I read Sri Aurobindo to find some light in our difficult days

Professor Samuel Hugo Bergman

 (1883-1975)

Prithwindra Mukherjee

In a recent conversation[1], I mentioned that in 1972, as a guest of the Hebrew University for lecturing on Savitri, I made the acquaintance of Yehuda Hanegby, editor of the monthly Ariel. During this visit, Madame Themanlys, commissioned to interview me for Kol Israel, the official radio, revealed her identity as the daughter-in-law of a personal friend that the Mother had in Paris, belonging to Max Théon’s group.  I would like to speak of a third interesting personality whom I met in Jerusalem : Professor Schmuel Hugo Bergman, commonly known as Samuel Bergman.

On the eve of my talk, during a dinner, Dr Poznanski, the Rector of the University, informed me that  Professor Bergman, Dean of the University, was hoping to listening to me but, owing to his health (running 89), he could not be present at my lecture; he would appreciate if I went to have breakfast with him on the next morning.

I was staying with my friend, Professor Joseph Sadan, and had my meals with his parents at the picturesque Hayim Nahman Bialik Street : Joseph's father Dov Sadan was a well-known scholar in Ladino, and his mother treated me with refined traditional dishes from Central Europe. Yehuda came to pick me up for going to see Bergman. Yehuda knew him pretty well and informed that Bergman had been a school-mate of Franz Kafka in Prague, and  a zealous friend and translator of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). In 1920, Bergman along with Martin Buber (1878-1965) had founded in Palestine a "dual national" area to house peacefully Jews and Arabs, before joining the Hebrew University.  

On entering the impressive library where sat the venerable scholar, I discovered rows of books by Sri Aurobindo. Amused by my reaction, he asked me to take the seat in front of him and commented on showing me the set : "This was our food for thought; David and I read Sri Aurobindo to find some light in our difficult days."

Yehuda whispered : "By David, he means Ben Gurion !"

---

[1] "Meeting Prithwindra Mukherjee", Article and Interview by Sunayana Panda, The Golden Chain, August 2009, p.13 

Luhmann, Varela, Maturana, & Wolfe

Promises of Posthumanism: UPDATE from Larval Subjects I’ve just begun Cary Wolfe’s What is Posthumanism?. 

Luhmann in his discussions of social systems as communication systems, all remain nonetheless all too human in their focus on the primacy of human phenomena with respect to everything else. Of this group, Luhmann is probably the best of the bunch insofar as he at least recognizes the existence of other systems that are not human or social in nature. But still he insists on tracing everything back to the distinctions our systems make in observing these systems. […]

Towards this end, Wolfe deploys the second-order cybernetics of Luhmann, Varela, and Maturana. Luhmann, especially, is one of the undiscovered gems of theory. If you’re interested in his work start with The Reality of Mass Media, and then proceed to Social Systems. In discussing “different perceptual modes” of humans and animals, Wolfe is simultaneously quite close and exceptionally far from object-oriented ontology. [the Orchid and the rOse: Venter and the Adventure of Consciousness]

Fichte, Foucault, and Freedom

Mythology, Madness and Laughter – Fichte’s Laughter 3.3-3.4 from An und für sich by Anthony Paul Smith

Žižek offers something different than the usual reading of Fichte (though he appears to largely be following Peter Preuss in this reading), a reading which takes Fichte to be the radical subjective idealist in the line of Kant-Fichte-Schelling-Hegel (already mentioned in the previous sections). Instead, Žižek claims, Fichte recognizes that both materialism and idealism lead to ridiculous conclusions, ones that hinder practical engagement (which Žižek suggests is the main goal of Fichte’s escape from philosophy), “Both materialism and idealism lead to consequences that make practical activity meaningless or impossible” (138). 

• The first leads to determinism where the human being’s actions are meaningless in that free action is impossible and 
• the second leads to one being merely a passive observer of their dream making meaning as independent reality impossible.

Thus “Fichte’s wager” (drawing up the image of Pascal, obviously) is that in order to act like “a free moral agent, I have to accept the independent existence of other subjects like me, as well as the existence of a higher spiritual order in which i participate and which is independent of natural determinism” (138). Yet all of this is a leap of faith, one of practical necessity unsupported by theory as such. This, in part, explains a “mysterious subchapter” of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason where Kant explains how our lack of access to the noumenal realm is what creates the space for human freedom: “In short, the direct access to the noumenal domain would deprive us of the very “spontaneity” which forms the kernel of transcendental freedom” (140). It is only the betweenness of human beings that gives them their freedom as both in and outside of nature, which eventually leads to Žižek’s discussion of anstoß.

Part VI: Selections from Foucault and Augustine: Reconsidering Power and Love from Per Caritatem by Cynthia R. Nielsen

Because knowledge is always put to use by fallible human beings in a practical world of competing interests and visions, we are deluding ourselves…if we believe that questions of truth can be disentangled from questions of normative worth and value.  Even what appears to be most self-evidently natural is inevitably situated in a cultural context, and thus, shot through with social meanings and moral ambiguities” (149).  In other words, scientists too are human beings, shaped by specific cultures, language games, and personal proclivities—all of which influence their scientific pursuits and findings.

According to Foucault, with the shift from a religious frame to a scientific frame, the categories of “normal” and “abnormal” not only replace but alter in significant ways what was formerly understood as sin and a fallen state in need not of medical correction but of grace. 

“Once moral and religious discourses are transposed into a scientific key, a whole range of human frailties and fallibilities … are ‘placed under the rule of the normal and the pathological’” (149). 

Of those classified as “abnormal,” Foucault is particularly interested in “children, women, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and the condemned.” For example, in his book, Birth of the Clinic, he provides vivid descriptions of what a mentally ill person undergoes in a mental hospital in order to impress upon us the extreme lengths to which our culture is willing to go in order to try and “eliminate disorder and clean up social messes” (150).

In place of exile or physical torture for illicit acts, the new modes of societal exclusion and punishment, or rather rehabilitation, involve updated, scientifically compatible differentiating techniques.  For example, in contrast to “commemorative accounts” and “genealogies,” one now “becomes known by scientifically defined variances and anomalies” (151).  Instead of legends of brave saints, we produce “distinctively modern epic genres—the psychological autobiography and the carefully monitored and charted case study” (151).  In sum, Schuld states,

“No longer moral transgressions and guilt, no longer honor and shame, no longer action and social consequence, but nature and defect analyzed through rational quantitative study govern the relations of power of those falling outside expected norms, values and behaviors” (151).

Mirror of Tomorrow :: Jung in a Valley of Diamonds: Supermind and ...

In fact, given the logic of the existence of numbers as qualitative phenomena, each of which is connected to wholeness and the Supermind or unus mundus as the one-continuum, her challenge regarding the Matrimandir needs to be seriously ...

Western philosophy is now at a dead end

(title unknown) from enowning

Iran's Seyyed Hossein Nasr explains what's up.

What about the West? At least speaking about philosophy, it seems the West is passing through a kind of paralysis also.

The West is now undergoing a very, very severe intellectual crisis. The reason why people are not aware of it is because of the power of technology and the military might of the West. It is like the end of the Roman Empire. As long as the Roman legends were leading in Libya, nobody thought that something was wrong. It is a very similar situation. Western philosophy is now at a dead end. Even Heidegger said, Western philosophy ends with me. There is a philosophical crisis and a religious crisis as a result of that. After that comes the environmental crisis, which is not solved unless the West changes completely the way it lives, its worldview, and they don’t want to do it. So they use cosmetics all the time. Look at the Gulf of Mexico now. It is a great tragedy of human history. Nobody wants to talk about it. So the West is also experiencing a very, very large crisis, and I’d say it is suicide for us to try to blindly copy the West at this stage.

Amazon.com: Heidegger's Hidden Sources: East-Asian Influences on his Work ~ Reinhard May (Author)

As in love and war, all is fair in philosophy, October 13, 2004 By Sagan Lazar "Sagan Lazar" (In yo monitor) - See all my reviews

Let us recall the socio-political climate of the times when Marty was in agony over the West's metaphysical tradtion. Philosophy was more or less sputtering at the time for want of something to fresh say. Who at that time was saying something totally unheard of; something so funky and seductively nonsensical that one had to squeeze some new meaning into them? Richard Wilhelm the sinologist had just translated the I JING and was giving lectures to small groups. Heigdegger was most certainly aware of Wilhelm's work.

The author (May) was Heidegger's student and saw some things first hand. If May's claims are correct (I have no overwhelming evidence to suspect he is not), then indeed, we should pay a little more attention to how Heidegger went about getting some of his ideas. Marty hired a Chinese doctoral student to help him privately (maybe even secretly) to translate the Lao Dze's DAO DE JING. He was quite studious about it, apparently.

One might argue that some of May's findings of connections between Heidegger's work and Daoist literature are circumstantial. Maybe they are. […] May's book is not an 'expose' of something embarrassing that Heidegger wanted to hide in shame. Anxiety of influence, etc. Rather, I think Heidegger was right to not acknowledge the Chinese influence in his work -- if only to keep those who will come after him to stay within the straight and narrow of the Western tradition of 'philosophy' as such.
Besides, Marty probably saw it as a bank loan that would be erased once it has served its purpose and paid back with interest. Whatever the source of his ideas, one could argue that Heidegger more than paid the loan back: After all, the house is rebuilt and new rooms are being added even as we speak. (As an architect, I couldn't vouch for the soundness of the structure, however.)

Poor sales of this book indicates that professors who cannot get enough of this guy's work/life do not make this book mandatory reading for their students. Which is strange but also understandable: they just don't wanna "go there" since that would entail extra exegetical work and uncertain forays into unfamiliar territories from which they might end up fetching the wrong things and make fools of themselves. Or, maybe there exists something like 'Code Red' (the unwritten 'don't go there' policy) that reflects something inherently, unbreakably Euro-centric (Judeo-Xtian) within contemporary (Occidental) critical theory, despite all the politically correct-sounding rhetoric.

The bulk of postmodern thinking is about the problem of 'thinking without metaphysics' which amounts to 'thinking without Christianity' more or less: an impossibel task -- sort of like performing a total dissection on oneself and wanting to live to tell about it.
Unfortunately, most thinkers in the West go about trying to solve this agonizing problem as if there were no other models of thinking worthy of their attention. (Or else they get all bent out of shape torturing language and themselves over something like, "the psychoanalytic politics/ethics of post-colonial ap/propriation of dis/avowal of the Other in the absence of the Subject as the Thing.") Levinas was perhaps most honest about this when he expressed his horror of the 'Yellow Peril' as an alien mode of thought so alien as to be Martian.

Stubborness? Pride? An unspoken attitude of smugness and sense of superiority derived fron the very patriarchal edifice they want to deconstruct? Much of the high-flying rhetoric about being open to 'diversity' and 'what-comes' falls a little flat in the provincial attitude within modern high theory that would relegate all 'Other' to East Asian Studies, anthropology, or Buddhist Studies. So, same pie, just sliced into different shapes, less sugar, thinner crust, but in the end, still the same pie.

The question remains: WHY did Marty feel he had to take out a loan from a bank so far away? Francois Jullien's books including the very enlightening 'Detour and Access' (see my review) might be helpful if you really want to know -- and also get a head start on figuring out what one version of Deleuze's ideas has been.  Permalink

Ontological implications of Morhoff’s PIQM are earth-shattering

20 zephyr 05/18/2010 6:15 am

I’m glad to see UD mention Morhoff, he needs to be given attention by those interested in the ID debate, never mind QM and philosophy. His own interpretation of the Quantum Paradox, the Pondicherry Interpretation (PIQM) is original and important and may account for certain inexplicables in QM that otherwise remain loose ends or at least very much misunderstood. The PIQM is fully explicable and compatible from a religious context/dimension (at least a Hindu one), and Morhoff is explicit on this. In fact what is interesting about Morhoff’s PI is that he considers the whole consciousness problem in QM which has been raging for decades (does consciousness/observation collapse the wave function?) as a pseudo-problem and based on a misunderstanding of the measurement problem in wave mechanics. An irony here is that those of a religious/mystical bent have, based on an extension of the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM, used this notion of consciousness collapsing the wave function – the work of Eugene Wigner and Henry Stapp notably and others – to advance the notion that a religious or a mystical/animist philosophy is justified by findings in QM.

One sees this in popular books and academic articles on QM where the authors are sympathetic to Oriental mysticism/Buddhism and associated philosophies. Famous popular books would be physicist Fritjof Capra’s 'The Tao of Physics’ and Gary Zukov’s ‘The Dancing Wu-Li Masters’, also the late Michael Talbot wrote extensively on this. Plenty others of course. In fact such thinking is a mainstay within parapsychological and mystical circles since it is perceived as offering theoretical underpinnings to parapsychological phenemona such as PK (whether these phenomena exist or not is of course another whole controversy). See for example Evan Walker’s hypthothesis on Quantum Tunnelling and numerous models and hypotheses on the mind/brain from a dualist perspective.

Morhoff says this is all misguided and wrongheaded, even though he is sympathetic to mysticism and parapsychology. In fact he has been highly critical of Henry Stapp’s ideas here and there has been a fair bit of back and forth on that front – this gets into meaty stuff on probability algorithms, the measurement ‘problem’, mathematical formalism and the debate on whether QM is an epistemic theory or not. The ontological implications of Morhoff’s PIQM are earth-shattering and would shake up more than QM if valid, but other scientific disciplines too, not just religion and philosophy. Like most everybody, I have no adequate competence in this arena (QM) to offer an opinion that matters one way or the other, but it is worth recognising Morhoff’s important contributions to QM and even potentially overhauling much of our supposed “understanding” of what is going on here. His papers on QM and his espousal of the Pondicherry Interpretation are a must-read to anybody interested in Quantum Mechanics and consciousness and the scientific, philosophical and theological implications thereof. Morhoff is very much a physicist apart. One may not agree with him but he is an outstanding physicist, and his work, like that of ID scholars, deserves a wider audience.

Timeaus brings u some interesting points but several things need to be mentioned, Hindu philosophy like numerous Western religious philosophies and cosmogony itself cannot be summed up or understood in a few comments on a blog thread, without grossly oversimplifying things. It is all very staggeringly complex and one really needs to read up on say the mystic Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy (Morhoff’s religious inspiration in many ways) in order to get where Morhoff is coming from and thus offer a more accurate critique of his philosophy, whether one is sympathetic to his outlook or not. Indeed the journal Anti-Matters features regular expositions by Morhoff and others on the philosophy of the Hindu sage Aurobindo and these expositions need to be read and digested in order to appreciate where Morhoff is coming from. Personally I do not think there is any substantial philosophical and scientific disagreement between Aurobindo’s philosophy and Vedantic philosophy in general and ID, in fact I don’t see any even minor disagreement or contradiction whatsoever.

I think Morhoff is in error here and this error may be rooted in a misunderstanding and conflation of ID with its contemporary Western religious context and background and general support. Rather than recognising ID for what it is and what ID scientists and scholars say it is, Morhoff appears to confuse the personal philosophies of prominent ID figures for ID per se. There is an irony here (if I am right and of course I may be wrong in my notion on this front), that Morhoff gets caught up perhaps in a similar kind of error that he accuses physicists like Stapp of doing re QM, namely getting caught up in a pseudo-problem, and it is this pseudo-problem that is wrestled with rather than the respective factual matters. I cannot explain what I mean here without getting into nitty gritty details that I do not have the time for, and so will leave it at that. I do want to stress though that I do not see any incompatibility with ID as a scientific programme and Morhoff’s philosophy, Vedanticism and Hinduism in general for that matter, and even animism and shamanism. In fact there are other Hindu scholars, in both the West and the Orient who share my opinion here, this is a whole other topic though.

On this front though it should be mentioned in passing that a reading of much Western mystical religious philosophy, including Jewish Merkabah mysticism and Hassidic Kabbalah, the philosophy of famous Kabbilists like Moses ben Jacob Cordovera and Isaac Luria is not dissimillar to the independent Oriental philosophy of which Morhoff is enamoured. Note that there are considerable differing strains of thought among Jewish theology and within Kabbilistic theology itself that engendered considerable feuds over the centuries and still do, as is the case with the considerable feuds within Christian theology and within and amongst Catholic and Protestant factions/affiliations themselves, as we all know. Hence why one cannot type out a few quips that sum up what Morhoff is saying and where he is right or wrong on ID, they are both very meaty subjects that cannot be done justice to short of a book-length treatment. Otherwise we are speaking past one another and the noise to signal ratio remains too high.

As far as the editorial board at the Anti-Matters Journal goes, they include Stephen Braude, one of the most heavy-weight philosophers of our age (at the University of Maryland). He has written extensively and deeply on numerous cutting-edge scientific and philosophical issues that have great bearing on ID, including NDEs and parapsychology and other topics. Also Mae-Wan Ho is a biologist who is preeminent in criticising GMOs from a perspective that is compatible with a religious outlook, that complements either ID or theistic evolution, depending on your own personal philosophy. Indeed anybody interested in the GMO controversy cannot ignore her writings in this regard.

There is also Roger Nelson who did and continues to do important leading-edge work on cognitive perception and the possibility of a collective unconscious and the necessity of establishing and testing for physical parameters in this regard. Nelson and others are trying to establish what has been universally regarded as an abstraction in psychology (the collective unconscious) on a more solid and falsifiable scientific footing (this isn’t as odd as it may sound, and grew out of the Princeton PEAR lab work, a whole massive controversial topic beyond the scope of my post). Right or wrong he should be commended for going where most fear to tread, IF he is right the implications to ID on this front are considerable. Then there is Benny Shannon at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who is a leading world authority on hallucinogenic drugs esp DMT related and their implications for human consciousness studies and religion. ID as a scholarly endevour is considerably buttressed by taking into consideration the serious ID implications of the work of Morhoff, Shannon, Nelson, Braude and Mae-Wan Ho alone.

Whatever the personal philosophies of the above mentioned (even if not ID friendly themselves, that is in a personal capacity), their body of work in seperate but overlapping disciplines all have very important implications to ID as a whole that are rather incredibly neglected by the self-described ID community itself, academics and scientists included. I have much to say on this front but this is not the time nor is this thread itself the place for it.

What I am getting at is that Anti-Matters is an important high-quality journal that should be read by all those interested in the debate over religion and science.

Btw Morhoff himself has reviewed Berlinski’s ‘The Devil’s Delusion’ and Mike Gene’s ‘The Design Matrix’ in Anti-Matters, and has given favourable reviews to both (available on-line for free). They are worth checking out, and show that Morhoff’s input and critiques are valuable to those interested and sympathetic to ID even if Morhoff does not count himself as an IDist. 

21 zephyr 05/18/2010 6:33 am

Ilion, the idea that our existence in the cosmos is an illusion, that you attribute to Buddhism and Hinduism is in fact a mistaken assumption that appears to come from a Western superficial new-agey take on Oriental philosophy more than anything else. The whole idea of maya as illusion is more complex than your typical Castaneda and Deepak Chropa reading hippie in Berkeley would be aware of. In fact the concept of maya appears largely misunderstood in the West and even in the East.

One needs to study Oriental philosophy in a serious way if one is going to give a knowledgeable opinion on it, just like everything else. Otherwise knocking down straw-men comes to the fore. 

22 Granville Sewell 05/18/2010 6:48 am

Thanks for your insightful comments, I agree with your assessments of AntiMatters, and Mohrhoff as a scientist. By the way, Mohrhoff also has a nice review of Beauregard and O’Leary’s “The Spiritual Brain” in AntiMatters, which incudes quotes from Dembski.

Here Sri Aurobindo gets quite sociological

Mythology, Madness and Laughter – The Mythological Being of Reflection 1.2 from An und für sich by Brad Johnson

Gabriel affirms and supplements Badiou’s conclusion that “the being of consistency is inconsistency.” (qtd. p. 54) It is here, with this reconciliation (or attempted reconciliation), that Schelling really goes to work. Importantly, for Gabriel, when we identify inconsistency as “the being” of consistency, we are not saying that inconsistency is a state of affairs, or “a primordial nameless tohubohu in the beginning waiting to be ordered by the divine world.” (p. 55) On the contrary: “The being of consistency,” i.e. the absolute identification of the indeterminate condition (the abgrund) for determinacy, is identified as such retroactively — prior to its determinate identification, “that which eludes our grasp (however we name it) . . . does not even exist.” (p. 55)

the other invisible hand from immanence by ai

The mirror neuron meme continues to circulate via that dependable circulator of likable sciencey ideas, Jeremy Rifkin: There's much more to his argument than mirror neurons (fortunately). “Empathy is grounded in the acknowledgment of death and the celebration of life in rooting for each other to flourish and be. It’s based on our frailties and our imperfections.” “Empathy is the invisible hand. Empathy is what allows us to stretch our sensibility with another so that we can cohere in larger social units. To empathize is to civilize; to civilize is to empathize.” If the invisible hand of the liberal right is the market, and of the conservative right is tradition, is the invisible hand of the left empathic sociality? And is science now on its side? See The Empathic Civilization for more. And the RSA for more videos by the likes of David Harvey, Matthieu Ricard, Barbara Ehrenreich, Slavoj Zizek,... 

EVOLUTIONARY,  SPIRITUAL CONCEPTIONS OF LIFE – SRI AUROBINDO ... by M Leicht - 2006 Evolutionary, spiritual conceptions of life - Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin and Ken Wilber in comparison Dr. phil. Michael Leicht

But the position of Aurobindo is quiet different. It is not by removing himself from his body, mind and even his consciousness, that the individual can reach the highest state. But it is by the fullest development of the body, mind and consciousness. Moreover, it is only in an enlightened and ennobled world that the highest type of individual can dwell. The divinised man is a citizen of a divinised world (Reddy, 2004: 147). Here Aurobindo gets quite sociological. [Evolutionary, Spiritual Conceptions of Life - Sri Aurobindo, ... - Page 34 Dr. phil. Michael Leicht – 2008] 9:54 PM 

Zaadz: Anand’s blog » Departed Spirits - Ramana Maharishi and Sri Aurobindo

The crucial extra element that Aurobindo brought to Indian philosophy/mysticism is a collective aspect of spirit. While he describes communion, union and identity with Spirit in a manner that is similar to Vedanta, he later articulates the descent of the Supermind along with the creation of a new Man and a new advanced society. The Mother (Mirra Alfassa) attempted to carry out this program and helped found Auroville - a model for such an advanced society. In recent times, this theme has been further developed in a (constructive) postmodern direction by Ken Wilber and his followers. [Nature and wildlife in Auroville « Aurovillenews By aurovillenews] 9:56 AM

The Life Divine has nothing to do with institutional religion

Evolutionary, Spiritual Conceptions of Life - Sri Aurobindo, ... - Page 34 Dr. phil. Michael Leicht - 2008 - 52 pages

Nevertheless partly we agree with Aurobindo. In the Kantian tradition there is the 'intelligible world', ... In a way, Aurobindo's theory of evolution resembles Lyod Morgan and Samuel Alexander's theory of emergent evolution. ...

Understanding thoughts of Sri Aurobindo, Indrani Sanyal, Krishna Roy, Jadavpur ... - 2007 - 317 pages

According to Samuel Alexander, the whole process of the universe is a historic growth from space-time. The original matrix is space-time. Time is the mind of space. In course of time, space-time breaks up into finites of ever- ...

Environment Evolution & Values - Page 81, D.P. Chattopadhyaya - 2007 - 332 pages
His concepts and expressions anticipate those of Lloyd Morgan, Sri Aurobindo, Samuel Alexander and Teilhard. According to him, "evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes ... [History, Culture and Truth: Essays Presented to D.P. Chattopadhyaya, Economic History of India from Eighteenth to Twentieth Century: History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civlization v. 8, pt. 3, Women of India: Colonial and Post-Colonial Periods: History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization (Vol. IX, Part 3), Societies, Cultures and Ideologies, Induction, Probability, and Skepticism (S U N Y Series in Philosophy), Language Logic and Science in India: Some Conceptual and Historical Perspectives (Phispc Monograph Series on History of Philosophy, Science and Culture in India, No 4), Self, Society and Science: Theoretical and History Perspectives (History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, Vol. XI, pt. 2), Natural Science of the Ancient Hindus (Icpr Series in Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences), Sociology, Ideology and Utopia: Socio-Political Philosophy of East and West (Philosophy of History and Culture)]

Tattvabodha: Essays from the Lecture Series of the National ... Sudha Gopalakrishnan - 2006 - 164 pages

Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries BC (New York: WW Norton & Company. 1970). 9. Such philosophies have been offered, among others, by evolutionary thinkers like Samuel Alexander. Sri Aurobindo. ...

Idealistic Thought of India - Page 389, P. T. Raju - 2006 - 452 pages

Of late, Samuel Alexander says that the world would evolve the Deity itself Iqbal's view may not exactly be the same, ... Almost all contemporary Indian philosophers including Radhakrishnan, Tagore, Gandhi, Aurobindo Ghose, Tilak, ... [Idealistic thought of India;: Vedanta and Buddhism in the light of Western idealism]

Shankara's universal philosophy of religion, Yakub Masih - 1987 - 163 pages

Nirvana is not a fact, or, in the pregnant statement of Samuel Alexander: "God as actually possessing deity does not exist ... from which all subsequent writers like Shankara, Ramanuja, Tagore and Aurobindo have drawn their inspiration. ...

Philosophical Humanism and Contemporary India - Page 199 Vishwanath Prasad Varma - 2006 - 211 pages

impediments to 143-44 Ahimsa 111, 129 Ahriman and Ormuzd 119 Akbar 56 Alexander, Samuel 25, 36 Almond G. 87, ... Karl 113 Behavioralism 100 — and philosophical humanism 45-50 Bentham 149 Berdyaev 40, 44, 120 — and Aurobindo ...

Indian literary criticism in English: critics, texts, issues, P. K. Rajan - 2004 - 363 pages
This is substantially a line of argument of the thinkers like Sri Aurobindo, Samuel Alexander and Chardin. Needless to say that Goethe's Faust, Blake's Jerusalem, Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and Aurobindo's Savitri are poetic models of ... The Indian imagination: critical essays on Indian writing in English - Page 80 K. D. Verma - 2000 - 268 pages

Immortal Paradigms: Sri Aurbindo Home-Coming Centenary Volume - Page 183, Charu Sheel Singh - 2002 - 264 pages

Samuel Alexander held space-time to be the continuum of Matter and it sets out of that Life, Mind and Deity emerge as qualities. Prof. AN Whitehead propounded ingressive Evolution and held events as meeting place of actualities and ... [Chariot of Fire: A Study of William Blake in the Light of Hindu Thought (Salzburg Studies in English Literature)]

Saints of India: Sri Aurobindo Ghose Shiri Ram Bakshi, Sangh Mittra - 2002 - 335 pages

This, Sri Aurobindo says, is "The real Monism, the true Advaita. . .which admits all things as the one Brahman and ... Modern science and some modern western thinkers like Samuel Alexander assure us that the universe is a play of this ...

The phenomenology of compassion in the teachings of Jiddu ..., Veronica Boutte - 2002 - 150 pages

Alexander, Samuel. Space, Time, and Deity. Macmillan and Co. Ltd., London, 1920. Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1978. Aurobindo, Sri. The Yoga of Self-Perfection. Buchet Chastel, Paris, 1977. ...

Quantum questions: mystical writings of the world's great physicists Ken Wilber - 2001 - 225 pages

There is, for instance, a way to test the truth-value of a mathematical theorem, but this test is based, ... whole or in part) by modern thinkers such as Nicolai Hartmann, Samuel Alexander, Whitehead, Aurobindo, Maritain, Urban, etc. ...

Encyclopedia of Asian philosophy - Page 42, Oliver Leaman - 2001 - 669 pages

Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust. ... Samuel Alexander was the first Australian philosopher of note. He was born in Sydney in 1859, moved to Melbourne in childhood, ...

The Advent Sri Aurobindo Ashram – 2001

we find them in the light of modern theories of Darwin, Bergson, Samuel Alexander, Whitehead, ... The supramental Yoga has, therefore, been presented by Sri Aurobindo as a practical means by which humanity can be helped and lifted up on ...

The other perennial philosophy: a metaphysical dialectic, Alan M. Laibelman - 2000 - 431 pages

See Alexander, Samuel Spectrum Of Consciousness. See Wilber, Ken Spiritual Espousals. ... See Aurobindo System Of Transcendental Idealism. See Schelling, FWJ Szarmach, Paul Introduction To The Medieval Mystics Of Europe, 168, 216, ...

Creative stillness: Indian perspectives on art & beauty, Vishwanath S. Naravane - 2000 - 239 pages

Although Sri Aurobindo has here referred specifically to creative literature, the comments are applicable to all ... of a transcendental consciousness in humanity with the views of another well-known modern thinker: Samuel Alexander. ...

The enigma of the oceanic feeling: revisioning the psychoanalytic ... - Page 203, William Barclay Parsons - 1999 - 252 pages

For a comparison between Bergson's and Aurobindo's concepts of intuition, see SK Maitra, The Meeting of East and West in Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy (Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1956), chapter 2. Chapter 4 1. ...

The integral advaitism of Sri Aurobindo - Page 429, Rāma Shankar Miśra - 1998 - 437 pages

Ranade, RD, A Constructive Survey of Upanisadic Philosophy (Oriental Book Agency, Poona). Samuel, Alexander, Space, Time and Deity, Vol. II (Macmillan London, 1920). ...

East-West evaluation of Man, Vedre Narayan Karan Reddy - 1996 - 390 pages

Intuition is inarticulate unbroken reality in Sri Aurobindo while it is an inward experience of the spirit in Radhakrishnan, a self-evident truth and an immediate awareness. According to Samuel Alexander the awareness of space and time ...

Mother India: monthly review of culture Sri Aurobindo Ashram – 1993

In one passage, for instance, he names him in line with Fichte, Hegel, Bergson, Whitehead, Samuel Alexander, ... What Sri Aurobindo meant exactly by this epochal event has puzzled many who are otherwise sympathetic to his vision. ...

Adi Sankara and Aurobindo, V. Narayan Karan Reddy - 1992 - 85 pages

Advaita, Sadhana, 2, 10, 16 Alexander, Samuel, 71 All this is the Brahman,... 22 Fagles, Robert, 30 Fichte, 56 Four austerities, 3 Four liberations, 3 Freedom of individual, 38-39 Free-will, 39 Freud, 27 Future in Sri Aurobindo, ...

Phenomenology and Indian philosophy, Debi Prasad Chattopadhyaya, Lester E. Embree ... - 1992 - 376 pages

Though some thinkers like Samuel Alexander and Teilhard de Chardin start as naturalists, they end up with a type of ... of qualitative emergence.14 There are others like Hegel and Sri Aurobindo who maintain that super-nature itself is ...

The minimalist vision of transcendence: a naturalist philosophy of ... - Page 251, Jerome Arthur Stone - 1992 - 262 pages

Agape, 80, 98, 100 Agnosticism, ix, 32 Agreement: definitional, 151; observational, 151 Alexander, Samuel, 49, ... 122 Atheism, 74 A/theology, 210-214; deconstruc- tive, 211 Augustine, 11, 107, 181, 210 Aurobindo, Sri, 101, ...

The future of the body: explorations into the further evolution of ... Michael Murphy - 1992 - 785 pages

Evolutionary Novelty and Emergence Samuel Alexander, C. Lloyd Morgan, CD Broad, Joseph Needham, Michael Polanyi, and others have developed the idea that evolution produces emergent structures, processes, and laws (or habits) that had ..

Revisioning philosophy - Page 76, James A. Ogilvy - 1992 - 318 pages

The Evolution of Embodied Consciousness During the two centuries since "progress" became a prominent idea in the West, ... Samuel Alexander, C. Lloyd Morgan, Jean Gebser, Charles Hartshorne, Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo,...

The Philosophy of religion: selected readings, Yeager Hudson - 1991 - 636 pages

Naturalism Alexander, Samuel. Space, Time, and Deity. New York: Dover Publications. 1966. ... Aurobindo teaches absolute idealism, a form of supernaturalism that holds that all being originated from one all- inclusive mind called the ...

The Plays of Sri Aurobindo, a study, S. S. Kulkarni - 1990 - 160 pages
The views of William James and Samuel Alexander on the Emergent Evolution were being ... Before finalising Perseus the Deliverer for publication in 1907, Sri Aurobindo must have studied these developments since his play is, ...

Knowledge and the sacred - Page 240, Seyyed Hossein Nasr - 1989 - 341 pages

ranging from Nietzsche's superman to the emergent evolution of Samuel Alexander and the creative evolution of Henri ... Strangely enough, in this domain the French Jesuit was preceded by an Oriental, namely Sri Aurobindo, who in his...

Freedom, transcendence, and identity: essays in memory of ..., Kalidas Bhattacharya, Pradip Kumar Sengupta ... - 1988 - 222 pages

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 276. 4. Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Phenomenology, 242-3. 5. JP Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego. 6. Samuel Alexander, Space, Time and Deity, Vol. II, p. 82 7. ...

Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx: integral sociology and dialectical ... - Page 314 Debi Prasad Chattopadhyaya - 1988 - 336 pages
like Sri Aurobindo, Samuel Alexander and Chardin. The history of ideological and utopian thought clearly shows the hidden ... Sri Aurobindo justifiably claims that The Life Divine has nothing to do with institutional religion. ...

Philosophy and the self: East and West - Page 214, Troy Wilson Organ - 1987 - 239 pages

Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, (New York: Dover, 1966), ...Aurobindo capitalizes Matter, Life, and Mind when they denote metaphysical principles. 80. Aurobindo Ghose, The Life Divine, pp. 241-42. ...

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research Indian Council of Philosophical Research – 1987

It not only examines the philosophy of evolution propounded by philosophers like Charles Darwin, Henri Bergson, Samuel Alexander, Lloyd Morgan, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Alfred North Whitehead, Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, etc. but also ...

Vaṇījyotiḥ Utkal University P.G. Dept. of Sanskrit – 1987

Emergent Theory of Evolution of Samuel Alexander. But Sri Aurobindo- holds an ... need of following the rhythm of thought as it manifests itself, since thought is not its essence, thought is only an evolute at a certain state. ...

Selected Doctrines from Indian Philosophy - Page 143, Vetury Ramakrishna Rao - 1987 - 147 pages

... 2 Alexander, Samuel, 43, 48, 85-86 Aloneness, see Kaivalya Anaximander, 41 Animal behaviour, 28-29 Annam, ... 107 Atheism, concept of, 9, 74 and mukti 116-17 Augustine, 26, 32 Aurobindo, and concept of evolution, 86-88 Avijja and ...

Knowledge, value & other essays, Harsiddh Maganlal Joshi - 1986 - 239 pages

Sri Aurobindo reconciled the extremes of matter and spirit by introducing the concept of evolution in his integral non-dualism. In the West, Bergson, Alexander and Whitehead have propounded theories of evolution in Metaphysics. ...

The philosophy of Advaita: a transition from Śaṅkara to Śrī Aurobindo, Priti Sinha - 1986 - 435 pages

Alexander Samuel, 341. Antaryamin-manifestation ...

Indian philosophy: an analytical study, Bijayananda Kar - 1985 - 148 pages

Philosopher like Samuel Alexander holds that unconscious matrix of Space-Time is the ultimate source out of which all things and events are evolved. But, according to Sri Aurobindo, such explanation offered by both scientists as well as ...

Evolutionary theory: the unfinished synthesis, Robert G. B. Reid - 1985 - 405 pages

A 'realistic' emergentism was developed by Samuel Alexander and Conwy Lloyd Morgan. Samuel Alexander (1859-1938), an Australian who studied mathematics and classics at Oxford, was elected to a Fellowship at Lincoln College, ...

Natural architecture: 40 earth sheltered house designs, Charles G. Woods - 1984 - 145 pages

Today Nature as a living organism is seen in the developing philosophies of Samuel Alexander, AN Whitehead, Sri Aurobindo, and Teilhard de Chardin. All of nature is one organic whole. Everything is interrelated in a dynamic way. ...

Modern Indian thought: (Rammohun Roy to Jayaprakash Narayan), Dev Raj Bali - 1984 - 262 pages

Maulavi 159 Alexander, Samuel, 225 Ajmal Khan , Hakim, 162 Ali, Maulana Mohammed 162, 164- 165, 174 Ali, ... Sabha 9 Aurobindo, Sri 93, 97, 132, 134-135, 137-139, 141-143, 145, 157; Philosophy 146 Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam 121, 164,

Introduction to the study of English literature, K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Prema Nandakumar - 1984 - 296 pages

During the last several decades, the poets have tried to make the Word once again a winged instrument of the spirit, ... itself is being viewed in a new way by twentieth century thinkers like Bergson, Lloyd Morgan and Samuel Alexander, ...

Eastern and western philosophy: an introduction, Vedre Narayan Karan Reddy - 1980 - 217 pages

Plato, Locke and Rousseau were the great educators of the West as much as Gandhi, Tagore and Sri Aurobindo in the East. ... Samuel Alexander was very particular of the Method of Philosophy and this Method of Philosophy must necessarily ...

Towards the life divine: Sri Aurobindo's vision Louis Thomas O'Neil - 1979 - 103 pages

Aurobindo maintains no dualism within his philosophy and holds to a variety of different intensities of intuition, ie, Higher mind, ... The third philosopher in the West whose philosophy is similar to Aurobindo's is Samuel Alexander. ...

Reflections on philosophy, S. Balasundaram - 1979 - 124 pages

INDEX ABHEDANANDA, Swami 4 n Alexander, Samuel 4 Anselm 24 Aparoksanubhuti or Self- Realization 53,76n Aquinas, St. Thomas 22 Aristotle 1, 22, 52, 82, 93 (The) Art of Life 5n Aurobindo, Sri 66, 67n 115 BARNES, Winston HF 82n Barnett, ...

The future of man according to Teilhard de Chardin and Aurobindo Ghose, J. Chetany - 1978 - 500 pages

Only Samuel Alexander's Emergent Evolution comes somewhat closer to that of Aurobindo's. But paradoxically, it is the Space-Time that constitute the metaphysical absolute for Alexander. In such a scheme of things the entire reality is ...

The yogi and the mystic: a study in the spirituality of Sri ..., Jan Feys - 1977 - 371 pages

Teilhard may have avoided plain static pantheism, but does he not visibly lapse into some sort of dynamic pantheism, after the manner of a Samuel Alexander, if not of Hegel? The flaw of all monistic philosophies consists in absorbing ... [Sri Aurobindo's Treatment of Hindu Myth]

Europese invloeden op het denken van Sri Aurobindo Alphonsus Maria Gerardus van Dijk - 1977 - 446 pages

Orgar gaa- sover ook Samuel Alexander op te nemen in de rij van Europeanen dieAurobindo ... 10 Het verschil tussen de progressieve leer van Aurobindo en de traditionele cyclische leer is oa opgemerkt door 3.K. Maitra, The ...

Indian philosophical annual University of Madras. Centre of Advanced Study ... – 1976

Have students of Sri Aurobindo and Chardin specific hypotheses to offer in this difficult terrain ? We may censure Samuel Alexander for producing countless rabbits and pigeons out of his empty hat, space-time. ...

Indian thought: an introduction, Donald H. Bishop - 1975 - 427 pages

The chapters in this section include one on Aurobindo, a modern counterpart of the ancient risis and founder of a noted ... CL Morgan and Samuel Alexander, the philosophers of Emergent Evolution, Whitehead's philosophy of Organism, ...

East-West understanding of man, Vedre Narayan Karan Reddy – 1974

The Spititual Evolution or the progressive evolution of Sri Aurobindo seems to be definite improvement over both the ... Spencers' Cosmic evolution, Bergson's Creative evolution and the Emergent evolution of Samuel Alexander and Llyod ...

Prāci-jyotī: digest of Indological studies Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra University ... – 1973

93 A Comparative Study of the Philosophic-Ethical doctrines of Communism and Anasakti Yoga. 94 A Critical Study of the Metaphysics of Swami ... 100 Samuel Alexander and Sri Aurobindo. 101 Sri Aurobindo ka Dharma ...

The philosophy of evolution in Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin, Jan Feys - 1973 - 276 pages

What Has Been Done If the comparison between Aurobindo and Teilhard is such an obvious one, could one still claim ... Samuel Alexander (1859-1938), the Holism of General Jan C. Smuts {1870-1950 ; author of Holism and Evolution, 1926), ... [The Spirituality of the Future: A Search Apropos of R. C. Zaehner's Study in Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard De Chardin]

Towards eternity; Sri Aurobindo birth centenary volume, 15th ... 1973 - 526 pages
Then there is a whole lot of the Philosophers of emergent evolution — Samuel Alexander, C. Lloyd Morgan and others who envisage the possibility of a higher quality in man. Science, sustained by philosophy, thus sees nothing unscientific ...

Forschung an Österreichs Musikhochschulen Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Musikerzieher Österreichs - 1973 - 154 pages

in der Philosophie deutbar, denkt man etwa an Samuel Alexander, Alfred North Whitehead, Nicolai Hartmann und Hans Reichenbach wie andere, ... Yoga durch den lnder Sri Aurobindo , aber auch durch PJ Saher von Asien her ergänzt wird. ...

Current trends in Indian philosophy, K. Satchidananda Murty, K. Ramakrishna Rao - 1972 - 307 pages

the thesis being Some Considerations of the Philosophical Position of Samuel Alexander with special reference to his Theology. ... About the same time I became interested in Sri Aurobindo, and the issue Sankara vis-a- ...

Sri Aurobindo and Whitehead on the nature of God, Satya Prakash Singh - 1972 - 196 pages

In the third place, whereas God, according to Alexander, always remains transcendent to the world, He, according to Whitehead and Aurobindo, is destined to be embodied in the world leading to the apotheosis of the latter. ...

Crî Aurobindo, philosophe du yoga intégal Robert Sailley - 1970 - 207 pages

Cycle cosmique 50, 67, 169, 193 Agni 59, 61-66 Alexander (Samuel) 193 âme 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 97, 104, 110, 113, ... épouse d'Aurobindo) 15, 25-26 Bouddha, bouddhisme 76, 87, 89, 158, 192, 193 Brahma, Brahman 17, 18, 24, 36, 37, 70, ...

Zygon Joint Publication Board of the Institute on ... – 1969

Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1911); Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, ... The Word Incarnate (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959); Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1960). ...

Eternity in words: Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, Rameshwar Gupta - 1969 - 194 pages

Then there is a whole lot of the philosophers of emergent evolution — Samuel Alexander, G. Llyod Morgan and others ... Christ, Sri Aurobindo and others who "like the single drops which sparkle in the sun as they are flung far ahead of ...

Sri Aurobindo and the theories of evolution: a critical and ..., Rama Shanker Srivastava - 1968 - 464 pages

Samuel Alexander ... [Sanskrit and Evolution of Human Speech, Based on Sri Aurobindo's Linguistic Theory.(Book review): An article from: International Journal of Humanities and Peace Anuradha Coudry]

M. P. Pandit 50th birthday commemoration volume Madhav Pundalik Pandit - 1968 - 66 pages

Further as Sri Aurobindo who was fully conversant with the theories of Creative Evolution of Henri Bergson, of emergent evolution of Lloyd Morgan and of Samuel Alexander, and of course the ...

The philosophy of integralism: the metaphysical synthesis in Sri ..., Haridas Chaudhuri - 1967 - 181 pages

He conceives of reality as infinite possibility flowing into an infinite actuality as a continual surpassing of itself. He equates reality with history. Samuel Alexander, the neo-realist, looks upon the world as an all-encompassing ... [Integral Yoga: A Concept of Harmonious and Creative Living (Quest Book), Being Evolution and Immortality: An Outline of Integral Philosophy (A Quest Book), PHILOSOPHY OF MEDITATION, Sri Aurobindo and Haridas Chaudhuri: A glimpse of a dynamic prospect for mankind, The Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, Evolution of Integral Consciousness (Quest Books), The Essence of Spiritual Philosophy, Mastering the Problems of Living]