The letters reveal Nirod's unique relationship with his guru. The exchanges are suffused with a special humour.
Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
Nirodbaran's correspondence with Sri Aurobindo began in February 1933 and continued till November 1938, when Sri Aurobindo injured his leg and Nirod became one of his attendants. The entire correspondence, which was carried on in three separate notebooks according to topics - private, medical, and literary - is presented in chronological order, revealing the unique relationship Nirod enjoyed with his guru, replete with free and frank exchanges and liberal doses of humour. Covering a wide range of topics, both serious and light-hearted, these letters reveal the infinite care Sri Aurobindo devoted to the spiritual development of his disciple.
THEME/S
But what is this, Sir, I felt last night? It was a warm touch on my forehead, as warm as your feet at Darshan. But it was so sudden that I doubted it almost. Possible such touches?
Possible! What an absurd question to ask! Such touches are quite a common experience in sadhana. There are however different touches. Sometimes the touch is personal, sometimes it is the touch of the Power or Presence from above. Many feel not a warm touch but a wave of something warm descending, etc.
December 1, 1935
Naik and I had an interesting discussion about the prognosis of sex-glands in consequence of Yogic abstinence, or any abstinence, for that matter. Naik said that since sex has no place here, there is a possibility of the sex-glands undergoing atrophic degeneration. I could not agree with him and told him that had it been the case, people who practised brahmacharya, would lose all their virility, energy, radiance, etc. Don't the Yogis say that ojas and tejas can only be produced by such abstinence?
That is correct. The whole theory of brahmacharya is based upon that by the Yogis. If it were not so, there would be no need of brahmacharya for producing tejas and ojas.
Naik argued that what is seen as vigour, energy, etc., may be due to the spiritual force descending and flooding the system, and have nothing to do with the sex-gland secretions at all.
It is not a question of vigour and energy per se, but of the physical support—in that physical support the ojas produced by brahmacharya counts greatly. The transformation of retas into ojas is a transformation of physical substance into a physical (necessarily producing also a vital physical) energy. The spiritual energy by itself can only drive the body, like the vital and mental, but in driving it it would exhaust it if it had not a physical support—(I speak of course of the ordinary spiritual energy, not of the supra-mental to be which will have not only to transmute retas into ojas but ojas into something still more sublimated.)
How is it then that scientists attach no value to sex energy except its use for procreation? The current theory is that sex is a physiological necessity. If the sex-glands run the risk of an atrophy due to abstinence, you see how dangerous it would be medically. What does your spiritual science say on the matter?
You mean the doctors. But even all doctors do not agree on that; there are many (I have read their opinions) who say that sex-satisfaction is not an absolute necessity and sex-abstinence can be physically very beneficial and is so of course under proper conditions.
As for scientists, the product of the sex-glands is considered by them (at least so I have read) as a great support and feeder of the general energies. It has even been considered that sex-force has a great part to play in the production of poetry, art etc. and in the action of genius generally. Finally, it is a doctor who has discovered that the sex-fluid consists of two parts, one meant for sex-purposes, the other as a basis of general energy, and if the sex-action is not indulged the first element tends to be turned into the second, (retas into ojas, as the Yogis had already discovered). Theories? So are the statements or inferences of the opposite side—one theory is as good as another. Anyhow I don't think that the atrophy of the sex-glands by abstinence can be supported by general experience. N's contention is however logical if we take not individual results but the course of evolution and suppose that this evolution will follow the line of the old one, for these useless organs are supposed to disappear or deteriorate. But will the supramental evolution follow the same course as the old one or develop new adaptations of its own making—that is the uncertain element.
1) What about P's eyes? She complains that they only repeat ancient history—cure and recure and you seem to be quite callous about her hard hard case. What?
2) What about N? He writes that he has realised he was having fever all the time, though it did not occur to him that it was fever. I hope this is not the result of the tuberculous suggestion of Manilal.
3) What happened about A? He was to have another urine examination by Becharlal. Did it take place?
Dr. Valle suggests a radiogram to be taken of S's stomach and intestine.
It might be better. But I understand it can't be properly done here. Must be done at Madras or Calcutta.
December 3, 1935
Prasanna is better in every respect. But how am I to impress upon her that trachoma is a nasty business, that it takes a long time to cure completely?
She does not care about all that. Her point of view is that the doctor is there to cure her and why doesn't he do it? Very careless and callous of him. It is something like the attitude of many to us and our Yogic force.
By her own confession, you will see that there is at least some improvement. Isn't it something?
Obviously.
I intend to try a new medicine on Prasanna's eyes, brushing the lids with sodium chlorate powder which is supposed to give good results. But it is rather painful. She has already become aprasanna with our callousness and futile treatment. Who knows what she will be if we give her excruciating pain with sodium chl. and make her from bad to worse?
Good Lord! she will make a worse noise than Hercules in the shirt of Nessus!
If you give us courage, we may venture.
Not possible. Prasanna will become more than aprasanna, she will become abasanna and do dharna.133 Won't do.
I knew nothing about N's fever. He swept in today and said he was feverish. Temperature was normal, his feeling can't be due to T.B. suggestion, for he doesn't know what T.B. is.
He is writing very aghast notes and demanding an explanation from me of his perilous condition—so I thought it better to refer the matter to the medical authorities.
A's urine was examined. The specific gravity was rather high and we advised him to take less sugar, after that we didn't enquire and he didn't complain.
He does not complain—I simply wanted to know what had happened.
About S's stomach—if there is no radiogram, then we can make at least a screen examination.
It might be done—only R is in charge. He might object to an allopathic screen pushing into the stomach and upsetting his homeopathic effects, what?
To take up our yesterday's discussion—I think Vivekananda said that by observance of brahmacharya, one acquires a prodigious memory. He himself proved it by reproducing anything he was asked from the Encyclopaedia Britannica though he just took some glances at it. But it was said that only Vivekananda and Anandas like him can do the feat. We have heard about your doing such feats of memory also, on a miniature scale.
