Sunday, February 23, 2020

Nihilism also implies indomitable hope for humanity


SEOF: https://t.co/yMEc4ddJB0
[Congratulations, my dear Prithwin. We are proud of you. When you come for the award to Delhi, do come and stay with us at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Delhi Branch. Old memories of our childhood are crowding my mind. Hope to see you soon. ~Tara Jauhar]

Plain & Simple: Here's a chance just at a glance https://t.co/al7GRiZ1gV
[Dear Manojda, congratulations from the bottom of my heart. We are so proud of you. I'm sure this is not the last of your laurels. May be you will go into the Guinness book for number of awards. Tara Jauhar]

Aurora Mirabilis: Books have the power to transport us to faraway worlds https://t.co/wXDt2bx8fd
The luminous heart of unknown https://t.co/OkrAMHr3xv
Tusar Nath Mohapatra @NathTusar Director, Savitri Era Learning Forum (SELF), Shipra Riviera, Indirapuram, Ghaziabad - 96500-65636

Savitri Era Learning Forum: Socratic irony, Galileo's error, and Gargi's silence https://t.co/SoWH9xG4wh
If you harbour even an iota of desire to understand #TheMother & #SriAurobindo, here's a chance just at a glance https://t.co/upjH4BU1Q1 by @NathTusar https://t.co/YGoEhdLyp7

by Sharad Rajimwale
When we notice that an attempt is being made these days by certain dour, orthodox forces, imagining themselves in the role of the exclusive voice of Hindu culture and religion, to enforce a uniform, homogenizing interpretation of it and using it as a clout to browbeat ‘others’, it is natural to feel that a macabre distortion is being introduced somewhere in manufac-turing this line of thinking and peddling it as the soul of Hindu way of life. Not only, one feels, is truth being made subservient to the campaign of promoting preposterous notions and ideologies, but the true essence of the develop-ment of Hindu philosophy as fundamentally a respecter of diversity is being cruelly neglected or overlooked, or just cudgeled into silence. In cluttering together the ritualistic noise, glitter of iconic trinkets, holy cow and holy Ganges feelings, and  hoodlums to sainthood as steps towards building a Hindu India, a clamorous crowd of unthinking fanatics and one dimensional ideas is being mobilized to kill the liberal-democratic ways of apprehending realities, as well as the very broad spirit of catholicity that went into shaping Hinduism from the early days.
Hinduism Respects Diversity - Mainstream Weekly http://mainstreamweekly.net/article9174.html

Here is a detailed review of the book 'Galileo's Error' by Philip Goff @Philip_Goff Whether you agree with the author or not this book is important for those interested in consciousness studies and philosophy.  https://t.co/AwQiyEnZD0 via @swarajyamag
https://twitter.com/arvindneela/status/1231039366157389826?s=19

The new emphasis on the primacy of listening and speaking over thinking is reflected, also, in works like J. Samuel Bois’ The Art of Awareness, or Borisoff and Purdy’s Listening in Everyday Life. The former is influenced by Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics and the latter largey by Jean Gebser’s cultural philosophy. We should also point out physicist David Bohm’s interest in and promotion of Bohmian dialogue as the implementation of his rheomode of thinking to social practice. This is not without significance for the kinds of developments that are arising in the midst of the chaos of the “new normal”.
After all, looking for the signal in the noise begins with effective listening.
Rosenstock-Huessy’s grammatical method is, as much as anything, a philosophy of listening as much as speech and speaking, and opening the “doors of perception”, as Blake called it, as much involves the ear as it does the eye. “Those with ears to hear let them hear…” attests to the fact that real listening is more than simply hearing and that the imparting of vital truth comes first via the ear rather than the eye. 
Robopaths | The Chrysalis https://longsworde.wordpress.com/2020/02/22/robopaths/

Nihilism and Nietzsche Interpretation

Not many philosophers have suffered the abuse and misuse of their doctrines as Nietzsche. He knew it was his fate to be so misused and abused, and that his own Lehre, as it were, would also be sucked into the vortex of his expected “two centuries of nihilism”. “All higher values devalue themselves” — Nietzsche’s concise formula for nihilism — has been nowhere more apparent than in Nietzsche interpretation itself, or in what some describe as “vulgar Nietzscheanism”.
Continue reading 

I still think there is value in understanding where Nietzsche himself probably gained his understanding. He witnessed the Russian movement that identified as Nihilists, as a way of embracing what, in post-revolutionary Europe, had been a slur fundamentalist Christians threw at non-believers and those who deviated in their beliefs.
The implication was that such people did not believe anything at all, but the reality was that many of the targets of this slur were simply radical skeptics, questioning received wisdom in general. In its original meaning, Nietzsche also was a nihilist, specifically in his criticism of Christianity. That is the thing about nihilism, it is simply the other side of radical doubt and questioning.
Understanding this deeper meaning of nihilism gives us much insight about modernity. There was always two sides (or maybe multiple sides) to nihilism. It was highly critical and despairing of modernity, and yet implied within it was a sense of indomitable hope for humanity, that humans had within them immense potential even answers to our problems elude us.
By the way, I’m reminded of Nietzsche’s view on the bundled self. Before him, David Hume had argued for this same position, probably something he learned from missionaries bringing back Buddhist ideas. Many thinkers, such as Julian Jaynes, have made similar arguments since. But it stands out to me that this is an area of Nietzschean thought that receives little attention, maybe because it is so threatening to our modern identity.
Much of Nietzsche’s understands are still too radical, what many conservative and reactionary Christians to this day would consider nihilistic.

The Gods and the Titans Strive for Control of the Human Psychology https://t.co/Gk2wtEwUh4
The battle of the gods and the Titans is an allegory of the inner struggle between the impulses driven by ego, and the aspiration of the higher self seeking to attain knowledge and realisation. The actions of each individual are governed by the predominance and balance of the three gunas, or qualities of Nature.  Those with a predominant sattwic nature, focused on peace, harmony, compassion, seeking for knowledge and devoted to truth, are carrying out the action of the gods, focusing on the growth of the higher principles of action, and reducing the impact of the ego-nature’s seeking for satisfaction of its desires.  Those with a predominant rajasic nature tend to try to aggrandize themselves at the expense of others, want to satisfy the urgings of their lower desires and do not care about truth in their attempt to gain a victory for their egoistic pursuits.
In today’s world, where ancient knowledge is so critically needed to address the challenges of modern-day life, we now have an opportunity to truly appreciate and apply “the secret of the Veda” as developed in the Upanishads.
The Esoteric Sense of the Ashwamedha, the Horse Sacrifice https://t.co/zJbog54mC4

The meta-psychogy of Reason --An Aurobindonian perspective https://t.co/wiePoSfpsZ
The hard question is how did that element of doubt creep into his system, leading to a ‘synthetic reinterpretation’ and reappraisal of his perceptual information? Was it instinct? Was it some sort of intuition?
It may be argued that ‘reason’ itself supplied that doubt. Of course, it is the function of reason to argue and doubt. That is how man has been able to rise above superstitions, dogmas and stereotypes. But by the time reason had developed to an optimal level as a universal faculty, man was already flooded with a multitude of perceptual inputs. Reason therefore needed some intrinsic guidance to select those perceptions that required correction or revaluation. This pre-programmed guidance must have been instinctive or intuitive. To understand this phenomenon, we need to appreciate the meta-psychology of reason.
[...]
Sri Aurobindo is optimistic and points out that “present potentiality is a clue to future realisation (11).” He is confident that the scope of the present levels of human experience (viz. sensory perception and reason) can be extended for conceptualising and willing an anterior potentiality. This can only be possible by an expansion of the faculties of knowledge. That expansion necessitates a surpassing of reason and harnessing hitherto untapped suprarational faculties. These suprarational faculties have been sporadically available to exceptional individuals scattered in space and time. But Sri Aurobindo previsions their emergence as a more generalised, universal experience. He works out this concept in The Life Divine and traces an evolution of consciousness through cognitive matrices that progressively moves towards a global cognition that includes both the oneness and the multiplicity and finally culminates in the integral cognition of the Supermind where the Whole is present at every point and at every point, one can cognise the Whole.

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