Friday, August 28, 2026

A soft sensuality dressed up as spirituality

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

Vedic Chhanda Rig Veda 1.1.1

We have discussed the special design of matras in the first rik of Agni Suktam in a previous post

We have seen that making the first Varna a deergha or long gives a special force right at the beginning of the hymn and the entire Veda. This technique is later seen in Ancient Greek poetry where the Dactyl (Long-Short-Short) is what creates the rhythm of the hexameter

Let us look at the energy and its movement in the first rik. We begin with an open airway and the sound is coming from deep in the chest as we pronounce a- अ .We move immediately then to ga- which is a kanthavya or guttural. Now there is a constriction in the air with force and a vibrating vocal cord सघोष 

How does this feel? The energy will move upward with the next word and will come to the lips, the face, the brain, and the cells. And as energy changes so does the psychology

Please test this. For this is not theory. The Veda is direct practice and experience. Never abstractions but pramaana 

https://x.com/AmazingVedas/status/2092926340232098201

As concepts go, intersectionality is deservedly iconic. Few terms have been as successful in conveying that gender simultaneously shapes, and is shaped by, other social categories such as caste, class, race, religion. Long before the term was coined, activists and thinkers in many parts of the world recognised that isolating gender from other axes of analysis could not adequately capture the constraints on women’s lives. It was Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1989 intervention that rendered this insight portable, citable and usable. An interesting new article in Identities takes this distinction—between a widely held understanding and the term that organised it—as its point of departure. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

https://x.com/ASR_Metta/status/2093185202663063971

by JK TSE2015 — Cyril O'Regan wants Pfau to think critically about his genealogical framework, asking him to clarify why exactly the particular thinkers he has chosen ( ...
1 Jan 2013 — Pfau traces the evolution and eventual deterioration of key concepts of human agency—will, person, judgment, action—from antiquity through ...

Thomas Pfau argues that the loss of foundational concepts in classical and medieval Aristotelian philosophy caused a fateful separation between reason and will in European thought. Pfau traces the evolution and eventual deterioration of key concepts of human agency—will, person, judgment, action—from antiquity through Scholasticism and on to eighteenth-century moral theory and its critical revision in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Featuring extended critical discussions of Aristotle, Gnosticism, Augustine, Aquinas, Ockham, Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson, Hume, Adam Smith, and Coleridge, this study contends that the humanistic concepts they seek to elucidate acquire meaning and significance only inasmuch as we are prepared positively to engage (rather than historicize) their previous usages.

Beginning with the rise of theological (and, eventually, secular) voluntarism, modern thought appears increasingly reluctant and, in time unable to engage the deep history of its own underlying conceptions, thus leaving our understanding of the nature and function of humanistic inquiry increasingly frayed and incoherent. One consequence of this shift is to leave the moral self-expression of intellectual elites and ordinary citizens alike stunted, which in turn has fueled the widespread notion that moral and ethical concerns are but a special branch of inquiry largely determined by opinion rather than dialogical reasoning, judgment, and practice.

https://scholars.duke.edu/publication/1011380

Lewis Carroll was a mathematician before he was a storyteller, and Wonderland is laced with mathematical ideas, argues Minh-Hoang Nguyen. Science and mathematics once promised that reason could reach a complete, final understanding of the world. But from Carroll's paradoxes to Gödel's incompleteness theorems, mathematics tells a different story about itself. Nguyen argues that reality, like Wonderland, is fundamentally incomplete. The belief that we live in a closed system awaiting full explanation is a philosophical mistake. Read the full article. iai.tv/articles/godel…

https://x.com/IAI_TV/status/2093050979507671166

Central to its laws from Newton to Einstein, science is unable to describe time itself. Strangely, in the so-called "block universe" of contemporary physics, the direction of time disappears, yet time remains without our being able to say what it is. Join Tim Maudlin, Hilary Lawson, Ivette Fuentes, and Wahida Khandker as they debate. Tap the link to watch now: iai.tv/video/times-gr…

https://x.com/IAI_TV/status/2093024426367287379

Abolishing private ownership of the means of production does not abolish power; it concentrates it. Without private property and market prices, rational economic calculation becomes impossible. Planners lack the information required to allocate resources efficiently. The result is not emancipation but shortage, coercion, and a new ruling class that controls both the economy and the state. Marx offered a total explanation of history and a total solution. Reality refused both. 

https://x.com/CreativeDeduct/status/2093057897018143048

Communism was never primarily an economic system. Economics was the surface. Beneath it lay something far more insidious: a total, systemic, institutionalized commitment to lying. Not occasional dishonesty. Not spin or propaganda in the ordinary sense. Something deeper – a civilizational war against truth itself, waged through every institution, every classroom, every newspaper, every conversation, until reality itself became negotiable and the lie became the air people breathed.

