Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

On Universalism: In Debate with Alain Badiou by Etienne Balibar

Debashish — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:21:00 -0700

Etienne Balibar (1942- ) is a French philosopher and political theorist who was among the principal students of Louis Althusser. In this thought dialog with Alain Badiou (a worthy counterpart of the interview on Universalism carried on sciy earlier), Balibar conducts a sophisticated investigation on universalism - its dichotomies, its establishment as truth and the responsibility implicit in its pursuit.

Why is universalism always ridden with contradiction? Can it be spoken of in a singular fashion or can it be reduced to the proper side of a single dichotomy? In tracing a speculative history of universality, Balibar moves through the variety of dichotomous displacements through history to bring to focus the intrinsically dialectical essence of universalism.

This leads him to the political question of the establishment of universalism. Balibar extends the philosophical discourse of dialectics to the perpetuallly revolutionary essence of the politics of universalism - that is, it is in ceaseless reviolution that the single-dual ideal of what Balibar calls "equaliberty" becomes the quasi-transcendental horizon of realization. One may say that social consciousness expands in this process in unpredictable dimensions.

Finally, on the question of the responsibility intrinsic to the pursuit of universalism, Balibar points out how the question of violence is also intrinsic to it. This question is not merely an external or extensive one, a fact of revolution as mentioned before, but an internal and intensive responsibility - that of the violence of internal exclusivism. This is the specter of the terror of totalism or absolutism which we are so familiar with today. Balibar points to the always present specter of this danger and something the responsibility of the pursuit of universalism needs to be constantly vigilant about. - db

Sri Aurobindo's Integral Education in Contemporary Higher Education

Debashish — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:00:00 -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.

An Imaginative Geography - Chapter One of "The Myth of Shangri-La" by Peter Bishop

Debashish — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:35:00 -0700

As globalization strips the veil from the last inviolable topos of earth and real-time surveiilance renders every square unit of the planet physically transaparent in its utilitarian Google Maps and Star War strategies, the sacred plexuses of the earth also multiply in their resistant cultural geographies of surreal uptopia.

Peter Bishop teaches Communication and Cultural Studies at the University of Southern Australia. Bishop's entertaining and erudite analyses of contemporary material culture pry open the spaces where spirituality, imagination, cultural history and material practices intersect. In this first chapter from his book, The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing and the Western Creation of Sacred landscape, he presents the makings of a theory of sacred cultural materiality - the spiritual, psychological, aesthetic, cultural, historical, political, economic and geographic transactions which establish the utopian spaces of contemporary spiritual desire. - DB

Conference: Fundamentalism and the Future

Rich — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:54:00 -0700

Conference Announcement: Fundamentalism and the Future
Friday, September 11 and Saturday, September 12, 2009
California Institute of Integral Studies
1453 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA
A two-day conference will be held Friday, September 11 and Saturday September 12 on the topic “Fundamentalism and the Future.” The conference will be at the California Institute of Integral studies in San Francisco, hosted by the Department of Asian and Comparative Religions. The conference organizers are Rich Carlson, Debashish Banerji and David Hutchinson. Registration is free. For details on the conference, location, and registration, please see http://fundamentalismandthefuture.com

Fascism and False Guru Sects (Kheper.net)

Rich — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:35:00 -0700

It seems that many of the attributes of authoritarian regimes, listed above, also define authoritarian cults and cultic and abusive guru movements. The reason is that in both cases there is a highly narcissistic but also fearful and shadow-projecting individual or individuals at the top, who through giving in to adverse entities, acts in a way to supress any creativity, originality, individuality, authentic spirituality or anything else that threatens the ideology, belief-system, personal worldview, or hypersensitive ego of the leader or leadership.

A Matter of Mind by J. Kepler

Debashish — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:13:00 -0700

At the core of much of the recent discussion and controversy in the Integral Yoga (IY) online community seems to lay the role of the mind and mental reasoning. Many statements from Sri Aurobindo and Mother could be quoted both praising the essential, enabling contributions of the mind, as well as criticizing the mind’s obstinate, obstructing features and liabilities. This dual nature of their commentary itself may point us in the right direction. It’s the particular use made of the mental faculty in a particular context that determines its helpful or harmful status.

Many quotes could be furnished where Sri Aurobindo and Mother state definitively that their teaching is a living spiritual path and not a set of fixed doctrines or dogmas to be religiously recited and referenced. But especially in documents that pertain to their own practice, in Sri Aurobindo’s case his Record of Yoga, in Mother’s case l'Agenda de Mère, and in other miscellaneous talks and letters by both of them, they exhibit a characteristic attitude and approach to mental formulation. This attitude is marked by a highly flexible and, one could even say, experimental approach to mental formulation of the vast spiritual experiences they passed through.

Considered in this light, the current Heehs controversy is perhaps best seen not as simply a flawed biography by a flawed ashramite who upset many devotees with his academic approach to evaluating Sri Aurobindo’s life. The controversy might also represent a stark and revealing light being cast upon the mental formations and constructions that have hardened among many associated with IY. All should be able to agree that the Mother’s approach is never a static one and she always seeks to propel us toward the future, breaking our comfortable habits of thinking and feeling as need be whenever our advance requires it. “her feet are rapid on the upward way.”

Unending Desire: De Certeau's Mystics

Debashish — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:33:00 -0700

"Unbeknownst even to some of its promoters, the creation of mental constructs . . . takes the place of attention to the advent of the Unpredictable. That is why the 'true' mystics are particularly suspicious and critical of what passes for 'presence'. They defend the inaccessibility they confront." - Michel de Certeau.

The writings of Michel de Certeau on mysticism are interdisciplinary, original and tantalizing. They draw on disciplines ranging from history, theology and spirituality to psychoanalysis, semiotics and cultural theory. While de Certeau concentrated on sixteenth and seventeenth-century French and Spanish spiritualities with their emphasis on 'spiritual experience', one of his most controversial views was that mysticism is not purely a matter of interiority but is a form of disruptive 'social practice'.

In a time of institutionalized comforts, of Integral Theory, Integral Religion and Integral Psychology, the caution of Michel de Certeau becomes more pressing than ever. De Certeau relates the rise of mysticism with social conditions which "possess" and displace experience within the language of orthodoxy. The science of 'mystics' he proposes is not so much a system of named experiences as a blueprint of praxis, a language of tactical retreat, a shifting map of recognized departures and social attitudes of refused identification. In this article, Philip Sheldrake, Vice-Principal and Academic Director of Saturn College, Salisbury and Honorary Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Wales, Lampeter, opens a window on de Certeau's studies and caveats on mysticism.

Spiritual Authoritarianism (P2P)

Rich — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:00:00 -0700

A link from a cyber-buddy Michel Bauwens whose P2P foundation is cutting edge with respect to clearing an open source horizon for progressive social agency in a increasingly interconnected society forced to navigate the communication nodes and commercial portals of corportist networks on the world wide web

It occurs to me that we should perhaps refine the terminology we are broadly labeling as Fundamentalism. Spiritual Authoritarianism further nuances meaning here and I believe better describes certain events and persons with respect to the IY Community and The Lives of Sri Aurobindo...

Knowledge and Human Liberation - Excerpts from Ananta Kumar Giri Annotated by Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:46:00 -0700

This is an annotated introduction to the first chapter of a recent book Knowledge and Human Liberation by Ananta Kumar Giri of the Madras Institute of Development Studies. The essay tries to engage Jurgen Habermas and Sri Aurobindo in a thought dialog. The potency of Jurgen Habermas (1929 - ) in a postmodern era has sustained itself due to the questions of human liberty, equality, ethics and understanding he has prioritized over those of knowledge, identity or experience. Habermas’ most powerful contribution to contemporary thought has been in the theorization of the “public sphere.” In elaborating its implications, Habermas focuses on what he calls “communicative reason.” Communicative rationality, according to him, is "oriented to achieving, sustaining and reviewing consensus - and indeed a consensus that rests on the intersubjective recognition of criticisable validity claims.” This discipline of intersubjective practice restores the lifeworld from its fragmentation under ideological or economic (commodified) alien consolidations. Thus Habermas’ communicative speech acts operate under an implicit faith in Human universality and its inevitable collective experience as social and individual knowledge, a continuation of the Enlightenment ideal.

A discplined intersubjective praxis of creative communication can very well be seen as a part of the social realization of an integral spiritual ideal in a plural field. Usually this has not been clearly described or prioritized by scholars and practitioners of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Non-Dualism, the emphasis having been directed towards the articulation of a universal (integral) Psychology, in terms taken from Sri Aurobindo’s own writing. But such denotative asocial descriptions have tended to subjugate phenomenological variety and social/cultural/personal experience. As a consequence, the danger of a totalitarian epistemology in the name (nomos) of Integral Theory has asserted itself with its own institutional disciplinary agents, who have increasingly tended to police out (violently if necessary, as the contemporary controversy related to the recent biography, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, alarmingly and overwhelmingly demonstrates) all subjective interpretation of the way to this goal, and thus to the possibility of a plural realization of the Integral Yoga.

Against this background, the comparative and cross-cultural dialog between Habermas and Sri Aurobindo initiated by Ananta Giri is a salutary intervention. Using each to critique the limits and possibilities of the other, Giri shows how the rational assumptions of knowledge in the Enlightenment ideal lead to aporia which have been amply documented by postmodern thinkers, but which receive a higher validation through the transcendental ontology and praxis of Sri Aurobindo; just as the susceptibility to ontotheological abstraction and totalism of Sri Aurobindo’s phenomenology and praxis when reduced to an Integral Psychology, Integral Theory or Integral Religion can be safeguarded for a plural space through disciplines of intersubjective communication as developed by Habermas.

• India and Europe by Wilhelm Halbfass

Debashish — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:38:00 -0700

With the ascendency to Indian politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party, a plethora of literature has appeared paying serious attention to the phenomenon of "Neo-Hinduism" in India, and by and large relating it to fascist possibilities. This postcolonial literature, swelling the shelves over the last five years, has piggybacked onto a larger more international body of postmodern writing on nationalism and its dangers that has been growing in stridency ever since the pseudo-religion ...

