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

Is This History or Speculation?

Raman Reddy

I question the very credentials of Peter Heehs being a serious historian. His selection of material does not concern itself with authenticity as much as the belittling of Sri Aurobindo in the public domain. Disciples and admirers of Sri Aurobindo wouldn’t mind being informed of the “defects” or the “human side” of Sri Aurobindo if the information with regard to them was based on honest research and well-ascertained documents. Not because they would be glad to see the human defects of their Master, but because they know that Sri Aurobindo overcame them and did finally embody a divine consciousness. This is what his yoga of transformation is all about and it is always encouraging for them to know that, at a certain point of his life, the Master faced the same difficulties which now engage so much of their time and attention. But this is not the case here. We have here instead a highly biased and pretentious writer who systematically suppresses primary evidence because it puts Sri Aurobindo in positive light, and uses secondary evidence in order to create a negative picture of him. To make matters worse, even this secondary evidence is often woven in with uncalled for personal remarks and statements based on pure speculation. Take the following paragraph on Sri Aurobindo’s married life:

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,

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partly innate and partly learned from philosophers such as Epictetus, would have helped him to keep his sexual tendencies in check. (Lives, 56)

I have marked in bold those words which a historian would generally not use, that is, if he bases himself on well-ascertained evidence and expects the reader to have some trust in his research. Note the following words – “presumably”, “does not seem”, seems to have”, “may have”, “would have”. Is this history or guesswork?

The word “presumably” has been used in reference to an imaginary Guru in a commentary on the Isha Upanishad by Sri Aurobindo; it has nothing to do with his own life. But Peter Heehs has to speculate on the reason for Sri Aurobindo’s marriage from what the imaginary Guru says because the commentary was written by Sri Aurobindo “four or five years after his marriage”.¹ So whatever he wrote around this time has to be a reflection of his own life! It is because Heehs would not be able to defend this silly conclusion on the basis of authentic material that he uses the word “presumably” to be on the safe side. For where are the primary documents which throw light on the reason for Sri Aurobindo’s marriage, in the absence of which a regular historian would mention only the bare facts like Sri Aurobindo’s father-in-law did, “There was no issue of the marriage.”² After all, a historian is not supposed to be a writer of fiction, who can build his story on any stray material which can unleash his imagination.

Next — the usual desire for gratification “does not seem” to have been an important factor in Sri Aurobindo’s decision to get married. Another uncertainty! How did he conclude that sex did not “seem to be” an important factor? Where is the reference to the document that Heehs bases his uncertainty upon?

Further, “the act seems to have held few charms for him”.  How does he know this? Again no documentary reference! Moreover, this is in stark contradiction to the first sentence which says that sex was “presumably” a factor in Sri Aurobindo’s decision to get married. The following is part of endnote 76 referred to in the above passage on p 56 of the Lives:

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In 1936 he [Sri Aurobindo] wrote to his disciple Nirodbaran, who was complaining about the difficulty of overcoming anger and sexual desire, “I was also noted in my earlier time before Yoga for the rareness of anger. At a certain period of the Yoga it rose in me like a volcano and I had to take a long time eliminating it. As for sex—well. You are always thinking that the things that are happening to you are unique and nobody else ever had such trials or downfalls or misery before.” See Nirodbaran, ed., Correspondence, 748. (Lives, 425-26) [emphasis added]

On one hand, Heehs tries his level best to produce evidence of Sri Aurobindo’s knowledge of sexuality (as in endnote 76); on the other hand, he keeps contradicting himself by saying that sex held few charms for Sri Aurobindo.

“Consummation may have been delayed because of Mrinalini’s youth.” Is Heehs some kind of sex doctor to speculate so authoritatively on Sri Aurobindo’s sex life?

Finally, Sri Aurobindo’s “own stoicism, partly innate and partly learned from philosophers such as Epictetus, would have helped him to keep his sexual tendencies in check.” I reproduce below the document which Heehs has based himself upon to show the reader how he decontextualises his sources:

Sri Aurobindo’s intellect was influenced by Greek philosophy.

Very little. I read more than once Plato’s Republic and Symposium, but only extracts from his other writings. It is true that under his impress I rashly started writing at the age of 18 an explanation of the cosmos on the foundation of the principle of Beauty and Harmony, but I never got beyond the first three or four chapters. I read Epictetus and was interested in the ideas of the Stoics and the Epicureans; but I made no study of Greek philosophy...³

Sri Aurobindo’s note begins with “Very little” in answer to the biographer’s statement on him being influenced by Greek philosophy. If Sri Aurobindo goes on to say that he read Epictetus

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and was interested in the ideas of the Stoics, it certainly does not mean a denial of his opening answer or that he was indeed influenced by Epictetus and the Stoics. How does Heehs then conclude that Sri Aurobindo’s stoicism was “partly learned from philosophers such as Epictetus”? How does he at all conclude that Sri Aurobindo was a stoic? By the fact that he took up Yoga which requires self-control? If that is the case, then we can conclude that only stoics take up Yoga!

I take up another paragraph (equally bad) from the Lives on the same topic:

About their connubial relations nothing is known. Her [Mrinalini’s] father summed up the situation in a sentence: “There was no issue of the marriage.” After Aurobindo entered what he called “the sexual union dignified by the name of marriage,” he seems to have found the state bothersome and uninteresting. “Marriage,” he wrote later to a disciple, “means usually any amount of trouble, heavy burdens, a bondage to the worldly life and great difficulties in the way of single-minded spiritual endeavour.” Many of these difficulties, for most people at least, are related to sex and the desires that accompany it. Aurobindo appears to have had few problems in that regard. He was probably alluding to his own experience when he wrote to a disciple that there were “some who can eliminate it [the sexual propensity] decisively by a swift radical dropping away from the nature.” 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 (Lives, 318-19)

Heehs seems to know more about Sri Aurobindo’s private life than Bhupal Bose, who was Mrinalini’s own father and Sri Aurobindo’s father-in-law! When Bhupal Bose himself said that nothing is known about Sri Aurobindo’s married life, how did Peter Heehs come up with so much of psychological insight with regard to the same? What is his source of information on Sri Aurobindo finding his marriage “bothersome and uninteresting”? As no reference

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is given to authenticate this statement, one gets the impression that Heehs is cooking up data from his own fertile mind.

Next, the phrase “sexual union dignified by the name of marriage” is picked up from a letter of Sri Aurobindo to Nolini Kanto Gupta in which he humorously advises the latter not to get married. It is presented by Heehs as if it were a remark of Sri Aurobindo on his own marriage!

“Aurobindo appears to have had few problems in that regard.” Why “appears to have had few problems”? What is the basis of this conjecture?

“He was probably alluding to his own experience when he wrote to a disciple that there were “some who can eliminate it decisively by a swift radical dropping away from the nature.” Another probability! But this time Heehs refers to his source of information, which is a letter of Sri Aurobindo to a disciple on how to eliminate the sex difficulty in Yoga. But how does he know that Sri Aurobindo was alluding to his own experience in that letter? Sri Aurobindo advised so many of his disciples on how to deal with sex in Yoga – does it mean that each letter bears a reflection of his personal life? It only means that a Guru of his stature experiences the difficulty on a universal scale and derives knowledge from a universal source, which makes him the pathfinder and guide to all those who are drawn to his Yoga.

“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.” The reference to this quote in endnote ²⁶ is: “Sri Aurobindo, talk of December 13, 1923, partly published in Sri Aurobindo Circle 9 (1953): 207”. Now should not a historian deal with his material in chronological order? Or can he put things in any order he likes? Sri Aurobindo’s remark (even this is not a primary document but an oral notation) was made in December 1923 whereas he wrote his letters on Yoga to his disciples in the late twenties and thirties. So his advice to eliminate sex swiftly and decisively came after his remark on having blocked his sexual

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side, and not before as presented by Heehs. The chronological order of documents makes a huge difference because, when presented in the right order, it implies a certain progress in Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana – that of being able to overcome the sexual difficulty which was previously lying blocked or set aside. As presented by Heehs in the reverse order, it only confuses the reader and “problematises” Sri Aurobindo’s personality, for how can the sexual difficulty be eliminated and blocked at the same time?

Having pointed out the blunders of our so-called historian, let me make it clear that I do not necessarily support the opposite of what I have refuted. So if I have challenged Peter Heehs’s conclusion of Sri Aurobindo being a stoic, it does not mean that I consider him to be emotional or passionate. I have challenged rather the historical method of Heehs than his conclusions as such, for his method (or rather lack of method) seems to hardly befit a serious and disciplined historian.

2nd June 2011

Notes:

1. Peter Heehs, Lives of Sri Aurobindo, p. 55
2. Ibid, pp. 318-19 (also quoted below)
3. Autobiographical Notes, CWSA, Vol. 36, p. 112