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

"Michael Murphy very well might be the single most significant spiritual pioneer of our generation, if for no other reason than the extraordinary spaces that he created in which others could transform," Ken Wilber writes in his book 'The Eye of Spirit.' Indeed, ever since Murphy discovered the pioneering work of Sri Aurobindo almost fifty years ago, his passionate interest in the cultivation of human evolutionary potential has continued unabated. Not only did he found, with his friend the late Richard Price, the by-now-historic testing ground of human potential, Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, but he has also written several best-selling books about the relationship between sports and the mystical dimension of life and has, together with his colleague George Leonard, painstakingly mapped out a systematic theory and program of what he calls "Integral Transformative Practice." Integral practice, inspired by Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, is now Murphy's main passion, and its role in our understanding of human evolutionary potential is, in his thinking, absolutely essential. ...   more »

She's pretty enough to be mistaken for a Hollywood actress... But Seanne Corn's claim to fame is yoga. And for this reason, Hollywood celebs, businessmen, sports personalities, all seek her out.

"Yoga is evolving and growing in the West. So, I wouldn't call it a fad – no fad can last this long. Now, it is attracting younger, aggressive people who want more from their life. The interesting thing is, once they make yoga a part of their lives, they cease to want those things," says Seanne.

But what is her connect with this ancient Indian practice? Seanne gets candid, "I was a very troubled teenager, doing drugs and alcohol. A friend told me in jest that yoga might make me more stable and level headed, and I took it seriously. I travelled to Mysore, and enrolled in the Aurobindo Ashram. I'm 40 now, and this happened when I was 19. So, for the past 21 years, yoga has been a way of my life," she says. ...   more »

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…   more »

“. . .It is not a fact that the Gita gives the whole base of Sri Aurobindo’s message; for the Gita seems to admit the cessation of birth in the world as the ultimate aim or at least the ultimate culmination of yoga; it does not bring forward the idea of spiritual evolution or the idea of the higher planes and the supramental Truth-Consciousness and the bringing down of that consciousness as the means of the complete transformation of earthly life."   more »

Since my trip to Auroville & Pondicherry (more later on that) I am feeling a pressure behind me above the shoulders and head. It is as if a golden disc, much larger than the body, much larger than myself, is pressing down, forcing something out of the human that wishes to express or perhaps to co-evolve with it. The disc looks something like one of the discs used for the Matrimandir only its texture is ...   more »

After visiting the rooms of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, we return in the afternoon to our Keet (thatch) hut in the community called Adventure (Auroville) for a rest and a change of clothes. As Ron is in the process of changing, a snake falls through the roof our our Keet hut, missing Ron’s head by about a foot.   more »

Nothing could have prepared us (Ron and me) for the impact of physically being in the rooms where the Double Avatar lived and breathed and worked ceaselessly to transform this plane of existence. Thanks to Aster Patel, this was made possible on Thursday, January 12, 2006. Our group was six and when we made our way slowly up the staircase to ...   more »

Twenty years ago I read Franklin Merrell-Wolff's spiritual chronicle, "Pathways Through to Space". As a fellow seeker, it impacted me greatly. Today I am reading about Sri Aurobindo's life with fascination and awe.  It has occurred to me, with some urging from Ron, to document here on SCIY some of what is in my own inner experience. To some this may seem arrogant, to others naive. The purpose is not to wallow in irrelevant diaristic ...   more »

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