January 14, 2013

Dr. Karan Singh, Prof. Makarand Paranjape, Richard Hartz, & Peter Heehs

Sri Aurobindo did not write poetry to pass time on a Sunday afternoon. His works are the creations of a master poet who expects his readers to know the background of what he is saying. This again becomes a common stumbling block. Even if a person had the inclination to read a sonnet or a long narrative poem, he would still find it hard to understand not only the vocabulary but also the allusions and references to Greek or Indian mythology, which often form a backdrop to Sri Aurobindo’s poems. These literary and cultural references were once common knowledge to the educated person but do not generally form part of the intellectual development of modern man.
In other words, one needs a certain amount of preparation about the context before one can take pleasure in reading some of the poems. And that preparation must also include a familiarity with his yoga in order to grasp the meaning of many of his later poems, including most of the sonnets. The most fascinating thing about these poems is that they were written not only in different places but also during the various phases of a life that changed dramatically through the decades… Perhaps our knowledge of Sri Aurobindo the philosopher may remain incomplete without our knowledge of Sri Aurobindo the poet. ‘Love & Death’, 4:42 PM, 11:08 AM Friday, July 11, 2008

Sri Aurobindo’s writings abound in allusions, and Savitri is no exception. Indeed Sri Aurobindo has made lavish use of this poetic tool to enrich the suggestiveness of his word-music and images. We find echoes of the Vedas, Upanishads, Gita and Puranas – but also of Greek and roman mythology, of the Bible, and of lines or phrases from English literature, and from Virgil, Dante, Homer and other great poets. 5:36 PM Wednesday, July 30, 2008

It's exactly like pulling open a curtain: everything is waiting there behind. It's difficult for me to speak during these experiences because French comes to me more spontaneously, and the experiences all happen in English—Sri Aurobindo's power is so much with them... .

The phrase “original Gods” must be understood in the context of the embodied Nothingness, one with whom Savitri is going to have a life-and-death settling debate. She must grapple the problem; she must meet head-on this being who has sprung up from the Absolute’s mysterious Void, a paradoxical Void packed with every opposite of his. The formless Cause, that has given rise to that mighty embodied Nothingness, must be discovered and that Nothingness transformed into the Being of luminous creative Delight.
Savitri’s path for immortality upon earth passes through such a strange puzzling and inexplicable Void, a path which can open out only with the death of Satyavan. Who in this creation has reached the Supreme passing through the all-negating Void? None; therefore Death has remained unconquered. Savitri is now set to do it. If this is her way, and it seems that is the only way, to do God’s work in the field of the utter Nothing, then the imperative of Satyavan’s death becomes perfectly understandable, rational, necessary, inevitable.
Even the Supramental or Transcendental Gods are only the truth-ful and luminous Functionaries, high-stationed and majestic, imperial, each holding some specific office, all in harmony with each other, working in the Truth and Light and Consciousness and Joy of the great creative Urge. When the spiritual gifts of the divine Dawn, appearing repeatedly, pile up there is a possibility of the birth and growth of all the Gods in us. Among them the four great shining Kings are Varuna, Mitra, Bhaga, Aryaman … cast the glory and protection of their divine gaze.

Nehru Memorial Museum & Library cordially invites you to a Conference at 9:00 a.m. on Friday-Saturday 11-12 January in the Seminar Room, First Floor, Library Building
‘Swami Vivekananda and the Making of Modern India
Swami Vivekananda was one of the earliest to emphasize the point that our material lives became more meaningful only when spiritualized. Above all, he inspired his countrymen, and by extension, all oppressed people in the world, to relocate faith and vitality in themselves. He exhorted men and women to more fully realize their potentialities as individual human beings; at the same time though, he encouraged them to be more compassionate and socially responsible.
Even though Swami Vivekananda rejected political praxis and West inspired reform, his message constitutes an integral part of Indian self-awakening. The overarching mission in his life was empowerment of the people: through education, collective thought and action and realizing the underlying unity of all human existence. ‘Man-making’ was Vivekananda’s vital agenda.
Programme Schedule Friday, 11 January 2013 9:15 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. Inaugural Speech by Dr. Karan Singh
Session I Chair Prof. Mahesh Rangarajan, Director, NMML
Speaker: Mr. Richard Hartz, Independent Scholar, 9:30 a.m.-10:45 a.m. Pondicherry
‘An unmanageable encounter: The meeting of religions and cultures in Chicago, 1893’
12:15 p.m.-1:30p.m. Prof. Makarand Paranjape, Jawaharlal University, New Delhi.
‘Swami Vivekanada and the shaping of Indian modernity’
Session II Chair Mr. Peter Heehs, Independent Scholar, Pondicherry
Saturday, 12 January 2013
10:15 a.m.-11:30a.m. Mr. Peter Heehs, Independent Scholar, Pondicherry
‘Roots, trunk, branches, and seeds: Similarities and differences in Swami Vivekananda’s and Sri Aurobindo’s approaches to Vedanta and Yoga’
Prof. Pralay Kanungo, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
‘Hindutva and Swami Vivekananda’

