Originally posted on sciy.org by Rich Carlson on Mon 27 Aug 2007 08:50 AM PDT
Ok, the following is what I have come up with after researching the publication history of the Record of Yoga.
After getting responses from very credible sources who have been close to the project what follows is a brief
summary:
It is unlikely that Sri Aurobindo kept his diary with the idea of
publishing it. If he had written it for that purpose, it would have
been easier for skeptics to dismiss it. The fact that it lay around for
60 years or so before it was discovered shows that he had no such
intention and enhances its credibility. Part of its value lies in the fact that he was not trying
to prove anything to anyone except himself.
The Record of Yoga was found in Sri Aurobindo's notebooks among
thousands of pages of writings he had not published and in many cases
probably would never have published himself. If we went strictly by his
stated intentions about the publication of his writings, his complete
works might come to about ten volumes. For example, in 1949 he
explicitly ruled out the publication of The Future Poetry, The Secret
of the Veda and A Defense of Indian Culture without extensive revision
which he never had time to do. So his final instructions regarding
these books were that they should not be published. There is no such
written statement barring the publication of the Record of Yoga. Of
course the question simply didn't arise during his lifetime - or the
Mother's, as far as it is known. The actual decision to start publishing the Record was
made after getting the approval of Nolini Kanta Gupta.
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