RE: Aurobindo 1

[Guest guest]

Namaste, Christopher Wynter:

 

You ask: "What does Max say from his own experience?"

 

Like everyone else on this list, I speak from life experience.

This life experience would include social-cultural setting,

personal history, traditions of thought which have influenced me,

and the nature and shape of my spiritual practice and experiences.

It is to be acknowledged that the first three categories of experience

greatly influence the shape of the fourth category, but the fourth

category also impacts back upon the first three categories.

 

I can say this about me: my general outlook is in large part

a convergence or synthesis of three traditions which have

profoundly affected my perspective. These three traditions are:

 

1) Sri Aurobindo's neo-Vedantic Yoga philosophy;

2) Jung, Jungianism and post-Jungianism; and

3) Hermeneutic Phenomenology (Heidegger and Ricoeur).

 

Much of my thinking reveals the influences of these three traditions,

all of which engaged my interest at the same time: during my years

as a philosophy student at the unversity in the early 1970's. It was

also then that I became a yoga sadhaka. I am content with this.

 

BTW, my comments on your propositions were mostly

intended to be supplementary or complementary rather

than contradictory (although I simply disagree on the

ego=ucs. proposition), and the purpose was not to provoke

argument but to engage in dialogue. Isn't that what this

medium of communication - the listserve - is all about?

 

Lastly let me offer this suggestion: It may be that we

differ in our fundamental attitude towards

the role of ego in self-realization. I favor a vision

of continuity between ego and self which allows

for ego to play a positive role in self-realization.

 

Let me close with a quote from Aurobindo which

is compatible with a continuity view and which

demonstrates a remarkable similarity with Jung:

 

"Our observable consciousness, that which we call ourselves,

is only the little visible part of our being.

It is a samall field below which are depths and farther depths

and widths and ever wider widths

which support and supply it

but to which it has no visible access.

All that is our self, our being;

what we see at the top is only our ego and its visible nature."

 

"Even the movements of this little surface nature

cannot be understood nor its true law discovered

until we know all that is below or behind and supplies it

- and know too all that is around it and above."

 

"For below this conscient nature is the vast Inconscient

out of which we come. The Inconscient is greater,

deeper, more original, more potent to shape and govern

what we are and do

than our little derivative conscient nature.

Inconscient to us, to our surface view,

but not inconscient in itself or to itself,

it is a sovereign guide, worker, determinant, creator.

Not to know it is not to know our nether origins

and the origin of the most part of what we are and do.

And the Inconscient is not all."

 

"For behind our little frontal ego and nature

is a whole subliminal kingdom of inner consciousness

with many planes and provinces.

There are in that kingdom many powers, movements,

personalities which are part of ourselves

and help to form our little surface personality

and its powers and movements.

This inner self, these inner persons we do not know,

but they know us and observe and dictate our speech,

our thoughts, feelings, doings

even more directly than the Inconscient below us."

 

"Around us too is a circumconscient Universal

of which we are a portion.

This circumconsciemce is pouring its forces,

suggestions, stimuli, compulsions into us

at every moment of our existence."

 

"Around us is a universal Mind of which our mind

is a formation and our thoughts, feelings, will,

impulses are continually little more than a

personally modified reception and transcription

of its throught-waves, its force-currents,

its foam of emotion and sensation, its billows of impulse."

 

"Around us is a permanent universal Life

of which our petty flow of life-formation

that begins and ceases is only a small dynamic wave."

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Hi Max,

>3) Hermeneutic Phenomenology (Heidegger and Ricoeur).

 

I am familiar with Heidegger but not Ricoeur... which may tell you _when_

I was in school. )) Would you mind saying something about Ricoeur?

>Let me close with a quote from Aurobindo which

>is compatible with a continuity view and which

>demonstrates a remarkable similarity with Jung:

>

>"Our observable consciousness, that which we call ourselves,

>is only the little visible part of our being.

>It is a samall field below which are depths and farther depths

>and widths and ever wider widths

>which support and supply it

>but to which it has no visible access.

>All that is our self, our being;

>what we see at the top is only our ego and its visible nature."

>

>"Even the movements of this little surface nature

>cannot be understood nor its true law discovered

>until we know all that is below or behind and supplies it

>- and know too all that is around it and above."

>snip<

 

This is quite wonderful! - thank you.

 

For some reason it brings back to me a dream I had many years ago. I was

running from the city... I was very young, and I was with a male, like a

brother... two children escaping from some catastrophe in the city...

running into the mountains. And there was an old man with us, guiding us.

 

We came to an opening in the side of a mountain. There were curtains hung

across it, and there was a show going on... a puppet show, I think. We

went through or over the curtains and into the mountain.

 

On the inside of the mountain was a vast cave. All the people/beings I saw

there looked just alike, all wearing a robe with a hood that went to a

point like a flame... and I was wearing one too. Some of them were on

ground level, and some were moving through the air.

 

One of them took me over to a corner of the cave to teach me. We used the

corner like an elevator shaft, although there was no elevator there. He

showed me how to just rise up higher and then stop and create a floor under

our feet... then up higher and create another floor. Going down, we

either made the floor disappear or just went through it. We practiced for

a long time, until it was easy.

 

Love,

Dharma