Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

Rooted within language, even in its most holistic form, is the pregnant push towards sequencing, sparing, punctuation -- differentiation in time and space. In the Vākyapadīya, the Śabdatattva, symbolized by the seed sound AUM, [48] is sequenced by the power of time into the various recentions of the Veda and all spoken words. [49] For Derrida the image is one of the sign, as the linguistic whole, being differentiated by spacing (on the page) and interval or pause (in speaking) into articulated meaning and sound-image. It is the actualizing of this inherent force for differentiation that enables language to function. But it is, at the same time, the limit of language. As Derrida puts it, since a sign (the unity of signified and signifier) cannot be produced within the plentitude of absolute presence, there is, therefore, no full speech, no absolute truth or full meaning. [50] In the words of Lao Tzu, "The tao that can be spoken is not the eternal tao" [51] Or as Hegel once put it, "When speaks the soul, alas, the soul no longer speaks." [52] But whereas Lao Tzu and Hegel are mourning the inability of manifested language to make present the soul or the tao, Derrida and Bhartṛhari emphasize the positive contribution of articulated speech. The sphoṭa and the sign (Derrida's whole) are manifested, and in the dynamic tension of that manifestation lies truth.

Rather than arriving at a skepticism of language, namely, that it is devoid of any truth content (the conclusion of the Buddhists and many modern skeptical critics of language), truth is seen to be contained in the very dynamics of language itself. Thus Derrida's thesis that there is no referent outside of the text is not as nihilistic as it at first sounds, and Bhartṛhari's sphoṭa is not as artificial an entity as much Indian philosophy has assumed.

In Vākyapadīya I:5, there are two terms which Bhartṛhari uses to describe the Veda: it is the prāptyupāya or the means for the attainment of Brahman; and it is the anukāra or symbolization of Brahman. For now let us confine our attention to the term anukāra, which comes from the root kṛ, "to do" or "to make" and suggests the dynamic activity of the Word-Principle. The Vṛtti elucidates the verse by stating that the activity of the Vedic seers in speaking the mantras is the criterion case of word-making activity. The term mantra, notes Aurobindo, signifies a "crossing over" through thought (root man, "to think," and tṛ, "to cross over") from the Absolute or Unmanifested to the human experience of manifested language. [53] As pure Sanskrit language, the mantras are conjunctions of certain powerful seed syllables which induce a particular rhythm or vibration in the psychosomatic structure of consciousness and arouse a corresponding psychic state. Such seed sounds can be differentiated in a great variety of ways producing an immense progeny of language. The evocative power is at its height before the mantras become too locked into particular forms of articulation. Poetry is at its peak before language becomes too fully elaborated. Then it must be deconstructed or evolved backwards to recover its original power for signification. Articulation is necessary, but the further it goes the greater the loss of freedom and power within language.

This also seems to be what Derrida means when he refers to the prose book as a corpse of language which must be exited from or transcended [54] -- the delimiting of the multisignificant roots has been pursued to its logical conclusion, and the power of the word has been exhausted. The aim of the project of deconstruction, says Derrida, agreeing with Aurobindo, is to get back to metaphoric, poetic language, where the power for signification has not yet been used up. [55] Bhartṛhari also reminds us that as language divides and separates, this necessary process in the end can become a source of confusion. The process of difference, pushed to its logical conclusion, produces such a plethora of speaking accents that communication of knowledge is obstructed. [56] Unlike Derrida and Aurobindo, Bhartṛhari's solution is not to deconstruct or reverse the process of differentiation, but to control it by the imposition of strict grammatical rules (the science of the Grammarians) by which the power of the root mantras to convey knowledge and action will not be obfuscated. [57] Bhartṛhari, along with the other Grammarians, claims to have uncovered the pure forms of the correct unfolding of the patterns of differentiation inherent in the Śabdatattva and symbolized (anukāra) in criterion form in the initial speaking of the Vedas... [58] more »

