Thursday, February 21, 2013

Sri Aurobindo’s alternatives to the Enlightenment ideals


Text of a talk delivered at the AUM Conference, Los Angeles, May 2003.
Transcript of a Talk given at Nainital, India on 8/16/06. Detachment in a spiritual sense is the development of another dimension within us, a dimension which coexists with our active personality but is outside of it. It is to find an inner freedom, to discover a part of the being that cannot be touched by external circumstances or by the outer being’s activities – a separation within between what we know as ourselves in the world and something which is intrinsic and connected to an infinite being, a sort of an immutable witnessing.
This article attempts to sketch out Sri Aurobindo's contribution to the future of humanity as carried in his major texts. In doing so, it also tries to underline the cross-cultural nature of these texts and the disciplinary redefinitions implicit in them.

Friday, February 01, 2013

Ashis Nandy, Peter Heehs, and Richard Hartz

The purpose of the Ashram Trust is unambiguously clear in the opening words of the Trust Deed. We need not therefore have any qualms of conscience for being termed as “followers and disciples of Sri Aurobindo having faith in his philosophy and yoga” for which the Ashram was “exclusively” meant. So is the Trust Board contemplating changes in the very object of the Trust Deed by quoting the paragraph on the necessity of scepticism and atheism in society? It is one thing to force on others one’s own point of view and another to invite spiritual disaster by courting falsehood. The first is religious fundamentalism, which is not the case here, as we are not trying to convert Peter Heehs or his associates and supporters, it is he who insists on converting us into materialistic sceptics with his so-called “objectivity”. The second is spiritual suicide by accepting the rank falsehood pervading his book, which has already started eating into the very foundation of sadhana at the Ashram. Should the disciples bear with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s denigration in the very heart of the institution that they have dedicated their lives to? Should they take this untenable criticism of their Master without any protest? Should they simply do nothing to prevent this perverted book from getting introduced in the curriculum of universities in India and abroad? …
Finally, about the dig at Ranganath’s involvement in the Savitri corrections case at Alipore. The Trust did not do a favour to Ranganath by providing him legal defence; Ranganath did a favour to the Trust by leaving his work and deposing in front of the court. The main accused in the case was the Trust and the names of Ranganath and many others were included in the petition as co-respondents because of their indirect involvement in the matter – Ranganath was looking after the Ashram Press at that time and he printed the new edition of the Savitri under instructions from the Trust. The Trust itself, along with a few others, was actually responsible for the Savitri corrections. Incidentally, the same Peter Heehs and Richard Hartz figure prominently in this case, which could have been easily settled out of the court with a little discussion and referring the matter to other experts in the same field instead of insisting on the decisions of only one committee. Raman Reddy 3 July 2010

Most certainly, there is another way of reading Aurobindo’s life. It could be quite enlightening to bring in another reading here offered by another significant hermeneutical thinker of India, Prof. J.L. Mehta, who takes Aurobindo’s own statements about his life as an authentic rendering of its truth. He treats them as more meaningful beginning of his life’s story… On this reading, what Nandy considers as being lost, that is, Aurobindo having lost to the West, Mehta considers it as a mere adventuring of the self to the Other, experiencing it in all its otherness as its own part. For indeed, Mehta works with a hermeneutical insight as far as human understanding is concerned…
Depicting the complexity of a hermeneutical life as that of Sri Aurobindo, in which he arrives at an understanding of himself and that of the West as part of each other, Mehta locates this understanding emanating from the Vedantic as much as from a Heideggerian sources. He brings in Heidegger to illustrate the interesting relationship the self has with its other, a position which Aurobindo spawned by living out the kind of existence he did. Aurobindo’s life came with a certain kind of depth where any stark differences between the self and the other simply got dissolved.
[Prof Savita Singh is Professor and Director of the School of Gender and Development Studies, IGNOU... She wrote her Ph.D. thesis on 'Discourse of Modernity in India: A Hermeneutical Study', and earned her degree from Delhi University. Fathoming the Depths of Reality: Savita Singh in Conversation with - Roy BhaskarSavita Singh - 2003 - This book presents the main features of Roy Bhaskar's philosophy in a readily comprehensive form. The result is probably the simplest and clearest statement of the themes and development of his philosophy ever published.]

Are we facing an evolutionary crisis? The Hindu February 2, 2013 MANOJ DAS
According to Sri Aurobindo, “At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny; for a stage has been reached in which the human mind has achieved in certain directions an enormous development while in others it stands arrested and bewildered and can no longer find its way.” Sri Aurobindo envisions a future when the mind could be transformed into a Supramental gnosis…
To a professor who was logically convinced of Sri Aurobindo’s vision but wondered if the ugly man of today could really grow into something beautiful, a rustic school teacher told, “If a wonder like the lotus could bloom out of mud with the Sun’s Grace, why cant out of our muddy mind bloom the Supramental with the Divine’s Grace? We may replace Divine’s Grace with Evolutionary thrust, if we please.

Sri Aurobindo Ashram -Delhi Branch founded on 12 Feb 1956. The Mother had once called the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry a veritable laboratory to ...

S A K S I is a Spiritual movement. The aim is to spread the message of Veda and Sri Aurobindo, which imparts awareness to lead a beautiful, harmonious, creative...

aurohyd.wordpress.com/We welcome you to the Sri Aurobindo Society, Hyderabad, (Musheerabad X Roads) which was founded in 1972 by ...

(M.P. Pandit 'Yoga in Sri Aurobindo's Epic 'Savitri', published by Dipti... In his dissertation, Chanel goes farther: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother 'may from many ...

And in this passage from The Letters on Yoga , he elucidates on the manner in which the human consciousness navigates the recondite “dream worlds”: Ordinarily when one sleeps a complex phenomenon happens.

Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts & Communication, New Delhi, India. 1252 likes·

There he discovered Sri Aurobindo and The Mother and their “new evolution”. He resigned from the civil service, and went in search of adventure in French...
Satprem relates that on 19 May 1973, six months before The Mother’s death he was barred admission to her room, the beginning of a serious falling out between the Ashram leadership and himself. Moreover, Satprem and his followers believe there is evidence in the recorded audiotapes that the Mother did not actually die but rather entered a “cataleptic trance” or state of suspended animation in which there would not even be a detectable heartbeat.

Omkarnath Bharadwaj has left a new comment on "Sri Anirvan and Ekalavya": Savitri Era at 4:58 pm, February 02, 2013 Dear Sir
I want to know In which year Sri Anirvan ji visited Pondicherry & met the Mother
Regards Omkarnath Bharadwaj 

Savitri Era - Spinning mythology - Ashis Nandy had mauled the memory of Sri Aurobindo like a bull in a china shop which Savita Singh has now ably countered by juxtaposing the hermeneutical reading of J.L. Mehta.