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 ...

The aim should be understanding of being and the world

Communication practicum from Auroville Radio by contact@aurovilleradio.org (Herman) Jan 17, 2013

This has been the fifth year running that communication and political science students from the American University of Paris have been coming to Auroville for their undergraduate practicum. Also for the past few years they have been joined by students from Linneaus University in Sweden. Auroville provides a perfect platform for the students with all the different projects and activities they can get involved in. To round of their 2-3 week visit they all gave a presentation of the work they have been doing in Auroville.

Lalit on Queens University & CEPT  from Auroville Radio by contact@aurovilleradio.org (Andrea) Jan 16, 2013

Auroville Integral Sustainability Institute shares the experience of hosting 2 different groups of visiting planning students from Queens University, Canada & CEPT, Ahmedabad - ‘It was very enriching for all’, says Lalit, Programme coordinator. Auroville being an inspiring & interdisciplinary learning field provided very conducive environment to experience a different way of life which gave them a very real life glimpse of integral life & sense of purpose.

“The Party” from Larval Subjects Jan 17, 2013

Among Heideggerians, for example, Heidegger research becomes an end in itself, whereas the aim should be understanding of being and the world.  Among the democratic party, perpetuation of the democratic party becomes an end in itself, rather than representing the interests of the people.  The first question we need to ask of any form of organization– and this is why we need anarcho-communism as a regulative ideal –is that of how we can insure that parties, groups, and organizations remain “complex, adaptive systems”, rather than becoming ends in themselves and machines of alienation.  How can we organize in a way that remains responsive to the alien and singular?

The second problem with group structures is of greater concern and has darker implications.  As I have argued for a number of years now, group identification has the structure of masculine sexuality (the left side of the diagram to the right).  I will not rehearse the intricacies of Lacan’s graph of sexuation here (readers who are curious can consult chapter 6 of The Democracy of Objects or my article “The Other Face of God“, .pdf)… Such was Zizek’s conclusion regarding the function of the symbolic figure of the Jew in anti-semitism.  Anti-semitism has nothing to do with real Jews, but is instead a fantasy structure designed to explain why the organic and harmonious communities dreamed of by conservative ideologies fail (today the figure of the Jew has been replaced by leftists and Middle Easterners).   

Most Overrated Philosopher Of The 20th Century Science 2.0 By Massimo Pigliucci January 16th 2013 Reprinted from Rationally Speaking, January 11, 2013 Willard van Orman Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Bertrand Russell, &

Martin Heidegger, a major practitioner of the phenomenological and existentialist approaches in philosophy, buddy of the Nazi (the well! what the well!), and a top competitor with Derrida for most obscure philosophical writer of the 20th century. He talked a lot about Being (and Time).

Eric Schliesser Introduces Foucault from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Eric Schliesser follows last week’s ‘Philo of Economics’ with this week’s on “Foucault and the Invisible Hand”. Eric refers to Michel Foucault's treatment of Smith in “The Birth of Biopolitics”. While commenting on Smith's use of "invisible hand" in the Wealth of Nations (hereafter WN), Foucault insists that Smith is committed to the claim that:

“Everyone must be uncertain with regard to the collective outcome if this positive collective outcome is really to be expected. Being in the dark and the blindness of all the economic agents are absolutely necessary. The collective good must not be an objective... Invisibility is not just a fact arising from the imperfect nature of human intelligence which prevents people from realizing that there is a hand behind them which arranges or connects everything that each individual does on their own account. Invisibility is absolutely indispensable. It is an invisibility which means that no economic agent should or can pursue the collective good” (Foucault 2008: 279-80).

Comment

I am not going to comment on Foucault’s general reasoning on Adam Smith’s use of the IH metaphor in this post.  His reasoning tends to be obscure. To argue that “human intelligence prevents people from realizing that there is a hand behind them which arranges or connects everything that each individual does on their own account” is a strange way of putting it. The “hand behind them which arranges or connects everything that each individual does on their own account” is either saying that “human intelligence” stops them fantasising about an IH that actually exists or prevents them fantasising about one that does not exist.  That is what makes philosophy such a tormented subject; it’s never really clear as to what they mean except by engaging in constant “deep thinking”. Those excellent teacher’s of philosophy (such as Eric Schliesser) are unfazed by textual ambiguity and are among the brightest and best of social scientists.  They are always stimulating when listened to in conversation or in seminars and stretch their student’s critical faculties…

