Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1935

Letter ID: 1248

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

January 24, 1935

N said that he took some methylated spirit knowing it fully well and obeying a suggestion that if he took it, all his complaints would disappear. Is it really the hostile force that prompted him?

Is he speaking the truth? B writes that he did it immediately after B left him and then bawled from the terrace to B to come and help. If he did do it with such an idea, it is evidently a suggestion of the hostile force or, if you like to put it more psychologically, he was possessed by a mental formation of an irrational undetermined character. It is of the same class as the ideas which get hold of people’s minds and become “fixed ideas”, only these are momentary. But even if he did it by mistake, it was a suggestion from a source that wanted to do him injury – and took advantage of a momentary absence of mind.