Hormonal urges to which all men are susceptible

Psychoanalytic Views of Mental Health from An und für sich by Jeremy

Recently Nancy McWilliams, a prominent American analyst, presented at my graduate program. Here’s her list of mental health. Let me know what you think.

Signs of Mental Health based on McWilliams’ Presentation at GWU (March 2012):
1) Capacity to Love (Freud)
2) Capacity to Work (Freud)
3) Capacity to Play (Winnicott)
4) Secure Attachment (Bowlby)
5) Sense of Agency/Autonomy (Erikson)
6) Self Constancy/Identity Integration (Stern)
7) Object Constancy (Stern)
8) Ego Strengths (Westen/Shedler)
9) Realistic/Reliable Self-esteem (Kohut)
10) Sense of Values (Superego) (Cleckley)
11) Affect/Thought Tolerance/Frustration (Tomkins)
12) Insight (Reality Testing) (Fenichel)
13) Mentalization (Reflective Functioning) (Fonagy)
14) Good Coping Strategies/Defensive Flexibility (A Freud)
15) Balance between Self-Definition & Self-in-Relationships (Balint)
16) Passion/Vitality/Purpose (Winnicott)
17) Acceptance & Capacity to Mourn/Suffer (Klein)

Notice, the absence of sex and aggression!

Sex and the godman: Nityananda haunted by his past by Venky Vembu Firstpost May 4, 2012 14 Comments

Yet, the karmic deeds of a past when kundalini forces—and the hormonal urges to which all men are susceptible—played havoc with a spiritual practice aren’t proving so easy to bury.

Should women dress modestly? Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo ... 14 Oct 2011 by Sandeep

In everyday life, people frequently engage in pseudo-interactions with women (e.g., through the phone or the internet) or anticipate interacting with a woman later on. The goal of the present research was to investigate if men's ...

Empirical Evidence, Sexual Harassment, and the Economic Way of Thinking from Marginal Revolution by Alex Tabarrok

What the theory and the empirical results are saying is that people exposed to a higher risk of sexual harassment are paid more, just as people exposed to a higher risk of death are paid more… Nevertheless, the principle here is clear, the way to think about these issues is not to throw out economic reasoning but to apply the reasoning ever more deeply.

Lacan, Anarchy, Masculinity, and Psychosis from Larval Subjects (Levi Bryant)

I argued in The Democracy of Objects that it’s actually the masculine side of the graph of sexuation that’s semblance, masquerade, and fiction 

Tweets 30m - Jaideep A. Prabhu ‏@orsoraggiante Optimal Openness: http://goo.gl/V61eZ MT @pragmatic_d It's not openness that's important, but judiciousness

1m - Savitri Era Party ‏@SavitriEraParty - @orsoraggiante @pragmatic_d [Why liberals are dogmatic ideologues - Shadow Warrior]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303830204577446512522582648.html?mod=rss_opinion_main%5d & [Amod Lele] http://loveofallwisdom.com/2012/07/how-intellectual-conversion-happens-and-elephants/ -  Hide conversation 10:15 PM - 2 Jul 12 

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Creative people easily rationalize their dishonest behavior

Study finds men suffer mental decline when around, or even just thinking about women. Same doesn't hold true for females, researchers say Comments (30) BY RHEANA MURRAY NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, March 13, 2012 Seen in movies like "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," sometimes men don't know what to say in the presence of a woman.

Men just can’t think straight when women are around. Researchers are studying how males can actually experience a mental decline when interacting with women, Scientific American magazine reported. A study from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands showed that while heterosexual men’s cognitive performance was impaired when they were around someone from the opposite sex, the same didn’t hold true for women. Just the anticipation of interacting with a woman could impair mental performance, according to the study, first published online last November.

Researchers compared the findings to a scene in Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina,” in which a male character, Levi, becomes so nervous trying to think of something to tell a woman, Kitty, that he doesn’t recognize a friend who walks by the pond where they’re standing. Such temporary lapses in memory or mindfulness are more common “if the woman is attractive and men report trying to impress her,” according to the study’s authors. And they happen in real life, too…

Men who were told a woman would be watching them performed worse on subsequent tests of cognitive ability, even when there was no actual face-to-face contact with a woman. Women showed no change.

Researchers suggest the findings could be attributed to “evolutionary pressures” that have shaped men to be more likely to sexualize otherwise neutral situations, but say further study is necessary. rmurray@nydailynews.com

Creative people more dishonest, Harvard study finds - Daily Dose 2 Dec 2011 – By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff - But are creative types more likely to lie, cheat, and steal?

“There’s been a lot of anecdotal evidence linking creativity with dishonesty, but without much empirical evidence,” said Francesca Gino, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. She decided to conduct a series of experiments with several hundred college students to determine whether creativity and intelligence play a role in lowering ethical standards when it comes to making money. The findings were published in the recent issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology…

“When you’re a creative person, you can use that creativity to come up with reasons for why unethical behaviors may be okay,” said Gino. “Crossing ethical boundaries may not be as problematic.”

Interestingly, all of the study participants wanted to maintain a positive view of themselves: In anonymous surveys, nobody admitted being a cheater, and all considered cheating to be wrong. But when faced with ethical dilemmas where they weighed self-interest against the desire to maintain their high self-image, the creative participants were better able to rationalize their dishonest behavior, so they could still see themselves as honest human beings.

They figure what’s the harm in cheating, just a little? “One might reason that other people would cheat under the same circumstances or that a little cheating will not hurt anyone,” wrote Gino in the paper.

