Ken Wilber has put further flesh on the skeleton of Sri Aurobindo's work

Philosophy as Spiritual Ordeal from Pagan Metaphysics by Paul Reid-Bowen

I would strongly suggest that you consider looking at Joshua Ramey’s new book The Hermetic Deleuze… While a lot of my earlier years were spent reading esotericism, gnosticism, hermeticism and occultism, I have been incrementally distancing my philosophical self from such potential contaminants to reason for twenty years now. And this is despite teaching both philosophy and contemporary incarnations of such esoteric traditions at university. I only started to forcefully question the viability and value of this bracketing quite recently: Posted by Paul Reid-Bowen at 13:38

Ashis Nandy and the Cultural Politics of Selfhood - Christine Deftereos - gives the reader an insight into a novel aspect of Nandy. The author insists that Ashis Nandy is not merely a self-described political psychologist; he is also an intellectual street fighter who comes face to face with the psychology of politics and the politics of psychology, thus affirming why this intellectual is one of the most original and confronting Indian thinkers of his generation. The main features of this book are its original reading and the authentic use of the psychoanalytic theory to characterise and demonstrate the importance of psychoanalysis in Nandy's work. Read More...

Mind and Cosmos:  Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False - Amazon.com

Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. 

Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic.

ABA Journal - Feb 1962 - Page 155 Vol. 48, No. 2 - Magazine - Full view Lawyers are now frequently called upon to make decisions in business matters, and businessmen must often decide a course of action that has distinct legal implications. by Stuart T. Saunders, President, Norfolk and Western Railway Co.

In his stimulating book, The Uses of the Past, Herbert Muller emphasizes the importance of values in these words: “Our business as rational beings is not to argue for what is going to be but to strive for what ought to be . . .” It is this pursuit of truth in the face of ultimate uncertainty that establishes the essential dignity and grandeur of man. All our hopes for the future depend upon this quest, and we, as judges, lawyers and businessmen, must see to it that human idealism remains the well-spring of our civilization.

Source Book Modern Hinduism - Page 171 - Glyn Richards - 2013 - Preview The rending of the veil by involution and evolution is the prerequisite of the development of divine consciousness and divine life within humanity. ... Though he failed to stir the imagination of the people in the same way as men like Vivekananda and Gandhi he still succeeded in inspiring enthusiasm in small groups of intellectuals for the cultural heritage of India, especially the Vedas and Upanishads in which is philosophy is firmly rooted.

Science and Religion Around the World - Page 204 John Hedley Brooke, Ronald L. Numbers - 2011 - Preview - More editions One of these was Aurobindo Ghose (1872–1950), an English-educated Bengali nationalist and philosopher, who repudiated the materialism of Darwinian evolution for the “involution” of divine consciousness. Hindu creationists, however ...

The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - Page 11 - V. P. Varma - 1990 - Preview - More editions Aurobindo traces this theory of involution and evolution also in Heraclitus according to whom the cosmos represents the involution and evolution of the one eternal principle of Fire — at once the one substance and the one force — which he expresses as the upward and downward road. Vivekananda traced this concept of involution in the ancient Hindu philosophy. He says: "... this whole chain, is the involution of that cosmic life which is everywhere. It is this one mass of intelligence which from the protoplasm up to the most ...

The political philosophy of Swami Vivekananda - Page 33 - A. V. Rathna Reddy - 1984 - Vivekananda related the evolution of the world to the involution of the spirit. According to him, social evolution is not an independent process. He believed that it is regulated by involution. It is not evolution that decides the course and destiny of...

Hinterlands and Horizons: Excursions in Search of Amity - Page xii - Margaret Chatterjee - 2002 - Preview - More editions Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, and S. Radhakrishnan. Their cultural ... Out of this mining of ancient wisdom the Indian thinkers of the post-Brahmo Samaj era chiseled a discourse that was not derivative, but rooted in Indian soil. This took further ...

Page 47 Vivekananda invokes guna language elsewhere, when he applies the concept of realization to the national and ... Indeed Sri Aurobindo, like Vivekananda, combines mining ancient thought along with grafting elements of modernism and is untouched by the Christian framework of ideas. His rejection of the Samkhyan strict dualism of purusa (spirit) ... The theory of "involution" of the Eternal or Spirit is to be understood as a counterconcept to "ex nihilo" creationism, and integral yoga draws on all the capacities of the individual without polarizing nature to spirit. In this connection, it is worth ...

History of Science and Philosophy of Science: A Historical ... - Page 6 Pradip Kumar Sengupta, Sengupta Pradip Kumar - 2010 - Preview - More editions A product of the Indian intellectual temper of the late 19th century, he, like Swami Vivekananda, was committed to ... in the light of lights, only the wisest person can discern the different levels of evolution (uttarana) and involution (avatarana).

Analysis of Sri Aurobindo's 'The Life Divine' - Page 131 - Roy Posner - Full view Source (i.e. the involution) and an ascent to the Source (i.e. the evolution) simultaneously. ... Aurobindo also tells us that Life/Energy is a dynamic play of the universal Force, and through this interchange, stimulation, and response between the ...

