Indwelling spirit begins to speak through the imagination

Indic Visions: In an Age of Science - Page 80 - Varadaraja V. Raman - 2011 - 272 pages - Preview

Then suddenly, the intellect jolts the mystic; and the sage-poet wonders if those awesome images of a grandiose ... In this context, let us recall the opening lines of Sri Aurobindo's Sáviti where modern India's sage-poet recast this ... 

Conscious Evolution: The Dance of Intuition and Intellect. - Sheldon Stoff, Barbara Smith Stoff - 2010 - 192 pages - Preview

With deep reading in myth and literature, one's cognition becomes as a rich mother loam wherein spirit can dwell and build that interior castle, from which the indwelling spirit begins to speak through the imagination, The body, And The ... 

History Of Science And Philosophy Of Science: A Historical ... - Page 496 - Sengupta Pradip Kumar - 2010 - 776 pages - Preview

... case that appealed to the receptive intellect of humanity so that the scientist can have some understanding and therefore ... Besides, in India, since the time of Upanisads till Sri Aurobindo and Akhandamandaleshwar Sri Sri Swami ... 

Anandamath - Page 2 - Bankim Chandra Chatterji - 2006 - 168 pages - Preview

... besides being a genius in imaginative literature, was certainly the most powerful intellect produced by India ... Sri Aurobindo 'Of all his (Bankim's) works, by far the most important for its astonishing political consequences was ... 

India's freedom movement: legacy of Bipin Chandra Pal - Page 130 - Binay Bhattacharya, Bipin Chandra Pal Memorial Trust - 2007 - 271 pages - Preview

Sri Aurobindo saw a divine message in Bipin's speech. The opening sentence of an editorial titled "India and the Mangolian" published on April 1, 1908 in the Bande Mataram ... 814) Again, paying glowing tributes to Pal's intellect of ... 

Encyclopaedia of eminent thinkers: Volume 16 - Page 29 - Ashu Pasricha - 2008 - Preview

Sri Aurobindo said that insistence upon action Subhas so fervently advocated was "absurd" if one had not the light by which to act. Human intellect and energy alone could not set right the ills of this world. Intellect had to be ... 

Roadsigns: navigating your path to spiritual happiness - Page 39 - Philip Goldberg - 2006 - 275 pages - Preview

The 20th-century master Sri Aurobindo summed it up this way: “Mind has to cease to be mind and become brilliant with something beyond it.” Caution about the intellect runs through the Abrahamic religions as well. 

The Spiritual Roots Of National Integration - Page 171 - Moazziz Ali Beg - 2006 - 208 pages - Preview

... the demons of destruction and a system of education inspiring human conduct with love and man's intellect with wisdom ... It may be apt to turn to Sri Aurobindo who had once presented us a principle of human dignity telling us that:... 

Soul and structure of governance in India - Page 306 - Jagmohan - 2005 - 516 pages - Preview

Another towering figure of the renaissance period was Sri Aurobindo.26 He was certainly the greatest philosopher, ... His philosophic insight and penetrating intellect spotted the inherent vigour and vitality of this spirituality.

Sri Aurobindo proffered a complex and sophisticated developmental theory

There is no such thing as a monoculture from The Immanent Frame by Justin Neuman

For Arendt, the ability to act, to introduce something new and unexpected into the world, can only arise in a condition of pluralism. In a famous passage at the beginning of The Human Condition, Arendt describes the human condition as one of plurality owing “to the fact that men, not Man, live on earth and inhabit the world…this plurality is specifically the condition—not only the conditio sine qua non, but the conditio per quam—of all political life.” By linking action to freedom and freedom to plurality Arendt means to emphasize that the capacity to introduce novelty into the world depends upon a quality of openness antithetical to a monoculture. On a practical level, as we adopt increasingly flexible and, as Amartya Sen calls them, “robustly plural” senses of our own identity based on multiple, overlapping, and shifting modes of belonging, the purely hypothetical nature of a religious monoculture becomes increasingly apparent.

(title unknown) from enowning William Koch reads Zizek's "Hegel versus Heidegger".

“It seems right that Hegel needs to be rethought and made more fully applicable to our historical moment, but this rethinking need not masquerade as a claim that Hegel really meant to speak (or indeed did speak) other than he did. Students of Marx have done very well to admit that Marx's thought faced certain failures and needs to be rethought and reformulated. Students of Heidegger should do the same. We need not cover up or deny inconsistencies or deny that we are continuing, rather than simply explaining, the work of the thinkers we engage with.”

