Here’s another example from my book, one that has driven some people wild. Describing himself as a youth, Sri Aurobindo said: “I was a most terrible liar and perhaps no greater coward on earth.” I paraphrased this when I spoke of him as a student: “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.” We’re talking about Sri Aurobindo at the age of 14 or 15, remember. He never had anything positive to say about himself at that age, except that he wrote good poetry and had patriotic feelings (both of which I comment on). Why did I go to the trouble of writing about his youthful frailties? Because my book as a whole shows him to be one of the most extraordinary beings who ever lived. If I began by saying that he was a star athlete and model of fortitude and probity, nobody would have given any credit to my later positive assertions – assuming they even bothered to read the book that far.

I could give many other examples of strategic concession used in my book as a means to strengthen my positive evaluations of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s life and works. But I want to turn to the second technique, which I will call anticipating and refuting objections. This is known in Sanskrit rhetoric as the purvapaksha-uttarapaksha form of argument. It is also well known to Western rhetoricians, debaters, and writers, many of whom use the technique without knowing its technical name.

Philosophers, debaters and writers anticipate objections in order to refute them. Aware of the sort of arguments that could be employed against their own positions, they deliberately engage with these objections in order to clear the way for a successful presentation of points that some readers might want to resist. I will give an example from my book. After spending several pages speaking about Sri Aurobindo’s inner experiences as related in Record of Yoga, I paused to “consider a question that may have occurred to some readers” (these are my ordinary rationalistic readers who knew nothing about Sri Aurobindo before they opened my book). The question, which I introduced as delicately as I could, is whether these experiences might, after all, be symptoms of madness. This is not a far-fetched concern. It is a fact that mysticism and madness have been connected in people’s minds for centuries, that at least some madmen have believed that they were mystics, and that some mystics have passed through periods when those around them wondered whether they had lost their balance. So the “question” is one that the writer of my biography (whose readers will include ordinary rationalistic people unacquainted with Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual stature) was almost obliged to consider. I did so in the book, for two or three pages, citing a variety of evidence, before concluding that Sri Aurobindo “was anything but unbalanced”. I ended the passage: “Record of Yoga is remarkable not only as a chronicle of unusual experiences, but as the self-critical journal of a practitioner who was never satisfied with anything short of perfection.” In going through the exercise of raising an objection that I then refuted, I may have helped some dubious readers realize just how extraordinary Sri Aurobindo was. If people in India (most of whom have not read the book but only Raman’s deliberately misleading extracts) understand my purpose to be the opposite of what it was, it is not my fault.

At this point, you or others might object: “strategic concession and anticipating objections seem like good techniques for ordinary subjects, but they certainly are not good when writing about Sri Aurobindo”. In both techniques, you raise the possibility of a negative interpretation. The moment you make a strategic concession or anticipate an objection, people will seize on the negative statement and use it against Sri Aurobindo. Everybody will begin saying bad things about Sri Aurobindo, with the result that his spiritual work will be undermined, his disciples mocked, and his ashram closed.

People who make this sort of objection seem to feel that Sri Aurobindo and his yoga are embattled outposts of truth in an entirely hostile world. Everybody is against him, and he has to be protected at any cost. This attitude is much in evidence in recent blogs (postings on the internet) and newsgroups (online discussion groups, such as that of the ex-students), which list the powerful enemies of Sri Aurobindo that people are worried about: America, the Vatican, the communists, asuras, and so forth. If you think I am making this up, please read the blogs and newsgroups.

Another possible objection to the use of the techniques is that Sri Aurobindo is so sacred that even suggesting, say, that mysticism and madness have sometimes been associated together and discussing this in connection with Sri Aurobindo (to show that he was, in fact, anything but unbalanced) is the same as saying that Sri Aurobindo was mad, hence the same as throwing mud at Sri Aurobindo.

I think such objections are ridiculous. To begin with, Sri Aurobindo and his teachings are beyond the reach of petty negative criticisms. The image that comes to my mind is throwing pebbles at the Himalayas. (Perhaps I got this image from you.) The notion that the Vatican or CIA are interested in toppling the integral yoga is, I think, symptomatic of psychosis. And while my discussing negative possibilities in connection with Sri Aurobindo (in order to refute them) may have caused discomfort to some, to others it has had the result of enhancing Sri Aurobindo’s stature.

Many people who have written me about the book have told me that it has made Sri Aurobindo’s greatness more apparent to them than it had been before. I quote from one such reaction:

“I think that it [the book] is not only a great achievement as a biography per se, but that it will also draw many to Sri Aurobindo who would never have given him more than a passing thought. This, more perhaps than anything else, makes me hope that you remember that the world is a big place and that you won't be too fraught by the flak which would seek to belittle or destroy the accomplishment: not a dead statue, but a living presence.”

I have received many similar comments from others, some of which I quoted in an earlier letter to you. Looking over these comments, I notice one common factor. All the writers are native speakers of English or speak the language as well as native speakers. They are familiar not only with English vocabulary but also with some of the subtleties of English style and tone. And they all have read a lot of books that make use of complex forms of argumentation. In other words, they are the sort of people I was writing for. A lot those of who have missed the point of my book are (I’ll try not to sound patronizing when I write this) people who have a limited knowledge of English, misunderstand many words and phrases (if not whole chapters), and have little sense of tone or style. (Moreover, most of them have not read the book itself but only as excerpted in a duplicitous way by Raman Reddy.)

I suppose it could be said that I should have written my book for such inexperienced readers. But they were not the sort of audience I was trying to reach. There are more than enough books, magazines and souvenirs published for such readers. Writers who are interested in reaching such readers can and should go through my book to find material that they can present to them in appropriate ways. But to find such material, the writers will have to give the book an honest reading.

Peter