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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The aim should be understanding of being and the world

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

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

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

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

“The Party” from Larval Subjects Jan 17, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Augment Whitehead with Sri Aurobindo

RESEARCH IN PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION-ABSTRACTS DEVI, S., A Critical Study of the Concept of Creativity in Philosophy with special reference to Bergson, Whitehead and Sri Aurobindo, Ph. D. Phil., Kur. U., 1976

The objectives of the study were (i) to find out if creativity was the general scheme of reality, (ii) to find out if creativity was linked with different concepts of this universe, that is, with becoming, cosmic evolution, consciousness, organic evolution and teleology, (iii) to trace the historical background of creativity both in Indian and in Western thought, with special reference to the Vedas, Upanishads, Plato and Plotinus, (iv) to locate the concept of creativity in Bergson's ideas, (v) to investigate how Whitehead contributed to the concept of creativity, (vi) to identify the concept of creativity in the ideas of Sri Aurobindo, and (vii) to analyse various theories of creative evolution developed by S. Alexander, L. Morgan and James Ward.

The methodology adopted was philosophical, historical and comparative. The study was philosophical in the sense that ideas of various personalities were organized, critically analysed and evaluated. It was historical because the development of the concept of creativity from various sources had been traced. Further, it was comparative as commonness between the ideas and theories of various persons on the concept of creativity had been identified and critically evaluated. Content analysis was used both as a tool and technique to analyse the educational ideas of Tagore and Whitehead. Content analysis consisted of documentary analysis and thematic analysis. For content analysis, primary as well as secondary sources were used. The material was also examined to find out its suitability for the proposed research by way of internal and external criticism.

Some of the findings of the study were:

1. Creativity constitutes the very basis of reality.

2. Creativity has been conceived by various thinkers as an exercise of nonfigurative powers of the whole psyche involving all its substance, the play of its entire energy. The creative action is more than cerebral, more than visceral, involving more than mind and heart, intellect and emotions. It augments the structure of human vision by introducing some new, vital configuration of ideas or from among those available to organize experience.

3. Creativity was the power to evolve a pattern that remained omnipotent insofar as it touched the details of actualization. Creativity was a widely recognized ideal for every human being.

4. Both east and west emphasized that what was creative about spiritual experience was not its psychological accompaniments but the inward change which manifested itself in the fruits of the spirit-peace, JOY and loving suffering. A new type of life emerged with a higher correspondence between one's self and the ultimate sources of reality. New qualities of mind and character were called forth out of ordinary men and women, qualities which manifested the Divine in them.

5. Bergson's concepts elan-vital had led to a revolutionary syndical that would restore a purified social life by insisting that social change in any class of people could be achieved only by the force of their own associations, through means that would evolve so as to suit their particular needs. In the theory of science, he had inspired a new `positivism' that criticized scientific data in a vigorous and original way and showed how much arbitrariness there was in our methods of measurement of magnitudes.
6. Whitehead introduced an omnibus principle called creativity, which was a sort of universal blanket to cover all logical branches that his philosophy had created. Whitehead's emphasis on the organic character of natural systems and his attempt to bring physics and biology closer together had a good deal in common with the Gestalt approach to mind and nature.

7. Some emergentists advocated the theory of levels according to which evolution proceeded by the method of creative synthesis and life and mind came of a certain kind of organization of non-living elements. These new qualities could not be inferred by merely adding together the qualities of elements taking part in the organization. At each new level of reality, new powers, new capacities and new qualities emerged. Life appeared at one of these levels. Along with it emerged a series of new qualities such as growth, assimilation, irritability, adaptability and reproduction. Mind was the result of still more highly complex organizations. This was called creative evolution or emergent evolution whose pioneers were Bergson, Alexander, Morgan and Ward.

8. Sri Aurobindo's evolution admitted both mechanism and emergence, determinism and freedom. The creator was the supermind and it was a power of Sachchidananda. Hence the process of evolution was free, self-imposed and self-determined by Sachchidananda. The world was not the result of blind chance but a self-manifestation of the ultimate. Nature's processes appeared to us to be mechanical merely because the purpose was under disguise. Nothing was created from outside.

9. Creativity constitutes the very basis or foundation of reality. It was the creative purpose which steered and guided cosmic evolution and natural evolution. Creativity in human civilization was the expression of creation, which was at the root of nature and reality.

10. Man's future is in the hands of two creative agencies, his biological evolution and his psychological evolution. Genetic and natural environmental forces continued to influence the development of man. Psychological control dominates the direction of human evolution. Man's personal potential is biological, but he is freely And creatively designed. His future depended upon his understanding and attitudes towards reality. Man would be creative and free in projecting his future only if he could at one and the same time realistically immerse himself in the history of his age and culture, discover trans-historical meaning and affirm divine communication. 

11. Bergson, Sri Aurobindo and Whitehead are quite close to each other as far as the process of creativity is concerned.

Science v. Religion (in the lead up to my dissertation) – Al Jazeera interviews Richard Dawkins, and Lawrence’s Krauss thinks he’s special from Footnotes to Plato by Matthew David Segall

Now that I've completed preparatory research essays on Schelling (The Re-Emergence of Schelling: Philosophy in a Time of Emergency) and Whitehead (Physics of the World-Soul: The Relevance of A.N. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology), it’s finally time to start zeroing in on my dissertation thesis. The title I’m proposing for now is Imagination Between...

Sri Aurobindo, the hope of man - Page 309 - Keshavmurti - 1969 - In the beginning Sri Aurobindo did not concern himself much with the war though he knew that poor leadership in England and France was at least partly responsible for Hitler's truculent and bellicose ...

Collected Works: Words of the mother - Page 127 - Mother - 1980 - 1 April 1946 A Declaration Sri Aurobindo withdrew from politics; and, in his Ashram, a most important rule is that one must abstain from all politics — not because Sri Aurobindo did not concern himself with the happenings of the world, but because politics, as it is practised, is a low and ugly thing, wholly dominated by falsehood, deceit, injustice, misuse of power and violence; ...

The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - Page xv - V. P. Varma - 1990 - Preview - More editions Possibly such reconstruction of the political philosophy of Aurobindo might not appeal to some sections in our country who would regard it as an enterprise in the profanization of a sacred personality. But we must not forget that Aurobindo was ...

Quest - Volumes 93-98 - Page 16 - Indian Committee for Cultural Freedom - 1975 - Aurobindo might not have had the time or the inclination to enter into a proper study of the scientific picture of the world. Also, some of the great discoveries took place after his self-imposed seclusion. However, the theories of relativity and ... Sri Aurobindo Ghose - Page 581 - Verinder Grover - 1993

Sri Aurobindo's treatment of Hindu myth - Page 32 - Jan Feys - 1983 - But for these queries Aurobindo might not have spoken of it at all. His general approach to myth also holds good here. Thus, e.g., Radha under the spell of Krishna symbolises "the soul, the psychic, hearing the call of the Divine". Aurobindo's ...

Sri Aurobindo--the poet - Volume 2, Part 4 - Page 162 - Kaikhushru Dhunjibhoy Sethna - 1999 - Just as the merits of Savitri were appreciated to the utmost, whatever seemed a shortcoming no matter how slight and negligible in the midst of the abundant excellence was pointedly remarked upon so that Sri Aurobindo might not overlook... Sri Aurobindo: Savitri; a legend and a symbol - Page 733 - Aurobindo Ghose - 1970

The philosophy of Sri Aurobindo: his idea of evolution - Page 58 - Joseph Veliyathil - 1972 - So Aurobindo might not have felt the necessity of attributing immediacy to the acquisition of knowledge by the intellectual faculty. This made him limit the intellectual operation to discursive level only. Now if a comparison may be made ...

Sri Aurobindo--secularist? or nationalist? - Page 37 - Ke. Es Nārāyaṇācārya - 2006 - ... a detail Sri Aurobindo might not have known, as most savants of 'unity' took it for granted that Islam too was a 'religion' like any other, without realising its diabolic, predatory nature. Only recent researches are waking us up all over the world.

Letters on Savitri - Page 10 - Aurobindo Ghose, Sri Aurobindo, Kaikhushru Dhunjibhoy Sethna - 2000 - Just as the merits of Savitri were appreciated to the utmost, whatever seemed a shortcoming no matter how slight and negligible in the midst of the abundant excellence was pointedly remarked upon so that Sri Aurobindo might not overlook...

Swami Vivekananda and Indian Nationalism - Page 91 - Subodh Chandra Sen Gupta - 1984 - Although Aurobindo might not have known the 'tens of thousands of young men' beaming with patriotic fervour, he should not have failed to see that most of them could not have much to do with P. Mitra's Samiti, some associates and members ...

The Light at the Center: Context and Pretext of Modern Mysticism - Page 104 - Agehananda Bharati - 1976 - His writings are different indeed from those of the older Vivekananda and the younger Sivananda. Aurobindo might not have been a good poet, but he was a poet; he might not have been a thinker in any professional sense, but he expressed ...

The oneness/otherness mystery: the synthesis of science and mysticism - Page 508 - Sutapas Bhattacharya - 1999 - Preview ... of the material order is held by Aurobindo, Whitehead and others to be Nature's development of habits (stable patterns of behaviour emerging from repetition) rather than laws obeyed by Nature. Reality is fundamentally creative but patterns ...

Sri Aurobindo and Vedānta Philosophy - Page 71 - Sheojee Pandey - 1987 - Preview - More editions Here we have to say that Whitehead's Philosophy of evolution is more close and more similar to that of Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy of evolution. Like Whitehead Sri Aurobindo also believes that God is the ultimate principle and the evolution ...

Evolutionary, Spiritual Conceptions of Life - Sri Aurobindo, ... - Page 35 - Michael Leicht - 2008 - Preview Here Aurobindo gets quiet sociological. In the following I want to correct one misunderstanding of Madhusudan Reddy of Whitehead's theory: He assumes that Whitehead's philosophy has no final goal of evolution (Reddy, 2004: 156).

Aurobindo's Philosophy of Brahman - Page 3 - Stephen H. Phillips - 1986 - Preview - More editions I doubt that one could overstate the importance of Aurobindo's mysticism for his philosophy. How then is he a metaphysician? A.N. Whitehead gives a just characterization of the trade: "Speculative Philosophy," he says, "is the endeavor to...

The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad - Page 356 - Ken Wilber - 2001 - Preview - More editions Notice that Shankara, Nagarjuna, Aurobindo, Plotinus (and Alexander and Wilber) can pass this test; Whitehead does not. This is not a secondary issue; it is at the precise heart of the matter, a heart that Whitehead lacks. Thus, the notion of ...

Cognitive models and spiritual maps: interdisciplinary ... - Volume 7, Issues 11-12 - Page 202 - Jensine Andresen, Robert K. C. Forman - 2001 - Preview What Whitehead doesn't have, something essential to Wilber, is the Great Nest or Chain of Being in addition to the Great Network of Being. For that, we would need to augment Whitehead with Aurobindo. I agree with Wilber that Whitehead's ...

The Essential Aurobindo: Writings of Sri Aurobindo - Page 23 - Aurobindo Ghose, Robert A. McDermott - 2001 - Preview - More editions In its philosophic comprehensiveness, Sri Aurobindo's philosophy finds its contemporary Western analogue among the systematic thinkers — Royce, Bergson, Whitehead, and Heidegger; in its spiritual and autobiographic quality, it more closely resembles Kierkegaard and Buber, and perhaps Heidegger and Wittgenstein.

Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy of Social Development - Page 40 - Preview This is what Sri Aurobindo has attempted in his metaphysics of evolution. And it is here that the theories of Darwin, Lamarck, Herbert Spencer, S. Alexander, Whitehead, Lloyd Morgan, Bergson, Hegel and Croce have stopped short of the ...

Integral Psychology - Page 84 - Ken Wilber - 2000 - Preview Maslow. Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) is well known enough that I will only make a few passing comments. Like all truly great integral thinkers— from Aurobindo to Gebser to Whitehead to Baldwin to Habermas—he was a developmentalist.

Faith possesses understanding: a suggestion for a new direction in ... - Page 220 - Jehangir Nasserwanji Chubb - 1983 - Preview - More editions It can be said of Sri Aurobindo what Eckhart said of God : 'In him there is no denial except the denial of all denials.' Upanishadic paradox, 216 Whitehead, A.N., 182 Upanishads, 16, 60, 210. See my article The Logic of the Infinite in the ...

Whitman, Wittgenstein, Whitehead, and Sri Aurobindo

The Hindu : NATIONAL  TAMIL NADU : MADURAI TODAY December 22, 2012

Sri Aurobindo Society : Meeting on 'The yoga of Savitri reading,' 3 Lajapathi Roy Road, Chinna Chokkikulam, 4 p.m.

Letter to the Ashram Trustees – by Nanjappa from Critique of The Lives 

Is ‘historical research’ the be all of Sri Aurobindo’s teaching or sadhana? Sri Aurobindo’s yoga is surely no easy matter, nor is it for the average person… His association with the Ashram is what confers some credibility to his highly prejudiced and totally distorted views… But the Peter Heehs episode is entirely different. It seeks to spread scandal in the guise of research studies, aiming to undermine the very basis of the Aurobindonian movement.

An Introduction to Sri Aurobindo's Metaphysical Cosmology: Part I ... - ericweiss.com 9 Jun 2006 June 9, 2006 I. Introduction A. It is my intention in this paper to give a brief introduction to my interpretation of Sri Aurobindo’s metaphysical system. The ideas presented here are very close to those of Sri Aurobindo, but they are not identical. In particular, my treatment of the category of Being is very influenced by my studies of Alfred North Whitehead… 12:52 PM - 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. Let us consider them one by one: Sat: Being In the metaphysical cosmology that grows out of transpersonal process metaphysics, “being,” or sat, ...

The Body Electric: Extending Soul into Cyberspace Posted by Andrew Neuendorf on November 12, 2012

I think Bostock would have an unlikely ally in Walt Whitman, no Luddite, who celebrated the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable  in his poem “Passage to India,” which is largely about the unfinished journey of Columbus. Whitman writes about this journey symbolically (not from a historical perspective, which would reveal Columbus’ mission to Christianize and enslave the indigenous West) as an attempt to unite East and West by bringing Europe and India together to begin a global civilization. (Columbus’s journey is also Edgar Morin’s historical starting point for the beginning of the planetary era in his book Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future, which I’ve written about recently here)… 5:41 PM

Free ALL Your Minds From The Hobbesian Nightmare from ANTIDOTE by Sauvik von Chakraverti Dec 22, 2012

Leviathan FELL FLAT as far as Englishmen in that Cromwellian Age were concerned – which is why it was John Locke’s Two Treatises on Civil Government (1690) that earned its author the reputation of a “prophet” – and went on to inspire Whiggism, the colonists of America, and the first “covenanted civil servants” of the Honourable East India Company as well.

“Where there is no Property there is no Justice,” wrote Locke. While Hobbes painted “statelessness” – what he called the “State of Nature” – in the most lurid prose: “A War Of Each Against All.” Adding that statelessness, or the State of Nature, would result in lives that are all “nasty, poore, brutish, and short.” In socialist India, we do have this Leviathan of a centralized State – but we have no Property – we have no Justice – and the lives of over half the residents of the Capital City itself are “nasty, poore, brutish and short”!

The Politics of God By MARK LILLA The Times Magazine: August 19, 2007
After centuries of strife, the West has learned to separate religion and politics — to establish the legitimacy of its leaders without referring to divine command. Next Page » Mark Lilla is professor of the humanities at Columbia University. This essay is adapted from his book “The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West,” which will be published next month. 7:15 PM

Christians addled by apocalyptic dreams hunted and killed Christians with a maniacal fury they had once reserved for Muslims, Jews and heretics. It was madness. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes tried to find a way out of this labyrinth. Traditionally, political theology had interpreted a set of revealed divine commands and applied them to social life. In his great treatise “Leviathan” (1651), Hobbes simply ignored the substance of those commands and talked instead about how and why human beings believed God revealed them. He did the most revolutionary thing a thinker can ever do — he changed the subject, from God and his commands to man and his beliefs. If we do that, Hobbes reasoned, we can begin to understand why religious convictions so often lead to political conflicts and then perhaps find a way to contain the potential for violence. The contemporary crisis in Western Christendom created an audience for Hobbes and his ideas. 

The ideal of human unity - Page 338 - Sri Aurobindo - 1999 - Preview - More editions One of the foremost Indian philosophers of the twentieth century, Sri Aurobindo was also a political activist, a mystic, a spiritual leader and a poet. Between 1927 and 1950, Sri Aurobindo remained in seclusion while perfecting a new kind of ...

