Never trust a man who dyes his hair

Tweets 21 hrs - Savitri Era Party ‏@SavitriEraParty [in defending ethical revaluation while ... advocating compassionate giving and the prevention of wrongdoing, Śāntideva remains consistent.] 22 hrs [Latour may be a bit flippant at times, but his point is certainly not to “do everything he can to deny enchantment"] http://footnotes2plato.com/2013/03/10/reflections-on-latour-tarnas-and-the-misenchantment-of-the-world … 22 hrs [By contrast, others’ wrongdoing is beneficial to us, because it can help produce patient endurance.] #Śāntideva http://loveofallwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/lele-dissertation.pdf … 22 hrs [Property & personal relationships, things we would normally take as goods, are actually harmful to our flourishing, because of attachment.] 22 hrs [Ethical Revaluation in the Thought of Śāntideva - A dissertation by Amod Jayant Lele] http://loveofallwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/lele-dissertation.pdf … (pdf) - http://loveofallwisdom.com/2013/03/why-you-can-read-my-dissertation-on-this-site/ … 23 hrs [Towards a Spiritual Aesthetics of the Environment: Quality, Space, and Being in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, ISLE Vol.18, Issue 2, Spring 2011] 24 hrs [Those who are other-focused are happier... Happier people are more successful — and that’s causal, not correlative.] http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/09/what-6-steps-should-be-guiding-your-career/ … Mar 11 - doubtinggaurav ‏@doubtinggaurav Never trust a man who dyes his hair.  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party Mar 11 - Harsh Madhok ‏@hmadhok It is our desire to cling to the past while grabbing at the future which has made the present too complicated.  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party  Mar 11 Savitri Era Party ‏@SavitriEraParty At SELF our slogan is "Be Selfish" ... Judgment failures occur as a result, and our vigil for "Self-interest" skids. http://savitriera.blogspot.in/2008/08/one-should-have-nose-for-what-is-good.html … Mar 11 [Smith said humans have the power of reasoning... Self-interest is far more complex than rationality.] -Gavin Kennedy. http://adamsmithslostlegacy.blogspot.com/2013/03/for-new-readers-of-adam-smiths-moral.html … Mar 10 [For Heidegger, by contrast, conscience is not God talking to me, but me talking to myself] Simon Critchley 20 July 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/20/heidegger-being-time-critchley … -  View summary Mar 10 Racing round the universe riding on a mouse: The meditative mode of blogging - by Tusar N. Mohapatra http://savitriera.blogspot.in/2009/07/racing-round-universe-riding-on-mouse.html … Om Sri Aurobindo Mar 9 -Vivek Dehejia ‏@vdehejia To label those opposed to Modi's Wharton visit as "Indian sepoys" does no credit to Rajiv Malhotra nor his arguments. http://huff.to/13I9Qdc   Retweeted by Savitri Era Party -  View summary - Mar 10 kittu reddy ‏@kitturd http://wp.me/s3bTx3-182  via @wordpressdotcom Sri Aurobindo on ancient indian polity  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party  View media Mar 10 Sri Aurobindo admits the debt of materialism for making us free from superstitious beliefs http://selforum.blogspot.in/2010/06/sri-aurobindo-admits-debt-of.html … Savitri Era Learning Forum Mar 9 Savitri Era Party ‏@SavitriEraParty Being pushed, willy-nilly, towards Hindutva camp is another danger @RajivMessage either overlooks or underestimates. http://savitriera.blogspot.com/2013/02/rajiv-malhotra-vis-vis-raja-rammohan-roy.html?showComment=1362841178423#c5506374844487270099 … Mar 9 Savitri Era Party ‏@SavitriEraParty [we must first become a nation of individual citizens, multi-hyphenated, yes, but also equal in the eyes of the law.] http://www.firstpost.com/politics/the-fake-debate-communal-modi-fanboys-vs-sickular-commies-623991.html … - View summary Mar 9 [Confused liberals in India mix up classical liberalism, secularism and nationalism – and end up practising none of them.] @minhazmerchant Mar 9 [Ananthamurthy imposes a misleading mix of existentialism and the Marxist conception of society] -Sandeep Balakrishna http://themusepaper.blogspot.in/2013/03/ananthamurthy-imposes-misleading-mix-of.html … Mar 9 IIT Delhi workshop on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit by Prof John Russon and Prof Shannon Hoff (Canada) on 11th March 2013 (10 am: MS 610) Mar 9 santosh krinsky ‏@santoshk1 Karma Is a Law of Spiritual Evolution http://wp.me/pCLXM-1qy  via@wordpressdotcom  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party  View summary Mar 8 [Sri Aurobindo and Tyagaraja attempt to capture the bliss of spiritual experience & unison.] -Murali Sivaramakrishnan http://themusepaper.blogspot.in/2013/03/sri-aurobindo-and-tyagaraja-are.html … Mar 8 db Debashish Bose ‏@db_DelAlpha @kshetragnya They are different persons, Aurobindo is a visionary willing to believe and try, Nirad C is a chronicler and commentator  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party  View conversation Mar 8 Savitri Era Party ‏@SavitriEraParty [a person who is attuned to Sri Aurobindo’s consciousness just falls in love with his writing style.] by Sandeep http://selforum.blogspot.in/2013/03/postmodernism-requires-maturity-and.html … 9 hrs Hostilities between the Israelis and the Palestinians too will be resolved one day through the Savitri Era Religion. http://savitriera.blogspot.in/2008/02/hostilities-between-israelis-and.html … 9 hrs Sri Aurobindo admits the debt of materialism. Postmodernism requires maturity. History-mythology. Auroville to Esalen http://selforum.blogspot.com/ 

On the Generality of Exchange Behaviours from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Humans are not isolated in their self alone.  They act in social settings with other people and also have memories.  They live today in settings where the majority of people nearby are anonymous, not relatives or friends. (The ‘company of strangers’ was a great title recently).  In a small hunter/scavenger and gathering band they knew everybody intimately… We share by giving in order to legitimise our expectation of getting at some time in the future… The share motive (so-called altruism) was accompanied by the expectation of reciprocation in due course, and punished by exclusion from sharing in future (witnessed by Dunbar and observed by people today in work situations and, indeed in families). This simple facet of exchange by reciprocation is experienced today in inter-personal relations in the workplace, including university faculties (!) and is an element of behaviour relevant in developing influence among fellow employees. 

