Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

Intro. to JYOTI, by Debashish

ronjon — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 07:34:03 -0800

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:

Themes

Editorial

People

Recordings of Classes & Studies

- Life Divine studies via Skype

- Savitri class recordings

Creative

Reviews

Articles

Note:

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

JYOTI ONLINE

Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: Photographs by Gangaram Malwade

RY Deshpande — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 06:33:26 -0700

These 111 photographs of the Samadhi, seven inches by ten inches in size, taken at different times of the day and from different angles, have been collected and printed on art paper in this volume. They evoke the presence of this sacred place with its atmosphere of deep peace and serenity. Many of the photographs capture the beauty of the floral decorations and designs that are created twice daily on the Samadhi. A short introduction records how the care of the Samadhi and its environs developed from December 1950 to the present and includes many of the Mother's instructions on how things were to be kept and arranged.

Arjava—an Impression by Amal Kiran

RY Deshpande — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:22:29 -0700

This pencil-sketch of Arjava, with the caption below it, is by Amal Kiran drawn on a piece of paper. It is kept by him as a frontispiece in his copy of Poems by Arjava (J A Chadwick) published in 1941. The copy contains, in Amal’s hand, Sri Aurobindo’s comments on a fairly large number of poems. These poems were mostly written during the 1930s. It is significant to note that Arjava the logician-philosopher started writing poetry after joining the Ashram.

Divine Sight—A Sonnet by Sri Aurobindo

RY Deshpande — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 03:25:10 -0800

A master-work of colour and design,
A mighty sweetness borne on grandeur's wings;
A burdened wonder of significant line
Reveals itself in even commonest things.

The accompanying painting by Huta Hindocha depicts this stanza of the sonnet. …

• Image, Symbol and Myth in Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry--G. S. Pakle

RY Deshpande — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:36:41 -0800

Most of the qualified professionals tend to remain taciturn about Sri Aurobindo’s creations, partly awed by his personality, partly because of their inability to research patiently and perceptively some 3000 pages of his poetic work consisting of two epics, narratives, short poems, long poems, sonnets, experiments in different metres, poetic dramas, translations, and an equally vast body of his criticism in the form of essays and letters. Sri Aurobindo has yet to be studied. In that respect the present work of Dr Pakle can be considered to be a pretty good attempt, though somewhat general in character. Coming as it does from an academician, it has the merit of well-organised presentation rapidly covering a couple of aspects, essentially the aspects of simulacrum. Simulacrum in the broadest sense can be defined as “something that has a vague, tentative, or shadowy resemblance to something else.” It could include a host of features such as image, myth, symbol, simile, metaphor, and these become powerful aids in describing what otherwise escapes all representation. And yet they need not be just algebraic substitutes or notations, even as they do carry a breathing vibrancy which gives to them their true meaning and significance. Dr Pakle’s work is concerned with these features that give to poetry a poetic character…

The Works of the Mother

RY Deshpande — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 06:03:29 -0800

http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/

The Ashram has now made available Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's written works on its website in PDF format. All the volumes of the Collected Works of the Mother and those so far published in the Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo can be accessed at:

http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/sriauro/writings.php

http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/mother/writings.php

THE MOTHER

The Works of Sri Aurobindo

RY Deshpande — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:00:51 -0800

http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/

The Ashram has now made available Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's written works on its website in PDF format. All the volumes of the Collected Works of the Mother and those so far published in the Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo can be accessed at:

http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/sriauro/writings.php
http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/mother/writings.php

SRI AUROBINDO

The Dream Boat—A Poem by Sri Aurobindo as Illustrated by Huta

RY Deshpande — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 03:29:30 -0800

In March 1967 Huta began the work of expressing some of Sri Aurobindo’s poems through paintings. Under the Mother’s inspiration and guidance she selected certain passages from the poems and completed fifty-four paintings, which were all shown to the Mother in September of that year. This new book presents these paintings along with the lines which inspired them from some of Sri Aurobindo’s most well-known poems, such as Invitation, Who, Thought the Paraclete, and A God’s Labour. Appropriate quotations from the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, some comments on the paintings by the Mother, and background information and photographs accompany the plates. The entire book is printed on art paper.

Introducing SCIY Editor Ulrich J. Mohroff's superb new journal: "Anti-Matters"

ronjon — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:00:00 -0800

I'm introducing here SCIY Editor Ulrich J. Mohroff's superb new journal: Anti-Matters, which I highly recommend reading. I'm taking the liberty of reproducing below the Table of Contents of Vol 1, No 2 (2007). ~ ronjon

The following is from Ulrich J. Mohrhoff's "Preface to the Second Issue":

The release date of the last yearly issue of AntiMatters — the second issue in the case of this first volume — is November 24th. On this day in 1926, Sri Aurobindo arrived at a turning point in his yoga. According to Sri Aurobindo, there is a highest mental plane, to which he gave the name “overmind.” The Isha Upanishad refers to it as a “brilliant golden lid” obstructing the passage from mind to supermind. For years Sri Aurobindo had striven to negotiate this passage. Success came on that day in 1926, when the light and power of the overmind descended into his physical being. Subsequently Sri Aurobindo withdrew from outer contacts to concentrate on the more difficult task of enabling the supermind to descend, take possession of his body, and for the first time act on matter directly, rather than through mental intermediaries. Here is part of a conversation of the Mother with Satprem (Mother’s Agenda, August 2, 1961): ...

'The Doctrine of the Subtle Worlds: Sri Aurobindo's Cosmology, Modern Science, and the Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead'

ronjon — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:11:11 -0800

This is an unusually long article for SCIY. It's copyrighted by Eric M. Weiss, and was his dissertation for his Ph.D. at CIIS, the California Institute of Integral Studies, with a concentration in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness. I'm taking the liberty of posting it here because, in my opinion, it's one of the most thorough and insightful treatments of the core concern of SCIY; the multiple & interpenetrating relationships between science, culture, and consciousness, placed within the contextual framework of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga. - Warning: This is challenging material, but I believe working through it and contemplating its implications is well worth the effort. - My deepest appreciation goes to Dr. Eric Weiss for his extraordinary and groundbreaking work. ~ ron

...Here we are, at the dawn of the Twenty First Century, and I have awakened to find myself living in a science fiction novel. If this novel were to be written from the standpoint of the 23rd century, looking back to the beginning of the 21st, it might start something like this:

At that time, the certainties of science had faltered. The great charism of the men in white lab coats had faded. The bastions of materialism had crumbled from within, and the civilization that it had fostered was losing its way.

Meanwhile, three centuries of rapacious assault on the biosphere were, at last, showing decisive results. The globe was poisoned, people were sick, species were being slaughtered by the tens of thousands, global temperatures and global sea levels were both beginning to rise. A civilization was ending, and in its death throes, it was bringing to a close the Cenozoic Era. The Earth was preparing for a fresh creation.

Looking back, too, we can see that the promise of the new civilization had already begun to shine. The iron cage of the material world, in which the species had been trapped for centuries, was starting to dissolve. Here and there, the experiences of the subtle worlds were breaking through. A few intrepid explorers had seen the promise, and had just begun to glimpse the vast freedoms and the limitless horizons that we now enjoy, but the darkness was still thick and Kali was dancing wildly across the face of the globe. This is the story of those early pioneers…

Integral Transformation: The transmutation of the individual, the transformation of the world, the divinisation of matter.

ronjon — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:48:32 -0700

I had a fun experience with this site. I was reading through it, intrigued by the author's (M. Alan Kazlev) deep experience and knowledge about many different esoteric and spiritual paths. I was attracted by his commitment to the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and his comparisons of their work with other approaches to individual and collective tranformation. So I checked out Alan's recommended links to see if there were any that sounded interesting. (This is where the fun begins.) ...

The Role of Money and the Internet in Social Development

ronjon — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 12:00:00 -0700

... We witness today the confluence of factors that characterize the mental stage: unprecedented political freedom, a global affirmation of the individual and the rights of the common man, abundant and overflowing social energy, an irrepressible drive of mental inquisitiveness, the accumulation and codification of knowledge in all fields, the universal aspiration for and spread of education, a worldwide revolution of rising expectations, a veritable explosion of technological inventiveness, and the accelerating pace of organizational creativity and innovation, which is the technology of social development. These factors coming together in the mental stage have given birth to a new form of organization whose creativity and potential contribution to social advancement rival in importance the role played by money over the past millenium.

The emergence of the Internet as a worldwide system of communication, information exchange, education and commerce is opening up vast opportunities for more rapid development. It is eliminating barriers to communication imposed by space and time, leveling the playing field between rich and poor, and making possible universal access to information and services at very low cost. ...

A Comprehensive Theory of Social Development (TMSS)

ronjon — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 15:04:00 -0700

... This paper identifies the central principle of development and traces its expression in different fields and levels of social advancement. Development is a function of society’s capacity to organize human energies and productive resources to respond to opportunities and challenges. The paper traces the emergence of higher, more complex, more productive levels of social organization through the stages of nomadic hunting, rural agrarian, urban, commercial, industrial and post-industrial societies. It examines the process by which new activities are introduced by pioneers, imitated, resisted, accepted, organized, institutionalized and assimilated into the culture.

Organizational development takes place on a foundation of four levels of infrastructure – physical, social, mental and psychological. Four types of resources contribute to development, of which only the most material are inherently limited in nature. The productivity of resources increases enormously as the level of organization and input of knowledge rises. The theory identifies the human resource as the driving force and primary determinant of development. ...

The Mother's Service Society (TMSS)

ronjon — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 14:42:01 -0700

The Mother's Service Society was founded in 1969 in Pondicherry, South India, with a view to studying the basic laws of human development based on the theory of creation propounded by Sri Aurobindo, the sage of Pondicherry, who declared that humanity is not the final goal of creation. Humankind will evolve beyond mind into Supramental being.

This web site includes numerous original essays written over a period of thirty years by members of the Society on a wide range of theoretical and applied subjects including development theory and strategy, economics, business management, literary criticism, science, education and spirituality in life.

"A grassroots spirituality:" Auroville Today interview with Dr. Ananda Reddy

ronjon — Mon, 22 May 2006 14:41:35 -0700

The spirituality of tomorrow will belong to mankind as a whole, not to the religious and moralist elite. That is why I emphasize that it does not matter if Sri Aurobindo is known or is not recognised much tomorrow, for the Supramental Consciousness will awaken mankind in general to spirituality and thus fulfil the work for which both The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have taken birth this time. ...

"Life and Yoga", by Sri Aurobindo

ronjon — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 04:42:41 -0800

The following text is the first part of the introductory chapter of Sri Aurobindo's book: Synthesis of Yoga. It is copyrighted by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India. I highly recommend reading it for those interested in getting a sense of Sri Aurobindo's unique writing style and his profound scholarship in the deep meaning and purpose of India's spiritual traditions. ...

The Hour of God

ronjon — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 00:57:11 -0800

When things get tough, I personally find these words by Sri Aurobindo reassuring. If you have Real Audio Player, you can hear them in the Mother's voice. In the Mother's voice : an excerpt from 'The Hour Of God' File size : 770 KB Duration : 6 mins.16secs

• The Golden Path by Anie Nunnally

Debashish — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 00:22:24 -0800

Anie Nunnally's book of interviews of twelve senior disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry and Auroville is reviewed here by Mangesh Nadkarni.