Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1766

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

October 29, 1936

Guru, now I remember it was not exactly স্তব্ধতা. It is so difficult to express it – as though something was going to happen to me with which I was totally unfamiliar. I was going away somewhere, getting as quiet and still as the atmosphere around. Going to lose the consciousness of the surrounding things?

Well, that is the beginning of some kind of Samadhi.

And if some forces were to invade at that moment – this was my fear.

Why the hell should they? But if there is any chance of that, call the Mother’s protection around you.

But do you say that স্তব্ধতা is empty of other presences?

Certainly.

Isn’t it a fact that some adverse force may come and try to attack us in meditation?

In meditation it may, but not in স্তব্ধতা. All meditation is not

S told me that once while he was meditating at the dead of night, a force came and gripped his neck (?).

Well, that’s quite possible. If it does, one has only to kick it away and say, “Get off, you fool.” Or if you are not vigorous enough to do that, call the Mother’s force.

Anyway this fear must go.

Exactly.

People come in contact with so many planes, beings and forces in meditation, and if one gets afraid, there is a chance of madness.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “a chance of madness”.]

Not necessarily madness. Plenty of people get afraid without getting mad. Madness is exceptional. What fear does is to stop the experience or else it exposes you to blows from the vital beings. If you don’t fear, they can’t hurt you.

J’s uncle was one.

[Sri Aurobindo drew a line indicating “one”.]

One what? Got mad with fear?

So fear must go.

Fear must not enter in Yoga. As Vivekananda said, the Yogi must be অভী¹.

The other day Dr. Sircar asked me what is the yogic process you adopt in curing people. I told him what you have said about the medical aspect – when the diagnosis is definitely clear you concentrate on that so that when the root is handled, symptoms disappear gradually...

Not always. Most often I deal with the symptoms also.

“It is a Science which he alone knows, to others it is a sealed book or a forbidden tree...”

Why he alone? What about the Mother? Plenty of people besides, have felt forces.

“We have tried to pluck the fruit, but he is very strict and does not allow.”

How’s that??

Any comments or light on this occult business? How far am I right in enunciating or enumerating your method?

All right, subject to the comments above.

By the way, if it is a question of forces, how or where the deuce do these millions of blessed bacilli and viruses come in? Has each Force a definite bacillus as its agent?

What is the difficulty? You are like the scientists who say or used to say there is no such thing as mind or thought independent of the physical brain. Mind and thought are only names for brain quiverings. Or that there is no such thing as vital Force because all the movements of life depend upon chemicals, glands and what not. These things and the germs also are only a minor physical instrumentation for something supraphysical.

Or do the Forces diminish the general resistance of the body in an occult way and germs according to their individual characteristics try to capture the body?

They first weaken or break through the nervous envelope, the aura. If that is strong and whole, a thousand million germs will not be able to do anything to you. The envelope pierced, they attack the subconscient mind in the body; sometimes also the vital mind or mind proper – prepare the illness by fear or thought of illness. The doctors themselves said that in influenza or cholera in the Far East 90 percent got ill through fear. Nothing to take away the resistance like fear. But still the subconscient is the main thing.

But diseases like cholera, plague etc. are supposed to outbreak by contamination.

If the contrary Force is strong in the body, one can move in the midst of plague and cholera and never get contaminated. Plague too, rats dying all around, people passing into Hades. I have seen that myself in Baroda.

You will say then that flies, bugs etc. that contaminate food, are sent to people by these forces and they were meant to be infected?

They were open to the Forces in some way.

Buddha, they say, died of dysentery due to pork-eating.

Modem scholars have cleared Buddha of that carnivorous calumny. They say it was a vegetable root called sukarakhanda which ignorant commentators have mistranslated “piece of a pig”.

Dysentery, as you know, is caused by a germ.

It isn’t. It is instrumentated by a germ.

And germs got into the pork by flies and flies were there at the instance of forces?

What about the vegetable root? Flies also. But why should not flies be instruments for illness just as you are an instrument for curing?

What about Ramakrishna’s cancer? You will perhaps chide me for bringing in these instances, but logically they have to be there. And if Buddha’s illness may not be believed, can Ramakrishna’s? “How does it invalidate the theory of forces, you fool?” you will thunder.

What did he himself say about it – that it was the sins of his disciples which constituted the cancer. There is a physical aspect to things and there is an occult supraphysical aspect – one need not get in the way of the other. All physical things are the expression of the supraphysical. The existence of a body with physical instruments and processes does not, as the 19th century vainly imagined, disprove the existence of a soul which uses the body even if it is also conditioned by it. Laws of Nature do not disprove the existence of God. The fact of a material world to which our instruments are accorded does not disprove the existence of less material worlds which certain subtler instruments can show to us.

But Ramakrishna was an Avatar, Sir! An Avatar to be attacked and given insufferable pains!

Why should he not? Why on earth limit the possibilities of an Avatar?

Last night L called Dr. Becharlal for tympanites. He saw there was no tympanites at all... She had also a good motion today.

That’s it! Constipation she has got but she bloodcurdles herself into any number of other things.

S asked for meals at home. Because of the rainy weather he says he feels unwell. How can I refuse when a healthy fellow like myself – ?!

What delicate people all are becoming! A feather will hunch them down. Can’t bear this, can’t stand that. Evidently they are approaching the heights of supramental Yoga!

[In the medical report, I wrote the name of the patient as Ambala instead of Ambalal.]

I say! this is the name of a town, not of a person.

¹ abhī: fearless.

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