Sri Aurobindo has been neglected and misunderstood

Amazon.com: The Lives of Sri Aurobindo: Peter Heehs A groundbreaking book, October 22, 2008 By Richard Hartz - See all my reviews

This is a scholarly but very readable biography based on decades of research. Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) was a major figure in modern Indian history, though he has been neglected and misunderstood. He was a remarkably wide-ranging and original thinker and one of the greatest spiritual philosophers of all time. A Cambridge-educated intellectual turned mystic, he achieved a sweeping synthesis of the thought and vision of East and West. Such a many-sided personality makes unusual demands on a biographer. Heehs has spent most of his life preparing himself to meet these challenges. He succeeds impressively in almost every respect.
The climax of the narrative is reached before the mid-point of the book in the gripping story of Aurobindo's brief but eventful role as one of the leaders of an early phase of the Indian freedom movement, marked by his year in jail and the famous Alipore Bomb Trial. 

Review of Lives of Sri Aurobindo: The Religious Studies Review 15 Aug 2010

Sri Aurobindo Ghose has been curiously neglected in Western scholarship. Heehs, one of the founders of the Aurobindo Ashram Archives, ...

Sri Aurobindo: A Contemporary Reader

It brings forth Sri Aurobindo's neglected social and international vision and underlines his role as a cultural critic, focusing on his view on ethnicity ...

Sri Aurobindo - A Contemporary Reader - Aurobindo Ghose, Sachidananda Mohanty - 2008 - 235 pages - Snippet view

A considerable body of Sri Aurobindo's writings related to pivotal contemporary studies in translation, cultural criticism and art history remain sadly neglected; a cardinal loss to the literary world. ...

SABDA - Sri Aurobindo: A Contemporary Reader

In the process, we tend to ignore the many-sided nature of Sri Aurobindo's ...

SABDA eNews 8/03

In the first section the author highlights the often-neglected subject of Sri Aurobindo as a poet of Nature. He points out how Sri Aurobindo's concept of ...

Michel Danino - Lectures and Articles

The lecture deals with Sri Aurobindo's view of Indian culture and confronts its state of deep neglect in today's India, though it was precisely what gave ...

more... - Hindu Wisdom

It deals with Sri Aurobindo's view of Indian culture and confronts its state of deep neglect in today's India, though it was precisely what gave the country ...
Plain & Simple: Sri Aurobindo's Opposition

The reasons for the neglect Sri Aurobindo suffered among leftist intelligentsia in India was that he was cold to the promises of communists and the dreams ...

Sri Aurobindo and Bergson: a synthetic study - Abhoy Chandra Bhattacharya - 1972 - This tendency in India has resulted in an ignorance or an uncritical study of Sri Aurobindo;1 and its result in the West is a total neglect of Bergson's last book, perhaps the most important work of the author. A strong bias against all ...

Neoplatonism and Indian philosophy - Page 186 - Paulos Gregorios, International Society for Neoplatonic Studies - 2002 - In Conclusion, if Neoplatonism is to be revived as a viable contemporary philosophy, I believe it needs to develop the neglected aspect of that philosophy outlined in this essay, and Sri Aurobindo 's Integral philosophy would serve as ...

Jayaprakash Narayan: a centenary volume - Page 211 - Sandip Das - 2005 - To conclude, l may say that when we try to asses the social significance of JP, we generally neglect this dimension which ... by the penetrating ideas of Sri Aurobindo, Bhagwan Das and Gandhi to place social order on a spiritual basis. ...

Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx: integral sociology and dialectical ... - Page 52 - Debi Prasad Chattopadhyaya - 1988 - It is for this reason that Sri Aurobindo is primarily interested in the psychology of history and not in the sociology of ... We must make abstractions, we must neglect and select. But with this we arrive at . . . many histories.1 The ... Freedom and Future: An Imaginary Dialogue with Sri Aurobindo Daniel Albuquerque (Paperback - Aug 1, 1998)

The perennial quest for a psychology with a soul: an inquiry into ... - Page 359 - Joseph Vrinte - 2002 - 42 Though Sri Aurobindo does not neglect the social, economic, cultural and political liberty in the spiritual synthesis of the individual and the collective being, he nevertheless emphasises only spiritual freedom. ...

The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - Page 383 - V. P. Varma - 1990 - In his enthusiasm for spiritual individualism and even spiritualized anarchism Aurobindo does not neglect the socializing role of the state. Without denying the aggressive, despotic and brutal tendencies of the state in several ...

