"Is Auroville only the 2000 people who live here, or is there a larger, invisible Auroville made up of all those who feel connected to this place?" The questioner is Enzo Fazzino, who has visited Auroville a number of times over recent years. "..Auroville is a capital of connections and heart linkages that represent a strong presence beyond the physical City.. ." Enzo's idea is to make this invisible Auroville more visible, and to strengthen the relationship between those who live here and those who are part of the larger Auroville, through an initiative which he provisionally terms 'Universal Citizens of Auroville'. ..Enzo sees good communication as being the key to the success of the initiative. As the man who coordinates the website portal for the whole of UNESCO, he knows what he is talking about. ...   more »

This is a review by Anie Nunnally of Jocelyn's book on Auroville titled 'Antithesis of Yoga.' It critiques the books chronicling of the stories and events of some of the pioneers in Auroville's history from 1969 to 1993.   more »

These two poems were written after a trip tp Japan in December 2003. The first, titled Uji, refers to a town with a famous bridge where the late 12th c. hero Yoshitsune fought a legendary battle and where Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the 16th c. shogun initiated the Zen cult of tea. Uji is famous to this day for its tea but its earliest claim to fame was the Phoenix Hall or Byodo-in built by a Fujiwara aristocrat in 1053. This building, so called, because it seems poised for flight with outspread wings (while simultaneously plunging into the underworld through its reflection in water), replicates within the perfect world of Amitabha Buddha holding this aspiration for the world's future. The second poem, titled Taikan's House is about the home of the famous nationalist (Nihonga) painter Yokoyama Taikan. Taikan's house in the Ueno suburb of Tokyo is now a museum of his works. When I visited during a brief stopover in Tokyo, the curators were exhibiting Taikan's water=related paintings.   more »

A transcript of the Guru Pershad Lecture given at the Sri Aurobindo Society Beach Office in Dec. 2004, this article links a key chapter in The Life Divine with the Mother.   more »

Our faith should be in a future where the values of the spirit and a new evolutionary emergence of a global mind uniting man and womankind will ultimately prevail over the forces of ignorance, terror and tyranny. The unity of nations would almost demand a new definition of nationhood ...   more »

This show is worth looking at for the increasing links between science & IY. E.g., there's new evidence that cosmic ray showers from the death of suns occurring billions of miles from Earth & millions of years in our past, may be necessary igniters of lightning strokes here on earth. [and lightning may be the primordial "spark of life, "not only on Earth, but on other planets throughout the cosmos] ...   more »

Shortly after his masterly exposition on the practice of the integral yoga, Shri Jugal Kishore Mukherjee has come out with a slim but packed volume on the rather grim and esoteric subject of death, rebirth and karma. ...   more »

..it must therefore be emphasised that spirituality is not a high intellectuality, not idealism, not an ethical turn of mind or moral purity and austerity, not religiosity or an ardent and exalted emotional fervour, not even a compound of all these excellent things; a mental belief, creed or faith, an emotional aspiration, a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience. ...   more »

Black holes are best known for ripping stars apart, but new observations of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way show that it’s actually helping stars form. Until now, scientists had disagreed about the origin of a collection of massive stars orbiting less than a light-year from our galaxy’s central black hole, which scientists call Sagittarius A*. The stars were first seen by infrared telescopes. The new finding, based on observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, confirms the theory that black holes can help form massive stars and gives more support to the idea that black holes play a big role in galaxy formation. ...   more »

Last week I started a series on Ray Kurzweil's new book, "The Singularity is Near." Sub-titled "When Humans Transcend Biology." (www.amazon.com) We are going to continue looking at his view of the future for the next two letters. This week we are going to look at the positive side of ! his view of the future. Warning: it is beyond your wildest science fiction dreams, and seems so far out there that you will wonder if I have taken leave of my senses to take this seriously. But as I note below, there are reasons you should take Kurzweil very, very seriously. ...   more »

Neurowarfare, the use of weapons that target the human central nervous system, is an escalating concern. This month's Acumen Journal uncovers some areas of Russian neurowarfare research: ...   more »

"...I'm now in the midst of a spiritual, scientific research community. Every question can be asked. Every tool can be used, contemplative tools, external scientific tools, the latest things from all sides. It's all directed toward human betterment and compassionate action, reducing suffering and making this world a truly great place. And we're doing it with joy and celebrating each other's capacity. This is how we should be at every university. ..."    more »

"COS: I did want to bring up one final example that has been quite an experience for me-the event you put on with the Dalai Lama and all the others of your circle. It was quite amazing. There were maybe 1,100 in the audience?

COS: We sat there for a couple of hours, and something took place. When I returned on that first evening, all of a sudden I realized that my whole sense of self and my own personal field were really impacted. It was almost as if I had meditated for a week or so in nature. You are really operating from an enhanced and much more open field around you, a sort of clearing, of Lichtung. ..."   more »

Sri Aurobindo puts it this way in his *Synthesis of Yoga*: - "Ishwara-Shakti stands behind the relation of Purusha-Prakriti and its ignorant action and turns it to an evolutionary purpose. The Ishwara-Shakti realisation can bring participation in a higher dynamism and a divine working and a total unity and harmony of the being in a spiritual nature." (p. 205)   more »

Thomas Malone’s question concerns how to use information technology to design better ways of organizing. Three themes stand out. The first one is the notion of a "physics of organizing," which allows one to be much more precise in defining the space of possibility and articulating the laws of coordination among actors and activities. Coordination, according to Malone, is the management of dependencies among activities. His hypothesis is that there are three elementary types of dependency that map the possible space in which activities can link: flow (one activity produces a resource used by another), sharing (a single resource is used in multiple activities), and fit (multiple activities produce a single resource).   more »

On September 11, 1893, the world’s first Parliament of Religions opened in Chicago. Representatives of such a variety of religious and spiritual traditions had never before been assembled in one place. Delegates from every part of the globe read speeches before a huge audience at the inaugural session. Thirty-first on the list was a young, unknown Hindu. When his turn came, he rose to say the words the spirit would move him to speak. “Sisters and Brothers of America,” Swami Vivekananda began. What happened next was later described by a woman who was present that day. “I was at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893,” she recalled. “When that young man got up and said, ‘Sisters and Brothers of America,’ seven thousand people rose to their feet as a tribute to something they knew not what.” ...   more »