have entered in varying degree into a universal community, and it has developed to the point where a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere. The idea of a cosmopolitan right is not fantastic and overstrained; it is a necessary complement to the unwritten code of political and international right, transforming it into a universal right of humanity.” (Kant 2003:18).

This confident sense of an emergent world order, written over 200 years ago, can now be seen as the high point of the liberal revolution, before it was overwhelmed by its twin offspring, industrial capitalism and the nation-state.

Earlier Kant wrote an essay, “Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose” (1784) which included the following propositions:

“1. In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural faculties which aim at the use of reason shall be fully developed in the species, not in the individual.

2. The means that nature employs to accomplish the development of all faculties is the antagonism of men in society, since this antagonism becomes, in the end, the cause of a lawful order of this society.

3. The latest problem for mankind, the solution of which nature forces us to seek, is the achievement of a civil society which is capable of administering law universally.

4. This problem is both the most difficult and the last to be solved by mankind.

5. A philosophical attempt to write a universal world history according to a plan of nature which aims at perfect civic association of mankind must be considered to be possible and even as capable of furthering nature’s purpose.”

Our world is much more socially integrated than two centuries ago and its economy is palpably unequal. Histories of the universe we inhabit do seem to be indispensable to the construction of institutions capable of administering justice worldwide. The task of building a global civil society for the twenty-first century is an urgent one and anthropological visions should play their part in that.

Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s work was in jeopardy

Sri Aurobindo and the Big Bang Georges van Vrekhem talks about 'Sri Aurobindo and the Big Bang'. by Andrea Friday, 10 December 2010

The latest talk of Georges van Vrekhem on Thursday December 9 was about Sri Aurobindo's take on the Big Bang theory. Sri Aurobindo’s works are seldom approached for their scientific contents, yet he has followed the evolution of scientific thought up close. He wrote at the time of Einstein and the quantum mechanic revolution. In Savitri, his ‘testament’, Sri Aurobindo takes a clear stand for the Big Bang theory, even before the general consensus it has today.

Descent Into Death by Andrea and Anitha  Wednesday, 08 December 2010

On Saturday, December 4, Georges van Vrekhem’s talk was on “Sri Aurobindo’s Descent into Death”. Georges recounted that soon after the Second World War, the world, in Sri Aurobindo’s words, was “worse than worst”. In fact, Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s work was in jeopardy -- and it was not his intention “to give his sanction to another fiasco”. This is one of the most dramatic episodes in spiritual history and the history of humankind, documented hour-by-hour and commented upon by the Mother herself. Georges explained Sri Aurobindo’s voluntary descent into death, only six years later, the manifestation of the Supermind with its enormous future consequences.

Auroville & the Quiet Healing Center - Nandita Shah

Welcome to my website. This has been designed to introduce you to me, my philosphy and my work and also to let you understand my vision of healing through ...

Homeopathy encompasses a wholeness that touches the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of an individual. Although it is used effectively to treat physical disease, it recognizes the connection between the disease and the emotional imbalance. It is truly the balanced binding together of the whole that allows the freedom of expression in the nature of the being. 

Comment on Raising a child prodigy by Supriyo Bose from Comments for Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother by Supriyo Bose

Dear Sandeep,

Delightful to read Jane Austen starting your post. Speaking of which, did you know that “Mother’s Service Society” has been running a series of programs on “Pride and Prejudice”, it seems, for some years now?
And now, they are using the insights and lessons in that book to teach Sri Aurobindo’s “The Life Divine”. You can get the recordings of those talks (by Garry Jacob) here: http://karmayogi.net/ -Supriyo

Exploring digitized materials that previous humanities scholars did not have

Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches By PATRICIA COHEN NYT: November 16, 2010

[…] start exploring how technology is changing our understanding of the liberal arts. This latest frontier is about method, they say, using powerful technologies and vast stores of digitized materials that previous humanities scholars did not have.

These researchers are digitally mapping Civil War battlefields to understand what role topography played in victory, using databases of thousands of jam sessions to track how musical collaborations influenced jazz, and searching through large numbers of scientific texts and textbooks to track where concepts first appeared and how they spread.

This alliance of geeks and poets has generated exhilaration and also anxiety. The humanities, after all, deal with elusive questions of aesthetics, existence and meaning, the words that bring tears or the melody that raises goose bumps. Are these elements that can be measured?

