January 03, 2013

We have to be very discriminating about Paul Richard

Tweets 9h - Sathya Anand @SathyaSher SR Goel noted that org like ISKCON, RKM, Aurobindo Ashram etc have termed themselves as 'universal', rather than as Hindu organizations.

Now for a few years the ‘Mount road Mao’ has been waging a war against Swami Vivekananda the fountainhead of Vedantic humanism and Indian nationalism. Thus a few years back we have in ‘Frontline’, which comes from the house of ‘The Hindu’, Meera Nanda attacking Swami Vivekananda, accusing him Sri Aurobindo and even Nehru of ‘their cardinal sin’ which according to her was that they ‘tried to appropriate for Hinduism’ modern scientific thought (Meera Nanda, ‘Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and `Vedic science’, Frontline, January 03-06 2004).
Continuing this ‘spit and run’ method of attack, the mother dinosaur ‘Mount road Mao’ itself published another article by Meera Nanda titled ‘Calling India’s freethinkers’ (‘The Hindu’, 22-May-2004). In this article the ‘apologists associated with the Ramakrishna Mission and Aurobindo Ashram’ were accused of promoting an ‘occult’ dogma that has ‘deeply Hindu and Aryan supremacist overtones’. One can read ‘Breaking India’ for an elaborate analysis of the emptiness of Meera Nanda’s accusations against Swami Viveakannda as well as Indian cultural discourse on the synthesis of science and spirituality.

Upon study of the Vedic horse, Sri Aurobindo concluded that go and aṣva represent two companion ideas of Light and Energy, (Consciousness and Force). In fact for the Vedic and Vedantic mind these are the twin aspect of all activities of existence. Thus the entire yajña or Vedic sacrifice, with all its limbs need to be understood this way. - C. Krishnamurthy (chamathu2003@yahoo.co.uk)

I am afraid any kind of spiritual utopia is an idealistic fantasy. You have to recognize that souls are in different stages of evolution and process the same stimuli differently according to their temperament.
What seems abhorrent to you is always going to be perfectly acceptable to someone else. The human mind has the singular ability to argue successfully for any cause, and there will even be people who will be convinced and buy those arguments. Consequently, there will always be people who will have unrestrained sex with multiple partners, social and religious fetters notwithstanding.
The only thing we can do is to put out information based on our growing spiritual knowledge and hope for the best. Like-minded individuals will agree with you but those who haven’t reach that spiritual understanding will argue with you. People move in and out of various social circles driven by their changing ideals.
Yes, it is your Indian upbringing which causes you (and many other Indians whose minds are steeped in a long religious tradition) to shrink from her “immoral conduct”. When you transcend that abhorrent feeling, you will discover the treasure-house of wisdom that she has left behind. It took me some time as well to understand her life so let me see if I can explain.
Firstly, you have to realize that one’s spiritual destiny is not revealed all at once. Spiritual growth occurs in phases and in the mean time, one continues living an ordinary life. And in this ordinary life, one can make poor choices as well in marriage and finances. At some point, there is a sudden rupture/awakening after which a new and more spiritual life begins – what they call “dwijanma” or second birth in India.
Yes, Sandeep, I see what you mean and that Mother had no intention of marrying him, but ‘his family affairs’ forced it. But, where his book is concerned, I think we have to be very discriminating – he was the ‘emanation of Falsehood’ after all.

Ned used to blog as spiritofnow initially. She was writing about her personal concerns occasionally referring to The Mother & Sri Aurobindo before she formally launched The Stumbling Mystic with more or less similar content and style.
Ned (Nehdia Sameen) passed away on June 15, 2012. http://rainbowther.blogspot.in/search?q=ned

GLBT Hindus - Gender/Sexuality 21 May 2007 by spiritofnow
Two posts I wrote that I'd like some feedback on (warning -- both are kind of long): Beyond the Gender Binary - Homoscepticism and Homophobia
Thanks! Edit: A newer post I made recently: Islam and Homosexuality. Let me know what you all think. Posted on May. 22nd, 2007 at 01:47 am 5 comments 
spiritofnow Posted on May. 22nd, 2007 04:25 pm (UTC) Link Parent Thread Hey there! You know I have gotten in touch with many people from the communities associated with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in the United States and also some from India -- the community seems very broadminded and liberal and I have really been pleasantly surprised by how inclusive they are.
With all the cult-like stuff happening in the world today, it's nice to find a community which is so open and gentle.
The Mother by the way came out of the elite socialist and feminist circles of her time, prior to her undergoing her occult training. So she has a very nuanced perspective on gender and related issues.
spiritofnow Posted on May. 27th, 2007 03:24 am (UTC) Link ParentThread Hi there -- yep, I know what you mean about having books in your hands!
There are many reasons why I like these two teachers so much, but one of the main reasons is their remarkable lack of religious or mythical distortion. Both were raised as staunch atheists (which they were very grateful for) and that gives them an intellectual clarity and freedom that you don't see in spiritual teachers very often. Sri Aurobindo's main source of inspiration are the Vedic scriptures, but being a highly original modern-day synthesizer he frequently reinterprets them and/or criticizes them. Both these teachers were opposed to religion and on their own insistence what they represent is a certain consciousness, not any sort of fixed or dogmatic intellectual system. It has annoyed me to see Sri Aurobindo associated with the Hindu right in the writings of some secular Marxist Indians -- because he is clearly anything but right-wing. (Politically he was a spiritual anarchist.) Also, Sri Aurobindo is one of the few teachers who seriously engages with science, and incorporates evolution into his larger cosmic teleology.
Aurobindo and Mirra are those rare teachers who engage with everything and make it a point to reject nothing (and encourage us to do the same). They really are the gurus of gurus.
spiritofnow Posted on May. 22nd, 2007 04:47 pm (UTC) Link Parent Thread By the way most of Sri Aurobindo and Mirra's works can be found online here

The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind - Page 67 - David Kopf - 1979 - Preview - More editions It should also be pointed out that many of the humanists before them who championed science — Dutt, Vidyasagar, and Seal — were themselves not scientists as such. So pervasive were certain aspects of scientism in nineteenth-century Bengal that Brahmos often justified their rational religion in the name of science.

Quotation of the Day… from Cafe Hayek by Don Boudreaux
… is from page 69 of Nicholas Phillipson’s 2010 biography of Adam Smith, Adam Smith; here, Phillipson is describing the philosophy of David Hume – a philosophy that Smith built upon and advanced: “It was a theory that was built on the belief that the progress of society depended on the efforts of individuals to better their lot, rather than on radical exercises in political engineering.”

No comments:

Post a Comment