Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

Topics within "Integral Yoga" Category

Ron — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 16:03:32 -0800

Click on the names of these subcategory ('Topic') folders to see articles relevant to each Topic:

PUBLICATIONS

ACTION IN THE WORLD

COLLECTIVE & INDIVID. IY

IY PHILOSOPHY

.. Intelligent design & IY

.. Supramentalization

PERSONAL IY STORIES

SRI AUROBINDO

.. Indo-EuropeanMystic Poets

.. 'Savitri'

.. 'The Life Divine'

.. 'The Synthesis of Yoga'

THE MOTHER

Darshan Day Message: Justice! (Heehs case stayed by Orissa High Court)

Rich — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 08:56:42 -0800

As reported by the Hindu, Justice A. S. Naidu of the Orissa High Court has stayed proceedings in a criminal case against Peter Heehs in the court of the subdivisional magistrate, Cuttack. This means, for those unfamiliar with legal terminology, that the case has been taken from the hands of the magistrate, and that all proceedings in the case have been halted until the matter is disposed of by the High Court. In addition the High Court has quashed (nullified) an order that had been passed by the subdivisional magistrate. The fact that the case in the lower court was stayed even before the magistrate was given a chance to hear it shows that the High Court found it to be fundamentally unsound in law

Integral Psychology – Theorizing its Disciplinary Boundaries

Debashish — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:11:50 -0700

The following is a revised transcript of a talk given by me at the Cultural Integration Fellowship, San Francisco in 2008 and carried in the current edition of Sraddha, a journal of the Sri Aurobindo Bhavan, Kolkata.

In this, I bring into dialog the epistemic boundaries of the western academic discipline of Psychology and Sri Aurobindo's formulation of Integral Yoga, so as to reflect on the disciplinary formation of a field of Integral Psychology. What would such a field hold out and how would it impact the existing assumptions of both Psychology and Yoga? The insertion of such a discipline into the academy is not a trivial task. It is a project fraught with danger and possibility, which needs to be carefully negotiated. - db

Sri Aurobindo's Integral Education in Contemporary Higher Education

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

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

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

Fascism and False Guru Sects (Kheper.net)

Rich — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:35:49 -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.

Spiritual Authoritarianism (P2P)

Rich — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:00:29 -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...

• India and Europe by Wilhelm Halbfass

Debashish — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:38:27 -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....

Response to Sraddhalu, Alok letter of May 10th on Heehs reintegration

Rich — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:43:42 -0700

In your letter of May 10th 2009 you say that you speak only for yourselves, but then propose what Peter and the Trustees should do, as if you speak for the entire Integral Yoga community. Since you both made the allegations against Peter in the first place, you cannot disassociate yourself from the discussion or process.

Law Suits, Sraddhalu and the Fraternity of Conspiracy Theorists

Rich — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:42:20 -0700

Tripathy is actively involved as an advocate as well. The proof of Tripathy's involvement is given below...

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

Debashish — Sat, 16 May 2009 17:32:55 -0700

David Hutchinson, Debashish Banerji and Rich Carlson Respond to Sraddhalu

Debashish — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:03:28 -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.

SCIY Response to Sraddhalu

Rich — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:31:07 -0700

There were several distortions of the truth in a recent letter (May 1st) by Sraddhalu regards the IYF site and SCIY and the associated people responsible for them. While the former site is of interest the later site SCIY is what concerns me because it is the only one in which I have participated in as a co-constructor and editor. Aside from the fact that these assertions are clearly libelous, I wish here to demonstrate to Sraddhalu the reasons for his factual errors, in the hope he will correct them in future correspondence.I will only speak to the issues he raises against SCIY and hope the other distortion of facts will be addressed elsewhere.

Sri Aurobindo: Man or Messiah by Carter Phipps (EnlightenNext executive editor comments on Heehs affair)

Rich — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:49:58 -0700

Doesn’t exactly sound like the raw material for a scandal, does it? But that’s what is unfolding right now in the world of Aurobindo—which includes the Ashram in India, Auroville, and many supporters and students worldwide. A few individuals have started a campaign against the book calling it malicious and claiming that it maligns the legacy of this great Indian figure. Not only that, they have even convinced the Indian legal system to temporarily stay publication of the book. And they have tried to kick Peter Heehs out of the ashram in India where he has lived for many years. Basically, it sounds like a mess, and it’s causing a split in those who are passionate about Aurobindo’s legacy and work. The good news is that Heehs’s supporters are fighting back and have stated a website called Integral Yoga Fundamentalism, in which they document the controversy and provide updates. This is an excerpt from the site:

Fundamentalism in Integral Yoga - New Website Announcement

Debashish — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 12:18:59 -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.

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

100 Years of Sri Aurobindo on Evolution: Why Sri Aurobindo would not believe in Intelligent Design (part 1 of 6)

Rich — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:45:00 -0700

While the purpose Sri Aurobindo gives to evolution lends it directionality and transcendence. The fact that he presents a teleology as central to his views does not necessarily mean that his perspective squares with the contemporary theory known as Intelligent Design. Sri Aurobindo's teleology does not square with the fundamentalist view of the religions in the Abrahamic tradition, all of whom have found a common cause in the ideology of intelligent design, and who dismiss evolutionary biology because they find it threatening to their faith....

So called scientific theories of intelligent design often simply present a facade for creationist teaching. Although some Christian organizations have called on scientist not affiliated with their religious faith to discount evolutionary biology these scientist certainly represent a minority view in the scientific community at large. For instance, the faith based Discovery Institute, who is on the forefront of arguing that creationism be taught in American public school, has chosen to employ several scientist, some of whom claim to be atheist, to argue in support of their position...

While Sri Aurobindo does not buy into its materialist reduction of life, and openly voices his objection to the chauvinism of science, he does keep open the possibility that certain Darwinian mechanisms such as natural selection are at work in evolution, even if they can not by themselves fully account for it. While acknowledging the limitations of science he certainly does not seem to find its theories that diverge from his own threatening rather, he contextualizes them in accordance with his own integral comprehension of the world. In the following passage in his essay on Materialism (1915) he defers to science by referencing a religious text:.....

“we have not to hide our face from it any more than could Arjuna from the terrible figure of the Divine on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, or attempt to escape and evade it as Shiva, when there rose around him the many stupendous forms of the original Energy, fled from the vision of it to this and that quarter, forgetful of his own godhead. We must look existence in the face in whatever aspect it confronts us and be strong to find within as well as behind it the Divine.

Materialistic science had the courage to look at this universal truth with level eyes, to accept it calmly as a starting point and to inquire whether it was not after all the whole formula of universal being. Physical science must necessarily to its own first view be materialistic, because so long as it deals with the physical, it has for its own truth's sake to be physical both in its standpoint and method”

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 Evolution of Discourse and The Lives of Sri Aurobindo

Rich — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:47:00 -0700

When Sri Aurobindo left his body the evolution of consciousness did not suddenly cease. Namely, there have been several significant mutations of discourse regimes, in response to the advent of the practice of Critical Theory. It is my view that one can view this succession of discourse in the same light as one would the development of a future poetry; it is a representation of the evolution of language.

While it would be understandable for a traditional religion to discard the advent and development of styles of discourse which follow on the death of its founder, in a spiritual practice whose organizing idea is of the evolution of consciousness, to discard the ideas, movements, cultural logic, etc that are part and parcel of this development, would be its undoing.

Peter Heehs book is a critical biography written in a contemporary academic style, that is -as all contemporary academic styles - informed by Critical Theory. It is not surprising therefore, that it treats its subject in a manner appropriate for this type of discourse. The fact that those in a yoga whose unique major metaphysical premise is of the evolution of consciousness would criticize its language and method of inquiry because it follows a discursive style that is indicative of how consciousness has evolved over the past 58 years is nothing short of ironic. It is almost as if these reactionary followers of Integral Yoga in looking back to the past to co-opt modes of expression that have now become fossilized discursive practices, as consciousness has evolved into a new millennium, have begun looking backward to the past instead of forward to the future to complete the project of integral yoga. Such a backward looking view of the yoga can be understood to have flipped the goals of the Integral Yoga in substituting devolution for evolution.....