“The digital humanities do fantastic things,” said the eminent Princeton historian Anthony Grafton. “I’m a believer in quantification. But I don’t believe quantification can do everything. So much of humanistic scholarship is about interpretation.”

“It’s easy to forget the digital media are means and not ends,” he added. Digital humanities scholars also face a more practical test: What knowledge can they produce that their predecessors could not?

Sri Aurobindo & Bio-Psychosocial perspectives

Punjab Governor inaugurates International Conference on Bio-Psychosocial perspectives Punjab Newsline Network Monday, 15 November 2010 CHANDIGARH:

The First International Conference of Asian Association of Applied Psychology organised by Panjab University here on “Enhancing Human Potential Bio-Psychosocial Perspectives”, took off to a grand start at the University Auditorium Monday. 

The Governor of Punjab and Administrator, Union Territory Chandigarh Shivraj V. Patil, inaugurated the three-day conference to the packed audience of nearly seven hundred and thirty delegates from within and outside India. Prominent international scholars Professor Lars Eric Unestahl from Sweden and Professor Alex P. Linley of U.K. were also present. Dr. (Mrs.) Vipin Sobti, Member, Educational Tribunal, government of Punjab and Chairperson of the Conference also graced the occasion.

The Governor of Punjab Shivraj V. Patil expressed happiness to inaugurate the conference. He also appreciated the theme and congratulated the university for organising the conference on such a holistic and interdisciplinary theme. He referred to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to elaborate his views on developing human potential. He emphasised that human potential cannot be considered mechanical as it encompasses humanistic and spiritual elements. In consonance with the ideas of the great Indian philosopher Aurobindo Ghosh, the Governor pointed out that a combination of thinking capacity and spirituality part play an important role in developing possibilities for human potential. 

This will ultimately result in enabling the individual to overcome the barriers of memory and connect past knowledge with awareness about the present and the future.  Patil further asserted that Vedas and Upanishads do not tell us how the prayers have to offered but the talk about Super Science and the entire nature emphasizing that individual is the almighty force. Such an attitude will unfold tremendous potential that lay hidden inside the individual. This requires handling the possible arrogance that the individual might develop by glorifying the self at the expense of others. It is here that positive attitude building becomes necessary where applied psychology can play a vital role. He narrated instances of his interaction with spiritual leaders and foreign dignitaries to emphasize the significance of spiritual upliftment that can help developing cosmic attitude which rises above the global and the universal. He recommended that science is not to be used alone but in combination with spirituality. Therefore, the need of the hour is to develop super science to evolve a better world.

Patil talked of dire need of discarding negativity and negative approach by inculcating positive virtues which is a sure way of becoming all powerful.  The cosmic attitude, he said, was a positive attitude wherein human beings ought to perceive everything with a creative approach.  The Vedas enjoin upon human beings to realize in oneself every other human being, other creatures, plants and even organic matter …. and this way one becomes powerful from within and non-destructive.  The governor urged to create an environment for making a conducive place for all living creatures to survive and flourish. 

Earlier Professor R.C. Sobti, Vice Chancellor, Panjab University presented the welcome address and impressed upon that to be human is to think feel aspire, strive and to achieve social goals. He deliberated that India being the youngest country in terms of average age of its populace has enormous human potential to develop with thrust on certain special issues which will be discussed in the forthcoming “academic feast” of the conference. 

Professor R.C. Sobti underlined the need of psychological development saying that human talent was the most valuable resource without which developments in other fields were meaningless.  Prof. Sobti said it was important to discover the tremendous hidden talent within us and make use of it.  Biological factors, the Vice-Chancellor said were closely related to human behaviour which made up our mental frame.  We must do introspection and develop positive attitude.

Professor Emeritus Dr. Jitendra Mohan, Director of the International Conference introduced the theme of the conference. He stated that in all seven important sessions on women sports, education, technology, management, health, bio-sciences and community participation will be held more than three hundred presentation including research papers from the faculty and posters by the students will be presented. According to him this is the largest possible response and concerned shown by the younger generation for the future of human kind to develop human potential. Chairperson of the International Conference, Professor Ajaib Singh proposed vote of thanks.

