Business is not an academic discipline like chemistry or geology

How Business Schools Lost Their Way Author(s): Warren G. Bennis, James O'Toole

Description: Business schools are facing intense criticism for failing to impart useful skills, prepare leaders, instill norms of ethical behavior, and even lead graduates to good corporate jobs. These criticisms come not just from students, employers, and the media but also from deans of some of America's most prestigious B schools. The root cause of today's crisis in management education, assert Warren G. Bennis and James O'Toole, is that business schools have adopted an inappropriate--and ultimately self-defeating--model of academic excellence. Instead of measuring themselves in terms of the competence of their graduates, or by how well their faculty members understand important drivers of business performance, they assess themselves almost solely by the rigor of their scientific research.

This scientific model is predicated on the faulty assumption that business is an academic discipline like chemistry or geology when, in fact, business is a profession and business schools are professional schools--or should be. Business school deans may claim that their schools remain focused on practice, but they nevertheless hire and promote research-oriented professors who haven't spent time working in companies and are more comfortable teaching methodology than messy, multidisciplinary issues--the very stuff of management. To regain relevancy, the authors say, business schools must rediscover the practice of business and find a way to balance the dual mission of educating practitioners and creating knowledge through research. Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Number: R0505F Language: English Length: 10p Publication Date: May 1, 2005 Availability: In Stock

Lacan was always reformulating, remobilizing and never said “its ready” about any point

There are two dimensions in teaching: accumulation and investigation.

To that end, repetition is a part of any teaching. It is a part of the teaching that must not be disregarded. Neither is it unpalatable. It is the recitation of the work accumulated by those who came before us. Lacan’s nightingale by Jacques-Alain Miller But there is the other dimension of this teaching, as one doesn’t teach merely through repetition. This other dimension is investigation. Investigation is research, research of the new. It is true that, to have an idea of something new, it necessary to know the existing literature. Research is also searching, waiting for the new. As such, there is dialectic between the planes of accumulation and investigation. Custom dictates that we “await the new”. We look for the right moment where it can be found. This then obeys another approach, different from an emphasis on repetition. However, that dimension assumes everything is contingent wherein any kind of foundational assurance is absent. In repetition we gain surety, but on the dimension of research this is not so. The emphasis has to be as it is in the “hard sciences”, where people organize and meet and in crossing paths with one another, generate new ideas. The importance of this cannot be underestimated, just as what I emphasized in respect to the systematic. It is this dimension toward which I am directed, leaving aside all that is systematic, the foundation that sustains all activity, but that is only interested in the measure; that, as a result, also gives a place to the a-systematic and to the singular.

Lacan’s Research: I’ll begin talking about one singularity: the search by Lacan for the form of his Seminar, his manner of teaching. He never had another way and never disregarded that style, even when he had his own School.

Lacan, in truth, had only one style of teaching: his Seminar. Probably the existence during thirty years of Lacan’s Seminar, contributed to making this concept part of the French language. In the classic Latin, seminarium is a kitchen garden. Seminare comes from semen. The modern use of the work Seminar has its origins in the Counter-Reformation (or, better stated, a place, a religious institution where the young are trained to receive religious orders). The modern meaning of Seminarium is born with the Council of Trent, in the Counter-Reformation, when the Catholic Church sought out mechanisms for reconquering Christendom. By extension, from this point in modern history, it took on the general meaning to be the place where youth were “formed”. I found all of this in a dictionary of the French language, which went into detail on this point.

We can continue the history of the word seminar by considering the modern sense of the term: in the university a seminar is distinct from a more didactic style of “master’s” course. In the former, the students present their work and the professor or master orients or corrects it and talks about the students’ work publicly with them. The students are directed based on the orders from above. This is what we call the seminar in the university environment. I believe that this form of teaching, the seminar, comes from Germany. I believe I read, in the memoirs of a historian, that it was introduced in France after the war (against Germany, that France lost) of 1870. Immediately after that, the French began robbing the ideas of the Germans, which had the end result of strengthening the French structures in a certain way such that many of fields of instruction imported and put in place the German methods. Thus, we had Ernest Renan giving the advice to France: study the Germans. This was something that was imposed in many intellectual disciplines.

We now consider the Seminar as a form of teaching.We can’t say that the interventions of the students had a major role in the Seminar of Lacan. These interventions were more residual in character. Nevertheless, periodically Lacan sought to re-energize the participants and stimulate questions or to present some kind of communication, but fundamentally in his Seminar, it is Lacan, the master, that speaks. This produced in France, almost a change in sentiment, or at least, eased the limit of what would be a Seminar.

But it is also important to say that Lacan’s Seminar is well named because it was a “sowing” of psychoanalysts, a place for the development of psychoanalysis and for the formations of the unconscious. One could say: a place for the formation of the unconscious and for the treatment of the unconscious by psychoanalysis and with results, that is to say, famous ones, because among the psychoanalysts formed in Lacan’s Seminar, there are many present in all of the analytic societies in France. If we consider its publication one could say that it was a successful formation both intellectually and at the level of practice. This implies the necessity that we examine, with a very powerful lens, just exactly what was this marvelous stance that Lacan took in his Seminar.

Was it about a procedure? Was it a method? It does not appear to be the case. I think it was such a success because it was neither a procedure nor a method. Some might classify it as a procedure, consider its results as if it was a technique, but clearly the Seminar was not a technique of Lacan. It began as a Seminar with a reading of Freud’s work. The first ten Seminars always referenced one or two of Freud’s books. The crucial point was Seminar XI, when Lacan considered the four key concepts of Freud, but presented in a new way. Later, he moved away a bit from the typical reading style of an academic seminar.

Lacan had a model. It wasn’t all original. This model, I think, was the Seminar on Hegel that Kojève brought to life in the 1930’s. The readings done by Kojève in his Seminar recreated what Hegel had done. He created a reading that was a scansion, a punctuation of the Phenomenology of the Spirit on the point of the dialectic between the Master and the Slave. It was a creative reading so pregnant with meaning that it is only now that commentators have attempted to unpack the power of Kojève’s interpretations of Hegel’s work.

Lacan’s reading of Freud was also a creative reading, a reading based on language and the function of the speech, or, should we say, as result of what appeared to be a pioneering science for the so-called “human sciences” of the 1950’s: structural linguistics. This form took as a point of departure a reading of Freud’s, but one informed by Saussure, revised and reedited by Jakobson. In truth, it is a formula invented by Levi-Strauss, not by Lacan. So, to summarize, the Seminar of Lacan was initially a seminar style of reading, which had as its model Kojève and was informed by a specific understanding of structural linguistics.

However, the Seminar of Lacan is something else all together. It was, day after day, week after week, a discourse of someone who was experiencing the unconscious. Someone who manifested what in psychoanalysis was, at the same time, its practice and its difficulty and it preoccupations. Someone who expounded as he went, as he was going about making this discipline and this object; as he was entangled and trying to untangle himself, as he became enmeshed, muddled and then unstuck again. It is evidently the case that he was a long way from arriving at the idea of a teaching method.

In the Seminar, Lacan exemplified, as result of Freud’s texts and the texts of others, his way of doing it, which clearly changed as time went on. He modified his way of working, in such a way that he succeeded in transmitting psychoanalysis as a discipline, but reinvented in his way. It is clear that it wasn’t always like that. In the beginning of his teaching, he presented things in the manner of a structuralist, in the style of “this is the correct form.” But now that we have a picture of the totality of his journey, we can perceive, in the evolution of his propositions, a style of reinvention and reformulation that constitutes a particular way of working. Certainly, it would be more palatable to present his teachings as an intellectual journey in the direction of the scientificization of psychoanalysis and the intellectual strength of Lacan had something of this, but the perspective of reinventing dislocates the impetus to scientificization.

