They have found themselves on the losers’ side of globalisation

Raman Reddy said... The mischief was not so evident in 1988 when Amal Kiran wrote his rebuttal, though the seeds of it were present. But the mischief is very evident now in this biography. One can therefore, to a certain extent, generalise. This is not to deny that Heehs' work has nothing positive. It is because his defendants keep trying to defend him by not mentioning his objectionable points that we keep emphasising them. Finally, all said and done, you cannot get away by saying that he insulted the Master only a few times. May 31, 2009 2:42 PM

Raman Reddy said... Dear Vishwanath, I cannot post the original contents of the manuscript because it is not under my control. But we checked it and found Heehs' wording pretty faithful to the contents of the original. But I would discredit the original itself, because it is a tertiary source, not even a secondary one. It is, as I have recently written in "Are We Religious Fundamentalists?" posted on 31.5.2009, something that Purani noted down of what Nolini told him. Purani himself was not there in Sri Aurobindo's house during this period. He came a little later. Even Mother has some adverse remarks in the Agenda on Purani's notations of Sri Aurobindo's talks. It shows the unreliability of the whole evidence, on which such an edifice of falsehood has been built. May 31, 2009 9:14 PM

May 31, 2009 "Are We Religious Fundamentalists?" by Raman Reddy In fact, if anything has been followed with almost a religious fervour even though it was not imposed, I would say it is physical education, having myself grown up at the Ashram with an overdose of basketball, running and swimming, with the result that I suffer, like so many of my colleagues, from sports related injuries.

• Now which diehard secular fundamentalist would call these activities religious? [...]

The attitude of these over-confident intellectuals on the SCIY forum is to question everything without realising that their very questioning is foolish, because there is no spiritual foundation to it.

• Has anybody there sufficient spiritual development to be able to question the fundamentals of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s Yoga?
• Has anybody found his or her psychic being or has some awareness of the various levels of consciousness above the mind that Sri Aurobindo has written about?
• Even admitting a legitimate need for questioning, is Yoga only a matter of debate and comparative study of spiritual disciplines without prior spiritual experience?
• And what is wrong with those who would rather confine themselves to what Sri Aurobindo has written and not give credence to the Freudian interpretations of a dishonest researcher?
• How do they suddenly become blood-thirsty fundamentalists? [...]

Now, this attitude is reminiscent of the colonial days and the British Raj rather than reflective of the mind of a globalised spiritual community. In fact, I suspect that part of the fury of Heehs’ friends is due to the fact that they have found themselves on the losers’ side of globalisation... Posted by Raman Reddy at 5/31/2009 03:10:00 PM Labels: Article, Background, Refutation, Romance