Other research suggests we all start to self-rationalize more when we’re in a creative mindset -- looking for ways to lower our tax bill, for example, or coming up with a new idea for an advertising campaign. “Anyone who’s thinking creatively at [the] moment, may be more likely to engage in unethical behavior,” Gino told me.

Of course, we shouldn’t try to avoid being creative, but we may want to be a little more self-aware. “Knowing that creativity can have this side effect,” Gino said, “should make us stop and think more carefully when we’re faced with an ethical decision.” Deborah Kotz can be reached at dkotz@globe.com

Rich People 'More Likely To Lie, Cheat And Break The Law' 28 Feb 2012 – huffington post

People from privileged, wealthy backgrounds are more likely to be dishonest and unethical than their poorer counterparts, a study has found. Wealthy more likely to lie, cheat: Study - Indian Express Washington, Tue Feb 28 2012

They may be the more respectable and upstanding members of society, but the rich are also more likely to lie, cheat and engage in other kinds of unethical activities than those in lower classes, claims a new study. But these findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, do not mean that everyone of high status behaves unethically, nor that everyone in lower society behaves ethically, scientists cautioned. 'Wealthy class more likely to lie, cheat' - Times Of India

However, the researchers suggested that the rich's view of the world may be clouded by self-absorption and greed. As a result, they have fewer scruples than those who have less money to burn.

Everyone believes what they want to in a post-fact world

The fallacy of mood affiliation by Tyler Cowen on March 31, 2011 at 8:43 am in Philosophy Permalink Recently I wrote:

It seems to me that people are first choosing a mood or attitude, and then finding the disparate views which match to that mood and, to themselves, justifying those views by the mood.  I call this the “fallacy of mood affiliation” 

Let’s not count the poor from Kafila by Shivam Vij

As someone recently commented on a Kafila post, we live in a post-fact world where there are no facts. Everyone believes what they want to. 1:47 PM

We are all salespersons to different degrees, and use fallacies Why Politicians are Liars, Darrell Williams author's web site September 19, 2007

These are complex deceitful statements that are used to sell an idea by misleading claims. This is done by different individuals to different degrees for different purposes. Some are harmless but some are dangerous and illegal. There are over 166 different ways in which a person can use fallacies to deceive or mislead someone. 5:36 PM

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Neat People vs. Sloppy People":

Oh well, it is not so much her questionable sense of humour that bothers me here; it is not the fact that she is painting a very two-dimensional black and white picture either. It is that people relate to it: "Oh yes, everything in my life can be defined so simply. One line, two kinds of people." Seriously? I don't recognize any sloppy nor any neat people I know in this essay. Why not stick to the definition? (Oxford) neat: arranged in a tidy way; in good order. sloppy: careless and unsystematic; excessively casual.

I see nothing about waste or attachment to things here.
When you want to put people in boxes, the larger your boxes are, the more judgmental and wrong you get. And it doesn't get any funnier... Evergreen Essays at 7:15 PM, March 17, 2012

Non-marriage based communities

Feminism and the Family – Thoughts on International Women’s Day from Kafila by Nivedita Menon MARCH 8, 2012 - Excerpts from my forthcoming book Seeing like a Feminist (Penguin India/Zubaan Books).

Women have to learn to remake themselves completely, but even more significant is the fact that the entire period of their lives before this singular event of marriage, is spent in anticipating and preparing for this specific future, from choice of career and job options to learning to be adaptable from early girlhood.

As a young girl said, ‘Whenever I ask my mother to have fun, go out, to wear interesting clothes, she says, ‘Now I am married, I can’t do that’. If marriage is the end of life, how can it also be the goal of life?’[7] […]

The family is an institution that rigidly enforces systems of inheritance and descent, and in this structure, individuals – sons, daughters, wives, husbands – are resources that are strictly bound by the violence, implicit and explicit, of this frame. We tend to take this frame for granted, and it becomes obscenely visible only in extraordinary circumstances.

As feminists we need to build up the capacity and strength of both women and men to live in ways in which marriage is voluntary, and to build alternate non-marriage based communities.

The questionability of the traditional family from An und für sich by Adam Kotsko Mar 6, 2012

Modern society has certainly tweaked with the traditional model to a significant extent, relying primarily on the willingness of the mother to leave an abusive situation and take the kids with her. In extreme situations, the state itself will intervene to take the kids away from an abusive parent’s custody. Yet the primary strategy is to provide exit strategies for when things go wrong. And of course conservatives are constantly fighting to make those exit strategies more difficult — and to cut off the means to avoid becoming entrapped in bad situations in the first place (i.e., birth control and abortion).

This is where gay marriage is absolutely necessary: at its best, it provides a model for a voluntary union of equals. Unless we’re going to go the full Republic route, it seems that more or less autonomous households are here to stay — and so we might as well have them forming without all the baggage of patriarchal presuppositions. This is the good way that gay marriage challenges the traditional family: by pushing it further in the direction of being a realm of love and affinity rather than a regime of property.

Obviously this isn’t a magic-bullet solution, because gay marriage and the changed marriage norms it can hopefully bring with it do not lead automatically to a utopia in which everyone is good and responsible. Yet the patriarchal model is practically begging the father to abuse his power, and so moving away from it can only be good.

Thus I would say that straight people would do well to make their marriages a little more gay.

