Research by Patrice Marot unearthed Theon's history

From pain to paint by leprosy patients

Paintings from the Bindu Arts, an organisation that helps leprosy patients in self-reliance through art, is going to hold its next exhibition at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Gallery, Pondicherry, from Jan 19 to 29, 2013. All the works of these artists are sold to international galleries and through the website of Bindu Arts

Review of a New Publication of the First Edition of Savitri by Narad from Savitri Posting date: 16 Jan 2013 - 01:35 PM

The things I lay most stress on then are whether each line in itself is the inevitable thing not only as a whole but in each word; whether there is the right distribution of sentence lengths (an immensely important thing in this kind of blank verse); whether the lines are in their right place, for all the lines may be perfect, but they may not combine perfectly together—bridges may be needed, alterations of position so as to create the right development and perspective etc., etc.

Articles in Professional Journals and Books Peter Heehs is an independent scholar based in India. He has written or edited nine books and published more than fifty articles.  2011. “The Kabbalah, the Philosophie Cosmique, and the Integral Yoga: A Study in Cross-Cultural Influence”. Aries 11:2 (September): 219-247 (Pdf file available here).

The link between Aurobindo and this group was Mirra Alfassa (1878 - 1973), a Frenchwoman of Sephardic Jewish extraction who met him in India in 1914 and later became his chief collaborator… The most obvious resemblances between the Philosophie Cosmique and the Integral Yoga are the least significant… In their history of the H.B. of L., Godwin, Chanel and Deveney write that Aurobindo and the Mother ‘were very largely inspired by Theon and his wife’. In his dissertation, Chanel goes farther: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother ‘may from many points of view be looked on as disciples of the Theons or in any case as continuers of their work’. In another passage Chanel suggests that the Theons have been denied due recognition by Aurobindo’s followers: The Philosophie Cosmique, he asserts, ‘constitutes one of the essential sources of the teachings of [Aurobindo’s] ashram in Pondicherry, even though this fact is, or was, generally little known or eclipsed’.

What I have written in the preceding sections should be enough to show that these claims are exaggerated… All in all, the parallels between the Philosophie Cosmique and Aurobindo’s philosophy are interesting but relatively unimportant compared to the enormous influence of the Vedantic tradition of India, which Aurobindo fully acknowledged. Chanel also notes that it is through the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo ‘that the work of the Theons, that is, the Philosophie Cosmique, is present, though unbeknownst to many, in the world today’.

This is true, and it draws attention to what might be called the “multinational” side of the transmission of esoteric knowledge. The Philosophie Cosmique, based in large measure on a form of the kabbalah that took shape in what is now Israel, was developed in France and Algeria during the early twentieth century, but now is scarcely remembered in any of these places. Elements of this teaching are present in the Integral Yoga, a system of thought based largely on the Upanishads that was elaborated in India by an English-educated Bengali and a Frenchwoman of Sephardic extraction. This system of yoga is followed by tens of thousands of people in India, and many hundreds in Europe and North America.

Thus elements of an esoteric teaching made a journey from mediaeval Spain to Palestine and then back to Europe, where they were repackaged for dissemination in France. From France they were taken to India, and from India they have begun to make their way back to the West. 8:35 am, 9:21 am 

Between Jerusalem/Benare: Comparative Studies in Judaism and Hinduism - Page 264 - Hananya Goodman - 1994 - Preview - More editions These are some of the trends of thought which reveal Sri Aurobindo's faith in the basic goodness of human nature and in the ultimate evolution of one ... The "breaking of the vessels" in Lurianic Kabbalah arises from the spilling over of light.

Mythos: The Myths and Tales of H.P. Lovecraft & Robert E. Howard - Page 71 - H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Gwendolyn Toynton - 2011 - Preview But it also ties in with the Cthulhu mythos, in that the Lurianic world of chaos pertains to cycles before the present age ... life on Earth. This theme of cosmic restitution is developed in much greater detail by the Indian sage Sri Aurobindo, who ...

The Long Trajectory: The Metaphysics of Reincarnation and Life ... - Page 286 - Eric M. Weiss - 2012 - Preview It is these three terms that describe the metaphysical ultimates in Sri Aurobindo's system. ... (This is rather like the ideas of Lurianic Cabala, in which God, in order to manifest a universe, must withhold some of his fullness—an operation termed ...

The Four Faces of the Universe: An Integrated View of the Cosmos - Page 299 - Robert Kleinman - 2007 - Preview For a more detailed examination of the doctrine of creation in Lurianic Kabbalah, see Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York, 1978), ... She originally met SriAurobindo in Pondicherry and, after a four-year stay in Japan, returned to India and...

Becoming Whole: Jung's Equation for Realizing God - Leslie Stein - 2012 - Preview - More editions Aurobindo initially refers to the Divine as of no gender, just a Force or an “unremembering Entity.” After the thought is sown, the ... Ein Sof in Lurianic Kabbalah withdraws leaving a space for its manifestations. The breaking off of the female ...

The Roots of Modern Magick: Glimpses of the Authentic tradition ... - Page xxiv - Allen Greenfield - Preview And, his connection to The Mother and to the current that brought us Sri Aurobindo is not insignificant! ... Perhaps a hundred years from now, nobody will care that the Lurianic school at Safed inherited the rich traditions of Languedocian...

Beyond man: life and work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother - Page 29 - Georges van Vrekhem - 1997 - It was [Alma] who had been supporting Theon with her knowledge and powers; without her he was nothing and naturally after her death the entire project suffered shipwreck.' (Sri Aurobindo) One has the impression that Alma withdrew from ...

In Search of the Masters: Behind the Occult Myth - Page 121 - Paul Johnson - 1990 - Research by Patrice Marot, a contemporary Aurobindo disciple, unearthed considerable details on Theon's history. He was born on August 5, 1847 in Warsaw, son of a rabbi. His real name appears to have been Louis Maximilien Bimstein, ...

Ariel - Issues 56-62 - Page 35 - Israel. Miśrad ha-ḥuts - 1984 - His kabbalistic heir was Pascal Thémanlys who asserts that much of Theon's thinking had been passed on through Mirha Richard to Aurobindo. Bergman, who was editor of general philosophy for the Encyclopedia Hebraica, was impressed ...

Secret Cipher of the UFOnauts - Page 9 - Allen Greenfield - 2006 - Preview - More editions Bilnsfein, Louis M., also known as Max Theon and Aia Aziz. The son of a Polish ...Virtually every modern occult movement, from the Theosophical Society to the followers of Sri Aurobindo in India, owe him a debt in their origins. Bimstein was a...

The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye: Alchemy and the End ... - Page 299 - Jay Weidner, Vincent Bridges - 2003 - Preview 1968, eighteen years after Sri Aurobindo's death and only five years before her own death, the Mother began a major series of building projects at ... As John Major Jenkins points out in Galactic Alignment, the Matrimandir, like Hewitt's linga altar stone, is a combination of all three cosmic ... Mirra Alfassa, the Mother, is in her own right one of the most fascinating figures in twentieth-century occultism.

Women of Wisdom: The Journey of the Sacred Feminine Through the Ages - Paula Marvelly - Preview - More editions In 1905, Mirra met an occultist by the name of Max Theon in Paris, a Polish Jew who had been the Grand Master of a ... staying there, he determined to seek the advice of a holy man, and in 1910 he had his first encounter with Aurobindo.

The White Woman's "Other" Burden: Western Women and South Asia ... - Page 208 - Jayawardena Kum - 1995 - Preview - More editions Alfassa also knew Max Theon, a "Polish Jew who was highly advanced in occultism," who had worked with Blavatsky and had ... There he met the political exile Aurobindo; on his return to Paris with news of Aurobindo, Mirra began to feel ...

Stairway to Heaven: Chinese Alchemists, Jewish Kabbalists, and the ... - Page 210 - Peter Levenda - 2008 - Preview Metamon was the teacher of one Louis Maximilian Bimstein (a.k.a. Max Theon), who in turn had so much influence over the group around the famous Indian teacher Sri Aurobindo and “the Mother.” The Mother, whose birth name was Mirra ...

Tradition and the Rhetoric of Right: Popular Political Argument in ... - Page 90 - David J. Lorenzo - 1999 - Preview Despite her later study with the Algerian mystic Theon, this artistic experience seems to have been the most formative of her life before she met Aurobindo. Her core belief was that the world could be changed by changing the way people ...

