This article brings together some predictions and uncanny observations made by Sri Aurobindo that were fulfilled later in time. To preserve chronological fidelity, I will only draw on remarks which predate the actual occurrence of the event. If the modern tech-savvy yogi had to record predictions about the future, he or she could use Trusted timestamping(digital notary), a cryptographic technology which is now available in commercial software products. Such technology was unfortunately not available in Sri Aurobindo’s time nor did he care to impress others with his yogic abilities. Nevertheless, the original manuscripts from which these remarks are drawn are preserved in the Archives Department of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry.
Indian Independence
In an interview in January of 1910, Sri Aurobindo told a correspondent of a vernacular Tamil weekly named “India”:
“Since 1907, we are living in a new era which is full of hope for India. Not only India, but the whole world will see sudden upheavals and revolutionary changes. The high will become low and the low high. The oppressed and the depressed shall be elevated. The nation and humanity will be animated by a new consciousness, new thought and new efforts will be made to reach new ends. Amidst these revolutionary changes, India will become free.” [1]
The British government which then ruled India regarded Sri Aurobindo as a “dangerous man”. They duly made a record of his remarks in their official reports:
Aravinda Ghose who is proved to be living in Pondicherry is stated to have declared in reply to a Karmayogin correspondent that 5,000 years of the Kaliyuga have expired, that a new epoch has commenced and in the next 4 or 5 years there will be “great deluge, change, revolution, great revolution, great persons falling, low persons rising, change, change, change everywhere, change in the Government, change in our people, new methods, new ideas in all [2].
Four years later, in 1914, the First World War started which in turn led to the Second World War. Britain became saddled with war debt, the British Empire collapsed and it was not just India but many other countries which gained freedom in the subsequent upheavals. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK fell from 700 million to 5 million[3]. Sri Aurobindo had accurately foreseen that the “oppressed and the depressed [would] become elevated”.
Image: British empire in red. Wikimedia commons. Click image for source
First World War
Durng his early years in Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo made copious notes of his newborn yogic powers and related developments in a diary now published as The Record of Yoga. On Dec 10, 1912, this diary contains an entry which seems to be a prevision of the First World War that would begin in July, 1914:
The visions in samadhi grow in richness and completeness, eg last night a vision of armies of different nationalities advancing successively along a road, not seen consecutively without interruption but successively with intervals of avikalpa samadhi. Dream is still in the same stage, but last night present associations [4].
Although Sri Aurobindo does not say so, I believe this was a prevision of the First World War.
The German retreat from Paris in World War I
When the World War I started in July 1914, the German army activated the Schlieffen Plan, whose purpose was to rapidly conquer France so as to avoid a two-front war. By the end of August 1914, the Germans were within thirty miles of Paris. In the first week of September, Alexander von Kluck, commander of the German First Army made a tactical error which opened a 50-km gap between him and the German Second Army commanded by the cautious General Bulow. The Allies took advantage of this blunder and poured troops into the gap. The Germans retreated and regrouped but lost in Battle of Marne which was fought from 5th – 12th Sept, 1914.
Sri Aurobindo seems to have foreseen this German defeat. While reading the remarks below, we have to keep in mind that in 1914, news traveled through telegraph wire services and newspapers and took about a day to propagate from Europe to India. The BBC did not exist until 1922. (See: How fast did news travel in 1914?)
On Sept 10, 1914, Sri Aurobindo wrote in his diary:
Trikaldrishtis (i.e. occult vision of past, present, future)
1. Strong impression of great German reverse approaching
2. Idea of increasing Russian difficulties but eventual victory.[5]
On Sept 15, he noted that the Sept 10 prediction had been fulfilled: “The great German defeat satisfies at once trikaldrishti and aishwarya. Similarly, the Russian victory, in spite of great resistance for several days” [6].
In the text above, he also refers to a Russian victory. On the Eastern Front, the Russians were suffering from a string of losses. They lost against the Germans in the Battle of Masurian Lakes (present-day Poland) fought between 9th – 14th September but won against the Austria-Hungarians in the Battle of Galicia (modern-day Ukraine) fought between 26 August – 11 Sept, 1914. Sri Aurobindo may be referring to the Russian victory in Galicia.
Image : Battle of Marne. Wikimedia commons. Click image for source
Death of elder brother
On Feb 14, 1911, Sri Aurobindo noted a vision of his brother in the diary: “My eldest brother in a past state of health & vigour, chhayamay in Samadhi. Indication that he will not recover that health or live long” [7].
This prediction did come true but it was not the eldest brother Benoy Bhushan but the sibling after him Manomohan who died early. Sri Aurobindo had two brothers elder than him. The eldest brother Benoy Bhushan (b 1867) died in 1947 at the age of eighty, while Manomohan (b 1869) died in 1924 at the age of fifty-five, because his health deteriorated after wife Malati’s death in 1918 [8, 9]. This occurred about thirteen years after Sri Aurobindo had jotted down this vision.
It is worth noting that with the exception of Manomohan, the other three brothers all lived till the age of about eighty – Barindra Ghose (1880-1959) and Sri Aurobindo (1871-1950).
Genetic engineering
(This was originally pointed out by V. Arvind of the “Institute of Mathematical Sciences”, Chennai)
In a commentary on the Isha Upanishad written in during the 1913-1914 period, Sri Aurobindo predicted that one day man would be able to freely modify plant and animal life:
Modern man has not yet succeeded in discovering or using the laws of Life, but there is no reason to suppose that he will not one day make that discovery also. The day must inevitably come when he will be able even to originate no less than to modify freely both plant life and animal life in matter and govern them for his purposes as he now originates mechanisms of material force and modifies and governs its currents, combinations and separate workings so as to abridge distance, to invade the air, to economise the expenditure of his own life energies or to serve a hundred other purposes of human construction, destruction or development [10].
Sri Aurobindo was at least 50 years ahead of his time when it comes to advent of genetic engineering. In 1944 Avery, Macleod and McCarty demonstrated that it was DNA that carried genetic information. In 1952, Hershey and Chase confirmed DNA’s role in heredity. In 1953, Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. And it was in the year 1972 that Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen proved that genes can be moved between species (i.e. recombinant DNA).
Hypercomplex numbers in physics
In Feb 1935, in a letter exchanged with a disciple named Nirodbaran, Sri Aurobindo made a casual remark which is really unusual given his academic background. He wrote:
In mathematics one works out problems in infinite and in unreal numbers which exist nowhere on earth and yet these are extremely important and can help scientific reasoning and scientific discovery and achievement. The question of a Muthu becoming a Ramakrishna, i.e. a great spiritual man may look to you like being an exercise in unreal numbers or magnitudes because it exceeds the actual observable facts in the case of this Muthu who very evidently is not going to be a great spiritual man — but we were arguing the matter of essential principle [11].
This remark is unusual because Sri Aurobindo, who was educated as a classics scholar rather than as a physicist or a mathematician and who had finished his schooling in the late nineteenth century, made this assertion at a time when the application of “unreal numbers” (or rather hypercomplex numbers) to physics was hardly as well-known as it is today. Regarding his mathematical education, Sri Aurobindo once said, probably in a self-deprecating manner, that “Euclid was bad enough. When Riemann came in, it was time for me to give up mathematics”[12]. Riemann was a German mathematician who developed complex analysis, among other things.
To understand the significance of the above remark, it would be helpful to briefly trace the history of the development of hypercomplex numbers and their application to physics.
Complex numbers (numbers of the form “a+bi”) were known since their usage by Gauss in the early nineteenth century. Quaternions (numbers of the form “a + bi + cj +dk”) were discovered by Hamilton in 1844 and Grassman developed algebras around the same time. Clifford developed his eponymous Clifford Algebras in 1876. These discoveries remained unutilised by physicists until Gibbs gave a lecture on these topics in 1886. In 1885-1887, Oliver Heaviside wrote Electromagnetic induction and its propagation in which he employed vector calculus to re-express Maxwell’s electrodynamic theory. Eli Cartan developed spinors in 1911 and by 1930, Pauli and Dirac had successfully applied spinors to mathematical physics. It is only after this that the application of hypercomplex numbers picked up in physics. Today, these tools are pervasive in the theory of quantum mechanics. To understand the significance of complex numbers to physics, check out this blog post by physicist Luboš Motl
If Sri Aurobindo was referring to some trivial applications of complex numbers that he studied in school, then his remark is probably not very significant, but if he meant the whole machinery of abstract algebra in general, then it is a mystery as to how he could have known in 1935 of their growing application to physics.
Sino-Indian war of 1962
China launched a military campaign against Tibet in October 1950 and against India in October 1962. Sri Aurobindo had foreseen these Chinese plans when the Korean war had just begun on 25th June, 1950. This is a clipping from the newspaper “Times of India” dated 17 August 1950.
In a letter to a disciple Amal Kiran dated 28th June, 1950, he had written the same:
I do not know why you want a line of thought to be indicated to you for your guidance in the affair of Korea. There is nothing to hesitate about there, the whole affair is as plain as a pike-staff. It is the first move in the Communist plan of campaign to dominate and take possession first of these northern parts and then of South East Asia as a preliminary to their manoeuvres with regard to the rest of the continent — in passing, Tibet as a gate opening to India. If they succeed, there is no reason why domination of the whole world should not follow by steps until they are ready to deal with America. That is, provided the war can be staved off with America until Stalin can choose his time. Truman seems to have understood the situation if we can judge from his moves in Korea, but it is to be seen whether he is strong enough and determined enough to carry the matter through. The measures he has taken are likely to be incomplete and unsuccessful, since they do not include any actual military intervention except on sea and in the air. That seems to be the situation; we have to see how it develops. One thing is certain that if there is too much shilly-shallying and if America gives up now her defence of Korea, she may be driven to yield position after position until it is too late: at one point or another she will have to stand and face the necessity of drastic action even if it leads to war. Stalin also seems not to be ready to face at once the risk of a world war and, if so, Truman can turn the tables on him by constantly facing him with the onus of either taking that risk or yielding position after position to America. I think that is all that I can see at present; for the moment the situation is as grave as it can be [13].
Invention of the atom bomb (nuclear energy)
Pavitra was a French disciple who had been educated at l’Ecole de Polytechnique in Paris. In a conversation with him dated 8 May 1926 regarding the Pancha-mahabhutas (five subtle elements), Sri Aurobindo said:
“Agni is threefold: ordinary fire(Jala Agni), electric fire(Vaidyuta Agni), solar fire(Saura Agni). Science only entered upon the first and the second of these fires. The fact that the atom is like the solar system could lead it to the knowledge of the third” [14].
The Manhattan project began in 1939 and the first nuclear device (Trinity) was detonated in 1945. Although this conversation took place in 1926, the talk was first published in an internal magazine, Sri Aurobindo Circle, much later in 1952. As a result, it may not satisfy the skeptic’s requirement that the prediction had to be published before the actual event.
Update Nov 11, 2012 : Shyam Kumari wrote to me pointing out that these two lines:
“A scientist played with atoms and blew out
The universe before God had time to shout.”
in the poem “A Dream of Surreal Science” (CWSA vol. 2, p 614). There exist three handwritten manuscripts for this poem dated 25 September 1939, according to CWSA vol. 2, page 721. This is another possible proof that Sri Aurobindo had foreseen the invention of atom bomb.
Existence of vital signs in Coma
When we fall asleep or go into a coma, the greater part of our consciousness recedes from the surface and plunges into the depths of the subliminal being. But there still persists a life-force within the body which can remember and respond when presented with an external stimulus. Writing in the early part of the twentieth century, Sri Aurobindo had outlined this condition of consciousness in his work The Life Divine. Advances in the neuroscientific technologies which allow us to peer deep into the brain of a coma patient are now confirming his insight. It is only recently that science has begun making a distinction between vegetative states and minimally conscious states.