Thill - February 13th, 2012 on 2:37 am - I think that Aurobindo who proffered a complex and sophisticated developmental theory would reject the notion that the “pre” and the “trans” levels of development are strikingly similar.

In Aurobindo’s somewhat Hegelian logic of development, although the achievements of previous stages are assimilated and integrated, in varying degrees, into the subsequent higher stages, any aberrations or deformations at the “pre” or lower stages will have to be overcome before the transition to the “trans” or higher stages can be securely made. Thus, in Aurobindo’s theory of development, The latter “trans” stages or levels have specific qualitatively higher features which clearly distinguish them from the lower, “pre” stages.

Isn’t it like saying that the work of a composer who has mastered the basic principles of harmony in the art of musical composition and gone beyond them will be strongly similar to the work of a beginner in composition who is yet to master those principles of harmony?

Although I would acknowledge that the musical freedom exhibited by a master who has assimilated and transcended the confines of basic principles of harmony may occasionally resemble that of a person who is yet to master those principles, it is extremely unlikely that there will be any great and consistent similarities between the two.

Religion is an ineradicable aspect of human nature

Robert N. Bellah: The Big History of Religion in Human Evolution. Footnotes to Plato

I just returned from a lecture by the sociologist of religion Robert Bellah. He was invited to speak about his book Religion in Human Evolution (2011) by the Dominican University of California. The University has just started a program in Big History, which concerns not only the study of human culture (east, west, and indigenous), but the history of life on earth and of matter and energy in the universe. Bellah spoke to an audience of perhaps 400 people not primarily about religion, but about science. …

Matthew David Segall says: February 10, 2012 at 9:48 am

I don’t think his point is to say that everything is religion so much as to argue that religion is an ineradicable aspect of human nature. We are animals that ritually orient ourselves to the transcendent through symbolism of different kinds. We are embedded in story and narrative at every turn, and “theory,” rather than a radical break out of story into the clear light of truth, is more like a form of “mythospeculation,” a way of telling the story of stories.

Bellah spent most of his talk trying to walk the tightrope between cosmic optimism (e.g., Teilhard, Berry, etc.) and cosmic pessimism (Monod, Dawkins, etc.). The optimists, he says, read too much Christian providentialism into the cosmos, while the pessimists see the cosmos only in terms of the fall. The bit about carbon being Christ-like is not a comparison Bellah made–he went to great pains to respect the difference between theoretical science and the various sorts of religious and/or symbolic responses we might have to it (“the universe is cold and indifferent and only human have a chance to rebel against it!” -Dawkins; “The human is a creative flowering of the dynamics of the universe itself, and so all our culture and religion should be universe-referent” -Berry).

Flat? I’m not sure. I think part of what he is trying to do with his new book is challenge the secularist assumption that religion is just bad science, that is it primarily a set of theoretical claims that one believes or disbelieves. He wants to root religion in something deeper than belief. He roots it in practices, in play and ritual, especially those rituals that are widespread socially. This makes it seem like something inescapable, though of course we might not want to say that Super Bowl Sunday, just because it is highly ritualized, is therefore a religious event. Or would we?

Matthew David Segall says: February 10, 2012 at 12:38 pm

Bellah wasn’t equating cosmic pessimism with science. Brian Swimme’s cosmology (also in attendance at the lecture) is an example of how the scientific evidence can be read in a different way, not exactly secular, but not religious, either.

As for turning religious categories into arche-concepts, I would probably want to argue that this is an appropriate move in some cases. The death-rebirth mystery, for example, seems to be a widespread motif present in all the world’s religious and indigenous traditions. It seems to be a fundamental concept in all religions. Such religious expressions have their roots deep in human nature, reflecting real aspects of our existential situation, so its no surprise that, despite claims of secularity and modernity, we see the same arche-concepts cropping up again and again.

Dawkins is probably not the best example to use to argue that not everyone needs Christian narratives. Here is the systems biologist Brian Goodwin writing about Dawkins:

“To give a very brief summary of the way he presents neo-Darwinism in The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype, let me mention four points he makes: (1) Organisms are constructed by groups of genes, whose goal is to leave more copies of themselves; (2) this gives rise to the metaphor of the hereditary material being basically selfish; (3) this intrinsically selfish quality of the hereditary material is reflected in competitive interactions between organisms, which result in survival of fitter variants generated by the more successful genes. (4) Then you get the point that organisms are constantly trying to get better, fitter, and — in a mathematical, geometrical metaphor — always trying to climb peaks in fitness landscapes.

The most interesting point emerged at the end of The Selfish Gene, where Richard said that human beings, alone amongst all the species, can escape from their selfish inheritance and become genuinely altruistic, through educational effort. I suddenly realized that this set of four points was a transformation of four very familiar principles of Christian fundamentalism, which go like this; (1) Humanity is born in sin; (2) we have a selfish inheritance; (3) humanity is therefore condemned to a life of conflict and perpetual toil; (4) but there is salvation.

What Richard has done is to make absolutely clear that Darwinism is a kind of transformation of Christian theology. It is a heresy, because Darwin puts the vital force for evolution into matter, but everything else remains much as it was. I suspect that Richard was at one stage fairly religious, and that he then underwent a kind of conversion to Darwinism, and he feels fervently that people ought to embrace this as a way of life.”

Matthew David Segall says: February 10, 2012 at 10:01 am Hey Zayin,

Yes you’re right to point to Bellah’s insistance on different but overlapping realities. I think the word “power” is perhaps misleading. I think of Christ’s power not in terms of creative force or might, but in terms of love. Eros (which can be both attractive and repulsive, both creative and destructive) is operative at all levels, from microcosmic electromagnetism, to macrocosmic gravitation, to mesocosmic human compassion. But it seems that the symbolism surrounding Christ is trying to point to an outpouring of love unmatched at any other level.

Tusar N. Mohapatra  -  11:14 AM  -  Re: Nature's Plans? Hidden?

Obviously every rule has an exception. There is a frog in Australia which delivers its babies through its mouth. Nature goes with what(ever) works. But still,

Nietzsche, Whitehead, & Levinas

Among recent philosophers, perhaps only Whitehead can claim to have accounted for the life of non-human objects, though his position is haunted by other serious difficulties. The problem is that everyone wants to avoid the naive versions of realism, but they also don’t want to be driven into the patent absurdities of solipsism, since it is far safer not to adopt any metaphysical position at all. Having painted itself into a corner on this issue, contemporary philosophy is left with the sole emergency measure of inventing sophistical compromise phrases such as “internal realism,” “quasi-realism,” or “the mad human subject positing the very gap between real and ideal.” But all of this reduces reality to its effect on humans: a position better known simply as idealism. NAIVE IDEALISM 427 Graham Harman PHILOSOPHY TODAY WINTER 2004

Braver accuses Nietzsche of backsliding into noumenal naiveté of a sort that Hegel had ended, and that even Putnam is praised for transcending (159). For despite Nietzsche’s apparent dissolution of reality into infinite interpretations, “this metaphor of interpretations brings in the idea of the text that gets interpreted, masks [that] imply an original face, and so on” (159). Braver’s verdict is clear: “[Nietzsche’s] Kantian way of framing the issues is strewn with conceptual traps…. Another revolution is needed” (159). For Braver that revolution is found in the later Heidegger, with the early Heidegger paving the way. A FESTIVAL OF ANTI-REALISM 203 Graham Harman PHILOSOPHY TODAY SUMMER 2008

I think my first bet would be on Levinas standing the test of time a lot better than many of my friends think he will. So many people seem to view Levinas as just a preachy old finger-wagger who talks about God too much. That’s not the Levinas I know. Then again, the Levinas I know was encountered through Alphonso Lingis, who isn’t exactly a preachy old finger-wagger who talks about God too much. Maybe you need to encounter Levinas through Lingis to be able to see Levinas as an utterly cutting-edge thinker, which is exactly the way I see him. 4th and final Philosophy Today article now posted by doctorzamalek “Levinas and the Triple Critique of Heidegger.” HERE.

Integral God: Footnotes to Plato

Intimations of an Integral God: A lecture at CIIS | Footnotes to Plato: 'via Blog this'

Slide 8: Emmanuel Levinas, who was heavily influenced by Buber, finds God in the infinite responsibility that takes the ego hostage in any authentic face-to-face encounter with another. He writes: “The free [human being] is dedicated to [her] fellow; no one can save [herself] without others. The inside-out domain of the soul does not close from inside” (Humanism of the Other, p. 66). The soul is infinite, and so it seems it cannot find wholeness without relating to divinity, which for Levinas is the holiness of others. This notion of a soul unable to close from the inside also reminds me of Teilhard de Chardin’s question as to why “we are not more sensitive to the presence of something on the move at the heart of us that is greater than ourselves?” (The Human Phenomenon, p. 120).

