Juergensmeyer's article on Religious Nationalism and Transnationalism in a Globalizing World, carried earlier in sciy, throws a clear interpretive light on our contemporary world situation, a context within which the present imbroglio in Pondicherry wrt. "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" may be framed (with whatever customized caveats). But perhaps the earliest intuitive ray on this dialectic fueling the present discourse was the publication in 1995 of Benjamin Barber's now classic study "Jihad vs. McWorld." The book itself was in fact preceded by a March 1992 article of the same name in The Atlantic by the author (which later became the Introduction chapter in the book).
This article is worthy of our consideration (or reconsideration if already read) in the present circumstances. more»
“One of my countrymen has put the matter very simply,” as Burnham says in the novel. “‘Jesus Christ is Free Trade and Free Trade is Jesus Christ.’ Truer words, I believe, were never spoken. If it is God’s will that opium be used as an instrument to open China to his teachings, then so be it. For myself, I confess I can see no reason why any Englishman should abet the Manchu tyrant in depriving the people of China of this miraculous substance.”
Popular will, democracy, representative government have as little to do with the action of Ghosh’s novel as Congress did with the war in Iraq. “Parliament?” Ben Burnham scoffs to a disbelieving Indian raja. “Parliament,” Burnham laughs, “will not know of the war until it is over. Be assured, sir, that if such matters were left to Parliament there would be no Empire.”
Our free-ranging conversation touches on, among other things,Niall Ferguson's apology for empire; the narrowing discourse in American media; Afghanistan and Pakistan today; the polyglot world of sailing ships; the anthropological eye; and the history of Asian words in English.
It is not his project as a novelist and an Indian, Amitav Ghosh remarks, to break the “imperial gaze” of British writers from Kipling to Conrad. Rather he would love to recapture the cosmopolitan vision of the American, Herman Melville — the real precursor, he says, of Barack Obama..... radio open source. more»
The Western Sky in Pondicherry around 8 pm on Monday, December 1st, 2008 — the eve of the anniversary of the SAICE, which was founded by the Mother on December 2nd, 1943 — with the three brightest heavenly bodies after the Sun — the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter — in an auspicious configuration.
I am beginning to be forced to wage war for the Truth against all the conceptions of the truth! And that's rather interesting.
For instance, there is here that old idea of
vegetarian food. Some people write to me indignantly that these "holy
rules" are being increasingly broken in the Ashram! Someone wrote to me
a first time, asking me to answer; I neglected to. So he wrote a second
time to tell me, "What can we do if you don't answer?" I answered
(they'll probably bite their tongues at my reply), I replied something
like this:
"Truth is not a dogma that one can learn once
and for all and impose as a rule. Truth is as infinite as the supreme
Lord and It manifests every instant for those who are sincere and
attentive."
I could have added other things but didn't, so as not to wage battle too openly!
The same day, that is, just today, I got another letter.... The
whole letter ranted and raved about all that's going on in the Ashram,
saying, "What! This place is worse than the world!" and so forth. (All
this in the name of "truth," naturally.) So (laughing) I answered:
"Were Truth to manifest in such a way as to be seen and
understood by all, they would be terrified by the enormity of their
ignorance and false interpretation."
I hit hard this time.
And it's going on.
Day after day it's like that, growing acute. Everyone is the
"defender of the Truth." One about food, another about money, another
about business, another about relationships ... - everyone has his
hobby-horse.
The wonderful thing is that till now not one has told me,
"Maybe my opinions aren't true?" - not one! "Maybe my way of seeing or
feeling isn't true?" - not one. They are all in full Truth!
It's very interesting.
The defenders of the truth are often worse than the enemies of the truth.
(Mother nods approvingly) But I can't say anything about that because I am the one responsible, I told them, "Cling to Truth."
No, they all make the same mistake: they confuse truth with the
old idea of virtue. They all make the same mistake as the moral error.
And above all, they want a truth expressed in a few very clear
and well-defined words, so they can say, "This is true." The old
calamity of religions: "This is true" - therefore the rest is
falsehood.
How many times ... how many times Sri Aurobindo
(and I myself) said, "When a thing is true, you can be sure that its
opposite is also true. When you have understood this, then you will
begin to understand."
This morning I was also bombarded with a
quotation from Sri Aurobindo (they came and bombarded me in the name of
Sri Aurobindo!), to tell me that in The Mother he wrote, "The divine Grace can act only in the Truth" - and I shouldn't forget that! (Mother laughs) There
is a quotation from Sri Aurobindo in which he says, "The divine Grace
will answer, but do not think it will answer in Falsehood...." An
admirable sentence. Only, they don't know: THEY are the possessors of
the Truth - Falsehood is for others!... And even intelligent people
(that's the strange thing, because it's so idiotic!), even people who,
anyway, have a brain, who understand, fall into the trap.
(silence)
Thanks to all this, I might say (not even
"because of" - THANKS TO all this), I have had these last three days a
vision - a concrete vision every second, showing how the supreme
Consciousness (which I personally find convenient to call the "supreme
Lord"), how EVERY SECOND it makes you do or say or see or know
ex-act-ly what is needed for everything to move on like this (round gesture expressing the innumerably ramified movement of universal forces), to move forward. It's not yet the direct, all-powerful, crushing Movement of direct Forces (gesture from above downward, like a sword of light): it's a movement like this (same round gesture), but
marvelous - marvelously subtle, ingenious, respectful of everything,
but everything; you know, a movement that makes use of everything to
lead towards the goal, even "errors" - which aren't errors because when
the Consciousness is there, the error isn't one committed by ignorance:
a thing is said or done because that's what needs to be said or needs
to be done - it may in appearance be even a blunder, yet it's ex-act-ly
what is needed for everything to move forward (same innumerable round gesture), move
forward luminously towards the desired goal. It's absolutely marvelous!
And seen in tiny little details and in the whole. It's this marvel of a
Consciousness that makes everyone do what must be done, puts everything
in its place, sorts out everything, and it's our idiocy, an absolutely
ignorant and stupid vision, that would have us believe in mistakes, in
errors, in ... Everyone is a problem to be resolved, so all those
problems interpenetrate, and it is the WHOLE that must be led towards
precisely this famous Truth (the true one). But I've spent, you know,
hours in admiration - a blissful admiration - at this marvel of
organization, with all the little things around you, all the little
people around you, all the little circumstances.... It's wonderful,
wonderful!
And then, this overweening mind which understands nothing and
asserts itself in its all-powerful knowledge, oh ... it's so comical!
(silence)
It is the maximum use of all possibilities and
all impossibilities, all capacities and all incapacities; a maximum use
in a maximum power and a maximum Compassion, and also ... a smile! A
smile, a sense of humor, oh! ... Such a benevolent irony, so full of
compassion, so wonderful.... And this overweening mind, a fantastic
phenomenon indeed: it spends its time judging what it doesn't know and
deciding on what it doesn't see!
The other day, for some question of work, I was led to explain my position from the standpoint of the materialist conviction (I don't know what their position is today, because that's something I am not concerned with generally), but anyway I was led to do it because of a certain work.
For them, all the experiences men have are the result of a mental phenomenon: we have reached a progressive mental development (they are at a loss to explain why or how!), anyhow it was Matter that developed Life, Life that developed Mind, and all of men's so-called spiritual experiences are mental constructions (they use other words, but I believe that's their idea). It is, at any rate, a denial of all spiritual existence in itself and of a Being or Force or Something superior which governs everything. As I said, I don't know what their position is today, what point they have reached, but I was in the presence of a conviction of that type.
Then I said, "But it's very simple! I accept your point of view, there is nothing other than what we see, than mankind as it is; all the so-called inner phenomena are due to a mental, cerebral action; and when you die, you die – in other words, the phenomenon of agglomeration comes to the end of its existence, and it dissolves, everything dissolves. That's all very well."
(Quite likely, had things been that way, I would have found life so disgusting that I would have left it long ago. But I must add right away that it's not for any moral or even spiritual reason that I disapprove of suicide, it's because to me it's an act of cowardice and something in me doesn't like cowardice, so I did not ... I would never have fled from the problem.)
That's one point.
"But then, once you are here on this earth and you have to go to the end, even if the end is nothingness, you go to the end and it's just as well to do so as best you can, that is to say, to your fullest satisfaction.... I happened to have some philosophical curiosity and to study all kinds of problems, and I came upon Sri Aurobindo's teaching, and what he taught" (I would say "revealed," but not to a materialist) "is by far, among the systems men have formulated, the most satisfying FOR ME, the most complete, and what answers the most satisfactorily all the questions that can be asked; it is the one that helps me the most in life to have the feeling that 'life is worth living.' Consequently, I try to conform entirely to his teaching and to live it integrally in order to live as best I can – for me. I don't mind at all if others don't believe in it – whether they believe in it or not is all the same to me; I don't need the support of others' conviction, it's enough if I am myself satisfied."
