January 21, 2013

Savitri, Occult, OOO, and the Invisible Hand

6.2. The World Does Not Exist - MLibrary Digital Collections The Democracy of Objects by Levi R. Bryant - 2011
Here we might think of monumental intellects such as Donna Haraway and Katherine Hayles, the work of McLuhan, Kittler, Ong, and Stiegler, the later work of Deleuze and Guattari, the thought of Latour and Stengers, …  that ranges freely over the “experience” of nonhuman entities, plumbing the worlds of other entities without being obliged to relate everything back to the human. Graham Harman's universe is a universe populated by circuses and clowns, vampires, unnamed monsters, fire and cotton, and a host of other frightening and delightful carnivalesque entities that erupt across his pages like so many apparitions that simultaneously withdraw and capture us with their inherent fascination and allure.
Jane Bennett's universe is inhabited by the vital forces of abandoned bottle caps, dead rats, trash heaps undergoing various forms of bio-chemical decomposition, and a host of other objects. Ian Bogost is currently writing his Alien Phenomenology, which promises to bring us into the subterranean experience of all sorts of other entities such as computer software we scarcely notice in our day to day existence. Donna Haraway's universe is pervaded with wolves, microbes, lab reports and articles, various types of primates, plants, and all sorts of laboratory equipment. Karen Barad's universe is populated by all sorts of particles, instruments and waves.

Lie bound in the subconscient's cavern pit
And the Beast grovels in his antre den:
Dire mutterings rise and murmur in their drowse.

While man works out the dreams of God in the life of the world, he is himself just a small creature in the works of Nature, a thinking caricature of a mysterious puzzling Force. It is she who reveals in him what is present in her, her glories and her deep puzzling darknesses. It is not only the gods who live in his house; there also dwell occult shadows and tenebrous powers. He harbours dangerous powers in his house, the Titan and the Fury and the Djinn. These are dreadful beings, the ancient immortal giants of incredible strength. The first generation of the Titans existed long before the younger gods arrived on the scene,—the Olympians came later.
This could perhaps correspond to the beings who were present before the Gods awoke with which Savitri opens. There are in us also Furies, distorted goddesses of vengeance, of murder, who would punish every crime this little creature might commit unknowingly, punish with no excuse of ignorance; such are the powers that inhabit the subconscious. The three Furies or Infernal Goddesses described in Greek mythology are: goddesses of vengeance: Tisiphone (Avenger of Murder), Megaera (the Jealous) and Alecto (constant Anger). They are also called the Daughters of the Night. Another name for them is the Erinyes. Without mercy, the Furies would penalize all crimes, including the breaking of the rules, penalize considering all the aspects of the society. They would strike the offenders with madness and never stop following the criminals. The Erinyes are similar to if not the same as the Poinai (Retaliations), Arai (Curses), Praxidikai (Exacters of Justice) and Maniai (Madnesses). They are depicted as ugly, winged women with hair, arms and waists entwined with poisonous serpents. They wield whips and are clothed either in the long black robes of mourners, or the short-length skirts and boots of huntress maidens. [From the Internet]
There are five different types of Djinn who are responsible for illness and mishaps, of man and the cosmos. Genie is made famous in the insightful tales of the Arabian Nights. When a brass lamp is rubbed three times a genie will appear and he will grant three wishes for having freed him from the lamp. Solomon the Wise shut them in a lamp which he threw in the sea, that they would never come out. There is the monstrous vital being seated in us, hid in the subconscient den; he remains there groveling all the while, with face downward and the body prostrate, taking pleasure in mean and harsh things. There are powers rising in fierce opposition to the authorities. These act in the acts of man, these control his thought and his life.

In today's news we are featuring short interview with Professor Kostel talking on D.A.M., which is India's first Design, Arts, Music carnival. The festival revolves around the concept of nourishing creativity and it will be held at Ganesh Thottam near Auroville, at the end of the canyon road in green belt. 

I don’t understand. When Sri Aurobindo spends more than 100 pages of The Life Divine refuting Shankara’s view, I don’t see how that’s any different from what Sandeep is doing here.
Many people may attain Self-realization but their experiences may diverge after that. In this vast universe, you might penetrate into zones of consciousness that no one has reached before. Take for instance the ascent-descent of consciousness: Ramana Maharshi consistently denied Sri Aurobindo’s claims on the topic, and yet other people do have such experiences indicating that they are possible. I think Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had richer experiences which enabled them to decipher the interconnection between the different worlds.
Shankara probably only had previsions of the future (mental dreams) which made him conclude that the occult worlds are illusory. He may also have been influenced by the nihilistic Buddhist sects which were popular in his time. Had Shankara walked about in his dreams, he might have reconsidered his views on their illusory nature. The “real” nature of the occult worlds can be derived from several (subjective but repeatable) experiences: We are not debating an assumption here but the differences which arise because people do not have the same spiritual experiences. Comment by Sandeep Jan 21, 2013 The study of mystical experiences yields insights which need to be discussed.

One of the confusions that tends to permeate the discussion about the law of Karma is the implication that because one is morally or ethically good, that one should therefore have physical pleasure or well-being. Sri Aurobindo exposes this confusion and points out that each type of action has its result primarily within its own sphere, and only secondarily will have effects of a different nature.
The direct impact of moral or ethical action is thus primarily in the field of moral and ethical result, with tangential and secondary effects in other forms of energy possible, but not necessarily supremely powerful in those other fields. Modern research shows, for instance, that strong emotions, such as love or hatred, release various biochemical reactions, such as stimulating hormones, which can indeed impact the physical body and its ultimate health, positively or negatively as the case may be, but such effects may be offset or overcome by specific direct actions taken to support physical health and well-being or not.

Manifesto for a human economy from The Memory Bank by Keith Hart Jan 20, 2013
Ronald Coase won a Nobel prize in economics for inventing the idea of transaction costs in his famous paper “The nature of the firm” (1937). He has just announced his desire, with Ning Wang, to found a new journal called “Man and the economy”. Their manifesto, “Saving economics from the economists”, was published in the Harvard Business Review for December 2012…
We can’t arrive instantly at a view of the whole, but we can engage more concretely with the world that lies beyond the familiar institutions that immediately secure our rights and interests. According to Mauss and Polanyi (especially, but all the founders of modern social theory too), the chief way of achieving social extension has always been through markets and money in a variety of forms.

Those who learn that bargaining, for instance, is about mediating their self-interest with the self-interests of others to achieve some degree of their own self-interests.
In practise, as the Red-Blue game illustrates, the “propensity to exchange” identified by Smith in Wealth Of Nations is not a well understood process across the population, which Smith clearly identified as the ‘If-Then’ conditional proposition (WN I.ii: 25-6). By recognising Smith’s ‘If-Then’ proposition it is easily understood and practised in the real world.
Once again, neoclassical Max U economics approaches bargaining by wrongly formulating it as confrontational problem (see modern economics on bargaining since the 1930s around themes like Zeuthen’s ‘economic warfare’, Hicks on ‘strikes’, Cross and others on ‘conflict’, even actual warfare, through to the 1980s.
Yet Adam Smith set it out in both Moral Sentiments and Wealth Of Nations in the 18th century in his two great, but mostly unread, books.  Hence, my particular sadness, at people libelling Smith with a self-interest theory that he never held.
'Anonymous' is Wrong; Try Again? from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy Jan 19, 2013
Smith’s writing on self-interest does not conform to the Maximum Utility models of neoclassical economics.  Smith notes scores of cases where individuals pursuing their self-interests undermine the self-interests of others. In fact, Smith’s ideas on the “pursuit” of self-interests are quite the opposite of the views asserted in “Raising the Invisible Hand” at the head of the above statement. [I have no views on the politics expressed by "anonymous", as I only comment on political views expressed in the country or about the country where I vote, i.e., Scotland.]

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