I suggest Hayek’s defiant conjecture (Fatal Conceit) that knowing every action of 7 billion of people about matching possible choices among billions of products and services (36 billion choices in New York alone each minute of the day – only a few dozen choices for gatherer-hunter upper Amazonian tribes) is well beyond human comprehension or understanding, let alone practical even in a Providential fantasy of the imagination. Surely it is an extreme theological idea, even as a figure of speech. A Must Read New Book on Friedrich Hayek Eamonn Butler: “Friedrich Hayek: the ideas and influence of the libertarian economist”

The limits of Karl Polanyi’s anti-market approach in the struggle for economic democracy from The Memory Bank by Keith Hart Jan 16, 2013

I am a fully paid-up member of the Karl Polanyi fan club. In the past few years I have published, with my collaborators, a collection of essays on the significance of The Great Transformation for understanding our times (Blanc 2011, Holmes 2012) and have made him a canonical figure for my versions of economic anthropology, the human economy and the history of money. I have also published two short biographical articles on him. I have contributed in this way to the recent outpouring of new work on Polanyi to which this book is a significant addition. I am a believer, but some believers also have doubts. I still have reservations about a Polanyian strategy for achieving economic democracy and these are linked to his historical vision of “market society”.  Theories are good for some things and not for others and, in my view, the plural economy would be best served by a plural approach to theory and politics. But first let me summarise what I most value personally in what I have learned from Polanyi.

Most anthropologists take their lead from the academic work done by Polanyi and his collaborators at Columbia University after the war… Polanyi falls within this anti-market camp since he acknowledged Aristotle as his master and considered “the self-regulating market’s” contradictions to have been the principal cause of the twentieth-century’s horrors. A less apocalyptic version of socialism in the tradition of Saint-Simon acknowledges the social damage done by unfettered markets (what Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction”), but would not wish to do away with the wealth they produce… John Maynard Keynes produced the most impressive synthesis of liberalism and social democracy in the last century. Much recent writing on Polanyi would place him within this tendency rather than as a card-carrying anti-marketeer. He did recognize a role for the market and lined up with those who sought institutional means to correct capitalism’s ills… In either case, the post-war turn to social democracy or “embedded liberalism” – the apogee of national capitalism – was hardly anticipated by The Great Transformation. We should not repeat this error when we draw inspiration from Polanyi in the struggle for economic democracy today.   

09. Narad’s reading of The Mother on Savitri from Savitri 17 Jan 2013

Regarding a passage in Savitri in which Sri Aurobindo describes the universe as a play between He and She. "This whole wide world is only he and she," He, the Supreme in love with her, her servitor; She, the creative Force.

As one too great for him he worships her; … This whole wide world is only he and she. 

What a marvellous work! He goes into a completely different region, so much above thought! It's constant vision, it isn't something thought out—with thought everything becomes flat, hollow, empty, empty, just like a leaf; while this is full, the full content is there, alive.

A critique of the book "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" by Peter Heehs

To begin with, any successor must be someone who will swear personal loyalty to Manoj Das Gupta as against Sri Aurobindo. Some of the names being ...

Disciples - Sri Aurobindo Ashram - E-Library - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Heredity and environment cook uniqueness of each individual

The Interaction of the Individual Soul, Heredity and Environment from Sri Aurobindo Studies 

We are born into the world as children of our parents, carrying with us a physical heritage from our ancestors which is called heredity. These traits are passed along in the DNA transmitted from the parents, and combined according to the dominant or recessive characteristics of the particular genetic interactions. This process therefore provides a basis for the continuity of the physical framework of our lives from generation to generation. The ability for genetic material to combine and create new combinations through the contribution of the two parents provides an enormous potential capability for individuation and new development in the newly born child.

This process of heredity, however, is not the sole factor in determining our lives. Once born into the world, we interact with an environment consisting of both the world at large, and the other beings with whom we interact. We are both influenced, and in our turn, influence the development of the community of life and existence and its development. We are part of the community and partake of the time-spirit within which we are born and live, carried along by the currents of that tremendous collective energy, but also doing our part to try to shape and move that collective existence.