Well, there's no reply to that.
The experience lasted a long time – for all details, to all problems, that's what I answered. And when I came to the end, I said to myself, "But that's a wonderful argument!" Because all the elements of doubt, ignorance, incomprehension, bad will, negation, with that argument they were all muzzled – annulled, they had no effect.
That work, I think, must have had worldwide repercussions. I was in it, in that state (with the sense of a very great power and a wonderful freedom) for certainly at least six or eight hours. (The work had started long before, but it became rather acutely present these last few days.)
And afterwards, everything was held in a solid grip – what do you have to say?
(silence)
It's much easier to answer out-and-out materialists who are convinced and sincere ("sincere" within the limit of their consciousness, that is) than to answer people who have a religion! Much easier.
...
Never do I argue with someone who has a faith – let him keep his faith! And I take great care not to say anything that might shake his faith because it's not good – such people are unable to have another faith. But with a materialist ... "I don't argue, I accept your point of view; only, you have nothing to say – I've taken my position, take yours. If you are satisfied with what you know, keep it. If it helps you to live, very good. "But you have no right to blame or criticize me, because I am taking my position on your own basis. Even if all that I imagine is mere imagination, I prefer that imagination to yours." That's all.
Lynda Lester made a great presentation at AUM 2007 on fundamentalist tendencies in Integral Yoga. We are happy to post it here:
Today I’d like to focus on the difference between yoga, religion, and fundamentalism in the Integral Yoga community. And because in a discussion like this we’re all coming from different cultures and orientations, my yoga might be your religion and someone else’s fundamentalism. So I thought I’d start out with some definitions.... more»
When Sri Aurobindo left his body the evolution of consciousness did not suddenly cease. Namely, there have been several significant mutations of discourse regimes, in response to the advent of the practice of Critical Theory. It is my view that one can view this succession of discourse in the same light as one would the development of a future poetry; it is a representation of the evolution of language.
While it would be understandable for a traditional religion to discard the advent and development of styles of discourse which follow on the death of its founder, in a spiritual practice whose organizing idea is of the evolution of consciousness, to discard the ideas, movements, cultural logic, etc that are part and parcel of this development, would be its undoing.
Peter Heehs book is a critical biography written in a contemporary academic style, that is -as all contemporary academic styles - informed by Critical Theory. It is not surprising therefore, that it treats its subject in a manner appropriate for this type of discourse. The fact that those in a yoga whose unique major metaphysical premise is of the evolution of consciousness would criticize its language and method of inquiry because it follows a discursive style that is indicative of how consciousness has evolved over the past 58 years is nothing short of ironic. It is almost as if these reactionary followers of Integral Yoga in looking back to the past to co-opt modes of expression that have now become fossilized discursive practices, as consciousness has evolved into a new millennium, have begun looking backward to the past instead of forward to the future to complete the project of integral yoga. Such a backward looking view of the yoga can be understood to have flipped the goals of the Integral Yoga in substituting devolution for evolution..... more»
Not only have the detractors of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo done violence to the text through selective omission and decontextualization to distort its meaning and make it appear degrading to Sri Aurobindo, but some folks, who should know better, have also been spreading rumors, making innuendos, and telling downright falsehoods regards the intention that the author Peter Heehs had in writing the book
One allegation is that Peter and an associate had taken and sold documents from the Sri Aurobindo Archives that concern the Record of Yoga. The way the story is told is that these documents were suppose to have been purchased by Jeffrey Kripal, the Newton Rayzor Professor of Religious Studies/Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University and author of Kali's Child, who with the support and financial backing of Michael Murphy founder of the Esalen Institute were going to publish some type of Freudian account of the Record of Yoga. This conspiracy theory goes on to allege that the Lives of Sri Aurobindo was a just prelude to the distortions of Sri Aurobindo and The Record of Yoga yet to come.
Oddly enough even though the people making these allegations have never been privy to conversations between any of these parties (aka Peter Heehs, Michael Murphy, Jeffrey Kripal) that has not discouraged them from making these charges, that in short are based on wild speculation. To set the record straight on this issue and the value of the work Peter Heehs has done in his critical biography of Sri Aurobindo and that Richard Hartz has accomplished in his painstaking work making The Record of Yoga available to us all, I would like to publish an open letter to SCIY from Michael Murphy
Dear Rich Carlson-
Rumors that I asked Jeff Kripal to write a "Freudian" study of Sri Aurobindo are completely false, and Kripal has no intentions to do so. But I am indeed deeply fascinated (and indebted) to Sri Aurobindo, who remains the chief inspiration for my life work. I discovered his writings in 1950, at Stanford University, as a 19-year old undergraduate and would not have started the Esalen Institute without his inspiration.
Lately, I have been newly inspired by Peter Heehs's magnifcent Aurobindo biography and by the historic scholarship conducted by Heehs and Richard Hartz at the Aurobindo Ashram Archives. Their work on Aurobindo's extraordinary Record of Yoga will one day help revolutionize psychology and transformative practice, and Heehs's book is bringing new awareness of Sri Aurobindo to countless people worldwide. I hope that the book's detractors will eventually come to appreciate the good it is doing for the very cause they celebrate.
Peter Heehs and Richard Hartz are expanding the frontiers of Aurobindo scholarship with the courage and dedication that Aurobindo embodied and recommended to us all.
The rampant rise of religious nationalism and sectarian violence all over the world may have an intimate relation with contemporary neo-liberal globalization. Mark Juergensmeyer, director of global and international studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, presents his sociology of 21st century national and transnational religious sectarianism in a post-Enlightenment global context. more»
Our recommended links represent some of the best resources we have found on the web for integrating global perspectives with critical reflections....
Open Democracy and Global Voices (who it seems C.N.N has just discovered) move along complimentary liminal pathways in the cybersphere of global journalism to engage important perspectives left out in the corporatist Media-net
Kanishk Tharoor is an assistant editor of Open Democracy and he raises an interesting question regards the agenda post-Mumbai for a similar Patriot Act in India as in the States post 9/11. more»
Thanks to Rich for a taste of pure jihadi heaven with Madhubala: Teri Mehfil Mein Qismat Aazmakar from Mughal-e-Azam. But if the jihadis fail, this is where they may find themselves. more»
This article continues the section of responses on The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by those who have read the book. In this essay, Larry Seidlitz, a resident and scholar at Pondicherry, examines the charges being made against the author of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo and attempts to put to rest the exaggerations and misreadings which have been circulated by the ringleaders of the "anti-PH movement" and which have become "authorized truths" to a vast range of "followers" of these ringleaders, most of whom have not read the book. more»
"The secret of success in Yoga is to regard it not as one of the aims to be pursued in life, but as the one and only aim, not as an important part of life, but as the whole of life." (Sri Aurobindo) more»
What is the post-human destiny to which we are called as humans in contemporary times? In this transcript of a talk given for the AUM conference in Los Angeles in 2003, Debashish Banerji compares Nietzsche's call for the Overman with that announced by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to point to the similarities and differences. How can we pick our way through the maze of choices held up at this end-time of human becoming? Is it by remaining complacent or by using our wills or by surrender to a greater force than ours? And if so, what force - the vitalism of an unconscious Nature-force, the deceptive "universality" of the world market or an unpredictable future which calls our arduous attention? These and similar questions are posed and discussed in this article. more»
In other articles, I have argued that in her book: The Shock Doctrine (the rise of disaster capitalism) Naomi Klein has located the current economic ideology that Sri Aurobindo, more than ninety years ago in a work now known as "The Human Cycle", called economic barbarism. Interestingly, if one takes George Soros seriously (see comment) Sri Aurobindo was also prescient about the collapse of the Titan he speaks to in concluding the chapter Civilization and Barbarism
In these interviews Naomi runs the voodoo down on the rescue of the Titan and the possible criminal mismanagement of the largest economic bailout in history:
Since some of my friends at the Sri Aurobindo ashram have expressed puzzlement at my stand against the "Brahmins of Pondicherry" in the matter of the book The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, I am copying here a letter written by me to a senior and respected member of the ashram.
That the views expressed here are not "popular" is well known. But I am wondering how many others who have read the book share any of these views. I would encourage them to express themselves in the comments following this posting. more»
The Bauhaus, founded in 1919 at Weimar, Germany by Walter Gropius, was arguably the most influential school of design in modern times, set up in the form of a residential creative community of designers, craftsmen, architects and artists. As part of its central ideal, Water Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, envisaged a world made up of creative communities united spiritually in and around a materialized soul, which he likened to "a crystal cathedral." Today, Bauhaus influenced architecture is ubiquitous as the symbol of world modernity, but Gropius' dream is far from fulfilled. This article explores the historical dimensions of this ideal, the causes for its failure and the possible conditions for its postmodern manifestation. more»
Only 4(9) days and counting, and G.W. Bush will finally return to his ranch/compound outside of Waco Texas, where he will await the Rapture with his millennialist Christian neighbors....
The thought of him soon departing keeps me humming this tune. If you never saw Pops perform then watch closely, he's the real thing! more»
Thacker's brilliant essay on biophilosophy is an attempt to go beyond simple dichotomies such as the one/ the many, mind/matter, nature/culture, human/machine to conceive of life as not simply the center of self-organization but also as constituting its peripheries.
"Today a similar process is happening with studies in self-organization and emergence. The question has changed, but its form of the problem is the same: 'how do simple local actions produce complex global patterns?' The effects of self-organization can be analyzed forever (e.g. 'ant colony optimization') and they can be applied to computer science (e.g. CG in film, telecommunications routing). But a central mysticism is produced at its core, for if there is no external, controlling factor (environment, genes, blueprints) then how can there be control at all? Again, 'life itself' the ineffable, the absent center. In this sense life follows the laws of thought: it is self-identical (whatever is living continues to be so until it ceases to be living), non-contradictory (something cannot both be living and non-living), and either is or is not (something either is or is not living, there is no grey zone to life). It is in this sense that 'life' and 'thought' find their common meeting point.
Clearly inspired by Deleuze, Thacker contrasts biophilosophy to the discipline called the philosophy of biology:
"Whereas the philosophy of biology (especially in the 20th century) is increasingly concerned with reducing life to number (from mechanism to genetics), biophilosophy sees a different kind of number, one that runs through life (a combinatoric, proliferating number, the number of graphs, groups, and sets). Whereas the philosophy of biology renews mechanism in order to purge itself of all vitalism ('vitalism' is one of the curse words of biology...), biophilosophy renews vitalism in order to purge it of all theology (and in this sense number is vitalistic). more»
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. Originally from Sudan, An-Na'im is a disciple of nationalist leader and Islamic reformer and Sufi, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, who was executed in 1985 by the regime of President Gaafar Nimeiry. Taha's pronouncement of his first political incarceration by the British is reminiscent of Sri Aurobindo's: "When I settled in prison I began to realize that I was brought there by my Lord and thence I started my Khalwah with Him."
An-Na'im's specialties include human rights in Islam and cross-cultural issues in human rights. He is the director of the Religion and Human Rights Program at Emory. He also participates in Emory's Center for the Study of Law and Religion. An-Naim was formerly the Executive Director of the African bureau of Human Rights Watch. He argues for a synergy and interdependence between human rights, religion, critical thought and secularism, instead of a dichotomy and incompatibility between them. more»
In the second of two articles I am posting on psychology in India, I am posting this article from Vladimir, as an example of just how different psychology is treated in Indian spirituality. In this article he considers and quotes extensively from one of my favorite chapters of Sri Aurobindo namely, chapter 8 of his commentary on the Kena Upanishad, that demonstrates a radical discontinuity with Western theorizing of the phenomena of Mind. No matter how many times I read this chapter I take away something new. Since I believe the best platform for a conversation between Sri Aurobindo and a Western philosophical conception of mind is to be found in the realm of imagination. In this reading the last sentence stands out because it sheds some light on the ontology of the imagination
From the beginning of time man has been preoccupied with the phenomenon of Consciousness. His understanding has found its expression in the religious and ritualistic texts.
The Aitareya Brahmana 25. 7 depicts Vedic ritual, agnihotra, as consisting of three priests: hotar, adhvaryu, and udgatar, reciting texts from Rig, Yajur and Sama Vedas, corresponding to the three spheres of the Sacrifice: earth, air and heaven, respectively. The fourth one—brahman, who is silent during the performance, observing all the actions as well as listening to all words uttered by the priests. His function is to be a witness of all what is happening and in case of some imperfection in action or in speech to cure and correct it in his mind, praya-citta....more»
This article from the New York review although a bit dated (1981) I find fascinating, not only because its includes a perspective in Indian Psychology that is located in the work of Sri Aurobindo, but because of its continuing relevance for cross cultural studies, ethnography, psychology, especially in the work of Matthijs and the Indian Psychology Institute in Pondicherry.
Some facts stated by the author in the article have surely changed for instance: “When India gained independence, there were about fifty psychiatrists in the country, many of them army doctors; now the number is estimated at only about 500 for India's 640 million people; others—perhaps too many—leave India to practice abroad. “
“ a seminar led in India by Erik Erikson presents a picture of increasingly prevalent anomie, Eastern-style. In it the associate director of the BM Institute argues that there is an "identity vacuum" for Indians at the present time: values that are appropriate in an uncompetitive agrarian society break down under modern pressures; traditions and established roles are threatened by the mass media.”
No doubt India has changed and the outsourcing of IT jobs makes it no longer so dependent on agrarian economics. It is also certainly much more infiltrated by western medicine and practices of psycho-therapy, but aside for such obvious changes in the society I find much of the article still relevant for the current day.
For example, I would think much of the critique of the article regards the questionable appropriation of Western psychotherapy to Indian society is still valid -although as India accepts many of the urban values of the West, along with its neurosis perhaps that is changing a bit as well-. But it also speaks to such intellectual imperialism of its spiritual tradition by folks like Jeff Kripal who reduce complex Indian spiritual practices and questions of alterity to concerns of Freudian analysis
As an example of just how different psychology is treated in Indian spirituality I will also post a paper from Vladamir in which he considers and quotes extensively from one of my favorite chapters of Sri Aurobino namely, chapter 8 of his commentary on the Kena Upanishads, that demonstrates a radical discontinuity with Western theorizing of the phenomena of Mind. No matter how many times I read this chapter I take away something new. In this reading its last sentence sheds some light on the ontology of the imagination
In researching this I also came across a correspondence between Mathiis to a sponsor of his project for a renaissance of Indian psychology in which he draws some interesting conclusions. I will post these as well with some comment I find applicable. rc...
Going to India from the West is like stepping onto another planet; but is having a mental illness in India any different from having it in Manhattan? Is treatment similar—if it is available? Do you get ill as often there, or less, or more? Do poverty and overwork leave any time for mental illness, is it a side effect of affluence—or do the hardships of a poor country provide all the more cause for disintegration? Are there differences in the Indian character structure itself that make mental illness and its treatment take different forms from those in the West? And does a third world country, obviously so much less well equipped with psychiatric and psychotherapeutic services than affluent societies, need more mental health care—or does greater provision for illness conjure up the illness to meet it, as new roads bring out more traffic?....
South to Pondicherry, ceded to India by the French in 1954, home of the Aurobindo ashram. It was here that the distinguished psychiatrist N.C. Surya came when he threw up his job as director of the National Institute of Mental Health at Bangalore. Trained in Europe and the US, formerly a Marxist, he was following an Indian tradition of abandoning the world for spiritual concerns when the moment is right; Aurobindo, founder of the ashram, did the same when he gave up his fight for Indian independence and retreated to Pondicherry. While outside Pondicherry steams in the sun, the ashram library is all greenery, coolness, and hush. Dr. Surya comes out of the library carrying the rolled umbrella (against the sun) that, like an Englishman, he seldom opens.more»
Dylan Thomas who died on this day, 9 Nov in 1953, composed: Do not go gentle into that good night, two years earlier, its mantric encounter with the "dying of light",
our future poetry?
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. more»
Each page view shows the most recent 15 days that articles were posted. To see more 15-day intervals, scroll to the top of the page & click 'Previous 15 days' or 'Next 15 days.' Click on the Month & Year Archives in the bottom left blue column to see pages for earlier dates.
The Bauhaus, founded in 1919 at Weimar, Germany by Walter Gropius, was arguably the most influential school of design in modern times, set up in the form of a residential creative community of designers, craftsmen, architects and artists. As part of its central ideal, Water Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, envisaged a world made up of creative communities united spiritually in and around a materialized soul, which he likened to "a crystal cathedral." Today, Bauhaus influenced architecture is ubiquitous as the symbol of world modernity, but Gropius' dream is far from fulfilled. This article explores the historical dimensions of this ideal, the causes for its failure and the possible conditions for its postmodern manifestation. 
