Heredity and environment cook uniqueness of each individual

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

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

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

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

Patterns of the Present - Georges Van Vrekhem 

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

Preparing for the Miraculous - Georges Van Vrekhem 

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

American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner, ed. By Robert McDermott

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

James, Myers, Royce, and Sri Aurobindo.

The action of subliminal memory | Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo ... 23 Apr 2010 – Sandeep October 8, 2012 at 11:44 am “Irreducible Mind” describes the work of American psychologist F. W. H. Myers, who is credited with inventing the term “subliminal” in Western psychology to denote larger consciousness which exists beneath the surface consciousness. Myers did not want to use the word supernatural.

Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation of the term ‘subliminal’ is derived from the Upanishads, if we go by this footnote in the Life Divine… Sri Aurobindo defined subliminal as intermediate region between the superconscious and subconscious realms

Sri Aurobindo on Subliminal Consciousness - AntiMatters subliminal regions of our consciousness, with biographical sketches of Sri Aurobindo and of F. W. H. Myers, who coined the term “subliminal consciousness” and ...

The Absolute as a Heuristic Device - California Institute of Integral ... Robert A. McDermott's discussion in "The Absolute as a Heuristic Device: Josiah Royce and Sri Aurobindo," International Philosophical Quarterly IX (1978): (1) an account of Royce and Aurobindo from the perspective of comparative philosophy, particularly in terms of their use of materials outside their own respective ...

Teilhard, Jaspers, Royce, Heidegger and Sri Aurobindo - Savitri ... 26 Jan 2006 – Teilhard, Jaspers, Royce, Heidegger and Sri Aurobindo. MAN-NATURE UNION IN HINDU METAPHYSICS Ramakant Sinari, Ph.D. Professor...

The philosophy of integralism: the metaphysical synthesis in Sri ... - Page 82 Haridas Chaudhuri - 1967 - the metaphysical synthesis in Sri Aurobindo's teaching Haridas Chaudhuri ... The American Neo-Hegelian Josiah Royce lays emphasis upon the character of the infinite stream of becoming as a totum simul present at a stroke to the Absolute. ...

The philosophy of integralism, or, The metaphysical synthesis ... - Page 255 - Haridas Chaudhuri - 1954 - ... a measure of 'apartness' and 'independent action' is indeed the 'main miracle' of the universe. Josiah Royce has expounded the view that finite-infinite individuals are in the nature of self-imagings or self-representations of the Absolute.

Sri Aurobindo's prose style (with a foreword by V.K. Gokak) - Page 30 - Goutam Ghosal - 1991 - Josiah Royce (1855-1916) defended the Idealist and Absolutist tradition in philosophy on the basis of dialectic... It is not improbable that a glutton of books like Sri Aurobindo on various aspects of life came into touch with his writings. The ultimate views may differ in important details but Royce foreshadows certain stylistic features of Sri Aurobindo no less ...

A comparative study of the philosophy of Josiah Royce & Radhakrishnan - Page 216 - H. L. Chourasia - 1979 - ... Radhakrishnan's attitude would seem to be nearest of all to that of the great sage Ramanuja and closely allied with that which has been so suggestively developed in recent years by Sri Aurobindo."1 Strikingly a similar opinion is expressed ...

Josiah Royce (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Copyright © 2011 by
Kelly A. Parker <parkerk@gvsu.edu> 3 Aug 2004 – Josiah Royce (1855–1916) was the leading American proponent of absolute idealism, the metaphysical view (also maintained by G. W. F. Hegel and F. H. Bradley) that ... Royce began to write more about what today would be called “practical” or “applied” philosophy…

Royce and James had always disagreed deeply concerning the proper understanding of religious phenomena in human life. When James delivered the Gifford Lectures in 1901 and 1902, he directed many arguments against Royce's idealism, though he did not there target his friend by name. James's lectures, published asThe Varieties of Religious Experience, were a popular and academic success . Royce believed that James, who had never been regularly affiliated with an established church or religious community, had in that work placed too much emphasis on the extraordinary religious experiences of extraordinary individuals. 

