From: rcarlson@olympus.net
Subject: Re: Yoga and Research: Sri Aurobindo on science and yoga
Date: August 4, 2005 1:50:03 PM EDT
To: rjon@vzavenue.net

As I seem to have become the proponent of reason on the forum ( against my will I assure you, because those close to me will tell you just how irrational a guy I am) I will also add that I think that many many mistakes have been made on the community level (specifically in Auroville from what I have gathered as a non-resident) in this yoga from discarding reason and the critical intellect before they were sufficiently developed as instruments in the collective. And, at the risk of being repetitive, we are talking apples and oranges when it comes to the yoga on the individual or community level. In the latter as Rod suggests undoubtable there needs to be the guiding intuitive idea (the integral yoga, the service of the divine etc), then as Debashish states there must be an affective intresubjectivity. e,g, a an opening of hearts to each other. "a good will" and acceptance of difference. However, to make decisions as to the good of the community, in other words on the civic level, unless we all claim to be intuitive beings or mind readers who understand all the idiosyncrasies of cultural interpretations that we all bring to the yoga as individuals, we must demonstrate what good our claims and calls to action will have to the community and validate them in a manner which can be understood by all. It was in this regards that I previously argued for the benefits of a Habermasian intersubjectivity, which I also feel is in many ways consistent with Sri Aurobindos on writings on social democracy (which I believe he felt was appropriate for humanity at its current level of realization, although by all means he does not want the world to stop at this level)

But a rational intersubjectivity also has limitations and a community must IMO also strive toward an affective relationship and be ultimately guided by a vision which descends from the intuitive mind or beyond.

There is no Maha Guru now to say: do this or do that, and the world rapidly changes ( and as both Debashish and I have brought up and given examples of: both Mother and Sri Aurobindo can be shown to have evolved perspectives over the course of their life times regarding the change of circumstances they encountered in the world) Thus as a collective there are many things which need to be evaluated according to our current rapidly changing culture and we have to make the determination as to the proper course of action ourselves. IMO the trinity of a guiding intuitive idea, an affective intersubjectivity, as an opening to each other, and a rational intersubjective methodology to make collective decisions are at least at this point in history circa 2005, all integral to our collective well being.

- Don, if I understand it correctly I think the methodology you proposed for research yesterday in its own way also addresses these three areas of understanding. -

As the well worn phrase goes "mind is the helper, mind is the bar", this is true for individuals and a collective. But especially as a collective let us be sure we have been helped as much as we can by our good will toward others and our mind's critical thinking skills before making a head long rush to transcend the bar. A community which prematurely attempts to make the leap to the integral level, risks sliding back from the integral (ideal) level into the mythic or religious realm. History provide hundreds of examples of utopian communities who tried to make the leap and who never made it to the other side. So in many ways on the collective level we are caught between a mythic rock and an integral hardplace. But once we have been assisted along the path, as much as we can by our good will, the mind and its critical intellect, then by all means to get over this intellectual hurdle: "Go For it"

I have to also add to the on going dialog the following from The Synthesis of Yoga page 775 in which Sri Aurobindo is talking about the ascent to an intuitive level meant especially for the person who has an intellectual bent. I also think that it is in this spirit in which Sri Aurobindo is referring to reason in the Arya quote.
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>"A fourth method is one which suggests itself naturally to the developed intelligence and suits the thinking man. This is to develop our intellect instead of eliminating it, but with the will not to cherish its limitations, but to heighten its capacity, light, intensity, degree and force of activity until it borders on the thing that transcends it and can easily be taken up and transformed into that higher conscious action. This movement also is founded on the truth of our nature and enters into the course and movement of the complete Yoga of self-perfection. That course, as I have described it, included a heightening and greatening of the action of our natural instruments and powers till they constitute in their purity and essential completeness a preparatory perfection of the present normal movement of the Shakti that acts in us. The reason and intelligent will, the buddhi, is the greatest of these powers and instruments, the natural leader of the rest in the developed human being, the most capable of aiding the development of the others. The ordinary activities of our nature are all of them of use for the greater perfection we seek, are meant to be turned into material for them, and the greater their development, the richer the preparation for the supramental action.

The intellectual being too has to be taken up by the Shakti in the Yoga and raised to its fullest and its most heightened powers. The subsequent transformation of the intellect is possible because all the action of the intellect derives secretly from the supermind, each thought and will contains some truth of it however limited and altered by the inferior action of the intelligence. The transformation can be brought about by the removal of the limitation and the elimination of the distorting or perverting element. This however cannot be done by the heightening and greatening of the intellectual activity alone; for that must always be limited by the original inherent defects of the mental intelligence. An intervention of the supramental energy is needed that can light up and get rid of its deficiencies of thought and will and feeling. This intervention too cannot be completely effective unless the supramental plane is manifested and acts above the mind no longer from behind a lid or veil, however thin the veil may have grown, but more constantly in an open and luminous action till there is seen the full sun of Truth with no cloud to moderate its splendour. It is not necessary, either, to develop the intellect fully in its separateness before calling down this intervention or opening up by it the supramental levels. The intervention may come in earlier and at once develop the intellectual action and turn it, as it develops, into the higher intuitive form and substance.

The widest natural action of the Shakti combines all these methods. It creates, sometimes at first, sometimes at some later, perhaps latest stage, the freedom of the spiritual silence. It opens the secret intuitive being within the mind itself and accustoms us to refer all our thought and our feeling and will and action to the initiation of the Divine, the Splendour and Power who is now concealed in the heart of its recesses. It raises, when we are ready, the centre of its operations to the mental summit and opens up the supramental levels and proceeds doubly by an action from above downward filling and transforming the lower nature and an action from below upwards raising all the energies to that which is above them till the transcendence is completed and the change of the whole system integrally effected. It takes and develops the intelligence and will and other natural powers, but brings in constantly the intuitive mind and afterwards the true supramental energy to change and enlarge their action. These things it does in no fixed and mechanically invariable order, such as the rigidity of the logical intellect might demand, but freely and flexibly according to the needs of its work and the demand of the nature."