A General Guidebook for Tattvikas is a short book by Reverend Shrii Shrii Anandamurti ji for the local spiritual workers called Tattvikas. It is one volume, set out in fifteen points. He begins with the old quarrel between a one-sided spiritualism and a one-sided materialism. He treats the material side as the one that has grown strong in the present age. The path he wants is a blend, because he takes matter as the cruder showing of spirit, and he keeps that spirit inside the work of the world.
That quarrel, in his account, runs through every part of human life. A person who gains some light in meditation and then ignores society has stepped off the path, even when the withdrawal looks holy. Tattvikas are therefore asked to be active and energetic. Their work has two sides, a practical side and an intellectual side. The practical side has three fields, which are relief, the welfare of women, and socio-economic reform.
Relief, in this book, includes nursing the sick, the last rites, a water supply, and the building of roads. The workers do that work themselves, and they also move other people to join it. On women, he treats their social position as a duty of the Tattvikas, to be changed by teaching and by a new social arrangement. On the economy, he says the wealth of the world is common property and must be used properly, with a just adjustment between people.
On the intellectual side, social reform comes first. He names two roots of social failure, which are superstition and economic interest. Dowry, in his account, has both a superstitious side and an economic cause, so he treats speeches as insufficient while that economic cause remains. Caste, he says, is held mainly by superstition, and also by a smaller economic interest that the society has come to accept. The last point asks for a scientific approach to education and reform, which means naming the problem and then finding how it can be solved.
The book is a charge to those workers. The personal mantra stays with the Acharya, who gives it in person.