Auroville Radio Auroville Radio Newsletter Editor's Notes Dear readers,

There is much hustle-bustle here in Auroville these days with new developments as well as the Bulgarian celebrations in the International zone. And with International Women’s Day just around the corner, you can imagine the excitement as women take the lead in History, Literature, Cinema, Dance and a lot more! 

How many Ashrams have we imagined where the inmates, some unmarried, especially women, expose their lower bottom on the body by wearing shorts and go out on the streets, even to the markets? How many traditional Indian ashrams serve non-vegetarian food to their inmates? This is a reality in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and a big attack by some fundamental groups who are plotting a planned and systematic attack to the very essence and existence of its survival. This is the nature of attack… Manas 12:33 PM from: Narayan T Rao narayan.t.rao@gmail.com date: 6 March 2012

'लिव इन रिलेशनशिप' को स्वीकार करें: टीम अन्ना दैनिक भास्कर गाजियाबाद. टीम अन्ना 'लिव इन रिलेशनशिप' के समर्थन में आगे आई है। टीम के सदस्य और पूर्व केंद्रीय मंत्री शांति भूषण ने कहा है कि लोगों को बदलते समाज के सच के साथ इसे स्वीकार कर लेना चाहिए। भूषण के मुताबिक लिव इन रिलेशनशिप का विरोध नहीं होना चाहिए। 

गाजियाबाद में एक कार्यक्रम के दौरान मीडिया से बातचीत में शांति भूषण ने कहा, 'सामाजिक मूल्य बड़ी तेजी से बदल रहे हैं और हमें इसे स्वीकार करना चाहिए।' विधानसभा चुनाव के बारे में शांति भूषण ने कहा कि अन्ना फैक्टर ने अपना असर दिखाया है और चुनावी नतीजों को देखने से यह बात साफ हो जाती है। (12/03/12) 

Live-in fallout of materialistic western culture: RSS Ramu Bhagwat, TNN Mar 17, 2012 Times of India - NAGPUR:

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has made it clear that it could never approve of the recent vogue of live-in-relationships. Reacting to events organized in Nagpur and Gujarat by lonely senior citizens to find live-in partners, RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale said that it was a fallout of materialistic western culture and such an act cannot be encouraged.

Hosabale was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the three-day Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha which began here on Friday. The remark coming from him became all the more important as he is being billed to succeed Mohan Bhagwat as next 'sarsanghachalak' (RSS chief) few years down the line. Hosabale said over the last one year the RSS has conducted camps to spread the message about importance of strengthening the institution of family.

Oedipus complex may not apply to other cultures

Comment on Practising Titiksha with marshmallows by Sandeep from Comments for Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother by Sandeep

True. You might be aware of American psychologist Alan Roland’s book “In Search of Self in India and Japan“, in which he examine cultural differences between Indian, Japanese and American cultures. He observes that Western psycho-analytic models such as the Oedipus complex may not apply to other cultures. One Japanese psychologist defined other variations which were more prevalent in his culture.

MacIntyre against Wilber’s worldcentrism from Love of All Wisdom by Amod Lele

MacIntyre, in the 30 years since his famous After Virtue, has been telling us a story of regret and decline – one focused largely on ethics, but ethics broadly defined. In After Virtue, MacIntyre described the Enlightenment project of “justifying morality” as performed most famously by Kant and Mill, but also more recent analytic figures like Alan Gewirth. And he argues that this project has not only failed, but had to fail. “Morality”, in this sort of modern context, nearly always stands opposed primarily to “self-interest”.

rick-santorum-women-military-combat-roles

But I do have concerns about women in front-line combat, I think that could be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission, because of other types of emotions that are involved," Santorum continued. "It already happens, of course, with the camaraderie of men in combat, but I think it would be even more unique if women were in combat, and I think that's probably not in the best interest of men, women or the mission. [Women are more afraid]

Social currency and insecurity

sbicitizen : Message: Re: Social currency: 'via Blog this'

Human devised solutions to the issues such as currency, morality, rights etc, will always be unequal. This is not an opinion, it is His (nature/universe) law. He has designed us differently (similar only in race), this universe is uniquely dual and its chaos are loaded with benefits.

Sense of equality touches our conscious, sounds good, is wonderful in concept, but remains a mirage that a desperate thirsty mind chases. We have choices, stay in pursuit of the mirage as we done since time immemorial, or seek a different beat; preach reality. Let us challenge human mind to adopt to the realities of this universe and take charge of self survival. Our fair mind has always taken care of rare/exceptional unequal human conditions. In the name of equality, organized religion has exploited/failed its followers more than providing claimed benefits.

Let us get real for the sake of our own conscious and broadcast/preach real values as they exist. He has given His creation the adaptability to adjust to the realities of their situation. Fake bleeding hearts and false hope generating exploiters remain the only constant impediment. Nirmal S. Nilvi, Texas.

Class and Academia: On cultivating a sense of entitlement by Adam Kotsko from An und für sich - Jan 13, 2012 

My father is a truck driver and though my mother went to college shortly after I did and ultimately became a teacher, she spent my childhood helping to run a small business and then doing various service jobs. At every level of my education, my parents were of little assistance in helping to discern what I should do. My mom opted not to put me in the “gifted program” when offered the opportunity in elementary school. I applied to only one college: Olivet, where I knew I would qualify for a full-tuition scholarship. It seemed obvious to me that I couldn’t afford college anywhere else, even though I had a 4.0, excellent test scores, and a strong record of extra-curricular activities. And when it came time to do grad school, I was already far out of their range of experience.

My ignorance of the practical mechanics of these kinds of processes was exacerbated by a lack of the skills associated with success: social networking above all. But perhaps most important was the emotional burden. Every step I made, it seemed to me, could be my last. One small mistake could lead me tumbling back down to where I really belonged. This sense of the fragility of my position has had profoundly negative emotional effects. The job market is always stressful, but for me it was devestating — far out of proportion to the actual results, which turned out to be really good in the end. I deal with groundless anxiety in my teaching, somehow convinced against all evidence that one small mistake will spell the end. I am also overly sensitive to “pride”-related issues like recognition for my work from other academics.

“Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” from Per Caritatem by Cynthia R. Nielsen

King calls for solidarity and a concern for humans qua humans.  None of this suggests that King is advocating for a post-racial society where we deny difference. Rather, he sees that in order to fight for justice, human rights, and the like, there must be some common bond, some unity that connects us and yet allows difference to manifest and even be celebrated. In other words, I see in King a desire to hold unity and difference in tension rather than to exalt one over the other.

Joy of being: Practical life and spiritual path The Hindu

Sri Aurobindo calls it 'to watch the thought'. This means, we do not identify with the thought but sit above and watch it. What happens when we sit above ...

Understanding women on spiritual basis

Spiritual Basis of Feminism: Women in Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy
Deepak Sharma, Associate Professor, SGND Khalsa College, University of Delhi, Delhi – 110005

The present paper attempts a study of the problem of feminism as a spiritual problem with special reference to the philosophical traditions of Sri Aurobindo. By Aurobindo’s philosophy we mean the writings of Sri Aurobindo as well as those of The Mother. For, a spiritual reality is at the basis of all others; the divine world is the eternal foundation on which are built all the other worlds. In regard to this Supreme Reality all are equal, men and women, in rights and in duties; the only distinction which can exist in this domain being based on the sincerity and ardour of aspiration, on the constancy of the will. And it is in the recognition of this fundamental spiritual equality that can be found the only serious and lasting solution for this problem of the relation of the sexes. In view of the above the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother devotes a place to the understanding of women in the society. The Mother’s, writings on the subject form a crucial and enlightening study of women and their true role. She has highlighted various natural qualities of woman like a great organising capacity, and psychic and intutitive faculties etc. The Mother reminds woman that she should remember that she comes from the same supreme source as man, and so is in no way inferior to him. According to Mother, woman has a distinct, a unique role to play for the future humanity. The Women's Council, an integral part of Sri Aurobindo Society, lays emphasis on `Woman' herself than on her rights, condition and circumstances. The Mother has studied the role of woman as a mother, as a conscientious worker, as a shakti the goddess of power. The paper attempts a comprehensive study of the views of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as enshrined in their writings.

Boita Bandana 2011

Bal Jagruti Association celebrating Boita Bandana Utsav for 8th time in Delhi on 10th November 2011 at India Gate Boating Place.
http://boitabandana.com/about-us.html

Sri Aurobindo’s theory of a spiritualised Ethics

Home > E-Library > Magazines >  Sraddha > November 2010 > Contents

What is the Significance of the name“Arya”? Sri Aurobindo 7

Sri Aurobindo and The Mystery of Death Srimat Anirvan 11

Sri Aurobindo’s Commentary on Kenopanishad Sarnath Basu 17

Veda Vyasa’s Mahabharata in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri Prema Nandakumar 23

Sri Aurobindo on ‘The Two Negations’: Reconsideration of the Materialism Spiritualism Debate R C Pradhan 35

Charles Darwin and Sri Aurobindo: Evolutionists With a Difference Tapan Banerjee 46

Reviving the Vedic Aryan Anuradha Choudry 62

Sanskrit: A Language of Integral Perfection Sampadananda Mishra 81

Modes and Aspects of Self in Hindu Philosophy in the Light of Sri Aurobindo’s Explanation Arun Chatterjee 92

Epistemology of Perception Sandeep Joshi 111

Emotion and its Transformation Larry Seidlitz 120

Reflections on Jouissance as Ananda Prithwindra Mukherjee 134

Genius of Civilisations M S Srinivasan 152

Spiritualty and the Crisis in Contemporary Multiculturalism Sachidananda Mohanty 165

“Seer Deep-Hearted”: A Metrical Fragment by Sri Aurobindo : Sri Aurobindo’s

Contributions Toward a Global Spiritual Culture Shraddhavan 174

The Theme of Urvashi in the Indian Renaissance : Madhusudan Datta, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo Ranajit Sarkar 188

Editorial

To a few are given the vision and dream to build a new world, a new earth. Fewer still are those who have the daring and the courage to tread the thorny path that leads to our summit selves ever resplendent with an unsetting sun, and bring down from those glorious ‘splendour-peaks’ into this vale of tears ‘the calm, the light, the power, the bliss, the freedom, the wideness, the heights of knowledge, the seas of Ananda’. It is left to the Avatar to accomplish that task and make it happen. Such was the mission of Sri Aurobindo, the Avatar of the Supermind. […]

December 5, 1950 being the day when Sri Aurobindo left his earthly body to help more fully his work of transformation, we have included in this issue an early writing of Srimat Anirvan, the great yogi, mystic, Vedic scholar and philosopher, which was published in Asia No.2 from Saigon, Vietnam in 1951.

