(A Counter to) Deliberate Distortions of Sri Aurobindo's Life and Yoga

The Gospel of Peter

Dr. Alok Pandey

If one has to believe in all that Peter and his followers are saying, then one would arrive at the following conclusions:

• 1. Devotion, faith and love for the Master are not spiritual but religious things. As such they have little to do with the Integral Yoga which is beyond religion.
  2. Spirituality is about an unbridled freedom of the mind and vital to do as they please, when they please and wherever they please.
  3. Anything that either restrains this kind of freedom or restricts it, is religion and fundamentalism.
  4. Doubts about the path and criticism of the Master is also one of the roads that one can take in the journey of the Integral Yoga.
  5. To point out a crass misuse of freedom and theft of a most valuable treasure by those who are meant to guard it, is blasphemy and sacrilegious.
  6. It is perfectly alright that someone who is entrusted with but does not possess or own a property, steals and sells it. It is simply exercising his freedom. To point out such transgressions is being narrow-minded.
  7. Some “yogis” across the Atlantic are so developed that they know what is happening in an Ashram in South India better than the Ashram inmates themselves. Not only they know but can also dictate what the collectivity should do and must do. This is not moral policing, but standing up to an ideal!
  8. Indians are intrinsically intellectually inferior, incapable of analysing anything, have a poor knowledge of the nuances of English language and are simply a bunch of sentimental fools.

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• 1. Laws are meant only for some and not for others. To go to the court to settle disputes is ethically wrong.
  2. Writing letters that draw the attention of authorities to a serious transgression and insist that action be taken to prevent further theft and misuse, amounts to sword-brandishing and arm- twisting. So also, to express the collective anguish through such a letter is simply mob mentality and mass hysteria.
  3. Unity means accepting to conciliate with those who are hostile to the Yoga and to the Divine. It means to shake hands with brazen falsehood.
  4. Human beings are superior and much more important than the Divine. Love for those who are akin to me in custom and culture come first and foremost to my consideration. Love for humanity comes next. Love for idealism, for truth, for honesty, for transparency comes last. And Love for the Divine is simply an abstraction or a hallucination, a fantasy, and one must get rid of it fast so as to appear modern and secular, non-religious and thereby fit and acceptable for sharing the platform of elitist conferences.
  5. The Avatar is simply an imperfect human being who with great labour and pain somehow achieves a doubtful divinity. He is not, as is generally and ignorantly believed and upheld by ignorant religious minded persons and mystics, a Perfect Consciousness descending into an imperfect mould to work amidst and upon an imperfect field of earth and humanity.
  6. Scholars can never be wrong and man’s mind is capable of judging and criticising the Divine.
  7. And finally, though it sounds like a cliché, the boss is always right! And the boss is Peter Heehs!

7 January 2010

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