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 [7]¹

Pondicherry
March 22. 1926.

My dear Tirupati,

I have received all your letters; I am sorry to find from them that you are still persisting in the same state of vital exaltation, the same ideas, the same forms of speech, the same delusions. You say that you have understood our letter of the 5^th. We told you to understand that letter in its plain significance and not to put into it some false imaginary meaning out of your mind. Either you have put some false meaning into it or, if you understood our plain written instructions, you are deliberately refusing to follow them. For you are doing exactly the opposite of what we told you to do. We shall write more about this in a day or two. At present I write only a few essential things.

1. It is not possible for you to become my “Avatar”; I have told you that the very idea is absurd and meaningless.

2 It is possible for you to manifest the supramental consciousness in this life. But it is not possible by the means you are now trying. It cannot be done by falling at my feet. It cannot be done in a moment. It cannot be done by fasting. It cannot be done by refusing to have anything to do with physical forces and the normal physical life.

3 If you throw away your body, you will not be my “Avatar” either in this life or in any other. On the contrary, you will destroy your chances for a hundred lives to come.

4 The supramental consciousness can only be manifested if you follow exactly my written instructions. These are

(1) You must eat well and regularly every day, sleep well every night and build up a strong body. The supermind cannot descend and remain in a weak and starved body.

(2) You must consent to come down into the ordinary physical consciousness and stay there to transform it slowly. If you continue to refuse to live in the ordinary consciousness, the supermind cannot get the opportunity to change it; in that case you will always go on as now thinking “now I have got it, today it is made permanent”, but it will not remain.

(3) You must learn to understand and follow in their plain sense my written instructions. You must learn to give them a greater value than to the ideas you get from within by your sadhana. If you refuse to do this, the supramental consciousness will refuse to remain in you.

(4) You must learn to resume natural relations with people in the physical world – with those around you, with your friends and your people.

5. I have told you that you are not to come to Pondicherry without my written permission. If you disobey and follow your own impulses, you will not be received here; you will be sent away like last time.

It is not for you to fix the date of your coming, whether August 15^th or another. It is for me to decide and you must not come till I write and call you.

You cannot come to Pondicherry till you have carried out my written instructions plainly and faithfully for many months together. You cannot come till you have stopped fasting altogether. You cannot come till you have descended into the ordinary physical consciousness and remained there for months together. You cannot see me again at Pondicherry until you are ready to meet me on the physical plane and that can only be when you have accepted the physical consciousness and the physical life. This is definite.

6. If you refuse to do what I tell you, you cannot have the fulfilment you hope for. You can if you like remain as a Bhakta all your life, but even then you must renounce the vital form of Bhakti. You must bring back the psychic Bhakti, the Bhakti which is calm, quiet, deep, the Bhakti which is not noisy, not making demands, the Bhakti which finds its greatest pleasure in obedience. This is the only Bhakti in which I can take delight; I accept no other.

My blessings.

Sri Aurobindo

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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