JYOTI - AN ONLINE JOURNAL

The online journal Jyoti was started in 2000 as an attempt to carry cultural articles and information related to the teaching of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and the collective life of the Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles, also known as The East-West Cultural Center.

The online journal took its name both from the founder of the Center, Jyotipriya and from the essential meaning of the name, which is LIGHT.

At present, the editor of Jyoti is no longer connected with the Los Angeles Center and the journal in its present incarnation has therefore divested itself of its Center-specific content. Moreover, the journal will henceforth appear within the web portal SCIY. Here, Jyoti will continue in a new form - that of a continuously expanding magazine. SCIY provides enhanced opportunities for extended dialogs around its Articles through an organized structure of Comments. It is thus hoped that entries in Jyoti will become occassions for interaction and expansion of knowledge among the community of its readers.

Subscribers to Jyoti will receive automatic notifications for every new Article or Comment posted in the journal. A link will take them to the post. Below the post, they will see a space for comments. To add a comment, one will need an username and a password. By default, all jyotilist members have been granted the username jyotilist (all lower case) and the password jyoti. A reader is encouraged to enter into the different areas of Jyoti as well as of its parents, SCIY. It is hoped that once familiar, readers will choose to subscribe themselves individually to the SCIY web-portal and will not need the generic jyotilist access.

The subcategories for Jyoti, will be found in the Categories Tree on the left margin, under 'Jyoti' and can be opened and read by clicking on them or on the links below. These subcategories, as before, are:

Note:

Earlier issues of the journal may be found by going to:

JYOTI ONLINE

Beyond the trembling veil of sight he disappeared
When with purple dusk the wind surged towards the sea.
In slow advancing night the dim boat sailed
To an island crowded by shadow-birds of Time:
The shouts of broken wings, of waves, beings
Falling not with their weight but with deathfulness
Of thickening gravity—they soon led him leeward.
His name drifted under the flood…   more »

... In July 1938 the Yogi-Poet had an assignation with the primordial Night, the Night of Creation. He went to meet her, carrying “God’s deathless light” in his breast. He was aware that this was going to be a very bold and dangerous rendezvous; it was going to be an exceptional and most decisive affair, fraught with possibilities. His fate and hence the fate of the world remained locked in them, in the possibility leading towards earthly deathlessness. So, he the pilgrim-soul made an assignation with the Night. But what was the outcome of that bold and dangerous rendezvous? What had actually transpired in the course of the meeting? But apart from dropping some broad hints, no communiqué was issued. If at all, it seemed that the way was lost and that there was no end to the “weary journeying”. Yet there was hope, there was conviction and certitude that the outcome was going to be a path leading towards immortality. There was the inalienable freedom, and the Yogi-Poet lived in the Spirit’s calm, and was in possession of the vast immobile bliss of the Being. Soon his rooms would get lit up with an endless Light, and rapture would be coursing through his nerves, and through every cell of his body. In a mute blaze of ecstasy, and preserving the “living sense of the Imperishable”, even in the bodily existence, he would proceed towards his goal. That was great indeed, marvellous. If the bodily existence was set ablaze in this way, it meant that there was the wonderful realisation or the siddhi of the Mind of Light in him, that the physical had started receiving the supramental. Sri Aurobindo had definitely moved towards it, a remarkable event, a landmark event in the evolutionary sequence. It is said that Pythagoras had a thigh of gold, and that Vamadeva, after crossing the hundredth year, lived in a golden body for sixteen full years. Something golden had happened in that far past, but now the Mind of Light has made the body its permanent base, permanent home. ...   more »

Sri Aurobindo introduced the term ‘Mind of Light’ with a specific suggestion, with a kind of well-defined association; he introduced it in his very last prose writings when he was, at the request of the Mother, contributing a series of articles to the Bulletin of Physical Education during 1949-50. To this term he gave a special technical connotation involving a whole world of luminous yogic and psychological sense. It is indicative of the fact that his own yoga-tapasya had progressed to a stage from where the envisioned manifestation of a fuller divine life could come within the realisable range of the evolutionary ascent. The role of the Mind of Light as an active principle, in fact an effectuating power, is seen to be that of the leader of a type of new mental beings, of a presiding official over the intermediate race, the race governed, in the Mother’s phrase, by la conscience du surhomme, the superman consciousness. This new race, the new humanity, will be “not only capable of standing enlightened in the radiance of the Supermind but able to climb consciously towards it and into it.” This surhomme is not simply 'aboveman' or 'overman'; it is already governed not by Overmind but by the delegate power of the Supermind itself. Indeed, the appearance of the Mind of Light is the first definite and assured entry of the Supermind itself in the earth-consciousness, the beginning of the process of supramentalisation. It is that which will carry out the preparatory work and bring mortality’s travail closer to its end. It will be the initiation of termination of the presently death-processed evolution.   more »

…the tremendous hour must arrive. The Mother’s own yoga-tapasya bearing the agony and ecstasy in the process of bringing to the gross earth-consciousness the supreme Beatitude got more and more intensified in the course of swift time. Her way to meet the grim hour lay in complete surrender to the Divine: “What Thou willest, what Thou willest” became her solicitous and powerful mantra for the physical transformation. Therein indeed is the true remedy for the body-problem. The Mother describes, as follows, the triumph in what she calls the descent of the superman consciousness, her experience of 1 January 1969:

In the night it came slowly and waking up this morning, there was as though a golden dawn, and the atmosphere was so light. The body felt: ‘Well, it is truly, truly new.’ A golden light, transparent and… benevolent. ‘Benevolent’ in the sense of a certainty—a harmonious certainty. It was new.

How wonderful, this Divine work in the earth-consciousness! The Divine in the Physical! That's tremendous indeed! and beyond our comprehension! Glory to the Divine in all his worlds! …   more »

The objective and final stage of integral yoga is to actualise the Supermind within one's being ("Supramentalisation"), this would constitute a divinisation of matter itself or a realisation of its inherent primordial propensity, and usher in a completely new, 'divine' way of existing. (The Life Divine, Book II, ch. 26-28). This involves bringing down of the Supramental consciousness, and the resulting transformation of the entire being, and ultimately, the divinization of the material world.

Supramentalisation requires both a spiritual and a psychic transformation as their necessary prerequisites.

Sri Aurobindo considered that most yogas and religions were concerned with the process of ‘ascent' or the process of ascending beyond the body and beyond time into a formless and timeless absolute or transcendent self. He wrote that the ‘old systems' arrived at an ‘infinite empty Negation or an infinite equally vacant Affirmation'. [1] He introduced the imperative for and the process by which the supramental (or greater than mental) consciousness would ‘descend' or firmly establish itself in Earthly life...   more »

An evolution of consciousness is the central motive of terrestrial existence. The evolutionary working of Nature has a double process: an evolution of forms, an evolution of the soul. Man occupies the crest of the evolutionary wave. With him occurs the passage from an unconscious to a conscious evolution. At each step one receives an intimation of what the following step will be. The nature of the next step is indicated by the deep aspirations awakening in the human race. A change of consciousness is the major fact of the next evolutionary transformation, and the consciousness itself, by its own mutation, will impose and effect any necessary mutation of the body. There is no reason to suppose that this transformation is impossible on earth. In fact, it would give the truest meaning to earthly existence. Man's urge towards spirituality is an undeniable indication of the inner drive of the Spirit within towards emergence, its insistence towards the next step of its manifestation...   more »

I recommend watching this video. Imo, it's a good example of the spirit and vision shared by many Aurovilians.  ~ ronjon

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A 6.37 minute video pointing out the potentiality of Auroville Universal Township, especially of the International Zone, as a new kind of United Nations, has been posted by way of answer to [the]Davos Question on the You Tube, thanks to timely intimation from Jack Alexander, a former Aurovilian and a close friend of Auroville from USA.

 

Link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtrfRIffAgQ

The highest videos will be shown and discussed at the World Economic Forum starting from 23^rd January. ...

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Here therefore exists the origin of error, falsehood, wrong and evil in the consciousness and will of the individual; a limited consciousness growing out of nescience is the source of error, a personal attachment to the limitation and the error born of it the source of falsity, a wrong consciousness governed by the life-ego the source of evil. But it is evident that their relative existence is only a phenomenon thrown up by the cosmic Force in its drive towards evolutionary self-expression, and it is there that we have to look for the significance of the phenomenon. Emergence of the life-ego is a machinery of cosmic Nature for the affirmation of the individual, for his self-disengagement from the indeterminate mass substance of the subconscient, for the appearance of a conscious being on a ground prepared by the Inconscience; the principle of life-affirmation of the ego is the necessary consequence. But because it does these things as a separate ego for its separate advantage life-discord, conflict, disharmony arise, and it is the products of this life-discord and disharmony that we call wrong and evil. Nature accepts them because they are necessary circumstances of the evolution, necessary for the growth of the divided being; they are products of ignorance, supported by an ignorant consciousness that founds itself on division, by an ignorant will that works through division, by an ignorant delight of existence that takes the joy of division.   more »

Prabuddha Bharata of August 2005 carries an article by Dr Anil Baran Ray presenting Bankim Chandra Chattopadyaya’s ideas about Indian nationalism and emergence of the Indian identity. He introduces the author as follows: “Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya (1838¬-94), the master litterateur of Bengal, called the ‘emperor of literature’ mainly for his novels, was an essayist par excellence as well. Among the numerous essays and satires that he produced, quite a few focused on political themes and issues. Bankim Chandra’s political ideas can be gleaned from those essays and satires as also from his novels such as the Ananda Math. Drawing upon such sources, the present article proposes to reflect on Bankim Chandra’s concept of nationalism in terms of its sources and nature as also its characteristic contribution towards the development of the Indian identity.”

The present excerpt deals with one particular theme, Nationalism seen in the image of the Mother Goddess, culminating in his composition of Bande Matarm, the song that became the battle-cry of the awakened youth of the country, a song that inspired Sri Aurobindo to bestow Rishi-hood to its author. The present article could be read along with the two posted here recently: India’s Independence and the Spiritual Destiny by RY Deshpande and The Spirit of the Nation by Makarand Paranjape...   more »

Al-Kemi recounts the story of the eighteen months that Andrew VandenBroeck, a painter and writer, spent in daily contact with the remarkable French philosopher, hermetist, and Egyptologist, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961). Structured like a mystery, and distilled in the crucible of memory for fifteen years, Al-Kemi provides a passionately felt, personal, and dramatic introduction to the startling world of this contemporary alchemist (from back cover).

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What from a spiritual point of view might be the truth behind the recent history of India, particularly its independence? To answer this question, we will have to peep behind the veil of politics, economics, and culture. These are only the exoteric coverings of world events, the esoteric kernel of whose inner significance is usually hidden from most people.

Writing more than 100 years ago, Swami Vivekananda explained what this hidden truth about India was: "Here in this blessed land, the foundation, the backbone, the life-center is religion and religion alone. In India religious life forms the center, the keynote of the whole music of nation."

In other words, in India, religion forms the base, politics and economics, the superstructure. To change the latter, you have to act on the former. This is what revolutionaries in India have recognized down the ages. The greatest impact could be made by those who altered the religious and spiritual organization of society. Any number of examples can be cited: the Buddha, Shankaracharya, Basava, Nanak, Kabir, Chaitanya, and in more recent times, Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, Gandhi, and even Ambedkar.

The importance of dharma in Indian life has been summed up well by Sri Aurobindo in his famous Uttarpara speech in 1909: "When it is said that India shall be great, it is the Sanatan Dharma (Hinduism) that shall be great. When it is said that India shall expand and extend herself, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall expand and extend itself over the world. It is for the Dharma and by the Dharma that India exists. To magnify the religion means to magnify the country." When Aurobindo was in jail, the Divine actually spoke to him, giving him the following message:

Since long ago I have been preparing this uprising and now the time has come and it is I who will lead it to its fulfillment." At the end of this historic speech, Aurobindo repeated his main contention: "I say no longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion, a faith; I say that it is Sanatan Dharma which for us is nationalism. This Hindu nation was born with the Sanatan Dharma, with it, it moves and with it, it grows. When Sanatan Dharma declines, then the nation declines.

Of course, it needs to be stressed that by Sanatan Dharma, Aurobindo meant the eternal, universal religion, not any particular sect or creed: "If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose."   more »

At the midnight hour of 14 August 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru spoke of the solemn promise of India awaking to life and freedom. At that moment of history he was claiming Independence from the British. “Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge...At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.” Sixty years have passed today and it is time for assessment and introspection, as to what extent the soul of India has been able to find its authentic and fulfilling utterance, to what extent the pledges made have been implemented. Has India awakened to the greatness of her soul? Indeed, what is it that constitutes the greatness of a nation’s soul? If truth-values found the greatness of a nation’s or an individual’s soul, the question is: Are we living in them?

The real problem of the society, as in the case of the individual, is for it to find its soul, the true collective soul… There has to be a conviction that, culmination of the social development into the Age of the ageless Spirit is the secret urge and motivating force behind the evolutionary Nature’s long painstaking and patient working. Humanity’s conscious participation in it will assuredly hasten this triumph and this glory. The soul of India has the intuition of perceiving these possibilities and India’s freedom is meant for its growth in the progression of the manifesting spirit. If this can be kept as the focus, the celebration of India’s sixty years of independence will then be truly significant.   more »

Thanks to Ashok Hindocha for sending me the following details of a historically significant function that was held on 12 December 2007, at 49 St Stephen’s Avenue London W12. During the function English Heritage Blue Plaque for Sri Aurobindo was unveiled by Monnou Bhandari. ...   more »

This is the season for year-end lists of books in which the mainstream review media steer literate culture away from deep questions about how our world works and who we are and toward celebrations of narcissism, celebrity gossip, and literary cliques. What I wrote in 1991 in "The Emerging Third Culture", still pertains today:

A 1950s education in Freud, Marx, and modernism is not a sufficient qualification for a thinking person in the 1990s. Indeed, the traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time. Their culture, which dismisses science, is often nonempirical. It uses its own jargon and washes its own laundry. It is chiefly characterized by comment on comments, the swelling spiral of commentary eventually reaching the point where the real world gets lost.

Given the well-documented challenges and issues we are facing as a nation, as a culture, how can it be that there are no science books (and hardly any books on ideas) on the New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year list; no science category in the Economist Books of the Year 2007; only Oliver Sacks in the New Yorker's list of Books From Our Pages? ...   more »

I've taken the liberty of transcribing the following passages from the remarkable book Jesus and the Lost Goddess, by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. I highly recommend purchasing and studying this book. Reading it is like a moist vivifying breeze in the scorched lifeless desert of deadly strife between cults of religious fanatics who each believe they alone worship the true God. It documents the horrifying behavior of the misogynous and patriarchal Roman Church and the self-serving lies and propaganda its repressed male leaders have been spreading for two thousand years in their attempt to exterminate Sophia, the divine Goddess of Wisdom and Gnosis. I've felt for years that the RC Church was more Roman than Christian, this book substantiates that intuition with an illuminating compendium of well-referenced scholarship. ~ ronjon

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...For the original Christians, the Jesus story was a myth used to introduce beginners to the spiritual path. For those wishing to go deeper than the 'Outer Mysteries', which were only 'for the masses', there were secret teachings or 'Inner Mysteries'. These were 'the secret teaching of true Gnosis' which, according to the 'Church Father' Clement of Alexandria, were transmitted 'to a small number by a succession of masters'. Those initiated into these Inner Mysteries discovered that Christianity was not just about the dying and resurrecting Son of God. They were told another myth that few Christians today have even heard of – the story of Jesus' lover, the lost and redeemed Daughter of the Goddess.

Amongst the original Christians the divine was seen as having both a masculine and feminine face. The related to the Divine Feminine as Sophia, the wise Goddess. Paul tells us, 'Among the initiates we speak of Sophia', for it is 'the secret of Sophia' that is 'taught in our Mysteries'. When initiates of the Inner Mysteries of Christianity partook of Holy Communion, it was Sophia's passion and suffering they remembered. Amongst the original Christians, priests and priestesses would offer initiates wine as a symbol of 'her blood'. The prayer would be offered: 'May Sophia fill your inner being and increase in you her Gnosis.' ...   more »

The problem of our age is that we, the global society, have turned outwards. Triumphant science and technology have spread before our enchanted eyes the panorama of not only comfort and pleasure but also of outer knowledge and the power it brings. The telescope and the microscope have extended the reach of our surface search, taking us away from our centre. We have sought to increase our consciousness but away from our psychological centre and in a way that is forgetful of it. In pursuance of this goalless voyage we have come far, but have landed up with agnosticism, dilettantism and cynicism in our approach to things. We have knowledge of all kinds but we are not sure of the conclusions we derive from it. We have loads of information available at finger-touch, ready to turn our minds into god’s own. And we equip our young ones with ‘job-oriented’ education. After all, the population is on the rise, and a growing population is a growing ‘market’. In our enthusiasm for production we are so much enamoured of computer, which far surpasses human working in its quantitative aspects, that we do not hesitate to ascribe Intelligence to it or even characteristics of human personality. A quantum leap of quantity is taken by us as a sign of quality. We do not understand or we ignore the darker side of applied science which likes to denigrate all human and spiritual values and, if possible, to eliminate them.   more »