Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1739

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

October 3, 1936

[The first report was written by Dr. Becharlal, regarding S’s illness, treatment, diet and work, and all the arrangements to meet her complaints.]

Mother approves all your arrangements. If you think, she can do light work for an hour. Is it advisable for her to leave her room or go about? She has fancies about her room, disliking it, and thinks it is her room that makes her ill.

K vomited a small particle of bright red blood... Examined the lungs and found that the lesion has extended more than last time. Can you not consent again to an X-ray? [26.12.35]

Yes.

If the diagnosis is correct, the treatment has to be pursued actively and regularly. The best thing would be to send her away...

That’s all very well – but she was ill before she came and the family, X says, will do nothing for her treatment if she is sent back. What to do then?

She has gone down in health, feels easily tired. Her food is very, very scanty...

If so, how can she recover? In T.B. surely suralimentation is necessary.

It seems Mother strongly disapproved of D.L.’s taking up that rice-pounding work, but she insisted and Mother had to give way. The origin of her trouble or its recrudescence is traced to that heavy muscular work.

All that is rubbish. The trouble was due to something else not physical without which she could have gone on pounding another fifty years without injury to her body.

... I must say that R’s theories about diseases are absurd, however successful he may be as a homeopath-physician.

You may say what you like about the homeopathic theories, but I have seen R work them out detail by detail in cases where he had free and unhampered action and the confidence of the patients and their strict obedience and have seen the results correspond to his statements and his predictions based on them fulfilled not only to the very letter but according to the exact times fixed, not according to R’s reports but according to the daily long detailed and precise reports of the allopathic doctor in attendance. After that I refuse to believe, even if all the allopaths in the world shout it in unison, that homeopathic theory or R’s interpretation and application of it are mere rubbish and nonsense. As to mistakes, all doctors make mistakes and very bad ones and kill as well as cure – my grandfather and one of my cousins were patently killed by one of the biggest doctors in Bengal. One theory is as good as another and as bad according to the application made of it in any particular case. But it is something else behind that decides the issue.

Just hear what grave errors he has committed. He said to me that he brought about the profuse menstruation in D.L.’s case by his drug, in order to get rid of some mischief there which the patient would not admit. He asked me if this excessive flow should be stopped... He had no justification at all to cause that profuse bleeding, when every drop of blood was precious.

To bring out the latent illness and counteract it, is a recognised principle in homeopathy and is a principle in Nature itself. He misapplied it here because he was in ignorance of the full facts about the menstrual trouble.

As I understand from you, it was only from me that you came to know about her critical condition.

No. I said he had told me her condition was very critical; but he had given no details. I learned the details from you.

Even after her fainting, he took her walking to the pier. Good Lord, an extremely debilitated, anaemic patient to be moved about like that!

Never heard of the anaemia before or then. It was all a talk about stomach, worms or this or that stomachic ailment.

Chlorodyne contains morphia which, you know, is a sedative to the heart and respiration etc. Dr. Becharlal told R about its dangers, but R said, “I have given it already and the drugs to counteract its effects.” Counteracting would be tantamount to making it useless and ineffective.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “tantamount to making it useless and ineffective”.]

Not according to homeopathic theory.

Valle said, after D.L.’s death, that he was positive about the cause of death. All symptoms and signs were of peritonitis.

May be or may not be. Neither Valle nor R are infallible. So often I have seen a diagnosis made on all the symptoms which turned out to be the wrong one. It is like a condemnation on circumstantial evidence.

I believe Mother’s Force had an effect on these medicines, but when R went out of those to this Chlorodyne, and didn’t let you know, the danger was signalled. Of course, in any case, the condition was hopeless, but who knows?

How can you believe that when everything is explained according to medical science? There is no place left there for Mother’s Force or any force except Valle-Force.

Valle said D.L. would have passed away two or three days ago, but glucose, oxygen and injections kept her up. Beating our drum?

Quite so.

Whatever was given to her: glucose etc., met with opposition from R.

Quite natural for a homeopath, just as your sneering at homeopathic theories and treatment is natural in an allopath.

It seems you were not very hopeful from the time I reported about her case.

No. As I say, he told me it was critical.

If he had informed you before, wouldn’t it have been better?

No, it would not have been better.

Why do you say that the conditions were not favourable?

They were unfavourable for working through R as we had worked in outside cases or as I have worked by myself in certain cases outside or inside.

Why didn’t your Force prove decisive in this case? About the Supermind and its failure over hostile forces, I give you a chance to bombard me or else I shall!

What has the Supermind to do here? Who told you that I was using the supramental Force? I have said all along that it was not the supramental Force that was acting. If you want the supramental Force, you had better go to Jogesh Mama of Chittagong. I hear from Chittagong that the supramental Force is descending in him.

I have put down a few comments to throw cold water on all this blazing hot allopathism. But all these furious disputes seem to me now of little use. I have seen the working of both systems and of others and I cannot believe in the sole truth of any. The ones damnable in the orthodox view, entirely contradicting it, have their own truth and succeed – also both the orthodox and heterodox fail. A theory is only a constructed idea-script which represents an imperfect human observation of a line of processes that Nature follows or can follow; another theory is a different idea-script of other processes that also she follows or can follow. Allopathy, homeopathy, naturopathy, osteopathy, kaviraji, hakimi have all caught hold of Nature and subjected her to certain processes; each has its successes and failures. Let each do its own work in its own way. I do not see any need for fights and recriminations. For me all are only outward means and what really works are unseen forces behind; as they act, the outer means succeed or fail – if one can make the process a right channel for the right force, then the process gets its full utility – that’s all.