Commodity fetishism, Sign-value, and Seduction

[In capitalist societies] it is only the definite social relationships of men themselves, which in their eyes takes on the phantasmagorial form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world, the products of the human mind appear as independent beings endowed with life, as entering into independent relations both with one another and the human race. The same way are in the world of commodities the products of men’s hands. This I call the fetishism which is attached to the products of labor, as soon as they are produced as commodities, and which therefore is inseparable from the production of commodities. Marx(10)

This section shows how similar the structure of Marx’s diagnosis of commodity fetishism is to Feuerbach’s critique of religious belief as outlined in The Essence of Christianity (11). There Feuerbach argues that religious convictions merely represent unfulfilled human desires. We create idols in order to bestow them with powers, we do not possess. The subsequent religious belief is an expression of the powers one has attributed to the idols. Marx picks up on this motif and constructs his description along the lines of a form of naturalizing anthropology. (12) The important difference between the religious and the commodity oriented model seems to be, that in the latter the appearance is a result of a process of production rather than a thought process. Marx presents a moral criticism of the state of illusion that is connected to the form of fetishism of the commodity that we have analyzed. It is bad

• (1) because it is a manipulation of people’s minds and it functions
• (2) in order to stabilize the structures that allow other people to enlarge profits. by Mario Wenning

On Baudrillard's analysis, advertising, packaging, display, fashion, "emancipated" sexuality, mass media and culture, and the proliferation of commodities multiplied the quantity of signs and spectacles, and produced a proliferation of sign-value. Henceforth, Baudrillard claims, commodities are not merely to be characterized by use-value and exchange value, as in Marx's theory of the commodity, but sign-value — the expression and mark of style, prestige, luxury, power, and so on — becomes an increasingly important part of the commodity and consumption. This position was influenced by Veblen's notion of "conspicuous consumption" and display of commodities analyzed in his Theory of the Leisure Class that Baudrillard argued has become extended to everyone in the consumer society. For Baudrillard, the entire society is organized around consumption and display of commodities through which individuals gain prestige, identity, and standing. In this system, the more prestigious one's commodities (houses, cars, clothes, and so on), the higher one's standing in the realm of sign value. Thus, just as words take on meaning according to their position in a differential system of language, so sign values take on meaning according to their place in a differential system of prestige and status.

Baudrillard interprets seduction primarily as a ritual and game with its own rules, charms, snares, and lures. Seduction does not undermine, subvert, or transform existing social relations or institutions, but is a soft alternative, a play with appearances, and a game with feminism, a provocation that provoked a sharp critical response.[6] Baudrillard's concept of seduction is idiosyncratic and involves games with signs which set up seduction as an aristocratic "order of sign and ritual" in contrast to the bourgeois ideal of production, while advocating artifice, appearance, play, and challenge against the deadly serious labor of production. His writing mutates at this point into a neo-aristocratic aestheticism dedicated to stylized modes of thought and writing, which present a set of categories — reversibility, the challenge, the duel, — that move Baudrillard's thought toward a form of aristocratic aestheticism and metaphysics. Stanford

God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life

Recently, Nicholi published a book called The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life. In it, he provides a new dimension to the argument by adding “a third voice … in the form of their biographies.” We know what the two men believed — but how did those beliefs shape who they were? by Gina R. Dalfonzo

Sigmund Freud was an atheist nearly all his life. Lewis too was attracted to a materialistic explanation of the universe, perhaps even more than Freud. The scientist, drawing on what he believed to be a universal ambivalence about father figures, tried to explain religion as “wishful thinking” about a supernatural father. But Lewis didn’t wish religion was true; he wanted no divine figure interfering in his life. It wasn’t until his early 30s, after several of his friends had become Christians, that he decided to examine the evidence — to actually read the Bible. To his shock and dismay, he realized that story had all the elements of truth. He became a “reluctant convert” to theism, or belief in God, and eventually to faith in Jesus Christ.

Freud also owned a Bible, observed by Nicholi on a visit to Freud’s daughter Anna. And he often thought and spoke in religious terms, quoted religious authors, and admitted the truth of certain theological concepts such as sin and guilt. But he wanted nothing to do with a personal faith. His wife, raised like him in an Orthodox Jewish family, once wrote, “Not being allowed to light the Sabbath lights on the first Friday night after my marriage was one of the most upsetting experiences of my life.” (Incidentally, I’ve read a good deal by and about Lewis, and there appears to be no evidence of that staunch traditionalist either ordering or forbidding his wife to do anything.)

Nicholi writes, “Both Freud’s and Lewis’s views have existed since the beginning of recorded history — the spiritual worldview, rooted primarily in ancient Israel, with its emphasis on moral truth and right conduct and its motto Thus Saith the Lord; and the materialist or ‘scientific’ worldview, rooted in ancient Greece, with its emphasis on reason and acquisition of knowledge and its motto What Says Nature?”

It’s interesting that Lewis always acknowledged that psychiatry was a useful tool, even though it often led people to believe that “the sense of Shame is . . . dangerous.” It’s also interesting that Freud himself believed in the validity of shame and guilt. Yet his closed universe, with no authority higher than science, contained few tools for dealing with good and evil. So he fell back on education. People must be taught that ethical behavior was in their own best interest, he stated; once they became well educated, they naturally would behave ethically. As Nicholi notes, “Freud wrote this in 1927 before the Nazi rise in educated Germany.” Yet even before that — as far back as 1913 — Freud confessed to a friend, “That psychoanalysis has not made the analysts themselves better, nobler, or of stronger character remains a disappointment to me.”

