Sri Aurobindo, wrote Prof. Sisir Kumar Maitra in 1942, has accomplished the “transfer of the leadership in philosophy from the West to India.” But what we witness today in 2006 is something entirely different. Why?The whole scenario is not devoid of politics and what is at issue is not philosophy but hegemony. In pursuit of that, there has been constant shifting of goal posts and resorting to gerrymandering. Marginal items have come to occupy the mainstream space in philosophy while the basic metaphysical concerns rank as subaltern. Why?Sri Aurobindo gave the most full-proof philosophy in the entire human history, but the Westerners are unwilling to accept him at the top. Pseudo-philosophers are lapped up and their books sell in plenty almost as a conspiracy to eclipse Sri Aurobindo. He is discounted simply as a mystic or a revivalist, instead. Why?Because Sri Aurobindo is an Indian and American hubris can’t digest this. Numerous charts and complicated graphics are being devised in pathetic attempts to cook up all-encompassing philosophies. Many of Sri Aurobindo’s innovations are being recycled. Even then, success eludes such enterprises. Why?For Sri Aurobindo, as Dr Maitra decreed, stands tall on merit. Every intellectual, every journal and every University will have to swallow this cruel pill. No amount of racial or colonial resistance can suppress the supremacy of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy. The whole world, whether today or tomorrow, must turn to it where all the whys are answered. [TNM696MMYP] #
Westerners will never ever acknowledge the greatness of Sri Aurobindo's work and philosophy.
ReplyDeleteSwami Vivekananda had a similar problem. He was full of passion about bringing the high spiritual dharma of the East to the West. But because he was a brown skinned man from India he had no hope in hell of getting significant numbers of westerners to take much notice of him. That is one reason why he died at 33 years of age. He was literally worn out by the effort that it required.
They were (and still are) full of their western "christian" arrogance.
This arrogance is alive and well (sic) in the Vatican and is a feature of all the USA right wing think tanks (why not feeling tanks??) and so called "religious" institutes etc. Check out First Things (FT) or Touchstone or Crux and their associated websites and blogs etc etc. The current issue of FT contains an essay The Orthodox Imperative which emphatically states that there is ONLY one source of "truth" in the world and that ALL other ways are inherently false and the breeding ground of all kinds of relativism.
No ecumenism allowed--none!
I come to all of you today with a great gift from the American Philosopher.
ReplyDeleteIt is the moral imperative of life. I give it to you thus:
You must live a life that detracts not at all from the lives of those who will follow us into this world.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
Limestone, Maine
An Illustrated Philosophy Primer for Young Readers
Precious Life - Empirical Knowledge
The Grand Unifying Theory & The Theory of Time
http://www.geocities.com/donaldwrobertson/index.html