Sri Aurobindo

Autobiographical Notes

and Other Writings of Historical Interest

Part Two. Letters of Historical Interest

2.Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life 1911–1928

To People in India, 1914–1926

To V. Tirupati [4]¹

[February 1926]

You must by this time have read the first three letters we wrote to you and we hope you have understood and will act according to our instructions. But it is necessary to make some of them more precise and clear. Today I will write only on two subjects

1 First as to your so-called inspirations and intuitions.

Understand henceforth that you must put no reliance on these suggestions which merely come to you from your mind. They are altogether false. If they seem to come from very high, they are still false; they come from the heights of vital error and not from the truth. If they present themselves as inspirations and intuitions or commands, they are still false; they are only arrogant creations of the vital mind. If they claim to be from me, they are still false; they are not from me at all. If they seem imperative, loud, grand, full of authority, they are all the more false. If they excite and elate you and drive you to act blindly in contradiction to my written orders and instructions, they are most false; they are the suggestions of a power that wants only its own satisfaction and not the Truth.

Henceforth do not seek at all for inspirations and intuitions to guide your conduct. Get back into touch with physical realities, act with a plain practical mind that sees things as they are and not as you want them to be.

You ought to see now that your inspirations were entirely untrue. The explanations by which you try to account for their failure, are equally untrue. For instance you told Duraiswami that because you did not start by the first train from Madras, therefore you lost your chance. This is absurd and false. By whatever train, at whatever time, whatever you might have done, I would not have seen you or received you, for you may [not] come without my written orders [to] come and even against my orders.

2 Next, as to your coming back to Pondicherry. You are always thinking that you have only to act for one or two days according to my orders and then I will call you back. You are always expecting an immediate recall. Put this out of your head altogether. You cannot come back until I am satisfied that you have entirely got out of your present false consciousness which makes you act and think as you have been doing, and that there is no danger of your going back to it. This will take time. You will be called back to Pondicherry if you obey my orders consistently for a long time and satisfy my conditions, but you must no longer be always thinking of a rapid coming back; you must think only of doing what I tell you and satisfying my conditions. Remember what those conditions are

(1) You must eat and sleep and build up again a strong body.

(2) You must come out of your present state of vital consciousness, give up its false excitement, false elations, harmful depressions, give up your false inspirations and intuitions and come down into a plain, natural quiet physical consciousness. That is your only chance of coming back to reality and the Truth.

(3) You must get rid of your nervous shrinkings from life and others; you must be able to look at people naturally as human beings and deal with them calmly, quietly with a sane calm practical mind. Until you have done this, you will not be in the right condition for returning here.

3^dly, about your stay there. You must not talk or think of Vizianagaram or your surroundings as a bad or dangerous atmosphere. It is nothing of the kind. I would not have sent you there, if it were – on the contrary, it is the best place for what you have to do now and what you will have to do hereafter before you can return to Pondicherry.

If you cannot stay in your family house, which would be the most convenient, you can stay in your father-in-law’s villa – or the empty family house. But then it will be much better if you allow somebody to stay with you who will look after your needs and [incomplete]

¹ An enthusiastic sadhak, Tirupati practised an extreme form of bhakti yoga, as a result of which he lost his mental balance. Sri Aurobindo advised him to go back to his home in Vizianagaram, coastal Andhra, to recuperate. From there Tirupati wrote a number of letters to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Sri Aurobindo wrote these twelve replies at this time.{{1}}This letter-draft was written by Sri Aurobindo in his own hand. – Ed.

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