Dear Raman, I understand where you are coming from, and I will concede to the point made here ... "Whew! You would knock out most of the disciples in this Ashram if you apply this criterion. I think it is high time you pay a visit to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram to see what it is like. But perhaps your friends might have already informed you that it is not worth it. For your information, some of the greatest sadhaks here have hardly cared to develop their minds. Have you met Champaklal or many of the Gujerati workers who unstintingly served Sri Aurobindo and the Mother without any care for their personal health and, least of all, for their intellectual development? This does not mean that I am against intellectual development, but that I bow down with humility in front of true spirituality." Everyone in the world doesn't want to be (and doesn't need to be) a scholar to do yoga. There are a million ways to the Divine, as many ways as there are individuals. One of my spiritual mentors was far from an intellectual, but he had a powerful presence and I know that the intellect is overestimated in the modern/postmodern world. But I still find it silly that people should have such a huge reactions to this biography, especially without reading it or without even reading the extracts. To me that is really nothing else but vital drama. Intellectual or not, one has to reign in their vital being or end up becoming a menace to themselves and others. I have actually felt that people are giving far too much credit to this biography than it really deserves. I really never felt it had the sort of power that people seem to think it has. I don't want to get into a discussion on the Extracts but I personally did find them misleading. But we can disagree on that. I'm still not convinced about many of the measures taken against Peter, in particular the court case against him (why involve an external court at all, rather than handle the whole thing internally?). Why can't a volume be published called "Essays on The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" with 20-30 critical papers (including your other essay on this blog for instance) on the biography rather than having to resort to such external means? And even if someone isn't a scholar or an intellectual, there are far more creative ways of dealing with one's pain over such a publication than mob violence and court cases -- one could use music, theatre, satire, or whatever, to express one's feelings. At the very least we ought to admit that the situation is not just one person's doing. It's been co-created by the overall collective consciousness in our community. Inshallah I'll get a chance to visit the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at some point and see things for myself. No worries about my feelings, please. If my feelings get hurt, it's my own problem, nobody else's. :-)