Lacan yielded an extraordinary effect in the formulation, dissemination and fecundity of psychoanalysis, because he demonstrated his own struggle with an object and a dimension that he could not completely master. It is a dimension that has it own consistency and its own internal resistance. At first glance, one might think that Lacan demonstrated his mastery of the topic, but no, by being aware of its unceasing quality, he shows, in contrast, the resistance of knowledge and a certain shattering of any mastery of the real. It is patently obvious that this is a demonstration of the inability of total mastery. Lacan was always reformulating, remobilizing and never said “its ready” about any point. When in the few times that he said it, he denied it shortly after a few words.

What is at stake is preserving this sense or dimension of dissatisfaction. Even though one could be justified in doing so, we are not going to add a special domain: the domain of dissatisfaction. It would be the domain where one would be say that there is nothing satisfactory either in the programme, or in the methods that were achieved. It would be a domain where one would never say “it’s complete.” Dissatisfaction is a part of everything and for this reason we don’t need to create a specific domain for it.

To justify oneself as an analyst is a work of desireThe Seminar of Lacan was not a method. We can develop this point further. This seminar, as I see it, was done by someone who sought to justify himself. It was ministered by someone who perhaps wanted to be pardoned for the practice of psychoanalysis. Sometimes, this is lost in the post-analytic experience of analysts, but for Lacan there was a certain sin in practicing psychoanalysis: the attempt of the professional to master a real which does not lend itself to being mastered. It is in this way that psychoanalysis is like an imposter, as Lacan asserted toward the end of this life. This is what energized him such that he presented himself every week in front of the audience, in front of the big Other, to defend his cause.

It is important not to forget that it was he himself who invented the concept of the big Other. It is necessary to think that he had a certain relation with the dissimilar: that to which one is directed. At the same time as it is the place where a message is directed, it is also, in a certain way, its author. The big Other thus has two faces. On one hand, in order to be distinct from the small other, it is a function that seems anonymous, universal and abstract. But on the other hand, as Lacan underlines in Seminar V: The formations of the unconscious (apropos of the Witz), this big Other doesn’t function without a limitation of its space, without a limitation of its field to a parochial dimension.

The parochial dimension is a province of shared meaning. Lacan established it in his Seminar, a province which allowed him to speak self-reflexively. That is, he created a province of the Other. He directed himself toward the analysts and formed them. It is because Lacan directed himself to this province of the Other that the community of analysts became constituted. The specific discourse that was directed toward them transformed itself into an Other. The discourse of Lacan was deposited, collected and returned to us, the Other to which he directed himself.

The royal road to the unconscious was a dream, according to Freud. The Seminar of Lacan, for several generations, has been a real road to reach psychoanalysis. As it was neither a procedure nor a method, what was produced in the seminar had something to do with both desire and guilt.At the same time, Lacan created a special language to speak of the unconscious of psychoanalysis, a language especially adapted to capture and circumscribe psychoanalytic phenomena. This special language imposes itself now as psychoanalytic maxims, used outside the immediate circle of Lacan’s students. This language he created, as a result of elements he took from scientific discourse, was reconstructed and reshaped in order to conform to the object he was addressing.

Lacan’s idea, surely, was to make a transcription of Freud’s work that could re-energize the psychoanalytic field and obtain, as such, a language more appropriate, adequate, and adaptable for psychoanalysis. I believe that teaching and research are not really effective if a teacher is not also animated by a dream... Translation by Gary Marshall Review by Thomas Svolos Source: http://www.lacan.com/jamnigh.htm Labels: Alain Miller, Lacan

Sri Aurobindo's influence in Western thought has been far reaching

While many writers and thinkers could be chosen to discuss the emergence of this new level of human consciousness, the writings of two have had a most profound impact on me personally. These two seem somehow "essential" in that they articulate the core of what this revolution is about. -- Matt Wesley

A. Whitehead

In 1927/1928 a brilliant mathematician, theoretical physicist and philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, delivered the Gifford lecture series in what was eventually collected in the book Process and Reality. This book is very tough sledding, made even more so by the fact that Whitehead never bothered to polish his lecture notes. The process cosmology elaborated in these lectures proposes that the fundamental elements of the universe are in process as occasions of experience. According to this notion, what people commonly think of as concrete objects are actually processes. Occasions of experience can be collected into groupings; something complex such as a human being is thus a grouping (or nexus) of many smaller occasions of experience. According to Whitehead, everything in the universe is characterized by experience (which is not to be confused with consciousness); there is no mind-body duality under this system, because "mind" is simply seen as a very developed kind of experiencing while "body" is a lower order process. Whitehead's occasions of experience are interrelated with every other occasion of experience that precedes it in time. Inherent to Whitehead's conception is the notion of time’s directionality; all experiences are influenced by prior experiences, and will influence future experiences. An occasion of experience consists of a process of prehending other experiences, and then a reaction to it.

By application of his ideas, Whitehead is able to fundamentally reconcile a number of very difficult Western philosophical problems in unique and compelling ways. His solution – when stripped down, look profoundly Eastern – reality, as we perceive it, simply arises as processes – that being is a potential for becoming. Because of its density, this book has not seeped into popular conceptions, but it is the first and most profound attempt at a post-Kantian philosophic cosmology after Einstein. Whitehead essentially provides the intellectual freight needed to ground much of the intuitive insight expressed by the Continental existentialists and to a lesser extent the German Idealists, who were otherwise too easily dismissed by more rigorous approaches. It is not so easy to dismiss Whitehead.

B. Aurobindo

In India, between 1914 to 1949, a western educated Indian mystic and philosopher, Sri Aurobindo, wrote a series of articles that would eventually be collected into book – “The Life Divine”. He realized that Einstein and the developments of Quantum physics pointed the way to a reconciliation of Eastern and Western thought and that it was possible for human beings to perceive the world in way that brought reason and subjective experience together. In his book The Life Divine, he posited that humans represent a apex of evolution to date and that they are uniquely situated to lead a spiritual life. By this he meant that Matter and Spirit are met in human consciousness. He posited that the purpose of existence is to discover the latent spirit in all things and release infuse and elevate all of life by application of higher forms of human and transpersonal consciousness. The importance of Aurobindo cannot be overstated. His influence in Western thought has been far reaching through the seminal work of Allan Watts, Aldous Huxley, the Beat Movement. Indeed, the entire gestalt of the 1960’s (and New Consciousness thinking) was fundamentally shaped by his work. Whether people recognize the lineage or not, most progressive thinking in the Western world since then has been significantly influenced by his work.

Based on these two pillars of early 20th Century thought, as well as some sother ignficiant writers, I have begun to develop a personal metaphysics. Posted by Matt Wesley at 9:39 AM Labels: history, philosophy, spirituality

Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1914/1940) used the term Integral to describe a type of knowledge or yoga, as published in The Life Divine

INTEGRAL REVIEW 4, 2007 Hampson: Integral Re-Views Postmodernism ...postformal construct of conceptual ecology—a construct which not only enables the dialogical consciousness of holarchical conceptual space, but also local temporality and the metaphorical resonances of organicity and life. In the first of two sections, a genealogy is described which philosophically links the integral quest and the postmodern quest as two complementary branches. In the second section, a conceptual ecology is identified which contextualises different interpretations of integral. A particular relationship is then chosen to exemplify a pertinent contestability: that between the integrals of Wilber and Gebser.

