stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

194 STRIPPING THE GURUS
wise, in his own (2000b) Integral Psychology, he has Aurobindo appointed
as India’s “greatest modern philosopher-sage.”
So, if there’s one thing we can safely conclude....
Georg Feuerstein, among others, fully shares Wilber’s complimentary
evaluation of Aurobindo. Bharati (1976), however, offered
a somewhat different perspective:
I do not agree with much of what he said; and I believe his
Life Divine ... could be condensed to about one-fifth of its size
without any substantial loss of content and message....
[Q]uite tedious reading for all those who have done mystical
and religious reading all their lives, but fascinating and full
of proselytizing vigor for those who haven’t, who want something
of the spirit, and who are impressionable.
For my own part, I would say largely the same about Adi Da’s
Only-Written-By-Him books, in his “Dawn Horseshit” days and
otherwise. Further, as so often happens, it appears that much of
“what is good is not original, and what is original is not good,” even
in Da’s theoretical teachings:
Adi Da’s worldview is summarized in his teaching of the
seven stages of life [as expounded in his Dawn Horse Testament],
a series of levels of development. This worldview,
clearly, is not original. It resembles in some respects Gurdjieff’s
seven types of men (which itself borrowed heavily from
still earlier teachings) (Smith, 2001).
Such uncredited (and obviously derivative) borrowing, further,
apparently did not stop with Da Teacher:
It is possible to look at [Wilber’s] early but seminal book The
Atman Project and see how his idea of successive stages of
psycho-spiritual development grew out of Da’s seven stages
of life thesis (Kazlev, 2003).
Serious concerns have further been raised, in Kazlev (2004)
and Hemsell (2002), regarding the possible significant misrepresentation
of Aurobindo’s ideas by Wilber.
Aurobindo himself, in any case, whether a “great philosopher”
or not, could well be viewed as having wobbled mightily about the
center, if one were to consider his purported contributions to the
Allied World War II effort: