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The Seven Quartets, the Triple Transformation and the Mother – How to Integrate the Formulations of the Integral Yoga
No full textThrough his life Sri Aurobindo provided different formulations of his yoga practice, which he called the Integral Yoga. One may identify at least three such formulations, encapsulated in the blueprints provided by “the Seven Quartets” (Sapta Chatushaya) as expressed in his Record of Yoga, “The Triple Transformation” as expressed in The Life Divine and the idea of “The Mother” as expressed in its eponymous text. The differences in these formulations may have arisen from changes in Sri Aurobindo’s own understanding, the need to address different audiences and/or shifts in practical emphasis relating to the same complex integral phenomenon. In this talk, I will approach these three distinct formulations of Sri Aurobindo’s teaching with a view to understand how they relate to the goal of the Integral Yoga and if at all they can be integrated
Haridas Chaudhuri and Thomas Berry, Inspiring Sources of the CIIS Mission
No full textSome seeds take root and flower dramatically: in 1967 I attended Thomas Berry’s course on Hinduism. In 1970 I went to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville, and on the way home visited Dr. Chaudhuri. In 1974 I edited a book of essays on the major works of Sri Aurobindo for which Thomas Berry wrote the essay on Sri Aurobindo’s Foundations of Indian Culture. In 1975 Dr. Chaudhuri died, Thomas Berry gave up Asian religions for ecology, and I went into study and administration of anthroposophy. But in 1990 these strands reunited: I succeeded Haridas as president of CIIS, Brian Thomas Swimme, who became a student and friend of Thomas Berry as I had been, joined the faculty. With other PCC faculty Brian and I have been weaving the Chaudhuri and Berry legacies. In the early 90s CIIS awarded Thomas an honorary doctorate and a weekend in his honor. We inherited a third of Thomas’s library that sits in a place of honor next to the library of Dr. Chaudhuri
Unity in Diversity: Building the CIIS Community
No full textoai:digitalcommons.ciis.edu:founderssymposium-1000In this presentation the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) President Joseph L. Subbiondo discusses the principle of Unity-in-Diversity as the general founding rationale for CIIS, its particular relevance to community building at CIIS today, and in the context of an integral education that will lead to a harmonious world community
Integrative Health Studies Newsletter
Get PDFThis is the June 2014 issue of the Integrative Health Studies Newsletter at CIIS.https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/integrative-healthnewsletter/1004/thumbnail.jp
Integrative Health Studies Newsletter
Get PDFThis is the Spring 2014 issue of the Integrative Health Studies Newsletter at CIIS.https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/integrative-healthnewsletter/1003/thumbnail.jp
Integrative Health Studies Newsletter
Get PDFThis is the Summer 2014 issue of the Integrative Health Studies Newsletter at CIIS.https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/integrative-healthnewsletter/1025/thumbnail.jp
Integrative Health Studies Newsletter
Get PDFThis is the October 2014 issue of the Integrative Health Studies Newsletter at CIIS.https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/integrative-healthnewsletter/1026/thumbnail.jp
An Anatomical, Biochemical, Biophysical and Quantum Basis for the Unconscious Mind
Get PDFThis article suggests that it may now be possible to develop some theoretical and experimental bases for organic substructures involved in psychological phenomena including the unconscious. Our inquiry arose from mutual interest in the mechanisms involved in peak athletic and artistic performances and in deep therapeutic encounters. We are referring to a state of consciousness is often described by performers as “the zone.” This is a state in which individuals or groups function at an extraordinary level of perception and coordination; or a state in which therapists develop a deep connection with their clients’ repressed feelings or traumatic memories. Here we suggest possible mechanisms for Freud’s “conversion disorders” based on the concept that there are two or more interconnected systems that can sense and respond to the environment and that can also convert repressed emotions into chronic muscle tension or other somatic issues. One connection between sensation and action is the well-established neurophysiological mechanism and another involves semiconduction through the living matrix. This is one type of “hardware” system that functions more or less in parallel to the nervous system and possibly in concert with the “wetware” or biochemical systems described by Dennis Bray (2009). It is proposed that one aspect of the unconscious —its capacity to absorb and process vast amounts of sensory information—involves rapid signal processing through a combination of ultra-fast biological processes that are present in all cells and tissues, including but not limited to neurons. Semi-conduction, wetware, electromagneticphotonic communications and quantum coherence are examples of such processes
Sri Aurobindo and Gilles Simondon: A Manifesto for Posthuman Praxis
No full textSri Aurobindo (1872-1950) envisioned the exceeding of human limits in an overmental and supramental being as part of our contemporary destiny. This cosmic and transcendental subjectivity, achievable by transformative praxis, was seen by him not as an escape from mainstream life but as the condition for a new kind of society, that may be thought of as utopian. However, almost 65 years since his passing, what we see more pervasively around us is another kind of Utopianism, that of technocultural transhumanism. The technical intervention infiltrates our contemporary lives to an extent undreamed of, so as to be thought an integral ubiquity, turning us into posthuman subjects through an independent destining, beyond our will. Confronted by this regime, are there any forms of praxis open to us, or is (post)human subjectivity necessarily an adjunct to a global production and consumption desiring machine? Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) was a French philosopher who theorized the co-constitution and co-evolution of human and technical milieus with relational possibilities that may provide a new language of praxis that engages the trajectory of cosmic individuation through technicity. This talk will revisit the utopian project of Sri Aurobindo in a contemporary technical key by aligning his ideas of subjective evolution and transformative praxis with those of Simondon