Lewis would not have been surprised. Where Freud proposed “a dictatorship of reason,” Lewis saw the danger of “a dictatorship of Pride.” Because Freud acknowledged no universal moral law, and thus no Lawmaker, he and his followers could only compare themselves to people around them — a practice, Lewis warned, that invariably leads to pride, “the utmost evil.” Whereas Freud’s philosophy of good and evil dealt only with the intellect, Lewis saw beyond that to the fatal flaw — the sin nature — in all human beings. Yet Freud, ironically, believed wholeheartedly in that flaw. Although he considered himself a moral person, he couldn’t understand why “other people are brutal and untrustworthy.” To a pastor friend, he wrote, “I do not break my head very much about good and evil, but I have found very little that is ‘good’ about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash.”

By contrast, Lewis’s conversion greatly expanded his capacity for love and friendship. “To believe and to pray were the beginning of extroversion,” Lewis wrote. “I had been, as they say, ‘taken out of myself.’” The self-centered misanthrope became a man who, according to his friend and biographer George Sayer, was “great fun, an extremely witty and amusing companion . . . considerate.”

Lewis, while agreeing that sexual love was greatly important, refused to see it as the only kind of love or even as the greatest. He identified four types of love: affection, friendship, sexual love and the love of one’s neighbor. The last type, which the Greeks called agape, is “a state of the will, which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.” Although this kind of love does not always come easily, it has the power to transform relationships and lives. As Nicholi writes, “As a clinician, I have observed that Agape is the key to all successful relationships, even those within groups and organizations. . . . If Agape determined how we related to others, we could save ourselves and those around us a lot of unnecessary pain.”

This giving of oneself carries over into the other types of love as well. For example, in Eros, or sexual love, even though the lover is seeking pleasure, real love helps him see the beloved as a person instead of a sexual object. (That concept could certainly revolutionize a number of relationships today.) So for Lewis, love was based ultimately on giving pleasure and happiness to others, not in seeking it for oneself. And there was not only one kind of love, but a wide and enjoyable variety.

To both men, Nicholi writes, “the question of God” was the question that made all the difference. Both men were preoccupied with it throughout their lives, but each answered it differently. Everyone’s life is different, and it’s undoubtedly true that not all atheists are gloomy and not all Christians are cheerful. But Lewis and Freud serve as excellent prototypes of their worldviews, because each not only followed his beliefs as faithfully as he could, but spent a lifetime thinking about them, speaking on them, and writing to defend them. “Perhaps Freud and Lewis represent conflicting parts of ourselves,” Nicholi says. “One part raises its voice in defiance of authority, and says with Freud, ‘I will not surrender’; another part, like Lewis, recognizes within ourselves a deep-seated yearning for a relationship with the Creator.”

Feuerbach, Fechner, Freud, Fromm

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), along with Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche, must be counted among those philosophical outsiders who rebelled against the academic philosophy of the 19th century and thought of themselves as reformers and prophets of a new culture. Although he began his career as an enthusiastic follower of Hegel, he emerged in the 1840's as a leader of the Young Hegelians, a group of radicals. Feuerbach is best known for his criticism of Idealism and religion, especially Christianity, written in the early forties. He believed that any progress in human culture and civilization required the repudiation of both. His later writings were concerned with developing a materialistic humanism and an ethics of human solidarity. These writings have been more or less ignored until recently because most scholars have regarded him primarily as the bridge between Hegel and Marx. With the recent publication of a new critical edition of his works, however, a new generation of scholars have argued that his mature views are philosophically interesting in their own right.

Fechner, Gustav Theodor, 1801–87, German philosopher and physicist, founder of psychophysics, educated at Dresden and Leipzig. He became professor of physics at Leipzig in 1834 but was forced by ill health to leave in 1839. Thereafter he devoted himself largely to the study of the relationship between body and mind, although under the name “Dr. Mises” he also wrote humorous satire. In philosophy he was an animist, maintaining that life is manifest in all objects of the universe. His greatest achievement was in the investigation of exact relationships in psychology and aesthetics. He formulated the rule known as Fechner’s, or Weber’s, law, that, within limits, the intensity of a sensation increases as the logarithm of the stimulus. Two of Fechner’s most important works were Zendavesta (1851) and Elementen der Psychophysik (1860).

Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939, Austrian psychiatrist, founder of psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud was an atheist nearly all his life. As Nicholi notes, he experienced a brief period of “wavering” in his student days, even writing to a friend, “The bad part of it, especially for me, lies in the fact that science of all things seems to demand the existence of a God.” But most of his professors, his peers, and many authors of the time were steeped in scientific materialism, and their influence prevailed. Also, the anti-Semitism pervading his native Austria — a country where 90 percent of the people called themselves Catholics — didn’t make a very good impression on the Jewish Freud. Nicholi comments, “One can understand Freud’s motivation to discredit and destroy what he called the ‘religious Weltanschauung [worldview]’ and why he referred to religion as ‘the enemy.’ ”

Fromm, Erich, 1900–1980, psychoanalyst and author: Breaking from the Freudian psychoanalytic tradition which focused largely on unconscious motivations, Fromm held that humans are products of the cultures in which they are bred. In modern, industrial societies, he maintained, they have become estranged from themselves. These feelings of isolation resulted in an unconscious desire for unity with others. Fromm’s works include Escape from Freedom (1941), The Sane Society (1955), The Art of Loving (1956), Sigmund Freud’s Mission (1958), May Man Prevail? (1973), and To Have or to Be (1976).

Hartley, Priestley, Helvétius, Holbach

Hartley, David (1705-1759): English physician and philosopher. Hartley's Observations on Man: his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749) {Amazon} offered a physiological explanation for the association of ideas in purely mechanistic terms. His classification of various types of pleasure experienced by individual human beings was the basis for the later work of Bentham.