Sharing Schelling: A Genealogy of Postmodernisms
A starting place to view a less adversarial relationship between integral and postmodern than that connoted by Wilber and some members of the integral community, is to consider their shared genealogy. Philosopher Arran Gare (2002) has done just that. He presents the following picture: As scientific materialism began to increase in societal power in late 18th Century Europe, a "postmodern" countertradition arose in the footsteps of Giambattista Vico and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Johann Herder led the way, identifying: suffering caused by abstractions; the need for self-realisation; an appreciation of cultural plurality; the importance of the particular, the sensory, the active; and a purposeful nature. This thread led—via Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—to Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. Like Rudolf Steiner, Wilber (1995), and Jennifer Gidley (in press), Gare identifies Schelling as an inspiration, and a pivot in history. He highlights Schelling’s dialectical method and also his understanding of that, that we are: an "unprethinkable Being" which precedes all thought and is presupposed by it. Gare then identifies a historical bifurcation stemming from Schelling. One branch leads to the poststructuralists ("poststructuralist postmodernism"), the other to a high-order quest for coherence ("cosmological postmodernism").27

In addition to the dialectical nature of the philosophy that lies at the root of the two branches, the branches themselves can be seen as a dialectic between Schelling’s alignment with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on the one hand, and his critique of Hegel, on the other. The branch that proceeds from Schelling’s critique of Hegel includes Friedrich Wilhelm Neitzsche, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault (largely influenced by Neitzsche), Jacques Derrida (largely influenced by Heidegger) and Gilles Deleuze (who retains more influence from Schelling than the others). Somewhat resonant with Roland Benedikter’s (2005) seminal work on postmodern spirituality, Gare proffers that, "poststructuralists require Schelling’s earlier philosophy or developments of it to sustain their arguments" (Gare, 2002).

The branch which is more aligned to Hegel leads to Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead via Charles Peirce and also via Karl Ernst Von Baer’s evolutionary theory of nature. Gare identifies this thread as a high-order quest for coherence. Such a quest for coherence is surely central for any integral theory. But surely a greater integral quest would be to attempt to respectfully honour both branches? Although the branches may seem somewhat incommensurable from a formal perspective, a postformal perspective on integral might better facilitate such a quest. But what is integral? A postformal approach to answering that question might well address the conceptual ecology among different (connected and contested) uses and
interpretations of the word.

An Ecology of Integrals 28
Integral—meaning, "of or pertaining to a whole"—entered the English vocabulary from the Latin, integer (via the French, intégral) in 1471. In terms of integral theory and correspondent developments, Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1914/1960) used the term to describe a type of knowledge or yoga, as published in The Life Divine. Unaware of Aurobindo’s usage, Jean Gebser (1949/1985, p. xxix) began using the term (as a conjunct to aperspectival) in 1940, culminating in its usage in The Ever-Present Origin in 1949. 29 Meanwhile, Haridas Chaudhuri carried the term through from Aurobindo and founded the California Institute of Integral Studies (C.I.I.S) (n.d.) in 1968. Michael Murphy also brought through Aurobindo’s integral theory when he cofounded the Esalen Institute 30 (2005) in 1962. He has since adopted the term integral with George Leonard, in their Integral Transformative Practice (2007).

The most popular(ist) integral theorist—Ken Wilber (1997, 2000a, 2000c)—had started using the term by 1997 to describe both his own writing, 31 and thence his institutional frameworks, such as the Integral Institute (2007) including Integral Naked. 32 Global-outreach tertiary institute, Pacific Integral (n.d.), was founded in reference to this genealogical branch, as well as to William Torbert’s work. 33 Wilber’s genealogical branch entered futures studies via Richard Slaughter (1998). Ervin László (2004) started foregrounding the term in relation to integral science in 2003, competitively using with the same turn of phrase as Wilber—An Integral Theory of Everything—in 2004. Global philosopher Ashok Gangadean (2006a) incorporates László’s work among others, to form his own dialogical integral approach. Gidley acknowledges Gangadean as part of her quest to "integrate the integrals," notably an exploration of connections between Gebser, Wilber and Rudolf Steiner, the latter of whom she identifies as an integral pioneer (Gidley & Hampson, 2005).

Meanwhile, others have furthered representations of C.I.I.S.’s mission, including Robert McDermott, Richard Tarnas (see, for example, 1991), and Jorge Ferrer, the latter of whom has identified a participatory integral approach along with Marina Romero and Ramon Albareda(Ferrer et al., 2005), directors of Estel, a centre for personal growth and integral studies in Barcelona (Albareda, n.d.). In addition, William Irwin Thompson (2003)—whilst acknowledging Aurobindo and Steiner—has, for some decades, been running with Gebser’s interpretation to foreground a certain artistry: integral performances that seek to generate new horizons; such alignment with creativity parallels both Bernie Neville’s (1989) Gebserian and archetypal educational approach, and, substantively, Alfonso Montuori’s (1997) interpretation of integral asa form of disciplined improvisation, via the generative metaphor of jazz.34

From this particular ecological perspective,35 there are six intertwined genealogical branches of integral: those aligned with Aurobindo, Gebser, Wilber, Gangadean, László and Steiner (in respective chronological order of first usage 36), among which there are varying degrees of commonality and contestation in various dimensions. 37 As such, we may regard the above as an outline of some "semiotic attractors" within a (necessarily complex and dynamic) hermeneutic ecosystem. 38 Picking up one such inter-branch contestation, let’s turn to the relationship between the integrals of Wilber and Gebser. Thompson (1996) foregrounds a difference between the two in relation to Gebser’s "grand" European sensibility and loving attention to detail.

27 Consideration might be given here regarding the nature of the relationship between Gare’s genealogy and Wilber’s (1995) bifurcation of post-Enlightenment as "Ego" and "Eco."
28 As integral can be contextualised within "an ecology of integrals," so an ecology of integrals can itself be contextualized within "an ecology of related terms."
29 Alan Combs (2005) comments that it remains unclear as to the degree of influence Aurobindo had on Gebser, remarking, "the whole affaire of Eastern influences in Gebser’s thought would be an excellent topic for an investigation" (§ The Inner and The Outer, ¶ 8).
30 Beck and Cowan (1996) address Esalen as Green vMeme.
31 The original edition of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995) does not have an entry for "integral" or "integral …" in its 33-page index, whilst the second edition (1995/2000) does.
32 To date, the nascent Integral University (2007) has not yet emerged.
33 Also see below regarding Cook-Greuter’s ego developmental model.

