Category: Spirituality
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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…
Finding Auroville 