"Deliberate Distortions of Sri Aurobindo's Life and Yoga" edited by Raman Reddy

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Sri Aurobindo's Marriage (Part 2) -- by Raman Reddy (republished)

Heehs then concludes on the basis of this evidence that it was “the usual desire for gratification” that was presumably a factor in Sri Aurobindo’s decision to get married. Now is this scholarship or speculation? I thought historians base themselves on concrete evidence and not on what imaginary characters say in Vedantic commentaries. If the teacher in the commentary speaks as if he has had marital relations, does it prove that Sri Aurobindo went through the same experience in real life? Extend that argument to other authors in their respective fields and you can come to ridiculous conclusions. How many novelists would be accused of committing murder, robbery and rape just because they have convincingly described them in their crime thrillers! [extract]

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Sri Aurobindo’s Accident in November 1938 ― by Krish Patwardhan

In the paragraph below from the Lives of Sri Aurobindo (pp. 381-82), Peter Heehs not only misrepresents Sri Aurobindo’s relation with the Mother but gets one of the most basic facts wrong in the life of Sri Aurobindo, namely, the fracture of his right leg in the early hours of 24 November, 1938. Heehs, disregarding the factual accounts of Nirodbaran and Champaklal (the two disciples who personally served Sri Aurobindo during his last twelve years), writes that it was “a fracture of the left thigh close to the knee”! I wonder how he got his facts so wrong despite all the hagiographic fanfare about his 40 years of research on Sri Aurobindo.

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Analysis of the Preface of Peter Heehs’ The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, CUP, 2008 (Part 2) – A Zombified Disciple

MURDERS IN THE LAND OF THE NAÏVE – 4

Note: In this analysis, as in the previous, Peter’s words are in Italics and mine are in Roman.

Peter’s Attitude and Approach–D): (1) I first encountered Aurobindo [in an April 1950 photo] in 1968 in a yoga center on 57^th Street in Manhattan…I did not find it particularly remarkable…. A few months later…I found myself in another yoga centre…on Central Park West. Here there were just three pictures on the wall, one of them the standard portrait of Aurobindo (Figure 1). I was struck by the peaceful expanse of his brow, his trouble-free face, and fathomless eyes. It would be years before I learned that all these features owed their distinctiveness to the retoucher’s art…. (2) Figure 2 is photograph of Aurobindo taken around the same time as Figure 1. Note the dark, pockmarked skin, sharp features, and undreamy eyes. (3) As far as I know, it did not appear in print before 1976, when I published it in an ashram journal. (4) To me Figure 2 is infinitely more appealing than Figure 1. (5) There is hardly a trace of a shadow between the ears, with the result that the face has no character. The sparkling eyes have been painted in; even the hair has been given a gloss. As a historical document it is false. As a photograph it is a botched piece of work. (6) But for many, Figure 1 is more true to Aurobindo than Figure 2. (7) In later life, his complexion became fair and smooth, his features full and round. Figure 2 thus falsifies the “real” Aurobindo. (8) It is the task of the retoucher to make the photograph accord with the reality that people want to see. Hagiographers deal with documents the way that retouchers deal with photographs. Biographers must take their documents as they find them.

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An Analysis of the Preface of Peter Heehs's "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, CUP, 2008 ― A Zombified Disciple

Peter’s Attitude and approach: Biographers must take their documents as they find them…, paying as much attention to what is written by the subject’s enemies as by his friends, not giving special treatment even to the subject’s own version of events. Accounts by the subject have exceptional value, but they need to be compared against other narrative accounts, more important, against documents that do not reflect a particular point of view.

My Comments: This statement authorises me to take this exceptionally valuable preface as I find it and, without giving special treatment to his particular point of view, compare it against other narrative accounts and facts that do not reflect his version of events, and interpret the whole by my critical openness of a disciple. The biographical story that has emerged I call Avatars (Lives) of Marcher. The name ‘Marcher’ is a fusion of C. Mayo (1867-1940) whose Mother India vilified Indians, and W. Archer (1856-1924) who vilified Indian culture through his India and the Future and whom Sri Aurobindo put in his place in The Foundations of Indian Culture.

