November 30, 2012

Intentionality and consciousness implicit in Matter

Ananda Coomaraswamy: A Gentle Introduction from Centre Right India by Sandeep Balakrishna Nov 29, 2012
The period that roughly began in the latter half of the 19th Century and lasted till about the 1960s in India is truly a Golden Age in many respects. It was the era that spawned both an upheaval, and a revival of the highest order. The revival was cultural and spiritual, which transformed India and helped an enormous mass of Indians rediscover their own selves. This revival formed the moral, ethical, spiritual, and philosophical foundations for the Indian freedom struggle against the British. In today’s parlance, it is what is today known as Hindu revivalism.
A galaxy of extremely accomplished people who began this process should rightly be regarded as the true progenitors of the freedom struggle. As with pretty much everything that India should rightly feel proud of, the Nehruvian state has long discarded these heroes. Perhaps a Swami Vivekananda and an Aurobindo Ghosh happen to be the exceptions to this Nehruvian phenomenon.
Ananda K Coomaraswamy happens to be one such forgotten hero, a true intellectual warrior who waged a fierce war against motivated attempts by missionaries and the West to distort and vilify Hinduism and its various facets. It is a cruel testimony to the kind of depths that we’ve plumbed because most Indians haven’t even heard the name of this giant…
Pretty prophetic and starkly accurate especially when we note that the most successful failed B.A was Jawaharlal Nehru who spawned an ecosystem which is dominated by the likes of the anchors of today’s English news channels. The price India has paid for perpetuating the Macaulayite education system is staggering. It has resulted in a continuing erosion of national and cultural identity. Most of urban India today has been reduced to a Wasteland inhabited by fabulous imitators of imported Western ideologies… This is the kind of insight, forthrightness, and honesty that characterizes everything he’s written, and that which today’s scholarship lacks. 

Justice and reconciliation from The Immanent Frame by Colleen Murphy Nov 30, 2012
Histories of violence and injustice leave marks of damage, despair, and pain. The central question Daniel Philpott considers in his book Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation is: “What does justice consist of in the wake of its massive despoliation?” The answer, Philpott argues, is political reconciliation. At first glance, this answer seems odd… The justice of reconciliation is not primarily the justice of desert (as in retributive justice or what Philpott calls balance retributivism) or justice as fairness (as in Rawls’s theory of distributive justice).
The justice of political reconciliation prioritizes the repairing of relationships and evaluates the justice of an action on the basis of what will achieve the repair that injustice creates; it is not fundamentally about responding to individuals and their actions in a manner that is in some sense fitting or due. Indeed, rather than resonating with the justice of retributivism and distributive justice articulated and defended by secularists and prevalent within liberal democratic communities, part of Philpott’s task is to problematize and challenge these notions. Of course all traditions, including secular liberal traditions, have their critics. Restorative justice is a secular movement, and it is to this understanding of justice that Philpott appeals when demonstrating that justice as reconciliation can become the subject of an overlapping consensus that includes secularists. However, restorative justice remains a somewhat minority view, and thus only a minority of secularists are likely to be included in the consensus Philpott envisions.

This is a talk I gave back in September for my colleagues at CIIS during our annual retreat to Esalen in Big Sur, CA.

Alright, so those of us who haven’t been hoodwinked by Latour litanies or a form of Husserlian phenomenology presented in a pedantic form are kind of used to these occasional passive aggressive bullying outbursts from Harman. The bullying rhetoric from OOOers of various stripes functions in the same way each time, beginning with some proclamation of good intention followed incredibly insulting remarks before then putting the onus of the bullying on the one subjected to the bullying by claiming that it is in fact they who scream at them…
But when I use the untrademarked version of speculative realism I am thinking more of the general thrust of this movement towards realism, engagement with the sciences, materialism, so not Harmanian OOO in any specific sense. Nor am I thinking there is some filial relation. To my mind non-philosophy is a living project, not a historical one, and so my claim, understood by I think readers without weird label protecting agendas, is that Laruelle’s realist theory sure looks a lot like other realist theories in Continental philosophy. Harman is very fond of claiming that only he and de Landa were calling themselves realists back in the 90′s. The truth is that the early Laruelle as early as Principe de minorité was calling himself a realist and exploring a form of thought that would be neither correlatioinist nor absolutist (the main difference between his work and Meillassoux’s). 

Tweets 2h - Levi Bryant @onticologist 4) This allows me to bring in all sorts of Lacan, Marx, Baudrillard, etc., without reducing objects. 2h 3) I've been able to develop a much more robust place for semiotic machines vis a vis their account of incorporeal transformation. 2h 2) Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's account of content and expression, 2h 1) Just hit the 150pg mark in Onto-Cartography. I'm currently working on a section chapter 5.2 entitled "Content and Expression".

Back in the 1930s, a French psychoanalyst and philosopher by the name of Jacques Lacan began his life’s work—an attempt to create the framework by which the human psyche could be analyzed within modern civilization. Such was his influence that Lacanian thought not only left a mark on the field of psychoanalysis but found integration in Marxist thought, most notably with Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Zizek. Like many 19th and 20th century thinkers, Lacan was particularly influenced by George Wilhelm Fredrik Hegel. After failing a physical to enter the French army, Lacan took to studying psychoanalysis. By 1934 Lacan had published “On Paranoiac Psychosis in its Relations to the Personality.” The work did not cause much of a ripple, except in Parisian Surrealist circles.
The psychoanalytical umbilicus between Lacanian psychoanalysis and Surrealism is fairly-well established. A young Lacan published work in the Surrealist review Minotaur, and associated with Andre Breton and the radically-influential novelist and philosopher Georges Bataille(author of “The Story of the Eye”). Lacan, inspired by the Surrealists and their automatic writing, went on to create work that inspired philosophers like Gilles Deleuze (“Capitalism and Schizophrenia, co-written with Felix Guatarri), Foucault (especially his panoptic disciplinary consciousness) and Baudrillard (simulated reality); whose work in turn has helped us better understand the modern, media-driven political world in which we live.
It is true that the Surrealists, only a few years after coalescing, abandoned the idea of pure automatic writing, with Breton, Bataille, Louis Aragon and Phillipe Souppault, amongst others, writing critical Surrealist novels. But the efforts in automatism were vital. Language, ossified by the upper classes and imposed on all throughout history, needed to be liberated by “pure psychic automatism.” Breton may have been the “high priest of Surrealism,” ex-communicating members for trivial transgressions, but he was right about language.
At this moment, I, the writer, and you, the reader, are partaking at a banquet of language that we did not create—a system superimposed on our consciousness. The raw material of our minds is rendered by the symbolic aspect of language, and there is no escaping it; unless one takes psychedelics, descends into madness, attains a hightened non-symbolic spiritual state, or disrupts the historical, psychological superstructure of language.

