Why not every week?Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1937
Letter ID: 1909
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
April 13, 1937
Why, Sir, you didn’t know that smallpox fellows are not required to be vaccinated?... A book says one attack generally protects for life, but second attacks are not very uncommon and the protection tends to wear off in time. My theory smashed? Well, exception proves the rule, what?
Well, there are people who say that smallpox attacks immunise for only a few years. But if it is as you say, then there are others, I suppose. There is Amani1 among the servants for instance who nearly died of smallpox. I myself had a slight attack in Baroda soon after I came from England – so you needn’t try to come up and vaccinate me.
You have written to Shailaja that the effect of vaccination lasts 5 years, and revaccination is not required within that period.
That is what one book says.
But I gather that French regulation requires vaccination every year...
Why not every week?
Whom are you vaccinating? Mother wants to have the report every day.
How do you like this poem2, Sir?
Well, the rhythm seems to me all right and the poem is exceedingly beautiful. A1.
Why the devil am I having a headache these last 2 days?
Supramental trying to find a place in your head?
[Regarding the interpretation of a poem of J’s:] When there is no fire of Aspiration, the psychic opens the door?
It can, by a pressure from above. It may be that the preparation was over, so that the fire like everything else had sunk into silence, waiting for the descent under whose pressure the psychic door flew open.
That is hardly possible in your Yoga. No aspiration, no nothing – says your teaching.
Never taught anything of the kind. I got the blessed Nirvana without even wanting it. Aspiration is the first or usual means, that is all.
1 The Mother’s servant.
2 “Alor gandha”, Swapnadīp, p. 23.