Originally posted on sciy.org by Rich Carlson on Sat 10 Jan 2009 09:55 AM PST
There is a movement of folks in Pondicherry who are so upset by the biography that Peter Heehs has written entitled The Lives of Sri Aurobindo that they have instigated a movement to discredit the author. Some people have even become so embolden as to try and have him ejected from the Ashram itself. The folks who have spurred this on have in the course of their attacks on Mr. Heehs openly distorted his text by decontextualizing portions of it or by a series of selective omissions to make it suit their own interpretation of events that facilitate their own story they wish to tell.
Because of this movement I have decided to post all the portions of the text that have been decontextualized or omitted and reprint them with corrections to demonstrate how the text from the book actually reads in its entire context. The portions of the text that have been lifted to suit the purposes of those with an agenda against the author of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo are in black, the missing portions of the text that are needed to give the entire context of the narrative are in red. As everyone will see there is a lot of red in the text.:
rc
Extracts from The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs
<With systematic and deliberate distortions and misrepresentations corrected by restoring omitted text and notes and providing brief clarifications. Restored text in red. Footnotes and explanations in red and in angle brackets. Text in black is the entire contents of the file as originally typed.> <ver.3>
<Copyrighted material. Cannot be excerpted or used without permission.>
(arranged subjectwise)
Sri Aurobindo
Hagiography
(Preface: xii) The genre of hagiography, in the original sense of the term, is very much alive in India. Any saint with a following is the subject of one or more books that tell the inspiring story of his or her birth, growth, mission, and passage to the eternal. Biographies of literary and political figures do not differ much from this model. People take the received version of their heroes’ lives very seriously. A statement about a politician or poet that rubs people the wrong way will be turned into a political or legal issue, or possibly cause a riot. The problem is not whether the disputed statement is true, but whether anyone has the right to question an account that flatters a group identity.
Aurobindo has been better served by his biographers than most of his contemporaries have. But when I began to write articles about his life, I found that there were limits to what his admirers wanted to hear. Anything that cast doubt on something that he said was taboo, even if his statement was based on incomplete knowledge of the facts. Almost as bad was anything that challenged an established interpretation, even one that clearly was inadequate.
Figure 2 is a photograph of Aurobindo that was taken around the same time as figure 1. Note the dark, pockmarked skin, sharp features, and undreamy eyes…To me it is infinitely more appealing than figure 1, which has been reproduced millions of times in its heavily retouched form. I sometimes wonder why people like figure 1. There is hardly a trace of shadow between the ears, with the result that the face has no character. The sparkling eyes have been painted in; even the hair has been given a gloss. As a historical document it is false. As a photograph it is a botched piece of work. But for many figure 1 is more true to Aurobindo than figure 2….
Hagiographers deal with documents the way that retouchers deal with photographs. Biographers must take their documents as they find them. They have to examine all sorts of materials, paying as much attention to what is written by the subject’s enemies as by his friends, not giving special treatment even to the subject’s own version of events…
Such an approach is possible and necessary when dealing with public events. But what about mystical experiences? In trying to trace the lines of Aurobindo’s sadhana, a biographer can use the subject’s diaries, letters, and retrospective accounts. There are also, for comparison, accounts by others of similar mystical experiences. But in the end, such experiences remain subjective. Perhaps they are only hallucinations or signs of psychotic breakdown? Even if not, do they have any value to anyone but the subject?
Those who have had mystical experiences have always held that they are the basis of a kind of knowledge that is more fundamental, and thus more valuable, than the relative knowledge of words and things. Absorbed in inÂner experience, the mystic is freed from the problems that afflict men and women who are caught in the dualities of knowledge and ignorance, pleasure and pain, life and death. A mystic thus absorbed often is lost to the human effort to achieve a more perfect life. But this is not the only possible outcome of spiritual practice. Aurobindo’s first major experience was a state of mystical absorption, but he was driven to return to the active life, and spent the next forty years looking for a way to bring the knowledge and power of the spirit into the world. In this lies the value of his teaching to men and women of the twenty-first century.
Childhood
(17) As a rule, however, he kept to himself. Most of his classmates were too much older than he to be his friends. A few patronised him on account of his childishness; the rest paid him scant attention. He had few of the qualities that English schoolboys find interesting. Weak and inept on the playing field, he was also – by his own account – a coward and a liar.<Source of first statements given in footnote 26, “Government of India, Home Department Proceedings, series D, June 1908, 13: 3, National Archives of India.†Sri Aurobindo’s “own accountâ€, not quoted verbatim and therefore not footnoted, is from a talk of 28 June 1926 recorded by A.B. Purani: “I was a most terrible liar and perhaps no greater coward on earth.†Cited by Purani in Sri Aurobindo in England, p. 18.>
Riding test
(28) Aurobindo failed to pass his medical examination the first time on account of “something found wrong with his urinary organs.â€<source in footnote 83, “Government of India, Home Department Proceedings, series D, June 1908, 13: 3, National Archives of India.â€>
<N.B. “urinary organs†is a Victorian euphemism for “kidneysâ€. For the significance of this problem in Sri Aurobindo’s life, see Lives, pages 220-221, 406, 408, 409.>
(30) In October, the ICS commissioners wrote Aurobindo asking him to fix a date to take his riding examination. He agreed to go on October 26, but did not turn up. An official then asked him to meet the riding instructor to make another appointment. He did not bother to see the man. Called to the office to explain, Aurobindo told a series of lies. <Source in footnote 93: “India Office Records L/JP/6/333, Memorandum by the Senior Examiner, Civil SerÂvice Commission Respecting the Examination in Riding, November 16, 1892; India Office Records L/JP/6/325, Hennell to Under Secretary of State, November 17, 1892.†See also quotation under (17) above.>
(32) He was rejected simply because he did not pass the riding examination. He was not given another chance to pass because he did not follow instructions, keep appointments, or tell the truth.<Same sources as above>
Marriage
(56) The usual desire for gratification, as Aurobindo has the guru call it [in his upanishadic dialogue quoted at length immediately above in the text, ref. The Upanishads, 138-139], 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. (see full endnote below) Consummation may have been delayed because of Mrinalini’s youth, and his own stoicism, partly innate and partly learned from philososphers such as Epictetus, would have helped him to keep his sexual tendencies in check.
(425)
Endnote: For Sri Aurobindo’s general knowledge of human sexuality,
see his letters to disciples on sex, which occupy more than forty
pages, 1507-1549, of Letters of Yoga. For his experience of
maithunanda, see Record of Yoga, 204, 300,
302, 329, 431, 464, 774, and 1456.
Maithunanda means literally the bliss, ananda, of coitus, maithuna.
In the Record it refers to a particular intensity of spontaneous
erotic delight, but some references, notably
on page 204 (“equal
to the first movements of the actual maithuna anandaâ€) seem to
imply a knowledge of ordinary maithuna.
Sri
Aurobindo never spoke directly about his experience or lack of
experience of sex, but he did refer to the
subject indirectly. In
1936 he wrote to his disÂciple 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.â€
See Nirodbaran, ed., Correspondence,
748.
When Nirodbaran asked
him why spiritual teachers such as ConÂfucius
or Sri Aurobindo got married, he replied: “Perfectly natural—they
marry before the [spiritual] change—then the change comes and the
marriage belongs to the past self, not to the
new one.†See
Nirodbaran, ed., Correspondence,
576.
A half-century later, Nirodbaran alluded to this exchange
in a talk
about Mrinalini. He concluded: “Why did Sri Aurobindo marry? As far
as I have understood his
philosophy of life, he was from the
beginning holding the view that life is not an illusion; he refused
even to accept a
yoga which rejected life. The wholeness, the
integrality of the experience of life was his doctrine. . And
love through
marriage playing a very important role could not be
excluded from the pursuit of his avataric mission which meant
to
change the world. That experience left out would not give the seal of
completeness to that mission or enable him
to say to us, ‘This
experience also I have had.’†See Nirodbaran, Mrinalini
Devi, 28.
For Sri Aurobindo’s own
views on the avatar and sex, see
Nirodbaran, ed., Correspondence,
169,
and N. Doshi, ed., Guidance,
280–281.
<The following discussion on pages 318-319 omitted in its entirety:
About their connubial relations nothing is known. Her father summed up the situation in a senÂtence: “There was no issue of the marriage.â€<Footnote 25> After Aurobindo entered what he called “the sexual union dignified by the name of marriage,†[allusion to a letter quoted on page 316-317] 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.<Footnote 26>
<Text of Footnotes 25 and 25
25. B. Bose, note on Mrinalini Ghose, in SAAA, reproduced in Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research 2 (December 1978): 208.
26. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, 1528, 1512; Sri Aurobindo, talk of December 13, 1923, partly published in Sri Aurobindo Circle 9 (1953): 207.>
Anger
(112) His “voluntary self-effacement†was put to the test on December 12 when an officious secretary printed his name as editor-in-chief where Pal’s name used to be. Aurobindo was furious when he saw it. It gave him publicity he did not want, and also ran counter to an earlier decision that the editor of the paper would not be named. He spoke to the secretary “pretty harshly†about it. Hemendra Prasad, who witnessed the outburst, thought Aurobindo was more than just harsh. “Well, if you take the clothes away there remains little to distinguish one human radish from another,†he noted in a Shakespearean allusion. A day later, he was more explicit: “Babu Aurobindo Ghose is an extremely strange man. And I suspect a tinge of lunacy is not absent in him. His mother is a lunatic. And it is not at all strange†– not strange, that is, that the madness in Aurobindo’s family might express itself in him as an intensity that exceeded the norm.<footnote 31>
<Footnote 31 gives source of “pretty harshly†as Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, 59 and of Hemendra’s Prasad quote as : Diary of Hemendra Prasad Ghose, December 12–13, 1906.>
Sri Aurobindo’s Politics
(104) When people asked to her Aurobindo speak, Pal replied “Try to assimilate what I am telling you. When he speaks, he will speak only fire.â€
<para> Aurobindo’s
reticence was only partly due to his temperament. He was incapable of
addressing a meeting in Bengali, and had trouble understanding the
East Bengal dialects.
<This is common knowledge, commented on by Sri Aurobindo himself. See Karmayogin, p. 43 (speech of 1909): “I have spent the earlier part of my life in a foreign country from my very childhood, and even of the time which I have spent in India, the greater part of it has been spent by me on the other side of India where my mother tongue is not known, and therefore although I have learned the language like a foreigner and I am able to understand it and write in it, I am unable, I have not the hardihood, to get up and deliver a speech in Bengali.†Even now, people from West Bengal who know standard Bengali perfectly have trouble understanding the dialects of Mymensingh, Sylhet and other districts of East Bengal (now Bangladesh). Sri Aurobindo’s Bengali was far from perfect at this time (1906).>
(130) His unwillingness to compromise was his strength as well as his weakness. He was – as he wrote in a letter of 1920 – the right person to call on “when there is something drastic to be done, a radical or revolutionary line to be taken.†<Footnote 92> In the give-and-take of day-to-day politics he was less effective. He approved of but could not follow Tilak’s advice that a politician should be ready to accept half a loaf, and then demand the rest. Cotemporaries and historians questioned his right to be called an effective politician. Certainly, he was not a great builder or steady worker. But his radical interventions opened up paths that others could hardly imagine.
<Footnote 92: Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, 433>
<Other sources drawn upon here include a statement by Sri Aurobindo quoted on page 212 of the book: “I was more suited for intellectual pursuits like poetry than for politics.†<Source in footnote 152: V. Chidanandam, ed., “Sri Aurobindo at Evening Talks,†Mother India 23 (February 1971): 22>
(149) “Without making any effort at oratory,†another listener recalled, Aurobindo managed to hold the audience with his “impassioned eloquence†– this despite his being far from impressive as a speaker: short, thin, with a drawn and angular face and a voice high-pitched to the point of shrillness.< Footnote 137>
<Text of footnote 137: T. Sastry, “My First Meeting with Sri Aurobindo,†232; letter from A. K. ChowdÂhury to Sudha Sundaram, January 10, 1981, in SAAA; P. Chandwani, “Sri Aurobindo: A Few Reminiscences,†469; B. Ghose, “Sri Aurobindo,†33C; A. Purani, Reminiscences, in SAAA.>
Surat session of the Congress
(140) As the
Extremists followed their leader [Sri Aurobindo] as he walked out of
the room, one of Bannerjea’s
lieutenants raised his fist and shouted: “Aurobindo, go eat Tilak’s
shit!â€<Footnote 140>
The next morning tempers were still frayed, but most of the delegates wanted to see the thing through.
