Sunday, January 22, 2012

Authentic, verifiable, balanced and truthful


We are a group of individuals who have come together to initiate a service of providing information that is as authentic, verifiable, balanced  and as truthful as possible.
We prefer not to be named and identified, not because of a lack of courage or straightforwardness, but because we believe that this website belongs to all those who want to make the effort to find and get closer to the Truth.  This website is therefore an open source and belongs to all those to participate in this effort.
Moreover, we believe that the moment identities are revealed people look for motives and agendas and one gets stereotyped. We may get categorised as pro-establishment or anti-rebels or seekers of favours or whatever. Somebody will dismiss our work based on our identity, or we will create enemies. Instead we want people to focus on the information and the work and not the people doing it.
Lastly, we do not claim to posses the Truth, but we believe that we can help remove those obstacles that come in the way of or obfuscate Truth - especially those obstacles that are in the form of deliberate misrepresentation and distortion of facts or the creation of myths – by providing more reliable, accurate and  complete information.

Introduction: Introduction to Dubious Websites:
As the internet is becoming increasingly accessible to a larger number of people, a plethora of websites, blogs, internet discussion groups, etc., related to Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the larger Aurobindonian collective are also ever-increasingly springing up. As a result of that a large amount of information on these subjects and related matters is being propagated through cyberspace.
While many benefit from the availability of such information, there is however a flip-side to the ease with which information, especially inaccurate, erroneous and even deliberately misleading information can be created and diffused on the internet.
Because like in everything else, there are a few individuals or small groups of like-minded people who are more interested and keen to promote their personal ideas, views and opinions as well as their personal agendas and interests, which more often than not go contrary to the ideology that they claim to espouse.  In fact, such individuals land up using an ideology – to which they may have an affinity or dedication – also as a prop to promote themselves. While lip-service is given to the ideology, it is in reality given a back seat as their personal preferences take over, determine and drive all their actions.
The evident and inevitable outcome of the mixing of ideologies with personal preferences is: confusion. This is made worse with the deliberate creation and diffusion of misinformation with the intent to confuse and muddle issues. Thus unfortunately in recent times, the names of Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, The Sri Aurobindo Ashram as well as the Aurobindonian collective have found themselves surrounded by rumours, myths, even blatant lies all designed to promote an individual’s or a small group’s personal preferences.
As the internet has provided a convenient platform for the diffusion of all kinds of information, this blog attempts to verify, analyze, demystify and critique some of the information, especially that which is dubious, inaccurate, misleading, biased, etc., that is being propagated on some of the websites and blogs that associate themselves to Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the Aurobindonian collective.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Nama-Japa in the Yoga of Transformation by Ramkrishna Das

Nama-Japa in the Yoga of Transformation by Ramkrishna Das at Vedic Books: 'via Blog this'
Translated and revised from the original Odia text, this book is a passionate argument for the effectiveness of nama-japa in Sri Aurobindo’s yoga. The author’s premise is that through all the difficulties and arduous trials of the yoga of transformation, the safest and least difficult path is that of complete surrender to the Mother, and that the most direct way to achieve such a surrender is by the constant repetition of the Mother’s name. In concise and affirming language, he describes how to use nama-japa in work, in worldly life, to overcome obstacles from within and attacks from adverse forces, and how to make its practice natural, spontaneous, and effective.