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Letter to the Ashram Trustees – by Nanjappa

The senseless writings of Heehs will be countered by real scholars even outside the Ashram and without its patronage, as it has been done in the case of Sri Ramakrishna  vis-a-vis  Jeffrey Kripal. The spiritual stature of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and their philosophical insights will stand the test of time as they are based on profound Truth. Sadly, what stands exposed is the lack of vision and courage on the part of the present Trustees of the Ashram. [extract]

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Squint-Eyed Scholarship – by Nileen Putatunda

Earlier this year, former New York taxi driver Peter Heehs, based in India since the 1970s, was in the news for his controversial book The Lives of Sri Aurobindo published by Columbia University Press. There was an attempt made by devotees of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, who were outraged by this book, to deny Heehs an extension of his Indian visa. Some supposedly-eminent Indians rushed to the rescue of Heehs by appealing to the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, and Heehs was allowed to stay on.

Being a humble admirer of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother over many years, and having delighted in attending a monthly reading session here in Kolkata of Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri, I got hold of a copy of Heehs’ book to see what the din was about. Having read every word of the book, I must say that I was disappointed with the scholarship in this part-serious, part-frivolous effort by Heehs which pop historian, Ramachandra Guha has described as: “The product of a lifetime of scholarship, its empirical depth and analytical sharpness is unlikely to be surpassed. For Heehs knows the documentary evidence on and around Aurobindo’s life better than anyone else.” 

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A Short Note on TLOSA by Seshachalam Dutta

The author is patently ignorant of Indian History and harbours an obvious, unreformed racist bias.  He calls the “revolutionaries” “terrorists.”  Even the British knew the difference in those days. Heehs ought to know the distinction: terrorists kill their own people or innocent people to create terror to achieve political ends, the revolutionaries and freedom fighters are those who fight foreign invaders and occupiers. [extract]

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Objective Research, or Research with an Objective? -- by Saurabh Somani

The most serious objection I have to the book though is not that facts are presented selectively or out of context. It is the fact that Peter Heehs is voluntarily an inmate of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and has been one for over 3 decades. Nobody is forced to join the Ashram. However, when someone decides to join the Ashram, it is implicit that he does so because he believes in the Ashram philosophy, i.e. the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. If one doesn’t believe in the philosophy, then why be a part of it? The Ashram does not hold guns to peoples’ heads and force them to join. (extract)

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Dr Anand Kumar's Letter to the Trustees

PH is a good case study for a psychoanalyst. I am reminded of a psychopath. When he was shown a square and asked what did it remind him of? He said, “sex.” He said the same for a circle, a triangle, a hexagon and the picture of a goat. When the doctor was perplexed by his single word answer, he asked the patient if the latter was a maniac. The patient was annoyed. He barked back, “What else you expect me to say when you show me such lewd images?” (extract)
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Govind's Reply to Ajit & Co ref Partition of India

[Here is Govind’s reply to Ajit Reddy, Arindam Das, Bulu and Gautam Chatterjee on whether Sri Aurobindo and his colleagues can be held partly responsible for the Partition of India. Ajit & Co’s defence of Peter Heehs is produced below for reference.]

