Change in the Editorial Board of rtlosa@gmail.com

Due to unavoidable circumstances, Sraddhalu Ranade and Raman Reddy have withdrawn from the editorial board of this website with effect from 15th August 2010.

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"Sri Aurobindo on Hinduism" by Peter Heehs -- reviewed by Raman Reddy

Sri Aurobindo made a clear distinction between two types of Hinduism, the lower and the higher. By the lower Hinduism, he meant outdated Hindu customs and rituals, the Hinduism “which takes its stand on the kitchen and seeks its Paradise by cleaning the body”. By the higher Hinduism, he meant the Hinduism, “which seeks God, not through the cooking pot and the social convention, but in the soul”. He made a further division in the higher Hinduism, “the sectarian and unsectarian, disruptive and synthetic, that which binds itself up in the aspect and that which seeks the All”. It is by cleverly playing on these multiple meanings of the word that Heehs causes grave misunderstandings. He deliberately confounds these various aspects of Hinduism and uses the word consistently in the negative sense to convey that Sri Aurobindo dispensed with Hinduism altogether after coming to Pondicherry, as if it did not have anything of lasting value. In fact, he concludes by saying that the Hindu disciples of Sri Aurobindo may be doing a great disservice to their Master by still following Hindu rituals of the past such as the belief in Krishna and the Divine Shakti of the Mother. Even Sri Aurobindo himself should be then spared of Avatarhood by us, because he himself said so! I wonder what would be the practical implications of this fantastic logic which throws out the baby along with the bathwater!
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Deception by Peter Heehs (page 266) – by Sandeep

Some of the errors I have found earlier in this biography have been noted at http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/12/14/4019788.html
http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2009/1/9/4051044.html

In many places in the book, Peter Heehs, having mentioned something positive, proceeds to concoct a negative side. Some of these negatives are phony because they have been inferred by craftily using Sri Aurobindo's words against him. By that I mean he takes Sri Aurobindo’s quotes out-of-context to potentially mislead uninformed readers. There is a certain procedure which has to be followed in order to uncover such deceptions. When you find a negative remark, you should look up the citation and read the original source. Then you must search for alternative sources, at which point you will realize that the negative remark is not really negative at all.

One instance is on Page 266.   ...full text...