Cell Intelligence in Physiological & Morphological Spaces

[AshvinP]

Here are the latest posts. As one can see, I escalated the focus. As we have experienced here before, remaining at the metaphysical descriptive level can give the misleading sense that we are all speaking about the same things, but when things are made more concrete, that's when the real discrepancies come to light. If nothing else, it may help for people to know that there are, in fact, discrepancies in these views and therefore alternate ways of approaching the reality of spiritual evolution. Otherwise they convince themselves Aurobindo, Steiner, Martinus, Maharshi, etc. are all fundamentally approaching the same experiences and facts of spiritual reality, except Steiner just went crazy or totalitarian or racist or [fill in the blank] for a while


MM: Oh… but if you are looking for someone who described his teachings by being obsessed over the details at an intellectual level you might like to take a look at my paper here : https://integral-review.org/the-integra ... s-studies/

This is only a still superficial bird’s eye view of his metaphysics. If you want to know more, but something that is still condensed and contains also an outline of his spiritual practice, another starting point could be the book “Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo's Teaching & Method of Practice”. However, if one would like to know really what his spiritual approach is about, I’m afraid the only way is the long one. His books “The Synthesis of Yoga” and “The Life Divine” are a must. His epic poem “Savitri” is less mandatory for the intellect but is ultimately his real testament, and only about the supersensible.

I hope that will help.


Thanks for the paper. The metaphysics and cosmology certainly make sense and align with what we also find through the path of Western esoteric science. But I am wondering more about details on, for example, how souls journey from incarnation to incarnation and these karmic threads advance the evolution of humanity and the Earth organism. Is there anything like that in his writings or those of anyone else who pursued the integral yoga path?


MM: There is a lot about these aspects, but not organized in a single book. You might like to check this page where most of his works can be downloaded in PDF format: https://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/sria ... itings.php Especially the five volumes series “Letters on Yoga” are organized according to topics and subtopics you can see in the contents table. For example, one finds “Karma and Heredity,” “Death,” “Rebirth,” and “Occult Knowledge and Powers” in section III, IV of vol. I. Or, if you download his “Essays in Philosophy and Yoga,” the part entitled “The Problem of Rebirth” might help also. In “The Life Divine” he writes on similar topics in Ch. XX-XXII. I would use the search function and browse through the other volumes on the same page as well. I guess there is everything what you are looking for, but you will have to do your research.



I will surely visit some of those resources when I have the time. But let me use a more conspicuous example : )

I am sure you can point me to a specific passage of Aurobindo that relates to this quote by Jean Gebser:

"The new mutation of consciousness, on the other hand, as a consequence of arationality, receives its decisive stamp from the manifest perceptual emergence of the spiritual...

Two apocryphal statements of Christian doctrine clarify in their way what is meant here: “This world is a bridge, cross it but do not make of it your dwelling place,”2 and “I have chosen you before the earth began.”3 They point to the spiritual origin prior to all spatio-temporal materialization. We may regard such materialization as a bridge that makes possible the merging or coalescence, the concrescere of origin and the present. The great church father Irenaeus presumably had these sayings in mind when he stated: “Blessed is he who was before the coming of man.”4

We have seen him; he revealed himself in space and time. In his departure he was beheld by his disciples in his transparency, a transparency appropriate only to the spiritual origin (if anything can be appropriated to it), the transparency which a time-free and ego-free person can presentiate in the most fortunate certainty of life. The grand and painful path of consciousness emergence, or, more appropriately, the unfolding and intensification of consciousness, manifests itself as an increasingly intense luminescence of the spiritual in man."

Or similarly by Owen Barfield:

"And now let us further suppose that our imaginary student of the history of language [philology], having had up to now that conspicuous gap in his general historical knowledge, was suddenly confronted for the first time with the Christian record; that he now learned for the first time, that at about the middle of the period which his investigation had marked off, a man was born who claimed to be the son of God, and to have come down from Heaven, that he spoke to his followers of “the Father in me and I in you,” that he told all those who stood around him that “the kingdom of God is within you,” and startled them, and strove to reverse the direction of their thought — for the word metanoia, which is translated “repentance” also means a reversal of the direction of the mind — he startled them and strove to reverse the direction of their thought by assuring them that “it is not that which cometh into a man which defileth him, but that which goeth out of him.”

Can you point me to a passage that discusses the role of these events in the evolution of consciousness? Again, to be clear, I'm not trying to debate this issue, find agreement on it, or find 'errors' in Aurobindo, but simply trying to get a better sense of how he understood the role of cognition in the higher spaces. This can't be discerned through metaphysical descriptions of mind or consciousness or the higher spaces, but requires some more intimate examples and points of reference.


