MURDERS IN THE LAND OF THE NAÏVE — 2
Peter Heehs wrote two
biographies: Sri Aurobindo: A Brief Biography, OUP, 1989 (Bio-1), and The Lives of Sri Aurobindo,
CUP, 2008, (Bio-2).[1] He also
planted a life-sketch of Sri Aurobindo in an anthology of some Indian saints, maybe
to test the tactic used in Bio-1 and
imply Sri Aurobindo’s rank among them. This part of my article analyses the
rest of Bio-1’s preface. Parts 3 and
4 will take up the preface of Bio-2.
Part 5 will compare a few of the facts and interpretations in them with
relevant facts from variant accounts.
Peter’s opinions on specific points are cut up, masked, and
implanted in unrelated passages. To unravel these opinions and weave their
pieces in an unbroken paragraph, I had to often repeat and remerge the pieces with
their soul-mates in other passages. Peter’s text is in Italics and mine in
Roman.
Peter’s
Attitude and approach – D):
(1) No one has tried to deal evenly with all the different aspects of Sri
Aurobindo’s life: domestic, scholastic, literary, political, revolutionary,
philosophical, spiritual. I have attempted…to give adequate attention to each
of these aspects.
(2) My main problem has been to balance the conflicting claims of two
different classes of readers: students of history and social sciences i.e.,
materialists, and spiritual aspirants.
Readers in the first class require a
work of scholarship: well researched, documented and objective, making no
unwarranted assumptions or unverifiable claims and providing facts and interpretations based on facts.
Readers in the second class are
looking principally for spiritual guidance and uplift…are interested mainly in
anecdotes and examples, not facts and interpretation. They are apt to consider
documentation unnecessary and to be offended by an objective tone. A biographer
who wishes to reach them must share their assumptions and make appropriate
claims.
(3) I believe that the needs of both types of readers are legitimate and I
feel that the present volume has something to say to each. My form, method and
tone all are scholarly; at the same time much of the book is devoted to Sri
Aurobindo’s spiritual life and thought.
My
Comments:
(1) Who can rightly judge
if all aspects in the life of one absorbed in spirituality for 45 of his
78-years, have got adequate attention?
Peter, whose theoretical preconceptions
arbitrate Sri Aurobindo’s account of his life against his documents? Whose non-devotional scholarly mind decides if Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual experiences are
actual realities or delusion? Can his
materialist readers, for whom “there is no inner reality, and consequently, no
spirituality,”[2]
be the right judges? Or spiritual aspirants, who know that the Spirit is the
sole Reality which influences, guides, and finally possesses all surface human characteristics and personal drama of
life?
(2) To claim that
balancing the needs of materialists
and spiritual aspirants is a problem is sheer drivel; both needs are present in
all. The history of Science and Spirituality is replete with highly developed personalities
– Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo are two such cases – in whom science
and spirituality co-existed. “Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual practice, his
‘spiritual realism’,” says George van Vrekhem, “has always taken the sciences
as known to him fully into account, and weighed the contents of their worldview
against the profoundest spirituality of the past and his personal experience.” [3]
(3) Peter’s claim of
giving equal legitimacy to the claims
of fellow materialist-foxes and disciple-hares is an outright lie. His real
problem is how to indulge the foxes and fool the hares. So he pompously offers
to the foxes intellectual substance: My
form, method, and tone all are scholarly. And what does he throw to the hares?
Much
of the book is devoted to Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual life and thought! But this
is baloney! Hares know too well that devoted
to Sri Aurobindo does not mean ‘written as a devotee or disciple of Sri
Aurobindo’, but ‘about’ or ‘space allocated to’ or ‘portion assigned to’ Sri
Aurobindo’!
Peter’s
Attitude and approach – E):
(1) The scholarly biographer of a saint or yogin, faced with evidence about
outward happenings that is not in accord with his preconceptions, is not
permitted to explain it away by invoking the deus ex machina of supernatural intervention.
