Not only have the detractors of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo done violence to the text through selective omission and decontextualization to distort its meaning and make it appear degrading to Sri Aurobindo, but some folks, who should know better, have also been spreading rumors, making innuendos, and telling downright falsehoods regards the intention that the author Peter Heehs had in writing the book

One allegation is that Peter and an associate had taken and sold documents from the Sri Aurobindo Archives that concern the Record of Yoga. The way the story is told is that these documents were suppose to have been purchased by Jeffrey Kripal, the Newton Rayzor Professor of Religious Studies/Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University and author of Kali's Child, who with the support and financial backing of Michael Murphy founder of the Esalen Institute were going to publish some type of Freudian account of the Record of Yoga. This conspiracy theory goes on to allege that the Lives of Sri Aurobindo was a just prelude to the distortions of Sri Aurobindo and The Record of Yoga yet to come.

Oddly enough even though the people making these allegations have never been privy to conversations between any of these parties (aka Peter Heehs, Michael Murphy, Jeffrey Kripal) that has not discouraged them from making these charges, that in short are based on wild speculation. To set the record straight on this issue and the value of the work Peter Heehs has done in his critical biography of Sri Aurobindo and that Richard Hartz has accomplished in his painstaking work making The Record of Yoga available to us all, I would like to publish an open letter to SCIY from Michael Murphy

Dear Rich Carlson-

Rumors that I asked Jeff Kripal to write a "Freudian" study of Sri Aurobindo are completely false, and Kripal has no intentions to do so. But I am indeed deeply fascinated (and indebted) to Sri Aurobindo, who remains the chief inspiration for my life work. I discovered his writings in 1950, at Stanford University, as a 19-year old undergraduate and would not have started the Esalen Institute without his inspiration.

Lately, I have been newly inspired by Peter Heehs's magnifcent Aurobindo biography and by the historic scholarship conducted by Heehs and Richard Hartz at the Aurobindo Ashram Archives. Their work on Aurobindo's extraordinary Record of Yoga will one day help revolutionize psychology and transformative practice, and Heehs's book is bringing new awareness of Sri Aurobindo to countless people worldwide. I hope that the book's detractors will eventually come to appreciate the good it is doing for the very cause they celebrate.

Peter Heehs and Richard Hartz are expanding the frontiers of Aurobindo scholarship with the courage and dedication that Aurobindo embodied and recommended to us all.

Michael Murphy

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