Hallo!!
But everybody knows that you are a much greater "Ananda", Sir! So perhaps possible.
Possible, of course.
What I wanted to say however is that poets and artists, as a class, are rather loose and lavish in their sex economy. If they indulge much in sex, how can their sex-force produce great things?
You have not understood. I was answering the statement that scientists don't attach any value to sex-gland—product and think it is only of use for an external purpose. Many scientists on the contrary consider it a base of productive energy ; among other things it plays a part in artistic and poetic production. Not that artists and poets are anchorites and Brahmacharis, but that they have a powerful sex-gland activity, part of which goes to creative and part to (effectual or ineffectual) procreative action. On the latest theory & Yoga theory, the procreative part would be retas, the creative part the basis of ojas. Now supposing the artist or poet to conserve his retas and turn it into ojas, the result would be an increased power of creative productivity. Q.E.D., sir! Logic, sir!
I suppose Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa were complete abstainers, though there is doubt about the last two.
Excuse me, there are no doubts about Kalidasa. Very much to the contrary.
December 4, 1935
I asked R about S's screen examination. He said he would write to you. I am doubtful about his consent.
He is sardonically permissive—displeased with S's bull-like unmanageableness and says he does not care whether he is rayed or remains rayless all his life.
I am now caught up in a triangle of confusion: one side of the triangle is story writing, another is poetry and the base—concentration, meditation, etc.
Make it a triangle of harmony
Now all on a sudden an onrush of all these three. I've actually completed half a story. Not that it is something great or good.
All right—great or not, complete it.
My main idea is to attempt to develop a style by constant practice, and to open up my grey matter if possible, though I doubt it very much. Again doubt! Yes, Sir, doubt at every blessed nook and corner.
You must have been St. Thomas in a past life, also Hamlet, an Academic philosopher, and several other things.
If I can develop the style, I hope the rest will follow—at least you have made me believe so.
Of course
As regards poetry, there again I am inundated by hazy ideas for 2 or 3 compositions and many lines seem to peep out.
What is the meaning of this "seem"? Do they peep or do they not Peep?
But they seem more bent on tantalising me than meaning anything serious, because as soon as I sit down to transcribe them, they evaporate like ether or camphor.
What do you mean? Why should you sit down to transcribe them? Keep hold of the lines and expressions by the nose as soon as they peep out, jump on a piece of paper and dash them down for prospective immortality.
It appears so easy to catch all these amorphous beauties and put them into morphological Grecian statues!...
Why amorphous, if they are lines and expressions?—lines and expressions are either morphous or they don't exist. Explain yourself, please.
The one thing you have not written is how the third side of the triangle manifests its activity. You say, all are active together?
Can you solve this eternal disharmony and is there any possibility of harmony?
Every possibility if you will cease to Hamletise and go straight or go baldheaded for the thing to be done when there is a chance.
If poets have powerfully active sex-glands, I suppose I can also be called a poet, at any rate an embryonic one! Q.E.D. Logic, Sir! n'est-ce pas?
No, sir—ce n'est pas ҫa. You are illegitimately connecting two disconnected syllogisms. Ist syllogism—all poets are sex-gland-active, Nirod is a poet, therefore Nirod is sex-gland-active. 2nd syllogism—all sex-gland-actives are poets, Nirod is sex-gland-active, therefore Nirod is a poet. The second proposition does not follow from the first as you seem illogically to think. All poets may be sex-gland-active, but it does not follow that all sex-gland-actives are poets. So don't start building an epic on your sex-glands, please.
December 5, 1935
What shall we do about S? Ray him or leave him?
Wait a while till the present imbroglio is over.
We allopaths are concerned with diagnosis. We open up even a dead man's viscera not to speak of sacrificing so many guinea-pigs which, according to Moni, is much more abominable than goat-sacrifice before Kali.
I suppose the objection is to the suffering inflicted which is avoidable in the other cases.
Shall we continue giving K cod-liver oil? He seems all right.
It might be stopped. Perhaps Nergine may be given instead. He will have hard work now, so a little support may be necessary.
You are asking why" amorphous"? The lines, expressions, words that I feel swarming all around me, but I cannot put into form, what else shall I call them?
If you simply feel things swarming without a shape, then you can't call that lines and expressions—it is only the chaotic potentiality of them.
One begins with the morphous lines hoping that the amorphous chaos will sweep in ecstatically and help me build splendidly original cosmos, and what do I find? Either the elude me or what comes is something fictitious and corn monplace.
That's another matter. It's like dreams in which one gets splendid lines that put Shakespeare into the shade and one wakes up am enthusiastically jots them down, it turns out to be "O you damned goose, where are you going While the river is flowing, flowing flowing?" and things like that.
Do you mean that I should scribble down all these expression as soon as they hop in? Good Lord! there will be parts and pieces only. How shall I make a whole poem out of them?
Many poets do that—jot down something that comes isolated in the hope that some day it will be utilisable. Tennyson did it, I believe. You don't want to be like Tennyson? Of course it is always permissible for you to pick and choose among these divine fragments and throw away those that are only semi-divine.
Already words and lines of four or five poems in halves and quarters are lying in a comatose condition, without any hope of resurrection.
Well, well—all that shows you are a poet in the making with hundreds of poems in you also in the making, very much so. The mountains in labour, you know—what?
I have told you—by some magic there is now a manifested tendency to concentrate. 3-4 duty, 4-4.30 tea, 4.30-6 writing reports, 6-8.30 meal, meditation, duty, 8.30-9 prayer class, 9.30-10.30 or 11 left to me exclusively. So only 9.30-11 is the solid time. What can one write in one or one and a half hours?
Lucky man! Ample time, sir, ample time, both to realise the Brahman and to write another Iliad—or Nirodiad.
Good Lord! what can one write in 1 or 1½ hours? If I could only get that time for immortal productions every day! Why in another three years Savitri and Ilion and I don't know how much more would be all rewritten, finished, resplendently complete.
