January 28, 2009

A culture of dispassionate consideration and mechanisms of dialog

The arduous and disciplined thinking of a Heidegger, Foucault or Derrida walks perpetually at the edges of human possibility, testing the limits of language. In many ways, therefore, this thinking leads up to Sri Aurobindo. To think this civilizational linkage is part of its creative invitation. To believe that some "academic explanation" has exhausted its meaning is immediately to falsify its leading. It is in its historical place in the thinking of the human location and trajectory that it is "more evolved" than what has gone before it, whether humanism, metaphysics or religion; it is in the discipline of its own perpetual re-invention, which rests in the ceaseless re-invention of the human, that is its alignment with the cusp of the future. DB Re: The Evolution of Discourse and The Lives of Sri Aurobindo Debashish Sat 06 Dec 2008 02:38 AM PST

Much of the richness of a good academy comes from the radical differences of opinion which can be fielded impartially within it. Unless one is claiming supramental omniscience, human knowledge is all of the nature of interpretation and the expansion of such knowledge towards integrality can be much facilitated through confrontation with difference. What is required here is not so much sentiments such as "basic courtesy," but a culture of dispassionate consideration and mechanisms of dialog. Ananda Reddy's institution may, in fact, have served just such a role, were he not so eager to sit on the throne of judgement. Re: A Cultural Misunderstanding Debashish Tue 27 Jan 2009 10:15 AM PST

Well said, Mr. Sane! An effort in this direction, to create a culture of dialog and social forums for conducting these, is the need of the hour. But all this presupposes the acknowledgment of personal finitude, the openness to the other and the willingness to aim for integrality, as you point out. Re: Yoga, religion, and fundamentalism in the Integral Yoga Community by Lynda Lester Debashish Tue 27 Jan 2009 07:21 PM PST

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