December 08, 2012

Obtaining other tools of perception

Integral Humanism and the BJP from Centre Right India by Pulakesh Upadhyaya Dec 8, 2012
Integral Humanism is one of the core ideologies on the basis of which the Jana Sangh and subsequently the BJP were founded… Most members in the BJP suffer from ideological haziness, and many of its stands have tended to depend on plain anti-Congressism and not on any of the foundational principles… The BJP is passing through a phase where it requires serious introspection, otherwise it does not take very long for political parties to break up and reach political oblivion. It has already shot itself in the foot by discarding ideologues and well-wishers, paying lip-service to icons who built the Jana Sangh; the only way it can kill itself is by losing whatever remains of its ideology.

Jean Gebser: Cartographer of Consciousness EnlightenNext: by Gary Lachman January 26, 2011 at 12:57 pm 8 comments
Gebser’s magnum opus, The Ever-Present Origin (first published in Germany in 1949 but not translated into English until 1984) is an immense, six-hundred-page exploration into an insight—a “lightning-like inspiration” as he called it—that first came to Gebser in Spain in 1931. This insight, that a new kind of consciousness was beginning to appear in the West, came to Gebser through his study of poetry, particularly that of the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. As Gebser unraveled it, he soon saw that evidence for this new consciousness could be found in developments in science too. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more Gebser discovered signs of this new consciousness in practically all aspects of Western culture.
For the next eighteen years, he gathered and organized his thoughts on what he called an impending “mutation” in consciousness, the most immediate manifestation of which was what he called the breakdown of the “mental-rational structure” of consciousness, the dominant “scientistic” rationalist reductive paradigm that has held sway over the West for the last few centuries. In 1949, when the first part of The Ever-Present Origin appeared—to be followed soon after by the second—Gebser had marshaled some of the most convincing arguments that a shift in Western consciousness was indeed taking place, and that its consequences would be felt by people of his and the following generations…
Speaking to a younger generation of readers eager to know more about different forms of consciousness and familiar with the work of Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin (two other thinkers concerned with the evolution of consciousness), in a preface to a new edition of The Ever-Present Origin, Gebser wrote that “the principal subject of the book, proceeding from man’s altered relationship to time, is the new consciousness, and to this those of the younger generation are keenly attuned.”

Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen - Page 281 - Gary Lachman - 2008 - Preview - More editions Lachman's critique of occult politicians like Annie Besant, Emanuel Swedenborg, Nicholas Roerich, René Guénon, Julius Evola, Rudolf Steiner, Mircea Eliade, C. G. Jung, and Aleister Crowley shows that politics is as swayed by the occult now as it ever was. 

The authors systematically marshal evidence for a variety of psychological phenomena that are extremely difficult, and in some cases clearly impossible, to account for in conventional physicalist terms… The authors further show that these rogue phenomena are more readily accommodated by an alternative 'transmission' or 'filter' theory of mind/brain relations advanced over a century ago by a largely forgotten genius, F.W.H. Myers, and developed further by his friend and colleague William James. This theory, moreover, ratifies the commonsense conception of human beings as causally effective conscious agents, and is fully compatible with leading-edge physics and neuroscience. 

Andy Clark argues that our thinking doesn't happen only in our heads but that "certain forms of human cognizing include inextricable tangles of feedback, feed-forward and feed-around loops: loops that promiscuously criss-cross the boundaries of brain, body and world." The pen and paper of Feynman's thought are just such feedback loops, physical machinery that shape the flow of thought and enlarge the boundaries of mind.

Think of the Body October 22, 2005 by Tusar N. Mohapatra Review of Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity: Ian Burkitt
Growing interest in the consciousness studies is forcing the skeptics to look at it afresh, for it no longer belongs to the New-Ager's domain, alone. This book is a commendable compendium of path-breaking ideas reconstituting our conception of subjectivity. While post-modern sentiments amply spice the text, what should not be missed is the emphasis on body-mind continuum, which runs as an undercurrent, throughout the work.

In the last chapter of his book “The Emperor’s New Mind”, Roger Penrose draws on his scientific career to offer insights into the spontaneous, aesthetic and non-algorithmic nature of mathematical insight, the non-verbal thought process of the scientist, and other topics related to what he calls the “physics of the mind”. Many of his remarks chime quite well with corresponding observations made by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the nature of the thought process, as we see in this article.

Scientists have developed what they call “laws” of physics. These laws of physics describe the action of material energy, the laws of “cause and effect” in the physical universe. Similarly, we find other applications of the action of cause and effect. We observe that what occurs today is the result of energy expended and directed yesterday; and similarly, today’s action creates tomorrow’s result. The entire system of life in Western civilisation is based on the principles of cause and effect development. Sri Aurobindo makes it clear that this action of “cause and effect” is the fundamental essence of what is known in the East as the “law of Karma”…
Sri Aurobindo makes it clear that in a universe that functions under the kind of strict laws that we see everywhere at work, the idea that it is developed by Chance is incomprehensible. The reason for this mistake is contained as a seed in the first error, in that we attempt to explain things of a different order by an understanding based in the physical world, whereas our expanding insight is now beginning to show us that we need other forms of knowledge and other tools of perception when we begin to explore realms beyond the purely physical world.

Integral Yoga and Psychoanalysis - III On Love — Miranda Vannucci Publisher: Miranda Vannucci, Italy Binding: Soft Cover Pages: 151 Price: Rs 600
The third book in a series suggesting possible points of contact between the disciplines of psychotherapy and the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, this volume addresses, from a psychological point of view, certain aspects of love. Chapters cover such subjects as the acceptance of the self, the confusion between sexuality and the sentiments of love, maternal love and unconditional love, the awareness and purification of the vital, the union of two beings, forms of love such as friendship, fraternity, and solidarity, and love as one of the universal forces. Numerous extracts from the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are used to elaborate the author’s premise.

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