The Bauhaus, founded in 1919 at Weimar, Germany by Walter Gropius, was arguably the most influential school of design in modern times, set up in the form of a residential creative community of designers, craftsmen, architects and artists. As part of its central ideal, Water Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, envisaged a world made up of creative communities united spiritually in and around a materialized soul, which he likened to "a crystal cathedral." Today, Bauhaus influenced architecture is ubiquitous as the symbol of world modernity, but Gropius' dream is far from fulfilled. This article explores the historical dimensions of this ideal, the causes for its failure and the possible conditions for its postmodern manifestation.   more »

An Introduction to the history of modern Indian art along with an approach to its categorization, as expressed in the curatorial practice of the exhibition "Contours of Modernity" held at the SOKA University, Irvine from February-April, 2005 and curated by Debashish Banerji and Nalini Rao.   more »

What is the post-human destiny to which we are called as humans in contemporary times? In this transcript of a talk given for the AUM conference in Los Angeles in 2003, Debashish Banerji compares Nietzsche's call for the Overman with that announced by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to point to the similarities and differences. How can we pick our way through the maze of choices held up at this end-time of human becoming? Is it by remaining complacent or by using our wills or by surrender to a greater force than ours? And if so, what force - the vitalism of an unconscious Nature-force, the deceptive "universality" of the world market or an unpredictable future which calls our arduous attention? These and similar questions are posed and discussed in this article.   more »

... The personal yoga of Sri Aurobindo, as he himself once characterized it, was an "incalculable" one, leading from realization to realization in a journey without end. Through his life, Sri Aurobindo attempted to chart this journey in the form of a darshana (or philosophy) and a yoga (a process leading to experience and transformation). His earliest formulation to himself of this journey with its goals and processes is what he called the Sapta Chatusthaya (Seven Quartets) which form the background to his private notes to himself of his own yogic progress, kept mostly between 1912-1920 and now publshed as The Record of Yoga. Between 1914-1920, he wrote most of his major works in the serialized journal, Arya, where he outlined his yoga, philosophy of evolution and social philosophy in terms which may also be thought of as contemporaneous with the Record of Yoga. Particularly, in his principal work on yoga, The Synthesis of Yoga, the fourth part, the Yoga of Self-Perfection, can be thought of as a yoga of transformation, a new formulation for the future which followed the achievements of the more traditional yogas of Works, Knowledge and Divine Love, comprising respectively the first three parts of Sri Aurobindo's synthesis in this text. This Yoga of Self-Perfection can largely be correlated with the Sapta Chatusthaya and thus, the Record of Yoga.

Later, after 1926, we have Sri Aurobindo's Letters on Yoga and later still, after 1932, further revisions to his other texts, including the Synthesis of Yoga and the Life Divine. In these writings, Sri Aurobindo introduces a new terminology and what may seem new emphases to his yoga and darshana.

Richard Hartz, who works at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram archives, has studied Sri Aurobindo's texts and revisions intensively as an editor of his Complete Works and takes a historical view of the development of Sri Aurobindo's yoga and writing. Here, he raises and tries to answer some of the questions pertaining to the changes and revisions in Sri Aurobindo's understanding and teaching, by looking at the Record of Yoga, the Yoga of Self-Perfection and other key texts of Sri Aurobindo such as the Life Divine and Savitri. He also considers what may be the special contribution of Sri Aurobindo to the Indian tradition of yoga and touches on the part paid by Vivekananda as a precursor. ...   more »

This article attempts to sketch out Sri Aurobindo's contribution to the future of humanity as carried in his major texts. In doing so, it also tries to underline the cross-cultural nature of these texts and the disciplinary redefinitions implicit in them.   more »

This is a chapter on Evolution from R.Y. Deshpande's just published book based on Book VI of Sri Aurobindo's "Savitri, The Book of Fate" - which deals with Narad's Arrival at Ashwapathy's kingdom of Madra. Deshpande reviews here the philosophical approaches which try to explain Becoming in the Cosmos, the meaning of Time and human destiny. His wide-ranging contemplation includes the nature of Time as seen through determinism and probability in the debates of Science, early Greek phulosophy in Heraclitus and Paramenides, Kant's reflections on the limits of rational knowledge and empirical experience and more recent evolutionary thinkers, such as Nietzsche, Bergson, Samuel Alexander and Teilhard de Chardin, before settling on Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of Integral Non-Dualism.   more »

Rod Hemsell's essay on mantric traditions explores the phenomenology of the mantra drawing on Vedantic and Buddhistic traditons, as developed in Japanese Tantric Buddhism by the sage Kukai and relates this traditional understanding to the theory and use of the mantra by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, particularly as exemplified by Savitri. He also extenbds his reflections on mantra into contemporary postmodern thinking.   more »

A transcript of the Guru Pershad Lecture given at the Sri Aurobindo Society Beach Office in Dec. 2004, this article links a key chapter in The Life Divine with the Mother.   more »

The regime of modernity in India can be said to begin from the turn of the 17th/18th c. with the setting up of trading interests in Calcutta by the British East India Company. The British occupation of India swiftly replaced the indigenous miniature schools with naturalistic Company Painting and institutional forms such as art salons and art schools generated a new breed of Indian elite painters who turned to oils and water colors in a British style, though often with Indian subjects from myth, portraiture or landscape. ...   more »

On September 11, 1893, the world’s first Parliament of Religions opened in Chicago. Representatives of such a variety of religious and spiritual traditions had never before been assembled in one place. Delegates from every part of the globe read speeches before a huge audience at the inaugural session. Thirty-first on the list was a young, unknown Hindu. When his turn came, he rose to say the words the spirit would move him to speak. “Sisters and Brothers of America,” Swami Vivekananda began. What happened next was later described by a woman who was present that day. “I was at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893,” she recalled. “When that young man got up and said, ‘Sisters and Brothers of America,’ seven thousand people rose to their feet as a tribute to something they knew not what.” ...   more »

Happy Darshan to all. Matthijs has edited the transcript of his talk and the corrected version has now been archived. You can access it at: http://www.sriaurobindocenter-la.com/postaum2005/MatthijsAUM05.doc   more »