A day of consecration, of self-examination and a preparation

Madurai Today - The Hindu March 3, 2013

Sri Aurobindo Society: Study circle meeting on ‘The Mother on Savitri,’ 3 Lajapathi Roy Street, Chinna Chokkikulam, 10.30 a.m. ~ Sri Aravindar Annai Trust: Collective meditation, Aravindar Annai Relics Meditation Centre, 12 Aravindar Avenue, Tirunagar, 10 a.m.

Auronet Sunday 3 Mar ~ Contact Us Call Us: +91 413 2623424

Class - Savitri Bhavan 10:30 AM Savitri Study Circle at Savitri Bhavan

Class - Verite Hall 06:45 AM Vinyasa Yoga with Einat - in Vérité

Exhibition - Savitri Bhavan 09:00 AM Exhibition - The Mother's Yoga:1956-1973 at Savitri Bhavan

Exhibition - Savitri Bhavan 09:00 AM Exhibition - Meditations on Savitri at Savitri Bhavan

Exhibition - Pitanga 10:00 AM Light beyond skin

Exhibition - Exhibition: Chantal GOWA (Shanta) Rétrospective 03:00 PM Exhibition: Chantal GOWA (Shanta) Rétrospective

Exhibition - UNITY PAVILION 04:30 PM Matrimandir and The Park of Unity

For general information about Auroville please visit us at auroville.org

Savitri Bhavan programme for March ~ Arka schedule

Natural childbirth: new midwife in Auroville Manuela Schliessner

Birth is a blue print for the rest of the life, if we invest in a peaceful gentle birth, we invest in the future life that lies ahead of this person. If a birth is full of trauma the person needs to work on removing the obstacles during his whole life. The Art of Midwifery is to guide by being still, pure presence, observing and guiding through the Heart, with as less as possible medical interventions; to support women in their authentic feminine power and to reconnect to their own strength and authenticity. 

AIR 1968 Auroville Inauguration from Auroville Radio by contact@aurovilleradio.org (Andrea & Amanda)

Listen to an inspiring piece of broadcasting history as Mother announces the inauguration of Auroville live across India on 28 February 1968. The recording was made with Mother sitting in Pondicherry while 5000 founding members of Auroville conducted the inauguration ceremony nearby at the Matrimandir Amphitheater. Thanks to All India Radio, her reading of the original Charter of Auroville in French was broadcast live to the amphitheater, as well as across India, while soil representing 124 nations and 23 Indian states was placed in the ground. 

Comment on Predictions of Sri Aurobindo by Sandeep

Additional remarks made by Sri Aurobindo regarding the first two predictions seen above

Sri Aurobindo explained that when something is decided in the higher plane, the decision may be communicated to men who are fit to receive it. Thus when living in Alipur Jail he himself got definite prophecy about the war of 1914. Mirra [the Mother] received such a prophecy about the Chinese revolution. Then he referred to a vision he saw at the time of the last European war. Two eagles were trying to go through a mountain pass and a strong gale was blowing against them and above that scene he saw the words 1931. This was not a definite prophecy as before but Sri Aurobindo interpreted it in this manner: the two eagles obviously referred to Austria and Germany and the whole scene represented a cataclysm of which obviously the European war was the beginning; it would end in 1931 by the dissolution of the British empire and the eventual liberation of India. This was not a definite prophecy but only Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation of the vision he saw.

Comment on Conversations with Sri Aurobindo recorded by Anilbaran Roy, Part 3 by Anurag Banerjee Sri Aurobindo’s speech on l5th August 1926 as recorded by A.B. Purani

But we have attached a special importance to this day and it is justified if we live in the light of the Truth it symbolises. For this day we can fix a mark in the stage in the individual and general progress. It is a day which ought to be a day of consecration, of self-examination and a preparation for future advance, if possible, for the reception of a special Power which would carry on the work of advance. This can only be done in each individually if he takes up the true attitude and lives on that day under the right conditions. That was what I meant when I spoke the other day. It is we who can make it a decisive day in this sense, and it is we who can help to fulfill it.

Comment on Conversations with Sri Aurobindo recorded by Anilbaran Roy, Part 1 by Virender Ghai

This interview truly reveals the thoughts of Sri Aurobindo. Though, strictly speaking, I am not follower of Sri Aurobindo but am greatly influenced by the way he has amalgamated philosophy, psychology and science into spirituality on one hand and sociology, religion and nationalism on the other hand particularly at macro level in his spiritual thoughts. I feel convinced that while pursuing my studies in application of Quantum Physics, Non-local Reality and Genetics I must have further in-depth understanding of Sri Aurobindo’s thoughts. Virender Ghai, Gurgaon

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change - Page 217 - Charles Duhigg - 2012 - Preview - More editions Social habits are what fill streets with protesters who may not know one another, who might be marching for different reasons, but who are all moving in the same direction. Social habits are why some initiatives become world-changing ... How Movements Happen from The Tao of Wealth by Sreekanth

Book Review: Ricoeur On Psychoanalysis from Continental Philosophy 

Reading On Psychoanalysis will provide anyone interested in Ricoeur’s hermeneutics the chance to discern and even admire the continuity and remarkable coherence of his views on Freud over a period of about thirty years. Second, the texts simultaneously indicate the development of his philosophy by revealing new questions that preoccupied Ricoeur from the 1970s onwards and that shaped his thinking in the latter years of his life. Some of these thematic concerns had to do with language, text and narrative. 

Call For Papers - SUSSEX PHENOMENOLOGY

Husserl’s famous battle cry calls thinking to return to the ‘things themselves’, that which is given, or that which presences and is present. Yet, this very challenge, the question of presence, has drawn quite different responses from those thinkers who have engaged with the inheritance of phenomenology. Now more than ever, phenomenology must contend with a scientific world view which describes the world by that which is withheld and yet underpins all that is given. 

Latour’s 4th Gifford – “The Anthropocene and the Destruction of the Image of the Globe” from Footnotes to Plato by Matthew David Segall

Latour prefers a geostorical connective tissue woven out of “loops” to the historical-spherical project of globalization. Spheres, “from Plato to Nato,” have disconnected us from the local, narrative knowledges of the Earth Community. In the rush toward “global thinking,” Man has tried to unify too quickly what should have been composed slowly, taking great care to follow the networks, the feedback loops, that tie us to this planet and her uncanny life. This work of composition is not simply cognitive (i.e., scientific), but also affective (i.e., political).

Gaia has no central control station. She is not an all-seeing sphere, but a complex assemblage whose life is precariously composed by an indefinite multiplicity of chemical, microbial, and, increasingly, human teloi. She is not a unified actor; Her agency is fully distributed, which is why her face is so frightening.

Tweets 5 hrs - Steven Shaviro ‏@shaviro I have the same experience reading Laruelle as I do reading Schelling: amazing formulations emerge in the midst of stuff I just can't parse.

Review – English Vinglish from sunayana.com I am a bit disappointed that, at all the glittering award ceremonies that took place recently, English Vinglish did not receive more awards. In my eyes this was by far the best film that was produced from the Mumbai film … finish reading Review – English Vinglish

Mind, Cosmos and the Invisible brewer

An Author Attracts Unlikely Allies By Jennifer Schuessler: February 6, 2013

Mr. Nagel’s depiction of a universe “gradually waking up” through the emergence of consciousness can sound oddly mystical — the atheist analytic philosopher’s version of “spiritual, not religious.” And even some readers who admire Mr. Nagel’s philosophical boldness see a very fuzzy line between his natural teleology and the creator God of theists like the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga (who reviewed Mr. Nagel’s book favorably in The New Republic, throwing more red meat to his detractors). In his conclusion Mr. Nagel declares that the present “right-thinking consensus” on evolution “will come to seem laughable in a generation or two.” …

“Mind and Cosmos,” weighing in at 128 closely argued pages, is hardly a barn-burning polemic. But in his cool style Mr. Nagel extends his ideas about consciousness into a sweeping critique of the modern scientific worldview, which he calls a “heroic triumph of ideological theory over common sense.” Consciousness, meaning and moral value, he argues, aren’t just incidental features of life on earth, but fundamental aspects of the universe. Instead of random evolution Mr. Nagel sees the unfolding of a “cosmic predisposition.” Such ideas are anathema to modern evolutionary theorists. Mr. Nagel calls for an entirely new kind of science, one based on what he calls “natural teleology” — a tendency for the universe to produce certain outcomes, like consciousness, but without any help from a Godlike agent.

The Hermetic Critique of Deleuze from An und für sich by Daniel Whistler 

The Hermetic Deleuze very deliberately positions Deleuze in the Renaissance (221). From this the consequence: Deleuzian ontology is an ontology of sign, a ‘being in signs’. Via Foucault, Ramey envisages ‘a vital transcription of immanence as an open set of enigmatic yet adequate signs’ (89), vectors for the mind to think that unthought intensity in which ‘life’ consists. While Ramey is quick to point out a Spinozan ambivalence that continues to haunt Deleuze on language, the intensification of ‘a language of intense, intuitive, and spiritual apprehensions’ (7) is still for Ramey’s Deleuze the task of thinking. But nothing is set in stone: the identification of success in this regard is only possible in an a posteriori, ‘improvisatory’ manner (30), for Deleuze is very much a pragmatist: what matters are configurations of signs that work.

It is here that a perspective on Deleuze as well as a Deleuzian perspective opens up – and this becomes clearer by taking a step back to consider the operation of which semiosis is a subset: mediation, or the articulation of mediators that are able to incarnate the intensity of the thought-unthought in a sustained, healthy manner. Here is the moment in the book where Ramey points most clearly to a post- and even anti-Deleuzian philosophy of mediators, as a response to Goodchild’s criticisms (which push him furthest). 

Each Energy Carries Out Its Own Function from Sri Aurobindo Studies 

In the Kena Upanishad, the seer describes the various physical forces, the force of fire, the force of wind and their characteristic power of action. Fire is the force that burns all created things. Wind is the force that moves all created things. Agni, the God of Fire, replied when asked about his power: “Even all this I could burn, all that is upon the earth.”

We have an intuitive sense of a moral law existing in the Universe, and this provides us a clue that there is such a component in the manifestation; however, it operates under what Sri Aurobindo elsewhere calls “the logic of the Infinite” and is not limited by the circumscribed human view that we try to overlay on the universe.

Everywhere we turn we find that the creation is far more complex, inter-related and consisting of symbiotic parts and movements, than anything that our human mind can create. We cannot therefore hope to judge the creation in its entirety using that limited consciousness. Physical Energy and Moral Retribution from Sri Aurobindo Studies 

Having excluded the possibility that physical energy consciously conducts a policy of reward and punishment, there is still the possibility that physical energy carries out such a policy directed or guided by some conscious intelligence above or beyond that utilizes it. Sri Aurobindo describes what this would imply: “If a law of moral punishment is imposed through the action of her physical forces, it must be by a Will from above her or a Force acting unknown to her in her inconscient bosom.”

The implications of this approach however are that we then create a vision of deity that would be more terrible than the worst human rulers we could imagine, as Sri Aurobindo explains: “But such a Will could not be itself that of a moral Being ethical after the conceptions of man,–unless indeed it resembled man in his most coldly pitiless and savage moral reason or unreason. For its action involves terrors of punishment that would be abhorred as atrocities in an all-powerful human ruler and could not be other than monstrous in a moral Divine Ruler. A personal God so acting would be a Jehovah-Moloch, a merciless and unrighteous demander of righteousness and mercy.”

The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo: The Two Negations: The Refusal of the Ascetic from The Tao of Wealth by Sreekanth

The complete Truth accepts the consciousness that exists beyond the world as true and wants to bring down the same consciousness to matter. It wants to assert as the Vedas say – All this is Brahman. As we go upwards to meet the Divine, we need to bring the Divine down into the physical world and make it also Divine. For doing this one has to expand his consciousness to become the Divine consciousness and once one has done that he will realize that the universe is both eternal and the universe exists in and for his consciousness. This is because his consciousness is now the Divine and the Divine is everything.

The IH Metaphor Describes the Cause Not Its Unintentional Consequences from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Smith was clear that humans are social beings, living in their societies with other human beings. Each individual has self-interests but though this condition is widely reported, the essential Smithian condition is that individuals pursuing their own self-interests must take account of the other humans with whom they transact, even communicate. 

Given the human propensity to exchange one object, or understandable sentence, with other humans, it is a basic requirement that in doing so they transact and communicate in an acceptable manner to each other.  The basic requirement if individual self-interests are to be mutually realised is by the mutual mediation of the self-interests of each pair of humans.

This requirement for mutuality is universal and repeated across all human cultures.  We achieve our self-interests (food, clothing, and shelter) by mutual mediation to reconcile the different self-interests of ourselves and other people… He said nothing about the IH in Book I, where he gave the “butcher, brewer, baker” example. 

To the work Sri Aurobindo initiated The Mother gave a concrete form

Re: [TheBecoming] Re: Video: Debate on Identity with Indian American Youth (WAVES) Posted By: Sandeep Joshi Sat Jan 5, 2013 > Gulati: Peter Heehs raised a considerable controversy within the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and outside, with his thesis that Sri Aurobindo was not a Hindu.

The solution to this debate might be to separate Hinduism into spiritual and cultural aspects. Then we can state that Sri Aurobindo was spiritually Hindu but culturally indifferent, just as some Indians are culturally Hindu but spiritually ignorant (or atheists or Marxist...).

Re: Debate on Identity with Indian American Youth (WAVES) Govind Rajesh Jan 17, 2013

1) No institution that today carries or attaches to itself the name of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother should be automatically assumed to represent their direct will in all its operations. In the absence of direct guidance from their founders all organizations are prone to go their own way as they think fit and err in the finite wisdom, and in certain cases the infinite stupidity, of their all too human leadership. The attempt to decrypt the occult vision and will of the original founders, in this case Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, by extrapolating from the casual and meandering e-mails of a few individuals or even the policies and procedures of independent institutions functioning in their Name would almost surely end up in misconceptions and wrong notions, at times of the most exaggerated sort. 

2) The sheer scope and scale of the life and work of the Mother demands a careful and circumspect assessment to even approach her reality. Viewed simply in its ordinary human dimensions the Mother's life gives the impression of an uninterrupted sacrifice, a living yagna, dedicated to Sri Aurobindo and to all that his birth and life represent. To the work he initiated she gave a concrete form and a growing life in the world, and through it she has brought to countless fortunate souls the touch, the brahma-sparsha, of Sri Aurobindo and her own deep, unconditional and nurturing love. 

The Need for Humility : An Indispensable Quality from At the Feet of The Mother a talk by Alok Pandey Tuesday, 5th February 2013 at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.

The Divine Action upon the world is not easily understood by humanity. The pressure of the Divine Force is received poorly because we are often shut up in the small glass case of the ego. We have our preferences, attachments, opinions about everything leaving little scope for the Divine to act or if He does so, to be understood. No wonder the forces that are ever active to disrupt the pilgrim use this pride and arrogance of man to cause his downfall. The one safety against the attack of these forces hostile to Yoga is Humility. The other helpful qualities are sincerity and vigilance. The following talk is based on the need of this indispensable quality called Humility. 

Lori Tompkins has left a new comment on "Sri Aurobindo is India’s future" to Savitri Era at 12:44 am, February 06, 2013

He was passionate about the source of Hinduism as revealed in his major opus cited above. His aim was to reveal its psycho-spiritual ‘secret’ in the effort to restore that ‘soul of knowledge’ in those new foundations of Hinduism which Swami Vivekananda had foreseen.

I have followed Sri Aurobindo’s lead, not because of any ‘Aurobindonian orthodoxy’ which has been rearing its stifling head of late, but because my own yoga drew me along the very same path until I returned to the same source (The New Way, Vol. 2)' Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, 'The Choice of Cosmic Truth or Superstition'

India's Auroville shows the way in green living Deutsche Welle (press release) - Date 05.02.2013 Author Johanna Treblin/sp Editor Sumi Somaskanda

The “global village” is named after Sri Aurobindo, an Indian philosopher who was ... He liked the ideas of Sri Aurobindo and Mira Alfassa to shape a “conscious” ... “Auroville is unique,” political scientist Karen Litfin from the University of Washington who's currently writing a book on so-called “ecological villages.”

Dimensions of Sustainability - Next Future Magazine - Sri Aurobindo ...

The concept of Sustainable Development is now universally accepted by all development thinkers. However in a more integral perspective, the concept and the.

The Roar of Awakening: The Eros of Esalen and the Western ...

He came to his mystical life in college via the reading of Sri Aurobindo, the Indian metaphysician who encouraged a form of traditional sannyasa or celibate ...

The Tao of Wealth - Practical ways to create abundance Posted on February 6, 2013 by Sreekanth

This post contains my personal notes and reflections of the chapter called The Human Aspiration from The Life Divine written by Sri Aurobindo. Man wants to ...

Gandhi's Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony - Page 45 - Anthony J. Parel - 2006 - Preview - More editions

What is striking from the perspective of this book is that Sri Aurobindo could see no way of combining the pursuit of the spiritual and that of the political. For him the essence of the Indian mind was spirituality – not the whole of it, but ''the ...

Vishwaroopam: The Stark Reality Facing the Hindus : Centre Right ...

Sri Aurobindo knew this in 1923 when he sagely remarked, “Allow the Hindus to organize themselves and the Hindu-Muslim unity would take care of itself…

Insights on Ancient Indian Polity [Part 3 of 7] Next Future Magazine

Characteristics of Ancient Indian polity - by Kittu Reddy, based on Sri Aurobindo's writings. ... Sri Aurobindo remarked that the system allowed for a very ...

The Terrestrial Law of Physical Energy « Sri Aurobindo Studies

In our ongoing attempt to infuse moral significance into everything that happens in the world, we frequently imply that events and forces occurring in the physical ...

Recent books and articles - PhilPapers

Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. Published by Centre for Sri Aurobindo Studies, Jadavpur University, in Association with Decent Books, New Delhi.

Sanskrit Text in Sri Aurobindo's Works - Auro e-Books AURO E-BOOKS PROJECT

I discovered that our family of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother may rather not be well informed and learned on this tremendous upcoming change of reading so far and they are needed to be facilitated and get benefits of spiritual and mental progresses by this utility soon or later. And also I discovered that there are no appropriate book formats of the works of the Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and of the other disciples of them too… Perhaps somebody might notice that “Bases of Yoga” now “more friendly” than before – It had been updated.

It took us more than fifty days to cover almost the whole of Orissa 28 May 2008  - Babaji had a sincere collaborator in the form of Professor Prapatti who did the ploughing of the field if Babaji can be thought to have sown the seeds. Savitri Era Learning Forum: Matrubhaban, a place of pilgrimage 7 Feb 2006 - One of the stalwarts of the Sri Aurobindo movement in Orissa was Sri Prapatti (Professor K.C.Pati), who sowed the seeds of this movement and gave it the dynamism it now has acquired by his indefatigable zeal in the early ... 9:55 pm

Why stocks are good investments from The Tao of Wealth by Sreekanth

So stocks are good investments because they help you own successful companies and over long periods they are the best performing investments. They do that by paying regular dividends and by capital appreciation. 50 ideas from The Little Book of Bulletproof Investing - Slowing down to the speed of life: Book Notes