Angiras, I can't thank you sufficiently for undertaking this thankless task. What is on display here is the petty mind of the reader – in this case the director of the "University of Tomorrow," which claims to encourage "a thoughtful and critical examination of all ideas" (q.e.d.) – rather than "the petty mind of the writer," as this rabble-rouser claims.

Dear Angiras,

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

Just a few observations, comments and questions.

"What is perhaps surprising is that the writer of this letter is the director of an online educational institute, Sri Aurobindo Darshan: The University of Tomorrow. As stated on its websight, this institute does not insist on the acceptance of “any particular teaching, practice, or point of view,” and encourages “a thoughtful and critical examination of all ideas.”"

In all fairness, perhaps the issue of Peter being an Ashramite is different from being a student at SACAR or the University of Tomorrow. It would be different if Mr. Reddy had objected to a student at SACAR / University of Tomorrow from writing this biography. I think Peter should have been more sensitive to the emotional boundaries of individuals in the institution of which he is a part.

Frankly, if I were him, I would have run the manuscript by others in the Ashram and gotten feedback/criticism before publishing it. It just seems to be a basic courtesy to respect colleagues in the institution of which you're a part. This letter from Dr. Satchidananda Mohanty expressed the Ashram perspective very well, I thought:
http://www.sriaurobindoaba.com/index.php?option=com_links&task=linkdetail&cname=19&Itemid=72

"Added to all these objections, written in the letter [below], there is also the danger of the local politicians, the central govt.- anti-Sri Aurobindonean, leftists all converging on the Ashram and dig open for ‘inquisition’ just because of this malignant book! "

But why would any of these people -- particularly politicians and people in the government -- read this biography or even be interested in it? I felt that it is so mental, dry and analytical that only some highly esoteric academics interested in Sri Aurobindo would have read it.

And if anti-Aurobindo parties did read the book, why would they turn against the Ashram because of it? They might continue to write anti-Aurobindo material or propaganda -- which they have been doing anyway, regardless of the Heehs biography -- but I don't see why it would land the Ashram into any kind of political trouble. (Maybe I am misunderstanding this statement.)

"The book is already increasing the awareness of and respect for Sri Aurobindo in America."

I happen to have a very close friend here in America who is a Christian mystic, and I told him a little bit about this controversy in the international Sri Aurobindo community. What he pointed out to me was that in the West, when one wants to venerate and elevate someone in the eyes of others, one subjects them to a critical analysis and shows that they stand up well to it. It is actually a form of veneration in the Western mind.

Now certainly I can raise lots of stylistic issues with the Heehs biography and there are definitely certain paragraphs which in my opinion should just be re-written completely as they are prone to misinterpretation. Also, the biography is too dry and mental for my taste ... I prefer the passion of Satprem's "Sri Aurobindo, or the Adventure of Consciousness". But I can see what Peter Heehs may have been trying to do, and I can understand some of the cultural differences at play here.

"Heehs has spent much of his life studying Indian culture and has a good reputation as a scholar among Indian academics."

His book, "Indian Religions", is one of the best compendiums of knowledge on spirituality in India, at least on the mental plane.

"In so strongly stating the materialistic position, Sri Aurobindo is giving the opposite of his own viewpoint in order to refute it in what follows."

Yes, exactly, Sri Aurobindo does this a lot, and in fact the way in which certain academics misrepresent him and accuse him of being racist or pro-eugenics is precisely by quoting such paragraphs without quoting those paragraphs that follow after them. It is because he tries to look at everything from every angle first and then offers his own synthetic spiritual solutions to problems.