Aurobindo's Philosophy of Brahman - Page 125 - Stephen H. Phillips - 1986 - Preview - More editions (Aurobindo uses the term 'involution' in a rather precise sense: as "infolding" or "self-containment," which is to contrast with "unfolding" and "self-expression.") Matter, for example, marks as complete an involution of the characteristic of ...

Teilhard De Chardin and Eastern Religions: Spirituality and ... - Page 200 - Ursula King, Joseph Needham - 2011 - Preview - More editions Teilhard also uses the term involution, but it describes a rather different process from what it means in Aurobindo's thought. For both thinkers involution is the fundamental law of evolution, but in an almost opposite sense. When Teilhard ...

The future of man according to Teilhard de Chardin and Aurobindo Ghose - Page 424 J. Chetany - 1978 - Involution: We have noted that Aurobindo explained evolution as an inverse process of the Saccidananda's original ... Aurobindo means by involution the original process whereby the Absolute Saccidananda became Matter and Ignorance.

The Essential Aurobindo - Page 70 - Aurobindo Ghose, Robert A. McDermott - 2001 - Preview - More editions Aurobindo Ghose, Robert A. McDermott. Involution. and. Evolution. THE Western idea of evolution is the statement of a process of formation, not an explanation of our being. Limited to the physical and biological data of Nature, it does not ...

Physics of the Soul: The Quantum Book of Living, Dying, ... - Amit Goswami - 2001 - Preview - More editions A greater power must come, a larger light (Aurobindo 1970, bk. 6, canto 2). For the last few hundred years, nay, the last millennium, with a few ... Involution. and. Evolution. Esotericism has an aspect that two philosophers of recent times ...

God Is Not Dead: What Quantum Physics Tells Us About Our Origins ... - Page 128 - Amit Goswami - 2012 - Preview - More editions Indian thinking with the idea of first involution and then evolution of consciousness. Ken Wilber (1981) has put further flesh on the skeleton of Aurobindo's work, and so have I (Goswami, 2001). Figure 9-2 shows the evolved version. E = Mc2 ...

The Perennial Quest for a Psychology with a Soul: An Inquiry Into ... - Page 411 - Joseph Vrinte - 2002 - Preview SRI AUROBINDO'S COSMIC EVOLUTION IN TERRESTRIAL NATURE For Sri Aurobindo and Ken Wilber, evolution is preceded by involution, and what was original and primal in involution is in evolution the Supreme emergence.

Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion - Page 293 - Jeffrey J. Kripal - 2007 - Preview - More editions also prefiguring the upward-arc of the evolutionary vision of Henry James Sr. and Sri Aurobindo. It is precisely this involution-evolution mysticism that Darwin Fall will discover is dramatically embodied in the physical transfigurations and ...

Braudel, Broadie, Bede Griffiths and the transformation of the body

Review of an "Agreeable Connexion" from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Alexander Brodie. 2012. “Agreeable Connexions: Scottish Enlightenment links with France”. Edinburgh: John Donald, Birlinn Ltd.

This is a most agreeable book for scholars and those interested in the Scottish Enlightenment from which so much of the modern world evolved… Broadie’s thesis is that what became known as the Scottish Enlightenment has its roots in a long history of connections between Scottish intellectuals from the medieval period onwards, primarily with their French opposite numbers, despite their different theological traditions, particularly after the Reformation (largely inspired from Luther’s Germany).  Enlightened thinkers thought for themselves; unenlightened thinkers were tied to the unchanging thoughts of past, mainly theological, authorities. Where there is argument and debate without political repression, or at least passivity, Enlightenment may follow.  Brodie’s account of this background is enlightening itself…

In summary, I consider Alexander Broadie has established his thesis that the centuries long links between France and Scotland were foundational in what became the Scottish Enlightenment in the unpromising circumstances of each country, one dominated by an all embracing rigid Calvinism and the other by a monolithic Catholic Church, yet feeding each other intellectually in the prelude of the transformation of one world to another.  

Why OOO? from Larval Subjects Nov 13, 2012

First there was my encounter with DeLanda’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy and A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, both of which brought non-signifying differences and material processes to the fore and led me to read Deleuze in a very different way.  I was spitting mad and simultaneously fascinated when I encountered these books.  Was he really arguing that ocean currents and wind patterns (non-diacritical, a-signifying differences) played a key role in where European and American cities developed?  Preposterous!  But he got me reading the historian Braudel and his dry as dirt yet magnificent Capitalism and Civilization. 

Most Valuable Books of 2009 from Larval Subjects Dec 2, 2009

And in the background of all this was the material history of Ferdinand Braudel in the three volumes of Capitalism and Civilization. Braudel’s three volumes have been my nightly bedtime reading for the last few months. Let Harman have his Gibbon, I’ll take my Braudel. If reading Braudel has been such a transformative experience, then this is because he draws attention away from familiar territory revolving around signs, ideologies, texts, norms, and concepts, investigating instead infrastructures throughout history such as the presence or absence of roads, the epidemiology of diseases, diets, trade routes, clothing, forms of energy, etc., etc., etc.. You leave these works with an entirely new set of glasses, seeing the world and why the world is the way it is in an entirely different light. Suddenly things you were focused on in your social and political thought seem to become less important as a consequence of the rather minor role they play in social organization, while a whole host of other urgent questions come to the fore. 

A Higher Soul Nature and Law of Karma « Sri Aurobindo Studies

While it is the first formulation of human motivation, the force of desire, attraction towards what is pleasant and avoidance of what is unpleasant, is not the sole...

At the Feet of The Mother: The Integral Yoga and Traditional Paths

at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India. ... So Sri Aurobindo says that perhaps they will find God outside life but will not find the Divine in ...

Inspirational & Religious 2013: Savitri and The Yoga of the Cells Sri Aurobindo (Author), The Mother (Author), RY Deshpande (Editor)

The body was not ready to hold the charge of luminous immortality in it. It had remained an unbaked vessel, atapta tanu. The cells of the body had not awakened yet to the reality that is seated deep within them. The problem of the inconscient nature had yet to be tackled.

Sri Aurobindo’s concern was chiefly this. It was a twofold effort, of invoking and bringing down the dynamism of the supreme Truth on the earthly plane, and preparing the unregenerate inconscient material nature to receive it for its unhampered action. The spiritual and occult-yogic tapasya carried out together by him and the Mother saw that this was done. That opened up new doors, bright doors of the physical, for the entry of the Infinite's dimensions in the earth-possibilities. Presently it has made its manifestation an accomplished fact, here in the physical’s subtle. 

SABDA - A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo — Dr. Anand Reddy

A FOLLOWER OF CHRIST AND A DISCIPLE OF SRI AUROBINDO — CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN BEDE GRIFFITHS AND K. D. SETHNA (AMAL KIRAN)

So too, Griffiths tries to subsume Sri Aurobindo in Christianity:

      ‘To me it is important because I think that the transformation of the body is an essential element in Christian doctrine. The physical transformation which took place in Mary was seen as related to the physical transformation of the body of Christ in the resurrection, and this again as foreshadowing the physical transformation of man and the universe. This is where I find Aurobindo’s insistence on the transformation of matter and the body so significant’. (p.44)

      ‘I cannot resist the conviction that Jesus did exactly what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were attempting to do’. (p.72)

      ‘The resurrection of Christ is a physical event, which has effected all humanity and the whole creation. If this is not the same as the belief of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother it is extraordinarily close to their idea of the Supramental manifestation’. (p.86)

     Amal Kiran, in a note of tender mercies, replies: ‘What a diminution of his (Sri Aurobindo’s) colossal stature, his Herculean labour, to understand him as having come just to confirm Christianity and to establish a person more firmly in it! If he and the Mother have nothing really momentously new to give us, since everything was there in the Christian vision, all of us who are striving to live up to their teaching and example are misguided fools who could do much better to get baptized and join hands with the priests and nuns of Pondicherry’. (p.93)

     And in a stronger vein he argues: ‘Lastly, after postulating an evolution over millions of years following in man’s progressive spiritual history through the aspiring mind towards a Supramental which is still in the future, is it logical or reasonable or consistent to affirm that all evolution was summed up to thousand years ago in one man who did not exemplify an evolutionary transformation in his life-time but is alleged to have acquired a divinized body after his death?’ (p.61)

Rooting for the revival of a grand tree - The Hindu

The tree is an 82-year-old Peltophorum pterocarpum that stands next to Sri Aurobindo's Samadi, which was named 'Service Tree' by the Mother. Through the ..

Patient's symptoms are answers in search of questions

The Hindu: NATIONAL TAMIL NADU: Coimbatore today December 30, 2012 RELIGION

Sri Aurobindo Devotees: Prayers, Sasibalika Vidya Mandir, R.S. Puram, 9.30 a.m.; Annai Meditation Centre, Kovaipudur, 4 p.m.

The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - Page 257 - V. P. Varma - 1990 - Preview - More editions Aurobindo is critical of a world state and favours a world union. There are three possible institutional means to effectuate the scheme of the unity of mankind. There can be a centralized unitarian world state but Aurobindo rejects this suggestion ...

Comment on Sravana Manana and Nidhidhyasana by Sandeep Dec 29, 2012

In the book “Consciousness, Indian Psychology and Yoga”, there is a chapter where Matthijs Cornelissen says the hard problem arises because Western psychology is inverted in its thinking. It sees this world as real and hence has to figure why the brain works; whereas Indian psychology which sees this world as a projection can explain better why the brain creates images. Comment on Sravana Manana and Nidhidhyasana Here is the excerpt from the article by Matthijs: 

(David) Chalmers' formulation of the hard problem-and of the correlation between the brain and consciousness are typical examples of our unwarranted, and often unconscious collective tendency to think that even if consciousness is irreducible, it is somehow still “less fundamental” than matter. The recent philosophical debate on the nature of consciousness is to a considerable degree dominated by such materialist presuppositions…. (Kireet Joshi, Matthijs Cornelissen (ed). Consciousness, Indian Psychology and Yoga , New Delhi, Motilal Banarsidas, 2004. pp 16-17)