34 Further—in addition to the integrally-oriented ReVision (co-founded by Wilber)—there has recently been an upsurge in integral journals—including Kosmos (2001), The Journal of Conscious Evolution (2005), Integral Review (2005), and AQAL (2006); there has also been the Gebser Society’s Integrative Explorations Journal (currently not in print).
35 Different perspectives are, of course, possible. For instance, although he doesn’t mention Gebser or Steiner, Daniel Gustav Anderson (2006) gives an alternate perspective that, "integral theory…remains Aurobindian from tip to toe inclusive of thinkers as diverse as Wilber and Thompson" (p. 63, n. 3). This can be seen to signify an ecology stemming from one root. Other perspectives might dispute inclusion and/or exclusion of various branches for various reasons (see following footnote, for example). Furthermore, I am not claiming this sketch is comprehensive, but rather, a reasonable point of departure. Every framework inevitably comes with a bias, and I apologise to any authors who may feel underrepresented by identifying / constructing this particular genealogy.
36 Noting that the Steiner branch is via the conduit of Gidley.
37 Most contestations occur in relation to Wilber’s genealogical branch. Possible causes for this include (a) the power base of each branch (see Appendix C), and (b) Wilber’s competitiveness over the term, integral. For example, the website for Wilber’s Integral University (2007) advertises itself with the tagline, "the world’s first integral learning community." Apart from the tense-related misnomer regarding the fact that it is not yet in operation, such a claim has the quality of being decidedly competitive with regard to the term, integral, in relation to the ecology of interpretative uses of the term as described in this article. Specifically, Sri Aurobindo’s thread was established first, Gebser’s second and Wilber’s third. C.I.I.S was founded in relation to Sri Aurobindo’s integral (and this relationship has been in continual—if varying—reference to this thread ever since (Wexler, 2005). It would also be difficult not to interpret C.I.I.S., at least in part, as a "learning community." In this way, it could readily be argued that C.I.I.S. was the world’s first integral learning community. Two questions arise here: (a) In what specific ways has Wilber (or The Integral University) honoured this understanding concerning C.I.I.S.’s Aurobindian—and thus integral—heritage? and, (b) Given the central utilisation of Aurobindo by AQAL, in what specific ways has Wilber (or The Integral University) detailed a differentiation between C.I.I.S.’s interpretive use of Aurobindo and his own interpretive use of Aurobindo to the extent that he can justify unilateral interpretative usage of the term, integral, in the manner described here? Also—although associated primarily with Wilber’s integral thread with regard to interpretive usage of integral—a further question could be asked with regard to the already-existent integral learning community at Pacific Integral: namely, Would they regard themselves primarily as being part of Integral University’s learning community to the extent that I.U.’s claim is understood as congruent with their own sense of identity? Such are some of the power relations (AQAL lower right quadrant identifications) regarding the term or meme, integral. For further discussion on the current status of integral, I would recommend Cowan and Todorovic (2006).
38 I note that, through publication of this article, I myself am participating in this ecosystem.

Sri Aurobindo learned the Veda without help of any oral tradition or Vedic teacher

Ramanlal Pathak, Mother India, September, 2002

Through regular and intense Yogic sadhana he turned to the Veda, as the Veda simply brought him a confirmation of what he had received directly. Thus Sri Aurobindo is first a yogi and then a great Vedic scholar.

• Unlike other Vedic scholars, Sri Aurobindo
• Possessed no family background for the Rig-Veda and vedantic study
• He learned the Veda without help of any oral tradition or Vedic teacher, ‘shruti-parampara’
• He had not seen even Sayana before he attained considerable depth and height of his own in the Vedic study
• He had not followed any established branch of the study or theory propounded by any Indian or western scholar
• In the light of his own deep Yogic experiences, intense abstraction, severe meditation, ‘tapas’, and intuition, ‘ritambhara prajna’, he went towards the study of the Veda
• He studied the Veda with the direct and original text of the Veda itself
• Philologically he delved into the old Vedic language in the light of a deep study of the Tamil, Greek, and Latin root-system
• and learned the grammar of the old Sanskrit language from the original root-clans of the words.

The Shudra, Bhaga, and Mahasaraswati

She is Mahasaraswati, the goddess of divine skill and of the works of the Spirit, and hers is the Yoga that is skill in works, yogah karmasu kauśalam, and the utilities of divine knowledge and the self-application of the spirit to life and the happiness of its harmonies. Page – 752 Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Synthesis Of Yoga Volume-21 > Faith And Shakti

The Divine is the pure, the faultless, the all-embracing, the untroubled ecstasy that enjoys its own infinite being and enjoys equally all that it creates within itself; Bhaga gives us sovereignly that ecstasy of the liberated soul, its free and unfallen possession of itself and the world. Page – 444 Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Secret Of The Veda Volume-10 > The Guardians Of The Light
Varuna represents the principle of pure and wide being, Sat in Sachchidananda; Aryaman represents the light of the divine consciousness working as Force; Mitra representing light and knowledge, using the principle of Ananda for creation, is Love maintaining the law of harmony; Bhaga represents Ananda as the creative enjoyment; he takes the delight of the creation, takes the delight of all that is created. It is the Maya, the formative wisdom of Varuna, of Mitra that disposes multitudinously the light of Aditi brought by the Dawn to manifest the worlds...

Surya Savitri, who is Bhaga, stands between the Infinite and the created worlds within us and without. All things that have to be born in the creative consciousness he receives into the Vijnana; there he puts it into its right place in the divine rhythm by the knowledge that listens and receives the Word as it descends and so he looses it forth into the movement of things...Page – 289, 293 Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Secret Of The Veda Volume-10 > To Bhaga Savitri, The Enjoyer
Bhaga, enjoyment, and bhāga, share, were for the Vedic mind not different words, but one word which had developed two different uses. Therefore it was easy for the Rishis to employ it in one of the two senses with the other at the back of the mind colouring its overt connotation or even to use it equally in both senses at a time by a sort of figure of cumulative significance. Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Secret Of The Veda Volume-10 > The Philological Method Of The Veda

The honour of the Shudra which gives itself in obedience, subordination, faithful service, a disinterested attachment. Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Social And Political Thought Volume-15 > The Cycle Of Society

The Vaishya, Mitra, and Mahalakshmi

She is Mahalakshmi, the goddess of the supreme love and delight, and her gifts are the spirit's grace and the charm and beauty of the Ananda and protection and every divine and human blessing: Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Synthesis Of Yoga Volume-21 > Faith And Shakti

The miracle of eternal beauty, an unseizable secret of divine harmonies, the compelling magic of an irresistible universal charm and attraction that draws and holds things and forces and beings together and obliges them to meet and unite that a hidden Ananda may play from behind the veil and make of them its rhythms and its figures. This is the power of MAHALAKSHMI and there is no aspect of the Divine Shakti more attractive to the heart of embodied beings. Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Mother Volume-25 > The Mother Part One

The Divine is boundless consciousness, perfect in knowledge, pure and therefore luminously right in its discernment of things, perfectly harmonious and happy in its concordance of their law and nature; Mitra brings us this light and harmony, this right distinction and relation and friendly concord, the happy laws of the liberated soul concordant with itself and the Truth in all its rich thought, shining actions and thousandfold enjoyment. Page – 444 Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Secret Of The Veda Volume-10 > The Guardians Of The Light

The honour of the Vaishya which maintains itself by rectitude of dealing, mercantile fidelity, sound production, order, liberality and philanthropy; Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Social And Political Thought Volume-15 > The Cycle Of Society

Update: October 7, 2013 INTEGRAL REVIEW September 2013 Vol. 9, No. 3 Debashish Banerji: Traditional Roots of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga 

The Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda describes the self-sacrifice of Purusha by “quartering” Himself into the four varnas – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Sudras. The Pancharatra emanationaism follows this in seeing a Supreme Narayana emanate Himself into four descendants, the Vrishni heroes who can be identified as lords of the the four varnas – Vasudeva or Mahavira for the Brahmin, Sankarshana or Balarama for the Kshatriya, Pradyumna for the Vaishya and Aniruddha for the Sudra. For further details on Pancharatra, see Matsubara (Matsubara, 1994). [Sri Aurobindo seems to write in order to explain a...] [True intent of the caste system | Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo ...]