Wilber leaves essential information out of his presentation

Visser on Wilber’s Views of Evolution from integral praxis by Eric

From Integral World: The 'Spirit of Evolution' Reconsidered: Relating Ken Wilber's view of spiritual evolution to the current evolution debates by Frank Visser 

WILBER ON EVOLUTION - IN GENERAL

In his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977), the term "evolution" features prominently as the heading of Part One of two parts, Part Two being called "Involution". This sets the tone for a thoroughly spiritualist exposition of the subject. As he explained later, in the 20th anniversary edition of the book (Wilber, 1993: xix), at that time he was following A.K. Coomaraswamy's usage of these terms. Briefly, "Evolution", in this sense, means a movement from the One or God to the Many or the manifested world. (Other traditions would call this "emanation"). "Involution", then, is the opposite movement: from the Many to the One. In the first phase, Spirit loses itself in the world, in the second, Spirit returns to itself again as Spirit. In such a book, one would sooner find a reference to Dante than to Darwin...

In The Atman Project (1980), the meaning of these two terms is reversed. This time, Wilber follows Sri Aurobindo's understanding (Wilber, 1993: xix). This time, involution is the "downward" movement from Spirit to the world of the Many; and evolution the "upward" movement from the world to Spirit. This would remain the dominant model in Wilber's mind for years to come: evolution is seen as a movement that is both driven by Spirit and directed towards Spirit. In Up from Eden (1981), which was sub-titled "A transpersonal view of human evolution", the same scheme is used by Wilber to organize the field of human evolution, i.e. anthropology. Wilber starts his narrative with the first hominids, but does not cover evolution per se. […]

Somehow one gets the feeling that Wilber systematically overlooks the relevant literature. […] Unfortunately, The Blind Watchmaker is not referenced in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, and Brief History doesn't have any references at all. […]

It is equally obvious, then, that Wilber leaves essential information out of his presentation when making his points about evolution and its mechanism. He apparently disagrees with Dawkins on this matter, but without confronting Dawkins' arguments, Wilber's thesis becomes empty. Rhetorical maneuvers like repeating the word "chance" about seven times in one paragraph—as a kind of mantra—cannot compensate for this deficiency. […]

By not being responsive to online criticism directed at this theory, Ken Wilber has not lived up to the ideal of Habermasian "communicative rationality", in which viewpoints are freely exchanged in search of the best arguments. Nor has he taken responsibility for extreme statements on neo-Darwinism done in the past, when confronted with criticism. He has misrepresented a major field of science in a less than respectful way.

And finally, though this talk had as its manifest subject Ken Wilber's views on evolution, it's hidden subject has been—as you may have guessed—why has it been so extremely difficult to discuss these matters within the integral community? Openness to criticism and public debate are the hallmarks of science and philosophy. I would therefore like to give the last word to John Stuart Mill (1863: 17), form his treatise on liberty:

In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious.

CRD & RYD

Manoj Das Gupta demands apology from RY Deshpande by RY Deshpande 

on Mon 01 Nov 2010 03:30 AM IST  |  Permanent Link  |  Cosmos

A hundred years ago CR Das was fighting in the Alipore Case more for the Doctrine of Nationalism than defending an accused; the beauty is, for preaching such a Doctrine none can be held guilty. Should that not hold true when it is the matter of psychic and spiritual reverence to the Mother and the Master who attempted all and did all for us? We have to be at least grateful for all that we receive from them. Let me tell you that what I am fighting for are these basic spiritual verities. This is what the Ashram as an Institution should uphold. If it fails in it, then it has no reason to exist. 9:25 AM

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Re: The Parable of Two Birds    by RY Deshpande

MONTH ARCHIVE

November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010

Feeling of superiority is simply a statement of facts

George Nakashima was inspired by Shaker furniture By Anonymous 1:10 AM Friday 22 October 2010

There is always lots to be learned from anyone leading a pursuit of perfection.

Indians and devotees of various ashrams here, (incl. Sri Aurobindo Ashram/Auroville), have something to learn from them. Leaving alone for a moment the claim that our God and knowledge is greater than everybody's, and we have all the answers to save and change the world (give these glorious and ancient benefits of ours a rest for sometime to enable to rejuvenate themselves), and learn something else even if it is funny. Funnily these communities do not proclaim anything or superiority and work quietly, which is what is best.

[Some people never learn anything because they understand everything too soon.   - Alexander Pope]

There are some people among us who feel very superior over the others

Posted by Gopal on August 22, 2008 at 8:30 pm ... Superiority Complex of "some" of devotees of Sri Aurobindo....

