June 14, 2015

Evolution and the Veda

Justin Just to be fair, it’s not that I’m averse to difficult prose; and there were other specific things about my first impressions of Whitehead that I mentioned besides just the flowing concrescences of jargon. I am not intending on demeaning him in any way. And I never mentioned Russell, although I have mentioned Panikkar who I think is a good example of someone with new concepts, word coinages, challenging prose style, etc, but who seems, to me at least, to be much more eloquent and fleshes out his concepts and coinages carefully and coherently rather than in a chaotic muddle. I don’t see how anything could ‘do violence’ to the chaotic depths. I think it is usually the chaotic depths that do violence to us! But I also conceded that I have not really read Whitehead and that this was only a first impression…

#Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul http://t.co/anS92OiXNe





Didn’t realize they were working on an RV translation together. What a great team of scholars to do that.

Sanjeev Sabhlok


Sanjeev Sabhlok. Now for the next round (previous). Here is Kalicharan Tuvij's response (bolding, underline, colouring are mine): 
India should be seen as the world's greatest melting pot, not as the originator of proto-indo-aryan, but the developer and innovator of these and many more ideas.
The only sensible solution is to have an In and Out Theory. Surely ideas came into India, and surely many went outside India. We are talking about a period of 2500 years (4000-1500 bc). Why would there only be ONE directional flow (from any side)?

In 2003, Rod published Sri Aurobindo and the Logic of the Infinite: Essays for the new Millennium. Other publications includeThe Poetry of Sri Aurobindo – Mantra, Metrics and Meaning (2009), and The Philosophy of Evolution – Darwin and Sri Aurobindo(2011).

From 2005 to 2013 Rod has lectured on philosophy and poetry at the University of Human Unity in Auroville, where he was also Principal of New Era Secondary School. During May-August 2013 he has presented a series of workshops on the Kena Upanishad and Savitri in the USA. Texts and audio recordings of these and other presentations are available at http://universityofhumanunity.org/

The Philosophy of Evolution by Rod Hemsell (ebook) - University of ...

www.universityofhumanunity.org/bibliodetail.php?biblioid=2407
Oct 10, 2014 - As presented here, The Philosophy of Evolution, is a compendium of lectures presented by Rod Hemsell at the University of Human Unity in ...

Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=1477554327
Georges Van Vrekhem - 2012 - ‎No preview - ‎More editions
Besides, what is nowadays generally labelled as Darwinism hardly resembles what Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species, but is the result of scientific developments at times considered anti-Darwinian. This book narrates the relevant events in ...

Hitler and His God: The Background to the Nazi Phenomenon

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=1477573321
Georges Van Vrekhem - 2012 - ‎No preview - ‎More editions
The author analyses Mein Kampf, the book in which Hitler laid bare his thoughts and intentions without being believed.



Music And Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=0857457144
Steven Brown, ‎Ulrik Volgsten - 2011 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions
This volume is the first to address the social ramifications of music’s behaviorally manipulative effects, its morally questionable uses and control mechanisms, and its economic and artistic regulation through commercialization, thus ...

Savitri Era of those who adore, Om Sri Aurobindo & The Mother.








The Immanent Frame
From personalism to liberalism? - In his paper “Personalism, Community and the Origins of Human Rights,” Samuel Moyn argues that a relatively understudied current of Catholic political thou...
2 days ago

[Catholic political thought underwent a transformation  - doctrine of human rights on the basis of human “person,”] http://t.co/15Uhk5pSGS

[in the 1930s Maritain developed a range of arguments on behalf of a Christian embrace of democracy and human rights] http://t.co/AGkYN63xaw

Samuel Taylor Coleridge « The Immanent Frame
Dec 22, 2010 ... For once, practice actually lags behind theory. In their very interesting post on “ Reconceiving the secular and the practice of the liberal arts,” ...
Losing sight of reason « The Immanent Frame
Oct 9, 2014 ... From Thomas Aquinas, Pfau jumps to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Henry Newman. Both were Anglican and Romantic. Newman ...
Ancient questions for modern answers « The Immanent Frame
Oct 23, 2014 ... But the former conception is finally rescued by an unlikely hero, Samuel TaylorColeridge, who is able to show us the way back to what we have ...
Mindful love: On Thomas Pfau's critical appropriation of Thomist ...
Oct 9, 2014 ... Although Pfau places the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge at the center of his examination of modernity, the conceptual protagonist of the book ...
Playing God « The Immanent Frame
Nov 5, 2014 ... It is as though Pfau must conjure an Enlightenment of the most frightful proportions in order to dramatize the struggle of Coleridge and other ...


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June 02, 2015

From cultural biases and ideologies to metaphor and aesthetic practices

New blog posting: the Introduction (current draft) of my book-in-progress DISCOGNITION. http://t.co/XHcKYn77QN
Steven Shaviro at The Pinocchio Theory 
Here is the current draft of the Introduction to the book I am trying to write this summer, Discognition: Fictions and Fabulations of Sentience. Of course it is subject to revision. What is consciousness? How does subjective experience occur? Which entities are conscious? Or, to put things as particularly as possible: what is it like […

The modern empirical scientific method is sometimes described as a process of “torturing nature to reveal her secrets” — a phrase often wrongly attributed to Francis Bacon. Philosophers of science also like to quote Isaac Newton’s Hypotheses non fingo (“I feign no hypotheses”). But a much better account of actual scientifc practice is the one proposed by Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers, who say that scientists work by negotiating with nonhuman entities, and by entering into alliances with them. Scientists do not get very far by treating the things they are interested in as mute and inert objects to be dissected. They do much better when they are somehow able to collaboratewith the very entities that they seek to observe and explain.
Alfred North Whitehead, a major inspiration for both Latour and Stengers, notes that if the “rigid… Baconian method of induction” had been “consistently pursued,” it “would have left science where it found it.” Nothing new would ever have been discovered. The same can be said for Newton’s claim of making no hypotheses. Whitehead insists that science needs, not just empirical observation and induction, but also “the play of a free imagination, controlled by the requirements of coherence and logic.” That is to say, a certain degree of speculation is always necessary in scientific research. This speculation has to be “controlled” in some manner; it cannot be altogether arbitrary and unbounded. But without speculation, science is caught in a rut. It cannot stretch beyond the given, immediate facts, in order to provide a plausible explanation for these facts.
The speculative process described by Whitehead is roughly similar to what Charles Sanders Peirce calls abduction. For Peirce, abduction stands in contrast to — and supplements — both deduction and induction. Deduction starts with conditions that are already given, and traces out a chain of logical consequences for those conditions. Induction, for its part, generalizes on the basis of an already given set of particular observations. According to Peirce, neither deduction nor induction can actually suggest anything new. Abduction, in contrast, makes a sort of leap into novelty. It shifts register: suggesting a higher-order explanation for the circumstances with which it is concerned, or positing a possible cause for the effects in view. Science is often praised for having — as other human disciplines do not — an intrinsic self-correcting mechanism. But without first engaging in abduction or speculation, science would never come up with any material to confirm or deny, or to self-correct.
Because it requires flights of speculation, as well as because it requires collaboration among many separate entities, science can never be purely human, nor purely rational. This is why efforts to place science on a pedestal, radically separating it from other forms of thought and endeavor, are so deeply mistaken. Empricial science and rational discourse are largely continuous with other ways of feeling, understanding, and engaging with the world. These include art, myth, religion, and narrative, together with the nonhuman modes of inference exhibited by other sorts of organisms.
We should therefore always be alert to the deep bioligical roots of scientific experimentation and discovery. As Björn Brembs points out, there has recently been a major change of paradigm in neuroscience: a “dramatic shift in perspectives from input/output to output/input.”

