Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Letters
Fragment ID: 6447
(this fragment is largest or earliest found passage)
Sri Aurobindo — Tirupati V.
May 6, 1926
To V. Tirupati [12]1
[6 May 1926]
Tirupati,
Your aspiration to be my manifestation and all the rest
of the delusions to which you have surrendered yourself are not Yoga 
or Sadhana. They are an illusion of your vital being and your brain. We tried to
cure you and for a few days while you were obeying my instructions you were on
the point of being cured. But you have called back your illness and made it
worse than before. You seem to be no longer capable even of understanding what I
write to you; you read your own delusions into my letters. I can do nothing more
for you.
All that I can tell you is to go back to Vizianagaram and allow yourself to be taken care of there. I can make no arrangements for you anywhere. I can give only a last advice. Throw away the foolish arrogance and vanity that have been the cause of your illness, consent to become like an ordinary man living in the normal physical mind.
Now that is your only means of being saved from your illness.
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.
Tirupati came to Pondicherry on 6 May 1926. Sri Aurobindo refused to see him. He gave him this letter instead. It is reproduced here from one of the notebooks of A. B. Purani who recorded it. – Ed.