although I personally accept Sri Aurobindo's formulation
let me argue some points which maybe put forth from a post-structuralist perspective. From this perspective one might say that the doxa of the times (e.g. progress, enlightenment and evolution) may undergird Sri Aurobindo's
social theories Of course such an argument would preclude SA's concurrent notion of devolution or his acceptance of falling away from on original source as equally in play.
In this he defies the modernist paradigm of progress by his eschewing a linear ideal toward infinite progress, much as Gebser does.

Gebser is refreshing as he does not fall prey to the modernist fallacy of the idea of continuous progress, but sees evolution as proceeding through a series of bifurcations or discontinuous mutations. Here is Gebser:

With the unfolding of each new consciousness mutation consciousness increases in intensity; but the concept of evolution with its continuous development excludes the discontinuous character of the mutation, The unfolding then is an enrichment tied, to a gain in dimensionality; yet it is also an impoverishment because of its increasing remoteness from origin. (46)

But in response to the following:

Though such a possibility looks distant, Sri Aurobindo says, "But if it is at all a truth of our being, then it must be the truth to which all is moving and in it must be found the means of a fundamental, an inner, a complete, a real human unity which would be the one secure base of a unification of human life. A spiritual oneness which would create a psychological oneness not dependant upon any intellectual or outward uniformity and compel a oneness of life not bound up with its mechanical means of unification, but ready always to enrich its secure unity by a free inner variation and a freely varied outer self-expression, this would be the basis for a higher type of human existence".

Well how does one unify the psychology of the individual
after Foucault who basically says that an indivdual psychology does not exist, rather the individual is the sum of a number of multiple, often competing discourses, which have been formulated by experts and internalized within the psychology of the individual. How does one get to free inner variation, if the substratum of human experience is already defined by social discourse?

But even if the individual is fragmented, my thought is Can't the process of fragmentation form greater wholes?

If the individual psychology is pervaded already by the discourses of history and culture, so that each human being may be seen in a certain way to be representative of the whole of human experience at the time of their Episteme. Aren't we all rather not fundamentally already unified in certain biological and social discourses which we have all internalized, even as each of us is a singular individual expression of our phenotypal evolution?

And who/what is the Spirit that unifies psychology, is it a totalizing structual imposition of the whole on the expression of the individual, as in the formulation of a totem where the whole tyrannizes its parts,
(and I think if I understand SA correctly, if humanity does not become plastic enough for the transformation, plasticity may be forced upon it by the evoltuion, perhaps embedded in silicon wafers and composite nano-materials, but nature will keep moving forwarded whether a self-reflective humanity is ready or not)

Or will the play of spirit find humanity a vehicle to internalize the divine anarchy in an affective intersubjective play of multiplcity in unity. e.g. a unity in which the parts presence the whole, as Goethe's archetypal plant.

Secondly regards the continuing evolution of consciousness mediation by language or not, according to Derrida, for humanity everything is mediated by language. So how would we use language which mediates our experience of the world, to go beyond itself?
(I take it by the practice of silence, but something undoubtable emerges from the silence (e.g. the future poetry, will that not also be of grammartology?)


Somehow, I can not buy into Rod's argument that although things are imperfect today in 50 years (or maybe longer) there will be those in Auroville who actual faithfully practice the yoga of Sri Aurobindo and will be the prototypes of an Gnostic Being. In fact at present to my mind this is pretty close to magical thinking. But it also seems to smack of the enlightenment idea of linear progress.

Although I agree that Auroville may actually be privileged in this respect, but my own thoughts on giving such special status to Auroville is actually quite decisive that this is not unlike certain Zionist who see the multi-dimensional New Jeruselum collapsed into the one dimensional space of the state of Isreal as ending history. (Moreover, even if this is a departure from AV doxa, I beleive what Mother would envision for the township today is anyones guess?)

As I said I do have faith in Sri Aurobindo's vision and certainly see him and the Mother as annunciating a new future, its just that I think this future will baffle any formulation we can currently conceive.


rich

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Rich,

To speak of the doxa of 19th c. Enlightenment idealism as undergirding Sri Aurobindo's formulations of an Ideal of Human Unity is to assume that such ideals (rationality, continuous progress, enlightenment, evolution) are unquestioned categories in his thinking. This is clearly not the case, since though he uses these categories to express his views, the views themselves are quite an alternate formulation with other bases and experiential conclusions. Since you raise the question of a post-structuralist take on this, Gayatri Spivack, a leading postcolonial and feminist thinker (and the translator into English of Derrida's "On Grammatology") has a coined a term "strategic essentialism" to speak of the need to accept the essentialized frames of feminist discourse as a strategy to be heard, but to deconstruct it from within and bring to birth within its boudaries, that which is alien to it. To my view, this is exactly what Sri Aurobindo does to the ideals and assumptions of the Enlightenment - appropriate them to the experiential praxis of a psychic and supramental integrality pushing towards the unification of psychology, culture and world through a "free inner variation and a freely varied outer self-expression." The assumptions that undergird his appropriation are rather those of the Indic discourse of darshan (ontological knowledge by identity) and a social neo-Vedantic evolutionism based on this. The deceptive similarity between the evolution of Spirit in Matter proposed by Hegel and that of Sri Aurobindo is a similar case in point as is the notion of a "religion of humanity" when compared to Enlightenment Humanism (whose misguided rational charities Heidegger rejected calling himsef an anti-humanist). This I have tried to bring out in my relfections above, since Sri Aurobindo is anything but a liberal rationalist in his understanding of human unity. In a sense, yes, of course, Sri Aurobindo is speaking to those who are calling out to him with their own doxa, as a variety of Homi Bhabha's mimicry - the language of the "west", but "not quite/not white," his alienness perturbing subtly from below the surface the smooth texture of his Victorian-sounding Overmental prose. What unites then is hardly a structure, a religion, a rational convention however encompassing, but rather the supra-human sources of integrality which culturally he has a right to assert both through his experience and through the Indic discourse within which equally if not more properly he situates himself and which he extends. Our hopes, dreams, ideals may be speculative nonsense masquerading as Truth and forcing themselves onto others through strategies of power which is why any foundationism is looked suspiciously upon by most anti-foundationist post-structural thinkers. But the discourse of darshan begins by asserting its non-speculative basis in supra-rational experience and a subjective objectivity. To situate Sri Aurobindo in a western discourse it is first necessary to take him on his terms, and he spells these out in the chapter "Methods of Vedantic Knowledge" in The Life Divine. This does not make it unaccountable to anything other than its own assertions of relative experience. Darshana based philosophies (and yogas) have succeeded one another without displacing or invalidating any throughout Indian history using a method of vitarka (argumentation). It is interesting to note that the grounds of such a process are not restricted to "reasonableness." When Chaitanya sat in debate in the centers of Indian scholarship, what made his philosophy fly was not just the coherence of his interpretations of the Vedas and the Upanishads, but the fact that his speech and his appearance connoted something far greater than their content. This invisible component of language spoke to the supra-rational faculties of knowledge latent within the human, awakening him/her to visions, experiences and spontaneous understandings which can best be called overmental. I believe this is the case with Sri Aurobindo too, which is what makes those who are open to his word, bypass the grammatology and awake to the Truth-validity behind its address.