Slide 9: An integral God would not only foster community, but would deepen the intimacy of our relationship to the cosmos. Teilhard’s love of matter goes a long way in this direction, but I think the German shoemaker turned mystic Jakob Boehme’s vision of the relationship between God and creation may have even more to say to us. The physicist Basarab Nicolescu distills the essence of Boehme’s cosmology of divine self-manifestation as “a threefold structure leading to a sevenfold self-organization of reality” (Science, Meaning, and Evolution, p. 90)."

Goal of Evolutionary Nature « Sri Aurobindo Studies

1. Sri Aurobindo points out that if it is the goal of Nature to awaken man to awareness of the supreme Reality and liberate him from the action of Nature in the world,...

Don Salmon on Evolution

This is a collection of excerpts from a book I wrote with my wife, Jan Maslow entitled Yoga Psychology and the Transformation of Consciousness: Seeing Through the Eyes of Infinity, based on the Integral Psychology of Sri Aurobindo. The previous essay in this series examined the controversy over the idea of direction or progress in evolution. Frank Visser wrote a very interesting response (see "Theories are Confessions: Response to Salmon"). I originally posted my response to Frank's article in the Integral World Forum ("Up the Evolutionary Stream Without a Paddle"), which Frank took and posted here at Integral World. If you have questions or criticisms, but don't have the time to put together an essay, I invite you to join me over at the Integral World Forum or on the Integral World Facebook page.

My intention in posting these excerpts is not to claim that when looked at together, the findings of neuroscience and evolutionary biology prove some kind of directionality or purpose to evolution. Rather my goal is to elucidate what I find to be some extremely interesting parallels between the two. Whether this suggests the working of any kind of "quasi mystical" force or is merely the result of a "blind, uncaring shuffle through Chaos"[2] is left for the reader to decide. Ken Wilber's Evolutionary View Gets a Trim With Ockham's Razor ...
http://www.integralworld.net/salmon10.html

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Wilber's Aurobindianism

For The Turnstiles by DGA on Oct 27, 2011 8:10 PM

To draw some threads together: Suppose it is true that the argument of Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality is predicated on positions taken by Nagarjuna, Plotinus, Schelling (and by extension Hegel), and Aurobindo. Also suppose that it is this argument that predicates most of the theoretical work in integral studies that follows after it. Problems accumulate.

There are problems in the way Wilber advances his claims on Nagarjuna. Specifically, Nagarjuna's description of emptiness in no way coincided with Wilber's, where Emptiness is reified into Spirit and made to equate with the metaphysics of Meister Eckhardt. Raphael Foshay's essay "Tension on the Left" in a recent JITP addresses this in part as well, as do my essays in The Integral Review. At a minimum, this warrants a detailed and uncompromising comparative analysis of Wilber's appropriation and deployment of Nagarjuna's methodology.

There are problems in the way Wilber describes Plotinus' philosophy. Brian Hines' essay "What Wilber Gets Wrong about Plotinus" is convincing enough, to my mind, that a similar detailed and uncompromising reconsideration of Wilber's use of Plotinus in the context of the rest of his work is warranted.

There are problems with the way Wilber deploys German Idealist historicism. This is the topic of all three of my contributions to The Integral Review. My point is not that Wilber misunderstands Schelling or Hegel (he may or may not, I do not have a pony in that race). My point is that this kind of idealist historicism is untenable logically and reproduces the social relations that produced it (e.g., it is a cipher for imperial capitalism). I think this warrants a similar reconsideration of Wilberian natural history and cultural history.

Charles I. Flores' essay on Aurobindo demonstrates related problems with Wilber's appropriation and use of that writer, strong enough in my opinion to open an investigation into the validity of Wilber's Aurobindianism.

In all four cases, care must be taken to consider how these doctrines are used in the broader context of Wilber's argument. This is a genealogical analysis I am proposing: what are the consequences of disproving this or that premise? What happens to subsequent claims that, before, had followed from that premise?

This is separate from the broader question of the reason behind Wilber's arguments, which are also very suspicious to my mind and to others. My point is that if Wilber's premises are faulty, then his broader systematic claims are definitely subject to critique as described above (and should have been since Jeff Meyerhoff's book or before).

Four Theses of Flat Ontology

The Democracy of Objects
Levi R. Bryant
OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS, AN IMPRINT OF MPUBLISHING, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LIBRARY, 2011
Contents
Dedication
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Towards a Finally Subjectless Object
1. Grounds For a Realist Ontology
1.1. The Death of Ontology and the Rise of Correlationism
1.2. Breaking the Correlationist Circle
1.3. The Onto-Transcendental Grounds of Experimental Activity
1.4. Objections and Replies
1.5. Origins of Correlationism: Actualism and the Epistemic Fallacy
1.6. On the Alleged Primacy of Perception
2. The Paradox of Substance
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Aristotle, Substance, and Qualities
2.3. The Paradox of Substance
3. Virtual Proper Being
3.1. The Mug Blues
3.2. Deleuze's Schizophrenia: Between Monism and Pluralism
3.3. Virtual Proper Being
3.4. The Problem With Rabbits and Hats
3.5. Žižek's Objecting Objects
4. The Interior of Objects
4.1. The Closure of Objects
4.2. Interactions Between Objects
4.3. Autopoietic and Allopoietic Objects
4.4. Translation
4.5. Autopoietic Asphyxiation: The Case of the Lacanian Clinic
5. Regimes of Attraction, Parts, and Structure
5.1. Constraints
5.2. Parts and Wholes: The Strange Mereology of Object-Oriented Ontology
5.3. Temporalized Structure and Entropy
6. The Four Theses of Flat Ontology
6.1. Two Ontological Discourses: Lacan's Graphs of Sexuation and Two Ways of Thinking Being
6.2. The World Does Not Exist
6.3. Being is Flat
Bibliography
Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.9750134.0001.001
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The Life Divine is the culminating point of the Indian mind

Home > E-Library > Magazines > Sraddha > November 2009 > Contents

The Dharma of The Gita Sri Aurobindo 7

Sri Aurobindo Arabinda Basu 10

Veda Vyasa’s  Mahabharata  in

Sri Aurobindo’s  Savitri Prema Nanda Kumar 25

Sri Aurobindo and Vedic Riks Dr Sampadananda Mishra 39

The Path of Nachiketa: The journey Alok Pandey 47

Sri Aurobindo’s  The Life Divine:

The Immortal Text On The Divine Truth R.C. Pradhan 54

Sri Aurobindo and Uttarpara Speech Trija Roy 69

The Mother Abides Nolini Kanta Gupta 89

A Canadian Question 92

Twin Prayers 95

November 17, 1973 97

Integrality Matthijs Cornelissen 98

Practices in Integral Yoga Larry Seidlitz 111

Spiritual Knowledge Martha G Orton 121

Sri Aurobindo and the Hindu Muslim Problem Kittu Reddy 134

The Theme Of Urvashi In

The Indian Renaissance:

Madhusudan Datta,

Rabindranath Tagore , Sri Aurobindo Ranajit Sarkar 141

The National Value of Art Pabitra Kumar Roy 159

Cover Design : Dhanavanti’s painting ‘Rainbow rhythm’

Editorial

Space permitting, there is also a proposal to reproduce some of the ‘golden oldies’, essays of extraordinary depth and insight written by authors of eminence, most of whom are no more living. These priceless treasures secreted in the ageold vaults of the Advent, Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, Mother India, Srinvantu, Sri Aurobindo Circle, etc. need to be dug out and their authentic and authoritative views made known to a wider audience, especially among readers of this generation and those who wish to make a serious study of Sri Aurobindo. [Recent developments in analytic philosophy, Language and Mind, Vol. 1: A Western Perspective (Kant, Fodor, Searle, Kripke)]

Sri Aurobindo’s  The Life Divine : The Immortal Text On The Divine Truth

R.C. Pradhan

Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine represents the spirit of man in ascending the higher realms of the divine Truth. It is a text of the immortal voice of man aspiring for the highest Truth realisable in human life. If the Upanishads laid the foundations of the immortal life on earth and the Gita propounded the Karmayoga to effectively make it a part of the worldly life, The Life Divine further established the transforming power of the Supermind to make the earth its home. It has fulfilled the prophetic vision of the Upanishads and the Gita in concretising the immortal Truth of the Divine Reality on the rugged surface of the earthly life surrounded by darkness. The Life Divine is the culminating point of the Indian mind in its evolutionary history from the primitive to the most enlightened forms of spiritual realisation.

What I will do in this essay is not to summarise the vast knowledge unfolded in the text, but to throw hints as to how one could wade through the labyrinth of the divine drama created and enacted in Sri Aurobindo’s immortal text. Mine will not be a textual reading but an interpretation of the most important concepts dealt with in the text.

