[The letters present to the reader a different aspect of Sri Aurobindo than we meet in his more formal writings. Prior to November 1926, Sri Aurobindo met with his disciples daily. After he retired to his room, his external contact with them was mostly limited to exchanges of letters. The letters from Sri Aurobindo to his disciples are personal, direct, simple, often humorous, always encouraging, and full of his compassion and care. They respond individually to specific questions on every conceivable subject or problem facing the sadhak. Sri Aurobindo cautioned his disciples that it was not advisable to apply to oneself what he had written for another: “Each sadhak is a case by himself and one cannot always or often take a mental rule and apply it rigidly to all who are practising the Yoga.” Yet there is a core of knowledge that emerges – a common theme on the practice of yoga, the foundation of the sadhana, a set of guiding principles for the path of self-perfection, and an explanation of the psychic and spiritual realisations that form the base of the Integral Yoga – that, if taken in the right spirit, can widen and deepen the understanding of any sincere reader.]
[For some time afterwards, his main literary output was his voluminous correspondence with his disciples. His letters, most of which were written in the 1930s, numbered in the several thousands. Many were brief comments made in the margins of his disciple's notebooks in answer to their questions and reports of their spiritual practice—others extended to several pages of carefully composed explanations of practical aspects of his teachings. These were later collected and published in book form in three volumes of Letters on Yoga. In the late 1930s, he resumed work on a poem he had started earlier—he continued to expand and revise this poem for the rest of his life.[41] It became perhaps his greatest literary achievement, Savitri, an epic spiritual poem in blank verse of approximately 24,000 lines.]
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The state of affairs narrated is quite true as experienced by us often during our visits to Ashram for Darshan. Today only (17/11/14) my wife was misbehaved badly by a male sadhak while she was silently standing in queue in Dining room to deposit utensils in the wash area. It is a pity that there is no one to oversea as to how the visitors/devotees coming from far flung areas are being treated by the so called Ashramites
most ashramites there today, didn't come to imbibe any values or ideals. prime location, free food, no work.... so forget about any evolution. i just hope they don't do the opposite of dragging the rest of us into some dark abyss.
Polite? thats the deviant trait thats found in less than handful of people in the ashram outlets.