Kepler's response to Sraddhalu

Rich — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:47:16 -0800

I appreciated your most recent email for its civil tone and relative lack of demonization of PH. I have to say your suggestion that the anti-Heehs activists have been purely dignified and scholarly in their methods while the pro-Heehs camp has inexplicably responded with ad hominem invective, seems a bit disingenuous to me. Although both sides should be chided for some harsh and excessive rhetoric, it was the rush of letters last fall charging PH with diabolical motives and asuric status, phrased in highly inflammatory language, that most upset those who were familiar with PH as a published scholar and who didn't find anything particularly outrageous about his latest book.

Personally I don't think very highly of the Lives, as I noted in my review (now posted here: http://iyfundamentalism.info/j/content/view/15/35/). Some points and issues you raise in your email I could agree with. Your conspiracy-oriented claims involving Jeffrey Kripal have been denied by others, so I don't have any way to determine the facts there (apart from the generally high probability that any conspiracy theory is false). But my primary feedback concerns the list of “conclusions” you maintain the book asserts:

- that Sri Aurobindo was a frequent liar, and, among other things, that he lied about his supramental experiences,

Surendra's letter to Sraddhalu

Rich — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:36:06 -0800

It would help if the saice group is also made aware that you had not signed the petition and, in fact, cautioned everyone against it. I would like to forward it with a note, i.e. if you give me the permission. Lest it be considered a violation of some kind and be misunderstood by you, I chose to write this mail to you under cc to all persons you had included in your original mail (I have not added any names on my own). This fwd. could create a little much needed goodwill and perhaps sow the seed towards bridging the gap, which is fast threatening to boomerang into an imperative division on the lines of the Auroville split...

Yet, despite our trustee’s message of caution and prudence, a court case was filed privately - NOT by ASHRAM.....

Yoga, religion, and fundamentalism in the Integral Yoga Community by Lynda Lester

Rich — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:44:01 -0800

Lynda Lester made a great presentation at AUM 2007 on fundamentalist tendencies in Integral Yoga. We are happy to post it here:

Today I’d like to focus on the difference between yoga, religion, and fundamentalism in the Integral Yoga community. And because in a discussion like this we’re all coming from different cultures and orientations, my yoga might be your religion and someone else’s fundamentalism. So I thought I’d start out with some definitions....

Larger Issues of "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" Controversy

Debashish — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:52:26 -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.

Corrections to textual excerpts of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs

Rich — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 09:55:21 -0800

There is a movement of folks in Pondicherry who are so upset by the biography that Peter Heehs has written entitled The Lives of Sri Aurobindo that they have instigated a movement to discredit the author. Some people have even become so embolden as to try and have him ejected from the Ashram itself. The folks who have spurred this on have in the course of their attacks on Mr. Heehs openly distorted his text by decontextualizing portions of it or by a series of selective omissions to make it suit their own interpretation of events that facilitate their own story they wish to tell.

Because of this movement I have decided to post all the portions of the text that have been decontextualized or omitted and reprint them with corrections to demonstrate how the text from the book actually reads in its entire context. The portions of the text that have been lifted to suit the purposes of those with an agenda against the author of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo are in black, the missing portions of the text that are needed to give the entire context of the narrative are in red. As everyone will see there is a lot of red in the text.:

The Greyscale Between Religion and Spirituality by Rick Lipschutz

Debashish — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 09:46:03 -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.

Auroville Today Interview with Peter Heehs

Debashish — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 09:35:50 -0800

Alan of Auroville Today interviewed Peter Heehs, author of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, which has created such strong reactions among followers of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother at the Sri Aurobindo ashram and elsewhere. In this short, but pointed interview, one gets to hear Peter's voice on his book and its controversies.

Setting the Record Straight: An Open Letter from Michael Murphy

Rich — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 09:51:00 -0800

Not only have the detractors of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo done violence to the text through selective omission and decontextualization to distort its meaning and make it appear degrading to Sri Aurobindo, but some folks, who should know better, have also been spreading rumors, making innuendos, and telling downright falsehoods regards the intention that the author Peter Heehs had in writing the book

One allegation is that Peter and an associate had taken and sold documents from the Sri Aurobindo Archives that concern the Record of Yoga. The way the story is told is that these documents were suppose to have been purchased by Jeffrey Kripal, the Newton Rayzor Professor of Religious Studies/Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University and author of Kali's Child, who with the support and financial backing of Michael Murphy founder of the Esalen Institute were going to publish some type of Freudian account of the Record of Yoga. This conspiracy theory goes on to allege that the Lives of Sri Aurobindo was a just prelude to the distortions of Sri Aurobindo and The Record of Yoga yet to come.

Oddly enough even though the people making these allegations have never been privy to conversations between any of these parties (aka Peter Heehs, Michael Murphy, Jeffrey Kripal) that has not discouraged them from making these charges, that in short are based on wild speculation. To set the record straight on this issue and the value of the work Peter Heehs has done in his critical biography of Sri Aurobindo and that Richard Hartz has accomplished in his painstaking work making The Record of Yoga available to us all, I would like to publish an open letter to SCIY from Michael Murphy

Dear Rich Carlson-

Rumors that I asked Jeff Kripal to write a "Freudian" study of Sri Aurobindo are completely false, and Kripal has no intentions to do so. But I am indeed deeply fascinated (and indebted) to Sri Aurobindo, who remains the chief inspiration for my life work. I discovered his writings in 1950, at Stanford University, as a 19-year old undergraduate and would not have started the Esalen Institute without his inspiration.

Lately, I have been newly inspired by Peter Heehs's magnifcent Aurobindo biography and by the historic scholarship conducted by Heehs and Richard Hartz at the Aurobindo Ashram Archives. Their work on Aurobindo's extraordinary Record of Yoga will one day help revolutionize psychology and transformative practice, and Heehs's book is bringing new awareness of Sri Aurobindo to countless people worldwide. I hope that the book's detractors will eventually come to appreciate the good it is doing for the very cause they celebrate.

Peter Heehs and Richard Hartz are expanding the frontiers of Aurobindo scholarship with the courage and dedication that Aurobindo embodied and recommended to us all.

Michael Murphy

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

Debashish — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:17:01 -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 19:05:34 -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? ...

Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies - II

Debashish — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:04:11 -0700

This is a fragment constituting a continuation of Debashish Banerji's reflections on Techno-Capitalism as the epistemic regime of modernity and posible post-human futures at the eschatological cusp of history. Here the alignment of Marx and Hegel with the Enlightenment vision/teleology is contemplated and questions asked regarding a comparative alignment with the Neo-Vedantic teleology (if it can be called that) of Sri Aurobindo.

Course on the Vedas by SCIY Editor Vladimir Yatsenko

Debashish — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:41:27 -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 19:36:47 -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.

Future Bodies: Evolution & Progress

Rich — Sat, 03 May 2008 13:44:42 -0700

(courtesy Google Images)

This paper seeks a long overdue critical exploration of Sri Aurobindo's evolutionary vision and how it might inform contemporary discourse on globalization and those regimes of techno-science whose productions propel its advance. That such a critical inquiry is overdue is regrettable because we live at a time in which we are undergoing what is perhaps our most rapid period of change in human history. We live in an era in which the dislocation of our physical, life and mental worlds seems to result from the pull of three strange attractors accelerating at different speeds.

Gazing out from the edge of digital culture in North America to do a critically inquiry into the future is problematic because our perspectives are already conjoined to the gaze of a culture entrained in exponential change. But what would constitute a future view? An epistemology of the Other? A discourse on the never quite? The future is that distant coordinate which is only know through its proximity to our present. So what does the present teach?

In America we are travelling so rapidly that from here we do not hear the voices of indentured knowledge workers standing in lines of up to mile, amidst the smoke and decay of south India, to compete with the multitudes of Heidegger's “standing reserve” for their conditions of economic bondages; of eight to twelve partitioned hours a day spent facilitating the global flow of virtual capital. Although the gaze from here may sense the desiring nature of the machine it lacks an epistemology for coping with its assemblages and a methodology for resisting its discipline.....