Regarding Foucault and the construction of the personality by intersecting and contested discourses, it is not true that Foucault takes the human being as fully determined by these and nothing outside of them. In his later writing and particularly in his essay "What is Enlightenment?" where he engages with Kant's essay of the same title, he makes a strong case for practices of individual creativity in everyday life arising out of a critical consciousness stretching the limits of the discursive determinants and thus pushing them towards rupture or innovation. To think of creativity in this manner, I believe, is certainly to give subjectivity an incalculable dimension beyond the constraining power of discourses. Sri Aurobindo is no stranger to the radically fragmented nature of the human personality, and though he may have emphasized more its psychological than its social constitution, the social is never far from his analyses. In practical terms, though, what I think Sri Aurobindo is saying in his chapter "The Religion of Humanity" is that the psychic element in humankind is pushing through processes both of painful struggle and rapturous communitas for emergence and disclosure of its supra-rational integrative capacity and only when this makes itself properly recognizable and functional can the ideal of human unity become a reality. However, as you say, this may be effectuating itself through unpredictable ways. In cultural processes a discourse expands through fragmented realities being forced to share a world. These processes forge new vocabularies, if not of translation, at least of doublespeak, so that doxa are dislodged from reified states and move towards universalities of understanding while maintaining specificities of taste and life-ideals. Such creative acts of intersubjective practice may also further the emergence of the psychic element in humankind. And yes, I agree, that the beliefs of the faithful in the apotheosis of privileged spaces and times may be a dangerous anodyne and substitute for growth of consciousness through critical and creative practice.

Debashish

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Deb wrote:

What unites then is hardly a structure, a religion, a rational convention however encompassing, but rather the supra-human sources of integrality which culturally he has a right to assert both through his experience and through the Indic discourse within which equally if not more properly he situates himself and which he extends. Our hopes, dreams, ideals may be speculative nonsense masquerading as Truth and forcing themselves onto others through strategies of power which is why any foundationism is looked suspiciously upon by most anti-foundationist post-structural thinkers.

so this implies that Sri Aurobindo's metaphysics would not be admitted in post-structuralist or even in post-Wittgensteinian discourse. But if all discourses (liberal, romantic, marxist) have had doubt cast upon them by post-modernism (even for that matter, the validity claims of the postmodernist themselves) can we also find a strategy to admit the darshan discourses to the ivory tower of the Academy,

And is this what you wrote regarding recent subaltern scholarship just that ticket?

(to the claim that has to do with indigenous folk hearing god speak)


Deb wrote:
Guha has to dismiss this claim as a case of "a massive demonstration of self-estrangement (to borrow Marx's term for the very essence of religiosity) which made the rebel look upon their project as predicated on a will other than their own." Dipesh Chakrabarty, another founder-member of the Subaltern Studies group, calls Guha up on this, pointing out that if the subaltern studies project is to recover subaltern agency, ie. to allow him "to speak," as Gayatri Spivack says, then his assertion that it was not his agency at all but God's, also needs to be taken seriously.

???

regards Foucault on individual and creativity, here is a related quote from him, in reference to the function of the author, and notice he does not say the author, rather he describes a process e.g. the author function

The first author function regards the appropriation of property and ownership e.g when copyright laws appeared, the second function the literary author's function which requires an author's presence to validate it,

The third point concerning this "author-function" and here is Foucault: "is that it is not formed spontaneously through the simple attribution of a discourse to an individual. It results from a complex operation whose purpose is to construct the rational entity we call an author. Undoubtedly, this construction is assigned a "realistic" dimension as we speak of an individual's "profundity" or "creative" power, his intentions or the original inspiration manifested in writing. Nevertheless, these aspect of an individual, which we designate as an author (or which comprise an individual as an author), are projections, in terms always more or less psychological, of our way of handling texts: in the comparisons we make, the traits we extract as pertinent, the continuities we assign, or the exclusions we practice. In addition, all these operations vary according to the period and the form of discourse concerned. A "philosopher" and a "poet" are not constructed in the same manner; and the author of an eighteenth-century novel was formed differently from the modern novelist."

So in my reading that Foucault is not so much ascribing creativity to a heroic individual but rather to a process of consciousness, which is in itself dependent on the text for validity.

Undoubtably creative imagination is at play however, and since I agree with the esoteric wisdom of Sufi masters who say: "the eyes of the soul is creative imagination", to my mind it indicates that true individuality is not necessarily a human quality. As Plotinus says we dwell in the soul. The soul is much larger than we. It is only the ability of the human being to make soul as Keats would say, that grants a true individual formation, as the psychic entity comes forward. (e.g. not dependent on any surface social discourse)

rich

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Rich,

You ask whether Sri Aurobindo's metaphysics can be admitted into post-structuralist discourse -

> so this implies that Sri Aurobindo's metaphysics would not be admitted in post-structuralist or even in post-Wittgensteinian
> discourse. But if all discourses (liberal, romantic, marxist) have had doubt cast upon them by post-modernism (even for that
> matter, the validity claims of the postmodernist themselves) can we also find a strategy to admit the darshan discourses to the
> ivory tower of the Academy

Post-foundationism is one aspect of post-srtructuralism (brought forth most strongly by Foucault) which can and has been deconstructed by other post-struicturalist thinkers (such as Derrida) since to limit the human to a rational epistemology is also a foundationalist structuralism. However, the difficulty of admitting Sri Aurobindo into this discourse is that "The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge" are somewhat culturally specific and as such alien to the western traditon of knowledge seeking. However, texts such as those of Sri Aurobindo or Coomaraswamy, for that matter, need to be looked at as culturally hybrid texts and a new language needs to be created to adequately theorize them in the academy. This language is in the making, I believe, and the post-structuralists themselves have taken the first steps to make this possible. Heidegger's later writings on poetry, for example, and, in spite of his leaning on the side of the restriction and plurality of meaning in the written text, Derrida's musings on language, can be seen as important steps in this direction. But post-colonial writers, such as Dipesh Chakravarty, whom I mentioned in the quote you referenced are taking this hybrid discourse further. Ranajit Guha himself, whom I mentioned in that quote as not taking seriously the divine agency of peasant rebel leaders, has now written a book, "Hostory at the Edge of World History" where he raises issues of cultural hybridity in English texts written by authors of other cultures, viz. Indians, and the cultural ontologies backgrounding these texts. The fiedl of cross-cultural philosophy, which makes the hermeneutics of cultural hybridity its business, is also gaining much greater prominence n the academy. It is efforts of this kind, not least of all, I hope, efforts by Ausrobindonian scholars themselves, that may openm up the way to a new languaging which will not have the present difficulties in accomodating Sri Aurobindo.

Re. Foucault, his essay about the author is a famous one but (a) it is an early essay; and (b) what he is saying here is more that the authorship of texts is discursive. By saying this, he is debunking the cult of genius associated in the modern mind with authorship (as a consequence of post-Renaissance "man is the measure of all things" thinking), the attachment of divine status to human beings in a world which has done away with god and needs some vestige of Him to glorify. However, he is saying nothing about whether behind the discusrively bound author-finction there is any agency or not. He has been, even in his lifetime, criticized for this, and his late writing on "What is the Enlightenment" represents the view that it is not so much in texts but in the creative acts of everyday life that human agency is to be sought, stretching the boundaries of constraining discourses. And, in texts (as in life seen as a text), it is the immediacy of its engagement with its historicity which constitutes the temporal locus of the creative agent. To really learn something from "an author" it is not the ahistorical meaning of his/her texts that matter but the meanings that may be found in the process of its engagement with the histories of its own time as with the histories of the present.

Debashish

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Deb wrote:

I hope, efforts by Aurobindonian scholars themselves, that may openm up the way to a new languaging which will not have the present difficulties in accomodating Sri Aurobindo.<

well I certainly think you are lighting a candle to help illuminate that path.

(setting aside the reductionist approach of those who still hang on to the project of arche-reductionism, like Crick and Dennett )

I take it Habermas and his followers who remains committed to an overhauled enlightenment project, might question admitting any validity statements that would be based on metaphysical premises. I take it they certainly have a point, since Habermas has categorized these as
"romantic" and I would even say he justly criticizes philosophers who followed romantic beliefs in the early to mid 20th century, which according to him wound up in the excesses of Nazi Germany. He holds Heidegger particularly responsible. ( and in this regards he does have a point MH never really renounced National Socialism and his collaboration with them was pretty shameful, especially his treatment of his mentor, Husserl)

So if the hermeneutics of cultural hybridity is gaining prominence in the academy, perhaps the best we can hope for is the acceptance of the normative cultural valuations these "other" societies make, while not necessarily admitting the truth of their metaphysical claims.


rc

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I agree about the irresponsible personal acts of Heidegger and Foucault which casts a questonable light on their philosophies. But I also believe their texts are far more pregnant with potential than a reading of them against certain life-indiscretions or misjudgements may suggest. In fact as brought home by Foucaut himself, the text in its "author function" has a life far exceeding its "origin" in an "author" (though to me the author's complexity and trans-personal agency also far exceeds his/her conscious intentional judgements/misjudgements).