The Roots of Modern Magick: Glimpses of the Authentic tradition ... - Page 34 - Allen Greenfield - Preview Nahar is perhaps sometimes doubted because of a `devotional' approach in his writings, directed mainly towards Sri Aurobindo and “The Mother” -- one-time Theon follower Mirra Alfassa. Yet, Nahar would seem to have no special allegiance... Page 52 - A. H. Greenfield - 2005

Mythos: The Myths and Tales of H.P. Lovecraft & Robert E. Howard - Page 71 - H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Gwendolyn Toynton - 2011 - Preview Sri Aurobindo provided detailed philosophical and psychological interpretations of what he referred to as the ... the English equivalent 'unconscious', seems to imply the term was adopted from Theon, via Mirra, both being francophones).

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

Intercultural understanding vis-à-vis Small-circle care

International Conference on Atisha and Cultural Renaissance  Venue: 11, Man Singh Road, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi-110011. Date: 16th to 18th January, 2013 - ‘Atisa Dipankar Srijnana and Cultural Renaissance’ Atisha is the last outstanding Indian scholar who went abroad for the cause, in the 11th century. Home, Silver Jubilee Celebration

The Self and Its Other: Philosophical Essays: J. N. Mohanty

J.N. Mohanty is Professor of Philosophy, Temple University, Philadelphia and Woodruff Professor of Philosophy and Asian Studies, Emory University, Georgia. Book Description Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 4, 2001)

In Self and Other, J. N. Mohanty addresses contemporary questions of post-modernism without abandoning his fundamental stand on phenomenological method. The essays in this volume reveal a shift from an over-emphasis on identity in classical metaphysical thinking to an emphasis on differences without falling into the fogginess of post-modernism.

Writing the Self  [Paperback] Peter Heehs (Author) Book Description Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic Publication Date: April 11, 2013

The self has a history. In the West, the idea of the soul entered Christianity with the Church Fathers, notably Augustine. During the Renaissance the idea of the individual attained preeminence, as in the works of Montaigne. In the seventeenth century, philosophers such as Descartes formulated notions of selfhood that did not require a divine foundation; in the next century, Hume grew skeptical of the self's very existence. Ideas of the self have changed markedly since the Romantic period and most scholars today regard it as at best a mental construct. First-person genres such as diaries and memoirs have provided an outlet for self-expression. Protestant diaries replaced the Catholic confessional, but secular diaries such as Pepys's may reveal yet more about the self. After Richardson, novels competed with diaries and memoirs as vehicles of self-expression, though memoirs survived and continue to thrive, while the diary has found a new incarnation in the personal blog. Writing the Self narrates the intertwined histories of the self and of self-expression through first-person literature. About the Author

Peter Heehs is an independent scholar based in India. He has written or edited nine books and published more than fifty articles. Articles in Professional Journals and Books

2011. “The Kabbalah, the Philosophie Cosmique, and the Integral Yoga: A Study in Cross-Cultural Influence”. Aries 11:2 (September): 219-247 (Pdf file available here).

2010. “Introduction”. In P. Vir Gupta, C. Mueller, and C. Samil, Golconde: The Introduction of Modernism in India. Bangalore: Inform.

2009. “Revolutionary Terrorism in British Bengal”. In E. Boehmer and S. Morton, eds., Terror and the Postcolonial. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

2008. “Sri Aurobindo and Hinduism”. Published online in AntiMatters 2.2 (April).

2007. “Nationalism”. In S. Mittal and G. Thursby, eds., Studying Hinduism: Concepts and Methods. New York: Routledge.

2006. “Introduction: Appropriation as a Marketing Strategy”, written as guest editor of Postcolonial Studies 9 (June): 113–19.

2006. “The Uses of Sri Aurobindo: Mascot, Whipping-Boy or What?”. Postcolonial Studies 9 (June): 151–64.

2006. “Yoga/Yogi”. Keywords in South Asian Studies. Published online by Centre of South Asian Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

2004. “Ghose, Aurobindo.” In The New Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2003. “ ‘The Centre of the Religious Life of the World’: Spiritual Universalism and Cultural Nationalism in the Work of Sri Aurobindo.” In Antony Copley, ed., Hinduism, Public and Private: Reform, Hindutva, Gender, Sampraday. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

2003. “Shades of Orientalism: Paradoxes and Problems in Indian Historiography”. History and Theory, vol. 42, no. 2: 169–95. Reprinted in Gwilym Beckerlegge, ed., Colonialism, Modernity and Religious Identities. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 239-74.

1994. “Myth, History and Theory.” History and Theory, vol. 33, no. 1, 1–19. Reprinted in Robert Segal, ed., Myth (New York: Routledge, 2007).