The great men of science of today stand on the shoulders of giants. Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) was one such intellectual "giant" whose works laid the foundation for that branch of science which we now call Chemistry. Although Priestley is best known for his experiments with gases especially that which we now call oxygen, he was extraordinarily prolific in his writings on other areas of intellectual endeavors. He had important contributions in the fields of education, moral philosophy, theology, metaphysics, political economy, history and physical science.

Helvétius, Claude-Adrien (1715-1771): French philosopher, Encyclopedist, and committed hedonist. Both De l'esprit (Of Mind) (1758) and De l'homme (Of Man) (1773) {Amazon} use empiricist methods to defend a strictly materialist account of human life, according to which ethical egoism is generated by the natural desire to maximize pleasure.

Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789) was a philosopher, translator, and prominent social figure of the French Enlightenment. In his philosophical writings Holbach developed a deterministic and materialistic metaphysics which grounded his polemics against organized religion and his utilitarian ethical and political theory. As a translator, Holbach made significant contributions to the European Enlightenment in science and religion. The close circle of intellectuals that Holbach hosted and, in various ways, sponsored produced the Encyclopedia and a number of revisionary religious, ethical, and political works that contributed to the ideological basis for the French Revolution.

Vogt, Moleschott, Buchner, Haeckel and Sri Aurobindo: Riddle vs. Riddle

In 1854, Vogt gave a materialistic explanation of consciousness...like biological functions. Moleschott thought that matter contains within itself the principle of thought. Buchner popularized the theory of evolution and in Force and Matter explained that matter is the ultimate principle of life. Materialism was advanced most vigorously by Earnst Haeckel (1834-1919), whose book, The Riddle of the Universe (1899), gained wide popularity. He taught zoology and did much to popularize Darwin's theory of evolution. Frederick Mayer, HMP

N. Berdyaev, one of the leading “Neo-Christians” of modern Russia, prophesies in his book, The End of Our Time, the breakdown of modern civilisation, because he can find no meaning in any life in which the central principle is not a mystic communion with God. Materialistic civilisation has failed, but neither does mysticism seems to offer a door of escape...To these criticisms levelled against mysticism and Yoga by the modern scientific mind, Sri Aurobindo's book, The Riddle of the world, furnishes a complete and trenchant reply. Anilbaran Roy, 1940

Life is instinct with the stuff of Mind, abounds with an unconscious sensation...I use the language of the materialist Haeckel in spite of its paradoxical form. Sri Aurobindo, KENA.18.39

A Design Epistle

Design is a process. As a process products may be produced . . . or not, aesthetic elements may be included . . . or not. As a process communication will be fostered, knowledge will be promoted and truth acknowledged. Because design is a process it can be taught, measured, evaluated, owned, learned and improved. As a process, design can be applied in creative ways but does not require creativity. As a process, design also needs information and opinions from those without creative credentials but whose experience and expertise is critical.

Design as a process defines a structure, where possibilities are conceived, nested, nurtured, hatched, fed, weaned, grown, released and rejuvenated. It is where a curriculum can be developed, methods identified, exercises planned, tests given, standards met, graduate and post-graduate degrees earned. It is where certification can happen as well as accreditation, codification and preservation. Design as a process is a structure without form, agreement without capitulation, collaboration without loss or forfeiture of individuality. It is where the unconceivable is conceived and made whole.

Design as a process doesn’t limit participation, it encourages it, complements it, compels it, engages it and even permits conflicting agendas to find sanctuary. Design as a process shapes instincts into instruments, tools that produce measurable results. Art and culture are parameters of design as a process, the way love and passion are parameters of procreation. They are wants not necessarily needs. To those who understand process, how it works, the routes it takes, its elements and choices, mechanics and parameters, the advantages are available and rewards are inevitable. Define the goal, provide the conveyance and you will structure success. Design is a process. Posted by: Joseph Michael Essex at October 29, 2003 03:05 PM

Simplicity

Simplicity, simplicity! How sweet is the purity of Thy presence!
THE MOTHER

As soon as all effort disappears from a manifestation, it becomes very simple, with the simplicity of a flower opening, manifesting its beauty and spreading its fragrance without clamour or vehement gesture. And in this simplicity lies the greatest power, the power which is least mixed and least gives rise to harmful reactions. The power of the vital should be mistrusted, it is a tempter on the path of the work, and there is always a risk of falling into its trap, for it gives you the taste of immediate results; and, in our first eagerness to do the work well, we let ourselves be carried away to make use of this power. But very soon it deflects all our action from the right course and introduces a seed of illusion and death into what we do.

Be like a Flower

The Mother

Be like a flower. One must try to become like a flower: open, frank, equal, generous and kind. Do you know what it means?

A flower is open to all that surrounds it: Nature, light, the rays of the sun, the wind, etc. It exerts a spontaneous influence on all that is around it. It radiates a joy and a beauty.

It is frank: it hides nothing of its beauty, and lets it flow frankly out of itself. What is within, what is in its depths, it lets it come out so that everyone can see it.

It is equal: it has no preference. Everyone can enjoy its beauty and its perfume, without rivalry. It is equal and the same for everybody. There is no difference, or anything whatsoever.

Then generous: without reserve or restriction, how it gives the mysterious beauty and the very own perfume of Nature. It sacrifices itself entirely for our pleasure, even its life it sacrifices to express this beauty and the secret of the things gathered within itself.

And then, kind: it has such a tenderness, it is so sweet, so close to us, so loving. Its presence fills us with joy. It is always cheerful and happy.

Happy is he who can exchange his qualities with the real qualities of the flowers. Try to cultivate in yourself their refined qualities.

