Reviews of books & articles including 'The Lives of Sri Aurobindo' by Peter Heehs, 'Better to Have Gone' by Akash Kapur, 'End of Illusions' by Luc Venet ..
Yoga in 21st Century
THEME/S
Writing under the pseudonym Little Q, a 21st-century voice gives expression to an aspiration, recounts experiences on the path, reflects on the present state of the Integral Yoga community, and raises questions for our times.
Contact reviewer at little.q.seeker@gmail.com
Peter Heehs • Published: 2003
The modern biographer has become history's great leveller: every summit must be reduced to a hill, every hero to a neurotic, every saint to a madman.
Given this trend, soon, the surest certificate of greatness may be a book dedicated to disproving it.
These books differ widely in subject, yet they are united by a common approach.
Each contains a central dark knot—a sinister note, an obscure impulse, often concealed yet always alive enough to make its presence felt. And that, ultimately, ruins everything.
It is as though the poverty of the author's mind is transferred to the subject, and the resulting distortion is triumphantly presented as an iconoclastic masterpiece. Just as some animals must gnaw their food before they can digest it, certain minds seem incapable of approaching an idea, an event, or a life without first grinding it through the mill of mediocrity and instinctively defiling it.
What is truly intriguing, however, is the way the modern intelligentsia has persuaded readers that sympathy produces hagiography, whereas aversion produces genuine biography. As though love necessarily corrupts judgment, while hostility guarantees objectivity.
Millennia of human evolution have brought us to this curious destination: little minds casting their little gaze upon a little world, insisting that their smallness is not merely inevitable but virtuous—the highest form of wisdom, the only permissible vision, and our sole salvation.
(A Counter to) Deliberate Distortions of Sri Aurobindo's Life and Yoga
Luc Venet (Article) • Published: 2008
At the very outset of this breakup, Satprem, in the 1990s, responded to a letter from Luc with nothing but a prayer:
“Let this sad way of existence change. Lord, let us get out of this misfortune and human misery.”
There is, indeed, no meaningful way to respond to this article without descending into further misery and pettiness. A few reflections, therefore, are offered.
* * *
Satprem could be accused of many things. He could be called a rebel, a fanatic, a misanthrope, even a madman—but never a small man.
Good or bad- his stride was that of a giant and not a dwarf.
Hence, the pettiness of the motives attributed to him reveals far more about the author than about Satprem.
“Those who lead the way turn their back on their followers. That is just what the followers deserve.”
So wrote a twentieth-century revolutionary painter.
But art lovers are supposed to feel the thrill and grandeur of those who ventured ahead, or lament about the fate of the followers left behind?
Crusaders are united only in the service of a Cause. The moment a soldier forgets that those who march in the same legion owe one another nothing beyond the Victory of the Cause, disillusionment is never far away.
It is not through polemics or psychoanalysis that one can bring down a warrior who openly declares, "We are fighting against FALSE MATTER."
To answer such a challenge, one must either proclaim, "I am not false matter," or "I know a better, swifter, and more effective way to carry this Divine battle to victory."
That, however, is precisely what none of Satprem’s detractors has ever said. EVER.
“Led astray are those who are not sincere enough to want ONE SINGLE THING: The New World.”- Satprem
We are repeatedly reminded in this article that those around Satprem often met tragic ends or took their own lives.
As though those who stayed far away from him were somehow living immortal lives in a paradise.
In any case, any battlefield lies strewn with corpses. Is the Commander to be condemned for that, or the merciless conditions of war?
It is curious that, on the one hand, Satprem is accused of cultivating and thriving on a cult of personality, while on the other he is accused of driving people away from him.
Had Satprem fulfilled the author's expectations, he would have ceased to be a pathfinder and become an Integral Life Coach—carefully managing relationships, nurturing followers, and ensuring that everyone felt seen, heard, and validated.
That one could, at some moment in life, have felt the breath of the New World—and yet be interested in things other than THAT.
That one could have conceived of a Life without Death, yet remain incapable of writing a single page without the ego—without MY opinions, MY disappointments, MY passions; me, me, and ever more of me.