While there is a debate about whether heredity or environment is more important in the development of the human being, and there are strong proponents of each view, it is clear that both are part of the legacy of the past, and the force of the present within which we have to take up our lives and become who we are meant to be. These two factors on their own however are not the whole story, although they provide us a clue. When we recognize that the very process helps to ensure “uniqueness” of each individual, we can see that the physical process supports the concept of the individual soul born into life.

Patterns of the Present - Georges Van Vrekhem 

Patterns of the Present is a profound and inspiring account of the present situation of mankind and the world it lives in. On the threshold of the new millennium, countless pages have been written on the meaning of our world and its possible development. The conclusion in most cases was depressing – man would become an automaton in a sci-fi world. The author puts the present situation of humanity in the perspective of the evolutionary vision of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. The result is a positive interpretation of the global situation. The meaning of history, the globalization of our planet, the values represented by East and West, their meeting and reciprocal fertilization, the future evolution of mankind – all these topics and more are presented here in a fresh, often surprising, perspective. Contents:
1. The Big Picture
2. The Avataric Field
3. East and West
4. Reason on Trial
5. Science, Scientism, Modern Technology
6. The Supramental “Catastrophe”
7. The Future of Humanity

Preparing for the Miraculous - Georges Van Vrekhem 

The Belgian writer Georges Van Vrekhem explores these and other timeless questions in the light of Sri Aurobindos evolutionary concept and casts a refreshing new look on issues that have been the lasting preoccupation of seekers throughout the ages. This book contains the edited versions of eleven talks that Georges Van Vrekhem gave in Auroville in 2010 and 2011:
* Adam Kadmon and the Evolution
* The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Thought
* Preparing for the Miraculous
* What Arjuna Saw: the Dark Side of the Force
* 2012 and 1956: Doomsday?
* Being Human and the Copernican Evolution
* Bridges across the Afterlife
* Sri Aurobindo's Descent into Death
* Sri Aurobindo and the Big Bang
* Theodicy: "Nature Makes no Mistakes"
* The Kalki Avatar.

American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner, ed. By Robert McDermott

I mentioned this text, American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner, edited by my advisor Robert McDermott, a few months back. It has since been published. …

About the Author Robert McDermott, Ph.D., is president emeritus and chair of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). His publications include Radhakrishnan (1970); The Essential Aurobindo (1974, 1987); The Essential Steiner (1984); (with Rudolf Steiner) The Bhagavad Gita and the West (2009); The New Essential Steiner (2009) and Six Pillars: Introductions to the Works of Sri Aurobindo (2012). He has also published on William James, Josiah Royce, M. K. Gandhi, the evolution of consciousness, and American thought.

Book Description American philosophy may have taken a wrong turn in the mid-twentieth century, when pragmatism gave way to a tradition of analytical philosophy that eschewed metaphysics as inherently meaningless and focused on the coherence or incoherence of linguistic structures. Nonetheless, many new sites of potential dialogue exist between Steiner and American philosophy.

Style « Larval Subjects 25 Apr 2008 – Hopefully I have enough “cred” to inveigh against “difficult books” (I am, after all, mired in the work of figures such as Deleuze, Lacan, Hegel, etc., who are the worst of the worst), but I have increasingly found myself suspicious of the “difficult work”… I wonder if terribly dense styles such as we find in figures like Deleuze, Lacan, Hegel, Derrida, etc., etc., etc., aren’t a form of intellectual terrorism… I’ve spent my fair amount of time defensively defending the writing style of figures such as Lacan, Derrida, Heidegger, Deleuze, etc., etc., etc. What I realize is that what I was defending was not their style but the value of their concepts and arguments despite their style. 12:19 PM - 4:22 PM

Alethetics from Larval Subjects Every great philosopher proposes a frame, a new window through which to encounter the world… We no less frame selections of the world than we are seized by selections of the world.  7:07 PM

A Must Read New Book on Friedrich Hayek from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy - Eamonn Butler: “Friedrich Hayek: the ideas and influence of thelibertarian economist”

Hayek’s life and legacy testify to the lasting power of ideas over the fleeting influence of individual politicians who, because they misunderstand the dynamics of human societies, normally promote the wrong ideas. Radicals of Left and Right believe they can change society by capturing the legislature to correct what they regard as society’s systemic errors. Hayek noted, sardonically, that if designed changes tried to change the world, we cannot be sure that the outcome would please either its designers or those affected by their changes.