I did find some parallels in Peter's style to this. For instance, when he describes "The Synthesis of Yoga" (p. 279) he starts off by giving the standard objection raised to Sri Aurobindo's yoga -- even by other Indian spiritual teachers -- which is that he provides no real methods. Then he quotes from Sri Aurobindo and explains why this is in fact a benefit of the integral yoga, and not something that goes to its detriment. My only objection to this particular paragraph (which is I guess my objection to the biography as a whole) was that it was too restrained and there was not enough passion in it. I also felt Peter missed an opportunity to quote that marvelous statement from The Synthesis of Yoga, summing up for me what is the greatness of the integral yoga:

". . . one may say that the perfection of the integral Yoga will come when each man is able to follow his own path of Yoga, pursuing the development of his own nature in its upsurging towards that which transcends the nature. For freedom is the final law and the last consummation." (p. 51 from The Synthesis of Yoga)

Moving on ...

"Heehs switches from “Aurobindo” to “Sri Aurobindo” in the last part of the book, starting at the point where Sri Aurobindo himself made this change. “Sri” thus indicates the spiritual transformation he had undergone and acquires a deeper meaning than if it had been used from the beginning of his life."

But doesn't Georges van Vrekhem do this in his book too, i.e. in "Beyond the Human Species"? He starts off by referring to Them as Aurobindo and Mirra and then moves on to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother when he starts to speak of their role as Divine incarnations. Nobody raised any objections to that, as far as I know.

"Heehs’s remarks on the marriage do not differ so much from those of some other biographers. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, for instance, writes: 'After three or four years, they seem to have somewhat drifted apart.... Mrinalini very likely found her admired and adored husband rather difficult to understand.'"

It seems fairly obvious that Sri Aurobindo and his wife were poles apart intellectually and spiritually. The same goes for Mother and her first husband -- she was obviously vastly spiritually superior to him. It's hardly difficult to understand why they would have drifted apart.

"By avoiding dogmatism, Heehs has opened himself to charges of heresy. When the Mother spoke in 1965 of “the difference in the atmosphere now, after the intrusion of something which was not there before,” she was asked whether this “something” was the supramental force. She answered: “I would rather not give it a name, because people will make a dogma out of it. That is what happened when what is called ‘the first supramental manifestation’ occurred in 1956. I tried my best to prevent it from being made into a dogma. But if I say, ‘On such a date, such a thing happened’, it will be written in big letters and if anyone says anything else he will be told, ‘You are a heretic.’ So I do not want that.” (CWM 10:208) She tried her best to prevent such statements of hers from being turned into dogmas, but the human religious tendency has proved too strong."

This is a really interesting passage.

I must admit I have found this insistence on the literal, fixed mental belief in Sri Aurobindo and Mother's avatarhood very strange. This is not because I don't have faith in that possibility, but simply because, quite frankly, I don't know what it means!! I can keep screaming "They were avatars! They were avatars!" at the top of my lungs for as long as I want, but in terms of having an actual inner grasp of what avatarhood means, I will get nowhere. Even if I have some mental ideas about avatarhood -- I see it as a sacrifice made by an instrument that consents to bear a descent of Divinity and simultaneously to help the ascending humanity by bearing its ignorance [yes, it sounds excruciating] -- that is a far cry from knowing inwardly what a sacrifice of that sort entails.

What about the "mystery" aspect of spirituality? Why should we pretend that we already know things that are far beyond our understanding? Some time back I wrote down a list of assumptions that I was going to take on faith in this yoga. Here is one of them:

"There is a soul within and a Grace above. My Gurus, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, were in their lifetime embodiments of this Grace, although this is a mystery of an order that is beyond my comprehension at present. "

Would I also be branded heretical for not coming right out and committing myself to the mental dogma of avatarhood? But from my perspective I am just being honest. I really do not have a clue what avatarhood means in practice.

"He has sinned much by his defiance of all spiritual norms and played into the hands of the hostile forces, I feel."

As someone who spent 18 years in the Islamic religion, I am really uncomfortable with the language of "sin" and "virtue". Every single one of us sinning in different parts of our being, day in and day out, by virtue of not being 100% purified and surrendered instruments. The difference between individuals is just one of degree. This sin and virtue stuff is so exceedingly relative that I simply don't bother with it anymore.

Is the language of sin and virtue not what we are supposed to be liberating ourselves from? Is the Divine not beyond good and evil? Is the Supramental Conscious-Force not equal to good and evil?

This statement strikes me as being so much closer to Christian and Islamic moralism than to the wideness and generosity of the Hindu spirit. Hinduism is probably the only religion whose scriptures have such a profound grasp of the limitations of morality.

Also -- and maybe I am just exceedingly ignorant and stupid and childish for thinking this since I cannot claim to have any stable occult faculties myself -- but I have been surprised at how easily people have been accusing "the other" of being in the hands of the hostile forces. It just seems to me that one walks on thin ice when one makes such allegations. Unless one is integrally purified and surrendered, and has a lot of stability and equality, freedom from all moral prejudices, one's occult perceptions are highly prone to distortion.

I have had some experiences in which I have been able to sense "vibrations", including "negative" or "asuric" vibrations from others. The problem is that I have never been able to separate these vibrations from my own subconscient projections, so I am always compelled to not take my inner perceptions so seriously until I have more stability, purity and equality. So unless people can claim to be integrally purified and have developed proper occult faculties, tested, stabilized, working at peak capacity day in and day out (which is precisely the example the Gurus have laid out for us!), I don't see how we can take these perceptions too seriously and be so convinced that our subconscient projections have nothing to do with them.

Then again, maybe I am too inexperienced to understand these things. I welcome feedback and criticism on the above sentiments on occult perception. It's just that in my own experiences, I have seen how easily an inner vision comes, is degraded because of my impurities, and gets mixed and loses its original luminosity. This happens pretty much in a matter of seconds. So I am convinced that my perceptions are distorted and I will not take them seriously until I feel I am integrally purified. Otherwise there is the danger of infrarational mysticism and superstition, and that is something I want to avoid at all costs.

"Perhaps he has “sinned,” as the religious-minded would say. At least he has apologized to those whom he has offended and offered to revise the passages they object to. Those who launched a campaign of character assassination against him – by circulating not only defamatory letters such as this one, but misleading extracts taken out of context from the book without the publisher’s permission, in violation of copyright laws – have never apologized or admitted their wrong-doing."

Yes, regardless of Peter's "sins" in writing this biography -- and I am hardly suggested that it is above or beyond reproach, let alone being the final word on anything -- there have also been defamations of him and false allegations against him from the anti-Peter side. Some people have jumped to such ridiculous conclusions that one can only laugh -- one person online was accusing Peter of being an agent of the Vatican! Good God!!

Others have accused him of having told a "lie" on every page of the biography -- an allegation this serious has to be backed up by actual facts.

No doubt, the biography itself is a mixed affair but as far as I can tell, so is the reaction to it.

"In short, one could put it like this: when one understands, one no longer judges and when one judges, it means that one doesn’t know."

Yes, yes, yes! This sentiment of the Mother's has been a wake-up call for me on many an occasion when I have been making a fool of myself by judging someone else.

I've concluded that Rule No. 1 of yoga is: be harsher on yourself than on anyone else. "Examine thyself without pity, then thou wilt be more charitable and pitiful to others." -- Sri Aurobindo

Ned,

By and large, I enjoyed reading your response, though I cannot agree with you about the book being "mental, dry and analytical." I know of several people who can hardly be classed among the "highly esoteric academics interested in Sri Aurobindo" whio have read and enjoyed reading the book. But still, you may be right about politicians and government officers.

However, when I read -

In all fairness, perhaps the issue of Peter being an Ashramite is different from being a student at SACAR or the University of Tomorrow. It would be different if Mr. Reddy had objected to a student at SACAR / University of Tomorrow from writing this biography. I think Peter should have been more sensitive to the emotional boundaries of individuals in the institution of which he is a part. -

I was hard put to understand what you meant. Because Peter is an ashramite, Ananda Reddy (who, by the way, is not an ashramite) develops the right to flout the principles of impartiality by which he runs his educational institution? Or hypocrisy is so much a part of academic institutions that the director of one should not be expected to be any different, particularly when it comes to the enjoyable spectacle of foreigner-bashing?


And, when you write -

Frankly, if I were him, I would have run the manuscript by others in the Ashram and gotten feedback/criticism before publishing it. It just seems to be a basic courtesy to respect colleagues in the institution of which you're a part. -

what kind of institution did you have in mind, I wonder? Educational institutions, for example, do not consider it any basic courtesy for their scholars to run their manuscript by others in the institution. Much of the richness of a good academy comes from the radical differences of opinion which can be fielded impartially within it. Unless one is claiming supramental omniscience, human knowledge is all of the nature of interpretation and the expansion of such knowledge towards integrality can be much facilitated through confrontation with difference. What is required here is not so much sentiments such as "basic courtesy," but a culture of dispassionate consideration and mechanisms of dialog. Ananda Reddy's institution may, in fact, have served just such a role, were he not so eager to sit on the throne of judgement.

On the other hand, if it is an ashram, not of the traditional kind, but of the kind founded by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that you mean, when you are speaking of the prescription for the "basic courtesy" of running one's manuscripts by others, I am yet to come across such a requirement for the yogic life in the writings of the founders. Sri Aurobindo defended both Dilip Roy and Nolini Gupta for their perceived "rudeness" on several occasions, pointing out that to be affronted by such behaviors had no place in the ashram. It is a personal choice to run one's manuscript by someone else. There is no "basic courtesy" that can dictate whether one should have to do this, specially in an ashram where one owes one's inner allegiance to the gurus and to no one else.

DB

Dear Debashish,

Good points ... it is a really gray area to be honest, and I don't really know what the overall policy of the Ashram is. You've also previously pointed out that most people who have objected to this biography are actually not from the Ashram itself.

I'm actually just trying to see if there are ways in which such a situation could have been avoided. What I gathered though was that there is perhaps an unstated position in the Ashram that sees Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in a particular light, and when someone from within the Ashram writes a publication that deviates from that position he / she will have to face the music to some extent.

A corresponding example I can think of is if you are working in a regular biology department which upholds the Darwinian paradigm of evolution, and you suddenly write a book advocating Intelligent Design, which is anathema to the rest of your department and which your university institution sees as an embarrassment, it's fully expected that people will jump down your throat. The person who is setting out to do this should know that they will be violating boundaries and should know full well what they are getting into.

I'm neither saying the behavior of the biology department in the example, nor that of the Heehs detractors is commendable, just that this is how human beings and human institutions often behave.

Ned: What I gathered though was that there is perhaps an unstated position in the Ashram that sees Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in a particular light, and when someone from within the Ashram writes a publication that deviates from that position he / she will have to face the music to some extent.

DB: Though there is no "overall policy" of the ashram about this kind of thing (there is an official policy, btw, on how to resolve differences, and this was completely flouted by the anti-Heehs bunch), I agree with you that among a large number there is an "unstated position." This in fact, has gradually developed after the passing of the gurus and can be attributed to what you have elsewhere astutely identified as "the curse of the next generation" - ie. the hardening of a memorial conservatism in lieu of a culture of progress. What has complicated matters and brought them to a head in this case is the exploitation of this situation by a few who have set themselves up as pseudo-authorities in the absence of better judgement within the community. As I have tried to bring it out, this act of arson cannot be entirely reduced to ignorant outrage as with the rest of the conservatives. Ambition is always on the lookout for a good opportunity.