Abstract: Rather than delve into the potential theo-logic of a Butlerian “constructivist” account of gender, this blog post proposes that we pause, and instead question the discursive operations undergirding the very idea of “the future of systematic theology.” 
Originally, I wanted to outline a bit of a Butlerian “constructivist” account of gender and examine the theological overlay/import, to lay out what I see as a potential alternative to a “Christianly gendered” theology… In Giving an Account of Oneself, Butler is quite clear that the socially-constructed self does not eliminate agency or norms, or even the need for norms. The “problem is not with universality,” she explains, “but with an operation of universality that fails to be responsive to cultural particularity and fails to undergo a reformulation of itself in response to the social and cultural conditions it includes within its scope of applicability” (6). The task, rather,  is to acknowledge and interrogate norms, to recognize the ways norms function to constitute oneself in relation with the other. This is what seems to be eschewed in many conversations that assume essentialist gender claims—i.e. the assumed connection between feminism and receptivity.
As I say in an earlier footnote, for a critique of gender—and sexual—essentialism—I highly recommend Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. What Butler does is this text is demonstrate how discourse shapes reality in terms of producing (gendered) subjectivities, and that this has oppressive and violent consequences. 

The deeper modern science goes in exploring Matter, the closer it comes to an understanding that there is a spiritual self-conscious being that manifests itself in the universe, and that Matter is a form of Spirit. First, the scientists recognized that Matter is Energy. Then further research yielded the understanding that Energy is Consciousness. When we look at modern physics, quantum theory, string theory and other cutting-edge theories, we find scientists now recognizing more and more clearly the intentionality and the consciousness implicit in the world of Matter. Matter is not dead, inanimate and simply dense “stuff”. It is actually alive with energy; in fact, so much energy that releasing it can create enormous power as we see in atom bombs and nuclear power plants!
What is missing when we see Matter as “inanimate” is simply that we do not have the ability to see and understand the packed intensity and density of Matter. Just as we now recognize an electro-magnetic spectrum that includes waves that are both above and below our threshold of perception, there are expressions of energy and consciousness both above and below our ability to perceive them.

The Ultimate Foundation Of A True Sociology from ANTIDOTE by Sauvik von Chakraverti SATURDAY, 9 JUNE 2012
This, then, is the “constant” – the Individual Mind. This is the “epistemological foundation” of this New Science. This approach was inaugurated by Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School of Economics, in the 1880s and, after him, fully developed by Ludwig von Mises during the 20th century.
It was Mises, in the first 100 pages of his Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, who first outlined the constant features of the trading human mind, features common to us all - and these he termed "mental categories" that are embedded within the mind's "logical structure." Mises took a very different view of this mind, a view that distinguished him from John Locke and many other philosophers, who believed that the mind was a tabula rasaupon which experience wrote its own story. “No,” said Mises, preferring to cite Leibniz, who said, “there is nothing in the intellect that has not been previously in the senses – except the intellect itself.”
In other words, the logical structure of the human mind comes as a “given” to us – given, that is, before any experience. Indeed, without it, we would not know how to “categorise” experiences. We would not know how to "grasp the meaning" of the "concepts" these mental categories represent. There would be no difference between us and the animals – had it not been for our very human reason.
For example, Capital is one such category Mises listed, and along with this he listed Income. These are to be found in the minds of any nomadic herdsman who "counts his sheep" and, while he may sell of consume some, makes sure that the size of his herd does not diminish: that is, he is careful not to "consume capital." His natural "good sense" makes him "accumulate capital."

Review of the Economic Ideas of Ander Chydenius Perhaps Anticipating Adam Smith from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy Nov 29, 2012 "Anticipating The Wealth of Nations: The Selected Works of Anders Chydenius (1729-1803)" Published by EH.Net (November 2012) Maren Jonasson and Pertti Hyttinen, editors, Anticipating The Wealth of Nations: The Selected Works of Anders Chydenius (1729-1803). Translated from the original by Peter C. Hogg. London: Routledge, 2012.

November 29, 2012

Those who grew up under The Mother’s personal care have betrayed her

The Trustees derive their power from the divine and secular centre that the Mother occupied when She was physically present. Disciples and followers unquestioningly accepted Her authority and had full faith in Her divine knowledge both in spiritual and worldly matters. That physical space having fallen vacant in November 1973, the first Trustees and heads of departments chosen by the Mother continued to hold sway over the community for a couple of decades by acting with sufficient maturity and tact. As they quietly exited the mortal scene and were replaced by those who were not directly chosen by the Mother, the moral credibility of the next batch of Trustees and heads of departments rapidly diminished and, within a decade or two, all that remained was their legal authority.
In this respect, devotees from outside, who have settled in the Ashram from a long time, and the so-called home grown “children of the Mother” are both responsible for this administrative deterioration. As a matter of fact, if anybody has betrayed Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in the present crisis, it is the generation that grew up under the Mother’s personal care – there are of course a few exceptions who unfortunately have not been able to assert themselves effectively. [Cf. A Basic Scheme for Sri Aurobindo Ashram – proposed by an Ashramite.]

