That Sri Aurobindian ontology will exercise power on merit is unavoidable

[Re: The Melodrama of Difference (Or, The Revenge of the Colonized) by Jean Baudrillard
by Debashish on Tue 14 Jul 2009 06:46 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link
This essay brought to my mind a profound moment in Savitri, where Aswapathi, master of Knowledge, stands at the summits of cosmic Mind, identified with its very Self ("In the Self of Mind") and experiences the sceptic finger which turns all things unreal.]

[Re: The Melodrama of Difference Debashish Thu 16 Jul 2009 09:03 AM PDT You speak of the comprehensibility of Sri Aurobindo's prose. But the fertility of this prose lies in the fact that it yields at any time only as much as the reader can comprehend but over time, continually reveals other depths of understanding in its seemingly prosaic language. Moreover, much in The Life Divine remains enigmatic and open to interpretation, while he himself makes a case for the evolution of language use based on the consciousness of its users. In this respect, he draws attention to the languaging of the Vedas and Upanishads as holding a power of revelation in their symbols and paradoxes which were flattened in the later more rational philosophies.]

[Re: Cogito in the Matrix by Erik Davis
by Debashish on Fri 17 Jul 2009 04:44 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link
It is hardly messiahs we need today, rather a concordance of disciplined subjective exploration outside cultic vocabularies and formulas. DB Reply]

[Re: The Resonant Soul: Gaston Bachelard and the Magical Surface of Air by Robert Sardello Debashish Tue 07 Jul 2009 02:08 PM PDT Here's where the Integral Yoga demands a framework of comparative hermeneutics to extend its perception if it is to arrive at a universal epistemology. A universal epistemology cannot be a monolithic metaphysics but a burgeoning cross-cultural dialog. Bachelard's "reverie" can map interestingly into Sri Arobindo's phenomenology of knowledge. "Aurobindonians" who remain stuck in the vocabulary of Sri Aurobindo too readily dismiss any such alternate formulations as irrelevant, but in the process deny themselves the benefit of a practical approach to certain possibilities of consciousness as well of course of the sheer poetic delight of a mystic enjoyment.]

[Re: The Melodrama of Difference
by Debashish on Fri 17 Jul 2009 03:42 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link
The imperialism of ideology, of the "West" as the elect inventors of Metaphysics, has now invented and infected "the East," who return with the revenge of the colonized - the new elect who practice the new xenophobia, immured in their borrowed totalitarian cosmology and teleology, the integral theory of a brief history of Everything in the overt or hidden name of Sri Aurobindo.]

[The Melodrama of Difference (Or, The Revenge of the Colonized) by Jean Baudrillard Debashish Wed 15 Jul 2009 03:29 PM PDT In fact, it is the "boiling down to an essence" which is what Baudrillard is bemoaning as the episteme of modernity. As I see it, it is the banishment of the Unknowable... What I have scrupulously avoided and consider as illegitimate in the many commentators who continue to do it, is a flattening of the mystery of the Unknowable by "explaining" it. This is more so the case with Sri Aurobindo than anyone else. Meditations are meant to be meditated on. Poetic writing is an engagement with the Other and bears the sensible imprint of the Other. This is what makes it speak in so many tongues to so many people and not exhaust itself. 6:17 AM What I am referring to are the commentators who flatten the Unknowable in Sri Aurobindo. by Debashish on Wed 15 Jul 2009 05:33 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link] Life Divine Colloquia via Skype

[The Life Divine should sometimes also be read aloud
THE POETRY OF SRI AUROBINDO: MANTRA, METRICS AND MEANING
BY ROD HEMSELL 1:03 PM He commented somewhere that reading Homer in the original was literally to bring the gods down from Mount Olympus, to make them live. He did it. He reincarnated the whole pantheon of Greek gods and goddesses in this book called Ilion. It is amazing, it is extraordinary. It raises another question for me that is closely aligned with the later chapters of The Life Divine and our evolutionary exploration, where at one point Sri Aurobindo goes into a very elaborate and totally incomprehensible description of the planes of existence above the physical, the vital, and the mental.]

Whatever "in The Life Divine remains enigmatic and open to interpretation" or "totally incomprehensible" should wash at the shores of Cyberspace.

Baudrillard insisted to Forget Foucault as the latter’s discourse on power amounted to wielding power. That Sri Aurobindian ontology too will exercise power on merit is unavoidable. In fact, Sisir Kumar Maitra made such a prophecy some 60 years back.

There is no reason to be apologetic about it all provided the mantle of power sits lightly upon our shoulders and we conduct ourselves in alignment with self-flow. Further, there is no justification to look at it though the lens of post-colonialist register. Exhibiting an overdose of politeness and consideration can be misconstrued as weakness in this case. [TNM]