The Lives of Sri Aurobindo
Ranked #5,189 in Culture & Society, #107,585 overall
My Review
In India this is a controversial book. It's even been banned in Orissa. The ban is due to the book not putting everything Sri Aurobindo did in a starry light. It deigns to suggest psychological motives, finding them in the plays Aurobindo wrote as well as his letters.
From a Western perspective, the suggestion that the man had personal motives as well as spiritual ones, doesn't detract from his stature. However, many Indian devotees perceive them as an insult to his name. It's called 'Freudian Psychoanalys' by some - when there really isn't a word of Freudian psychology in the whole book.
I'm hoping to go the Sri Aurobindo Ashram for a few months next year, and thought I'd read up on their tradition. So I ordered three books - this biography, a book featuring the teachings of The Mother and a similar book about Aurobindo's spiritual teachings.
I just love biographies: they transport one back in time into the life of people who generally led interesting and admirable lives. Sri Aurobindo's life is perhaps everything in the extreme. He lived the first years of his life in India, moved to England because his father wanted a good education for him and his brothers - and then lived their with his brothers taking care of themselves.
Though Aurobindo was the third of the three brothers, his scholarship money ended up taking care of the three of them when they went to college. He was a brilliant scholar. However, he avoided his father's wish of joining the Indian Civil Service (the British government controlled Indian Civil Service) by refusing to take riding lessons. Yes - this was a different time: it was considered essential that the people in charge of India's administration be able to ride a horse.
Aurobindo avoided direct refusal because of respect to his father and the rest of the family. This is an Indian pattern: one doesn't stand up to family directly, one instead creates circumstances that make their wishes impossible.
Anyhow, Aurobindo ended up in the service of one of the princely rulers of India. These semi-independent kingdoms were ruled by Indian kings and princes who worked with the English government while also having autocratic power over their subjects.
While doing that, Aurobindo also taught. studied Indian languages like Sanskrit and Bengali, and wrote his first pieces on an Independent India. We're still talking the 19th century here. Aurobindo was the first to publicly claim India needed to be independent of British rule. Unlike Gandhi, he felt armed resistance was a viable course, though when the extent of modern arms became clear - he changed his mind. Not out of principle, but out of a practical insight in the harm of violent retribution by the government.
Aurobindo, by nature not very sociable, ended up a very public figure for a few years. His brother lead a group of insurgents, who tried bombing prominent people. This backfired and the whole group was arrested. The government tried to convict them all - including Aurobindo, but the judge (an old Cambridge acquaintance) thought there was not enough evidence to convict Aurobindo.
In the meantime Aurobindo had been practicing yoga and meditation and he felt the transformation these exercises caused in him were more important than politics. Fleeing the police to French ruled Pondicherry, South of Madras (now Chennai), he ended up spending the rest of his life there, founding an ashram. This is what he's most famous for in spiritual circles in the West: his Ashram, his Integral Yoga and his spiritual relationship with Mirra Alfassa, aka The Mother.
The book misread
The parts found offensive include those which suggest that the Bengal revolutionaries, under Sri Aurobindo's leadership, gave the freedom movement a Hindu slant, and thereby exacerbated the communal divide.
The book is clear on this: Aurobindo was not as aware of communal tensions as in hindsight he ought to have been. It is clear that his own spiritual inspiration was traditional: The Upanishads, Rig Veda and The Bhagavad Gita. He was quite ready to work with Muslims, but thought independence more important than actively pulling them in.
Now that may sound like a confirmation of the above, but Aurobindo did very little active organization work. He wrote and he stimulated others to organize. And in that inspiration he let them very much free to do what they wanted, whether he agreed or not. He felt that once things have taken a certain form, they had better continue.
Perhaps, the most important charge against the book is that it apparently suggests that Sri Aurobindo's spiritual and mystical experiences were due to "an inherited streak of madness".
What Heehs notes has been historically noted throughout the ages: mysticism and madness are often hard to distinguish from the outside. The same goes for creativity BTW. The difference ultimately seems to be that mysticism ends up a positive for not only the person who experiences it, but also those around him or her. Heehs observes that while some have linked Aurobindo's mysticism to his mothers madness, the accounts on Aurobindo's sanity are overwhelmingly positive: noting his wisdom and emotional self control.
Devotees in Puducherry, where Aurobindo settled in 1910 after abruptly ending his political career, said the book also makes unacceptable remarks about Aurobindo and his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa, referred to as the Mother, and hints that their relationship was "romantic". They accuse Heehs of depicting Aurobindo's wife Mrinalini and senior-most disciple Nolini Kanta Gupta in a poor light.
I did not get from the book that The Mother and Sri Aurobindo had a romantic relationship. In fact, it makes it quite clear that they were both - and had been for decades - celibate. That there was emotion involved in their relationship is obvious, but it is rather a leap to go from friendship and working closely together to romance.
For me the culture shock in reading the book was rather the dismissive attitude towards sex that they shared. I mean - I'm single and likely to continue like that, but still - an ashram in which sexual activities are forbidden totally?
Quotes from 'The Times of India, Chennai'
“An awe inspiring life”
A controversial book
Write a review, add a comment, or debate someone who disagrees with you.
To an Indian audience this book is so controversial, that a whole website has been devoted to it. I guess I'm too Western to fully understand that. To me this book is respectful and positive about Sri Aurobindo. It just doesn't erase the human from the yogi.
What did you think?
Fetching blurbs now... please stand byLove it! Inspiring read on one of the most fascinating men in India's recent history
dotpattern says:
The book is a concise and accessible introduction to Sri Aurobindo and his profound influence in both politics and spirituality. This article is a very impressive analysis of the book and all aspects of the controversy, with both sides represented impartially, and a detailed investigation into the very phrases that presented a difficulty to a few, very vocal, individuals.
Posted February 20, 2011
spirituality says:
Wherever there is controversy, I allow every opinion expression. Pro, contra - like my own, or not.
Posted February 14, 2011
Yours Truly says:
Readers of these comments ought to be aware that some or all of them have been planted by the people who started the movement against Heehs and lodged multiple lawsuits against him and the Trustees of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. “Sona Singh Gill” is one of many aliases used by the leaders of the movement in their misleading and often abusive posts scattered around the Web. See http://mirrorofdayaftertomorrow.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/cyber-hero-warriors/ for an explanation. It is ironic that “Gill” claims to speak for the Ashram Trust when those who use his persona are at present attempting to have an Indian count dismiss the five Trustees because they have steadfastly refused to expel Heehs under mob pressure. “Donna Osborne,” who claims, in suspiciously bad English, “I am also Westerner,” repeats some of the false arguments offered by “Gill’s” colleagues in Indian courts. “Arya” (the name evokes the extreme Hindu Right) says twice, in the course of his long, rambling and probably fictitious account, that Heehs claims that his is “the only official” biography. This is false. Neither Heehs nor his publishers ever made such a claim. Heehs in fact has always insisted that his is only one of many possible approaches and that readers should make up their own minds. See http://www.auroville.org/journals%26media/avtoday/August_2008/An_extraordinarily_complex_individual.htm. “Arya” also repeats some of the arguments that “Gill’s” friends have made in court. Negative criticism is legitimate and even welcome in the open world of the Web; it is unfortunate however that “Spirituality,” by exposing the movement against Heehs and the Ashram in her excellent review, inadvertently allowed this page to become a channel for those who are leading this movement.
Posted February 13, 2011
spirituality says:
What can I add to an already long book review? I loved this book, though it is scholarly. For that reason I did not read it out in one sitting. I thought it well balanced, taking Aurobindo serious as a spiritual teacher, without ignoring the human in him.
Posted August 02, 2010
Doesn't do justice to Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo says:
a. The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs is not a book but a crime punishable under sections 295A and 153A of the IPC, 1860 (45 of 1860) as declared in the Govt. Notification No 1612/C Dated 09-04-2009.
b. Peter Heehs is an accessory to crime or a petty criminal if you will, under the very same sections.
2. Crimes and criminals are not dealt with by writing books but in accordance with the law of the land, which fortunately operates outside your universe of shallow moral grandstanding and statesmanship of convenience.] http://seof.blogspot.com/2011/08/guha-toes-heehs-line-another-book.html
[The proscription of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs has little to do with freedom of expression and is all about academic fraudulence, intellectual property theft, copyright violation, impersonation and criminal factual distortion with malicious intent.