Ontology of consciousness: percipient action - Page 400 - Helmut Wautischer - 2008 - In the first half of the twentieth century, Aurobindo built a still wider synthesis, encompassing not only what he felt was the essence of the Indian tradition but also what he considered the best that the Western civilization was in the process of ...

Knowledge, freedom, and language: an interwoven fabrics of man, ... - Page 189 - Debi Prasad Chattopadhyaya - 1989 - At about the same time, in the second decade of this century, Aurobindo in India (1914-1919) and Wittgenstein in Europe (1913-1921) addressed themselves to, one might say, essentially similar problems of knowledge and language. At least ...

Going against the flow: an exercise in ethical syncretism - Page 238 - Alan M. Laibelman - 2004 - Preview - More editions It is in vain to talk of the interest of the community without understanding what is the interest of the individual."41 In the twentieth century, Aurobindo extended Bentham’s admission into a definitive expression of political and social propriety, ...

Martin Heidegger: Critical Assessments - Volume 2 - Page 7 - Christopher E. Macann - 1992 - Preview - More editions But whereas Heidegger (however marginally) was for a while involved with one of the more lamentable regimes of the century, Sri Aurobindo spent a significant portion of his life actively engaged in contesting (verbally) the British occupation ...

Exploring Wild Law: The Philosophy of Earth Jurisprudence - Page 132 - Peter Burdon, Peter Burdon (ed.) - 2011 - Preview There have been many philosophies that are based on process, including Heraclites of Ancient Greece and Lao Tzu of China and in the twentieth century Sri Aurobindo in India, and Henri Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin of France. Among...

Sri Aurobindo came to me: reminiscences - Page ix - Dilip Kumar Roy - 1964 - For I fully agree with a modern appraiser who whites after referring to prophets "from Kierkegaard down to Buber" that "while men of their calibre may be expected in every century, Sri Aurobindo is an event over which Divine Providence is a ...

Christianity: Dogmatic Faith & Gnostic Vivifying Knowledge: The ... - Page 92 - George Heart - 2005 - Preview One of the greatest Esoteric philosophers of the twentieth century, Sri Aurobindo has devoted highly elaborated works to describe what he called the Supramental Realm in which will live the man of the coming Golden Age.

East West Poetics at Work: Papers Presented at the Seminar on ... - Page 160 - C. D. Narasimhaiah - 1994 - Preview - More editions

The poetry of Dryden and the poetry of 18th century, Sri Aurobindo maintained, came from the surface mental level, though earlier he felt like Arnold, that it was the poetry of the 'Age of prose and reason'. Browning and the Victorians wrote ...

Oh Calcutta - Volume 4 - Page 10 - 1974 - That is achievement enough for a single century." Aurobindo Bankim Chandra Chatterjee is the creator cf the Bengali novel — a pioneer among pioneers. He heralded an era in literature. He created and ushered in a golden age of which Sarat...

Vande Mataram: the song perennial - Page 38 - Amarendra Laxman Gadgil - 1978 - For Bankim chandra, Aurobindo played brilliantly the same role in the first part of this century. Aurobindo has called Bankim a Seer and a Sage. The atomic force compressed in the song and what miracles it would work in future could only be ...

The Sociology of Indian Politics - Page 300 - R. Motwani, R.D. Sakxena - 2002 - Preview All of India's leading political thinkers have followed Vivekananda's conceptualization of politics and power. The first to accept him was also the most systematic political philosopher of this century — Sri Aurobindo Ghose. Among Aurobindo's ... Encyclopaedia of Sociology of Politics - Page 300 K. Motwani, R.D. Saksena - 2002 - Preview 

Gandhi marg - Volume 20 - Page 139 - Gandhi Peace Foundation (New Delhi, India) - 1998 - Vivekananda's discussion of individual freedom and social responsibility was continued and enlarged not only by Gandhi but by other Indian theorists early in this century. Aurobindo Ghose and Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932) conceptualized ...

"Of Many Heroes": An Indian Essay in Literary Historiography - Page 82 - G. N. Devy - 1998 - Preview - More editions In this sense, Sri Aurobindo was the first original historiographer of Indian literature during the twentieth century. Sri Aurobindo argued in his passionate defence of Indian culture that though temporarily occluded, it was not an entirely atrophied ...

