The Wrong Notion that Sri Aurobindo Rejected Hinduism – Raman Reddy

(With specific reference to The Clasp of Civilisations (2015) by Richard Hartz, published by Nalanda International, and Nationalism, Religion, and Beyond (2005), a compilation of Sri Aurobindo’s writings on Politics, Society and Culture, edited by Peter Heehs.)  

I was rather disappointed after reading The Clasp of Civilisations by Richard Hartz because I expected from him a better understanding of Hinduism than most Western scholars.[1] The book starts off well with a sense of universality in spiritual matters which justifies the title, but gets caught halfway through with the usual antipathy towards Hinduism that is so common among secular scholars of India. The chapter on Vivekananda’s famous address in the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in September 1893 is indeed well-written and the circumstances of the historic event depicted in a most interesting manner with an undercurrent of humour. But the chapter on Hinduism titled “Untold Potentialities: Jawaharlal Nehru, Sri Aurobindo and the Idea of India”, in which Nehru is elevated into a spiritual figure and Sri Aurobindo converted into a secular icon, shows the fundamental flaws of Richard’s scholarship. One immediately gets the impression of encountering one more Hinduphobic armchair scholar, who meticulously builds his arguments on the works of other Hinduphobic scholars who also have never empathised with Indian culture. Ironically, Richard Hartz has studied the Vedas and is an expert in Sanskrit, but this only shows that mere scholarship does not open the gates of spiritual comprehension. After all, Peter Heehs, his colleague, did the same, wasting forty years of research on Sri Aurobindo and producing such a hostile biography that the disciples of Sri Aurobindo had to go to the Court to take him to task. But let us come back to Richard Hartz who could have easily come to his own conclusions instead of following the path of Peter Heehs with regard to Hinduism, or what is in fact the path of leftist secular scholars of India and abroad which Peter Heehs himself follows faithfully for the sake of his academic career. After all, for him academic success is more important than stating the fundamental truth of Hinduism!   

  ...full text...

Timeline of the Controversy

1978 Nirmal Singh’s rejoinder to Peter Heehs on the birthplace of Sri Aurobindo. According to Peter Heehs, Sri Aurobindo was wrong about where he was born. The Birth Place of Sri Aurobindo – by Nirmal Singh Nahar 12.02.1984 Appointment of Manoj Das Gupta as Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust after the passing away of Nolini Kanto Gupta. He was recommended as Trustee by Nolini Kanto Gupta through a dubious note signed (or made to sign) in his last days and left in the custody of Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya. We do not know why Nolini did not give the note to Padmanabhan Counouma, who was then the Managing Trustee of the Ashram, and why he did not recommend Manoj Das Gupta earlier through a formal meeting of the Board of Trustees. Manoj Das Gupta’s policy of not rocking the boat even when the boat is about to be wrecked, as in the controversy over the Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs, makes him undoubtedly the most vehemently criticised Trustee in the history of the Ashram. He is also known to protect the guilty and punish the victims or those who have raised the alarm. Manoj Das Gupta’s Strange Attitude!

  ...full text...

Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya’s letter regarding Peter Heehs

[Many senior sadhaks of the Ashram rang early warning bells and amply cautioned the Trustees with regard to Peter Heehs and Richard Hartz, the two American editors of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives. Jugal Kishore Mukherji’s [1] two long letters (1 & 2) addressed to the Trustees in 1986-87 have already been published on this site. We now publish a letter of Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya [2] dated July 1987, written in the same context and shortly after Jugal Kishore Mukherji’s letter of June 1987. His letter raises doubts and suspicion regarding the editing of the Archives & Research journal and the revised Edition of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri. What is most interesting is that PKB foresaw twenty-one years back the insidious attack of “The Enemy Within”. He wrote the following:

“If the [my] suspicions could be proved they would not remain suspicions, they would become facts. But clever people know how to hide their true colour for a long time. That is why time is considered to be the best judge. So, until then, one should be on one’s guard, watch the suspects, and wait for the time when the truth reveals itself. If it is found that my suspicions are baseless, I shall be, too, happy to correct myself. It gives a very unpleasant feeling to be suspicious about people and things.” [emphasis added]

Well, Time has indeed proved to be the best judge when Peter Heehs revealed his true colours in 2008 with the publication of his derogatory book on Sri Aurobindo. If only the Trustees had paid heed to PKB’s early warning, how much trouble and controversy the Ashram Trustees could have averted, apart from nipping the mischief in the very bud! – Bireshwar]

  ...full text...

Response to Govardhan Dave – by Sridharan

Govardhan Dave is perhaps at his illogical best in the recent posting of 19 August 2014 on the Well-Wishers’ forum. Logical analysis was never his strong point, but what concerns me is that he is also an ignoramus on life in Sri Aurobindo Ashram and on the stormy events that have recently occurred there. What is more disconcerting is that he proceeds to write a factual analysis of the controversy with this half-knowledge and with his half-baked mind. This double deficiency makes him indeed a dangerous disseminator of wrong information which gullible strangers might readily believe. Hence I will take the trouble to rebut him instead of dismissing him as a harmless nincompoop who is being used by the Well-Wishers’ forum to shoot over his shoulders. I quote below his so-called analysis with my comments below.

  ...full text...

Who is Gaining from Legal Battles? – Sridharan

The Well-Wishers of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Forum is active again. This Forum can be considered as the unofficial mouthpiece of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust with Matriprasad Satyamurthy (secretary of the Ashram Trust) and Richard Hartz (controversial editor of Sri Aurobindo’s publications) hiding behind pseudonyms and spewing hatred at what they call anti-Ashram elements. Let me remind you once more that we had made a clear distinction between the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust in our last response to this forum. Therefore the Ashramites who have filed this “new case” are not against the Ashram but the Ashram Trust, which runs the Ashram in the most irresponsible manner. Their demand is to revamp the present administration through a Government intervention without which no structural changes can be brought about in the governance of the Ashram. The changes will ensure transparency and accountability, the utter lack of which is the hallmark of the present setup. The introduction of some democracy into the highly autocratic functioning of the present Trustees would also be a welcome measure. All these demands are fundamental to any institution in modern times and, if the excuse for not conceding to them is that the Ashram is a spiritual institution and not a secular one, then show me these “highly spiritual disciples” among the present Trustees who can guide the Ashram to its spiritual destiny!

  ...full text...

Connecting the Dots between the pro-Ashram Trust Nexus – Sridharan

The Well-wishers of Sri Aurobindo Ashram website which follows closely our site has recently done some “remarkable investigation” and announced how it has “connected the dots” between the so-called anti-Ashram nexus. Let me first remind these “highly intelligent sleuths” that Sri Aurobindo Ashram (Pondicherry) is different from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust (Pondicherry). The Ashram Trust was created by the Mother in 1955 for protecting the assets and properties of the Ashram, whereas Sri Aurobindo Ashram spontaneously began in 1926 when Sri Aurobindo gave “the spiritual and material charge” of his disciples to the Mother after the Siddhi Day. The Ashram is the spiritual institution and the Ashram Trust is only a legal body, whose administration has at first gradually and then rapidly deteriorated in recent times after the passing away of its Gurus. A section of the Ashramites are extremely unhappy with the corrupt and dictatorial functioning of the Ashram Trust and have therefore gone against it in various legitimate ways. They have not gone against the Ashram itself nor do they want to destroy the Ashram from the face of this earth, as the supporters of the Ashram Trust would like the ignorant public to believe. The solution to this rudderless present situation of the Ashram without any spiritual heads, or rather with the present Trustees who always get into loggerheads with anybody who differs from them, is an alternate system of fair and democratic governance. If this is difficult to understand and highly objectionable, then I think we have to set the clock back and go back to pre Magna Carta days.

  ...full text...