IIM-A's decision comes on the back of the premier B-school being awarded a Rs one crore top grant from Education Innovation Fund for India (EIFI), a collaborative project between the HP Sustainability & Social Innovation group and the India Council for Integral Education (ICIE), an initiative of the Sri Aurobindo Society.

The Journal of the Bihar Research Society - Volume 42 - Page 224 - Bihar Research Society - 1956 - Mature of History The basic concepts of Aurobindo 's philosophy — Sachchidananda or the Supreme Spiritual reality, supermind and evolutionary progression are the foundations on which is constructed...

Towards a new India - Page 27 - Karan Singh (Sadr-i-Riyasat of Jammu and Kashmir) - 1974 - The two important concepts of Aurobindo, then, were of the nation as a spiritual entity and of nationalism as the highest sadhana. Besides Aurobindo felt that because India had been violently subjugated, she was fully justified, in using ...

The perennial quest for a psychology with a soul: an inquiry into ... - Page 542 - Joseph Vrinte - 2002 - Preview Ken Wilber's all-quadrant, all-level approach aims at a multi-causal analysis without reducing one to the other. Could it be that the weak areas that Ken Wilber identified are more closely related to Sri Aurobindo's disciples than to his vision?

Teilhard De Chardin and Eastern Religions: Spirituality and ... - Page 227 - Ursula KingJoseph Needham - 2011 - Preview - Yet it is of little help in furthering understanding or comparative assessment when some of Aurobindo's disciples maintain that Teilhard has written little that Aurobindo has not expressed much better or claim that the latter has in fact ...

The philosophy of Sri Aurobindo in the light of the Gospel - Page 71 Eva Olsson - 1959 - But such are as a rule not found among Sri Aurobindo's disciples, who consider the sense of guilt of sin as the cause of the inferiority complex in man, discouraging his own efforts to rise. According to Sri Aurobindo man's own efforts are a ...

The Lives of Sri Aurobindo - Page 369 - Peter Heehs - 2008 - Preview - Around 1930 some of Sri Aurobindo's disciples began to ask him questions about poetry and to send him poems for evaluation. He seems to have relished this correspondence, writing replies covering a half-dozen literatures and a dazzling ...

History of dharmaśāstra: (ancient and mediæval religious and civil ... - Page 1466 - ṇḍuraga Vāmana KāeBhandarkar Oriental Research Institute - Can anybody point out even half a dozen men and disciples of Aurobindo who have devoted all their energies to the regeneration of the country and of the human race on his lines ? The position of the Ashram itself is rather vague, anomalous ...

Asia: Asian quarterly of culture and synthesis - Volume 1 - Page 221 - René de Berval - 1951 - The disciples of Aurobindo have expressed in moving terms the remembrance of their Master. They have extolled the superhuman majesty of each his look, each movement, each way of his, despite the modest and gentle expression which he ...

The genius of India - Page 145 - Guy Sorman - 2001 - It is near Pondicherry that the disciples of Aurobindo have built a contemporary Tower of Babel. In February 1968, a few weeks before May 1968, thousands of young men and women, in response to a call from the Mother, congregated from all...

Vishnu on Freud's desk: a reader in psychoanalysis and Hinduism - Page 56 - T. G. VaidyanathanJeffrey John Kripal - 1999 - various disciples of Aurobindo and Ramakrishna and, of course, a notable correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi.34 'The Unity of Europe and Asia', he wrote, 'must be, in the coming centuries, the most noble task of mankind'.35 Starting in ...

Modern Vedanta - Page 235  - P. K. Das - 2004 - Scholars of Sri Aurobindo's thought, like late Prof. S.K. Maitra, consider Sri Aurobindo's speculation about the future of man as the most important aspect of his philosophy. This, however, is not the near future but a distant far off time, so far ...

The Eastern journal of international law: quarterly organ of the ... - Volume 10 - Page 43 - Eastern Centre of International Studies - 1978 - The view that the East is East and West is West stands to be refuted and hence scholars of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy seem to justify his theory of evolution as a true reconciliation between the East and the West. According to them, a meeting ... Indian philosophical annual - Volumes 8-11 - Page 139 - University of Madras. Centre of Advanced Study in Philosophy - 1976 

The Journal of Indian writing in English - Volume 33 - Page 85 - G. S. Balarama Gupta - 2005 - The ease with which the writer relates Sri Aurobindo's yogic career with the poetic career, and the profusion of critical support he draws upon, makes this book a convenient first book for other aspirant scholars of Sri Aurobindo, as well as an ...

Colorado's Sanctuaries, Retreats, and Sacred Places - Jean TorkelsonBill Bonebrake - 2001 - Preview As read by Aurobindo scholars and disciples, the poem is a mantra that followers use to achieve spiritual illumination. No mention of Aurobindo's life would be complete without paying tribute to his spiritual co-worker, known to disciples as The...

The Yoga Party: Philosophical Writings - Page 15 - Douglas E Frame - 2009 - Preview ... you have an evolution of the body, so also is there an evolution of the spirit and contrariwise. The most interesting thing I find in Sri Aurobindo and I'm sure Aurobindo scholars would concur, is that you don't need to escape rebirth to become ...

Sri Aurobindo and his contemporary thinkers - Page 136 - Indrani SanyalKrishna RoyJadavpur University - 2007 - As we know, it is through the commendable efforts of some living scholars like Dr Kireet Joshi of the ICPR, Sri Samar Basu of the World Union of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry and other Sri Aurobindo scholars of repute that Sri Aurobindo ...
Gandhi-Aurobindo and Radhakrishnan on Bhagavadgita - Page 123 - Susmit Prasad PaniGeeta Satpathy - 2009 - ... and the interpretations of eminent scholars like Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Sri Aurobindo. Scholars suspected that Gandhi had given a twist to the Gita to fit his doctrine of non-violence, and that his view was effected by the study of the Bible.

