Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

Sri Aurobindo's Integral Education in Contemporary Higher Education

Debashish — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:00:47 -0700

Sri Aurobindo envisaged the goal of human becoming as a transformed society and civilization based on the expressions of an integral consciousness. However, in keeping with the collective dimension of this goal, a transformed society was envisaged by him not merely as the end result of individual transformations, but as the dynamically transforming life-context or field which would allow and facilitate individual transformation. Seen from this standpoint, the social discipline of education, meant to “socialize,” “in-form” and inculcate the cultural, knowledge and epistemological skills of the social habitus for individual engagement takes on a changed meaning related to a new phenomenology, epistemology and teleology of human and social becoming. Integral Education then becomes a socially acknowledged and authorized praxis of the Integral Yoga or at least the pedagogical condition for its social possibility and collective transformation.

Though much has been written and several attempts at implementation made to formulate Integral Education as a form of child education, the higher educational possibilities and ramifications of Integral Education have remained largely untheorized. This paper is an attempt to think through some of these possibilties and implementations. Debashish Banerji is the educational coordinator of The University of Philosophical Research in Los Angeles.

Visual Imagination of India

Debashish — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:09:16 -0800

The following is a course outline for a graduate course in Indian Art History to be taught online through the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), San Francisco in Spring semester of 2008. In this course, I would like to explore the history of Indian Art in terms of basic philosophemes which manifest through the visual imagination and shape the discursive space of Indian Art History. Whereas Indian Art is usually taught either chronologically (as art history) or symbolically/archetypically (as Indology), the attempt here is to see the persistences, transformations and ruptures of philosophemes or cultural memes manifesting through the visual imagination in a social field. I am presenting the outline here with the hope of generating a conversation on the inclusions, exclusions and mediations of the topics proposed along with bibliographies. Under the general post of this outline, I will post each of the weekly topics as a comment with the basic ideas I have in mind for it, and hope for feedback and reading suggestions through nested comments.

The Early History of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS)

Ron — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:38:57 -0800

...Spiegelberg's interest encompassed all the world's traditions of religion and philosophy:
"I had contact with many Indians, but none of them has made such an impression as the reading of the books of Sri Aurobindo, which I did in Stanford University, where I started teaching in 1942. This led to my eventual visit to India on a Rockefeller grant in 1948 and '49, where I was fortunate enough to have the darshan of Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry." -- Frederic Spiegelberg

Spiegelberg also discussed philosophy with Ramana Maharshi and had extensive correspondence with Sivananda.

Gainsborough's proposal intrigued Spiegelberg, and he set about the task of assembling a distinguished international faculty for the exciting and important project:
"When I was asked by Mr. Gainsborough of the Login Corporation to help him establish a center of Asian studies, I was immediately thinking about calling a first-rate man from Aurobindo's Ashram to join me in this work. After quite a bit of correspondence with the Ashram, one suggested Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri, who was then head of the Philosophy Department at Krishnagar College in Bengal to come to join me in this venture in the Academy of Asian Studies:
"The question was brought to Sri Aurobindo himself, who approved of Chaudhuri's coming to us with the word "Acha" (of course!)."
-- Frederic Spiegelberg

Two months later, in December of 1950, Sri Aurobindo died.

"Aurobindo is the guiding spirit of this earth and the prophet of our age. I believe that the last most important contribution that Sri Aurobindo made before passing was to send you here."
-- Letter from Spiegelberg to Haridas Chaudhuri