Objectionable Extracts from Wendy Doniger's book, Hindus: An Alternative History – Bireshwar Choudhury

Wendy Doniger, who of late is very much in the news, is the intellectual grandmother of Peter Heehs. Wendy Doniger begat Jeffrey Kripal, who did his “research” on Sri Ramakrishna for his P.H.D. dissertation under her guidance at the University of Chicago. Jeffrey Kripal wrote the blurb on the back of the Lives of Sri Aurobindo (2008) by Peter Heehs, who gave a soft copy of his book to his “venerable guide” prior to its publication – Kripal’s book on Esalen (2007) contains references to the MS of the Lives. Esalen is an institution founded by Michael Murphy, who is more or less in the same business of misinterpreting spirituality. He in fact paid for the trips of both Richard Hartz and Peter Heehs to America in order to attend a conference in California. This is the lineage of the so-called scholarship that we are presently dealing with, and of which most of the disciples, followers and intellectual admirers of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are totally unaware. Now that Wendy Doniger, the grandmother of falsehood (she has a veritable brood of children who have followed the path of outright denigration and erotic misinterpretation of Hinduism) has been exposed and her publisher Penguin Books has capitulated to a humble headmaster (hats off for Dinanath Batra, the octogenarian hero and his courageous lawyer Monica Arora), it is time that the followers of Sri Aurobindo  rethink and take stock of the situation at the Ashram: Why did the Managing Trustee of the Ashram encourage Peter Heehs in his denigration of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? Why did Manoj Das, the award winning writer justify this incomprehensible action of the Managing Trustee, who will certainly go down in history as perhaps the only Trustee who has gone against the interest of the spiritual institution he was entrusted with?

Meanwhile, it is time to rejoice a great victory for all those who stand for the spiritual values embodied in Hinduism. We publish below a few objectionable extracts from Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History in order to give the readers an idea of her so-called scholarship and the academic tag attached to her erotic misinterpretations of the sacred symbols of India. The extracts along with critical comments on them are part of an online petition that was circulated for canvassing against her book. The petition at one point of time fetched 11009 signatures as opposed to the meagre 3500 claimed by a group of leftist scholars fighting for her cause. The full petition, which also has a list of factual errors, can be accessed at:

http://www.petitiononline.com/dharma10/petition.html.

  ...full text...

Apropos of Savitri and Prof. Manoj Das – by R.Y. Deshpande

Private dispute should always be avoided; but shrink not from public battle; yet even there appreciate the strength of thy adversary. ~ Sri Aurobindo

Prof Manoj Das writes: “I was for a while representing the Ashram in the courts where several cases were filed against the Trust because it brought out a revised version of the Master’s epic, Savitri. It was ‘revised’ in the sense that errors (typographical, punctuation, omission, words not properly deciphered in corrected proofs, etc) were removed through years of study and scrutiny.I was convinced that the Revised Edition of the epic is the most authentic one.” [Refer to Bireshwar Choudhury's reply to Manoj Das.]

In response to this we have the following on the website: “The Savitri revision controversy has rocked the Ashram for a decade or two. RY Deshpande was part of the team that finalised the Savitri revisions and he says that even Nirodbaran expressed his unhappiness over some of the revisions. The late Jugal Kishore Mukherjiwrote a fifty page letter to Amal on these revisions. … I will throw a challenge which Deshpande has long been insisting upon: Make all the Savitri manuscripts public. Put them up on the Net for all to see and judge for themselves the legitimacy of the revisions of the Archives editors.”

Prof Manoj Das says, “I was convinced that the Revised Edition of the epic is the most authentic one.” He also writes to the same effect to Dr Karan Singh.

Here my concern is to ask one or two immediate questions to Prof Manoj Das. If I get direct and non-evasive answers I would like to continue the dialogue further. The technical dialogue will be on this website. It is up to him to say yes or no.

  ...full text...

RICHARD HARTZ joins PETER HEEHS in blaming Ashram Trustees for TLOSA Disaster and Abuse of Archives Dept

Now Richard Hartz, a long-time associate of Peter Heehs at the Archives of the Ashram, and the principal co-conspirator in the crime that is TLOSA, has jumped in and joined the chorus in blaming the Trustees.(extract)

RICHARD HARTZ joins PETER HEEHS in blaming Ashram Trustees for TLOSA Disaster and Abuse of Archives Dept

Justice is blind and cannot see body language. Thus, unlike the Trustees of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust who relied on this perceived blindness to escape the Law and were erroneously using sign language and were calling it “dignified silence”, Peter Heehs has been speaking up aggressively and cutting his losses. He has, as already known to all, filed memos in the Orissa Court holding the Trustees responsible for his perverse “research” and the debacle and fallout of his offensive and illegal book The Lives of Sri Aurobindo (TLOSA).

Now Richard Hartz, a long-time associate of Peter Heehs at the Archives of the Ashram, and the principal co-conspirator in the crime that is TLOSA, has jumped in and joined the chorus in blaming the Trustees.

In an open letter dated 25th August 2011 to his dwindling, shaky and jittery supporters who are increasingly questioning the wisdom of TLOSA and discussing its withdrawal, Hartz writes:

“I have been in Pondicherry the whole time and my perception is based on what I have experienced here, not on the discussion on internet forums where the situation has been different. In early October 2008 the Managing Trustee described the Ashram as a "seething cauldron." This was no exaggeration. At that point I was almost the only person in the Ashram who had tried to defend Peter, apart from Manoj Das Gupta himself who heroically stood his ground in refusing to expel him. (He did, however, ask him to withdraw from the Archives until things return to normal, which so far shows no sign of being likely to happen.) It is hard for me to relate my memory of this phenomenon to the "healthy doubt against an excessive intellectuality" you speak of. If there was a comparable outburst of collective hysteria in support of PH, I never heard about it. At least it didn't happen here.

… The basic question raised by the Lives controversy is whether a member of the Ashram can be allowed to write for an academic audience in terms acceptable to that audience. (As you suggest, I could have written a book that might have offended no one, but CUP would never have published it.)

… In agreement with Sri Aurobindo's own description of the Ashram as a laboratory, it is officially recognized by the Government of India as a research institute for purposes of tax exemptions on donations from devotees. This fact is important for understanding how the Lives came to be written in the way it was, because it is part of the reason why Peter Heehs was encouraged to write and publish academic articles which could be listed in the Ashram's reports on its research activities, submitted annually to the government. Despite his lack of formal credentials, he succeeded in getting these papers published in a wide range of academic journals. That meant, of course, adapting his style of writing to academic expectations…. Since his publications were being regularly cited in the Ashram's official reports, he was led to believe that this activity, even if it drew criticism from some quarters, was consistent with the aims of the Ashram. To a certain extent, his downfall resulted from his doing too well the work he had been assigned and encouraged to do.

I hope this will shed light on the question of whether or not it was appropriate or acceptable for a person in Peter's position to write the book he did.” [highlights added]

In other words Hartz is revealing that Columbia University Press (CUP) “would never have published” a book which “offended no one” given Heehs’ “lack of formal credentials” and the resulting limited saleability. Therefore Heehs had to write an “offensive book” in order to make it saleable to CUP and the public, and the Ashram Trustees “assigned” this work to him and “encouraged” him.

This stunning volte-face by Richard Hartz, the first public admission holding the Trustees of the Ashram responsible for encouraging and misguiding Heehs in the disaster that is TLOSA, is a watershed moment. The reference by Hartz to Heehs’ downfall is also telling.

This turn of events is being brought about by the now-public information that CUP will shortly file papers in the Orissa court against orders detailing the role of the Ashram Trustees in supporting, aiding and endorsing all that is wrong with TLOSA. This much CUP will certainly do to absolve itself of the serious charges it is now faced with, not least among them, Heehs’ allegation that he was erroneously labelled “Founder” by CUP and is not personally liable for this serious legal, moral and criminal lapse.

Each failure raises the threshold of the next potential success and there comes an inflection-point where the pain of loss is too great to pursue any further potential gain.

Does Manoj Das Gupta understand this?

We do.

Truly,

Prof Kamal Das


  ...full text...

Response to Richard Hartz’s “Ghost of Things Dead” – by Ranganath Raghavan

In Richard’s article, there is an implied, if not overt correlation, even an equation between the secular, the progressive, the rational mind and the Future. Again there is an equivalence implied or otherwise, between the retrograde forces of the Past and the irrational and religious. But here the religious is often extended into the legitimately spiritual! Another suggested notion is that Religion and Spirituality are faith-based and irrational and that Secularism and Rationality, devoid of Religion, belong to the Future. These understated implications are certainly not true. Religion and Spirituality are not the same, but there is no clear-cut line dividing the two trenchantly. They merge into one another and often overlap. Secondly, Spirituality need not contradict Rationality although it can go beyond into the Logic of the Infinite. Neither is Science free from faith.



Response to Richard Hartz’s “Ghost of Things Dead” – by Ranganath Raghavan

A four page article which was presented by Richard Hartz at an Auroville seminar discusses the related concepts of progress and evolution. He considers the forces tending towards the Future and those forces that pull backwards towards the Past. Whatever the intellectual and philosophical principles raised by the author, it is clear that he is examining the phenomenon of Fundamentalism. This is the issue that came up in the wake of the publication of the book “The Lives of Sri Aurobindo” by Peter Heehs. In the book, Peter treats Sri Aurobindo as an ordinary mortal, who was as vulnerable as any normal human being. He finds that Sri Aurobindo is no philosopher; nor is he a poet — his poetry is outdated; he is a liar; he is responsible for the Hindu-Moslem divide; he married for sex; his spiritual experiences are questionable; it is doubtful whether he is an avatar, as claimed by his faithful followers; he did not know how to plan his books — some chapters are too long, some are too short; his language is too abstruse, involved, difficult to follow, and much more. There are some passages which are laudatory, but the general tone of the whole book is “I am being objective; I am not writing a hagiographic biography. I am going to judge him with my analytic and rational mind. I will judge him on merit.” This attitude of mental arrogance of a petty kind with no experience whatsoever of spiritual realities runs through every page of the book!!!

The problem, for most ashramites, is that he has been a member of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram for the last thirty years or so — not a very willing and enthusiastic member by his own confession. He feels he has the right and the freedom to find fault with Sri Aurobindo, even while being a member of the ashram, enjoying all its facilities, being supported by all its infrastructure, working in an ashram department, eating at the common mess, and using its extensive sports facilities. As a matter of fact, he was a member of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives where he had access to classified unpublished documents which he used in his book, without permission from the Trust. He even claimed to be the founder of the Archives Department, which is completely false, as testified and clarified by the Ashram authorities themselves.

This was the situation when some alert members of the Ashram pointed out these transgressions and demanded strict action. These ashramites, loyal and faithful to their Guru, were immediately branded as “Fundamentalists” who were narrow minded, mean, uncivilized, violent and with a mob mentality. They were accused of not understanding the very important concept of Freedom of Speech, of not being tolerant and wide-minded. In short, they were considered fossils, petrified into fixity by the past. They should have been “rational, secular”, according to the grand concepts of the Western World. This is the background of the article by Richard Hartz which is just a continuation of the same old argument under the guise of an intellectual and rational justification.

It is true that Evolution is the result of two contrary forces: the force of progress towards the Future and the force of retardation by the Past. Sri Aurobindo states in the Record of Yoga that there is the Law of Gradual Change and the Law of Resistance. The Law of Resistance to change operates most effectively in the physical world. It is this law that ensures the permanence of forms. It is the cause of fixity and apparent stability of well- defined forms. But the law of gradual change initiates a slow, often imperceptible mutation. It is this force that makes possible the evolution of consciousness. It brings in complexity, completeness and a forward movement. Progress then becomes possible. But to the Yogin, who wants a rapid change of consciousness, it appears as if the law of resistance is much more powerful than the law of gradual change. Progress seems to be interminably slow!

Now it is contended in Richard’s article that the forward movement of Progress (let us call it ‘the Future’) is challenged always by the forces of the ‘Past’. As evolution proceeds, the past is littered with the corpses of outdated forms, ideas, concepts and morals. The Future is always throwing up new and better forms in all the fields, physical, vital, mental and spiritual.

The question, then, to be considered is what does the Future reject and what does the Past try to preserve. Is the Future always a linear forward movement? Does not the Future throw up forms that may be rejected later? Is the Past invariably full of dead, meaningless outdated forms? Does not the Past retain and preserve some ancient forms and carry them well into the Future? Is there no Sanatana Dharma?

A little consideration will show that all the movements mentioned above do occur and the evolutionary progress is never a simple linear movement. Progress is the result of complex and heterogeneous forces. It can be more accurately described as a spiral motion, with swift advances and perhaps more often, discouraging recoils. It is the recognition of this truth that Indian thought expressed in the concept of the Yugas: Satya, Dwapara, Treta and the Kali. There is a slow decline of values tending downwards and ending in a complete chaos from which emerges once again the Satya Yuga when Harmony, Light and Truth are established at a higher level. Then the cycle begins all over again.

Now to come down to brass tacks.

In Richard’s article, there is an implied, if not overt correlation, even an equation between the secular, the progressive, the rational mind and the Future. Again there is an equivalence implied or otherwise, between the retrograde forces of the Past and the irrational and religious. But here the religious is often extended into the legitimately spiritual! Another suggested notion is that Religion and Spirituality are faith-based and irrational and that Secularism and Rationality, devoid of Religion, belong to the Future. These understated implications are certainly not true. Religion and Spirituality are not the same, but there is no clear-cut line dividing the two trenchantly. They merge into one another and often overlap. Secondly, Spirituality need not contradict Rationality although it can go beyond into the Logic of the Infinite. Neither is Science free from faith. In fact the march of Science starts always from assumed axioms, postulates, hypotheses, which are conveniently thrown overboard or suitably enlarged to include new data. These Scientific postulates are in the nature of faith. Thus finally we are confronted with the one question relevant to The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. Are loyalty, faith, trust and devotion to the Guru elements of Fundamentalism? Are they things that the Future will throw out as inconsistent with Rationality and Progress? Or are they valuable principles to be retained eternally in spiritual life? Here again, it may be noted, that if one is not doing yoga, or one is not affiliated to any particular group or has not accepted any fixed line of sadhana, then one is perfectly at liberty to compare methods, analyse statements, and even find shortcomings in systems of yoga or philosophies. But here too a humble admission that the mind cannot understand things beyond itself should be made. The ignorant, limited, arrogant mind does not see this simple truth. A healthy attitude of “I do not know yet” is infinitely better than the insistence on false ideas or half-truths. But once someone has chosen by his own free will a particular discipline under a Guru, it must be followed with reverence, faith and implicit trust. This truth is not likely to be thrown out by the Future and trampled on the wayside. It is a well established principle in all yogas. The flouting of this very elementary rule can seriously damage the institution and also the erring individual.

Richard himself admits, or rather quotes Sri Aurobindo to say that Spirituality will ultimately triumph and even some lesser men are quoted to voice the opinion that it is most doubtful that Secularism will replace religion.

In defining Secularism, we may say that it is the attempt to keep religion out of all human activities and confine it to a small corner of life. An hour or so in the Church only on Sundays is enough of a concession to Religion, which should not meddle in other fields of life. This attitude towards religion is quite understandable in the context of European history. The testimony of history is there for all to see — the sale of indulgences, the Crusades, the burning of witches at the stake. But in India, the reigning idea has always been to see and do everything with reference to God. Sarvam Khalu Idam Brahman No festival, no social function, no important occasion is ever observed without bringing in the Divine. Thus Sri Aurobindo’s statement that Spirituality will spread and replace Secularism is most rational and inevitable. Let us remember that in the very first paragraph of the Life Divine, he asserts that the earliest concepts of God, Light, Freedom and Immortality will return after every banishment. We have seen this happen already in the past history of humanity.

Where does all this lead us to? Are we allowed to criticize the Guru of the path that we have chosen? What would be the fate of the institution if we start demolishing the very pillars and foundations of the structure? For that matter, is freedom of speech really absolute? Are there not natural barriers to it? Is malicious fault-finding tolerated in any organization?


Ranganath Raghavan

7 March 2010


Ranganath has already written on the concept of Fundamentalism on this site. Readers can go to the following web address to read his reply to "faithful" supporters of Peter Heehs:

http://www.thelivesofsriaurobindo.com/2009/05/ranganaths-reply-to-accusation-of.html

  ...full text...

Alok Pandey's Reply To Angiras

Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr Feignman!

[The following is Dr. Alok Pandey’s reply to "Angiras" (Richard Hartz's internet pseudonym), who published in the SCIY forum a lengthy and scathing criticism of the former’s letter to the Trustees regarding The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs. Dr. Alok, a practising psychiatrist in the Ashram Dispensary and a popular speaker on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s Integral Yoga, was one of the first persons to expose Heehs. His replies to Angiras are formatted flush left and are in normal type. Angiras’s criticism and Dr. Alok’s letter to the Trustees are indented and in italics.]
  ...full text...