Dear All, Thanks a lot for Guiding me through the T & A, post. Barin dada drew our attention towards the self-righteousness, a sense of social dignity, and ego-consciousness, which is a shadow of the individual aspect of the Supreme. here i guess i need to discuss something which i have been observing with many of my fellow devotees of The Mother and The Master. there are some people among us who feel very superior over the others because they are the followers of Sri Aurobindo, or for practicising Integral Yoga. They even go to an extent that they will announce the rest of the teachings, or philosophies are myth. some even tend to propagate the Masters vision like missionaries, though i have come across some words of The Master and The Mother to not to do so. they even like to overpower others beliefs...

the other one is a sort of egoistic statement. i am a follower of Sri Aurobindo, and i am following a philosophy which is beyond all the philosophies so far....on the surface it may not seem like an egoistic statement, but in the core what lurks is...i am superior than the rest...is this a right attitude? what The Mother and Master have said about such an attitude? — 3 Comments (Add) 

 Comment by Barindranath Chaki

Dear Gopal, it is a good question. The ideas in this regard which are in your mind definitely need a solution. But before answering this question, I may be questioning myself, as to whether I am committing the same mistake when I am answering you. Because, I am certain that what i am going to present here is perfectly true and correct, but when I am presenting them before you, one may have the impression that I am stating and emphasizing my statements in an egoistic way, or in a missionary way [two are different things].

In all that you have told, there are several things. I am touching them one by one.

The Teaching of Sri Aurobindo, if we analyze rationally and philosophically, is a TURNING POINT in the history of all human endeavours. All philosophies are surpassed by Him, especially, because it is a great Synthesis. All previous thoughts and realizations of true value and worth are synthetized by Sri Aurobindo. None of the previous Realizations are left by Him. He opposes nothing. Nobody opposes Him, philosophically. But each of the previous teachings and discoveries [spiritual or philosophical] form a part in His Synthesis. So, naturally, when you find what Sri Aurobindo has taught us is the most unique and most universal Realization, you have the idea that He has surpassed all other things, all other teachings, and therefore all religions!

And when I will say that, one may have the Idea that I am having a feeling of superiority. But no! That is simply a statement of facts. What Sri Aurobindo has said to us is a New Truth — the truth about a New and Higher plane of Consciousness, the Supramental Consciousness, which will solve all the human problems. But that will be done only when we are ready for that. If we, the followers, think that His Teaching is just one of many Teachings, His discovery is one of the many discoveries, then we are mistakes! His truth is the final truth, at this moment. It has to be accepted and followed. Or else, we will meet ABYSS.

The Mother has told us: Men, countries, continents! The choice is imperative: Truth or the abyss.

When They [The Mother and sri Aurobindo] have brought the Truth and the New Consciousness and Force on earth, They have also chosen some persons as Their instruments, bigger or smaller. And Their forces are active though those instruements! And Some of the instruments feel their Work to be a Mission. So thay are often forced to take a missionary spirit. That is different from Ego. Ego or egoistic attitude is definitely bad, as it will lead nowhere. And our task is to go ahead. Hence, we shall have a clear understanding, a clear vision and a straight march ahead! Barin Chaki 22-08-08 11-14 PM. 8:57 AM, 9:34 AM 

It's the tea which drinks the man

Kevin Kelly: What Technology Wants: how technology changes us and vice-versa review by Cory Doctorow from Posthuman Destinies by abdul lateef

"Kelly's central thesis is this: technology has its own internal logics and rhythms that are distinct from (and sometimes adverse to) the desires of the humans that create it. Technology creates itself, using humans to do its bidding, and our normal view of inventors creating technology is a kind of romantic fairy tale that ignores the fact that nearly every great invention is invented nearly simultaneously by many people at the same time, all over the world."

Technology Review India: Blogs: Mims's Bits: Why Japanese Love Robots (And Americans Fear Them) Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Animism, Frankenstein and the Biblical injunction against creating life led to the dawn of robotic warfare

Here's social scientist Naho Kitano in Animism, Rinri, Modernizationp; the Base of Japanese Robotics (pdf)

The sun, the moon, mountains and trees each have their own spirits, or gods. Each god is given a name, has characteristics, and is believed to have control over natural and human phenomena. This thought has continued to be believed and influences the Japanese relationship with nature and spiritual existence. This belief later expanded to include artificial objects, so that spirits are thought to exist in all the articles and utensils of daily use, and it is believed that these sprits of daily-use tools are in harmony with human beings.