Darshan Day message 24 April 2009

Rich — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:12:00 -0700

"Oh Mother, give me peace -
peace of mind, peace of feelings,
peace in the sensations -
the peace of perfect faith,
Peace, peace, peace.
with blessings - The Mother

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 13:03:13 -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)

100 Years of Sri Aurobindo on Evolution: Anticipating Science and Society (part 3 of 6)

Rich — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:56:00 -0700

One thing that can be said non-metaphorically about that the way Sri Aurobindo practiced yoga was that it was scientific. The perfection of his sadhana was a feat that required experimentation and one in which he sought demonstrable results. It should reasonably follow that his perspective on science would be one in which its truth claims were open to critical interrogation, just as were his experiments in yoga.

Given his penetrating intellectual insights into cultural change, his understanding of history as both progressive and cyclic, his multivocal criticisms of society, his integrative encounter with other voices and texts, his ability to effortlessly traverse the subjectivities of Europe and India and to transit freely between both ancient and modern zeitgeists, it seems reasonable to assume that he would size up science with a critical gaze....

Sri Aurobindo's project can be said to be a valiant attempt to find ways to integrate various levels of understanding and seemingly incommensurable experiences by respecting each ones particular articulation of truth while simultaneously harmonizing their unique claims to truth. But he also seems to have anticipated several recent scientific claims on the role punctuated equilibrium, symbiosis, complexity and emergence play in evolution as well as to have held perspectives that most social theorist share today. These social theories dismiss positivist arguments for reductive epistemology and highlight how biology can be used as an ideological tool. Additionally, early on at a time it was still popular, Sri Aurobindo discounted the more extreme implications of Spencer's Social Darwinism “survival of the fittest” strategy and clearly was repelled by the social engineering program of eugenics.....

100 Years of Sri Aurobindo on Evolution: Darwinian Fundamentalism, reductionism, pluralism, play (part 2 of 6)

Rich — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 10:46:10 -0700

The ideology of intelligent design as well as some of the theories associated with Neo-Darwinian biology can not be falsified so it is hard to make the claim that they are scientific in the strict sense. While intelligent design can not be falsified because we have no instruments to detect a designer who stands outside the material world he/she designed, one of the central tenets of Darwinian fundamentalism that only natural selection and genetic variation can explain all evolutionary descent can not be falsified in the same way.

For instance, it can not be demonstrated that all life descended from a single, primordial cell solely by the process of natural selection and genetic variation. One can dispute the falsifiability of the proposition, by asking, "What experiment can be conducted to show this did not happen?" The problem is similar to the problem of "last night I dreamed of electric sheep." There are no other witnesses to my dream but me, just as there are no witnesses left from the Precambrian era to account for everything that might have gone on then. If there are no witnesses, one can argue, that there is no way to test the claim and the assertion is therefore not falsifiable.

Worse are the falsifiability claims of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary psychologist who claim to explain the origins of consciousness. The tales told by them of our psychological origins can never be falsified and so are similar to the just-so stories of Rudyard Kipling that, as Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin reminds us, maybe useful as a quick way to solve a child's curiosity can not be verified.

For Kipling, the elephant got its trunk because a crocodile pulled on it. Does this mean that elephant trunks occurred as an adaptation due to hungry crocodiles? Maybe, maybe not because it is a hypothesis that cant be proven. It is “just so”.

Jesus and the Lost Goddess Sophia

Ron — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:35:16 -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.' ...

Introducing SCIY Editor Ulrich J. Mohroff's superb new journal: "Anti-Matters"

Ron — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:00:00 -0800

I'm introducing here SCIY Editor Ulrich J. Mohroff's superb new journal: Anti-Matters, which I highly recommend reading. I'm taking the liberty of reproducing below the Table of Contents of Vol 1, No 2 (2007). ~ ronjon

The following is from Ulrich J. Mohrhoff's "Preface to the Second Issue":

The release date of the last yearly issue of AntiMatters — the second issue in the case of this first volume — is November 24th. On this day in 1926, Sri Aurobindo arrived at a turning point in his yoga. According to Sri Aurobindo, there is a highest mental plane, to which he gave the name “overmind.” The Isha Upanishad refers to it as a “brilliant golden lid” obstructing the passage from mind to supermind. For years Sri Aurobindo had striven to negotiate this passage. Success came on that day in 1926, when the light and power of the overmind descended into his physical being. Subsequently Sri Aurobindo withdrew from outer contacts to concentrate on the more difficult task of enabling the supermind to descend, take possession of his body, and for the first time act on matter directly, rather than through mental intermediaries. Here is part of a conversation of the Mother with Satprem (Mother’s Agenda, August 2, 1961): ...

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? ...

• Understanding Thoughts of Sri Aurobindo, Ed: Indrani Sanyl & Krishna Roy

Debashish — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 00:48:53 -0700

In spite of some surface infelicities, a very fine collection of essays on various aspects of Sri Aurobindo's "thought."

...The book concludes with an article “Sri Aurobindo – A Century in Perspective” by Aster Patel. Sri Aurobindo became the first principal of National College, Calcutta, now known as the Jadavpur College, about a hundred years ago. In the century which has elapsed since then, humankind has experienced its most intense period of collective growth and crisis throughout the world. Human consciousness is poised on a brink where it is faced either with the specter of oblivion, the horror of the abyss or a leap into another modality of being, the integral consciousness of the overman. Mediating this critical choice is the life and work of Sri Aurobindo, throwing a powerful beacon ahead of us into the century to come. Aster Patel draws out some of the implications of this work ahead of us in following the light of Sri Aurobindo in the coming century. Can we equal in consciousness the integral vision of reality which contemporary Science is indicating to our minds and our technological practice? Are we even ready to engage with the fullness of the term “integral”? How can we draw together our past and our present, our fractured personalities, our fragmented disciplines, our physical matter and our mental, vital and spiritual substance into the Oneness of integral being which Sri Aurobindo lived and wrote about? His integral consciousness is still fully alive in his words and each word is an invitation and a fire to kindle in us his life and reality. This is the ever-living fire of Heraclitus, the living legacy of the “thoughts” of Sri Aurobindo.

A New Name for SCIY? - "SCSC (Science, Culture & Supramental Consciousness)"

Ron — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 15:52:53 -0700

As SCIY's readership has steadily increased during the 21 months since its founding in September 2005, the inclusion of the term "Integral Yoga" in its name has been a source of ongoing misunderstanding...

In the years since Sri Aurobindo coined it in the early 1900's, the terms "integral" and "yoga" have been adopted by many other individuals and organizations. E.g., in the United States, Ken Wilbur has become strongly associated with the integral thought movement and founded the Integral Institute in 1998. And in contrast to its Indian spiritual meaning, the word "yoga" is often interpreted in the West as a set of exercises and postures for relaxation and physical conditioning...

We're posting this article to request feedback from SCIY's readers. What do you think about this proposed name change?

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

Ron — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:11:11 -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…

Is India headed the right way?, by Francois Gautier

Ron — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:35:11 -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. ...

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

Ron — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:58:38 -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. ...

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

Ron — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 17:22:03 -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. ...

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

Debashish — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:30:45 -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 15:23:26 -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.

The Purusha Sukta - An Aurobindonian Interpretation, by RY Deshpande

Ron — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 11:51:34 -0800

RY Deshpande asked me to post this article for him:

Purusha Sukta in the Rig Veda (X: 90) celebrates famously the Sacrifice of the Purusha performed by the Gods, the Rishis and the Sadhyas, the accomplished celestial beings. All is established in the Sacrifice and therefore Sacrifice is the best means of achieving whatever has to be achieved, asserts a scriptural text. What did these sacrificers intend to achieve by performing the difficult sacrifice? the cosmic order, the possibility for growth, conquest, expansion, winning new grounds, making the law of the higher truth-existence operational in the universal functioning, instituting the dharma? Indeed, it was for that, and only by it could they themselves ascend to greater realms of immortality. It is in the Sacrifice of the Purusha, the Holocaust of the primal Being, Yajna of the Great Person that the incomparable deed was carried out. In an enterprising act, by making an offering of this Purusha himself, the Male who is the begetter of things in all the worlds was this Yajna completed. Its jubilation in the Rig Veda is a forceful triumph-song of the Creator poised for Cosmic Action,—“a profound composition,” as Sri Aurobindo says about it. ...

A thought about SCIY

Kim — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 01:43:05 -0800

A man came to a scientist and wished to be instructed; this instructor showed him the revelations of the microscope & telescope, but the man laughed and said, "These are obviously hallucinations inflicted on the eye by the glass which you use as a medium; I will not believe till you show these wonders to my naked seeing." Then the scientist proved to him by many collateral facts & experiments the reliability of his knowledge but the man laughed again & said, "What you term proofs, I term coincidences, the number of coincidences does not constitute proof; as for your experiments, they are obviously effected under abnormal conditions & constitute a sort of insanity of Nature." When confronted with the results of mathematics, he was angry & cried out, "This is obviously imposture, gibberish & superstition; will you try to make me believe that these absurd cabalistic figures have any real force & meaning?" Then the scientist drove him out as a hopeless imbecile; for he did not recognise his own system of denials and his own methods of negative reasoning. If we wish to refuse an impartial & openminded enquiry, we can always find the most respectable polysyllables to cover our refusal or impose tests & conditions which stultify the enquiry."
- Sri Aurobindo

Reading the above words, I am reminded of how much I appreciate the postings here on SCIY and the attitude of open enquiry ...

From "Mind" to "Supermind" by Kamaladevi Kunkolienker

Debashish — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 09:42:08 -0800

This article publihsed in Philosophy of Mind was among those read at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, in Boston, Massachusetts from August 10-15, 1998. It presents an overview of Sri Aurobindo's ontology of Mind.

The Post-human, Evolution and the Avatar

Debashish — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 20:10:51 -0800

Some questions on the evolution, the descending consciousness and the avatar - a continuation from RC's questions on the Post-Human, the evolution and the avatar.

Is there a possible integration between Buddhism and Integral Yoga?

Ron — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 13:04:56 -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

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

Debashish — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:39:46 -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.

• The Religious, the Spiritual and the Secular by Robert Minor

Debashish — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 01:21:44 -0700

In this slim paperback, Robert Minor sets out with a double intention: (a) to tell the legal story of the power struggle between the Sri Aurobindo Society and Auroville; and (b) an exploration of the legal and cultural epistemological ambiguities surrounding the terms "religion", "spirituality" and "secularism" and their shaping of the discourse of modern political contestation in India, as exemplified in the story of Auroville.

Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:33:43 -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 23:53:29 -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.

"The Poet Seers" -> Examples of Sri Aurobindo's Poetry

Ron — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 15:18:34 -0700

Sri Aurobindo falls into the exclusive category of poet-seers who have achieved the highest realisations and have endeavoured to share that experience with the rest of humankind. The teachings and very utterances that spiritual masters of this calibre offer to the world come from the most sublime realms of consciousness that human beings can attain to. Their poetry transcends the page to become mantra, an invocation to the transcendental consciousness. ...

The Conversion of the Vital - The Mother

Ron — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 10:34:18 -0700

The vital is the fountain-head of life, the energy without which nothing can be accomplished. It is also the source of all our emotions, feelings, desires and impulses. Purified, it can become the perfect instrument for all we have to realise in the world. The Mother said that the training of the vital was the most important, the most indispensable of all forms of education. But she added, "it is seldom taken up in a comprehensive and methodical way." "There are several reasons for this," she said: First, human thinking is in a great confusion over what concerns this particular subject; secondly, the enterprise is very difficult and to be successful in it one must have endurance, endless persistence and an inflexible will." The sooner the importance of the vital is recognised, the better it is for the child. The education of the vital should proceed along three main lines: first, the training of the senses, then the development of the artistic faculties, and last and most important, the enlightenment of all the inner movements. This last step is certainly the most arduous one but it is indispensable if one wants to master one's own nature. To be sure the vital consciousness can be changed, and this change is at the heart of the inner adventure to which the Mother beckons us.