That is the real End of Illusions.
Lettres choisies de Satprem à Luc
Dr Nirmalya Mukherjee • Published: 2019
Auroville in the 1970s and 1980s was undergoing a revolution—perhaps premature, perhaps ultimately unsuccessful, but a revolution nonetheless. As with every great revolution in history, the enduring question is not who was right or wrong, but what the movement was striving to bring into being. Only by understanding the deeper evolutionary impulse—the IDEAL struggling to manifest through imperfect people and turbulent events—can one truly grasp its significance. Everything else, however valuable as historical context, remains secondary to the movement's essential direction and meaning.
Unfortunately, the book neither intends nor is able to engage seriously with this larger discussion. Instead, it presents a reactionary narrative steeped in bitterness, concealed beneath a mass of documents in an effort to portray the SAS as victims and Auroville as master schemers. In reality, it was a battle of strategy played out on a vast political chessboard, in which BOTH sides played their cards as skilfully as they could. One side lost—and decades later has written a book to chronicle that defeat.
The SAS may not have been particularly villainous, just as Louis XVI was not. Yet Louis lost his throne—and ultimately his head. The SAS may well have been guided by sincere intentions, just as countless honest, well-meaning, and devoted members of the French or Russian bourgeoisie were. Good intentions, however, do not determine the verdict of history.
Nor were the rebels required to be saints. Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, and Lenin were no angels—yet they prevailed because, for a time, they embodied and carried forward the force of a historical revolution. France eventually descended into the mediocrity of the Second Empire, Russia into the Stalinist regime, and Auroville itself may well have proved unworthy of the adventure that had been offered to it. Yet none of these later outcomes invalidate the original revolutionary impulse.The greatness of the Revolution prevails over its crises.
History did not favour the SAS. The destiny of Auroville was simply meant to unfold along different paths. The matter is, in the end, no more complicated than that—with or without the web of intrigue the book claims to expose.
Akash Kapur • Published: 2021
The book succeeds in being what it set out to be: a deeply personal account of experiencing Auroville during one of its darkest hours. It deserves credit for its compelling narrative. Beyond that, however, there is little to commend.
What is the most profound or original insight the author offers?
Edmund Burke had already levelled that criticism against the French Revolution in the eighteenth century. Gorky and Orwell lamented the tragic course of the Russian Revolution in the twentieth. There is scarcely anything novel here.
The whole history of humanity has been a tragic succession of betrayed dreams—from Athens to Tibet, from the Vatican to the Kremlin.
Since the dawn of history, humanity has shown, in its noblest moments, that there are ideals worth more than life itself. That is why the stories of the gallows, the firing squad, and the torture chamber continue to inspire those who refuse to accept mere survival as the highest virtue of human existence.
None of these horrors is altered by the author's—or our own—sentimental goodwill and noble lamentations over the sorry state of the world. Such wailings have long since become redundant. They do not redeem our condition; they merely expose our impotence and, at times, our cowardice.
What is truly astonishing, however, is that one could read The Mother's Agenda,Savitri, and Notebooks of an Apocalypse; live in Auroville and be immersed in everything it has to offer; and yet display such total incomprehension of Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's Yoga, and of Auroville's highest purpose.
Towards the end of the book, the author writes:
“They died for their beliefs,” people say of Diane and John. I suppose this is true. You could just as well say they died because of their beliefs.
No, my fellow seeker. It would be more accurate to say:
“They would have died one day, irrespective of their beliefs.”
This is not Eastern fatalism. It is the stark, raw, inviolable fact of human existence.
Only a few—those whom the book dismisses as fanatics, madmen, or tormented souls—have dared to challenge the human condition itself, choosing to wage, with bare hands, a lonely and seemingly impossible battle with Death, while the rest of the world remained content to quarrel over books and beliefs, lament injustices committed against them, or mourn the private tragedies of their own lives.
The book undoubtedly leaves the reader with sadness and anguish. Yet its most enduring impression is of an all-encompassing compassion for human smallness — this uncanny ability of humanity to reduce everything, everything, to its pygmy scale.
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