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December 31, 2012

Intellect divisible into two important classes and Invisible hand

Sri Aurobindo Society: Study circle meeting on ‘The Mother’, 3 Lajapathi Roy Street, Chinna Chokkikulam, 10.30 a.m.

Munshi was educated in Baroda under Sri Aurobindo, and started his career as a lawyer and entered into politics under the guidance of Dr. Annie Besant and...

Transforming India - The book “Material things are not to be despised – without them there can be no manifestation in the material world.” Sri Aurobindo

Young India! Reject State Education! from ANTIDOTE by Sauvik von Chakraverti Dec 30, 2012 Read about James Watt - and how this "steam engine" happened. Read about Edison - a man who "invented" so many, many wondrous products! And there have been so many such - and there are many such even today…
NEW KNOWLEDGE - is "produced." This includes "new histories" - something that NO COURT HISTORIAN ever does! We may say "Austrian School of Economics" - but even this School of Thought has never stayed STATIC. Mises, for example - he raised a TOWER above whatever Menger had begun. Just as I have made attempts to further "develop" upon all that Mises has left behind. Each one of us is a "unique and non-repeatable" human-in-time. We are not here to repeat or relive the lives of ancestors - like these "political epigones" who claim to be "leaders" - and even "youth leaders" - or even "role models." It is the PREROGATIVE OF YOUTH to contribute something NEW to the vast inventory of mankind.

We drifted away from our own dharma and karma, we gave up the teachings of Geeta, we betrayed our ancestors-Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo. Today ...

The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs – A Critical Appraisal · Some Issues of Critical Importance · The Present Situation – Various Practices Adopted in ...

The focus on the individual details makes us lose sight of the “big picture”, the sense or significance, the perspective. Impressionist painters such as Vincent Van Gogh conveyed this sense through their artistic efforts. Up close, their paintings overwhelm one with the incredible number of brush strokes, texture, and color. There is however a “tipping point” as one backs away from the canvas where one suddenly switches from the “detail view” to the “gestalt”, the idea being conveyed, and suddenly the “big picture” takes over and the brush strokes are seen for what they are, the technique or the “facts” by which a larger significance is expressed.
Similarly, we become so involved in and overwhelmed by the detailed acts of our day to day lives that we tend not to recognize the “big picture”, the significance of those lives or those acts.
Sri Aurobindo discusses this situation with a very insightful view about the relationship between the day to day details and the soul’s meaning in creating and carrying out those details… Just as we undergo a transformation in our view of life when we understand that the sun does not revolve around the earth, but the earth around the sun; and that the entire solar system is part of an enormous Milky Way Galaxy which is a part of a larger universe, we can begin to understand the soul’s action and the true meaning of the details of our day to day lives when we take a different standpoint outside the focus on each of the details and begin to view the “big picture”.
Modern psychologists point out that there are essentially two hemispheres to the human brain. Left brain activity tends to be fixated on details, analysis and “the trees” of our lives; while right brain activity looks at the “gestalt”, the “big picture”, “the forest” if you will. Both of these perspectives are valuable, but they must be integrated in order to give a true sense and meaning to what we experience.

Those who practice the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have developed the habit of reading their books either alone or during study circles. Comment on Sravana Manana and Nidhidhyasana by Sandeep Dec 31, 2012
One of the aspects I forgot to emphasize in the main article is the fact that the ancients used to transmit knowledge orally rather than via writing. Texts were read aloud rather than silently as we do now. And the medium of transmission was through poetic verses rather than prose. That allowed the ancients to absorb and remember the melody of a composition which might have helped to stimulate the power of “intuition”. OTOH, we are drowned very much in an intellectual and visual era.
Although it is known that the Vedas were transmitted orally, historical documentation is scarce in India. In Greece and Rome, however, we find records that indicate that reading was usually done aloud. See a few anecdotes from Plutarch, St Augustine and St. Benedict here: http://www.readingaloud.org/history.htm. Also see online Chapter 2 of Alberto Manguel’s “A History of Reading” - There are plenty of other books on the subject. For example, Rosalind Thomas on page 13 of her Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece
Predictions of Sri Aurobindo Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother 4 Aug 2012 Lateralization of brain function (thanks to Ashish Kumar Sahani who pointed this out in a comment seen below)
Ashish September 17, 2012 at 6:30 am Link (http://surasa.net/aurobindo/aurowrit.htm) to “A system of national education” as proposed by Sri Aurobindo in Karmayogin 1909. It seems he knew about the workings of left and right half of the brain much before the modern split brain experiments which began only in 1950 which can be verified from this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain#History
Sandeep October 8, 2012 at 11:37 am Rajiv Malhotra has independently discovered the same prescient observation of Sri Aurobindo. On pages 283-284 of his book Being Different, he writes:
“Sri Aurobindo describes the dichotomy between the left and right as follows:
The intellect is an organ composed of several groups of functions, divisible into two important classes, the functions and faculties of the right hand, the functions and faculties of the left. The faculties of the right hand are comprehensive, creative, and synthetic, the faculties of the left hand critical and analytic … The left limits itself to ascertained truth, the right grasps that which is still elusive or unascertained. Both are essential to the completeness of the human reason
It is noteworthy that Sri Aurobindo wrote this in 1910, long before modern science came up with the idea that there are differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. A yogic technique of pranayama consists of breathing through the nostrils in such a way as to synchronize the two hemispheres.”
ashish kumar sahani October 9, 2012 at 3:48 am Thank you Sandeep, I was quite sure that Sri Aurobindo was the first to speak about left half and right half of the Buddhi. Your detailed and persistent effort in validating the observation added a seal of certainty to it. I hope you will mention this in your main article very soon. I will like to congratulate you for this blog which is truly a treasure house of knowledge for spiritual aspirants. 
Whatever theory that is superimposed on phenomenal data is just a collective belief upheld by the personalities of the participating scientists. Some day, these scientists will die and be replaced by a new set of scientists who might question and overturn the “consciousness-based models” and return to the more close-fitting materialistic theories. Given alternate explanations, science works fine with “inference to best explanation” or parsimonious theories. Nothing in the phenomenal world requires a supernatural explanation. The world works fine as it is. December 29, 2012 at 12:32 pm
I am more inclined to believe that the scientists will just conjure up more refined materialistic theories to explain away the anomalies and discoveries that crop up with new instruments and experiments. Antonio Damasio did just that; he constructed a new three-layered model of the Self to explain all his clinical results on mind-body connection in a series of books from Descartes Error to Self Comes to Mind

The attitude of mankind towards originality of opinion is marked by a natural hesitation and inconsistency. Admired for its rarity, brilliancy ...

gune has left a new comment on your post "Prior uses of the ‘invisible hand’ in literature, ...": Savitri Era Learning Forum at 9:43 PM, December 30, 2012
A list of prior uses of invisible hand is useful to the reader. The issue is that the reader is able to identify what the metaphor is. You can analyse the whole list. 

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