Hayek, Zizek, Heehs and Elst

Sri Aurobindo: A Contemporary Reader Sachidananda Mohanty - 2012 - Preview - I believe that Peter Heehs is right in his analysis and observations. While the intersection of religion and nationalism remains an unresolved issue and Heehs has not ventured 'to set forth in systematic form', his own vision of Sri Aurobindo's views—he does it elsewhere—his point about the existing prejudice and misunderstanding against Sri Aurobindo is a valid one. What I propose to do next is to underline key aspects of Sri Aurobindo's social vision that make him a front-ranking thinker of contemporary culture.

Aurobindo's Philosophy of Brahman - Page 132 - Stephen H. Phillips - 1986 - Preview - I think that the case for the interpretation that his overriding motive is empiricist is a good one. My chief reason for identifying this additional affinity is, as before, to try to comprehend his positions as fully as possible, ...

While mystic experience does stand out not only justificationally but in his idea of the nature of divine life, Aurobindo's stress is on a continuity, mutual value, and mutual reality obtaining between the mystical and and our more ordinary ... 

An Indian Sceptic – Philosophy of Daya Krishna from from Centre Right India by Koenraad Elst - Dec 28, 2012. Daya Krishna (1924-2007) had been a member of the Changers’ Club, the debating circle of friends at Delhi University, featuring the later journalist Girilal Jain, economists Ram Swarup and Raj Krishna and historian Sita Ram Goel.  

Daya Krishna wisely avoids pronouncing on the difficult question of their absolute chronology… Briefly, Daya Krishna was a Hindu philosopher who knew his classics very well, and who took a questioning position. He was not a secularist, the kind who know next to nothing of their tradition yet condemn it out of hand anyway. But he was not a believer either, aware as he was of the contradiction between the common beliefs about Vedic literature and what the Vedas themselves say.

The Enduring Relevance of Koenraad Elst from The Rediscovery of India by Sandeep B.

One of the defining sentences in the various analyses of post-Independence Hindu revivalism, which is also original is this: Hindus have been playing the game by the rules set by their enemies. [Ed: Paraphrased] Elst wrote this in his masterful Decolonizing the Hindu Mind in 2001. More than a decade ago. As we see, very little has changed since then. If anything, it’s gotten worse in several respects… The Intellectuals: The widely travelled, well-read, and smart ones. The ones who (rightly) want to change the narrative, who point out the inherent bias in our discourse about India and Hinduism.

A Day in the Life of a Sikh Prejudice: Pukhraj Singh DECEMBER 29, 2012 from Kafila Guest post by PUKHRAJ SINGH

“The very ink with which history is written,” allegorised Mark Twain, “is merely fluid prejudice.” By that rationale, religion can often be the quill which defaces the truth with its broad strokes, perverting history than promulgating it. And like the bastard child of these perversions, a few counter-narratives manage to wade through the tides of public opinion, carrying the dim outline of the ossified ideas that led to its tragic pursuit. But one has to have the right kind of eyes, says Hunter S. Thompson, to “see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” 

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):

“Faced with the demands of the protestors, intellectuals are definitely not in the position of the subjects supposed to know: they cannot operationalize these demands, or translate them into proposals for precise and realistic measures. With the fall of twentieth-century communism, they forever forfeited the role of the vanguard which knows the laws of history and can guide the innocents along its path. The people, however, also do not have access to the requisite knowledge–the “people” as a new figure of the subject supposed to know is a myth of the Party which claims to act on its behalf…

There is no Subject who knows, and neither intellectuals nor ordinary people are that subject. Is this a deadlock then: a blind man leading the blind, or, more precisely, each of them assuming that the other is not blind? No, because their respective ignoance is not symmetrical: it is the people who have the answers, they just do not know the questions to which they have (or, rather, are) the answer…. 

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.” 

(title unknown) by enowning

In Al Jazeera, Santiago Zabala on the thinker of our age. 

[His ability to fuse together Martin Heidegger's "fundamental ontology", Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" and Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" in order to undermine our liberal and tolerant democratic structures is a practice few intellectuals are capable of.]