<Text of footnote 14o: B. Ghose, Barindrer Atmakahini, 19–20; B. Ghose, “Sri Aurobindo,†48.>
(141) Years later Aurobindo observed in a letter that his advice was, in effect, “the order that led to the breaking of the Congress.†This gives too much importance to a single factor in a complex chain of events. The differences that brought about the split had been building for months. Even without Aurobindo’s “orderâ€, Tilak’s stance and the attack against him would have led to a free-for-all.<This opinion would be supported by most if not all historians who have studied the period. It does not deny the importance of Sri Aurobindo’s order; rather it contextualizes it.>
Hinduism
(187) The Uttarpara speech has been printed and cited innumerable times since its delivery, mostly because it was the first and the last occasion that Aurobindo spoke of his spiritual experiences in public. As such, it is an imporÂtant document for scholars of mysticism. But historians, political scientists, and politicians also discuss the speech. Left-wing critics hold it up as proof that Aurobindo’s nationalism was Hindu at its core, and suggest that this bias encouraged the growth of communalism, which made the partition of the country inevitable. Right-wing enthusiasts regard the speech as an inspired expression of the imperishable Indian spirit, citing passages of the speech out of context to make it seem as if Aurobindo endorsed their programs. These readings are both partial and thus both false; Aurobindo’s “universal religion†was not limited to any particular creed. It had been given classic expression in the Upanishads and Gita, but it was also at the core of such scriptures as the Bible and the Koran. More important, “its real, most authoritative scripture is in the heart [of every individual] in which the Eternal has His dwelling.â€<footnote 70> The true sanatana dharma was not a matter of belief but of spiritual experience and inner communion with the Divine.
<Text of Footnote 70> “Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, p. 26.†Passage quoted here for convenience: “This sanatana dharma has many scriptures, Veda, Vedanta, Gita, Upanishad, Darshana, Purana, Tantra, nor could it reject the Bible or the Koran; but its real, most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has His dwelling. It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world’s Scriptures, the law of knowledge, love and conduct, the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga.â€>
<For Heehs’s papers in historical journals refuting the Right-wing claim that Sri Aurobindo’s position was proto-Hindutva, and the Left-wing charge that his writings and speeches encouraged communalism, see Heehs’s website: https://peterheehs.net. References to his papers on these subjects may also be found on the back of Heehs’s 2008 booklet Sri Aurobindo and Hinduism, where they were listed at the request of the booklet’s editor, Dr. Mangesh Nadkarni.>
Hindu-Muslim problem
(115-116) A hundred years later, the East Bengal riots are remembered not as occasions of Hindu self-assertion, but as early examples of the communal violence – to use a term that had not yet been invented – that continues to the present day. Aurobindo and other Extremist are sometimes accused by liberal and left-wing historians of preparing the way for communalism by giving a Hindu slant to the movement.<See note in angle brackets above. For a balanced discussion of the East Bengal riots and how they are remembered today, see Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal: 1905-1947. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991).>
(190) But he did not turn his back on political issues such as the Hindu-Muslim problem. In the issue of July 17, 1909 he wrote that there was “absolutely no reason why the electoral question should create bad blood between the two communities.†Union could never be achieved “by political adjustmentsâ€; it had to be “sought deeper down, in the heart and the mind, for where the causes of disunion are, there the remedies must be sought.†Sound psychology, but few Muslims were comforted by his assertion that “our Musulman brother†was an Indian as any Hindu, since “in him too Narayan dwells and to him too our Mother has given a permanent place in her bosom.†<footnote 82> Only highly cultivated men like Abul Kalam Azad could see the sense behind the Hindu imagery. Azad visited Aurobindo a few times in the Karmayogin office and was briefly in contact with one of the revolutionary groups.<footnote 83> But most Muslims stayed away from Extremist politics, which appeared to them to be dominated by Hindu interests.
<Texts of footnotes 82 and 83:
82. Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, 29–31
83. A. Azad, India Wins Freedom, 4.>
(212) He tried, half-heartedly, to bring Muslims into the movement, but he never gave the problem the attention that hindsight shows that it deserved. But could anything said or done in 1907 have changed the outcome forty years later? Probably not. Still, partition and the bloodletting that accompanied it were the movement’s principal failings, and Aurobindo and his colleagues have to take their share of the blame. <If not, then all the blame falls on the British and the Muslims. No serious historian could advance this view, however comforting it might be to some.>
Aurobindo legend
(199) In an effort to explain the “marvellous change†of an “obscure school-master†into a national political leader, [Jitendra Lal] Bannerji proposed to give his readers what was needed to plumb the “secret of that mysterious personality which has drawn to itself so much love, hope and reverence.†Glowing portraits of Rajnarain Bose and Dr. K. D. Ghose were followed by a potted biography of Aurobindo that stressed his intelligence and self-sacrifice. Released from jail after a year’s confinement, he “is like gold, thrice tested in fire.†Some called him a visionary and a dreamer. Jitendra Lal had no quarrel with that: “Yes, Aravinda Ghosh is a dreamer – but he has dreamed golden dreams for his country and people – visions of glory and triumph.†<Footnote 115> This article may be said to mark the beginning of the Aurobindo legend, which would assume new forms in the years to come. But Aurobindo does not seem to have been taken Jitendra Lal’s article too seriously. In December he published a letter by a professor named Hiralal Haldar that scoffed at Jitendra Lal’s hero-worshipping tone.<Footnote 116>
<para> Critics of Aurobindo could be as zealous in detraction as Jitendra Lal was in praise. Annie Besant again proclaimed him dangerous, even fanatical on account of “his refusal to work with any Englishmen.†<Footnote 117> Members of government used the same terms to describe the man they were trying to imprison. Some added that they thought he was slightly off his head: “There is madness in his family,†wrote the Viceroy to the secretary of the state, “and he probably has a bee in his bonnet.†Minto seems to have picked up this notion from R.C. Dutt, a onetime friend of Aurobindo’s, who had been asked for information by the political agent of Baroda. “Arabindo’s mother was off her mind,†Dutt volunteered, “and Arabindo himself was eccentric.â€<Footnote 118>
<Rest of paragraph and long citation from Sri Aurobindo omitted>
<Text of footnotes:
115. J. Bannerji, “Aurobindo Ghose—A Study,†476–487.
116. Letter from Hiralal Haldar, November 5, 1909, published as “Comment and CritiÂcism†in Karmayogin 1 (December 11, 1909): 5.
117. Besant in Central Hindu College Magazine 9 (September 1909): 210.
118. Minto to Morley, April 14, 1910, Minto Papers; Diary of R. C. Dutt, August 7, 1909, Baroda State Papers.>
Sri Aurobindo’s adesh
(204) Years later Aurobindo explained that when he heard Ramchandra’s warning, he went within and heard a voice – an adesh – that said “Go to Chandernagore.†He obeyed it without reflection. Had he given it any thought, however, he would have found good reasons to comply. Chandernagore was a French possession, one of five scattered enclaves that made up the French settlements in India. Outside the jurisdiction of the British police, it had beÂcome an important center of nationalist activity. For a man with a British warrant against him, it was the best place near Calcutta to go. The adesh also came at an opportune moment. Aurobindo had written ten days earlier that he would “refrain from farther political action†until a “more settled state of things supervenesâ€â€”something that was unlikely to happen very soon. This period of political paralysis coincided with his own wish to retire from poliÂtics and spend more time practicing yoga. In December, he had looked into the possibility of buying land outside Calcutta to found a spiritual ashram.<footnote 134> Nothing came of this idea, but his urge to leave politics remained. It was only his awareness that his party depended on him that kept him in the field. But the return of Shyamsundar and the other deportees meant that the movement would not be leaderless if he left. In addition, the arrival of his uncle Krishna Kumar Mitra meant that his last family duty—looking after his aunt and her children—had come to an end.
This is not to suggest that he thought all this through when he decided to leave Calcutta. By his own account, his “habit in action was not to devise beforehand and plan but to keep a fixed purpose, watch events, prepare forces and act when he felt it to be the right moment.â€<footnote 135> The moment for his deÂparture had come. As he sailed up the Hooghly in his little wooden boat, he probably was not looking further ahead than the next few days.
<Texts of footnotes 134 and 135:
134. Government of India, Home Department Proceedings, series A, January 1910, 141–142: 4.
135. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, 18.>
Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual experiences
(245-247)
Before continuing it is necessary to consider a
question that may have occurred to some readers. In writing and
speaking about his sadhana, Aurobindo
made the following claims: that he saw visions, heard voices, and had
other sources of knowledge independent of the senses and reason; that
he could read people’s minds and had knowledge of the future; that
by means of mental power he could change the course of events, cure
diseases, and alter the form of his body; that he went into trance;
that he felt physical pain as pleasure and experienced spontaneous
erotic delight; that he had a sort of supernatural strength; that he
was in touch with goddesses and gods; that he was one with God. Those
familiar with Indian mythological literature will not be surprised by
these powers and experiences, as they are commonplace in the epics
and Puranas.
But
Those familiar with the literature of mysticism will observe
that Aurobindo’s powers and experiences are similar to those that
other mystics from Milarepa to Rumi to Saint Teresa are said to have
possessed. But those familiar with the literature of psychiatry and
clinical psychology may be struck by the similarity between
Aurobindo’s powers and experiences and the symptoms of
schizophrenia.
