“Human History becomes more and more a race between Education and Catastrophe”

H.G. Wells(1866-1949) Culture of Preparedness

 

After the Catastrophe is before the Catastrophe

We have to start talking about catastrophes in the same way

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A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

10: Across the Silence of the Ultimate Calm

Even while he stood on being's naked edge ...   more »

A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

09: Her Mortal Birth

A world's desire compelled her mortal birth.

One in the front of the immemorial quest, ...   more »

A deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary, Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven; Love in her was wider than the universe, The whole world could take refuge in her single heart. The great unsatisfied godhead here could dwell: Vacant of the dwarf self's imprisoned air, Her mood could harbour his sublimer breath Spiritual that can make all things divine. At once she was the stillness and the word, A continent of self-diffusing peace, An ocean of untrembling virgin fire; The strength, the silence of the gods were hers. In her he found a vastness like his own, His high warm subtle ether he refound And moved in her as in his natural home.   more »

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…   more »

A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

07: A Mailed Battalion

A mailed battalion marching to its doom,
The last long days went by with heavy ...   more »

When the mystical doors open out they do not necessarily take the poet to mantric utterance, nor do the emotion-charged devotional songs to the high-winging lyricism of the spirit. Occult ranges have their own white peaks of achievements, but they may yet miss the pure ethereality of the seeing word and hearing sight. When it comes to the question of spiritual poetry aglow with several suns of beauty, joy, power, truth in manifold combinations or severally one has to rise much above the human level, spend years of intense effort to enter into the world of the original sound where revelation and inspiration find their native expression. We may have ample poetic intelligence and creative insight, an unfailing aesthetic sense too, yet the vision and language and rhythm of the mantra may be quite lacking. A direct perception not only of the mysterious and the divinely haunting, a living contact with the reality is that which alone can give us such poetry. One large sustained example is in the ancient poetry of the Rig Veda; in our own time dimension of the infinite joining the aspiring soul and the answering benediction is in Savitri. To get that kind of poetry one has to be a Yogi-Poet indeed. ...
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NB: This essay is reproduced from the author's 'Sri Aurobindo and the New Millennium'.   more »

Thanks to Koantum for suggesting this article by Aurovillian Francois Gautier.
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Today, there is a sense of deep satisfaction, of gloating even, in India... we see a much more dynamic and self-confident India, galvanised by the liberalisation taking place at this very moment.

But if one looks closer at what is happening here, one is bound to feel a little unsettled. For what we see today is an India veering blindly, without restraint, towards total globalisation and Westernisation. — Yes, there are great values in the Western world: Freedom, democracy, equality (not always though), respect for the environment, less corruption. And India must, and has already borrowed from these qualities. — But since the last two, three years, it seems the Indian political and intellectual mind is pushing these qualities to an illogical extreme, as if it wants to prove to the West that 'we are as democratic, as liberal, as free as you are.' — Thus, democracy in India has been hijacked. It takes a fortune to be elected. Politicians, elected by and for the people, once they are locked in the ivory tower that is Delhi, forget all about the people.

This process of copying the West to the point of aping it has, of course, already happened many times in the developing world. And it killed the soul of many countries, making them just another replica of the West -- with a youth that wears the latest Calvin Klein jeans, knows the No 1 bestseller on the Time list, can quote a few lines from Dante, reads The Times of India, but knows nothing about pranayama, has never read a verse from Kalidasa and does not know who Sri Aurobindo is. ...    more »

A Spiritual Biography of Savitri

06: A Colloquy of the Original Gods

An episode in an unremembered tale,
Its beginning lost, its motive and plot concealed, ...   more »

How might one know if one has contacted the Supramentalised Consciousness? What marks would this leave on the individual, in their own consciousness, in their relation to others, in their teachings? This is explained in this very important talk by the Mother in 1961:

I can tell you right away that there are two signs - two certain, infallible signs. I know them through personal experience, for they are two things that can ONLY come with the supramental consciousness; without it, one cannot possess them - no yogic effort, no discipline, no tapasya can give them to you, while they come almost automatically with the supramental consciousness. ...   more »