Why Zizek doesn’t have a political program from An und für sich by Adam Kotsko

From Less Than Nothing, pp. 1007-1009 (yes, I’ve finished the thing):

“Claude Levi-Strauss wrote that the prohibition of incest is not a question, an enigma, but an answer to a question that we do not know. We should treat the demands of the Wall Street protests in a similar way: intellectuals should not primarily take them as demands, questions, for which they should produce clear answers, programs about what to do. They are answers, and intellectuals should propose the questions to which they are answers. The situation is like that in psychoanalysis, where the patient knows the answer (his symptoms are such answers) but does not know what they are the answers to, and the analyst has to formulate the questions. Only through such patient work will a program emerge.” 

Slavoj Zizek and the role of the philosopher Santiago Zabala Al Jazeera, 25 Dec 2012

In order to respond, as Edward Said once said, the intellectual has to be "an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on the margins of society", that is, free from academic, religious and political establishments; otherwise, he or she will simply submit to the inevitability of events.

If Slavoj Zizek perfectly fits Said's description, it is not because he is unemployed, in exile, and at the margins of society, but rather because he writes as if he were. His theoretical books, political positions and public appearances are a disruption not only of the common academic style, but also of the idea of the philosopher or intellectual as someone to be idealised and deferred to…

While many believe that globalisation made the Slovenian philosopher more popular than John Dewey, Herbert Marcuse, or Jurgen Habermas, it was actually his ability to disrupt our neoliberal democratic surety through the same events that characterise it…

Today, whether we like him or not, Zizek is, as the Observer points out, "what Jacques Derrida was to the 80s", that is, the thinker of our age. While Derrida's intellectual operation focused on "deconstructing" our linguistic frames of reference, Zizek instead "disrupts" our ideological structures, the underside of acceptable philosophical, religious and political discourses. 1:57 PM

Slavoj Zizek: I am not the world's hippest philosopher! Salon - SUNDAY, DEC 30, 2012 01:30 AM IST ‎The coolest and most influential leftist in Europe tells Salon he battles depression -- and those who worship him BY KATIE ENGELHART

Almost 25 years ago, philosopher Slavoj Žižek broke through the intellectual cul-de-sac of Slovenian academia — making his mark on the English-speaking world with “The Sublime Object of Ideology” (1989), a wily fusing of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Frankfurt School idealism, and reflections on the 1979 blockbuster horror flick “Alien.”

Today, he’s everywhere. The notoriously unkempt “radical leftist” philosophe has become the unlikeliest of celebrities: a cult icon and spiritual guide for Europe’s lethargic left…

Žižek: I really hate all of this politically correct, cultural studies bullshit. If you mention the phrase “postcolonialism,” I say, “Fuck it!” Postcolonialism is the invention of some rich guys from India who saw that they could make a good career in top Western universities by playing on the guilt of white liberals… I also have a bit of megalomania. I almost conceive of myself as a Christ figure.

Sri Aurobindo delineating Aim in Yoga during 1912–13

CWSA > Essays In Philosophy And Yoga > NOTE ON THE TEXTS PART TWO: THE YOGA AND ITS OBJECTS (CIRCA 1912) 

The Yoga and Its Objects This essay, which is mentioned in a letter written by Sri Aurobindo in 1912, was first published as a booklet in 1921 under the title "The Yoga and Its Object" The title was changed to the present form in the second edition, issued in 1922 New editions were published in 1931, 1938, 1943, 1946, 1949 and subsequently In 1934 Sri Aurobindo wrote that the booklet represented "an early stage" of his sadhana "and only a part of it is applicable to the Yoga as it has at present taken form after a lapse of more than twenty years"

Appendix: Explanations of Some Words and Phrases consists of explanations of certain words and phrases in the essay, written by Sri Aurobindo in June 1938 in answer to questions posed by a disciple. Page – 597

CWSA > Essays Divine And Human > NOTE ON THE TEXTS Section Two (1910 ­ 1913) 

Manuscripts of six of these essays—"The Sources of Poetry", "The Interpretation of Scripture", "On Original Thinking", "The Balance of Justice", "Social Reform" and "The Claims of Theosophy"—were typed in or around 1912 using the same typewriter and the same sort of paper. The other seven essays are related to the typed ones by subject or date or both. 

The Sources of Poetry. Circa 1912.

The Interpretation of Scripture. Circa 1912.

On Original Thinking. Circa 1912. After the text of the principal version, the editors have placed the draft opening of another version, entitled in the manuscript "On the Importance of Original Thinking". Above this title Sri Aurobindo wrote: "Essays—Human and Divine". Page – 504 The editors have used a variant of this (see "The Silence behind Life" below) as the title of this part and of the volume as a whole.

The Balance of Justice. Circa 1912. This is a revised and enlarged version of "European Justice" (published in Early Cultural Writings), which probably was written in 1910.

