He didn’t say everything I said. For example, he didn’t say he’s a fag, and I implicitly stated that Eastern philosophers are fags.
Sri Aurobindo wants to trick us into believing that his coming man is a balanced man and that the old man is an imbalanced man.
This is not true.
A very seductive proposition it is, but it is not true.
He is trying to portray himself as possessing both masculine energies (Titan, Asura, Power) and feminine energies (God, Deva, Love.) I do not doubt this to be true. But this does not mean that what he’s doing is right.
The relevant question is not whether he possesses both, but rather, which one he values more.
And I think it is pretty clear that he values feminine energies more than he values masculine energies. Thus, we can conclude, he’s a fag. A man-powered woman.
But the problem runs deeper than that.
The relevant question, the truly relevant question, is the question of fundamental dualism. What is the fundamental dualism of life? What is that which underlies our judgment of true and false, right and wrong, good and bad, beautiful and ugly?
That is the relevant question.
Sri Aurobindo does not really think that the opposition between masculine and feminine energies is the fundamental opposition. Rather, he thinks that the fundamental opposition is the one between balance and imbalance of the two energies.
Rather than man/woman he posits balance/imbalance as the fundamental dualism.
This is yet another name for a well known dualism between good/evil, benevolent/malevolent, light/dark, love/hate, spirit/matter, harmony/disharmony, peace/war and so on and so forth. It is also tightly related to pleasure/pain dualism.
Note that this is NOT the same dualism as that between man and woman.
The question is, are there any other tendencies in the universe other than masculine and feminine tendencies?
It breaks a man’s heart to realize that he’s been feminized, that he’s been distracted from his nature, that he no longer stands up to his very own standards of evaluation. Thus it becomes easier to deny that the fundamental dualism is the one between man and woman.
But man/woman is the fundamental dualism.
Man represents the active force of concentration. This is a force of gravitation that attracts, accumulates and generates form. Man is life-affirming.
Woman represents the re-active force of decentration. This is a force of radiation that repels, dissolves and eliminates form. Woman is life-denying.
There are many other names for the same dualism.
Tension/release. Pain/pleasure. Compession/expansion. Generation/radiation. Gravitation/levitation. Accumulation/dissipation. Centripetal/centrifugal. Past/present. Reality/fantasy. Phenomenon/noumenon. Will/instinct. Reason/emotion. Matter/void. Action/reaction. Motion/rest. Energy/lethargy. Speed/slowness. High frequency/low frequency. Power/weakness. Life/death.
It’s a very subtle point.
Osho speaks of the need to be “the center of the cyclone”. This is a seductive proposition. It is seductive because it appeals to our desire to be in control of ourselves. But what kind of center is he speaking of? What kind of spiralling motion is this center of? Does his center attract, and thus defines itself, or does it repel, and thus dilutes itself?
It’s not enough to simply be centered. The center must be a center of centripetal motion.
In the case of Osho, and other mystics, occultists, spiritualists and religious people, this center is a center of centrifugal motion.
These people, borrowing from Nietzsche’s work, pride themselves on having and promoting “power over themselves”, but do they really have this power?
And what do they really mean when they say “power over oneself”?
Their power, properly speaking, is merely a power of a drug addict. Fair enough, drug addicts do not have much power. But these people do. They have the power to drug themselves without using any kind of physical substance. That’s the extent of their power. Their power lies exclusively in meditation. In decentration. In relaxation. Other than that, they have no power.
Indeed, properly speaking, this is no “power over oneself”. They have no “power over themselves”. They are dying. What they have power over is pain.
It wouldn’t really be much of a problem if they were simply dying. The problem is that they are trying to live their death.
Decentration cannot possibly have a considerable effect on the external world. Unless, of course, it becomes concentrated.
Zombies aren’t exactly dead. They are death concentrated.
And there wouldn’t be a problem if they actually tried to resist their decentration through concentration. Indeed, this would be a positive. The problem is that their efforts at concentration never reach completion. Rather, their concentration is always decentered, and this decentration of concentration, it is never decentered.
Their image of the old man as lacking “power over himself” is a projection of their own lack of “power over themselves”.
They picture the old man as suffering from the same kind of decentered concentration that they do, but merely lacking in meditation.
Meditation merely softens their lack of self-control, it does not make it go away.
Nietzsche spoke of this extensively. He called it ressentiment. It’s when people start hating everything that is unlike them, especially that which is better than them.
There is no balancing to be had between concentration and decentration. Rather, one must concentrate, at all times, without interruption.
Sure, the strength of concentration can vary through time, but there must be a domination of concentration over decentration.
The positive aspect of decentration merely lies in its use to counter decentration, to decenter decentered concentration.
My recommendation of decentration is to men, because men are by their nature high on concentration, thus at risk of being decentered in a very rigid manner.
There really is no balancing.
The moment you start balancing is the moment you let decentration dominate concentration.