I can write at the most 10 lines which seem so poor a stuff!
The question is whether they are really poor or something can be made out of them.
Today I have produced 8 unchiselled lines in the afternoon—so I couldn't do any meditation.
What of that? Chisel them at the next opportunity.
Please don't ask me to fix the consciousness high while writing, for that is impossible. This is the difficulty I've been facing all along: one part bounding for concentration, another plunging into literature. How can I go straight or baldheaded?
Well, but what I mean is to stop this profitless debate in your stomach and do what you have to do. When you are moved to concentrate, concentrate—when you are moved to cosmicise chaos, cosmicise away. And don't waste time in remorses for having done either. Remorse is a damned useless affair, very depressing, de-fertilising etc. Even if you murder somebody or, what is worse, write lines which amount to a murder of the Muse, remorse is out of place. In the first case, the useful thing to do is to bury the corpse and in the second to seek the capacious arms of the W.P.B.134 for your misdeed or try to cover it up by doing better.
I was perplexed by your reply about Kalidasa [4.12.35]. You mean he was an abstainer? You seem to know his life very well; then is there any truth in the conjecture that you were Kalidasa?
Don't know anything about that. But I said "There are no doubts, very much to the contrary"—meaning that everybody knows he was a sex-gland-active.
I have given you my timetable so that you may concentrate on me at the exact time. I hope the mathematical figures won't give you a shock!
No fear. Mathematics are more likely to send me to sleep than give a shock.
December 6, 1935
We have no Nergine in the Dispensary.
No. You can take a box from Dyuman for K.
My, what flattering phrases you use, Sir! "Perfective immortality", etc., etc.
Rather startled by this phrase. Can't find it, but don't believe it is a correct reading.
J stormed in like a meteor and exclaimed, "Mother has achieved a great victory tonight. Sex-energies of some people have surrendered." I asked, "All occult business, I suppose?" "Of course!" he answered.
Good Lord, no! J's imaginations, that is all.
Then he said that Mother reveals to his higher mind all her workings. Must be wonderful if it is a fact.
The usual delusion! Voices, voices—the Mother in a confidential mood on the 7th storey!
A very big "if".
We have found that his knowledge is not always true e.g. A.B.'s story I wrote to you about, for instance.
Don't remember. He was writing an absurd affair of A.B.'s trying to take possession of him and substitute himself for the Mother—is it anything to do with that? I told him not to allow himself to be invaded by absurd delusions. But he seems to have only given it another form.
He says that very few vitals are free here (not sexually)
[Sri Aurobindo drew a line to the word 'free".]
That seems to be the one thing true in all that he said.
One is linked up with another, e.g. D's lower vital with N's.
Rubbish!
If D wants to meet the Mother in the vital, he has to go through N's vital, he says.
Bejabbus!
Ramchandra wants S's stove, sign (?) and coals, kerosene, spirit, cocoa and barley to be removed from his room bodily and summarily. We don't know how to organise this raid. Mother suggests that you might undertake it, the things to be distributed afterwards to the proper quarters. Ready for the heroic deed? As for S, you can tell him "Doctor's orders!"
December 7, 1935
I had been plodding at a poem and now it is ready. I called in NK who did in five minutes what would have taken me five hours, and with what result. Do our styles harmonise?
What of that? The result is all right. H used to write ten or twelve poems in a day or any number more. It takes me usually a day or two days to write and perfect one or three days even, or if very inspired, I get two short ones out, and have perhaps to revise the next day. Another poet will be like Virgil writing nine lines a day and spending all the rest of his time polishing and polishing. A fourth will be like Monomohan, as I knew him, setting down half lines and fragments and taking 2 weeks or 2 months to put them into shape. The time does not matter, getting it done and the quality alone matter. So forge ahead and don't be discouraged by the prodigious rapidity of Nishikanta.
It is certainly a little difficult to keep them together, especially as Nishikanta's stanzas are strong and fiery and yours are delicate and plaintive. It is like a strong robustious fellow and a delicate slender one walking in a leash—they don't quite coalesce.
December 8, 1935
Here is NK's poem. Just think of it—a fellow who never has written a single line in English and doesn't know it well, translates his own poem at a shot into a more beautiful, richer poem! Look at his astounding mistakes in spelling but does it matter?
No, so long as there is somebody to correct it.
And on the whole the metre also seems all right.
What metre? Is it the one I indicated?
Amal has corrected the whole thing, he says some of the lines are striking. What would you say, and will you kindly retouch, if necessary?
It is very beautiful. Amal has worked much upon it, so it is so surprisingly perfect. The original form is very poetic, but it is only the first two lines of it and the first two also of the second stanza that are quite successful. All the same it is a remarkable endeavour.
NK says that before writing or painting he bows down once before the Mother and you. If that is the secret, why, I shall bow a hundred times, Sir!
It depends on how you bow.
December 9, 1935
Amal says that he wanted to make a metrical experiment by a sort of combination of iambic and anapaest. You write that after Amal's correction of NK's poem, it is surprisingly perfect. Can it be called. a poem, with so many irregular variations? Or would it be called free verse, with some metrical arrangement?
What on earth do you mean? Iambics and anapaests can be combined in English verse at any time, provided one does not set out to write a purely iambic or a purely anapaestic metre. Mixed anapaest and iamb make a most beautifully flexible lyric rhythm. It has no more connection with free verse than the constellation of the Great Bear has to do with a cat's tail. Free verse indicates verse free from the shackles of rhyme and metre, but rhythmic (or trying to be rhythmic) in one way or another. If you put rhymes, that will be considered a shackle and the "free" will kick at the chain. The rhythm and metrical arrangement is perfect on the iamb-anapaest basis. I only wanted to know whether that was what Amal intended. For the rhyme scheme of the poem is that of a sonnet and in English the sonnet is always written in iambic pentameter—the combination of a lyrical metre with sonnet rhyme scheme is a novel adventure.
If Nishikanta can learn the English metre, he will produce some splendid poems. What do you say?