The Kshatriya, Aryaman, and Mahakali

She is Mahakali, goddess of the supreme strength, and with her are all mights and spiritual force and severest austerity of Tapas and swiftness to the battle and the victory and the laughter, the aţţahāsya, that makes light of defeat and death and the powers of the ignorance: Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Synthesis Of Yoga Volume-21 > Faith And Shakti

The Divine is in its own being pure and perfect power and in us the eternal upward tendency in things to their source and truth; Aryaman brings to us this mighty strength and perfectly-guided happy inner upsurging.

... many-charioted Aryaman in the movement and all-discerning force of Tapas; Page – 444 Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Secret Of The Veda Volume-10 > The Guardians Of The Light

The honour of the Kshatriya which lives in courage, chivalry, strength, a certain proud self-restraint and self-mastery, nobility of character and the obligations of that 'nobility; Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Social And Political Thought Volume-15 > The Cycle Of Society

The Brahmin, Varuna, and Maheshwari

She is Maheshwari, goddess of the supreme knowledge, and brings to us her vision for all kinds and widenesses of truth, her rectitude of the spiritual will, the calm and passion of her supramental largeness, her felicity of illumination: Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Synthesis Of Yoga Volume-21 > Faith And Shakti

The Kingship of great Varuna is an unbounded empire over all being. He is a mighty world-ruler, an emperor, samrat. His epithets and descriptions are those which a mind at once religious and philosophic could apply with little or no change to the supreme and universal Godhead. He is the vastness and the multiplicity; among his usual epithets are vast Varuna, abundant Varuna, Varuna of whom wideness is the habitation, Varuna of many births. But his puissant being is not only a universal wideness; it is a universal force and might…

Varuna, the Vedic symbol of this grandiose conception, is described finely as a vast thinker and guardian of the Truth. In him, it is said, all wisdoms are lodged and gathered up into their nodus; he is the divine Seer who nurtures the seer-knowings of man as if heaven were increasing its form. Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Secret Of The Veda Volume-10 > The Guardians Of The Light

The honour of the Brahmin ~ which resides in purity, in piety, in a high reverence for the things of the mind and spirit and a disinterested possession and exclusive pursuit of learning and knowledge... Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Social And Political Thought Volume-15 > The Cycle Of Society

A synthesis of this kind was attempted in the ancient Indian culture. It accepted four legitimate motives of human living,—

1. man's vital interests and needs,
2. his desires,
3. his ethical and religious aspiration,
4. his ultimate spiritual aim and destiny,

—in other words,

• the claims of his vital, physical and emotional being,
• the claims of his ethical and religious being governed by a knowledge of the law of God and Nature and man, and
• the claims of his spiritual longing for the Beyond for which he seeks satisfaction by an ultimate release from an ignorant mundane existence.

It provided for

1. a period of education and preparation based on this idea of life,
2. a period of normal living to satisfy human desires and interests under the moderating rule of the ethical and religious part in us,
3. a period of withdrawal and spiritual preparation, and
4. a last period of renunciation of life and release into the spirit.

Page – 676 Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Life Divine Volume-19 > The Integral Knowledge And The Aim Of Life.Html

Virgil was sent via a chain of holy women, viz., Beatrice, St. Lucia and the Virgin Mary

Part I: The Perplexing Role of Virgil in Dante’s Divine Comedy
from Per Caritatem by Cynthia R. Nielsen

As many commentators of Dante’s Divine Comedy have noted, Dante’s choice of Virgil as his guide is as pregnant with meaning as it is perplexing.[1] In light of the fact that Dante is a Christian, the question immediately arises as to why he selects a pagan to lead him out of the “shadowy forest” in which he finds himself? Virgil, of course, was a virtuous pagan who was well-respected by Dante for his literary excellence and for his role in making Rome great via his writings.

Yet, as Dante makes clear as the story unfolds, Virgil’s ultimate home for all eternity is Limbo-a place that houses many famous philosophers and poets (e.g., Plato, Aristotle) who lived prior the Christian era. On the one hand, it seems clear that Virgil serves as a kind personification of natural reason or wisdom. Yet, on the other hand, Virgil, now existentially knowing the truth of the claims of Christianity, has both grown in his wisdom and is now in a sense a servant of the Christian God. That is, Virgil has not come to Dante’s aid of his own accord, but was sent via a chain of holy women, viz., Beatrice, St. Lucia and the Virgin Mary.

In other words, though Virgil surely represents human reason and the wisdom that can be gained by a proper use of this God-given faculty, nonetheless, Virgil also has come to realize the limitations of natural reason and, as we shall see, is often quick to confess the superiority of divine revelation. Here I suggest that Dante’s choice of Virgil was in part to communicate Dante’s own preference for a kind of Christian philosophy wherein there exist certain mysteries of the faith that transcend human reason and are yet not irrational but supra-rational.

For those familiar with the Christian philosophy of St. Thomas, my description above seems to suggest a good deal of continuity with Thomas’ understanding of the relationship between faith and reason. Though I readily acknowledge a number of similarities-both actual and formal, I remain unconvinced that Dante’s presentation of the faith/reason relationship is an accurate embodiment of Thomas’ conception of this relationship[2]-in fact, anachronistically speaking, one might develop a strong case that the way in which Dante instantiates his view of the relationship between faith and reason is closer to a Lutheran or even Kierkegaardian understanding.[3]

Substantiating that proposal, however, is not my present pursuit. Rather, in this essay, my goal is simply to highlight the complexity of the faith/reason relationship as presented by Dante via his choice of Virgil as his spiritual guide and to raise various questions along the way that attempt to bring the surface the seemingly unavoidable tensions involved in Dante’s choice of this virtuous, yet eternally exiled pagan.[4]

Notes [1] Cf. Kenelm Foster, O.P., The Two Dantes and Other Studies (Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1977), pp. 137-253 and Robert Hollander, “Tragedy in Dante’s Comedy,” Sewanee Review 91(1983): 240-60.
[2] Cf., H.L. Stewart. “Dante and the Schoolmen,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 10, No. 3 (June 1949): 357-373.
[3] This suggestion is not meant to speak pejoratively of either Luther or Kierkegaard-here I have in mind Kierkegaard’s own views on faith and reason as presented in his writings under his own name (e.g., Training in Christianity) and not the views set forth by his various personae (e.g., Johannes de Silentio). Contrary, to the all-too-common caricature of Luther as the great adversary of (natural) reason, I tend to follow Heiko Oberman’s interpretation of Luther as presented in his book, Dawn of the Reformation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992.
[4] Given time constraints, I have focused mostly on passages from Purgatorio. Seeing that I have not yet completed my reading of the Purgatorio, nor have I read the Paradiso, my account as it stands may (and likely will) need revision.

