The Hindu : NATIONAL TAMIL NADU : Madurai today Aurobindo Society: Study circle meeting
on ‘The Mother of Sri Aurobindo’ No.
3 Lajpat Rai Road , Chinna Chokkikulam, 10.30 a.m.
The Hindu : NATIONAL TAMIL NADU : Coimbatore today Sri Aurobindo Devotees Trust: Prayers
to Sri Annai, Sasi Balika Vidya Mandir, Azad Road, R.S. Puram, 9.30 a.m.; Sri
Annai Meditation Centre, W7C, Kovaipudur, 4 p.m. Sri Annnai Ashrama: Prayers to Sri
Annai, Sri Annai Ashram, Narayana Guru road, Saibaba Colony, 10.30 a.m.
The Hindu : NATIONAL KARNATAKA : Channabasappa: keep away from
merchants of communalism BIDAR, February 10, 2013 RISHIKESH BAHADUR
DESAI
Is art for art’s sake? The question that
occupied the minds of thinkers, artists and writers for centuries was raised
again at the 79th All India Kannada Sahitya Sammelan by Ko. Channabasappa in
Bijapur on Saturday…
Dr. Chennabasappa quoted from Ashoka’s
edicts to highlight the need for religious tolerance. Narrow-minded belief and
appreciation of one’s own faith would lead to pitfalls. Assault on Buddhism had
left an everlasting scar on India ’s
cultural history. The killings of Godhra had brought us global notoriety. We
should ensure that such acts did not recur. Dr. Chennabasappa spoke about his
upbringing and his evolution as a writer. He dismissed the view that
“creativity is a flash of inspiration from heaven” and said it was the result
of long years of hard work. The writer quoted from personalities who
influenced him such as Pampa ,
Harihara, Raghavanka, Basavanna, Sri Aurobindo, Bendre, Kuvempu, Purandara
Dasa, Nijaguna Shovayogi, and Dr. Ambedkar.
No harm in having a simplified version of Sanskrit - The
Shillong Times FEBRUARY 10TH, 2013 By Our Reporter SHILLONG:
Scholars, Indian and Foreign, from Pondicherry and other parts of the
country who are well versed in the role of Sanskrit in the growth of Indic
Civilization and culture and also the uniqueness of Sanskrit as a language in
the light of Sri Aurobindo’s works were part of the first ever national seminar
on “interrelation between Sanskrit and Indian culture with special reference to
Sri Aurobindo” organized by Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan (RSS), New Delhi and
the city based Sri Aurobindo Institute of Indian Culture (SAIIC) at its
auditorium on Saturday…
Registrar of RSS, Prof KB Subbarayudu said that Sri Aurobindo has
lived to the meaning of his name, that is, Lotus – which never gets polluted by
the surroundings around. “He lived in UK
for 14 years but was not influenced by westernization,” he said while drawing
comparison with the modern civilization, who finds India dirty, its streets and roads
and only wishes to return to the west…
Former Home Minister, RG Lyngdoh
emphasized on the need to look back to Sanskrit as a language and continue to
thrive on the spirit since Sanskrit is the mother of so many languages. He also
spoke about the efforts of Sri Aurobindo, who wanted to see Sanskrit become the
national language for its unifying pull.
There is a story stemming from the Greek tradition which illustrates
the role of man in physical nature–The story of Prometheus. The name itself
stems from Greek roots that mean “forethinker”. The story goes that the Gods
were withholding the power of fire from humanity. The allusion however widens
to represent powers of understanding, progress and mastery over the forces of
physical nature that enter into the world with the advent of human-embodied
powers of creativity and originality and the corresponding application of the
powers of mind and will to manifest what was formerly latent in Nature, in most
cases against intense opposition (in the original story Zeus, king of the Gods
opposed the action of Prometheus and penalized him with constant and
ever-recurring pain and anguish). Zeus also created Pandora and gave her the
famous “Pandora’s box” in retribution for the action of Prometheus. The
symbolism of Pandora’s box represents all the “unintended consequences” that
arise from the forward seeking mind of humanity attempting to understand,
master and develop beyond the limits of physical nature.
This story illustrates the struggle of man to escape the control of
the forces of Nature... The seeking for a moral law in the world is an attempt to understand a
higher order or organization than the purely non-moral physical forces clashing
and building. The manifestation of life, and later of mind, upsets the
established order of action of the purely physical forces of Nature, and seeks
to bring about a new and higher order based on the increased complexity of this
new, higher expression of consciousness in the world.
The story of Prometheus is an allusion that has gripped the mind of
man for ages, from the time of Aeschylus and his play “Prometheus Bound”, to
the time of Shelley and his poem “Prometheus Unbound”. We see around us the
tremendous development of new powers as we explore every aspect of physical
Nature, and we see at the same time the enormous unintended consequences and
both individual and collective suffering entailed in exceeding the original
limitations placed upon us. We see here that Prometheus, the forethinker,
represents the evolutionary process to bring about the expansion of
consciousness in the world.
Liberty pursued by exclusion
of the thing exceeded leads along the path of negation to the refusal of
that which God has accepted. Activity pursued by absorption in the act and
the energy leads to an inferior affirmation and the denial of
the Highest. While God combines and synthesises, why should we not do the
same?
Groups or Individuals at the Core of Natural Selection? from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy
As natural selection is blind and may operate in other contexts with
other males which have, or evolve, other rival advantages in their other
characteristics, some of which may also be advantageously beneficial to rivals,
it does not follow that the size characteristic alone, or any other specific
characteristics evolving among individuals by natural selection, will ‘take
over’ that group or the whole species of reindeers. Natural
selection is not tidy. It operates naturally and over long
time periods…
Over the many millennia of pre-history and history, societies have
come and gone, their detritus scattered across (and usually under) the
landscape. There is no ever “upward” tidy progression of human
societies in a straight-line. Blind Natural Selection among humans
is not like that. There is no “invisible hand” that “winnows”
the behaviours that do not work to make way for those that do. I
shall say nothing on this occasion about the myths of the “invisible hand” as
ascribed wrongly to Adam Smith (scroll through my many posts of the IH metaphor
to see my arguemnts).
Human behaviour that “works” is not an uncontroversial subject. Certainly,
since the re-emergence of commercial society from the 15th century
in north-western parts of Europe and its associated Enlightenment in ideas, of
which Adam Smith played his part with the rest of his colleagues in the
Edinburgh of his day, some tentative steps have taken place – again from
individuals, or mall teams, to the group, not the other way round.
How To Spoil an Excellent Case For Markets by Gavin
Kennedy
Like the wind, an individual’s motives are not seen by others, but the
consequences of their buy-sell decisions are felt across the ever sensitive
prices that their motives may occasion. Those who supply goods and
services in markets in supply or demand chains do not need to know the motives
of everybody else whom they transact with. Apart from any other
issue, motives across a population vary and often conflict. Entrepreneurs who
get their prices right more often than they get them wrong make profits, those
who don’t make losses.
Of course there is a role for governments in market economies in the
effectiveness of the State’s justice system that sets the rules for the conduct
of producers and the rights of their employees, and the rights of
consumers. Laws and regulations are inevitable in any well functioning
market system.
The Misknown Desire of the Philosophers: On Evaluation and
Hermeticism from An und für sich by Anthony Paul Smith
Do philosophers ever know what they want? What drives a philosopher?
What makes them undertake an ordeal? Or is it simply that the ordeal comes to
them, prior to their identity as philosopher, that the ordeal is simply human
or creatural? I’ve already expressed my admiration for Joshua Ramey’s The
Hermetic Deleuze, but it is the attempt in this book to connect up the
philosophical task with a simple creatural ordeal I find most laudatory about
the text. It’s combination of the personal with the scholarly, sacrificing
neither for the sake of the other…
But the reflective moment that follows that lived moment, the act of
asking ourselves “what is it that we’ve been doing with our lives?”, a moment
that doesn’t always come so late, is separate from the act of doing philosophy
and yet is the philosophical act par excellence. In a way this is
the challenge that hermeticism presents to philosophy, as Joshua presents it,
for hermeticism is lived, it is practiced, it involves flesh and the
manipulation of nature. These active forces within religion are in motion, they
move forward, often blocked, often pointless, but they move. Philosophy so often
becomes moribund, even McDowell sees that in his theory of philosophy’s purely
therapeutic value. Yet, the danger with religion is the same danger with all
those aspects of our human experience that lie outside of the rational.
We must accept the many-sidedness of the manifestation while asserting
the unity of the manifested. The Divine in this world becomes the subconscious,
conscious and superconscious. The subconscious is not aware of the
oneness, the conscient can become aware of the oneness, the oneness with the
universal and the oneness with the Transcendent. The point at which the ego
becomes aware of the Oneness is the turning point where the Divine become
manifested in the Many. The perception of unity is not only with the
Transcendent but also with other points in the Multiplicity. Therefore when One
becomes liberated, this becomes contagious and cannot stop until everyone is
liberated. Was this what Buddha was referring to when he said: never to
make the irrevocable crossing so long as there was a single being upon
earth undelivered from the knot of the suffering, from the bondage
of the ego?
Through the Multiplicity we have to attain to the Unity and then
express that Unity again in the Multiplicity. We invade mortality
with the immortal beatitude and become luminous centres of its conscious
self-expression in humanity.
From SELF-Shelf
Entropy & evolution, resistance & purification 10
Jan 2013
The Vaishya, Mitra, and Mahalakshmi 10 Oct 2007
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