Education for Tomorrow

My Experiences in the Experiment for the Education for Tomorrow by Prashant Khanna

I had the benefit of receiving my education in the Centre of Education started by the Mother under her own close supervision and care. My teaching at the Mother’s International School, New Delhi, gave me enough opportunity to observe education in a cosmopolitan set-up too. Education is the art of living and therefore all life is education—this is the basic premise at the Centre in Pondicherry. It is distinctively child-oriented and the growth of the child is its pivot. Understanding the personality of the individual is the basis of education at Pondicherry.

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother held that every individual has lodged within him a spark of divinity which is his true individual Self, the ‘Psychic Being’. Alongside this are the other selves like the body, emotions and thoughts—the physical, vital and mental parts. Education must aim to help the child grow in such a manner as would enable him to realise his full potential in a harmonious blending of these various elements which constitute his personality. The Pondicherry system of education ensured that each child grew at his own pace and in a manner best suited to his individual needs and capacities.

Since its inception, this system had a unique feature, namely that it was not necessary for a student to be in the same class for all subjects! It was quite common for a child to be say in class V for certain subjects, in class VI for others and even in class VII for still some others. Such a provision imparted a very great degree of flexibility. If his personality needed more time to absorb and understand the basic concepts of a certain subject he could, without misgiving, afford to repeat his class in that subject and move forward with regard to the other subjects.

Later on, with the introduction of the ‘Free Progress’ system, as implied by its very name, the degree of flexibility became even greater as it removed even the minimal burden on the child of keeping pace with the syllabus and with his peer group. The child had the option of taking as much time as he needed on a particular lesson and moving on to the next lesson only when he inwardly felt convinced and satisfied that he had understood and exhausted the contents of that lesson. The result of such a high degree of flexibility and so much latitude was that students were able to study what really interested them and go slow on or keep for a later date what did not interest them then. In other words, education was largely something to look forward to rather than an imposition or a ‘necessary evil’.

It would be obvious that when a child studied what really interested him, his concentration and involvement became much greater, thereby greatly enhancing a qualitative retention of what he studied. The other unique contribution of the ‘Free Progress’ system was the love of learning that it fostered. The encounter with education as a student having been such a pleasant one, the eagerness to widen one’s horizons and explore new vistas in the realm of the intellect survived long after completion of formal education. There was an ambience that encouraged free discussion and even near hostile and aggressive questioning. This enabled the mental faculties to develop to an extent that one learnt the art of learning and could take flight into regions beyond formal student life.

Looking back over the decades, I feel that the Mother had largely succeeded in creating a modern day gurukul-like environment where the teacher was often like a friend and guru to the students. Life outside school tended to be a seamless extension of time spent in the school and one had ample opportunity to meet, play and discuss with the teachers issues and subjects often unrelated to pure academics. There was also always present before the students the example of the teacher himself and it is a well-known fact that the most effective teaching is by example—practice rather than precept.

That a healthy mind resides in a healthy body is now a recognised tenet of education in good educational institutions, but in Pondicherry this was implemented as far back as 40 years ago with a rigour beyond the farthest stretches of imagination of people elsewhere. It might come as a surprise that the time spent in sports, exercise, athletics was as much as in studies. It extended to almost 3 full hours, starting from 4.30 p.m. and going upto 7.30 p.m. and sometimes beyond. Alongside studies and games, a lot of importance was attached to cultural activities, and I have till date not seen cultural programmes being organised in other schools on such a scale and frequency.

The spiritual needs of the children and the youth were met by the Mother herself, who kindled in the children the psychic spark and oversaw with great care, love and sympathy the progress made by each child. There were regular classes in which she closely interacted with the children and nurtured them along the path to divinity. She went to the length of reading out children’s stories accompanied with dramatic gestures and intonation and modulation of voice and then eliciting from them a fuller and deeper understanding of the issues involved. CALL BEYOND

Böehme, Boyle, Bohr, Bohm

Jakob Böehme (1575-1624) was a Renaissance shoemaker whose radical and mystical theology is consistent with modern knowledge of the relationship of the physical world to nonlocal reality, and of the dynamics of the psyche. One need only mention Schelling's famous book on human freedom which is thoroughly dependent on Boehme's vision of the genesis of God, world, and man. From here, Boehme's indirect influence reaches Hegel and Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Hartmann, Bergson and Heidegger. Boehme's ideas of process in creation and Deity presaged Whitehead's process theology. He was also frequently cited by Carl G. Jung in illustrating the transformative dynamics of the psyche's "alchemical" individuation process. Boehme himself apparently was aware that he was using alchemical symbolism in a psychological way. Albert Schweitzer seems especially to be true to the Boehme spirit of an independent Protestant mysticism consistent with modern knowledge.

Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, noted for his work in physics and chemistry. Although his research and personal philosophy clearly has its roots in the alchemical tradition, he is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist. Besides being a busy natural philosopher, Boyle devoted much time to theology, showing a very decided leaning to the practical side and an indifference to controversial polemics. He spent large sums in promoting the spread of Christianity in the East, contributing liberally to missionary societies, and to the expenses of translating the Bible or portions of it into various languages. By his will he founded the Boyle lectures, for proving the Christian religion against "notorious infidels, viz, atheists, theists, pagans, Jews and Mahommedans," with the proviso that controversies between Christians were not to be mentioned.

Niels Bohr, 1885–1962, Danish physicist, one of the foremost scientists of modern physics. In 1922, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them". Bohr also conceived the principle of complementarity: that items could be separately analyzed as having several contradictory properties. For example, physicists currently conclude that light is both a wave and a stream of particles - two apparently mutually exclusive properties - based on this principle. Bohr also found philosophical applications for this daringly original principle.

David Bohm, 1917-1992, was one of the world's greatest quantum mechanical physicists and philosophers, deeply influenced by both J. Krishnamurti and Albert Einstein. Bohm's scientific and philosophical views were inseparable. In 1959, he read a book by the Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti. He was impressed by the way his own ideas on quantum mechanics meshed with the philosophical ideas of Krishnamurti. Bohm's approach to philosophy and physics receive expression in his 1980 book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, and in the book Science, Order and Creativity. Bohm also made significant theoretical contributions to neuropsychology and the development of the holonomic model [1] of the functioning of the brain, in collaboration with Karl Pribram.

Plutarch, Plotinus, Petrarch, Pascal

Plutarch (circa 45-125 A.D.)Priest of the Delphic Oracle: For many years Plutarch served as one of the two priests at the temple of Apollo at Delphi (the site of the famous Delphic Oracle) twenty miles from his home. By his writings and lectures Plutarch became a celebrity in the Roman empire, yet he continued to reside where he was born, and actively participated in local affairs, even serving as mayor. At his country estate, guests from all over the empire congregated for serious conversation, presided over by Plutarch in his marble chair. Many of these dialogues were recorded and published, and the 78 essays and other works which have survived are now known collectively as the Moralia. Plutarch's essays and his lectures established him as a leading thinker in the Roman empire's golden age.

Plotinus (204/5-270 C.E.), is generally regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism. He is one of the most influential philosophers in antiquity after Plato and Aristotle. The term ‘Neoplatonism’ is an invention of early 19th century European scholarship and indicates the penchant of historians for dividing ‘periods’ in history. In fact, Plotinus (like all his successors) regarded himself simply as a Platonist, that is, as an expositor and defender of the philosophical position whose greatest exponent was Plato himself. Originality was thus not held as a premium by Plotinus. Nevertheless, Plotinus realized that Plato needed to be interpreted. In addition, between Plato and himself, Plotinus found roughly 600 years of philosophical writing, much of it reflecting engagement with Plato and the tradition of philosophy he initiated. The three basic principles of Plotinus' metaphysics are called by him ‘the One’ (or, equivalently, ‘the Good’), Intellect, and Soul.

Petrarch (1304-1374) was regarded as the greatest scholar of his age, who combined interest in classical culture and Christianity and left deep influence on literature throughout Western Europe. The majority of his works Petrarch wrote in Latin, although his sonnets and canzoni written in Italy were equally influential. Petrarch was known as a devoted student of antiquity, who had a passion for finding and commenting on the works of the ancients. Scholar, poet, and humanist, a major force in the development of the Renaissance, he is famous for his poems addressed to Laura, an idealized beloved.

His father died in September 1651 and following this Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) wrote to one of his sisters giving a deeply Christian meaning to death in general and his father's death in particular. His ideas here were to form the basis for his later philosophical work Pensées. Not long after he underwent another religious experience, on 23 November 1654, and he pledged his life to Christianity. He began to publish anonymous works on religious topics, eighteen Provincial Letters being published during 1656 and early 1657. Pascal's most famous work in philosophy is Pensées, a collection of personal thoughts on human suffering and faith in God which he began in late 1656 and continued to work on during 1657 and 1658. This work contains 'Pascal's wager' which claims to prove that belief in God is rational with the following argument. If God does not exist, one will lose nothing by believing in him, while if he does exist, one will lose everything by not believing.

Sri Aurobindo, Carl Jung, Jean Gebser, & Richard Maurice Bucke

Todisco, Maria A.

The psychology of consciousness evolution: an inquiry into the psychological dimensions of current theories (transpersonal, Sri Aurobindo, Carl Jung, Jean Gebser, Richard Maurice Bucke)

Degree: PH.D./ California Institute of Integral Studies; 0392. Adviser: Lawrence M. Spiro.- 1997 // DAI, Vol. 58-05b, page 2725, 00289 Pages.

ABSTRACT: The psychology of consciousness evolution is not currently established as a coherent field of study in its own right. This work selects four major theorists that discuss themes pertinent to the psychology underlying the posited expansion of self from the personal to the transpersonal. The increasing spiritual intimations that accompany this shift are given voice by evoking and unfolding the elements in the four theorists' work which express them. The writings of Sri Aurobindo, Carl Jung, Jean Gebser, and Richard Maurice Bucke are analyzed according to four developed Dimensions of relevant literature, which, together, form a gestalt that allows for a richer, more comprehensive vision of the material than is readily available in most other sources.

The bulk of the work addresses what these four theorists express as a current qualitative shift in consciousness and communicates some of its intimate psychological dynamics. Similar concepts are then extracted from the selections of these theorists' works and synthesized into five prominent themes. Speculations regarding the possible future of this emerging consciousness, as exemplified by the vision of Andrew Harvey and others, are then tentatively discussed. This effort is offered as preliminary research towards establishing a field of study directly concerned with the psychology of consciousness evolution.

Paul Tillich, Teilhard, Radhakrishnan and Sri Aurobindo

Tilak, Samadanam John

Nature, history and spirit: a theological investigation on nature, history and spirit in trialogue among western secularism, hindu spiritualism and christian trinitarian faith

Degree: S.T.D.- 1977 / Lutheran School Of Theology; 0309 // DAI, VOL. 42-02A, Page 0749, 00214 Pages.

ABSTRACT: This dissertation is a comparative study of the Christian theologians Paul Tillich and Teilhard de Chardin and the Hindu philosophers Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan and Aurobindo Ghosh. The constructive proposal of this study assumes that the Holy Spirit as interpreted in the Christian dogma of the Trinity both relates nature and history and also transcends nature and history in a higher vision of reality. The particular thesis of this study is that "spirit" is the key which relates nature and history and thereby offers a unified concept of reality which integrates Hindu and Christian thought.

• An initial chapter outlines the ideas of nature and history in the history of Western and Hindu thought. The idea of nature in Western thought is discussed in the Greek view, the Renaissance view, and the Modern view, following R. G. Collingwood. The Greek, Medieval, and Modern ideas of history in Western thought are then surveyed.
• The idea of nature in Hindu thought focuses on the idea of "maya" in the classical and modern periods. The classical and modern idea of history in Hindu thought is then summarized.
• The second chapter analyzes the positions of Tillich, Teilhard, Radhakrishnan, and Aurobindo on the ideas of nature and history.
• The third chapter critically analyzes the attempts of the four thinkers to synthesize the ideas of nature and history in the idea of spirit.
• First, Tillich and Radhakrishnan are compared. In Tillich spirit is conceived as appearing as life in nature and as creative presence in history. In Radhakrishnan spirit is conceived as the source of nature and as a cosmic presence in history. Points of agreement and disagreement between Tillich and Radhakrishnan on nature, history, and spirit are assessed.
• Then, the positions of Teilhard and Aurobindo are brought into dialogue. In Teilhard spirit is conceived as the radial energy and personal power of love which relates nature and history. In Aurobindo spirit is conceived as the divine essence and activating cosmic force in the evolutionary process of nature and history. Points of agreement and disagreement between Teilhard and Aurobindo on nature, history, and spirit are assessed.
• A final chapter discusses the the relation of nature, history, and spirit in western secularism, Hindu spiritualism, and Christian trinitarian faith. Previous chapters are summarized. The positions of Tillich and Teilhard are criticized from the viewpont of the dogma of the Trinity. Tillich interprets the doctrine of the Trinity too exclusively in ontological terms; Teilhard too exclusively in cosmological terms. Western secularism and Hindu spiritualism are characterized.

A constructive argument is made for the position that the view of spirit in the Christian dogma of the Trinity unifies and transform our understanding of nature and history. This position maintains both the immanent and the transcendent understanding of spirit as well as the interpersonal relation of nature and history.

Herald and pioneer of future man

Sri Aurobindo, 1872-1972; herald and pioneer of future man, a centenary symposium

- London: Sri Aurobindo Society of Great Britain, 1972.- xi, 58 p. port. 23 cm.- NOTES: Limited ed. of 500 copies. Includes bibliographical references.- ISBN: 0950241911

• Editor's introduction
• Sri Aurobindo: The teaching of Sri Aurobindo
• Parish, M.: Sri Aurobindo and his Ashram
• Basu, A.: Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of evolution
• Smart, N.: Sri Aurobindo and history
• Měhling, J.: Auroville and the crisis of our time
• The Mother: A force greater than the mind
• Schnapper, E.: The old and the new
• Sri Aurobindo: A new and larger synthesis
• Davies, D.: Facets of integration
• Mukherjee, P.: The man who never smiled
• Kleinman, R.: The concept of an integral absolute in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy
• Sri Aurobindo: Man has to exceed himself

Collaboration and real brotherhood

THE CHARTER OF AUROVILLE
1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
2. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
3. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realizations.
4. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.

THE DREAM
"There should be somewhere on Earth a place which no nation could claim as its own, where all human beings of goodwill who have a sincere aspiration could live freely as citizens of the world and obey one single authority, that of the supreme truth; a place of peace, concord and harmony, where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer the causes of his sufferings and miseries, to surmount his weaknesses and ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and incapacities; a place where the needs of the spirit and concern for progress would take precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions, the search for pleasure and material enjoyment.

"In this place, children would be able to grow and develop integrally without losing contact with their souls; education would be given not for passing examinations or obtaining certificates and posts but to enrich existing faculties and bring forth new ones. In this place, titles and positions would be replaced by opportunities to serve and organize; the bodily needs of everyone would be equally provided for, and intellectual, moral and spiritual superiority would be expressed in the general organization not by an increase in the pleasures and powers of life but by increased duties and responsibilities. Beauty in all its artistic forms, painting, sculpture, music, literature, would be equally accessible to all; the ability to share in the joy it brings would be limited only by the capacities of each one and not by social and financial position.

"For in this ideal place money would no longer be the sovereign lord; individual worth would have a far greater importance than that of material wealth and social standing. There, work would not be a way of earning one's living but a means of expressing oneself and of developing one's capacities and possibilities while being of service to the community as a whole, which, for its own part, would provide for each individual's subsistence and sphere of action.

"In short, it would be a place where human relationships, which are normally based almost exclusively on competition and strife, would be replaced by relationships of emulation in doing well, of collaboration and real brotherhood." The Mother wrote these words in 1954.

Of life elsewhere

How does Sir James Jeans or any other scientist know that it was by a "mere accident" that life came into existence or that there is no life anywhere else in the universe or that life elsewhere must either be exactly the same as life here under the same conditions or not existent at all? These are mere mental speculations without any conclusiveness in them. Life can be an accident only if the whole world also is an accident — a thing created by Chance and governed by Chance. It is not worthwhile to waste time on this kind of speculation, for it is only the bubble of a moment.