A Must Read New Book on Friedrich Hayek from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Eamonn Butler: “Friedrich Hayek: the ideas and influence of the libertarian economist”

It is in his accounts of why markets flourish naturally that Hayek is most persuasive, and Butler is at his best in showing the importance of this side of Hayek’s work.  This means discussing socialism, which at first glance is a debate about a past that is now over. However, lessons from the endemic failures of socialism are in excellent contrast to the superior results of market capitalism, and Butler develops the contrast clearly, highlighting the untold damage done by the rising tide of deliberate rule changes that eventually clog the operations of markets, restraining them from their full potential.

Socialism is a mistaken response to how societies evolve and work.   The “battle lines” may have changed from what they were in the 19^th century when socialism was an untried idea, but having been tried and failed in the 20^thcentury, the central problem remains today: how does a central agency manage a complex economy? Socialism necessarily means dispensing with an existing market capitalism, which whatever else is regarded as dispensable, the visible success of markets that grew within the margins of the millennia-old human experiences since our ancestors left the forest and plains to become shepherds and farmers 10,000 years ago, suggests that markets are dispensed with at an enormous cost.  

We can contrast the experience of China and Britain since the 15^th century; China’s government deliberately ended foreign trade despite its massive technological lead. Meanwhile individuals in Britain continued trading and eventually re-discovered the ‘lost’ technologies of China which led to the spread of local markets, science and unheard of new technologies.  Market capitalism flourishes under conditions of constitutional liberty more than totalitarian socialism can flourish by destroying markets. Gavin Kennedy Emeritus Professor, Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University

Hayek, Whitehead, and Sri Aurobindo

Vices and more vices from Marginal Revolution by Tyler Cowen Dec 20, 2012

Lately a few people have been linking to 2006 posts on the vices of various political philosophies.  If you are curious, here is my post on the libertarian vice.  Here is my post on the liberal vice.  Here is my post on the conservative vice.  I still like these posts. Since I have written these posts, several additional acts of vice have been committed.

An Introduction to Sri Aurobindo's Metaphysical Cosmology: Part I ... - ericweiss.com 9 Jun 2006 June 9, 2006 I. Introduction A. It is my intention in this paper to give a brief introduction to my interpretation of Sri Aurobindo’s metaphysical system. The ideas presented here are very close to those of Sri Aurobindo, but they are not identical. In particular, my treatment of the category of Being is very influenced by my studies of Alfred North Whitehead…

As Sri Aurobindo would say, on one side there is the “materialist denial,” (nothing but Matter) and on the other side there is “ascetic denial” (nothing but Spirit). Sri Aurobindo, both for the sake of philosophical depth, and for the ...

Notes on The Life Divine: The Refusal of the Ascetic - 6 Jun 2010 by rs Kownslar

The Refusal of the Ascetic. For Sri Aurobindo, the second of the “Two Negations”, the refusal of the ascetic, is based on a powerful spiritual experience: the awareness of the Transcendent Spirit that exceeds this entire universe of name and form, mind and matter, living beings, and everything else we encounter in normal human experience. ...Interestingly, both the materialist and the ascetic end up denying any real significance or value for human life. Either we are all ...

How to eat like a Yogi - Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother 19 Jul 2009 by Sandeep

Way of the Ascetic: The ascetic suppresses desire for food and rejects flavour and taste as part of a harsh discipline. This just defers the ... Sri Aurobindo & the Mother advised another way of food consumption which is neither of the above; it may be called the Way of Equality (Samata) where one eats consciously without surrendering or repressing the desire for food. This is aligned ... The teeth have a mechanical habit of gnashing when food is denied. This is because ... Life Divine Online commentaries

1. Roy Posner’s summary
2. Kireet Joshi’s talks on the Life Divine
3. Mother’s Service Society :  Introduction to the Life Divine
4. Karmayogi’s Discussion on the Aspects of the Life Divine
5. David Hutchinson’s guide
6. Talks by Debashish Banerji
7. Commentary by Soumitra Basu at Institute for Integral Yoga Psychology

Books on the Life Divine

The book The Life Divine is available online at the Ashram website

1. M.P. Pandit.  Legends in the Life Divine (SABDA link)
2. M.P. Pandit.  Introducing the Life Divine (SABDA link)
3. Ananda Reddy.  Deliberations on the Life Divine (SABDA link)
4. Ram Shankar Misra.  Integral Advaitism of Sri Aurobindo (amazon link) (SABDA link) (google books).  (I recommend this book as an introduction to The Life Divine.) 

