J. Kepler reviews Debashish Banerji’s new book – “The Seven Quartets of Becoming”, subtitled “A Transformative Yoga Psychology Based on the Diaries of Sri Aurobindo.”
Kepler says in this review that DB focuses on a certain text Sri Aurobindo noted down around the same time called the Sapta Chatusthaya (hereafter SaptaC), translatable as the “Seven Quartets”. It is an outline of concepts and terminology that came to Sri Aurobindo during his early years of deep yogic experience and realization and was clearly a guide to his own yogic practice at that time (as documented in the Record). It also provided the underlying architecture for the Yoga of Self Perfection section in The Synthesis of Yoga.
So it’s an unusual exegetical approach DB takes to presenting Integral Yoga, one which carries a heavy burden of Sanskrit terminological explanation, and requires frequent attempts to relate to concepts and terminology Sri Aurobindo adopted in his later, more widely read texts. But DB manages this in an impressive fashion, providing lucid explanations of key terms, concepts and practices, also trying now and then to place them in some kind of context within contemporary intellectual discourse. He demonstrates a thorough knowledge of Sri Aurobindo’s writings, Integral Yoga, the Indian spiritual tradition, and European philosophy. DB also writes here in an admirably clear style, mercifully refraining from the crypto-prose idiom sometimes found in postmodern-influenced texts.
The book succeeds broadly on 2 fronts:
1) It models a style of writing about Integral Yoga, Sri Aurobindo, and the Mother, which is potentially acceptable within modern intellectual culture, i.e. not easily rejected out-of-hand as primarily a religious or mystical tract. DB consistently orients Integral Yoga as an experiential field of psychological practice, not a cluster of dogmatic beliefs. At the same time he avoids a tone-deaf, disrespectful or insensitive style discussing a subject-matter which is for many permeated with the sacred. One intensely hopes other authors writing for a similar audience take note of this example.
2) It provides an impressive explication of the complex terminology and structure of the SaptaC, perhaps especially suitable for those already familiar with Sri Aurobindo’s later writings and formulations of Integral Yoga, but interested in what this early formulation contains; for example the dual pattern of Mukti and Bhukti recurring throughout the SaptaC………..