The material universe is only the façade of an immense building which has other structures behind it, and it is only if one knows the whole that one can have some knowledge of the truth of the material universe. There are vital, mental and spiritual ranges behind which give the material its significance. SRI AUROBINDO, Letters on Yoga, Volume 1, Section Four, REASON, SCIENCE AND YOGA

On Bergson

I have not read him [Bergson] sufficiently to pronounce. So far as I know, he seems to have some perception of the dynamic creative intuition involved in Life, but none of the truly supra-rational intuition above. If so, his Intuition which he takes to be the sole secret of things is only a secondary manifestation of something transcendent which is itself only the "rays of the Sun".
***
No, it [Bergson's "élan vital"] is not the supramental. But Bergson's "intuition" seems to be a Life Intuition which is of course the supramental fragmented and modified to act as a Knowledge in "Life-in-Matter". I can't say definitively yet, but that is the impression it gave me.
***
He [Bergson] sees Consciousness (Chit) not in its essential truth but as a creative Force = a sort of transcendent Life-Energy descending into Matter and acting there.
***
[Élan Vital:] Not Sachchidananda but Chit-shakti in the disguise of Pranashakti. Bergson is, I believe, a vitalist (as opposed to a materialist on one side and an idealist on the other) with a strong perception of Time (in Upanishadic times they speculated whether Time was not the Brahman and some schools held that idea). So for him Brahman = Consciousness-Force = Time-Force = Life-Force. But the last two he sees vividly while the first which is the real thing behind creation he sees very dimly.
***
Instinct and intuition as described by him [Bergson] are vital, but it is possible to develop a corresponding mental intuition, and that is probably what he suggests — and which depends not on thought but a sort of mental direct contact with things. This is not exactly mysticism, though it is a first step towards it.
***
I suppose Bergson must already know what the "mystics" say about the matter and has put his own interpretation or value upon it. So he would not at all be impressed by your suggestion. He would say, "I know all about that already."

SRI AUROBINDO, Letters on Yoga,

Volume 1, Section Four, REASON, SCIENCE AND YOGA

When doubt is impossible

I have started writing about doubt, but even in doing so I am afflicted by the "doubt" whether any amount of writing or of anything else can ever persuade the eternal doubt in man which is the penalty of his native ignorance.

In the first place, to write adequately would mean anything from 60 to 600 pages, but not even 6000 convincing pages would convince doubt. For doubt exists for its own sake; its very function is to doubt always and, even when convinced, to go on doubting still; it is only to persuade its entertainer to give it board and lodging that it pretends to be an honest truth-seeker.

This is a lesson I have learnt from the experience both of my own mind and of the minds of others; the only way to get rid of doubt is to take discrimination as one's detector of truth and falsehood and under its guard to open the door freely and courageously to experience.

All the same I have started writing, but I will begin not with doubt but with the demand for the Divine as a concrete certitude, quite as concrete as any physical phenomenon caught by the senses. Now, certainly, the Divine must be such a certitude not only as concrete but more concrete than anything sensed by ear or eye or touch in the world of Matter; but it is a certitude not of mental thought but of essential experience.

When the Peace of God descends on you, when the Divine Presence is there within you, when the Ananda rushes on you like a sea, when you are driven like a leaf before the wind by the breath of the Divine Force, when Love flowers out from you on all creation, when Divine Knowledge floods you with a Light which illumines and transforms in a moment all that was before dark, sorrowful and obscure, when all that is becomes part of the One Reality, when the Reality is all around you, you feel at once by the spiritual contact, by the inner vision, by the illumined and seeing thought, by the vital sensation and even by the very physical sense, everywhere you see, hear, touch only the Divine.

Then you can much less doubt it or deny it than you can deny or doubt daylight or air or the sun in heaven — for of these physical things you cannot be sure but they are what your senses represent them to be; but in the concrete experiences of the Divine, doubt is impossible. SRI AUROBINDO, Letters on Yoga, Volume 1, Section Four, REASON, SCIENCE AND YOGA

Exclusive Concentration and Unconcealment

Sri Aurobindo
THE LIFE DIVINE

2.1.13: Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance

In this chapter, Sri Aurobindo attempts to resolve an age-old metaphysical question in absolute speculative fashion with remarkable success. It is interesting to note that this piece of philosophical wizardry has resonance in Heidegger's Unconcealment.

Three Madnesses and Five Dreams

Three Madnesses & The Five Dreams of Sri Aurobindo

Three madnesses

In a letter to his wife, Sri Aurobindo spoke of his Three Madnesses.

Five dreams

On the eve of India's independence, Sri Aurobindo revealed his Five Dreams in a message broadcast over radio.

Invitation

"With wind and the weather beating round me

Up to the hill and the moorland I go.

Who will come with me? Who will climb with me?

Wade through the brook and tramp through the snow?"

-Sri Aurobindo-

Six pillars vs. Scepticism

Six pillars: introductions to the major works of Sri Aurobindo

- Chambersburg, Pa.: Wilson Books, 1974.- ix, 198 p.: port.; 21 cm.- SERIES: [South and Southeast Asia studies].- NOTES: Bibliography: p. 194-198. .- ISBN: 0890120013

• Savitri; poetic expression of spiritual experience, by John Collins
• The foundations of Indian culture; its contemporary significance, by Thomas Berry
• The vision of the Purushottama in Essays on the Gita, by Thomas J. Hopkins
• A new yoga for a new age: a critical introduction to The synthesis of yoga, by J. Bruce Long
• A pragmatic approach to The human cycle, by Eugene Fontinell
• The life divine; Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of evolution and transformation, by Robert A. McDermott

Zinkin, Taya. Book Review -- Heehs, P. Sri Aurobindo: A Brief Biography

Having fled from British justice to Pondicherry, Aurobindo met Mme Richard - the Mother - and soon became a recluse. He spent twenty-four years locked in three rooms, accessible to his devotees only through the Mother. During that time his philosophical outpourings were gargantuan; whether they are profound is debatable. However, what is remarkable is that during the time in spent in seclusion, emerging only a few times a year for brief blessings of his devotees, he kept walking back and forth for ten hours every day, wearing a channel two feet deep in the floor of his three rooms. The author, who devotes the last part of his book to the philosophy and the writings of Sri Aurobindo, is more than discreet about the part played by the Mother and presents a picture of Ashram austerity and saintliness which is at variance with this reviewer's memory of the facts.

Sri Aurobindo and St. Bonaventure

Stoeber, Michael

Mysticism in Aurobindo and Bonaventure: a comparative study

- Ottawa: National Library of Canada, 1987.- 3 microfiches (148 fr.); 11 x 15 cm.- SERIES: Canadian theses = Thčses canadiennes.- NOTES: Thesis (M.A.)--University of Calgary, 1986. Includes bibliography.- ISBN: 0315327596

A. N. Whitehead and Sri Aurobindo

Simmons, Ernest Lee

Process pluralism and integral non-dualism: a comparative study of the divine in the thought of Alfred North Whitehead and Sri Aurobindo Ghose

- 1981.- x, 328 leaves, bound; 28 cm.- NOTES: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Claremont Graduate School; 0047, 1981. Bibliography: leaves 320-328. Microfiche. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1981. 4 fiches; 10 x 15 cm.- DAI, VOL. 42-07A, Page 3197, 00338 Pages.

ABSTRACT: Today's unprecedented confluence of religious and philosophical traditions calls for attention to the question of how religious viewpoints can be constructively related without abrogating either side. The present comparative study is one response to this concern. The purpose is two-fold;

• first, to test the ability of Whitehead's philosophical system, originating in Western exoteric scientific analysis, to take account of the experience of Aurobindo, an Eastern mystic in the esoteric tradition of Advaita Vedanta and,
• second, to determine whether the philosophical articulation of such non-dual experience can be found at all compatible with Whitehead.

The major conclusion of this study is that Whitehead's metaphysics can adequately account for Aurobindo's experience and philosophy, indicating that a metaphysics grounded in process can be relevant to the articulation of at least one form of mystical experience. Thus the claim of multiplicity and becoming to express the nature of mystical reality may be equal to that of unity and being. Under such circumstances Whitehead's metaphysics may be helpful in grounding inter-religious dialog as well as assisting in the integration of exoteric and esoteric experience.

In his yogic practice Aurobindo contended that he had had four major realizations;

• Nirvana (non-duality),
• Cosmic Consciousness in the personal Divine of Vasudeva,
• Integral Brahman (static and dynamic) and
• overmental descent leading to Supermind.

A Whiteheadian analysis of yogic method was then shown to involve the silencing of symbolic reference to allow for perception in the two pure modes alone. Perception in presentational immediacy could produce the experience of the illusoriness of the phenomenal world, and causal efficacy without referential specificity may result in the experience of a non-specific unity of reality. These results parallel Aurobindo's experience of the silencing of thought and the unqualified non-duality of Nirvana.

If Whitehead's system is to allow for Aurobindo's other realizations, in some way the unity of Divine experience must be prehendable. The prehendability of any actual entity is via the entity as superject which must also be true of God. The unitive satisfaction of the Primordial and Consequent Natures is prehendable through God as superject which is the Superjective Nature. As a superjective unity, the subjective form of God's physical and conceptual feelings would then be accessible by physical and hybrid physical prehensions analogous to the experience of Supermind as discolsive of the Divine. Through a clearer understanding of the function of God as superject several internal problems in Whiteheadian metaphysics are resolved as well as accounting for the major realizations of Aurobindo.

Aurobindo integrated his philosophy by means of two novel concepts; the "triple poise" Brahman understood as Transcendent, Universal and Individual and Supermind conceived as the "connecting link" between Sachchidananda and Matter-Life-Mind. The triple poise

Spiritual anarchy

Sherer, Jean Benedict

ABSTRACT

Setting the Words to Music:

Sri Aurobindo Ghose's Theological Encounter with the Modern World

evaluates the political ideology, theology and attendant organizations of Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) as agents in the modernization of India. Modernization is described as the processes by which societies become increasingly individualistic, egalitarian, literate, democratic and industrialized. The Indian caste system suggests additional processes, such as Sanskritization.

• Between 1892 and 1908, Aurobindo espoused an Extremist Party programme of swaraj, swadeshi, boycott and National Education. His methods--political meetings and journalism--and his message--swaraj or Indian independence--were modernized and modernizing.
• In 1910, after a year in prison and extensive yogic experimentation, Aurobindo turned from political activism to spiritual sadhana. The theological system he created, integral or purna advaita, worked major themes of Indian tradition into a synthetic whole. Aurobindo's integralism was unusual in that it sought the transformation of self and world into perfect expressions of the divine.
• The social ideal he sought went beyond modernity as conceived in the West to a post- modern "spiritual anarchy" in which the identity of individuals with the divine took priority over communalism. The organizations that grew out of the Aurobindian synthesis, especially the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville, illustrate Aurobindo's integralism as a practical discipline. The Ashram in Pondicherry pursues a relatively traditional sadhana and attempts to train a community of yogins capable of spearheading evolution towards divinity.
• In Auroville, the residents attempt to build a model community according to Aurobindian principles, particularly his ideas of evolution toward divinity and "spiritual anarchy." Auroville's internationalism and social commitment make Aurobindoism more than "just a cult." Aurobindo's theology, Auroville and the Ashram all seek a spiritually-grounded response to the inadequacies of modernity.
• Their contributions to the practical modernization of India have been limited--a spiritual a priori is always inconsistent with modern rationalism-- yet they indicate alternatives to uncritical social development.

[1th ed.].- 1983.- xv, 346 leaves; 28 cm.- NOTES: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Emory University; 0665, 1983. Bibliography: leaves [335]-346.- DAI, VOL. 44-12A, Page 3717, 00369 Pages.- [2th ed.].- 1984.- xv, 346 p.- NOTES: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Emory University, 1983. Bibliography: p. [335]-346. Photocopy. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1984. 21 cm.