The National Value of Art

Pabitra Kumar Roy

Man, for Sri Aurobindo, is always the traveller of the cycles of society and his road is forward. This thesis holds no less in the domain of man’s aesthetic adventures. As elsewhere, he gathers in his material from the minds and lives of his fellow-men around him and makes the most of the experience of humanity’s past ages, and does not confine himself in a narrow mentality. The dialectic of individual and humanity is a characteristic of the logic of the evolutionary process. At one pole of man’s being, he is a variation of human individual, and yet belonging to his race and class types. He has his svadharma, according to which man resembles some, and differs from others. Society is formed on the ground of human affinity. Social affinity enriches the individuals, and his enrichment, in turn, enriches the society. For Sri Aurobindo, in modern times, society is the nation. By enriching the national life, the individual helps the total life of humanity. But it should not be understood that he holds that one’s nationality is one’s exhaustive identity. Rather, “if by a part of himself he belongs to the nation, by another he exceeds it and belongs to humanity.” 1 (HC, p. 81). 

Man’s societal self-limitation and subjection to his environment and group is hardly the last credential of a man’s existence. He shares something of the infinity, complexity and free variation of the Self manifested in the world, and thus has a necessary tendency of expansion and transcendence of his environmental affinities. The individual lives in humanity as well as humanity in the individual. The point is that nation is a temporary necessity. This view of nation and nationality we have to keep in view when we discuss Sri Aurobindo’s ideas concerning the national value of art. [Beauty Art and Man, David Hume;: A critical introduction to his theory of knowledge]

Univerisity of the Integral Yoga: Integral Library

Integral Library Integral Yoga 1. Sri Aurobindo and Mother - 2. Yoga for Every Day - About this blog

Sri Aurobindo and Mother left us a huge gift of knowledge about the practice of yoga, the device of the universe and human psychology. On this blog we will regularly put the words of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, help us to understand increasingly the work performed by them on the ground and how we ourselves can contribute to its development.

Human existence contains a set of planes of being: physical, vital, mental, and others that can be accessed at the present time we have is limited. We plan to create multiple partitions on a blog, each of which will gradually reveal the details of each of the levels of our being, and use this knowledge in everyday life.

About our center

There are different centers, each of which expresses and presents some ideas and deeds. Our center - a center of striving towards the Divine and the possibility of realization of God in the phenomenal world.

No and no rigid concept of the center, which is essentially a dynamic implementation. As we move along the path, there will be corresponding changes in the center. This center is not only a virtual phenomenon. He should and will be embodied physically in order to provide an opportunity for live communication and exchange of experience.

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, what is their teaching that they brought the earth and mankind, what is their job? We will try together to find answers to these questions. What the seeker, the soul is awakened when he heard the call of God, but the mind does not know where to start and what to do when the usual boundaries of society begin to compress the chest and cover your breath? Perhaps this project could partly solve these problems.We do not pretend to much, we just try to do your job well and be faithful to the call of his soul.

There are people who are in search of something elusive, searching for the truth of his soul. Perhaps they will find here the sound to a note that always sounds inside.

We are not a closed society and we are sincerely glad to help anyone who wants to help in the development of our center. This is not an easy job in which there is no rapid progress, and every achievement requires more effort. According to Sri Aurobindo, we can not find any authority other than on himself. Stepping on this path, we must be prepared to give everything, but only Allah and none else. Requires full commitment. His mother says that if a person does not sincere in their aspirations and these words are not in tune with him, he should not undertake this yoga - it's a flame that burns.

No seclusion can not move forward in this yoga far enough. Over time, there comes a time when it is necessary to take the next step, and if it is not done, will move in a circle, and progress will stop. No individual progress is impossible without a collective component, repeatedly talked about Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. We sincerely hope that the collective component finds its rightful place here and help us all make a few more steps on the path of ascent to the divine.

Center for the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Univerisity of the Integral Yoga VladNesh's Channel - YouTube - Vladnesh | Integral Library

The Human Cycle; epub v.1.0 Posted on 16/07/2011 by Vladnesh

Hi friends! Today we are publishing one of Sri Aurobindo major works “The Human Cycle” which includes in itself three titles: “The Human Cycle” itself, “The Ideal of Human Unity” and “War and Self-Determination”. I hope you will enjoy this … Continue reading → Posted in ePub, Integral Yoga | 1 Comment

The Synthesis of Yoga; epub v.1.0 Posted on 16/07/2011 by Vladnesh

Hi friends! Today we are publishing one of Sri Aurobindo major works and this one is particularily dear and presious to my heart, it is: “The Synthesis of Yoga”. This book in great detail shows human psychology and possibility of … Continue reading → Posted in ePub, Integral Yoga | 1 Comment

Sri Aurobindo’s Letters to his wife Mrinalini Devi; epub v.1.0 Posted on 16/07/2011 by Vladnesh

Hi folks! Today we are publishing a unique collection of Sri Aurobindo’s letters to his wife which gives us a rare opportunity to peek in to the past of our Master, his early years of private life which reveals us … Continue reading → Posted in ePub, Integral Yoga | Leave a comment