Now, on the issue of the Darwinian biology department, this is exactly the example of poor academic culture. I know it happens, but it is not the only way things could happen, nor is the western academy marked by this kind of unconscious congealment of affinities. I can provide the counter example of the art history department at UCLA where two world authorities on Modern Art had neighboring offices, seldom saw eye to eye, had each their own admirers and haters within the department, and would never think of running their papers by each other, yet enriched the understanding of many due to their differences. A progressive institution creates social mechanisms whereby differences can be absorbed and made to enrich a community. This is, in fact, what the Managing Trustee of the ashram is trying to do and would have eminently succeeded in doing with some help from "intellectuals" rather than this kind of regressive and irresponsible behavior.

To elaborate, I used the word "courtesy" in a particular context, i.e. when someone is about to write something that is going to deviate from the majority opinion in the department / institution of which one is a part. It would probably not be a bad idea to give others a "heads-up" so that they aren't emotionally knocked off-guard, I guess.

This said, I admit it's a pretty gray area.

Personally, I appreciated Ned's (and at one point Angira's) comments noting some quanta of insensitivity on Peter's part re his latest book. Clearly the offense taken by many ashramites and devotees to some of the tone in Peter's book was not surprising, and he bears some responsibility for apparently considering that offense unimportant relative to the transcendent goal of attracting academics to the subject of Sri Aurobindo as a philosopher/mystic of interest.

To me a balanced reaction to the controversy finds some amount of excess and over-reaction on both sides (not necessarily an even amount, but at least some amount). On this particular blog one senses at times an almost "hagiographic" attitude toward Mr. Heehs himself.

In the end perhaps some good will emerge. The instinctive splitting of many into two camps viewing each other as either Indian/religious/fundamentalist or Westerner/skeptic/materialist, was clearly latent beneath the surface and is a phenomenon one can imagine Sri Aurobindo smiling at.

Kepler,

What you see on this blog rather than being a "haigiographic attitude toward Mr Heehs" is rather an instance of a necessary defense of the authors position visa vie the reactionary stance and the aggressive actions
taken against him by people who pass themselves off as spokespeople for IY.

Besides inciting a witch hunt against him they have charged him criminally for simply writing this biography. They have written petitions, expounded their dissatisfaction on the internet, (even on this site) and had him thrown out of his job. As a reaction to this rabid intolerance an aggressive defense and counterargument has been put up here. So do not confuse a vigorous defense with fawning devotion!

You write: Clearly the offense taken by many ashramites and devotees to some of the tone in Peter's book was not surprising, and he bears some responsibility

Yes some Ashramites and devotees have taken offense at this book, however there are many other Ashramites and Devotees who do not take offense at the book and actually praise it. So there are differences in perspectives even among devotees.

So what you have here is simply a difference of opinion and if you and Ned happen to come down on one side of that opinion so be it, but that does not universalize such opinions.

Moreover, to hold PH to some standard that includes being judged by Ashramites and Devotees and suggest that he should have first gotten their permission to publish it, is not only a slight to free speech and a minimum standard of academic freedom but is to grant censorship rights to
a class of people who are biased toward a certain devotional perspective that at its most extreme can be called fundamentalist.

To grant fundamentalist veto power over a work that aims at historic scholarship is hardly consistent with the path of Integral Yoga. (at least the one I know of) or common sense for that matter.

Indeed perhaps PH should have known that some of those around him in the Ashram would "flip out" when they encountered the book and he most certainly has the freedom to choose if he he still wants to resides in that Ashram or depart.

But, that point nonwithstanding it still does not grant those detractors the right to incite violence and criminal cases because they dont agree. Moreover, as has been demonstrated here not many of the detractors have even read this book.

Regards your final point" The instinctive splitting of many into two camps viewing each other as either Indian/religious/fundamentalist or Westerner/skeptic/materialist, was clearly latent beneath the surface and is a phenomenon one can imagine Sri Aurobindo smiling at. "


This is something that I wholeheartedly agree with, and perhaps we are even better off with those two camps coming out of the closet now to make explicit these difference even though as imagined Sri Aurobindo may certainly be chuckling.


TC






Your last point is well taken