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Wednesday, June 25

Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault

by Rich on June 25, 2008 02:56PM (PDT)

The chapter on the philological method of the Vedas in The Secret of the Vedas is a fascinating one in which Sri Aurobindo traces the genealogy of Sanskrit back to its origins in onomatopoeia. If correct words at the dawn of language acquisition were not simply arbitrary signifiers chosen conventionally to represent things but corresponded directly to the signified as a natural (human) sound articulation of the phenomena itself. That is there is an actual resemblance between the sound vibration of the word and the phenomena itself. From these ur-utterances are derived a small number of roots in which the subsequent nominative conventions and evolution of vocabularies can be located.

In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault arrives as a similar conclusion which he derives from the work of some of the French philosophers of the Enlightenment. Foucault's ascribes the power of attribution and the propositional function of language to verbs which trace their origins back to the most basic verb “to be”. At the root of all attributions is the verb “to be”. The verb to he is found in all propositions, because we cannot say that a thing is in such and such a way without at the same time saying that it is “ .

For its part the nominative function of language is implicit in the designating power of adjectives and nouns. As such Foucault locates the primitive origins of language through its role as pure designation. In tracing back its earliest designative function Foucault ascribes to the originating process of naming things a very similar role between the non-arbitrary articulation of sound and the actual phenomena itself as does Sri Aurobindo. Additionally, in tracing language back to its function of pure designation Foucault also concludes that our vocabularies can be traced back to a small number of originating roots.

The following post is a comparative exploration of the origins of words as described by Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault. Below are a few excerpts from the texts included in this post.

Sri Aurobindo:

“The Rishis' use of language was governed by this ancient psychology of the Word. When in English we use the word "wolf" or "cow", we mean by it simply the animal designated; we are not conscious of any reason why we should use that particular sound for the idea except the immemorial custom of the language; and we cannot use it for any other sense or purpose except by an artificial device of style. But for the Vedic Rishi "vrika" meant the tearer and therefore, among other applications of the sense, a wolf; "dhenu" meant the fosterer, nourisher, and therefore a cow. But the original and general sense predominates, the derived and particular is secondary. Therefore, it was possible for the fashioner of the hymn to use these common words with a great pliability, sometimes putting forward the image of the wolf or the cow, sometimes using it to colour the more general sense, sometimes keeping it merely as a conventional figure for the psychological conception on which his mind was dwelling, sometimes losing sight of the image altogether. It is in the light of this psychology of the old language that we have to understand the peculiar figures of Vedic symbolism as handled by the Rishis, even to the most apparently common and concrete. It is so that words like "ghritam", the clarified butter, "soma", the sacred wine, and a host of others are used.(Secret of the Veda, Chapter 5)

Foucault:

“Roots may be formed in several ways. By onomatopoeia, of course, which is not a spontaneous expression, but the deliberate articulation of a sign that is also a resemblance: 'to make the same sound with one's voice as the object that one wishes to name'[70]. By employing a resemblance experienced in one's sensations: 'the impression made by the colour red, which is vivid, rapid, harsh to the eye, will be very well rendered by the sound R, which makes an analogous impression upon the ear'[71]. By imposing movements upon the organs of the voice analogous to those one wishes to signify: 'so that the sound resulting from the form and natural movement of the organ when placed in this state becomes the name of the object'; the throat rasps to designate the rubbing of one body against another, it hollows itself inside to indicate a concave surface [72]. Finally, by employing the sounds an organ naturally produces to designate that organ: the glottal stop determined the name of the throat in which it occurs, and the dentals (d and t) are used to designate the teeth [73]. Using these conventional articulations of resemblance, every language is able to provide itself with its pack of primitive roots. The pack is a small one, since the roots are almost all monosyllabic and exist only in very small numbers - two hundred for Hebrew, according to Bergier's estimate [74]; and even smaller when one remembers that (because of the relations of resemblance that they establish) they are common to almost all of our languages: de Brosses thinks that all of them together, from all the dialects of Europe and the Orient, would not fill 'a single sheet of writing paper'. But it is on the basis of them that each language develops its own particularity: "their development is prodigious. Just as one elm seed produces a great tree, which by growing new shoots from each root produces in the end an entire forest'[75]” (The Order of Things, p.106-109).... more »