(2) It seems equally dubious to me to explain away spiritual
phenomena by invoking up-to-date dei ex machina of Marxist, Freudian or other provenance.
(3) When a sociologist [Gordon[4]] interprets Sri Aurobindo’s interest in
spirituality as ‘a way of handling a situation of cultural aggression’, he seems to me to be telling us
more about his theoretical preconceptions than about Sri Aurobindo’s
discernible motives. It is even worse when a historian [same Gordon] strays out of his field into the
formula-ridden morass of pop psychology, suggesting that Sri Aurobindo’s ‘lifelong
obsession with mother figures dates from his childhood’, or that his rejection from the ICS was due to his ‘fear of
failure’. If one is to deal successfully
with inner experience – whether emotional, intellectual or spiritual – one must
deal with it in appropriately inner terms.
My
Comments:
(1) This law against explaining
outward happenings in a yogi’s life
in spiritual terms arises from the central assumption behind the three laws of scholarly biography Peter holds sacrosanct,
viz., it cannot be devotional.
And which Gods framed these inviolable laws? The leftist ‘secular’ clique ruling
India’s scholarly world! Bio-1 is not
his first offering at this sacred altar.[5]
(2) In his outward Ashram life Peter showed himself
a talented playwright and actor. Here he plays the dual-role of a Certified Fox
who denigrates Sri Aurobindo and his disciples, and a Heroic Hare who springs
to their defence:
a) Certified Fox convicts Purani,
Iyengar and Monod-Herzen, (why not Satprem?) of lacking in scholarly objectivity because they wrote from the spiritual point
of view, which, he explains, is not
surprising since all of them were disciples or devoted admirers of their
subject. Heroic Hare contests this verdict: But admiration, even discipleship, is not proof of total lack of
objectivity. It is true that none of these three had anything unflattering to
say about Sri Aurobindo, but neither did they engage in gratuitous
glorification.
b) Hares are not permitted to explain outward happenings in a yogi’s life by
the religious fraud of invoking supernatural
intervention; but foxes may explain
away spiritual phenomena by invoking up-to-date dei ex machina of Marxist, Freudian or other provenance,
without seeming to do it.
c) Certified Fox validates
Gordon’s charge that the human side of
Sri Aurobindo has not adequately been brought out in any existing biography,
and Heroic Hare softens it: but this does
not in itself convict the authors of the total lack of objectivity implied by
the word hagiography. In order to make the charge stick, it would have to be
shown that they were so intent on glorifying
Sri Aurobindo that they distorted the entire picture. Both know
the charge sticks by the Fox God’s
dictum “Thou shalt not be devotional!”
(3) Brother Gordon should
have set aside Sri Aurobindo’s interest
in spirituality as a political ploy to resist European culture without seeming to, like Peter’s India’s Freedom Struggle[6] craftily
slashed Sri Aurobindo’s political role to a disposable footnote. So should Gordon
have deviously psycho-analysed Sri Aurobindo’s life-long obsession with mother figures as a sexual fantasy rooted
in a motherless childhood. In sum, only Peter’s critical openness of the seeker of truth[7] can precisely
explain his subject’s inner experiences in
appropriately inner terms – rejecting even the subject’s own account. In
the next section playwright Peter depicts the last two days of Sri Aurobindo.
Peter’s
Attitude and approach – F):
(1) 4th and 5th
December 1950: (1) Sri Aurobindo fell
into what the doctors assumed to be a terminal uraemic coma; but it was a
strange sort of coma, from which the patient seemed to be able to emerge at
will.
(2) During his periods of full outward awareness Sri Aurobindo spoke to his
attendants, and
(3) even, when the end drew near, kissed these faithful companions of his
last years. Some time after midnight on 5 December 1950 he plunged within for
the last time, and
(4) at 1.26 a.m. his vital
functions ceased.