100 Years of Sri Aurobindo on Evolution: The Illusion of Human Progress and the Ideal of Human Unity (part 5 of 6)

Rich — Fri, 29 May 2009 12:43:00 -0700

... In this context progress can be seen as a social ideology that corresponds to other hijacked evolutionary ideologies reflected in the German Idealism of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, and Herbert Spencer's “progressive evolution”. All the above ideas at one time or another have been utilized by those with couched power agendas for their use value in aligning different races and cultures along a scale of graduated being in which the European was seen to be the most highly evolved. A close reading of Sri Aurobindo however, will show that he had no such agenda. This fact should be understood properly before moving on to consider Sri Aurobindo's view of human progress.

Although in many ways Sri Aurobindo was certainly a visionary in his view of history he did not claim to be a prophet. The impossible burden of proof placed on prophecy is not lost on him. Even the future of poetry it seems can not be anticipated twenty five years years hence:

“ The gods of life and still more the gods of mind are so incalculably self-creative that even when we can distinguish the main lines of which the working runs or has so far run, we are still unable to foresee with any certainty what turn they will take or of what new thing they are the labor. It is therefore impossible to predict what the future poetry will actually be like. We can see where we stand today but we cannot see where we shall stand a quarter century hence” (Sri Aurobindo FP p.1972)

If this be the case with the life gods of poetry how much more is this so with the gods governing human history. Indeed how could one expect him to anticipate the developments in subsequent years when he wrote this optimistic assessment of the future in his 1909 essay Process and Evolution:

It is not likely that the immediate future of the democratic tendency will satisfy the utmost dreams of the lover of liberty who seeks an anarchist freedom, or of the lover of equality who tries to establish a socialistic dead level, or of the lover of fraternity who dreams of a world-embracing communism. But some harmonization of this great ideal is undoubtedly the immediate future of the human race. Once the old forces of despotism, inequality and unbridled competition, after they have been once more overthrown, a process of gradual samyama will be performed by which what has remained of them will be regarded as the disappearing vestiges of a dead reality and without any further violent coercion be transformed slowly and steadily out of existence.”

Of course what followed were the two great wars that almost destroyed civilizations and the partition of his beloved India. It seems like a harmonization in the immediate future was not to be in the cards dealt by history.....

For Sri Aurobindo the question of human progress is, as almost everything he wrote about, complex. While he believes in 1909 that human progress is the agent of change and writes: “ Whether we take the modern scientific or the ancient Hindu standpoint the progress of humanity is a fact.”(Aurobindo 1909) by the early 1940s his view seems to have notably altered and he writes:

“the idea of human progress itself is very probably an illusion, for there is no sign that man, once emerged from the animal stage, has radically progressed during his race-history; at most he has advanced in knowledge of the physical world, in Science, in the handling of his surroundings, in his purely external and utilitarian use of the secret laws of Nature....

Postsecular Interrogations: AsiaSource Interview with Talal Asad

Debashish — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:10:00 -0700

Talal Asad is a Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York. In his self-description, "I am interested in the phenomenon of religion (and secularism) as an integral part of modernity, and especially in the religious revival in the Middle East. Connected with this is my interest in the links between religious and secular notions of pain and cruelty, and therefore with the modern discourse of Human Rights. My long-term research concerns the transformation of religious law (the shari'ah) in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt with special reference to arguments about what constitutes secular and progressive reform."

Asad looks at the phenomenon of modernity as a discourse in Foucauldian terms, marked by the rise of the secular public sphere and the disciplinary institution and apparatus of the nation-state. The inevitable subjugations and investments in ideological choices rooted in the history of the European Enlightenmnt that this implies have led, in his opinion, to our present fractured and violent postcolonial world, where contested uniformities assert their right over the ubiquitous disciplinary space of nation states. But Asad's analyses don't stop short at stating the obvious in a sophisticated language or taking sides either with apologists of religious militancy or secular normalcy. Asad's call is for a dialogic engagement, interrogating the biases, provincial limitations and arbitaray choices within post-Enlightenment modernity through the critiquing of its doxa and nomos by alternate cultural histories, while probing these pre-modern formations for pluralities of interpretation and internal resources of human emancipation.

He thus envisages a postsecular world, in which individuals and groups may co-exist not through the policing of the boundaries of a public sphere by the nation-state, but through the development of alternate social realities of human emancipation. Asad's views are germane to the present situation in India, with the rise of a majoritarian uniformalist Hindutva at the national level and the percolation of its ideological nomos into ashrams such as the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The following interview with AsiaSource correspondent Nermeen Shaikh brings a number of his insights to the front.

A Proposal - Shifting From Words to Action by Savitra

Debashish — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:43:00 -0700

Savitra's proposal is formulated in response to the aggressive and illegitimate tactics (whether considered in terms of civil or spiritual society) employed against Peter Heehs in the case pertaining to his recent biography The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, but it is not limited to or exclusively directed at the individuals mentioned in this case. He intends the Principle of this Proposal would apply to all -- regardless of age, gender, culture or nationality -- who violate basic civil and spiritual rights and codes of conduct.

Active Omissions: A Review of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Manoj - Annotated by Debashish

Debashish — Sat, 16 May 2009 17:32:00 -0700

Prana, Kratu, Jazz II: Ali Ahmad Hoosain, Hasan Haider, Ahmad Abbas and Subhen Chatterjee at UC Irvine, May 10, 2009 by Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:15:00 -0700

Grizzled shehnai ustad Ali Ahmad Hoosain laid out the cross-cultural and cross-epochal sonic landscapes along with his two sons and his tabla accompanist Subhen Chatterjee at U of California, Irvine. Prana, Kratu and Jazz commingled once more.

David Hutchinson, Debashish Banerji and Rich Carlson Respond to Sraddhalu

Debashish — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:03:00 -0700

Two of those involved in allegations and support of censorship, Ranade and Pandey, are invitees to this year’s AUM conference. They have both responded to our letter with justifications of their actions. Ranade has reiterated in his letter a list of his charges against the author and his book. Ranade also continues to stand firmly behind the writ to ban the book.

G.K. Chesterton on Fanaticism by James V. Schall (Gilbert Magazine)

Rich — Fri, 01 May 2009 09:57:00 -0700

Fanaticism is often associated with religious practice and its mystical tendencies. In this article on G.K. Chesterton view of the fanatic, the reviewer notes that Chesterton rather associated fanaticism with a particular logic that is derived from mystical experience and not from mystical experience itself.

Today, we often hear it said that “fanaticism” is the consequence of religion, that science is its alternative. If I understand Chesterton's view of both the scientists and Islam, it is that “fanaticism” stems from both. But it comes not from the original mystical insight but rather from the “logic” that flows from it and subsumes all else in its wake. Scientism denies any place for revelation in its “logic.” Islam's “logic” ends up denying secondary causes or an understanding of the divinity in which diversity in the Godhead and Incarnation are impossible. The subduing of the world to Allah is a conclusion not of the mystical insight but of the logic that follows from it.

In the end, “fanaticism” is not a product of mysticism, but of logic. By looking for its causes in the wrong place, we often reveal our own “fanaticisms.” The “fanatical” concern about the religious cause of “fanaticism” has blinded us to the “fanaticisms” that stem from science itself and has caused us to misunderstand what it is within Islam that often makes it so “fanatical.”...

Fundamentalism in Integral Yoga - New Website Announcement

Debashish — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 12:18:00 -0700

Dear SCIY readers,

Because Sraddhalu Ranade and Alok Pandey have been invited to the US for the AUM conference this year, we wish to place certain facts about them before those who may be considering support or sponsorship of these people or their projects. These facts concern their involvement in what we regard as promotion of religious fundamentalism, censorship, distortion of truth, and defiance of Ashram rules and authority carried out by Ranade and Pandey recently, so that you may assess any possible support for them.

To make people aware of the misleading activities of Ranade, Pandey, and others, and to increase awareness of an unfortunate growing trend among some who claim to be followers of Sri Aurobindo, a website has been started website, http://www.iyfundamentalism.info.

Filio's response to Sraddhalu on the SAICE list

Debashish — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:01:00 -0700

Responses to Sraddhalu's amusing letter keep coming in. This one is from Filio, an ex-student of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram writing on the discussion list of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram International Centre of Education (SAICE).

100 Years of Sri Aurobindo on Evolution (complete text with links)

Rich — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:24:00 -0700

As the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origins of Species take place this year, it is easy to overlook the fact that 2009 also marks the 100th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo's first major text on evolution and consciousness. In Process and Evolution and Yoga and Human Evolution (1909) Sri Aurobindo begins to comprehensively articulate his vision of human evolution. Just as Darwin's book became the foundation for a science of evolution, what has been called evolutionary spirituality can be traced back to Sri Aurobindo's work. Many are acknowledging this bi-centennial year of Darwin's birth with a reassessment of his work in light of what we now know about evolution it therefore, also seems to be a good time to reassess Sri Aurobindo's vision of human evolution in terms of our contemporary understanding of the phenomena......

Even though his view of history is essentially cyclic he starts his consideration of evolution by writing in Yoga and Human Evolution (1909) the following:

“Whether we take the modern scientific or the ancient Hindu standpoint the progress of humanity is a fact” (Aurobindo)

However, by the early1940s when he is revising the last chapters of The Life Divine he writes:

“the idea of human progress itself is very probably an illusion, for there is no sign that man, once emerged from the animal stage, has radically progressed during his race-history; at most he has advanced in knowledge of the physical world, in Science, in the handling of his surroundings, in his purely external and utilitarian use of the secret laws of Nature “ (Aurobindo 1949 p832)....

There are six sections in this paper:

I) Why Sri Aurobindo would not believe in Intelligent Design
2) Darwinian Fundamentalism: reductionism, pluralism, play
3) Anticipating Science & Society
4) Complexity and the Dialectics of the Visible and Invisible
5) The Illusion of Human Progress and the Ideal of Human Unity
6) The Dialectics of Biology and Culture: science, ecology & economics

Peter, his book and/or the REAL ISSUES?! (from SAICE) by Aurofilio

Debashish — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:44:00 -0700

Since Peter’s book got published we have heard voices from both sides. We are of course all too familiar with what the loud and vociferous critics of the book have had to say. But we have also heard people who have liked the book, drawn inspiration from it, got closer to Sri Aurobindo, etc.; in other words appreciated and benefited from it. And many others, the VAST majority, have just not bothered about it and have kept quiet.

Even the website www.thelivesofsriaurobindo.com, so strongly recommended by Peter’s critics could not prevent the following poll information (screenshot image of the result is also attached here) from appearing on its website some time last month:.

