Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1937

Letter ID: 1902

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

April 6, 1937

I have scratched the whole poem out of existence! And yet when I completed it, I was so happy thinking it was something great! Fool!

Every poet is such a fool. His work is done in an exalting excitement of the vital mind – judgment and criticism can only come when he has cooled down.

Well, Sir, any good this poem, or goes to the same basket?

This one is very fine. No W.P.B., please.

I can’t get the current back. Even the taste has disappeared. On the contrary a fear has grown, lest my poems be good-for-nothing.

Nonsense! No poet can always write well – If even Homer nods, Nirod can often doze – that’s no reason for getting morally bilious.

Once I asked you to give some advice as regards the treatment of a patient, you replied: “... I have no medico in me, not even a latent medico.” [1.4.35]

Of course not. If it were there, I would develop it and run the Dispensary myself. What would be the need of a Nirod or Becharlal or Ramchandra?

Then the other day regarding K’s baby you wrote that the Mother has no intuition for infants.

No intuition for stuffing infants with heterogeneous medicines.

Well then, if you have no latent medico and Mother has no intuition for infants, can you tell me how by the force of devotion, faith, surrender, etc., is one going to get guidance from you? If the Divine hasn’t got it, where the deuce will it come from?

What logic! Because Mother and myself are not Engineers, therefore Chandulal can’t develop the right intuition in engineering? or because neither I nor Mother are experts in Gujerati prosody, therefore Punjalal can’t develop the inspiration for his poems?

If the Divine can’t guide me externally which is much easier, how can he guide internally, and if he has no medico, wherefrom will the medico come to him within?

Oh Lord! what a question! To guide internally is a million times easier than to guide externally. Let us suppose I want General Miaja to beat Franco’s fellows back at Guadalajara (please pronounce properly), I put the right force on him and he wakes up and, with his military knowledge and capacity, does the right thing and it’s done. But if I, having no latent or patent military genius or knowledge in me, write to him saying “Do this, do that”, he won’t do it and I wouldn’t be able to do it either. It is operations of two quite different spheres of consciousness. You absolutely refuse to make the necessary distinction between the two fields and their processes and then you jumble the two together and call it logic.

If the medico can be revealed from within, why could it not be revealed from without and tell me to give antidys. serum to K’s baby, which I hear has been administered and found to be effective?

Damn it, man! Intuition and revelation are inner things – they don’t belong to the outer mind.

If you or Mother can’t guide me concretely, how will the guidance come later on, I wonder.

Do you imagine that I tell you inwardly or outwardly what expressions to use in your Bengali poems when you are writing? Still you write from an inspiration which I have set going.

Can you satisfy my logical brain box, Sir?

Your logical brain box, sir, is such a rule-of-thumb, Dr. Johnsonian sort of affair that it is quite impossible to satisfy. If ever you succeed in emptying the brain box of its miscellaneous contents and being mentally silent, then you will discover how these things are done.

If I am to carry on the medical work well, I would like and expect to have an opening in that line... Please don’t say that I cogitate and hesitate. It is precisely that that I want to avoid. Shall I adopt the surrealistic method, i.e. to keep quiet for a moment and whatever strikes first, go ahead with it; only be careful in case of poisons?

There is a vegetable called “bubble and squeak”. That describes the two methods you propose. “Bubble” is to go on tossing symptoms about in the head and trying to discover what they point to – that’s your method. “Squeak” is to dash at a conclusion (supported by a quotation) and ram some inappropriate medicine down the patient’s throat,– that’s X’s method – But the proper method is neither to bubble nor to squeak.

You remember once I told you of this surrealistic method and you cried Good Lord!? [28.10.35, p. 365]

I did and I repeat it; I don’t want this Asram transferred to the next world by your powerful agency.

Once Mother asked me to try this method, i.e. instead of analysing the various possibilities and probabilities and then diagnosing by elimination etc., just keep quiet and go at it.

Well, so that’s how the Mother’s statements are understood! A free permit for anything and everything calling itself an intuition to go crashing into the field of action! Go at it, indeed! Poor it!

What the Mother says in the matter is what she said to Dr. Manilal with his entire agreement – viz. Reading from symptoms by the doctors is usually a mere balancing between possibilities (of course except in clear and simple cases) and the conclusion is a guess. It may be a right guess and then it will be all right, or it may be a wrong guess and then all will be wrong unless Nature is too strong for the doctor and overcomes the consequences of his error – or at the least the treatment will be ineffective. On the contrary if one develops the diagnostic flair, one can see at once what is the real thing among the possibilities and see what is to be done. That is what the most successful doctors have; they have this flashlight which shows them the true point. Manilal agreed and said the cause of the guessing was that there were whole sets of symptoms which could belong to any one of several diseases and to decide is a most delicate and subtle business, no amount of book knowledge or reasoning will ensure a right decision. A special insight is needed that looks through the symptoms and not merely at them – This last sentence, by the way, is my own, not Manilal’s. About development of intuition, afterwards – no time tonight.

Regarding the vaccination you referred to, shall I ask the hospital doctor to come and do a few cases and then from the next day I can do; or shall I ask them to show me a few cases at the hospital? Either can be arranged for. Valle says all the members have to be vaccinated. André says all are not necessary. He has asked me to see him tomorrow morning.

The letter sent to us by Valle with Gaffiero’s counter-signature expressly offered to us the management of the whole affair by our own doctors, so that there should be no intervention of the authorities with all its inconveniences – we have only to make a report of the persons vaccinated and their reactions. They, if we have to vaccinate at all, are just the conditions Mother wants. She does not want their doctors or infirmiers¹ to come in. So you will avoid that. Ask them to show you a few cases so that you can do the thing yourself – that is the only course Mother sanctions.

Valle of course had to say that everybody was to be vaccinated, but really they are offering us by this arrangement some freedom in the matter which we shall not have if they come in. The Mother proposes to have the workmen and servants vaccinated and a small number of the sadhaks, especially those who go out and mix with the town people – enough to make a sufficient show on paper. She expects that Gaffiero will pass the thing and let the matter drop without insisting more – he is very favourable to the Asram. Only the thing had better be completed before he goes to Europe.

¹ Hospital-attendants.

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