My
Comments:
(1) This falsification of
facts is meant to cast aspersions on the following statement of Nirodbaran, the
doctor-disciple in attendance on Sri Aurobindo from 1938 to 1950: “He was now
always indrawn, and woke up whenever he was called for a drink. That
confirmed the Mother’s observation that he was fully conscious within and disproved
the idea that he was in uraemic coma. Throughout the entire course of the
illness he was never unconscious.”[8]
(2) This distortion of
facts implying that there were also periods of unconsciousness, as there would
be if Tom, Dick and Peter fell in such a coma, is invented to adequately bring out the human side of Sri
Aurobindo.
(3) Isn’t this sly
mutation of attendants into faithful companions meant to provide scope
for a homosexual interpretation of Sri Aurobindo by Peter’s soul-mate Jeffrey
Kripal? An attendant (says the Chambers Dictionary) attends or serves; a companion keeps company voluntarily or
as a profession. The only eye-witness accounts of these scenes are by Dr. Nirodbaran
and Dr. Sanyal. Here is Dr. Sanyal’s: “Though He seemed to be unconscious He
was not, which was evident by the fact that He drew Champaklal several times to
his breast and kissed him lovingly…this emotional behaviour was evident here
for the first time.”[9] And here
is Nirodbaran’s: “It was during this period that he often came out of the
trance, and each time leaned forward, hugged and kissed Champaklal who was
sitting by the side of his bed. Champaklal also hugged him in return. A
wonderful sight it was, though so strangely unlike Sri Aurobindo who had
rarely called us even by our names in these twelve years… Sri
Aurobindo’s impersonal nature kept at bay all personal touches except during
out birthday or Darshan pranams, when he would pat and caress our heads.
Now Champaklal had his heart’s yearning gratified to the full extent…. Was it
the repayment of God’s debt to his ‘servant’ for his lifelong dedicated service
without the expectation of any other meed than perhaps some occasional look or
touch or word? For my part too, I can count a few glowing touches…when I did
pranam on my birthday…and the last Darshan day, he was unusually tender and
caressed and pressed my head for a long time. But the climax of the wonder
came when I was massaging his right leg [on 4th December]. He was
quietly lying down in bed; I was within the reach of his right hand. As I bent
down, I suddenly felt a quick touch of his palm on my head. At once I
looked up; all was as before. His gaze was elsewhere as if he knew nothing
about it…. About ten minutes before the grand end, he called me by name
from his indrawn state, inquired about the time and said, “Nirod, give me a
drink.” This was his deliberate last gesture…there was no apparent need
of calling me by name.”[10] Are
these accounts written by gay companions?
(4) So will Peter and I
conk out; but Sri Aurobindo controlled his vital
functions, they ceased only because he willed it.
Peter’s
Attitude and approach – G):
This biography is a short work and does not pretend to be
comprehensive. It is meant as a popular introduction to the subject. I hope it
will mark the beginning of the critical study of a remarkable life.
My
Comments:
We naïve Ashramites took this
popular introduction as written by a
spiritual seeker[11],
and thought that its cover-picture, a painting of Sri Aurobindo in 1915 by a
Danish artist known to the Mother, was chosen by an Ashramite[12]. But we
never imagined Peter’s comprehensive and
critical study of Sri Aurobindo’s remarkable life promised here would materialise
as The
Lives of Sri Aurobindo, the very antithesis of a disciple’s homage to
his Master. It is an infinitely more sordid affair than the Revised Edition of Savitri published in 1993
that began with a lot of fanfare in 1980[13]. Is the
climax yet to come in The Lives of Mirra Alfassa, a.k.a. Mother?
Or have his sponsors postponed this crowning achievement in view of the popularity
of The Mother’s Agenda compiled by
Satprem?
Peter’s
Attitude and approach – H):
A
full list of the people to whom I am indebted would occupy a disproportionate
amount of space. But I must acknowledge the help and encouragement I have
received from various members of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives and Research
Library. Thanks are also due to the Trustees…to quote from Sri Aurobindo’s
works. Neither the Ashram nor its Archives is in any way responsible for ideas
or opinions expressed or implied in these pages.
