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Sociological Intelligence, Administrative Autonomy for Auroville, and Anarchy
In a recent post about sociological intelligence I had written about how, as we move from self-centered tamasic and rajasic attributes to more altruistic sattwic attributes, our general thinking, understanding and outlook moves from being more insular to becoming wider and encompassing broader groupings of people. We begin to empathize…
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Intellectual Humanism and Spiritual Humanism (aka Humanism and Integral Yoga)
Over the past few posts, while discussing the topics of sociological intelligence and sociological imagination and the yogas of bhakti, jnana and karma, I made use of the terms intellectual humanism and spiritual humanism. These are simply the renaming of Sri Aurobindo’s terms intellectual religion of humanity and spiritual religion…
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Putting the Yoga into Bhakti, Jnana and Karma, Part II
In the previous post I had gone through the descriptions of Bhakti Yoga (the yoga of devotion), Jnana Yoga (the yoga of knowledge) and Karma Yoga (the yoga of action) by Sri Aurobindo in Essays on the Gita. These three together constitute the basis of Integral Yoga. The core purpose…
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Putting the Yoga into Bhakti, Jnana and Karma, Part I
Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga, founded on the Bhagvad Gita, is an integration of three yogas: Karma Yoga (the yoga of action), Jnana Yoga (the yoga of knowledge) and Bhakti Yoga (the yoga of devotion). Integral Yoga is the purpose of the Auroville experiment, and so these three yogas should be…
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Sociological Intelligence, Sociological Imagination and the Future of Humanity
In a recent post about parochial thinking, I had written about how on the path of self-realization, one’s thinking becomes less insular and more expansive, and how this expansion of the scope of thinking will have to include a deepening and broadening of our “social and sociological conceptualization and understanding”…
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Mental Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence and Integral Yoga
Over the past few decades the term “emotional intelligence” has become popular in the general lexicon to denote a form of intelligence that is different from the regularly understood mental intelligence. Emotional intelligence is linked with levels of emotional understanding, maturity and empathy. In this post I will make connections…
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Freedom and Discipline, Individual and Collective, and Institutional Purpose
This post brings together various aspects that were written about in earlier posts, related to the topics of the individual and the collective, and freedom and discipline, in the context of Integral Yoga and Auroville. The aim is to discuss Auroville as an institution or an “intentional community” as it…
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How Comprehensive Can Mental/Intellectual Understandings of Spirituality Be?
In previous posts of this blog we have gone through Sri Aurobindo’s conception of humans as mental beings. This means that the mental and intellectual faculty in humans has developed to an extent that has not been seen before in the evolutionary process on Earth, and is (currently) the defining…
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Insecurity and Parochial Thinking
Many of the recent posts in this blog have compared certain aspects of conservative thinking, progressive thinking and spirituality. Conservative thinking has been defined as essentially parochial and insular, and the limits of the effectiveness and sincerity of progressivism have been highlighted. Progressive thought and action will always fail in…
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The Irony of Trying to “Protect” Auroville as a Liberal/Progressive Space
The ongoing conflict in Auroville over administrative authority and control has been painted and promoted in part as a fight between conservatism on one side and liberal and progressive values on the other. The narrative is that the conservative BJP government in power at the center in India wants to…
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What Auroville Tells Us About the Term “Pseudo-Liberal”
I had a series of conversations a short while back with someone with a conservative bent of mind, and the term “pseudo-liberal” kept cropping up. This got me thinking about why this term is much more in use in everyday discussions and debates than any conservative counterpart. There are various…
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The Problem With Studying Auroville as a “Utopia”, and Other Issues of Materiality
There has been some interest from academics recently in studying Auroville through the analytic framework of “utopia”. I haven’t gone into the details of exactly how these scholars have been examining Auroville as a supposed or proposed utopian space, but I want to briefly address one fundamental aspect of this…
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India is Waking Up to Yoga
There are a lot of theories making the rounds in Auroville regarding the reasons behind the Indian government’s “take over” of the administration of Auroville. While the government is definitely exerting more influence over the functioning of Auroville, it is doing so because the situation in Auroville had become unacceptable,…
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Religion, Progressivism, Integral Yoga and Auroville
Over the past few posts we have been looking at the commonalities between the aims of progressive thinking and the spiritual philosophy of Integral Yoga, as well as the limits of progressive thinking in being able to find true solutions for humanity. Humans are on the path of perceiving a…
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Community in the Context of Integral Yoga, Part II
In the previous post we looked at how the conception of the term community in the context of Integral Yoga differs from the general understanding and connotations of community in our present everyday existence. In the current state of humanity it is individual and collective egos that are at the…
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Community in the Context of Integral Yoga, Part I
In Auroville the term “community” is used often. It is used to describe the community of Aurovilians as a whole. It is used as part of the “community decision-making process” by which Auroville has supposedly been making administrative and governance decisions over the past few decades. Housing in Auroville over…
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The Allure of Power, Authority and Control
In previous posts we have gone through the reasons why the idea of administrative autonomy is such a key topic of debate in Auroville. Administrative autonomy is indeed the central issue in the pitched battle that is ongoing in Auroville today. The small group of Aurovilians who have been running…
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Scale of Thought and Action in Integral Yoga, Part II
In the previous post we took a look at the vastness of scale and scope that Integral Yoga deals with. As we detach from the limitations of identifying with our material selves, we begin to identify with the entirety of humanity, the world and the universe, and begin to see…
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Scale of Thought and Action in Integral Yoga, Part I
In the last few posts we have contextualized progressive and conservative thinking in the framework of Integral Yoga. In this post we take this further, focusing this time on the scale at which Integral Yoga functions, and how that intersects with progressive and conservative thought. And then with this framing…
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Integral Yoga and the Limits of Progressive Thought and Action, Part II
In this post we continue to contextualize progressive thinking and its limitations within the framework of Integral Yoga and Sri Aurobindo’s writings. In the previous post we had gone through how humans as we exist today are a transitional being in the evolutionary journey on Earth. We are transitional because…
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Integral Yoga and the Limits of Progressive Thought and Action, Part I
In the previous post we saw how progressive thought and Integral Yoga have similar aims of universalism and the moving of humanity in a more egalitarian, harmonious, peaceful and compassionate direction. We also touched upon the idea that progressive solutions are limited by the fact that progressive thinking cannot go…
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Is Spirituality/Integral Yoga Progressive or Conservative? Part II
Now that we have gone over the basic definitions of the conventional terms we are going to use over the next few posts, lets start taking a look at the relationships between them. The reason why I think this topic of the relationships between spirituality/Integral Yoga, religion, progressivism and conservatism…
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Is Spirituality/Integral Yoga Progressive or Conservative? Part I (Descriptions)
There are many (maybe infinite?) supra-interesting sociological and psychological themes that can be analyzed by studying the petri dish that is Auroville. Among these are the multifarious interplays between spirituality, religion and the socio-political ideologies of liberalism/progressivism and conservatism. In the next few posts I will take a look at…
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Why Should Auroville Have (Some Level of) Autonomy? Part III
In the first post of this current sequence of posts on Auroville’s autonomy, I had pointed out two often mentioned quotes of The Mother regarding her aspiration for a place which no individual person or group could lay claim to, and which instead belonged to the entirety of humanity. In…
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Why Should Auroville Have (Some Level of) Autonomy? Part II
In the previous post (Why Should Auroville Have (Some Level of) Autonomy? Part I), we went through the spiritual and philosophical context behind the need for Auroville to have a level of administrative autonomy. In this post, we will unpack the correlations of terms such as spiritual anarchy and autonomy,…
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Why Should Auroville Have (Some Level of) Autonomy? Part I
In the previous post (Why is Auroville in India?), I had mentioned that the Indian government had granted Auroville a level of autonomy in its governance and functioning, via the Auroville Foundation Act of 1988. But why does Auroville need this autonomy at all? (This is a long post with…
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Modes of Existence in Auroville
It is very clear from the previous posts of this blog that my focus has been on emphasizing the centrality of Integral Yoga in the Auroville project. Yet there are many people in and connected to Auroville who don’t just de-emphasize Integral Yoga in Auroville, but deny its relevance outright.…
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Why is Auroville in India?
After establishing that Auroville is indeed in India (for the foreseeable future), and that it is indeed an international township but for a very specific reason, we can ask why Auroville is in India. An international township can exist anywhere in the world, so what are the reasons why this…
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Is Auroville in India?
The fact that this question has to be asked at all is ridiculous, but the narratives in Auroville are so perverted that it needs to be addressed. For anyone unfamiliar with Auroville, it is a non-question – of course Auroville is in India. But within the bubble of Auroville, things…
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Auroville as a Universal/International Township
Auroville is known as a Universal Township or an International Township. People from all over the world have been living here since its founding in 1968. However, there is currently and has been in the past a questioning of what exactly this means. Is Auroville simply an experiment that entails…
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The Core Truth of Integral Yoga
Even though this blog is only a few posts old, it is already apparent that there is a focus on the importance of Integral Yoga in the context of Auroville. I did not know in which direction this blog would evolve, but at least at this early stage, it seems…
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What is Sanatana Dharma?
The term Sanatana Dharma is in the news these days in multiple contexts. Sanatana Dharma can be understood in different ways, mainly because of the complexity of the word Dharma. The word Sanatana is understood well enough to mean “eternal”, but Dharma is a word with complex connotations. It is…
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What Kind of Spirituality in Auroville?
Auroville of course is a community/township with spirituality at its core. However, for many people, for example young people who come here for various volunteering and learning opportunities, this fact is only of peripheral importance. And even people who come to Auroville because of its spiritual focus usually carry a…
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Human Unity or Integral Yoga?
In the previous post I wrote about the purpose of Auroville, and mentioned that there are narratives prevalent here that present other purposes for the township. One of the most powerful of these narratives de-emphasizes Auroville as a laboratory for Integral Yoga, and instead presents it as an experiment in…
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What is the purpose of Auroville?
Let’s start, as the song goes, at the very beginning, with the big questions. What is Auroville? What is its purpose? Why are we here (in Auroville)? These are fundamental questions that will form the basis of further discussions in this blog. And to be able to answer these questions,…
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Finding Auroville 