The Democrats Are Neocons

Who's the Bigger Hawk, George or Hillary?
by Joshua Frank
There aren't many elected officials in Washington who want to throw the gauntlet down on Iran more than Hillary Clinton. The New York senator believes the president has been too soft on the militant Islamic country, claiming that Bush has played down the threat of a nuclear-armed Tehran.
"I believe we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations," Clinton told an audience at Princeton University on Jan. 18. "I don't believe you face threats like Iran or North Korea by outsourcing it to others and standing on the sidelines. … We cannot and should not – must not – permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons," Clinton added. "In order to prevent that from occurring … we must move as quickly as feasible for sanctions in the United Nations...read+

On Pakistan, Democratic candidates sound like neocons
As usual, I will let other people deal with the political implications of the debate tonight, and focus solely on issues related to foreign policy. 1. A couple of days ago I wrote that "It's safe to assume the topic [of Iran] will not be absent from tomorrow's debate either, even if it is overshadowed by Pakistan." This prediction proved to be correct as far as Pakistan is concerned. Iran, however, got much less attention. Quite amazing for an issue that just two weeks ago seemed like the most pressing of all. 2. But the even more amazing thing about the Pakistan chapter of the debate was the extent to which the Democratic candidates sounded almost like ? well ? neocons...read+

antineocons

Lines Of Fulfilment

"The ideal society or State is that in which respect for individual liberty and free growth of the personal being to his perfec60n is harmonised with respect for the needs, efficiency, solidarity, natural growth and
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organic perfection of the corporate being, the society or nation. In an ideal aggregate of all humanity, in the international society or State, national liberty and free national growth and self- realisation ought in the same way to be progressively harmonised with the solidarity and unified growth and perfection of the human race.
Therefore, if this basic principle were admitted, there might indeed be fluctuations due to the difficulty of a perfect working combination, as in the growth of the national aggregate there has been sometimes a stress on liberty and at others a stress on efficiency and order; but since the right conditions of the problem would have been recognised from the beginning and not left to be worked out in a blind tug-of-war, there would be some chance of an earlier reasonable solution with much less friction and violence in the process.
But there is little chance of such an unprecedented good fortune for mankind. Ideal conditions cannot be expected, for they demand a psychological clarity, a diffused reasonableness and scientific intelligence and, above all, a moral elevation and rectitude to which neither the mass of mankind nor its leaders and rulers have yet made any approach. In their absence, not reason and justice and mutual kindliness, but the trend of forces and their practical and legal adjustment must determine the working out of this as of other problems. And just as the problem of the State and the individual has been troubled and obscured not only by the conflict between individual egoism and the corporate egoism of the society, but by the continual clash between intermediate powers, class strife, quarrels of Church and State, king and nobles, king and commons, aristocracy and demos, capitalist bourgeoisie and labour proletariate, this problem too of nation and international humanity is certain to be troubled by the claims of just such intermediate powers. To say nothing of commercial interests and combinations, cultural or racial sympathies, movements of Pan-Islamism, Pan-Slavism, Pan-Germanism, Pan- Anglo-Saxonism, with a possible Pan-Americanism and Pan- Mongolianism looming up in the future, to say nothing of yet other unborn monsters, there will always be the great intermediate factor of Imperialism, that huge armed and dominant
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Titan, that must by its very nature demand its own satisfaction, at the cost of every suppressed or inconvenient national unit and assert its own needs as prior to the need~ of the new-born inter. national comity. That satisfaction, presumably, it must have for a time, that demand it will be for long impossible to resist..."

Read more @ Sri Aurobindo's Social and political volume 15

Mentally Bankrupt Anglos

The CIA and the Iranian experiment by Thierry Meyssan*

The news of alleged election fraud has spread through Tehran like wildfire, pitching ayatollah Rafsanjani’s supporters against ayatollah Khamenei’s in street confrontations. This chaotic situation is secretly stirred by the CIA which has been spreading confusion by flooding Iranians with contradicting SMS messages. Thierry Meyssan recounts this psychological warfare experiment.

In March 2000, the Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admitted that the Eisenhower administration organized a regime change in 1953 in Iran and that this historical event explained the current hostility of Iranians towards the United States. Last week, during the speech he addressed to Muslims in Cairo, President Obama officially recognized that « in the midst of the cold war the United States played a role in the toppling of a democratically elected Iranian government » [1].

Is History repeating itself? Washington renounced to a military attack on Iran and has dissuaded Israel to take such an initiative. In order to «change the regime», the Obama administration prefers to play the game of covert actions – less dangerous but with a more unpredictable outcome. After the Iranian presidential elections, huge demonstrations in the streets of Tehran are pitching supporters of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ali Khamenei on one side, to supporters of defeated candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on the other. The demonstrations are a sign of a profound division in the Iranian society between a nationalist proletariat and a bourgeoisie upset at being held back from economic globalization [4]. With its covert actions, Washington is trying to weigh on the events to topple the re-elected president...source

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President Barack Obama was forced to address accusations that the CIA was involved in fomenting the post-election riots in Iran during his White House press conference yesterday, claiming the allegations were “patently false,” despite the fact that the U.S. government publicly gave the CIA approval to undertake a destabilization campaign in Iran more than two years ago.
“There are reports suggesting that the CIA is behind all this - all of which is patently false but it gives you a sense of the narrative that the Iranian government would love to play into,” said Obama.
CIA involvement in Iran is not a “narrative” manufactured by the Iranian government, as Obama well knows.
As we highlighted in our report earlier this week, evidence of U.S. intelligence meddling in Iran is widespread, which is no surprise considering the fact that the U.S. all but announced they would pursue a destabilization campaign in Iran years ago.
In May 2007, the London Telegraph and others revealed that President George W. Bush had “Given the CIA approval to launch covert “black” operations to achieve regime change in Iran.”...........source

Silent Repression: The CIA's Covert Operations

The Truth About The Sun And The Moon

"To the senses it is always true that the sun moves round the earth; this is false to the reason. To the reason it is always true that the earth moves round the sun; this is false to the supreme vision. Neither earth moves nor sun; there is only a change in the relation of sun-consciousness and earth-consciousness".

Sri Aurobindo

And From The Holy Quran..

[Yusufali 75:9] And the sun and moon are joined together

[Yusufali 76:13] Reclining in the (Garden) on raised thrones, they will see there neither the sun's (excessive heat) nor (the moon's) excessive cold.

The Seven Suns Of The Supermind

Seven Suns of the Supermind

1. The Sun of Supramental Truth, — Knowledge-Power originating the supramental creation.
Descent into the Sahasradala.

2. The Sun of Supramental Light and Will-Power, transmitting the Knowledge-Power as dynamic vision and command to create, found and organise the supramental creation.
Descent into the Ajna Chakra, the centre between the eyes.

3. The Sun of Supramental Word, embodying the Knowledge-Power, empowered to express and arrange the supramental creation.
Descent into the Throat Centre.

4. The Sun of Supramental Love, Beauty, and Bliss, releasing the Sou lof the Knowledge-Power to vivify and harmonise the supramental creation.
Descent into the Heart-Lotus.

5. The Sun of Supramental Force dynamised as a power and source of life to support the supramental creation.
Descent into the Navel Centre.

6. The Sun of Life-Radiances (Power-Rays) distributing the dynamis and pouring it into concrete formations.
Descent into the Navel Centre.

7. The Sun of Supramental Substance-Energy and Form-Energy empowered to embody the supramental life and stabilise the creation.
Descent into the Muladhara.

SOURCE

Sri Aurobindo's Gayatri Mantra

What Is Light?

Perennial Light


O mortal who complainst of death and fate,Accuse none of the harms thyself hast called;This troubled world thou hast chosen for thy home,Thou art thyself the author of thy pain.
- Sri Aurobindo

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There are special forces of the Light and there is a play of them according to needs but the Light in itself can be lived in as much as one can live in Peace or Ananda.
As Peace and Ananda can pour through the whole system and finally stabilise themselves so that they are in the body, and the body and the whole being are in them – one might almost say, are that, are the Peace and Ananda – so it can be with Light. It can pour into the body, make every cell luminous, fix itself and surround on all sides in one luminous mass of Light.
***
It is not balls or flashes of light, but a flow or sea of Light entering into the body and surrounding it and illumining the whole field of consciousness. There can also be a vivid sense of Light and illumination without the vision. It can be seen or felt usually as an intense white or diamond or golden Light or something like sunlight or, for many, a blue or bluish white light.
***
Light or rays of light are always light of the higher consciousness working in the being to illumine or to purify or to awaken the consciousness or attune it to the Truth.
***
It depends upon the colour of the Light. In any case it is the Light of Force from above. All lights are indications of a Force or Power. It is the work of the Lights and the Forces they represent to act in their descent on the lower nature and change it.
***
It is not necessary or possible to define. Light is light just like the light you see, only subtle – it clarifies the consciousness and works as a force and makes knowledge possible.
***
It [the Divine Light] has no function – it is just Light of Divine Consciousness. If you mean the result, it is supposed to illumine, to remove darkness and obscurity, to make the nature fit for true consciousness, Knowledge etc.
***
It [Light] is the power that enlightens whatever it falls upon – the result may be vision, memory, knowledge, right will, right impulse etc.
***
(1) The lid of the skull opening means that the mental being has opened to the Divine Light, and the flames indicate aspiration filled with the Light arising to join the mental part to what is above Mind.
(2) The Divine Light from above is of various colours. White is the divine Power of purity, blue the light of the spiritual consciousness, gold the hue of the supramental knowledge or of knowledge from the intermediate planes.
(3) OM (golden) rising to the sky means the cosmic consciousness supramentalised and rising towards the transcendent Consciousness.
(1) and (2) indicate either something that is happening at present or a potentiality that is trying to materialise. (3) symbolises the process of the yoga which will be followed if this potentiality is realised and pursued to its natural goal.
***