On the question of Habermas and his followers, Habermas remains committed to the Enlightenment project of a rational universality, a position that limits the definition of the human within a western metaphysical epistemology. Truth claims based on metaphysical asusmptions may justly be criticized as "romantic" but Habermas' enemy is not metaphysical assumptions as such but any non-rational foundations of experience or judgement. By clubbing any assumptions outside of the rational as "romantic" and bolstering his case with the evidence of German Nazism, he is failing to distinguish between what Sri Aurobindo calls "true and false subjectivism" in The Human Cycle and in Sri Aurobindo's language "throwing out the baby with the bath water."

"Validity claims based on metaphysical statements" are exactly what Heidegger and his descendents (Foucault, Derrida) are catigating as "onto-theology" and which they are trying to repalce with a phenomenologically based hermeneutics. Arguably, Derrida goes one step further than Heidegger in this, showing Heidegger himself to be a prey to onto-theology and also pointing to the inescapable limits ("margins") of metaphysics, without relinquishing a basis of action in messianic mysticism.

On this topic of metaphysical assumptions and the cultural bases of truth validity, I had an interesting conversation around Sri Aurobindo's "Methods of Vedantic Knowledge" with Jim Ryan and Kundan of CIIS yesterday. If you recall, the "methods" of Vedantic knowledge are based in experience. The questions asked are not what one thinks but what one "sees". This idea (or philosopheme) of "seeing" is central to Indian cultural theory and philosophy as "darshan". The word "seeing" is a poor translation for darshan due to the western epsitemological boudaries of seeing, which requires a seer and a seen, and brings in immediately the probem of "objectivity" and "correctness" of seeing. But darshan describes a non-dual state of experience, where subject and object disappear and what remains is a state of transcendental identity as "seeing". This is why a visit to a guru (such as the four-times-a-year visits to "see" Sri Aurobindo) are called "darshans." The realization of an universal ontology would be just such a "seeing", which is why philosophies in India are known as "darshans". But what goes even further is that the "method" of discursively establishing Vedantic knowledge also rests on "darshan". This is what I was indicating in my discussion of Sri Chaitanya earlier - i.e. philosophical arguments, however hair-splitting, cannot arrive at truth validity unless there is granted the conviction which comes with "direct seeing" (prataksha) - and it is this which "he who has seen" can and does transmit as experience through "darshan." To equate this to a "metaphysical assumption" may be Habermas' and the western academy's disciplinary distortion based on fears of irrationality, but it is basic to the cultural ontology of Indic reality where Truth is not thought of as speculative metaphysics but as experience. With the insufficiencies of "rational" solutions quite evident today, and rabid irrationalisms aggresively staking their claim on the "gobal" life-world, we are left with little option for the future but to take more seriously the alternate methodologies of cultures to which truth is a matter of experience and the human is
not a fixed, but a transitional being with a direction and destination in which he/she has some choice.

Debashish

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I am posting here Rod Hemsell's comment apropos this portion of the discussion:

" As for Heidegger, in his later writings he pored
praises on Husserl and credited him with making his
own development possible. And he renounced National
Socialism repeatedly in his understated philosophemes,
eg. On Humanism. Let those who have an ear hear.
As for Habermas, he has adopted a Christianized
stance on natural Philosophy. End of story.
Debashis's comments on Heidegger and Derrida seem to
me to be quite accurate and complete. Postmodernism
may have gotten to the verge of discovering the
vedantic method, as I have suggested in my essays,
indicating progress toward the integral philosopheme.
Postmodernism is in its best lights still only what it
is."

---

Deb wrote:

But what goes even further is that the "method" of discursively establishing Vedantic knowledge also rests on "darshan". This is what I was indicating in my discussion of Sri Chaitanya earlier - i.e. philosophical arguments, however hair-splitting, cannot arrive at truth validity unless there is granted the conviction which comes with "direct seeing" (prataksha) - and it is this which "he who has seen" can and does transmit as experience through "darshan." To equate this to a "metaphysical assumption" may be Habermas' and the western academy's disciplinary distortion based on fears of irrationality, but it is basic to the cultural ontology of Indic reality where Truth is not thought of as speculative metaphysics but as experience.<

Well thats just it and I think we can find a word in the Western tradition which expresses a value which exceeds
anything that can be produce in a rational argument. It also denotes a quality by which one might also judge one's position superior to anothers even though they battle to a draw in rational argumentation.

The word derives from integral and its called integrity!
It is by virtue of integrity that the full valuation of ones assertions become fully accepted (even beyond what any rational resolution of the issues can conjure)

So for example Martin Heidegger was perhaps one of the greatest thinkers Germany produced last century, but as a human being who makes moral choices, he pales before the integrity of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died for his moral beliefs. So who do we follow the man of ideas of the man of action who lives his philosophy in the streets and in the prison?

So I do think there are appropriate academic terms in which we can lend validity to experiences other than rational, and explicate the authenticity of cultural ontologies foreign to the Western academy through communicatve reason. To do so however we have to open up the rational to an experiential dimension which does not reduce to mere
philosophical or scientific formula.

rich

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Rich,

"Integrity" in general pralance and as you have used it is a moral quality. While it certainly carries more conviction than the word of somone whose acts defeat the principles he/she espouses, this is not exactly the kind of conviction referred to in the awakening of conviction through darshan. Methodologically, I would say, darshan is the awakening of an inner faculty which can recognize truth as self-evident and not dependent on any external criteria. Vide "The Future Poetry", the overmental word if channeled even by a scoundrel, can carry this effect (though it may be debated whether the scoundrel would have inner access to this quality of speech. I'm not sure, though without evidence to the contrary I couldn't rule it out). On the other hand, a man of intergity may lack the inspiration to open to the trans-subjective oracle. Of course, in the likes of Chaitanya or Sri Aurobindo it is both the integrity of being and the trans-personal power of revelation which combine. Re. Heidegger vs. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I don't know enough about either as a person and about the second as a writer to pass judgement. Heidegger's word may be ambiguous, when read in the light of his political lapse, but there is enough of a higher opening in it for the future to discriminate its productive potential. And then, as Rod says, the castigation of Heidegger may be overdone.

Debashish

---

yes I realize that integrity in its normal meaning does not invoke the same notions of trans-subjective experience, I was trying to follow it back to its roots of true integration. e.g. integral
in the true sense. and perhaps not applicable today as some of those who lately espouse integral practice appear to lack integrity

But there is an essential element I find lacking in western academics with its unbalanced leaning toward mental realization, and perhaps a more
cross-diciplinary approach is needed, or at least
a way to address other parts and planes

Moreover in an cross-cultural dialog integrity can easily be verified through experience , whereas transpersonal is still in the realm of metaphysics
for most. I am re-reading Merleau Ponty Primacy of Perception, in which he demonstrates that perception certainly precedes intellectual formulations.

Of course for quite some time there have been many who feel uncomfortable letting reason be the final arbiter. Bergson focused on legitimizing intuition almost a century ago.

Regards Heidegger versus Bonhoeffer, to me there is no comparison as to their integrity as determined by their choices they made in time of crisis:

In short Heidegger was a Nazi collaborator who banned all Jews including his own dear mentor form from his university and its library, I am not sure if any later apologizes he made to Husserl maker up for this. Also in the opinion of most historians he never sufficiently renounced the romantic idealism that lead him to endorse the notion of recovering the organic soul of the German race. He also stayed a party member until 1945 so he was in it for the full count

On the other hand Bonhoeffer flew back from New York in 1939 to aid the victims of the 3rd Reich and to fiercely resist it, for which he was imprisioned and executed. He also advocated an extremely inclusive/progressive form of Christianity

Its only real if you live it, and Heidegger certainly fell short here (and of course his affair with Hannah Ardent in the 1920s also complicates the matter, and I certainly do admit I too seperate his writings -which are brilliant- from his personal choices, because on has to live in this reality and this this world is certainly a mixed up place)

But these 3 biographies are of extreme importance I think in assessing intellectual responses to crisis, in this case totalitarianism

Heidegger - the intellectual collaborator

Ardent - intellectual in exile

Bonhoeffer - intellectual as resistance fighter

if one combines Bonhoeffer's moral courage with Heidegger's pioneering thought perhaps one begins to approach the stature of Sri Aurobindo

---

Rich,

I see the importance of "integrity" as you draw it out in the enterprise of cross-cultural understanding. Thanks for the biographical references. I need to inform myself about Bonhoeffer (whom I know next to nothing about). About Heidegger, though, I feel the future will forget his biographical details but be able to derive light from his texts even treated anonymously. That is, "darshan" may arise from an anonymous text without any referent in biography (due to the transpersonal power of the "word").

You write about Merleau-Ponty that according to him "perception certainly precedes intellectual formulations." This is exactly the basis of phenomenology and in your statement, one can draw the direct relationship with the "methods of vedantic knowledge" vide Sri Aurobindo, since the primary ground of that method is the question "what do you see" rather than "what do you think" - i.e. literally, "perception precedes intellectual formulations." In western philosophy this is a turn, since in classical (Aristotelian) philosophy which dominates until this point, metaphysics precedes thinking and thinking precedes seeing - i.e. metaphysics first, then epistemology, then phenomenology. But Merleau-Ponty is one of the initiators of the trend away from metaphysics by pointing out that our seeing conditions the categories of our thinking (phenomenology precedes epistemology). Heidegger takes it one step further in that ontology precedes phenomenology - our mode of being conditions our seeing. This mode of being is a given and thus invisible, we live in it as a fish in the sea; as a being-in-the-world, we are already conditioned by it (its discursive limits, as Foucault will put it). But it is not fully determining. We can become aware of its conditional boundaries and evan play a part in its transformation through this awareness. Rubbing against other and alien modes of being makes this disclosure of our own ontological discursive limits more possible and may facilitate transformation. But for this, a new language needs to be fashioned through a reappropriation of old vocabularies in a transformed frame.
Here, I find what you said in an earlier comment very fertile:
" So I do think there are appropriate academic terms in which we can lend validity to experiences other than rational, and explicate the authenticity of cultural ontologies foreign to the Western academy through communicatve reason. To do so however we have to open up the rational to an experiential dimension which does not reduce to mere philosophical or scientific formula. "

In the formulations of Indic (Vedantic) knowledge, not only does ontology precede phenomenology, which precedes epistemology, but technologies (tantra, yoga) or spontaneous possibilities (grace, anugraha) are culturally accepted as providing means (upaya, kushala) to altered ontologies (realization, darshana). These in turn consequently alter perceptions of reality (pratyaksha, darshana) and following this, categories of knowledge (epistemology) and their systematic formulations (metaphysics, darshana). This then expresses itself discursively in philosophical argumentation (vitarka) part of whose method includes transmission of experience (anubhava) through the power of ontological integrality (conviction, darshana). This would be one way of attempting a cross-cultural hermeneutics of knowledge which relocates metaphysics in experience.

DB

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Deb,

So if our mode of being influences our seeing which then influences our thinking, and it is the practice of inner technologies e.g. tantra,yoga,
which opens one to ones original mode of being then:

How does one seperate out pure being from those unconscious social formulations of being in the world which also underlie both our seeing and thinking, (eg phenomenology and epistemology)?

And here I will instance Bourdieu and his notion of habitus ( I will place a wikipedia
reference below) So if not only a pure ontology but a habitus as well, underlies our perceptions and actions in the world, does Darshan or direct seeing resist or dissolve habitus?
(e.g. even the habitus which is internalized from
the doxa of Indic discourse and its methodology of darshanic seeing?)

In other words are these inner technologies antecedent of Vedantic social constructions? or is there something parculiar to its methodology which can penetrate its own partcular cultural doxa, to presence an authenticity of being which could be universally interpreted?

Is Indic darshan discourse and its resultant technologies somehow resistant to what in Althusser's terminology is the interpellation of a subject? or the assertion that it has already socially constructed an imaginary ideological subject to which it addresses itself?

If I understand you correctly the Vedantic meditative practices which transmit the experience of ontological integrity would have to express a hermenuetic of knowledge which would resist any particular cultural doxa and could be universally represented.

from wiki:
Bourdieu's influential concept of habitus was developed to resolve the paradox of the human sciences: objectifying the subjective. It can be defined as a system of dispositions: lasting, acquired schemes of perception, thought and action. The individual agent develops these dispositions in response to the objective conditions they encounter, but they remain subjective things. In this way Bourdieu theorizes the inculcation of objective social structures into the subjective, mental experience of agents. Having thereby absorbed objective social structure into a personal set of cognitive and somatic dispositions, and the subjective structures of action of the agent then being commensurate with the objective structures of the social field, doxa emerge. Doxa are the fundamental, deep-founded, unthought beliefs, taken as self-evident, that inform an agent's actions and thoughts within a particular field. Doxa tends to favor the particular social arrangement of the field, thus privledging the dominant and taking their position of dominance as self-evident and universally favorable. Therefore, the categories of understanding and perception that constitute a habitus, being congruous with the objective organization of the field, tend to reproduce the very structures of the field. Bourdieu thus sees habitus as the key to social reproduction because it is central to generating and regulating the practices that make up social life.

approach to sociology:
Bourdieu insists on the importance of a reflexive sociology in which sociologists must at all times conduct their research with conscious attention to the effects of their own position, their own set of internalized structures, and how these are likely to distort or prejudice their objectivity. The sociologist, according to Bourdieu, must engage in a "sociology of sociology" so as not to unwittingly attribute the object of observation the characteristics of the subject.

For Bourdieu, sociology was a combatant effort at exposing the unthought structures that underly the somatic and cognitive practices of social agents. He saw sociology as a means of combating symbolic violence and exposing those unseen areas where one could be free.

Rich

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Rich,

Somehow, your comment did not offer a reply option. Nor, I suspect, will this present one. To reply, if you wish, go back to the last comment before this which has a Reply button, and post your comment there. It will find its location below this one.

Heidegger's ontology of "thrownness", Boudrieu's habitus, Althusser's interpellation, all point to the same thing - that we are born into a world not of our own making, which is given to us and into which we are socialized without knowing the difference bwtween conditioning and choice. This habitus, ontology, interpellated reality is our culture - set into place through historical processes of discourse. But culture, though it may be given, is not fixed. It is in constant change, and we are the social agents of that change. Change in the fundamental assumptions and discursive "seeds" (doxa, memes) of a culture lead to a changed habitus. In Foucault's language, history is marked by sudden changes of this kind, which are not entirely causally describable. He calls them epistemes. The "modern episteme" is fundamentally different from the "episteme of the Renaissance." He begins his book "The Order of Things" by talking of the change from the one to the other. But this change may be more properly and priorly seen as a change in ontology, as a different "disclosure of Being" (in Heidegge's language). As recognized both by Heidegger and Foucault, such changes cannot entirely be explained, but social processes are certainly involved in their occurrence. These processes are partly immanent (transformations within the culture through critical and creative processes which "dissolve doxa", as you put it) and partly through alien culture contact and other incalculable factors (and thus, transcendent). The conditionings of doxa then become revealed as choices or else they may transform themselves (much as viruses can do) and continue in new more resistant forms until forced once more into consciousness.

