Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Knowledge is given on a need-to-know basis

The false choice – reject or be annexed LINK (Part 1) by Govind on May 13, 2012 REJECT Indian spiritual tradition or be annexed by it. Mirror of Tomorrow: (part 2) here by Govind on May 15, 2012 It is clear that Mother Sri Aurobindo do not REJECT Indian spirituality but simply the giant errors that crept into it. Mirror of Tomorrow: 
It is only by getting rid of these “religious” things that these parasites can rightfully claim absolute freedom to abuse Sri Aurobindo and yet lord it over and lead a soft and comfortable life by feeding off the free grade A organic milk-fat flowing from His Ashram… Far worse and unforgivable is their blind, fanatical devotion to and fervent promotion of a point of view which renders Sri Aurobindo a total prisoner of history… This point of view delegitimizes and strongly disputes the Mother’s claim of Sri Aurobindo’s a-historicity…
In the immediate context of the current controversy over the TLOSA book it also reveals the nefarious modus operandi of the Heehsian propagandists. Not only do these purveyors of falsehood project their own prejudices and fears onto Mother Sri Aurobindo but they also project their own cardinal faults and failings onto their opponents. While they themselves are parasitical xenophobes, looking down on the land that has embraced them and detesting the spiritual tradition that is its living essence and its very life-blood, they coolly turn around and condemn their opponents as xenophobes. While they are the ones trying to annex Sri Aurobindo to their own ideological prejudices and phobias they will first take care to accuse their opponents of doing the same so that these will be shamed into silenced or at least discredited by others. Finally, to cover their own fundamentalist adherence to Heehs and his book, they will label all his critics as fundamentalists for their faithful adherence to Mother Sri Aurobindo.
Engaged in all-round betrayal of everything they verbally profess, projecting onto their opponents the crooked tendencies they themselves harbor, these promoters of Heehs and the servants of the Ashram Managing Trustee would exile its Soul from the Ashram and fill the remaining vacuum with a triumphant anti-divine Western materialist intellectualism and a one-man authoritarianism.

It would be too onerous to discuss the precise details of the supramental transformation in this article. People who are exposed to the topic of supramental transformation inevitably ask the question: well, then when is this huge supramental change going to happen?  Certainly not in our lifetimes, in which case it doesn’t really matter.  There are a couple of occasions when I had to answer this question on this blog so I am going to reproduce the answers here. In this comment, I said:
“Such high-level questions are best left unanswered because they serve as a litmus test to separate wheat from chaff. Those who are discouraged by such questions tend to be unfit for Yogic practice. On the other hand, those who have received the inner call to practice Yoga will continue to stake the path irrespective of any doubts regarding current status, because they have realized that there is no other choice, since the phenomenal world cannot offer the joys that Yoga brings.
So you have to find the answer on your own through your yogic practice. And if you don’t practice, then the question doesn’t need to be answered, because if I give you an answer, it becomes dogma.” In another comment, I replied:
“I don’t spend any time speculating on such lofty questions regarding the supramental, mahapralaya, etc. Knowledge in the spiritual path is given on a need-to-know basis. When you are inwardly ready for something, the knowledge will be automatically disclosed to you in a vision.
Until then, one has to focus on bread-and-butter issues. One has to learn to live better by regulating food consumption and speech, sleeping well, extending the duration of mental silence, etc. When you reach a certain stable point in the spiritual path, your intuition awakens and automatically provides you with the answers to the questions as required.”
Sandeep says: May 6, 2012 at 5:11 pm Andrew Cohen also talks about evolutionary enlightenment. He was influenced by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo but never acknowledges that. Given the spread of esoteric knowledge in recent times, there are going to be many people who will voice the same ideas. It’s become difficult to disentangle who is what. The situation today is qualitatively different from about a hundred years ago when mass communication was not highly developed. We just have to stick to the teaching that makes sense and carry on with our lives. For me, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are sufficient. …
This is ridiculous! Mahatma Gandhi was not even Enlightened and made several political miscalculations in his life. Anyway, the less said the better about the proliferation of these Gurus. I prefer to stick to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother! May 6, 2012 at 8:42 pm

mike says: May 13, 2012 at 6:48 pm Also, there are so many authors today writing about Spiritual things that they’ve never experienced. l don’t feel it’s right to do that, no matter how good the reason. 

sbicitizen: Message: Re: The Art of Growing up - 6 May 2009 Devinder Singh Gulati 
The controversy is reminiscent of the split in the Catholic Church, when the Broadway musical, Jesus Christ Superstar was made into a movie in 1973.
[…] Quoting DAVID BROOKS, Published: June 6, 2008 The new York Times. (See previous post.) Peter Heehs couldn't agree less. Soon after David Brooks published his column, Heehs found himself in the centre of a fierce controversy- in early September- after a review of his new book, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo appeared in the Auroville Times.

It’s hard to think of any historical moment that more deserves political theological reflection than the American Civil War, yet a very quick Google Scholar search turns up only one book (Mark Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis) that uses the phrase “political theology” (once, in passing) in its discussion of the event. Why is the Civil War so richly deserving of entering the ranks of privileged political theological points of reference (along with Schmitt’s and Benjamin’s focus on the European Baroque with its doctrine of absolute sovereignty, or Agamben’s camp and the Musselman, or Hardt and Negri’s Empire, to name a few)? Consider the constellation of factors: the crisis of sovereignty, the friend-foe decision, the state of emergency, the status of the human reduced to bare life, and, not the least significant factor, the claim made by North and South to be waging a battle for the future of Christendom. 

I propose in this post, in opposition to recent scholarship, that Herder did indeed try to crystallise a “national form” that was constantly evolving. However, I concur with the latest research on Herder that there is no inclination of the desire to set up a political institution like the modern state in Herder’s thoughts. Therefore, to read Herder as a nationalist is perhaps accurate but to define that term (nationalist) in the manner many modern historians of nationalism have is blatantly wrong. Herder probably did not believe that nationalism as is understood by the majority of academics today was modern. Hence it is unlikely that Herder could be of his own volition the father of modern ethnic nationalism. It is Herder’s search for the eternal Geist that makes him a Romantic figure, delving into amorphous ideas and gefühl. This was perfect fodder for the monstrous distortions of Herder’s ideas by latter day nationalists.

I suppose the lesson has always stayed with me. It accounts for my cynicism over the Lok Pal and the concept of “Persons of unimpeachable integrity”… In general, I am sceptical of any solution that relies on people’s character rather than structures and incentives. 10:39 AM   

No comments:

Post a Comment