MM: I’m not sure to get it. Sri Aurobindo is all about “The mutation of consciousness receiving its stamp from the emergence of the spiritual,” or about the “spiritual origin prior to all spatio-temporal materialization,” the “path of consciousness emergence,” the “unfolding and intensification of consciousness, manifests in the spiritual in man,” and “the role of cognition in the higher spaces.” If I randomly pick out a page of his writing, I only see this repeated over and over again. So, I’m afraid that I don’t understand what you are missing.


Yes, of course. I am drawing attention specifically to the role of the Christ events - not limited to, but centrally, the incarnation, death, and resurrection. Gebser, Barfield, and many other 20th century spiritual evolutionary thinkers ascribe central importance to these events, such that we cannot even understand the depths of spiritual evolution without taking them into account in a living and imaginative way.

To be clear, I am not speaking of any particular religious sect or theological doctrine, but about the inner significance of these events for the very structure of human cognitive consciousness. Everything we are doing here right now through our thinking, along with the ability to penetrate the higher spaces with cognition, was made possible through these events, in the view of Western esotericism. That is not to suggest we are discovering something other than the ancient Wisdom known in the East, but we are discovering-inventing it in an entirely new way that was not possible before the Mystery of the 1st century.

Does this clarify what I am asking about?

[AshvinP]

Further comments, which could very well be the last : )

MM: Oh… I see. Well, you must consider the universality of his vision. While Sri Aurobindo was very knowledgeable about the Western culture, he didn’t attach to Christ more importance than what Buddha, Krishna, or other so-called ‘Avatars’ represent (even though, because of the obvious cultural context, he mainly focused on the Eastern perspective.) In this view they are the expression of a divine “sacrifice” descending into the world to accelerate human evolution (on the general notion of the “sacrifice” you will find him writing extensively in the Synthesis of Yoga.) You might also like to read M. Orton’s article on how he saw “The role of the Avatar”: https://www.collaboration.org/journal/s ... he-avatar/ While he recognized the very important evolutionary function of religions and the impact of the Avatar in the spiritual evolution of humankind, he also advocated for something that transcends religion. Thus, I suspect that you will not find him saying anything highlighting the significance of the Christ events as something more central than the “Buddha events,” or “Krishna events.” In his view, to understand the wider context of the evolution of consciousness one needs to see them all together and even go beyond them.

I hope this helps.


Yes, this helps locate the spiritual perspective much better, thanks.

It is an issue for a number of reasons, for one that the phenomenological study of human history clearly shows the time of the Christ events as standing apart, as a sort of center of gravity around which all past and future stages of Earthly evolution revolve. (we have to decondition from the default intuition of linear time to better understand this). As Barfield indicated, it signified a metanoia, a 'reversal of the direction of the mind', which means a reversal of the very flow of Time from involution to evolution. As hinted in the truthfulness essay, it is when the Overmind found its concrete reflection in the stream of thoughts and could therefore sense itself as an individual agency who can freely adopt creative responsibility for recohering the fragmented content of experience into ever-more expansive ideal unities. Many facts of evolving human history are harmoniously ordered when we discern this center of gravity.

There is nothing inaccurate in the article you linked on the role of the Avatars. As Orton wrote, we should indeed feel "deeply humbled and grateful for the concrete physical presence of the Divine on earth and consider the enormity of the sacrifice which this represents." And Aurobindo clearly goes further than many others in discerning how the Avatars descended so that humanity could ascend from within, through concrete inner development. Yet we can still go deeper in our understanding of how the Avatars have influenced Earthly evolution and the concrete role of the Christ Avatar in that process. There is no need to arbitrarily stop investigating the depths of the Spirit in this respect.

Here is a passage from Steiner on the topic to contemplate:

"Let us look back to the large numbers of great personalities who were destined to beatify and save humanity. They were the external expression of the avatars, the divine spiritual forces who descended from spiritual heights in various epochs and assumed a human form, such as Krishna, Vishnu, and others. These benefactors and saviors of mankind had to make their appearances so that humanity could find its way back into the spiritual worlds, and in ancient times it took the intercession of divine power to do so. However, when the Mystery of Golgotha happened, human beings received the ability to muster from within the strength necessary to elevate themselves and lead themselves upward into the spiritual worlds. The Christ descended much deeper than had those previous leaders of the world and of mankind: not only did He bring heavenly forces into the earthly body, but also He spiritualized this earthly body in such a way that it now became possible for human beings to find the way back into the spiritual world with the help of these very forces. Although the pre-Christian saviors had used divine powers, the Christ used human powers to save mankind. And with this act human forces have been placed before our souls in their primordial potential. What would have happened on our earth if the Christ had not appeared? This serious and deeply incisive question is the one we want to pursue today.

It doesn't matter how many world saviors might have descended from the spiritual worlds; in the final analysis, they all would have found down here only human beings who were so deeply struck in the material world and so entrenched in matter that the pure, divine-spiritual forces would have been unable to lift them upward out of this unholy, impure matter. The oriental sages were deeply distressed and looked sadly into the future, which they viewed this way: the Maitreya-Buddha will appear in order to renew the primeval wisdom of the world, but there will not be a disciple present to absorb such wisdom. If the course of the world had continued in such a fashion, the Maitreya-Buddha would have preached to deaf ears and would not have been understood by human beings who were completely immersed in material things... A strong heavenly force had to radiate into physical matter and sacrifice itself into this matter. What was required was more than just a God wearing the mask of human appearance; what was needed was a true human being with human powers who was carrying the God within himself. The Event of Golgotha had to happen so that the matter into which the human being was placed could be readied, cleansed, and ennobled. When components of matter are cleansed and sanctified, this will make the comprehension of primordial wisdom possible again in future incarnations. Mankind must be led to a true understanding of how the Event of Golgotha has really worked in this sense." (GA 109)

[Federica]

Ashvin, are you going to reply to MMs latest?

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, are you going to reply to MMs latest?

I am drafting a reply but may post it tomorrow. Probably a final post to close the discussion, assuming he doesn't suddenly take an interest in the higher cognitive path Did you want to suggest something?

[Federica]

Ashvin, are you going to reply to MMs latest?

I am drafting a reply but may post it tomorrow. Probably a final post to close the discussion, assuming he doesn't suddenly take an interest in the higher cognitive path Did you want to suggest something?

Just that I think I see where his stance comes from, but it's in tension with his belief that an evolutionary perspective is so key, so I wanted to highlight that, and where the moral impulse comes from. I would have commented in case you didn't plan to respond, but I can still do it later, after your conclusion.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, are you going to reply to MMs latest?

I am drafting a reply but may post it tomorrow. Probably a final post to close the discussion, assuming he doesn't suddenly take an interest in the higher cognitive path Did you want to suggest something?

Just that I think I see where his stance comes from, but it's in tension with his belief that an evolutionary perspective is so key, so I wanted to highlight that, and where the moral impulse comes from. I would have commented in case you didn't plan to respond, but I can still do it later, after your conclusion.

Ok I went ahead and posted my concluding thoughts, so feel free.

MM: Dear Ashvin, so finally we have found a point of disagreement. I believe that many aspects you highlighted could equally (or in reverse) be said for other Avatars as well, and that nothing of what Steiner wrote makes Christ more exclusive than others (even though every Avatar had something exclusive that others hadn’t.) My resonance with Sri Aurobindo is, among other things, dictated precisely by his universal understanding of religions and Avatars in a larger context and without the other “conditionings” that place one spiritual figure over the other. But that said, I won’t go into the eternal quarrel regarding who is “standing apart,” who is or was the “center of gravity,” and who “descended much deeper.“ I have seen so many times people arguing about the supposed superiority of one Avatar (teacher, teaching, doctrine, religion, guru, prophet, etc.) over others and could see that it never led to anything neither intellectually nor spiritually valuable. We all have our own path and belief system that makes us grow. We can follow very different paths that contradict each other and nevertheless progress. So, if you feel more comfortable with this point of view and feel it nurtures your spiritual development, I will not insist.

Right, I have also encountered this exact discrepancy many times and I agree logical arguments won't resolve the issue. I can only ask that one try to remain conscious of how an inner contradiction is established when we come to this domain - it is as if we say all other facts about the 'noumenal' reality are accessible to inner cognitive development, *except* the significance of the facts surrounding the incarnation, death, and resurrection of an Avatar who appeared at the very center of historical evolution (which can be established along many phenomenological lines of inquiry), and perhaps not coincidentally at the center of Earthly geography as well. We suddenly erect the Kantian boundary to knowledge and say this must remain a matter of mere belief, preference, or speculation, but it cannot ever become a matter of inner objective knowledge like other aspects of the spiritual cosmology that we are more comfortable with.