Possibly and even probably—only he must learn also what is and is not possible in English poetic style.
I hope you didn't fail to notice in Nishikanta's poem—"With profuse success, each pot of my every dot fulfils," word for word a translation by him of his Bengali line—প্রতি বিন্দুর প্রতি আধার
Amal and I had a hearty laugh!
Yes, it was a stroke of genius.
Amal said "Better send NK's poem, as it is, to Sri Aurobindo and ask him whether it would not be better to write such poems in free verse."
Free verse would very likely be the death of his new possibility. His genius runs naturally into rhyme.
But don't you agree that it is a very striking piece with much original imagery?
It is indeed a remarkable effort, full of beauty and power. You will see that by some changes (for the sake of metre and correct language and style) it becomes a poem of great original beauty.
It seems to be better than the previous one—both in force and imagery and yet it doesn't seem to be so oriental. Am I right?
You are right; it is much more possible in English.
I believe that Nishikanta will profit immensely if he tries to learn the metre.
Yes. This one I have turned into a very flexible amalgam of iambs, trochees and anapaests. It gives to my eye a very attractive and original effect.
I have grave doubts about the success of the orientals in the field of English poetry. It is very difficult for us to enter into the subtleties of English language; and our oriental nature is also unappealing to the Westerners.
What you say is no doubt correct, but on the other hand it is possible that the mind of the future will be more international than it is now. In that case the expression of various temperaments in English poetry will have a chance.
Look at HarM's poetry. We're so ecstatic over it here, but outside he hardly gets a good audience; not even K seems to like his poetry.
I don't think I can put as much value on K's literary judgments as on his comments on Yoga etc. Some of his criticisms astonished me. For instance he found fault with Harin for using rhymes which Shelley uses freely in his best poems.
You must remember also that Harin's poetry has been appreciated by some of the finest English writers like Binyon and De la Mare. But anyway all growing writers (unless they are very lucky) meet with, depreciation and criticism at first until people get accustomed to it. Perhaps if Harin had published his poems under the name let us say of Harry Chatto, he would have succeeded by this time and no one would have talked of Oriental inaptness.
I always look with pity at our people trying poetic exercises in English, except HarM, and always think of Michael Madhusudan's failure. But I suppose you think otherwise, because you have a big trump up your sleeve—the Supermind.
My aim is not personal glory, but to arrive at the expression of spiritual truth and experience of all kinds in poetry. The English tongue is the most wide-spread—if it can be used for the highest spiritual expression, that is worth trying.
How do you explain Nishikanta's miraculous feat? He can't speak at all correctly in English, whereas he writes wonderful poetry!
That has nothing to do with it. Speech and Poetry come from two quite different sources—Remember Goldsmith who wrote like an angel and talked like a parrot.
You can't say that it is all due to Yoga. He has been here only for a year and D for so many years, yet the difference between them as poets, is striking. I can understand your yogic success in his Bengali poetry, because the field was ready, but the opening of his channel in English has staggered me. I can't explain if it is your success or his.
What do you mean by Yoga? There is a Force here in the atmosphere which will give itself to anyone open to it. Naturally it will work best when the native language is used—but it can do big things through English if the channel used is a poetic one and if that channel offers itself. Two things are necessary—no personal resistance and some willingness to take trouble about understanding the elementary technique at least so that the transcription may not meet with too many obstacles. Nishikanta has a fine channel and with a very poetic turn in it—he offers no resistance to the now of the force, no interference of his mental ego, only the convenience of his mental individuality. Whether he takes the trouble or the technique is another matter.
I had written to you that Nishikanta bows in front of your photograph before he sits down to write, and that I am ready to bow,a hundred times, if that is the trick. You answered that it depends on how one bows. Methinks it does no depend on it. Even if it did I don't think Nishikanta know, it. Or was it in his past life that he knew it?
Well, there is a certain faculty of effacing oneself and letting the Universal Force run through you—that is the way of bowing. It can be acquired by various means, but also one may have the capacity for doing it in certain directions by nature.
December 10, 1935
After hearing what you have written regarding the learning of metre, Nishikanta approached Ramchandra for learning it; because it was he who had given him the push to write in English. But Ramchandra wants to read with him English poetry, so that he may plunge into the spirit before learning metre. To develop the English poetic style, I suppose, it would be the best plan.
It is not English yet. But they can do like that if they prefer. Right rhythm however is the one thing still lacking and, until he learns it, these efforts will he only a promise.
Are we taxing you too much by this occupation with our poetry? If not, Nishikanta proposes to send you one poem a day. How would you like having the dish every night?
You can send it. I will look at the dish even if I don't devour it.
December 11, 1935
Here is a lyrical dish prepared by Nishikanta all on a sudden after reading a book on metre. How do you find it?
For a first attempt remarkable—but he has not yet the necessary niceties of phrase and rhythm. The first three lines of the second stanza are very powerful, as good a thing as any English poet could have written. With some doctoring it makes a powerful lyric.
Nishikanta has got the metre all right this time.
Almost—he has the gift. But there are defects—e.g. he sometimes gave 3 ft. for 2 ft. lines and vice-versa. Having made a scheme he should keep to it.
He wants to know how to get the right rhythm and the right poetic style. I said by reading English poetry.
Yes, reading and listening with the inner ear to the modulation of the lines.
About myself—as I go on writing, the lines, expressions, images seem so commonplace that I distrust the value of my work.
It is no use being too squeamish at first. By that distrust you can depreciate good as well as cheap values.
Secondly, I get tired of waiting and leave of say after an hour. What else can one do? Where is the ego or personal resistance you speak of?
I didn't mean all that. I meant that a certain Nirod gets in the way, is too active or too blocky. Too subtle for farther explanation, you have to feel.
It is not the question of "being open" or "knowing how to bow", but having a poetic being open or semi-open...
It has nothing to do with the poetic being.
"Personal resistance, mental ego" are phrases, for there must first be a poetic being, for an ego to resist.