Peter Heehs - Shades of Orientalism: Paradoxes & Problems in ... [published in History and Theory 42 (May 2003), pp.169-195]

Another habit of European scholars that got Aurobindo’s hackles up was their tendency to trace Indian achievements back to European, usually Greek, predecessors. Where Greek influence was evident, as in the Gandharan school of sculpture, he condemned the work as inferior to “pure” Indian styles. Europe’s literary criteria too were not applicable to India. Albrecht Weber’s idea that the original Mahabharata consisted only of the battle chapters was a case of “arguing from Homer.” It was, he insisted, “not from European scholars that we must expect a solution of the Mahabharata problem,” since “they have no qualifications for the task except a power of indefatigable research and collocation. . . . It [p.178>] is from Hindu [i.e. Indian] scholarship renovated & instructed by contact with European that the attempt must come.”[34] …

Chakrabarty’s project is one of the most sophisticated attempts to arrive at an Indian, or let us say a not-exclusively-European way of looking at Indian history, but he builds on foundations that were laid a hundred years ago. Many of his predecessors exhibit great subtlety of thought and are not hobbled, like him, by an excessive reliance on (European) figures like Heidegger and Marx who, taken at [p.192>] face value, seem to offer little support to his thesis. I examine briefly one branch of this lineage, the nationalists of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Bengal.

Any survey of this style must begin with Bankim Chandra Chatterji, who, suggestively in his novels and explicitly in his essays, challenged the right of Europeans to dictate the terms of the colonial encounter… Chatterji, Tagore, Pal and Aurobindo were all modern in outlook and education, but they all used religious concepts in their writings… Writers like Chatterji, Tagore and Aurobindo laid stress on India’s distinctiveness because it seemed threatened by absorption into a universalized Europe. But they were also internationalists who knew and respected Europe and worked for intercultural understanding.[110] Their defenders and detractors lay stress on their essentialism, but they themselves went beyond it, contesting the validity of Eurocentrism without promoting an equally imperfect Indocentrism.

The Myth of Universal Love By STEPHEN T. ASMA January 5, 2013 328 Comments

One of the more deeply engrained assumptions of Western liberalism is that we humans can indefinitely increase our capacity to care for others, that we can, with the right effort and dedication, extend our care to wider and wider circles until we envelop the whole species within our ethical regard. It is an inspiring thought. But I’m rather doubtful… 

Two of the leading liberal social theorists, Jeremy Rifkin and Peter Singer, think we can overcome factional bias and eventually become one giant tribe. They have different prescriptions for arriving at ethical utopia. Singer, who is perhaps the world’s best known utilitarian philosopher, argues in his book “The Expanding Circle” that the relative neocortical sophistication of humans allows us to rationally broaden our ethical duty beyond the “tribe” — to an equal and impartial concern for all human beings…

One of the architects of utilitarian ethics, and a forerunner of Singer’s logic, was William Godwin (1756-1836), who formulated a famous thought experiment… Godwin argues that the utilitarian principle (the greatest good for the greatest number) requires you to save the archbishop rather than your mother. He asks, “What magic is there in the pronoun ‘my’ that should justify us in overturning the decisions of impartial truth?”[2] Singer has famously pushed the logic further, arguing that we should do everything within our power to help strangers meet their basic needs, even if it severely compromises our kin’s happiness…

Jeremy Rifkin voices a popular view in his recent book “The Empathic Civilization” that we can feel care and empathy for the whole human species if we just try hard enough.  This view has the advantage over Singer’s metric view, in that it locates moral conviction in the heart rather than the rational head. But it fails for another reason. I submit that care or empathy is a very limited resource. But it is Rifkin’s quixotic view that empathy is an almost limitless reserve. He sketches a progressive, ever widening evolution of empathy…

The world of Singer’s utilitarianism and Rifkin’s one-tribism is a world of bare minimums, with care spread thinly to cover per capita needs. But in favoritism (like a love relation) people can get way more than they deserve. It’s an abundance of affection and benefits. In a real circle of favorites, one needs to accept help gracefully. We must accept, without cynicism, the fact that some of our family and friends give to us for our own sake (our own flourishing) and not for their eventual selfish gain. However animalistic were the evolutionary origins of giving (and however vigorous the furtive selfish genes), the human heart, neocortex and culture have all united to eventually create true altruism. Gratitude is a necessary response in a sincere circle of favorites. Finally, my case for small-circle care dovetails nicely with the commonly agreed upon crucial ingredient in human happiness, namely, strong social bonds…

These are not digital Facebook friends nor are they needy faraway strangers, but robust proximate relationships that you can count on one or two hands — and these bonds are created and sustained by the very finite resource of emotional care that I’ve outlined. As Graham Greene reminds us, “one can’t love humanity, one can only love people.” Stephen T. Asma is a fellow of the Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture at Columbia College Chicago, and author of, most recently, “Against Fairness.” FOOTNOTES [1] See Robert Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations (Harvard University Press, 1981). [2] See William Godwin’s 1798 Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness, Vol. I (Toronto University Press, 1946) NYTimes.com

Sri Aurobindo always seeks for the larger synthesis

[Rough Draft] Worldly Religion in Whitehead and Deleuze: On the Possibility of a Secular Divinity from Footnotes to Plato by Matthew David Segall Dec 17, 2012

The purpose of this essay is to unpack Deleuze’s and Whitehead’s philosophical contributions to the task of re-thinking religion in a post-everything (perhaps even post-apocalyptic) world no longer certain of its own secularity. “The secularization of the concept of God’s functions …

Stengers’ contrasts Deleuze’s celebration of unhinged creativity with Whitehead’s tremendous respect for history and continual emphasis upon the importance of acquiring new habits in a way that is sensitive to the habitat they depend upon. “Each task of creation,” writes Whitehead, “is a social effort, employing the whole universe.” While Hallward’s claim may or may not be justified, Stengers’ modest Whiteheadian corrective to Deleuze’s penchant for skinny dipping in the Acheron allows us to receive much insight and inspiration from the latter without forgetting the perhaps more mature imperative of the former regarding the true responsibility of the philosopher: “…[to] seek the evidence for that conception of the universe which is the justification for the ideals characterizing the civilized phases of human society.”

[Grant, Iain Hamilton. Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (London: Continuum, 2006). Hallward, Peter. Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation (London: Verso Books, 2006). Ramey, Joshua. The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal (London: Duke University Press, 2012). Stengers, Isabelle. Thinking With Whitehead (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).]

Buddhists and “Hindus” against traditional family values from Love of All Wisdom by Amod Lele Dec 17, 2012 

Patrick Olivelle’s remarkable The Āśrama System, examining the classical dharmasūtra texts, established that the “four āśramas” – celibate student, householder, forest-dweller and renouncer – were originally conceived not as stages, but as choices, alternatives. It was only in a later stage of Indian thought – a stage that sought to diminish the importance of free choice – that it was claimed that one should renounce the world only after having children. This compromise was an attempt to bring the kind of renunciation pioneered by the Jains and Buddhists back into the fold of Vedic familial tradition. But it ran counter to the strong undercurrent – praised by the Buddha and remaining in Indian society to this day – where people would never start families, renouncing from the beginning of adulthood or even earlier, and where they were strongly praised for doing so…

The integrity orientation of traditional Indian thought is not the same as that of modern thought, certainly, but in many respects the two are closer to each other than they are to the familial worlds of premodern Judaism or Confucianism. (Even Christianity is far less intrinsically oriented toward “family values” than is often supposed… There is plenty that may be said in favour of the family life. But let us not pretend that premodern traditions agreed on its worth. 

Are Karma and Freedom Incompatible? from Sri Aurobindo Studies 

Sri Aurobindo’s approach is consistent in that he always seeks for the larger synthesis that reconciles apparently irreconcilable opposites into complementary poles or aspects of one continuum. He is able to provide us a clue to the reconciliation of karma and freedom… Once we acknowledge that there is something within the individual being that can exercise free choice, even if we, for the moment, limit that free choice to participation and non-participation in the cosmic action, we are able to escape the bonds of Karma and the impulsion towards a strict predetermined universal unfolding which would otherwise force itself upon us.

We may also go further, of course, and suppose that if we have the freedom to participate  or not, and are thus able to establish some part of us which is independent of the law of Karma, the chain of cause and effect in action, then it may also be possible to find the standpoint within ourselves where the choice of participation or non-participation itself is no longer restricting our freedom. In such an instance we would find that “freedom” and “Karma” are actually able to exist side by side, each fulfilling its role and purpose.