https://x.com/Kristof_Poland/status/2064309615651668179

When everything requires permission, permission becomes the currency – and the people who master it are the ones who always did: the post-communists and their networks. Forty years of practice in navigating the apparatus didn’t disappear in 1989. It got a Brussels upgrade. So the connected do anything. For everyone else, everything is illegal or very, very hard. The system doesn’t select for the best builders. It selects for the best-connected askers – same as before 1989. Meanwhile in the US, they just build.

https://x.com/Kristof_Poland/status/2092943665102483495

My Ayn Rand Phase: The Dangers of ‘Dead Dogma’

by Robert Jensen countercurrents.org/2026/08/my-ayn…

Robert Jensen reflects on his four- or five-year immersion in Ayn Rand’s Objectivism during his twenties and examines why its ideas appealed to him at the time. Looking back, he connects Rand’s emphasis on individual autonomy and freedom from obligation to his own desire to escape the emotional burdens of family, history and community.

He also revisits the philosophical limits of Rand’s rejection of altruism, empathy and emotion. Drawing on John Stuart Mill’s warning about “dead dogma,” Jensen considers how certainty can turn ideas into closed systems and argues for a more open-ended approach to questions of meaning, human nature and the limits of our knowledge.

https://x.com/Countercurrents/status/2092993854471614587

The older hippie fascination with Indian mysticism helped carry such ideas to Western seekers of peace, authenticity, and “living in the moment.” This has fed the New Age beliefs that now permeate many reform circles, replacing the philosophical and moral foundations of the West with sentiment, therapy-language, and magical thinking, and a soft sensuality dressed up as spirituality. The pull is not upward toward civilization, but downward toward the primitive.

https://x.com/JayantBhandari5/status/2093157316501671961

This reflects a total misunderstanding of my position. The first clause (religions are solutions to human problems) is precisely why I resent the hegemonic position of Hindu Nationalism vis-a-vis Hindu spirituality. Whatever problems Hindu Nationalism addresses in India are not our problems.

https://x.com/vjgtweets/status/2093084208881336554

The appeal of universality is an argument in favor of adapting Hindu spirituality to local cultural and social conditions precisely so it can address “human problems.” What we have now is a set of ossified cultural and ritual norms preserved as “Hinduism”

https://x.com/vjgtweets/status/2093086080358928644

This is related to your post, which I still need to address, but the bigger issue is that we lack an institutional mechanism to make exactly this determination. Why should I care if someone else asserts these as universal or not? If I deny they are, does that make me a lesser Hindu? Who makes that determination? These arguments about what constitutes “authentic Hinduism” are little more than idiosyncratic preferences asserted as normative.

Yes so that’s a good answer. One voluntarily associates with a sampradaya that presumably has views on this question and others. In that sense, i am spiritually homeless

I’ve written about this before but I find discussions on the sampradaya-level far more productive than pontificating about “Hinduism”

And what happens when that ecosystem no longer exists, as is the case in the diaspora?

https://x.com/vjgtweets/status/2093089183225278926

The Sangh’s consistently articulated goal is to cleanse, and then become, this organism. This commitment to sangathan, or collective, the RSS’s leaders have long insisted, is understood as a necessary part of overcoming an alleged Hindu emasculation and disunity. For the Sangh, sangathan is both the means and the end: the path to Hindu Rashtra.

This organicism, therefore, is not simply metaphorical. It is an ecological organising principle, part of the Sangh’s stated goal of “Sangh samaj banega”—the Sangh will become society. The RSS understands that having spawning diverse organisations is not incompatible with organisational singularity... Felix Pal (@FelixPal8) explains: caravanmagazine.in/politics/unvei Explore the network map here: rssproject.caravanmagazine.in

https://x.com/thecaravanindia/status/2092926887773556778

Savarkar's greatest sin was that he and his ideology were thoroughly democratic - he was blinded by an "enlightened" form of nationalism while totally disregarding the high noon of "enlightened" nationalism in Europe culminated in Bonapartism

https://x.com/HinduEvolian/status/2092950505270243545

True. This is the "The Constitution of the Hindusthan Free State Act, 1944" passed by the H.M.S. Nothing interesting, for we have seen the effects of liberal democracy. This is why there is a need to innovate politically. Indo-Futurism is the natural extension of Hindutva into the modern day constitutionofindia.net/historical-con…

https://x.com/CivitasSameer/status/2092979564645368092

What shapes a civilization’s narrative? In this Book Talk, historian Meenakshi Jain reflects on Ayodhya, intellectual debates, publishing challenges, and reclaiming India’s civilizational heritage. youtu.be/4ZDcOcculEw?si… @MakrandParanspe @PariksithSingh @AmazingVedas

