July 04, 2012

Gandhi and Tagore are given more importance than Sri Aurobindo

We are disciples and devotees of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from Gandhinagar, Gujarat. We are deeply pained to see that the book The Lives of Sri Aurobindo written by Peter Heehs is not yet disapproved by the Ashram Trust. It is more than 4 years and the Ashram Trust has failed to act in spirit and action to disapprove the book publicly and officially and remove Peter Heehs from the Archives department and the Ashram.
The book The Lives of Sri Aurobindo written by Peter Heehs is defaming and denigrating the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and twist their teachings. The managing trustee himself has accepted this and issued a statement officially. But the Ashram Trust has not acted yet. We are disturbed by this fact and hence we undersigned disciples demand the following remedies to be done without fail and immediately.

1. Officially declare that the book The Lives of Sri Aurobindo written by Peter Heehs is not approved by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust. Kindly inform us and other centers of the same.
2. Officially remove Peter Heehs from the Archives department and from the ashram and inform everyone concerned about the same.
3.  Get back all the original and archival documents and manuscripts from Peter Heehs and keep them in safe custody.
4. Stop harassing people who expose the perverse contents of the book and question the inaction of the trustees.
5.   If the present trustees cannot do this immediately, we sincerely request them to step down and give way others to do this with utmost seriousness.
6.   Bring new rules and regulations for the Ashram Trust Board. Appoint Trustees only for 2 or 3 years and by appropriate selection mechanism
7.   Bring one Advisory Body to the Trust and Ashram with representatives from all the centers and sadhana kendras from India and abroad.

Over the recent years, plenty of similar appeals have been made to the managing trustee, from the hands of senior sadhaks and devotees of all shades from far and near. Yet, all these pleas have fallen on his deaf ears. Either he is callous like a piece of stone, or far too strongly into his nefarious collusion with Peter and his infamous brood, to be able to back out and have the conviction and courage to take the justified actions in the interest of the Ashram. In either of these cases, the only remedy is to replace the existing incumbents with a new body, who would be capable of taking a fresh look and take up the due actions in the interest of the Ashram and its vast circle of devotees.
May the Mother's FORCE help remove this hurdle in Her work.

Sri Aurobindo used to say that the Vedic sages had discovered the Supramental path. BTW, just as you seem frustrated that more people are not aware of Vallalar, similarly there are people who are frustrated that more people do not understand Sri Aurobindo. In India, Gandhi and Tagore are given more importance than Sri Aurobindo while in the West, there is Ken Wilber and a cluster of other teachers besides of course, the perennial Christ, Muhammad and Buddha. There is only so much one can do to spread the word. The masses prefer a simple set of instructions and that is what mainstream religion provides. Ultimately, every person naturally gravitates to the teaching which matches his or her current level, so the best option is to live the teaching and let the Divine Power handle the rest!
In general, the field of comparative spirituality is rife with misunderstandings created by adhoc mixtures and correspondence tables. There are people who compare Plotinus with Sri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi with Sri Aurobindo, and so on and so forth. It all becomes very confusing in the end so I rarely venture into investigating these similarities. To read Vallalar's works in original Tamil would require me to learn Tamil, which is not feasible right now given other constraints. However, I do intend to check out the links you gave above. Ramalingam is mentioned in the Agenda July 22, 1970 and Agenda July 11, 1970

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