SACAR (Sri Aurobindo Center for Advanced Research) held an extensive seminar on BEING DIFFERENT in Pondy in February, 2012. This event was interesting for several reasons. Firstly, I was given enough time to introduce my work in detail. Hence, I devoted the first half hour to give an overview of my UTurn Theory in order to explain the background to the book, BEING DIFFERENT. Click for UTURN THEORY This was followed by an hour long overview of BEING DIFFERENT. Click for BEING DIFFERENT Secondly, a German lady in the audience announced that after being at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram for the past 33 years, she had re-converted back to Catholicism in Germany last year. I enjoy such open discussions because they support my UTurn Theory research; I encouraged her to share her experience and reasons, and we had a short debate until the organizers felt we should move on. This video is precious and one of many I am collecting. Click for my debate with German UTurn lady. Thirdly, I enjoy challenges posed by the audience, and got a chance to respond to another Western devotee of Sri Aurobindo who felt that Western religions were also free from history centrism. Click for short response to Western religions' history centrism
Finally, the host, Anand Reddy, director of SACAR, was very insightful both in his introduction and concluding remarks. He had read through BEING DIFFERENT in minute detail and moderated the event despite having high fever that day. Click for Director's Introduction Click for Director's Concluding remarks Frankly, what I missed was serious back and forth exchange with "experts" of Sri Aurobindo's work. Their comments did not debate the specific core thesis of BEING DIFFERENT, and seemed to be generic views on east-west relations. Click for Scholars' comments. Click for my response to the scholars. | 
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