So many words and so little sense! How depressing it is that in a forum of people from the Mother's school we have ex-students, acting as sadhaks of Rich Carlson, who seems to have penned this little write up word-for-word, defending a nakedly hostile and evidently false claim that Sri Aurobindo is in any way to be blamed for the partition that happened nearly 40 years after He left active politics. Such a claim can only be made by one who is either ignorant of history or one who is deliberately in the business of hurling grossly distorting speculative accusations against Sri Aurobindo. Since the former is not a possibility, no doubt the latter is the category to which our scholarly calumniator and his gaggle of supporters here belong.
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Is This History or Speculation? -- by Krish Patwardhan

But where are the solid facts and well-documented evidence? All that we come across is speculation after speculation, and one speculation pitted against another speculation in order to create problems! And if there are a few hard facts, Heehs is more keen on artificially creating problems than solving them. There is as it were a deliberate “problematising” of Sri Aurobindo’s life and a deliberate denial of the right perspective to create the impression of a so-called “balanced” view which caters more to the materialistic point of view than the spiritual, so that Sri Aurobindo is often presented as a bundle of opposites!
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"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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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...

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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The Trial and the Verdict -- by Alok Pandey

We have in this book TLOSA what may be called the Second Trial of Sri Aurobindo to see where He stands in our assessment. Unfortunately the trial is being ordered not by the British Municipal Magistrate but by an inmate of his own ashram. It is being done in crass violation of all ethical and spiritual norms. Ethically it is not in good taste to pass comments upon someone who is no more there to defend himself and set things in their right perspective. Spiritually, it is an anathema to doubt and criticize the Master, an act regarded in all spiritual schools as the straight road to perdition. [Extract, read full article below]

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Sri Aurobindo's Image in the Words of Peter Heehs -- by Michel Beven

SRI AUROBINDO--LAZY LIAR, INSANE TERRORIST

HIS YOGA--NO GUIDELINES

HIS APHORISMS--ONLY IMITATIONS OF A FOREIGNER

SAVITRI--ONLY A STORY

KRISHNA--IS HE DIVINE?

HIS VISION OF KRISHNA--ONLY IMAGINATION

HIS POLITICAL FAME--DUE TO PROPAGANDA

SEX-SMOKING-ALCOHOL--BETTER NOT TO KNOW
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On Sri Aurobindo’s Childhood, Anger and Riding Test—by Krish Patwardhan

Another unpardonable case of bad taste! I wonder whether those who support the book have at all understood this sentence: “Well, if you take the clothes away there remains little to distinguish one human radish from another.” It is a reference to the male sexual organ! And if this is passable, then I wonder what is not passable, and you might as well start writing for a porn magazine. [extract]

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One-Sided Reporting by Peter Heehs -- by Alok Pandey

Let me now give an example of one-sided reporting from the chapter entitled “Son”. Our biographer goes at great length to describe the madness of Sri Aurobindo’s mother and keeps referring to it time and again well past the half-way mark of his book. He mentions the unfaithfulness of Sri Aurobindo’s father to his wife and dubs him as “Darwinian Mr Ghose” because he was “proud to have brought children of a better breed into the world” (p 9). What does the author convey through the presentation of this data? He is forcefully drawing our attention to the poor heredity of Sri Aurobindo, more specifically the inheritance of madness from his mother, and the unhappy environment of his childhood days, both of which may have caused the spiritual “hallucinations” he saw in the latter part of his life! This view we of course discredit, but even from the angle of the psychologist seriously interested in engaging with someone who does not believe in spiritual things, there are three important factors Peter deliberately ignores.

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Clever Denigration of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs -- by Alok Pandey

Peter Heehs uses in his book certain subtle psychological techniques to create a negative opinion of Sri Aurobindo. One such device is never passing an outright negative judgment without making some qualifications to it. Generally he flip-flops between positive and negative statements, swings to the left and right, and in a most unsuspecting way nullifies his positive statements on Sri Aurobindo. For committing this ‘murder in cold print’, he begins with some sweet talk lulling the reader into a false sense of sympathy, and then delivers a blow to Sri Aurobindo in someone else’s name, adding his own opinion quietly in the presentation of a multitude of documents. He does this so cleverly that at times it is hard to distinguish his personal opinion from the quoted documents. For example, while summarizing Sri Aurobindo’s life at Baroda, the author makes the following statement:   ...full text...