From Sri Aurobindo's Letters On Yoga(volume3)

Sun

"What you saw was indeed a sun, – the sun of blue light which is the light of a higher mind than the ordinary human mind. The sun is the symbol of Light and Truth. This higher spiritual Mind is trying to wake in you, but at the beginning there is always a difficulty because the consciousness is not habituated to receive, so there is the sense of pressure deepening sometimes into a feeling of headache or this feeling of the head preparing to split. It is nothing but a sensation in the physical created by the inner mind (this part of the head is the seat of the inner mind) trying to open under the touch from above.

Your dream was not a sign of the worldly desire in you, but only a test or ordeal dream such as you have had before. Your absence of response in the dream shows that you have no such inclination towards these things as many have. The whole was only a formation or suggestion of outer forces on the vital plane to see what kind of response, if any, your consciousness would make"

SRI AUROBINDO(LETTERS ON YOGA ,VOLUME3)

Stanley Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey

THE OPENING

THE DAWN OF MAN

HAL

"MOTHER"

ORBITAL HALCYON

THE ENDING

The Little Girl..

12 JANUARY 1939

Nirodbaran narrated to Sri Aurobindo an incident that had taken place in Calcutta. The Mother was present during the narration. The incident concerned a girl of about ten or twelve. She belonged to a very well-known family and had visited the Ashram with her parents more than once. Now there was a tea-party in their sumptuous house. Many high-ranking people had been invited. The topic of the Ashram came up. Comments and criticisms started flying freely. Even the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were not spared. The child listened quietly. But when somebody seemed to overstep the limit of decency, she could stand it no longer. In a firm tone she said, "Look here, if you speak one more word about my Gurus, I'll give you such a slap that you'll tumble down." Everybody was stunned. The child's mamma left the room in shame and anger at the insult to her guests. Her uncle started looking at the ceiling in embarrassment, and to change the subject he started calling to the servants, "Hari, Ram, what a lot of dust is here!" Nirodbaran's story was enjoyed by all immensely. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo looked happy. Then the Mother left.

SRI AUROBINDO: What this girl does is remarkable for her age. Along with strength of character she has developed an extra ordinary intelligence. When she used to write to us, she would make reflections about people and the world in general, which were beyond even a woman of fifty.
NIRODBARAN: I'll tell you of some rare traits in her, her powers of judgment as well as of detachment. She had a dancing master. Her parents wanted to dismiss him because he was said to have a bad character. She wouldn't agree at all. Her argument was that character had nothing to do with teaching. But for all her position the parents did send the fellow away. And when he left she acted quite contrary to expectation. Although she had fought much for him, she seemed not the least put out by his dismissal. Then there is the incident of the death of her pet dog. When this animal, which she had loved intensely, died she remained perfectly calm. This set her mamma thinking that she didn't love the dog and also that she might not be loving her even and would one day leave her for the Ashram.
SRI AUROBINDO: Her parents have found out it would be difficult to bend her to their will. She on her side has found out they keep lying to her...source

Talks,Jokes,Letters On James Jeans And Arthur Eddington

151. A man came to a scientist and wished to be instructed; this instructor showed him the revelations of the microscope and telescope, but the man laughed and said, "These are obviously hallucinations inflicted on the eye by the glass which you use as a medium; I will not believe till you show these wonders to my naked seeing." Then the scientist proved to him by many collateral facts and experiments the reliability of his knowledge but the man laughed again and said, "What you term proofs, I term coincidences, the number of coincidences does not constitute proof; as for your experiments, they are obviously effected under abnormal conditions and constitute a sort of insanity of Nature." When confronted with the results of mathematics, he was angry and cried out, "This is obviously imposture, gibberish and superstition; will you try to make me believe that these absurd cabalistic figures have any real force and meaning ?" Then the scientist drove him out as a hopeless imbecile; for he did not recognise his own system of denials and his own method of negative reasoning. If we wish to refuse an impartial and openminded enquiry, we can always find the most respectable polysyllables to cover our refusal or impose tests and conditions which stultify the enquiry.
152. When our minds are involved in matter, they think matter the only reality; when we draw back into immaterial consciousness, then we see matter a mask and feel existence in consciousness alone as having the touch of reality.
Which then of these two is the truth ? Nay, God knoweth; but he who has had both experiences, can easily tell which condition is the more fertile in knowledge, the mightier and more blissful.

Sri Aurobindo's Thoughts and Aphorisms(Jana)

SIR ARTHUR EDDINGTON

SIR JAMES HOPWOOD JEANS

At one time physical science claimed to explain everything according to its laws. Now they admit they can explain nothing.
PURANI: The law of causality which once allowed no exception is now said to be not absolute. The physicists can't determine the causes of phenomena in every case because in trying to observe the phenomena they interfere with the process and thus vitiate it. This they now call indeterminacy.
SRI AUROBINDO: The attempts of scientists like Jeans and Eddington to find Reality by science are futile. You can't found metaphysics on physical science; for, when you have built your philosophy, after some thirty years or so science will change and your building will tumble down. All you can say is that certain conclusions of science agree with and correspond to certain conclusions of metaphysics. You can't make metaphysics depend on physics.
PURANI: The Continental scientists have now refused to build philosophy on science. They say it is not their business to explain but only to lay bare the process. Eddington says in his Gifford Lectures that the human mind, the subject, ultimately accepts one conclusion out of a number of conclusions not because of the nature of objective reality but because of the nature of the observing subject. That 8+8=16 and not 61 points to some correspondence in the material world to the movement of the thinking mind.
SRI AUROBINDO: It is the accumulated experience- the invariable experience-that gives that sense. Man has found by putting 8 and 8 together that it makes 16.
PURANI: Again, in regard to the rainbow, the scientist study the wave-lengths of light while the poets make a play imagination over it. We have no means of saying that the real rainbow exists for the scientist and not for the poet.
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SRI AUROBINDO: I should say it exists for neither. Only the scientists get excited over the process and the poets over the result.
PURANI: Eddington also admits that we have no ground to say that non-scientific knowledge and experience are less real than physical science.
SRI AUROBINDO: Of course not...source

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1. The question about science and spirituality would have been of some moment some twenty years ago and it filled the minds of men in the earlier years of the twentieth century, but it
Page – 204
is now out of date. Science itself has come to the conclusion that it cannot, as it once hoped, determine what is the truth of the things or their real nature, or what is behind physical phenomena; it can only deal with the process of physical things and how they come about or on what lines men can deal with and make use of them. In other words, the field of physical science has been now definitely marked off and limited and questions about God or the ultimate Reality or other metaphysical or spiritual problems are outside it. This is at least the case all over continental Europe and it is only in England and America that there is still some attempt to reason about these things on the basis of physical science.
The so-called sciences which deal with the mind and men (psychology, etc.) are so much dependent on physical science that they cannot go beyond narrow limits. If science is to turn her face towards the Divine, it must be a new science not yet developed which deals directly with the forces of the life-world and of Mind and so arrives at what is beyond Mind; but present-day science cannot do that.
2. From the spiritual point of view such temporary phenomena as the turn of the educated Hindus towards materialism are of little importance. There have always been periods when the mind of nations, continents or cultures turned towards materialism and away from all spiritual belief. Such periods came in Europe in the nineteenth century, but they are usually of short duration. Western Europe has already lost its faith in materialism and is seeking for something else, either turning back to old religions or groping for something new. Russia and Asia are now going through the same materialistic wave. These waves come because of a certain necessity in human development – to destroy the bondage of old forms and leave a field for new truth and new forms of truth and action in life as well as for what is behind life...source
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I think X bases his ideas on the attempt of Jeans, Eddington and other English scientists to thrust metaphysical conclusions into scientific facts; it is necessary that he should appreciate fully
Page – 205
the objections of more austerely scientific minds to such a mixture. Moreover, spiritual seeking has its own accumulated knowledge which does not depend in the least on the theories or discoveries of science in the purely physical sphere. X's attempt like that of Jeans and others is a reaction against the illegitimate attempts of some scientific minds in the nineteenth century and of many others who took advantage of the march of scientific discovery to discredit or abolish as far as possible the religious spirit and to discredit also metaphysics as a cloudy verbiage, exalting science as the only clue to the truth of the universe. But I think that attitude is now dead or moribund; the scientists recognise, as you point out, the limits of their sphere. I may observe that the conflict between religion and science never arose in India (until the days of European education) because religion did not interfere with scientific discovery and scientists did not question religious or spiritual truth because the two things were kept on separate but not opposing lines...source
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Your faith in it seems to he strengthened by Sir James Jeans's exposition of modern physics in his most important book so far. Physics and Philosophy. According to you, Berkeley's view of mentalism was a limited and imperfect one, only a beginning in fact, but a beginning in the right direction, which agrees with the trend of present-day physics.
When you ascribe anti-mentalism to Sri Aurobindo you are at
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once right and wrong. Right if you mean that he does not accept the mental consciousness in any form as the world-creator. Wrong if you mean that he does not accept consciousness at all as the creator of the world. Mind, to Sri Aurobindo, is not a synonym of consciousness: it is just one degree. Are you ascribing anti-mentalism to him by yourself employing the word "mind" broadly to signify consciousness and thinking he assumes for matter an existence outside consciousness altogether? I can quote you passages galore from The Life Divine to demonstrate that when a broad sense is read into the word "mind" Sri Aurobindo is not anti-mental in the least. Here is one: "The world is real precisely because it exists only in consciousness; for it is a Conscious Energy one with Being that creates it. It is the existence of material form in its own right apart from the self- illumined energy which assumes the form, that would be a contradiction of the truth of things, a phantasmagoria, a night- mare, an impossible falsehood." Sri Aurobindo is anti-mental only when the sense is narrowed. Correctly, the sense should be narrowed; else we confuse the issue at stake. I for one act the anti-mentalist with the narrow sense in view, and if I aver that the drift of Science is away from Berkeley I must be taken to mean not that modern physics thinks matter contains its own explanation but that, in the first place, it does not agree to Berkeley's foundational premiss — "matter exists wholly as a percept of our consciousness" — and that in the second place, the term "mentalism" or "idealism" is mal à propos in science as in philosophy.
On page 203 of Physics and Philosophy Jeans says that before mentalism "can be seriously considered some answer must be found to the problem of how objects can continue to exist when they are not being perceived in any human mind". Is it not evident that Berkeley's foundational premiss is negated by Jeans? And once it is negated, what remains of Berkeley? You will argue that Berkeley postulates the mind of God as that in which objects when unperceived in any human mind exist. But this is an arbitrary step on the Bishop's part. If our percepts are sufficient, God's mind is not required; if they are not, why choose God's mind rather than matter's independent externality..source
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I chuckled, Sir, to learn that you held the chart horizontally, because of its length! And E is none of those high sounding "extravagant" words. If you had just looked about you for a moment, lifting your eyes from the correspondence, you would have discovered that E stands for nothing but a simple evening. Clear?
No. What has evening to do with it? Evening star? "Twinkle, twinkle, evening star! How I wonder what your temperatures are?" But I suppose Sir James Jeans knows and doesn't wonder. But anyhow E for Evening sounds both irrelevant and poetic.
March 25, 1936
No, Sir, it is not at all irrelevant, though poetic. I swear it is evening. You know they take these pulse and respiration rates Morning and Evening of which M and E are short- hands, and one of which I suppose you will make mad and the other one of the three you have divined! But what is this "Jones — knows and doesn't wonder"?
Jeans, Jeans, Jeans — not Jones!
Sir James Jeans, sir, who knows all about the temperatures, weights and other family details of the stars, including E. ..source

FTL( Faster Than Light)

" there is also an amplitude for light to go faster (or slower) than the conventional speed of light. You found out in the last lecture that light doesn't go only in straight lines; now, you find out that it doesn't go only at the speed of light! It may surprise you that there is an amplitude for a photon to go at speeds faster or slower than the conventional speed, c"
– Richard Feynman

Faster-than-light speeds in tunneling experiments: an annotated bibliography

Revision and enlargement of this page is now permanently stalled - this page is no longer updated. Some less ancient references (as of 2001) are added in piecemeal fashion, below.

One central tenet of special relativity theory is that light speed is the greatest speed at which energy, information, signals etc. can be transmitted. In many physics-related internet newsgroups, claims have appeared that recent tunneling experiments show this assumption to be wrong, and that information can indeed be transmitted by speeds faster than that of light - the most prominent example of "information" being a Mozart symphony, having been transmitted with 4.7 times the speed of light. In this document, I've tried to collect the major references on these faster-than-light (FTL)-experiments. If I find the time, I will develop this into a written introduction on the topic of FTL speeds and tunneling, so far it is merely a (possibly incomplete) collection of references. If anyone has relevant additions/comments, I'd appreciate a mail.

Most of the references are to the technical literature, presuming that the reader has at least a basic grasp of physics. However, as usual, those articles have abstracts and conclusions, which give an overview of what the article is about. Some references that are in German are omitted here, but can be found in the german version of this page.

What's this all about, anyway?

The Movie Contact

Journey through the Einstein/Rosen Bridge

Faster Than Light's Velocity

June 2, 1966
Is the difficulty of the other day over?
Oh, I've had an experience, a new experience. I mean, it's the cells of the body that have had a new experience.
When I lie down on my bed at night, there is an offering of all the cells, which regularly surrender as completely as they can, with an aspiration not only for union but for fusion: let there remain nothing but the Divine. It's regular, every day, every single day. And for some time, these cells or this body consciousness (but it isn't organized as a consciousness: it's like a collective consciousness of the cells), it seemed to be complaining a little, to be saying, "But we don't feel much. We do feel" (they can't say they don't feel: they feel protected, supported), "but still ..." They are like children, they were complaining that it wasn't spectacular: "It HAS to be marvelous." (Mother laughs) Ah, very well, then! So two nights ago, they were in that state when I went to bed. I didn't move from the bed till about two in the morning. At two in the morning I got up, and I suddenly noticed that all the cells, the whole body (but it really is a cellular consciousness, not a body consciousness; it isn't the consciousness of this or that person: there's no person, it's the consciousness of a cellular aggregate), that consciousness felt bathed in and at the same time shot through by a MATERIAL power of a fan-tas-tic velocity bearing no relation to the velocity of light, none at all: the velocity of light is something slow and unhurried in comparison. Fantastic, fantastic! Something that must be like the movement of the centers out there ... (Mother gestures towards faraway galactic space). It was so awesome! I remained quite peaceful, still, I sat quite peaceful; but still, peaceful as I could be, it was so awesome, as when you are carried away by a movement and are going so fast that you can't breathe...READ+

Mahakali's Waves

"Whatever comes from above can come like that in waves – whether it is Light or Force or Peace or Ananda. In your case it was the Force working on the mind in waves. It is true also that when it was like that, not in currents or as a rain or as a quiet flood, it is Mahakali's Force that is working. The first necessity when it is so, is not to fear."

From Sri Aurobindo's Letters on Yoga(volume3)

Wave And Particle

The wall between consciousness and force,impersonality and personality becomes much thinner when one goes behind the veil of matter.If one looks at a working from the side of the impersonal force one sees a force or energy at work acting for a purpose or with a result,if one looks from the side of being one sees a being possessing,guiding and using or else representative of and used by a conscious force as it's instrument of specialised action and expression..In modern science it has been found that if you look at the movement of energy,it appears on one side to be wave,on the other as a mass of particles each acting in its own way.It is somewhat the same principle here..

(From Chapter/Book:The Superconscient/Sri Aurobindo And The Adventure Of Consciousness.)


Wave Particle Duality



Erwin Schrodinger

At an early age, Schrödinger was strongly influenced by Schopenhauer[3]. As a result of his extensive reading of Schopenhauer's works, he became deeply interested throughout his life in color theory, philosophy[4], perception, and eastern religion, especially Vedanta...read+

On Reason,Science and Yoga

Reason, Science and Yoga

1 The article reads as if it had been written by a professor rather than a philosopher. What you speak of is, I suppose, a survival of the nineteenth-century scientific contempt for metaphysics; all thinking must be based on scientific facts and the generalisations of science, often so faulty and ephemeral, must be made the basis for any sound metaphysical thinking. That is to make philosophy the handmaid of science, metaphysics the camp-follower of physics and to deny her her sovereign rights in her own city. It ignores the fact that the philosopher has his own domain and his own instruments; he may use scientific discoveries as material just as he may use any other facts of existence, but whatever generalisations science offers he must judge by his own standards – whether they are valid for transference to the metaphysical plane and, if so, how far. Still in the heyday of physical science before it discovered its own limitations and the shakiness of its scheme of things floating precariously in a huge infinity or boundless Finite of the Unknown, there was perhaps some excuse for such an attitude. But spiritualism glorified under the name of psychical research? That is not a science; it is a mass of obscure and ambiguous documents from which you can draw only a few meagre and doubtful..READ MORE

SECTION FOUR

Reason, Science and Yoga

EUROPEAN metaphysical thought – even in those thinkers who try to prove or explain the existence and nature of God or of the Absolute – does not in its method and result go beyond the intellect. But the intellect is incapable of knowing the supreme Truth; it can only range about seeking for Truth, and catching fragmentary representations of it, not the thing itself, and trying to piece them together. Mind cannot arrive at Truth; it can only make some constructed figure that tries to represent it or a combination of figures. At the end of European thought, therefore, there must always be Agnosticism, declared or implicit. Intellect, if it goes sincerely to its own end, has to return and give this report: “I cannot know; there is, or at least it seems to me that there may be or even must be Something beyond, some ultimate Reality, but about its truth I can only speculate; it is either unknowable or cannot be known by me.” Or, if it has received some light on the way from what is beyond it, it can say too: “There is perhaps a consciousness beyond Mind, for I seem to catch glimpses of it and even to get intimations from it. If that is in touch with the Beyond or if it is itself the consciousness of the Beyond and you can find some way to reach it, then this Something can be known but not otherwise"...READ MORE

Talks On Einstein,Relativity,Science,Atoms-Part2

26-12-1939
Disciple : N. was puzzled about time and space because it is not clear whether time and space are properties of matter.
Page – 102
Sri Aurobindo : Time and space can't be properties of matter, at least time is not material. Space and time are the extensions of the Brahman. For instance, you feel when you go deep in meditation that there is an inner space, – cidākāśa, which extends to infinity, and our material space is only a result of it. So time also is extension of Brahman in movement.
You can see that time and space both are not the same for man every time. When your mind travels from Calcutta to London it is not in the material space and not in the time that you feel with the outer mind. It is in the mind itself that you move.
Space also is a movement of the Brahman inasmuch as it is an extension, but there is a difference as far as time is concerned.
Disciple : We are conscious of the movement of Brahman as time because we live from moment to moment and we can feel time only by events. So also the world is an extension.
Sri Aurobindo : In that way everything is an extension – expression, projection, manifestation, – of the Brahman. It is only a way of saying.
Disciple : Some say that time does not exist at all.
Sri Aurobindo : Who says it? It depends upon the point of view and state of consciousness from which you say it; i.e. whether one says it only intellectually, or from an experience,
Disciple : Time may not exist in a consciousness where the universe does not exist.
Sri Aurobindo : Quite so.
Disciple : The scientists define gravitation as only a curvature of space – and, as we know matter only by weight, matter is a curvature of space.
Sri Aurobindo : But what about matter being the same as energy ?
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Disciple : Einstein admits their identity and says that energy has weight.
Disciple : How can energy have weight ?
Disciple : If you wound your watch and unwound it – there would be a difference in the weight ? (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo : But what you have to ask is : "what is Energy ?"
+ + +
17–9–1940
Disciple : According to science there is no empty space anywhere, that is to say, there is no emptiness in space. There are two schools of physicists: Some believe that there is what they call "cosmic dust” in all space. Others say that the ray of light being material can pass through nothing – there is no necessity to imagine anything between.
Sri Aurobindo : "Nothing" means what ? Does it mean non-existence, or nothing that we can, or do, sense ? If you say it is non-existence then nothing can pass through it, you empty a tube or a vessel of the air or gas it contains and say it is a vacuum. But how do you know there is nothing in it ?
Disciple : If there was anything in it, there would be resistance.
Sri Aurobindo : Why should you assume that everything must offer resistance ? If 'nothing' means non-existence then if anything enters non-existence it becomes non-existence. If you enter non-existence you cease to be. A ray can arrive only at nowhere through nothing.
Disciple : That may be occult knowledge.
Sri Aurobindo: It is not merely occult knowledge but occult knowledge and common sense.
Disciple : What is space ?
Sri Aurobindo : The question remains : either it is a conception
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or any entity. If it is a conception only, then your observations can also be only conceptions, that is to say, they happen in you only. Then you come to Mayavada : nothing but you exists.
Disciple : The latest idea is that space is curved.
Sri Aurobindo : What is the meaning of space being curved? Einstein speaks of curvature of space round the Sun and when a body gets near it, it goes down the curve. But the question is: what is that curve and in what does it exist?
For instance, some say the universe is expanding, in what? There must be something in which it is expanding. And why is a ray of light deflected in the sun's neighbourhood ? You say : because there is a curve. But why is there a curve ? And in what is that curve?
And then, what is expanding? Is it Matter ? You will say : No. Then Energy ? You say : yes. But the energy is expanding into what? You say space is bent: the question is : is matter bent or space ?
Disciple : The amount of Matter in the universe is limited – it is finite.
Matter has weight arid the weight of all matter is known.
Sri Aurobindo : But what is matter ? Is it a wave or a particle?
Disciple : According to the quantum theory it is a particle which is matter and energy at the same time.
Sri Aurobindo : If you say that matter is finite then there must be some medium which supports matter and which is infinite. You say matter has weight, – what is weight?
Disciple : Some of the scientists say that the sun is losing weight at a certain rate and the time when it will be exhausted is calculated !
Sri Aurobindo : How do you know that the sun is not renewing its weight ?
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Disciple : What else can science do ? It must take the data and make a hypothesis.
Sri Aurobindo : In the real science :
i. You must have the right data.
ii. Then you should draw the right inference. The difficulty is that you can never be sure of having all the data for any phenomenon.
Disciple : There are so many calculations : earth's age, the rate of the expanding universe, the sun's birth, the age of the sun etc.
Sri Aurobindo : I sympathise with Shaw who says: "they don't know what it really is." Something escapes from their calculations like the fish from the fisherman's net.