The ontic technologies of Vedanta are certainly prior to any cultural doxa formation, but the Vedantic cultural complex was created to facilitate the operation of such technologies from within its habitus. This is the subtext of Sri Aurobindo's "Foundations of Indian Culture." However, it is not dependent upon this habitus (whose outer forms keep changing unpredictably and not always for the best) and can and needs to be socialized through other cultural representations in times of worldwide epistemic/ontological revision. This also I believe is Sri Aurobindo's subtext and his social text. It indicates, as Rod has hinted, at a foundationalism based in experience - which, perhaps, phenomenology, as a cultural revisionism of western metaphysics can facilitate as aprt of a cross-cultural hermenutics leading towards social and individual (ontic and ontological) freedom.

Debashish

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Deb wrote:

The ontic technologies of Vedanta are certainly prior to any cultural doxa formation, but the Vedantic cultural complex was created to facilitate the operation of such technologies from within its habitus.<

IMO yes the ontic technologies of Vedanta, Buddhism, and some other spiritual traditions are specifically designed to penetrate doxa, and
to dissolve ones own habitus, but here is the rub,
in that one does emerge from these meditative (doxa free) states they are so to speak extra-normal

The problem as I see it is how to stabilize these states in consciousness, before one falls back into
the doxa of the tradition from which one began
the praxis. Unless this is addressed and states of consciousness assimilated by a sufficient
critical mass of the population, I am fairly skeptical about the psychological conditions being met which would be necessary to bring about the Ideal of Human Unity, which began this train of comments.

rc

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Rich,

Unless a social habitus supports an ontic possibility, it is bound to be extra-normal. But closer consideration of this proposition may reveal that a kind of extra-normality may be the desirable condition for a habitus which socializes a transitional humanity. The Vedantic cultural complex (I include early Buddhist societies in this since imo Buddha operates within a Vedantic discursive formation) socializes an extra-normal outsiderism in its samsara-sannyasa dialectic. But this outsiderism is also central to its habitus, a transcendence that is powerfully active as an immanence in the historical revisions of the habitus for both its polarities, sannyasa and samsara (eg. the discussion of sannyasa and tyaga in the Gita, which Sri Aurobindo explicates so brilliantly in The Essays on the Gita or in the forms of Indian creativity or even polity as he brings out in The Foundations of Indian Culture). But today, this discusrive dialectic itself seems bankrupt due to the alien cultural hegemony of the west (earlier called colonialism and presently known as globalization). (I have a prpaer on the processes of this epistemic transformation in India, which perhaps I will post in SCIY). Moreover, while it operated vitally (and even now operates subliminally in spite of contrary appearances) in the Indian cultural habitus, its leanings predominated towards a negation of samsara, or saw it at best as a window to transcendence through sannyasa. However, a habitus-transcendence dialectic may be socialzed in other ways or forms to be more creatively transformative of the habitus, an immanence of technologies of transcendence which could be the basis for constant revision for the habitus. This would require alternate social formulations, or discursive interchanges and relations which allow such a socialization and set up such a habitus (as a new phenomenological foundationalism). The global habitus which defines our ontic boudaries today does so economically through the corporation and the market, culturally through the media and intellectually through the academy. Together they determine our social (in)habitation. To arrive at a new habitus which socializes technologies of trancendence as part of its own self-definition as perpetual mutation, we need alternate forms of enterprise, alternate relations of social and material exchange, alternate forms of dissemintaion, presentation and reception of culture and alternate academic boundaries, vocabularies and environments. These cannot be throught of in isolation but as overlapping categories dialectically related to the present discursive forms and transforming them through these relations. Tagore's Shantiniketan, Sri Aurobindo's Pondicherry and the Mother's Auroville are all such alternative experiments in potential. You or I are free to start our own. An experiment in alternate habitus is valid only to the degree of its creative power to stretch the boundaries of hegemonic discourse - and thus, on the real-time individual and social praxis of its inhabitants, not merely as isolated individuals or social islands but as dialogic agents in the world creatively institutiing new interpellation systems. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

DB

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Deb wrote:

The global habitus which defines our ontic boudaries today does so economically through the corporation and the market, culturally through the media and intellectually through the academy. Together they determine our social (in)habitation. To arrive at a new habitus which socializes technologies of trancendence as part of its own self-definition as perpetual mutation, we need alternate forms of enterprise, alternate relations of social and material exchange, alternate forms of dissemintaion, presentation and reception of culture and alternate academic boundaries, vocabularies and environments.<

Well said, and if I can reformulate this without mischaracterizing it :

1) The inner technologies of transformation in the traditional samsara-sanyasa dichotomy enable one to
transcend one's own embeddedness in cultural habitus
because its goal leads to one renouncing ones life within a specific culture and thus skillfully avoids the doxological formulations of the culture, because one no longer engages in the world by virtue of it.

But if we are talking about changing the world and aiming toward an ideal of human unity then one who takes the path of transcendence must necessarily remain socially embedded. And therefore the need is there to create social institutions which can support individual transformation while resisting the ideological inheritence of historical and cultural dogmatisms.

I certainly agree here, and thats why to my mind the belief that homo sapiens will undergo some major spiritual transformation solely dependent on the individual transformation of a few to me smacks of magical thinking!
(And its why I resist the doxa of Auroville or those in the Ashram in what appears to me, their wholehearted acceptence of the enlightenment ideal of a solely "progressive evolution" which will in spite of world events and global and local institutions produce certain individuals who will spiritualize the species)

Now if those few individuals who are transformed are in real positions of power,say over major institutions such as a president or prime minister and can initiate change therein, well then it seems more plausible to me. IMO there is a necessary interdependece between individuals and society and I think this is true in Sri Aurobindo's formulation.
For example, if we can believe Norman Dowsett when he related what SA told him in 1950 (that if a nuclear war would break out it could set his work back thousands of years) from such statements and the actions SA took in the world (working for indian independence, working against the fascist) it is clear that he does not see sadhaks as acting in isolation from the world, and that yes changes in society are also important in facilitating the goals, which he urged those following him to aspire

rc

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Rich,

You say:

"But if we are talking about changing the world and aiming toward an ideal of human unity then one who takes the path of transcendence must necessarily remain socially embedded. And therefore the need is there to create social institutions which can support individual transformation while resisting the ideological inheritence of historical and cultural dogmatisms.

"I certainly agree here, and thats why to my mind the belief that homo sapiens will undergo some major spiritual transformation solely dependent on the individual transformation of a few to me smacks of magical thinking!
(And its why I resist the doxa of Auroville or those in the Ashram in what appears to me, their wholehearted acceptence of the enlightenment ideal of a solely "progressive evolution" which will in spite of world events and global and local institutions produce certain individuals who will spiritualize the species)

"Now if those few individuals who are transformed are in real positions of power,say over major institutions such as a president or prime minister and can initiate change therein, well then it seems more plausible to me. IMO there is a necessary interdependece between individuals and society and I think this is true in Sri Aurobindo's formulation. ..."

Do you really believe that you can so tritely encapsulate the "doxa of Auroville?" Do you imagine you've spent sufficient time residing at Auroville to arrive at such a sanctimonious judgement? My own experience of having stayed there for 3 months/year for the past 3 years is honestly that I've met only a couple of AV residents whom I'd describe as having a "wholehearted acceptence of the enlightenment ideal of a solely 'progressive evolution'." And the other residents smile tolerantly when confronted with those few who profess such an innocent belief. Most of the Aurovilians I've met are far too busy dealing with day-to-day survival and the intricate sociological complexities.

Auroville and its residents become less & less amenable to glib generalizations the better I get to know them. Imo, there's an incredibly complex process underway there with constant interaction with outside society, both via a host of formal arrangements and informal influences via AV residents traveling to and from their home cultures, via the thousands of visitors from many different countries, and of course via the deep interactions & involvement with the surrounding villages.

I think Auroville is one of those rare places where there is in fact a kind of magical 'darshana' available to those who are open to it. I think what's happening at AV could well have real influence on the "presidents & prime ministers" whom you say "occupy the real positions of power." Do you honestly feel that you personally increase this possibility by academic criticisms from the sidelines Rich? Are you applying the methods of cultural criticism to your personal 'habitus' and 'ontic conditioning.'

I'm with Margaret Mead on this one. How did she put it? Ok, here's her quote:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

She sometimes replaced the words "thoughtful, committed " with the word "caring."

~ ron

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Ron:
Do you really believe that you can so tritely encapsulate the "doxa of Auroville?"

Rich:
Well what you call trite, I may think of as noteworthy and in need of further examination, review, and deconstruction but we can agree to disagree.

But in short; Yes!!! And since I did do it, I guess I can say: This I Do Believe!


(btw to put this in proper context I will refer you back to my first or second comment in this train, in which I specifically define what I refer to the doxa of AV regards human evolution. I identify RH as my source. I do this not only because of my respect for his own judgment and scholarship, but as I think you would agree he is certainly one of the most experienced, best informed, and most articulate Aurovillians. Although you are right perhaps everyone there does not believe this, I think Rod’s interpretation which valorizes homo sapiens evolution in the township as “progressing linearly” toward some far off (or near off depending on your timeline) mystic status of liberation, regardless of world history, would be accepted by many there.

Now maybe I have mischaracterized RH futurology of AV, but in my understanding it goes something like this that: in 50 or even 100 years, maybe 300 years at the latest, the ones who are doing the authentic practice of integral yoga individually will (just as Vernor Vingt's machines after the singularity) suddenly "wake up"!

I am a bit more fuzzy on RH’s take on the institutions at AV at the time of the singularity, but I do not think there is necessarily a cybernetic or positively reinforcing relationship required for this to occur? In other words it can happen in isolation from the AV social institutions, which must not necessarily be so mystically transformed.

Ron:
Do you imagine you've spent sufficient time residing at Auroville to arrive at such a sanctimonious judgement?

Rich
well lets see,

First off: what you call sanctimonious, I might consider reasoned and well thought out.

Secondly I also say (with perhaps slight variation) that this is the doxa of the Ashram as well, so feel free to call me on that sanctimonious judgment as well or equally attach your irritation to that cause. But as I said we can agree to disagree (which is actually the integral thing to do)

But in answer to your question:

Yes I do think I can make such a judgment.

As for my resume: I think my immersion in the IY community for 25 years, my commitment to it, coupled with my visits to AV, and the multiple narratives disclosed to me by many Aurovillians who have lived many years there, does give me a somewhat privilege position in making this judgment.. (that is I am probably a bit brighter on the issue than the average philosophically bent schmuck)

If we accept the logic behind your question and given a different context: I would be wrong to believe that Israel is “not” the promised land because I have not set foot there

Ron:
Auroville and its residents become less & less amenable to glib generalizations

Rich:
Glib generalizations huh?

What you call a glib generalization, I might call a deconstruction of doxology!
But again we may have different perspectives, due to our different levels of investments in that specific Township.


Ron:
I think Auroville is one of those rare places where there is in fact a kind of magical 'darshana' available to those who are open to it. I think what's happening at AV could well have real influence on the "presidents & prime ministers" whom you say "occupy the real positions of power."

Rich:
Well where did I say this was not possible????
Did I say that nothing would make me buy in to RH's
articulation of AV's futurology???


Ron
Do you honestly feel that you personally increase this possibility by academic criticisms from the sidelines Rich?

Rich
So I guess your saying just shut up, don’t critically think culture, or give an opinion not sanctioned by the sacred text, just do your yoga, and it will all be alright. Where have I heard that one before?


rc

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Rich,

First, I apologize for my using terms such as "trite," "sanctimonius," and "glib" to characterize your description of Auroville's doxa. Please know that my comments were made within the context of ongoing high admiration for the quality and real wisdom of the dialogue you, DB, and RH have been having here.

I admit to a personal investment in the possible contributions that Auroville, and other similar experiments, may make to an evolutionary future for humanity consistent with Sri Aurobindo's vision. Mea culpa of an inappropriate reaction to what I felt was your inaccurate characterization of the attitude of many of the AV residents I've come to know personally.

My bias wrt AV is that I have great respect for the inspiring personal efforts and indeed sacrifices that many Aurovilians have been making over so many years. Their actual experience of participating at AV is dramatic proof of the *non-linear* ups and downs of AV's development. Its (and sometimes their) very survival has often been in doubt. They know very well that nothing is guaranteed, that it takes huge personal effort to move the situation ahead; this fact is I think an antidote to overly naive "magical thinking."

Yet, in spite of the chaos and craziness all at AV need to frequently confront, they also keep the possibility alive that their efforts (along with many others) may in fact contribute to a transformation of the human species toward a more integrated and transcendent state of being. And that such beings can in fact undertake the long term task of divinizing materiality itself. Without some foundational belief ("faith") like this, what would inspire ordinary people to even make the attempt?

I like Sri Aurobindo's definiton of faith:

"Faith is the soul's witness
to something not yet manifested,
achieved or realized..."

This is why I resist the idea that all such faith is somehow illusionary or naive. Where is the line where skepticism becomes self-defeating?

~ ron

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Ron

Your support of AV is admirable and I admire your defense of her, and of all those there doing the hard work. Believe it or not I also feel compelled to assist in the effort. If not I surely would not have spent 80 hours or so on the KC project. So yes, I certainly think AV a most admirable institution and in whatever way I can I do support it.

The wider issues I was trying to bring to center stage, even though it may have been in my typically texas inspired irascible manner were:

1) that the "great transformation" (IMO) will not happen in isolation from institional change, both are interwined, both are necessary.

2) a caution about extrapolating our mentalized notions of linear progressive timelines into the future, when by its nature the future is non-linear, complex, and most unpredictible.



rich

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Hi Rich,

First let me say that I'm very pleased to hear that you "...certainly think AV a most admirable institution and in whatever way I can I do support it ..." I had begun to wonder about that, so I'm pleased that I don't have to further justify my personal fascination and commitment to it.

You also say:

"The wider issues I was trying to bring to center stage ... were:

1) that the "great transformation" (IMO) will not happen in isolation from institional change, both are interwined, both are necessary.

2) a caution about extrapolating our mentalized notions of linear progressive timelines into the future, when by its nature the future is non-linear, complex, and most unpredictible. ..."

Well, I certainly agree with both concerns. I think my reaction re your statement about the "doxa of Auroville" was that I thought you were implying that most Aurovilians don't understand these points.

My reply was that my impression is that AVians in fact do understand this more than most Westerners, because those who have lived at AV for any length of time have repeatedly experienced the "nonlinear, complex and unpredictable" nature of reality in having to deal with the chaotic embodiment of those very attributes in the ups and downs of nearly everything about AV itself. To live at Auroville is to have a visceral connection with the strangeness of reality and the absurdity of many of our most cherished "mental" notions of it.

The "institutions" of AV, such as they are, are a constant reminder of the ongoing dilemma of how to create institutions that actually represent the interests of such a diverse group of creative individuals. And negotiating AV's intricate relations with the surrounding villages, Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, & various branches of India's national government requires a political awareness and wisdom beyond what most of us normally experience. The whole setup of AV enforces practical concerns and involvement and ongoing co-evolution with a myriad of institutions that is another aspect, imo, of the extraordinary experiment and learning opportunity unfolding there.

All this is part of the wonder of AV and motivates my admiration of those AVians who continue to flow with the very unpredictability of it all. I'm not sure I would have the fortitude to hang in there like they do without spending most of my time back here in my comfortable sanctuary in "utopian" Marina del Rey.

In an earlier comment in this long thread, Debashish noted:

"...An experiment in alternate habitus is valid only to the degree of its creative power to stretch the boundaries of hegemonic discourse - and thus, on the real-time individual and social praxis of its inhabitants, not merely as isolated individuals or social islands but as dialogic agents in the world creatively instituting new interpellation systems."