Syncretism in Sri Aurobindo’s thought – part 2 Posted on March 18, 2010 by Sandeep

One of the pleasures of reading Sri Aurobindo’s works is that such contradictions do not exist because he resolves every contradiction by tracing it to its Divine origin and reconciling it as part of a larger Truth.   He explicates how every principle has it’s play in a certain context but if we over-generalize, then it loses its value. […]

What can we glean from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the Nature versus Nurture debate?  We are given the understanding that nature and nurture can be reconciled in the greater spiritual truth, that there is an soul within Man evolving towards Divinity.  This soul persists across incarnations, puts forth its own distinct personality in every life and is also influenced by the genetic makeup of the parents as well as by the prevailing Zeitgeist. […]

Intelligent Design raises valid questions about abiogenesis (i.e. how life arises out from inorganic matter) and speciation (i.e. how do new species arise) but is unable to satisfactorily answer them with a suitable teleology, other than to posit the existence of an extra-cosmic entity which must be managing the Universe.

On the other hand, Neo-Darwinism only examines the superficial evolution of forms, and remains unaware of the greater aeonic evolution of souls as they are reborn in progressively more complex forms, (plant, animal and human) as determined by the evolution of soul consciousness.

We present the synthesis of the above ideas as discovered in the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.  Speciation is explained by the fact that consciousness precedes form in evolution [12]. Consciousness precedes form in evolution

Sri Aurobindo scores over Whitehead

Joy of being: All about life The Hindu August 18, 2011 R. DINESH

Though I had been brought up exposed to Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy, I actually re-discovered his teachings in his writings, “Essays on the Gita’’ and translation of the Upanishads. Initially, they were hard to understand, but soon I realized that once the essential Truth is understood, every word makes sense and can be experienced and related to every situation of our life, both in thoughts and actions. 

The Upanishads, 1st US Edition by Aurobindo Ghose Words of a Master, October 14, 2010 Amazon Review Written by John Pellicci (Palm Beach Gardens, United States)

There are few who can compare with Sri Aurobindo Ghose. His erudition is only surpassed by his realization. A wordsmith of the highest order, who can bring to light and clarity the often confusing and veiled jargon of the ancient Rishis. His commentaries on the Upanishads opens vistas of thought that allow the earnest and informed seeker the opportunity to sit at the feet of a modern master-sage. Comment | Permalink

Process Philosophy and OOO from Larval Subjects . by larvalsubjects

We get a lot of lectures about Whitehead explaining Whitehead to us, but I think this misses the point that our differences with Whitehead are not failures to understand him (cf. my post on transference), but because of genuine disagreements with Whitehead. For me, there are three basic points of divergence. First, I believe that Whitehead is a complete non-starter so long as his account of God is not severed from his thought and his thought isn’t thoroughly severed from process theology. Following Donald Sherburne, I think that Whitehead’s account of God is incoherent and at odds with the ontological foundations of his own philosophy. Any engagement of Whitehead that doesn’t sever it from his concept of God and substantially modify his ontology is, I believe, a priori to be excluded. …

Am I a process philosopher? Sure. I argue that objects are processes and processes are objects. Yet all of my work is focused on the precise nature of what processes are and how relations come to be forged. Above all, I’m interested in how relations can be broken so that we might be able to form a more just and equitable society than the one we find ourselves in today.

Shaviro on The Prince and the Wolf from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman) HERE. …

Like many other readers of Whitehead, I find that Steven is projecting a dynamism into his instants that is there in only the feeblest sense, and is perhaps over-reacting to the connotations of the word “process.” I find this to be especially the case among readers of Whitehead who are inspired by Deleuze. But there’s simply no comparison between the two thinkers, however much people want there to be. In all the important senses they are polar opposites, for the same reason that Whitehead and Bergson are polar opposites. 11:09 PM

Bogost on firehose materialism from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harham)

Ian now responds to Steven Shaviro, HERE. My favorite part of Ian’s post is probably the final sentence:

“…the fundamental dispute between OOO and process philosophy is a legitimate philosophical disagreement, not just a failure to communicate or understand.”

Levi made roughly the same point in his own post. The problem cannot be reduced to claiming that one side is misunderstanding Whitehead. No, there’s an actual philosophical disagreement at work. Incidentally, I should also add that Steven’s posts are always welcome, since they stay on topic.