For more on this, see the article “Mental awareness in comatose patients”
Animal cognition
In his private diary and in conversations with disciples, Sri Aurobindo had made certain observations regarding the cognitive abilities of animals. Some of these observations are now being confirmed by advances in science which allow us to peer into the animal brain. He specifically said:
- Animals have a wide range of emotions: This is aligned with recent scientific evidence. Animals exhibit emotional fever, ambient emotional states and other non-trivial emotions.
- Animals have a rudimentary language capability: This is aligned with the current scientific data, and has been documented across several species.
- Animals have an “intelligence which acts within narrow limits of the needs of their life”: This is also aligned with the current scientific evidence. Animals can’t function completely like humans but they do exhibit limited rational skills.
- Animals have a “power of wonderful telepathic communication of impulse”: This is not yet scientifically proven, or if it is, I do not know the exact experiment which proves it.
To read more on this subject, see an earlier article “Insights into Animal Cognition”
Lateralization of brain function
(thanks to Ashish Kumar Sahani who pointed this out in a comment seen below)
In 1910, Sri Aurobindo wrote a series of essays entitled “A system of national education” in the Karmayogin magazine. In one passage in this series, he elucidated on the difference between the capacities of the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of the brain:
…The intellect is an organ composed of several groups of functions, divisible into two important classes, the functions and faculties of the right-hand, the functions and faculties of the left-hand. The faculties of the right-hand are comprehensive, creative and synthetic; the faculties of the left-hand critical and analytic. To the right-hand belong judgment, imagination, memory, observation; to the left-hand comparison and reasoning….Both are essential to the completeness of the human reason [15].
Sri Aurobindo’s remarks anticipate the discoveries on functional lateralization in the human brain made by Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Wolcott Sperry in the 1960s. In those days, epileptic patients used to undergo a corpus callustomy to reduce seizures. The reduction of communication capacity between the left and right brain allowed Sperry and Gazzaniga to investigate the unique capacities of each hemisphere. Sperry was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981 for his work on split-brain functioning. Today, it is commonly known that the left-brain is logical and analytical while the right-brain is said to be intuitive and creative. See Split brain on wikipedia
Conclusion
There are probably a few more such predictions lurking in the written works. Any further discoveries will be added to the comments section of this blog post.
Interpreting the universe by soul signs
He read from within the text of the without:
The riddle grew plain and lost its catch obscure.
A larger lustre lit the mighty page.
(Sri Aurobindo. Savitri, Book I, Canto V)
References
- Sri Aurobindo. On Himself, SABCL vol. 26, p 390.
- Government of India, Home Department-A, June 1912, 41-68: 67.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire
- Sri Aurobindo. Record of Yoga, CWSA vol. 10-11, p 143.
- Ibid., p 621.
- Ibid., p 624.
- Ibid., p 42.
- Anurag Banerjee. Private Communication.
- http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/manmohan-ghose
- Sri Aurobindo. Isha Upanishad, CWSA vol 17, p 536.
- Nirodbaran. Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, p 142.
- Nirodbaran, Talks With Sri Aurobindo. Vol 2, page 531
- Sri Aurobindo. On Himself. SABCL vol 26, p 416
- Sri Aurobindo Circle, Eighth number, 1952, pp 99-102.
- Sri Aurobindo. Early Cultural Writings, CWSA vol. 1, p 387.
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Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother 
Reblogged this on Sri Aurobindian Ontology.
‘Animals have a “power of wonderful telepathic communication of impulse”’
Something like this perhaps? http://vimeo.com/31158841
How amazing D!! Great article. Also it is shown that the heart is the seat of emotions in humans and animals, and affect the electromagnetic field around the body and the interaction of these fields have now been proven. See the most amazing research on the ‘heart-brain’ – there’s an abstract on pubmed, and part 1 + 2 are both highly recommended. Thanx for the article!
That’s a nice video but the ability has to be proven and replicated through scientific experiments with statistical significance and published in some mainstream scientific journal. All the other points listed above have been proved in this fashion. We just have to wait a little more I guess.
Any one who visited foreign countries known about their culture did some research can able to predict these things it’s not an extra ordinary thing. Why it is difficult to understand Aurobindo Ghosh literature. At some point he will tell some things without any certainty then again oppose it with a different theory. All I can say from his history is he read so much of different cultures and their way of religions and came up with new idea of spirituality. What he told is nothing new. If the supramental power is on earth then why not it help the people.
Thanks for your opinion. You can continue to believe whatever you want.
But the supreme Grace will act only in the conditions of the
Light and the Truth; it will not act in conditions laid upon it by
the Falsehood and the Ignorance. For if it were to yield to the
demands of the Falsehood, it would defeat its own purpose.
The Mother
Sri Aurobindo
It looks like you unfamiliar with their works. Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are not mental synthesis, they are revelations from higher planes of existence. There is a certain amount of free will that people have, and it is your own responsibility to strive towards good and reject evil. Most of the misfortunes are self-created by egoistic attitude so people experience consequences of their own actions and reactions.
Ooops – link to that rresearch is http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15025887
Also check out “The Heart, Mind and Spirit” by Professor Mohamed Omar Salem
Click to access Heart,%20Mind%20and%20Spirit%20%20Mohamed%20Salem.pdf
Here is more reliable information on how fast news traveled in 1914 via telegraph. First, we have to account for delays in release of information by the governments at war in Europe. It might have taken a day or two for the news from the war-front to be consolidated and released to the press. After that, it took a few hours for it to reach India and be published the next day, according to Daniel Headrick.
These are excerpts from Headrick’s paper “A Double-edged Sword : Communications and Imperial Control in British India”
During the Crimean War of 1854-55, a combination of land lines and short submarine cables allowed the French and British governments to interfere actively in the conduct of operations, while their respective publics followed the news on a day-to-day basis thanks to telegraphic dispatches from war correspondents at the front. As soon as that war ended, several British entrepreneurs proposed to lay telegraph lines to India. Before work could begin, the Indian Rebellion broke out in May 1857. News of that event did not reach London until forty days later. News stories published in the British press were all based on lurid reports by the English papers in India about the atrocities perpetrated by savage Indians. In a panic, the British government signed a fifty-year contract for a cable to be laid along the bottom of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean between Suez and Bombay….
In 1865 a land line through the Ottoman Empire from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf connected the European telegraph network with a cable to India. Telegrams crossed so many national borders and were relayed so many times, however, that the average message took six days, eight hours, and forty-four minutes to reach its destination. Another land line, this one across Prussia, Russia and Persia, provided an alternate route, but was even slower, with an average delay of seventeen days, five hours, and five minutes. Sending a telegram over these lines was extremely expensive, costing two pounds seventeen shillings for twenty words. Moreover, both lines were unreliable, for they were often interrupted by bad weather or broken by bandits, and their operators, few of whom knew English, frequently garbled the messages. The British government also worried about its important messages passing through so many foreign hands.
In 1870, the Eastern Telegraph Company laid a cable from Suez to Bombay, thereby completing a connection between Britain and India that was entirely in British hands. Britain finally had fast – albeit very costly – communications with its principal colony. With the laying of a submarine cable all the way, the time it took a message to travel between London and Bombay dropped to six hours. By the end of the century, most telegrams made the trip in one to two hours.
To defray their staggering cost, the British telegraphic and postal networks were opened to the public from the start….Besides governments, the cable companies relied on three kinds of customers: shipping companies, traders, and news agencies
Among news agencies, Reuters was the first and most important. In 1850, soon after the first Prussian telegraph line was opened, Julius Reuter set up shop in Aachen in western Germany to communicate with Bernhard Wolff in Berlin, at the other end of the line. In 1851, when the first submarine telegraph cable was laid across the English Channel, Reuter moved to London and opened an office there and another one in Paris. In 1866, as soon as regular telegraphic communications with India was established, Reuter opened an office in Bombay; two years later, his company opened offices in Calcutta, Karachi, and Madras, as well as in Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong, Java, and Australia.
By the early twentieth century, Reuters controlled the news of the British Empire and most of Asia, leaving the rest of the world to the French company Agence Havas, the German agency Wolff, and the American Associated Press. Of all of Reuters’ markets, India was the most profitable, employing up to one out of four of its correspondents. Thanks to its close ties with the British and Indian governments, Reuters handled almost all the news between India and the rest of the world. It received a special subsidy to supply the India Office in London with news and to diffuse India Office press releases. After buying up the two independent Indian news agencies, the Associated Press of India and the Indian News Agency, it also dominated the internal Indian news market.
Daniel Headrick. “A Double-edged Sword : Communications and Imperial Control in British India” , Historical Social Research, vol. 35 , no. 1 (131), pp 51-65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20762428
Thanks for giving this wonderful information. Definitely Sri Aurobindo a Great Yogi of all times, above information may help our analytical mind to deepen our trust and faith on our Master, The Lord.
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Link(http://surasa.net/aurobindo/aurowrit.htm) to “A system of national education” as proposed by Sri Aurobindo in Karmayogin 1909. It seems he knew about the workings of left and right half of the brain much before the modern split brain experiments which began only in 1950 which can be verified from this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain#History
That claim requires some investigation because phrenology was quite popular in the 19th century.
I will confirm later if this is an example of Sri Aurobindo’s prescience.
You may be right. As of now, I can’t find any references to any distinction between left-right brain differences before Sri Aurobindo made those remarks in 1909.
See Keith Sawyer’s Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation, page 78 for a brief history
Rajiv Malhotra has independently discovered the same prescient observation of Sri Aurobindo. On pages 283-284 of his book Being Different, he writes:
“Sri Aurobindo describes the dichotomy between the left and right as follows:
The intellect is an organ composed of several groups of functions, divisible into two important classes, the functions and faculties of the right hand, the functions and faculties of the left. The faculties of the right hand are comprehensive, creative, and synthetic, the faculties of the left hand critical and analytic … The left limits itself to ascertained truth, the right grasps that which is still elusive or unascertained. Both are essential to the completeness of the human reason
It is noteworthy that Sri Aurobindo wrote this in 1910, long before modern science came up with the idea that there are differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. A yogic technjque of pranayama consists of breathing through the nostrils in such a way as to synchronize the two hemispheres.”
Thank you Sandeep, I was quite sure that Sri Auro was the first to speak about left half and right half of the Buddhi. Your detailed and persistent effort in validating the observation added a seal of certainty to it. I hope you will mention this in your main article very soon. I will like to congratulate you for this blog which is truly a treasure house of knowledge for spiritual aspirants.
Yes, I am going to update the article. I hope you also continue to add to the treasure house!
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Starting in 1899, a commercial artist named Jean-Marc Côté and other artists were hired by a toy or cigarette manufacturer to create a series of picture cards as inserts. The images were to depict how life in France would look in a century’s time, no doubt heavily influenced by Verne’s writings. The only known set of cards to exist was discovered by Isaac Asimov, who wrote a book in 1986 called “Futuredays” in which he presented the illustrations with commentary.
Some of their predictions on these cards were pretty close
1) machine that would transcribe spoken language into print
2) video calling
3) microscope or telescopes
4) robots that service humans or plow fields
5) food science laboratories
They also imagined books being ground up and fed directly into the ears of schoolchildren. That hasn’t happened yet !
for more see, http://singularityhub.com/2012/10/15/19th-century-french-artists-predicted-the-world-of-the-future-in-this-series-of-postcards/
William Braude has published extensively on ESP in animals – and to the extent that at least a certain segment of scientists accept it, the “Journal of Parapsychology” could be considered a legitimate journal for publication of Braude’s results. He has found instances of telepathic communication in animals and plants.
For parallels between Sri Aurobindo’s descriptions of animal consciousness and discoveries in cognitive science, you may be interested in my articles at http://www.integralworld.net. If you go to the “Reading Room”, and click on my name (“Salmon”) you’ll find a series of excerpts from our book on yoga psychology (essentially, in Sri Aurobindo’s integral yoga psychology). There’s a chart in one of the articles (I think it’s part 2) that shows the parallels. It was absolutely remarkable to me to see the clear and close connections. I had been studying Sri Aurobindo since the mid 1970s, and was following the very slow research into animal consciousness – even in the 1990s, there was widespread doubt about consciousness even existing in animals. By 2006, when the book was published, there had been an explosion of research in animal consciousness, going back as far as the slime mold (Nakagaki has done some extraordinary research on intelligence in one-celled organisms). All of it confirmed Sri Aurobindo’s intuition. There’s so much more – we’ve all barely scratched the surface. To me, Sri Aurobindo’s writings present the best foundation we have for the development of an utterly new science, completely and profoundly different from the materialistic based one we have now.
