Sri Aurobindo had seen the Truth and sensed the presence of the Source

Mamata Shankar Reopens Historic Indian Silk House in Kolkata: "Tradition is the Mother of All Fashion Trends" Kolkata, Jan 27, 2013 (Washington Bangla Radio) Calcutta Music Blog Reporting by Barshali Banerjee (newsdesk.kolkata@washingtonbanglaradio.com)

Internationally renowned danseuse and actress Mamata Shankar re-inaugurated the hallowed "Indian Silk House" and shared her thoughts about about traditionalism with WBRi... Indian Silk House was founded in 1926 by Shri Rishabhchand who, fired by his patriotic fervor, plunged into the Non-Cooperation movement against the British. The House has dressed Indian film and entertainment icons like Nargis, Supriya Devi, Chhabi Biswas, Sarat Chandra Bose, P.C. Sorcar senior and more. The business was carried on by his brothers and son after Rishabhchand settled in Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry in 1931.

Scientist sees end to poverty in 50 years Times of India KOLKATA: Jan 29, 2013, 

Dr Mani Lal Bhaumik, one of the rare scientists to bridge science and spirituality was speaking at a lecture organised by the Sri Aurobindo Institute of Culture and Suresh Amiya Memorial Trust at the Future Foundation School on Sunday evening. "The technology is there. So is the money. All we need now is the right political circumstances to eradicate poverty," said the inventor of excimer laser used in corrective eye surgery. Bhaumik, who is a real life rags-to-riches story, was born in a village in Tamluk but went on to receive global acclaim for his scientific prowess and humanitarian work.

"It thrills me to think that Sri Aurobindo had seen the Truth that our rishis saw in the Vedic age and scientists are only now beginning to dwell upon. He had sensed the presence of the 'Source' - the source of the beginning of the universe - in everything around us, and within us. Our awareness is part of the cosmic awareness. Perhaps the next step of evolution is that we will be able to perceive the 'Source'."

13:20  -  From the Editor’s Desk (Feb 2013) » From the Editor’s Desk (Feb 2013)

In the last few editions, we have been touching on parts and planes of the being. In this edition, we stand on the rung of the Illumined Mind, greater then the Higher Mind in its lustre and power and capacities. These are zones of our being which have to be lived to know and known, in the truest sense, in order to be lived. It is best to leave the lines from Sri Aurobindo and The Mother to illumine us as much as ...

13:30  -  Comment on Epistemology of perception by Sandeep » Bina Gupta has covered the Vedantin view in her book “Cit Consciousness”. The following passage from her book expands on the section “Perception in Vedanta” seen in the article above.

Pure consciousness on account of being covered by the multiplicity of names and forms cannot associate itself with the objects of cognition. Instrumentality of the inner sense is required to establish its connection with the object. The Advaitins hold that the inner...

Saraswathi Mukkai - 05:31  -  Complete Education » What makes Education complete Education to be complete must have five principal aspects corresponding to the five principal activities of the human being: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psy... mment... 05:20  -  Perceiving our forefathers wrongly » In the book titled "The Human Cycle", Sri Aurobindo points out how we mistakenly perceive the actions of our forefathers. We read always our own mentality into that of these ancient forefathers and ...

Swaraj is rooted in the collectivist General Will of Rousseau, not natural rights of John Locke On November 19, 2012 by Sanjeev Sabhlok MOST COMMENTED 

Hayek was a NATURAL RIGHTS advocate. He wanted firmly bounded constitutions at all levels of government. He would never tolerate, even in any "market" based political model, ANY diminution of liberty for the sake of some experiments on people. What you are saying is that it is quite OK for me to be driven OUT of my place of birth because someone imposes their ideas on me and I refuse to accept them. So you are committing two major fallacies:

a) You are accepting the reduction of my liberties. But I live not to be governed by others. I live to be free. I deny anyone ANY right to impose their will on me.

b) You are advocating Rousseau's collectivist idea of "general will" by which a particular village can have the right to form a "general" collectivist view about what can or cannot be done in that village. Both are based on the same foundational flaw – that a MAJORITY has a right to encroach on ANYONE'S liberty. Majorities DO NOT HAVE RIGHTS. We humans have individual natural rights.  All of us have the right to life and liberty.