Imo, that beautifully summarizes what the world now needs. And for me, Auroville is the best place which I've so far found where I can actively participate in such a necessary process. It's also why I think this conversation on SCIY, with our present thousands of readers around the world, is worth putting serious effort into.

~ ron

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Deb & Rich,

In order to keep up with this remarkable dialogue, and given that I have no formal background in philosophy, I often need to look up the meanings of some of the technical terms you're using. An example is the term "foundationist," which Debashish first uses in his above posting, and which Rich picks up on in his later replies. Wikipedia defines it as a variant on the term "Foundationism," which it says was coined by the popular US Science Fiction TV series "Babylon 5," which I doubt is the meaning you intended.

Wikipedia also lists the term "Foundationalism," which it defines as: "...any theory in epistemology (typically, theories of justification, but also of knowledge) that holds that beliefs are justified (known, etc.) based on what are called basic beliefs (also commonly called foundational beliefs). ..."

I'm assuming that the latter terms, "Foundationalism/foundational/foundationalist," are what you're referring to, correct?

~ ron

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Ron,

Yes, by Wikipedia's definitions, it is "foundationalism" (and its derivatives) which I meant (though many texts still refer to this as foundationism).

Debashish

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Now that we have clarified the definition, it might be worthwhile to consider what it is, with respect to both postmodern criticism and our fundamental assumptions about knowledge, logos, darshan, etc. We assume that something like direct intuitive knowledge is possible because there is a fundamental relationship between the idea and its material forms, knowing and being. This assumption is fundamental to both western metaphysics and the darshana systems of the east. It may be a necessary assumption if truth-knowledge, vijnyana, gnosis is a real possibility and there is more to human consciousness than relativistic subjectivity. But then there are the problems of systems of knowledge constructed upon foundations that are themselves false, leading to false systems and values. That seems to be the main concern of critical postmodernism and it is an important one. The relationship between the theories of onto-theology, differance, and supramental gnosis seems to rest on a necessary foundationalism without which there would be no hope.

Rod,

Well put and true. "Foundationalism" usually refers to metaphysical assumptions about reality without the possibility of their direct experience (darshan). In the western rationalist tradition, speculative metaphysics or the cosmologies of mathematical physics mark the limit of our apprehension of reality. These are foundationalist, because there is no way, in this categoric frame, of knowing whether these are true or false. Kant is the first in the western canon of thinkers to point this out, which is why he terms reality as transcendental - that it, its truth will always escape our knowledge. Hence, phenomenology in the western canon, is a shift away from such foundationalism and a turn instead towards direct experience. But as you point out, phenomenology "assume(s) that something like direct intuitive knowledge is possible because there is a fundamental relationship between the idea and its material forms, knowing and being." This leads to a different foundational basis, one based on experience.

To Indic epistemology, reality is knowable through direct experience (pratyaksha) or knowledge by identity (yoga, vijnana), so here too foundationalisms can only be based on realization(darshana) and tested empirically and validated or challenged through realization (darshana).

DB

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It certainly seems ironic that in 1936 Heidegger wrote his most spiritual text on Schelling's Treatise on the essence of freedom, in which are published also his notes for lectures on this subject between 1941 and 1943. He coins here the term systasis, later adopted by Gebser. And he says for example, The system is innermost Being, the standing together of beings as a whole, where they are to endure the most extreme discord...the good is the evil. and he cooments on Schelling's virtual silence for fifteen years after writing this treatise that it indicated the utmost integrity, to be unable to speak further from the center of being and freedom that he had achieved in this meditation. Heidegger is sitting in the Black Forest writing about and contemplating freedom and being, and he mentions that the biographical facts of schelling's or any philosopher's life are irrelevant, while in 1938 Henry ford received the Silver Cross from Hitler, Hitler and Roosevelt were having amicable exchanges about the state of Europe, and Dirac and Shrodinger, et al, were preparing the atom bomb for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Isn't "integrity" rather historically ubiquitous? Where was Karl jaspers hiding out?

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wasn't Jasper's last seen hiding out in that box with Schrodinger's Cat?

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Deb, Rich, & Rod:

While we're on the subject of definitions, have you thought about contributing some of your insightful ideas to Wikipedia itself? I think it's a pretty simple procedure to become one its editors. This could be another way (besides SCIY) of introducing your important perspectives to a global audience, since Wikipedia is now by far the most used encyclopedic and dictionary reference in history, with hundreds of thousands of accesses per day:

"Currently Wikipedia has more than 5 million articles in many languages, including more than 1.4 million in the English-language version. There are 229 language editions of Wikipedia, sixteen of which have more than 50,000 articles each... Since inception, Wikipedia has steadily risen in popularity,[2] and has spawned several sister projects. According to Alexa, Wikipedia ranks among the top 20 most visited sites..."

Perhaps this is an alternative way for having one's perspectives become "foundational?" ;-)

~ ron

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A wonderful crosscultural appropriation of terms; transformation of the habitus, transformation of the doxa - the supreme deconstruction and hermeneutical transformation. The supreme sacrifice. Is there time? Is it important enough?

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I certainly think so ...

~ ron

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I'm reluctantly taking the bait. And here I go:

Concepts like “the interpellation of the subject” and “the structure of the social field” do not adequately describe the discourse of Sri Aurobindo. Nor do the concepts of individual discourse being merely an intersection of social and cultural streams of doxa, or of intellectual formulations being necessarily preceded by perceptions. The question as to whether Sri Aurobindo’s discourse “fits into post-structuralist discourse” is simply not a question, it’s a mistaken and confused stab at making some kind of sense out of incommensurables. Post-structuralism is a description of texts, and as such can be applied to a kind of analysis of SA’s texts, as to anyone else’s. Phenomenology is a theory of mental processes of thought and speech, and as such may be applied to the phenomena of spiritual consciousness such as that which features prominently in the writing of Sri Aurobindo. But he does not thereby become a post-structuralist or a phenomenologist, and his statements do not thereby become more meaningful or valid. Why should he “fit” into either of those categories of understanding or discourse? Does he need some form of cross-cultural doxa to validate his statements and contextualize his views? Any half-baked amateur of ideas can waste time trying to tie the wagging tails of such imaginary animals together. But that doesn’t make either good sense or decent scholarship. It’s just a form of self-stimulating irrelevance. How, for example, (or why for that matter) would such a critique deal meaningfully with a statement like this:

‘It is difficult for us to conceive in theory or admit as a practical possibility the transformation of the human mentality I have suggested as a change that would naturally take place under the lead of the supramental truth-consciousness, because our notions about mind are rooted in an experience of human mentality in a world which starts from inconscience and proceeds through a first almost complete nescience and a slowly lessening ignorance towards a high degree but always incomplete scope and imperfect method of only partially equipped knowledge which does not serve fully the needs of a consciousness always pushing towards its own immeasurably distant absolute.’

The only context in which such a statement makes sense is one that is itself beyond mentality, one that is integrally magical-mystical-rational-supramental. And so he says, for that kind of understanding to emerge:

‘The embodied being upon earth would have to rise out of the domination over it of its veils of mind, life and body into the full consciousness and possession of its spiritual reality and its nature would have to be lifted out of the consciousness and power of consciousness proper to a mental, vital and physical being into a greater consciousness and greater power of being and the larger and freer life of the spirit. …But this again could not be if mind, life and body were not taken up and transformed by a state of being and a force of being superior to them, a power of Supermind as much above our incomplete mental nature as that is above the nature of animal life and animated Matter…
The descent of the Supermind will bring to one who receives it and is fulfilled in the truth-consciousness all the possibilities of the life divine.’