Social Reform. Circa 1912. The first nine paragraphs were typewritten. Sri Aurobindo subsequently added five handwritten paragraphs to the last typed sheet. (These paragraphs are difficult to read and parts have been lost through mutilation of the manuscript.) The passage beginning "We are Hindus" was written separately and headed "For Social Reform'". Sri Aurobindo left no indication where he wanted it inserted. The editors have placed it at the end, separating it from the main text by a white space.

Hinduism and the Mission of India. Circa 1912. Editorial title. The first pages of the manuscript have been lost; the first surviving sentence lacks its beginning.

The Psychology of Yoga (regarding the title, see the note on "The Psychology of Yoga" in Section One). Circa 1912 (written around the same time as the pieces on Theosophy that follow).

The Claims of Theosophy. Circa 1910 ­ 12 (certainly written after January 1908, when Sri Aurobindo met V. B. Lele, the "member of the Theosophical Society who [gave] me spiritual help" mentioned in paragraph six). This article, like the others on Theosophy, was never published by Sri Aurobindo. However much he disagreed with some of the methods or doctrines of the Theosophical Society, he was well aware of the pioneering work done by this movement, which "with its comprehensive combinations of old and new beliefs and its appeal to ancient spiritual and psychic systems, has everywhere exercised an influence far beyond the circle of its professed adherents" (The Renaissance in India, CWSA vol. 20, p. 70). He assured a disciple who had been associated with the Theosophists: "I have nothing against it [the Theosophical Society] nor against any of the Theosophists, to all of whom I wish the best. I am not against them" (Talk with a disciple, 11 January 1926).

Science and Religion in Theosophy. Circa 1910 ­ 12. Heading in the manuscript: "Papers on Theosophy / II / Science & Religion in Theosophy". (Although not so identified, "The Claims of Theosophy" evidently is the first of the papers.) Page – 505

Sat. Circa 1912.

Sachchidananda. Circa 1912 ­ 13.

The Silence behind Life. Circa 1912. Above the title Sri Aurobindo wrote: "Essays Divine and Human". The editors have used this as the title of this part and of the volume as a whole. 

Section Three (circa 1913) 

The essays in this section form three groups, which were written in three notebooks in or around 1913. The titles of the first and third groups were given by Sri Aurobindo. 

The Psychology of Yoga. Sri Aurobindo wrote this title inside the cover of the notebook used. On the front of the cover he wrote, and then cancelled, "Hints on Yoga".

Initial Definitions and Descriptions. Circa 1913. Before the first paragraph Sri Aurobindo wrote the numeral "1".

The Object of Our Yoga. Circa 1913. This essay is found in the notebook containing the pieces that make up the next group, but seems to go better here. It has no title in the manuscript.

Purna Yoga. Editorial title. The three pieces are headed I, II, III in the manuscript.

I. The Entire Purpose of Yoga. Circa 1913. 

It does not matter if for the present we fall short of our aim, so long as we give ourselves whole-heartedly to the attempt and by living constantly in it and for it move forward even two inches upon the road; even that will help to lead humanity out of the struggle and twilight in which it now dwells into the luminous joy which God intends for us. But whatever our immediate success, our unvarying aim must be to perform the whole journey and not lie down content in any wayside stage or imperfect resting place. Page – 98

In brief, we have to replace dualities by unity, egoism by divine consciousness, ignorance by divine wisdom, thought by divine knowledge, weakness, struggle & effort by self-contented divine force, pain & false pleasure by divine bliss. This is called in the language of Christ bringing down the kingdom of heaven on earth, or in modern language, realising & effectuating God in the world.

Humanity is, upon earth, the form of life chosen for this human aspiration & divine accomplishment; all other forms of life either do not need it or are ordinarily incapable of it unless they change into humanity. The divine fullness is therefore the sole real aim of humanity. It has to be effected in the individual in order that it may be effected in the race. Page – 101

II. Parabrahman, Mukti and Human Thought-Systems. Circa 1913.

III. Parabrahman and Parapurusha. Circa 1913. Editorial title.

Natural and Supernatural Man. This title is written on the cover of the notebook that contains all the pieces in this group.

The Evolutionary Aim in Yoga. Circa 1913.

The Fullness of Yoga—In Condition. Circa 1913. A draft of this and the preceding essay is published as piece 127 of Part Two. The second part of the draft, from the phrase "Yoga in its practice may be either perfect or partial" to the end, was rewritten as "The Fullness of Yoga—In Condition". This essay follows the draft rather closely for two and a half paragraphs; from this point the two are developed on different lines. The significance of the phrase "in condition" in the title is not made clear in the essay; but it is brought out sufficiently well in the draft. Page – 506

Nature. Circa 1913. This essay was at one point to be entitled "Maya, Lila, Prakriti, Chit-Shakti". Individual pieces on each of these aspects of the force called Nature were apparently planned, but only "Maya" was written.

Maya. Circa 1913. In the second paragraph Sri Aurobindo writes of his intention to "look at the Cosmos from . . . the standpoint . . . of . . . Lila". Although never able to complete an essay on this theme, he did sketch his view of the subject in two sentences written on the back cover of the notebook. These sentences are given as a footnote. 