Meditations on the Isha Upanishad: The Third Movement Debashish ... - sciy.org 2 Sep 2012 by debbanerji

In his interpretation, Sri Aurobindo analyses this assertion. This analysis also forms his exploration in two of the earliest chapters of The Life Divine: The Materialist Denial, and The Refusal of the Ascetic. The Materialist Denial ...

The Vison and Work of Indian Culture Past and the Future–M.S. ... 9 Apr 2012 by integral musings

Sri Aurobindo explains with a luminous and crystal-clear precision the meaning of spirituality contrasting it with what it is not: “… it must therefore be emphasised that .... The satisfaction of the natural needs and propensities of his physical, vital and mental being and the fulfillment of his duties and responsibilities are not denied in an ascetic spirit; they are accepted as indispensable parts of his evolutionary growth and development. But Indian culture insists that there ...

Distortion Of Vedanta « Truth is, What we say by experience - ujalaa.wordpress.com 23 Nov 2011 by Sunder Dinesh

Ramesh Bijlani: Sri Aurobindo makes a powerful case for restoring the life-affirming and life enriching element of spirituality that had receded over the past 1000 years. His Savitri... Of these three lines, the first is the 'denial of the materialist'; the second is the 'refusal of the ascetic'; and the third is the flaw in the 'refusal of the ascetic' who, therefore, loses sight of the identity he has with the rest of the creation and also misses the joy of seeing “the body of God”. How we ...

Why Has Asceticism Led To The Weakening Of Bharat By Sanjeev Nayyar, April 2001 [esamskriti@suryaconsulting.net]

I was reading a book on Sri Aurobindo where in response to a message “about an Aurobindo Matt” from Shri Motilal Roy of Chandranagore who ran a Pravartak Sangh under the inspiration of Aurobindo, he said, “You must understand that my mission is not to create Matts, ascetics and Sannyasis, but to call back the souls of the strong to the Lila of Krishna and Kali. That is my teaching as you can see from the Review, and my name must never be connected with monastic norms or the monastic ideal. Every ascetic movement since the time of the Buddha has left India weaker and for a obvious reason. Renunciation of life is one thing, to make life itself national, individual, world-life greater and divine is another. You cannot enforce one ideal on the country without weakening of the other. You cannot take away the best souls from life and yet leave life stronger and greater. Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the Yoga I teach – no other renunciation”.

The essay attempts to understand Sri Aurobindo’s mind… We can work harder to create a Bharat that produces high quality goods at a reasonable price, export them, capture markets, create brands, make our enemies completely dependant on us. Secondly, we can develop a strong Defence Industry, export arms. Thirdly we can send our share our pearls of wisdom with the rest of the world. Vedanta, Ayurveda, Yoga, Vedic Mathematics, Reikhi, Meditation, Music, Movies, Food to name a few. And lastly, have Armed Forces that act as a strong deterrent to our adversaries, current and future. 

We must increase defence spending to 3 % of GDP till 2010. We must follow the Sardar Patel secularism model that means equal respect for all religions but no special privileges to any one. Our beloved country will progress faster when Sanatan Dharam is given its due. Long live Dharma. 

Temptations and Misuses of the Money Power « Sri Aurobindo Studies 17 Aug 2012

The money power is one that has been so often the occasion of misuse and abuse that it has led to illustrative examples and proscriptions throughout the world. Whether we hear the words of Jesus that it would be easier for someone to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven, or we view Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice which illustrated the extremity of greed overcoming basic humanity, or we read the writings of Charles Dickens as he explores the plight of the underclasses who were oppressed by greedy rich businessmen, or we view the spiritual paths that call for ascetic denial of money or possession of wealth, we find a common thread or theme running through each of them; namely, that money can easily corrupt, distract and mislead.

Sri Aurobindo discusses it thus: “This is indeed one of the three forces–power, wealth, sex–that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the Asura and are most generally misheld and misused by those who retain them. The seekers or keepers of wealth are more often possessed rather than its possessors; few escape entirely a certain distorting influence stamped on it by its long seizure and perversion by the Asura.”

We are easily reminded of the character of Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ The Christmas Carol and we can reflect on the way he was consumed by greed until his providential conversion through what can only be termed “divine intervention”.

We also see the famous story of King Midas who requested a boon that everything he touched would turn into gold; only to learn through hard experience that he could not eat or drink gold, nor could he engage in any human relationships when the people he touched became gold–a morality tale that illustrates the grip of the money power on the human psyche and the suffering that comes in the wake of this obsession.

How many times in history have we seen noble causes or ideals distorted through compromises intended to attract money? In Goethe’s Faust the development of money was invented by Mephistopheles to mislead and enslave humanity. Those who control the power of money have time and again used it to manipulate, enslave, control and suppress others and they have acted to enhance their wealth at the expense of everyone else and without care or concern for the balance or harmony of the world, the environment, or the living beings who share this earth.

Today especially with the rise of Western material culture, we see the power of money raised up to a level of ultimate worship and the pursuit of money is considered to be a noble ideal in its own right, regardless of how it is acquired or the use to which it is being put. And we are causing untold suffering to the world and the people and other beings in the world through this one-sided, extreme, obsessive and compulsive behavior. Clearly the need for a new understanding and balance in the acquisition and use of money is required.

Offending Markets or the Gods? from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Chris Allsobrook is a lecturer in philosophy at St Augustine [Catholic] College and a politics research associate with the University of Johannesburg. He is also managing editor for the social and political theory journalTheoria.  He writes, 29 November, in Thought Leader (Mail & Guardian), South Africa HERE …

I am pleased to note the disavowal of the existence of an “invisible hand” by Chris Allsobrook, given the predilections for theology for notions of the “hand of god” in human events throughout the Christian era. A Must Read New Book on Friedrich Hayek from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Eamonn Butler: “Friedrich Hayek: the ideas and influence of the libertarian economist”

Holding to his unfashionable convictions for decades led Hayek into intellectual isolation. He was, albeit, politely tolerated rather than listened to by faculty in the universities he taught at. Mainstream economics passed him by during the Keynesian years.  Nobody, for example, mentioned him during my undergraduate years from 1965-69. More is the pity. I found much in Butler’s book that explained a lot about mid-twentieth-century controversies between Keynes’s and Friedman’s economics, which I would have understood better if I had read him at university. 

Hayek contributed original thinking to philosophy and to neuroscience, which brought him close to Adam Smith’s works in the 18^th century, such as his theories about the emergence of morality from childhood (‘self command’) and as an adult (the ‘impartial spectator’), the origins of language and how knowledge evolves, and of course, the origins of the wealth of nations.  Kkk

Opening Anthropology: An interview with Keith Hart at Savage Minds from The Memory Bank - Dec 21, 2012 Part 1 Ryan Anderson: Thanks for doing this interview, Keith.  Let’s just jump right in here: What do you think about this whole ‘open access’ conversation going on in anthropology? …

Keith Hart: The fastest-growing sector of world trade is in cultural commodities – entertainment, education, media, information services – increasingly online. The universities are doing at best a flawed job of providing people with the education they want when they want it and at an affordable price. Everywhere sclerotic corporate hierarchies are outsourcing to smaller flexible units or being replaced by them. This is particularly true of research today. There are massive opportunities out there to address the demand for lifetime self-learning and anthropology should be admirably suited to that. With imagination and less dependence on the universities, anthropology could enter a new golden age…

The academic seclusion of the discipline, its passive acquiescence to bureaucracy, is the chief obstacle preventing us from grasping this historical opportunity. We cling to our revolutionary commitment to joining the people, but have forgotten what ethnography was for or what else is needed, if humanity is to succeed in building a universal society. The internet is a wonderful chance to open up the flow of knowledge and information. Rather than obsessing over how we can control access to what we write, which means cutting off the mass of humanity almost completely from our efforts, we need to figure out new interactive forms of engagement that span the globe and to make the results of our work available to everyone.

Ever since the internet went public and the World Wide Web was invented, I have made online self-publishing and interaction the core of my anthropological practice. It matters less that an academic guild should retain its monopoly of access to knowledge than that “anthropology” should be taken up by a broad intellectual coalition for whom the realization of a new human universal – a world society fit for humanity as a whole — is a matter of urgent personal concern.