Emotion and its transformation

Larry Seidlitz

As with many things in Sri Aurobindo’s writings, we find in his treatment of emotions a great paradox together with its synthesis and resolution. On one hand, emotions are presented in the most disparaging terms, as the centre stage for all suffering, perversion, and sordid obscurity. On the other hand, emotions are viewed as not only deriving from the ineffable Ananda or Bliss which is the very nature and substance of the Divine Existence, but they are also a powerful means into the very heart of that Ananda. So let us look at this mystery of emotions, examine their nature, and trace the lines of their transmutation and divinisation as explained by Sri Aurobindo. […]

We see this character most clearly in certain emotions such as anger, irritation, hatred, jealousy, envy, greed, and lust. But similarly, sadness, despair, and grief typically arise in reaction to the disappointment of an egoistic demand or claim, however justifiable it may seem. Fear and anxiety both have an instinctive quality, and may arise spontaneously due to conditioning with various harmless stimuli.

These negative emotions are the source of much human suffering, but what about our positive emotions, such as love and joy? Here, too, when we scratch the surface we often find them to be egoistic in nature and not very pure. […] The fullness of Ananda comes with Oneness of our consciousness and nature with the Divine; suffering comes from limitation and separation of our consciousness and nature from the Divine. A purified Love and a sincere surrender of our whole being to the Divine are at once a path towards, and the very nature of, that Oneness and Delight. [Consciousness and its transformation: Papers presented at the Second International Conference on Integral Psychology]

Reflections On Jouissance As Ananda

Prithwindra Mukherjee

Introduction

Ego as conceived in the West seems to have attracted quite a number of contemporary investigations as well as - very often - misled them. Recently I have gone through an original, ambitious and complex essay to explore its limits and the way to determine how such an enterprise can be of any help to any ethical or spiritual quest. The author, an Indian “feminist” teaching abroad, offers a critique of European psychoanalysis with references to Indian philosophy, and a selective examination of colonial to post-colonial literature.

The book rightly deplores the staunch resistance of Freud and Lacan to any theory of the ‘sublime’ (so to say spirituality), even before  situating - in contrast – a French “feminist” like Luce Irigaray’s welcoming approach to  jouissance as the closest to  ananda or ‘Joy’  (which, in Indian tradition, is the first of  the three attributes of the Divine, the other two being  chit or ‘Consciousness’ and  sat or ‘Existence’). The author strives to find in her extended idea of jouissance the simultaneous juxtaposition of the corporeal and the spiritual dimensions perceptible in  a human being. For her, ananda is not only the means of “ego-transcendence” — as suggested by as yet living and traditional scriptures like the Upanishads — but, once the “absolute” (Divine) is achieved, in a complementary process this transcendence can lead even to bring the same “absolute” down to the more or less material sheaths — body, life and mind — of our being, as has been viewed and most logically elaborated in the recent years in Sri Aurobindo’s vast synthesis, especially in his magnum opus,  The Life Divine.

Hailing from a land where — down three thousand years at least, extended over an area of a full-blooded continent — a score of languages share the daily experiences of the common citizen practising, apparently, several parallel religious creeds, food habits, clothing styles, our scholar is no exception to other birds of feather aiming at a cross-cultural approach to any given subject, in order to do justice to the full implications embedded in the themes chosen.

Spirituality And The Crisis In Contemporary Multiculturalism

Sachidananda Mohanty

My entry point into the subject will be through the following set of questions: What is the link between contemporary Multiculturalism and the search for a new ethics in late capitalism?  What role do we envision for languages of the world in the ongoing identity politics in civil society? How does this search translate itself in our communitarian lives? And finally, how does it go beyond the conventional understanding of education and culture to newer paradigms?

Conventional reading of Sri Aurobindo tends to make a rigid and somewhat trenchant distinction between Morality, Ethics and Spirituality. In some quarters, the polarisation has been accentuated in order to deny any creative interface among the three categories. Viewed from this rigid angle, Spirituality is supposed to supplant Morality or Ethics. Some argue that no judgment is ever possible regarding human actions. Can we have cultural relativism of the Post-Modern kind? How can communities govern themselves in the absence of a code of conduct howsoever flexible it may be?

The aim of this essay is to take a fresh look at a problem that has come to be at the forefront of spiritual communities, the State and the Civil Society today. Basing myself on some of the best thought in the field, I shall argue that Sri Aurobindo’s theory of a spiritualised Ethics offers an alternative set of life values that can serve the interests of a growing individual, as indeed an enlightened social order.

In the first part of this essay, I shall try and sum up the achievements and limitations of contemporary multiculturalism, especially the Anglo-American kind as theorised in the metropolitan academia. Although my thinking is grounded in a multidisciplinary terrain, I am primarily concerned with the debates in literary studies. The public face of this debate, in recent times, has been the question of the literary canon formations and sensibilities. I shall argue that the key aspects of these debates centre on the question of defining an alternative ethics.

In the second part, I shall suggest that we have regrettably limited our effort by considering primarily two dominant models: namely that of religious nationalism and secular modernity.  We need to go beyond these polarities and bring in hitherto marginalised paradigms that could mediate between competing identities rooted to rival claims of language and culture.

I

The question of the use of languages for inter-cultural dialogue acquires a new urgency in the context of India’s 9 X 11. In a tragi-comic sense, language has taken centre stage in the cross-border blame game. Always central to intelligence and espionage, language today seems to have gone beyond its traditional role in international relations. Asked to explain about the weapons of mass destruction, after the so called liberation of Iraq by the coalition forces, Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S Defence Secretary is reported to have said in a somewhat Derridean manner: “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence!” […] How then can we restore to language the power of wonder in late capitalism?

Languages are more than a means of communication and civic convenience. They typify our life experience and shape our troubled past and fragile futures. It is time we made them part of the solution we desperately seek. It is only then that a new spiritualised ethics can truly promote a dialogue of civilisations.

Notes on Authors

Anirvan, Srimat, a Bengali/Hindu monk, writer, Vedic scholar and philosopher, was born on July 8, 1896 in the town of Mymensingh, then a part of British India and now in Bangladesh. His birth name was Narendrachandra Dhar. He was the son of Rajchandra Dhar, a doctor, and Sushila Devi. He was a spiritually and intellectually-inclined child, who by age 11 had memorised the Astadhyayi of Panini and the Bhagavad Gita. He was named  Baroda Brahmachari after going through the sacred thread ceremony. He also won a state scholarship as a teen and completed university IA and BA degrees at the University of Dhaka and an MA from the Sanskrit College of the University of Calcutta. At 16, he joined the Assam Bangiya Saraswata Math ashram, located in the village of Kokilamukh near Jorhat in Assam. He was a disciple of the ashram’s founder, Paramahansa Srimat Swami Nigamananda Saraswati Dev, who initiated him into sannyas. Anirvan’s new monastic name was Nirvanananda Saraswati. He taught at the ashram school and edited its monthly magazine Aryadarpan. Some time after 1930, Nirvanananda changed his name to Anirvan. He travelled widely in North India, eventually returning to Assam and establishing an ashram in Kamakhya near Guwahati. However, he continued to travel. In the 1940s, when he was living in Almora, Madame Lizelle Reymond documented some of this period in My Life with a Brahmin Family (1958) and To Live Within (1971). During this time, Sri Anirvan translated Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine into Bengali (as Divya Jeevan Prasanga); which was hailed by Sri Aurobindo himself as ‘a living translation’. In 1953, Sri Anirvan moved to Shillong in Assam. His reputation as a Vedic scholar grew; and he wrote chiefly in Bengali on various aspects of Hindu philosophy, particularly Samkhya, the Upanishads, the Gita and Vedanta and the parallels between Rigvedic, Puranic, Tantric and Buddhist thought. His magnum opus, Veda Mimamsa, was published in three volumes in 1961, 1965 and 1970. This work won him the Rabindra award. Sri Anirvan made his final move, to Kolkata, in 1965, where he died on May 31, 1978, after a six-year illness.

Anuradha Choudry, a graduate from the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Puducherry, completed her Ph.D in Sanskrit on Vedic Psychology from Pondicherry University and became an Erasmus Mundus Scholar for an MLitt in European Humanities at the Universities of St. Andrews, Scotland and Bergamo, Italy. Presently, she is a free lance instructor for Sanskrit as Yoga for organisations like Auroville International, the Netherlands, the School of Philosophy and others. As a volunteer with Samskrita Bharati, Anuradha is an active advocate of Spoken Sanskrit and regularly conducts workshops on experiencing the transformative power of Sanskrit sounds. Apart from her passion for Sanskrit she is deeply committed to the cause of human harmony and has recently started a project called Ekataa which invites all human beings to celebrate our common humanness for 11 minutes at midnight on 1.1.11 (One.One.Eleven).

Arun Chatterjee is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Tennessee in USA, where he taught for 34 years.  He currently lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with his wife Kalpana.  He grew up in Kolkata, and he did postgraduate study (Master’s and Ph.D.) in USA.  Although his formal education is in Engineering, he has been studying philosophy and religion informally at the university for many years. He came to Pondicherry with his parents in 1949 when he was a child and had the Darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. His father late Shyama Charan Chatterji translated three books of Sri Aurobindo in Bengali for the Ashram.

Larry Seidlitz  (lseidlitz@gmail.com) is a faculty member of Sri Aurobindo Centre for Advanced Research (SACAR) in Pondicherry, where he facilitates online university courses on Sri Aurobindo’s teachings. Originally from the USA, he has worked at SACAR for the past six years. He also is editor of Collaboration, a USA based journal on the Integral Yoga (also available in India), and co-editor of New Race: A Journal of Integral Studies published by the Institute of Human Study, Hyderabad. Before coming to India, Larry was involved with several Sri Aurobindo Centres in the USA, and worked as a psychologist at the University of Rochester Medical Centre.

Prema Nandakumar obtained her Ph.D  in 1961 for her study of Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri.  Since then, she has been an independent researcher, publishing critical and biographical works. As a translator, her career spans half a

century, with the UNESCO publishing her book on Subramania Bharati.  Dr. Nandakumar’s translation into English of Manimekalai, the ancient Buddhist epic in Tamil has been received with enthusiasm. She is also a creative writer in English and Tamil.  One of her recent  publications is K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, a monograph on her father for Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi (2008).  Dr. Nandakumar is a frequent keynote speaker and draws her inspiration from sources as varied as the Vedas, ancient Hindu and Buddhist epics, ancient and modern Indian literature.  She is a recipient of several awards, including the Sri Aurobindo Puraskar and Panditha Ratna.