Purpose 2012 — The Annual Youth Camp, Hanamkonda Dec 6–9, 2012  Champak Hills, Jangaon, Hanamkonda, Andhra Pradesh
AURO YUVA, the youth wing of Sri Aurobindo Society, Hanamkonda, organized the annual youth camp—PURPOSE 2012—at Champak Hills, Jangaon, from 6th to 9th December 2012. The camp was supported by Matridarshan Trust, Champak Hills, Jangaon. This year, 44 boys from Warangal in the age group of 18–25 participated in the camp, while Sri Raghav Rao, Managing Trustee, Matridarshan Trust, Sri C. A. V. Ravi, Sri Shanthi Swaroop, Sri Venkataramana, Sri Ramu Sowmithri and a team of 11 volunteers coordinated the entire camp.

Arya samaj was the first socio-cultural hindu organisation that took up the task of addressing the challenges before hindu society with a well organized modern approach. Samaj was involved in social reform, education, service activities and reconversion to vedic religion.
The inspiration for samaj was to reform hindu religion and follow vedic way of life, apart from that samaj did commendable work in spreading education among masses…
Arya Samaj had a vibrant intellectual culture of debate, though at times it had caused ideological divisions. It’s important to discuss and differ than to stagnate, new vital currents of thought and action could emerge from such debates.
Arya samaj had enriched the spiritual, social, intellectual, cultural, and political life of hindu society, from its spring of inspiration emerged many personalities who made their mark on Indian society including its struggle for national independence.

