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.

The author is puzzled about Sri Aurobindo sitting with a guru in the first week of January 1908, “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.” Does “eternal silence” mean “mental stillness” as there are grades and grades of silence going all the way up to the omniscient Hush wherein is born the original Word of Creation? But they, mental stillness and eternal silence, are two different things. What this experience meant was that the mind had fallen totally silent, a state in which he could see thoughts not rising from the brain but coming from outside, from the cosmic field. “It caught the burden of secrecies sealed and dumb,”—if we could use the phrase from Savitri. In fact, he already started living in a “mystic place where thought is born”. The spiritual realization had a much vaster connotation than just this. “A static Oneness and dynamic Power descended in him”, they putting on him the seal of Godhead’s integrality. He could stop these thoughts entering into him or allow them in. This is the state in which he would receive the higher knowledge directly, without mental interference, and all his Arya and later writings came in that state. It is not a state of Nirvana, nor does the ego really disappear in it. It is an experience of the Vedantic Passive Brahman. This is one of the major realizations he had just within three days. The other realization, within months of this one when he was in Alipore jail as an undertrial prisoner, was that of Active Brahman; there he witnessed the all-pervasive presence of Vasudeava, the Divine Person present everywhere. Can one ignore these master-experiences to satisfy the demands of a rational mind even while assuming it to be a questing mind? And reject them, or downplay them,  one doesn't know for what dubious gain? Should these be denied or dismissed only because we have chosen to fix our ideas on one particular aspect, our standards of rational thought which is but a small arc of the vast domains of Mind? But these are spiritual realizations which come after lives of yogic effort and here’s Sri Aurobindo who got them within months. What does that mean? But it is this Silent Mind that the Mother received as the first valuable gift from Sri Aurobindo after they met on 29 March 1914. As we have in Savitri, these are early experiences of Aswapati, of static Oneness and dynamic Power, marking the beginning of his spiritual realisations, climbing all the way up to the limits of transcendental manifestation.

But let us see further what our curious author has to say. “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.” This is simply amazing! What is it then that counts? His examination mark sheets lying in the university records? He adds: “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 on a priori grounds, or to explain them away according to the assumptions of one or another social-scientific orthodoxy.” If here the rational mind is trying to be fair to itself, it is making a terrible confusion of matters spiritual and orthodoxy of whatever kind it be. No such test can be applied to inner experiences. Take them or else just ignore them, leave them as there is absolutely no compulsion to talk about them, dismiss them if you feel squirmy about them but opine not on them with such notions of things amounting to the ridiculous. Perhaps it is wiser, certainly much safer not to talk about them, particularly when one does not have any intimate or first-hand personal knowledge about them, knowledge that comes from deeper spiritual realizations.

As far as spiritual experiences and realizations are concerned, by saying so it is as good as trying to bring what is mystic-transcendental into the domain of the limited, mundane or rational, a thing which is simply impossible because of its severe limitations, of its crudeness. You accept them or you just forget about them. Not seeing the difference between the two is sheer inanity of the rational mind and such inanity has no value in spiritual matters, perhaps nowhere.

And there’s yet another brave statement: “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.” But “different interpretations” by whom? and for whom? and in what contexts? Of course “different interpretations” could be for one who has the “necessary discernment” not to criticize, but to perceive things that are absolutely spiritual. In such a case the best thing should have been to keep quiet or mum and not throw careless assertions around.

Even if we assume the best intentions of the author to lead or persuade the rational mind towards Sri Aurobindo, he must first understand both. His method, instead, is by cutting up the uncleavable to one-fourth of its size. That is the absurdity of the entire approach and it’s a pity there are wise folk who applaud it—not recognizing what the Integral Yoga really is. After all, the solution to rationality is by transcending rationality and seeing it from that higher location, the basic desideratum to enter this wonderful system of spiritual discipline. That is the solution for every problem and, if we are earnest, our endeavour should be to transcend all limitations to which we are tied. That needs great inner spiritual preparation and unless that is done one does not talk of biography and hagiography, least in the disparaging manner.