PART TWO: FROM MAN TO SUPERMAN

5. Circa 1912. Heading: "Ishavasyam". On the next two pages of the same notebook is written a fragmentary commentary on the Isha Upanishad. The present piece clearly is related to that commentary.

The rooted and fundamental conception of Vedanta is that there exists somewhere, could we but find it, available to experience or self-revelation, if denied to intellectual research, a single truth comprehensive & universal in the light of which the whole of existence would stand revealed and explained both in its nature and its end. This universal existence, for all its multitude of objects and its diversity of faces, is one in substance and origin; and there is an unknown quantity, X or Brahman to which it can be reduced, for from that it started and in & by that it still exists. Page – 182

22. Circa 1913.

All existence is Brahman, Atman & Iswara, three names for one unnameable reality which alone exists. We shall give to this sole real existence the general name of God, because we find it ultimately to be not an abstract state of Existence not conscious of itself, but a supreme & self-aware One who exists—absolutely in Himself, infinitely in the world & with an appearance of the finite in His various manifestations in the world.

God in Himself apart from all world manifestation or realisable relation to world manifestation is called the Paratpara Brahman, & is not knowable either to the knowledge that analyses or the knowledge that synthetically conceives. We can neither say of Him that He is personal or impersonal, existence or nonexistence, pure or impure, Atman or unAtman. We can only say to every attempt to define Him positively or negatively, neti neti, Not this, not this. We can pass into the Paratpara Brahman, but we cannot know the Paratpara Brahman. God in the world is Brahman-Iswara-Atman, Prakriti or Shakti and Jiva. These are the three terms of His world-manifestation.

24. Circa 1913.

The self which we have to perfect, is neither pure atman which is ever perfect nor the ego which is the cause of imperfection, but the divine self manifested in the shifting stream of Nature. Existence is composed of Prakriti & Purusha, the consciousness that sees and the consciousness that executes & formalises what we see. The one we call Soul, the other Nature. These are the first double term from which our Yoga has to start. When we come to look in at ourselves instead of out at the world and begin to analyse our subjective experience, we find that there are two parts of our being which can be, to all appearance, entirely separated from each other, one a consciousness which is still & passive and supports, and the other a consciousness which is busy, active & creative, and is supported. The passive & fundamental consciousness is the Soul, the Purusha, Witness or Sakshi; the active & superstructural consciousness is Nature, Prakriti, processive or creative energy of the Sakshi. But the two seem at first to stand apart & distinct, as if they had no share in each other.

The Purusha, still & silent witness of whatever Prakriti chooses to create, not interfering with her works, but reflecting only whatever forms, names & movements she casts on the pure mirror of his eternal existence and the Prakriti restlessly creating, acting, forming & effecting things for the delight of the Purusha, compose the double system of the Sankhyas. But as we continue analysing their relations and accumulate more and more experience of our subjective life, we find that this seeing of the Purusha is in effect a command. Whatever Prakriti perceives it to be the pleasure of the Purusha to see, she tends to preserve in his subjective experience or to establish; whatever she perceives it to be his pleasure to cease to see, she tends to renounce & abolish. Whatever he consents to in her, she forces on him & is glad of her mastery & his submission, but whenever he insists, she is bound eventually to obey. Easily found to be true in our subjective experience, this ultimate principle of things is eventually discovered by the Yogin to determine even objective phenomena. The Purusha & Prakriti are therefore not only the Witness & the Activity witnessed, but the Lord & his executive energy. The Purusha is Ishwara, the Prakriti is His shakti. Their play with each other is both the motive & the executive force of all existence in the universe. Page – 195

30. Early 1913.

Chitshakti not mind has created the world. Chitshakti is the thing which the Scientists call in its various aspects Force & Energy, but it is no material Force or Energy, it is the divine power of self-conscious Being forming itself not materially, not in substance of matter but in the substance of that self-consciousness into these images of form and force which make up the world. What we call world, is a harmony of things seen not by the individual mind or even by universal mind, but rather seen through universal mind, as through a reflecting medium, by the Eye of divine Being. The eye that sees is immaterial, the things seen are immaterial; for matter itself is only a form, image & appearance of eternal Spirit. Page – 200

35. Circa 1912. Heading: "Life".

36. Circa 1912. Heading: "Vedantic Suggestions / The Secret of Life —Ananda".

62. Circa 1913.

Matter is but a form of consciousness; nevertheless solve not the object entirely into its subjectivity. Reject not the body of God, O God lover, but keep it for thy joy; for His body too is delightful even as His spirit.

Perishable and transitory delight is always the symbol of the eternal Ananda, revealed and rapidly concealed, which seeks by increasing recurrence to attach itself to some typal form of experience in material consciousness. When the particular form has been perfected to express God in the type, its delight will no longer be perishable but an eternally recurrent possession of mental beings in matter manifest in their periods & often in their moments of felicity.

106. 1912 ­ 13.

107. 1912 ­ 13. Faces piece in the manuscript.

122. Circa 1913.

Yoga is the contact of the humanity in us with the deity in which it dwells, of the finite with the Infinite, of the as yet accomplished evolving & imperfect humanity with its yet unevolved attainable perfection, of the outwardly active waking consciousness which is controlled with the inwardly active controlling consciousness, of man with God, of the changing outward apparent ego with the secret real and immutable Self. By that contact the lower rises to the higher, the unevolved evolves, the unborn is created, humanity assumes some part of godhead, man moves upward to God. This upward and self-expanding movement is the utility of Yoga.

124. Circa 1913. Heading: "The Evolutionary Aim of Yoga." The piece apparently is related to "The Evolutionary Aim in Yoga" (Part One, Section Three), and so to piece 127.

The human being on earth is God playing at humanity in a world of matter under the conditions of a hampered density with the ulterior intention of imposing law of spirit on matter & nature of deity upon human nature. Evolution is nothing but the progressive unfolding of Spirit out of the density of material consciousness and the gradual self-revelation of God out of this apparent animal being.

Yoga is the application, for this process of divine self-revelation, of the supreme force of tapas by which God created the world, supports it & will destroy it. It substitutes always some direct action of an infinite divine force for the limited workings of our fettered animal humanity. It uses divine means in order to rise to divinity.

All Yoga is tapasya and all siddhi of Yoga is accomplishment of godhead either by identity or by relation with the Divine Being in its principles or its personality or in both or simultaneously by identity and relation.

Identity is the principle of Adwaita, relation of Dwaita, relation in a qualified identity of Visishtadwaita. But entire perfection comes by identity with God in essential experience & relation of difference with Him in experience of manifestation.

126. Circa 1920. Heading: "An Introduction to Yoga. / 1 / The Meaning of Yoga".

127. Circa 1913. This long piece can be considered a draft of what, differently developed, became two essays, "The Evolutionary Aim in Yoga" and "The Fullness of Yoga—In Condition" (Part One, Section Three). The sense of the second of these titles is explained better in the last two paragraphs of the present piece than in the revised essay.

129. Circa 1915. Heading: "Essays in Yoga. / The Seeds of Yoga."

144. Circa 1912.

PART THREE: NOTES AND FRAGMENTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS 

The Marbles of Time. 1910 ­ 14. Editorial title. Cancelled heading: "Marbles".

A Theory of the Human Being. 1912 ­ 14.

A Cyclical Theory of Evolution. 1910 ­ 13. This piece probably was written around the same time as the preceding one. The opening page or pages (and so also the title) are missing.

Towards Unification. Circa 1912. In the manuscript written beneath the heading: "Studies in the Mahabharat—/ The Book of the Woman." Evidently the passage printed here was meant to be an introduction to a discussion of the eleventh book of the Mahabharata, the Stri-Parva or Book of the Woman. Sri Aurobindo broke off work on the piece without reaching the proposed subject. The title has been supplied by the editors.

China, Japan and India. Circa 1912.

The Origin of Genius. 1910 ­ 14.

Poetic Genius. Circa 1912. Editorial title. In the manuscript the heading is "The Genius of Valmekie" (see the next piece).

The Voices of the Poets. Circa 1912. Editorial title. The text of this piece, like the preceding one, was written under the heading "The Genius of Valmekie". There is no explicit mention of Valmiki in either piece. 

Pensées. Circa 1912.

The Beauty of a Crow's Wings. 1910 ­ 12. Editorial title.

PART FOUR: THOUGHTS AND APHORISMS 

Thoughts and Aphorisms. In or around 1913, Sri Aurobindo wrote 552 aphorisms in a single notebook. In May 1915 and May 1916 he published ten of them in the monthly review Arya. 

Sri Aurobindo is a gradualist, an evolutionist

A greater psychology: an introduction to Sri Aurobindo's ... - Aurobindo Ghose, A. S. Dalal - 2001 - Provides an overview of the psychological thought of the Indian philospher which includes body, mind, soul, and spirit… "When it comes to a 'greater psychology'-one which includes body, mind, soul, and spirit- Aurobindo has much to teach us, as is clearly and beautifully ...

Indian Philosophy Since Independence - Volume 1 - Page 114 - Dale Maurice Riepe - 1979 - Preview - More editions ... an attempt in particular to possess and organise the mysterious occult, outwardly still undeveloped direct power of Mind upon Life and both Mind and Life over Matter. Lest anyone think that Aurobindo has much use for matter or secular ...

Sri Aurobindo and his contemporary thinkers - Page 8 - Indrani Sanyal, Krishna Roy, Jadavpur University - 2007 - Sanyal observes that the idea of universal history as understood by Pramath Nath or Sri Aurobindo has much wider connotation than what is ordinarily conveyed by this expression. Sanyal attempts to elaborate the standpoint of Pramath Nath ...

Annual - Page 106 - Sri Aurobindo mandir, Calcutta - 1995 - Snippet view - More editions This is a very sad state of affairs, because Sri Aurobindo has much to offer to this country: he has brought to us a new model of spirituality which can not only make our terrestrial lives rich and fulfilling, but which can also make us the leaders of ...

Mother India: monthly review of culture - Volume 21 - Page 321 - Kaikhushru Dhunjibhoy Sethna, Sri Aurobindo Ashram - 1969 - We wish to consider some fundamental principles of Sri Aurobindo's world- vision and God-vision. For we are all seeking to deepen our consciousness of Truth, the truth of the Self, and the World, and God — and Sri Aurobindo has much to tell...

International Encyclopaedia of Yoga & Occultism (In Vols. 3) - Page 453 - Prof. Ramesh Gupta - 2008 - As philosopher Ken Wilber comments: "When it comes to a 'greater psychology' — one which includes body, mind, soul, and spirit, in both ascending evolutionary and descending/involutionary currents—(Sri) Aurobindo has much to teach us.

Sri Aurobindo: A Contemporary Reader Sachidananda Mohanty - 2012 - Preview - More editions The organized Hindi group is fighting against the international numeral on the ground of Aryan Culture. Sri Aurobindo has no decided opinion on the question. But if the South Indians and other non-Hindi Provinces insist on this arrangement, ...

Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx: integral sociology and dialectical ... - Page 90 - Debi Prasad Chattopadhyaya - 1988 - Preview Then he refers to the deliberations of the Stuttgart Socialistic Conference which considered the question whether socialism is consistent with or excludes patriotism. As for himself Sri Aurobindo has no doubt in his mind that socialism, which ...

Aurobindo's Philosophy of Brahman - Page 83 - Stephen H. Phillips - 1986 - Preview - More editions

But Bolle tries to make far too much out of the point, claiming that Aurobindo has no concern for "epistemology" or for the "foundations" of his positions (see p. 88). 89. Agehananda Bharati in 77ic Tantric Tradition (1970) writes: "Tantrism has ...

The Indian Imagination: Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English - Page 221 - K. D. Verma - 2000 - Preview - More editions In Worthy is the World: The Hindu Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo (Rutherford: Far- leigh Dickinson UP, 1971), Beatrice Bruteau notes "Aurobindo's thesis of the three poises of Brahman," and observes: "He [Aurobindo] has no difficulty in admitting...

Spiritual Titanism: Indian, Chinese, and Western Perspectives - Page 150 - Nicholas F. Gier - 2000 - Preview - More editions Aurobindo has no sympathy for those who describe the Superman as the "deification of the rare or solitary ego," which, says Aurobindo, is unfortunately one valid interpretation of Nietzsche's "Overman." Accepting the cooriginality of Devas ...

Sociology, Ideology and Utopia: Socio-Political Philosophy of East ... - Page 39 - Debi Prasad Chattopadhyaya - 1997 - Preview - More editions The label "false subjectivism" appears no more meaningful than the labels of "oriental despotism" and "oriental substantiality". Sri Aurobindo has no hesitation to recognise the philosophers, poets, and musicians of Germany as "great" but to...

Knowledge Consciousness and Religious Co - Page 269 - Michael T. McLaughlin - 2003 - Preview Recall, however, that Aurobindo has no belief in an incarnation in the Christian sense. For Lonergan and for the Christian theologian in general, the incarnation means that the God-Man, Jesus Christ, is the object of CONVERSION IN ...

Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of ... - Page 186 - William Irwin Thompson - 1998 - Preview - More editions So it is small wonder that Aurobindo has no use for sexual love or the affectionate touching of the human body. But the Rig Veda is fascinating precisely because it gives us a way of getting into a mind that is older even perhaps than the texts ...

Against Empire: Feminisms, Racism and 'the' - Page 109 - Zillah Eisenstein - 2004 - Preview - More editions Sri Aurobindo has no patience with "enforced dogma, cults, and moral codes". One's spiritual evolution develops as one finds oneself "more and more united with the collectivity and the AH". This is a fluid religiosity which encompasses a ...

Studies in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy - Page 125 – S.K. Maitra - 1945 - The chief complaint of this writer is that, unlike Sankara, Sri Aurobindo has no faith in intuition, and he has paid me a great compliment by quoting from my book An Introduction to the Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo to show that Sri Aurobindo has...

A New Way of Living - Page 257 - Roy Posner - Preview The spiritual view of time described by Sri Aurobindo has no precedence in human history. It is where all understanding of time and beyond should begin to understand its ultimate frontiers. Ordinary vs. Spiritual View of Time -- The normal ...

The Calcutta review - Page 168 - University of Calcutta, University of Calcutta. Dept. of English - 1934 - Aurobindo has no liking for a negative attitude in life; hence though he sees the dignity of the Nirvana calm, he leaves it aside as not yielding the full fruition of life. Aurobindo is always alive to the intrepid and incessant activity of life in which he ...

The yogi and the mystic: a study in the spirituality of Sri ... - Page 122 - Jan Feys - 1977 - Sri Aurobindo has no use for the traditional 'light and dark courses' the deceased soul is supposed to follow. Instead we have the 'supracosmic' and 'cosmic' states of the soul. These are made to correspond to the double 'Unmanifest' of the ...