Race and Racialization: Essential Readings - Page 108 - Tania Das Gupta - 2007 - Preview Hindu discussions about Aryan origins are probably best represented in the speeches and writings of the nationalist activist and spiritualist Aurobindo Ghose during the early part of this century. Aurobindo, a spiritual source of emulation for...

History Of Ancient India (portraits Of A Nation), 1/e - Page 107 - Kapur, Kamlesh - 2010 - Preview - More editions In the beginning of the last century, Aurobindo Ghosh, another noted philosopher said, "The racial identification of supposed Aryans and non- Aryans was just a conjecture supported by other conjectures... a myth of philologists." After studying...

Culture and Customs of India - Page 29 - Carol Henderson Garcia, Carol E. Henderson - 2002 - Preview - More editions In the twentieth century, Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) established an influential religious center in Pondicherry. A concept of selflessness linked to a search for inner awareness energized many who called for social change. In the 1980s and ...

Religion, Conflict and Reconciliation: Multifaith Ideals and Realities - Page 48 - Jerald D. Gort, Henry Jansen, H. M. Vroom - 2002 - Preview - More editions From the late nineteenth century onwards, Sri Aurobindo was active in political journalism and in behind-the-scenes organization of the first stirrings of Indian revolutionary nationalism. In the first decade of the twentieth century Aurobindo had ...

The persistence of religion: an essay on Tantrism and Sri ... - Page 79 - Kees W. Bolle - 1971 - Preview - More editions Although the struggle for independence was never a merely political issue for Indian leaders, particularly in the early years of our century, Aurobindo found ways and traditional, religious terms in which to voice the desire for independence that ... Studies in the History of Religions - Page 79 - 1956 - Preview - More editions

Indian Wisdom and International Peace: From the Vedas & Lord ... - Page 33 - R N. Vyas, Vyas R N - 1987 - Preview The religion of humanity was put forth for the first time in the West in 18th century. Aurobindo calls it "the manasa putra of the rationalist thinkers who brought it forward as a substitute for the formal spiritualism of ecclesiastical Christianity.

General elections in India: electoral politics, electoral reforms, ... - Page 173 - M. L. Ahuja - 2005 - As a revolutionary nationalist writing in the first decade of the 20th century, Aurobindo welcomed pan-Islamism and the rise of a separate Muslim self-consciousness. He saw it as a sign of the vitality of nationalism and as part of the process of ...

Managing the global: globalization, employment and quality of life - Page 146 - Donald McLean Lamberton, Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research - 2002 - Preview - More editions D.P. Chattopaclhyaya (1988 and 1997) has competently dwelt on the subject, after the Indian savant of the 20th century, Sri Aurobindo (Aurobindo 1972), and has stressed that the Indian ideal encompasses both the physical and the mental ...

Dante and Sri Aurobindo: a comparative study of The divine comedy ... - Page 33 - Prema Nandakumar - 1981 - Hence Savitri came to be written, not in Bengali or Sanskrit, but in English. In a poetic career extending over half a century, Sri Aurobindo had experimented with a variety of literary forms in English: essays, skits, poetic dramas, lyrics, sonnets...

Śrī Madhva's teachings in his own words - Page 23 - B. N. Krishnamurti Sharma - 1979 - In the present century, Aurobindo Ghosh has gone the farthest in trying to plumb the depths of mystic interpretation of Vedic hymns. Madhva's influence on these two great modern representatives of the Arsa tradition of Vedic interpretation ...

Page 115 - Preview Thanks to the insight and inspirations of Dayananda at the close of the Nineteenth Century, followed by spiritual experiences of another great savant of the present century, Sri Aurobindo, there has been a complete metamorphosis of our thinking and evaluation of the Vedic texts.

Ancestral Voices: Reflections on Vedic, Classical and Bhakti Poetry - Page 8 - Ramesh Chandra Shah - 2006 - Preview - More editions Vedic literature gives an emphatic and unambiguous answer to this question when it declares that 'infinity alone can satisfy man' ('Bhumd vaisukham ndlpe sukhamasti — Ch.U.7). In our own century, Sri Aurobindo, under Dayananda's ...