https://x.com/sriaurobindochr/status/2093037075759067209

From finance to spirituality, discover Smt. Radhe Pfau’s transformative journey at the Lagrasse Sri Aurobindo Integral Life Center, her path to Vedic astrology, and the influence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. youtu.be/rkaqX6zC-3M?si…

https://x.com/sriaurobindochr/status/2093084639065936266

Exploring Sri Aurobindo’s engagement with wisdom literature in Sanskrit with Lopa Mukherjee at Bharat Nivas, Auroville. #Auroville #SriAurobindo #TheMother

https://x.com/AurovilleMedia/status/2092979195508830245

“Let THY Will be done & not mine.” Dr. Monica Gulati explores the deeper art of living truly in the light of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, at Unity Pavilion, Auroville, as part of the 154th Birth Anniversary celebrations. #Auroville #SriAurobindo #TheMother #UnityPavilion

https://x.com/AurovilleMedia/status/2092566880754217174

Creativity, whether in literature, theatre, music, painting, or any other art form, for that matter, is an act/art of discovering fresh power(s) [shakti] of shabda/abhinaya/svara/rang to realise the svabhava (inherent nature) of the self, the beings in nature and the vibrations (spanda) in space. Shall share my thoughts today on the poetics of emotive revelations/illuminations in poetry that builds on the resonances in the human consciousness and the word/world consciousness in Nature. @icssr @EduMinOfIndia

https://x.com/DhananjayaJnu/status/2092838268136296941

Creativity is an act of discovery ! Consider that ancient Indian philosophy understood the limitations of language to express the nature of ultimate reality! Looking forward to listening to @DhananjayaJnu !

https://x.com/ProfessorPuri/status/2092874105800491188

Integral Yoga Psychology

D Banerji - The Wiley‐Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal …, 2026
To arrive at a clearer understanding of this goal, it is instructive to ground it in its
emergence in Sri Aurobindo’s experience. From 1906 to 1910, Aurobindo Ghosh
was among the leaders of an anticolonial political movement in Bengal, India. It was … Sri Aurobindo invoked Vivekananda in making this assertion and retrospectively read... This is also what Sri Aurobindo referred to as integral in integral yoga. Haridas Chaudhuri, one of the scholars and commentators of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy, identified this integral … Sri Aurobindo asserted this in Synthesis of Yoga as follows: “… the perfection of the integral Yoga

The Wiley‐Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, Second Edition Chapter 34 Integral Yoga Psychology Debashish Banerji Book Editor(s):Glenn Hartelius, Jenny Wade, Harris L. Friedman First published: 20 August 2026 Summary

This article begins with a discussion of an appropriate theoretical framework for introducing a modern yoga psychology in a transpersonal frame. From this, it derives a goal of becoming as the primary determining factor for a structural psychology (darshana) and a transformational psychology (yoga). It then discusses the goal of becoming of the integral yoga as proceeding from the transpersonal experiences of Sri Aurobindo. It identifies the goal of becoming as the recognition of a fragmented ontology (Avidya) and its integration (Vidya) in a transformed individual and social life. It further subdivides the ontology of fragmentation in terms of a psychological, a cosmological and an ontological fragmentation and the need for their integration. From this, it discusses a practical metaphysics or structural psychology and a number of approaches given by Sri Aurobindo towards a transfrormational psychology or yoga praxis.

References

Banerji , D. ( 2012 ). Structure and process: Integral philosophy and triple transformation . Integral Review , 8 ( 1 ), 11 .

Banerji , D. ( 2018 ). Sri Aurobindo's formulations of the integral yoga . International Journal of Transpersonal Studies , 37 ( 1 ), 6 

Forman , R. K. C. ( 1998 ). The innate capacity: Mysticism, psychology and philosophy . Oxford University Press 

Hacker , P. ( 1983 ). Inclusivism . In G. Oberhammer (Ed.), Inclusivismus: Ein Indische denkform . Institute of Indology, University of Vienna .

Lucid Dreaming

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Despite a history of anecdotal reports dating back hundreds if not thousands of
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Joining the Widening Circles: How Transpersonal Psychology Can Contribute to Global Social Movements

KE Coder, D Rothberg - The Wiley‐Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal …, 2026
… Karma yoga infuses its practitioners with courage, resilience, and calmness amid
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[PDF] Nature and Self: The Bhagavad Gita's Direction to Psychological Health and Ecosystem Sustainability

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… Here, the amphitheatre’s stone tiers and surrounding vegetation are not mere
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… The findings of the study will be useful for educators, parents, and policymakers in
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P Cunningham - The Wiley‐Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal …, 2026
This chapter presents a definition of transpersonal education, explains why
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The risk of iatrogenesis in schools: When well-intentioned interventions do more harm than good

R Brito, E Sellman - Exploring Mental Health in Education
This chapter examines growing debates about how schools respond to rising
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Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) has become one of the most important concepts in
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