The Poll indicated: I find the book “The Lives of Sri Aurobindo” by Peter Heehs to be: .

Offensive – 19 votes - 13% .

Deceptive – 18 votes - 13%

Boring – 10 votes - 7%

Representative – 63 votes - 45%

Useful – 113 votes - 82%

The Soul of a City: The Crystal Cathedral as Organizing Metaphor for (post)Modern Architecture at the Bauhaus

Debashish — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:38:00 -0700

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.

Larger Issues of "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" Controversy

Debashish — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:52:00 -0800

The Heehs biography controversy is unfortunately a symptom of a much deeper crisis in the Integral Yoga community, with future repercussions which are hardly optimistic. In this consideration of some of the larger issues involved, the editors of sciy and other concerned viewers of the phenomenon draw attention to what is at stake for all those interested in the Integral Yoga. These are only a few of the more serious ramifications. Readers are welcome to add their own concerns as comments.

Representing Swami Vivekananda: Some Issues and Debates By Makarand Paranjape

Debashish — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 10:05:00 -0800

Controversy surrounding the representation of a "nationalized" Indian mystic comes late to Sri Aurobindo. Pre-dating the latter in personal chronology as in nationalism and the modern articulation of a global Vedantic spirituality, Vivekananda precedes also in the matter of contemporary debates on representation. In the present 2005 piece by Makarand Paranjape, some of the recent histories of representation and the all too familiar stakes are rehearsed and can be instructive to our consideration of the present controversy raging around "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo." Who gets to authorize the representation? What are the relative uses of hagiographny and biography? Are not both of these varieties of fiction? What purposes do they serve? Where does cultural tradition come in? What is the place of hermeneutics in all this? Paranjape's reflections and call for a balanced realism is much needed for us to heed and reflect on in these times of myth-making and madness.

Competing Visions of History in Internal Islamic Discourse and Islamic-Western Dialogue - ABDULLAHI A. AN-NA'IM

Debashish — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 09:52:00 -0800

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. Originally from Sudan, An-Na'im is a disciple of nationalist leader and Islamic reformer and Sufi, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, who was executed in 1985 by the regime of President Gaafar Nimeiry. Taha's pronouncement of his first political incarceration by the British is reminiscent of Sri Aurobindo's: "When I settled in prison I began to realize that I was brought there by my Lord and thence I started my Khalwah with Him."

An-Na'im's specialties include human rights in Islam and cross-cultural issues in human rights. He is the director of the Religion and Human Rights Program at Emory. He also participates in Emory's Center for the Study of Law and Religion. An-Naim was formerly the Executive Director of the African bureau of Human Rights Watch. He argues for a synergy and interdependence between human rights, religion, critical thought and secularism, instead of a dichotomy and incompatibility between them.

The Greyscale Between Religion and Spirituality by Rick Lipschutz

Debashish — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 09:46:00 -0800

Rick Lipschutz reflects here on the continuum which stretches from religion to spirituality. Drawing on the Mother's distinction between spiritual realization, spiritual philosophy, occultism and religion and her perception of a complementarity in their workings, the author calls for a more integral understanding of the yoga and its stages and processes.

Living Laboratories of the Life Divine by Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:50:00 -0800

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.

American Transcendentalism: A History by Philip F. Gura Reviewed by Laura Miller

Debashish — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 20:15:00 -0800

"What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us, is Idealism. As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects, the Materialists and the Idealists; the first class beginning on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell." (Ralph Waldo Emerson in a lecture at the Masonic Temple in Boston in 1842.)

Philip F. Gura's history of American Transcendentalism was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction in 2008. In this work, Gura brings us into close contact with some of the deeper aspirations underlying American idealism. At once universalist, intuitional and critical, the contextual and social development of Transcendentalism in mid-19th c. America, drawing on mystic Christianity, Vedanta, German Romanticism, Enlightenment Philosophy and other sources, continues to flow like an invisible river under the surface of American capitalism, inspiring a vision of the future convergent with that held up by Sri Aurobindo. A luminous moment in American history, this movement and its founders are discussed in this work as struggling with its complexities with a prophetic intuition but without adequate internal or external resources. In today's America and today's world, the legacy of the Transcendentalists opens once more a chapter of hope and an invitation to further its projects with renewed understanding and care.

The Yoga of Self-Perfection and the Triple Transformation, by Richard Hartz

Debashish — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:17:00 -0700

... 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. ...

Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies III

Debashish — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:05:00 -0700

The concluding section on Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies by Debashish Banerji continues its second installment's reflections on the Omniscience, Omnipotence and Omnipresence presented to us as the emerging destiny of post-Enlightenment Modernity and compares this destination with its appropriation and supercession in the Neo-Vedantic teleology of Sri Aurobindo. What are the differences, dangers and promises of these destinies and what are the conditions for achieving an alternate destination? ...

Course on the Vedas by SCIY Editor Vladimir Yatsenko

Debashish — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:41:00 -0700

SCIY Editor Vladimir Yatsenko will teach an online course in the Vedas starting in October 2008. We carry the details here as well as a link to one of the lecture transcripts posted earlier in SCIY.

Sri Aurobindo and the Future of Humanity

Debashish — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:36:00 -0700

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.

• Review of Sri Aurobindo and his Contemporary Thinkers

Debashish — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:32:00 -0700

Following the publication of “Understanding Thoughts of Sri Aurobindo,” Indrani Sanyal and Krishna Roy of the Centre for Sri Aurobindo Studies, Calcutta have complied a set of eighteen scholarly essays on Sri Aurobindo and his contemporaries in the ideational context of what has been called the Bengal Renaissance. Sri Aurobindo’s physical involvement in the politics and culture of early Bengal nationalism was of relatively short duration (1905-1910), albeit an intense and all-sided participation which internalized the entire regional history of the movement and left a powerful creative impress in the milieu of its time and space. Moreover, the discursive background of this involvement continued to develop organically and find voice throughout his life in his subjective articulation just as his own situated contribution continued to resonate in later Indian nationalism. Thus this collection of considered interpretive contemplation fills an important need in our historical understanding. But more importantly, it is the post-colonial legacy of these engagements which draws us today by their fertile and future-gazing content, inviting reflection not merely for India’s but the world’s re-generation at a time of global ferment.

'Going beyond God,' Karen Armstrong's transformed views of religion

Ron — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:29:00 -0700

Imho, this is an important article about the pluses and minuses of religion, an interview with a former nun who has had many deep experiences of what she writes. Highly recommended. ~ ronjon

Karen Armstrong is a one-woman publishing industry, the author of nearly 20 books on religion. When her breakthrough book "A History of God" appeared in 1993, this British writer quickly became known as one of the world's leading historians of spiritual matters. Her work displays a wide-ranging knowledge of religious traditions -- from the monotheistic religions to Buddhism. What's most remarkable is how she carved out this career for herself after rejecting a life in the church.

At 17, Armstrong became a Catholic nun. She left the convent after seven years of torment. "I had failed to make a gift of myself to God," she wrote in her recent memoir, "The Spiral Staircase." While she despaired over never managing to feel the presence of God, Armstrong also bristled at the restrictive life imposed by the convent, which she described in her first book, "Through the Narrow Gate." When she left in 1969, she had never heard of the Beatles or the Vietnam War, and she'd lost her faith in God. ...

100 Years of Sri Aurobindo on Evolution: The dialectics of biology and culture; science, ecology & economics (part 6 of 6)

Rich — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:36:00 -0700

Perhaps it is best if the twain between science and religion do not meet. Trying to engage science and spirituality in a dialog has a long and troubled history. The incommensurable narratives of matter and spirit they both tell have proven time and time again troublesome for reaching any common understanding. In fact, if science and spirituality do share something in common it is that they all too often accuse the other of totalizing a universal narrative that usurps all ways of looking at the world that are inconsistent with their own.

Religion and science each have their own fundamentalist practitioners who would reduce the world solely to accounts told in their holy books or biology text books. One can not easily imagine an encounter between science and religion in which some violent reaction would not be triggered. Worse perhaps then the violent confrontation between science and religion is when either one appropriates the narratives of the other for the purpose of furthering their own ideological concerns. In the case of religion one example would be in their use of science to justify creationism, while in the case of science such appropriation usually results in one of the just-so stories of origins or cultural analogs of natural selection that Neo-Darwinism tells....

This holds true also for any dialog one would wish to begin between integral yoga and science. It would perhaps be best to begin such a dialog by first exploring Sri Aurobindo's dialectic between yoga and culture and then to look for resonances with narratives told by credible scientist regards the dialectics of science and culture. Better yet, in Sri Aurobindo's own work one finds him at times also critically exploring the dialectic between science and culture. It would therefore seem best to arrive at a dialogic platform to engage science and integral yoga using their diffusion in the semi-permeable membrane of culture, rather then by a direct confrontation as a means to begin the conversation.

100 Years of Sri Aurobindo on Evolution: Complexity and the Dialectics of the Visible and Invisible (part 4 of 6)

Rich — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:03:00 -0700

“but all this need not mean that the types developed one from another in an evolutionary series. Other forces than hereditary variation have been at work in bringing about the appearance of new characteristics; there are physical forces such as food, light-rays and others that we are only beginning to know, there are surely others which we do not yet know; there are at work invisible life-forces and obscure psychological forces. For these subtler powers have to be admitted even in the physical evolutionary theory to account for natural selection;”

Although, in the above passage, Sri Aurobindo is referring to these subtle forces as invisible, we should also recall one of the three laws of the future that Arthur C. Clark's has defined, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. This law is so ingrained in us, now that we can fly the globe or surf the web, that Gehm's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law cynically puts it, "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." or even more to the point Marge Simpson states "We can do anything now that scientists have invented magic,"

We are now able to parse matter almost magically to a degree that would have surpassed the understanding of Sri Aurobindo's age. His work was written before the discovery of the dna molecule. One does not really know how he would assess the biological sciences today. For instance, how would he conceive of evolution in light of genomics and bioinformatics? How would he assess the discovery of the cybernetic process that now govern bio-chemistry? How would he apprehend a paradigm of life not in vitalistic terms but in terms of information? Would he regard the application of precise cybernetic principles to biology as making visible the invisible life forces he was referring to when he wrote the above passage, in the early 1940s, when Shannon, Von Neumann, Wiener and others were just defining the new paradigm of information (cybernetics)? ....

But while keeping in mind his rejection of eugenics in his 1915 essay on Evolution Sri Aurobindo does seem to have enough foresight into history as to extrapolate from what he knew already about bio-technology the possibility that human biological/spiritual evolution may preceded through the intervention of its own sciences; in other words that our minds may operate upon our biology to produce new genetic mutations in organisms: “It has been noted that the human mind has already shown a capacity to aid Nature in the evolution of new types of plant and animal: it as created new forms of environment, developed by knowledge and considerable changes in its mentality. It is not an impossibility that man should aid nature consciously also in its own physical and spiritual evolution and transformation.” (844)

NASA to beam Beatles' song 'Across the Universe' to deep space on Feb.4,2008

Ron — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 02:00:00 -0800

...at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, Feb. 4...NASA will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of its first space mission — the launch of the Explorer 1 satellite — by using the system of huge antennas that usually listen for inbound signals from space to send one outbound instead: the Beatles’ song “Across the Universe,” which as it happens was mostly recorded exactly 40 years earlier, on Feb. 4, 1968.

Reception will be best in the general direction of Polaris, 431 lightyears away, which is where NASA is aiming the signal. (That would be the North Star to us laymen.) But it ought to be audible in plenty of places on Earth as well, at least by imitation: NASA is encouraging space fans and Beatle fans alike to play the song themselves at the same time.

NASA’s press release includes some perfectly in-character comments from Sir Paul McCartney (”Amazing! Well done, NASA! Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul.”) and from Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon, the song’s main author (”I see that this is the beginning of the new age in which we will communicate with billions of planets across the universe.”). ...

Jesus and the Lost Goddess Sophia

Ron — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:35:00 -0800

I've taken the liberty of transcribing the following passages from the remarkable book Jesus and the Lost Goddess, by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. I highly recommend purchasing and studying this book. Reading it is like a moist vivifying breeze in the scorched lifeless desert of deadly strife between cults of religious fanatics who each believe they alone worship the true God. It documents the horrifying behavior of the misogynous and patriarchal Roman Church and the self-serving lies and propaganda its repressed male leaders have been spreading for two thousand years in their attempt to exterminate Sophia, the divine Goddess of Wisdom and Gnosis. I've felt for years that the RC Church was more Roman than Christian, this book substantiates that intuition with an illuminating compendium of well-referenced scholarship. ~ ronjon

...For the original Christians, the Jesus story was a myth used to introduce beginners to the spiritual path. For those wishing to go deeper than the 'Outer Mysteries', which were only 'for the masses', there were secret teachings or 'Inner Mysteries'. These were 'the secret teaching of true Gnosis' which, according to the 'Church Father' Clement of Alexandria, were transmitted 'to a small number by a succession of masters'. Those initiated into these Inner Mysteries discovered that Christianity was not just about the dying and resurrecting Son of God. They were told another myth that few Christians today have even heard of – the story of Jesus' lover, the lost and redeemed Daughter of the Goddess.

Amongst the original Christians the divine was seen as having both a masculine and feminine face. The related to the Divine Feminine as Sophia, the wise Goddess. Paul tells us, 'Among the initiates we speak of Sophia', for it is 'the secret of Sophia' that is 'taught in our Mysteries'. When initiates of the Inner Mysteries of Christianity partook of Holy Communion, it was Sophia's passion and suffering they remembered. Amongst the original Christians, priests and priestesses would offer initiates wine as a symbol of 'her blood'. The prayer would be offered: 'May Sophia fill your inner being and increase in you her Gnosis.' ...

Buried in the Sands of Time: The Gospel according to Thomas

Ron — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 02:00:00 -0800

The following article is from Vol 1, No 2 (2007) of SCIY Editor Ulrich J. Mohroff's superb new journal: Anti-Matters, which I'll introduce in the next SCIY article. ~ ronjon

The question we have to consider in this essay is whether Jesus, regarded as the founder of the Christian religion, actually believed in the God of the Jews or in any God in Heaven and thus divided reality into two worlds. The writers of the four gospels seem to think he did, and the churches both Catholic and Protestant, deriving their doctrines largely from these gospels, follow this view. The gospel writers were naturally influenced by the popular Jewish religious sentiment of the time as well as by prevalent pagan Greek and Egyptian eschatological beliefs. Their writings reflect the feelings and mirror the beliefs of the ordinary man the soldier, merchant, artisan, slave living in a world of differentiation, division, hostility and discord. To the simple man whose mental capacities denied him a wider, more penetrating vision, this division was the reality, the truth. Did Jesus also subscribe to this idea of the world, or is there proof to the contrary? Was he a dualist, a believer in two realities and two worlds: this one here, and another above or was he a monist, a man to whom reality was one unitary, organic whole?

...Most Christians are acquainted with those sayings in John's gospel which explain reality from a monistic point of view, such as the famous John 17:22: "And the glory (of oneness) which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, as we are one." But in addition to these famous words there is a whole collection of monistic sayings of Jesus which the church literally dropped under the table. What kind of work is this Gospel according to Thomas, which is officially regarded as "apocryphal," unauthentic, not admitted to the New Testament canon? ...

Philosophy and religion, between exchange and tension: by Mohammed Arkoun

Ron — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:46:00 -0800

“Islamizing” modernity instead of modernizing Islam – preposterous! worries Professor Mohammed Arkoun. A refuge in poor countries, a rejection of “tele-techno-scientific reasoning” in rich countries, religiosity is spreading in the world at the expense of humanist values and philosophical thinking. ...

• Beyond Man by Georges Van Vrekhem

Ron — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:35:00 -0700

Originally published in Dutch, an English version of Beyond Man was brought out by HarperCollins in 1997. The present edition is an exact (and perhaps photographic) reprint. Some spelling mistakes have been set right. Ten years ago it was very refreshing to read Van Vrekhem’s child-like approach to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The same holds true today as we turn the pages steadily to learn about these two brilliances who brought back the Vedic spirit of exploration to our days with the promise that life on Earth can definitely be transformed into the life divine. ...

As an Aurobindonian poet wrote at that time: “A light is lit in everyone, and those/ emblazon the Living Flame.” The Aurobindonian yoga being a collective yoga, this conclusion is inevitable. Having listed the questions, Beyond Man signs off with the seal of faith: “The Great Change in evolution is happening around us and within us, whether we want it or not.” For a world caught in despair and defeatism, this is nectarean hope.

Burning Man 2007 Art Theme: "The Green Man"

Ron — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 10:55:00 -0700

His name means the Green One or Verdant One, he is the voice of inspiration to the aspirant and committed artist. He can come as a white light or the gleam on a blade of grass, but more often as an inner mood. The sign of his presence is the ability to work or experience with tireless enthusiasm beyond one's normal capacities ...

And I have felt....a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

~ William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

Entheon Village at Burning Man

Ron — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:59:00 -0700

Entheon, meaning “a place to discover the spirit within,” is an effort to promote sustainable cultural re-evolution that heals relationships between the people of the earth and our planet. The mission of Entheon is to demonstrate a future in which sustainability, ecological responsibility, environmental stewardship, and meditative and mystical consciousness are a welcomed and integrated part of society, and where art, spirituality and creativity is central to that vision.

[The] Entheon [camp at Burning Man 2007] will be a grounded gathering place offering an intellectual, therapeutic, artistic and creative cornucopia of interactive opportunities. Lectures, workshops, renewable energy demonstrations, visionary art, zen meditation in a zendo, holotropic breathwork sessions, and performance come together in the spirit of celebration to co-create our shared vision of global healing and a broader awareness of ecological responsibility. ...

Primrose School of Pondicherry: An experiment in integral education

Ron — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:14:00 -0700

Primrose School, inaugurated in June 1999 in the former French colony of Pondicherry, is a pioneering effort in India to utilise Dr. Glenn Doman’s teaching methods as the basis for a full program of pre-school, primary and secondary education.

The Mother's Service Society, Pondicherry, has been in the field of social development for a quarter of a century now and has been recognised as a "Scientific and Cultural Research Institution" by the Central Government for three decades. The Society has longed believed that new methods of education can transform India into a leading knowledge society and fulfill Sri Aurobindo's dream of India becoming the Jagat guru of the world. Primrose School was founded for this purpose, and after discovering the wonderful educational insights of Dr. Glenn Doman, they have taken them and creatively adapted them to suit Indian conditions.

Most of us believe that geniuses are a very rare breed and only a few children are born with that potential. The truth is, many children have the potential of developing genius. Every child has far more potential than comes to the surface under normal circumstances. The secret is to create conditions that enable the child to discover and express their full potential.

Dr. Doman has shown decisively that young children have an incredible capacity for learning. They can learn to read multiple languages with ease at a very young age, even before entering school. They can imbibe a wide range of general knowledge just as a form of recreation. Children can learn at least twice as fast as they normally do in traditional schools without homework, cramming or strain of any type. ... -- The Mother's Service Society believes that this method could revolutionalise education in India. ...

The [Astronauts'] Overview Effect Goes Viral

Ron — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 03:00:00 -0700

Back on February 7th 1971 (Earth time), Ed Mitchell was speeding much faster than a rifle bullet, on track between the Earth and Moon. That’s when the strangest thing happened… Mitchell had piloted Apollo 14’s Lunar Module down to the Fra Mauro region of the Moon, become the sixth human to do science in the dust, and gotten himself and Cdr. Alan Shepard back off the regolith and onto their bus ride back home. -- Now he was bored. “We were just systems engineers on a perfectly functioning spacecraft.” So he looked out the window. The Command Module was pointing “up” – which is to say perpendicular to the plane of the Solar System – and spinning slowly, about once every two minutes. “Barbecue Mode”, it’s called; to evenly heat the vehicle. Ed was floating, watching the Earth, Moon, Sun and starfield pan by.

And then, without warning: an overwhelming feeing of bliss, timelessness, connected-ness… He suddenly and deeply felt the understanding of his constituent atoms as having been born in the fires of ancient supernovas. He saw Earth and it’s people and all it’s other species and systems as a unified integrated synergistic whole. He felt good; ecstatic actually… He was not the first – nor the last – to have this specific epiphany. -- Rusty Schweikart had felt it back on March 6th 1969 during a spacewalk outside his Apollo 9 vehicle: “When you go around the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing. That makes a change…it comes through to you so powerfully that you’re the sensing element for Man.”

20 years ago, author Frank White collected, sifted, polished and curated the observations of 30 astronauts and cosmonauts. But these weren’t science observations or notes about the spacecraft hardware. They were reports of this specific, marked psychological shift – common to all these space travelers – immediately and profoundly broadening these hard-boiled guys’ perspectives. -- This morning, in a hotel across the street from the Pentagon in Washington, DC, Frank White addressed proponents of proselytizing this Overview Effect. Cognitive scientist David Beaver had called us here. A core group of about 40 authors, astronauts, special; effects designers, ex-magicians, musicians, scientists, technologists, producers, journalists, capitalists, space-tourist adventurers, humanists, assorted geeks, hippie-survivors (and, yes, this reporter) quickly decided upon a loose strategy of collaboration and mutual support. Intended mission: maximize opportunities for Earth-dwellers to have individual Overview experiences. Strategy: use art, science, mass media, music, environmental awareness, personal networking and, oh yeah: the Web to spread the opportunity for non-space travelers to understand and possibly experience the Effect. ...

What is Hindutva?

Ron — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 02:45:00 -0700

'Hindutva' has been described and defined by many. The first definition has come from Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923, in his pamphlet entitled" who is a Hindu?" to describe movements advocating Hindu Nationalism. Thereafter, a spate of definitions and interpretations have arisen, but none of them carries the full Import of the struggles of the Hindu life on this Earth.

Firstly, all the previous efforts in defining it were rooted in some type of a Social or Religious motivations (all religions in their present status are materialistic in practice - and not truly Spiritual), or Political motivations. Now, presently the effort is for gaining a lost self-identification motivation.

Secondly, in view of the laws of 'the spiritual evolution', eternally functional and in operation in the universe, the human cognitive limits have always failed to realize fully the true agenda of their life. Vedic knowledge is the only guide available to the struggling human mind; and Hindus have inherited and attempted to follow this wisdom to a large extent. Therefore, the concepts or definitions of organized religions, Natural Sciences and even 'Spirituality' 'Dharma' are all in the crucible. ...

Esoteric Physics, Preface

Ron — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:56:00 -0700

...Esoteric Physics is the discipline that studies the laws of the universe and all the process through which practical magic works. The main applications and studies of esoteric physics regard cosmology, space and time, the structure of the form, human perceptions and sensitivity and, in a certain way, natural medicines. Esoteric physics explores all the correspondences of the universe with the human microcosms and its subtle and spiritual aspects: it’s a real pathway to knowledge and awareness, beyond this universe, towards the Infinite outside and inside of us...

Spirituality is not a theoretic and transcendent concept. It is rather action, experience, behaviour and responsibility. But it is also enchantment, mystic enthusiasm and rapturous contemplation of everything. As we are incarnated into the forms, Spirituality is made of actions, events, choices, imperfect things, not of sublime ideas: there is no space for superstition in a real pathway of research and there is no space for fanaticism since the greatest spiritual realisation is not to reach certainties, but, perhaps, the continuous availability to change, to pose questions, to grow and renew ourselves. ...

Philip K. Dick's Divine Interference, by Eric Davis

Ron — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:30:00 -0700

...Unlike most religious seers, Dick did not approach his visions with anything like certitude. Dick distrusted reification of any sort (his novels constantly wage war against the process that turns people and ideas into things), and so he refused to solidify his experiences into a belief system. ...Dick approached his theophany (or "in-breaking of God") as artistic material, reworking it in his writings with an artist's commitment to irony, craft, and a political bite. Even in his private journals, he constantly liquefies his revelations, writing with a modern thinker's sense of the tentativeness of speculative thought.

... Dick's Black Iron Prison imaginatively captured the "disciplinary apparatus" of power analyzed by historian Michel Foucault. Demonstrating that prisons, mental institutions, schools, and military establishments all share similar organizations of space and time, Foucault argued that a "technology of power" was distributed throughout social space, enmeshing human subjects at every turn. Foucault argued that liberal social reforms are only cosmetic brush-ups of an underlying mechanism of control. As Dick put it, "The Empire never ended."

"...today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. [10]"

As Jean Baudrillard has argued into the ground, simulation rather than representation has become the defining characteristic of cultural signs and artifacts in our time. ... The technological simulacrum creates its own reality, which Baudrillard calls the "hyperreal," a kind of ersatz parody of Plato's ideal world of forms. For example, when you download a printer driver from the Internet or record a CD onto digital tape, you do not "copy" the information so much as replicate a hyperreal object.

... As an exhausted rationalist, Baudrillard simply abandoned himself to a morbid celebration of the pixel apocalypse, giving up any notion of resistance or transformation while ignoring the messy realities that gum up the works of all such grand intellectual scenarios. But Dick never gave up his commitment to the "authentically human," the "viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new." He also recognized that simulacra lie deep in our souls, and that we are not so far from the spiritual paradigms of the ancient world, with their camouflage spirits, talking images, and automata gods. And so Dick redeployed the gnostic struggle for authenticity and freedom within the hard-sell universe of simulation. The world is a prison not because of its materiality—which was the opinion of the ancient Gnostics—but because of the hidden orders of power and control it houses: the various corporate, political, and ideological archons herding us into increasingly compelling synthetic worlds. ...

A Spirituality that Transforms: Translation vs. Transformation

Ron — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 18:10:00 -0700

...If we use the percentages of Chinese Ch'an as a simple blanket example, this means that if 0.0000001 of the population is actually involved in genuine or authentic spirituality, then .99999999 of the population is involved in nontransformative, non authentic, merely translative or horizontal belief systems. And that means, yes, that the vast, vast majority of "spiritual seekers" in this country (as elsewhere) are involved in much less than authentic occasions. It has always been so; it is still so now. This country is no exception.

But in today's America, this is much more disturbing, because this vast majority of horizontal spiritual adherents often claim to be representing the leading edge of spiritual transformation, the "new paradigm" that will change the world, the "great transformation" of which they are the vanguard. But more often than not, they are not deeply transformative at all; they are merely but aggressively translative--they do not offer effective means to utterly dismantle the self, but merely ways for the self to think differently. Not ways to transform, but merely new ways to translate. In fact, what most of them offer is not a practice or a series of practices; not sadhana or satsang or shikan-taza or yoga. What most of them offer is simply the suggestion: read my book on the new paradigm. This is deeply disturbed, and deeply disturbing.

Thus, the authentic spiritual camps have the heart and soul of the great transformative traditions, and yet they will always do two things at once: appreciate and engage the lesser and translative practices (upon which their own successes usually depend), but also issue a thundering shout from the heart that translation alone is not enough. ...

ISEC: The International society for Ecology & Culture

Ron — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:47:00 -0700

I got to know the remarkable Helena Norberg-Hodge, the Founder of ISEC, back in the 70's, when she was setting up the Ladakh Project, for which she shared the 1986 Right Livelihood Award, otherwise known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize.' –- Her selfless, Buddhist commitment to protecting the indigenous peoples of the Tibetan high plateau from Western commercial development deeply impressed me. I'll always remember her inspiring photos of the unique and glowing faces of the Ladakh people who hadn't yet been exposed to Western culture. Knowing Helena, I can unreservedly attest to the quality and integrity of ISEC. ... ~ ron

'The Doctrine of the Subtle Worlds: Sri Aurobindo's Cosmology, Modern Science, and the Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead'

Ron — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:11:00 -0800

This is an unusually long article for SCIY. It's copyrighted by Eric M. Weiss, and was his dissertation for his Ph.D. at CIIS, the California Institute of Integral Studies, with a concentration in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness. I'm taking the liberty of posting it here because, in my opinion, it's one of the most thorough and insightful treatments of the core concern of SCIY; the multiple & interpenetrating relationships between science, culture, and consciousness, placed within the contextual framework of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga. - Warning: This is challenging material, but I believe working through it and contemplating its implications is well worth the effort. - My deepest appreciation goes to Dr. Eric Weiss for his extraordinary and groundbreaking work. ~ ron

...Here we are, at the dawn of the Twenty First Century, and I have awakened to find myself living in a science fiction novel. If this novel were to be written from the standpoint of the 23rd century, looking back to the beginning of the 21st, it might start something like this:

At that time, the certainties of science had faltered. The great charism of the men in white lab coats had faded. The bastions of materialism had crumbled from within, and the civilization that it had fostered was losing its way.

Meanwhile, three centuries of rapacious assault on the biosphere were, at last, showing decisive results. The globe was poisoned, people were sick, species were being slaughtered by the tens of thousands, global temperatures and global sea levels were both beginning to rise. A civilization was ending, and in its death throes, it was bringing to a close the Cenozoic Era. The Earth was preparing for a fresh creation.

Looking back, too, we can see that the promise of the new civilization had already begun to shine. The iron cage of the material world, in which the species had been trapped for centuries, was starting to dissolve. Here and there, the experiences of the subtle worlds were breaking through. A few intrepid explorers had seen the promise, and had just begun to glimpse the vast freedoms and the limitless horizons that we now enjoy, but the darkness was still thick and Kali was dancing wildly across the face of the globe. This is the story of those early pioneers…

Metaphysical implications of the quantum 'Zero Point Field'

Ron — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 14:38:00 -0800

This is Part 1 of a series of quoted passages from the book The Field: the Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, by science journalist Lynn McTaggart. It’s an excellent non-technical explanation about the metaphysical implications of modern quantum theory, especially what’s called the ‘Zero Point Field.’ I hope this can provide a useful vocabulary for our ongoing dialogues re possible relationships between science and spirituality. I’ll say more in future comments to these articles. ~ ron

...The notion of an electromagnetic field is simply a convenient abstraction invented by scientists (and represented by lines of 'force', indicated by direction and shape) to try to make sense of the seemingly remarkable actions of electricity and magnetism and their ability to influence objects at a distance — and, technically, into infinity — with no detectable substance or matter in between. Simply put, a field is a region of influence. As one pair of researchers aptly described it: 'Every time you use your toaster, the fields around it perturb charged particles in the farthest galaxies ever so slightly.' ... In the quantum world, quantum fields are not mediated by forces but by exchange of energy, which is constantly redistributed in a dynamic pattern. This constant exchange is an intrinsic property of particles, so that even 'real' particles are nothing more than a little knot of energy which briefly emerges and disappears back into the underlying field. According to quantum field theory, the individual entity is transient and insubstantial. Particles cannot be separated from the empty space around them. Einstein himself recognized that matter itself was 'extremely intense' — a disturbance, in a sense, of perfect randomness — and that the only fundamental reality was the underlying entity — the field itself. ...

