Continuing the discussion from The integrative Impulse: Sri Aurobindo's Experimental Praxis:
I’d like to create a page soon on Metapsychosis with the details regarding the reading group we are planning for Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine. This page will give an overview of our plan, provide details and background info, and invite others to join our collaborative journey through conversation and creative praxis.
I am imagining that this reading will be offered at no cost, but we will include a donation form for those who wish to support the development of Cosmos, Metapsychosis, or any of our other efforts. It will also be possible to become a monthly subscriber to Metapsychosis / Readers Underground, or member of Cosmos.coop. I am envisioning these as options, not requirements, as I would like anybody who feels the sincere desire to be able to join our group on a gift economy basis. I feel that this most appropriate approach for the subject matter, but of course, I am open to feedback.
Furthermore, I would like to propose that we incorporate a triple focus into our game plan:
- Studying the philosophical, literary, and spiritual aspects of Aurobindo’s work, specifically by reading and discussing The Life Divine.
- Applying his ideas through personal and/or intersubjective experiments with his Integral Yoga. (It’s been suggested we might also want to read to Aurobindo’s The Synthesis of Yoga, which surveys that various modes of yogic practice in an evolutionary context.)
- Engaging the question of how spiritual realization interacts with, influences, or is effected by social, political, and technological realities, especially at the psychic and subtle levels. (Here we can refer to the work TJ has started on The Human Cycle.) What are the real world implications of consciousness realization?
Might we have different sub-groups, or off-shoots from the main path, meeting at different times perhaps, to dive deeper into specific areas? Although I am not intending any kind of social media marketing push (the Readers Underground is underground for a reason!), I would like to share this event with our mailing list, along with several people (and groups) I suspect would be interested and could make great contributions. I would like for us not just to go through the motions of a ‘reading group,’ but see what happens if we collectively (pluralistically, naturally) focus our minds on a higher possibility.
Following @EMW’s advice, I have divided the text into 20 segments, so that we’re reading an average of 50 pages per week. I am also suggesting we take breathers between the major sections of Book 1, Book 2/Part 1, and Book 2/Part 2.
Reading Schedule [proposed]
INTRODUCTORY MEETING (no required reading): Thursday, 5/31.
Book One
Omnipresent Reality and the Universe
Starting week of June 4
Week 1 | Chs. 1–6
Week 2 | Chs. 7–11
Week 3 | Chs. 12–16
Week 4 | Chs. 17–21
Week 5 | Chs. 22–24
Week 6 |Chs. 25–28
(One-week break)
Book Two
The Knowledge and the Ignorance—The Spiritual Evolution
Part 1 – The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance
Starting week of July 23
Week 7 | Chs. 1–2
Week 8 | Chs. 3–4
Week 9 | Chs. 5-6
Week 10 | Chs. 7–9
Week 11 | Chs. 10–12
Week 12 | Chs. 13–14
(One-week, end-of-summer [in the Northern Hemisphere] break)
Part 2: The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution
Starting week of September 10
Week 13 | Chs. 15–16
Week 14 | Chs. 17–19
Week 15 | Chs. 20–21
Week 16 | Chs. 22–23
Week 17 | Ch. 24
Week 18 | Chs. 25–26
Week 19 | Ch. 27
Week 20 | Chs. 28
Help Needed
If we’re going to accommodate more participants, we’ll have set up a better system for managing our video meetings and archival recordings, so that different groups can efficiently record and post videos, share notes, and create meetings on the fly without central admin. I could really use help with this. Getting the word out (especially to marginal groups and outliers), responding to interest, and facilitating the production of successful discourse events will also be key.
I could also use help with web admin and posting recordings to the website. We don’t have to make everything public and promoted on the front page, but I believe we can use the site to host aesthetic archive pages of our dialogues—including descriptions, keywords, and transcripts if possible, for ongoing learning and discovery.
The creative output of this event could be a invaluable resource, even treasure trove, for future researchers and creative explorers, and I would like to work on a way of presenting it that honors all the time, effort, attention, love, and care we’re putting in.
Finally, I would love for this event to open up new possibilities of engagement within Cosmos as a whole. How might we be actualizing ourselves in all the dimensions we’re reading about? And what happens next?