Royce, Josiah [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] by JAK Kegley - 12 May 2011 – In 1912, while recovering from a stroke, Royce published The Sources of Religious Insight, in which he sought an explanation for the phenomena of ordinary religious faith as experienced by ordinary religious communities and individuals. He considered this a correction to James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience (The Gifford Lectures, 1901-1902), which, in Royce’s judgment, put too much emphasis on extraordinary and individualistic religious experiences. Drawing on the semiotic of Peirce and other sources, in 1913, Royce published his opus on religious community, The Problem of Christianity, a work which Yale philosopher, John E. Smith identified as “one of the finest works in the philosophy of religion ever to appear on the American scene” (Smith 1982 &1992, 122). In place of the earlier “Absolute Knower,” Royce presents the concept of an infinite community of interpretation, guided by a shared spirit of truth-seeking and community building. The Universal Community constitutes reality, and its understanding increases over time, through its members’ continual development of meaning. Royce’s concern for building a universal or “Beloved Community” is exemplified in two later works focused on building peace and a world community: War and Insurance (1914) and The Hope of the Great Community (1916). In the 1914 book, Royce made a daring political and economic proposal to use the economic power of insurance to mediate hostilities among nations, and reduce the attraction of war in the future. Royce died September 14, 1916, before he could develop fully his new philosophical insights. 

Bergson's U.S. visit in 1913 brings a traffic jam on Broadway

William James - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist who had trained as a physician. He was the first educator ... William James (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 7 Sep 2000 – Russell Goodman  - rgoodman@unm.edu

William James was an original thinker in and between the disciplines of physiology, psychology and philosophy. His twelve-hundred page masterwork, The Principles of Psychology (1890), is a rich blend of ...

Henri Bergson (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 18 May 2004 – Leonard Lawlor lul19@psu.edu Valentine Moulard

Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was one of the most famous and influential French philosophers of the late 19th century-early 20th century… In 1903, Bergson published, in the prestigious Revue de métaphysique et de morale, an article entitled “Introduction to Metaphysics” (later reproduced as the centerpiece of The Creative Mind [La Pensée et le mouvant] in 1934). The first of Bergson's works to be translated in many languages, this article not only became a crucial reading guide for Bergson's philosophy as a whole, but it also marked the beginning of “Bergsonism” and of its influence on Cubism and literature. Through Williams James's enthusiastic reading of this essay, Bergsonism acquired a far-reaching influence on American Pragmatism. Moreover, his imprint on American literature (in particular, Wallace Stevens and Willa Cather, who created a character called “Alexandra Bergson”) is undeniable.

Creative Evolution appeared in 1907. It was the beginning of the “Bergson legend,” as well as of numerous, lively academic and public controversies centering on his philosophy and his role as an intellectual. The beginning of the next decade is the apex of the “Bergsonian cult” (“le Bergson boom”). Creative Evolution was translated into English. Bertrand Russell (who publishes an article entitled “The Philosophy in Bergson” in The Monist in 1912) objects that Bergson wants to turn us into bees with the notion of intuition. Russell also notes that any attempt at classifying Bergson will fail, as his philosophy cuts across all divisions, whether empiricist, realist or idealist (Soulez et Worms 2002, p. 124). Bergson's lectures at the Collège de France were filled to capacity, not only with society ladies and their suitors, but also with a whole generation of philosophy students (Étienne Gilson and Jean Wahl among others) and poets such as T.S. Eliot.

In January 1913, Bergson visits the United States for the first time (Soulez et Worms 2002, p. 134). The week before he delivered his first lecture at Columbia University (entitled “Spirituality and Liberty”), The New York Times published a long article on him. The enthusiasm this article generated may explain the traffic jam that occurred before Bergson's lecture, the first traffic jam in the history of Broadway. 

Henri Bergson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bergson travelled to London in 1908 and met there with William James, the Harvard philosopher who was Bergson's senior by seventeen years, and who was instrumental in calling the attention of the Anglo-American public to the work of the French professor. The two became great friends.

Alfred North Whitehead - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia OM FRS (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1903

The period between 1910 and 1926 was mostly spent at University College London and Imperial College London, where he taught and wrote on physics, the philosophy of science, and the theory and practice of education.

Whitehead's metaphysical views, which he called process philosophy emerged in The Concept of Nature (1920) and were expanded in Science and the Modern World (1925), also an important study in the history of ideas and the role of science and mathematics in the rise of Western civilization. Indebted to Henri Bergson's philosophy of change, Whitehead was also a Platonist who "saw the definite character of events as due to the "ingression" of timeless entities."^[8]

Alfred North Whitehead (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 5 Apr 2010 – A. D. Irvine - andrew.irvine@ubc.ca

The second main period, from 1910 to 1924, corresponds with his time at London. During these years Whitehead concentrated mainly, but not exclusively, on issues in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of education… Thus although not especially influential among contemporary Anglo-American secular philosophers, his metaphysical ideas continue to have significant influence among many theologians and philosophers of religion. 

