Letter of Kittu Reddy, Ranganath Raghavan & Sumita Kandpal
to Manoj Das Gupta on 28 May, 2010 Before we proceed, we
wish to present these self-evident propositions: ...
b) The Sri Aurobindo Ashram has been founded by the Mother and Sri
Aurobindo and its roots are deeply imbedded in an eternal Truth. Any
administration or management, which is temporary, ever-changing, can never be
its true representative. Therefore a clear distinction must be made between the
two entities, between the Truth that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother stand for on
one side, and the administration and trustees on the other side. They must
never be confused and a false identification must not be claimed. Today, many
inmates are confused between loyalty to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo on one
side and the Ashram Trust on the other. This is a disturbing trend which can be
disastrous for the Ashram and for the spiritual life of its inmates.
c) The SAAT is a public body, subject to the laws of the land. It is
open for examination by any national official body having authority to do so.
There can be no claim for privacy and secrecy of views, actions or decisions.
Everything must be open, transparent and frank, and any enquiry should be
respected and answered clearly with conviction.
Having these points in view, we would like to state the following: ...
18. We believe that the Trustees of the
Ashram are as human and vulnerable to ignorance and error as any other
Ashramite or human being. In decisions that affect the entire community, they
are answerable to all the inmates. They cannot take decisions in secrecy. As
Trustees, your first responsibility is to serve the Mother and Sri Aurobindo,
and the Ashram community as a whole.
The collision of Eastern and Western spiritualities in the 19th and
20th centuries is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in the
life of Mirra Alfassa. Heehs places her in context of the life of
Aurobindo Ghosh, the Bengali philosopher and yogi in whose ashram she spent the
last half of a long life. Mirra is important to the Church
of Light for an association that
preceded her travels to India ;
she is by far the most celebrated disciple of Max Theon, spiritual guide of the
Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor …
The extent to which Aurobindo’s spiritual mission was influenced by Mirra’s
former association with Theon is not readily discernable from the Heehs
biography, but until Theon’s teachings are better understood no
historian will be able to appraise their impact.
Another article that’s worth reading is ‘Sri Aurobindo and Hinduism’ by
Peter Heehs, published in the last issue of Anti-Matters, which also demonstrates that although
Sri Aurobindo was inspired by the Vedantic scriptures, he never considered
himself an exoteric “Hindu” per se (he grew up an atheist).
Meeting Peter Heehs by ned Dec 13, 2007
Peter Heehs is also the author of a paper entitled The
uses of Sri Aurobindo: mascot, whipping boy, or what?, and a wonderful
little book called Nationalism, Terrorism, Communalism. In both the
paper and the book, he thoroughly investigates all the allegations of Sri
Aurobindo having been an “extremist” or a “Hindu supremacist” and shows that
they simply do not hold water.