Hail to "Angiras"!

[Editorial Note: "Angiras" is the pseudonym under which Richard Hartz has been writing on the SCIY website.]

The Science, Culture and Integral Yoga Website (SCIY: http://www.sciy.org/) has started serialising the letters of those who first brought to the attention of the Trustees of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram the highly controversial biography of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. One writer and commentator on the SCIY, under the pseudonym of Angiras, is determined to tear to shreds all criticism unfavourable to this biography. The first letter of complaint to the Trustees that he takes up for a point by point rebuttal begins with the following introductory note:

A document, headed “The Role of Peter Heehs in the Archives,” was circulated anonymously and is undated. It has been attributed on some websites to Ranganath Raghavan. Ranganath is reported to have given a letter (presumably this one) to the Trustees around the beginning of September 2008 along with Raman Reddy, the compiler of the “Extracts,” who is also a member of the Archives; “we” in the letter probably includes Raman. Ranganath and Raman are referred to below as R&R. The comments… are intended to correct misstatements and present an alternative viewpoint.

Now the first question I would like to ask Angiras is, “What was the necessity of coming down to such a personal level of argument? Why take names and target particular persons?” I can anticipate the knee-jerk reaction to my question, “Because you guys have attacked Peter Heehs in the same way!” I would then answer, “We attacked Heehs because he was the author of a book which went into the public domain on highly sensitive issues. And may I know why do you hide behind a pseudonym, as if you do not have the courage to reveal your identity to your readers on the Net?”

I begin to wonder who this Angiras could be, hiding such irrepressible virulence under the beautiful name of a Vedic Rishi. It has to be first of all someone interested in the Veda to have chosen this name. Secondly, he has to be a close colleague and a diehard supporter of Heehs at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives. Thirdly, he has to have access to entries in Cold Storage registers (which he mentions later in his rebuttal) to be able to allege that Ranganath and me are liars. Now I cannot think of anybody else but Richard Hartz! If I have indeed made a mistake, may God bless his soul! If it is him, which is more likely the case, I would advise him not to meddle with this controversy and be dragged down to this low level of argument, which can continue till the end of Time and Space. Barring a few points, most of them can be easily brushed aside and are the kind of “tit for tat” arguments, which you do not want to waste your precious time on. But what I would like to tell Angiras (or Richard Hartz?) is that this thankless industry hardly befits his scholarship, which until now has produced admirable articles in the Ashram’s monthly magazine, The Mother India.   ...full text...

Ranganath's reply to Angiras

[Editorial Note: "Angiras" is the pseudonym under which Richard Hartz has been writing on the SCIY website. The following is the reply of Ranganath Raghavan to “Angiras”. It may be recalled that Ranganath had written to the Trustees of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in September 2008. Richard Hartz, aka "Angiras", wrote a detailed commentary of this note in defence of Peter Heehs on the SCIY website. This is Ranganath's reply. The indented text in italics is from Angiras' article where each quote from Ranganath’s letter is followed by his comments. This is now followed by Ranganath’s reply to Angiras, which are in normal type (except when he again quotes Angiras) and without any indentation.]

Before I embark on the refutation of Angiras’ contentions, let me point out that I am not inclined to engage in long drawn-out arguments and counter-arguments, because it is a useless and fruitless exercise with no end to the process. This is therefore a one-time reply to straighten the twists in the article by Angiras. There will be no follow up on this.

The author of the “The Role of Peter Heehs in the Archives” stands firmly his ground without hesitation and can declare confidently that Angiras’ arguments are wrong in logic as well as in the interpretation of quotations from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

It is to be noted that all that follows in my reply applies only to a person who has opted to join a spiritual institution on his own free will, after having accepted as Guru the spiritual leader of the institution. By joining this institution, he voluntarily submits himself to its rules, regulations and conventions. It is a well known accepted principle of spiritual life that once having opted for a Guru, one accepts him as a representative of the Divine. If this psychological attitude is not possible for the aspirant, he then leaves the institution on his own and goes elsewhere. But opposition, disagreement, criticism of the Guru, even while living in the organisation and enjoying all its facilities, is not only unacceptable but can lead to spiritual hara-kiri.

  ...full text...