The term that triggered a million missiles

[Let us take the most shocking example of Heehs’ misrepresentation – his portrayal of the relationship of the Mother with Sri Aurobindo after her second and final arrival in Pondicherry in 1920://

It can be contested that I am merely imagining these flaws in Heehs’ presentation. My criticism could be dismissed on the basis of being more biased against Heehs than he is with regard to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. But lo, new evidence pops up again at the end of the book to show his real intentions. When Sri Aurobindo stumbled over the tiger skin and broke his leg in the early hours of 24 November 1938, Heehs writes about the Mother’s waking up in the following passage:

Around two o’clock that morning, while crossing to the bathroom, Sri Aurobindo stumbled over the tiger skin and fell…Attuned inwardly to her partner, she had felt in her sleep that something was wrong.

The word “partner” seems innocently woven into the text, but you suddenly realise the mischief on closer inspection. According to the Oxford dictionary, a partner is a “spouse” or “a member of a couple who live together or are habitual companions”, or “lover”. The word has other connotations, but you mostly associate it nowadays with an ordinary human relationship. It is hardly appropriate to describe the relationship between Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Peter Heehs’s The Lives of Sri Aurobindo—by Raman Reddy
on Sun 21 Dec 2008 09:36 AM IST Permanent Link Cosmos]

[Corrections to textual excerpts of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs
by Rich on Sat 10 Jan 2009 09:55 AM PST Permanent Link The Mother’s relation with Sri Aurobindo//(381-82) Around two o’clock that morning, while crossing to the bathroom, Sri Aurobindo stumbled over the tiger skin and fell. There was a sudden flash of pain. After years of practice he had developed the ability to transform most types of discomfort into ananda or bliss, but the pain he was feeling went be­yond his threshold. He tried to get up and failed, then lay back quietly. After a short while, the Mother entered. Attuned inwardly to her partner, she had felt in her sleep that something was wrong.
(Heehs had to ask around to find out what the problem was. The term “partner”, in the sense of “spiritual partner”, has been used to describe the relationship between Sri Aurobindo and the Mother by numerous authors whose attitude towards Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is, like Heehs’s, highly respectful. See for example George Feuerstein, Ph.D., The Yoga Tradition, p. 77, or else perform a simple Google search.) //

Vasavadatta
(299) From a literary point of view, Aurobindo’s plays are the least interesting of his works. Biographically speaking, they may offer insights into movements of his imaginative life. If his earlier plays suggest that he was searching for his ideal life partner, Vasavadutta seems to hint that he had found the woman he was seeking and was waiting for the moment when she would join him.]

At a critical stage in this delightful musical Rab ne Bana di Jodi Suri yells “Taani Partner," and nonplussed she leaves no chance to join him in the dance, and all agony gone with the wind they live happily ever after.

Peter Heehs’ imaginative depiction of Vasavadutta as the ideal life partner Sri Aurobindo “was seeking and was waiting for” gels ill with his denoting the relationship of The Mother by the same term “partner.” The term that triggered a million missiles, alas! [TNM]