Prithwindra Mukherjee (Kolkata, 1936) joined the Ashram in 1948; after his studies - languages, literature, philosophy, history, music (North and South Indian, Western) - he taught at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education (1955-66). The Mother opened his eyes to the art and the science of translation. With a French Government Scholarship (1966-70), he defended his University Doctorate, and the State Doctorate (1986) on pre-Gandhian freedom movement in India. Taught in two Paris faculties and produced features for Radio France (1972-81). Visited the U.S. archives with a Fulbright Scholarship, before joining the department of ethnomusicology, CNRS  (1981-2003). Author of more than 60 books, 400 articles. Henri Dutilleux has set to music one of PM’s French poems for an opus for voice and orchestra.   Recipient of the Sri Aurobindo Award. The French Government appointed him Knight in the Order of Arts & Letters (2009).

Ramesh Chandra Pradhan is at present Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hyderabad. He has specialised in the area of Western Philosophy, especially in Analytic Philosophy, Philosophy of Language and the Philosophy of Wittgenstein. He has authored several books in these areas. He has also interest in Metaphysics, both Indian and Western. He has keen interest in the philosophy of Sri  Aurobindo.

Ranajit Sarkar (b.1932) At the age of 12, he joined Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry; studied and later taught there at the International Centre of Education. In 1965 went to France, studied at the Sorbonne; he got his doctorate at the University of Aix-Marseille. From 1970 until his retirement he taught Sanskrit literature and Indian culture at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He has published poems, literary studies and Sri Aurobindo’s thoughts. He lives in the Netherlands.

Sachidananda Mohanty is Professor, Department of English, University of Hyderabad. He is the recipient of several national and international awards including those from the British Council, the Salzburg, the Katha and the Fulbright and the U.G.C. He has to his credit  21 books in English and in Oriya including D.H.Lawrence Studies in India, 1990,  Lawrence’s Leadership Politics and the Defeat of Fascism, 1992,  Understanding Cultural Exchange, Vision Books 1997,  Literature and Culture, Prestige, 2000 Travel Writing and the Empire, Katha, 2002; 2003, Early Women’s writing in Orissa, 1898-1950: A Lost Tradition, Sage Publications,2005, Gender and Cultural Identity in Colonial Orissa, Orient Longman 2008, and  Sri Aurobindo: A Contemporary Reader, Routledge India,2008. His essays and articles have appeared in some of the leading journals and forums in the country including India Today, The Hindu, The Indian Express, The New Quest, The Book Review and Economic and Political Weekly.

Sampadananda Mishra is working as Chief Coordinator, Sanskrit and Indian culture, in Sri Aurobindo Society, Puducherry. He is the author of several books including ”Sanskrit and the Evolution of Human Speech”, “Sri Aurobindo and Sanskrit”, “Chandovallri: A Handbook of Sanskrit Prosody,”The Wonder that is Sanskrit”. Dr. Mishra also conducts workshops, teacher’s training programmes, orientation courses, gives talks, presents papers in National and International seminars and conferences. He also writes popular articles related to India and Sanskrit in English, Oriya and Sanskrit, and composes verses and songs. He conducts special workshops on Sanskrit Alphabet and effective chanting of mantras in Sanskrit.

Sandeep Joshi is a computer engineer by profession currently living in the USA. He received initiation into Raja Yoga at the age of fifteen through a teacher in Bombay (Mumbai), who was also instrumental in introducing him to the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. He writes an Integral Yoga blog at http://auromere.wordpress.com

Sarnath Basu is a retired Professor of Philosophy from Burdwan University. He had been teaching at Jogmaya Devi College and also at the University of North Bengal. His special areas of study are the Nyaya Vaisesika, Advaita Vedanta and the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. He was a Sectional President of the 62^nd  session of the Indian Philosophical Congress held at the University of Kashmir in 1987. He had delivered the Maharshi Devendranath Thakur Memorial lecture at Visva Bharati, Santiniketan in 2004.

Shraddhavan “Shraddhavan” is the Sanskrit name given by the Mother in June 1972 to a young Englishwoman who had left her country, after completing studies in English Language and Literature as well as Librarianship, to join the up-coming project of Auroville. The Mother asked her to work in the Aspiration School, which was just being started at the time of her arrival in Auroville in November 1970. She has continued to be associated with a wide range of educational projects in Auroville. Since August 1999 she has been the Coordinator of the “Savitri Bhavan” unit of SAIIER  (Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research) which is a centre of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother Studies in Auroville.

Srinivasan, M.S.  is a Research Associate at Sri Aurobindo Institute for Research in Social Sciences, a unit of Sri Aurobindo Society, Puducherry. His main areas of interest are Management, Indian Culture, Yogic Psychology and History.

Tapan Banerjee Following his post-graduation and research works in Botany from Calcutta University, Tapan Banerjee (53 yrs.) served, for the most part of his profession in the Ministry Of Agriculture, Govt. of India, wherefrom he voluntarily retired to passionately consecrate himself to his long-cherished search

for the marvels and mysteries of the Indian cultural heritage. So far Sri Banerjee has, to his credit, more than a dozen valued papers in both English and Bengali journals of countrywide esteem.

Integrating Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, & Service

The Caste System of Hindu Society Huffington Post Pankaj Jain, Ph.D. Posted: 06/20/11 10:13 AM ET

In the medieval period, saint Thiruvalluvar, author of 'Thirukural' was a weaver. Other saints such as Kabir, Sura Dasa, Ram Dasa and Tukaram came from the sudra class also. Many of the great visionaries in modern India were not brahmins by birth but can be regarded as brahmins by their life-styles and teachings: Mahätmä Gändhi, Swämi Vivekänada, Sri Aurobindo, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Swämi Chinmayänanda etc. […]

Whatever coercion may exist in the society could be argued as a social discipline. In the practical world, there would be complete chaos and disaster if the individuals stopped performing their duties. A well-balanced society definitely needs warriors, merchants, teachers and laborers. Hence, instead of one's unrestrained rights, one's duties are given more importance.