Indian and foreign review - Volume 10 - Page ccxx - India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Publications Division – 1972 - Despite differences over basic issues, Tilak hailed Ranade as "a man of vision and action". Mahadeo Govind Ranade was a "man of God", ...

The Plays of Sri Aurobindo, a study - Page 1 - S. S. Kulkarni - 1990 - Various Aurobindo scholars have established him as an important Indian English poet. The bulk and the quality of his poems and plays published in the Birth Centenary Library series justify his claim that he was a poet first and everything else...

Sri Aurobindo's plays: a thematic study - Page xi - Sheo Jaiswal - 1993 - I owe special debt of gratitude to all other eminent Sri Aurobindo scholars, especially Prof. K.R.S. Iyengar, Mr. K.D. Sethna, Dr. Prema Nandkumar, Mr. M.V. Seetaraman, Dr. V.K. Gokak as also Prof. M.K. Naik and Dr. A.K. Sinha, whose works ...

Indian literature in English, 1827-1979: a guide to information ... - Page 476 - Amritjit SinghRajiva VermaIrene M. Joshi - 1981 - Chambersburg, Pa.: Wilson Books, 1974. Includes six essays by Aurobindo scholars from the West. Mehta, Rohit. THE BEING AND THE BECOMING; THOUGHTS ON SRI AUROBINDO'S ESSAYS ON THE GITA. Ahmedabad: R.N. Amin, 1975.

Journal of Indian psychology - Volume 22 - Page 75 - Andhra University - 2004 - ... more commendable scholarly service if he had chosen to develop Aurobindo's vision and thought to address the disturbing puzzles and limitations of contemporary psychological thought. lt is not unlikely that many Aurobindo scholars would ...

Triveni - Volume 52 - Page 30 1983 - This fundamental similarity between Cousins and Sri Aurobindo has not received sufficient attention from Aurobindo scholars and critics because of the fact that Cousins ' name disappeared from the literary horizon and Sri Aurobindo shot up ... Journal of South Asian literature - Volumes 24-25 - Page 120 - Michigan State University. Asian Studies Center - 1989

Tamil civilization: quarterly research journal of the Tamil University - Volume 6 - Page 71 - Tañcai Tamip Palkalaik Kaakam - 1988 - Seeing that this idea is a central element in the thought-structure of Sri Aurobindo, scholars have introduced this expression while discussing the teachings of Sri Aurobindo. However it does not mean that the term 'integralism' is of secondary ...

Complaints of Mrinalini pointless since Sri Aurobindo is no longer himself

Swamy Dayananda – The Lion Saint by @krishnarjun108 Posted on November 27, 2012 
Dayananda induced much needed shock treatment to hindu society. It was at its lowest ebb, obsessed with empty rituals, mindless sectarianism, casteism and superstition with an ostrich like approach to internal and external siege from enemies of its existence… Christian missionaries were targeting weakest links in hindu society and luring young minds in a systematic manner exploiting internal contradictions of hindus. Traditional hindu intellectual class was unable to cope up with the situation, time demanded an unconventional and radical approach to prevent society from dipping into self-hate.
Dayananda initiated much needed self-introspection in hindu society, reminded hindus of their vedic roots, highlighted the vedic core of hindu dharma with a rational approach. He also reminded hindus that knowledge, not dogma was the source of their path. He prompted hindus to return to basics, be rational and engage in the world with confidence. He was a critic of maya philosophy. The world to him is as real as a slap on the face.

Reflections on Indian English literature - Page 110 - Mukesh Ranjan VermaKrishna Autar Agrawal - 2002 - Preview S.K. Mitra has given an exhaustive review of the world-response to Sri Aurobindo. Be it Europe or America, Universities or general reader, it is always Sri Aurobindo the philosopher who is admired and appreciated (251-78). Few and rare are ...

Sri Aurobindo: a biography and a history - Page 755 - K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar - 1985 - To believe in the existence of this Power, to aspire to be a channel of its Manifestation, to realise this aspiration progressively: such could be our positive response to Sri Aurobindo. There are those, however, for whom Sri Aurobindo is little ...

Mother India: monthly review of culture - Volume 31 - Page 115 - Sri Aurobindo Ashram - 1979 - Certainly it is a major but negative response to Sri Aurobindo, for there is a clear recognition that his ideas constitute a real challenge to Shankara's Mayavada. Adoption of Sri Aurobindo...

India's cultural empire and her future - Page 7 - Sisirkumar Mitra - 1947 -... China and Tan Yun- Shan — Response to Sri Aurobindo's ideal — India's spiritual Kingdom of the future. . 

Kakatiya journal of English studies - Volume 6 - Page 66 - Kakatiya University. Dept. of EnglishPost-Graduate Centre,Warangal Dept. of English - 1984 - A response to Sri Aurobindo would be a return to sanity and spirituality. It is a sign of his creative genius that he has been able to equate the two. Beauty has a role to play beyond amusement and self-expression, not knowing which self to ...

Aurobindo's philosophy of Brahman - Page 119 - Stephen H. Phillips - 1986 - Preview - Similarly, what could Sankara say in response to Aurobindo, were he alive and willing to admit to having the type of mystic experience that Aurobindo thinks Sankara had? Nevertheless, the point that some further experience could invalidate...

A History of Indian Literature in English - Page 125 Arvind Krishna Mehrotra - 2003 - Preview - More editions the highly polarised critical response to Aurobindo's oeuvre. K.R. Srinivasa lyengar closes his discussion of the poem by approvingly quoting the opinion: 'Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the world for expanding man's mind ...

The Book review - Volumes 22-23 - Page 26 1998 - ... Digambar Nanda of Contai who had made a contribution of a huge sum of Rs. 1000. At this time Volunteer Samitis came up in response to Aurobindo Ghosh's call for 'Shakti' i.e. physical regeneration of the country for the realisation of the ...

