26 May 2011

"Sexual union dignifed by marriage" - page 318

On page 318, Peter Heehs falsely alleges that Sri Aurobindo engaged in “sexual union dignified by marriage”.   

The remark is as follows:
After Aurobindo entered what he called "the sexual union dignified by the name of marriage," he seems to have found the state bothersome and uninteresting.
We are told to accept these sort of remarks because Sri Aurobindo is being "humanized".   Has anyone bothered to inquire into the source of this conclusion?  It is derived from the previous page (page 316) where Sri Aurobindo asks his disciple Nolini whether he wishes to engage in "sexual union dignified by the name of marriage".   That passage is as follows:
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18 May 2011

Distortions of Quotations

In this text, Peter attempts to distort and misrepresent the relationship of guru and disciple as a romantic personal interest. He distorts simple normal gestures to turn them into “surprising” ones. He adds fertile speculation with comments without basis, such as “people noticed a surprising development” and “nothing furtive”. Nobody was surprised as the gestures were normal of a disciple to the guru, and Mirra’s primary interest in meeting Sri Aurobindo was spiritual. (Extract followed by full article)   ...full text...

5 May 2011

Sri Aurobindo's Avatarhood -- by Vishwas Patel

The occasion for a rebuttal came up when Peter Heehs attempted to ridicule the private beliefs of the disciples of Sri Aurobindo and argued that he was not an Avatar because he had “never made any such claim on his own behalf”. It would have been absolutely fine, I repeat, had Peter Heehs said that he did not believe in the Avatarhood of Sri Aurobindo, because there was never any question of forcing upon others such a sacred and personal conviction. It is only when he had a nasty dig at the faith of the concerned disciples in what he claimed to be the “first objective biography on Sri Aurobindo” (while still pretending to be a disciple of the same Guru), that a reply became necessary. It is this duplicity that had to be exposed in public. For it is understood that as far as institutional propriety is concerned you are either outside an institution or inside it. You cannot be both in and out, that is, enjoy the privileges of an insider and at the same time have the unrestricted freedom to criticise the founder of the institution that an outsider generally has. (Extract)

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