My very brief account of speculative realism is now finally online, both in English and in Spanish translation: http://t.co/sV6BGVcUos
Modern Western philosophy – at least since Immanuel Kant published his “Critique of Pure Reason” in 1781 – has tended to privilege epistemology over ontology. Ontology is concerned with the nature of being, with defining, on the most basic level, what is. Epistemology, in contrast, is concerned with how we know whatever it is that we know. It scrutinizes the grounds and limits of our ability to know the world. To say that epistemology must come before ontology is simply to point out that, in order to make assertions about what the world is like, we must be able to give grounds for these assertions, to explain how we can know that they are true. Kant observed that the philosophy of his time was unable to provide such grounds. Either it was dogmatic, claiming to discover metaphysical necessity by pure logical deduction, untethered to observation or empirical evidence; or else it wassceptical, grounded in empirical facts and in subjective experience, but unable to generalize beyond these particular facts and that immediate experience. Against both of these tendencies, Kant insisted that philosophy must start by scrutinizing, and thereby accounting for, its own foundations. If it failed to do this, and instead launched directly into metaphysical speculation, then only nonsense would result. For Kant, and for most philosophers ever since, we can only claim to know something (rather than just believing something blindly) when we can explain how we have come to know it, and what justifies our claims that it is true.
In principle, this priority of epistemology over ontology seems unexceptionable. But in practice, it has become quite problematic. For it means that we end up talking not about things in the world that we encounter, but rather about our own process of encountering them. Kant insists that “things in themselves” are unknowable; all we can really be sure of isphenomena – how things appear to us. In the centuries since Kant, this has become a sort of common sense. Today we take it for granted that we can never see things as they really are, because we can never escape the distorting lenses of our own impositions on the world. Today, these impositions have gone beyond Kant’s categories to include such things as language, our particular cognitive mechanisms, and our cultural biases and ideologies.
Epistemological reflection is important, because it makes us aware of our own prejudices and otherwise unquestioned assumptions. But at the same time, ironically, such reflection makes it nearly impossible for us to escape from these biases and assumptions. We are trapped inside our own perspectives, unable to take a view from any where else. ...

Harman revises Kant, and reintroduces the need for speculation, by both extending and exploding one of Kant’s most basic claims. Where Kant says that we can not know things in themselves because we can only experience them in terms of the frameworks that we ourselves impose upon them, Harman generalizes this situation to all entities in the cosmos. It is not just human beings, or rational beings, who apprehend the world in particular, limited ways. The world contains a multitude of objects, and none of these objects has access to any other object (or even to itself) in more than a superficial manner. For Harman, Kant is right when he insists upon finitude, or the unsurpassable limits of our knowledge. But Kant is wrong when he claims to establish human-centered structures that are complete and certain, at least within those limits. We don’t impose conditions upon the world, so much as we are trapped within our own limited ability to make sense of the world. Kant says that we must not speculate about things that we cannot know. Harman replies that, precisely because we cannot know things in themselves, the only thing that is left to us is to speculate. We cannot grasp objects cognitively; but we can allude to objects through metaphor and other aesthetic practices. In this way we can cherish things, even though we do not fully understand them. And such is the route of speculation: “the real is something that cannot be known, only loved.” ...

In sum, the speculative realists all find ways to circumvent Kant’s prohibition of metaphysical speculation. They work to resist the anthropocentrism that results from Kant’s privileging of epistemology over ontology. For Meillassoux and for Brassier, the way to overcome the constraints of Kantian epistemology is to realize that the limitations upon possible knowledge discovered by Kant are not inscribed within our own cognitive faculties, so much as they are already features of things in themselves, which are irreducibly contingent (Meillassoux) or non-conceptual (Brassier). For Harman and for Grant, meanwhile, the privilege accorded to human cognition must itself be put into question. Human perception and understanding are less special than we generally believe; for they belong to a much broader spectrum of processes of relation and causal influence. What I do when I contemplate a ball of cotton is not far different from what dye does when it colors a ball of cotton, or for that matter from what fire does when it burns a ball of cotton. For Harman, these are all instances of “vicarious contact” between distinctly separate entities. And for Grant, they are all transformations that are driven by, but that also halt and reify, the incessant productivity of Nature. Epistemology cannot be given priority, because understanding and knowing are themselves caught up within larger movements for which they cannot themselves account. All these thinkers take up speculation, not as a way to discover higher “dogmatic” truths, but rather as a way to explore what Meillassoux calls the “Great Outdoors” of existence, a realm far too vast and weird, and radically uncertain, to be subsumed by our own values and norms.
Steven Shaviro is the DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University. He writes about process philosophy, film and music video, and science fiction. He blogs at The Pinocchio Theory.


