Historian Peter Heehs has done the world a great service with the publication this year of a book that may finally make Sri Aurobindo and his work accessible to a broader audience. Appropriately titled The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, this meticulously researched and beautifully written scholarly biography follows its subject through five periods and personas—Son, Scholar, Revolutionary, Yogi and Philosopher, and Guide. While biographies of Aurobindo have been published before, including a short one by Heehs himself, none has ever drawn on such a vast resource of original letters, diaries, and other primary sources. - Ellen Daly in EnlightenNext more>>
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Despite his massive political and spiritual influence, the twentieth century Indian revolutionary turned mystic Sri Aurobindo Ghose has been curiously neglected in Western scholarship. Heehs ... corrects this by producing what is certain to become Aurobindo’s definitive biography....The result is a clear and detailed picture of a fascina-ting figure whose continuing religious relevance can be seen in the contemporary popularity of many of his pioneering East-West teachings: the evolution of consciousness, an integral approach to spiritual liberation and a socially engaged this-worldly mysticism. Particularly recommended for those interested in the religious, cultural and political landscape of twentieth-century India.
- Ann Gleig in Religious Studies Review more>>
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[Heehs's] book, which is around 500 pages long, is remarkable. It is an exhaustive
biography of the thinker covering all the different facets of his life . . . Peter
Heehs shows himself to be a very serious historian who bases his conclusions on
documents that are carefully cited in the endnotes. A bibliography completes
the book, which is far indeed from being a hagiography. . . . The author has
given us a model biography, which is accessible to the general public.
- David Annoussamy in Le Trait-d'union more>>
All biographies of gurus and saints face a painful choice: should they paint over human blemishes and glorify them, as it helps the devotees better focus on the divine? Or should they give the entire picture of a journey from the human to the perfect? Most religious texts and scriptures have chosen the first option. But Peter Heehs went for the second one — and we are grateful for that. For his work will be regarded by future generations as the absolute biography of Sri Aurobindo, avatar extraordinary, poet, revolutionary, philosopher and yogi. Not only is the book remarkably well researched but, as the title indicates, he has really covered all aspects of Sri Aurobindo’s life.
- François Gautier in The New Indian Express more>>