Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1936

Letter ID: 1631

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

May 16, 1936

It seemed to me at Pranam that Mother doesn’t like me poking my nose into B.P.’s affair after the case has been handed over to R. If so, after these points you have raised, I will stop.

I did not mention what you wrote on this point to the Mother as there was no time in the morning – everything being in a hurry – so your “seemed to me” was an error. I was only putting R’s point of view and stating the Mother’s impression about B.P.’s condition – Naturally so long as R is in charge, he must be left to his own methods.

... The day I sent him off to R, he was better, he said – the right eye decidedly so. His condition was bad enough, but I didn’t take it as worse than N.P.’s iritis.

To me he was lamenting to the contrary. But it is not on that that Mother based her observation. His letters are in Hindi and I do not translate them to her.

As it was, I didn’t really look at it as a “horrible condition and getting worse”, because it was keratitis.

It seemed so to the Mother, not eyes only but his whole disintegrated condition.

I don’t agree with R that B.P.’s eye-condition was going up to the brain – no such case has been heard of where the condition has travelled from the eye to the brain.

He was not speaking of the eyes’ condition going up to the brain, but of the inflammation which he said was moving upward.

What can at worst happen is iritis or iridocyclitis, resulting in blindness of one or both the eyes. But I don’t know that it results in brain complications and death in 5 minutes! I guess from the nature of the severe pain in the head and over the eyes, that iritis, iridocyclitis or even glaucoma may have set in and R is taking this for the beginning of brain complication. Syphilitic cases do end suddenly, but that is due to systemic involvement, not as a result of eye complication. Gonorrhoea almost never.

R says that they are cases of hereditary gonorrhoeic complaints not manifesting in the ordinary way which can develop under certain conditions of which he spoke as complications leading to death in this way and he says there have been many cases. Gonorrhoea by itself is obnoxious but not dangerous. That is his theory which he asserts to be founded on his experience.

I can send you the whole book on eye diseases. You will nowhere find a single instance where brain complication has set in due to eye trouble. I am absolutely positive about his not dying.

The difference lies in this that R did not take it as a case of ordinary eye trouble, but believed there was an infection of the system which could manifest at different points.

But loss of sight will be a consequence, if he doesn’t improve.

There R agrees.

I hear there is slight improvement. So far so good.

All that however is by the way – not much use, either, I suppose.

By the way, when Mother made all these observations about B.P., why didn’t you tell us, so that we could be more careful?

When Mother has handed over the case to a doctor (not of the Ashram), she never interferes, so long as it is in his charge. It would be ridiculous to do so. She can have no control or influence or weight with him. He is bound by his science and his ideas of treatment, and could not possibly understand much less appreciate her point of view.