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Location: Shipra Riviera, Indirapuram, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh 201014, India

May 30, 2015

Common misconception is that Indian philosophy is mystical

Hinduism is a combination of secular and sacred beliefs, rituals, daily practices and traditions that has evolved over the course of over two thousand years and embodies complex symbolism combining the natural world with philosophy. Hindu temples began as simple shrines housing a deity and by the time of the Hoysalas had evolved into well articulated edifices in which worshippers sought transcendence of the daily world. Hoysala temples were not limited to any specific organised tradition of Hinduism and encouraged pilgrims of different Hindu devotional movements. The Hoysalas usually dedicated their temples to Lord Shiva or to Lord Vishnu (two of the major Hindu gods), but they occasionally chose a different deity. Worshippers of Shiva are called Shaivas or Lingayats and worshippers of Vishnu are called Vaishnavas. While King Vishnuvardhana and his descendants were Vaishnava by faith,[6] records show that the Hoysalas maintained religious harmony by building as many temples dedicated to Shiva as they did to Vishnu.[7] Most of these temples have secular features with broad themes depicted in their sculptures.

Honestly, I don’t think most students know enough to have certain misconceptions anymore. The only common misconception is the idea that all of Indian philosophy is somehow mystical, and we have both Europeans and Indians to blame for that. It’s not hard to remove that either, by actually reading a text or two!
Also, and this is admittedly personal choice and sensibility: I am a bit wary of taking too much time away from discussing important Indian thinkers to engage in “shaming the West” sessions. Not that the latter aren’t warranted sometimes. I do point out to students how political and racial biases have prevented the full acceptance of Indian thinkers. (Incidentally, J. Barton Scott and Dan Flory have good papers on this on the APA Newsletter on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers that will be coming out soon, edited by Prasanta Bandyopadhyay and yours truly.) But, insofar as it is a course on Indian philosophy, I find off putting the idea that it is so important to systematically worry about Western misrepresentations that it warrants take time away from studying these great Indian thinkers on their own merits.
I tend to talk about misrepresentations as needed, sure, to clear away mistakes, but of course, a serious study of the Indian thinkers will do that, and better, will help students gain the capacity to illustrate such mistakes as they confront them. Not sure if I really answered your question. If not, please push me on it.

Graham Priest on why study Asian philosophy Posted on 24 May 2015 by elisa freschi — 1 Comment ↓
Graham Priest explains in a blog post why one should study “Eastern” philosophy (his label, probably because standard philosophy is in fact “Western” philosophy).
His post points to two reasons:
One better understands one’s own culture if one is confronted with another one 
There is progress in philosophy and new ideas can contribute to it, since progress does not arise ex nihilo. 
It is difficult not to agree. I had discussed Priest’s first point here and his second point here, while referring to an interview with Jay Garfield, and the posts have raised interesting discussions in the comments.

Two (or three) different narratives on Yoga, Mīmāṃsā, Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta etc. Posted on 30 May 2015 by elisa freschi — No Comments ↓
Some authors tend to think that once upon a time there was one Yoga and that later this has been “altered” or has at least “evolved” into many forms. According to their own stand, they might look at this developments as meaningful adaptations or as soulless metamorphoseis.
Other authors tend to think that there were several trends of Yoga prior to a given point (usually identified with the Yogasūtra (YS) if you agree with Chapple, etc., or with the Pātañjala Yogaśāstra (PYŚ) if you agree with Bronkhorst, Maas, etc.) and that they have been unified into a single system by the author of one or the other text. A long time after that, the same authors claim, new tendencies developed out of this unitary Yoga, much like in the way described by the authors of the fist group.
A minority group of authors contests the idea of a unitary Yoga at all and says that between the various things called Yoga in Classical and Post-Classical India there are at most family resemblances and at least nothing common at all. For these authors, it does not really make sense to host a conference on Yoga with people discussing Buddhist Tantric Yoga, Pāñcarātra Yoga, the Yogasūtra’s, contemporary Yoga practices and so on.
Who is right? Difficult to say. The point is that what we have are only fragments of the whole picture and that our interpretation of it will make us interpret some scattered pieces as belonging to the same puzzle or not. Accordingly, if we assume the first perspective, we will consider a form of Yoga which is far away from Patañjali’s YS (or PYŚ) as still somehow connected with it and detect slight similarities. If we assume the third perspective, we will rather notice the differences between the two.
Similar differences in approach can be detected in the case of Sāṅkhya (where the first scenario is ruled out by the data and scholars either subscribe to the second or to the third approach), Buddhism, the two Mīmāṃsās (Parpola embraces the first scenario, Bronkhorst the third one, there are no clear data in favour of the second one), the two schools of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and so on. In the latter case, in fact, I only know scholars subscribing to the first scenario. Mumme (1988) is aware of the fact that there were differences between the two schools even before the official split, but still calls them both Śrī Vaiṣṇava and says that they were “complementary”.

Shyam Ranganathan on 20 May 2015 at 4:20 pm said: Hi Amber
I would add that if you don’t draw a moral distinction between non human animals and human animals, the discussion of animals will generally be invisible and continuous with discussions of humans or persons. I read lots of Indian philosophy this way. The Yoga Sutra strikes me as an example of this kind of approach.
But there are some comments that stand out in my mind. I can’t remember the exact reference but Ramanuja in the Vedarthasamgraha talks about how the proper perspective on yourself is to understand yourself as essentially the same as other agents, whether they are an outcaste or a dog. I always found this a powerful criticism of casteism and speciesism. Yet, in his commentary on the Brahma Sutra, he defends the practice of Vedic animal sacrifices.
He claims that this practice does animals a favour of sending them up to a higher next birth. Shankara defends the practice at the same point in his commentary: III.i.25
Kumarila Bhatta similarly defends the practice in his defense of a deontology based on Vedic injunction. He further criticizes the idea that hedonism, teleology and suffering can be a criterion of moral action. (Slokavartika II.242-47)
What I find interesting in these Brahmanical accounts is that they do not deny the personhood of animals, so much as take up the challenge of justifying treating them differently than we would humans. Indeed, the apologetics only makes sense if we assume some type of background equality of animals. Otherwise, if animals were not persons, and lacked standing, we could do whatever we want with them, without having to justify our actions. That’s largely our way these days (clearly for the worse).

Chris Framarin on 20 May 2015 at 5:51 pm said: Hi Amber,
My recent book Hinduism and Environmental Ethics: Law, Literature, and Philosophy (Routledge) sums up many of the dominant arguments in the literature regarding the moral standing of animals (and plants and other entities) – such as arguments that animals have direct moral standing because they are interconnected with the rest of nature, because they are part of God, because they have an ātman, and so on. I evaluate these arguments and offer some new ones, drawing from the Yogaśāstra, Mahābhārata, and Manusmṛti. There I discuss the burning of the Khaṇḍava Forest in the Mahābhārata, Yudhiṣṭhira’s discussion with Bhīṣma about meat eating, and others. Hope this might be of some help, Chris

andrew ollett on 29 April 2015 at 6:27 pm said: 
Since someone brought up “The Lost Age of Reason” in the context of a different post: Ganeri mentions that Raghunātha Śiromaṇi interpreted “jagat” at the beginning of the Tattvacintāmaṇi to mean all of the varṇas, including women. This is an explicit claim about the inclusivity and accessibility of philosophy. The use of masculine pronouns isn’t, although we might extrapolate certain sociological conditions from their very unmarkedness (I myself don’t feel entitled to this kind of extrapolation—we barely know anything about Vātsyāyana, and yet we feel we can make sweeping judgments about the society in which he lived?). I don’t feel compelled to introduce feminine pronouns, even when the Sanskrit is gender-neutral, any more than I feel compelled to change “Devadatta” to “Jane Smith.” In case it needs to be said: I think that one can translate “paśyati” as “he sees” and still be a feminist in word and deed, because the battle of the pronouns (especially in translations of Sanskrit philosophical texts…) is probably of much less strategic importance in the struggle for feminism than it once seemed.

Amod, you may want to glance at Ganeri’s Introduction to his recent The Lost Age of Reason. I think you will find his own comments, and the research which he cites, quite amenable to your position. In short, he notes that innovators like Bacon and Descartes were not so much breaking with tradition than departing from seeds and starts already there in the “premodern” thinkers and responding/reorienting themselves in relation to it. It’s part of his broader argument that modernity does not require a complete rupture between it and the premodern world.
You reflections on authenticity, tradition, and being challenged invite much reflection. I think I am pretty sympathetic to your tying together unlimited choice with a kind of stagnancy: we can always find something out there that comports with our own current conditioned attitudes. Of course, this turns on its head our way of thinking about cosmopolitanism, wide-ranging exposure to various views of life, and the experience of modernity.
An apt quotation from Chesterton (Heretics):
The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men…In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique.


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May 14, 2015

Systematic study and continued focus is a power of change

Quartz-08-May-2015 Annalisa Merelli - May 8, 2015
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek isn't one to shy away from provocative observations. In a video published on the portal Big Think, he takes ...
“I’m well aware that we should not just walk around and humiliate each other,” says the philosopher. And yet he finds that “there is something so fake about political correctness”—something that, according to him, prevents a true overcoming of prejudice and racism. Žižek explains:
That’s my problem with political correctness. It’s just a form of self discipline which doesn’t really allow you too overcome racism. It’s just oppressed, controlled racism.

Texts are hard

Wednesday, May 13, 2015 — Adam Kotsko
The lecture at Shimer yesterday was very good. One point that Prof. McKenzie kept highlighting is that we in the liberal arts are “overdeployed” in text-oriented activities, while other forms of cultural production are seemingly outside our purview. He gave the example that we all learn to draw in some rudimentary way in grade school, but then that stops early on for most of us — and once we come around to teaching college, we’re lost as to how we would assess a visually-oriented student project. I know I feel pretty out of my depth when it comes to grading creative projects, and I’m not even one to think (as many academics do) that choosing a creative project over a paper is per sea scam to avoid genuine work. Overall, he argued that if we can find ways to help students generate arguments and narratives in media other than text, we’ll be better equipping them for the digital world.
writers have no guarantee that people will actually read their long texts, and readers have no guarantee that they will derive any benefit from a long text. The modes of connecting writers to readers remain primitive and scattershot.
But make no mistake--no human writer, no matter how “superintelligent,” will ever surpass Shakespeare. No musician will surpass Beethoven, or even John Coltrane or Van Morrison, for that matter. No human philosopher will ever surpass Plotinus, or Eckhart, or Aurobindo, or the Upanishads, because knowledge of the ultimate cannot surpass itself, any more than artistic perfection can surpass itself. There is just “perfection.” One either achieves (or approaches) it or one does not...The singularity is already here. So quit complaining and just enjoy it. posted by Gagdad Bob at 7:13 AM
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Sri Aurobindo Studies
We have seen the inability of the mental consciousness to solve any of the myriad issues or problems of life and harmony. We can recognize that the complexity of the world goes far beyond the realm of what can be grasped by Mind. Thus, Sri Aurobindo’s solution, the transformative effect of the spiritual consciousness descending into the world and addressing the issues in a comprehensive, global and integrated way, remains the only realistic solution we have found to achieve harmony, peace and balance in the manifested world within which we live and act.
Since the integral Yoga does not have a fixed and invariable routine or set of specific steps to be universally applied, such as are found in various other forms of Yoga, there is a considerable difficulty for the seeker in terms of what needs to be done, and how one knows that the practice is correct and aiming towards the intended conclusion. Sri Aurobindo sets forth several “rules” that can aid the seeker in this Yoga:
Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo describes the “test” for putting away of desire and craving, to be determined by a serene and peaceful equality of soul to all, as well as to every event or situation. The focus of the ego on its own fulfillment, its own ideas, its own wants, needs, desires or satisfactions may lead to outer success, but will not provide the inner basis for the yogic action to progress quickly and effectively. The intention here is not to impose a set of moral principles, rules, requirements or strictures on the outer being, but to effectuate a true inner change of standpoint and basis of response:




thanks for writing. the specific purpose of this blog is to systematically explore, page by page, the writings of Sri Aurobindo. the application of the principles and the teachings is of course for each individual to undertake. since we are studying this material systematically, the specifics of results and applications must be left to the right place and time in the texts where these issues are addressed, as well as to the insight and experience of those who are undertaking the sadhana over time. with respect to “bad people”, the process does not imply elimination of people. that is a mental concept. over time as circumstances change, and as the texture of consciousness on the planet undergoes a change, the responses of people to their environment naturally change, just as the development of the mental consciousness did not, in and of itself, do away with the forms and beings that represented the consciousness of the Life-Force or the world of Matter.




the systematic study allows each individual to gain new insight and opportunity to apply the teaching in a more and more comprehensive way in their own lives. the integral yoga does not have a fixed method that can be applied to all people; but rather, depends on the individual opening to the consciousness that is descending and applying the methodology of aspiration, rejection and surrender to the process that takes place internally. As that occurs, the individual begins to change in terms of the way he/she understands the life, the interactions of life and the world within which the life occurs, and subtle and even at times not so subtle changes begin to occur. The question of then applying this to society at large is more a question of the increasing pressure of this force on more and more individuals and the sum total of those changes. The yoga is not “theoretical’ but requires each individual to find the application within himself and carry it out sincerely. There are numerous posts over the last few years that look at the characteristics that the individual acquires or the “signs of the liberated man” for instance. We spent a lot of time on this in the study of the Essays on the Gita for instance, which preceded the review of the Synthesis of Yoga. Another text that has a lot of practical information is The Mother which was even earlier than the Essays on the Gita review. The point of the study is that the information has been systematically developed in detail, but most of us tend to either miss a lot of this information or are not really aware of what is contained in depth in these texts to help us implement the sadhana. So the idea of going page by page and highlighting the main points seemed to be a reasonable approach. What each individual actually does with this is of course, up to them. We find however that this type of systematic study and turning of the mind towards these subjects, and the aspiration that awakens as a result and gets fired up by continued focus, is itself a power of change for the individual.




as an addendum to the above reply, this is not about “morality” or passing judgment on any individual. each soul needs to confront its issues in its own time and in its own way. the transformation which Sri Aurobindo writes about is not something that gets imposed on individuals from outside, but something that grows up from within through a culturing of consciousness, which develops as a combined action of the aspiration from within meeting the response from above. This is not a matter of some kind of moral law or rule, and comes as an inner awakening and awareness as time goes on. the NEXT chapter we are studying starting tomorrow is Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom and it may be that in that chapter some of your questions will begin to be addressed.
Reply ↓




i have tried not to assume anything at all about you, but to respond from my perspective on what this current blog is about. i undertook this study so as to deepen my own insight and understanding and am not trying to teach anyone about anything. people have indicated they find benefit in following the page by page approach that i am pursuing and that is fine with me as it is not “about me” or “for me” in that sense. I agree fully with you that the inner experience is paramount. The turning of the mind in the right direction can assist in that process and certainly helps when it comes to the implementations that the mind needs to assist with. i have not had the opportunity to go to your link as of yet.
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Principles are whims of the mind just as desires are whims of the vital.
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Sri Aurobindo : Neither reason nor experience nor intuition nor imagination bears witness to us of the possibility of a final terminus

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Location: Shipra Riviera, Indirapuram, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh 201014, India

March 27, 2015

Life always has a meaning ~Sri Aurobindo

Life always has a meaning whether in success or in difficulty so long as it is turned towards the Divine. Protection will be given, but depression must be put aside ...

Joseph Vrinte - 2002 - ‎Preview
Aurobindo's philosophy of transformation and a divine life on earth is based on a metaphysical position. ... However, some of his insights are challenged by various critics, but always in a meaningful perspective or a constructive way, giving a sympathetic ... concept in the great system of ideas, i.e., it does not eliminate or exclude all that has significance in a wider sphere than its immediate context.

Sri Aurobindo's teaching is founded on an evolution of consciousness as the hidden inner meaning and secret purpose of life on earth. In The Mind of Light, Sri ...

CHAPTER TWELVE Delight of Existence is the Key to the Meaning of Life Sri Aurobindo states the solution clearly “In this conception of an inalienable ...

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Posted on March 25, 2015
When an individual takes up the call to the spiritual life, he is confronted with a number of issues with regard to his relationship to the “life in the world”. Many traditions have counseled the seeker to simplify, to abandon attachment to the world, and thereby to focus all the powers of his life on the spiritual quest. The anchorite in the desert, the yogi in the cave, the monk in the monastery cell, the ash-smeared sadhus all have answered the call in this manner, what Sri Aurobindo calls in The Life Divine, “the refusal of the ascetic”. Regardless of the path, the goal is to simplify and reduce the focus and the attraction of worldly comforts and worldly results, not to transform that outer life. Nevertheless, each individual still needs to hold commerce with the world, even if it is with a begging bowl! The idea behind this is to essentially cut the knot of attachment and refocus all the energies on the spiritual achievement, attaining the goal through the most direct method.
For the seeker of the integral Yoga, where the goal involves not simply an abandonment of the life and the body, but a total transformation of that life, and a realisation of the spiritual intention in all existence, the matter becomes much more complex.

Contrary to the worldwide belief that God cannot be mentally understood, Sri Aurobindo gives a precise definition of Divinity in the preceding chapters. His aim is divine life. It requires a divine soul. Obviously the ego is not the divine soul.

LIGHT ON LIFE
We often receive questions from aspirants who are not satisfied with their present state, who are trying to find a meaning in their lives, a deeper reason for why things happen as they do, and who are searching for a light to guide them in their actions.
Here are some questions of this nature compiled under various topics. The answers to these questions on life are from the writings of two great spiritual masters of our times Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and they present with great insight, the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of things. We welcome suggestions and more questions from you, the reader, to enrich this section.
We do hope that this list of compilations will inspire the readers to go to the complete works, help them to uncover the deeper purpose of their life, and set them on the path of ever greater perfection:

BLOGS & E-ZINES
Next Future An SAS e-Magazine (blog) | Mar 2015 
NAMAH—the Journal of Integral Health A quarterly e-Journal | SAIIIHR | Jan 2015 
Integral Musings A Blog | Integral Management | Mar 2015 
Exploration of Indian Yoga Psychology A Blog | Indian Yoga Psychology | Jan 2015 

Auro e-Books at Auro e-Books
Broad overview of psychology, cosmology and transformational practice of Integral Yoga - a psychological and spiritual methodology for evolutionary transformation of human nature developed by Sri Aurobindo. In 3D motion graphics

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Location: Shipra Riviera, Indirapuram, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh 201014, India
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