Questions that are rarely asked from Marginal Revolution by Tyler Cowen

“So, my libertarian devotees of evolutionary psychology, you can’t have it both ways.  If feminism is wrong to think we can and/or should resist the dispositions that evolution has given us, then why is it wrong for defenders of the classical liberal order to think we can and/or should resist those dispositions when it comes to our evolved instincts toward the morality of socialism?  Or put the other way around:  if resisting our evolved moral instincts and obeying the rules of just conduct work to generate a civilized, cooperative economic order, why should gender issues be any different?” That is from Steve Horwitz.

Quotation of the Day…  from Cafe Hayek by Don Boudreaux … is from page 190 of Richard Posner’s 1995 volume, Overcoming Law:

“We all have the weaknesses of our strengths.  It is hardly a surprise that people who have powerful intellects tend to have an exaggerated faith in the power of intellect to solve social problems.  It is the same perspectival deformity that leads intellectuals to model democracy as a form of intellectual discussion or to set freedom of thought and debate far above economic freedom.”

(title unknown) from Routledge India Originals's Facebook Wall ~ The Democratic Predicament: Cultural Diversity in Europe and India Edited by: Jyotirmaya Tripathy and Sudarsan Padmanabhan, Rs 895, Pages: 366. Both India and Europe have been undergoing a difficult process of negotiating cultural, religious and ethnic diversity within their democratic frameworks....

The Highest Law of Our Nature from Sri Aurobindo Studies 

It is a quite natural tendency of human nature to fixate on one issue to the exclusion of others. The mind, as a dividing and analyzing instrument, tends toward exclusive concentration. So it is easy to understand that when we once focus on the ethical principle, that it may be viewed as the “categorical imperative” of our human nature.

Sri Aurobindo acknowledges the role of the ethical principle, but he also puts it in context with other aspects of our nature that equally call for fulfillment. There are the seeking for knowledge, the seeking for beauty and harmony, the seeking for Oneness which also represent aspects of our nature.

Sri Aurobindo gave varied advice depending on the individual

Comment on Meditation by Sandeep from Comments for IYSATM by Sandeep

The advice Sri Aurobindo gave varied depending on the individual. Generally speaking, those who are over-eager for experiences are asked to ignore them, while those who can get fruitful guidance from them are asked to pay attention

Tweets Mar 4 - Savitri Era Party ‏@SavitriEraParty [Beyond the human Conference organized by Makarand Paranjape, Debashish Banerji, Richard Carlson, JNU, Feb 20-23, 2014] http://beyondthehuman.com/   - Mar 5 [Nishtha has translated hymns to Goddess Sarasvati in the Rig-Veda.] http://www.aurovilleradio.org/arts-a-culture/culture/3197-sarasvati-in-vedas … [Vedic Sacrifice in Savitri.] http://www.savitri.in/savitri/?q=content/mirror/the-vedic-sacrifice-savitri-i/05-mar-2013 … - Mar 5 Latour, Laruelle, Lovecraft, & Sri Aurobindo http://selforum.blogspot.in/2013/03/latour-laruelle-lovecraft-and-sri.html … The Meeting of the East and the West in Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy –SKM Mar 4 [Asian women’s film festival begins in Delhi tomorrow ~ Sri Aurobindo Centre for Art and Communication] http://thne.ws/WH5kKk  via @thehindu - 21 hrs [Vasantasena is a prostitute... prostitutes in the days of yore in India weren't looked down upon.] By Sandeep. B http://www.sandeepweb.com/2005/05/13/denigrating-indian-culture-eroticising-mricchakatika/ …  - 2 hrs [Our Hidden Secret Link - Sri Aurobindo, Rebirth and Karma, Section III, Chapter 16, The Higher Lines of Karma 144-145 ] http://www.lotuspress.com/item.php?item=990117 … - 3 hrs [Internatal Journey of the Soul Through Vital Or Mental Worlds Sri Aurobindo Studies 13 Oct. 2011 http://wp.me/pCLXM-Ky  via @wordpressdotcom -  View summary – 1 hr [an original dealing with modern problems in the light of the Indian spirit and ... to formulate a greater synthesis] http://kitturd.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/168/  -  View media - 14 hrs – [kittu reddy ‏@kitturd http://wp.me/s3bTx3-168  via @wordpressdotcom Sri Aurobindo on the way to awaken India  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party  View media] Mar 1Bipin ‏@I31p1n - @Back2Vedas Agree. Sri Aurobindo is the most learned man I have ever read of. At the same time Dayanand's Sanskrit knowledge was unparallel. Retweeted by Savitri Era Party -  View conversation - Mar 4 - Sathya Anand ‏@Saffronista - @mirzhaywire If interested, please read Aurobindo's The Secret of the Veda. I can mail a pdf later today if you want.  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party -  View conversation - 11 hrs - Vijay Vikram ‏@einvijay I do not treat Narendra Modi as a messiah as many of you do. Retweeted by Savitri Era Party - 30 mins - Sajid Bhombal ‏@SajidBhombal - @orsoraggiante Exactly; that is why I don't associate with MODI  Retweeted by Savitri Era Party -  View conversation

Evolutionary, Spiritual Conceptions of Life - Sri Aurobindo, ... - Page 33 - Michael Leicht - 2008 - Preview It seems to me that as Nietzsche shifts the stress from Apollonian harmony and reason to Dionysian ecstasy and disorder Aurobindo has made a similar shift by worshipping the destructive Shiva instead of the creative Brahman! Madhusudan ...