In the West, in contrast, creating life inevitably leads to destruction of the creator -- a notion that is hardly original to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, as author Rui Umezawa points out.

In order to understand fully religion's influence on the West's attitude toward robotics, we also must remember that Judeo-Christian monotheism also adheres to the doctrine that only God can give life, a popular interpretation of Genesis in which there is only God in the beginning and all living things are His creations. Exodus also decrees that idolatry is a sin. Thus, any human who breathes life into an inanimate object is assuming the role of God and thereby becoming a false idol. Such a blasphemer deserves punishment, and in the conventions of science fiction, this usually comes in the form of betrayal by the robots. From the 1920 work R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Czech playwright Karel Čapek - who is credited with coining the term "robot" -- through The Terminator movies to Battlestar Galactica, such human vanity is constantly met by rebellion by its creation.

In a feedback loop initiated by these preconceptions, culture influences not only the perception of robots, but also the design of robots created by Japanese and American engineers. 

Fractals and Time, PART II: Spacetime Smearing and Crystalline Time from Networkologies by chris

Crystal. Such a state, while static and outside of time, nevertheless changes, and here we will employ the term used by Whitehead, ‘advance’, for this sort of development which occurs in states which seem to be outside of standard forms of time. Quantum potentials advance because the size of the spacetime area in which a particle may actualize increases over time. In this sense, the smeared area of spacetime, or the smearing of the particle as potential in spacetime, increases over time as percieved outside the potential in question. As a spacetime potential expands as it advances, each new added area, and the time associated with it, recalibrates the entire set of probabilities within the quantum potential, both forwards and backwards in time, and if we think of separate paths off the most direct ones as sideways, then we can say in many directions in spacetime at once.

This is why some researchers have referred to this sort of time as spatial, while others have put forth a fractal model to describe such phenomenon, and both describe aspect of what is at work in quantum potentials. We will describe this sort of spacetime, following Gilles Deleuze, as crystalline. For like a crystal, a quantum potential grows from a germ, namely, a quantum event which emits a potential. The potential then grows, in all spacetime directions, in a manner which is both determined by that germ and the medium, or context, within which that germ finds itself, as well as some degree of randomness. As exponents of the fractal metaphor have argued, it seems that quantum potentials exhibit fractal properties at multiple levels of scale, similar to the manner in which cells of a crystal repeat at multiple levels of scale. As with crystals, as quantum potentials advance, they increase in spacetime area in a manner in which each new increment is mediated by the shape of the crystal as a whole, and this is due to the fractal iterative structure  at work in both part and whole. As with holographs, the whole is represented, if in mediated form, within each of the parts, in a manner similar to the iterative nature of crystals. And just as light is refracted when it enters a crystal according to the manner in which the whole is enfolded in its parts, so it is that the whole of a quantum potential is enfolded in all the parts (otherwise it could not advance at its edges), if differently and more intensely at some points than others, thereby leading to the refraction of probability states in a manner analogous to that of light. It is in this manner that quantum potentials advance in a crystalline manner, even if they do so in a manner which exceeds traditional definitions of space and time.

One aspect of Sri Aurobindo's doctrine is Providential

The Life Divine « Sujit's Blog by sbhosale

Like every other philosopher, Sri Aurobindo develops his own conceptual language. Getting used it takes time and attention. I had to finish almost first hundred pages before I could start appreciating the literary beauty of his genius. ...

For The Turnstiles By DGA

I have, in the past, described one aspect of Aurobindo Ghose's doctrine as Providential. Here is a passage in Aurobindo's brilliant epic Savitri that shows just what I am pointing at (book one, canto four): ...

A Message from the Chairman « Overman Foundation

We work to provide assistance to scholars and researchers who are interested in the lives and works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and accordingly we ...

5 weeks down.. - Auroville - Auroville, India - Living Routes
I can't believe we've already been here for 5 weeks! It feels like I just got here, but it feels like I've been here forever as well. ...

Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra: Birthday Reflections By Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra
I like to mention here that since childhood, I am avid follower of Sri Aurobindo. In fact I learnt about him from my mother, who is also his follower. I read a lot about his philosophy and ideals, and I sincerely try to emulate them. ...

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Why would you edit anybody’s work?": To Sunil:

You ask: “Why would you edit anybody’s work?”