Now we can sit in the rooms of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, as I did just last week for over an hour, and be literally flooded with divine consciousness-force. The revelation of its actuality, and not just its theoretical possibility, enters forcefully into one’s consciousness and into one’s physical nature, and this “darshan” becomes a direct seeing and knowing of the reality of the supramental truth-consciousness and force, of its self-nature, and of the immortality of those who are able to so directly transmit it from where they stand, on the other side of this dream of life. That may be termed magical, as may the “belief” that this phenomenon will lead, as indeed they said it would, to a transformation of those in whom it descends, and that such a descent will in turn lead eventually to a transformation of the instruments and structures of our mental, vital, physical, social and cultural existence. In those last prose writings of Sri Aurobindo, as in his last and more powerfully revelatory poetic writings, what we have are formulations in language of a consciousness, a seeing but also a living force of consciousness, that does not fit into our descriptive mental categories. And so it is no big surprise that one may be at a loss as to how these more-than-language/cultural formulations might fit into such a valid and important schemata of ignorance as post-modernism, even at its most brilliant and best.

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I hope I have not conveyed the impression of trying to show that "Sri Aurobindo’s discourse “fits into post-structuralist discourse.”" (I also hope I have not used the term "discourse" in the caricatured manner as in the above comment). If I have (either of the above) I apologize. The dialog with Rich simply began with the inadequacy of western social theory to allow for a supra-rational basis of human unity, not with trying to justify such a basis (or specifically "Sri Aurobindo's discourse" - whatever that may mean) through "post-structural discourse." My contention was that there were cultural doxa behind this inadequacy and that other vocabularies had been developed in "Indic discourse" which were more adequate to the task. This calls for cross-cultural hermeneutics and a possible transformation of the doxa of contemporary social sciences through such a dialog. If this is helpful or not or to whom is another matter. I happen to think it is helpful in the task of paving the way to more adequate social solutions in a wider context. If the institutional apparatus ("discourse") of the time is such that a majority of people learn only Zulu and if one knows that an important solution of some kind has been developed in the English language, it stands to reason to translate this offering into Zulu. The very attempt of translation is a cross-cultural hermeneutic process which ends up questioning, illuminating and transforming doxa.

DB

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Seems like we are following the usual course of misunderstanding inherent in considering Sri Aurobindo's writing in the same conversation in which other methods of intellectual inquiry are probed.

I guess I should also make it clear that I understood this conversation going two places:

1) To identify a manner of discourse which could be fromulated to allow the presentation of Sri Aurobindo's system of integral yoga and transformation, in a language which could be legitimized in academic situ. It was in no means an effort at reducing Sri Aurobindo's message to criterion defined by postmodernist discourse .

In this respect I do find some break throughs were (are) achieved (at least from my limited vantage point)
The issues Deb raised of cross cultural hermeneutic arising from the Indic darshanic seeing, and the references to comments by Gayatri Spivak about legitimizing subaltern belief systems by accepting them on their own terms
was for me highly insightful, and I think a small opening from which one can proceed in this direction.
(To me finding such methods of cross-cultural intersubjective discourse regards the yoga is a raison d'etre of SCIY)

2) To address the problem of the reification and sedimentation of Sri Aurobindo's work in current doxa
pervading the institutions which are founded on his vision. In this regards yes, I think it is important to subject the doxology which is now assciated with his teachings, to the methods of deconstruction.
Unless one can legitimize these critical methods of inquiry
within SA's institutions, my own belief is that they will continue on their way in creating a new religion. A religion whose metaphysical presentations will lend themselves only to interpretation by those with status and power in said institutions which are cloaked in their own cultural agenda. Hinduvta is one example. On the other hand the train of this conversation can also be useful to interupt and correct interpretations by contemporary commentators on consciousness like Ken Wilber who also cloaks his understanding of Sri Aurobindo in an academic language which appropriate many post-modernist references. I certainly dont think anyone here wants to leave this job up to him. And finally there is a need to address the mischaracterizations of leftist (and or/ marxist) who deliberately falsify SA works to set up their straw man thesis of communalism in India. The work of Jyotirmaya Sharma falls into this category
(although I do not wish to again appear sanctimonious, in my pronouncements I also see this as a founding vision of SCIY)

rich

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by Rod on Thu 26 Oct 2006 06:29 AM PDT |  Permanent Link

DB and RC,
If your intentions are, respectively: 1) a cross-cultural hermeneutic process which ends up questioning, illuminating and transforming doxa (DB), and 2) to subject the doxology which is now associated with his (Sri Aurobindo’s) teachings, to the methods of deconstruction (RC), among other perhaps equally worthy and necessary aims, such as translating Sri Aurobindo into languages others can understand and studying those languages critically so that they may be used intelligibly (such as poststructural criticism, phenomenology and deconstruction), then you might as well begin with the texts that have been created already by this discussion.
Terms and concepts such as “Sri Aurobindo’s master-idea” referring to the principle of society moving toward global unity because of the inherent Oneness of existence that evolves through temporal multiplicities, or “what Sri Aurobindo does to the ideals and assumptions of the Enlightenment - appropriate them to the experiential praxis of a psychic and supramental integrality pushing towards the unification of psychology, culture and world,” formulated by DB, seem to offer perfect examples of the doxa to be illumined and transformed, and the ideas to be translated into the critical language/thought of postmodern discourse.
A question asked by Rich is especially pertinent: how does one unify the psychology of the individual after Foucault who basically says that an individual psychology does not exist, rather the individual is the sum of a number of multiple, often competing discourses, which have been formulated by experts and internalized within the psychology of the individual. Of course the statement itself is contradictory, because individual psychology has to exist if it is going to internalize multiple discourses. But what it indicates, as clarified by Deb, is that Foucault’s critique is about “the author function” as defined by the critic – what we think of and understand the author to be doing/making. It is not about the author per se or his message. It is about our construction of what is written, from a broad consideration of all the contexts (beliefs, assumptions, doxa) that we and the author may bring to an interpretation of the text. How can there be an individual, other than a kind of synthesizing agent/witness, who matters much in such a multilayered context?
Nonetheless, Sri Aurobindo has claimed a divine sanction for his work, and he has written thousands of pages of primarily metaphysical and psychological statements based on a firm foundation of fundamental concepts and assumptions, such as an evolving cosmological order of distinct principles and planes of consciousness, and the prophetically revealed knowledge of supramental truth-consciousness, immanent and yet destined to be realized by human beings. Moreover, he has prescribed a process of psychological transformation based on bakti (devotion to a divine person), tapas (personal yogic effort), and shastra (study of sacred texts). The first things that have to be said about Sri Aurobindo’s work, as he would agree, are that these texts are characteristically foundational and contain all of the classical elements of a religious system. It will there be very difficult to avoid facing the fact that the evolving social context and doxa that contextualize this work are not characterized by impartial critical or academic discourse, but by religious faith and practice. What other meaning could the phrase “Sri Aurobindo’s master-idea” possibly have?

RH

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RC/DB- on evolution and human unity

Regarding the question of linearity and the evolution of consciousness, raised by RC, it is perhaps necessary to point out that “linearity” itself is merely a mental abstraction which, in every case, should not be taken as a literal description of real world things or events. If we plot the position of a planet in relation to the sun at a specific time each year, we may derive a line graph that is a linear interpretation of a very complex set of movements. If we describe the evolution of civilization from family units to tribes, to villages, clans, city states, nations, empires, and their respective forms of organization, etc. we get a kind of linear description of a very unpredictable pattern of emergent structures. Similarly, when Sri Aurobindo says that the descent of the supermind will bring about a general harmonization and uplift of humanity via the emergence of a “mind of light” leading to the eventual manifestation of a new supramental species in matter, this prediction may form a linear picture in the mind of someone inclined to such reductive formations. That of course does not mean that the process of emergence along the predicted trajectory will not be unimaginably complex, especially since it says nothing whatsoever about the social structures that will be produced by the changes of consciousness. If we are predisposed to think that a certain desirable change of such structures may be either an important condition or an important consequence of the evolution of consciousness, then we may construct a graph, linear, circular, spiral, chaotic, or whatever shape we like, to symbolize out notions, but this will still not give us any certainty about how things will emerge, which is why Sri Aurobindo said