So much hinges upon the avoidance of confusion and error

sam mickey | July 29, 2011 at 12:56 pm

I’m thinking of four anthologies released in the last few years that bring Whitehead into philosophical and theological dialogue with Badiou, Derrida, Deleuze, and others. Process and Difference (Daniell and Keller), Secrets of Becoming (Faber and Stephenson), Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson (Robinson), and Event and Decision (Faber, Krips, and Petus). …

If you’re interested in postsecular theology that addresses the challenges of our current historical moment, check out Clayton Crockett’s new book (if you haven’t already), Radical Political Theology. No Whitehead (although he does mention a little process theology, particularly Catherine Keller, perhaps the greatest process theologian), but there are plenty of helpful resources for understanding atheism and nihilism in their contemporary contexts.

Matthew David Segall | July 31, 2011 at 6:22 pm Glad you stopped by, Sam.

When I argue against metaphysical atheism in recent posts, I’m not thinking of the sort of “atheism in the name of God” that Alan Watts used to talk about. The “atheism” of the later group of thinkers you mention (Haraway, Derrida, etc.) is unlike the type that Bryant is arguing for in his responses to me. He seems to suggest that naturalism has made the “God hypothesis” (not the way I’d want to construe theological speculation) irrelevant, which is surprising to me since I didn’t think an OOO philosopher would try to lean on scientific materialism/naturalism to marginalize religion. He doesn’t seem to have read his Whitehead, or my posts on Whitehead in response, since he keeps accusing me of employing the concept of a transcendent “God” to explain natural processes when I’ve explicitly criticized such concepts. God is not a hypothesis meant to explain the universe, anymore than “matter” could be conceived of as such.

Matthew David Segall | August 1, 2011 at 10:14 am

Speculative philosophy must hold the binary (God/no-God) together to form a coherent image of the universe. The question is not: “does God exist?” but “what is the universe such that God does and does not exist?” Theism makes no sense without the possibility of atheism, and vice versa: they are interdependent, sometimes parasitic, sometimes symbiotic modes of thought.

What is Philosophical Realism? | The Radical Academy by Jonathan Dolhenty, Ph.D.

Philosophy is the attempt to understand the most basic facts about the world we inhabit and so far as possible to explain these facts. This enterprise is not the exclusive concern of certain specialists, but one in which every human being is deeply involved, whether or not he is clearly conscious of it.

Every way of life is based upon a way of looking at life. The way you look at life is your philosophy. Just as there are many ways of life, so are there many philosophies, some more true and some less true. So important is this basic enterprise of man, so much hinges upon the avoidance of confusion and error, that since the time of the ancient Greeks a certain discipline has been set aside for the concentrated consideration of philosophical problems and for the careful comparison and criticism of different ways of answering them. This discipline is called philosophy.

Husserl’s endless reductions, Heidegger’s endless preparations, Whitehead and Bergson are polar opposites

Shaviro on The Prince and the Wolf from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman)

HERE. Unsurprisingly, Steven sides with the Latour/Whitehead relationism against my critiques of that position. But it’s a well-written and thoughtful response to the book, also unsurprisingly. […]

As for Whitehead, I’m not sure I know what Steven means when he says the eternal objects are there as a source of novelty rather than a source of connection. The point is, prehension is always mediated by the eternal objects, and the eternal objects are in God. It’s hard to be more of an occasionalist than to say that God is the mediator of all relations and that entities exist only as occasions. It’s textbook occasionalism, in fact. Like many other readers of Whitehead, I find that Steven is projecting a dynamism into his instants that is there in only the feeblest sense, and is perhaps over-reacting to the connotations of the word “process.” I find this to be especially the case among readers of Whitehead who are inspired by Deleuze. But there’s simply no comparison between the two thinkers, however much people want there to be. In all the important senses they are polar opposites, for the same reason that Whitehead and Bergson are polar opposites.

Potentiality and Virtuality « Larval Subjects 26 May 2007 larvalsubjects Says: May 27, 2007 at 4:17 pm

This occurs often with political theory as well. Endless preparations to get things just right without jumping into the fray. This is the issue I have with epistemology: Kantianism, Husserl’s endless phenomenological reductions, Heidegger’s endless preparations to pose the question of the meaning of being (he argues that there has to be all sorts of preliminary work before the question itself can even be posed!), the epistemological debates of the 17th century, and yes, the endless refinements of critique among the critical theorists. Lacan liked to say that obsessional desire is the desire for an impossible desire. As a structure– i.e., something about a particular form of life, not an individual –obsessional desire sustains its desire by perpetually deferring the object of its desire, and it defers its object of desire by rendering that desire impossible. Critique, in my view, often functions in this way.