Indian Political Thought - Page 272 - Urmila Sharma, S.K. Sharma - 2001 - Sri Aurobindo's Neglect of Backward Classes In our comparison of Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx, we have already pointed out how Sri Aurobindo did not give sufficient attention to economic and social institutions. ...

India: a global power - Page 360 - Nayyar Shamsi - 2004 - At the height of our freedom struggle, the far-seeing apostle of Indian nationalism, Mahayogi Sri Aurobindo, ... Nationalism can afford to neglect and omit none. Anything done, consciously or unconsciously, to weaken the secular ...

Political thinkers of modern India - Page 98 - Adi Hormusji Doctor - 1997 - Nationalism can afford to neglect and omit none." Revivalism of ancient wisdom, was a very strong element in Aurobindo's nationalism. This revivalism was necessary in both the social and spiritual fields. Thus, Sri Aurobindo stood for ...

Sri Aurobindo's integral approach to political thought- Shiva Kumar Mital - 1981 - Sri Aurobindo's criticism of democracy and socialism mainly refers to theirneglect of the individual freedom. He visualises the advent of a spiritualised society for the sake of attaining integral freedom. The individual always remains ...

Sri Aurobindo, poet and social thinker - Sisirkumar Ghose - 1973 - THE POETRY OF SRI AUROBINDO: AN APPROACH This is Sri Aurobindo's centenary year and it is right and proper that on an occasion like this we ... But why this neglect and continued misunderstanding? The reasons are not one but many. ...

The poetry of Sri Aurobindo: a short survey - Sisirkumar Ghose, Aurobindo Ghose - 1969 - The reasons for neglect and misunderstanding are not one but many. For instance, the fact that Sri Aurobindo is a distinguished human being, indeed a culture hero. So few poets have been great as men! A leader in more fields than one, ...

Sri Aurobindo's prose style (with a foreword by V.K. Gokak) - Goutam Ghosal - 1991 - Sri Aurobindo has suffered neglect for the same reason. The language of his prose is not hard. What is really uncommon is the experience which governs his style. Not many know that Sri Aurobindo wrote a lot of plain prose. ...

Poetic plays of Sri Aurobindo - Page 180 - Bimal Narayan Thakur - 2004 - His plays, which are often neglected, are the integral part of Sri Aurobindo's integrated vision. It has been mentioned in the introduction that the genre of drama was created in order to facilitate transmission of such knowledge or ...

The literary criticism of Sri Aurobindo, with special reference to ... - Shree Krishna Prasad, Aurobindo Ghose - 1974 - It is significant that among the pioneers of the modern age Sri Aurobindo gives a place of honour to such neglected poets as Phillips, Carpenter and AE In the light of what he has to tell us about them we should do well to reflect ...

Indo-English poetry: a study of Sri Aurobindo and four others - P. C. Kotoky - 1969 - Milton retired from public attention, blind and ignored, to neglected seclusion ; Sri Aurobindo, after creating a public sensation by his alleged participation in revolutionary activities, to Yogic meditation. Impelled by the necessity ...

The Yoga of Patanjali and the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - G. M. L. Shrivastava - 1987 - We can not neglect the matter for the sake of spirit. Truth or reality must satisfy all aspects of the existence in this world, ... That is why Sri Aurobindo writes, "No synthesis of yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, ...

New Educational Philosophy - Page 397 - Bhagirathi Sahu - 2004 - The dreams and directions of great Indian thinkers like Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, Rabindra Nath Tagore, ... The present education typically meets the needs of the minority and neglects the needs of the majority. ...

Trends In Contemporary Indian Philosophy Of Education A Critical ... - Page 34 - G.R. Sharma - 2003 - They, however, never neglected the needs of the physical world. Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo particularly emphasised the need of physical development in the achievement of educational ideal. All these thinkers equally laid...

Conversations and transformations: toward a new ethics of self and ... - Page 33 - Ananta Kumar Giri - 2002 - To neglect these can admittedly be compatible with the maintenance of humanity as an end in itself, ... To put it in the words of seekers such as Sri Aurobindo, the evolutionary march of Nature and History depends upon the sadhana of ...

GOD SHALL GROW UP Body, Soul, & Earth Evolving Together - Page 9 - Wayne Bloomquist - 2001 - On the other hand, Sri Aurobindo's spiritual collaborator, the Mother, has been all but neglected and ignored. In this country, she is virtually unknown. That is indeed strange, because Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were one ...

Sri Aurobindo Ghose: the dweller in the lands of silence - William Kluback, Michael Finkenthal - 2001 - I appeared to belong intimately to Sri Aurobindo's world. In it I found the spirit, the last realm of ... He has not neglected a single one of its capacities. His experiments are endless. His universities are spread throughout the world ...