The scope of the fraudulence in the book involves, inter alia, factual distortion, entirely concocted quotations, out-of-context quotes, presentation of perverse speculation as actual facts, deliberate suppression of evidence contrary to the author's thesis, etc. all of which is structured to harm Sri Aurobindo's image.] http://seof.blogspot.com/2011/08/peter-heehs-has-stolen-research-of-his.html
Posted August 23, 2011
spirituality says:
Nanand - maybe he didn't set up the archives, but he did work there? The book very clearly does NOT suggest that he speaks for anybody but himself. It's also very clearly NOT written under the auspices of the Aurobindo Trust.
You're suggesting he lied about having worked at those archives or that the impression created gives his testimony more weight than it deserves? Which is it - I think your words are open to various interpretations, more than his.
Posted August 11, 2011
NAnand says:
Being an ardent devotee of Sri Aurobindo and being brought up in the Ashram I can categorically say Peter Heehs was not the one who setup the archives. This is what irks us devotees the most - a total misuse of the position entrusted to him.
If Peter Heehs wants to write a book he is entitled to do so but he has little right to write the book under the auspices of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust. By proclaiming that he worked at the archives and thus his words carry weight simply creates an impression that the book has been sanctioned by the Ashram Trust. He has deftly played on this aspect and has netted mostly the 'westerners' in his net. What do Indians know about writing, anyway??
Posted August 11, 2011
Sri Aurobindo is Divine. says:
Great injustice to Sri Aurobindo. All misrepresented facts under many excuses. The presentation is carefully misconceived so that Peter can have name and fame at the cost of a great personality.
Read this before you really approach the book-
http://www.thelivesofsriaurobindo.com/
Posted May 25, 2011
Sri Aurobindo's Son says:
This is the same group which attacked Sri Vivekanand and Sri Ramkrishna Paramhansa.
Posted May 09, 2011
Peter Heehs biography
Peter Heehs was born and educated in the United States but has lived in India since 1971. He has worked as an editor at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives since its founding, and has contributed to the editing of the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library and The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.
As a historian of modern India, Heehs has written on the swadeshi period of the Indian independence movement and on the early phase of the Indian revolutionary movement. His 1992 study The Bomb in Bengal highlighted the importance of the Maniktala secret society, which was a predecessor of the Jugantar Group. In this book and other publications, Heehs made it clear that the Indian freedom struggle had a violent as well as a non-violent side, and that the violent revolutionaries helped prepare the country psychologically for the later mass movements lead by Mahatma Gandhi. In the second edition of The Bomb in Bengal (2004), Heehs distinguished the aims and methods of early Indian revolutionaries from those of later terrorists in India and elsewhere.
Heehs has also written on problems of Indian historiography in History and Theory, Postcolonial Studies, and other journals. He has also contributed to popular magazines such as History Today.
As a scholar of religion, Heehs has edited the textbook Indian Religions and has contributed to journals and edited volumes dealing with new religious movements in India. He has also discussed the problems of Indian communalism.
Heehs's ninth book, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo (Columbia University Press, 2008) was intended for scholarly readers. It received positive reviews in the United States, but was objected to by conservative devotees of Aurobindo, who have delayed the publication of the book in India.
Bibliography
* India's Freedom Struggle (1988)
* Sri Aurobindo: A Brief Biography (1989)
* Modern India and World History (textbook, 1991)
* The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India (1993)
* Essential Writings of Sri Aurobindo (1998)
* Nationalism, Terrorism, Communalism: Essays in Modern Indian History (1998)
* Indian Religions: A Historical Reader of Spiritual Expression and Experience (2002)
* Nationalism, Religion and Beyond: Writings on Politics, Society and Culture (2005)
* The Lives of Sri Aurobindo (2008)
From wikipedia
What's Sri Aurobindo's most important contribution?
Sri Aurobindo contributed on many levels of Indian life. He taught at university, he wrote about Indian independence, he stimulated people who used violence towards that goal, he studied and practiced yoga at a high level and he studied and wrote about Indian Philosophy - coming to a new synthesis 'Integral Yoga'. He as also a poet and a translator.
Sri Aurobindo Ghose Biography
The central theme of Sri Aurobindo's vision is the evolution of life into a "life divine". In his own words: "Man is a transitional being. He is not final. The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner spirit and the logic of Nature's process".
The principal writings of Sri Aurobindo include, in prose, The Life Divine, considered his single great work of metaphysics,The Synthesis of Yoga, Secrets of the Vedas, Essays on the Gita, The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity, Renaissance in India and other essays, Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, The Future Poetry, Thoughts and Aphorisms and several volumes of letters. In poetry, his principal work is "Savitri - a Legend and a Symbol" in blank verse.
From wikipedia
The Lives of Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo's Works
Books by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother
1
Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo's Teaching & Method of Practice by Aurobindo
One of the foremost Indian philosophers of the twentieth century, Sri Aurobindowas also a political activist, a mystic and a spiritual leader. Between 1927and 1950, Sri Aurobindo remained in seclusion while perfecting a new kind ofspiritual practice he called the Integral Yoga. During this period he gavedetailed guidance to disciples and seekers, responding to thousands ofinquiries. This correspondence constitutes a major body of work on the practice of yoga-sadhana. The present volume brings to...0 points
2
Psychic Being (Soul: Its Nature, Mission, Evolution) by Sri Aurobindo, The Mother
The present compilation is an attempt to bring together in one volume themanifold teachings pertaining to the psychic being which are to be found in thenumerous works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. The selections deal with thenature of the psychic being, shedding the light of Sri Aurobindo and The Motheron the inner constitution of the human being and on various related questionssuch as the process of inner growth, the afterlife, and rebirth.0 points
3
The Hidden Forces Of life by Sri Aurobindo, The Mother
Dealt with herein are the diverse forces which act on us,determining the course of events,influencing our thoughts,feelings and actions,affecting our moods,health and level of energy,pulling thhe human being to nether depths or beckoning him towards lofty heights.Spoken of in this book are also the hidden forces behind evolution and beneficient forces which man can learn more and more to draw upon.Many of the passages in this book not only explain the nature of the various forces but also provid...0 points
4
The Mother - US Edition by Sri Aurobindo
Important small work dealing with the action of the Divine powers in the worldand practice of yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Revelatory, inspired writing, frequentlycalled the "Matri Upanishad".0 points
5
Powers Within by Sri Aurobindo, The Mother
The book throws light on the nature of various inner powers which we alreadypossess and use more or less unconsciously, as well as with latent powerswithin, which are as yet undeveloped. The book is of interest to the generalreader as well as to the spiritual seeker.0 points
Books by Peter Heehs
Vote for your favorites, or add any I missed.
1
The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs
Since his death in 1950, Sri Aurobindo Ghose has been known primarily as a yogi and a philosopher of spiritual evolution who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in peace and literature. But the years Aurobindo spent in yogic retirement were preceded by nearly four decades of rich public and intellectual work. Biographers usually focus solely on Aurobindo's life as a politician or sage, but he was also a scholar, a revolutionary, a poet, a philosopher, a social and cultural theorist, and t...