The stroke of the Horse’s hoof on the rock releasing the waters of inspiration

Vedic Vision of Consciousness & Yoga Sunday, October 7, 2007

8. Sri Aurobindo’s Contribution to the Understanding of Vedic Symbolism - I

Sri Aurobindo takes up Goddess Sarasvatī for his decoding. Sarasvatī occurs in the Veda as a river as well as a goddess. Recently the actual bed of the river has also been discovered through aerial photography. In the Ŗgveda, Sarasvatī as a river is said to emerge from the high Himalayas and merge in the sea. This has now been corroborated by recent researches. Now the question is what this Sarasvatī, as a matter of fact, was. Was she originally a goddess or merely a river? Sri Aurobindo does not deny the possibility of Sarasvatī having been an actual river also. But as the goddess of learning, as described in the Veda, she must not be a mere personification of any river whatsoever. Even then, however, how could the goddess of learning come to be associated with the stream of water? After raising this question, Sri Aurobindo refers to a point in the Greek mythology where Muses, the goddesses of learning, has been associated with an earthly stream of water known as Hippocrene. This river is said to have sprung from the hoof of the divine horse Pegasus. The horse smote the rock with his hoof and the waters of inspiration gushed out forming the river Hippocrene. Sri Aurobindo very rightly identifies Pegasus with the Sanskrit pājas meaning force, movement or footing. “The stroke of the Horse’s hoof on the rock releasing the waters of inspiration”, he observes, “would thus become a very obvious psychological image.” (On the Veda, p. 106). Thus, he shows the obvious possibility of representation of the string of inspiration by the stream of water.

Identification of Sarasvatī with inspiration gives a definite clue to the solution of the problem of sapta sindhava, the land of seven rivers whose identification with Punjab along with the Western part of Uttar Pradesh is being held even until now as a certainty. If Sarasvatī can represent the string of inspiration coming down from Ŗta, the truth-consciousness of the Eternal, will other river-goddesses associated so closely with her remain mere rivers, asks Sri Aurobindo. Via a discussion on the significance of the number seven used for these rivers in the Veda he eventually reaches the conclusion that they represent the seven planes of being which may be determined as the physical, vital, mental, supramental and the planes of delight, consciousness and existence. Sri Aurobindo states: “…the seven rivers are conscious currents corresponding to the sevenfold substance of the ocean of being which appears to us formulated in the seven worlds enumerated in the Purāņas.” (On the Veda, p.113)

Next to river and water, Sri Aurobindo takes up the problem of light, darkness, dawn, etc., as involved in the understanding of the Veda. The relevant accounts are explained by Sāyaņa in terms of breaking of day which was so essential for the performance of sacrifices. The Western Indologists, on the other hand, take it as a reflection of the state of mind of the newcomers of India who must naturally have been afraid of night and darkness in the alien land and therefore would have craved for the coming of the dawn and rising of the sun. Arguing on their behalf, Sri Aurobindo observes that even if we take the cow, so closely associated with the dawn, in the symbolic sense, it is quite possible to regard her as simply the symbol of the physical light... Posted by MukeshVeda at Sunday, October 07, 2007 Labels: Vedic Symbolism -- Professor S.P.Singh (Brief)

Sri Aurobindo’s acquaintance with the Veda is a remarkable incident in the history of Indian thought

Vedic Vision of Consciousness & Yoga Saturday, October 6, 2007

7. Sri Aruobindo’s Theory of Vedic Interpretation

Sri Aurobindo’s acquaintance with the Veda proved to be a remarkable incident in the history of Indian thought as well as in his own life. It is an incident of discovery of eternal life and inestimable amount of vitality from within the greatest literature of the world which virtually had begun to be treated as a dead mound containing completely fossilised ideas of bygone ages. It is an incident of re-enlivening what was supposed to be merely a historical record, into a perpetual psychology...

Sri Aurobindo’s line of Vedic interpretation leads us closest to the mind of the seer. The significance of this statement can be understood by a review of the earlier attempts in this direction which mostly are entangled in the symbolic stuff which they have taken to be the real meaning and have missed the real content. The Veda, after all, is a book of spiritual knowledge rather than a manual of sacrifice or an account of bewildered primitive gaze over the changing phenomena of nature. Sacrifice is an important ingredient in its composition no doubt, but on no account does sacrifice hold the pivotal position in it. Similarly nature is there in the Veda no doubt, but by no means is the latter an account of bewilderment over the changing phenomena of nature. The crux of the Veda is rather the deep spiritual experience of the seer. Its recapturing, therefore, needs spiritual penetration as well as keen historical and psychological insight which Sri Aurobindo could afford very well. Posted by MukeshVeda at Saturday, October 06, 2007 0 comments Links to this post Labels: Vedic Symbolism -- Professor S.P.Singh (Brief)

Unity, mutuality, harmony

A life of unity, mutuality and harmony born of a deeper and wider truth of our being is the only truth of life that can successfully replace the imperfect mental constructions of the past which were a combination of association and regulated conflict, an accommodation of egos and interests grouped or dovetailed into each other to form a society, a consolidation by common general life-motives, a unification by need and the pressure of struggle with outside forces. It is such a change and such a reshaping of life for which humanity is blindly beginning to seek, now more and more with a sense that its very existence depends upon finding the way. The evolution of Mind working upon Life has developed an organisation of the activity of Mind and use of Matter which can no longer be supported by human capacity without an inner change. An accommodation of the egocentric human individuality, separative even in association, to a system of living which demands unity, perfect mutuality, harmony, is imperative.

But because the burden which is being laid on mankind is too great for the present littleness of the human personality and its petty mind and small life-instincts, because it cannot operate the needed change, because it is using this new apparatus and organisation to serve the old infraspiritual and infrarational life-self of humanity, the destiny of the race seems to be heading dangerously, as if impatiently and in spite of itself, under the drive of the vital ego seized by colossal forces which are on the same scale as the huge mechanical organisation of life and scientific knowledge which it has evolved, a scale too large for its reason and will to handle, into a prolonged confusion and perilous crisis and darkness of violent shifting incertitude.

Even if this turns out to be a passing phase or appearance and a tolerable structural accommodation is found which will enable mankind to proceed less catastrophically on its uncertain journey, this can only be a respite. For the problem is fundamental and in putting it evolutionary Nature in man is confronting herself with a critical choice which must one day be solved in the true sense if the race is to arrive or even to survive. The evolutionary nisus is pushing towards a development of the cosmic Force in terrestrial life which needs a larger mental and vital being to support it, a wider Mind, a greater wider more conscious unanimised Life-Soul, Anima, and that again needs an unveiling of the supporting Soul and spiritual Self within to maintain it.

A rational and scientific formula of the vitalistic and materialistic human being and his life, a search for a perfected economic society and the democratic cultus of the average man are all that the modern mind presents us in this crisis as a light for its solution. Whatever the truth supporting these ideas, this is clearly not enough to meet the need of a humanity which is missioned to evolve beyond itself or, at any rate, if it is to live, must evolve far beyond anything that it at present is. A life-instinct in the race and in the average man himself has felt the inadequacy and has been driving towards a reversal of values or a discovery of new values and a transfer of life to a new foundation. This has taken the form of an attempt to find a simple and ready-made basis of unity, mutuality, harmony for the common life, to enforce it by a suppression of the competitive clash of egos and so to arrive at a life of identity for the community in place of a life of difference.

But to realise these desirable ends the means adopted have been the forcible and successful materialisation of a few restricted ideas or slogans enthroned to the exclusion of all other thought, the suppression of the mind of the individual, a mechanized compression of the elements of life, a mechanised unity and drive of the life-force, a coercion of man by the State, the substitution of the communal for the individual ego. The communal ego is idealised as the soul of the nation, the race, the community; but this is a colossal and may turn out to be a fatal error. A forced and imposed unanimity of mind, life, action raised to their highest tension under the drive of something which is thought to be greater, the collective soul, the collective life, is the formula found. But this obscure collective being is not the soul or self of the community; it is a life-force that rises from the subconscient and, if denied the light of guidance by the reason, can be driven only by dark massive forces which are powerful but dangerous for the race because they are alien to the conscious evolution of which man is the trustee and bearer. It is not in this direction that evolutionary Nature has pointed mankind; this is a reversion towards something that she had left behind her.