Samuel Alexander - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia OM (6 January 1859, Sydney – 13 September 1938, Manchester) was an Australian-born British philosopher.

In 1908, he published Locke, a short but excellent study, which was included in the Philosophies Ancient and Modern Series. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1908–1911 and from 1936–1937. In 1913, was made a fellow of the British Academy. He was appointed Gifford lecturer at Glasgow in 1915, and delivered his lectures in the winters of 1917 and 1918. These he developed into his great work Space, Time, and Deity, published in two volumes in 1920, which his biographer has called the "boldest adventure in detailed speculative metaphysics attempted in so grand a manner by any English writer between 1655 and 1920."

The question went largely unanswered and his work is mostly ignored (or, at best, little known) these days. Alexander's views have also been described as panentheistic.^[2] Alexander was a contemporary of Alfred North Whitehead, whom he influenced, and mentored others who went on to become major figures in 20th century British philosophy.

Sri Aurobindo: A Contemporary Reader Sachidananda Mohanty - 2012 - Preview - More editions On the other end, M. S. Golwalkar and others of the Right wing persuasion admire Sri Aurobindo for his Hindu nationalism. ... religion and nationalism remains an unresolved issue and Heehs has not ventured 'to set forth in systematic form',54 ...

Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx: Integral Sociology and Dialectical ... - Page xx - Debi Prasad Chattopadhyaya - 1988 - Preview Sri Aurobindo's integral sociology is a serious and systematic attempt to put the matter 'upside down', to use that famous expression of Marx, to show how the whole of our socio-political structure depends for their existence and significance ...

Political Philosophy Of Sri Aurobindo - Page 285 - V. P. Varma - 1990 - Preview - More editions PHILOSOPHY OF 'THE STATE Sri Aurobindo has not developed any systematic theory of the state like Hegel, Green or Bosanquet. But I will try to reconstruct a theory of the state according to Sri Aurobindo, by arranging, systematizing and ...

Perspectives on Sri Aurobindo's poetry, plays, and criticism - Page 144 - Amrita Paresh Patel, Jaydipsinh Dodiya - 2002 - Full view - More editions Sri Aurobindo was more consistent and original for he tried 'to present a systematic theory of futuristic poetry'. With the ...

Penguin Sri Aurobindo Reader - Page xii - Paranjape, Makarand - Preview Sri Aurobindo and the Mother may be considered among the most consistent and systematic proponents of this idea. As Sri Aurobindo put it, 'It is a step for which the whole of evolution has been a preparation.' Or in the Mother's words: ...

Thinkers Of Indian Renaissance - Page 205 - S A Abbasi - 1998 - Preview It is this fusion which gives Sri Aurobindo a very unique place in the history of Eastern as well as Western philosophy. In this essay an attempt has been made to present Sri Aurobindo's philosophy in a systematic, critical and comparative ...

The Study of Hinduism - Page 275 Arvind Sharma - 2003 - Preview Aurobindo Ghose was one of the most systematic thinkers of the so-called Hindu renaissance.

Sri Aurobindo Ghose - Page 478 - Verinder Grover - 1993 - Preview Sri Aurobindo's writing is large and most varied. But for the strict philosophical purpose the book of systematic exposition is only The Life Divine. His Letters in Yoga are answers to queries put by his disciples in the course of their practice of ...

The perennial quest for a psychology with a soul: an inquiry into ... - Page 542 - Joseph Vrinte - 2002 - Preview In The Human Cycle and Foundations of Indian Culture, Sri Aurobindo deals systematically and comprehensively with the social and cultural life of man, indicating the effects of the individual's spiritual development upon the evolution of man's ...

Reading Hegel: The Introductions - Page 265 - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aakash Singh, Rimina Mohapatra - 2008 - Full view ... place, this book ambitiously attempts to present readers with Hegel's systematic thought through his Introductions alone. ... Derrida and other post-moderns, to thinkers farther afield, like Japan's famous Kyoto School or India's Sri Aurobindo.

Indian Political Thinkers: Modern Indian Political Thought - Page 136 - N. Jayapalan - 2000 - Preview He was a great poet, a great metaphysician, a great systematic thinker, a great seer and a great patriot. He had a message for the whole world. Shri AurobindoGhosh was born on 15th August, 1872 in the city of Calcutta, a date which reminds...

The Lives of Sri Aurobindo - Page xii - Peter Heehs - 2008 - Preview - More editions But it had never occurred to anyone to search systematically for biographical documents. I spent parts of the next few years ... Most of the documents I found in public archives dealt with Aurobindo's life as a politician. They confirmed that he had ...

Oversimplification and underdetermination

[A Soul Evolution Uses Rebirth As Its Mechanism of Fulfilment by sri aurobindo studies

Rebirth, if restricted to the physical mechanism, adds little meaning to our lives, as it becomes an endless repetition of births with no goal other than pure existence. This leaves the questions about the significance of life and the reason for existence unanswered. Once we couple this physical mechanism with the concept of a soul evolution, a continuously progressive development that utilizes rebirth as the means of achieving results that cannot be attained in any single birth, we have the key that fits virtually all the locks, and we open up a new understanding about why we are here, and what we have to do.]

[Re: reincarnation vs rebirth... 

In The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo strives to achieve this internal consistency.  He takes each argument (for and against) to its logical end and aspires to justify it. Of course, the problem is that the system is under-determined because all the available phenomenal evidence is insufficient to prove the existence of anything occult or Divine. By Sandeep (?) 1:32 PM]

[Read the original works! By Sandeep

Finally, the purpose of the blog is to introduce you to the sublime wisdom present in the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, which cannot be captured entirely by any secondary work, including this blog.  So read the original works whenever you can. It will take time to grok their teachings, but it is worth the effort.]

[By immersing oneself in the original works, one gets a sense of the depth, comprehensiveness and majesty of Sri Aurobindo’s being that no compilation or third-person essay can ever convey. – Matthijs Cornelissen SABDA Newsletter, May 2008]

[Sandeep November 3, 2012 at 6:35 pm

In 1897, American psychologist William James suggested the “transmission theory” of mind, in which the brain is merely a mediator in the action of a mother-sea of consciousness which lies above it. This is similar to the mechanism that has been described above and is opposed to the “production theory”, prevalent in current Western psychology and philosophy discourse, which suggests that the brain produces consciousness.]

[Adam Says: September 11th, 2007 at 3:31 pm

Funny thing about William James is that his fucking book comes before the big break produced by WWI — a consolidation of a certain trajectory that has since been decisively critiqued. Apparently people regard him as the end-all — I had no idea. Over 100 years, and absolutely nothing has happened in the field! I’m so embarrassed not to defer to him in all things!

Seriously, does it ever occur to anyone that maybe there’s a reason something like the William James comes out around that time? You don’t even need to know academic theology — haven’t you ever read the chapter debunking the late-Victorian concept of the sacred in fucking Homo Sacer? That’s common currency, even though I know Karl Barth isn’t. 9:44 AM]

[Anthony Paul Smith Says: September 21st, 2007 at 8:20 am 

Re: Lenin. I think it is a gross oversimplification that leads one to total falsification… For me, and this isn’t a majority view and you certainly are not going to change your mind because of me, all philosophical taxidermy is repugnant falsification of actual philosophical thought. I just don’t find them helpful and very, very unpersuasive. In the ecosystem of thought I’m a Gleasonian. Still, I know it is not a popular view, … 3:59 PM]

[I Agree: It’s Religious from Cafe Hayek by Don Boudreaux

Talk matters.  Words matter.  They matter greatly.  (See Deirdre McCloskey.)

And talk and words have a history that unavoidably imparts meaning to them. The meaning that strikes the ears or eyes and then enters the minds of listeners is determined not merely by what the speaker (or writer) wants to convey – not exclusively by what he or she imagines others will understand – but also by what his or her audience brings to the conversation.  Conversation is a two-way street, not a one-way dictation.

Importantly, in the case of scientific writing the meaning that fellow scientists generally ‘get’ from a sentence uttered by a colleague is often quite different from the meaning that non-specialists ‘get’ from the very same sentence. This fact is especially important in the social science and, I believe, especially especially important in economics.

Economics is about the real world – or at least non-economists who hear or read pronouncements from people called “economists” will assume that these economists are making statements about the real-world… So when economists speak to the general public, they are duty-bound to be cognizant of the public’s biases and to communicate in ways that do not reinforce those biases but, instead, have some prospect for correcting those biases.]