Sri Aurobindo and his Contemporary Thinkers bookvistas.com - They take up interpretations of violence and non-violence by Sri Aurobindo and Mahatma Gandhi, Vivekananda's outlook about morality, caste system and dharma, and response of Aurobindo, Tilak and Gokhale to Western imperialism.

Educational Administration And Management:An Integrated Approach - Page 152 - S.L. Goel Aruna Goel - 2009 - Preview Knowledge is such a thing that the more you have it, the more you realize how little you know. That makes you humble and puts you in the position of a learner even while you teach. I recall the response of Sri Aurobindo to a group of teachers ...

Quality and Excellence in Higher Education - Volume 2 - Page 66 - Aruna GoelS.L. Goel - 2010 - Preview I recall the response of Sri Aurobindo to a group of teachers who sought his advice on how to become good teachers. He reportedly said: "Every teacher should bear in mind that nothing can be taught, but everything can be learnt." There is ...

Mother India: monthly review of culture - Volume 58 - Page 415 - Sri Aurobindo Ashram - 2005 - This response of Sri Aurobindo's makes all the complaints of Mrinalini pointless since Sri Aurobindo is no longer himself but only a tool in the hands of the Divine and so he cannot be judged any longer from the human standpoint which takes ...

The New approach to education - Page 9 Norman C. Dowsett, Sita Ram Jayaswal - 1974 - The Response of Sri Aurobindo Ashram The Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education at Pondicherry has been experimenting along these lines recognising the world cry and the urgent need, for the past thirty years. This experience ...

World union - Volume 14 - Page 4 - World Union (Organization) - 1974 - I greet you in the name of the World Union which is the response of Sri Aurobindo Ashram's urgent call to the divided world for existence and for recovering its soul of unity. Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's philosophy and practice of perfect life ...

The Religious, the Spiritual, and the Secular: Auroville and ... - Page 176 - Robert Neil Minor - 1999 - Preview - For a full discussion of Aurobindo's position toward "religion" and "the religions," see Robert N. Minor, "The Response of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother," in Modern Indian Responses to Religious Pluralism, edited by Harold Coward (Albany: ...

Modern Indian Responses - Page 85 - Harold G. Coward - 1987 - Preview - Chapter Five THE RESPONSE OF SRI AUROBINDO AND THE MOTHER R.N. Minor When the Indian political activist, Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) fled British India in 1910 for French Pondicherry in southeast India, he intended to ... 

November 28, 2012

Sri Aurobindo – the tallest Vedic intellect

Tweets 23 Nov Sangeeta Goswami ‏@SangeetaRG @yrskmohan '12 years with Sri Aurobindo' by Nirod baran and #LIfeDivine the books always on my desk :) @Back2Vedas  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party  View conversation
22 Nov Rajarshi ‏@TheRajarshi Marvelous, fiery opposition to a world-negating end of the spiritual journey. Sri Aurobindo.  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party
20 Nov ∫ubra ‏@IntegralUnity @NirvaniBliss Vivekananda was his spiritual guru (as he was for many) Aurobindo's writings would be v useful from a western pov  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party  View conversation
25 Nov Rajmohan Srinivas ‏@yrskmohan @Back2Vedas but my goes not to Aurobindo, but to Mother. If Sri Aurobindo was theory she was a practical demonstration.  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party  View conversation
19h Gautam Chikermane ‏@gchikermane While on the subject, another absolute must-read: The Future Poetry by Sri Aurobindo http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/sriauro/downloadpdf.php?id=39 …  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party
21 Nov Rajarshi ‏@TheRajarshi Finally got a framed, large photograph of Sri Aurobindo. Was looking out for one. Veritable silence on a throne of equipoise. Retweeted by Savitri Era Party
22 Nov Rajarshi ‏@TheRajarshi More I read and contemplate on Sri Aurobindo's writings, more I get amazed. In my opinion, the tallest Vedic intellect in a very long time.  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party
22 Nov Rajarshi ‏@TheRajarshi There are clear Tantric roots in the first impetus which drove Sri Aurobindo towards sadhana. He wanted Shakti, to liberate India. Retweeted by Savitri Era Party
22 Nov Rajarshi ‏@TheRajarshi It was Sri Aurobindo who told Tilak that moderates cannot be carried along. The revolutionaries wanted to break free, aim for full swaraj.  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party
23 Nov Kunal Dave ‏@kunal_nd @Back2Vedas agree on dat front. Infact if u look at history in 2nd world war it was Sri Aurobindo who gav powers to Churchill against Hitler.  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party  View conversation
21h krishnarjun ‏@krishnarjun108 When compared to the intellectual debates stimulated by the likes of Dayananda, Aurobindo hindu thought output abysmal after independence  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party
20 Nov Rangesh Sridhar ‏@kshetragnya @visaraj that Tilak and Aurobindo spearheaded was the first truly mass movement. and all we hear is Gandhi Archanai (3/n)  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party
26 Nov Savitri Era Party ‏@SavitriEraParty @saliltripathi With a slight modification of course, with Sri Aurobindo and his 1947 Five Dreams as the pivot. @sabhlok  View conversation
20m Savitri Era Party ‏@SavitriEraParty [Mimicry, mockery or mumukṣutva? A response to Deepak Sarma, by Jeffery D. Long - from Love of All Wisdom by Amod Lele] http://loveofallwisdom.com/2012/11/mimicry-mockery-or-mumuk%e1%b9%a3utva-a-response-to-deepak-sarma-by-jeffery-d-long/ …

So how can we know what she intended then and what she intends now for Auroville’s material development? Ultimately, the only way to know this for sure is to attain to the same consciousness as hers. Failing this, however, (and I assume that most of us do fail in this) there may be other indications.  ...
In the absence of unmistakable clues like this perhaps our wisest method, if we feel we need to ‘update’ or interpret Mother (and, let’s face it, we are doing it all the time), is first to try to understand the spirit or the principle behind some of her proposals. 11:36 AM Friday, March 04, 2011 8:09 AM

IPI: Events for December: International Workshop on Healing, Counselling & Therapy based on Principles of Indian Psychology Organised by Centre for Indian Psychology, JGI, at Jain University Global Campus, Bangaluru, December 13 – 15, 2012. For details see the invitation brochure. For registration use the application form

'Between Then and Now': The Changing Pattern of Modern Oriya ... indianfolklore.org by S Chhotaray – 2010 Narratives of Regional Identity: Revisiting Modern Oriya Theatre from 1880-1980 Sharmila Chhotaray
Ramshankar Ray’s Kanchi Kaveri, is generally recognized as the first modern Oriya theatre, staged in Cuttack in the year 1880… Aswini kumar Ghosh, one of the pioneers of Oriya drama in the second decade of 20th century wrote his first play Bhisma (1915) in blank verse… After 1939, Oriya drama moved toward a highly commercial market. Kalicharan Pattanayak switched over from Rasa and Lila, the traditional lyrical dramas to social plays like Girls’ School performed on Proscenium stage in his Orissa Theatres in 1939…
In sixties, a paradox was seen in Oriya Theater by the playwright Gopal Chhotray who provided the new orientation to the poetic plays of the popular Jatra playwrights. However, these revived myth-based and tradition-bound plays till the end of sixties could only attract its maximum popularity at the mass level.
The third phase is the post 1960S of Oriya theatre: The new drama movement. The gradual decline of Annapurna theatre paved way to the new drama era of Manoranjan Das followed by Bijay Mishra, Biswajit Das, Byomakesh Tripathy, Jadunath Das Mohapatra, Basant Mohapatra, Ratnakar Chaini and Ramesh Prasad Panigrahi. Theatre during this period modern experiment such as these inspired by Brecht, Freud and Sartre. However, the experimental and epic theaters were not found in favor (Tripathy, 1995:52)…
Manoranjan’s Bana Hansi (Wild Duck) pioneered the new drama movement that heralded a new era and opened up a whole new vista of new ideas. Das followed European dramatists like Ibsen, O’Neil, and Eliot’s symbolic expressionism but Freud’s psychoanalysis was the crucial aspect of his play. If Manoranjan showed psychological time by mingling the past, the present and the future, Bijoy Mishra in his Shaba Bahaka Mane (The pall-bearers) spoke of the real, actual time and in his play the time of action corresponded to performance. Mishra’s play has been called the first absurd Oriya play. Similarly, Biswajit Das depicts contemporary society and the living reality in his plays like Mrugaya, (the royal Hunt). In this play he has showed how darkness is the essence of the life and the gap between what we want and what we get increases. He has also contributed lighting techniques to the Oriya stage, which was underdeveloped for long. To break this absurdist tradition or combining other traditions into this new dramatic revolution, Ramesh Panigrahi and Ratnakar Chaini contributed new kinds of plays. Chaini made an appropriate use of myth to contemporize the theatre experience. Both of them have been highly influenced by Shakespeare, Shepherd etc and tried to reflect it in their play a psychoanalytical exploration of marital crisis… For instance, the common ‘Oriya mind’ was not prepared to accept the ‘absurd’ plays for long.

Indian literature - Volume 38, Issues 1-3 - Page 99 - Sahitya Akademi - 1995 - When 'Srujani' the famous theatre group of Orissa was established in 1964, for it, he wrote plays: Banahansi, Aranya Fasala, Amrutasya Putrah, Katha Ghoda, Urmi, Sabdalipi, Klanta Prajapati, Bitarhita Aparahna and Nandika Keshari. Authors speak - SaccidānandanSāhitya Akādemī - 2006 - Preview - More editions The products of this new creative consciousness include Banahansi (1966), Aranya fasala (1970) and Katha Ghoda (1972). In Banahansi, the failure both in love and in family of a couple is depicted and the play ends with their intense agony of ...

November 27, 2012

Ethics and an edifice of falsity, fantasy, and indeterminacy

Why India Is Not A Secular State - Omar Khalidi Outlook 29 Jan 2009 – With the Republic Day just gone by, it is time to ask: But is India really a secular state? I do not think so…
Official functions of the government whether at the central or state levels often commence with Hindu ceremonies of lighting lamps, breaking coconuts, and recitation of slokas. There is no disapproval to the fact that functions of central and state ministries of education begin with Sarasvati vandana.

India is not secular wichaar.com 6 Feb 2009 – It is easier now to understand the fallacy of Dr. Omar Khalidi's argument, such as it is, in his essay Why India Is Not A Secular State…
When the French writer Andre Malraux asked Jawaharlal Nehru in 1958 about his "greatest difficulty since Independence" then Nehru replied, "Creating a just state by just means". He then added: "Perhaps, too, creating a secular state in a religious country." Indian state is a work in progress but the foundations are right. The champions of modern Indian state fought hard to create a secular democratic state.

Spirituality and Ethics in Management - Page 214 - Google Books Result - Laszlo Zsolnai - 2011 - Laszlo Zsolnai, Business Ethics Center, Budapest University of Economic Sciences - Taking Spirituality Seriously: Misuse of Spirituality
As spirituality is becoming popular there is certain danger of its being misinterpreted and misused in business and management. Chakraborty warns that there is a tendency to treat spirituality as yet another means or tool to further the dominant objective and measurable goals of business. We can observe that spirituality is sometimes treated as either a new fad for professionals to rake in some money or a means to improve competitive strength for higher market share and bottom line figures.
Bouckaert clearly explains the problem. He states that rational economic theory tells us that ethics is needed as a resource to temper opportunism and distrust because of uncertainty and asymmetric information. Therefore ethics might make economic sense by reducing transaction costs, promoting profitable cooperative behavior and creating a competitive advantage. This rational argument does not challenge the economic logic; it only introduces ethics into the web of instrumental rationality. The rational argument for business ethics results in a paradox.

The issue isn’t one of rejecting these figures because of their style as Nussbaum did in the case of Butler, nor is it one of rejecting these thinkers at all, but rather of identifying a different sort of power at work in these texts that often is quite at odds with the explicit aims of the texts. This point seems to be getting lost in a number of the responses, no doubt because us continentalists– especially if we’re from the United States –are especially sensitive to this issue because we’ve suffered so many difficulties professionally in relation to Anglo-American philosophy having to defend the value of these thinkers. We know (or many of us think), for example, that there is something of tremendous value in Lacan’s work, yet the very first thing we encounter again and again in discussions with others about someone like Lacan, is curt dismissals of that work based on style alone. We thus find ourselves in the position of having to do all sorts of defensive legwork defending the purpose and importance of both the text and its stylistic decisions before we can even begin to discuss the conceptual issues.
What I’m proposing is that these stylistic practices have their own dynamic of power that is often at odds with the express aim of these practices. In A Thousand Plateaus, for example, Deleuze and Guattari contrast root-books and rhizome-books in the introduction to the work. Root-books are centralized, “paranoid” (in Deleuze and Guattari’s sense of the word), and presided over by an author-function that works much like a sovereign. Rhizome-books, by contrast, lack any centralizations, can be read in a variety of different ways, and connected to anything we might like. at 6:59 PM

The Lectern: 'Rene Leys' Victor Segalen 10 Oct 2011 [In this entrancing story of spiritual adventure, a Westerner in Peking seeks the mystery at the heart of the Forbidden City. ... Google Books]
Then, Segalen has his third epiphany, that every tale told to him by Leys in fact originated as a suggestion from Segalen himself, in his obsession with the Kuang Hsu Emperor, in his questions to the lad in their lessons and conversations, and his quest to gain entry into the Within, the Forbidden City. Leys took these questions and suggestions from Segalen, and built up from them an edifice of falsity and fantasy and fed it back to Segalen: ...from the very moment of our first meeting...Everything I said, he did. …
At this point the reader is reminded of the kind of narrative strategies used by Italo Calvino in If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. But whereas Calvino was exploring the psychology of reading, here the narratives games have an important philosophical function, which is to examine the different cultural attitudes towards indeterminacy itself.
The West, we can simply say, regards indeterminacy as problematic. The Western mind, trained in the precision of Aristotelian scientism and the Socratic syllogism, seeks to resolve indeterminacy into an either-or, or at least, tries to establish a clear boundary between component or antithetical elements of an entity. This is reflected in Indo-European, inflected languages, whose driving force is in the direction of disambiguation.
The East, on the other hand, is much more comfortable with indeterminacy, with vagueness. Chinese characters embody several ideas and the distinctions between them are not sought; the Chinese language, with its lack of distinction between nouns and verbs, lack of pronoun use and so on, is much more capable of sustaining ambiguity. Indeed we can go further and say the whole language and culture privileges indeterminacy, and that the search for clarification, for disambiguation, is not its main direction. For the Chinese, the process of clarification carries with it the inherent danger of creating false distinctions where none exist in nature, of the false imposition of mind on matter, of the name obscuring the thing, of a wrong seeing.
The Western mind seeks either-or distinctions; the Chinese mind is unperturbed by dwelling in a state of what Keats called 'negative capability'…The circular, anticipatory structure of the novel, and the fact that Rene Leys is a European lad ensures that the dialogue between West and East happens in the mind of the reader, not only on the page…
The mystery of the ways in which the fictional story of Rene Leys anticipates the real story of Sir Edmund Backhouse only deepens when we learn that in his memoir, Decadence Mandchoue, which has only this year been published, Backhouse, also like Rene Leys, claimed to have been the secret lover of his Empress Dowager (old Buddha), and to have had intimate knowledge of the workings of the Manchu Dynasty. VS died in 1919, however, and knew nothing of Backhouse's disgrace. POSTED BY MURR AT 11:55 AM MONDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2011

November 26, 2012

Georges van Vrekhem was a devoted child of The Mother & Sri Aurobindo

Sraddha - A Quarterly devoted to an exposition of the teachings  of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo Vol.4 No. 2 24 November, 2012 Sri Aurobindo Bhavan  8 Shakespeare Sarani  •  Kolkata 700 071
Editorial
When matter for the present issue of Sraddha had been finalised, we received news from Auroville of the passing away of Georges van Vrekhem on 31 August following a cardiac arrest. Georges was ailing and had been a heart patient for over 20 years. A voracious reader and a prolific writer, Georges was a true Aurobindonian to the core, a devoted child of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and one of the few exegetes of their teachings. Among his many publications, the two that stand out most are Beyond Man, the life and work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, which, according to the late Amal Kiran, can be considered as two of the best books that have been written on the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. He was a close personal friend and I will miss him sorely as would the entire Aurobindonian community in the Ashram, Auroville and indeed worldwide.
Contents
The Law Of  The Way Sri Aurobindo 9
Sri Aurobindo: The Recluse Of Pondicherry Barindra Kumar Ghose   11
The Last Embodied “Darshan” Amal Kiran 15
Gitanuvachan – Parts 5 & 6 Srimat  Anirvan 18
Avatar Debashish Banerji 43
The idea of “holding together the world,” what is referred to in the Gita as lokasamgraha, implies the secret power of unity present in the Becoming and at work to reconstitute through evolution the Conscious Harmony of the Purusha or Divine Person whose Sacrifice is this cosmos.
God  And The World Joan Price 69
Sri Aurobindo: Looking  For The True Vedanta Anita Chakraborty Goswami 76
Bringing Brahman Down To Earth: Lilavada In Colonial India Nalini Bhushan & Jay L. Garfield 84
Involution And Evolution: Murali Sivaramakrishnan 102
The Human Body – A Spiritual View Alok Pandey 111
Psychology: Five Major Indian Contributions Matthijs Cornelissen 118
Towards A Spiritual Mankind Usharanjan Chakraborty 141
How An Egyptian Discovered Sri  Aurobindo Zackaria Moursi 148
Georges van Vrekhem – An Obituary     153
Notes on Authors                                157
Cover : Country of the Mind by Giles Herdman
Anita Chakraborty obtained her MA in Philosophy in 1st class from North Bengal University securing a gold medal. She subsequently completed her M.Phil from thesame university. She is presently working as Associate Professor in the Dept. of Philosophy, Chanchal College, Chanchal, Malda, West Bengal.
Jay Garfield is Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Logic Programme and of the Five College Tibetan Studies in India Programme at Smith College, Professor in the graduate faculty of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Professor of Philosophy at Melbourne University and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies.  He teaches and pursues research in the philosophy of mind, foundations of cognitive science, logic, philosophy of language, Buddhist philosophy, cross-cultural hermeneutics, theoretical and applied ethics and epistemology. Garfield’s most recent books are his translation, with the ven Prof. Geshe Ngawang Samten of the FourteenthFifteenth Century Tibetan philosopher Tsong Khapa’s commentary on Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika (Ocean of Reasoning)  and  Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation (Oxford University Press 2002 and 2006), respectively.  Garfield is also working on projects on the development of the theory of mind in children with particular attention to the role of pretence in that process; the acquisition of evidentials and its relation to the development of theory of mind (with Jill deVilliers, Thomas Roeper and Peggy Speas), the history of 20th Century Indian philosophy (with Nalini Bhushan) and the nature of conventional truth in Madhyamaka (with Graham Priest and Tom Tillemans).  Other books in progress include the Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy (editor), Readings in Buddhist Philosophy (co-editor with William Edelglass for Oxford University Press), Trans-Buddhism: Transmission, Translation and Transformation (co-editor with Nalini Bhushan and Abraham Zablocki, for the University of Massachusetts Press), and  Sweet Reason: A Field Guide to Modern Logic (co-authored with Jim Henle and the late Thomas Tymoczko)
Joan Price has a Ph.D. from Arizona State University.  She is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Mesa Community College and has written several books, academic and for young readers. She is the author of Philosophy Through the Ages, a college textbook and Truth is a Bright Star, a Native American tale for children.  Joan has been a student of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother for 45 years and is an animal lover. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S.A.
Murali Sivaramakrishnan, poet, painter and critic, Professor, Department of English, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India is the author of The Mantra of Vision: An Overview of Sri Aurobindo’s Aesthetics (1997) and a number of critical essays and four volumes of poetry. He is the founder President of ASLE India (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment) and has travelled widely and participated in several conferences and workshops within the country and abroad. He has held more than 14 solo exhibitions of his works in India and abroad. He has authored over 100 research papers and his academic publications include: Figuring the Female: Women’s Discourse, Art and Literature (2005) co-edited; Tradition and Terrain: Aesthetic Continuities (2005) co-edited; Nature and Human Nature: Literature, Ecology, Meaning (2008); Learning to Think like Myself (2010); Ecological Criticism for the Present: Literature, Nature and the Critical Inquiry (2011) co-edit; Image and Culture :The Dynamics of Literary, Aesthetic and Cultural Representation (2011). Inter-Readings: Text, Context, Significance (2012) co-edited. He can be reached at smurals@gmail.com Website: www.smurali.cc.cchttp://smuralis.wordpress.com.
Nalini Bhushan earned her B.A. in Economics at Stella Maris College, and her M.A. and M.Phil. in Philosophy at Madras Christian College, Chennai, India. She completed her Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Bhushan is currently Professor of Philosophy at Smith College and Co-Director of the South Asia Concentration. Her research addresses questions in the philosophy of mind and language, aesthetics, the philosophy of science, and 19th and 20th century Indian philosophy. Bhushan is co-editor of Of Minds and Molecules: New Essays in the Philosophy of Chemistry (Oxford University Press 2000) and author of several influential articles in that field. Bhushan has also published articles in aesthetics and the philosophy of mind and language. She is co-editor of TransBuddhism: Translation, Transmission and Transformation (University of Massachusetts Press 2009), Indian Philosophy in English from Renaissance to Independence (Oxford University Press 2011) and Contrary Thinking: Selected Essays of Daya Krishna (Oxford University Press 2011). Bhushan is currently at work on a book on the history of Indian philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries and on the work of the modern Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil.
Zackaria Moursi, Egyptian by birth, was born in a well-known and respected Egyptian family and enjoyed a privileged childhood. In the 1960s at the age of 23, while studying in Germany on a doctoral scholarship, he came across a book on Integral Yoga, a compilation of texts by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, about whom he had never heard before. This triggered a turning-point in his life. Zackaria lived one year in Auroville and Pondicherry, and is currently living in the Sri Aurobindo Sadhana Peetham in LodiCalifornia, where he translates Sri Aurobindo and Mother into Arabic. He has already translated the Ashram compilation "Integral Healing", and the Arabic version is available in print. He has a bilingual website: www.saamia.com, where he posts miscellaneous translated texts. Professionally he has worked as university Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, school teacher, and programmer in different countries, and now, in his retirement, pursues his soul's and heart's desires, basking in Sri Aurobindo and Mother's Grace and Light.
Sraddha- Sri Aurobindo Bhavan 8 Shakespeare Sarani Kolkata 700 071
Editor: Arup Basu
Phone: 98302 58723 E-mail: arupbasu99@yahoo.com , arup.mbe@rediffmail.com
Published by Sri Aurobindo Centre for Research in Social Sciences Sri Aurobindo Bhavan 8 Shakespeare Sarani Kolkata 700071 Phone : 2282 3057, 2282 2162, 2282 1819