Originally posted on sciy.org by Koantum on Fri 29 May 2009 12:12 AM PDT
Subject: AUM 2009 — no thanks for invited speakers Ranade & Pandey
Date: 28 May 2009 09:40 GMT
From: Elke.Bracht@...
To: Dakshina
CC: ...
Dear Dakshina,
the days we met at the beautiful Mother's House in Vaitikuppam and our talks there are still vivid in my mind.
But regarding your invitation I must tell you that I am not willing to join a conference or meeting with Shraddhalu Ranade, Alok Pandey (in the USA) or Ananda Reddy (in Germany) as speakers. From their actions against Peter Heehs' biography it is clear as daylight that the charisma by which they travel is borrowed from the founders of the Integral Yoga and is not congruent with a mature personality. It doesn't take my experience as a clinical psychologist to conclude this from their defaming language against Peter Heehs. The lack of self-criticism it shows is strange and repulsive to a Western educated person. How is their level of rage and their persecuting action to be justified within the frame of Integral Yoga? The gap between claim and reality of these "representatives" is amazing.
It makes me feel sad to hear that followers of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother will not take a stand against these false gurus who are to be judged by their language and action. Not acting amounts to condoning and this means complicity — this is a lesson we Germans had to learn from our recent history. Some followers refrain from opposition on the pretext of "transformation". They have to be asked how it is possible that psychic transformation, the first transformation of Integral Yoga, has to go with a lack instead of a hightened discrimation of what is true or wrong?
It is now more than fifty years that I first came to know of Sri Aurobindo and strongly felt I had to experience as well as to study his work. The latter I did through indology and science of religion as academic approximations and through psychology for application. For more than thirty years I collected all available primary and secondary literature for the Sri Aurobindo collection at the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg — to which Karan Singh gave the first SABCL books on his visit as Indira Gandhi's minister in 1976.
Reading "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" was a double gain for me. It gives insights of not published sources — some very touching, indeed — and combines commitment with objectivity. Of this I think Sri Aurobindo is the best model, being engaged in experience and all the same able to take a reflecting step behind.
Peter Heehs' excellent biography serves as a stepping stone to a reception by people who at least are cultural Christians. They will understand now how a gifted English educated young man became the spiritual giant of integral nondualism.
A German audience, for instance, has to be met at its own secular worldview, which of course is not sheer "materialism". Ontological jumps offered by the above speakers won't do; they only make room for "healers" who turn the Integral Yoga into a therapy-religion (see "Hladina").
There is a need not for mission but for informing about the Integral Yoga and for correcting deviations in its reception.
If AUM 2009 went this way I would gladly join it.
Warm regards,
Elke
"Dakshina"
Dear friends ~
Just to let you know that several full scholarships for the AUM conference are still available.
The AUM this year is being held at the Furman University in Greenville SC from July 8-12.
The theme is “Sri Aurobindo...a New Hope and New Actionâ€
for details on the programs and speakers please visit: www.aum2009.com
If you are interested in attending, but prevented due to financial reasons, you may be happy to know that a scholarship is a possibility. Please let me know.
thanks,
dakshina for the AUM Scholarship committee
Attachment:
