This is an annotated introduction to the first chapter of a recent book Knowledge and Human Liberation by Ananta Kumar Giri of the Madras Institute of Development Studies. The essay tries to engage Jurgen Habermas and Sri Aurobindo in a thought dialog. The potency of Jurgen Habermas (1929 - ) in a postmodern era has sustained itself due to the questions of human liberty, equality, ethics and understanding he has prioritized over those of knowledge, identity or experience. Habermas’ most powerful contribution to contemporary thought has been in the theorization of the “public sphere.” In elaborating its implications, Habermas focuses on what he calls “communicative reason.” Communicative rationality, according to him, is "oriented to achieving, sustaining and reviewing consensus - and indeed a consensus that rests on the intersubjective recognition of criticisable validity claims.” This discipline of intersubjective practice restores the lifeworld from its fragmentation under ideological or economic (commodified) alien consolidations. Thus Habermas’ communicative speech acts operate under an implicit faith in Human universality and its inevitable collective experience as social and individual knowledge, a continuation of the Enlightenment ideal.

A discplined intersubjective praxis of creative communication can very well be seen as a part of the social realization of an integral spiritual ideal in a plural field. Usually this has not been clearly described or prioritized by scholars and practitioners of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Non-Dualism, the emphasis having been directed towards the articulation of a universal (integral) Psychology, in terms taken from Sri Aurobindo’s own writing. But such denotative asocial descriptions have tended to subjugate phenomenological variety and social/cultural/personal experience. As a consequence, the danger of a totalitarian epistemology in the name (nomos) of Integral Theory has asserted itself with its own institutional disciplinary agents, who have increasingly tended to police out (violently if necessary, as the contemporary controversy related to the recent biography, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, alarmingly and overwhelmingly demonstrates) all subjective interpretation of the way to this goal, and thus to the possibility of a plural realization of the Integral Yoga.

Against this background, the comparative and cross-cultural dialog between Habermas and Sri Aurobindo initiated by Ananta Giri is a salutary intervention. Using each to critique the limits and possibilities of the other, Giri shows how the rational assumptions of knowledge in the Enlightenment ideal lead to aporia which have been amply documented by postmodern thinkers, but which receive a higher validation through the transcendental ontology and praxis of Sri Aurobindo; just as the susceptibility to ontotheological abstraction and totalism of Sri Aurobindo’s phenomenology and praxis when reduced to an Integral Psychology, Integral Theory or Integral Religion can be safeguarded for a plural space through disciplines of intersubjective communication as developed by Habermas.   more »

The Bauhaus, founded in 1919 at Weimar, Germany by Walter Gropius, was arguably the most influential school of design in modern times, set up in the form of a residential creative community of designers, craftsmen, architects and artists. As part of its central ideal, Water Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, envisaged a world made up of creative communities united spiritually in and around a materialized soul, which he likened to "a crystal cathedral." Today, Bauhaus influenced architecture is ubiquitous as the symbol of world modernity, but Gropius' dream is far from fulfilled. This article explores the historical dimensions of this ideal, the causes for its failure and the possible conditions for its postmodern manifestation.   more »

Some relections on the continuing issue of techno-capitalism and post-human futures by Debashish Banerji. This is a first fragment highlighting Moishe Postone's commentaries on the late writings of Marx.   more »

An Introduction to the history of modern Indian art along with an approach to its categorization, as expressed in the curatorial practice of the exhibition "Contours of Modernity" held at the SOKA University, Irvine from February-April, 2005 and curated by Debashish Banerji and Nalini Rao.   more »

What is the post-human destiny to which we are called as humans in contemporary times? In this transcript of a talk given for the AUM conference in Los Angeles in 2003, Debashish Banerji compares Nietzsche's call for the Overman with that announced by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to point to the similarities and differences. How can we pick our way through the maze of choices held up at this end-time of human becoming? Is it by remaining complacent or by using our wills or by surrender to a greater force than ours? And if so, what force - the vitalism of an unconscious Nature-force, the deceptive "universality" of the world market or an unpredictable future which calls our arduous attention? These and similar questions are posed and discussed in this article.   more »

The concluding section on Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies by Debashish Banerji continues its second installment's reflections on the Omniscience, Omnipotence and Omnipresence presented to us as the emerging destiny of post-Enlightenment Modernity and compares this destination with its appropriation and supercession in the Neo-Vedantic teleology of Sri Aurobindo. What are the differences, dangers and promises of these destinies and what are the conditions for achieving an alternate destination? ...   more »

This is a fragment constituting a continuation of Debashish Banerji's reflections on Techno-Capitalism as the epistemic regime of modernity and posible post-human futures at the eschatological cusp of history. Here the alignment of Marx and Hegel with the Enlightenment vision/teleology is contemplated and questions asked regarding a comparative alignment with the Neo-Vedantic teleology (if it can be called that) of Sri Aurobindo.   more »

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.   more »

Links to Debashish Banerji's SCIY articles –

---

---

• Five Auroville Artists at the Cymroza Gallery, Mumbai

---

• Life Divine classes via Skype by Debashish Banerji (Apr.07)

---

• Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies III (Jan.07)

---

• A Second Response to Daniel Gustav Anderson's "Towards a Critical Integral Theory" (Dec.06)

---

• Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies - II (Dec.06)

---

• Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies - I (Dec.06)

---

• A Chronology of Modern Indian Art and Thematic Considerations By Debashish Banerji (Nov.06)

---

• The Psychology of Creativity Course Outline (Oct.06)

---

• Detachment and The Integral Yoga (Oct.06)

---

• Introductory Notes to "Hinduism" (Oct.06)

---

• Jyoti Editorial - February 2006 (Feb.06)

---

• February 2005: Contours of Modernity - An Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art (Nov.05)

---

• Contours of Modernity - A Picture Gallery (Nov.05)

---

• A Chronology of Modern Indian Art and Thematic Considerations (Nov.05)

---

• "The Divine Mother and the Triple Status of the Supermind" by Debashish Banerji (Oct.05)

---

• Modern and Contemporary Indian Art - an Encyclopedia Article (Oct.05)

---

• 005 b. db. Transcript: The Promise of the Future (Jun.05)

---

• 005 a. db. Link to The Promise of the Future (Jun.05)

---

• The Promise of the Future #1 (Jun.05)

---

Sri Aurobindo is not just the "foundational thinker" of "Integral Theory" – in Anderson’s back-handed compliment “To adapt a meme attributed to Whitehead: if European philosophy amounts to a footnoting of Plato, Integral theory may very well amount to a conversation about Aurobindo.” As I proceeded to read I could see how this is possible if one takes Sri Aurobindo’s Vedantic darshan, Purnadvaita Vedanta (inseparable from its corresponding yoga, Purna Yoga) as a western style speculative metaphysics purporting to be a Theory of Everything, an ideology which maintains itself as Truth through the Will-to-Power and becomes the defining hegemonic ideology of late Enlightenment Neoliberalism through the production of its world-subjects, something perhaps possible. But to attribute the foundation of such an ideological field to Sri Aurobindo is, certainly a new wrinkle to the abuses/misuses of his text which seem to be multiplying lately (as for instance through left and right perceptions of it as the foundational text for Hindutva). ...   more »

These Introductory Notes on "Hinduism" (a body of Indian religious and spiritual systems which follow the primacy of the Vedas) by Debashish Banerji attempts a cross-cultural description of this complex field seen as an unified discourse. Aspects covered include productive dualities within Hinduism, textual history of Hinduism, major Puranic gods, Hindu practices and the Hindu temple.   more »

The initial draft for the course outline for the Psychology of Creativity course as presented by Debashish Banerji   more »

In these last chapters of The Ideal of Human Unity, Sri Aurobindo draws together the threads that he has introduced earlier in the work, leading to his conclusion. Though Jan Smuts was yet to coin the word "Holism" to encapsulate the idea that a directed tendency towards the formation of ever-larger aggregates is observable in Nature, each such distinct stage marked by the presence of an identity and properties exceeding those of the sum of their parts, Sri Aurobindo's model of History follows this course. Indeed, this teleology follows naturally from Sri Aurobindo's master-idea of the progressive manifestation of intrinsic spiritual Oneness in Time, expressing itself politically as the drive towards world-union.    more »

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.   more »

The convulsive forces of the bio and psycho spheres are breaking through the outer crust once again today, since a new Divine manifestation is in the making and the earth will not rest content with our half-successes. The apathy of the faithful will not serve us here. To believe that the Divine will quell these forces while we remain their puppets in our inner and outer lives will bring no succor. What we are called upon to respond with today is the active aspiration that allows Shiva to act though us, to give us the Force and even more, the Skill, not merely to defeat or destroy, but to transform, to turn to song.   more »

This topic includes past & ongoing audio recordings of "Savitri" classes led by Debashish Banerji, at the Los Angeles Sri Aurobindo Center. They're also available as podcasts on Apple's iTunes site. Read the rest of this article for instructions ...   more »