Related to Rationalism and Devotion or, to put it a little differently, Reason and Faith is in a way the question of Biography and Hagiography; in fact to stretch the argument from a certain point of view, they are in that context just two representations of the same. But if hagiography is biography revering its saint, then any non-hagiographic biography of a saint will be a contradiction in terms which will land us into a messy or irresolvable paradox; it will only deprive him of his sainthood. And this is precisely what the author of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo is doing in his presentation of a Saint and a Rishi and a Yogi, and a Yogi par excellence at that. Posted at the Columbia University Press, the author himself gives the following summary introduction to us. He poses a question to himself and sets to answer it: “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 has to face.”

The answer is simple: ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the sainthood of Sri Aurobindo. If he is not a saint or spiritual guide then it is absurd to speak of being a practitioner of his path, the Path of Integral Yoga given by Sri Aurobindo, precisely that which the author of the Lives maintains, that he is one of its long-standing followers, for almost forty years now. But if he is a saint, then any denial of sainthood in the biography will give rise to abundant irrationality of the author as much as of the publishers also who, it seems, didn’t look into these details carefully enough. Not presenting the aspect of sainthood of a saint will thus amount to falsehood. That is the plain truth of the matter. ...   more »