What Sri Aurobindo represents in
the world’s history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive
action direct from the Supreme.
~ The Mother
(14 February 1961)
The Technology of Promotionalism
Peter Heehs’s Lives of Sri Aurobindo is a recent
arrival in the thriving genre of biographies and professes itself to be founded
on researched material. It essentially treats the subject as a human person,
one in our nature, and not really as an exceptional yogi or a spiritual
stalwart, and in the least as an incarnate. The book has been recently
published by the Columbia University Press and appears to be rough on the
sentiments of the devotees of the Mother and the Master. The author claims
himself to be a meticulous professional historian and wants to present the life,
howsoever remarkable it be, strictly as it should emerge from the documentary
material.
The approach is, holds the author, firmly rational and is grounded in the
principles of research, eschewing goody-goody emotionalism of the hagiographic
presentations of such themes. This may have certain merit, free of easy
shallowness, but there are things also that lie far beyond the reach of such
scientification of occult and spiritual matters. In fact, it should be
axiomatically understood that it is not possible for reason to grasp the issues
connected with them, although to some extent it could open to its own deeper intuition;
this is perfectly true, for the obvious reason that “things occult and
spiritual are never on the surface for men to see them”, for reason with its
limitations to enter into them. On the other hand, with a degree of spiritual
experience and realization, there is a chance of presenting them to the rational
mind as well. This spiritual experience and realization should come first
before one attempts to speak about those who live in the richness of the
spirit, in its multi-dimensionality and in its multi-glowing wisdom and widenes.
If this basic fact is not recognized, then the work will fail to carry in it
the substance or essential conviction of the higher principles. Not only that;
such a work could be at once dismissed as an inchoate or garbled attempt,
dismissed without any further consideration—because of the wrong premises with
which it begins, because it smacks more of “I’m wiser than you all, the
gullible, that you utterly lack rational faculty, the precious rational faculty
and capacity, your incapability to detach yourself from your object of adoration."
Such unfortunately seems to be the case of the much touted Lives of Sri
Aurobindo brought out with great fanfare, which is of course a part of the
modern publication dynamics where the author is commissioned to write what the
publisher wants him to write. Truth, the spiritual truth then gets sacrificed
on the altar of promotionalism. And it is a peculiar game, a very bad queer
game in which the more the writer becomes diabolical the more gets promoted
promotionalism. But we need not fall quick prey to all this full-size
ballyhooing if we are established in the spiritual principles that guide and
govern our aspiration and that bring fulfilment to it, the decisive factor
being transparent sincerity and devotion in the sense of commitment to one’s
persuasive or compelling ideals. So, without getting impressed by the
“gunny-sack” scouring of facts of pseudo-rationalism, we could depend more upon
the intuition and the inner conviction in matters of spiritual personalities.
This need not carry any guilty feeling in us; rather it is that which will
strengthen our refined perceptions and subtleties of understanding.
The Aspect of Avatarhood
The very first thing, though difficult for the modern mind,
that we must properly understand and recognize, and acknowledge, regarding Sri
Aurobindo is the very aspect of his Avatarhood without which it will be a
frustrating effort to speak anything worthwhile about him. If it is too much
for the modern mind to accept this, it can then as well leave him aside, though
dazzled it might get with his remarkably vast achievements in the intellectual
or creative fields. The Mother proclaimed a number of times Sri Aurobindo
coming as an Avatar, and she had no hesitation about it, never. Unlike Sri
Krishna, he wouldn’t declare himself to be one,—simply because of our tendency
to sentimenalise or romanticize the matter. We know how many times, and in how
many ways, Nirodbaran wanted to extract it from him, but he always dodged
it—finding an escape route from the nature of the questions put to him. So also
Nagin-bhai could not succeed in his attempts—although to him he made a little
greater revelation than that.
Young Nagin once asked him: “We
believe that both you and the Mother are Avatars. But is it only in this life
that both of you have shown your divinity? It is said that you and she have
been on the earth constantly since its creation. What were you doing during
your previous lives?” In response to this direct question Sri Aurobindo
simply replied: “Carrying on the evolution.” In answer to another question he
said: “The Avatar is necessary when a special work is to be done and in crises
of evolution. The Avatar is a special manifestation while for the rest of the
time it is the Divine working within the ordinary human limits as a Vibhuti.”
Did Sri Aurobindo come to do any “special work”? If yes, it should settle the
matter. In the case of Sri Aurobindo “as a decisive action direct from the
Supreme”, as the Mother revealed to us, his coming is in the context of this
dark and dumb inconscient creation opening itself for the supramental
manifestation, the arrival of the new race, the gnostic or supramental race.
He—and of course she—came for that and whatever he and she did they did for
that.
The Mother describing Sri Aurobindo’s Avataric Work
Let us quickly gather a few quotations from the Mother
describing the nature of Sri Aurobindo’s Avataric work, the special work he had
come to do:
·
Sri Aurobindo came to
tell the world of the beauty of the future that must be realised. He came to
give not a hope but a certitude of the splendour towards which the world moves.
The world is not an unfortunate accident, it is a marvel which moves towards
its expression. The world needs the certitude of the beauty of the future. And
Sri Aurobindo has given that assurance. (27 November 1971)
·
Sri Aurobindo came to
tell us how to find Thee and how to serve Thee. Grant that in this year of his
centenary we may truly understand what he has taught us and in all sincerity
put it into practice. (6 December 1971)
·
Sri Aurobindo came
upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world and not
merely did he announce this manifestation but embodied also in part the
supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for
manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to study all that he has told us
and endeavour to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new
manifestation. This gives life its real sense and will help us to overcome all
obstacles. Let us live for the new creation and we shall grow stronger and
stronger by remaining young and progressive. (30 January 1972)
·
Sri Aurobindo came on
earth from the Supreme to announce the manifestation of a new race and the new
world, the Supramental. Let us prepare for it in all sincerity and eagerness.
(15 August 1972)
·
Man is the creation of
yesterday. Sri Aurobindo came to announce the creation of tomorrow: the coming
of the supramental being. (15 August 1972)
·
From the spiritual
point of view,
The Difficulty of the Rational Mind
There is a tendency in the rational mind to dismiss these
utterances as sheer myths which have no verifiable basis, these utterances
meant for the naive and the trusting. It is maintained that there is abundant
devotionalism in them, bordering on the stereotyped religion and religious
practices, and therefore these could be, in fact should be unceremoniously set
aside. Even if coming from the Mother, these are considered by this rational
mind not only to be patronizing but are treated as an utter act of stupid faith-religion-fundamentalism-politics.
In the sequel, quickly enough, fundamentalism gets linked up with Sri Aurobindo
himself, something that unpardonably accuses him for what he never was. This
mind goes even further and says conceitedly that the whole business of
patronization was initiated by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother themselves, they
working together. They gave darshans, they gave blessings, they encouraged
disciples bowing to them—and the disciples thoughtlessly succumbing to all that
as if they had nothing of their own.
But a terrible confusion arises when we mix up matters of
the individual’s spiritual growth and progress with the aspects of wider
collective or organizational growth and progress, its intricate issues in their
own dynamics. For instance, an individual’s faith is an individual’s faith and nothing
can be said about it, nothing perhaps need also be said or done in that respect
which otherwise will amount to the rationalist’s fundamentalism. And the beauty
is, a true seeker of the spirit will always get the right guidance and will move
forward depending upon the sincerity and intensity of his aspiration,—and there
is no doubt about it. The collective,—that has been ever a difficult charge. If
the individual’s faith and belief are imposed on the unthinking collective,
then it would amount to unacceptable fundamentalism. Has Sri Aurobindo ever
done that?
There are certain cosmic fundamentals and they are seen coming
into operation in one way or the other through the history of entire time. Man
as an evolved being in his fullness always strives for
Wisdom-Strength-Harmony-Perfection and, as long as the balance is maintained,
he acquires the collective gain. But quite often that gain proves precarious,
Nature perhaps wanting him to move from one gain to another gain. The opening
paragraph of The Life Divine,
humanity’s formula for growth announced on 15 August 1914, sets the entire
tone: “The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts and, as it
seems, his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation,—for it survives the longest
periods of scepticism and returns after every banishment,—is also the highest
which his thought can envisage. It manifests itself in the divination of
Godhead, the impulse towards perfection, the search after pure Truth and
unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality. The ancient dawns of human
knowledge have left us their witness to this constant aspiration; today we see
a humanity satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis of the
externalities of Nature preparing to return to its primeval longings. The earliest
formula of Wisdom promises to be its last,—God, Light, Freedom, Immortality.”
Can Integral Yoga become a Religion?
It is with this brief background we could perhaps look into
Richard Carlson’s otherwise excellent paper on Integral Ideology: An Ideological
Genealogy of Integral Theory and
Practice posted at http://www.integralworld.net/carlson.html. It covers the following topics: Fundamentalism,
Neo-Liberalism, Neo-Conservatism, Gebser’s Sociology, and Integral Theories. In
the course of his discussion he raises a funny question vis-à-vis the Integral
Yoga, if it has become a religion. Perhaps this question is irrelevant for a
spiritual practitioner and it could simply be ignored. However, to consider it
as a part of the regular Hindu rites and rituals is rather becoming unfair to
it. But the queer amazing aspect of it, the suggestion that it was Sri
Aurobindo himself who encouraged it is preposterous! Let us look into the
relevant part of the Integral Ideology-article, the part referring to
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Here it is:
… Although Sri Aurobindo, the founder of
Integral Yoga formally eschewed couching his yoga in religion nevertheless,
religious practices crept into the practices of its followers. It is in fact
the transference of Hindu religious practices on to Integral Yoga which has
facilitated a fascination of some of his followers with the fundamentalist
rhetoric of today’s militant Hindu nationalism (Hinduvta).
Some of his writings from the period in which he was a revolutionary leader of
the Indian Independence movement have been historically decontextualized and
appropriated by various fractions of Hindu nationalist in support of their
ethnically cleansed view of
In many respects Hinduism for Sri Aurobindo was an indigenous resistance
practice to the foreign occupation and value systems of the Raj. In his
writings from this early period one finds the identification of the Hindu
concept of sanātana dharma—eternal religion—with the self-determination
of
If there are distinct themes in his socio-political writing, concerning the
current epoch, one of the strongest is the call for
Sri Aurobindo advocated a secular democratic government which would allow the
infinite diversity of the nations voices to be heard. After 1913 until his
death in 1950 he renounced sectarian religious practice and no longer
associated his yoga with Hinduism, claiming its practice transcended any
conventional religion.
In fact a close reading of his major socio-political works such as The Human
Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity demonstrates his abhorrence of
theocracy and fundamentalism. In some places he fervently exclaims that it is
better to be an atheist than a fanatical follower of religion.
Sri Aurobindo's life was in many ways heroic, his knowledge was both complex
and encyclopedic. He viewed his own accomplishments as the result of the
efforts of a man aspiring for transformation and transparency to the grace
received from above. He did however, speak of his yogic consort Mirra Alfassa
(the Mother) as an incarnation of the Divine in its form of Shakti. For her
part the Mother referred to Sri Aurobindo as an Avatar (divine incarnation).
While it can be said that they both did not actively seek worshipers and were
kind to their followers, it can also be said that they did not reject the
worship and deification of their devotees.
It is one thing to believe that in a universe in which consciousness is
delineated by various graduations, that on some planes of consciousness,
expressions of devotion through the articulation of feelings (bhakti) are
entirely proper, it is quite another not to comprehend—especially when one
otherwise advocates for secular polity and eschewing religious dogma—that some
followers will become attached to the forms of worship and inevitably confuse
levels of consciousness, as well as secular and sacred, subcultural and
cultural, theocratic and democratic values.
While claiming to disassociate his yoga from Hinduism many of the practices of
the Sri Aurobindo Ashram during his lifetime (and certainly today) in fact
mimic traditional forms of Hinduism. These practices include performance of an
audience with the Guru (darshan) and prostration at the feet of the Guru.
Moreover, it appears that these practices were deliberately cultivated to
satisfy the psychological needs of Indian followers by preserving their religious
traditions, because in the words of the Mother: “It gave them the fullness they
needed”. (Heehs’s Lives of Sri Aurobindo 2008, p. 356). Even if uttered with the best of intention
this statement is absolutely patronizing. The fact that the Mother was French
makes matters somewhat more problematic. Couldn't Indian followers also adapt
to a yoga that eschewed religious practice or were they too unsophisticated?
In short, while the rituals cultivated in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram are indeed
indigenous religious practices of
In general fundamentalism of any kind may also include fascistic orientations,
chief among these is blind allegiance to a charismatic leader. Participation in
an authoritarian culture also involves certain psychological orientations which
favor hierarchical structures, linear paradigms of causality, and hegemonic
gradients of power which are often expressed militantly. …
Richard Carlson further adds: “In the belief of Avataric
(Incarnate) action taking up terrestrial burdens in an act of spiritual
transformation has structural similarities with a host of other myths and
legends given to us in the worlds spiritual traditions. To believe in this
action is itself an action. It is an act of faith… Historically, faith has
proven itself an unworthy vehicle for harmonizing the world's ten thousand
divisions which unfortunately are facilitated in large part by acts of faith.
When one refers to an originating action inevitably certain dates in history
are provided, be they in 1961, 1956, 1926 and specific days take on a sacred
nature that allows them to be honored annually as a reminder of a sort of
eternal return of the same. These become Holidays, Darshan Days, or whatever...
Inevitably then what becomes important is the historical record, the date such
and such happened, the time an originating presence appeared on the scene. The
date of the Event implies that one then looks back at the past to confirm the
future it promises. With the study of a text however, things seem to me to be
just reversed… It is my belief that when one heralds the coming of L'Avenir and
the new forms of a promised future in which the guru is located in ones heart,
it is a contradiction (not simply a paradox) to hold on to the forms and
ceremonies of past ages that externalizes the Guru for adoration. It is this
central contradiction between heralding a new future while holding on to the
rituals and the forms of the past which however unintended, in my opinion is
responsible for the religion associated with integral yoga.”
It looks really odd that when one talks of the Integral Yoga one is not able to
reconcile Faith and Reason. These are aspects of our whole and wholesome
personality and are inevitably present in each one of us in different degrees
and in different proportions, and it must be the business of the Integral Yoga
to give them full value in our spiritual pursuits. If one’s mind is active it
does not mean that one dismisses one’s heart, and vice versa. The whole
discussion therefore boils down to the question: Has Sri Aurobindo’s Integral
Yoga become a Religion? Perhaps the more basic, more appropriate question is:
Can at all Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga become a Religion? This also assumes
that we understand precisely what is meant by the word ‘Religion’ in its
several ramifications, a thing which has not really been defined anywhere in
these grandiose formulations, religion meaning different things to different
people.
Perfection in Work
Apropos of Religion, let us recollect an instance which
occurred in 1954. This was when the Russian gymnasts visited the Ashram. In
their interview with the Mother they told her that they didn’t believe in God.
She replied that it was not necessary; instead she asked if they believed in
perfection. They responded in the affirmative and the Mother said that it was
enough, if followed sincerely it would lead them to the goal. Whatever our
inner being believes, that will be sufficient for us to go on the wonderful
path of growth and progress. Where’s the religion here? But it isn’t there at
all. Perfection in work, says the Gita loudly and distinctly, is Yoga; if we
follow it consciously, then it’s wonderful—as even otherwise our being sincere
to ourselves, to our inner urging, is a sufficient guarantee to be on the right
path. During the 1950s the Mother was very active in the Playground and this is
what we have from one of her talks, dated 17 April 1957:
I don’t know if there ever were beings on earth who had
partially realised this, but in a very small way there have been partial
instances of one thing or another, examples which go to prove that it is
possible. And following up this idea, one could go so far as to conceive of the
replacement of material organs and their functioning as it now is, by centres
of concentration of force and energy which would be receptive to the higher
forces and which, by a kind of alchemy, would use them for the necessities of
life and the body. We already speak of the different “centres” in the body—this
knowledge is very widespread among people who have practised yoga—but these
centres could be perfected to the point where they replace the different organs
by a direct action of the higher energy and vibrations on matter. Those who
have practised occultism well enough, in its most integral form, it could be
said, know the process of materialisation of subtle energies and can put them
in contact with physical vibrations. Not only is it something that can be done,
but it is something which is done. And all that is a science, a science which
must itself be perfected, completed, and which will obviously be used for the
creation and setting in action of new bodies which will be able to manifest the
supramental life in the material world.
But, as Sri Aurobindo says, before this can be done, it is good to utilise all
that we have in order to increase and make more exact the control of physical
activities. It is very obvious that those who practise physical culture
scientifically and with coordination acquire a control over their bodies that’s
unimaginable for ordinary people. When the Russian gymnasts came here, we saw
with what ease they did exercises which for an ordinary man are impossible, and
they did them as if it was the simplest thing in the world; there was not even
the least sign of effort! Well, that mastery is already a great step towards
the transformation of the body. And these people who, I could say, are
materialists by profession, used no spiritual method in their education; it was
solely by material means and an enlightened use of human will that they had
achieved this result. If they had added to this a spiritual knowledge and
power, they could have achieved an almost miraculous result… Because of the
false ideas prevalent in the world, we don’t usually see the two things
together, spiritual mastery and material mastery, and so one is always
incomplete without the other; but this is exactly what we want to do and what
Sri Aurobindo is going to explain: if the two are combined, the result can
reach a perfection that’s unthinkable for the ordinary human mind…
As he goes on to say… first one has to fight against a formidable mass of
stupid prejudices which create an irreconcilable antagonism between material
and spiritual life. And it is something so deep-rooted in human consciousness
that it is very difficult to eradicate it, even in those who think they have
understood Sri Aurobindo’s teaching! And many people said, when for altogether
different reasons I began to hold meditations again, “Ah! At last! We are
returning to spiritual life....” This was indeed what prevented me from holding
them for a long time. It was in order not to encourage this stupidity. But for
other reasons it was necessary to do it and so I did. So long as this
foolishness is not uprooted from human consciousness, the supramental force
will always find it considerably difficult not to be engulfed in the obscurity
of a human thought which understands nothing. That’s all. All the same, we
shall succeed.
Are there Religious Practices in the Ashram?
But Carlson insists: “The problem of religion and
sectarianism in the Ashram is famous. Let me quote from a New York Times
article of a book review of a book from Gregor von Rezzori”. And what do we have
there? “After
”The reason religious practices began in the ashram,” continues Richard Carlson
in his critique, “are cross culturally and epochally complex. These practices
are certainly not congruent with the Enlightenment inspired values of
renouncing religion that Sri Aurobindo and Mother also championed. So what are
we to do?” What should he do? He should first define Religion and then check if
Integral Yoga can become a Religion. But let us see it differently.
In his little but seminal book The Mother Sri
Aurobindo makes a key statement about his Integral Yoga in terms of the triple
formula of aspiration-rejection-surrender:
…an aspiration vigilant, constant, unceasing—the mind's will, the hearts
seeking, the assent of the vital being, the will to open and make plastic the
physical consciousness and nature; rejection of the movements of lower
nature—rejection of the mind's ideas, opinions, preferences, habits,
constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent
mind,—rejection of the vital nature's desires, demands, cravings, sensations,
passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility
to Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm,
large, strong and consecrated vital being,—rejection of the physical nature's
stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness,
unwillingness to change, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may
establish itself in a body growing always more divine; surrender of oneself and
all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to
the Divine Shakti.
And there are “the conditions of Light and Truth, the sole conditions under
which the highest will descend; and it is only the very highest supramental
Force descending from above and opening from below that can victoriously handle
the physical Nature and annihilate its difficulties… There must be a total and
sincere surrender; there must be an exclusive self opening to the divine Power;
there must be a constant and integral choice of the Truth that is descending, a
constant and integral rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and
physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature. The surrender
must be total and seize all parts of the being. It is not enough that psychic
should respond and higher mental aspect or even the inner vital submit and the
physical consciousness feel the influence. There must be no part in the being,
even the most external, anything that makes a reserve, anything that hides
behind doubts, confusions and subterfuges, anything that revolts or refuses.”
If this is not followed then it is immaterial whether we do
this or we do that. We may call it Integral Yoga, we may call it Religion, we
may call it Spirituality, Stupidity, and what not; but it will not satisfy the
soul’s deepest urge seeking the Divine within us, and everywhere. If our
concern is this single objective then all talk about rationality, faith in
science, faith in logic, blind faith, seeing faith—seeing faith is an extremely
rare commodity—pale into insignificance. We go to a spiritually accomplished
person to seek his help in this regard and endeavour to follow it if we are
centrally alert to its assuring methodology, sincere to our own deepest
yearning. If I am in the Ashram, for instance, I must always remember the
purpose for which I am here in the Ashram—the rest becomes inconsequential. And
the beauty is, this is true in every walk of life. If I can follow my path,—and
that path can be by whatever faculty in me is most open, most developed,—what
else is required? That path can be the opening of the mind or the emotional
being or the perfection in the physical work or the acts of nobility,—to put in
the technical parlance as Jnana Yoga, Raja Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga. All
are equally superior and going by any one of them will the Guide or the Divine Helper
give whatever is necessary for the fulfilment of the soul’s deepest longing. In
that situation all comparisons become meaningless.
The supreme operative truth is: “There are two powers that alone can effect in
their conjunction the great and difficult thing which is the aim of our
endeavor,—a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and—a supreme
Grace from above that answers.” That is all that matters.
A Cardinal Error in the Modern Insistence
It is then altogether immaterial whether one calls it
religious or mythological or secular or worldly or mundane or plain earthly or
historical or scientific, or even spiritual life; Sri Aurobindo’s life is
indeed Sri Aurobindo’s life—“a decisive action direct from the Supreme”. We may
not be aware of it, but then nor can we deny the scope for its happening, of
being so. What is not exactingly historical, the trenchant rational mind would
prefer to call mythological. Well, it’s up to it to call it so, to decide. But
these are spiritual matters and must be seen in that way, in the spiritual way
and not in any other way even it might appear strange to us. There is
absolutely no question of imposing this view on others, as one goes entirely by
one’s own authentic perceptions—and it is these which must count in this kind
of reckoning. In any case, it must be recognized that spirituality means a
many-faceted Possibility, and the rational is only one small arc of this
wide-stretching spectrum, just a tiny bit in the comprehensible and
incomprehensible totality. This should mean that we should not make fuss of it.
If for his own reasons the strict rationalist sticks to this small arc only,
and dismisses everything else, perhaps then he is missing the opportunities
that can enlarge his own fond and cherished rationality; but the choice is his.
When one goes to a spiritual person, one goes with the intention of making
spiritual progress; it is for that purpose he accepts what is conducive for it,
for that progress, rejects what stands in its way, trusts in the guidance and
help that comes from such a person, expresses his gratitude to him for it. It
is according to one’s own free volonté
that one follows what is necessary for it. Something deep within him prompts
him to do that. It means, we approach Sri Aurobindo with that intention, for
making spiritual progress, which is certainly not to deny that his philosophy,
his interpretations of the scriptures, his poetry, his aesthetics, his
political thought, his great considerations of social issues, any one of them
or several of them cannot attract us towards him. Nor can we make a fetish of
one single aspect of his personality, rationality alone for instance. If one
feels that for making spiritual progress one is getting help from a spiritual
Master, then one should be grateful to him; but if the inner being is not happy
with it, has reservations, even objections, then one should just forget him and
be on a newer quest, the unfettered quest. These are the spiritual etiquettes
and a spiritual seeker knows the importance of observing them. This is what a
spiritual gentleman or cultured individual does. There is no doubt that the
inner sincerity will guide him on the right path, and there is no doubt it
giving him the well-sought realizations. In that case there is neither the
question of frustration creeping in anywhere. It is very aptly put as follows:
If spirituality meant nothing more than rationality, then it goes without
saying that all spiritual seeking is superfluous and the seekers deluded fools.
But there is the question of action as it relates to a spiritual being.
Sri Aurobindo himself writes in a latter: “There is, it
seems to me, a cardinal error in the modern insistence on the biographical and
historical, that is to say, the external factuality of the Avatar, the
incidents of his outward life. What matters is the spiritual Reality, the
Power, the Influence that come with him or that he brought down by his action
and his existence. First of all, what matters in a spiritual man's life is not
what he did or what he was outside to the view of the men of his time (that is
what historicity or biography comes to, does it not?) but what he was and did
within; it is only that that gives any value to his outer life at all. It is
the inner life that gives to the outer any power it may have and the inner life
of a spiritual man is something vast and full and, at least in the great
figures, so crowded and teeming with significant things that no biographer or
historian could ever hope to seize it all or tell it. Whatever is significant
in the outward life is so because it is symbolical of what has been realised
within himself and one may go on and say that the inner life also is only
significant as an expression, a living representation of the movement of the
Divinity behind it.”
The Lives of Sri Aurobindo
Richard Carlson makes reference to the latest biography of
Sri Aurobindo presented by Peter Heehs. With a great deal of research done,
extensive and over a long period of time, marshalling the collected historical
documents connected with the life of Sri Aurobindo, it is claimed that we have
here in The Lives of Sri Aurobindo a “factually dependable and correct”
account. The book was recently published by the Columbia University Press (May
2008) which has the following note from the publishers: “Since his death in
1950, Sri Aurobindo Ghose has been known primarily as a yogi and a philosopher
of spiritual evolution who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in peace and
literature. But the years Aurobindo spent in yogic retirement were preceded by
nearly four decades of rich public and intellectual work. Biographers usually
focus solely on Aurobindo's life as a politician or sage, but he was also a scholar,
a revolutionary, a poet, a philosopher, a social and cultural theorist, and the
inspiration for an experiment in communal living. Peter Heehs, one of the
founders of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives, is the first to relate all the
aspects of Aurobindo's life in its entirety. Consulting rare primary sources,
Heehs describes the leader's role in the freedom movement and in the framing of
modern Indian spirituality. He examines the thinker's literary, cultural, and
sociological writings and the Sanskrit, Bengali, English, and French literature
that influenced them, and he finds the foundations of Aurobindo's yoga practice
in his diaries and unpublished letters. Heehs's biography is a sensitive,
honest portrait of a life that also provides surprising insights into
twentieth-century Indian history.”
In a post at http://www.cupblog.org/?p=343 dated Monday 4 August 2008 at
the Columbia University Press, Peter Heehs himself gives the following summary
introduction to us:
How do you write about a man who is known to some as a
politician, to others as a poet and critic, to still others as a philosopher,
and to a not inconsiderable number as an incarnation of God? This is one of the
problems a biographer of Sri Aurobindo (Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950) has to
face. Known in the West mostly to specialized audiences (people interested in
South Asian history, literature, philosophy, and spirituality), Aurobindo is
renowned in his native
Some historians and politicians see him as one of the forerunners of Mahatma
Gandhi, others as a precursor of today’s aggressive Hindu nationalists.
Admirers of his writings see his epic in iambic pentameter as the harbinger of
a new kind of poetry, but most contemporary poets and critics dismiss it as a
throwback to the Victorian era. The opinions of amateur and professional
philosophers are polarized along the same lines. There is general agreement
among students of religion that Aurobindo was a remarkable mystic, but few are
willing to swallow the claim of some of his followers that he was an avatar,
like
In The Lives of Sri Aurobindo I made Aurobindo’s many-sidedness the
foundation of the structure of the book. Each of the five parts deals with one
of his “lives”: the family man, the scholar, the revolutionary, the yogi and
philosopher, and the spiritual guide. The first three go together pretty well,
since the conventions of literary and political biography are similar. The
writer is expected to present the significant events of a notable life in a
chronological narrative, supporting the story with a scholarly apparatus based
on primary sources. It was easy for me to do this when I wrote about
Aurobindo’s life in politics. Discussing his role at the Surat Congress of
1907, for example, I was able to draw on government files, police reports,
newspaper stories, Aurobindo’s reminiscences, and the reminiscences of others
in English, Bengali, and Gujarati. But what was I to do with the information
that a few days after the Congress, Aurobindo sat with a guru who taught him a
meditation technique, and that, as Aurobindo later put it, “In three
days—really in one, my mind became full of an eternal silence”—by which he
meant the mental stillness and freedom from ego known as Nirvana.
It certainly is legitimate to cite Aurobindo’s own statements about this and
other inner experiences. But personal reminiscences don’t count for much in
scholarly biographies unless they are backed up by objective data and analysis.
But what sort of objective data was I to look for? (Nobody knew what was going
on in Aurobindo’s head.) If I wanted to discuss this inner event, did I have to
switch (in mid stream) from the conventions of scholarly biography to the
conventions of spiritual biography, that is, hagiography? Or could I get beyond
the conventions of both genres?
Hagiography in its original sense, writing about the lives of saints, has been
practiced since the first century CE (the Gospels, the Buddhacarita). What
distinguishes the hagiographic from the critical approach is not that
hagiographers are sympathetic to their subjects, but that they base their
accounts on unverifiable assumptions that are likely to be accepted only by
members of the discursive community that they belong to. Few modern
non-Catholic readers are likely to take seriously the claims of Angelo
Pastrovicchi that Joseph of Cupertino could fly. On the other hand,
Pastrovicchi’s eighteenth-century work remains a vital source for any anyone
wishing to write about the Italian saint. A scholar may reject levitation as
inconsistent with what we know about gravity but still accept that Joseph had
visions, as Pastrovicchi claims.
Aurobindo spent the last forty years of his life immersed in the practice of
yoga. He wrote about his yogic experiences in a diary, the Record of Yoga,
and in letters to his followers. Are these the sort of sources that a scholarly
biographer can cite? It certainly would be uncritical to accept at face value
all that Aurobindo wrote about his inner life; but it would be a different sort
of negligence to refuse to consider accounts of inner experience a priori
grounds, or to explain them away according to the assumptions of one or another
social-scientific orthodoxy.
I think that William James had the right approach to this
sort of material. “One cannot criticize the vision of a mystic,” he wrote in “A
Pluralistic Mystic,” “one can but pass it by, or else accept it as having some
amount of evidential weight.” I couldn’t simply close my eyes to Aurobindo’s
accounts of his mystical experiences, so I accepted them as evidence of a
vivid, if sometimes enigmatic inner life. I wonder however whether James got it
right when he said we “cannot criticize the vision of a mystic.” Many spiritual
traditions—the Catholic Christian and Tibetan Buddhist, for example— recognize
a distinction between true and misleading visions. I don’t have the necessary
discernment to criticize Aurobindo’s visions as visions; but I recognize—as
Aurobindo himself did—that inner visions and experiences are open to different
interpretations.
What about the assertion that Aurobindo was an avatar? I can’t say that the
question interests me very much. Aurobindo never claimed the distinction for
himself, and I don’t think anyone alive is in a position to say one way or the
other. The Aurobindo that interests me is the one who turned from a life of
hectic action to a life of contemplation, but was able, during his forty-year
retirement, to write a shelf full of books on philosophy, political theory, and
textual criticism, along with thousands of letters and, yes, that epic in
iambic pentameter. People will continue to differ about the significance of his
work, but its very mass is there for all to see. His life as a yogi and
spiritual leader is more difficult to quantify, but it certainly will not be
forgotten soon. I tried to do justice to all sides of this versatile man, but
to do so I had to be unconventional in more ways than one. http://www.cupblog.org/?p=343
Our author writes about Sri Aurobindo that “his life as a yogi and spiritual leader is more difficult to quantify, but it certainly will not be forgotten soon.” Perhaps it will be the other way round, that is, what can be quantified will be forgotten soon.
The too Righteous a Mind
But let us come to some specifics and ask the question: How
dependable can be this approach of a historian when he is dealing with an
exceptional spiritual person, a Yogi? Related to that is the question: Can
matters spiritual at all come under the scrutiny of the research methodologies
of history? Much of our way of looking at biographies of the spiritual persons
will depend upon the answer to it. But that is precisely what a professional
historian would like to maintain in order to ‘rationalise’ even the biography
of a Yogi, one whose life was never “on the surface for men to see”, that the
life of a spiritual person should come under the close inquiry and examination of
a stringent and tight historical scholarship, assuming it to be there. This
issue, of matters spiritual coming under the scrutiny of the research
methodologies, has to be settled first before one can proceed further. And,
then, granting that there is a possibility of Avatarhood or divine Incarnation
upon earth, we have the baffling question of writing an accurate biography of
such a one, a stunning question. There is one particular kind of a mind which
considers itself too righteous and all that which does not come under its keen
or zealous purview is, to it, trivial, inconsequential, worthless, credulous,
bagatelle, and that which must be disregarded brusquely. Nothing much can be
done about it, this zealous arrogant purview; nothing can be said about this
kind of a mind, this “squat godhead artisan” mind, and perhaps nothing need
also be said or done about it. Very often these prickling irksome
‘intellectuals’ who lack perception come and go, making not more than a
moment’s tiny impact,—that is, one could just ignore them. Perhaps the truth
is: “Belief there shall be not till the work is done.” The deeper truth is the
quiet work that continues to be done—in spite of them. Yet, at times, it might
become interesting, and perhaps sufficiently rewarding also, if with it one
could see the deeper truth behind things; it might come as another sort of
complementary help, a possibility that exists in it.
Let us take an example of Peter Heehs scripting an event in the early life of
Sri Aurobindo in which matters spiritual have been funnily knotted with the
issues that appeal to the common western audacious rational mind going, it
going by its quick rational faculty alone, though one would have preferred a
cultured and refined Russellian faculty than this fleshless or scratchy
faculty. Not that it is there everywhere so, that loud full-of-oneself
audacity, certainly not in that churlish-boorish manner, even as we witness,
not unoften, vastly observant, greatly insightful intuitive writers also seeing
things with some other vision, some other responsiveness opening in them.
Georges van Vrekhem’s Beyond Man and Satprem’s The Adventure of
Consciousness are very remarkable in that respect, another life breathing
in their biographies. But what do we have here, in The Lives of Sri
Aurobindo? It is asserted that if we start without preconceptions “armed
with an open truth and a total confidence in the integral possibilities of man,
we shall perhaps have a chance to arrive at an integral knowledge and so at an
integral life. Seen from the point of view of an evolution of the
consciousness, reincarnation ceases to be the futile round with a clarity
typical of the West, Sri Aurobindo rids us of this spiritual romancing, as the
Mother calls it, into which so many serious learnings have degenerated since
the Age of the Mysteries.” It is a novel theory that the ancient spirituality
considered reincarnation a futile round of our coming and going; not even the staunchest
of Illusionists thought it that way. A thousand difficulties of life are there
and as many solutions are also offered, solutions of various brands, ranging
from this-worldly secular to the mystical-esoteric; but never reincarnation
considered futile.
If we see man “armed with an open truth and a total
confidence in his integral possibilities,” needing nothing else, he in the full
richness of human potential à la Huxley, then there is really no necessity for
any higher or superior intervention, no necessity of the coming down of an
Avatar. But is there anything of the sort in man that he can advance without
any outside help? Is there any scientific theory, or any rational basis, or
spiritual foundation to assume so? Without logically going into those details,
if one makes statements of this nature, then they lose all their credibility.
In fact, one begins to wonder if this truth and confidence are not just eyewash.
Actually, it seems patent enough that Peter Heehs has
nothing to do with Sri Aurobindo as an Avatar, the incarnate Divine. He writes:
“There is general agreement among students of religion that Aurobindo was a
remarkable mystic, but few are willing to swallow the claim of some of his
followers that he was an avatar, like
The ādeśa: “Go to
In his Aspects of Sri Aurobindo, Amal Kiran points
it out with his characteristic journalistic incisiveness, with his clarity and
forthrightness to dispel misgivings about the whole thing. The incidence is of
Sri Aurobindo receiving a divine command, ādeśa, to go to
Sometime later when Sri Aurobindo was in Chandernagore, he received an
unmistakable inner order, ādeśa, instructing him to go to
Amal Kiran continues. Peter Heehs’s note in the Archives says the following:
“We have seen that Sri Aurobindo came to
The ādeśa or the divine command is always “clear and irresistible”, an
imperative and not going by it could be disastrous, which perhaps had happened
prior to his arrest in the famous Alipore Bomb Case, on 5 May 1908. But our
wonderful historian writes: “I have no difficulty in accepting that Sri
Aurobindo came to
The general impression one gets from Peter Heehs’s interpretation is that,
inescapably, in the case of Sri Aurobindo’s coming to Pondicherry political
factors were so overriding, so powerful that they even caused the arrival of
the ādeśa itself, that they prompted the ādeśa-giver himself to
issue out those instructions. Such is then the authority, merit and
effectiveness of political factors! Such will be the topsy-turvy miracle
wrought by the purists of crudified history. And there are plenty of people to
buy it at fifties of dollars. If this is true then, it would amount to saying
that political factors were kind of solely or primarily responsible or
instrumental in initiating Sri Aurobindo into his avataric work, the unfoldment
of his life governed by external factors rather than by the compelling
truth-force of his being itself, of his soul and his spirit in oneness with the
One, his identity with the Divine. Who shapes whom?—that’s the question; the
nexus of forces here forcing the divine issue or the divine issue working out
the nexus of forces? Sri Aurobindo says that he had to obey it, the command
from Sri Krishna. In that case, we will be told that he did not exercise his
own mind but subjected himself to somebody else’s who was in turn driven by the
political factors operating here. That’s what the historian’s interpretation
would plainly amount to. But let us leave it at that and go by our own
perceptions of things in the strength and purity of the cognition in contact
with the higher truth and not by the quick mental ideas and formulations when
it comes to authentic spiritual matters. Sri Aurobindo went to
Instead of this doubtful Lives of Sri Aurobindo, let us read The Adventure of Consciousness. After the ādeśa
“Go to
“He heard the Voice, suddenly, which spoke directly three words: Go to
Chandernagore. Ten minutes later Sri Aurobindo took the first boat down the
Possibly such is the meaning of the divine ādeśa which is totally beyond
our comprehension. If that is the case, trust then no historian. One has to
simply go by one’s own inner promptings and dependable insights—and there is
always the bright opportunity, the full joyous scope, of these promptings and
insights becoming wide, and conscient, and agreeable. In it is the true
spiritual progress. That is what Sri Aurobindo had come to give to us, to the
aspiring soul in its full divine possibilities. Let us prepare ourselves to
receive it, let us grow in it, let us progress in it.
In the present biography, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo,
Peter Heehs writes about the earlier ādeśa as follows: “Years later Aurobindo
explained that when he heard Ramchandra’s warning, he went within and heard a
voice—an adesh—that said ‘Go to Chandernagore.’ He obeyed it without
reflection. Had he given it any thought, however, he would have found good
reasons to comply.” (p. 204) That rather looks Heehsish, not even rational. One
just goes by the ādeśa, the divine command, or else one simply ignores
it; there is no question of giving any thought to it. We shall shortly look
into this ādeśa-aspect as presented
in the biography a little more in detail when examining a few samples from it.
Personal Reminiscences don’t Count in Scholarly Biographies
Peter Heehs says that personal reminiscences don’t count in
a scholarly biography, a strange assumption indeed. The assumption is strange
because it does not set at the beginning the criterion for the biography of a
spiritual person, does not examine the possibility of the tools of scholarship
at all being capable of dealing with matters spiritual. Let us read again his
statement: “It certainly is legitimate to cite Aurobindo’s own statements about
this and other inner experiences. But personal reminiscences don’t count for
much in scholarly biographies unless they are backed up by objective data and
analysis. But what sort of objective data was I to look for? (Nobody knew what
was going on in Aurobindo’s head.) If I wanted to discuss this inner event, did
I have to switch (in mid stream) from the conventions of scholarly biography to
the conventions of spiritual biography, that is, hagiography? Or could I get
beyond the conventions of both genres?” It is good the stand has been made
clear, but the arguments are gawky.
If something is not a scholarly biography, then does the spiritual biography
automatically become hagiography? Obviously not—how can it be? As an example, we
don’t consider Georges van Vrekhem’s Beyond Man as hagiography at all.
And mark the phrase personal reminiscences don’t count for much in scholarly
biographies unless they are backed up by objective data and analyses. But what
are these objective data? Records in government files? Things dug out from
gunny sacks? Scraps of papers with droppings of bats? If there aren’t such
objective data, then do we dismiss all spiritual experiences narrated by the
person himself in one way or the other, through letters, through poetry, during
private conversations, for instance? When the Mother says that Sri Aurobindo’s
coming was a direct action from the Supreme, do we ask her, “but Madame, where
are the data?” Otherwise was she simply telling stories and that we the
gullible were believing in them? Ultimately, it looks as though each one to his
own liking, and so one need not really argue about these matters.
An Extraordinarily
Complex Individual
As a part of systematic promotionalism of The Lives of
Sri Aurobindo we have in
the August 2008 issue of Auroville Today, Peter Heehs being interviewed
by Alan. The author maintains that his
is a biography based on enormous amount of archival material, on
“authentic documents”, something which the earlier works totally lacked. “It wasn't
always easy,” informs the biographer, the records of
So, what the Mother called “a direct action straight from
the Supreme” has to prove itself right in the eyes of the academicians, they
sitting in the lofty judgement seats. The fallacy becomes particularly glaring
when the interview comes to the deep occult matters, for instance the passing
away of Sri Aurobindo. Peter Heehs replies: “You correctly put your finger on a
special difficulty of dealing with a life like Sri Aurobindo's. When, as
historians, we speak of physical events, there's an established way of dealing
with them, using documents to corroborate what we say. When we talk about a
person's spiritual experiences, we have that person's own account of what took
place. But when we talk about occult workings and effects, we are talking about
spiritual things having an impact on physical events. But the influence of the
inner world on the outer is not verifiable in ordinary terms. I could have used
the Mother's accounts of his death etc. as she is certainly an authority in
these matters; but the kind of the biography I wanted to write had to be based
upon verifiable facts. When I think about things like Sri Aurobindo's death, I
certainly take what the Mother said about them into consideration. But I didn't
put everything I think into this book.” But has any criteria been spelt out as
to what should be put and what be not? We have no idea from the interview.
In conclusion the biographer says: “All in all, Sri
Aurobindo stands up very well to the critical approach. Devotees think they
have to be protective of him, that any criticism will destroy him and all his
work. This is ridiculous. His accomplishments in various fields are so strong
and lasting that he emerges firmer and stronger from a critical treatment that
deals squarely with difficult questions.” But this statement itself is
ridiculous, as it fails to recognize the foundational basis of the spiritual
work. It will of course be grossly ridiculous for the Ashram to consider Sri
Aurobindo as its property, but to speak of “an extraordinarily complex
individual” with multiple spiritual dimensions only in terms of facts found in
the gunny sacks lying in the attic is sheer falsification, certainly it is
perversion. And the fact is that, facts are not always presented; we shall see
some of these separately, by way of comments to the post. The whole approach
therefore displays complete lack of sensitivity; in it spiritual perceptions
are unfortunately absent. This becomes more astonishing when the author also
claims himself to be the follower of Integral Yoga. He proclaims: “I am, after
all, a practitioner of Sri Aurobindo's yoga, and I take what he has written
about his own practice of yoga, and the yogic discipline he recommends to others,
quite seriously.” But who is going to decide the “quite serious” aspect of the
matter? In any case, it need not be our concern, it need not concern us here.
But we can say only one thing, that with all the details at the disposal of the
biographer what we are given is a caricature of Sri Aurobindo, the
spiritual-yogic having been set aside from it. This needs be corrected.
RY Deshpande