The integral Advaitism of Sri Aurobindo - Page 342 Ram Shankar Misra - 1957 - It is true that Sri Aurobindo's integral view of Reality cannot be said to be perfectly original. The transcendence and immanence of the Absolute or Brahman has been advocated in the Upanisads and the different systems of the Vedanta.
Political Thinkers of Modern India: Sri Aurobindo Ghose - Volume 11 - Page 336 - Verinder Grover - 1993 - Preview Unlike Christianity, Hinduism did not find it difficult to assimilate Darwinian ideas, because from the beginning Vedanta viewed God as both transcendent and immanent in nature. Aurobindo could easily spiritualise the concept of evolution and ...
Sri Aurobindo: a garland of tributes - Page 243 Arabinda Basu - 1973 - Transcendent of the universe, it is also immanent in it. Secondly, one of the forms in which it is immanent in the universe is what Sri Aurobindo calls the spiritual soul or the psychic being. (It should be noted that the psychic being is not the mind...
Dancing with Siva: Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism - Page 171 - Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami - 2003 - Full view - More editions To most monists God is immanent, temporal, becoming. He is creation itself, material cause ... History's pantheists include Sankara, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Plotinus, the Stoics, Spinoza and Asvaghosha. The Vedas proclaim, “As a ...
Integral Advaitism Of Sri Aurobindo - Page 394 - Rāmacandra Miśra - 1998 - Preview Sri Aurobindo rightly argues that in order to have an integral view of Reality, we are not to take into account only the relationless or transcendent aspect of the Absolute but we have to include its immanent aspect, its universal and individual ...
Aurobindo's Philosophy of Brahman - Page 128 - Stephen H. Phillips - 1986 - Preview - More editions that Brahman is not responsible for the nature of our world.18 In this way Aurobindo is led to blur his distinction between an essential Sachchidananda and inessential finite presentations. He repeatedly insists on Brahman's immanence, and ...
Gems from Sri Aurobindo, 3rd Series - Page 64 - Sri Aurobindo, Sri M P Pandit - 1995 - Preview - More editions Sri Aurobindo Sri M P Pandit. The material world and the physical life exist for us only ... INNER DIVINE The Divine is already there immanent within us, ourselves are that in our inmost reality. INNER DOORS As the darkness disappears, the ...
Evolutionary, Spiritual Conceptions of Life - Sri Aurobindo, ... - Page 22 - Michael Leicht - 2008 - Preview and 'How do we get from atoms to Shakespear?' (If I remember right, Aurobindo makes somewhere an analogous simile about how mud can become a lotus?). Like Aurobindo he thinks that this can only be explained by positing immanent ...
Political Philosophy Of Sri Aurobindo - Page 294 - V. P. Varma - 1990 - Preview - More editions To Aurobindo on the other hand, the social institutions have an intrinsic immanent importance and do not depend for their significance on the political order. But in one sense Hegel, Bosanquet and Aurobindo are similar because all of them ...
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: Glimpses of Their Experiments, ... - Page 28 - Kireet Joshi - 1989 - Preview - More editions He said, 'Read the Gita knowing that Krishna is the symbol of the immanent God, the God within.' That was all. 'Read it with that knowledge — with the ... 42-3. But, in spite of her intimate contact with the leading 28 Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.
Sri AurobindoAnil Baran Roy - 1996 - Preview Through the practice of the Yoga of the Gita, Sri Aurobindo attained the state of Cosmic Consciousness and the perception of the immanence of God in all beings — sentient and insentient. This book provides the original Sanskrit text, ...
Sri Aurobindo and Vedānta philosophy - Page 130 - Sheojee Pandey - 1987 - But when scriptures go to describe the Reality as Nirguna then on that point Sri Aurobindo also agrees with Satikara, ... In spite of all the facts the transcendent and immanent aspects of Brahman have been advocated in Upanishads and in other...
Ph Quarles van Ufford, Anta Kumar Giri - 2003 - Preview - More editions For Sri Aurobindo, there is such a creative ongoing dialogue between transcendence and immanence. But despite this dialogue, transcendence for Sri Aurobindo seems to work at a much higher level and has its predominant reading as a ...
An introduction to Sri Aurobindo's philosophy - Page 36 - Joan Price Ockham - 1977 - Since Brahman is not only transcendent, but also immanent, the cosmic and the individual activity as manifestations of "That" are equally real. Herein lies the ... "In the beginning," says Sri Aurobindo, "all this was the Non-Being. It was thence ...
Sri Aurobindo, thinker and the yogi of the future - Page 66 - M. G. Umar - 2001 - Sri Aurobindo's concept of God, Soul and Nature is many- sided and complex. ... cdtmdnam na tato vijugupsate According to Sri Aurobindo, God has three aspects: the Transcendent Divine, the Universal Divine, the immanent Divine within us.
Teilhard and Aurobindo: a study in religious complementarity - Page 53 - David M. Brookman - 1988 - From the perspective of the supra- mental may be glimpsed Aurobindo's majestic vision of Reality as transcendent, unmanifest and self-absorbed on the one hand; immanent, manifest and creative on the other. Aurobindo conceives of three ...
Sri Aurobindo and Iqbal: a comparative study of their philosophy - Page 77 - M. Rafique - 1974 - Snippet view - More editions His God is both the transcendent and immanent. In one of hjs English verses, he says : , "Thou who pervadest all the worlds below, " ' Yet sits above, Master of all who work and rule and know, Servant of Love." Sri Aurobindo's conception of ...
Indian Religions: The Spiritual Traditions of South Asia : an ... - Page 455 - Peter Heehs - 2002 - Preview - More editions A few months later, while in jail awaiting trial for conspiracy, Aurobindo had the wider experience of the Divine as simultaneously transcendent of and immanent in the universe. This came to him as a vision of Krishna in all things and beings.
Revisioning Environmental Ethics - Page 119 - Daniel A. Kealey - 1990 - Preview - More editions Aurobindo wants to maintain Brahman's absolute transcendence on the one hand while on the other wants that the knowledge by identity with the absolute transcendental infinity be within the grasp of immanent, finite consciousness.

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