Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1935

Letter ID: 1488

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

December 4, 1935

Prasanna is better in every respect. But how am I to impress upon her that trachoma is a nasty business, that it takes a long time to cure completely?

She does not care about all that. Her point of view is that the doctor is there to cure her and why doesn’t he do it? Very careless and callous of him. It is something like the attitude of many to us and our Yogic force.

By her own confession, you will see that there is at least some improvement. Isn’t it something?

Obviously.

I intend to try a new medicine on Prasanna’s eyes, brushing the lids with sodium chlorate powder which is supposed to give good results. But it is rather painful. She has already become aprasanna with our callousness and futile treatment. Who knows what she will be if we give her excruciating pain with sodium chl. and make her from bad to worse?

Good Lord! she will make a worse noise than Hercules in the shirt of Nessus!

If you give us courage, we may venture.

Not possible. Prasanna will become more than aprasanna, she will become abasanna and do dharna.¹ Won’t do.

I knew nothing about N’s fever. He swept in today and said he was feverish. Temperature was normal, his feeling can’t be due to T.B. suggestion, for he doesn’t know what T.B. is.

He is writing very aghast notes and demanding an explanation from me of his perilous condition – so I thought it better to refer the matter to the medical authorities.

A’s urine was examined. The specific gravity was rather high and we advised him to take less sugar, after that we didn’t enquire and he didn’t complain.

He does not complain – I simply wanted to know what had happened.

About S’s stomach – if there is no radiogram, then we can make at least a screen examination.

It might be done – only R is in charge. He might object to an allopathic screen pushing into the stomach and upsetting his homeopathic effects, what?

To take up our yesterday’s discussion – I think Vivekananda said that by observance of brahmacharya, one acquires a prodigious memory. He himself proved it by reproducing anything he was asked from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, though he just took some glances at it. But it was said that only Vivekananda and Anandas like him can do the feat. We have heard about your doing such feats of memory also, on a miniature scale.

Hallo!!

But everybody knows that you are a much greater “Ananda”, Sir! So perhaps possible.

Possible, of course.

What I wanted to say however is that poets and artists, as a class, are rather loose and lavish in their sex economy. If they indulge much in sex, how can their sex-force produce great things?

You have not understood. I was answering the statement that scientists don’t attach any value to sex-gland-product and think it is only of use for an external purpose. Many scientists on the contrary consider it a base of productive energy; among other things it plays a part in artistic and poetic production. Not that artists and poets are anchorites and Brahmacharis, but that they have a powerful sex-gland activity, part of which goes to creative and part to (effectual or ineffectual) procreative action. On the latest theory and Yoga theory, the procreative part would be retas, the creative part the basis of ojas. Now supposing the artist or poet to conserve his retas and turn it into ojas, the result would be an increased power of creative productivity. Q.E.D., sir! Logic, sir!

I suppose Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa were complete abstainers, though there is doubt about the last two.

Excuse me, there are no doubts about Kalidasa. Very much to the contrary.

¹ A play on three Bengali words whose senses here are: prasannā = pleased, soothed; aprasannā = displeased; abasannā = dejected, but literally (one who has) sunk or sat down, whence dharnā, sitting obstinately before the door of a person you hold a grievance against.

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