Page 1056 Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Life Divine Volume-19 > The Divine Life

Scientific observations become accepted through repetition

Andy Smith Says: October 2nd, 2007 at 4:48 pm I think this is a no-win situation, Alan. If you cite the data or experiences of others, some may accuse you of lacking originality. But if you cite your own experiences, others will say, why should we believe you?

Indeed, Wilber has at times cited his own experiences, as in One Taste. If he has not used these experiences extensively in support of his system, that’s because this would turn off even more the academics he is trying to woo. The academic approach, we all know, is to establish observations or concepts by reference to others, in this case to show that certain kinds of experiences are cited often enough by others to make them believable in somewhat the same way that scientific observations become accepted through repetition. There are certainly problems with this approach, but some of them–such as the cherry-picking that Meyerhoff has discussed–are simply reflections of Wilber’s poor methodology. Carried out more rigorously and honestly, the approach does at least have the potential to get academia to pay attention.

In the meantime, I don’t see that the alternative is any better. There have always been people who claim to be realized, and build schools entirely on their own experiences. People argue endlessly over who is and who is not genuine, but the dominant Western political and cultural systems remain unswayed by any of them.

Serres is working hard to make sense of the “clinamen”

larvalsubjects Says: October 1, 2007 at 8:35 pm
It was translated into English a couple years back as The Birth of Physics. I’ve been slowly working my way through it, but had to put it down a couple months back because other things arose. I really should return to it as Serres is working hard to make sense of the “clinamen” or “swerve” as central to the project of physics. Honestly, while I find the concept of the clinamen as a little bit of chaos that gives birth to a world very appealing, I have a great deal of difficulty reconciling it with the first principle of Lucretius’ philosophy: nothing can come from nothing.

It seems that Lucretius wants to have his cake and eat it too. On the one hand, Lucretius wishes to reject superstition or any claims that assert something coming from nothing. Yet, on the other hand, he wishes (and needs to) posit something emerging from nothing in the case of the clinamen. It is difficult to see what entitles him to assert an uncaused bit of chaos in the case of the clinamen while rejecting something uncaused in the case of religion or superstition.
I’d be very interested in hearing from others that know some way of resolving this difficulty.

***

Clinamen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clinamen is the name Lucretius gave to the spontaneous microscopic swerving of atoms from a vertical path as they fall (2.216-293). According to Lucretius, there would be no contact between atoms without the clinamen, and so, "No collision would take place and no impact of atom upon atom would be created. Thus nature would never have created anything." (2.220-225) This was first described in Epicurean physics.
The clinamen has been taken up in discussions of determinism as a possible explanation for an incompatibilist free will.
The term has also been taken up by Harold Bloom to describe the inclinations of writers to "swerve" from the influence of their predecessors; it is the first of his "Ratios of Revision" as described in The Anxiety of Influence.
In Difference and Repetition, Gilles Deleuze employs the term in his description of multiplicities, pointing to the observation at the heart of the theory of clinamen that "it is indeed essential that atoms be related to other atoms."(184) Though atoms affected by clinamen engage each other in a relationship of reciprocal supposition, Deleuze rejects this version of multiplicity, both because the atoms are too independent and because the multiplicity is spatio-temporal instead of internal.

Violence sadly sometimes is necessary to prevent worse violence

pacifist sermons from Indistinct Union by cjsmith

I’m not advocating violence mind you. But an evolutionary picture for one, would tell a different story. War has been the greater force to bring together beings beyond tribal identities. Only after fighting each other for so long did they cease and move into trans-tribal alliances.

The very moment to moment existence of the universe is steeped in violence, in chaos, in destruction. Death in every moment.
A Christianity that can not accept this is one where we have to thrown down from our conception of heaven, violence, destruction. Where God becomes a God of peace-only. Where the great nondual Protestant realizer Jakob Boheme’s vision of God Janus-faced, one loving, the other terrifying and frightening is never realized.
I have said before, only half-jokingly, that Christianity suffers from a lack of a destructive force within the Trinity. I’ve said we should have a devotion to a black-winged bat Holy Spirit, prayers to the Mother of Destruction. A la Kali. A recognition of the profound energy of destruction in this world. (Often called Dark Feminine energy, Black Madonna).
Minus that our salvation, our freedom is held up waiting for a conditional change. For the end of violence in the world. i.e. Waiting forever and beyond. A smug (unintentionally so) satisfaction of ourselves as the peacemakers in this world.
Why not instead burn our flesh black like Kali in the “kiln” of moment to moment existence?
Plenty of places on earth, plenty of people need peace. Others perhaps need to align with the simultaneous Creation/Destruction that is every moment.

In Tantra everything that arises is self-liberated and therefore contains a seed of enlightened wisdom that can be transmuted, released from its seemingly negative outer shell. The seed of violence is Passion, Vitality, actually being in the moment. On the edge, heightened sensitivity, as soldiers often describe how hard it is to come back to mundane existence because when they faced death in every moment they were alive dammit.
Again I’m not glorifying violence, war or romanticizing it all. War is hell. It’s worse than hell. Bodies and minds are flung about like leaves in the wind, detached from the branches. Snuffed out like a mosquito on your wrist.
I don’t want to pick too much on this particular reflection. There is a time and place for much of what was said in it. But it locks realization and liberation into a set of conditions. Conditions that predicate our happiness and therefore subtly enslave. Conditions that will arise, come to pass (eventually? ever in this case?), and then pass? What if Origen was right and the universe is counted in world cycles (eons)? Each round counted from the time all beings fall and return to God, only to have the chance to fall again. What then of pacifism?
This notion of 100% non-violence is a green meme construct. The theologians cited in this sermon were all of this ilk. Not wrong, it’s a space in the Kosmic fabric. I used to resonate with it years ago. Not any longer however.
Violence sadly sometimes is necessary to prevent worse violence.

Socrates considered it was man’s duty to perform rituals as ancient tradition ordained

In spite of his exalted ethical ideas and critical spirit, Socrates sacrifices and prayed to the gods, participated in their festivals and scrupulously kept his vows. Even in his last moments he wanted to make a libation to a god from the draught of poison and drank it after praying to the gods, and just before dying remembered his vow of a cock to Asclepius and asked his friend to fulfill it. Socrates appears to have believed in the existence of gods, but certainly he considered it was man’s duty to perform rituals as ancient tradition ordained whether or not gods existed.

Socrates also believed in a God that directs and commands men, whom men have to serve. The example of Socrates shows that philosophic profundity, moral courage and critical ability are not contradictory to belief in gods and involvement in rituals…

While Kant’s categorical imperative is as exacting as the Dharma of Mimamsa, his principle that one must so act that the maxim of the act becomes by one’s will a universal law and that each individual must determine his own ends for himself according to his own idea of duty, make it a very different type of ethics.

