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A New Name for SCIY? - "SCSC (Science, Culture & Supramental Consciousness)"
Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Wed 06 Jun 2007 03:52 PM PDT
As SCIY's readership has steadily increased during the 21 months since its founding in September 2005, the inclusion of the term "Integral Yoga" in its name has been a source of ongoing misunderstanding. Wikipedia says this about the original meaning of the term:
Integral yoga or purna yoga (Sanskrit for full or complete yoga), sometimes also called supramental yoga, refers in Sri Aurobindo's teachings to the union of all the parts of one's being with the Divine, and the transmutation of all of their jarring elements into a harmonious state of higher divine consciousness and existence.
Sri Aurobindo initiated and defined ‘in the early 1900's as ‘a path
of integral seeking of the Divine by which all that we are is in the
end liberated out of the Ignorance and its undivine formations into a
truth beyond the Mind, a truth not only of highest spiritual status but
of a dynamic spiritual self-manifestation in the universe.' [1]
He describes the nature and practice of integral yoga in his opus The Synthesis of Yoga. As the title of that work indicates, his integral yoga is a yoga of synthesis, intended to harmonize the paths of karma, jnana, and bhakti yoga as described in the Bhagavad Gita. It can also be considered a synthesis between Vedanta and Tantra, and even between Eastern and Western approaches to spirituality.
In the years since Sri Aurobindo coined it in the early 1900's, the terms "integral" and "yoga" have been adopted by many other individuals and organizations. E.g., in the United States,
Ken Wilbur has become strongly associated with the integral thought movement and founded the
Integral Institute in 1998. And in contrast to its Indian spiritual meaning, the word "yoga" is often interpreted in the West as a set of exercises and postures for relaxation and physical conditioning.
Wikipedia notes this interpretation in its entry on Yoga:
Yoga is a family of ancient spiritual practices originating in India. As a general term in Hinduism, Gavin Flood defines it as referring to "technologies or disciplines of asceticism and meditation which are thought to lead to spiritual experience and profound understanding or insight into the nature of existence."[1] Outside India, Yoga has become primarily associated with the practice of asanas (postures) of Hatha Yoga (see Yoga as exercise), [emphasis added] although it has influenced the entire dharmic religions family and other spiritual practices throughout the world.[2]
Because of these misunderstandings, SCIY's founders have been discussing a possible new name for several months. One new possibility is
SCSC: Science, Culture and Supramental Consciousness. It was inspired by the following
quote posted on SCIY by RY Deshpande, from Sri Aurobindo's masterpiece
The Life Divine:
As there has been established on earth a mental Consciousness and Power
which shapes a race of mental beings and takes up into itself all of
earthly nature that is ready for the change, so now there will be
established on earth a gnostic Consciousness and Power which will shape
a race of gnostic spiritual beings and take up into itself all of
earth-nature that is ready for this new transformation. It will also
receive into itself from above, progressively, from its own domain of
perfect light and power and beauty all that is ready to descend from
that domain into terrestrial being. For the evolution proceeded in the
past by the upsurging, at each critical stage, of a concealed Power
from its involution in the Inconscience, but also by a descent from
above, from its own plane, of that Power already self-realised in its
own higher natural province. In all these previous stages there has
been a division between surface self and consciousness and subliminal
self and consciousness; the surface was formed mainly under the push of
the upsurging force from below, by the Inconscient developing a slowly
emergent formulation of a concealed force of the Spirit, the subliminal
partly in this way but mainly by a simultaneous influx of the largeness
of the same force from above: a mental or a vital being descended into
the subliminal parts and formed from its secret station there a mental
or a vital personality on the surface. But before the supramental
change can begin, the veil between the subliminal and the surface parts
must have been already broken down; the influx, the descent will be in
the entire consciousness as a whole, it will not take place partly
behind a veil: the process will be no longer a concealed, obscure and
ambiguous procedure but an open out-flowering consciously felt and
followed by the whole being in its transmutation. In other respects the
process will be identical,—a supramental inflow from above, the descent
of a gnostic being into the nature, and an emergence of the concealed
supramental force from below; the influx and the unveiling between them
will remove what is left of the nature of the Ignorance. The rule of
the Inconscient will disappear: for the Inconscience will be changed by
the outburst of the greater secret Consciousness within it, the hidden
Light, into what it always was in reality, a sea of the secret
Superconscience. A first formation of a gnostic consciousness and
nature will be the consequence. (pp. 967-68) [emphases added]
We're posting this article to request feedback from SCIY's readers. What do you think about this proposed name change?
Thanks!
Ron Anastasia
SCIY Founding Editor
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