Decolonizing international relations - Page 211 - Branwen Gruffydd Jones - 2006 - 91 It is here that Sri Aurobindo did not do full justice to his radical social reinterpretation of Advaita Vedanta of Samskara. He therefore neglected, first, the entire domain of political economy that Marx, for example, so assiduously ...

Facets of feminism: studies on the concept of woman in Indian ... - Page 80 - Raghunath Ghosh - 2005 - III A woman is taken as Mother Goddess by Sri Aurobindo. It is Sakti of the Divinity — through its manifestation the world is ... On the other hand, it is also not proper to neglect money or artha. Without taking recourse to money an ...

Human rights and poverty in India: theoretical issues and ... - Page 32 - S. N. Chaudhary - In the process of welfare of the nation, minorities' valuable ideas are even neglected and ignored in the name of caste, creed and religion. The great Indian philosophers like Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo clearly revealed that ...

Understanding Medical Physiology - Page 880 - Bijlani - 2004 - As Sri Aurobindo points out, desires starve in the absence of support from the ego. Surrender Surrender to a superior force, which we may call Nature, God, or by any other name, implies a few assumptions: first, that the force exists; ...

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: glimpses of their experiments, ... - Kireet Joshi - 1989 - Again, as Sri Aurobindo points out, synthesis does not mean a successive practice of the various systems. It is effected by neglecting the forms and outsides of the Yogic disciplines and seizing rather on the central principle common to ...

Living Within: Yoga Approach to Psychological Health & Growth - Page 121 - Sri Aurobindo, Mother, A. S. Dalal - 1987 - Taking support from Sri Aurobindo's teaching that the body is an indispensable basis of yoga, that it should not be neglected and that, on the contrary, great care should be given to it, the physical consciousness concentrates almost ...

Looking from Within - Page 162 - Aurobindo Ghose, Mother, Sri Aurobindo - 1995 - This does not mean that we shall not keep the body in right order so far as we can; we have not to fall into violent asceticisms or a positive neglect of the physical frame. But we have not either to be affected in mind by hunger or ...

Bases of yoga - Sri Aurobindo - 2007 - Neither neglect this turn of the nature (food-desire) nor make too much of it; it has to be dealt with, purified and ... It is a mistake to neglect the body and let it waste away; the body is the means of the sadhana and should be ...

Sri Aurobindo's Writings - The Mother's Collected Works

Above all conflicts and disagreements

Our Aspiration and Commitment 

This website is a place of peace, harmony and love, above all conflicts and disagreements. It is a collective effort of many souls united in their aspiration and devotion to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and the Supramental Force which they have brought down and is now in the process of transforming this earthly life to a life divine.

The site was inaugurated during 1998-99 with the encouragement and approval of the then Managing Trustee of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust. Later, in November 2002, further impetus was given by the present Managing Trustee to continue this effort. Over a period of time with the help of ashramites, aspirants and well-wishers, a very large collection of the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and their disciples have been uploaded in our E-library.  

We are working to gather all relevant and important data on the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the entire Sri Aurobindo community, including the many Centers and Ashrams devoted to Their vision.  It is an 'open source' approach to present a virtual Sri Aurobindo Ashram to the world. We intend to collect and integrate all information on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and Their creation and make it available to all sincere seekers who are searching for a higher and truer way of life.

The number of hits the website is receiving is steadily increasing. During the last six months there were more than 2.5 million hits and an extraordinary amount of additional data uploaded.  This has led to increased difficulty for viewers, as browsing speed and search functions have slowed. In an effort to improve the site, a decision has been taken to upgrade the hardware to a 'cloud compatible server' and reprogram and upgrade the present software into a powerful content management system (CMS).  We invite all devotees and disciples,  wherever they are, to participate and help enrich this website.  

Due to the collaborative nature of work, some errors are present in various sections. Viewers are requested to verify the content against the relevant printed material and whenever any discrepancies are found, to send us feedback so that all errors may be corrected. Guests who are seeking official information on the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry are requested to visit http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org.  

Hosting and hardware support is provided by some sincere sadhaks in America. The software for this website is prepared by a few members of Auroville. The content is collected and prepared by ashramites and many aspirants around the world. We are thankful to all disciples of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo  who have collaborated in this work, and grateful as well to all those who have offered their services to date.  If you would like to participate please  write to us. 

Sri Aurobindo's Writings - The Mother's Collected Works

Sri Aurobindo is clearly the most prominent modern exponent and interpreter

We will shine: transparent futures of consciousness 

MA Sherbon - 2011

J Gidley - 2011 - researchbank.rmit.edu.au

MA Sherbon - 2011

... 2 When you understand how Steiner did his research, it is also not surprising that his description 

of the multi-layered human being, from the most material layer to the most spiritual layer is very 

similar to that given by renowned Indian master, Sri Aurobindo Ghose. ... 

Integral perspectives on school educational futures

J Gidley… - 2011 - researchbank.rmit.edu.au

... Some significant twentieth century and contemporary writers other than ilber who were working 

from a substantially integral perspective include Rudolf Steiner, Michael Polanyi, Jean Gebser, 

Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Ervin L sl , Ashok Gangadean, and illiam Irwin Thompson. ... 

Giving hope back to our young people: Creating a new spiritual mythology for Western culture

J Gidley - Journal of Future Studies, 2011 - researchbank.rmit.edu.au

... (Wilber 2000b; Wilber 2003) Wilber's use of the Page 3. 3 term 'integral' draws on the work 

of cultural –historian Jean Gebser who in turn drew inspiration from Sri Aurobindo Ghose 

who coined the term 'integral education' in India in the 1950s. ... 

Bruteau's philosophy of spiritual evolution and consciousness: foundation for a nursing cosmology 

MP McCarthy - Nursing Philosophy, 2011 - Wiley Online Library

... As a scholar of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) and Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) 

she examines societal evolution, contemporary social inequalities, and defines an inclusive

futuristic vision of human reality in both cosmic and social contexts. ... 

Indian Psychology and the International Context 

AC Paranjpe - Psychology & Developing Societies, 2011 - pds.sagepub.com

... hard work by D. Matthijs Cornelissen.4 It is particularly auspicious that the conference was organ

ised by Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry, since Sri Aurobindo is clearly the most prominent 

modern exponent and interpreter of traditional Indian approaches to psychology. ...

A Dynamical View of the Personality in Evolution 

A Combs… - The Postconventional Personality: …, 2011 - books.google.com

... Sri Aurobindo's fi (1971) writings, for instance, remind us again and again that the 

yogic transformation begins only when we acquire the ability to look down on the 

buzzing mechanistic mind from a position of dispassionate clarity. ...

Nature's Information and Harmonic Proportion

 - papers.ssrn.com

... Sri Aurobindo Ghose considered, “This world is a vast unbroken totality, a deep solidarity joins 

its contrary powers.” The quintessential light of aetheric nature is also the Lightness of

Being.Aristotle again in Metaphysics,“Then comes the most difficult of all questions, whether ... 

Integral Archaeology: Process Methodologies for Exploring Prehistoric Rock Art on Ometepe Island, Nicaragua 

R Hurd - Anthropology of Consciousness, 2011 - Wiley Online Library

... Also, the word “integral” harkens back to early 20th century Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo's 

(1990) concept of Integral Yoga, which called for a transformation of consciousness and the

ever-evolving experience of reality that includes the physical, the emotional, and the ... 

Responsibility and hypocrisy

Religion’s many powers from The Immanent Frame by Craig Calhoun

Excerpted from the afterword of The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere. 

Like Habermas, Taylor is concerned with identifying ways in which the public sphere can help to produce greater integration among citizens who enter public discourse with different views. Habermas stresses agreement and clearer knowledge while Taylor stresses mutual recognition and collaboration in common pursuits. But both see excluding religion from the public sphere as undermining the solidarity and creativity they seek. In different ways, Judith Butler and Cornel West ask about the limits of optimistic visions of the public sphere in which harmonious integration is the apparent telos.

Butler emphasizes occasions when it is impossible to achieve intellectual (or political) integration, including agreement on truth and value. Religious sources of ethical insight may matter enormously precisely when deliberation in the public sphere fails. Deep differences may remain—and remain troubling and troubled. Religion may provide a guide to action in the face of divisions it cannot undo. This is true especially when the realities of state power and geopolitics bring people into the same place, not necessarily by choice, and into social relationships, though they do not understand themselves to constitute a single people or polity. Pluralization is not always a challenge to be overcome.

Butler offers the idea of cohabitation as an alternative, or perhaps a crucial supplement, to that of integrative public reason. It is an understanding of what is both possible and ethically right that she draws from Jewish tradition, shaped by the historical experience of statelessness, subjection, and partial autonomy under states Jews did not control. The ethic of cohabitation thus has an internal relationship to being Jewish—and on this basis criticizing state violence that is at odds with cohabitation must be “a Jewish thing to do.” Butler sees this as more than simply distinguishing “progressive” Jewish positions from others, because it entails taking seriously the limits of any identitarian concept of Jewishness—of identifying Jews with a nation-unto-itself in the manner of much nationalist rhetoric rather than with the position of people always already engaged in relationship with non-Jews.