Don
Nice to see you out of hibernation. Your wealth of knowledge can immensely augment several articles on this blog 🙂
Your Integral World articles can be found under http://www.integralworld.net/readingroom.html#DS.
I have collated all of Sri Aurobindo’s remarks on animals and compared them against recent results in cognitive ethology in a separate article – “Insights into Animal Cognition“. This was also published in NAMAH in its April 2012 issue. I would love to know your appraisal of that article.
Hi Sandeep:
I can’t tell you what a joy it is to spend time on your site. I’m working extremely hard with Jan (my wife) on a website on neuroscience and meditation (sorry, can’t give out the URL yet), so my comments are going to be sporadic, and I may or may not have time soon to comment on your article. I’ll probably come from time to time to add comments to various posts on your site. Your commenters are quite knowledgable as well – you’ve drawn a good crowd!:>)).
Jan and I gave a 90 minute presentation at a yoga teacher training class last week, on neuroscience and meditation – specifically, Dan Siegel’s “interpersonal neurobiology”. There are extensive very interesting parallels with the yoga sutras. The science of neuroplasticity, for example, now has many quite detailed explanations of the creation and modification of neural networks that bears a remarkable resemblance with some of the YS comments on karma.
I hasten to add – almost all the yogic/buddhist-western science comparisons I see are INCREDIBLY surface, superficial and almost naive (except, remarkably, on this site!). When I saw there’s a resemblance between neuroplasticity views of the brain and karma, it is only on the most superficial level. Karma is a concept (visionary, dharmic concept?) that has so many levels and is of such profundity, that there is simply nothing yet in modern science that can even begin to approach it. When I see karma compared to the conditioning of behavior psychology, or when someone says “well, those Indian yogis were really something, in their primitive, simplistic way See how all those funny, mythical comments were really the childish attempts to desccribe what we modern, sophisticated scientists now understand to be extremely complex workings of the brain.” Hah! The scientists have only scratched the surface.
OK, got to get back to work:>))
“When I see karma compared to the conditioning of behavior psychology, or when someone says “well, those Indian yogis were really something, in their primitive, simplistic way See how all those funny, mythical comments were really the childish attempts to desccribe what we modern, sophisticated scientists now understand to be extremely complex workings of the brain.” Hah! The scientists have only scratched the surface.”
There arrogance leaves me speechless.
Sorry l mean’t ‘THEIR’ arrogance. lol.
Sandeep hello and thanks for this post and your blog.
Could you recommend to me a book of Aurobindo that tells most about the particular changes he and the Mother aimed at inaugurating in the mind and body of humanity? In which book does he/do they go into greatest detail on that particular topic?
Thanks,
Jason
“Jason: a book that tells most about the particular changes he and the Mother aimed at inaugurating in the mind and body of humanity?”
Are you referring to the supramental consciousness ? If not, then Nizken’s recommendations are fine. Otherwise, check out the Life Divine and the Mother’s Agenda.
Sri Aurobindo added 12 new chapters to the Life Divine in the 1940s and these represent his final detailed notes on the subject. A discussion of the changes he made can be read at the end of the book in the section entitled “Note on the Text” (CWSA vol 21-22, pages 1109-1117). The last two chapters “Gnostic Being” and “Divine Life” are especially relevant. On page 1004, he says power of intuition will increase in the immediate future : “A freer play of intuition and sympathy and understanding would enter into human life, a clearer sense of the truth of self and things and a more enlightened dealing with the opportunities and difficulties of existence”.
There are also some conversations with disciples, where he cautioned against over-interpreting the consequences of the supramental change. Cats and dogs won’t change, for instance 🙂
Georges van Vrekhem, who passed away recently, has aggregated a lot of this material in his books.
See his website http://www.beyondman.org
Ah many thanks. The nature of the supramental and its effects certainly interest me. As I mentioned it’s the general nature of the changes in mind and body that were aimed at or foreseen that interest me… mind certainly not less than body. 🙂
I knew of van Vrekhem but hadn’t yet checked him out — interesting. Thanks again.
Can someone explain to me what Pushwala means?
Moroever: were the brackets “(i.e., to attain to the Supermind)”, in the original (I doubt that), or added by someone later?
Regards,
Mark.
These conversations were not taped. They were written down by disciples after their meeting with Sri Aurobindo. The brackets were probably added by a disciple to provide clarification.
In India, “wala” is a suffix appended to any profession. push-wala probably refers to some kind of labour profession. This is just my guess.
This one, from “Essays Divine and Human”, is not so much a prediction as an observation as to what would be needed to make psychology a true science – but I think it supports the other passage from The Human Cycle in making a prediction as to what kind of psychology will emerge in the future.
Sri Aurobindo: I mean by Yogic psychology an examination of the nature and movements of consciousness as they are revealed to us by the processes and results of Yoga.
This definition at once takes us out of the field of ordinary psychology and extends the range of our observation to an immense mass of facts and experiments which exceed the common surface and limited range very much as the vastly extended range of observation of Science exceeds that of the common man looking at natural external phenomena only with the help [of] his unaided mind and senses. The field of Yoga is practically unlimited and its processes and instrumentation have a plasticity and adaptability and power of expansion to which it is difficult to see or set any limit.
It is true that modern psychology has probed the internal law of living matter and consciousness and arrived at results which are remarkable but limited and fundamentally inconclusive. We know from it that the movements of consciousness are affected and on a certain side determined by the functioning of the physical organs. But still the nature, origin and laws of consciousness remain unknown; all that has been proved is that the body provides for it an engine or instrumentation for its manifestation in living physical bodies and that certain lesions, alterations or deteriorations of the engine may lead to considerable or serious results in the functioning of the embodied consciousness. This was to be expected and can at once be conceded; but there is no proof that consciousness is a function of matter or that it was originated by the chemical or biological processes of the body or that it perishes with the dissolution of life in the body. The cessation of its functioning in the body at death proves nothing, for that was to be expected whatever the origin of consciousness or its fundamental nature. Its disappearance may be a departure, a disappearance from the body, but not a disappearance from existence.
It is true also that modern inquiry probing into psychological (as opposed to physiological) phenomena has discovered certain truths that are equally discovered by Yogic process, the role of the subconscient, the subliminal, double or multiple personality; but its observations in these fields are of an extremely groping and initial character and one does not see easily how it can arrive at the same largeness of results here as in physiology, physics, chemistry or other departments of physical Science.
It is only by Yoga process that one can arrive at an instrumentation which will drive large wide roads into the psychological Unknown and not only obscure and narrow tunnels. The field of psychology needs a direct inner psychological instrumentation by which we can arrive at sure data and sure results in ourselves verified [by] equally sure data [and] results in our observation of others and of the hidden psychological world and its play of unseen forces. The physical is the outwardly seen and sensed and needs physical instruments for its exploration; the psycho- logical is the physically unseen and unsensed, to be discovered only by an organisation of the inward senses and other now undeveloped and occult means. It is through consciousness, by an instrumentation of consciousness only that the nature and laws and movements of consciousness can be discovered — and this is the method of Yoga.
(Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human, CWSA vol 12, pp 322-323)
I realize these passages could be interpreted as Sri Aurobindo predicting there will be a non materialistic psychology but leaving in place a materialistic science. I’ll see if I can find predictions of a non materialistic science; I think there are at least several.
l think satprems books cover it a lot, especially ‘On The Way To Suparmanhood’ which is meantioned in the Agenda, l believe a Power was given to this book by the Mother and SA [as said in Agenda] and SA seemed to be writing it through satprem.
lt seems to be online here:
http://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/satprem/on_the_way_to_superhumanhood_e.htm#007
Also two other books that discuss this:
Life without Death
and
The Mind of the Cells
Both here:
http://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/satprem/life_withowt_death_e.htm
and
http://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/satprem/mind_of_cells_e.htm
Satprem’s books in english and russian [a lot in english, though].
http://www.aurobindo.ru/persons/00129_e.htm
http://aurobindo.ru/workings/other/van_vrekhem-patterns.htm#07
In this chapter you’ll find the sub-chapter about a “man-man”. It’s the most profound explaining of this theme i have ever found.
Man-man. This future species will have assimilated into itself the capacities of the higher mental, the illumined mental and the intuition (according to the definitions given to these terms by Sri Aurobindo). Because of this it will be able to lead a totally satisfying life and have no higher ambitions. Sri Aurobindo called this species ‘a higher order of mental human beings’ and the Mother saw them as ‘a very happy humanity.’ One will remember that gross matter can become supramental only when the Augean stables of the Subconscient and the Inconscient will be cleaned. This liberation will completely change the way of existence of animal-man and man-man from the endless road of suffering which is our lot into ‘a happy pilgrimage.’ The presence of the supramental beings too will inevitably have a beneficial reflection on the environment in which both these species live and therefore on all lower species of the animal and semi-human kind.
the human-human, who will embody one or more spiritual gradations between the mental and the supramental consciousness; the human-human is a future being that will originate from the animal-human through the influence of the presence of the Supermind on Earth and that will be fully satisfied with its higher, complete humanness;
http://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/other/van_vrekhem-beyond_man.htm
Dimean, thanks for that information. lt’s not something l’ve read before.
l think Mother wants me to read it because l saw and felt Her with me just before l started reading it. So, thanks for being Her instrument.
l’m not sure why She might want me to see this information, but who knows the Mother’s ways.
l’m still going through it atm – very interesting. l’d heard of the ‘Overman’ before, but not the other developments [Man-Man etc.]..
Perhaps those who have this ‘Overman’ destiny will be told by the Mother – ‘You will have it’. l’ve read of SA and M saying this to some disciples. l’ve never been quite sure what it mean’t though. Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind is the ‘Supramental Realization’, but since that is way off in the distant future [SA will be the first to manifest in a Supramental Body]. So, it possibly refer’s to the Overmen and Overwomen of the near future. lt’s probable that they’re already walking amongst us..
Mike, I also advise you to read this conversation about that level of “human-man”. It was a true relevation to me. Every word of this talk i could fit to myself.
http://saccs.org.in/texts/mcw-index/mcw-indexed-texts/11-024.php
Also i advise you a book of van Vrekhem “Overman” about all that stuff http://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/other/van_vrekhem-overman.htm
You should not pretend to be an Overman per se (100%). The Mother used the term apprentice-overman about those who try to do yoga and rise behind the human nature (it’s a quote from this book “Overman”):
“All those who make an effort to overcome their ordinary nature, all those who try to realise materially the profound experience that has brought them into contact with the divine Truth, all those who, instead of turning to the Hereafter or the On-high, try to realise physically, externally, the change of consciousness they have realised within themselves – all those are apprentice-overmen [des apprentis-surhommes]. Among them, there are countless variations according to the success of their efforts. Each time we try not to be an ordinary man, not to live the ordinary life, to express in our movements, our actions and reactions the divine Truth, when we are governed by that Truth instead of being governed by the general ignorance, we are apprentice-overmen, and according to the success of our efforts we are, well, more or less good apprentices, more or less advanced on the way.”
P. S. I also thank you about the book of Joudry and Pressman. It explain me a lot about that thing, especially that theme of interlocked rings – very deep observation.
Thanks Dimean. l’ll check out those suggestions.
