A collection of articles by various authors to provide a counter to the vicious attack on Sri Aurobindo that came in the form of a distorted biography.
This book is a counter to the vicious attack on Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual stature that came in the form of a hostile biography of him by Peter Heehs entitled The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, published by Columbia University Press in 2008.
In this short note, we cover another distortion in this book which no one seems to have caught. This is the passage on page 253:
During their three-month stay, Mirra underwent a profound inner development, but this was due more to Théon’s wife that to Théon himself. Madame Théon was “a marvellous woman from the point of view of experience,” though her intellect was rather ordinary. Théon, on the other hand, had comparatively little experience, but an encyclopedic knowledge of things occult. A few lines from him was enough to inspire his wife to write pages and pages of what today might be called channeled writings. But these revelations, according to one French critic, were “written in such a bizarre manner that even the most cultivated men (unless of course they were themselves ‘Cosmic’) quickly abandoned the attempt to read them.” Mirra was aware of the deficiencies of Madame Théon’s writing, but she felt that this extraordinary woman was in contact with genuine sources of knowledge.” [emphasis added] (Lives, 253)
In this passage, Peter Heehs, via the opinions of some French critic, has effectively dismantled Madame Théon’s revelations. Did the Mother actually think Madame Théon’s writing was deficient? Let us go back to the primary source, which in this case is the Agenda:
Theon’s wife dictated it in English while she was in trance. Another English lady who was there claimed to know French like a Frenchman. ‘Myself, I never use a dictionary,’ she would say, ‘I don’t need a dictionary.’ But then she would turn out such translations! She made all the classic mistakes of English
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words that mustn’t be translated like that. Then it was sent to me in Paris for correcting. It was literally impossible.1
So the deficiency was in the French translation, which was being undertaken without the use of a dictionary. There was nothing wrong with Madama Théon’s revelations. So much for meticulous scholarship!
Rule of thumb while reading the book: Every negative remark in this book conceals a wealth of positive information. One must be prepared to go back to the primary sources to uncover the distortions.
Notes
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