Abstract
Societies are always gathered around a particular object or an idea that serves as its totem and its driving principle. This conscious arrangement of society, especially around an ideal, has been termed in history as utopias, which consciously moulds an individual’s behaviour inhabiting it for the desired future goal. However, in the hyper-humanistic period, called by James Scott as High-modernism, we can see a drastic truncation in the scope and range of those desired future forms, limited only to economic and material wellbeing. The aim of this paper therefore is to look into an example of the utopian experiment that substantially differs from a high-modernist worldview. The paper will analyse one such futuristic spiritual experiment at Auroville and try to trace its similarities as well as its difference from the hyper-humanistic ideals of modernity.
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Notes
For a detailed analysis of the idea of integral yoga, refer to Sri Aurobindo’s book on Integral yoga where the ideas of mind, overmind and Supermind and their dynamics are elaborated in detail.
CWSA, Vol.24, pp.620.
CWSA, Vol.24 pp.619.
ibid.
CWM, 1958, Vol.9, pp. 314.
Mother, ‘On Auroville’, Gazette Aurovilienne, No.6, Vol.2, 1973, p.14, CWM, Vol.3, p.178.
Idea developed by Sri Aurobindo in his thesis of integral yoga.
Rakesh Kapoor, 2007.
Gilbert, “Auroville Yesterday?” In Auroville Today. April issue (1989):2.
ibid.
Castaneda has been one of the most controversial anthropologist of America, who throughout his life dabbled in fabulous stories and strange philosophies. Till date, people have not figured out whether he produced fiction or unbelievable reality in his books.
See Alan Roland’s case studies of Indian personalities in Alan Roland, In Search of Self in India and Japan: Towards a cross cultural psychology (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988) where he differed from Indian psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar about the limits and possibilities of spiritualism in the Indian milieu.
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Singh ‘Martand’, P.K. An Ode to the Future Supermen: Understanding the Spiritual Experiment at Auroville. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 40, 223–239 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-023-00307-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-023-00307-y