These are exactly the beliefs and preferences we can seek to expose to the Light of consciousness and view objectively through the path of intuitive thinking. In fact, they are some of the first factors of our soul constellation that we meet and discern how they modulate our thinking states. Do we want to be dictated by these preferences for one spiritual thinker or another, for one cosmology or another, or freely accept only those ideas and ideals which harmonize the ever-expanding facts of inner experience that we encounter, even if they are experienced as uncomfortable to begin with? You believe the aspects could be said for other Avatars, but is this belief based on dispassionate investigation of the inner facts or on the preference for 'universal understanding of religion'? I am not expecting an answer. Again, this can't be decided by logical argumentation, but is a matter of each person's highest and freely chosen ideals.

I will conclude by saying, the idea of the Christ events 'standing apart' is only a matter of standard religious quarrels when one views these things on a horizontal axis, i.e. from the perspective of sensory cognition that can only evaluate the facts of the physical plane, of standard religious history. What we are speaking of is actually the hierarchical depth of Cosmic Beings, which is recognized by Eastern and Western esotericism alike. These Beings are the 'phase-spaces' of experiential potential in whom we 'live, move, and have our being'. It is by discerning this hierarchical depth and its concrete role in drawing human cognitive evolution upward that we gradually attain universalism in practice, not only on paper. It is a path of radical humility - we don't know what we need to know, what is best for our spiritual growth (apart from the broad strokes of more compassion, love, equanimity, balance, inner calm, etc.), but we trust the higher worlds will gradually grace us with this knowledge, in response to our cognitive efforts, when Time is ripe. Contradictions are fine and even healthy when they stimulate our spirit to move along the depth axis.

Where is the Christ Avatar now? Is it possible he is still active, has descended again to incarnate within a higher space (from the physical perspective) and that we can behold this reality with our inner cognitive perception just as the disciples beheld him 2,000 years ago on the sensory plane? Can we make this supersensible fact a matter of inner objective knowledge, just as we can other facts of supersensible worlds? These are some questions that I leave you with to contemplate.

[Federica]

OK - I added: Marco, it seems to me that there is tension between an eminently evolutionary perspective on the one hand, and a feel-good decree of spiritual par conditio on the other. I apologize if this sounds ironic, I am just trying to be as clear as I can in a few words. Every Avatar paved the way for the one who followed. Nonetheless, we can’t downplay the momentous evolution of human consciousness, requiring different planes of guidance in different epochs. Not to say I don’t sympathize with the impulse lying behind your support, grounded in … fill the blank with all the well-meant intentions that animate the egalitarian view you are expressing. Until not so long ago I shared it. But I contend it is an abstractly egalitarian position. What helped me clarify the (personal) motives behind it, and so overcome it, is the sense of a more real moral perspective emerging from a concretely evolutionary - that is, spiritual before historical - understanding. The moral aspect inevitably emerges from the same cosmological-introspective seed of reality. It can’t be an extra layer added from without. The forming of this true moral understanding results in an *inherently* egalitarian source of ideal brotherly love gushing out with force of natural law from within the alignment of the mentioned layers of being. Meanwhile, the felt impulse to establish a preliminary protection against “conditionings”, in form of manifesto from without, has in all likelihood more to do with reaction to personal, environmental, contextual states of affairs, than with the ground of reality the protection aims to set straight in the first place, in benevolent, yet in my opinion not fully scrutinized impulse.

[Federica]

MM: "Dear Federica, as I already said, I don’t think it is constructive to establish whether this or that Avatar stood apart. Whatever the truth, I feel there are much more urgent issues that nowadays need to be addressed if humankind wants to progress. So, forgive me if I don't comment further."


Sad but this conversation has been helpful for me.
I imagine this scenario will occur more and more often: brilliant people who have gone a long way in the necessary direction, yet for some reason stop at a certain threshold, and censor themselves, unable to make the connections and draw the conclusions that are inherent in their own quest, to glimpse at what really would be a constructive approach for humanity today...

[AshvinP]

MM: "Dear Federica, as I already said, I don’t think it is constructive to establish whether this or that Avatar stood apart. Whatever the truth, I feel there are much more urgent issues that nowadays need to be addressed if humankind wants to progress. So, forgive me if I don't comment further."


Sad but this conversation has been helpful for me.
I imagine this scenario will occur more and more often: brilliant people who have gone a long way in the necessary direction, yet for some reason stop at a certain threshold, and censor themselves, unable to make the connections and draw the conclusions that are inherent in their own quest, to glimpse at what really would be a constructive approach for humanity today...

Yeah, I think that's correct and we have already encountered it a few times here, and I have encountered a few such minds on Discord as well. It is a real catch-22, because the failure to notice the discrepancy between the content of their thoughts and what is inherent in their own thinking quest is itself the discrepancy we are trying to point attention to. In other words, we are continually trying to point attention to the continual failure to notice that there is something else to attend to. It is self-evidently why the path of intuitive thinking stands apart, since it brings to light all those inner factors that prevent us from understanding what is at stake when we stop at certain thresholds and rest comfortable.

If we lack in piety, devotion, equanimity, willpower, and such, we can become more sensitive to these discrepancies on the Way of Thinking and gradually torque our soul constellation, but it doesn't work the other way around. When one discards the value of cognitive training out of unquestioned and unexamined mystical or religious preference, it can't be recovered in any other way. The Christ impulse will never force itself on our soul constellation and into our thinking flow since it is synonymous with spiritual freedom, that would be an irresolvable paradox.

Meanwhile, because of this inner discrepancy that leads to lack of spiritual insight and pride, purely physical 'countermeasures' are envisioned as the best way to deal with environmental problems. Instead of harmonizing our soul rhythms with the Earthly and Cosmic rhythms, truly submitting our soul life to the Divine impulses, we seek to impose more of our disorderly soul life on the Divine. That is not to say technological interventions are always off the mark, but they must always be carried out in the light of genuine moral intuition. So we see that, in the absence of higher cognitive development, the humble receptiveness to the Divine Will is only preached on paper, but in practice the exact opposite is sought.

One countermeasure that has been rarely considered in the past, but has recently gained renewed attention is geoengineering. Geoengineering refers to deliberate, large-scale interventions in the Earth's natural systems to counteract climate change by either removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere or reflecting sunlight away from the Earth's surface... There are good reasons to be skeptical of any further human intervention.

However, geoengineering the atmosphere remains the only way out to avoid a climatic collapse. It remains the only credible tool for mitigating the worst impacts of climate change.

[Federica]

Yeah, I think that's correct and we have already encountered it a few times here, and I have encountered a few such minds on Discord as well. It is a real catch-22, because the failure to notice the discrepancy between the content of their thoughts and what is inherent in their own thinking quest is itself the discrepancy we are trying to point attention to. In other words, we are continually trying to point attention to the continual failure to notice that there is something else to attend to. It is self-evidently why the path of intuitive thinking stands apart, since it brings to light all those inner factors that prevent us from understanding what is at stake when we stop at certain thresholds and rest comfortable.

If we lack in piety, devotion, equanimity, willpower, and such, we can become more sensitive to these discrepancies on the Way of Thinking and gradually torque our soul constellation, but it doesn't work the other way around. When one discards the value of cognitive training out of unquestioned and unexamined mystical or religious preference, it can't be recovered in any other way. The Christ impulse will never force itself on our soul constellation and into our thinking flow since it is synonymous with spiritual freedom, that would be an irresolvable paradox.

Meanwhile, because of this inner discrepancy that leads to lack of spiritual insight and pride, purely physical 'countermeasures' are envisioned as the best way to deal with environmental problems. Instead of harmonizing our soul rhythms with the Earthly and Cosmic rhythms, truly submitting our soul life to the Divine impulses, we seek to impose more of our disorderly soul life on the Divine. That is not to say technological interventions are always off the mark, but they must always be carried out in the light of genuine moral intuition. So we see that, in the absence of higher cognitive development, the humble receptiveness to the Divine Will is only preached on paper, but in practice the exact opposite is sought.

One countermeasure that has been rarely considered in the past, but has recently gained renewed attention is geoengineering. Geoengineering refers to deliberate, large-scale interventions in the Earth's natural systems to counteract climate change by either removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere or reflecting sunlight away from the Earth's surface... There are good reasons to be skeptical of any further human intervention.

However, geoengineering the atmosphere remains the only way out to avoid a climatic collapse. It remains the only credible tool for mitigating the worst impacts of climate change.

Yes, one could say the 'code' is forever protected against third parties interventions, it can only be deciphered inside.
There's only one viewpoint from which things can be seen without discrepancy, and if that insight does not shine through the inner layers and into the intellect, it can't be conveyed by someone else's words!

It's terrible... and surely necessary too. There's sort of a gigantic 'freedom padlock' to protect the access to the path. And how absurd this sounds is only a good measure of the elusive difficulty the seeker of truth needs to wrap their head, heart, and whole being around