“You should not pretend to be an Overman per se (100%). The Mother used the term apprentice-overman about those who try to do yoga and rise behind the human nature (it’s a quote from this book “Overman”):”
Yes, your right. No one at this time can pretend to be an ‘Overman’ and as M said, we are only apprentices at best [major Realizations would be necessary in order to become a full-fledged ‘Overman’, l think]. Personally, l have no realization to speak of and l’ve always believed that without the Psychic Realization we we haven’t even begun the Spiritual Life proper. As M says below, these things are far ahead. They mention some big changes in 300 years time..so we’ve got a while yet [and probably a few lifetimes too lol].. lf the Mother wanted me to read about this stuff [because visions can always be misinterpreted – a level head is very important], l have no idea why – possibly to give me a clearer understanding of what ‘Overman’ signifies and how far we are from that stage in our evolution [it’s certainly clarified that]..Of course, without a Higher Vision we can’t really know who’s who, or who’s what.
Glad you enjoyed the Twinsoul book. lt definitely helped me at the time..
Thanks again..
“Only, it is very far ahead. You must not expect that it will be immediately–it is very far ahead”
Back in 2002, Jan (my wife) and I were staying at the Park Guest House hotel in Pondicherry (as it was still known back then). Every morning, just before breakfast, there were 4 ducks who were living on the premises who would walk across the courtyard toward the dining hall to be fed.
One duck in particular seemed unusually “conscious.” There were some workmen digging a hole at least 50 yards from the dining hall. The other 3 ducks would walk to the dining hall, but this 4th duck would stand at the edge of the hole, and look down, occasionally look around him, then look to the workmen, then look down again, as if he was contemplating some “deep” mystery.
One day, we were talking to Geoges (Van Vrekhem) who had been working on his “Overman” book. He had a lively sense of humor. I remember him laughing about one typically loud American tourist who kept mispronouncing his name (correctly pronounced “Jorge” with a soft “j” and silent “s” at the end) as Jor-jess” with a hard “J’ at the beginning and a very noticeable “s” at the end, with 2 distinct very un-French, un-Belgium sounding syllables. Georges loved it and never told the fellow the correct pronunciation. For the duration of our visit, we always referred to him as “Jor-gess” and laughed together heartily.
We also told Georges about this amazing duck at the Park Guest Hotel. Smiling mischievously, he at one point exclaimed, as if announcing a startling discovery, “The overduck!”
Don, Thank you for “the overduck” story. I enjoyed it! Mark
my 2 cents: Letters on Yoga (vol. II especially) and Synthesis of Yoga I feel. The Life Divine is more varied and comprehensive but overtly philosophical and I can barely understand many chapters in it; Synthesis of Yoga was easier to read. The booklet ‘The Mother’ is eminently readable and forceful too in this regard.
Thankyou, I’ll check them out.
(Although I don’t care how “difficult” the reading is, BTW.)
More cents from me then….Start in this order:
1. The Mother 2. Synthesis of Yoga 3. Letters on Yoga (vol. 2) 4. The Agenda
You don’t have to finish everything in them nor does it have to be in a linear cover-to-cover fashion. Just my recommendations although many other books like Essays on Gita are also quite fascinating.
Appreciate it Nizken.
Def not a good prescription to study Sri Aurobindo’s work, unless you’re just looking for Twitter type highlights to the Sunlit Path.
Hi George – not sure what you meant here. Did you mean this wasn’t a good recommendation of a way to get into the Integral Yoga? It seems to me that Nizken’s first recommendation – which could be taken as recommending we read the entire works of the Mother – may be one of the best ways to start, especially for those who find it difficult to get into SrI Aurobindo’s writings.
For myself, I started with Mother and Sri Aurobindo on education, and from the mid 1970s for at least 10 years my main daily book was Essays on the Gita. I tried the Life Divine in 1976 but never read it through till 1996. Now, more than 30 years later, I find it very easy to read but would recommend it to very few people as a starting point.
I also tried Savitri in 1976, and it’s only in the last few years that I’ve actually read through the whole thing. It’s the most powerful of all of Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s writings and for some it’s a perfect starting point, but for others it’s completely impenetrable.
Many people find Dalal’s excerpts from Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s writings the easiest place to start. I assume you were being critical when you spoke of “Twitter like highlights” but if there’s a choice between not reading them at all or starting there, I don’t see the problem.
Hi Sandeep:
Here’s another prediction of Sri Aurobindo: from The Human Cycle: “Conditions for the Coming of a Subjective Age” p. 249
“There will be new unexpected departures of science or at least of research, — since to such a turn in its most fruitful seekings the orthodox still deny the name of science. Discoveries will be made that thin the walls between soul and matter; attempts there will be to extend exact knowl- edge into the psychological and psychic realms with a realisation of the truth that these have laws of their own which are other than the physical, but not the less laws because they escape the external senses and are infinitely plastic and subtle.”
I’m curious what your interpretation of this would be. My understanding of this (and at least a half dozen similar predictions throughout his writings) is that there will come a time when a “new” science develops with a non-materialistic foundation. Do you think he’s wrong (or is my interpretation wrong?)
A new science may develop (it already is) but I wonder if it will be accepted by all scientists. That is my sticking point. I am willing to be hopeful but there are always adversaries in science who will shoot down any theory that is proposed. For example, the OBE experience of Pam Reynolds seemed convincing but I came across a neuroscientist who debunked it by citing anomalies in the medical data. I can’t recall his name but he claimed that this experience is similar to the illusions that fighter jet pilots experience during high-speed flight.
In order to gain universal acceptance, a new science would require
1) either some scientific instrument which isolates the action of the occult planes or proves the existence of the Atman.
2) or a group of remarkable mystics who can provide repeatable proofs of their abnormal skills.
Nevertheless, here is a list of articles on this blog which can indicate promising directions:
Embodied cognition in Yoga psychology
Insights into animal cognition
Memory transference in organ transplant recipients
Can a brain stroke victim experience Nirvana?
Mental awareness in comatose patients and sleeping newborn infants
Buddhist monk is the world’s happiest man
Science advances and works within a “paradigm” as written by Thomas Kuhn. The materialistic clockwork mechanistic paradigm that Don Salmon talks about has been overthrown by the work in quantum mechanics by Einstein/de Broglie etc but yes it does persist to a large degree in the public mind. I think Thomas Kuhn’s book (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) would be the best way to visualize and understand these scientific paradigms and how they are overthrown by scientific ‘revolutions.’ Another great book which I found very helpful and short was What is this thing called Science written by A.F. Chalmers. Thomas Kuhn after Karl Popper probably gave us the basic framework in which to understand the history and progress of science of past 300 years.
I am aware of Kuhn and Popper’s work
The problem here is that the system is underdetermined, and hence multiple theories are possible. Why should atheistic-minded scientists embrace a new theory which incorporates invisible worlds in the absence of compelling new empirical evidence? Those who practice Yoga and have a more spiritual orientation might do it, but the rest won’t.
What you wrote above is perfectly true; a majority of scientists today will not accept “invisible worlds” or supernatural phenomena even like NDE’s unless there is some empirical evidence first. OTOH these worlds and a scientific investigation of them was perfectly accepted by the ancient Sophists in Greece and even Socrates/Plato & Aristotle etc. Even the most rationalist critical Greek like Socrates found it okay to analyze about things like faith, love, gods and so on. And not just as poetic fancies but to carry out a complete scientific analysis into these ‘higher worlds.’ I think the paradigm we operate under has changed completely and nowadays the paradigm is simply different.
I thought Aristotle debunked Plato’s World of Forms
How can you do a scientific investigation of occult worlds ?
What instruments will you use ?
” I can’t recall his name but he claimed that this experience is similar to the illusions that fighter jet pilots experience during high-speed flight.”
Assuming it was an ‘illusion’ that is. Scientists of this kind always call the things they don’t understand ‘illusions’ -anything occult or supernormal is always categorized as an ‘illusion’ by these people. The astronauts might have been having genuine ‘out-of-body’ experiences.
Sorry, l mean’t ‘fighter-jet-pilots’ not ‘astronauts.
Socrates actually had a lot of ‘otherworldy experiences’, l believe – through his ‘daemon’ [probably their word for Higher-Self etc]. He went into a lot of trances, as l remember. And the fact that he was one of Sri Aurobindo’s previous incarnations might have helped lol.
Mike: And the fact that he was one of Sri Aurobindo’s previous incarnations might have helped lol.
You just love to bring up that reincarnation stuff, don’t you 🙂
Sandeep: I wasn’t aware of Aristotle debunking Plato’s World of Forms or even world of ideas (the higher worlds of thought) I was thinking that Aristotle applied these Forms in order to derive his taxonomic classifications of the natural world etc. Most of those famous Greeks never delved into or used any material empirical evidence, in fact most of them simply never went beyond the use of the mind. That’s why most of the famous Greeks are simply remembered for their science of metaphysical thought, logic, political thought, administration, philology only. Thucydides even tried to come up with a science of historical research.
Mike: Socrates never even cared to go beyond ordinary mental critical thinking as far as I’m aware of. I’ve never heard of him going into trances or any higher states of consciousness, in fact he ridiculed these states in the older pre-socratic philosophers and Sophists. But the daemon was indeed noted to have influenced Socrates (only when he was going to make a mistake!)
You haven’t answered the other question about how science can prove the existence of occult worlds…
Nizken: I wasn’t aware of Aristotle debunking Plato’s World of Forms or even world of ideas (the higher worlds of thought)
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle
Aristotle disagreed with Plato about the location of universals. As Plato spoke of the world of the forms, a location where all universal forms subsist, Aristotle maintained that universals exist within each thing on which each universal is predicated. So, according to Aristotle, the form of apple exists within each apple, rather than in the world of the forms.
Nizken: Socrates never even cared to go beyond ordinary mental critical thinking as far as I’m aware of. I’ve never heard of him going into trances or any higher states of consciousness, in fact he ridiculed these states in the older pre-socratic philosophers and Sophists.
I am not a Greek classics expert, but from what little I know, Socrates did go into trances. He was an ascetic who could even walk barefoot on cold ice during winter. Just google or bing “socrates trance” and you will find many references.
These are two passages from Plato’s Symposium :
“Aristodemus meeting Socrates in holiday attire, is invited by him to a banquet at the house of Agathon, who had been sacrificing in thanksgiving for his tragic victory on the day previous. But no sooner has he entered the house than he finds that he is alone; Socrates has stayed behind in a fit of abstraction, and does not appear until the banquet is half over.”
“The extraordinary narrative of Alcibiades is ingeniously represented as admitted by Socrates, whose silence when he is invited to contradict gives consent to the narrator. We may observe, by the way, (1) how the very appearance of Aristodemus by himself is a sufficient indication to Agathon that Socrates has been left behind; also, (2) how the courtesy of Agathon anticipates the excuse which Socrates was to have made on Aristodemus’ behalf for coming uninvited; (3) how the story of the fit or trance of Socrates is confirmed by the mention which Alcibiades makes of a similar fit of abstraction occurring when he was serving with the army at Potidaea“
I’m a novice too in this topic, so I think you would probably know better than me. My comments have all been typed extempore on-the-spur (automatic writing 🙂 )….
The science of the 20th century and the scientific paradigm we operate under today cannot address the existence of occult worlds. Even if it tries to address any occult worlds or NDE phenomena &c., it is forced to do so using material empirical evidence and instruments. The scientific paradigm we have developed in past 300 yrs is limited to matter and energy. It cannot address questions related to mind, God, spirituality, occult or even pure logic. All these are beyond the scope of science (even if science does use inferential logic and inductive reasoning etc!)
I’m no expert on Greek classics or Plato either, but I think we confuse the issue if we talk about trance and Socrates’ daimonion. The Greek philosophers were heavily influenced by the past Egyptian oracles and civilization, in fact we cannot even compare the Hellenic world and the Indian knowledge. Socrates was a heavy-duty intellect and Plato did state that Socrates was frequently lost in his abstract thoughts. At the battle of Potidaea Socrates does display extraordinary courage in face of death and against the enemy phalanxes but I don’t think that was the same kind of trance as say Ramakrishna Paramahamsa experienced. The Indian trances and knowledge gaining seems to be quite different from the older Hellenics (oracles included), so I’m afraid of even mentioning these issues. Even this famous daemon or the Dionysiac ecstasies don’t have a correlative in other civilizations imho.