Before I can answer that question, my question to you is, have you ever been involved in the work, process or business of editing? I sincerely doubt it, because you demonstrate very scant knowledge in the domain of editing literary material. But before that, do you even know the meaning of editing?
In case you don’t, here is the definition of the word Edit from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
- to prepare (as literary material) for publication or public presentation.
- to alter, adapt, or refine especially to bring about conformity to a standard or to suit a particular purpose.

If you are capable of understanding the above definition, you may also understand that none of Sri Aurobindo’s (or for that matter any author’s) works could have been published if they were not edited by someone. And whenever new information or material related to an author’s literary material is found, a new and different edition of that author’s literary work is the inevitable outcome.

So there is absolutely nothing surprising, scandalous, sacrilegious, wrong or evil if two editions of Sri Aurobindo’s works are not exactly identical, and it is even better when those changes represent Sri Aurobindo’s original writings even more faithfully.

Now, if you want us to believe that some people are deliberately “tampering” with Sri Aurobindo’s works because they have an Evil or Diabolical plan led by some Jeffrey Kripal and that they are doing so with the full connivance of the Ashram’s authorities, and that you think that you are one of those enlightened, pure and devoted souls that knows more and is more sincere than all those who are involved in the editing of Sri Aurobindo’s works, then any sane person would advise you to go to Dr. Alok Pandey (the shrink) and join his army of Light and Truth. You would be in perfect company. And I don’t think that the reason for which many people believe that you are hallucinating needs any explanation.

As for myself, given that people like yourself, Dr. Alok Pandey, and a few others have monopolized all that is Divine and True, all one can do is to wish all of you a quick recovery. All the best! A.A.D. Posted by Anonymous to Savitri Era Open Forum at 3:30 PM, October 18, 2010

Sri Aurobindo stands out distinctly among the Hindu Renaissance leaders for his unique Western upbringing

How do morals change? - [PDF] from yale.edu P Bloom - Nature, 2010 - nature.com

Satprem's book "Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness" (1996-2003, translated from 1970 French by Michel Danino) is relevant here in its connection between levels of human consciousness called the vital, the psyche and so on, as gleaned from spiritual ...
Introduction: Exploring Possibilities for a New Paradigm SS Nandram, ME Borden - Spirituality and Business, 2010 - Springer

One of the dominant Eastern perspectives that is useful for understanding spirituality hails from Sri Aurobindo. Insights ... Sri Aurobindo describes many steps in the transformation process of which there are two main levels. The ... 

Applying an integral perspective to business strategy: A case study ME Borden - Spirituality and Business, 2010 - Springer

What is Integral Philosophy? Integral Philosophy stems from the teachings of the sage and visionary, Sri Aurobindo and his female counterpart, The Mother. ... Sri Aurobindo uses the term Inner Being to describe this innermost divine aspect or Essence. ...
An other view of integral futures: De/reconstructing the IF brand - [PDF] from rmit.edu.au JM Gidley - Futures, 2010 - Elsevier

integral futures approach. I discussed my research drawing on Rudolf Steiner, Jean Gebser and Sri Aurobindo as well as Wilber, including disseminating to them a final draft of a paper which was later published [16]. Given this ...
DHARMA: THE OVERRIDING PRINCIPLE OF INDIAN LIFE AND THOUGHT SR Bhatt - Applied Ethics and Human Rights: Conceptual …, 2010 - books.google.com

In its constitutive facet it is the 'Law of being', the 'deepest law of our nature', to use Sri Aurobindo's expressions.(Sri Aurobindo, 1959: 2 and 104) It constitutes the nature of a thing (svabhava) and its disposition (gun. a) and determines its karma. ...
The Complete Yoga J Ryan - Integral Education: New Directions for Higher Learning, 2010 - books.google.com

meaning of the word Integral as it is inflected in the Integral Philosophy and Integral Yoga of Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri, who drew his central insights from the Indian sage Sri Aurobindo and from the ideas of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual partner Mirra Alfassa (referred to as The Mother. ... 