So, as you can clearly see, Shailesh, you and Arvind come from the same COLLECTIVIST mould of Rousseau. You are willing to tolerate the destruction of liberty by majorities.

That, by the way, was the reason why Socrates OPPOSED democracy, for he knew that there are some who elevate democracy ("general will") to a status greater than the individual.

I deny ALL such rubbish. I refute ANY attempt or any possibility that a village assembly can have ANY right to limit ANYONE'S liberties. That is, by the way, exactly what Hayek would say, but in far more suave and sophisticated language.

Sanjeev Sabhlok says: November 20, 2012 at 2:59 pm Shailesh, Democracy is not a goal. Liberty is. By glorifying the majority you undermine and destroy liberty, making the government itself irrelevant and a candidate for being destroyed. Hitler’s Germany was a democracy. Socrates was killed by democracy. Sri Aurobindo – the vocal opponent of socialism

Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse - Partha Chatterjee - 1986 - Preview - More editions

Habitations Of Modernity - Page 23 - Dipesh Chakrabarty - 2002 - Preview - More editions The process of inversion is reflected clearly in Aurobindo's [a nationalist leader] famous Uttarpara speech ... "I spoke once before ...” … He never considers the possibility that a religious sensibility might also use a political structure and a political vocabulary as means... For that is indeed the burden of Aurobindo's speech, from which Sarkar seems to have his ear turned away ...

Mapping Subaltern Studies And The Postcolonial - Page 264 - Vinayak Chaturvedi - 2000 - Preview - More editions For Sarkar, the Marxist historian, the question never arises as to whether a 'religious sensibility' could also use a political structure and vocabulary as a means to a (religious) end (for that indeed is the burden of Aurobindo's speech from which ...

Political Thought and Leadership of Lokmanya Tilak - Page 333 N. R. Inamdar - 1983 - Preview - More editions Aurobindo Ghosh who had long felt the same way, hailed Tilak as a leader of clear perception. ... The burden of Tilak's song was bound to be the same: The bureaucracy is incompetent and inexperienced for the job for which it is appointed...

Sri Aurobindo, his life unique - Page 141 - Rishabhchand - 1981 - Chittaranjan was a budding barrister at that time, and, encumbered with the burden of his father's debts and the maintenance of a big family, he was unable to make up his mind as to whether he should take up Sri Aurobindo's case or not.

Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth-Century Bengal - Page 134 - J. H. Broomfield - 1968 - Preview - More editions His successful defence of Aurobindo Ghose, Bipin Chandra Pal, and other leading nationalists brought him fame and riches. In a few years he had become the city's leading barrister, enjoying the luxury of frequent trips to Europe during the ... Page 32 At the same time there were disquieting, if less serious, trends within bhadralok society itself. The criticism by Aurobindo, Bipin Chandra, Rabindranath and others of the old Congress group for their denationalised and exclusive political ... Page 162 LOWER-CLASS BHADRALOK The trend of our argument has presented us with a logical problem: if, as we have asserted, the Bengal Congressmen were so implacably opposed to Gandhi and his programme of noncooperation, why did ...

Studies in history - Volume 1, Issue 1 - Page 93 - Jawaharlal Nehru University. Centre for Historical Studies - 1979 - The fact that Broomfield has to invent a term, "lower class bhadralok," for which there is no corresponding indigenous term, shows ... The "lower class bhadralok," share, with their superiors, all the status traits: high caste, access to education, ...

