Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3
I pointed out last evening that the idea that emotion was not allowed in this yoga, the idea you put forward for going away was not and could not be true. But there are certain other notions connected with it which come readily in your mind in periods of depression which are equally unfounded. I lay stress on these as these suggestions are used by the Force that wants to drive you away as its chief supports and reasons for departure. There is for instance the notion that tears of bhakti are disapproved of. It is strange that it should ever be supposed that tears of bhakti or true emotion are discouraged by us: the Mother has always spoken appreciatively of the feeling from which they come and never discouraged them. Tears of bhakti or tears of a high or pure emotion are not looked down upon by us. We have always spoken of psychic sorrow also as a thing to be respected, an emotion which is helpful and true in its place. Why then should it be supposed that emotion is discouraged and an empty heart is demanded of the spiritual seeker? Then there is the question of personal relations. But what personal relations of yours have been discouraged? Your friendships have always been respected: when you have called your friends here, they have been allowed and encouraged. I have not discouraged your friendship with Subhash or with Jawaharlal or with others. Your idea that I did not like your 
friendship with Vidya or the Yuvaraj is a sheer imagination for which I gave no cause. There are many friendships in the Ashram between sadhaks and some are supported, with the others there has been no interference. The only exception is when a certain vital relation comes in which is of a character inconsistent with the sadhana altogether. But there in your case you yourself have recognised the necessity of the elimination of this element and it is with your full consent that you have been helped and encouraged to eliminate but there has been no impatience or hard inhuman insistence. What then becomes of these grievances against the Yoga? They have no existence except in the suggestions by which the despondency tries to support itself in periods of depression.
What I have spoken of as desirable to eliminate, is the oversensitiveness of feeling which brings the sadness and depression, but it is because they come across and give you unnecessary trouble and suffering. You yourself have spoken of hyper-sensitiveness as a weakness you do not want and would like to get rid of. My wish to help you out of that cannot be regarded as an attack of the Yoga on your emotional being. On the other hand to affirm that the fact that you have it is a reason why you should not go on with the Yoga is not reasonable either. It is something that is no essential part of your vital being which has plenty of reserves of strength in it, but a small tendency of a small part which has unduly magnified itself owing to past struggles and comes up strongly in periods of depression. When you have even an ordinary quietude, you are master of it and with the affirmation of the will to be free of it, it can and will go.
P.S. I suppose the house for Vidya can be arranged and the furniture got from Madame [Olive].