My
Comments:
Is it a disciple’s reverence
that affixed Sri to all the seventeen
times Aurobindo occurs in this
preface? And his self-effacement the reason for not providing the reader with the
details of his own life and work environment: on how and why he became a
disciple and when an Ashramite; on how Mr Jayantilal Parekh, the late head of
the Ashram Archives, promoted and protected him at an infinitely more
disproportionate amount of trouble; on how without the innate liberality of Mr.
Manoj Das Gupta, his writings would have been in limbo; on how hundreds of
disciples all over the world offered every facility, thinking he worked for the
Ashram? No. This fake self-effacement was aimed to dupe the Ashram while assuring
the leftist Gods of his fidelity, like his fake bio-data in 1988: “In 1971 Peter Heehs settled in Pondicherry
[not as a disciple of Sri Aurobindo]. He
is a research scholar [not an
Ashramite] at the Sri Aurobindo [not
the Ashram’s] Archives and Research
Library, specializing [meaning?] in
the life and politics [not the Yoga] of
Sri Aurobindo.”[14] The
Ashram never woke up to that bio-data and the book’s intentional insult to Sri
Aurobindo. But self-effacement in this preface and playing both Certified Fox
and Heroic Hare in Bio-1 was his
only safeguard: to admit being a fox could force the Ashram to review his
licence to publish anything, anytime, anywhere; and to appear as a hare could
invite censure from the leftist Gods. The strategy worked: The Fox Gods were
gratified, the naïve disciples were zombified, and the Ashram took up the sale
of Bio-1 without any hesitation.
Heil Dr.
Heehs, Master of the Uncritical Openness of a Seeker of Falsehood!
A Zombified Disciple
Refer to Part 1 of the Analysis published on 5 May, 2013 on this site.
Refer to Part 1 of the Analysis published on 5 May, 2013 on this site.
[1] Presumably both were read and approved by
the Ashram Trust as per Rule No. 6 on p.5 of its Rules of Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
2003: “Nothing should be sent out for publication (contributions to newspapers
and magazines, or books) without having been first submitted to Sri Aurobindo
for approval.”
[2] Georges van Vrekhem, Evolution, Religion, and the
Unknown God, Manjul Pub. House Pvt. Ltd., 2011; p.207.
[4] Gordon, Leonard, A: Bengal: The
Nationalist Movement 1876-1940. New Delhi: Manohar, 1979.
[5] Read India’s Freedom Struggle, OUP, 1988:
adaptation of his prize-winning entry at a Delhi Govt. contest.
[6] Ibid.
[7] “If the mind is shut up in its own
ideas and refuses to allow the Mother to bring in the Light and the Truth…then
one is not open.” [SABCL 25:123-24] – “In Yoga, obedience to the Guru or
the Divine and the law of the Truth as discovered by the Guru is the
foundation of discipline.” [CWSA 35:672]
[8] Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo: Nirodbaran, 3rd Edition, 1988;
p.274-75
[10] Twelve Years…, p.275
[11] For the spiritual seeker the only
development he seeks is the development of the psychic and spiritual
consciousness…because it is necessary to reach and to serve the Divine…. – Sri Aurobindo
[SABCL 23:520]
[12] “By definition the Ashramite has
resolved to consecrate his life to the realisation and service of the Divine.”
– The Mother [CWM 13:117]
[13] In his Archives & Research, 1980, Peter’s critical
openness declared: “[My] editorial staff…verify material already published
[to produce] new editions of old books, in which newly discovered material
is added, and old texts are checked carefully…in a few years a critical text
of [Savitri] will be brought out.” (p.93); “The duty of the editor is to
present the text exactly as [I decide] the author would have wanted it
presented.” (p.199); “If the editor…resorts to emendation, it is to set
right a manuscript reading that [to me] is clearly not what the author intended.”
(p.200)
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