© Columbia University Press
The Lives of Sri Aurobindo
June, 2008
Cloth, 528 pages, 18 illus.
ISBN: 978-0-231-14098-0
$55.00
/ £38.00
"All students and scholars of Sri Aurobindo will find this extraordinary book most rewarding . . . Essential." — CHOICE
"A great biography . . . a doorway into [Sri Aurobindo’s] extraordinary spiritual philosophy and vision." — EnlightenNext
"The Lives of Sri Aurobindo easily constitutes the most comprehensive, thorough, and balanced study of Sri Aurobindo Ghose's life and thought to date. Peter Heehs's remarkable access to archival sources both at the ashram and in numerous other archives around the world establishes this text as the definitive study of Aurobindo's immense output in all of its genres and modes. His text humanizes and problematizes a historical figure whose complexity has been more or less lost to us via hagiography, piety, and now Hindutva apologetics. In some very real sense, Heehs gives us back Aurobindo as a political figure, a prolific writer, and as a religious teacher-all in all, a remarkable accomplishment. His writing is clear, uncluttered, precise, and in places quite beautiful. There are few scholarly texts I genuinely enjoyed reading, but this is one of them." — Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Professor and chair of religious studies, Rice University
"Sri Aurobindo, the first Indian leader to call for independence from Great Britain and India's greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, deserves far greater recognition in the West for his pioneering vision and spiritual practice. This, his first major biography, is written with meticulous care, without the fawning worship of previous hagiographies that have obscured his extraordinary life and work." — Michael Murphy, founder, Esalen Institute
"Sri Aurobindo has at last received the scholarly biography he deserves—and we need." — Robert McDermott, author of The Essential Aurobindo
"Here are details that are not only reliable but transparent in letting their sources speak. Throughout we hear the voices of Sri Aurobindo and his contemporaries. Peter Heehs has written the definitive biography and a superb introduction to the life and thought of Sri Aurobindo." — Stephen Phillips, professor of philosophy and Asian studies, University of Texas at Austin