Sri Aurobindo drew on Neoplatonism, Hegelianism, and Bergson

Revisioning Environmental Ethics - Page 75 - Daniel A. Kealey - 1990 - 136 pages - Preview Since Aurobindo was very reticent in acknowledging his Western sources, we can only say with confidence that he drew on Neoplatonism, Hegelianism (via the Romantic poets), and Bergson. From the latter two Aurobindo was inspired to ...

Knowledge, Consciousness and Religious Conversion in Lonergan and ... - Page 43 - Michael T. McLaughlin - 2003 - 318 pages - Preview Since Aurobindo often uses relativist arguments, playing knowledge of the part off against knowledge of the whole; the discrete off against the continuum, and uses other kinds of arguments from internal relations, as does Bergson, ... The neo-Hegelianism of F.H. Bradley, whose work had some influence on Sri Auropbindo, would seem to be …

Theoria to theory: Volumes 9-10 - Epiphany Philosophers - 1975 - Since Aurobindo has none of Nietszche's hysterical arrogance, and is careful to emphasize the necessity of the crucifixion of the ego in all self-development, I must say that it is Benz's puzzlement which puzzles me. Chardin could not publish ...

Aurobindo's philosophy of Brahman - Page 162 - Stephen H. Phillips - 1986 - 200 pages - Preview And if it is true, then it follows that the question of the veridicality of Aurobindo's experiences determines the most significant part of their worth — since Aurobindo's advocacy of a mystic pursuit presupposes their inestimable worth ...

Hartshorne, Process Philosophy, and Theology - Page 125 - Robert Kane, Stephen H. Phillips - 1989 - 198 pages - Preview And since Aurobindo's project is to provide a comprehensive explanation of the way things are (at least on my reading), what point could there be to presuming God aware of a power of creation without necessarily creating something or ...

Tradition and the Rhetoric of Right: Popular Political Argument in ... - Page 178 - David J. Lorenzo - 1999 - 339 pages - Preview Since Aurobindo had asserted that his yoga was not about living remote from the world in a "Himalayan retreat," and that his yogic insights should be treated contextually, not literally, one is hard put to decide whether Satprem's mode ...

The Religious, the Spiritual, and the Secular: Auroville and ... - Page 116 - Robert Neil Minor - 1999 - 208 pages - Preview Finally, they argued that since Aurobindo claimed insights from meditation, his teachings cannot be religious. Because scientists using scientific methods have been able to study meditation's effects on the body, meditation must be a ...

Sri Aurobindo, the perfect and the good - Robert Neil Minor - 1978 - 191 pages - Since Aurobindo's goal is not to escape from the phenomenal world about us, the concentration of integral yoga must realize the Divine in the world as well as beyond it.207 The world is to be affirmed by such concentration, not denied; ...

Jīvanmukti in Transformation: Embodied Liberation in Advaita and ... - Page 150 - Andrew O. Fort - 1998 - 251 pages - Preview Since Aurobindo holds that existence, from grossest Matter to highest Spirit, is an integral unity, the deluded individuated self (jiva) is real and can evolve back to its Spirit-ual basis (Supermind). Put another way, for Aurobindo ...

The philosophy of Sri Aurobindo: his idea of evolution - Joseph Veliyathil, Joseph Veliyathil - 1972 - 97 pages - Since Aurobindo does not admit creation out of nothing and the substantial difference between the Creator and the created universe, he is forced to conclude that the end of all the evolutionary process, is the fulL manifestation of the ...

The Ideological Integration of East and West: An Enquiry ... - Page 123 - Moazziz Ali Beg - 2005 - 240 pages - Preview Since Aurobindo teaches us that person is capable of inner evolution which is self- transcendence, "Human society progresses really and vitally in proportion as law becomes the child of freedom; it will reach its perfection when, ...

The Radical humanist: Volume 47 - Indian Renaissance Institute - 1983 - Since Aurobindo believed in spiritualising the existing institutions of man, he has not shown much interest in recreating them or creaing new ones. He reiterated that man is not a machine in his constitution and functioning and as such ...

Sri Aurobindo, Indian poet, philosopher and mystic - George Harry Langley, George Harry Langley - 1949 - 134 pages - This is especially important, since Aurobindo is himself a poet, gifted with great insight and creative power, and his characteristic approach to speculative problems is influenced by this fact. The creative aesthetic experience of the ...

The religious roots of Indian nationalism: Aurobindo's early ... - David L. Johnson - 1974 - 128 pages - The problcm'still remains, since Aurobindo's assertion just begs the question, how does the One become Many ? That is, how can there be diversification* of one into many at the same time as the reality and the unity of both ...

The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - Page 61 - V. P. Varma - 1990 - 494 pages - Preview Since Aurobindo accepts the reality of supra-physical beings1 he accepts that the Vedic and the Zoroastrian references to the forces of darkness do not relate to symbols but refer to concrete beings whose existence can be verified in ...

Journal of ecumenical studies: Volume 14 - Council on the Study of Religion - 1977 - Since Aurobindo's writings on yoga grow out of his study of the religio-political context of the Mahabharata, there is room for further analysis of his continued involvement with political liberation. The chapter on spiritual liberation ...

Indian critiques of Gandhi - Harold G. Coward - 2003 - 287 pages - But since Aurobindo claimed to see the whole picture, the part could not be privileged over the whole in the quest for independence. Violence, or nonviolence for that matter, could have only strategic value.7 Savarkar, for his part, ...

The Journal of the Bihar Research Society: Volume 42 - Bihar Research Society - 1956 - But since Aurobindo's theory of the Godsent leader is vitally influenced by the concept of the Instrument (Nimittamatram) as found in the Gita, hence there is a cardinal difference in his notion of the transcendence of morality and that ...

A Primer on Advaita Vedanta, or Non-Dualist Hinduism: Or, Why Atman is Brahman, And Why We Should Care from Networkologies by chris

What’s also worth noting is the strong similarities between both of these schools and certain developments in contemporary philosophy, such as the immanentism of Deleuze, or my own networkological thought. These issues will be discussed at another time… A This Worldly Vedantaism

There are many reasons why such an approach, in either it’s Buddhist or Vedantist flavors, has much to offer us today. While Buddhism clearly favors metaphors of emptiness and extinction of craving, and Vedantaism favors metaphors of plenitude and fullness, they ultimately aim towards identifying with the non-dual, the non-limited, that which is beyond spacetime, beyond craving, the ego, that which is the principle of the all beyond limitations. There are many parallels here with various strains of Sufi thought, as well as Hellenist Neoplatonism, both of which may have been influenced by the more ancient Indic tradition, even as it modified itself in relation to various influences as well.

There are, however, some legitimate potential objections to such an approach to the world. Firstly, what if this is all made up? That is, just as we might say that the Big Bang is the most real, we could also say that it is the least real thing there is. None of us have ever seen the Big Bang. It’s the furthest thing from our everyday lives. Might this not be living for a fiction? Building upon this notion, Nietzsche argued that many traditional philosophies and religions are “life-hating,” because they value a world we never see over the world we do, this world, and as such, are examples of “otherwordly-isms.” Is Vedanta life-hating and otherworldly?

On the one hand, perhaps it is.  Certainly followers of Hinduism and Buddhism often remove themselves from the world and its pleasures. Many are celibate. They seem to live “in the clouds.” But perhaps this is just a historical relic. Maybe it might be possible to imagine a “this worldly” Vedantism or Buddhism. For in a sense, it does seem that the world has two poles of “most-real-ness,” namely, from one end, the Big Bang, but from the other end, each and every one of its concrete aspects in experience. Might it not make sense to play both angles, both sides at once?

If Brahman is the most free, the principle of everything, then perhaps true liberation isn’t merely to identify with this, which would certainly give freedom from the cravings of this world. But perhaps it also means to extend this freedom to all maya, all the illusions. Perhaps this is compassion beyond that to mere persons, but to all matter. Maybe we need to make the world more Brahman, and bring liberation not only to our minds, but all the world of experience. A this worldly Vedantaism, which aims to liberate not only experience, but even matter from its limitations. An activist Vedantism.

As I’ve come to realize, as I continue working on my own work on developing a networkological, relational approach to philosophy, while learning increasingly about non-western philosophies, is that a this-worldly, activist version of what Buddhism, Sufism, Vedanta, and Neoplatonism propose is precisely what the networkological project aims at.

One could make the argument that this is already latent in Vedanta. But there is without doubt an individualistic focus in Hinduism and Buddhism, despite the fact that both are ultimately about dissolving the ego. That said, change happens inside, not outside. Then again, it does seem that the only reason why Brahman would have for giving rise to the world of maya would be precisely to lead it to liberation from its limitations, and the work of Sri Aurobindo, a Neo-Vedantist, works to integrate Vedantism with an evolutionary approach to the world.

The Mahayana Buddhist spin on these issues, seems to emphasize precisely the fact that the advent of the Buddha is precisely this saving compassion for all manifesting in the world. Sufism takes this further, and sees this as in fact the very purpose of creation as such, which is to say, the lifting of the veils, which transforms the individual, annihilating them as they merge with the limitless freedom and power of God. While these are clearly different traditions, the similarities between their notions of liberation are striking. Hindu forms of this, including Vedanta, deemphasize the collective and compassionate, even though this is latent within it, while Mahayana Buddhism and Sufism emphasize this more collective end of things, and this can be seen materially as well. Buddhism makes the alleviation of suffering it’s primary emphasis, and gives rise to monasteries for monks, while Sufism emphasizes the love of God for creation, and gives rise to massive lodges and orders. Vedanta emphasizes lifting the veil of ignorance over alleviation of suffering, and doesn’t give rise to more organized collectives to the extent of Buddhism or Sufism. While compassion and collective action in the world are implicit in some ways, they are less emphasized. That said, a Vedantic critique of this might be that these approaches emphasize the Ishvara side over that of Brahman itself. Certainly in Sufism, God as that which is Beyond Being presents itself in theophanic form to speak to us in a language we understand, and in Buddhism, the manifestations of the Buddhanature in so many Buddhas and Boddhisattvas are there to give us something to hold on to, so that we hear a message put in terms that we will more easily understand.

While such comparativist discussions are necessarily oversimplifying, they do allow for the potential to see the overall projects of Sufism, Advaita Vedanta, and Buddhism as having many strong commonalities, something which has been advocated and recognized by figures within these traditions, such as the famed Vedantic scholars Swami Vivekananda and Ananda Coomaraswamy, Sufi scholars like Seyyed Hossain Nasr, western Sufi converts such as Rene Guenon and Frithjof Schuon. While Buddhist scholars are perhaps less comparativist in this sense, because Buddhism doesn’t see itself as a religion at all, the issue of exclusivity is less pressing, and Buddhism has coexisted with many of these more doctrinally exclusive formations, and the similarities in many of these projects has been noted by prominent Buddhists such as the Dalai Lama. What’s more, many scholars have noticed strong commonalities with classic Chinese Taoism, particularly as manifested in the writings of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. While these issues cannot be addressed here, they are certainly worth pursuing more systematically elsewhere.

Mystical exeriences as figments of language’s mirage machine

(title unknown) from enowning Ted Sadler

In Kant, metaphysical truths had become nothing more than those 'phantoms of the brain' vouchsafed by the concepts of pure reason.

Speculative Realism, Deconstruction. and Post-Structuralism: Can We Start Philosophizing Again, Or Is That Just Naive? from Networkologies by chris

All the post-structuralist critiques of traditional metaphysics argue that metaphysics isn’t doing what it says it’s doing. So when Spinoza or Kant or Hegel seem to be talking about Spirit or God or the faculties, there’s actually a slight of hand going on. Perhaps it is just language, playing with itself, producing illusions that there’s something there. Or it’s a play of power, producing new truths, none of which are anything other than strategies in power plays. Or perhaps it’s all desire, filtered through language, manipulating us so that we think we know why we’re doing something, but really, it’s all the unconscious. Paul Ricoeur famously called these approaches to thinking “hermeneutics of suspicion,” …

The most devious of the critiques, for any attempt to write new philosophy, however, is deconstruction. The argument is pretty simple. All philosophy is written in language. But up until the mid-twentieth century, language was seen as an obstacle for philosophy to overcome, a transparent medium at best, a hindrance to clear explanation of truths beyond language at worst. But then structuralism comes along, in the mid-twentieth century, and argues that language molds what we can say. Deconstruction, and the writings of Derrida in particular, radicalize this argument. Language and its workings are what make us think there’s anything to say in the first place. When we think we’re talking about God, or the faculties, or Spirit, or whatever else, what we’re really doing is talking about language. Or rather, language is talking through us, and all it ever really talks about is itself.

Our deepest desires are so imbued with the play of language, that we can’t tell where the mirages created by language begin, and our desires end, or ever if our desires are in some way created by this play of language. And since philosophy is written in language, any philosophy that doesn’t take into account this play of language is naive. It talks about God, or Spirit, without realizing these are figments of language’s mirage machine. Structuralism made us aware that language impacts what we say, but post-structuralism, and deconstruction in particular, shows us how language is what we say, and nothing more, which is to say, everything more. It’s all text, everything we’ve ever dreamed… In the Greek tradition, there were the ancient Skeptics, who believed that any and every belief put forward in words could be deconstructed, and should be… Deconstruction, however, is particularly sneaky in terms of its skeptical methodology. All philosophy is written in language… Derrida is a post-modern form of the Ancient Greek Skeptics… Taken to its extreme, Derridean deconstruction leads to repetition of quietism, with nothing to say. 9:22 AM

Henri Bergson (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) - The two sources of morality and religion‎: 

On the one hand, there is Bergson's constant suspicion of language; for Bergson, as we noted in the discussion of intuition, language is equivalent to symbols. And, symbols divide the continuity of the duration, leading us into illusions. Bergson's criticisms of language, moreover, must have struck the generation of French philosophers who came of age in the 1960's as strange. Philosophers such as Derrida had so thoroughly embraced Heidegger that they believed that “language is the house of being.” On the other hand, there is the mysticism of The Two Sources. The striking religious tone of this book did not harmonize well with Husserl's phenomenology, which aimed to be a rigorous science… We must recall that the linguistic turn in France during the 1960's was accompanied by an “anti-Hegelianism.” Thus Bergson became a resource in the criticism of the Hegelian dialectic, the negative. June 15, 2012 at 12:03 pm

Forms of Life from The Pinocchio Theory by Steven Shaviro

“Bifurcations, divergences, incompossibilities, and discords belong to the same motley world,” as Deleuze says in his commentary on Whitehead. This is why translation is such an urgent problem. As Latour puts it, “there are no equivalents, only translations… the best that can be done between actants is to translate the one into the other.” There is no pre-established harmony among “incommensurable and irreducible forces.”

Translation is then inherently problematic, because it is not just a matter of moving from one code, or one language, to another. Rather, translation involves the violence of codifying, or putting into language, a reality that stands outside of all languages and codes. Translation endeavors to make an equivalent for that which has no equivalent. It forces an exchange between incommensurables. “If there are exchanges,” Latour says, “these are always unequal and cost a fortune both to establish and to maintain.”

This means that the problem of translation is really one of aesthetics. Kant established the basic antinomy of modern aesthetics in his Third Critique. On the one hand, every “judgment of taste” is entirely singular: it is non-cognitive, it has no concept behind it, and it cannot be generalized. On the other hand, every “judgment of taste” aspires to — or even demands — the assent of others. It makes a claim, Kant says, to be “universally communicable without mediation by a concept.” We may understand translation, therefore, as the endeavor to capture singularity within some universal medium of exchange, in order thereby to compel acceptance by everyone. For Kant, this takes the form of a sensus communis as the non-cognitive basis for the very possibility of cognition.

Kant’s antinomy of aesthetic taste is central to modern thought. What happens when incommensurables are measured together, or captured in the same universal code? Can disparate singularities be brought into contact, without being effaced? This question haunts — among others — Marx, Wittgenstein, and Whitehead. For Marx, Kant’s sensus communis is materialized in money as a “universal equivalent.” Wittgenstein’s critique of the notion of “private language” is rooted in Kant’s questions about “the communicability of sensation.” And Whitehead answers Kant’s antinomy with the founding principle of his own aesthetics: the injunction to convert exclusions and oppositions into contrasts.

Quotation of the Day…  from Cafe Hayek by Don Boudreaux … is from page 247 of Leland Yeager’s 2001 book, Ethics as Social Science: The Moral Philosophy of Social Cooperation:

Writers should make it clear, explicitly or by context, when they depart from a word’s most usual meaning. 

Indian religions: a historical reader of spiritual expression and ... - Page 24 -Peter Heehs - 2002 - 620 pages - Preview … the most decisive way to verify truth-claims is by means of mystical exeriences. No doubt the experiences of a Buddha or Nanak or Aurobindo are not in the reach of everyone, but these and other spiritual teachers insist that such states are the ultimate destiny of all aspiring humans. A preliminary decision to take seriously a mystic's ... 8:56 PM

Aurobindo's philosophy of Brahman - Page 120 - Stephen H. Phillips - 1986 - 200 pages - Preview As indicated, this is not to say that a mystic experience could not count as evidence at all for the existence of Brahman as conceived by Aurobindo. As was mentioned, just as in the case of a rope-snake sublation where the sublating ... 1:40 PM 

Reaction against the West was an integral part of Sri Aurobindo's outlook

The Secret Of The Veda - Page 37  Sri Aurobindo - 1998 - 604 pages - Preview It was my stay in Southern India which first seriously turned my thoughts to the Veda. Two observations that were forced on my mind, gave a serious shock to my second-hand belief in the racial division between Northern Aryans and ...

Spirituality And Ethics In Management - Page 38 - László Zsolnai - 2004 - 220 pages - Preview So, if we can succeed in fostering a sober and sincere mentality then we shall perceive straightaway that Aurobindo has turned the whole corpus of prevailing motivational theories upside down. Are we ready for it?

Communication for development in the Third World: theory and ... - Page 182 - Srinivas R. Melkote, H. Leslie Steeves - 2001 - 422 pages - Preview ... Aurobindo, turned to the Gita to justify their involvement in political and social action. It is difficult to understand why Weber failed to see that the Gita was a major scriptural source for a "work ethic" and for political and ...

Colonialism, tradition, and reform: an analysis of Gandhi's ... - Page 52 - Bhikhu C. Parekh - 1999 - 359 pages - Preview Ranade advocated 'Bacon's method', Gokhale thought that JS Mill's 'method of empiricism' alone research in thed Aurobindo turned to a combination of Darwin and Einstein. Despite the extensive references to science and scientific method, ...

Tradition and the Rhetoric of Right: Popular Political Argument in ... - Page 108 - David J. Lorenzo - 1999 - 339 pages - Preview To answer these questions on a cosmic scale, Aurobindo turned to two models — the spiritual cosmology of the East, and the evolutionary/idealist philosophy of the West — that he combined in a cosmology structured as a myth of return.

Aurobindo's philosophy of Brahman - Page 4 - Stephen H. Phillips - 1986 - 200 pages - Preview Are we really to believe that Aurobindo is a sort of mystic scientist turned philosopher? Why then does he espouse such typically Hindu ideas as that Brahman (or God) is the Creator of the universe and that Brahman's nature is ...

Sri Aurobindo Ghose: the dweller in the lands of silence - William Kluback, Michael Finkenthal - 2001 - 167 pages - Suddenly, Sri Aurobindo turned to me and said that at times he felt my silence was a criticism of the way he expresses his thoughts, that they are repetitious and employ too many words. I felt surprised. I said to the philosopher that ...

Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India, 1780-1913: A Critical Anthology - Page 13 - Mary Ellis Gibson - 2011 - 360 pages - Preview Aurobindo turned from the “hellenic” muses to the Indian goddess of poetry and learning, sarasvat ̄ı, thus cementing his nationalist loyalties, but he clearly bid a reluctant (and temporary) farewell to the classical European languages ...

J.L. Mehta on Heidegger, hermeneutics, and Indian tradition - Page 138 - Jarava Lal Mehta, William J. Jackson - 1992 - 309 pages - Preview ... disciples as well as mere readers, who will bring to bear upon their reading the wholly different background of a culture, both secular and religious, Biblical and Greek, from which Aurobindo turned away resolutely, early in life.

The philosophy of Sri Aurobindo: his idea of evolution - Joseph Veliyathil - 1972 - 97 pages - Thus for example Lamark and Darwin took this general notion of evolution to explain the problem of biology and thinkers like Aurobindo and Bergson turned to it to explain their respective philosophical view-points.

Sri Aurobindo and Bergson: a synthetic study Abhoy Chandra Bhattacharya - 1972 - 282 pages - Again, just as the process of evolution in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy starts from matter that is impregnated with spirit, similarly, Bergson's original creative urge, in spite of its being turned into matter, never loses itself totally ...

Realization of God according to Sri Aurobindo: a study of a ... - George Nedumpalakunnel - 1979 - 308 pages - After his return to India, it may be noted, Aurobindo turned his attention also to the study of Indian languages and Hinduism. In 1901 he married a young lady called Mrinalini Bose. Because of his intense political activity, however, ...

Science and the Indian tradition: when Einstein met Tagore - Page 23 - David L. Gosling - 2007 - 186 pages - Preview Four years prior to this he had turned his back upon active politics and taken up a contemplative life at an ashram in Pondicherry. The biographical details of Aurobindo's life are important because reaction against the West was an integral part of his outlook.

The life of Sri Aurobindo - Ambalal Balkrishna Purani - 1978 - 440 pages - Sri Aurobindo turned his back to him and sat quietly for a few minutes. He then turned to Bharati and said, "Mr. Bharati! I am not going to budge an inch from Pondicherry. I know nothing will happen to me. As for yourself you can do ...

Indian literature in English: critical views - Page 19 - Satish Barbuddhe - 2007 - 419 pages - Full view At last a face-saving proposal came from the priests that Sri Aurobindo should shave his head, But Sri Aurobindo turned down this proposal also, Then "an obliging Brahmin priest satisfied all the requirements of the Shastra for a ...

The Religious, the Spiritual, and the Secular: Auroville and ... - Page 82 - Robert Neil Minor - 1999 - 208 pages - Preview Likewise, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the chief minister of West Bengal, who warned that Sri Aurobindo must not be turned into "an object of worship," spoke of the dissemination of Sri Aurobindo's thought "among the masses and the ...