Mark: “You might also realize certain events are predestined and you
can’t fight against them.”
Sri Aurobindo himself would be a good example. He was shown in visions
during 1908 that India
would become independent. As a result, he stopped exerting himself on the
matter.
Somewhere Sri Aurobindo or the Mother have said that as long as the
future is being formed in the higher worlds, one can influence and change it,
but once these potentialities descend into the subtle-physical, they cannot be
altered.
On the day India
attained freedom, a voice spoke to the nation. The voice of the first Indian
leader who demanded complete independence from British rule.
The Supramental Action (Yoga and Human Evolution) from At the Feet of The Mother Tuesday, 8th January 2013 at
Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
We have entered an accelerated mode of evolution. It is at once
individual and collective. As a part of this process we see certain tendencies
that have long remained buried or else accepted as normal and natural are being
raised up only to be exhausted or changed. The mind of the race that long
accepted certain things is now disgusted with them and seeks to reject them
completely. But what is the way and the process? Yoga is not about miracles but
a steady climb towards new conquests, slow discovery of new possibilities, a
victory over enduring difficulties and obstinate resistances.
Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri running into about
twenty-four thousand lines is not only a literary masterpiece; it is the
supreme revelation of his vision, and a record of his yogic and spiritual
attainments. It proclaims the future of man and prepares the necessary ground
for the powers of the spirit to enter into his life. It speaks, for instance,
about the essential sound becoming the material sound, and it is that which can
give rise to new expression. It is the sound that can bring to us the knowledge-power
of the spirit. These are the possibilities, and these have been most forcefully
and luminously brought out by the Mother. It is that gift of hers which we
value most, that which can form a constant source of inspiration, that we may
grow more and more fully in it. Through it we can reach the vast realms of
delight, brihat saubhagam, in the accomplishment of our life and
our soul.
Assignation with the Night from Savitri there is the deep existential issue, and it cannot be wished away. One has to meet the Soul of the Night, and one has to talk to it, soul-to-soul. Sri Aurobindo becomes the bold pilgrim of the Night, the dark Soul, and fixes an assignment to meet her, to colloque with her; he indeed makes purposeful advances to woo her. This was on 26 July 1938 when important things were happening, and when were also seen dangerous signs of a thick shadow engulfing the world. He revisits her in 1944, on 18 August, when matters had taken a positive upward turn.
Assignation with the Night from Savitri there is the deep existential issue, and it cannot be wished away. One has to meet the Soul of the Night, and one has to talk to it, soul-to-soul. Sri Aurobindo becomes the bold pilgrim of the Night, the dark Soul, and fixes an assignment to meet her, to colloque with her; he indeed makes purposeful advances to woo her. This was on 26 July 1938 when important things were happening, and when were also seen dangerous signs of a thick shadow engulfing the world. He revisits her in 1944, on 18 August, when matters had taken a positive upward turn.
Sri Aurobindo has identified a persistent principle of the
manifestation that becomes ever more apparent as we ascend the scale of
consciousness, and that is the principle of “uniqueness” which is intimately
bound up with the necessity of rebirth. It is in the end, the uniqueness of the
individual that presents the hidden thread of development that cannot be
accomplished through one lifetime. We see the start of the differentiation
process as the unity of the life force begins to develop into different species
of plant and animal life, what we might consider to be the development of a
group consciousness that manifests characteristics that are unique compared to
other species. Eventually, however, we see the further development,
particularly as the principle of Mind takes hold, of unique individuals within
the group who begin to develop and express characteristics that make that
individual different from the rest of the common group.
H. Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and
Ernst Fehr,
editors 2005. “Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: the foundations of coopertion in economic life”,
MIT.
Another Poor Darwinian Application from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy
Living things can go on for billions of years. Natural
selection works throughout these long time periods. Species can
separate (that’s why we are here) and continue alongside each other, others die
out, even without competing, and some out-compete in limited space. Innovation
removes firms from old technologies either directly or indirectly. Within
the lifetimes of individuals these changes may have no effect upon them.
In short, I am not convinced by biological analogies, though I am
convinced by Darwinian science. When people who are convinced by
biological analogies demonstrate that they understand Adam Smith’s moral
philosophy and his use of the IH metaphor, I shall take more note of them.
We
are caught between extremes of traditional and western perspectives on women
Jan 9, 2013, 12.00AM Sudhir Kakar
The problem is that so many women men now
encounter in the public spaces of India's cities and towns — to which both
sexes have migrated in large numbers in the last few decades — such as those
who have come into the cities to work or study, do not easily fit into the
traditional mental categories of what constitutes a woman's personhood. In
their dress or deportment, these women cannot be accommodated to the relational
blueprint of the woman that the men have carried in their minds since childhood…
The recognition of indivi-duality constituting the personhood of a
woman is a western civilisational gift which makes us acknowledge that the
Indian woman is not only a person when she is relational but also, and in our
context, especially when she is an individual. But we also need to recognise
that the western sexual excesses of television channels, video films and
internet sites which we are in the process of aping are perversions of
individualism, not its essence. The writer is a psychoanalyst and novelist.
