A few slides
R. M. Matthijs Cornelissen
Introduction
On this page you'll find some of the slides I've used over the last few years during Powerpoint/Keynote presentations.
Please note that these slides were meant only as visual aids to support oral presentations. They may not make much sense when taken out of context, and several of them need to be taken with a grain of salt, especially "A supershort long history" and "The structure of the personality". The slide which is found quite consistently the most useful is the one but last one about the "PPB".
In case of doubt, it may be best to respond to these slides like the kids from Nicaragua at the bottom of this web-page!
The actual slides
- Naive and expert types of knowledge: the need for self-observation
- Self-observation, the practice
- A supershort long history
- What is consciousness?
- The evolution of consciousness, and its implications for values and the aim of life
- Concepts of consciousness, and their implications for values and the meaning of life
- Types of knowledge and mainstream schools of psychology
- Types of knowledge and integral psychology
- The Self and the personality
- The Planes and Parts of the Being (the "PPB")
- Faith and love for the Divine
Sri Aurobindo makes the distinction between the four types of knowledge on which these slides are based in "Knowledge by identity and separative knowledge", a chapter of The Life Divine. On this website, a detailed description of the naive and expert modes of these four types of knowledge can be found in Part two of Types of knowledge and what they allow us to see. A more in depth explanation of what is meant with knowledge and consciousness in this context, can be found in What is knowledge? A reflection based on the work of Sri Aurobindo.
Sri Aurobindo describes how to develop pure, purusha-based self-observation in "The Perfection of the mental being", a chapter of The Synthesis of Yoga. On this website, short descriptions can be found in What is knowledge? and in Research about yoga and research in yoga: Towards rigorous research in the subjective domain.
This is a ridiculously simplified, four-line historical "explanation" of how we landed up with a global civilization in which the vast majority of people use three non-compatible knowledge systems. Publically, in government, commerce and education we use a "dummified" version of science which limits reality to the physical and the social. Then, as this is for most people not enough, we resort to one of the communally and historically determined religions to tell us how we should understand the deeper meaning of life. And finally we use a sub-culturally determined third system that looks after the practical day-to-day issues with a more fine-grained cultutural differentiation. What misses in the midst of this confusion is an intelligent, progressive and self-critical methodology to study the more subtle aspects of reality that mainstream science does not know how to tackle.
A somewhat formal and philosophically argued article that deals with the issues covered in these slides is Sri Aurobindo's Evolutionary Ontology of Consciousness.
The issues covered in these slides are also covered in Sri Aurobindo's Evolutionary Ontology of Consciousness.
A detailed description of these three concepts of consciousness can be found in the first four chapters of Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine.
These slides are from Part One of Types of knowledge and what they allow us to see. They cannot be understood independent from the context given by this article.
The two main slides in this file are explained in Part Three of Types of knowledge and what they allow us to see. Even with this explanation, they may be hard to understand unless one has some prior understanding of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Psychology. Possible introductions might be A. S. Dalal's A Greater Psychology, or the overview given in the next set of slides read together with Self and personality in Sri Aurobindo's yoga.
A short overview of the terms used in these slides can be found in: Self and personality in Sri Aurobindo's yoga: An overview of his terminology. A much more extensive explanation is available in The self and the structure of the personality.
This is a single slide that depicts in a highly simplified way the relationship between the various terms Sri Aurobindo uses to describe the "Planes and Parts of the Being". The subject has been dealt with in some more detail in the previous two sets of slides. A short explanation of the terms used in this map of the Self and the personality can be found in: Self and personality in Sri Aurobindo's yoga: An overview of his terminology. A much more extensive explanation is available in The self and the structure of the personality.
Faith and love for the Divine play a central role in sadhana and deserve perhaps a larger role in Psychology as well.