That being said, I feel the ancient Egyptians and very old Hellenes did attempt a scientific study of the occult worlds and Plato is simply the culmination of that effort. Plato attempts to study these higher worlds using dialectical reasoning and ordinary logic.
(this is actually a reply to Sandeep’s question about scientific study of occult worlds). You might look at the Indian Psychology Institute’s site. They’re having a conference on the 20th (actually, it’s the 2nd part of the conference) on Indian psychology and contemporary research. One of the areas being explored is lucid dreaming. A very simple way to get very clear empirical and repeatable results is to train people to enter the dream space together. They can mentally create the most complex instruments in the dream and get precise readings.
You may recall Nicolas Tesla had the ability to visual machines to an astonishing degree. To test himself, he would run a visualized machine at the same time as he ran a “physical” (whatever that means) one. In one experiment, he compared the amount of friction involved (sorry, as a psychologist I haven’t a clue what that means, technically – maybe there’s an engineer here?) and it was precisely the same for the visualized and physical machine.
Ok, there’s an obvious question on the tip of your tongue (or perhaps you’ve already shouted it into the ether): Just where, Don, do you propose to find these people who can enter the same dream space.
Well, whomever, I’m glad you asked that question.
Let me refer you to Dean Radin’s latest book, “Supernormal”, in which he focuses on chapter 3 of the Yoga Sutras, the Siddhis, and shows that quite a few of them have been verified by contemporary research (including one I didn’t know about – at least 2 individuals have been closely monitored, 24 hours, for a 10 day period, during which they had no food or drink, and did not use any bathroom facilities either – there were no measurable declines in their physical functioning either).
He refers obliquely to some astonishing individuals he has tested for which he has not published the results. i personally have no doubt that within a fairly short period (decades perhaps, but I mean “relatively” short) there will emerge individuals who are not only master lucid dreamers but can enter the dreams of others. Dream telepathy, which is covered in Radin’s book, is quite close to this, and if you combine that with remote viewing, you’re even closer).
You can call them “occult worlds’ or “non physical realms” or simply “shared dream space” but this brings us much much closer to things that Indian “psychologists” have taken for granted for centuries.
Sandeep, I know you’re much more pessimistic than I am about this stuff, but you’re young enough (and I hope I am too:>) to wait a few decades and see if this is correct.
See you in 2045! Shall we meet at the Matrimandir?
“Don: Just where, Don, do you propose to find these people who can enter the same dream space. …Sandeep, I know you’re much more pessimistic than I am about this stuff…Sandeep, I know you’re much more pessimistic than I am about this stuff, but you’re young enough (and I hope I am too:>) to wait a few decades and see if this is correct,”
The young are often held out as a promise of dramatic changes to come, but sorry, I see no reason to be optimistic. Because of advances in technology, the younger generation today are worse than the previous generations. They become hopelessly addicted to gadgets, games, fast food, not to mention alcohol, drugs and smoke. How can people suffering from ADD (attentionn deficit disorder) train their minds to do lucid dreaming ?
Unless human beings dramatically change their lifestyle, I don’t see any hope of having more people who can fluidly enter the dream worlds. Perhaps this early phase of life where vital chaos (mood swings and rebellions, strong emotional upheavals) prevails is unavoidable ? Maybe the proportion of souls who are spiritually developed will always remain the same ?
“They become hopelessly addicted to gadgets, games, fast food, not to mention alcohol, drugs and smoke”
Think you forgot sex-addiction, sandeep. Mother said decades ago how sex is a ‘terrible slavery’. God knows what She’d say now.
l’ve looked into ‘Lucid Dreaming’ quite a bit, because over the years l’ve had quite a lot of them myself. To be fair, there are quite a lot of forums and blogs where youngish people are very interested in developing this ability – albeit through the use of supplements and drugs rather than Yoga. Unfortunately, just like the interest in Astral Projection and other occult powers, the young these days are tending towards the wrong methods and because of all the distractions and addictions that sandeep mentions, l think we are going to have a lot of damaged individuals coming out of this generation. SA and Mother did mention 300 years [possibly 250 now] before the first Supramental being will manifest – there is the Overman before then l suppose. This is a time of forerunners and pioneers, l think, so there aren’t going to be many Spiritual Giants around in the foreseeable future – but we are only talking about ‘lucid dreaming’ at the moment, and that’s a struggle for most people LOL.
l did hear one scientist talking about his experiments with physical mediums [there aren’t many it seems] who were able to bring spirits of the dead through into the the physical world, and everyone in the room was speaking to them. Apparently the government or scientific establishment shut him down, though.
Don: You might look at the Indian Psychology Institute’s site. They’re having a conference on the 20th (actually, it’s the 2nd part of the conference) on Indian psychology and contemporary research
The conference (2nd part) is on the 10th august. The first part was on 20th july
http://www.ipi.org.in/
So you’ve got me curious Sandeep. Particularly since this page is about predictions of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Either you think they’re wrong about their sinlge most important prediction or we have a completely different understanding.
I think it was in 1960 or thereabouts that the Mother predicted that in 50 years, there would be such a dramatic change in consciousness that the skeptics would start taking notice (hmmm, 2009, Richard Wiseman – great surname! – one of the world’s most adamant, aggressive anti-psi debunkers – admitted that the evidence for psychokinesis, remote viewing, telepathy and precognition is as good as that in any other science. In 2011, Ray Hyman, who has been prominent for decades longer than Wiseman as a well qualified psychologist debunking psi, admitted that the evidence is very good and the only reason he could see for his reluctance to admit it is because of prejudices he developed as a child.
To me, if psi is accepted by such debunkers, it’s a complete game changer for the entire field of science. As Radin lays out clearly in his book on the Yoga Sutras (chapter 3, actually, on the siddhis), a whole new world of science opens up once we acknowledge that there has been for many decades solid empirical proof of many of them. This includes dream telepathy, (the ganzfeild studies are among the most solid, statistically speaking) which would open the way for exploration of occult worlds.
My masters thesis was on lucid dreaming, and that was over 20 years ago, and the field has dramatically improved since then. The number of “master lucid dreamers” has exponentially increased over the last 20+ years, and the number of organizations devoted to “inner” or “contemplative science is nothing short of astonishing to me.
Brown University, Emory, UCLA, Penn State, just to name a few, have whole departments devoted to contemplative science. NYU has a department devoted to nondual science. This was completely unheard of when I was working on the yoga psych book just 10 years ago. More and more scientists are coming out and supporting Rupert Sheldrake’s idea of non-physical fields playing a part in evolution.
Again, my main point is that both Mother and Sri Aurobindo predicted all this (see “the Coming of the Subjective Age” in the Human Cycle and many letters regarding the next 300 years and what would specifically happen once the supramental “descended” into the earth atmosphere.
So my question is, do you think Sri Aurobindo was wrong, or do you have a different interpretation of what he and the Mother wrote?
Don:So my question is, do you think Sri Aurobindo was wrong, or do you have a different interpretation of what he and the Mother wrote?
Putting me on the spot there, aren’t you ? 🙂
I think those predictions of theirs were more long-term – maybe taking place over a few centuries. I’d love to see evidence of an immediate radical transformation in humanity but I don’t see that happening as yet.
hee hee – yes and I’m keeping you on the spot. There was the Mother’s specific prediction of 50 years from 1960, which coincides pretty amazingly with Hyman and Wiseman’s confessions/concessions. (and only 3 years off from Radin’s book – he himself agrees with me, saying the changes in the last decade were almost unimaginable (my word, not his) just 10 years ago – changes in terms of openness to the subtle, the occult or what Sri Aurobindo referrs to as the subliminal). Alan Wallace appears to be of the opinion.
So, on the one side, we have Don, Wallace, Radin, Hyman, Wiseman, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
And on the other, Sandeep?
(sorry:>)))))
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Additional remarks made by Sri Aurobindo regarding the first two predictions seen above
Sri Aurobindo explained that when something is decided in the higher plane, the decision may be communicated to men who are fit to receive it. Thus when living in Alipur Jail he himself got definite prophecy about the war of 1914. Mirra [the Mother] received such a prophecy about the Chinese revolution. Then he referred to a vision he saw at the time of the last European war. Two eagles were trying to go through a mountain pass and a strong gale was blowing against them and above that scene he saw the words 1931. This was not a definite prophecy as before but Sri Aurobindo interpreted it in this manner: the two eagles obviously referred to Austria and Germany and the whole scene represented a cataclysm of which obviously the European war was the beginning; it would end in 1931 by the dissolution of the British empire and the eventual liberation of India. This was not a definite prophecy but only Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation of the vision he saw.
From http://overmanfoundation.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/conversations-with-sri-aurobindo-recorded-by-anilbaran-roy-part-3/
“Def not a good prescription to study Sri Aurobindo’s work, unless you’re just looking for Twitter type highlights to the Sunlit Path.”
Yes, like donsalmon l was curious about that cryptic statement too.
The “problem” – Don, is not what Nizken read, how or when he read it. There are multiple layers being addressed here. Each of these works transcendental and universal experiences that a newcomer, especially from the West, needs to be acclimatised and familiarized to. Reading these works with one’s inner consciousness is a whole different item then flying through the pages to ‘see what happens next’. Your or Nizken’s absorption rate may be different but I have to go with Mothers recommendation of reading a paragraph at a time, but be consistently so. And yes, Mother’s Agenda is a good way to start, IF the beginner has a clue about basic principles of this yoga. An understanding between the Purusha and the Shakti aspect. An understanding of what the chakras represent in case the text refers about the vital mind or the heart center etc. – in order for newcomer to have an understanding what is meant.
Each individual approaches this yoga from a different angle, a different level of comprehension and nature and most of all a different level of consciousness. May I suggest for the real beginner to read some chapters of ‘Evening Talks’ to get the ‘vibrations’ of what those days were like in the very physical world we’re all so familiar with; then take it from there?
Then there is the suggestion of “Synthesis of Yoga” as the # 2 on the list to read. Even the Mother commented that this is a difficult and complex book to read; and I fully agree. To get to know, even superficially, the parts that “get integralized” by this Integral yoga, means to have a general idea about Jnana, Bhakti and portions of Tantric (Kundalini & Chakras) Yoga plus Hata Yoga. I would place Bhakti at the very beginning along with ‘The Adventures of Consciousness” for a new Student to this yoga. There are some of the very basic requirements for a ‘newbe’ to learn the priorities, other than just ‘study’ – they are: ‘Aspiration, surrender and rejection’ – and not just reading them but understanding them and most of all TRYING TO LIVE THEM! Cramming one book after another maybe good; inwardly fully understanding them is better, living every day accordingly is best! That requires CHANGE. Where in all these dissertations that I read on this yoga do I see the challenge to the individual to change to: What you want Lord (not what I want)?! “The most important Surrender is the Surrender of your character, your way of being, so that it may change.” The Mother
Sorry I guess I’m still confused. i thought you were saying not to start with Sri Aurobindo. This is a specific recommendation. Then you say the most important thing is how you read. I agree. And you also say it’s different for each person. I also agree.
In my own experience, the first book of Sri Aurobindo’s I read was his early writings on Education. The 2nd was “Essays on the Gita.” It immediately made complete sense to me, and if I had read any of the others you suggest I don’t think I would have gone on to his writings.
So I think ultimately we’re quite in agreement: what’s first in importance of course is the yoga (as you say at the end of your post). Mother said it most simply: “Remember and offer.” (she once said those 3 words sum up the whole yoga). Next, how you read. Agreed. Next, each has his/her own individual path. Agreed.
I just would caution in making sweeping assumptions (like don’t read Sri Aurobindo first).
Meanwhile, still waiting for Mike or Sandeep to tell me why Mother’s prediction was wrong:>)
“Meanwhile, still waiting for Mike or Sandeep to tell me why Mother’s prediction was wrong:>)”
Sorry Don, l’m not sure l get the gist of that. l actually think Mother was right in the sense of a massive [radical] explosion of ‘occult interest’ in the general consciousness – as you and your friends have said, occultism has invaded every aspect of our lives in the last 10 years or so. l don’t think She was referring to any Supramental revolutionary change in humanity at the moment – lf G.VAN.Wrekham is right then ‘The Overman’ will be the next big thing to appear – that would indeed be Radical – something that will finally ‘open our eyes’; those that want their eyes opened, that is.
Ah, we agree fully about the massive explosion of occult interest. I don’t recall her referring to any Supramental change that would be evident within the century after she died (or left the body, if you prefer.
So we agree. I was mostly teasing anyway – no need to offer any other alternatives, Sandeep.
I think the practical relevance of this explosion is a point I’ve been making on this site for quite some time (and which was the basis of the yoga psychology book we wrote) – that the time is ripe – if not now, within a few decades – my sense is that it will be by the middle of this century – for scientists to let go of the materialistic paradigm.
As far as I recall Sandeep is not as optimistic. That’s fine. Hopefully we’ll both be around in 37 years and well, we’ll see!
Thanks Mike. Are you in the US, by the way?
BTW lf you haven’t seen the film ‘RED LIGHTS’ l’d recommend it. lt revolves around this subject and is probably one the more interesting movies l’ve watched in recent years.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1748179/
“Psychologist Margaret Matheson and her assistant study paranormal activity, which leads them to investigate a world-renowned psychic who has resurfaced years after his toughest critic mysteriously passed away.”
“lf G.VAN.Wrekham is right then ‘The Overman’ will be the next big thing to appear – that would indeed be Radical – something that will finally ‘open our eyes’; those that want their eyes opened, that is.”
Sorry, LOL, l seemed to have contradicted myself there. lt’s most likely people won’t have a choice when these ‘BEINGS’ appears because it will be right ‘in their face’ so to speak.
“Thanks Mike. Are you in the US, by the way?”
UK
was interested in the future of quantum science as it seemed to me one of those with the potential of convergence between science and the spirit.. which Aurobindo has envisioned in the future. Some of these informational videos on double slit experiments and quantum Entanglement
and this one a discussion between scientists and Dalai Lama
Sri Aurobindo’s knowledge rings a bell in explaining some of these intriguing quantum phenomenon.Especially about the Qbit computing where they talk about starting with the whole and then condensing the specific out of the whole, as an alternate approach to programming, instead of the current strictly algorithm based approach.
And then this interview with German physicist Ulrich Mohroff, inspired by Aurobindo…
http://subversivethinking.blogspot.in/2011/05/interview-with-german-physicist-ulrich.html
If you are weary of Information overload like me i suggest you move onto the 19th question of this interview where in he summarizes his theories and questions some basic premise of science . Apparently he says mathematicians with their calculational tools and probababily calculas are a stumbling block. Also he wants science to redefine what constitues Space if they ever want to move ahead, … possibly alluding to the Brahman.
Finally i share Sandeep’s pessimism for the near future. To make a confession i got myself completely into this new age movement, they use words like Lightworkers, indigo children, and every one of them speaks in terms of Vibration of high qualities and of following your heart and excitement and flowing with the moment and what not… but almost no one knows or talks about the process of “Surrender and rejection” the two most laborious tasks given by Mother to ascend.
“Finally i share Sandeep’s pessimism for the near future. To make a confession i got myself completely into this new age movement, they use words like Lightworkers, indigo children, and every one of them speaks in terms of Vibration of high qualities and of following your heart and excitement and flowing with the moment and what not… but almost no one knows or talks about the process of “Surrender and rejection” the two most laborious tasks given by Mother to ascend.”
l totally agree with what you say about the ‘NEW AGERS’ and their Ascended Masters, Lightworkers, TwinnFles [although personally,l have had some weird experiences in that area] etc.. Most of it can be attributed to ‘Channeled Information’ from very dubious sources. l think we can blame the Theosophists for a lot of it, with their Mahatmas and such. Also, Alice Bailey and her ilk [people like david icke have their origins in alice bailey, l believe].
New Age channelers seem to be easily duped by anything that says it’s Spiritual or Ascended. As the Mother said – they might be in touch with ‘Heaven’ but WHICH ‘Heaven’. There seems to be very little discrimination in these sort of people – Hitler was a prime example of what has now become the so-called NEW AGE, and we know where his information was coming from. These beings that ‘new-agers’ apparently worship are adept at shapeshifting and deceiving. Even Madame Theon warned the Spiritualists [another deluded crowd IMO] of her day about how they were being deceived by these beings, but they wouldn’t believe it.
As for indigo, crystal, rainbow children, children of OZ etc… l’m not sure, because even Mother said how the ‘EYES’ of the present generation of children were brighter and more knowing – perhaps that was just at the ashram, though.
This stuff about ‘indigo children’ is even on Sri Aurobindo websites like:
http://www.sriaurobindosociety.org.in/s3rarch/s3rarchaprl06.htm
Here’s a quote from the above site. The rest is in a big article through that link:
“Next Step In Our Evolution
What are indigo and crystal children and adults?
How do you know if you, or someone you know, is an Indigo or Crystal Child or Adult?
We will describe the main features and characteristics of these people. But we want to stress that the Indigo/Crystal phenomenon is the next step in our evolution as a human species. We are all, in some way, becoming more like the Indigo and Crystal people. They are here to show us the way, and so the information can be applied more generally to all of us as we make the transition to the next stage of our growth and evolution.
The Indigo Children have been incarnating on the Earth for the last 100 years. The early Indigos were pioneers and wayshowers. After World War II, a significant number were born, and these are the Indigo adults of today. However, in the 1970s a major wave of Indigos was born, and so we have a whole generation of Indigos who are now in their late twenties and early thirties who are about to take their place as leaders in the world. Indigos continued to be born up to about 2000, with increasing abilities and degrees of technological and creative sophistication.
The Crystal Children began to appear on the planet from about 2000, although some date them slightly earlier. These are extremely powerful children, whose main purpose is to take us to the next level in our evolution, and reveal to us our inner power and divinity. They function as a group consciousness rather than as individuals, and they live by the” Law of One” or Unity Consciousness. They are a powerful force for love and peace on the planet.”
Unity Consciousness – Glad to hear these words….. this day being August the 15. Prayers to Sri Aurobindo. a few lines from Savitri on this …….
SAVITRI BOOK THREE CANTO FOUR THE VISION AND THE BOON
…I saw the Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers
Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
Forerunners of a divine multitude,
Out of the paths of the morning star they came
Into the little room of mortal life.
I saw them cross the twilight of an age,
The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,
The great creators with wide brows of calm,
The massive barrier-breakers of the world
And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,
The labourers in the quarries of the gods,
The messengers of the Incommunicable,
The architects of immortality.
Into the fallen human sphere they came,
Faces that wore the Immortal’s glory still,
Voices that communed still with the thoughts of God,
Bodies made beautiful by the spirit’s light,
Carrying the magic word, the mystic fire,
Carrying the Dionysian cup of joy,
Approaching eyes of a diviner man,
Lips chanting an unknown anthem of the soul,
Feet echoing in the corridors of Time.
High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,
Discoverers of beauty’s sunlit ways
And swimmers of Love’s laughing fiery floods
And dancers within rapture’s golden doors,
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light on Nature’s face.
Although Fate lingers in the high Beyond
And the work seems vain on which our heart’s force was spent,
All shall be done for which our pain was borne.
Even as of old man came behind the beast
This high divine successor surely shall come
Behind man’s inefficient mortal pace,
Behind his vain labour, sweat and blood and tears:
He shall know what mortal mind barely durst think,
He shall do what the heart of the mortal could not dare.
Inheritor of the toil of human time,
He shall take on him the burden of the gods;
All heavenly light shall visit the earth’s thoughts,
The might of heaven shall fortify earthly hearts;
Earth’s deeds shall touch the superhuman’s height,
Earth’s seeing widen into the infinite.
Heavy unchanged weighs still the imperfect world;
The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed;
Heavy and long are the years our labour counts
And still the seals are firm upon man’s soul
And weary is the ancient Mother’s heart.
O Truth defended in thy secret sun,
Voice of her mighty musings in shut heavens
On things withdrawn within her luminous depths,
O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,
Creatrix, the Eternal’s artist Bride,
Linger not long with thy transmuting hand
Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time,
As if Time dare not open its heart to God.
O radiant fountain of the world’s delight
World-free and unattainable above,
O Bliss who ever dwellst deep-hid within
While men seek thee outside and never find,
Mystery and Muse with hieratic tongue,
Incarnate the white passion of thy force,
Mission to earth some living form of thee.
One moment fill with thy eternity,
Let thy infinity in one body live,
All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,
All-Love throb single in one human heart.
Immortal, treading the earth with mortal feet
All heaven’s beauty crowd in earthly limbs!
Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God
Movements and moments of a mortal will,
Pack with the eternal might one human hour
And with one gesture change all future time.
Let a great word be spoken from the heights
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate.”
l wasn’t sure where to put this but it does seem prophetic to me.
We here a lot these days from ‘conspiracy theorists’ or as they like to call themselves ‘the truth movement’ about the ‘liiuminati’ and ‘the new world-order”
Well. here is Sri Aurobindo talking about ‘the new world-order’ in 1940! Highlighted by me.
Looks like these ‘forces’ referred to by SA are still trying to achieve their new-world goal in the chaos of the middle-east at the moment – syria is next on their list and possibly iran after that.
“In a talk in 1940, Sri Aurobindo said: “There are forces which are trying to destroy the British and their empire – forces above and here in this world, I mean inner forces. I myself had wished for its destruction; but at that time I did not know such forces would arise. These forces are working for the evolution of a NEW WORLD-ORDER which would come following upon the liquidation of the Empire. But, for the advent of this new arrangement, the Empire needn’t be destroyed. The new arrangement can be achieved more quietly by a change in the balance of forces, without much destruction. Had it not been for Hitler, I wouldn’t have cared what power remained or went down. Now the question is whether the NEW WORLD-ORDER is to come after much suffering and destruction or with as little of it as possible. Destruction of England would mean victory for Hitler and in that case, perhaps after a great deal of suffering and oppression, and reaction to them, that world-order may come or may not, or it may come only after pralaya! Of course the issue has been decided by the Divine Vision and there can be no change. But nobody knows what the decision is.”
These two long extracts are enough to show clearly Sri Aurobindo’s vision of the play of forces, how they try through the use of human instruments to fulfil their purpose and also what Sri Aurobindo’s part was in this mysterious play. I shall now give some extracts from our talks to demonstrate Sri Aurobindo’s close watch on the trend of the War, his comments on the military movements of the contending parties, sometimes his anticipation of their strategic moves and the consequences that would ensue, or his own suggestions about the courses that could be followed. And all this came enlivened with a sense of quiet humour that made the grimness of the War itself appear light, even an enjoyable game of forces.
On 29.12.40 Savarkar gave a speech in which he said that the British could not be defeated. Sri Aurobindo commented: “Nonsense. They were saved by Divine Intervention. They would have been smashed if Hitler had invaded England at the right time after the fall of France,”
“Why didn’t the Divine intervene in France?” one of us asked.
“Because the French were corrupt and had no power of resistance. The English had still some of their old virtues left, to which support could be given. The Mother says, ‘The French have betrayed Czechoslovakia and thereby stand condemned.’ ”
Similarly, when France, after the fall of Dunkirk, rejected Churchill’s proposal of a common citizenship for Britain and France so that they might carry on the fight as one country, the Mother seems to have considered it a rejection of the Divine Grace itself that had come to the help of France at the most opportune moment. The entire speech of Churchill was dictated in the occult way by the Mother, we were told.”
Interesting quote, Mike. I do think one needs to keep a historical context, though – I don’t know exactly what SA was referring to here. But “new world order” in the context of the modern conspiracy movement seems to refer to a pretty specific theme with many variants: deliberate coordination between major agencies and governments(and possibly reptilian aliens!) to achieve some sort of undefined oppressive scheme. SA seems to be using the phrase quite literally without referring to this specific concept. The conditions for the conspiracy movement only happened after his passing – the military-industrial complex in the USA, Cold War secrecy, actual conspiracies committed by the CIA, and who knows what else.
I find the whole area morbidly fascinating – I’m talking about the phenomenon of the conspiracy theory movement itself as well as the theories. I think one could gain insights about the world as well as of human psychology from studying the theories and interpreting them in the light of a higher consciousness. But I don’t research them or spend time around it because I think the atmosphere of all of it is quite fear oriented and generally low vibration.
My take on it is that these conspiracy theorists do detect the play of (often negative) occult and vital forces behind history. But because they lack yogic insight and stability, their mind works to project their insight onto concrete historical data. So rather than seeing (say) GWB and Federal Reserve bankers as puppets moved on a stage by vital beings behind the veil(an image SA used a few times), conspiracy theorists draw the conclusion that GWB and the Federal Reserve are actively, consciously plotting some scheme to enslave the world and turn it over to reptilian aliens – conscious, physically embodied evil beings. Or whatever.
Above is from ’12 years with Sri Aurobindo’ by nirod
http://www.searchforlight.org/nirod/WAR%20AND%20POLITICS.html
“The conditions for the conspiracy movement only happened after his passing – the military-industrial complex in the USA, Cold War secrecy, actual conspiracies committed by the CIA, and who knows what else.”
Yes RJ, your probably right. SAs new world-order might have nothing to do with the present day conceptions by conspiracy theorists, although, His remark – ” These forces are working for the evolution of a NEW WORLD-ORDER which would come following upon the liquidation of the Empire”, seems to fall in with the Decline of the British Empire around 1945 and all the things you mention that followed this.
The ‘cold war’ is dated between 1947-1991, so actually began 3 years before SA’s departure. So, the things you refer to, might well have been the ‘Forces’ He indicated. CIA conspiracies probably go way back [l think it was established in 1946] but obviously there is massive corruption there nowadays. The OSS was the forerunner of the CIA but l’m not sure if they were as bad.
Bohemian Grove which is constantly mentioned by conspirisists was formed around the 1870’s, so at the time of SA again. Even the Skull and Bones club at Yale goes back to the 1800’s. All tied into llluminati agenda’s. And l won’t mention what apparently goes on underneath the Vatican.
Anyway, unless SA confirms it Himself we can’t know what He really mean’t.
The reptilian stuff is a bit of a joke l think – at least the David lcke material is. Even his original source [arizona wilder] , apparently, now admits it was all a hoax. l mean the Queen shapeshifting [physically not astrally] and feeding on human bodies LOL. Anything is possible, but there is a limit.
We know from SA and Mother that otherwordly beings are adept at shapeshifting in order to decieve ppl and use them like puppets on a string [the spiritualists are decieved in this way all the time].
“My take on it is that these conspiracy theorists do detect the play of (often negative) occult and vital forces behind history. But because they lack yogic insight and stability, their mind works to project their insight onto concrete historical data. So rather than seeing (say) GWB and Federal Reserve bankers as puppets moved on a stage by vital beings behind the veil(an image SA used a few times), conspiracy theorists draw the conclusion that GWB and the Federal Reserve are actively, consciously plotting some scheme to enslave the world and turn it over to reptilian aliens – conscious, physically embodied evil beings. Or whatever.”
Yes, l totally agree with you.
They don’t seem to have any belief in ‘Divine lntervention’ – just the belief that we’re all victims of lower vital types. There’s no doubt in my mind that the majority of ppl are ‘puppets’ of these lower entities as SA and Mother say. There could very well be reptilian types in the astral worlds – there are numerous types inhabiting those planes; of which the most interesting are the Djinn who love shapeshifting. A woman called Rosemary E Guiley has spoken and written about these ancient beings and if l’m right, she believes they are responsible for a lot of the alien appearances in the world. She has done a good youtube interview on this subject for anyone interested:
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This Yuga business is a bit confusing. ln 1910 in the above post, SA says that 5000 years of the Kali Yuga have expired:
“Aravinda Ghose who is proved to be living in Pondicherry is stated to have declared in reply to a Karmayogin correspondent that 5,000 years of the Kaliyuga have expired, that a new epoch has commenced and in the next 4 or 5 years there will be “great deluge, change, revolution, great revolution, great persons falling, low persons rising, change, change, change everywhere, change in the Government, change in our people, new methods, new ideas in all [2].”
l did some research, as l’ve always been curious about the ending of Kali Yuga, and it seems that Sri Yukteshwar [Yogananda’s Guru] disputed the traditional Yuga Theory by the pundits. l don’t know if SA changed His view about the dating of the Yuga’s – because His above statement was very early in His Yogic career, but it’s difficult to dismiss the opinion of a guru as renowned as Sri Yukteshwar.
According to Sri Yukteshwar weare about 300 years into the Dvapara Yuga.
“The long count view of the yuga cycle with its vast time scale was challenged by the 19th/20th-century Indian yogi Swami Sri Yukteswar, guru of Paramahansa Yogananda.[3]
In his book, The Holy Science, Sri Yukteswar explained that the descending phase of Satya Yuga lasts 4800 years, the Treta Yuga 3600 years, Dwapara Yuga 2400 years, and the Kali Yuga 1200 years. The ascending phase of the Kali Yuga then begins, also lasting 1200 years. The ascending phase of the Kali Yuga began in September 499 AD. Since September 1699, we have been in the ascending phase of the Dwapara Yuga, according to Sri Yukteswar.[3]
In The Holy Science, Sri Yukteswar wrote that the traditional or long count view is based on a misunderstanding. He says that at the end of the last descending Dvapara Yuga (about 700 BC), “Maharaja Yudhisthira, noticing the appearance of the dark Kali Yuga, made over his throne to his grandson [and]…together with all of his wise men…retired to the Himalaya Mountains… Thus there was none in the court…who could understand the principle of correctly accounting the ages of the several Yugas.”[3]
According to Sri Yukteswar, nobody wanted to announce the bad news of the beginning of the descending Kali Yuga, so they kept adding years to the Dvapara date (at that time 2400 Dvapara) only retitling the epoch to Kali. As the Kali began to ascend again, scholars of the time recognized that there was a mistake in the date (then being called 3600+ Kali, even their texts said Kali had only 1200 years). “By way of reconciliation, they fancied that 1200 years, the real age of Kali, were not the ordinary years of our earth, but were so many daiva (or deva) years (“years of the gods”), consisting of 12 daiva months of 30 daiva days each, with each daiva day being equal to one ordinary solar year of our earth. Hence according to these men 1200 years of Kali Yuga must be equal to 432,000 years of our earth.”
This article is also very enlightening in predicting human history through subdivisions of the Yuga’s:
“The following article is authored by David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri) – Sri Yukteswar, the guru of Paramahansa Yogananda, in his book the Holy Science (Kaivalya Darshana) has provided an excellent model for understanding human history through the four Yugas of Hindu thought, which he has explained in a new way that brings much clarity into the system.
The purpose of the present article is to suggest an additional enhancement to Yukteswar’s Yuga theory, adding a set of ‘subyugas’ or minor yugas to add more detail to it.
These additional subperiods can explain historical changes over centuries that the Yuga model of thousands of years can miss.They also tell us why, though we are no longer in the Kali Yuga, that we are still in a difficult time that is likely to continue for some decades.”
“In this regard, it is important to note that the current Kali subyuga of the Dwapara Yuga that runs from 1900 – 2100 AD explains our continued global problems even though Dwapara proper has already begun. These problems will probably not be resolved until 2100 AD when the Kali subyuga ends and the Dwapara subyuga of Dwapara Yuga begins.
Presently we stand only slightly more than half way through the Kali subyuga of Dwapara Yuga. The question is whether the second half will be as destructive as the first half.
So the good news that Sri Yukteswar taught, that we are in Dwapara Yuga, needs to be tempered with the fact that we are also in its Kali subyuga. This means that some of the negative influence of the previous Kali Yuga will remain. These are reflected in our current ecological crisis and in the problem of religious fundamentalism and terrorism.
We must also recognize that Dwapara Yuga itself is not a spiritual age like Satya Yuga. It is an age of subtle materialism that brings some development over the gross materialism of Kali Yuga. But the powers that Dwapara develops from electricity to nuclear and the mass media create their challenges as well, along with their more dangerous weapons and possibility of a greater civilizational collapse. The beginning of Dwapara Yuga can result in wars and disasters greater than Kali Yuga because the energies and weapons are stronger!
We should additionally note that the cycle of the yugas does not proceed in a uniform way but through a series of transformations, which can have a destructive side. Often the forces of darkness increase or amass before they are eliminated or cast out. So struggles between the powers of light and the powers of darkness can heighten even in an era of generally increasing light, such as we see today.
The twenty-first century therefore is an important transitional period. As Dwapara Yuga moves forward, the shadow of Kali Yuga lingers on along with the immaturity of the new Yuga. As we are half way through this Kali subyuga that began around 1900, we can expect the next hundred years to present similar challenges to the planet as the twentieth century, though with greater technological capacities and dangers.”
Full article:
http://www.vedanet.com/2012/06/keys-to-the-yugas-or-cycles-of-the-ages-subyugas-in-the-sri-yukteswar-yuga-cycle/
In Nagin Doshi’s book “Guidance from Sri Aurobindo”, you will find a brief mention of the Yugas. Essentially, Sri Aurobindo tells Nagin that the Yugas are not fixed or static. I don’t have the exact text with me but maybe you can find it. The book is online here
http://motherandsriaurobindo.org/Contents.aspx?ParentCategoryName=_StaticContent/SriAurobindoAshram/-09%20E-Library/-03%20Disciples/Nagin%20Doshi/Guidance%20from%20Sri%20Aurobindo
Thanks sandeep.
From Nagin’s diary below, it seems the Master is saying that the ‘Yuga’ theory isn’t of much use – if l’ve got it right.
” It is said that before this Iron Age (Kali Yuga) there was a Golden Age (Satya Yuga). It is also said that the world is always progressing. How then comes this downward turn (Iron after Gold)?
There is no great utility in such theories. It was supposed that there was only movement in a constantly repeated cycle. The idea of progress was not there when the theory came into existence. Progress of course can be by cycles and not in a straight line, spirals with downward and upward curves.”
Has anyone come across this prediction by Sri Ramakrishna about his rebirth 100 years after his death in 1886 [as in quote below]::
“I always remember what the great Avatar, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, had said in 1886, the year he left His mortal body. He had said, “He shall again be born in 1986 in Ishan Kone (North West) direction of Kolkata (Calcutta).” Probably He had mentioned He will appear in the form of a Baul (From Bankura, Birbhum,Purulia districts)”
l did find this which is from an article:
“On 26 November 1935, Swami Vijnanananda said to the devotees in
Barisal (which is now in Bangladesh): “This time the Master came
secretly. He will come again after one hundred years in the
northwest direction.”
A Devotee: “Did the Master say that he would be born in the Punjab?”
Vijnanananda: “No, the Master did not say that he would be born in
the Punjab.”
Swami Abhedananda recalled: “One evening Sri Ramakrishna was
attended by his faithful attendants Shashi [Ramakrishnananda] and
Kali [Abhedananda], who were waiting upon him at Cossipore. The
Master inspired them by saying: ‘My Divine Mother has shown me that
the photograph of this body will be kept upon altars and be
worshipped in different houses as the pictures of other avatars are
worshipped. My Divine Mother has also shown me that I shall have to
come back again and that my next incarnation will be in the West.'”
!….!….!
On different occasions the Holy Mother made various statements about
the Master’s return. Once she recalled: “The Master said he would
come again after a hundred years. Meanwhile, for those hundred years
he would live in the hearts of those who love him. Standing on the
semicircular veranda of Dakshineswar, the Master said this, pointing
towards the northwest. I told him I could not come again. Lakshmi
also said she would not come again, even if she were chopped into
shreds like tobacco leaves! The Master laughed and said: ‘How can
you avoid coming? Our roots are twined together like the kalmi
plant. Pull one stem and the whole clump comes forward.'”
The Holy Mother also stated: “The Master said that he would dwell in
the hearts of his devotees for a hundred years in his subtle body.
He further said that he would have many devotees among the white
people.”
Swami Saradananda wrote on this subject in Sri Ramakrishna and His
Divine Play: “The Master not only knew this about himself through
his yogic insight, but he also told us many times, pointing to the
northwest, that the next time he would reincarnate there. Some of us
(Girish Chandra Ghosh and others) said that the Master even told
them the time of his advent, stating: ‘I shall have to be born in
that direction after two hundred years. Then many will be liberated,
and those who fail at that time will have to wait a long time for
liberation.'”
!….!….!
Ramakrishna’s niece Lakshmi said: “The Master said, ‘I shall come
back after 100 years.’ I can’t definitely say whether that year
should be counted from his birth, or death, or on the day when he
said it.”
Reblogged this on Bande Mataram and commented:
Sino-Indian war of 1962
China launched a military campaign against Tibet in October 1950 and against India in October 1962. Sri Aurobindo had foreseen these Chinese plans when the Korean war had just begun on 25th June, 1950.
Hopefully, India and pakistan will be reunited soon!!!
It would be challenging to see how that can happen.
1) Pakistan has been ruled mostly by army generals since 1947. It ranks the lowest in the world in several human developmental indices.
2) Even though culturally the people seem similar and anecdotal reports suggest that its urban population is friendly towards visiting Indians, its school textbooks teach hatred towards India and its army is always plotting wars against India.
3) It has not lived up to Jinnah’s vision of a secular state. Religious intolerance has gone up according to various surveys against Christians, Hindus as well as Shia and Ahmadiya Muslims. Perhaps this was exacerbated by Gen. Zia-ul-Haq’s encouragement of Islamic radicalism. Its Hindu population has done down to 2-3 percent since 1947.
Yes, it’s been a long time since SA said ‘the division between lndia and pakistan MUST (His emphasis) go by any means possible’. He also said if they can’t agree to it, they’ll fight – l think there have been 3 wars since then..
Great story don.
l bet SA and M had a good laugh about the ‘Overduck’ lol..
l remember the Mother saying some of the animals at the ashram weren’t ordinary animals.
l’ve noticed even around my town that you’ll get one or two who will stand out from the crowd, as if more ‘conscious’..
l’ve learn’t quite a bit from “Jor-gess”’s books. He seems to be the only one who mentions the ‘salamander’ as a symbol of the Supramental Transformation in the physical [l believe it’s means that – especially the golden salamander]..
l’ve been wondering for a while why Georges had a falling out with Satprem.
Perhaps this is is why:
“Georges Van Vrekhem disagrees with Satprem’s claim that the Mother’s work was cut short in those last six months, and argues instead that she did indeed attain a Supramental body and what remained was the residue, like the empty cocoon of a caterpillar after it has become a butterfly”.
Of course, lt’s still speculation without direct knowledge..but, the butterfly metaphor is interesting, because only yesterday my mother saw a many-coloured butterfly [like a rainbow butterfly – l didn’t see it though] hovering over my head. Just a curious synchronicity..lol
Mike: …I am simply curious about this…. Does your mother have subtle vision like yours? -this is regarding the multi-colored butterfly. Our family may be subtle-sighted, but we live in a very bright-sunny, hot and dry climate (we see roses blooming in January a lot of the time). I have read (somewhere) that his type of climate inhibits subtle temperaments. Anyway, you have mentioned subtle colors before and I wonder where/how you see them? …Hope I am clear about my question…here is an example (from another blog) where you said:
“a sort of pinkish-white Light came flooding out”
I’ve not seen colors (yet), but I mostly observe the mental/physical/emotional sensations (i.e., psychological manifestations). For instance, after the latest subtle-movement last August I’ve experienced significant psychological changes (which I am not qualified to classify specifically). But no colors or any other subtle-formations. Things like, mental clarity/focus, emotional stability, etc…. One thing that I would specify under subtle is the sudden ability to see deeper into the teachings of SA & M. Before the writings were veiled (or fuzzy), and now there is clarity: I have a clearer understanding about the goal of the Yoga. There are other changes that would be harder for me to indicate here in writing.
Thank You!
Hi mark, my mother does have a degree of subtle vision. l’m pretty sure the ‘butterfly’ was real, though. She normally sees in a more objective way than l do [quite psychic, as they say]. She knows nothing about Yoga, but she does know of SA and M. Before l even knew SA, and when l was going through a very difficult period, He appeared to her [objectively by all accounts] and told her l would be ok – she only recognized him much later when she saw one of my photo’s of him [the fact that she has the same birthday as SA probably means something]. When my father died she was seeing him almost every night in her bedroom.. he also had an interest in the occult..
Mine is mostly subjective. l can be sitting or walking and suddenly see an image or a scene in my head – this is how l see SA and M usually and other things like the ‘pinky-white’ light streaming from my chest [this was when l met the twinsoul]. Years ago l was in a sort of development circle and l would see loads of things about other people in the circle, which either came true later or were verified in some way. lt was always there in latency, l suppose, but not a great ability.. l have tried developing subtle vision [as SA did] when waking in the morning when the mind is less active. SA also used ‘Tratak’, of course – He told someone that tratak would usually bring the occult vision out eventually..
What has developed in you seems to be an opening of the lntuitive mind which l suppose comes with ‘expansion of conscious’. l need more of that type of clarity at the moment. lt does happen now and then in lucid dreams – but a lot more is needed..
That’s very interesting Mike. …I believe my mother has latent subtle/occult capacities as well – in my early 20’s she told me she thought I had a calling in spirituality, and that motivated me to pursue it at all cost. …I’ll look into ‘Tarak’ to see what it’s about.
“What has developed in you seems to be an opening of the lntuitive mind which l suppose comes with ‘expansion of conscious’. ” That’s interesting. I had not thought about a higher conscious status.
re: Intuitive Mind: “–it is not so much a matter of raising ourselves as of clearing away our many obstructions.” Satprem, Adventure of Consciousness, p215
This makes sense. Yes, before I had though higher states of consciousness were due to raising and heightening as Satprem states here.
There are many such predictions with genuine reasons. One is about disintegration of USSR or communism in his book Thought & Aphorism, about breaking of boundaries of the nation, Europe is one of such example. One about disintegration of Pakistan he said Pakistan is a country without soul so it will disintegrate.
One was such about defeat of Hitler and diverting his force from Europe to USSR during second world war in his poem titled as Nepoliyam sub titled as Hitler in last two lines.
Provide references please. The prediction must have been published before the event
Nostradamus in his codes predicts 92 Years of peace between the Second World War and the third world war. Hence we arrive at the Year 2037 which ushers in catastrophic changes. The comet ( Jan 2037) and asteroid ( June 2040) according to the Book of Revelations would destroy one third of the land and one third of the sea respectively submerging countries like Britain, Japan, South Africa, Singapore, parts of USA ( San Francisco) and ancient civilizations. After the 3 1/2 Years of peace war will breakout in 2041. India will be occupied by China. China and Russia will annex and occupy USA. Europe will be devastated by the Islamic invaders lead by the Mahdi of Greater Arabia who sports a blue turban launching nuclear weapons on it. The war would see 200 million soldiers kill 3 billion people. Read http://www.war2037.com for Hindu prophecies which mentions Kalki (Sree Veerabhoga Vasantharaya born in 1965-66 ) will restore law and order and usher in 1000 Years of peace from 2064 onwards.
Cool! Few blog readers will be alive when that happens.
surely there are multiple futures, it doesn’t have to happen this way.
ravi must be under the impression that 1. Nostradamus was generally correct in his predictions, which mostly incorrect, and, 2. that the believers of his ‘Oracle of Delphi’ like uttering’s interpreted the meaning and places correctly, which, again, is mostly not the case; and 3. Nostradamus’ predictions could not & did not foresee and include the manifestation of the Supramental force, the executive power of Sat-Chit-Ananda, that absolutely and totally changed the outcome of the evolutionary course of humanity and what comes after it. That change was but a very vague and opaque possibility at the time of Nostradamus, not the decisive and absolute certainty as it is today. I would have remained that, were it not for the intervention and sacrifice of the Kalki (double) Avatar that is Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Scratch every prediction, no matter how reliable it may be – and there aren’t any reliable ones to begin with, as the trajectory has fully and absolutely changed since those millenniums prior to Kalki. But with only a handful even understanding Nostradamus’s sources, his understandings of them and then the interpreters of Nostradamus’s transfiguration’s interpretations, there are allot more misses than hits of his Predictions.
1. In 1950, Ghosh as usual went for Sri Aurobindo’s darshan not knowing that it would be his last meeting. As Ghosh turned after offering pranama, Sri Aurobindo asked him: “You have not asked me about China?” Ghosh understood that Sri Aurobindo wanted to reveal some thing. Therefore, he waited in respectful silence. After a pause, Sri Aurobindo said: “China will disintegrate. It will break into three parts.”
Ghosh= Surendra Mohan Ghosh(Former Rajya Sabha MP)
2. After being told by Mr Sudhir Ghosh who Sri Aurobindo was, President Kennedy read the words of the seer’s last testament several times over and said:
“Surely there is a typing mistake here. The date must have been 1960, and not 1950. You mean to say that a man devoted to meditation and contemplation, sitting in one corner of India, said this about the intentions of Communist China as early as 1950?”
On being pointed out by Mr Ghosh that Sri Aurobindo had passed away in December 1950, Kennedy was somewhat shocked. “So there you are,” said Kennedy. “One great Indian, Nehru, showed you the path of non-alignment between China and America, and another great Indian, Aurobindo, showed you another way of survival. The choice is up to the people of India.”
http://www.reversespins.com/aurobindo.html
Has anyone come across this prediction by Yogi Arvindji about birth of god of god in India in August 1914?
SIR AUROBINDOJI made several Predictions related to India too. 1 was india will gain freedom on his birthday ie 15th August.
Another was India again will be united ie AKHAND BHARAT
now looking at Pakistan’s fiscal state it seems to be true. Please post them.
I do not have a source for the prediction that India will gain freedom on his birthday. If you have one, please provide
This post discusses only those predictions which have already occurred, so I will not add the second. Just because Sri Aurobindo said something about united India, please do not jump to conclusions based on current situation and trivialize the difficulties of getting there. Pakistan is a poor country with a large population, 97 percent Islamic, they imagine themselves as descendants of Arabs, their school textbooks espouse hatred for Hindus and other minorities, their rural areas are under the sway of fundamentalist Imams, their government sector reserves and allocates low paying sweeper jobs to Christians and Hindus. It will not be easy in the foreseeable future to integrate with people who have grown up in such a culture.
Mother said something interesting in the agenda, which seems to indicate what is now happening in Kashmir (the slow break-up of Pakistan) –
“How are you? What news?
Well, they’ve stopped fighting in the west….[[On the Kashmir and Rajasthan front, that is, the road to West Pakistan, the heart of the trouble. ]]
(Mother nods her head)
Which means it’s not the end of the problem.
Again it won’t be for this time.
It won’t be done that way. I’ve seen how. It won’t be done through a battle: the different parts of Pakistan will demand separation. There are five of them. And by separating, they’ll join India — to form a sort of confederation. That’s how it will be done.
It will break up from within, yes, I see.
That’s right. That’s how it will be done.
page 334 , Mother’s Agenda , December 18, 1971
I am aware of all the quotes on this subject but also cognizant of the ground reality.
I heard that Mataji predicted and made a map of New India which include Pakistan by 2023 ,is it true? I searched but not getting proper information, pls reply, Thanks
I am not aware of any 2023 date. Please do not believe in rumours, especially WhatsApp forwards.
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There is also thé prédiction about collapse of Europe …
I hope not ! Europe does provide a counterbalance and present a unique aspect of human development.
Are you referring to “a child shall destroy” aphorism ? I think the quote is misinterpreted or dated. He wrote that probably before the First world war or around that time.
This is quite interesting. About SA’s visions of the future –
I hope not ! Europe does provide a counterbalance and present a unique aspect of human development.
Exactly !