The Zero Point Field is a repository of all fields and all ground energy states and all virtual particles — a field of fields. ...

The existence of the Zero Point Field implied that all matter in the universe was interconnected by waves, which are spread out through time and space and can carry on to infinity, tying one part of the universe to every other part. The idea of the Zero Point Field might just offer a scientific explanation for many metaphysical notions, such as the Chinese belief in the life force, or qi, described in ancient texts as something akin to an energy field. It even echoed the Old Testament's account of God's first dictum: 'Let there be light', out of which matter was created. ... If all subatomic matter in the world is interacting constantly with this ambient ground-state energy field, the subatomic waves of the Zero Point Field are constantly imprinting a record of the shape of everything. As the harbinger and imprinter of all wavelengths and all frequencies, the Zero Point Field is a kind of shadow of the universe for all time, a mirror image and record of everything that ever was. In a sense, the vacuum is the beginning and the end of everything in the universe. ... If that were true, it meant every part of the universe could be in touch with every other part instantaneously. ...

... If matter wasn't stable, but an essential element in an underlying ambient, random sea of energy ... then it should be possible to use this as a blank matrix on which coherent patterns could be written, particularly as the Zero Point Field had imprinted everything that ever happened in the world through wave interference encoding. This kind of information might account for coherent particle and field structures. But there might also be an ascending ladder of other possible information structures, perhaps coherent fields around living organisms, or maybe this acts a a non-biochemical 'memory' in the universe. It might even be possible to organize these fluctuations somehow through an act of will. ... this represented nothing less than a unifying concept of the universe, which showed that everything was in some sort of connection and balance with the rest of the cosmos. The universe's very currency might be learned information, as imprinted upon this fluid, mutable field of information. The Zero Point Field demonstrated that the real currency of the universe — the very reason for its stability — is an exchange of energy. If we were all connected through the Zero Point Field, then it just might be possible to tap into this vast reservoir of energy information and extract information from it. With such a vast energy bank to be harnessed, virtually anything was possible — that is, if human beings had some sort of quantum structure allowing them access to it. But there was the stumbling block. That would require that our bodies operated according to the laws of the quantum world. ...

Sufi Teaching Stories, taken from 'The Way of the Sufi' by Indres Shah

Ron — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 01:10:00 -0800

Here's a sample of Sufi teaching stories, from Indres Shah's book "The Way of the Sufi":

One day a man came to the great teacher Bahaudin. He asked for help in his problems, and guidance on the path of the Teaching.
Bahaudin told him to abandon spiritual studies, and to leave his court at once.

A kind hearted visitor began to remonstrate with Bahaudin.

"You shall have a demonstration." said the sage. At that moment a bird flew into the room, darting hither and thither, not knowing where to go in order to escape.
The Sufi waited until the bird settled near the only open window of the chamber, and then suddenly clapped his hands.
Alarmed, the bird flew straight through the opening of the window, to freedom.

"To him that sound must have been something of a shock, even an affront, do you not agree?" said Bahaudin. ...

Is India headed the right way?, by Francois Gautier

Ron — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:35:00 -0800

Thanks to Koantum for suggesting this article by Aurovillian Francois Gautier.
_______________________________________________________________
Today, there is a sense of deep satisfaction, of gloating even, in India... we see a much more dynamic and self-confident India, galvanised by the liberalisation taking place at this very moment.

But if one looks closer at what is happening here, one is bound to feel a little unsettled. For what we see today is an India veering blindly, without restraint, towards total globalisation and Westernisation. — Yes, there are great values in the Western world: Freedom, democracy, equality (not always though), respect for the environment, less corruption. And India must, and has already borrowed from these qualities. — But since the last two, three years, it seems the Indian political and intellectual mind is pushing these qualities to an illogical extreme, as if it wants to prove to the West that 'we are as democratic, as liberal, as free as you are.' — Thus, democracy in India has been hijacked. It takes a fortune to be elected. Politicians, elected by and for the people, once they are locked in the ivory tower that is Delhi, forget all about the people.

This process of copying the West to the point of aping it has, of course, already happened many times in the developing world. And it killed the soul of many countries, making them just another replica of the West -- with a youth that wears the latest Calvin Klein jeans, knows the No 1 bestseller on the Time list, can quote a few lines from Dante, reads The Times of India, but knows nothing about pranayama, has never read a verse from Kalidasa and does not know who Sri Aurobindo is. ...

Subjective Mental Experience and Genuine Experience; The Mental Fortress, by the Mother

Ron — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 12:50:00 -0800

The following is from a talk by the Mother, dated 22 June 1955. Here she makes some very interesting comments regarding the appearance of the chakras in meditation and so on. This is also related to the concept of the "mental fortress", the idea that we create a subjective mental image of Reality, which we mistake for Reality itself.

If one knows it beforehand, one makes a mental construction and risks greatly living in his mental construction, which is an illusion; because when the mind builds certain conditions and then they are realised, there are many chances of there being mostly pure mental construction which is not the experience itself but its image. So for all these truly spiritual experiences I think it is wiser to have them before knowing them. If one knows them, one imitates them, one doesn't have them, one imagines oneself having them; whereas if one knows nothing - how things are and how they ought to happen, what should happen and how it will come about - if one knows nothing about all this, then by keeping very still and making a kind of inner sorting out within one's being, one can suddenly have the experience, and then later knows what one has had. ...

The Two Irrefutable Signs that prove one is in relation with the Supermind, by the Mother

Ron — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:58:00 -0800

How might one know if one has contacted the Supramentalised Consciousness? What marks would this leave on the individual, in their own consciousness, in their relation to others, in their teachings? This is explained in this very important talk by the Mother in 1961:

I can tell you right away that there are two signs - two certain, infallible signs. I know them through personal experience, for they are two things that can ONLY come with the supramental consciousness; without it, one cannot possess them - no yogic effort, no discipline, no tapasya can give them to you, while they come almost automatically with the supramental consciousness. ...

Sri Aurobindo & Hyperspace, by Garry Jacobs

Ron — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:59:00 -0800

Fascinating musings by Garry Jacobs of the Mother's Service Society, on possible relationships between the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and modern theories in physics as presented by Michio Kaku in his book Hyperspace.

1. The Special Theory of Relativity views time as a dimension. It finds that space and time are interchangeable. They can rotate into each other in a mathematically precise way. Reality is space-time.

Is there any sense in which Sri Aurobindo would view space and time as a single reality?

· According to him, all reality resides in and issues from the Absolute. By a process of Self-conception, the Absolute manifests Being/Existence (Sat) and all that issues from it. The principle of time emerges when Being extends itself subjectively to become Consciousness-Force (Chit). The principle of space emerges when Being extends itself objectively to become an object to its own Self-Conscious experience. Space and time are different expressions of the same reality. ...

One Vision: The home of David Ulansey (CIIS Prof.)

Ron — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 19:16:00 -0800

My name is David Ulansey. I am a Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and before I came to CIIS I taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Boston University, Barnard College (Columbia University), the University of Vermont, and Princeton University. My specialty is the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world, especially the ancient Mystery religions, Gnosticism, ancient cosmology, and early Christianity.

My publications have focused on the ancient mystery religion of Mithraism. ...

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

Ron — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:38:00 -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

"The Only Journey There Is: An Exploration of Cosmic & Cultural Evolution," Robert Godwin Interview (WIE)

Ron — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 17:22:00 -0800

Robert Godwin is ... an “outsider” thinker, and a masterful litterateur to boot. In his book "One Cosmos under God," he attempts nothing less than to reenvision the entire story of creation, both scientifically and spiritually, and audaciously and stunningly presents an often poetic, quasi-scriptural rendering of what a new cosmic narrative could be. It’s a book that breaks boundaries, thrills and teases, and ultimately makes very much sense in its Herculean embrace of cosmology, biology, quantum physics, psychology, anthropology, history, mysticism, theology, and more.

A practicing clinical psychologist, Godwin, in his words, became voraciously interested in everything at some point in his mid to late twenties. He also credits himself with having a synthetic versus analytic mind. So in order to make sense of what he was learning, he sought to find relationships and patterns among the truths he had gleaned from disparate fields of study. In short, he wanted to know. To that end, he recognized that the only way to grasp spiritual truths was through direct experience and he became a serious practitioner of Sri Aurobindo’s integral yoga. One Cosmos under God is the result of what he discovered as a follower of the Indian sage’s teachings, together with the fruits of his relentless curiosity. ...

"Trialogues at the Edge of the West," Chap. 5, part a: Light and Vision

Ron — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 17:49:00 -0800

I'm posting this portion of Chap. 5 of "Trialogues at the Edge of the West" because I think it may relate to the discussion presently under way re the article titled: "Instruments of Knowledge and Post-Human Destinies." My hope is that some of the new theories now surfacing in contemporary science may support our work in deconstructing the insights presented both in traditional Hindu and Buddhist texts and in Sri Aurobindo's more recent writings.
For example, the initial section of "Trialogues" that I quote below raises some interesting ideas about the possible relationship between light, perception, mind and consciousness. (ron)

A Second Response to Daniel Gustav Anderson's "Towards a Critical Integral Theory"

Debashish — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:30:00 -0800

Sri Aurobindo is not just the "foundational thinker" of "Integral Theory" – in Anderson’s back-handed compliment “To adapt a meme attributed to Whitehead: if European philosophy amounts to a footnoting of Plato, Integral theory may very well amount to a conversation about Aurobindo.” As I proceeded to read I could see how this is possible if one takes Sri Aurobindo’s Vedantic darshan, Purnadvaita Vedanta (inseparable from its corresponding yoga, Purna Yoga) as a western style speculative metaphysics purporting to be a Theory of Everything, an ideology which maintains itself as Truth through the Will-to-Power and becomes the defining hegemonic ideology of late Enlightenment Neoliberalism through the production of its world-subjects, something perhaps possible. But to attribute the foundation of such an ideological field to Sri Aurobindo is, certainly a new wrinkle to the abuses/misuses of his text which seem to be multiplying lately (as for instance through left and right perceptions of it as the foundational text for Hindutva). ...

Instruments of Knowledge and Post-Human Destinies

Debashish — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 15:23:00 -0800

The two postings on Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies (I and II) generated a thread on the relationship between physical instruments of observation and knowledge in the scientific sense (microscopes, telescopes, nuclear accelerators), human organs of observation and knowledge (mind, intelligence, sense organs) in the cognitive / psychological sense and possible mutations of human consciousness in the ontological / phenomenological / epistemological sense (change of being, change of consciousness, change of modalities of knowledge). The last (possibilities of a change of modalities of knowledge) opened up a consideration of Sri Aurobindo’s phenomenology of supramental knowledge and its subsidiary action in human forms and instruments of knowledge – specifically sense-knowledge through the sense organs with the “sixth-sense” of the “sense mind,” manas in the Indian Sankhya formulation behind them at/as their origin and the supramental Samjnana further behind/beyond but with a concealed and subsidiary operation in/through manas. Here we are reproducing the relevant parts of this very fertile thread for focused consideration.

"Trialogues at the Edge of the West," Chap. 1: Creativity and the Imagination

Ron — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 16:28:00 -0800

There's a profound crisis in the scientific world at the moment that is going to change science as we know it. Two of the West's fundamental models of reality are in tremendous conflict. The existing worldview of science is an unstable combination of two great tectonic plates of theory that are crashing into each other. Where they meet, there are major theoretical earthquakes and disruptions and volcanos of speculation. ...

The satanic spirit of science

Ron — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 14:49:00 -0800

...In our culture, we tend to move into cities that push nature away from us. In our mental environment, we do the same thing. Most people live within a very conventionalized set of notions that are deeply imbedded in a larger set of notions. When we go to the physical edges, such as the desert, jungle, and remote and wild nature, and when we go to the mental edges with meditation, dreams, and psychedelics, we discover an extremely rich flora and fauna in the imagination. This realm is ignored because of our tendency to see in words, to build in words, and to turn our backs on the raging ocean of phenomena that would otherwise entirely overwhelm our metaphors...
If we ask what has caused this blindness, we might answer that it's the satanic spirit of science. In the seventeenth century, the spirit of Satan was portrayed in Milton's Paradise Lost, with a whole taxonomy of various demons and fallen angels that acted as malevolent powers, such as Mammon, the demon of commercial greed. The primary sin of Satan and of the other fallen angels like Mammon was pride, the turning away from God toward their own self-sufficiency. This was the beginning of the whole humanist illusion that turned away from the spirit world and declared humans to be self-sufficient. From this point of view, all gods, demons, and spirits are projections of the human mind, creating a kind of anthropocentric universe. ...

The Buddha on Meditation & States of Consciousness, Part II

Ron — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 11:17:00 -0800

There is inevitable great difficulty in translating from noumenal experience to the realm of discourse, from raw reality to abstract concept. Experience is the forerunner of all spiritual teachings, though similar experiences may come to be articulated differently; the Vedas say, "The Truth is one, only the sages call it by different names." In any given exploration of higher states of consciousness, the version set down in words is of necessity an arbitrary, and perhaps nebulous, delimitation of states, their characteristics, and their bounds...
... the Tibetans recognize two levels of religious doctrine and practice: "The Expedient Teaching" and "The Final Teaching." The Expedient Teachings are the multitude of world religions, each shaped by and for the people who adhere to it; the variance among faiths is accounted for by these shaping factors. But the Final Teaching at the (often esoteric) core of all faiths is essentially one and the same. The typology of techniques which follows here is aimed at the level of Final Teaching, where doctrinal differences fall away, the unity of practice coming into focus. Religious systems differ by virtue of accident of time and place, but the experience that is precursor to religion is everywhere the same. The unity in Final Teaching underlying the various techniques is inevitable: all men are alike in nervous system, and it is at this level that the laws governing Final Teaching operate. ...

The Buddha on Meditation & States of Consciousness, Part I, by Daniel Goleman

Ron — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:06:00 -0800

As Suzuki (1958) points out, in every religion it has been the core experience of an altered state which has preceded and been foundation for the subsequent structures of institution and theology. Too often it is the latter that have survived rather than the former; thus the modern crisis of the established churches might be seen in terms of the disappearance in our age of personally experienced transcendental states, the "living spirit" which is the common base of all religions. Still, for each being who enters these states without a guide, it is as though he were discoverng them for all the world for the first time. A biographer of Sri Aurobindo, for example, notes (Satprem, 1970, p. 256):
"One may imagine that Sri Aurobindo was the first to be baffled by his own experience and that it took him some years to understand exactly what had happened. We have described the ... experience ... as though the stages had been linked very carefully, each with its explanatory label, but the explanations came long afterwards, at that moment he had no guiding landmarks."
This paper begins in Part I with a detailed discussion of the 'Visuddhimagga' account of Gotama Buddha's teachings on meditation and higher states of consciousness––perhaps the most detailed and extensive report extant of one being's explorations within the mind. ...

"Trialogues at the Edge of the West: Chaos, Creativity, and the Resacralization of the World"

Ron — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 15:04:00 -0800

Terence McKenna is a psychedelic explorer, ethnopharmacologist and theorist of time. Rupert Sheldrake is a controversial biologist, best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance, the idea that there is an inherent memory in nature. Ralph Abraham is a chaos mathematician and pioneer in the field of computer graphics.

TERENCE: In our culture, we tend to move into cities that push nature away from us. In our mental environment, we do the same thing. Most people live within a very conventionalized set of notions that are deeply imbedded in a larger set of notions. When we go to the physical edges, such as the desert, jungle, and remote and wild nature, and when we go to the mental edges with meditation, dreams, and psychedelics, we discover an extremely rich flora and fauna in the imagination. This realm is ignored because of our tendency to see in words, to build in words, and to turn our backs on the raging ocean of phenomena that would otherwise entirely overwhelm our metaphors.
RALPH: It's true. We have to misuse our language even to talk about these things.
RUPERT: If we ask what has caused this blindness, we might answer that it's the satanic spirit of science. In the seventeenth century, the spirit of Satan was portrayed in Milton's Paradise Lost, with a whole taxonomy of various demons and fallen angels that acted as malevolent powers, such as Mammon, the demon of commercial greed. The primary sin of Satan and of the other fallen angels like Mammon was pride, the turning away from God toward their own self-sufficiency. This was the beginning of the whole humanist illusion that turned away from the spirit world and declared humans to be self-sufficient. From this point of view, all gods, demons, and spirits are projections of the human mind, creating a kind of anthropocentric universe.
TERENCE: Humans are said to be the measure of all things.
RUPERT: This is humanism. To adopt the alternative tradition of animism and to recognize the living spirits and souls of all nature is profoundly repugnant to humanism, yet it is the common ground of all human civilization, thought, and tradition. As in Goethe's Faust, the paradigmatic scientist sells his soul to the devil in return for unlimited knowledge and power. The guiding spirit of modern science, according to the Faust myth, is a satanic demon, a fallen angel called Mephistopheles. ...

Is there a possible integration between Buddhism and Integral Yoga?

Ron — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 13:04:00 -0800

I've copied here part of the prior ongoing discussion re "Derrida, Death and Forgiveness" by Andrew J. McKenna. This part begins with Rich's posting about Herbert Guenther's book "From Reductionism to Creativity, rDrogs-chen and the New Science of Mind," and continues through a fascinating dialogue re systems theory, the Vedas & the Vedantic Method, Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and Integral Yoga. - I noted Debashish's comment that he finds a lack in Buddhism (or Guenther's version of it) related to the "Divine Maya of Supermind." -- However, my personal impression is that the Buddhist ontology/method now has significantly more influence on Western intellectuals and opinion makers (especially Tibetan Buddhism, perhaps because of the work of the Dali Lama) than does Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, which most Westerners have little or no awareness of.

My questions are:
1) Is Buddhism in fact somehow lacking in its ontology and/or its methods, compared to those presented by Sri Aurobindo as Integral Yoga? If so, why has it become so much more well known in the West than Integral Yoga?
2) Is there anything those of us who are partial to Sri Aurobindo's approach can do to increase its influence in the West?
3) Is there a possible integration between Buddhism and Integral Yoga, perhaps along the lines hinted at by Debashish as a "gnosis ... which involves entire realms of practice through transformed ontologies (the triple transformation) ?" ~ ron

The Spiros Project - Exploring the World of Contemporary Spiritual Art

Debashish — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 08:31:00 -0800

Phil Psilos is a researcher in contemporary spiritual art throughout the world who is in the process of preparing an art archive. At present he is headed for India where he will travel extensively. He will be in Pondicherry and Auroville just after the New Year (2007).

"Changing How We Work Together," Peter Senge & Margaret Wheatley

Ron — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 14:44:00 -0800

I'm posting the following interview with Peter Senge and Margaret Wheatley, by Melvin McLeod, the Editor of the Buddhist magazine Shambhala Sun, to provide a bit more depth on Peter's views than given by my partial transcript of his 5-minute 'QuickTalk' that I posted a few days ago ...

Increasingly, we’re directly incorporating into our work different practices that have been around for a long time, such as various types of meditation. It started with the work on dialogue. We found that dialogue often involved silence, and so maybe we needed to actually cultivate the capacity to sit in silence. And guess what? That started to look a lot like traditional forms of meditation or contemplation. ...

'Evolution - A Metaphysical Discussion' by R.Y. Deshpande

Debashish — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:39:00 -0800

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.

"Human history as a response to a future Attractor." - A talk by Terence McKenna

Ron — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 14:41:00 -0800

This is another experimental audio file. It's a 5-minute talk by Terence McKenna, a cultural anthropologist who spent many years doing participant observation research with indigenous tribes in Central and South America. The experiences he had with the Shamans of those tribes led him to believe that humanity is in the midst of a major cultural transformation that's being mediated by an "Attractor that lies ahead in the temporal dimension."

"Human history represents such a radical break with the natural systems of biological organization that preceded it, that it must be the response to a kind of Attractor, or dwell point, that lies ahead in the temporal dimension... It's almost as though this object in hyperspace, glittering in hyperspace, throws off reflections of itself, which actually ricochet into the past––illuminating this mystic, inspiring that saint or visionary––and that out of these fragmentary glimpses of Eternity, we can build a kind of map of not only the past of the universe, of the evolution and ingression into novelty, but a kind of map of the future. ...

When scientists have epiphanies ...

Ron — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 17:32:00 -0800

... Something had touched her, not her skin, deeper. At first it was just the awareness that she was not alone. By herself, on the dock, in her bare feet, she now shared her space with someone as real as she--as welcome and strangely familiar as a beloved friend.
She felt years of burden lift. For a moment, she basked in a warm sensation of infinite reprieve.
No judgment. No punishment.
Kaye shivered. Her tongue moved over her lips. A trickle of silvery water seemed to run through her head. The trickle became a rivulet, then an insistent creek flowing down the back of her neck into her chest. It was cool and electric and pure, like stepping out of the sweltering heat of a summer day into an underground spring. But this spring spoke, though never with words. It had a particular and distinctive perfume, like astringent flowers.
It was alive, and she could not shake the feeling that she had known about it all along. Like molecules finally fitting, making a whole--yet not. Nothing biological whatsoever. Something other. ...

Derrida, Death and Forgiveness by Andrew J. McKenna

Debashish — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:26:00 -0800

Andrew McKenna's essay from the online journal "First Things" reviews Graham Ward's comparative study of the French poststructualist philosopher Jacques Derrida and the modern mystical theologian Karl Barth. In addition, McKenna also considers a late text of Derrida's "The Gift of Death" which pursues further the thinker's mystical and messianic approaches to the "secret", the "promise", the "future" and the "Other."

"How Savitri illumines Om Namo Bhagavate," a talk & reading by Rod at Auroville

Ron — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 17:23:00 -0800

Rod asked me to post his following talk, which is related to a popular article he posted on SCIY a year ago.

...first I would like to make a few observations about "Savitri" and the Mother’s mantra. (I would be surprised if no one has made these before, but they seem original to me because I haven’t read them anywhere yet.) You might remember that the Mother elaborated on her mantra to Satprem in 1965, and at that time she said:

“Of all the formulas or mantras, the one that has the most direct effect on this body is the Sanskrit mantra: OM NAMO BHAGAVATE. ...

Question for Debashish re "Introductory Notes to Hinduism"

Ron — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 11:08:00 -0800

Hi Debashish, -- How would you relate your discussion of the historical development of Hinduism with the following commentary by Sri Aurobindo?

...The sages of the Veda and Vedanta relied entirely upon intuition and spiritual experience. It is by an error that scholars sometimes speak of great debates or discussions in the Upanishad. Wherever there is the appearance of a controversy, it is not by discussion, by dialectics or the use of logical reasoning that it proceeds, but by a comparison of intuitions and experiences in which the less luminous gives place to the more luminous, the narrower, faultier or less essential to the more comprehensive, more perfect, more essential. ..."

"The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge," by Sri Aurobindo (Chap. VIII of "The Life Divine")

Ron — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:33:00 -0800

This is the text of Chapter VIII of "The Life Divine," by Sri Aurobindo, copyright © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1990-2023.

BUT what then is the working of this Sachchidananda in the world and by what process of things are the relations between itself and the ego which figures it first formed, then led to their consummation? For on those relations and on the process they follow depend the whole philosophy and practice of a divine life for man. ...

Introductory Notes to "Hinduism"

Debashish — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:19:00 -0800

These Introductory Notes on "Hinduism" (a body of Indian religious and spiritual systems which follow the primacy of the Vedas) by Debashish Banerji attempts a cross-cultural description of this complex field seen as an unified discourse. Aspects covered include productive dualities within Hinduism, textual history of Hinduism, major Puranic gods, Hindu practices and the Hindu temple.

Beyond the limits of our Western "doxa"? - Experiments with "time travel"

Ron — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 15:46:00 -0700

This article purports to be a truthful account of experiments in time travel (!) being undertaken at the esoteric research community called the Federation of Damanhur, located in the foothills of the Italian Alps in northern Italy, about 30 km. from Turin. I was sufficiently intriqued by reports like this to travel to Damanhur a few years ago, and subsequently live there for 6 months per year for three years. -- Since only advanced initiates are allowed to take part in or even witness these experiments, I can only say that I talked at length with the persons involved, credible professionals all, and they have personally attested to and expanded on their quoted experiences with great conviction. They appear to believe that they did in fact have the reported experiences. So, judge for yourself if you wish to admit this within your "doxa" of possibilites. ~ ron

...Gorilla and his colleagues went through months of complex preparations to enable them to achieve the necessary mastery over mind and body. Long sessions of hypnosis had instilled into them the complicated information needed to carry out the trips successfully, as well as the receptivity they would require for detailed recall of the environments in which they would find themselves. It is likely that even the most open-minded reader of this article will be tempted to dismiss its contents. The implications of the claims made by the members of the community of Damanhur, featured in the last issue of Kindred Spirit, that they have devised a system capable of propelling men and women across vast oceans of time, are staggering. ...

Comments on "Reflections on Sri Aurobindo's THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY" (cont.)

Ron — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:10:00 -0700

I've taken the liberty of re-posting here all of the comments ("Replies") to Debashish's earlier posting: "Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji." -- My reasons:

1) The set of responses in this thread was getting so large that we were starting to experience some oddities in BlogHarbor's reply functions.
2) I was concerned that we could delete the entire thread due to some technical or human error, thus losing this fascinating & important discussion.
3) By posting all of the comments as this article, we can go back in and re-format them if we wish; e.g., correcting typos & adding italics for quoted passages.

PLEASE CONTINUE OUR REPLIES ON THIS TOPIC HERE, IN THIS ARTICLE, NOT IN THE PREVIOUSLY POSTED ONE.

Thanks,
~ ron

"The Synthesis of Yoga," by Sri Aurobindo. Part 1, Chapter 1, p.47, "The Four Aids"

Ron — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:24:00 -0700

Yoga-siddhi, the perfection that comes from the practice of Yoga, can be best attained by the combined working of four great instruments. There is, first, the knowledge of the truths, principles, powers and processes that govern the realisation -- sastra. Next comes ...

The Problem of ‘Mythologies of Separation' from Primordial Unity with Nature

Ron — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:17:00 -0700

My friend Peter Oldfield, just sent me this reflection on the profound influence on our experience that can be wrought by the religious traditions embedded in our cultures. For more about Peter's mythopoetic work, see this previous SCIY article re his "World Memory Theatre" project.

Grokking the Transparent Network: Reflections on the 13th Digital Be-In, by Michael Gosney

Ron — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 13:01:00 -0700

On May 29, 2004, the 13th edition of the Digital Be-In beamed in to San Francisco. The annual cyber culture happening featured Ram Dass and Wavy Gravy, luminaries digital and beyond, exhibits, live bands, DJs and an immersive visual environment. The theme of the event was “The Transparent Network. -- Be-In 13’s many co-creators addressed The Transparent Network theme through speeches, a curated art gallery, exhibits and installations, a video theater, more than 20 performances on three stages and immersive projections throughout the venue. Like past Be-In memes — “Freedom of Speech on the Internet,” “Cultural Diversity in Cyberspace,” and “Human Rights in the Digital Age” — The Transparent Network idea refers to current technical initiatives and social issues. But it is also an emerging archetype with broader meanings, and these more esoteric dimensions were explored as well. ...

The Spiritual Cinema Circle

Ron — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 22:21:00 -0700

Kim and I have been subscribing to Spiritual Cinema Circle for several months now and have become happy converts from the usual mass market movies delivered by Hollywood. -- Highly recommended! ~ ron

You may be missing this year's most visionary and inspiring movies because many are never released. Mainstream Hollywood distributors simply don't believe there is an audience for these kinds of films. Yet, as we all know, there is an audience; it is us. -- The Spiritual Cinema Circle exists in order to provide you with entertaining movies that will:
* - Awaken your sense of joy and wonder
* - Inspire love and compassion
* - Evoke a deeper connection with the universe around you ...

Two Poems on Durga By Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 01:26:00 -0700

Durga is the Divine Mother's aspect of luminous Power. She is known for the slaying of the Buffallo Demon, Mahisasura. She (and her companion aspects of the Divine Mother) are particularly active at this time of the year. In these two poems, I contemplate Durga as she has been realized in stone at two ancient Goddess worship sites of India - Mamallapuram, near Pondicherry in South India and Ellora, in the hills of the western Deccan.

Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:33:00 -0700

In these last chapters of The Ideal of Human Unity, Sri Aurobindo draws together the threads that he has introduced earlier in the work, leading to his conclusion. Though Jan Smuts was yet to coin the word "Holism" to encapsulate the idea that a directed tendency towards the formation of ever-larger aggregates is observable in Nature, each such distinct stage marked by the presence of an identity and properties exceeding those of the sum of their parts, Sri Aurobindo's model of History follows this course. Indeed, this teleology follows naturally from Sri Aurobindo's master-idea of the progressive manifestation of intrinsic spiritual Oneness in Time, expressing itself politically as the drive towards world-union.

Detachment and The Integral Yoga

Debashish — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 23:53:00 -0700

Detachment in a spiritual sense is the development of another dimension within us, a dimension which coexists with our active personality but is outside of it. It is to find an inner freedom, to discover a part of the being that cannot be touched by external circumstances or by the outer being’s activities – a separation within between what we know as ourselves in the world and something which is intrinsic and connected to an infinite being, a sort of an immutable witnessing.

Kindness Meditation Practice, by Jack Kornfield

Ron — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:02:00 -0700

The practice of loving-kindness is a specific meditation practice that can be used both to develop concentration and to develop the quality of kindness. The following instructions are taken from "A Path With Heart" by Jack Kornfield, (Bantham Books 1993) but it is also possible to recite to oneself the Buddha's discourse on kindness. ...

Essentials of Buddhism

Ron — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:42:00 -0700

Four Noble Truths

1. Suffering exists
2. Suffering arises from attachment to desires
3. Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases
4. Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the Eightfold Path

Noble Eightfold Path ...

Center for Integral Education, San Diego, CA, USA

Ron — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 13:33:00 -0800

Integral Education, based on the teachings and philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa (The Mother), focuses on developing the whole child. -- The Center for Integral Education operates the first two Integral Education schools in the United States: ...

Mistaken spirituality

Ron — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 18:20:00 -0700

..it must therefore be emphasised that spirituality is not a high intellectuality, not idealism, not an ethical turn of mind or moral purity and austerity, not religiosity or an ardent and exalted emotional fervour, not even a compound of all these excellent things; a mental belief, creed or faith, an emotional aspiration, a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience. ...