SRI AUROBINDO, OTHER TEACHINGS, THE BUILDING OF AUROVILLE     A LETTER     Your circular is full of goodwill and a sincere desire to bring about harmony. You seem to have come across Aurobindo-nians who tend to be more religious than spiritual in their attitudes. It is the usual religious mind that sets up one alleged revelation in opposition to the approaches of other religions towards God. But one who claims to do an Integral Yoga cannot be exclusive in this fashion or come out with cudgels against people who are not yet aware of what Sri Aurobindo stands for. No true Aurobindonian tries to bully or browbeat anyone into

TWO LETTERS FROM THE ASHRAM     MAY 12,1954   I wonder why you write: "Nobody mentions the Mother." Either my letters haven't reached you or else you don't read them rightly. I think they mention hardly anything except the Mother. Surely one need not speak of her directly in order to mention her. My letters are one long spiritual autobiography. And what is a spiritual autobiography from here except a various presentation of Mother-moodedness? What shall I say to your question about Sehra and me and the psychic being? Both of us live, each in an individual way, in something of its glow at least frequently if not all the time. But that i

-050_Sri Aurobindo's Home in the Subtle-Physical.htm SRI AUROBINDO'S HOME IN THE SUBTLE-PHYSICAL     A LETTER TO THE MOTHER WITH THE MOTHER'S REPLY     The Letter     Last night Amal told me that you had spoken of "a permanent home of Sri Aurobindo in the subtle-physical". At once my mind went back to a dream in last September.   This is how it ran:   I enter the Ashram and see that there is some difference in the building. I say, "Well, something has changed." And I see a staircase and climb up. I pass through a corridor upstairs towards a room at the end of it. In this room there are cupboards very high, reaching near to the ceiling. All th

SEX AND SPIRITUALITY     This is the article which has aroused a lot of curiosity ever since the publication of CHAMPAKLAL SPEAKS (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1975). In that book there is on page 58 the entry dated 5-11-1944: "While going back from Sri Aurobindo's room Mother said: 'Amal's article on sex is good, but it cannot be published in the ADVENT.'" The note which came to the author in Bombay from Sri Aurobindo through Nirodbaran was to the same effect: "Sri Aurobindo sends congratulations but finds the article unsuitable for the ADVENT." A bit of a riddle faces us in these pronouncements. It is solved when the precise reason for the res

-013_Part Two Raised From The Dead Intorduction-The Heart of the Problem' Part Two   "RAISED FROM THE DEAD"   An Approach to the Problem of the Resurrection of Jesus from the Descriptions of His "Risen" Body   Introduction: The Heart of the Problem   "The unique and sensational event on which the whole of human history turns" - that is how, in an address on April 5, 1972, Pope Paul VI characterised what the doctrine which has been central to Christianity from the very beginning affirms: the Resurrection of Jesus' crucified body. This doctrine is meant to convey the sense of an unparalleled intervention by God in our world's affairs, converting an absolute-seeming defeat -

The Friends of Paul - Luke and Mark   Did They Author any Books in the New Testament?   Popular Christian belief, especially Roman Catholic, and even a fair part of Biblical scholarship take the Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles as the double work of the Luke who figures three times in the Epistles of Paul (Colossians 4:14; Philemon 24; 2 Timothy 4:11). Similarly they accept, as the author of the Gospel that passes under the name of Mark, another friend of Paul's named Mark whom he mentions in his Epistle to the Colossians (4:10) as the cousin of Barnabas and who features in Acts (13:4-13) as the assistant of Barnabas and Paul in

    PROBLEMS OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY   Problems of Early Christianity   PART ONE: EARLY CHRISTIANITY PART TWO: "RAISED FROM THE DEAD"   AMAL KIRAN (K. D. SETHNA)     The Integral Life Foundation P.O. Box 239  Waterford CT. 06385 USA   First published 1998    (Typeset in 10.5/13 Palatino)   © Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna)  Published by The Integral Life Foundation, U.S.A. Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA 0750/7.2.95/500)  

Section II   1   The Nature of the Appearances and Some Clues from Sri Aurobindo   At the very outset we must say that, judged from Paul's list of appearances, the so-called Resurrection was not a universal historical fact: the "risen" Jesus did not go about, open to the sight of all men. Although to have appeared to "over five hundred brothers" renders him fairly public, we cannot conclude that people outside this group could have seen him just as well. Some psychological "mirroring" condition was a prerequisite. Yet to posit a believer's frame of mind at a certain pitch is not sufficient to account for the limited number or rather occasio

"Born of a Woman"   As the Letters of Paul constitute the earliest Christian witness, an important question in regard to the earliest Christianity and hence by implication Christianity as originally promulgated is: Does Paul know the doctrine of Mary's virginal conception of Jesus?   Here the most discussed passage is one that occurs in Galatians. The eminent Roman Catholic commentator, Raymond E. Brown,1 approaches it through a glance at the general New-Testament situation: "It is beyond dispute that there is no explicit reference to the virginal conception in NT outside the infancy narratives [in Matthew and Luke]. What is a matter of dispute is whether there are so

Did Jesus have Brothers and Sisters?   I   One of the most wide-spread beliefs among the Roman Catholics is that Mary, the mother of Jesus, not only gave birth to him by a virginal conception but also remained a virgin throughout her life. In other words, she had no marital relations with her husband Joseph and, in consequence, Jesus had neither brothers nor sisters.   However, as even the Roman Catholic priest-scholar Raymond E. Brown1 points out, direct scriptural authority is solely for Mary having been a virgin in conceiving Jesus. With equal broadmindedness and honesty Brown2 writes apropos of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the only t