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Tuesday, June 24

Tata and Vivekananda (India Now)

by Rich on June 24, 2008 12:46PM (PDT)

The birth of the country's foremost scientific research institute – the Indian Institute of Science – can be traced to a chance encounter between two of the leading lights of 19th century India. The "Empress of India" was sailing from Yokohama in Japan to Vancouver in Canada in 1893.

Aboard the vessel were Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata and Swami Vivekananda, the eminent philosopher: both were headed to Chicago. The former to attend the World's Columbian Exposition (also called Chicago World's Fair), to mark the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus, and the latter to participate in the World's Parliament of Religions, where he made his historic speech... more »

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Friday, June 20

Happy Summer Solstice with Louis and Ella (U Tube)

by Rich on June 20, 2008 03:11PM (AKDT)

Happy Summer Solstice to all and who better to celebrate the solstice with than Louis and Ella and their recording of Gershwin's Summertime... more »

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Thursday, June 19

Born Again Ideology: religion, technology and terrorism (u tube) A. Kroker

by Rich on June 19, 2008 06:53PM (PDT)

We, the inhabitants of post-Enlightenment society might have thought that the current cultural horizon was exhausted by fateful struggles between modernism, postmodernism and posthumanism, but it turns out that the past will not be denied. Out of the ashes of the Book of Revelation emerges a form of faith-based politics which is, in every political sense, the ascendant historical tendency in American public life. Here, putting on the policy garments of the "culture of life" movement, there waging bitter political combat against the heresy of "same-sex marriage," now opposed to scientific claims concerning stem cell research, allying itself actively with the crusading spirit of American imperialist adventures, dominating the media with faith-based cultural perspectives, the New Protestant Ethic easily sweeps aside secular discourses in the interests of a vision of culture, society and politics which is as cosmological in its theological sweep as it is eschatological in its historical ambitions.

Understood metaphysically, it may well be that the insurgency represented by faith-based politics is the representative politicalform of what Heidegger's Nietzsche described as the age of "completed nihilism." In this interpretation, power in its mature (nihilistic) phase -- sick of itself, possessing no definitive goal, exhausted with the historical burden of remaining an active will, always sliding inexorably towards the nothingness of the will-less will -- desperately seeks out a sustaining purpose, an inspiring goal, a historical mission. Into the ethical vacuum at the disappearing center of nihilistic power flows a strong historical monism -- the New Protestant Ethic -- that will not be suppressed. To power's empty formalism, to liberal humanism's (emotionally) ineffective proceduralist ethics, to the empire's cybernetic equations written in violence and in blood across the landscape of imperial wars, the New Protestant Ethic provides a singular historical purpose -- the crusading spirit of evangelical Christianity which is reconstructionist, resurgent, and reanimated -- backed up by the semiotic purity of the foundational texts of the Old Testament. To those who would discount faith-based politics as only the most recent instance of the politics of cultural backlash, it should be noted that this fateful, and entirely original, entwinement of (fundamentalist) religion and (imperial) war technologies in the American mind may well be in the order of a great overturning. With faith-based politics, we are witness to something entirely unexpected, and for that reason, deeply ominous -- an ethical reconciliation between religion and technology in which the apocalyptic visions of the Old Testament will be future-coded in the power languages of empire politics and networked capitalism. What is now only in its preparatory rhetorical stages as the "culture of life" movement may soon emerge full-blown as the essential life-principle of American, and by imperialist extension world, culture. Arthur Kroker more »