Sunday, June 06, 2010

What might come closer to the truth would be a mythological “biography”

Sri Aurobindo Society: Meeting, AP-514, J Block, 8th St., Anna Nagar, 6 p.m.. Pammal Sankara Eye Hospital: Eye screening camp, Government Boys HSS., ...
Sri Aurobindo Society: Golden jubilee celebration; meeting of members, 10.30 a.m.; Pradeep Narang, Chairman, Sri Aurobindo Society, and G. Natchiar, ...
The Gita in the Vision and the Words of Sri Aurobindo edited by Galeran d’Esterno  — Compiled from the works of Sri Aurobindo
ISBN: 978-81-7058-935-8 Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, Pondicherry Binding: Soft Cover Pages: 339 Price: Rs 240
Words of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother ISBN: 978-81-7060-291-0. Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry Binding: Soft Cover Pages: 56. Price: Rs 60 ...
Stores are stocking up on products that do not harm the environment Indian Express
“A considerable part of our products come from Auroville in Puducherry. We decided to have a store here as the city has a huge demand for these items,” says ...
Alexander's encounter · Playing Sri Aurobindo's Savitri · The Purpose · Transizione in Rotazione · Painting the Mother · Insurrection of the Neo Urban ...
New Race: A Journal of Integral Studies is a journal that seeks to promote Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future in the context of other insights and their ...
Peter Heehs (author of the recent controversial book on Sri Aurobindo) describes as "revolutionary violence" and seeking a regime change through it. ...
The CPI-M has a record of defaming Bankim Chandra, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, Netaji and Shyamaprasad. It has opposed computerisation and such languages as  English and Sanskrit. ... yours, etc., sunil kumar chakravarty, kolkata, 26 may.  
The Sri Aurobindo Center Southeast, Inc is hosting its Sri Aurobindo Integral Yoga Retreat from July 14-17 at Furman University ...
Studying the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is very helpful to me. If you would like to read some wonderful and inspirational writings visit the ...
Aurobindo Ashram ( Aurobindo Nagar) Ranchi RanchiSri Aurobindo Ashram Ranchi, ...

Comment posted by: David Jung in a Valley of Diamonds: Supermind and Unus Mundus, the Qualitative Value of Numbers and Unity of Spirit and Matter (Part VI-D)—by David Johnston
Jung attained a very high level of God-surrender as recorded in his last dream/vision, which I wrote about in the essay on Jung’s Later Visions. […] There are several people [Westerners] who have profited from both teachings, including myself, without finding any incompatibility. I am primarily a disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, while being grateful to Jung for his guidance, particularly as a Westerner with its peculiar psychology.  But it was the Mother who directly initiated me on my path in 1969 and that cannot be gainsaid.  I always write from that perspective because it is fundamental to who I am. […] 
Sri Aurobindo rejected the relevance of biographies on his own life noting that his life “has not been on the surface for men to see.”  He also observed that “…a man’s value does not depend on” learning fame “or what he does but on what he is and inwardly becomes.”  Respecting the position taken by Sri Aurobindo suggests to me that a standard biography of Sri Aurobindo, no matter how sympathetic, would be beside the point and essentially false.  What might come closer to the truth would be a mythological “biography” that manages to plumb the poetic cadence of Sri Aurobindo’s life from the inside.  In order to do this, there could be pertinent references to his magnum opus, Savitri, and its ongoing changes, as well as other major poems and literary works.  Synchronistic world events, during and after his life, would also be of interest and significant in understanding his life and its inner meaning.  Most important of all is Sri Aurobindo’s relationship with the Mother, as a mythological biography of the former, by definition, fully implicates the latter.
Then what about Jung?  He wasn’t the avatar as was Sri Aurobindo, and his life was not as profoundly interior as was Sri Aurobindo’s.  Yet it, too, was primarily an interior one, and it was so since early childhood. In fact, Jung made statements about his own life that are similar to what Sri Aurobindo wrote, for instance, he wrote that “all the “outer” aspects [have been] accidental.  Only what is interior has proved to have substance and a determining value.  As a result, all memory of outer events has faded, and perhaps these “outer experiences were never so essential anyhow, or were so only in that they coincided with phases of my inner development……..” Again, similar to Sri Aurobindo he wrote that “In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.”
Although Jung was not an avatar, as an epochal man who has gifted humankind with important teachings on the nature of individuation, he deserves, if not the same order, the same kind of respect as is accorded to Sri Aurobindo by his ardent disciples. This is simply a question of natural respect from the perspective of a higher human agency. […] What I have written about Jung was primarily regarding his inner life; according to both Sri Aurobindo and Jung that is what is important, i.e. the inner man and the essential he embodies provide the relevant data and not all that undigested biographical material on the external Jung that is spread all over the blog like a cancer.

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