In a gold moment’s blaze from Savitri Dec 17, 2012

There is joy and power, there is interminable happiness, the logic of infinite intelligence and the magic of changing eternity grow clear to his sense of deeper cognition. The things that have remained unknown all this long come into view. Immense realities take shape as realised accomplishments, as even the nameless formless God takes birth and accepts a deathless body and a divine name. He sees in the depths of the original Void the Desire surging up for expression. The ignorant march of dolorous Time from Savitri Dec 17, 2012

Théon used to say that this defeatist state (the result of which is death), this destructive power, was born with the Vital’s infusion into Matter. The rock, the stone, that is, the most exclusively material, isn’t defeatist. The beginning of destruction came with the beginning of the entry of the vital force: with water – water, air, all that moves. All that begins to move brings along the power of destruction.

Invocation 36 INVOCATION is published by Savitri Bhavan in Auroville - The English of Savitri (5) Book One, Canto One, lines 253-342 by Shraddhavan

Inertia is a basic principle of matter – matter doesn’t move until something gives it a push. So the life-force, the lifeparts, when we are asleep, share that inertia of matter, they are ‘released into forgetfulness’. Surely at no point in her waking day does Savitri forget about the coming loss of Satyavan. But when she falls into deep sleep, the life-parts of the body, the brain, they are set free from that memory, they are able to forget. So the life is resting – ‘repose’ means ‘rest’, either as a verb, or as a noun. Here it is a verb. It is unconscious, on the very edge, the verge of mental consciousness. The life is resting, ‘prone’ – lying flat, as we do when we sleep, and it is just as ‘obtuse and tranquil’ as material objects such as stones and stars are. ‘Obtuse’ – we meet this word in mathematics, in geometry: where two lines or planes meet at an angle which is more than 90 degrees it is said to be ‘obtuse’, as opposed to an acute angle, which is less than 90 degrees. The acute angle looks sharp, an obtuse angle looks blunt. We use both of these words psychologically: someone who is acute is considered sharp, bright, intelligent; but if a person has difficulty in understanding things quickly, we may say that they are ‘obtuse’ – stupid. But at the same time, such people are not easily disturbed or upset, so they may seem relatively tranquil, peaceful. A stone may lie peacefully in the same place, unmoving for centuries, the stars always seem the same to us, following their courses unmoved, unchanging.

[Rough Draft] Worldly Religion in Whitehead and Deleuze: On the Possibility of a Secular Divinity from Footnotes to Plato by Matthew David Segall Dec 17, 2012

After the Christian-Platonic initiation, the world is transfigured into a problematic network of occult icons whose meaning can only be uncovered intuitively by the mental magic of talismanic thinking. Ideas are traced into appearances as signs, moments of discontinuity in extensive physical time-space out of which the intensive oddity of self-reference emerges. These recursive oddities unfold themselves into the physical plane, erupting as problematic forces requiring of the flesh-hewn mind not new representations of a supposedly extra-bodily world, but self-immolation through constant death and resurrection. Thinking is a violent act, always killing the neurons which support it, “making the brain a set of little deaths that puts constant death within us.” [⁶⁶ Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 216; Curiously, Christian esotericist Rudolf Steiner says almost the same thing: “The chief characteristic of ordinary thinking is that each single act of thinking injures the nervous system, and above all, the brain; it destroys something in the brain. Every thought means that a minute process of destruction takes place in the cells of the brain. For this reason sleep is necessary for us, in order that this process of destruction may be made good; during sleep we restore what during the day was destroyed in our nervous system by thinking. What we are consciously aware of in an ordinary thought is in reality the process of destruction that is taking place in our nervous system” (Lecture: 1st May, 1913]

Kian Joke, dogma, and nostalgia - 2:32 PM, December 16, 2012

I was actually asking if your "Savitri Era Religious Fraternity" post was a joke, which it clearly is not. Why did you delete the near-entirety of my so-deplorably anonymously-posted quote? Does it hit too close to home for you? I very well understand the necessary variations in the at-large applicability of so many of the passages in Sri Aurobindo's Letters, but when perfectly reasonable adherence to the more clearly relevant of the Guru's "outdated" old words can be disdainfully and bloviatingly reduced to mere "dogma" or "nostalgia", I suppose anything goes, ye Chosen One. Your starkly Guru-unsubstantiated religion-founding/disseminating effort is ultimately your own misguided postmodern prerogative … Nor will I ever match the godlike measure of your "growth" in the arena of deluded, self-satisfied mental-gymnastic pointlessness. Au revoir. Kian 8:48 PM, December 16, 2012