Conclusion

Varna system is one of the most debatable phenomena of India and is tarred with many controversies. However, on a deeper analysis one finds that the basic need for this system was simply to ensure a healthy and flexible society unlike the one which has been rigidified due to the colonial misinterpretation and mistreatment of varnas, resulting in the castes as we find them in the present day India . The original varna system was quite flexible in which one's varna could be changed based on one's skill and was not fixed as is often understood. Indeed, it was the colonization of India by the British in the 18th and 19th centuries that changed the varna system into the present rigid system of castes. References

1. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, The Hindu View of Life,(HarperCollins, 1998)
2. Padmanabh S Jaini, "Values in comparative perspective: Svadharma versus Ahimsä", Collected Papers on Buddhist Studies, (Motilal Banarasidas, 2001)
3. J Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, (Delhi, Oriental Publishers, 1972)
4. Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, (Viking, 2002)
5. Nicholas B Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, (Princeton University Press, 2001)
6. Arvind Sharma, Classical Hindu Thought, (Oxford University Press, 2000)

The Caste System of India --- An Aurobindonian Perspective

DR. SOUMITRA BASU INSTITUTE FOR INTEGRAL YOGA PSYCHOLOGY :: Publications > DOWNLOADS

    It is indeed interesting that while civilizations, empires, nations and other social edifices continue to arise and fall, the Indian caste system seems to be resilient to ravages of history.  Outlived, decrepit and out of tune with the current era of globalisation,  it still haunts the socio-religious and political scenario of the Indian sub-continent.  While the nation gears up to enter the twenty-first century, caste factors are still strong enough to effect political upheavals and continue to be one of the major causes of violence.

      It is hardly surprising that neither social reforms nor a modern rational and scientific education have been able to usurp the caste system from the Indian psyche.  Inspite of its growing pragmatism, the Indian intelligentsia is peculiarly ambivalent in its attitude to caste factors. Such a deep-rooted and ingrained outlook can not be simplistically explained as a mere social phenomenon.  There must be, along with the social perspective, a psychological dimension that has contributed  to the acceptance and perpetuation of the caste system in the Indian psyche.  That does not however imply that social reform have to be supplemented by psychological maneuvers to help the Indian mind to transcend caste barriers. The predominant determinant of Indian culture arises from her spiritual repertoire.  All other knowledge---- psychological or sociological must be read in the background of a vast spiritual gestalt.  Any solution that aims to break the fetters of the rigid and obsolete caste system must be derived  from a spiritual perspective to be acceptable to the Indian mind.  It is difficult for the Indian temperament to throw away at a stroke an age-old practice.  Perhaps a better way would be preserve the basic principles of the Sanatana Dharma and revalidate them in the context of the changing times.

The caste systems as we find today is of course of a deviated and deformed version of the original Caturvarna system.  Sri Aurobindo examines the problem from three angles  : […]

The four‑fold personality perfected around an integrating soul‑force is the synthesis perceived by Sri Aurobindo. This task requires not only a human effort but a response from the Divine. This new synthesis is built from the same seed‑ ideas that gave birth to the Caturvarna. The Caturvarna was an expression of the Universal spirit as a four‑fold social hierarchy. With the passage of time the form lost its significance and became a burden‑ something that occurred when the Caturvarna became a diseased caste system. But the spirit of the original seed‑ideas born from an intuitive seer‑vision outlives the forms and can always be used for a new synthesis. The four‑fold personality featuring Wisdom, Strength, Harmony and Service integrated around the Soul‑force is such a new synthesis made from the same seed ideas that produced the Caturvarna. This would be more acceptable to the Indian psyche to whom the Vedas, Upanishads and Gita continue to be living spirit.

Such a new synthetic vision of personality has another dimension. The reaction to conventionalism in the West took the form of materialism, secularism and mechanical organisation in the age of Individualism. Sri Aurobindo had opined that the Indian reaction might differ from that of the West and take the form of subjectivism and practical spirituality.³⁰ An acceptance of Sri Aurobindo's synthesis of a perfected personality type constructed from the seed-ideas that evolved the Caturvarna while rejecting the worn‑out caste system would itself be a classical Indian reaction to the age of conventionalism. As such an attempt will have to integrate Wisdom, Strength, Harmony and Service around a Beyond‑Ego principle, it will be mandatory for the Time‑Spirit to press the Human Cycle to move towards a spiritual age en route an era of subjectivism.

FIRST PUBLISHED : SRI AUROBINDO MANDIR ANNUAL No. 54,1995, Sri Aurobindo Pathmandir, Calcutta-73. REFERENCES

(13) Kapali Sastry, T.V. Sri Aurobindo :Lights On The Teachings, Sri Aurobindo Library, Madras, 1948, Pg.93‑94.

(14) Subbannachar, N.V. Social Psychology. The Integral Approach, Scientific Book Agency, Calcutta, 1966, (Table 9, Pg 259 & 323).

(19) Basu, S : The Synthesis Of Eastern And Western Psychological paradigms in the light of Sri Aurobindo, Indian Journal Of Social Psychiatry, Vol. 11(1), 1995, Pgs. 35‑39. Sri Aurobindo's Writings - The Mother's Collected Works