The poetic being is not burdened with an ego. It is the outer being which contributes that.
Nishikanta started with a desire to write after reading about metre, but without any central idea. After an hour or so he felt a power descending, then the poem began to unroll itself. But he had no sleep at night.
That is all right—except for the no sleep which I don't exactly advise.
It means one need not have any preformed ideas, not even inspiration, a simple desire will do.
But that is the inspiration when something descends.
Will sun-treatment do any good to A's eyes?
Mother does not think it is safe for A. It might help her eyes, but her system might suffer from the sun exposure.
Something great, something big you have done, Sir. Will you kindly whisper?
I am always doing something big, but never big enough—as yet.
Really, Sir, do tell us, if no objection.
Eh, what? [Underlined.]
December 12, 1935
There is again a quarrel between. X and Y, and I am asked to intervene; if I don't there'll be a row. I must have your permission.
Permission for the row? I am utterly against rows. If sadhaks want them, it must be done on their responsibility. I neither permit nor refuse.
X says that she is suffering a lot. It.seems to me at times that she is a being of another world and incompatible with this world. What is the cause of her suffering?
Ego, foolishness, insincerity—a false claim that she is more noble and ideal than others—while in reality her vital is made just like any other human vital ... I am afraid your idea that she is a superior being from a more beautiful world (if that is what you think) can't hold water.
I am sorry for X, but she creates her own difficulties. She will not do what is necessary to have peace. If she went back from her ego, her demand on others, she would have peace soon enough.
I hate to disturb you with all these stories. Is it an individual affair that one should decide for oneself?
Surely it is an individual affair, being a clash of egos. There ought to be no such individual affairs in a Yoga Asram, but ought and is are far asunder.
December 13, 1935
About the individual affair, it may be so, but aren't most of the affairs that happen in the Asram, individual?
That is why we never take sides in these "affairs".
But have you not yourself said that very often when subtle planes are touched for transformation, all these impurities surge up in sadhaks?
In that case, there is nothing but touching and surging and if we go on touching by interventions there will be surgings for ever and ever.
And these individual affairs are bound to be there so long as our nature is what it is, especially when we are allowed so much freedom, a long rope. I am not justifying our weaknesses.
If there is no freedom, there can be no change—there could only be a routine practice of conformity to the Yogic ideal without the reality.
I was speaking of course of quarrels when I referred to individual affairs. If I intervene, that means in practice I "take sides" as people put it, by passing judgment. X herself has often accused us of refusing to protect her self-righteous and noble self against the wickednesses and unprovoked oppression of Y ... If I "support" X, Y will be at once a candidate for departure and suicide. And yet you say I ought to intervene!
These individual affairs are sure to end ultimately by reaching you, for people will write letters from all sides; and you letters of pacification will follow.
I have been answering such letters by more and more brief replied and now very few write to me.
X says that I should support her at least on the basis of old family relation.
What a wonderful principle of conduct for an Asram! It might serve in Arabia. Corsica or ancient Greece.
About X's novel-affair, you said it is her individual concern True, but poets and artists have to take their occupation as sadhana.
There is no objection to that, but an egoistic quarrel is not sadhana.
But you will say that it is a mixture of ego, desire for, fame etc.
The whole thing was that and nothing else.
When the whole situation became too complex one had to seek for your advice.
The people who quarrel don't come for advice, but for support against the other fellow.
You came for permission, but permission would have meant support from me to X. So my answer "I neither support nor refuse."
As a consequence of all this, X is upset, causing a fall in her sadhana. One has then to approach you and explain why it is so.
No doubt, but why should she expect a support for her ego which is the cause of her fall from sadhana, the affair being only an occasion for the said ego?
Can you then silence me or be indifferent to my condition by saying that it is my individual affair?
I did not say it was yours—it is not yours at all. It is individual to X, Y, Z...
If two of us quarrel and break our heads, will you keep quiet saying that it is an individual affair, look out for yourselves?
Yes, certainly, I keep quiet. Formerly, I used to intervene, the result was more and more quarrelling, each side either quoting me in self-justification or else abusing Mother and myself and doubting our divinity because we did not side with them. Now we have resolved never to intervene. When C, S etc. write about their quarrels, (they do it very seldom nowadays), we say nothing about the quarrel, we only answer "Restrain your passions, overcome your vital and your ego. You are concerned with Yoga; don't be upset by what C (or S) says or does or anybody says and does." Or we keep quiet and answer nothing.
You can say Karmayoga but no ego, please.
Karmayoga does not mean the free indulgence of ego.
True, but through imperfections, perfection has to be attained.
Not by indulging the imperfections and calling for the Guru's support for them.
December 14, 1935
Sending you one more poem by NK. Seems a very interesting piece. If it could have been done well, it would have been very attractive and original.
It is indeed matter of which a fine poem can be made. Nishikanta has imagination and the ideas carry beauty in them, the language also, but he has not yet knowledge of the turns of the English tongue which make the beauty effective. I have tried to make it as perfect as an hour's work can do—but that is not enough, it might b better.
But from the immensely profuse amount of corrections you have made and have to make, I wonder whether we are taking too much liberty with your precious Supramental time. But Supramental is beyond Time—that is the hope.
If I have not time, I shall keep till I have. The poems are such good matter of poetry that it is worth the trouble.
Amal says you take very little time in these things.
Usually, yes. A quarter of an hour is enough; but these last two took more time.
If Nishikanta goes for the proper technique at present, there may be a check on his flow, no?
Possibly, though fidelity to metre can be a help as well as check as it makes the God of Words more alert, skilful and subtle.
About my metre, shall I approach Amal or Arjava? Amal is willing.
Either.
Everyone is doing something. I am only Tennysonning. Don't you feel pity for me, Sir?
Not so much. If you were browning, I might.
On second thought, I keep the poem one day more.
December 16, 1935
I don't say that images, expressions may not sweep in, but one has to beat, beat and beat.
Beat-beating is not sweeping in.
I have found that a poem may follow automatically, spontaneously with rich images and expressions, though one doesn't know what will follow next. That gives a real delight and what comes is genuine stuff.
That is the proper way of inspiration.
Two of my poems that you liked very much came in that way. But unfortunately all don't and one has to work hard. Sometimes there is success, at other times failure. Can you tell me on what these variations depend?
It depends on whether the inspiration flows in or the fabricating mind labours. You are obliged to have a mixed method, part inspiration, part mental, because the inspiration is not yet free to pass through. Beat-beating is the sign of the mind at work like a God-forgotten blacksmith; the flow is the sign of the Muse pouring down things at her ease.
What's up with J? Trying to bring down the Supermind or going off the deep end?
I fear he is wandering in the intermediate zone. How much is occultifying drama and how much is real aberration is the question.
I can't ask him to work when he's in such a mood.
Don't
You can keep this note-book, but what about the one lying with you?
I was returning it this morning, but I found one place all wrong and have been beat-beating at it—penultimate stanza 2nd and 3rd lines. Made something at last but not very very right.
December 18, 1935
Two poems by Nishikanta enclosed; one old and the other new. But no use asking what the metre is. He has already begun learning it.
All right, I think. Rereading it, I find it très joli. Congratulation to myself and Nishikanta with Nirod Talukdar in the middle.
Why bother about the metre, precise English, etc? They will come some day and in the meantime let him go on writing and learning by corrections, lessons, so on.
That's all right—but I rub in a bit about metre and stresses so that his ear may learn—and yours also. Judging by the last poem there is a distinct progress—but where is the credit? Corrected by Amal? or only by your sole poetic self?
How do you rhyme "life" and "cliff', "smile" and "will", "came" and "whim"? Are they all whims?
These are called in English imperfect rhymes and can be freely but not too freely used. Only you have to understand the approximations and kinships of vowel-sounds in English, otherwise yon will produce illegitimate children like "splendour" and "wonder" which is not a rhyme but an assonance.
By the way you didn't like my poem or you hesitate to call it mine, because of so many corrections by Nishikanta? Others say that it is very fine.
It was very good; mixed parentage does not matter, so long as the offspring is beautiful.
December 19, 1935
Nishikanta has written:
"I am tuned in thy tremolo of dreamland, heaven and earth." Is the word tremolo all right?
It is rather strange, but perhaps it will do.
The credit of this poem goes entirely to him. You'll be glad to see that your effort at metrical lessons has proved fruitful.
Evidently with a little care and practice Nishikanta ought soon to be able to handle English metre. He has the gift.
I have no objection to being the trait-d'union in the "mixed parentage", but for heaven's sake drop that appendage Talukdar135, Sir. It is absolutely prosaic when I am trying to be poetic!
All right. Only it is a pity—it was such a mouthful! It may be prosaic in Bengali, but to one ignorant of the meaning it sounds as if you were a Roman emperor.
As for the next poem, it is as usual, of mixed parentage. Please see if it has blossomed as a beauty! Nishikanta finds it one of my best, but when I completed it, I said "Won't do! Won't do!"
[Sri Aurobindo underlined "Won't do! Won't do!"]
Rubbish! It is exceedingly fine and your won't do is nonsense
If NK is right, then my poetic sense is no good, or am I too self-critical?
Your poetic sense seems all right when you judge NK's or other poetry.
Not self-critical, self-depreciatory.
While I was having a nap in the afternoon, I had a vision of a very beautiful woman sitting under the sun. The rays of the sun were either surrounding her or were emanating from her body—I can't precisely say which. The appearance and dress seemed to be more European than oriental.
It is not a woman. A woman does not radiate and is not surrounded by rays either. Probably a Sun-Goddess or a Shakti of the inner Light, one of the Mother's Powers.
December 20, 1935
J is of the opinion that too much colour and imagery conceal the thought-substance in poetry. It is better to be as simple and direct as possible.
One can't make rigid rules like that. Wordsworth is as simple and direct as possible (not always though), Keats aims at word-magic. One can't say Wordsworth is a greater poet than Keats.
Whatever style is poetically successful, is admissible.
Next point she makes is that it is better not to close a poem too often with a direct prayer.
Too often, of course not. For then it becomes a mannerism.
The last 2 lines of the poem I've sent you, are weaker than the preceding lines, because they are a prayer.
They are weaker, but not because they are a direct prayer. Why can't a prayer be strong? I will send you one day a poem of mine where there is a direct prayer.
Can you not give some suggestions for improvement? Don't plead on your ignorance of Bengali; surely you can point out the defects.
I can tell my impression, but I can't say how it will affect a Bengali reader. My mind may be too international to coincide with the Bengali reader's. I may also miss fine distinctions which he can make,—I mean, shades of language, what is or is not possible, or is or is not native to the language.
You will be glad to know that I am working like a devil, at poetry; anyway, it will keep the d—out, won't it?
December 21, 1935
I seem to understand that trochees are to be avoided in an iambic-anapaest poem; but maybe I am wrong, for in a book on metre I find that trochee is a common modulation of iambs, specially in the first line.
By the change you have made in the line "Crystals at her feet" into "Is a crystal at her feet", does it mean that in an iamb-anapaest poem every line must have at least one iamb-anapaest foot?
Trochees are perfectly admissible in an iambic line as a modulation—especially in the first foot (not first line), but also occasionally in the middle. In the last foot a trochee is not admissible. Also these trochees must not be so arranged as to turn an iambic into a trochaic line.
My dear sir, this is an instance of importing one's own inferences instead of confining oneself to the plain meaning of the statement. First of all the rules concerning a mixed iambic-anapaestic cannot be the same as those that govern a pure iambic. Secondly what I objected to was the trochaic run of the line. Two trochees followed by a long syllable, not a single iamb or anapaest in the whole! How can there be an iambic line or an iambic anapaestic without a single iamb or anapaest in it? The line as written could only scan either as a trochaic, therefore not iambic line, or thus, —ᴗ/ ᴗᴗ—/, that is a trochee followed by an anapaest. Here of course there is an anapaest, but the combination is impossible rhythmically because it involves three short syllables one after another in an unreadable collocation—one is obliged to put a minor stress on the "at" and that at once makes the trochaic line. In the iambic anapaestic line a trochee followed by an iamb can be allowed in the first foot; elsewhere it has to be admitted with caution so as not to disturb the rhythm.