The Problem with the New Atheists from Larval Subjects . by larvalsubjects

Recently I’ve found myself reflecting quite a bit on religion and critiques of religion such as you find in folks such as Dawkin, Hitchen, Dennett, and so on. [...]

I think the new atheists fundamentally miss the social dimension of religion. What is forgotten is that religion is not simply a set of claims about the world, but it is also a set of relationships among people. When a believer entertains whether or not to sacrifice a belief, they are not merely raising the question of whether they should shift from treating one set of beliefs as true to treating them as false– for example, switching from belief in young earth creationism to evolutionary theory –no, they are entertaining questions about their place in a network of social relations involving family, friends, and all sorts of other people. In the suburbs of Dallas, for example, people tend to live very alienated and isolated lives. Back yards are fenced in. Garages are on the back of houses entailing that when you’re fiddling about in your garage you no longer easily encounter your neighbors. People seldom tend to walk out on the sidewalks or even spend much time outside. I get the sense that churches function as a sort of supplement, forming a community that overcomes the problem of communities not forming organically in the cities. It is not unusual for my students to tell me that they and their families spend four to five nights a week at their church. In these circumstances, a shift in belief does not merely entail the revision of a belief system, but also carries the very real possibility of exile (and I mean that in the strong sense), from one’s family, friends, and support network. Heightened awareness of this could lead to both a better understanding of why religious discussions are so often pervaded by such heated affect and why argument has such poor traction in persuading others to abandon particular beliefs. Such awareness of this dimension of religious practice would also lead to a very different set of strategic concerns. Rather than focusing on belief and its truth-value, it might raise questions of how alternative communities, alternative networks, might be formed to soften the blow of exile. When Dawkin, for example, focuses on the truth of belief and all of its negative consequences, he speaks from a well established social position filled with a network of supporters in the form of colleagues, friends, and so on. He doesn’t notice that he’s imploring others not simply to abandon their beliefs, but to abandon their networks… And for what? To live in isolation, loathed by those they love? If this network question can’t be answered and solved, there’s very little that such critiques have to offer.

Words and Deeds Baltimore City Paper - Andrea Appleton 

James Miller's Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche is not, I fear, “a page-turner,” as a blurb on the back of the hardcover would have it. [...]

Consequently, every tale Miller tells about him is accompanied by a healthy dose of skepticism. Whether or not they’re all true, Diogenes emerges as a fascinating figure, worlds away from the usual dry tale of the man with the lamp. Believing in the simple life, Diogenes lived in a clay wine jar the size of a tub and begged for food. He believed that any action that was appropriate in private ought also to be appropriate in public. Thus he is said to have masturbated in public, and once, following a long discourse on virtue, reportedly squatted and defecated in front of the crowd.

One could dismiss such colorful details as fodder for the prurient, but they serve to show that the man apparently walked his talk. And that connection between word and deed seems in large part to be Miller’s interest in writing biographies of these men. Not surprisingly, he uncovers a good deal of hypocrisy. Rousseau—who offered his own life up as an example of how a man should live—repeatedly impregnated a woman he refused to marry and then gave their progeny up to an orphanage where children regularly died. (A contemporary called him a “moral dwarf on stilts.”) Augustine was a “youthful heretic [who] spent his adult life attacking heresies,” Aristotle supported a tyrant, and Seneca colluded in matricide. Later philosophers tended to reveal their own foibles in their writings, undercutting potential accusations of hypocrisy, and in some cases built their own codes of conduct around such self-examination. Miller traces this evolution of thought to Emerson, who had a famous retort for critics: “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

How can we know what she intended

Other worlds and inner domains 

5 Dec 2009 by Tusar N Mohapatra

Having said that, it would be honest to admit that I (and, I presume, most of us) have no conscious access to the other worlds and the inner domains that Sri Aurobindo has delineated. No amount of languaging gymnastics, therefore ...

Can Mother be updated? Alan

So how can we know what she intended then and what she intends now for Auroville’s material development? Ultimately, the only way to know this for sure is to attain to the same consciousness as hers. Failing this, however, (and I assume that most of us do fail in this) there may be other indications.  ...

In the absence of unmistakable clues like this perhaps our wisest method, if we feel we need to ‘update’ or interpret Mother (and, let’s face it, we are doing it all the time), is first to try to understand the spirit or the principle behind some of her proposals.