The Realm of Between, K. Satchidananda Murty, IIAS, 1973 (P. 107)

Among philosophers in India today, Professor K. Satchidananda Murty is in a class in himself. He is a heterodox thinker as well as a critical traditionalist. Few specialists in Advaita Vedanta have been so critical of it as he has been in his Revelation and Reason in Advaita Vedanta (1959). And few have presented such an admiring exposition of it as he has done in his Advaitic Notion (1985).

Plato's ‘myth of the cave’ reflecting the Vedantic doctrine of maya, his concept of nous showing its similarity to the concept of Atman

Review Article Dr Anil Baran Ray
Professor of Political Science University of Burdwan

Journey of the Upanishads to the West
Swami Tathagatananda. The Vedanta Society of New York, 34 West 71st Street, New York, NY 10023. 2002. E-mail: vedantasoc@aol.com 599 pp. Rs 200. Available at Advaita Ashrama, 5 Dehi Entally Road, Kolkata 700 014. E-mail: advaita@vsnl.com

Swami Tathagatananda, a senior monk of the Ramakrishna Order and spiritual head of the Vedanta Society of New York, who has impressed us with publications such as Meditations on Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda (1993) and The Vedanta Society of New York (2000), has now come up with a gem of a book, very appropriately titled Journey of the Upanishads to the West, detailing Western scholars’ contribution to the dissemination of the Truth that was first discovered by the ancient rishis of India...

As regards Greece, he refutes the popular notion that with Alexander’s invasion in 326-27 BC, India became open to all sorts of influences from Greece, and shows that long before Alexander’s invasion, Pythagorus had perhaps travelled to India in the sixth century BC and that his theory of the harmony of the spheres reflected the ‘esoteric use of numbers in the Vedas and the Upanishads’. (11)

Further, Socrates (469-399 BC) had occasion to meet an Indian philosopher in course of roaming on the streets of Athens and was greatly moved by the latter’s Upanishadic observation that humans - the relative - could be properly understood only in the light of an understanding of the Divine - the Absolute.

The Indian influence is most discernible in the writings of Plato. His ‘myth of the cave’ reflecting the Vedantic doctrine of maya, his concept of nous showing its similarity to the Upanishadic concept of Atman and his idea of omniscience, somewhat similar to jnana yoga, the way of knowledge in the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita - all indicate the influence of Indian Upanishadic and religious thought on Plato. Indeed, Max Muller was startled to note the similarity between Plato’s language and that of the Upanishads. And Urwick went to the length of observing that most of Plato’s Republic was a paraphrasing of Indian ideas...

The crucial initial role in bringing about the expansion of India’s spiritual culture to France was played in the year 1671 by a French traveller to India by the name of Francis Bernier, who brought to France in that year the Persian translation of fifty Upani­shads made by Prince Dara Shukoh in 1656. The French interest in India’s spiritual literature, awakened by this event, received a boost when Voltaire received the gift of a copy of the Yajur Veda in 1760, which he regarded as the most precious ‘for which the West was ever indebted to the East’. The distinguished French philosopher Victor Cousin (1792-1867) poured his heart’s reverence for the Vedanta philosophy of India by acknowledging it as the highest philosophy that mankind had ever produced...

Among the German scholars who played the pivotal role in promoting the journey of the Upanishads to the West, Friedrich Von Schelling (1775-1854), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900) and Paul Deussen (1854-1919) deserve special mention. Schelling’s admiration for the Upanishads followed from his study of the Oupnek’hat. He was so charmed by the ideas of the Upanishads that he wanted their widest possible circulation in Germany and to that end he set Max Muller to the task of translating a portion of the Upanishads.

Schopenhauer, whose The World as Will and Idea was influenced by the Chandogya Upanishad, held that the Upanishads were the most beneficial and elevating study that the world had ever produced and that ‘it has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death’...

The services that England gave to the cause of Indic studies through scholars such as Sir William Jones (1746-94) and others that followed him were glorious by all means. Jones founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta in 1784. Under his able guidance, Indic studies in general and Vedic studies in particular received an organized focus and direction. ‘One correct version of any celebrated Hindu book would be of greater value than all the dissertations or essays that could be composed on the same subject,’ stated Jones, who also asserted that ‘without detracting from the “never-fading laurels of Newton” the whole of Newton’s theology and part of his philosophy were to be found in the Vedas and other Indian works.’ Known for his 6-volume Works, Jones’ English translation of the Ishavasya Upanishad was also the first translation of any Upanishad into a European language.

Sir Charles Wilkins (1750-1836), known for his memorable contributions to the research of the Asiatic Society, was the first to bring out a translation of the Gita into a European language. ‘The essence of the Hindu thought, as elegantly and concisely put forth in the Bhagavad Gita, was disseminated through­out all of Europe thanks to Wilkins’ translation...

The popular notion is that Vedanta made its journey to America for the first time through Swami Vivekananda in 1893 with the message he broadcast at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in September 1893. But the ground for the reception of such a message was prepared during the nineteenth century by the American transcendentalists such as Ralph W Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. The transcendentalists’ basic message that life was not limited to the five senses and that the individual ego was to be transcended for knowing truth, ultimately went back to the Upanishads. Emerson, the first prominent American to embrace Indian thought, received the gift of a copy of the Bhagavadgita (the English translation of Charles Wilkins) from Carlyle and made this most inspiring book his lifelong companion. Among the Upanishads it was the Katha Upanishad that influenced him most. His comments on the ‘Over-Soul’ showed his awareness of the Upanishadic concept of the Paramatman. His poems ‘The Celestial Love’ and ‘Wood-Notes’ reflected his knowledge of the immanence of the supreme Being. Above all, his poem ‘Brahma’ indicated his profound harmony with the Indian scriptures. Indeed, in this poem ‘American Vedantism’, as Tathagatananda puts it, ‘reached its highest level’. (431)

Thoreau stood on an equal footing with Emerson as an avatara of Indian wisdom in the United States. By his own acknowledgement, he acquired such wisdom from his study of the Vedas. As he said, ‘What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like a light of a higher and purer luminary.’ (441) Ex Oriente Lux (’light from the East’) was the proclaimed motto of Thoreau’s life.

Whitman’s compositions, especially his Leaves of Grass, bear such strains of Upanishadic message - transcendence of the ego, immanence of God and intuitability of knowledge - that one could see very clearly that he was very deeply influenced by the Upanishads and that he was thoroughly seized of the oriental spirit.

Apart from the American transcendentalists, two other agencies - the American Oriental Society, formed in Boston in 1842, and Harvard University through the Harvard Oriental Series, started in 1891 - gave a boost to studies of Indian wisdom in America...

The Russian interest in Vedanta began as early as when Anquetil-Duperron was writing his Latin translation of the Upanishads, Oupnek’hat, but became pronounced with Tolstoy’s expressing his keen interest in the Upanishads, the Bhagavadgita, the Tirukkural (a Tamil classic) and in the spiritual literature of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. Having read Swamiji’s Raja Yoga and two volumes of his speeches and articles, Tolstoy rated Swamiji as ‘India’s greatest modern philosopher’ and ‘placed him among the world’s greatest thinkers, along with Socrates, Rousseau and Kant‘. (528)...

Swami Tathagatananda’s efforts towards putting across the truth of Vedanta and towards distilling the essence of the Upanishadic message from the writings of scholars of six Western countries are, to say the least, monumental. But for years of dedicated and enormously painstaking research, documented with quotations from the works of distinguished scholars, a work of such magnitude could not have been produced. Swami Tathagatananda has indeed very deservingly earned the gratitude of humanity with this work of lasting value.