There is no other way of practicing Integral Yoga than pretending

[Savitri Era Learning Forum SELF posits a model of counselling and communicative action as an instrument in order to stimulate the public sphere. The model aims at supplementing the individual’s struggle for a successful social adjustment with more aspirational inputs so as to help one take an informed and balanced attitude towards life as well as society.]

[Re: Knowledge and Human Liberation - Excerpts from Ananta Kumar Giri Annotated by Debashish Banerji
by Debashish on Fri 12 Jun 2009 03:02 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link
Individuals come to IY from different points of entry, with different social, cultural, educational and professional backgrounds. They also each have a specific prakritic build and a specific swabhava and swadharma. If the social field of IY practice enables the sharing of phenomenological descriptions of IY understanding and process of individuals, a living field of participative communication is set up in which individuals must extend their consciousness boundaries to identify, empathize, synthesize, accept or avoid variant strains of experience of IY process, enriching the collective field and amplifying individual and collective growth. It is the near total lack of this middle ground of communication between internal experience and outer rote which is largely responsible for the collectve assumptions re. IY based on hearsay and lacking in personal self-confidence. Under such circumstances, orthodox representations of IY will take hegemonic hold over the field since there is no experiential richness of discourse to fill the space. 2. On your second question, a participative spirituality which extends its definition to include social embeddedness of the individual implies social participation as a form of acquisition of spiritual knowledge. Engaging with one's social environment at a depth of experience which probes existential spiritual choices in terms of collective creative expression (such communication whether verbal or of any other form such as manufacture is what Heidegger refers to as poeisis) would expand the field of individual knowledge (as individual consciousness) through participation. DB
by Debashish on Fri 12 Jun 2009 07:36 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link
1. Online forums, face-to-face discussions groups are good, but what I was talking about was institutional mechanisms within a community - eg. the community fielding interviews, presentations of individual interpretations of IY processes, etc, followed by sharing circles exploring interpretive positions, etc. while maintaining a culture of non-interference and respect for plurality in such communication acts. A living culture of this kind in a community promotes plurality of interpretation and the sense of individual participation and growth among its members. Its lack leads to the fossilization of a teaching into endless repetitions of a mainstream message by a few spokespersons in a fixed language and the willing or unwilling acquiescence of the rest to its proxy comforts. Yes, I think it is the lack of this kind of culture and the reduction of the social field of IY to unthinking consumption of a canned mainline propaganda dished out in a set of buzz-words by a few "authorities" that is largely the reason for the present close-mindedness. 2. Communicative participation in a social environmnt tends to the superficial or instrumental unless there is a conscious attempt (or institutional triggers) towards depth and richness in communication. Individual representations and interpretations of inner processes of spiritual growth engaged collectively enlarge the field of individual and social consciousness resulting in expanded knowledge and collective creative expression. DB Reply]

When Savitri Era Learning Forum spread its wings in June 2005 with a modest motto echoing Habermasian agenda, the scene was dismal. Four years later, we have accumulated much "depth and richness" thanks partly to the Heehs imbroglio. Angiras was spot on when he said, "Stop pretending that anyone is practising Integral Yoga," but the truth is that there is no other way of "practising Integral Yoga" than pretending and anticipating while keeping communication alive. [TNM]