and raise in them all that is
capable of perfection and to change all that is obscure and imperfect.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 [6]1
5.3.26
Dear Tirupati.
This morning we have received your letter probably of the 2nd of March (please put dates on your letters) and it is necessary to reply to it at once, for it is evident from it that you are persisting in a wrong effort which prevents the very object that you have in view. You want to have what you call the “divinisation”; but you cannot have it in the way you are trying.
I will point out your mistakes; please read carefully and try to understand rightly. Especially understand my words in their plain sense and do not put into them any “hidden meaning” or any other meaning which might be favourable to your present ideas.
The Divine Consciousness we are trying to bring down is
a Truth Consciousness. It shows us all the truth of our being and nature on all
the planes, mind, life and body. It does not throw them away or make an
impatient effort to get rid of them immediately and substitute something
fantastic and wonderful in their place. It works upon them patiently and slowly
to perfect and raise in them all that is
capable of perfection and to change all that is obscure and imperfect.
Your first mistake is to imagine that it is possible to become divine in a moment. You imagine that the higher consciousness has only to descend in you and remain there, and all is finished. You imagine that no time is needed, no long, hard or careful work, and that all will be done for you in a moment by the Divine Grace. This is quite wrong. It is not done in that way; and so long as you persist in this error, there can be no permanent divinisation, and you will only disturb the Truth that is trying to come, and disturb your own mind and body by a fruitless struggle.
Secondly, you are mistaken in thinking that because you feel a certain force and Presence, therefore you are at once divine. It is not so easy to become divine. There must be to whatever force or presence comes, a right interpretation and response, a right knowledge in the mind, a right preparation of the vital and physical being. But what you are feeling is an abnormal vital force and exaltation due to the impatience of your desire, and with this there come suggestions born of your desire, which you mistake for truth and call inspirations and intuitions.
I will point out some of the mistakes you make in this condition.
1) You immediately begin to think that there is no further need of my instructions or guidance, because you imagine you are henceforth one with me. Not only so, but the suggestions which you want to accept go quite against my instructions. How can this be if you are one with me? It is obvious that these ideas that go against my instructions come from your mind and impulses, and not from me or from any Divine Consciousness or from anything that can be called the Sri Aurobindo Consciousness.
2) In this connection, you write: “I see one
difficulty: that even when I am filled with you the idea of obeying and
following your instructions still works – even when you have made me yourself. I
pray for the needful.” The idea of following and obeying my instructions is not
a difficulty, it is the only thing 
that can
help you. That obedience is the thing that is needful.
3) What do you mean by saying: “You have made me yourself”? The words seem to have no meaning. You cannot mean that you become the same individual self as I; there cannot be two Aurobindos; even if it were possible it would be absurd and useless. You cannot mean that you have become the Supreme Being, for you cannot be God or the Iswara. If it is in the ordinary (Vedantic) sense, then everyone is myself, since every Jiva is a portion of the One. You may perhaps have become conscious for a time of this unity; but that consciousness is not sufficient by itself to transform you or to make you divine.
4) You begin to imagine that you can do without food and sleep and disregard the needs of the body; and you forget my instructions, and mistakenly call these needs a disturbance or the play of hostile material and physical forces. This idea is false: what you feel is only a vital force, not the highest truth, and the body remains what it was; it will suffer and break down if [it] is not given food, rest and sleep.
5) It is the same mistaken vital exaltation that made you feel your body to see if it was of supramental substance. Understand clearly that the body cannot be transformed in that way into something quite unphysical. The physical being and the body, in order to be perfected, have to go through a long preparation and gradual change. This cannot be done, if you do not come out of this mistaken vital exaltation and come down into the ordinary physical consciousness first, with a clear sense of physical realities.
As regards what you say about your wife –
As you are determined to have no such relations with her, all that is needed is to regard her as an ordinary woman and with a quiet indifference. It is a mistake to dwell on the idea of your past relations, or to have shrinking and abhorrence; that only keeps up a struggle in your self which would otherwise disappear of itself.
Finally, if you want the real change and
transformation, you must clearly and resolutely recognise that you have made and
are still making mistakes, and have entered into a condition 
that is unfavourable to your object. You have tried to get rid of the
thinking mind, instead of perfecting and enlightening it, and have tried to
replace it by artificial “inspirations and intuitions.”
You have developed a dislike and shrinking for the body and the physical being and its movements; and therefore you do not want to come down into the normal physical consciousness and do patiently there what is necessary for the change. You have left yourself only with a vital consciousness which feels sometimes a great force and ananda and at others falls into bad depressions, because it is not supported either by the mind above or by the body below.
You must absolutely change all this, if you want the real transformation.
You must not mind losing the vital exaltation; you must not mind coming into a normal physical consciousness, with a clear practical mind, looking at physical conditions and physical realities. You must accept these first, or you will never be able to change and perfect them.
You must recover a quiet mind and intelligence.
If you can once firmly do these things, the Greater Truth and Consciousness can come back in its proper time, in the right way and under the right conditions.
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.