Word from the Soul: Time, East/West Spirituality, and ... - Page 146 - Stuart Sovatsky - 1998 - Preview - More editions ... as Aurobindo, Nietzsche, Teilhard, Neumann, Gebser, Wilber, and others described, is far more of a spiritual nature than mere Darwinian adaptive evolutionism (and its widespread metanarratives and the eery eugenic technologies they still ...

Eros in Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche: The Politics of Infinity - Page 299 - Laurence D. Cooper - 2008 - Preview - More editions A somewhat more complete summary of this process and its underlying principle is offered by Ken Wilber as part of a ... of these systems cannot be experienced or deduced rationally, and nobody from Plotinus to Aurobindo thinks they can.

Secularism: The Hidden Origins of Disbelief - Page 269 - Mike King - 2007 - Wilber, as a Buddhist, is well aware of the great jnani traditions of meditation which ground and underpin Eastern non-devotional ... Nietzsche contributed with his unfortunate vision of the 'superman', and Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher who ... Wilber's spiritual historicism is deeply entrenched in the New Age, having made its way via Hegel through Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin.

The radiance of being: understanding the grand integral vision : ... - Page 332 - Allan Combs - 2002 - The historical roots of deconstructionism as a kind of textual relativism can be found, in part at least, as early as Nietzsche. 30. In his exceptional ... E.g., Satprem, 1970/1984, Aurobindo, 1972a. 2. Laszlo, 1987a ... Smith, 1982; Wilber, 1983. 5.

A Sociable God - Page viii - Ken Wilber - 2005 - Preview - More editions Ken Wilber. example, posits no supreme being or God and centers around a rigorous program of mental training explicitly aimed ... After all, the great saints and sages, Buddha, Christ, Lao Tzu, Shankara, Aurobindo, and others have been said to represent ... James, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Maslow, among others.

The Essential Ken Wilber - Page 153 - Ken Wilber - 1998 - Preview - More editions McDermott asks if we would ever hear polemic from the great spiritual philosophers, such as Aurobindo or James or Plotinus. ... Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Augustine, Origen, Plotinus, to name a very few. Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations With Leading Transpersonal ... - Page 354 Donald Jay Rothberg, Sean Kelly, Sean M. Kelly - 1998 

Uncreated Timeless Self of Radiant Emptiness - Onliness ... - Page 21 - Martin Treon - 2009 - Preview - More editions Thus, to the extent that Wilber's brilliant insights (as I have more or less adequately interpreted them here) are reflected and ... order), among this total who were certainly influential: Plato, Plotinus, Nagarjuna, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Meister Eckhart, Shankara, ... F. Nietzsche, S. Kierkegaard, Teilhard de Chardin, Alfred Whitehead, Karl Marx, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ferdinand de Saussure, ...

Life: Energies, Forces, and the Shaping of Life - Page 154 - Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka - 2002 - Preview - More editions Wilber is aware that referring to higher stages of consciousness may be subject to much controversy, among scientists ... Bergson said exactly that; and so did Toynbee and Tolstoy and James and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Maslow. ...Chardin, Jan Smuts, Jean Gebser, Arthur Koestler and Sri Aurobindo as a process unfolding hierarchically ever-higher wholes, inclusive, complex and integrated.

Encyclopaedia of Indian philosophy - Volume 2 - Page 218 - Vraj Kumar Pandey - 2007 - The Mother's preoccupation was with this stage of the supramental evolution of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. ... lived at a very crucial moment in the history of thought when Marxist materialism, Nietzschean individualism and Freudian vitalism were popular and fashionable. ... The American philosopher Ken Wilber, although influenced by Aurobindo, has tried to reduce the reliance on metaphysics in Aurobindo's ...

Spiritual practice contains its fair share of relaxation and hedonic moments

Should India be Secular or Hindu? Hindu Human Rights Online ... Ranbir Singh February 17, 2013

Cromwell’s Puritan dictatorship even banned Christmas. Protestantism emphasised the centrality of text and text alone as the word of god and the basis of religion. Enlightenment thinkers applied this to all religions. So when the Orientalists came to India and tried to categorise the culture, they ignored much of the customs and traditions in favour of what could specifically be found in texts. This was the only paradigm that they could use when confronted with a bewildering array of what became known as Hinduism. So anything in religious text such as Vedas formed the canon of Hinduism. All else was custom, tradition, tribalism or culture. It is that thinking which has lasted until today in defining secularism in India. The Enlightenment differentiated between sacred and profane, between religion and culture.

The very young Marx from Love of All Wisdom by Amod Lele

Hegel also considered himself to be an orthodox Christian. The greatest minds of the following generations – Ludwig Feuerbach, David Strauss, Marx – did not. They considered themselves Hegelian, yet they were against the gods… That atheism is at the heart of Marx’s dissertation… Marx turns his focus to two lesser-known figures, Epicurus and Democritus… The topic of his dissertation is Epicurus; Democritus’s role is merely to illustrate why Epicurus is so great…  The gods are just as distant in Epicurus’s explanations; he can look like a precursor of Darwin. And so it was to Epicurus that Marx turned as an inspiration for his still-developing atheist Hegelianism.

(title unknown) from enowning Robert Mugerauer on tenderness. 

“Tenderness, according to Heidegger, is used by Hölderlin to indicate the native essence of the Greek: their art of showing, letting appear what shows itself purely and thereby presences.  For the Greeks, what brings the splendour of the presencing to appearance is the athletic warlike struggle of heroes (also consider Heraclìtus and Pìndar) and the power of reflection (die Reflexionskraft) (HEH 166).” P. 414 HEH: Hölderlin's Erde und Himmel.

The Being behind Hitler Science Of Spirituality Blog on ... By: Martin Sobieroj on Feb 18, 2013 Source : Mother's Agenda, 12 January 1965

(Regarding an old "Playground Talk" of March 8, 1951, in which Mother spoke of the being that possessed and "guided" Hitler: … As for Sri Aurobindo ... (you know that there is a place in Russia where they were defeated [ii]), Sri Aurobindo had foreseen the defeat and had worked the night...

JOSHUA RAMEY’S ACADEMIC GNOSIS: Non-philosophy is the yoga of philosophy Posted on February 16, 2013 - Terence Blake ‏@TPBlake

“Spiritual ordeal” is too one-sided a vision of spiritual practice, which includes ordeals, but contains also its fair share of relaxation and hedonic moments. I “see” it as a process psychic and collective individuation, as Simondon and Stiegler call it. There is no necessary dualism between philosophy and individuation, and Deleuze is a shining (in the sense of Dreyfus and Kelly’s ALL THINGS SHINING) example of their co-existence and superposition.

Gilles Quispel once declared that “Alchemy is the yoga of Gnosticism”, that is to say the actual experiential and transformative practice that subtends and is subtended by Gnostic theoretical creation. One could reformulate this as “Non-philosophy is the yoga of philosophy”. 

Against Holism: The Argument from Entropy from Larval Subjects

Order never comes for free, but always requires operations, energy, and work precisely because it’s more probable for anything to be related to anything else, than for anything to maintain improbable and selective relations to a delimited range of elements in the order of being. “Onto-cartography” would be the investigation of the mechanisms by which improbable orders are maintained; and would therefore include investigations of discursive mechanisms (not surprisingly, the favorite of the humanities), chronopolotical mechanisms, geographical mechanisms (geopolitics), and thermopolitical mechanisms.  Whenever encountering an order in the social and political world we should be surprised and ask ourselves how it maintains itself.  In understanding how it maintains itself, we can begin to devise strategies undermine it where those negentropic mechanisms are oppressive.

All of this aside, we now see a third argument against holism.  A world in which everything is related to everything else is identical to the definition of a highly entropic system.  It is a world where no inferences can be made to other elements precisely because there’s an equal probability of anything being related to anything else.  Such a world would be a world of Brownian motion, where there was no language, mathematics, ecologies, or social orders, precisely because all of these orders are orders in which relations between elements are selective or improbable.  As Deleuze said of Hegel’s categories, the world proposed by holists is a world that is too baggy, too ill fitted, to get at the real of the world that we, in fact, encounter.

The Multiple Strands of the Mental Being « Sri Aurobindo Studies

There is the practical mind that involves itself with the physical and vital levels of existence and works to manage and utilize them to best advantage; there is also a higher mind of thought and concept, as well as an aesthetic and an emotional aspect that weave the complex fabric that we consider to be mental functioning. Sri Aurobindo explains: “The mental energy divides itself and runs in many directions, has an ascending scale of the levels of its action, a great variety and ...”

It is not simply the complexity of these different energies and levels of action that we have to contend with; we also have to take into account the varying concentration and intensity of the energy put forth within each of these lines. A weak force will soon be deflected, drowned out or watered down by the myriad other active forces around it and with which it needs to contend.

Her hooded eagles of significance from Savitri

It is here she loses herself into Infinity the way the crested eagles of thought fly into the sky of the Unknowable… Wherever he looked, he saw the veiled and seeking Force, she an exiled goddess building mimic heavens, a Sphinx gazing at the Sun.

Why do some people get angry and mad when you mention alternative medicine, the mind and the soul? Here's one person that explains it. ... if that force can be made to work freely, drugs are at once superfluous. Sri Aurobindo 

Meeting of the East and the West in Sri Aurobindo, Bergson, Heidegger, and Deleuze

THERE IS NO SHORTCUT TO HAPPINESS times of india - speaking tree By: Ramesh Bijlani on Feb 01, 2013

What it means is that happiness resides not in the car, but in ‘not wanting anything’. ‘Not wanting anything’ is an inner state to be cultivated, not a goal automatically reached by fulfillment of desires. The conclusion is that happiness is within us, not in the object outside. Let us take another example. A person goes and donates a unit of blood. That makes him happy. He has not got anything – in fact, he has given something. The person is happy because while donating blood he thought of another individual in need. In the process, he got so completely absorbed in somebody else’s need that he forgot what he himself wants. In other words, he was once again in a state of ‘not wanting anything’. Thus, to be happy, we need not get anything at all. In fact, the joy of giving is much greater than the joy of getting.

The above discussion exposes the two major flaws in the popular notion that happiness comes from getting things. One, happiness resides not in the things outside but within us; and two, true happiness comes from giving. But what we generally do is to look outside for happiness – in the objects that we want, in the work that we do, in the people to whom we are attached, in being healthy, and so on. All these are entities which are inconstant, unreliable, erratic and unpredictable. The objects that seem to give us happiness are perishable, the happiness they give is short-lasting, and the list of still more objects that we may want is endless. In case of a few fortunate ones, the work that they enjoy doing coincides with the work that they have to do for a living. Even these fortunate ones cannot go on doing the same work for ever: enforced ‘superannuation’ or bodily disability might force them to give up the work. People to whom we are attached do not always behave the way we would like them to. 

Understanding Medical Physiology - Page 876 - Bijlani - 2004 - Preview - More editions The basic text of integral yoga is The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo. CONCLUSION Yoga is an ancient system of Indian philosophy. Although its metaphysical aspects are complex, the fundamentals, as applicable to daily life, are quite ...

The meeting of the East and the West in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy - Page 165 - S.K. Maitra - 1956 - This statement we can look upon as containing the essence of Sri Aurobindo's conception of yoga, as, in fact, the text of integral yoga. The first thing which it asserts is that yoga is a birth. It is not a dissolution, nor an absorption, nor a swooning away into the Divine, but it is a birth. That is to say, the human being retains his character as a human being, which means as a being with a body, life, soul and mind, and having a part to ...

Leather, Fur, & Legendary Joy: A Response from Joshua Ramey to Beatrice Marovich’s “‘We Dance These Beasts’: Capitalism, Animism, Believers of the Future” from An und für sich by Joshua Ramey

As anyone who knows me knows, I spend as much of my time as I can drumming or dancing (when I’m not reading and writing and teaching).  Part of why I was drawn to Deleuze in the first place was that he seemed to be one of the few philosophers willing to lend some language to what was crucial for me about movement and rhythm, conceptually as well as at the affective level, and willing to take the emendation of the affects as far as the emendation of the intellect toward the composition of a philosophical life.  Deleuze was always, in a typically French way, reticent about being anecdotal, and I think he knew how to be revealing enough without anecdotes.  I’m not quite that refined.  Beatrice has moved me to relay, anecdotally, an experience that, for me, forms a kind of legend for the defense of spirituality Beatrice is drawing attention to between the lines of my book…

At any rate, I have often thought to myself that from the 1960’s to 2013 the spiritual stakes of experimentation have changed:  what was an aesthetic choice, then, has become a survival strategy, now.  For those of us with anything left to experiment with, survival itself has become experimental.  In the context of endless and irremediable debts, of a totally debt-leveraged existence, everything is improvisation, everything is experimentation.  Existence itself is spiritual ordeal, for those who manage to survive the imperative to “invest in oneself” at the cost of everything, and at the cost of everything manage to pretend to be an “entrepreneur of the self,” while in fact this means to take on the weight of the world, the burden of the global, ever-imploding debt.

On the Occasion of the Ordeal: A Response from Joshua Ramey to Dan Barber’s “Experimental Life and Ordeal’s Necessity” from An und für sich by Joshua Ramey

I would argue, however—with Laruelle’s theory of the fundamental autonomy of heresy and gnosis—that the reverse is the case, that it is orthodoxy that is more or less parasitic, in the long run, on religious experiences that are too wild, too intense, too idiosyncratic to regulate, order, and habituate.  (It’s true that Bergson’s view of religion is similar, but I don’t hold to Bergson’s ontology of development, which overemphasizes continuity). From that perspective, let me engage in some heretical theology.  The logic of exemplarity in standard Christian philosophy is a logic that attempts to provide limits or conditions for possible spiritual experimentation, in advance of ordeal. 

But from my perspective, and the perspective that I call “the hermetic Deleuze,” since every ordeal potentially is unlimited, any ordeal can exemplify any other, to the degree that it resonates with any other ordeal. This is where Bruno did not so much reject incarnationalism as rather accelerate it into a kind of terracarnationalism or cosmicarnationalism, a becoming-divine or being-divine of everything in relation to everything else.  This has obvious overtones of mystical theophanies such as Eriugena’s, and in alchemical theologies like Boehme’s. The problem with the “standard Christian philosophy,” as Bruno saw it, and as Deleuze put it borrowing a phrase from D.H. Lawrence, is that it is not yet ready “to have done with judgment.” 

(title unknown) from enowning Tomonobu Imamichi says The Book of Tea was there first. 

[Ito Kichinosuke, one of my teachers at university, studied in Germany in 1918 immediately after the First World War and hired Heidegger as a private tutor. Before moving back to Japan at the end of his studies, Professor Ito handed Heidegger a copy of Das Buch vom Tee, the German translation of Okakura Kkuzo's The Book of Tea, as a token of his appreciation. That was in 1919. Sein und Zeit was published in 1927, and made Heidegger famous. Mr. Ito was surprised and indignant that Heidegger used Zhuangzi's concept without giving him credit. Years later in 1945, Professor Ito reminisced with me and, speaking in his Shonai dialect, said, "Heidegger did a lot for me, but I should've laid into him for stealing." There are other indications that Heidegger was inspired by Eastern writings, but let's leave this topic here. I have heard many stories of this kind from Professor Ito and checked their veracity.] [The meaningfulness of the tea cup, in 1919. P. 83]

What Nandy considers as being lost, Mehta considers adventuring to the Other

Contemporary Indian thinkers not in varsity curriculum - The Times of India Jan 31, 2013 CHENNAI:

The study of contemporary Indian philosophers like K Satchidananda Murthy, Daya Krishna and K C Bhattacharyya needs to be incorporated in the curriculum of universities in the country, scholars said here on Wednesday. 

While classical western philosophers like Kant, Hegel and Wittgenstein and Indian thinkers like Sri Aurobindo, Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Nehru and Radhakrishnan need to be studied, importance also has to be given to contemporary philosophers, they said. The scholars were speaking at a seminar on the 'Philosophy of Professor K Satchidananda Murthy' organised by a Delhi-based NGO Centre for Studies in Civilizations (CSC) and the Madras University's department of philosophy. 

Member secretary of CSC Bhuvan Chandel said Delhi and Punjab universities had "old syllabi anchored more to western thinkers". However, she said wisdom is now dawning with the Jawaharlal Nehru University recently revising its syllabus to take on board contemporary Indian philosophers. Till four years ago, JNU did not have a philosophy section. She lamented that contemporary Indian philosophers were not given their due and there was no sincere effort to study them. 

R C Pradhan, professor of philosophy from the central university of Hyderabad, noted that only since the 1990s have some universities included K C Bhattacharyya in the curriculum, while Daya Krishna and Murthy are yet to be incorporated in the programme of studies.  Prof Satchidananda Murthy, who passed away last year, is regarded as one among the outstanding philosophers of the younger generation.

Ashis Nandy on Aurobindo – A Tale of Inauthentic Modernity: Savita Singh January 30, 2013 by Pratilipi Blog

Nandy concludes Aurobindo’s story rather somberly, as in his reading after so much pain,  Aurobindo’s bid for self-recovery still remains an unconsummated gain; in place of authenticity he  seems to have attained a compromise between the East and the indispensable West… For Aurobindo, discovering the East-in-the West became a transcendent goal and a practical possibility… Nandy does not end his story of Aurobindo’s encounter with modernity and its intervention in his life here. He still has a far more depressing ending, which he simply adds to the story as a closing note… Most certainly, there is another way of reading Aurobindo’s life. It could be quite enlightening to bring in another reading here offered by another significant hermeneutical thinker of India, Prof. J.L Mehta, who takes Aurobindo’s own statements about his life as an authentic rendering of its truth. He treats them as more meaningful beginning of his life’s story…

On this reading, what Nandy considers as being lost, that is, Aurobindo having lost to the West, Mehta considers it as a mere adventuring of the self to the Other, experiencing it in all its otherness as its own part. For indeed, Mehta works with a hermeneutical insight as far as human understanding is concerned. He writes, ‘so long as we live encapsulated within one tradition, our own, and in the language that embodies it, we can think and move and have our being only within the horizon of reality opened by it. We are free within it, for it is of essence of tradition…. But we are also limited by it, prevented from seeing what other tracks of vision may have brought to life. We are hence unfree” and that, even ones own must be learned after voyaging far into what is the other”.

Depicting the complexity of a hermeneutical life as that of Sri Aurobindo, in which he arrives at an understanding of himself and that of the West as part of each other, Mehta locates this understanding emanating from the Vedantic as much as from a Heideggerian sources. He brings in Heidegger to illustrate the interesting relationship the self has with its other, a position which Aurobindo spawned by living out the kind of existence he did. Aurobindo’s life came with a certain kind of depth where any stark differences between the self and the other simply got dissolved.

[Prof Savita Singh is Professor and Director of the School of Gender and Development Studies, IGNOU. She wrote her Ph.D. thesis on 'Discourse of Modernity in India: A Hermeneutical Study', and earned her degree from Delhi University. Fathoming the Depths of Reality: Savita Singh in Conversation with - Roy Bhaskar, Savita Singh - 2003 - This book presents the main features of Roy Bhaskar's philosophy in a readily comprehensive form. The result is probably the simplest and clearest statement of the themes and development of his philosophy ever published.] 6:48 pm

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Samuel Smiles, Edmond Holmes, Pringle-Pattison, Paul Tillich, Yaekara, Sri Aurobindo, and K.C. Bhattacharyya

The Hindu : NATIONAL TAMIL NADU : City engagements January 28, 2013

Sri Aurobindo Society: Study circle meeting, 3 Lajapathi Roy Street, Chinna Chokkikulam, 10.30 a.m..

Life, the Auroville way Daily News & Analysis  Sunday, Jan 27, 2013, By Tasneem Akolawala: Mumbai

They fought the thoughts of materialism and lived a radically simple life, voluntarily. They had hand pumps, farms and animals that provided them with food and water. My romantic notions regarding the idea of Auroville were corrected when I realised that a lot of hard work went into living there. 

Housing & Architecture Challenges -  Auroville Radio

Anupama, experienced architect and designer, gives an interesting presentation on Auroville housing issues... Rodogune, dramatic romance - one of the five plays written by Sri Aurobindo, directed by Aryamani with huge casting crew.

Larger dawns arrive and Wisdom’s pomps—A Video presentation by Tuhin Chowdhury

Philosophy climbs up Thought’s cloud-bank peaks

And Science tears out Nature’s occult powers, [Savitri: 141.56 – 59]

Indian intimacy from Love of All Wisdom by Amod Lele

As an adult I have frequently admired the fiercely solitary asceticism found in Jain ideals, but I saw none of this in the Jains I knew as a child. I mostly just knew them as Indians who didn’t eat eggs, in the way that I knew Jews as North Americans who didn’t celebrate Christmas… But it’s important not to forget that while India’s greatest philosophers have typically had an integrity ascent orientation or something close to it, the mainstream of Indian society has all that time still looked rather Confucian.

These thoughts have led me to realize a broader point: the majority of societies in human history have had, by and large, an intimacy descent orientation… Mencius and Xunzi argue for and defend their claims, whereas Confucius himself simply presents them, as a collection of wise sayings… The modern West became the way that it did for a reason. And my previous criticism still stands: individualist and anti-family orientations do arise, and get defended, and endure, outside the modern West as well.  

Comment on Sattwic ego, Rajasic ego and Tamasic ego by Sandeep

Sri Aurobindo recommended cultivation of equanimity through the practice of Yoga, but that transformation won’t happen in one day. People have been working on it for centuries and lifetimes

A Bunch Of … sheeple of India from ANTIDOTE

the very first paragraph of Samuel Smiles’ classic instructs readers that, while self-help “strengthens” its practitioner, “help from without is enfeebling in its effects.” As students of Economic History ought to know, it was this Victorian moralists’ bestseller that, in translation, FIRED the JAPANESE in their “catch-up with the Advanced West” after the Meiji Restoration of the 1860s.” And the Japanese DID catch-up – but WITHOUT any FOREIGN AID! What applies to nations and peoples – it BEGINS with Individuals in those nations and peoples.

The reverse invisible hand from An und für sich by Adam Kotsko

As we all know, capitalist accumulation is guided by the “invisible hand,” which ensures that the selfish and short-sighted choices of individual capitalists fit together into a beneficial whole that promotes long-term wealth-creation for all. What’s less well known is that for workers, the situation is reversed: their self-interested decisions add up to create a situation that is more and more disadvantageous for workers as a whole. 

(title unknown) from enowning In NDPR, Daniel L. Tate reviews Scott M. Campbell's The Early Heidegger's Philosophy of Life: Facticity, Being, and Language. 

“Heidegger was interested in the facticity of life as a dynamic context of meaningful relationships that admit different levels of intensity… Philosophizing is an activity that seeks to understand life and language from the experience of being an active participant in living and speaking… At stake in this project is not just the return of life to its factical origin, but also the revitalization of philosophy. Third, Campbell emphasizes the ambiguity in Heidegger's description of factical life. On the one hand, the world distracts us with worldly concerns that block us off from ourselves; on the other hand, it is replete with meaningful contexts that constitute our openness to the world. Campbell argues that this ambivalence regarding factical life simply reflects the human condition in its inherent ambiguity.”

The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal Joshua Ramey: 2012

Western esotericism, specifically the lineage of hermetic thought that extends from Late Antiquity into the Renaissance through the work of figures such as Iamblichus, Nicholas of Cusa, Pico della Mirandola, and Giordano Bruno. In this book, Joshua Ramey examines the extent to which Deleuze's ethics, metaphysics, and politics were informed by, and can only be fully understood through, this hermetic tradition… Ramey offers both a new interpretation of Deleuze, particularly his insistence that the development of thought demands a spiritual ordeal, and a framework for retrieving the pre-Kantian paradigm of philosophy as spiritual practice. 10:22 pm

Bible is primarily a linear account of the historical dealings of God and man, whereas the Upanishads are mainly timeless accounts

I suppose it's no coincidence that my favorite Christian theologians (e.g., Dionysius, Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, John Scottus Eriugena) often sound like vedic seers. For example, I might well have cited Nicholas to support the Cosmogenesis section of my book: This is Not a Post About Vedanta and Christianity from One Cosmos by Gagdad Bob 7:11 am, 10:22 pm

Science, Culture and Integral Yoga :: 100 Years of Sri Aurobindo on Evolution: Why Sri Aurobindo would not believe in Intilligent Design (part 1 or 6) - by Debashish on Sun 22 Mar 2009 02:33 PM PDT Permanent Link - In The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo often directs or turns an argument based on natural or phenomenological intuitions. The kinds of intuitions used by artists or poets in making judgements may seem impossibly subjective to arriving at universal truths, particularly of the material world, but poets and philosophers like Goethe and Giordano Bruno developed a cross-disciplinary view of knowledge, which gave them access also to a new material science. 3:41 pm, 10:22 pm 

The Long Trajectory: The Metaphysics of Reincarnation and Life ... - Page 283 - Eric M. Weiss - 2012 - Preview Sri Aurobindo's position is not “consciousness only” but rather a panpsychic position in which the potential for finitude, and even materiality, is built right into the ultimate ground of being. This move—starting with the full and the actual—is ...

The radical thinkers: Heidegger and Sri Aurobindo - Page 88 - Rhoda Priscella Le Cocq - 1972 - develop the finitude in Dasein even as a problem, without 'presupposing an infinitude?' At the end of his study of Kant, Heidegger recommends, as he does throughout all his works, ...

Nature Of God - Page 80 - Satya Prakash Singh - Preview According to him, changes take place in some or the other "piece of finitude" and by no means in the Absolute. ... Bergson is nearest to Whitehead and Sri Aurobindo inasmuch as his view of process is concerned but falls wholly apart from ...

Sri Aurobindo and Bergson: a synthetic study - Page 193 - Abhoy Chandra Bhattacharya - 1972 - Sri Aurobindo tells us that pain and misery are only temporary growth in the process of evolution. There is nothing as absolute pain or evil. Limitation and 1. The Life Divine, I, 170. finitude bring about dissatisfaction and painfulness.

The future of man according to Teilhard de Chardin and Aurobindo Ghose - Page 294 J. Chetany - 1978 - which speaks of Brahman as the immortal, immanent, soul and controller of all that exists. God is immanent in the world and yet is transcendent to its changes and finitude. He is the Supreme moral governor and the world redeemer.

New essays in the Bhagavadgītā: philosophical, methodological, and ... - Page 27 - Arvind Sharma - 1987 - At the root of this perpetual struggle is the finitude of human life. Kuruksetra represents for Aurobindo those moments of everyday struggle when human limits are exceeded and a crisis is reached: "Life (is) a battle and a field of death, this is...

Neo-Hegelian and neo-Advaitic monism: a study in converging ... - Page 111 - Lakshmī Saksenā - 1980 - The Religious Synthesis of The Age: In Aurobindo we have the profoundest expression of the religious ... 'The life Divine' appears to us primarily an attempt at justification of the ways of God to man in his present state of finitude.

History, culture and truth: essays presented to D.P. Chattopadhyaya - Page 378 - Daya Krishna, K. Satchidananda Murty - 1999 - Fallibility of human knowledge is further buttressed by the finitude of the human being. In other words ... This thesis may be substantiated by following the lines of arguments, among others, of Yaekara, Sri Aurobindo and K.C. Bhattacharyya… From my post-graduate days, when I developed my first familiarity with the works of Yaekara, Sri Aurobindo, Kant, Hegel...

Towards eternity; Sri Aurobindo birth centenary volume, 15th ... - Page 375 - Aurobindo Ghose, V. Madhusudan Reddy - 1973 - the Samkhya man is a product of the same modes of ... Perhaps it was an expression of man's feelings of finitude, dependence and impotence. Imperfection required perfection; finite demanded ...

The philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - Page 84 - Ram Nath Sharma - 1963 - finitude. He shrinks to call the individual a member in the Absolute simply because, such an expression might imply that it is separately and ... Pattison equally emphasise the fact that the existence of finite.

The Integral Advaitism of Sri Aurobindo - Page x Rāmacandra Miśra - 1998 - Preview that Sri Aurobindo has developed his system of the Vedanta on the solid foundations of logic and epistemology. ... But it will be realised by him, when in the course of cosmic evolution, man transcends his finitude in an absolute way and rises ...

The philosophy of integralism, or, The metaphysical synthesis ... - Page 345 - Haridas Chaudhuri - 1954 - Having found all current solutions unsatisfactory he considers it prudent not to strain human ingenuity beyond the utmost limit. Neither the finitude of the created universe, nor the reign of Law in Nature, appears to him to contain any rational ...

Emotions in Asian Thought: A Dialogue in Comparative Philosophy - Page 101 - Joel Marks, Roger T. Ames, Robert C. Solomon - 1995 - Preview - More editions A contemporary of Tillich's in this tradition, Sri Aurobindo, proposed a philosophy... So the soul strives to overcome the ambivalence of finitude, and yearns for an existence that has recovered its essence, knowing that one must forever be a ...

Main currents in modern thought - Volumes 19-20 - Page 94 - Center for Integrative Education, Foundation for Integrated Education - 1962 - The New Being will realize his finitude, his conditionedness, and the finitude of all of his creations in relation to the ultimate Unconditioned source of all being, God. Unlike Teilhard de Chardin and Aurobindo, Tillich does not think of the New ...

Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy - Page 57 - Oliver Leaman - 2001 - Preview - More editions Aurobindo's realist metaphysics was polarized in terms of an ultimately unknowable and ineffable God or Brahman and a ... Brahman, understood as Perfect Being, Conscious-Will and Bliss evolves itself into a realm of finitude terminating in ...

Thinkers Of Indian Renaissance - Page 207 - S A Abbasi - 1998 - Preview The finitude of the world will affect the infinitude of Brahman and introduce spatio-temporal limitations into it, which will be ... This conception of Samkara and his defenders is challenged by Sri Aurobindo, who holds that one can establish ...

Karma and Rebirth: Post Classical Developments - Page 19 - Ronald Wesley Neufeldt - 1986 - Preview - More editions for Aurobindo, given the absolute nature of the phenomenal process, evolution is inevitable and freedom must be seen in an integral light. The free human being cooperates with the process, ... It therefore has a significance beyond finitude.

The integral philosophy of Sri Aurobindo: a commemorative symposium - Page 145 - Haridas Chaudhuri, Frederic Spiegelberg - 1960 - ... 'deficiency' and, as such, arises from limitation and finitude, and the 'desire' which arises out of the fullness of being. ... This question cannot be answered if the 'why' seeks to discover a 'purpose' in or behind creation. In Sri Aurobindo's ...

Sri Aurobindo and the theories of evolution: a critical and ... - Page 357 - Rama Shanker Srivastava - 1968 - Firstly, it is erroneous to ignore the finitude and imperfection of parts as pantheism does. ... the Absolute is pure Being, the One and the All. "The Supermind is synthetic," observes Sri Aurobindo, "only on the lowest spaces of itself; where it has ...

Sri Aurobindo and the future of mankind - Page 112 - Adhar Chandra Das - 1934 - ... master principle which is the ground as well as the goal of evolution, and it is half-revealed in man who in his finitude is confronted by the Infinite. ... In Aurobindo's words, " The world has three layers, infra-ethical, ethical

An introduction to the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - Page 18 – S.K. Maitra - 1945 - Aurobindo says, "World-existence is the ecstatic dance of Shiva ... its sole absolute object is the joy of the dancing. ... Even the relative and the finite can rise above their relativity and finitude in proportion as they share this eternal bliss. Bliss...

The concept of māyā from the Vedas to the 20th century - Page 27 - Ruth Reyna - 1962 - So, too, there is an element of negation in Aurobindo's teaching which he does not deny; but what he terms the negative ... Self-expression in the sphere of relativity, the Infinite power of self-manifestation under the aspect of finitude, is maya.

The Vedic epiphany, an exposition and celebration of the inaugural ... - Volume 1 - Page 123 - V. Madhusudan Reddy, Aurobindo Ghose, Institute of Human Study - 1994 - As regards the functions of the gods Sri Aurobindo is very clear. ... This is possible if man moves from Falsehood to Truth and from finitude to infinitude and integrality.

Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of evolution - Page xv - V. Madhusudan Reddy - 1966 - PREFACE Sri Aurobindo's philosophy is a new and creative synthesis which holds together and reconciles many contradictions. The logic of the Infinite and the logic of finitude appear in it side by side. It is difficult to write about a philosophy of ...

Philosophy of evolution: Western and Indian - Page 101 - Jaideva Singh - 1970 - ... how does Reality which is spaceless manifest itself in space; how does the Infinite assume finitude? Aurobindo's solution of the problem is that it is the Supermind, a wonderful power of the Absolute that brings about the manifestation of the ...

The philosophy of Advaita: a transition from Śaṅkara to Śrī Aurobindo - Page 403 - Priti Sinha - 1986 - But this involvement in finitude is the temporary phase. Atman is finally to be withdrawn from this structure. Ultimately it is possible only through knowledge. Sri Aurobindo too realises fully that Atman is to be conceived as different from the body ...

Philosophy and religion: essays in interpretation - Page 183 - Jarava Lal Mehta - 2004 - ... way of the Rishis. Regarded as an independent means of transcending human finitude through total self-transformation, it ran a parallel course, outside the central Vedic stream, but often with close interaction between the two. In Aurobindo ...

Sri Aurobindo Ghose: the dweller in the lands of silence - Page 10 - William Kluback, Michael Finkenthal - 2001 - We would read other texts of Sri Aurobindo. We would read his poetry. We yearned to embrace what was not embraceable. We longed to define what was not definable. In finitude we discovered inadequacies; in mortality the ambiguity of the...

The splendour of Sri Aurobindo's muse - Page 177 - Jagdish Saran Agarwal - 1983 - They are described as having grown in some strange land or some garden of Eden, on some sward untrod by Time. "White as moon upon the desert sand, Petal-pure from taint of finitude, On sward untrod by Time strange lilies stand, Lift gars ...

Sri Aurobindo's integral approach to political thought - Page 45 - Shiva Kumar Mital - 1981 - They owe their existence to the finitude of the human mind, to the discriminating activity of human thought. Thus, according to idealism, then, change is unreal in some sense or other. Time is a prisoner in the house of the spirit. Reality in its ...

Annual - Issues 15-19 - Page 112 - Sri Aurobindo mandir, Calcutta - 1956 - arrived at on the question of the existence or non-existence of the soul after death, the finitude or infinitude of the world, etc. Edmund Holmes' remarks on this story are also very significant. He says,(4) "When we ...

Proceedings - Page 237 - International Association for the History of Religions, Nihon Gakujutsu Kaigi - 1960 - For the real man is nothing but God in the conditions of finitude and wearing a material vesture and limited in vital power and mental abilities. Sri Aurobindomaintains that all Yogas, indeed all religions for that matter, are essentially ...

Mainstream - Volume 34, Issues 1-26 - Page 51 - 1995 - One problem man has always tried to resolve is the problem relating to the finitude of existence. ... To quote Sri Aurobindo: Our spiritual evolution ascends therefore through the relative to the absolute, through the finite to the infinite, through all ...