The Role of Money and the Internet in Social Development

Ron — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 12:00:00 -0700
... We witness today the confluence of factors that characterize the mental stage: unprecedented political freedom, a global affirmation of the individual and the rights of the common man, abundant and overflowing social energy, an irrepressible drive of mental inquisitiveness, the accumulation and codification of knowledge in all fields, the universal aspiration for and spread of education, a worldwide revolution of rising expectations, a veritable explosion of technological inventiveness, and the accelerating pace of organizational creativity and innovation, which is the technology of social development. These factors coming together in the mental stage have given birth to a new form of organization whose creativity and potential contribution to social advancement rival in importance the role played by money over the past millenium.

The emergence of the Internet as a worldwide system of communication, information exchange, education and commerce is opening up vast opportunities for more rapid development. It is eliminating barriers to communication imposed by space and time, leveling the playing field between rich and poor, and making possible universal access to information and services at very low cost. ...

The International Center for Peace and Development

Ron — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 16:33:54 -0700
The International Center for Peace and Development was established as a non-profit, non-governmental organization in 1997 to continue the work initiated by the International Commission on Peace and Food (ICPF). The Commission was constituted in 1989 by a group of 25 concerned scientists, professionals, international administrators, business, social and political leaders from 15 nations to promote global peace and development in the post-Cold War world. Over a six year period ICPF conducted a series of international conferences and research projects on a wide range of issues concerning global security, conversion of resources from military to civilian purposes, food security, employment, economic development, and the environment. ...

A Comprehensive Theory of Social Development (TMSS)

Ron — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 15:04:00 -0700
... This paper identifies the central principle of development and traces its expression in different fields and levels of social advancement. Development is a function of society’s capacity to organize human energies and productive resources to respond to opportunities and challenges. The paper traces the emergence of higher, more complex, more productive levels of social organization through the stages of nomadic hunting, rural agrarian, urban, commercial, industrial and post-industrial societies. It examines the process by which new activities are introduced by pioneers, imitated, resisted, accepted, organized, institutionalized and assimilated into the culture.

Organizational development takes place on a foundation of four levels of infrastructure – physical, social, mental and psychological. Four types of resources contribute to development, of which only the most material are inherently limited in nature. The productivity of resources increases enormously as the level of organization and input of knowledge rises. The theory identifies the human resource as the driving force and primary determinant of development. ...

The Mother's Service Society (TMSS)

Ron — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 14:42:01 -0700
The Mother's Service Society was founded in 1969 in Pondicherry, South India, with a view to studying the basic laws of human development based on the theory of creation propounded by Sri Aurobindo, the sage of Pondicherry, who declared that humanity is not the final goal of creation. Humankind will evolve beyond mind into Supramental being.

This web site includes numerous original essays written over a period of thirty years by members of the Society on a wide range of theoretical and applied subjects including development theory and strategy, economics, business management, literary criticism, science, education and spirituality in life.

"Sri Aurobindo’s Vision and the 20th Century", a new essay by Rod Hemsell

Ron — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 20:58:33 -0700
It is perhaps inevitable, then, that we rewrite Sri Aurobindo, that we revision and rethink his vision as the background of this passing age of scientific and technological hubris, and that we narrate the necessary emergence of the trans-human. ...

"Life and Yoga", by Sri Aurobindo

Ron — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 04:42:41 -0800
The following text is the first part of the introductory chapter of Sri Aurobindo's book: Synthesis of Yoga. It is copyrighted by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India. I highly recommend reading it for those interested in getting a sense of Sri Aurobindo's unique writing style and his profound scholarship in the deep meaning and purpose of India's spiritual traditions. ...

Integral Yoga Links

Ron — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 15:05:01 -0700
Our favorite websites relating to this category, INTEGRAL YOGA: