Okay, the previous comment wasn't appearing so I rewrote this one below...it kind of expands the previous comment so I am posting this one also. You can delete my last two comments as they are redundant. All the best, ned. ------ Dear Raman, I see where you are coming from, and I concede the following point ... "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 certainly does not have to be a scholar to do yoga. There are as many paths to the Divine as there are individuals. I think I would temper what I said earlier to mean that I think everyone *has* to develop a kind of "mental witness" at least. Another quick personal anecdote to explain my own perspective. While I am myself of an intellectual temperament, the first person who awoke me spiritually was an older man from an impoverished area in Lahore who I met while still in my undergrad days. This man hadn't even completed high school, but he had a powerful spiritual presence. Yet although he was far from an intellectual, and in fact didn't have too many good things to say about intellectuals, I always felt he had developed a basic common sense rationality and had complete control over his emotions. I think developing some *basic* mental abilities -- enough to have a "mental witness" that can objectively observe our emotional reactions and give meaning to them and help us regulate them -- is a must, and I believe Sri Aurobindo speaks of this also. Even scientific studies have now shown conclusively that a basic ability to mentalize helps us regulate our emotions. Anyway, we are all at different stages of growth. And different people react to different things. Still we have to remember that we owe it to our gurus to develop a noble, disinterested, dispassionate, fearless vital being. And if people react to something they haven't even read, then what will they do when furious asuric forces are attacking them with a vengeance? I don't want to get into a discussion on the Extracts, but I actually did find them misleading, personally. But we can disagree and leave it at that. I think right from the start, since I've been following this controversy my only question has been why things have been handled the way they have been. I believe there are legitimate critiques of this biography that ought to be made; but ironically I feel these criticisms are going to be taken less seriously than they ought to be because of some of the methods being employed against Peter Heehs. If the only issue is Peter's membership at the Ashram, why is he being called to a court? Why involve an external legal court at all, if the issue is Peter being an Ashramite? Why not deal with the matter internally? Otherwise we ought to be suing the half a dozen published academic authors who have said the Master was a Hindu nationalist, a racist, pro-eugenics, or whatever else. Now as far as Peter's biography causing emotional pain goes, there are far more creative and interesting (not to mention effective) ways of dealing with and transmuting vital traumas than calling people to court, inciting a mass movement, demonizing a single individual (as if we are all not distorting the Divine Will left, right and center). Here are some ways I might go about it if I had been terribly pained by Peter's biography: 1. Write a critical paper on the biography. In fact, publish an entire volume with 20-30 critiques of the biography. 2. Suggest that the Ashram put out a detailed statement distancing itself from the Heehs biography. 3. If intellectual methods aren't suited to one's temperament, use singing, art, sculpture, music, dance and theatre to express or cope with one's pain or to express one's adoration for the Guru. My not-so-intellectual Lahori friend used to carve the most exquisite pieces of wooden carpentry to deal with his emotional traumas. Beauty and culture pacify the vital being. True warriors are silent, still, unmoved and unmovable. 4. Write or perform a satire of "Homo Academicus" (i.e. intellectuals) from a spiritual perspective (something I myself have been wanting to do for a while). Bring some humor and lightheartedness into the situation rather than all this emotional mistrust and fatalism. 5. Write a dream-dialogue between Sri Aurobindo and Peter (like Nirodbaran's dream-dialogue between Sri Aurobindo and the Ashram children). 6. If someone is particularly prone to the "fighting spirit" they can even use a martial art to express it without turning it against any one person in particular. Honestly the list of things one could do to "fight back" are endless and potentially endlessly creative, and they don't need to involve demonization, personal attacks, excommunication, inciting a mass movement, calling the author to court, etc. etc. How much stronger would the case against Peter or his biography look if the means employed used the tools of mind and culture rather than resorting to court cases and mass movements! I also question your statement that because Mother and Sri Aurobindo are no longer alive, all the more reason why we ought to be suppressing voices that express dissent. My impression is that Mother and Sri Aurobindo's decisions were based on a vast and universal knowledge combined with the needs of the moment. Often they would say or do one thing at one point, and then say or do the opposite at another point in time. The rest of us mere mortals on the other hand do not have that kind of flexibility or dynamism, and our perspectives and positions are not as plastic. We harden very easily. In the absence of the Masters in embodied form, there is (imho) all the more reason for us to be exceedingly careful, to not act too hastily, and to not be so sure that we are necessarily doing the right thing. No matter how well-intentioned we are, as long as we have egos, we can be sure we are distorting the Divine Will, and therefore a degree of self-doubt is probably a good thing. Basically I am convinced that there are hypocrisies on all sides of this issue (and in no way do I consider myself exempt either) and there's no need for anyone with any perspective to get too self-righteous. The whole outer situation is clearly a manifestation of the collective consciousness of the IY community and thus we are all culpable in different ways. As far as my personal feelings are concerned, please don't worry about them. ;-) I consider it my own problem, something to be worked out in yoga, when my feelings get hurt. And I always admit it immediately when I feel I was in fact wrong. Inshallah, some day I will get the chance to visit India and the Ashram and Auroville. I think at this point I will just have to retreat from this discussion as my next semester at school is starting and I will have to return to my work. This issue is also starting to feel like a bit of distraction for me in my own sadhana.