0 points2
The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India 1900-1910 by Peter Heehs
'..This study is a positive contribution to the history of revolutionary terrorism in India prior to World War 1 and of the relationship between revolution and religion.' -The Historian. '...a most readable narrative. Heehs is able to bring out the idealism, patriotism and religious fervour which took the young revolutionaries smiling to the gallows.' -Business Standard. The use of violence to secure political ends has engaged the attention of social scientists, politicians, social activists as....0 points
3
Nationalism, Terrorism, Communalism: Essays in Modern Indian History (Oxford India Paperbacks) by Peter Heehs
This collection of essays on the Indian freedom movement focuses on Bengal during the Swadeshi period (1905-12). The essays deal with revolutionary terrorism and its relation to the movement as a whole and with communalism, which began to be a problem during this period.0 points
4
The Essential Writings of Sri Aurobindo by Sri Aurobindo, Peter Heehs
This volume includes writings covering more than fifty years (1893-1950) of Aurobindo's life that suggest the diversity of Aurobindo's thought and are arranged in six sections according to his main areas of interest:politics, the Indian traditions, social and political theory, philosophy, yoga, poetry and poetics.0 points
5
India's Freedom Struggle, 1857-1947 by Peter Heehs
This introductory text explains how the Indian freedom struggle began and took shape between the Great Revolt of 1857 and the attainment of Independence in 1947. Beginning with the decline of the Mughal empire in the eighteenth century, it briefly surveys the British economic and social colonialism against which the struggle first began. Its development into a national movement, and the characters and significant events that went into the creation of modern India, are then discussed in greater d...0 points
More about the controversy
around 'The Lives of Sri Aurobindo' and it's author Peter Heehs
- A critique of the book "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" by Peter Heehs: Refutation
- Committed to objective, academic, respectful and honest discussions
- PETER HEEHS An American Historian in India
- Most books on Sri Aurobindo are hagiographical, with little or no biographical information; in keen contrast, this book covers in great detail the various stages of his life%u2026. Many expositions and commentaries on Sri Aurobindo's principal works have been written, especially on The Life Divine, but this reviewer believes that Heehs's book stands out as the very best by enabling readers to understand the various circumstances that led Sri Aurobindo to his final destination. Heehs (independent scholar) richly deserves congratulations for the first-class research and scholarship evident in this rare work. - Ramakrishna Puligandla in Choice
- The Lives of Sri Aurobindo
- Some thoughts on the controversy s\urrounding Peter Heehs's schol;ay biography The Lives of Sri Aurobindo
- Mirror of Tomorrow :: Peter Heehs's The Lives of Sri Aurobindo-by Raman Reddy
- Peter Heehs has a crisp and racy style; he comes straight to the essential points and there is a masterful weaving of historical data which hitherto has never been done in a biography of Sri Aurobindo. But that is about all that can be appreciated in this book, for he sets the ball rolling in the wrong direction right from the Preface. The reader is soon stunned at the innate hostility behind his clever presentation, or rather, misrepresentation of facts.
- Heehs Biography Controversy (SCIY)
- Peter Heehs book is a critical biography written in a contemporary academic style, that is -as all contemporary academic styles - informed by Critical Theory. It is not surprising therefore, that it treats its subject in a manner appropriate for this type of discourse. The fact that those in a yoga whose unique major metaphysical premise is of the evolution of consciousness would criticize its language and method of inquiry because it follows a discursive style that is indicative of how consciousness has evolved over the past 58 years is nothing short of ironic. It is almost as if these reactionary followers of Integral Yoga in looking back to the past to co-opt modes of expression that have now become fossilized discursive practices, as consciousness has evolved into a new millennium, have begun looking backward to the past instead of forward to the future to complete the project of integral yoga. Such a backward looking view of the yoga can be understood to have flipped the goals of the Integral Yoga in substituting devolution for evolution.
- Sri Aurobindo: Man or Messiah? : EnlightenNext: The Magazine for Evolutionaries
- formerly known as What Is Enlightenment?
- Fundamentalism in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram
- We, the writers on this site, are concerned about recent actions by a vocal minority among the followers or devotees of Sri Aurobindo, and reactions by impressionable masses inside and outside the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. There are signs of attempts to turn the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother into a religion with some of the characteristics of fundamentalism.
- The Lies about Peter Heehs
- After the court cases were found to be without merit, and just when one thought a measure of sanity had prevailed in the controversy regards the publication of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo and its author Peter Heehs a new front for battle has opened up.
- hindunow: Peter Heehs on Aurobindo
- Indians understand intuitively the psychological and spiritual growth that takes place in people's lives better than Christians like Heeh who see everyone as born sinner and try to find only negatives about great men (in other cultures) under the disguise of objectivity. Sadly, with all the time he wasted in India the author never grasped the spirit of the Nation! Neither did he grasp Hinduness as propounded by Aurobindo. Koenraad Elst has grasped the importance of Aurobindo's contributions much better than Heeh among the Westerners.
Sri Aurobindo's many names
The man who was known as Sri Aurobindo at the end of his life, was named Aurobindo Acroyd Ghose at his birth. Aurobindo meaning 'lotus' and Acroyd for an English friend of his father's: Annette Akroyd. When Aurobindo became active in the Indian Independence movement, he dropped the middle name and usually called himself Aurobindo A. Ghose. When an ashram developed around him, he was increasingly called 'Sri Aurobindo'.
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The Lives of Sri Aurobindo
By Peter Heehs
