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 [1]1
Pondicherry. February 21st - 1926.
Tirupati, my child —
Our Divine Lord sends you the following message:
Your letters have been
received and read with pleasure. Haradhan came back yesterday morning bringing
the two last ones and also the news that, during the time he remained with you,
you were eating and sleeping – which we have been very pleased to hear. It is a
great first step forward; and if you go on like that, you will soon establish a
solid basis for your complete physical recovery.
We heard also with pleasure that your family is ready to help you without intruding or forcing themselves upon you, and that arrangements are made for you to live quietly.
In your letters you ask for detailed instructions and also Haradhan reported that you were insisting very much to receive them. Here are, then, the instructions we have to give you:
First the outer condition.
1) Be careful to always eat well and never think that to eat well or to take pleasure in eating is in any way wrong. On the contrary you must try to recover the ananda of food; without fearing the attachment for food; if there is such [a] thing in you, it will fall off from you as the ananda grows.
2) You must take long, peaceful sleeps. Never believe that there is anything wrong in sleeping well and deeply. And fear not that the time you give to sleep is wasted for your sadhana. In a good, quiet sleep necessary things are done by the super-conscience and in the sub-conscience.
3) You need good fresh air and a moderate amount of exercise in the open every day. Vizianagaram is near the hills, it is surely a wholesome place; and a daily walk of one hour or so in the country will help you much to recover completely your physical strength.
4) We have heard that there are several alternatives
for your lodging: an empty family house in front of the house where your family
lives, or a villa out of town, or another two storied house. Because of its
situation, the villa seems the best, provided arrangements can be made for your
material needs. If not 
possible, you might live
in the empty family house and receive food prepared for you in your family’s
house.
5) Haradhan said also that you wished to cook for yourself. If you can take pleasure in cooking and making the necessary material arrangements, marketing, etc. it would be a good thing. But if you do not take pleasure and interest in it, it would be better to receive the food from your family or any of your friends.
6) You write: “it is most painful for me to have to accept this obligation from these people.” This is a wrong way of looking at the matter. This help is given to you through the family and that involves no obligation on your part and binds you to nothing. The spiritual sadhaka is entitled to receive help from others, and that puts him to no obligation to them and leaves him perfectly free. Those that help are merely instruments used by the Divine Power to provide the sadhaka with the needed conditions for his living.
7) About the inner condition.
Write regularly, fully and frankly everything, whether you think it good or bad. It is important that you should conceal nothing; and if you feel some hesitation in writing some things that appear to you as crude or non important, you must overcome this hesitation. To make everything as clear and open as possible is the essential condition for receiving a complete help and guidance; it is also the necessary condition for the transformation of the movements that are to be changed. So, you must write everything internal and external.
Do not forget that your absence from Pondichéry is only temporary. The sooner you get into the right condition, the sooner you will be able to come back.
And the right condition is to have a strong body, strong nerves, a calm mind capable of action and will; no shrinking from contact with life and with the others. These conditions are necessary because, before your return, we shall have to ask you to make certain arrangements, and you must have full power of will and action in order to succeed.
Write everything always, and we shall guide you and
know 
how you are progressing. And when we see
that you are ready, we shall tell you what to do.
P.S. We have received your letters of the 19th
and the telegram of the 21st. We will
answer fully, but meanwhile we write a few necessary words.
It is not sufficient to strengthen your body, you must also strengthen your mind; you must absolutely get rid of these ideas about sin, this brooding upon suggestions of sexual impulse and this habit of seeing dark vital forces everywhere. Your people are quite ordinary human beings, they are not evil spirits or forces, your attitude to them must be one neither of attachment nor of fear, horror and shrinking, but of quiet detachment.
Do not seek for inspirations, but act quietly and rationally according to our instructions, with a calm mind and a quiet will. Get rid of your obsession about coming here and falling at our feet. This and the other suggestions and voices are not inspirations but merely things created by your own mind and its impulses. Your safety lies in remaining quiet and doing what we tell you quietly and persistently, with a perfect confidence, until you are entirely recovered.
We have written one letter on the 16th, one yesterday [the] 20th and this is the third. Let us know each time you receive a letter from us.
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 the Mother at Sri Aurobindo’s dictation or following his oral instructions. – Ed.