I find the English metre very difficult because the same word is stressed or non-stressed according to the combination. How can one then be guided?
You mean the same syllable? It is syllables, not words that are stressed.
About the modulations, any numbers can be crowded in, it appears; only foot-numbers should be equal for the sake of harmony.
What numbers do you mean? The rules are perfectly clear and intelligible; only of course you must know what are the accents and what modulations are or are not possible. That means that you must know something about the language; that is all.
I have given you however some rules for the modulations in iambic verse—they are not exhaustive: In modern verse one can pepper an iambic line with anapaests—I have done so myself in the sonnets. But one must be very careful how one does it. This license is not for beginners.
If poets were to be guided by such metrical rules, they'd stop writing altogether!
How did the English poets write then?
What about the poem you promised yesterday? Golden chance, tomorrow being Sunday!
What poem? Sunday is not a golden chance because I have any amount of work to do on that day—wiping off arrears. People also often choose to forget that it is Sunday.
Don't you always tell the Mother what we write? She didn't know that the oculist is on leave.
I told Mother what you said, but you gave no date for the oculist's leave, only put it in the future.
December 22, 1935
Whet poem, indeed! Didn't you say you'd send me a poem showing the force of direct prayer? You forget so easily!
Excuse me. I said I will send one day. One day may mean after some weeks, some months, or some years.
I heard that R was called to see a case outside, which has been given up as hopeless by the French doctors, including Valle.
By the best doctors in Pondicherry, Valle, Amaladasan and others. They dosed and injected and he was near to his last gasp when Valle ran to R as a last chance.
Today R comes and tells me that the patient has gone to his office!
A fact.
And that you have congratulated him on his success!!
A fact. Why should I not, when an almost dead man rises full of life and energy in a few hours?
A miracle! I am flabbergasted, really!
Well and then? It should raise you up, not cast you down
R showed me some observations made by those doctors on blood-pressure, urine, etc. and asked me their significance. I found that the case was probably chronic interstitial nephritis.
That was reported to me by R from the first.
From a further talk I discovered that R has very little idea of what it is. And yet he goes and saves a dying man!
Do you deny the fact?
Again, it seems to me that he acted as an instrument or medium and nothing else.
What do you mean by nothing else? A human instrument without capacity can do things like that? That would be far more miraculous, impossible, incredible, surely, than a homeopath whose whole system is founded on symptomatology curing people.
R says findings of urine are not necessary. Leave the patient to nature. I said—albumin is a danger sign, it has to be eliminated through diet and medicine etc., otherwise there is a possibility of relapse. He replied, but he wants now to take meat, drink, etc.
A relapse is always possible, if, as R wrote to me, the man is a reckless bon vivant going strong and drinking. But that is his affair; his resuscitation remains a fact.
This instance has proved to me that homeopaths are concerned with symptoms, not with the disease itself, of which they have not much knowledge. If relying on symptoms alone, he has cured this man, I shall be the last person to believe it.
Because you are tied in your own system and do not understand that Nature is not so rigid as your mental ideas.
All big homeopaths I've heard of were allopaths before, i.e. they knew anatomy, physiology, pathology, etc. But R is unique and his cures are unique. So I am puzzled, puzzled about the real mystery behind...
Did they cure by allopathic treatment, then? Is it not the very principle of homeopathy that it cures the disease by curing the symptoms? I have always heard so. Do you deny that homeopaths acting on their own system, not on yours, have cured illnesses? If they have, is it not more logical to suppose that there is something in their system than to proclaim the sacrosanct infallibility of the sole allopathic system and its principle? For that matter I myself cure more often by attacking the symptoms than by any other way, because medical diagnosis is uncertain and fallible while the symptoms are there for everybody to see. Of course if a correct indisputable diagnosis is there, so much the better—the view can be more complete, the action easier, the result more sure. But even without infallible diagnosis one can act and get a cure.
When all doctors have failed, how does R proclaim that he will pull a man out without knowing anything of the nature of the disease?
Because he has confidence in himself, like all who are able to do in any field big things.
He knew there was blood-pressure and he fixed his whole energy in bringing that down and did it.
Does he have an immediate intuition or does he hear voices?
Well, he believes in his intuition and his faith justified itself. I never heard that he hears voices.
If he doesn't know that, his self-confidence, however strong and enormous, can't make him commit himself to such an extent. It would be foolish in some places.
Why can't it? How dreadfully downright and sweeping you are in your demands! What ground had Mustapha Kemal for his strong and enormous confidence when he defied all Europe and all the probabilities and possibilities and undertook to save three-quarters dead Turkey?
What does that matter if it succeeds in some places? Napoleon's self-confidence and intuition tripped him up at Waterloo, but before that it had won him Marengo, Jena, Austerlitz.
Was there some extraordinary power behind R before he came here that was responsible for the marvellous results?
Certainly. It was because the Mother saw a great force in him that she accepted him in the Asram.
I hear he is a very good medium and is a tower of vital strength.
Which means of course full of a massive vital force which can be used by the Yoga-force for its purposes and being massive can produce striking results.
Is the strength then the real cause of his success and medicine negligible? But I don't understand how a tower of vital strength can cure a dying man! If that were possible, whatever medicine he might have administered, would have been equally successful.
Why the flabbergasts not? What's the use of strength if it can't do things?
