An Elucidation of the JK-PH Nexus—by Varuna Mitra

An elucidation of the JK-PH nexus and connection as seen from their books Esalen: America a Religion of No Religion (2007) and The Lives of Sri Aurobindo (2008), respectively—by Varuna Mitra

A long drawn battle has been taking place on various sites regarding the book The Lives of Sri Aurobindo and a lot of people have spoken about an academic exposition of this book. Some spoke of the JK-PH connection and others lack of any such connection. Discussed below are some pertinent points.


PART I
(Peter Heehs is thanked in the acknowledgements by JK)
Numerous other individuals also played significant roles in my research and thinking. Some receive major treatment here. Others work…….Jane Hartford, Gil Hedley, Peter Heehs, James Hickman…..
[Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Acknowledgements, p. xii]

PART II
(Sources of some of the quotes are from PH’s then unpublished manuscript of Lives of Sri Aurobindo)
There are good historical reasons why Aurobindo avoided any explicit alliance with the Tantras. We must never forget that he was writing in a political context and time period in which the terms “Tantra” and “Tantric” carried overwhelmingly pejorative meanings, partly because they had long been savaged my Christian missionaries who saw in the sexual rituals and animal sacrifices of the Tantric traditions the epitome of human depravity, violence and religious folly. Murphy himself is clear that such categories still evinced reactions of deep ambivalence and cultural embarrasment from Bengalis of the ashram in the 1950s 23 Simply because we lack the centrality of the term “Tantra” in his text, then, does not mean that we cannot or should not use the term in our own precise ways; it simply means that Aurobindo chose not to do the same for his perfectly own sensible and very defensible historical and cultural reasons. He had his own audience. So do we.
[Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Ch.2, p. 63]

23. One of the few places where Aurobindo explicitly employed Tantric language was in his private correspondence with his revolutionary brethen. In these documents, he uses Tantric expressions as a code language to refer, for example to revolvers they were attempting to transport through the French postal system or to specific revolutionary actions (see Peter Heehs, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo [New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming], ch.26, MS pp. 17-18.

Hence he did not hesitate to emphasize (at least in his private diaries) the physical, even sexual, dimensions of his own experience of this kamananda or “erotic bliss,” “equal to the first movements of the actual maithuna ananda,” literally, the bliss of sexual intercourse.26 This latter description is from Aurobindo’s Record of Yoga, a recently published two-volume tome whose highly experimental and nondogmatic qualities make it Michael Murphy’s “new favorite Aurobindo.” According to Aurobindo’s biographer Peter Heehs, one of the most common themes of the Record is that of Ananda.

“The secret,” Aurobindo once wrote of the Goddess Shakti, “is to enjoy her in the soul as one enjoys a woman with the body.”27 He also clearly associated “the way of Ananda” with the “left-handed” path of Tantra.28

And here he was being entirely faithful to the ancient Sanskrit texts, which in a much more explicit way link the bliss of ananda pleasures and ecstasies of the penis. 29 Though Aurobindo is clear that such mature spiritual events carry very physical dimensions (his entire system insists on this), there is no evidence that after his wife dies he acted physically on what he called his kamananda or “bliss of sexual desire,” which, as Heehs points out, often came upon him spontaneously, for example when he was writing or walking. 30
[Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Ch. 2, pp. 64-65.]

30. Heehs, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, ch. 27, MS p.11


PART III
(Some striking similarities in the picking of particular quotes and interpretive language of the two authors)

Hence he did not hesitate to emphasize (at least in his private diaries) the physical, even sexual, dimensions of his own experience of this kamananda or “erotic bliss,” “equal to the first movements of the actual maithuna ananda,” literally, the bliss of sexual intercourse.26

[Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Ch. 2, p. 64]

The usual desire for gratification, as Aurobindo has the guru call it, was presumably a factor in his decision to get married, but it does not seem to have been an important one. His later writings show that his knowledge of human sexuality was more than academic, but the act seems to have held few charms for him.76 Consummation may have been delayed because of Mrinalini's youth, and his own stoicism, partly innate and partly learned from philosophers such as Epictetus, would have helped him to keep his sexual tendencies in check.
[The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, Encountering India]

76. For Sri Aurobindo's general knowledge of human sexuality, see his letters to disciples on sex, which occupy more than forty pages, 1507-1549, of Letters on Yoga. For his experience of maithunananda, see Record of Yoga, 204, 300, 302, 329, 431, 464, 774, and 1456. Maithu-nananda means literally the bliss, ananda, of coitus, maithuna. In the Record it refers to a particular intensity of spontaneous erotic delight, but some references, notably on page 204 ("equal to the first movements of the actual maithuna ananda") seem to imply a knowledge of ordinary maithuna.
[The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, References]

(This statement giving reasons for Sri Aurobindo’s marriage as sexual gratification and also that Sri Aurobindo’s ‘general knowledge’ about sexuality being more than academic is very interpretive. If JK does it, it is to fulfill his focus on homosexuality and homo-eroticism in spirituality. If PH did not have any such focus, then its very strange that he should interpret in the same manner, leading thus to the same conclusions as JK.)

“The secret,” Aurobindo once wrote of the Goddess Shakti, “is to enjoy her in the soul as one enjoys a woman with the body.”2
[Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Ch. 2, p. 64.]

The suggestive language of aphorism may have been more apt to express the intensity of the path of love, as in this example from his posthumously published collection Thoughts and Aphorisms:

What is the use of admiring Nature or worshipping her as a Power, a Presence and a goddess? What is the use, either, of appreciating her aesthetically or artistically? The secret is to enjoy her with the soul as one enjoys a woman with the body.65
[The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, Major Works]

(That JK mentions it is not the focus because he will find and use what suits his ideas about sexuality and spirituality, but PH being a member of the Archives, found exactly the same quote valid out of a list of 547 aphorisms and about 133 on devotion (bhakti yoga) apart from a number of exquisitely beautiful passages on Bhakti in Letters on Yoga and the Synthesis of Yoga, for his book is astounding.)

Aurobindo’s writings certainly know nothing of actual sexual fluids, although he does appear to have been perfectly aware that this attempted spiritual transmutations of the physical body relied on the suppression and sublimation of actual sexual energies: “I for one have put the sexual side completely aside,” he said on December 13, 1923, “it is lying blocked so that I can make this daring attempt at physical transformation.” 33
[Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Ch. 2, p.65.]

On another occasion he said more directly: "I for one have put the sexual side completely aside, it is lying blocked so that I can make this daring attempt" at spiritual transformation.26
[The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, Guide: Ascent of Supermind]

(Another instance of exactly the same quote being picked up as JK, and both have interpreted in the same psychoanalytic way, that Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual experiences can be related to suppressed sexuality. It is interesting to note that this quote is not from any of the readily available works of Sri Aurobindo but from a talk published in Sri Aurobindo Circle 9 (1953): 207.)

Note of explanation regarding some Sanskrit terms:
In the reference, PH and in his book JK, have defined maithuna as coitus. But this is the narrower and more perverted meaning of maithuna, it has been essentialized as sexual intercourse by American scholars of religion with little or no knowledge of Sanskrit. The correct understanding of maithuna as derived from its Sanskrit meaning is: The term maithuna, like its English equivalent ‘intercourse’, has social as well as sexual connotations. And in the Tantric sense, it also has spiritual meanings.

PH and JK have focused exclusively on the sexual meaning
However, maithuna also means intercourse with the world with all our senses—to intensely engage the world in order to transcend the duality of separation. It is used as a metaphor for a positive engagement with the world. In its highest sense it can mean the enjoyment acquired by the soul through the senses.