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From the Editors
Vol. 49, No. 3
Celebrating 50 Years of Collaboration
In this issue, we mark the 50th anniversary of Collaboration—a cause for celebration! It seems remarkable that Collaboration has been published for five decades! From its humble beginnings as a mimeographed newsletter, the journal has grown into the beautiful publication we enjoy today. In this milestone issue, we include commentaries by former and current editors of Collaboration as well as memorable articles selected from the archives.
The “Reflections, Past and Future” section starts out with a set of observations from Collaboration’s Editorial Advisory Board called “What Collaboration Has Meant to Me,” showing how Collaboration has been an inspiration for spiritual practice, a source of community, and, most recently, an opportunity for collective yoga.
“How It All Began: The Origin of Collaboration Journal” is the story of how Collaboration’s founding editor Eric Hughes first began publishing Collaboration at the Matagiri Sri Aurobindo Center in upstate New York.
In “A Center Being Any Place You Live: Editing Collaboration from 1982–95,” Gordon Korstange tells how Collaboration facilitated communication among those who had spent time in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville and helped to build Integral Yoga community in the USA and Canada.
In “The Arc of Collaboration: A Look at Changing Times,” Lynda Lester shares highlights of her tenure as editor and notes some of the changes in the collective mood of the Auro-sphere and the world at large over the past 50 years.
“A Reflection on My Work for Collaboration” is Larry Seidlitz’s account of how he came to edit Collaboration. He describes his experiences writing, soliciting, and editing material; highlights noteworthy articles; and acknowledges the many authors who contributed.
Turning from the past to the future, “Collaboration Alive: Revisioning the Journal for the 2020s and Beyond” is a contemplative essay from John Robert Cornell that speaks about the editorial team’s dreams to make Collaboration wider, richer, and deeper. “What does the Time-spirit intend for this journal of Integral Yoga in the 2020s?” he asks. He also notes that there is a tangible relationship field among team members, a perceptible collective feeling of service to the Divine. “Collaboration” then takes on a double meaning: the journal and the field of collaborating together.
The next section, “Select Articles from the Collaboration Archive,” features several outstanding pieces the editors consider worth a second read.
First is “The Word,” an inspired essay by Eric Hughes detailing how the writings and conversations of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother transmit a transformative vibration. Eric writes that Sri Aurobindo’s works are like “a mighty flood of light” and his power of expression is breathtaking, luminous, and brilliantly coherent. Likewise, in the Mother’s Agenda we discover “a spectrum of spiritual experience and life so broad and encompassing as to stagger the reader”—evidence of an inner life of breathtaking vastness and complexity that unsheaths a radiant divine energy.
In “On the Lam from the Divine,” John Schlorholtz and Clifford Gibson interview Mickey Finn, documenting the remarkable story of a soldier, thief, con artist, and heroin addict whose discovery of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother changed his life. This is a wild tale that has captivated spiritual seekers for decades.
“Sri Aurobindo: Inside, Outside, Upside Down” by David Hutchinson is a poignant telling of how Sri Aurobindo can touch us in the deepest parts of our being. Sri Aurobindo “has guided my body along dark mountain trails, steadied my emotions in the face of physical danger, and filled my being with joy in the midst of great suffering,” David writes. “Once Sri Aurobindo awakens those hidden places, your life will be changed forever…. Find him, meet him, identify yourself with him, and your life will change in ways you cannot even imagine.”
We have also selected “Seeds of the Future,” in which Carolyn Toben asks religious scholar Thomas Berry what he would say to future generations. He replies, “Tell them in the darkness of this time, a vast transformation is occurring in the depths of human consciousness, which is leading to the recovery of the soul, the Earth, the universe and a sense of the sacred”; he goes on to share a number of visionary insights.
When the editors reviewed five decades of Collaboration in search of a few features to reprint, we found a treasure trove of material that far exceeded our ability to fill just one issue. Thus we have compiled a list of “Recommended Reading from the First 50 Years of Collaboration,” a selection of excellent articles that can be found in the Collaboration archive. Check them out!
To conclude our anniversary review of Collaboration, we have included “Apropos Highlights, 1995–2004,” a compilation of uplifting and amusing quotes related to yoga and contemporary life.
Lastly, on the back cover we offer a sonnet from Sri Aurobindo called “The Call of the Impossible” that mirrors Collaboration’s aspiration to be a vessel for the truth, light, and beauty of the Divine.
The editors sincerely hope that our readers will enjoy reflecting on these reminiscences and fascinating articles from the past.
— Lynda Lester and Martha Orton for the Collaboration editorial team