Principles of cultural psychology and the Hindu avatar tradition: A study of Mother Meera through personal narratives C Ross, L Price - Culture and Religion, 2010 - informaworld.com

whom he had been searching for twenty five years. Her parents allowed Venkat to look after Kamala Reddy, her family name, at Sri Aurobindo's ashram in Pondicherry (Goodman 1998). She was there for four years until, due to ...
The Emergence and Characteristics of Integral Education - [PDF] from sunypress.eduS Esbjörn-Hargens, J Reams, O … - Integral Education: New …, 2010 - books.google.com

that find expression in contemporary schools, including those informed by the metaphysical perspectives of philosopher-sages like Rudolph Steiner (1965, 1967, 1983, 1997), Alfred North Whitehead (1929), Jiddu Krishnamurti (1912, 1953, 1974, 1975), and Sri Aurobindo. ...
Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought, Fin-de-Siecle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship (review) P Roy - Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 2010 - muse.jhu.edu

and colonial engagement. Indeed, some of the same cast of characters -- CF Andrews, MK Gandhi, Oscar Wilde, George Orwell, Sri Aurobindo, Mirra Alfassa Richard--feature prominently in both works. Gandhi's text showcases ...

Impact of adoption of yoga way of life on the emotional intelligence of managers H Adhia, HR Nagendra, B Mahadevan - IIMB Management Review, 2010 - Elsevier

According to Sri Aurobindo (in Chakraborty & Chakraborty, 2008), 'The more complete the calm, the mightier the yogic power, the greater the force in action' (p 201). ... According to Sri Aurobindo, yoga and knowledge are the two wings of the soul's ascent. ...
Contemporary perspectives on spirituality and mental health -  from ijpm.infoP Sharma, R Charak, V Sharma - Indian Journal of Psychological …, 2010 - ijpm.info

reconcile men to the cruelty of fate, particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common had imposed on them." In a similar vein, leading spiritualist of the twentieth century, Sri Aurobindo [10] warned ...
Elements of the underacknowledged history of integral education M Molz, GP Hampson - Integral Education: New Directions for …, 2010 - books.google.com

Aurobindean Integral Education Aurobindo Ghose (1872–1950), The Mother (1873–1973), Indra Sen (1903–1994), Haridas Chaudhuri (1913–1975) A further still-contemporary interpretation of integral education is that stemming from Aurobindo Ghose (Sri Aurobindo). ...
Postcolonial Translations - [PDF] from ufsc.br S Bassnett - 2010 - Wiley Online Library

Approaching from another angle in The Foundations of Indian Culture, which consists of four essays published between 1918 and 1921, the Indian scholar, nationalist, and sage, Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950), proposed a radical rethinking of the status of European writing in the ...
Integral Transformational Coaching WAJ Keizer, SS Nandram - Spirituality and Business, 2010 - Springer

Several philosophers such as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother state the importance of attention. Mindfulness is taught in coaching because of its enormous 130 WAJ Keizer and SS Nandram Page 3. ... This thinking hails from the work of Sri Aurobindo (1970). ...
New Self, New World: Recovering Our Senses in the Twenty-First Century P Shepherd - 2010 - books.google.com

and grace; it aligns us with the design of the divine intelligence of evolution itself, a design that has been made available to us, with majestic passion and preci- sion, in the divinely inspired works of great modern evolutionary mys- tics such as Sri Aurobindo, Jean Gebser ...

Dr. SR Ranganathan page: Dr. SR Ranganathan and Sri Aurobindo Ghose SR Ranganathan, SA Ghose - Information Studies, 2010 - indianjournals.com

SRR was of the view that the manager / administrator of a library should be aware and taking care of the little details of the library, but in taking decisions he/she should have a holistic total view of the library – goals and objectives, users, functions, staff, resources, techniques ...

The Role of the Astrological Symbol System in Understanding the Process of Evolutionary Growth AM Diaz - ReVision, 2010 - Revision Publishing

ride the lower power, lower plane or lower source of vital and material fate of which the stars are indicators. (Sri Aurobindo, 1970, p.468) Page 3. Spring 2010 31 ... Piaget, J. (1976). The Child and Reality. New York: Penguin Books. Sri Aurobindo. (1970). Letters on Yoga. ...
[CITATION] Integral Theory in Action: Applied, Theoretical, and Constructive Perspectives on the Aqal Model S Esbjörn-Hargens - 2010 - State Univ of New York Pr

Leadership wholeness: a human resource development model T Thakadipuram - Human Resource Development International, 2010 - informaworld.com

Aurobindo, GS 1992. Letters on yoga. Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Society. Barrett, R. 1998. Liberating the corporate soul: Building a visionary organization. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann. Blankestein, AM, RW Cole, and PD Houston. 2007. ...
Theses On Michael Murphy And Esalen J Ogilvy - ReVision, 2010 - Revision Publishing

But that department was dominated by positivists like Patrick Suppes, who vowed “to bury the metaphysicians.” So in order to pursue his studies of the past, in preparation for a new future, Murphy traveled to India to study in an ashram founded by Sri Aurobindo. ... 

Rural Development Programmes: An Overview M Jain - Journal of Research: BEDE ATHENÆUM, 2010 - indianjournals.com

Sri Aurobindo said, "the villages are the cells of a human body. When every cell is healthy, the
body is healthy." Villages are the soul of India. A look at the trend ofpopulation figures since 1921 shows that India continues to be rural, even in the twenty first century. ...
Machiavellian Hindutva Untamed N Mohkamsing - Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 2010 - informaworld.com

Part I is entitled 'Varieties of Nationalism' and has chapters on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's appropriation of Swami Vivekananda, spiritual universalism and cultural nationalism
in the work of Sri Aurobindo, the relationship between religious reform and Hindu ...

The use of Sanskrit, an ancient language, as a tool to evaluate cleft palate speech problems - from ijps.org K Gajiwala - Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, 2010 - Medknow

"The structure we find (in Sanskrit) is one of extraordinary initial simplicity and also of extraordinary scientific regularity of formation," writes Sri Aurobindo. [1] The arrangement of Sanskrit alphabets is called Varnmaalaa or the garland of phonemes. ... 1. Sri Aurobindo. ...
Leadership Among Spiritual Teachers CA Jones, W Mason - ReVision, 2010 - Revision Publishing

Sri Aurobindo describes the integration of the two processes quite eloquently. Mason: In the West, there is the idea that there is a goal to be achieved, a cut off point, for example, self-actualization. Our philos ...
Psychology & Developing - [PDF] from indianpsychology.org AK Dalal, G Misra - Psychology and Developing Societies, 2010 - indianpsychology.org

This wonder of existence is portrayed in the hymns of the Vedas, which attribute divinity to the striking aspects of nature (Radhakrishnan, 1953) and the human mind (Sri Aurobindo, 1939/2006). In the Vedic texts it was held that the universe has evolved out of One. ...
Invitation to Participate in Two Global Events with the Remedies Harmony and Samata S Lindemann, M Litchi-Grassi - Homoeopathic Links, 2010 - thieme-connect.com

KG. Invitation to Participate in Two Global Events with the Remedies Harmony and Samata. Sigrid Lindemann, Maggi Litchi-Grassi India. The first global event will take place on August 15th, the birthday of Sri Aurobindo. Those ...
Globally Scanning for JM Gidley - Futures, 2010 - Elsevier

examples of the features of the new consciousness based on almost two decades of transdisciplinary research provide a significant academic footnote to the extensive research on the evolution of consciousness undertaken by Rudolf Steiner xi and Sri Aurobindo some decades ...
Ayurveda education: A student's perspective - from nih.govNY Pathak - International Journal of Ayurveda Research, 2010 - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

An integral education, which could, with some variations be adapted to all the nations of the world, must bring back the legitimate authority of the spirit over a matter. Yet, knowledge of the matter must also be fully developed and utilized …" (The Mother at Sri Aurobindo Ashram). ...
Anita Roddick's Word Stretching: Conflating Philanthropy with Green Marketing J Takhar - Revue internationale de Psychosociologie, 2010 - cairn.info

which reinforces her enlightened inclusion of the Other, making her green consumer choices more internationalist, more meaningful in terms of what might be called “spiritual self-realisation” or “higher consciousness”[27] Sri Aurobindo calls this “supramentalism” in “The...  

The Indian Supreme Court and the quest for a 'rational'Hinduism R Sen - South Asian History and Culture, 2010 - informaworld.com

and quoting extensively from Aurobindo's writings as well as secondary sources, Justice RB Misra, writing for the majority, ruled 'there is no room for doubt that neither the Society nor Auroville constitutes a religious denomination and the teachings of Sri Aurobindo only his ... 

TRADITIONAL HINDU VIEWS AND ATTITUDES TOWARD CHRISTIANITY -  from globalmissiology.org AY Aghamkar - Global Missiology English, 2010 - ojs.globalmissiology.org
... Respect for the people of other faiths in journeying toward the Truth is encouraged. Sri Aurobindo Ghosh (1872-1950). Aurobindo stands out distinctly among the Hindu Renaissance leaders for his unique Western upbringing. ...