Soundings in Modern South Asian History - Page 246 D. A. Low - 1968 - Preview - More editions The vernacular press, which drew most of its readers from among the semi-educated, underemployed lower-class bhadralok, played upon this bitterness, ridiculing the elite for their English affectations of speech, dress and manners, accusing ...

Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India, 1780-1913: A Critical Anthology - Page 355 Mary Ellis Gibson - 2011 - Preview Paul's and at Cambridge. His biographer, Peter Heehs, argues that while we cannot know precisely how clearly Aurobindo planned this failure, it relieved him of a burden he did not wish to take up; Aurobindo wrote in later years that he could ...

The Lives of Sri Aurobindo - Page 278 - Peter Heehs - 2008 - Preview - More editions Nietzsche's superman, a godhead of power who “fiercely and arrogantly repels the burden of simple sorrow and service,” embodied only one of the three qualities of superhumanity: “Power,” Aurobindo wrote, “must bow its neck to the yoke of ...

J.L. Mehta on Heidegger, Hermeneutics, and Indian Tradition - Page 165 - Jarava Lal Mehta, William J. Jackson - 1992 - Preview In my own humble judgment, however, Aurobindo's Vedic studies constitute the one single, central pillar which carries the burden of Aurobindo's creative thought, the one stalk on which the thousand-petalled lotus of his thinking blossomed, ...

A Moral Critique of Development: In Search of Global Responsibilities - Page 266 - Ph Quarles van Ufford, Anta Kumar Giri - 2003 - Preview - More editions For Sri Aurobindo, 'There is in our mentality a side of will, conduct, character which creates the ethical man; then there is another side of sensibility to the beautiful – understanding beauty in no narrow or hyperartistic sense – which creates the ...

Symbolism In The Poetry Of Sri Aurobindo - Page 12 - Syamala Kallury - 1989 - Preview - More editions Of music, the third important trait of symbolist poetry, Sri Aurobindo says that it is "one of the powers by which the substance of the consciousness can be refined and prepared for sensibility to a still higher Beauty and Ananda." The Vedas ...

"Of Many Heroes": An Indian Essay in Literary Historiography - Page 109 - G. N. Devy - 1998 - Preview - More editions It is a book that battles against the coercive influence of the English sensibility on Indian literature. ... All those poets who do not appeal to Sri Aurobindo's sensibility are then described as the poets farthest from the source of divinity. All those ...

Spectrum History Of Indian Literature In English - Page 235 - Ram Sewak Singh, Charu Sheel Singh - 1997 - Preview - More editions This will clearly indicate that Aurobindo wanted to bring the Vedic and the Upanisadic spirit as the dominant mode of thought that should guide and shape contemporary Indian sensibility particularly concerning art and literature. Moreover...

Thinkers Of Indian Renaissance - Page 292 - S A Abbasi - 1998 - Preview And like Ananda Coomaraswamy, Sri Aurobindo revealed the subtlest meanings of Vedic thought and sensibility. Indeed the two philosophers are alike in seeing plainly into the clear depths of India's soul. Concerning the significance of Indian ...

Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion - Page 63 - Jeffrey J. Kripal - 2007 - Preview - More editions There are good historical reasons why Aurobindo avoided any explicit alliance with the Tantras... Simply because we lack the centrality of the term "Tantra" in his text, then, does not mean that we cannot or should not use the term in our own precise ways; it simply means that Aurobindo chose not to do so for his own perfectly sensible and very defensible historical and cultural reasons. On The Edge Of The Future: Esalen And The Evolution Of American ... - Page 115 - Jeffrey John Kripal, Glenn W. Shuck - 2005 - Preview - More editions

Philosophy Of Education - Page 219 - S.S. Chandra, S.S. Chandra & Rajendra Kumar Sharma - 2006 - Preview - More editions In his philosophy everywhere Sri Aurobindo has supported reason like any staunch rationalist and lauded its role as the law giver to the irrational elements, the passions, the sensibilities and the sense organs. A true and living education is ...