Of skulls & snakes

[Re: Larger Issues of "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" Controversy
by Rick on Sun 15 Feb 2009 11:28 AM PST Profile Permanent Link
So if I do bow to their greater wisdom, it is not the knee jerk of a religious person. It is linking up with this concentrated spiritual exchange that has a scientific foundation. It is feeling in more intense form, knowing by an ever-growing identify, that presence in whom I experience existence most profoundly. It is one scientific means, in a whole panoply of self-transcending techniques, to break—by a methodized effort, through a practical body of psychological processes—the habit of being a human being. And if that “powerful unifying force” leads, in the short term, to some more or less intense disunities, well, how can you transform a dragon without calling it up? I see this not as separativeness, and not as a mistake our masons couldn’t foresee and ought to own up to, but as a Unity Consciousness, loosening us through some evolutionary knots, in order to make that oneness finally a concrete fact. The process of this construction may take us apart all together, if and to the extent that it has to. We’re squaring the circle so the serpent can bite that tail----I mean, we’re not laying bricks here. What is our work? What are we building? It is the psychic being. And it's the sublimely practical, scientific business of a yoga that aspires to build a new kind of being who is beyond believing. But well worth knowing. I warmly welcome any thoughtful comments. Rick Lipschutz]

[Re: Larger Issues of "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" Controversy
by Debashish on Thu 19 Feb 2009 03:08 PM PST Profile Permanent Link: In fact, "the Sri Aurobindo Ashram" defines itself as a laboratory for world transformation, hence in terms of a plurality of representations of the yoga and its founders... Once again, whatever a traditional yoga ashram is obliged to do or not does not apply to the Sri Auorbindo Ashram. ]

[Re: Larger Issues of "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" Controversy
by Kepler on Thu 19 Feb 2009 07:05 PM PST Profile Permanent Link: The point was simply that an ashram is primarily concerned with growth of spiritual consciousness, not freedom of expression, hence an argument that appeals only or overwhelmingly to free speech is weak. It's not clear to me that Sri Aurobindo Ashram being non-traditional has any bearing on that, although I suppose one can take “non-traditional” to be a valid antecedent to any claim which would then be vacuously true, e.g. Sri Aurobindo Ashram should promote snake-handling as sadhana since it is a non-traditional ashram :-)]

[The Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Peter Heehs reportedly claims, is “a scientific research institution,” and hence it won’t be surprising if some day skulls and skeletons literally tumble out of the cupboards of its departments. Considering the secrecy with which the Ashram operates, it is difficult to predict where this supposedly hallowed institution is heading. Posted by Tusar N Mohapatra at 7:59 AM Monday, November 03, 2008]

Not a day passes without Ulrich Mohrhoff (koantum), the resident physicist, ridiculing science; and on the other hand the Sri Aurobindo Ashram is labeled as “a scientific research institution.” Hence, which paradigm of science is being adhered to here needs clarification as well as codification. [TNM]