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.]
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The Theme of Evolution in Sri Aurobindo’s Writings—its Centennial Celebration

The theme of evolution was central to Sri Aurobindo’s thought almost throughout his life. We have a set of essays written by him in 1909 which first came out in the weekly review the Karmayogin edited by him when he was in Calcutta; this was after his acquittal in the Alipore Bomb Case filed against the revolutionaries, including himself, in 1908. It is quite appropriate that we should read these over again to celebrate the centenary year of their appearance. For details click here.

Along with these three selected pieces, from Harmony of Virtue, must also go the absolutely last set of articles Sri Aurobindo dictated in 1950; this was at the request of the Mother who wished him to contribute to the newly started periodical, the Bulletin of Physical Education. These last writings were later published, in January 1952, in the book entitled The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth. The most important thing we become aware of in these revelations is the arrival of what Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light, the mind of the physical receiving the Supramental. It is this Mind of Light which governs the race of beings who provide a link between the Mental and the Gnostic beings,—the Intermediate Race.

If we do see a change in the writings of these two periods, separated by forty years, then it is not a change or shift of any kind in his central concepts related to the principles and methods of evolution, evolution which is more a collective change of consciousness, a change pertaining to spiritual evolution than to the evolution of form. The difference is due to the great yogic work that had gone towards the realization of the life divine upon earth, the difficult and untiring yoga-tapasya of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. To view it in any other manner, other than an occult-yogic work, howsoever appealing it might be to the rational mind, is to miss the entire purport of the evolutionary objective itself. One might please oneself with theories and concepts, but that would avail hardly anything if the day’s job is to make the evolutionary possibility a realised certainty.

Precisely in it lies the convincing uniqueness of Sri Aurobindo’s vision and work, and it is that we must celebrate during the centenary year, celebrate the first appearance of the theme in 1909.

Belonging to the writings of this early period, we include here a relevant record Sri Aurobindo made in his jottings of yogic experiences, dated March 1914. These jottings or records were more for his personal use than for publication. But these have now been published in book form under the title Record of Yoga. We do not know if Sri Aurobindo meant these to be made public at all, as we understand that the heap of papers containing these details had on top of it a note, marking it as ‘confidential’.

Perhaps the best thing would have been to just keep them as proper archival documents for studies by the interested individual researchers of his works. Which means that, while reading these, we must be extremely careful about the parameters that were associated with them at the time—we should not apply the demanding inflexible criteria of academic or professional scholarship to them, for they do not belong to the mental domain at all; we must only try to enter into the spirit of the occult knowledge they contain.

And what a treasure-mine it is, shining with luminous details, containing many a gem of the divine preciousness! When Sri Aurobindo says, for instance, that the Sun is only a subordinate star of the great Agni, Mahavishnu, in whom is centred the Bhu, the Earth, he is actually talking of knowledge of another world altogether. It will be a sheer travesty of this knowledge, as much as of the knowledge obtained by our present-day science, if we mix them up. One should be extremely careful in reading such details, actually meant for advanced yogi-occultists, and that could well be the reason why Sri Aurobindo might not have approved the publication of his records.

It is rather unfortunate that this important perspective is missed in the present publicity given to the Record of Yoga. All that we can now say is that the Record is meant for the seekers of the occult truth-details and they must qualify themselves before picking them up for study which should be more in the direction of extending the investigation of the occult working of nature, that functioning in this vast domain of space and time, time comprising of its three operative divisions. Let us hope that this will be well borne in mind before reference is made to the secrets of Record of Yoga.

~ RYD   ...full text...

About Immersed Attention and Revelatory Speech

The biographer of Sri Aurobindo applies contemporary standards to judge the past. Even if we grant such a stand to be valid, how can the past ever measure up to the present? But perhaps this conflict of two regimes of time has to be resolved elsewhere, particularly when the spirit’s expression comes from the timeless freedom and felicity of speech. If the whole approach is to pander to the demands of the quick audience,—and that would mean to become dishonest—then it is the case of misapplication of literary criticism to another mode of writing.

At Sri Aurobindo’s Prose Style we’ve a detailed discussion of the seven modes of his writings. There is also a comment about the maturing up of his writings with experience. But nowhere do we notice the aspect of Philip Davis’s “immersed attention” in its critical appraisal, a thing which is perfectly understandable because a spiritual person must be seen with some degree of spiritual perception, particularly a Yogi par excellence. Otherwise we simply trivialise all his work, as is done by the biographer of the Lives of Sri Aurobindo .

Let us look into it from a few points of view. Firstly, if Philip Davis is a present-day writer-critic, then we fail to understand how we can apply his criteria to what Sri Aurobindo wrote several decades ago—unless we decide to scrutinise and check the entire past from the perspective of present formulations. There is also the doubt if the theory of "immersed attention" has credibility at all in the literary circles, if it is taken seriously by the present-day authors-critics. Might be the non-cognisance of such theories of criticism by the upstarts and the tyros will not be respected by the professionals and the academics, but that could as well amount to mixing up of the issues which belong to different domains of expression—speech promoting human comprehension and speech entering into it with another power of knowledge and revelation. We cannot compare, for instance, the statement-speech of a business executive with the speech of a hero-general or that of a prophet of nationalism, of human values promoting freedom and self-determination. On the literary side, the author’s identity in the Formalistic style is generally kept aside and what counts are the contents in his writings; the intuitive-creative element is shortened or gets subdued in comparison with the discursive; here the mysterious subjectivity aspect no longer wearies the critics. But it is not necessarily or primarily the style which marks Sri Aurobindo as one coming from Cambridge, if there is the Cantabrigian stamp on it—note that Sri Aurobindo has been listed as one of the alumni of the Cambridge University. What counts is the whole approach towards things and matters; it is the approach of a well-prepared well-developed personality that must be seen. Sri Aurobindo enters into the field of life with a distinct individuality of his own, and it is that which really is important.

Surely we do understand and also somewhat admire the commitment of the academics to their line of approach, their faithfulness to the avowed profession. But that leaves a problem. How does one cognise and appreciate, in fact more than that, benefit from the style and language of a yogi who brings things from the "pure realms of gold" that are not accessible to us, the utterance of a yogi with its authority of expression, one who has the power to make things invisible visible to our developed faculty of seeing? It must be borne in mind that the dignity and profundity of certain writings have the mark of the unfading, the eternal style,—witness the Veda, the Upanishad, the Gita or for that matter King James Bible. Do we dismiss them by saying 'dated'? And then, as Sri Aurobindo had written apropos of Savitri, one has to wait for the arrival of the right type of a readership. I suppose there is also a deep connection between depth of thought and the wideness of expression. If we are not in tune with the substance, the contents, then the mould of the language looks clumsy. Intuitive writings have both together, fused in a most harmonious manner. If we have to put it differently, the problem is between spiritual writings and secular writings, they operating in different domains.

The biographer of Sri Aurobindo applies contemporary standards to judge the past. Even if we grant such a stand to be valid, how can the past ever measure up to the present? But perhaps this conflict of two regimes of time has to be resolved elsewhere, particularly when the spirit’s expression comes from the timeless freedom and felicity of speech. If the whole approach is to pander to the demands of the quick audience,—and that would mean to become dishonest—then it is the case of misapplication of literary criticism to another mode of writing.

The basic issue is perhaps connected with two modes of expression: academic-literary and spiritual-revelatory. Their styles have to be different and the criteria of one will not apply to the other. One is human potential perhaps going towards the other, the higher; the other is a possibility of expression that can enter into ours and enrich it in several ways. How does one convey this difference to the academia? Is it possible at all? If the answer is "No", then no dialogue can be held between the two. But, finally, it is not the question of convincing the one or the other; it is a question of feeling—if a piece of writing elevates our spirit, promotes our truer deeper aesthetic enjoyment, creates around us and within us an atmosphere of beauty and joy. These might be subjective criteria, but if there is the evolutionary urge to step into the supra-rational mode of living and progress, to go beyond the small and the puny and the immediate, to exceed ourselves is the greatness of the aspiring spirit and the invitation is to accept it.

On one occasion, when KD Sethna was living at the rue Fransçois Martin, Goutam Ghosal told him that he disliked the shorter biography by Hees, especially his literary observations; he asked Sethna what he thought about it. Sethna said, and he distinctly remembers it, "I asked Peter not to comment on the literary merits or demerits of Sri Aurobindo's work... he is no expert there." Goutam Ghosal concurs fully with Sethna.

Let me add a comment apropos of this. Sethna (Amal Kiran) gave me his copy of Peter Heehs’s book Sri Aurobindo: A Brief Biography and I’m thankful to him for this. I value it very much both as a present from him and for some of the important footnotes written by him in pencil. I’ll refer to just one, pertaining to a remark by Heehs on p. 109. He says, Sri Aurobindo “found Aristotle ‘exceedingly dry’ but admires Plato, whose Symposium he used as a model for his Harmony of Virtue. Amal’s footnote has the following: “The Harmony of Virtue, though archetypally based on the Platonic system of dialogue, seems actually to be more an independent exercise in the dialogue made brilliant by Oscar Wilde. There is even a reference to Wilde in it.” But all that we can say is, wild are the ways of the author of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo!

This comment presenting Sri Aurobindo’s prose style appeared originally at the Mirror of Tomorrow. It is preceded by several other comments in the context of the article entitled This Author must have been from Cambridge.

~ RYD   ...full text...

Sri Aurobindo's Sevenfold Prose Style

Sri Aurobindo’s Prose Style by Goutam Ghosal is one of the professional studies which examines the characteristics and nuances as much as influences and traditions given to the creation of newer possibilities of expression. It is not in an isolationist manner that one would admire his uniqueness, but by holding a universality which can become spiritually wide and comprehensive, and rewarding, that one might be able to enter into the vastness of its exoteric as much as its esoteric spirit. Ghosal says in his preface that “Sri Aurobindo never wrote like a scholar… [even] when he was a real scholar. Tradition formed his outline, the novelty came from experience. The more he matured the more he depended on his own experience. …his prose is of a literary artist with a mind of exceptional calibre.” It is a pity that the recent biography The Lives of Sri Aurobindo is unable to enter into its immensity and feel the charm of its ambiance, the presence of the spirit pervading it; not only that, it hurriedly and disparagingly speaks of it, Sri Aurobindo’s prose style, having problems in structuring itself for the modern mind to appreciate and understand it, to value the contents. But there is in his prose style, says in the foreword VK Gokak the eminent literary critic of yesteryears, “meticulousness and virtuosity possessing the power, charm and propriety” that stand out distinctly. In this author must have been from Cambridge we have a large number of examples presenting Sri Aurobindo’s prose writings belonging to different periods of time and covering diverse subjects. These should be sufficient to dismiss the oblique manner of looking at Sri Aurobindo as an author, one possessing exceptional power of expression which is lucid, powerful, musical, full of harmonious coherences climbing to the sheer inspired and inevitable mode of expression, the revelatory speech itself. It is in that context we reproduce in the following a chapter from Goutam Ghosal’s study, lending weight to what the perceptive and discerning see in Sri Aurobindo’s writings. Ghosal himself is an academic and carries authority being the professor and head of the English Department at Vishwa Bharati University, Santiniketan. Here is a remarkable chapter, chapter nine, entitled Style in the Major Works: Fusion of Myths and Seven Kinds of Style in Sri Aurobindo’s Prose Style published in 1990. ~ RYD

Refer to the following post for fuller details:

Sri Aurobindo's Prose Style
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Sri Aurobindo was unable to restructure his articles

Regarding his writings in the Arya, our biographer says that Sri Aurobindo was “unable to restructure” his articles constrained as he was by the publication schedule of a monthly periodical. There wasn’t scope to redo those compositions as they had to be rushed to the press. In other words, Sri Aurobindo left them in that raw form as they were typed out. If we go by our standard modes of assessment of writings, this observation might sound perfectly acceptable and there should be every reason to question the style that was adopted by the author. But the question is: can one really apply such considerations to a Yogi’s writings, one who says that he received all that he had written in a state of silent mind? Either we dismiss the claim, of that ‘silent mind’ by calling it humbug or nonsensical or funny or absurd, not worth paying attention to; or else we might pause for a while and ask ourselves the question if that could really mean something special to a spiritual person. In any case, much later when Sri Aurobindo was revising the Arya chapters for publication in a book form, he had no previous constrains of a periodical. Yet his style did not differ much from the earlier one.

As an example of constrains of a periodical, the biographer cites The Synthesis of Yoga in which “one part is too long, another too short.” But there are, in his opinion, other criticisms also, criticisms which could be levelled at the entire Arya writings. He says: “The style is involved and, by modern standards, frequently obscure. Like other writers trained in classical tradition, Aurobindo loved the periodic sentence, in which clause follows clause, until sometimes the point of the statement is lost in a maze of qualifications. He was the last generation to write like that in English. The twenty-first century reader of Dryden, Ruskin, Aurobindo, Virginia Woolf, or continental writers such as Michel Foucault, must develop what British literary critic Philip Davis calls ‘immersed attention’ to be able to profit from this style.”

But what has Sri Aurobindo common with these three authors, that he should have been grouped with them? Dryden’s greatest achievements were his satires; Ruskin was concerned with social justice and influenced the formation of Labour movement; Virginia Woolf as a novelist experimented with the stream-of-consciousness carrying psychological and emotional motives. In great contrast to all this, Sri Aurobindo was presenting his spiritual realizations and the associated mystical-intuitive metaphysics in a language that had substance and rhythm and the power of vision coming from the corresponding domains of expression, the beauty and the harmony which belong to the worlds of the spirit. It is a mistake to put these disparate things together which only goes to show, more than the sheer insensitivity of the author, his total lack of understanding of both. We should consider ourselves lucky that, he does not put together Harry Potter and The Life Divine.

~ RYD   ...full text...

A Review by Raman Reddy of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs

Peter Heehs has a crisp and racy style; he comes straight to the essential points and there is a skilful weaving of historical data which hitherto has never been done in a biography of Sri Aurobindo. But that is about all that can be appreciated in this book, for he sets the ball rolling in the wrong direction right from the Preface. The reader is soon stunned at the innate hostility behind his clever presentation, or rather, misrepresentation of facts.

He says in his Preface that he is against hagiography and expresses a strong dislike for the literature produced by his disciples in admiration for Sri Aurobindo; the result is that he swings to the other extreme and often indulges in open or covert hostility towards him. He takes the example of two photographs of Sri Aurobindo, one dated circa 1915-1916 (this is the beautiful photograph of Sri Aurobindo placed in the Meditation Hall downstairs in the Ashram main building) and the other dated 1915, and compares the retouching of the first with hagiography, which, he says, always distorts historical truth. He finds that “the dark, pockmarked skin, sharp features, and undreamy eyes” of the second one make it “more true to Sri Aurobindo” than the first one, which has been heavily retouched with “the result that the face has no character”.[1] Now these are tough statements to digest and one wonders why he is so delighted at the pockmarks! But then, you find out later that this is part of the methodology he follows, finding first the most damaging, negative evidence on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and then weighing it half-heartedly against flimsy positive evidence in the name of objectivity. In doing so, he carefully avoids the highly positive evidence which has been used until now by the devotees of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. You might not even notice this clever balancing of evidence in favour of the so-called academic view of spirituality, which generally considers Sri Aurobindo’s experiences to be hallucinations or psychotic delusions. Or the so-called academic view of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy which finds it not logical enough, so that “most members of the philosophical profession … would be loath to admit him to their club.”[2] And before you realise the insidious poison he is injecting through these harmless discussions, he has given a certificate of sanity to Sri Aurobindo! After discussing at length the possibility of Sri Aurobindo inheriting a tinge of lunacy from his mother, he says, that all said and done, Sri Aurobindo was “eminently sane”.[3] It is clear enough that plain devotion and sincere admiration for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is anathema to Heehs, who is at heart a rebel. In order to steer clear of hagiography, he has replaced it with hostility. Objectivity is a mere pretence to discuss only the “pockmarks” visible in Sri Aurobindo’s outer life, and he uses even a magnifying glass to discover the hidden warts and moles.   ...full text...

Alok Pandey's comment on Heehs (27.03.2009)

Heehs may be good at collecting data but is not a good writer

But it is not from European scholars that we must expect a solution of the Mahabharata problem. They have no qualifications for the task except a power of indefatigable research and collocation; and in dealing with the Mahabharata even this power seems to have deserted them. It is from Hindu scholarship renovated and instructed by contact with European that the attempt must come. Indian scholars have shown a power of detachment and disinterestedness and a willingness to give up cherished notions under pressure of evidence which are not common in Europe. They are not, as a rule, prone to the Teutonic sin of forming a theory in accordance with their prejudices and then finding facts or manufacturing inferences to support it.

When, therefore, they form a theory on their own account, it has usually some clear justification and sometimes an overwhelming array of facts and solid arguments behind it. The German scholarship possesses infinite capacity of acuteness, labour, marred by an impossible and fantastic imagination, the French of inference marred by insufficient command of facts, while in soundness of judgment Indian sane scholarship has both.[1]

Yes, so very true, though one may substitute the word European for a mind bound to material forms and heavily dependent upon sense data for its conclusions – the physical mind perhaps, a part of which is there in all of us but becomes a real trouble when we deal with spiritual things. Certain persons – Indians, Europeans, Americans, Asians – have it prominent in them. And while it is good within its limits and for the purpose of organising outer things, it can become a serious difficulty when we turn to spiritual things. That is why one needs both types of human beings in any group activity, not just organisers but also thinkers, not only those who can think dispassionately but also those who can feel deeply. It is a lack of this balance that is reflected in the collectivity mentioned.

Also the problem is that people confuse one kind of brilliance for another and think that, if an individual is good at one activity, he must necessarily be good at another. Or else, they simply don't bother and let things run their course taking shelter under the Mother's Name as if it were a shield for complacency. Thus, for example PH [Peter Heehs] may be good at collecting data and filing it, but to believe that he can be, by that virtue, a good or even an honest writer is so absurd. Unfortunately this is exactly what got into his head as one can see so very clearly from the book [The Lives of Sri Aurobindo]. He seems to be judging everything, from English prose to English poetry, to Psychology and Philosophy, on to Yoga and Spirituality and God knows what!!!! It is one thing to collect data from dusty files and quite another to make sense out of them and give each a just place. A mind too much dependent upon the externalities of life is too crude and gross to understand, let alone comment and opine about subtler things:

A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds
For ever stooped to hammer fact and form.
Absorbed and cabined in external sight,
It takes its stand on Nature's solid base.
A technician admirable, a thinker crude [2]

Yes, Sri Aurobindo's works seems to be handled by technicians and academicians rather than by responsible men who can think and feel deeply and have care and concern for spiritual life. But this is what happens when truth is seen only as an outer fact and not an all-encompassing Reality.

Alok Pandey
27 March 2009

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[1] Sri Aurobindo, The Harmony of Virtue, SABCL, Volume 3, Pages 180-181

[2] Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, CWSA, Volume 33, p 245
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In Defence of the Extracts

In Defence of the “Extracts from The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs”

Part 1

[I start by giving a brief history of the Extracts for the benefit of the reader who is not familiar with the circumstances in which they were compiled.

The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs was published by the Columbia University Press in New York in April 2008. A couple of months later, a few copies of the book turned up at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, of which Peter Heehs is a long standing inmate. Heehs, who works as an editor at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives and Research Library, had taken many years to write this biography. But the book could hardly be said to have been written in the spirit of a disciple and inmate of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, which is a spiritual institution and not a debating centre where you can question its very founder. A murmur of protest arose when a review of the book was published in Auroville Today in August 2008. Soon there was a demand and curiosity to know what exactly was objectionable in the book. There was the practical question of whether the book could be put up for sale in the Ashram’s official bookshop and the more serious consideration of taking administrative action against the author. It was under these circumstances that the Extracts were compiled, so that the reader at once knew the worst that Heehs had written. The compiler never intended them to be representative extracts of the book in order to get a brief introduction to it.

The Extracts caught on and before long most of the Ashramites were seething with anger, for, all said and done, they were Heehs’s own words, and he had dared to denigrate Sri Aurobindo in his own Ashram. Had he written the same book as an outsider and not as a member of the Ashram, nobody would have cared for it. But Heehs had written in his position as a senior editor and researcher of the Ashram Archives, which is the repository of the most valuable documents written by Sri Aurobindo. Not only was there a lack of basic allegiance to the institution that had fed him for 37 years and facilitated his research in every way, but his cursory dismissals of Sri Aurobindo’s works and denigrating statements on him were detrimental to the very spiritual well-being of the Ashram. People began circulating the Extracts by making Xeroxes, sending emails and posting them on the Net, and soon the whole Sri Aurobindonian community was convulsed with waves of anger. Thenceforth the discussions that followed between Heehs’s critics and supporters often referred back to the Extracts, as still not many copies of the book were available.

Around this time a strange theory was put forward by Heehs’ supporters who said, “Yes, if you read only the Extracts, you get a bad impression of the book. But read the whole book, and you will not feel that the book is so bad. In fact, you will not only start appreciating it, but find it wonderful.” Heehs himself argued that the Extracts were decontextualised and provided a corrected version of them. He filled in the footnotes, phrases and sentences passed over in the Extracts and claimed that he had restored the original content to its full glory. The objectionable portions suddenly became unpalatable but true statements on Sri Aurobindo and his denigration came to be termed as the human side of the Avatar. Heehs’s unwarranted criticism became academic objectivity and Sri Aurobindo’s disciples had to be taught the superiority of his intellectual assessment over what they felt deeply in their hearts about the greatness of their Master. It is then that I felt it was necessary to write a defence of the Extracts, which have so well exposed the mischief behind Heehs’s biography. For mischief it is, and there is no point in saying that he insulted the Master only a few times, or arguing that there is plenty of good research in his book in order to spare him the severe reprobation he deserves.]   ...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.

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Orissa Govt tells High Court to ban Heehs' book

Orissa Govt. told HC to ban publication of biography on Aurobindo
Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Report by Orissadiary correspondent, Cuttack:
In a significant development Orissa Government told the Orissa High Court that they would take immediate steps to ban the publication and circulation of the controversial book titled ’The Life of Sri Aurobindo’ written by US writer Peter Hasse. Along with State Government, Central government on Wednesday told the High Court the same in affidavit. In their respective counter affidavits filed in HC, the State and the Union governments admitted that the biography contains defamatory and perverse comments on Sri Aurobindo’s character, life, writings and thoughts, which are bound to affect the sentiments of lakhs of the spiritual leader’s followers. The affidavits came in the wake of a PIL filed in HC by a Balasore-based woman Gitanjali Bhattacharya seeking ban on the publication and circulation of the book in India.


Express News Service
First Published : 05 Mar 2009 03:58:00 AM IST
Last Updated : 05 Mar 2009 04:12:31 PM IST

CUTTACK: The Orissa Government is all set to ban the controversial biography ‘The Lives of Sri Aurobinda’, by Peter Heehs. The Government would invoke Section 95 of CrPc declaring the book, published by the Columbia University Press in USA and to be released by Penguin in India, forfeited on charges of containing defamatory content on the revolutionary and spiritual leader.

This has been informed to the Orissa High Court by Deputy Secretary of Home on the basis of an investigation conducted by the Crime Branch, CID wing of the State police. The CB after examining the content has suggested for action under Section 95 of CrPC to prevent circulation of such defamatory material. The publication and circulation of the book would outrage the religious feelings of the citizens of India and also attract several penal provisions under Sections 153 A, 292 and 295 A of Indian Penal Code, the Government submitted before the Court.

The HC earlier had imposed restrictions on publication of the book on the basis of a petition filed by one Gitanjali JB of Balasore. The division bench comprising Justice IM Quddusi and Justice SC Parija has now allowed withdrawal of the writ as the Government was taking action to prevent publication and circulation of the book. Gitanjali had alleged that the book was blasphemous and cast aspersions on the character and integrity of Sri Aurobinda, who is revered by billions in the country. Heehs, a founder of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives, has allegedly made defamatory comments on the personality of Sri Aurobinda pointing that his claims to spiritual experience and relations were questionable and irrelevant.   ...full text...

Defamation of Sri Aurobindo's character and Heehs' impersonation as founder of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives

An Examination of Larry Seidlitz’s Defence of Heehs’s Biography of Sri Aurobindo

Part 1

Larry Seidlitz’s defence of Heehs’s biography of Sri Aurobindo is rather lengthy and boring. It corroborates the decontextualisation theory put forward by Heehs by applying it faithfully in example after example, page after page, until you go to sleep. Now the word decontextualisation may be of recent origin but the practice of it is very ancient. It began, as the Mother recounted, with the appearance of the original Four Asuras separating from their divine counterparts. Love, Ananda, Truth and Life became, respectively, Hatred, Suffering, Falsehood and Death when they separated themselves from the Divine, or rather, decontextualised themselves from the larger context of the Divine, in which they were all united. References to decontextualisation of late have been more in the mundane realm of cricket. Ricky Ponting, the Australian captain, exonerated himself of the critical comments he had passed on Gavaskar in his book by the same argument—all this to say, there is no big deal about it, despite the academic pretentiousness with which it has been presented. Let me take Larry’s first and most important example: Sri Aurobindo’s “madness”. He writes: http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2008/11/26/3995462.html )

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