Comments

Debashish on Thu 06 Nov 2008:

Makarand Paranjape excavates the issue of hagiography and realist biography in Vivekananda's life, allowing for a place for both:

.... [I]n modern times, it would be advantageous, in the long run, for the spiritual truth to have its roots in the soil of the physical or the factual truth. But from there, it may soar to any height that it aspires to. The two kinds of truth ought, ideally, to support and reinforce each other. That is why the issue of representation that I have been discussing is so crucial. That is why we need exacting, even “scientific” methods and expectations from our scholars. And yet, if and when, as is bound to be the case, these truths clash, we must allow for both of them to be valid in their own way.

To sum up, I would argue that a spiritual fact is a combination of a historical fact and a poetic fact. Usually, the latter two may go hand in hand, but when they appear to clash, we can have plural narratives which the historian or the sadhaka may each approach in his or her own way. Within the spiritual path, the bhakta, the jnani, and the karma yogi approach reality in different ways. This must apply even to SV himself. To say that one approach is the best would not be a sanatani position. To say that all are the same or equally true would not hold up to modern scrutiny. To be a modern sanantani, then, is to discover a new path to the truth that is SV, a path which is not only committed to finding the “truth,” but one which allows, even invites, many different versions of it, all the while retaining the privilege of choosing not just individually, but for larger collectives, what is the most suitable, persuasive, pragmatic, and therefore, true path.

But even if we grant that both "poetic truths" and "historical truths" are forms of fiction or interpretation, it is important to understand what the stakes are in each kind of representation. Paranjape offers incisively the justification for factual information, "historical truths." After noting that institutional authorities have tweaked or tampered with the texts of Vivekananda to suit the "sanitized" representation they wish to make visible, he appeals to the non-trivial scope of such questions:

These questions, as I have tried, to argue, are not necessarily about the “character” of a saint or master, but really about the character of spiritual life itself. My approach to them is that the spiritual life is not what some people consider it to be, sanitised, idealised, and stripped of all elements of what we call the human, the passionate, the sensual. Rather, the spiritual life uses all the powers and capacities that inhere within an individual in such a manner that they are directed to the higher end of self-perfection and self-mastery.

Indeed, this is a key consideration as well, in the case of Sri Aurobindo. If, as Sri Aurobindo unequivocally intended, the future trajectory of humanity is to find its hope in a transition to a higher modality of being and consciousness, then it becomes particularly relevant to take sincere stock of what the integral individual and social matrix of transformation was for the exemplars of this journey. Concealment and distortion of facts here serves no one, least of all the Master's purpose.

On the other hand, religious and national myths, which give scant respect to factual validation, can have little value other than that of fossilized relics, not an unpredictable living reality which can challenge us but "our heart's desire," an idealized version of our ideological morals, gracefully cloaked in cloth cut to measure with quotes, a substitute whose guaranteed presence ensures our salvation without effort. No wonder, we are ready to kill for any disturbance of the stereotype of its museumatic finality.

Angiras on Fri 07 Nov 2008:

Paranjape: Here it is important to remember, as Swami Tyagananda pointed out, that most of the biographies of the Swami are written from the point of view of SV's importance to India and its people. He also suggested the need to write a new life to suit the globalised world that we inhabit today. I do hope that such a biography does get written, because that is indeed the need of the day.

Paranjape refers to Swami Tyagananda's article "Rediscovering Vivekananda in the East and the West." This is published along with "Representing Swami Vivekananda" and a number of other excellent articles in The Cyclonic Swami: Vivekananda in the West (New Delhi: Samvad India, 2005), edited by Makarand Paranjape and Sukalyan Sengupta.

It is worth quoting more of what Tyagananda says, as it is highly relevant to the discussion of "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo". After mentioning biographies which, "written as they were from the viewpoints of devotees and admirers of Vivekananda, may seem too adulatory," Tyagananda continues:

Then again, there were a few others (beginning in the 1970s) that provided a counterpoint by presenting what was claimed as a human Vivekananda minus the halo of divinity with which the earlier hagiographic literature had engulfed him. It was clear that at least for some people Swami Vivekananda's larger-than-life figure seemed either too unreal or too awe-inspiring and so needed to be cut down to size, so to speak.

The upshot has been that we now have two sets of books: one set written by those who are almost religiously devoted to Swami Vivekananda, and the other set written by those who are willing to be skeptical and critical about claims that seem to make him more than human. These two sets of books have mostly been patronised by two different groups of audiences who seldom communicate with each other. Is it possible to write a biography that will address the needs and concerns of both the groups? Is it possible to have a believable Vivekananda who is both like us and yet not quite like us?

The time is surely ripe for another biography given that the socio-political context in which most of the earlier ones were written no longer exists. India is not a British colony anymore and the world has come a long way since the two World Wars, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the emergence of widespread global trade and travel, and the rise of international terrorism. What we need today is a biography that will take a critical look at Vivekananda's life to see if it still has anything to teach us and if he is relevant to the twenty-first century. Such a book must be written by one who is not afraid to tear down myths and unsubstantiated claims and who, at the same time, is free from a mindset that stubbornly refuses - even in the face of evidence - to acknowledge the untapped power latent in the human mind and the glory of the human soul.

With regard to Sri Aurobindo, the situation is broadly similar to Swami Vivekananda except that the polarization of books about him into two opposing sets has not occurred. Not that he has been exempt from criticism, but it has been largely confined to articles in academic journals and passages in books on other subjects. It has hardly reached the ears of devotees and the general public. Sri Aurobindo has fortunately escaped so far from book-length attempts at the kind of debunking represented by Sil's "reassessment" of Vivekananda's "diseased, tumultuous and troubled life" ending in a "final confession of failure."

Perhaps it is partly because nothing like Sil's book has ever been written about Sri Aurobindo that Peter Heehs' recent biography, the first to meet present academic standards and address current intellectual issues, has been mistaken for such a hostile critique. It is true that The Lives of Sri Aurobindo is generally not outright "adulatory" in tone. Yet it is very far from being a debunking biography. On the contrary, it could be termed a preemptive strike against Sri Aurobindo's academic critics. It is precisely the kind of book that Tyagananda has called for and Paranjape says is "the need of the day" in the case of Swami Vivekananda, a book that suits the globalised world we now inhabit and shows Sri Aurobindo's relevance to the twenty-first century.

Rich on Sat 08 Nov 2008:

Angiras: Peter Heehs' recent biography, the first to meet present academic standards and address current intellectual issues, has been mistaken for such a hostile critique. It is true that "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo" is generally not outright "adulatory" in tone. Yet it is very far from being a debunking biography. On the contrary, it could be termed a preemptive strike against Sri Aurobindo's academic critics.

That is absolutely right on point. IMO this biography would have been written someday by someone else anyway, aka a critical biography, and in the hands of someone less sensitive to the yoga, less competent, or pushing a hidden agenda, it could have been a disaster.

In the future the Ashram will be lucky that when professional historians are looking for text for their own research — because they will naturally discount the hagiographies of SA — that they will at least have a credible historical source, sensitive to the yoga and cross cultural ways of knowing to draw on for their own scholarship.

Angiras on Mon 10 Nov 2008:

Debashish,

Let me condense your statement of the issues [in a SCIY comment not reproduced here] which, as you say, "make the stakes so high in the case of the Lives":

(1) The right of individuals to have their own relationship with the divine, and express it, so long as it does not deny other people's right to do the same. For a world culture of spirituality, this has to be a ground rule.

(2) Creating a collective version of the integral yoga which is standardized to make devotion for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother the primary and exclusive door of entry excludes all those who may have a different door of entry.

(3) The yoga today is in serious need of being made accessible to a larger sector of humanity. Sri Aurobindo has built a bridge between rationality and suprarationality. If someone can speak to that, it will mean addressing the predominant faith of the modern age and showing it that a way exists.

Since these issues have arisen in connection with an article on representing Swami Vivekananda, it is relevant to point out how Vivekananda himself dealt with the question of representing Sri Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna is widely regarded as an Avatar, like Sri Aurobindo, so similar issues are involved. We should recall that Sri Aurobindo saw his own work as in some ways a continuation of that of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. Vivekananda was the most successful communicator of Indian spirituality to the West. So his views are very pertinent to the evaluation of a book meant to introduce Sri Aurobindo to Western readers.

In a letter sent from New York in 1896, Vivekananda wrote (in Bengali):

That Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was God — and all that sort of thing — has no go in countries like this. M. has a tendency to put that stuff down everybody's throat, but that will make our movement a little sect. You keep aloof from such attempts; at the same time, if people worship him as God, no harm.... But principles are universal, not persons. Therefore stick to the principles he taught, let people think whatever they like of his person.... Truce to all quarrels and jealousies and bigotry! These will spoil everything.

With regard to the issues mentioned above, note that Vivekananda respected the right of individuals to have their own relationship with the divine. He neither insisted on acceptance of the Avatar nor discouraged it. As Sri Aurobindo wrote in the first chapter of Part One of The Synthesis of Yoga:

Vivekananda, pointing out that the unity of all religions must necessarily express itself by an increasing richness of variety in its forms, said once that the perfect state of that essential unity would come when each man had his own religion, when not bound by sect or traditional form he followed the free self-adaptation of his nature in its relations with the Supreme. So also one may say that the perfection of the integral Yoga will come when each man is able to follow his own path of Yoga, pursuing the development of his own nature in its upsurging towards that which transcends the nature. For freedom is the final law and the last consummation.

Debashish on Sat 08 Nov 2008:

I agree fully, particularly your last paragraph hits the nail on the head.

Also, it is noteworthy that Swami Tyagananda (delight-in-renunciation), a monastic of the Vedanta school, could express such an ecumenical and clear-sighted view of the need for a biography which bridges cultures and disciplines, while all that the so-called intellectuals of the Sri Aurobindo community could muster was theology, propaganda, inquisition, wounded pride and the dark politics of belief.

Here, again are Tyagananda's words, which we would do well to heed:

What we need today is a biography that will take a critical look at Vivekananda's life to see if it still has anything to teach us and if he is relevant to the twenty-first century. Such a book must be written by one who is not afraid to tear down myths and unsubstantiated claims and who, at the same time, is free from a mindset that stubbornly refuses — even in the face of evidence — to acknowledge the untapped power latent in the human mind and the glory of the human soul."