Conscious union with the Invisible

People everywhere have aspired for a better world, but we are still far from the rosy visions of a utopian life. As the search for better systems and models continues, it is becoming clear that the lofty ideals rooted in religion, morality and ethics have been unsuccessful in the struggle to make the planet a better place. But what if it is not the systems and models themselves but something more fundamental that needs to be investigated? There is a growing awareness that the panacea to the problems ravaging our world is in a paradigm shift to spirituality. However, a fundamental confusion persists that equates spirituality with morality, idealism and religion.
It is therefore of topical importance that Dr. A. S. Dalal has chosen this moment to bring out a compilation titled Morality, Idealism, Religion and Yoga: The Meaning of Spirituality.
For skeptics, hesitant beginners, or muddled seekers to whom these might sound as empty words devoid of real-world experience, Sri Aurobindo assures us that “yoga is not a matter of theory or dogma…but a matter of experience. Its experience is that of a conscient universal and supracosmic Being with whom it brings us into union, and this conscious experience of union with the Invisible, always renewable and verifiable, is as valid as our conscious experience of a physical world and of visible bodies with whose invisible minds we daily communicate.” — Gautam Chatterjee

Clearly neither Capra nor Heisenberg anywhere had mentioned that the celebrated uncertainty principle was based on Vedas and Upanishads. So with no uncertainty, one can say that the minister is in the wrong, if he claimed that the Uncertainty Principle was based on Vedic or Upanishadic wisdom. But the name Heisenberg should bring more serious issues into the concern of people who frame the science curriculum. The way pre-Christian Greek philosophical traditions have influenced the development of modern physics in the West cannot be overstated. It was Werner Heisenberg who pointed out this continuity —  Aravindan Neelakandan

Daya Krishna’s “Creative Encounters with Texts” —  Posted on 17 November 2014 by elisa freschi 

Daya Krishna was an Indian philosopher, a rationalist and iconoclast, who constantly tried to question and scrutinise acquired “truths”. The main place for such investigations was for him a saṃvāda ‘dialogue’. That’s why he also strived to organise structured samvāda Continue reading →

Shail Mayaram, in the introduction of a book dedicated to Daya Krisna and Ramchandra Gandhi, Philosophy as Samvad and Svaraj adds some interesting information about the samvādas 

Beatrice Bruteau —  Cynthia Bourgeault  Nov. 21, 2014 

Those who had the privilege of working with her directly speak of the clarity and precision of her mind, the luminosity of her vision, and the down-to-earth practicality of her contemplative practice. 

Rigorously trained, she held two degrees in mathematics and a doctorate in philosophy from Fordham University. In addition to her highly articulate Christianity, she was also a longtime student of Vedanta and one of the early pioneers of East-West dialogue. She wrote books on Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and was one of the founders of the American Teilhard Association in 1967. Her most important works include Radical Optimism (1993), The Easter Mysteries (1995), What We Can Learn from the East (1995), and God's Ecstasy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World (1997). In all of these works, she brought her deep understanding of non-dual states of consciousness as well as her scientific training and rigor to the mysticism of the West.

Her passion was the study of evolutionary consciousness, and over the course of her long teaching career, she lived to see this passion come into its own as one of the most significant spiritual movements of our times.