Talks On Einstein,Relativity,Science,Atoms-Part1

Einstein's notes on relativity

25-12-1939 (Evening)
Disciple : According to Einstein there is no gravitation.
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That is to say, there is no force of attraction exerted between objects. He says that what we call gravitation is due to curvature of space.
Sri Aurobindo : What is all that ?
Disciple : He says that Euclidian geometry is not applicable to the material world. That is to say, space is not flat, a three-dimensional analogue of a two-dimensional flat surface. Euclidian figures like the square and solids and straight lines are abstract, not real or actual. He also says that material space is "boundless but not infinite".
Sri Aurobindo : How do you know ? Perhaps it is not space that is limited but our capacity to measure space that is limited. Besides, how can you say that space is limited to Matter ? There is a non-material space beyond this material universe. A being can leave behind our material space.
Disciple : Einstein began his contribution by proving that simultaneity of events, constancy of mass and length etc. are all relative and not absolute. If the same length is measured from a body moving with great velocity at a distance the length would change. Besides, he showed that in a system of reference if the whole frame of reference moves uniformly then no measurement within the system can give you the proof of the uniform motion.
He has also shown that time is an indispensable factor in the measurement of dimensions of an object.
Sri Aurobindo : Time is not an indispensable factor of dimension. Movement is absolutely necessary to feel time. When an object is stationary the consideration of time does not enter in measuring the dimensions unless you move it to some other point. Really speaking, one has to know space as the extension of being and time as an extension of energy.
Disciple : According to science everything is moving. Earth is going round the Sun and revolving on its axis.
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If we tap on the same place twice Einstein would say we have not tapped on the same place, for the earth has moved 18 miles per second in the meantime.
Sri Aurobindo : But the taps do not change the dimensions of the board ! only, you can say that a consideration of time is necessary to complete your measurements of space.
Disciple : Einstein has introduced a fourth dimension of time, in addition to length, breadth, and height; their combination he calls the time-space continuum. It can be conceived as a cylinder over which a spiral is wound.
Sri Aurobindo : It is only a phrase ! Time cannot be relegated to the position of a mere dimension of space, it is independent in its nature; Time and space may be called the fundamental dual dimensions of the Brahman.
Disciple : Ouspensky has an idea in his Tertium Organum that our three-dimensional world is a projection from a subtler fourth-dimension which is suprasensual but real. He means to say that to each solid form we see here there corresponds a subtler form of it which is in the fourth dimension.
Sri Aurobindo : That is perfectly true, the cube would not be held together and therefore would not be a solid if something in the subtle dimension did not maintain it. Only, it is not visible to the physical eye but can be seen with the subtle eye.
Disciple : Sir Arthur Eddington in his Gifford Lectures (1934) says that science began with the aim of reducing the complexity of the material world to a great simplicity. But now, it seems, science has not been able to keep its promise and no model of the material universe is possible. A good deal of mathematics and specialisation is necessary now to understand what science says about the material world. Eddington says that the table on which he is writing is not merely a piece of wood. Scientifically
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speaking, it is a conglomeration of electrical particles, called Electrons, moving at a very great velocity, and even though the particles are moving, his hands can rest on the surface and not go through.
He has also argued against the scientists who insist that the so-called objective view is the only view that is permissible or intended. The rainbow is not intended I .only to give man the knowledge, or experience, of the difference in the wave-lengths of light. The poet is equally entitled to his experience when he says, "My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky".
So also a 'ripple' in water is not meant only to give man the knowledge of the pressure of the air, and the force of surface-tension.
Sri Aurobindo : Validity of human knowledge is not dependent on physical science alone. Physical science is only one side of knowledge. The poet's and the mystic's and the artist's experience have equal validity.
Disciple : Eddington argues that even in so-called objective scientific knowledge it is mind that is asked to judge ultimately. 8x4 is 32 and not 23, why?
Sri Aurobindo : It is:, by an intuition and repetition of experience and not merely by reason that man finds that one is right and the other wrong
Now even the scientists have been forced to admit that their conclusions are not all based on reason. Their formulas have become like magic formulas.
Disciple : They say that they can demonstrate their conclusions.
Sri Aurobindo : Yes, demonstration to the mind again...

Thus Spake Feynman

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.- Richard Feynman"

Feynman on science,religion...

These Magicians Are Like The Ancient Rishis

RICHARD FEYNMAN..there is plenty of room at the bottom

PAUL DIRAC..the purest soul in physics

WERNER HEISENBERG..the principle of uncertainty