The question of the relationship between mysticism and madness has been discussed since antiquity. In the folklore of many cultures, a man or woman of exceptional ability has often been thought closer to the lunatic than to the ordinary mortal. Indian tradition offers hundreds of examples of yogis, mysÂtics, and sufis whom others regarded, at least sometimes, as out of their minds. India assigns an honored place to the divine madman and madwoman once their spiritual credentials have been accepted. In the West, someone who acts eccentrically and claims divine influence is more likely to be considered a psychotic with religious delusions. Recent psychiatry has barely amended Freud’s idea that “religious phenomena are only to be understood on the pattern of the individual neurotic systems familiar to us.â€<Footnote 91> A defender of mysticism would argue that the truth value of mystical experience is so much greater than the truth value of psychiatry—a discipline based on dubious assumptions—that any attempt by the latter to explain the former is absurd. But unless the deÂfender was an experienced mystic, this would just be substituting one set of unverified assumptions for another. When I speak of Aurobindo’s experiences, my aim is not to argue for their veracity or for their delusiveness; I simply present some of the documented events of his inner life and provide a framework for evaluating them.
In
his Varieties
of Religious Experience, William
James examined the experiences of “religious geniuses,†some of
whom were considered unbalanced by their contemporaries. James
insisted that such experiences had to be
interpreted “in the
immediate context of the religious consciousness.†The correct
criteria for judging them were
“immediate luminousness,â€
“philosophical reasonableness,†and “moral helpfulness.â€
Later writers continued on
similar lines. Anton Boisen felt that
there was “an important relationship between acute mental illness
of the
functional type and those sudden transformations of characterâ€
known as conversion experiences. “Certain types of
mental disÂorder
and certain types of religious experience†were, he wrote,
“attempts at [personality]
reorganisation.†When successful, such
attempts can lead to a new synthesis; when unsuccessful, they lead to
insanity.<Footnote 92>
Neither
Boisen nor James attempted to erase the line between mysticism and
madness.
They acÂknowledged that many people who claimed to have
mystical experiences sufÂfered from psychological
anguish that
made them incapable of leading proÂductive lives. They also noted
that certain well-known mystics
passed through periods of apparent
madness. Sudhir Kakar, who discussed this with reference to
Ramakrishna,
felt that the distinguishing sign of psychosis in such
cases was “painful or anxious affect.†In the absence of
psychological pain or anxiÂety, “certain types of mystical
experience†could be regarded as having “their ground in
creativity, akin to the heightened fantasy of an artist or a writer, rather than in pathology.â€<Footnote 93>
Most
of Aurobindo’s experiences are familiar to the mystic traditions of
India and elsewhere. He wrote about them
in language that is
reasonable and luminous, though often hard to understand. Some of
this writing is in the form of
diary notations that were concurrent
with the experiences. Around the same time he also wrote more than a
dozen
books on philosophy, textual interpretation, social science,
and literary and cultural criticism, along with a mass of
miscellaneous prose and poetry. Numerous scholars admire these works
for their clarity and consistency;
thousands of readers believe that they have been helped spiritually or mentally by them. No contemporary ever reÂ
marked that Aurobindo suffered painful or
anxious feelings as a result of his experiences. In one or two
letters
written during the 1930s, he wrote that his life had been a
struggle, and hinted at inner dangers and difficulties as
great as
any “which human beings have borne,†but at no time did he give
evidence to others of inner or outer
stress. Indeed, virtually everyone who met him found him unusually calm, dispassionate, and loving – and eminently
sane. The
reÂports to the contrary are so rare that they can be examined
individually. As noted earlier, while
working as editor-in-chief of
Bande
Mataram,
Aurobindo sometimes was severe and occasionally angry. After
witnessing a tongue-lashÂing Aurobindo gave to another,
Hemendra
Prasad Ghose wrote in his diary that he thought
Aurobindo might have
inherited “a tinge of lunacy†from his mother. R.C. Dutt, asked
by the government for
information about Aurobindo, also mentioned
Swarnalata’s madness and suggested that her son was “eccentricâ€.
After Aurobindo had spoken of his vision of Krishna in the Uttarpara
speech, a few of his associates murmured
that he had lost his
balance. These scattered reports by people out of sympathy with him
are hardly significant in Attachment:
