Sri Aurobindo's work is untouchable in terms of comprehensiveness

New book Awareness-in-Action: A Critical Integralism for the Challenges of Our Time March 2012 Click Here to Download Awareness-in-Action

Should you choose to read, discuss, and share this work, it will help to remember that its primary purpose is to seed derivative applications in such real-world fields of human action as economics, business, politics, governance, sociology, journalism, and activism. While I have already been doing so in economics and business, there is no shortage of opportunities for critical integral reconstruction of established theories and practices within, between, and beyond disciplinary and institutional boundaries. If you would like to apply Awareness-in-Action in your particular field, please let me know. I would be glad to help in any way I can. Daniel J. O'Connor, Bainbridge Island, Washington Popular articles Sustainable Growth: What is Right? Who Decides? - A Crisis of Vision: Toward a More Integral Economics

But what about the prospect of an integral theory that bridges and unites the essence of both evolution and creationism? What if the pattern that we observe as evolution was the explicit unfolding of an implicit pattern of latent potentials previously involved in the human and natural world? What if we and our world are simultaneously involved or enfolded Spirit and evolved or unfolded Matter, Life, Mind, etc.? This hypothesis was beautifully articulated nearly 100 years ago by Sri Aurobindo in The Life Divine.  3:44 AM Posted by Daniel O'Connor

Integral Yoga is the path to enlightenment put to paper by Sri Aurobindo, an Indian activist, guru and philosopher… My general comments on the philosophy of Aurobindo are exceedingly positive. He makes every attempt to be comprehensive and exhaustive in his explorations, the extent to which has not been improved upon since only about 20 years ago with the advent of Ken Wilber's work. For 30 years, Aurobindo's work was untouchable in terms of comprehensiveness. He commands an incredible breadth of knowledge with respect to not only all spiritual enlightenment paths, but psychology, sociology and politics. He beautifully blends the masculine (Divine) and feminine (The Mother) aspects of spirituality providing a balanced and comprehensive insight into the nature of God. There is only one major point which I think is a bit weak, which is the somewhat overreliance on a deus maquina for areas of transformation which cannot yet be clearly articulated logically. However, if you want to get a comprehensive and systematic formula for the purpose and meaning of life, specifically with regard to human evolution going forward, Aurobindo remains untouchable.  Brandon Peele 8:38 AM

Joy of being: The Integral Yoga The Hindu R. DINESH MADURAI, November 15, 2012

The Integral Yoga is all about how one pulls in all the faculties inward. This will be possible only when the Body, Vital (Prana) and the Mind all agree on one single pointed or overarching goal. This has to be permanent Happiness or Bliss. Once that choice is made, then the search for that is not outside or in circumstances or words of others. It will be a pure and simple identification with the One who is inside or the same One in any form externally. Then all other Desires, even if they exist will be sacrificed to That One. All Knowledge would be used only to deepen one’s experience of That One and He becomes one’s constant companion. All the weaknesses either of the Body, feelings or Mind all fall away to be replaced by a quiet enjoyment of the vagaries of Life. Then one does not feel pressure or feel Life is futile and try to change external circumstances but instead one becomes deeper and deeper inward. As this progresses, the right effort would be made to change external circumstances if required to enable one progress faster on this path.

Some Links by Don Boudreaux Nov 15, 2012 I, Pencil

The full six-plus-minute-long video will be officially released tomorrow: It’s a truly inspiring account of voluntary, globe-spanning human cooperation.

Some Thoughts on Naturalism from Larval Subjects - Oct 29, 2012

The paper and pencil that we use is not just an unnecessary prop that we use for the sake of convenience and that we could dispense with as representationalists would have it.  Rather, paper and pencil actually extend our minds and allow us to engage in forms of reasoning that we would not otherwise be capable of doing.  The paper remembers on our behalf.  As I prove a geometrical theorem, I write down each step on a piece of paper.  The paper preserves the earlier steps, allowing us to focus on the step we’re currently working on.  Because the paper preserves the earlier steps, we can return to them when we need them for a new stage in the proof.  More importantly, the paper reduces the work-load of the brain insofar as we don’t have to engage in the calorically costly activity of keeping all these steps in our mind, and increases the speed at which we’re able to solve the problem.  Clark’s theory is anti-representationalist in the sense that he claims that cognition involves the use of physical entities outside the brain, rather than claiming that all cognition is the manipulation of symbols in the brain.  For Clark, the paper and pencil are literally a part of the cognitive apparatus.  This is not an idealist thesis as he’s not suggesting that mind makes these physical entities, but is rather the thesis that the tools we use are a part of our cognitive system.  He could be mistaken– I happen to think he’s right –but the important point is that he’s able to arrive at this thesis by taking our biology seriously, by taking seriously limitations of our brains, memory, etc., and by taking seriously the fact that like all other critters we need to get around in the world, respond to events in the world in real time, etc.

Notice just how much Clark’s naturalism differs from that of E.O. Wilson’s.  Clark is not making the claim that everything we do is really about biological survival and reproduction.  In fact, Clark’s extended mind hypothesis seeks to explain how, through our use of various media, we go beyond our biology.  The media that we use render us capable of things that at the level of simple biology we would not be capable of.  For Clark the first prosthesis or mental extension we develop is language.  Language, according to Clark, extends our mind dramatically, allowing us, for example, to think of entities in terms of general classes and in their absence in a way that would not be possible for perceptual systems alone.  In many respects, though a naturalism, Clark’s hypothesis is diametrically opposed to Wilson’s.  Humans become something different with each new medium they invent.  We don’t simply endlessly repeat the same biological imperatives of reproduction and survival.