You are very much behind the times. Do you not know that even many doctors now admit and write it publicly that medicines are an element but only one and that the psychological element counts as much and even more? I have heard that from doctors often and read it over reputable medical signatures. And among the psychological elements, they say, one of the most important is the doctor's optimism and self-confidence, (his faith, what? it is only another word for the same thing) and the confidence, hope, helpful mental atmosphere he can inspire in or around his patient. I have seen it stated categorically that a doctor who can do that is far more successful than one who knows Medicine better but cannot.
You said in S's case that the Force has to count on right medicines for rapid effects.
I did not mean that it cannot be done without medicines. But if it is to be done with the aid of medicines, then the right medicine is helpful, the wrong one obviously brings in a danger.
How does R choose the right medicine? Not by intuition; because I saw him consulting his books for the choice of medicines.
Of course. He learned homeopathic medicine in America and his ideas of homeopathy are the American ideas. But how does his knowledge prevent intuition? Even an allopathic doctor has often to intuit what medicine he should give or what mixture—and it is those who intuit best that succeed best. All is not done by sole rule of book or sole rule of thumb even in orthodox Science.
How could a patient, as good as lost, leap up, although he knew nothing of faith in yogic force?
That often happens. It is even sometimes easier to deal with a man of that kind, provided he does not know what is being done,—so that there is no room for doubt or mental resistance.
He himself admitted that he could not expect such a miraculous result from his treatment. It was the Mother's force that did it.
Naturally.
Is it then the question of mediumship? If so, I dance in rapture thinking that yogi-doctors have a vast possibility!
Yes, provided they do not entrench themselves in doubt and rigid materialistic orthodoxy.
I am thrown out of joint at two miracles, Sir: (1) R's treatment or yours: (2) NK's English poetry, though Madam Doubt still peeps from behind. Anyhow, no chance for me! কপাল136, Sir! What to do?
Why out of joint? It ought to strengthen your joints for the journey of Yoga.
Not at all কপাল, sir. Mind, sir, mind. Madam Doubt, sir, Madam Doubt! Miss Material Intellectualism, sir! Aunt Despondency, sir! Uncle Self-distrust, sir! Cousin Self-depreciation, sir! The whole confounded family, sir!
I congratulate you for having such a fine instrument, and him as well for being so for the Divine's action.
I will try to make it clear, but no time tonight as it is 4.40 a.m. already.
December 23, 1935
You have shown me my fallacy, but I am afraid, the fundamental points of perplexity remain unsolved ...
I don't deny G's resuscitation, nor do I object to your congratulating R. I don't even say that homeopathy is all bosh and allopathy is heaven's reward. Well, there were evidently three factors at work in this case: Mother's Force: R's mediumship which was constituted of faith, confidence, vital power, intuition, etc. and his drug treatment.
Now what I am puzzled about is the exact contribution of R's medicines in this case.
Exact? How can one measure exactly where vital and mental and spiritual factors come in? In dealing with a star and atom you may (though it appears you can't with an electron), but not with a man and his living mind, soul and body.
If R were an allopathic homeopath, with a difference only in treatment and not in pathology, I wouldn't doubt his explanations.
Why on earth? What is an allopathic homeopath? Homeopathic principles are just the opposite of the allopathic. So why must the dealings be fundamentally the same with only a difference of drugs? In spite of what you say you have the solid belief that allopathy alone is true. I suppose allopathic homeopathy is something like a biped with four feet.
If you say that homeopathy is quite different from allopathy, as regards the treatment, the pathology must be the same.
[Sri Aurobindo underlined the last part of the sentence.]
Not necessarily in all cases or in all respects.
How can a homeopath ask a high blood-pressure man who has just risen from the grave, to attend to his duties in the old way and give him the usual food?
Why can't he, if he has some other means of combating the possible bad results? I have not heard that R asked G to resume his duties. He represents it as if he remained neutral and it was G's own choice with which he did not interfere. That may have been imprudent; but R is daring in everything and that means a stiff dose of imprudence. Besides he has his theories also which may or may not be true, but I cannot say they are prima facie impossible if I can judge by the daring one he put forward for making S eat the full Asram meals. If S's accounts of his condition are true, they seem to have been justified by a considerable amount of success.
A symptomatic treatment can't be applied in cases where the same symptom is produced by two or three different diseases because the symptoms will always recur so long as one doesn't go to the root.
Why can't it? There is a possibility that you can strike at the cure, whatever it be, through the symptoms and you can kill the root through the stalk and leaves and not start by searching for the roots and digging them out. That at any rate is what I do.
Don't speak of your own cures, please; I can't fight you there!
Why should I not speak of my cures? When they are perfectly apposite and a proof that you can cure by symptomatic treatment?
You mean you don't want to give me the lie or say I am under a delusion?
If you say R is led by intuition I'll stop my argument and give you a chance of a hearty laugh. But then how did he ignore so important a factor as albumin in G's case?
He has intuition but not always the right intuition to fit the case. It is a mental intuition he uses, and mental intuition is a mixed movement.
I have answered all that already. I do not say R was right; but he did not act at random; he gave his reasons for neglecting the albumin which I am not medical enough to understand. I would have preferred if he had dealt with and had kept G under observation, before letting him loose, but it is not my funeral. I don't expect G to live long and I don't think R expects it either. But in the case of S he has for the time being at least proved his case. He is by the way dealing with G's kidneys today and admits it is a ticklish job; but the first effects he says were successful and he is waiting for the night to pass to see what will be the sequel. For the drug, he says, is highly potentised, (that is American language), but may produce an upheaval. Well, there you are, that is the man. Right or wrong? God he knows. I put a force behind him and also await the results.
He had by the way hesitated to act at once on the kidneys because the body needed to be accustomed to renewed vigour (so far as I understand) before risking the coup. Contrary to allopathic pathology? Maybe. But it has some similarity to what I have seen in my experience of action by Yoga.
His faith, hope, self-confidence, I suppose, help to produce a favourable nidus in the patient's mental atmosphere.
Certainly, if you are dejected, diffident, despairing, full of doubt you can't produce a favourable nidus in the atmosphere.
Self-confidence necessarily presupposes knowledge and experience; though the converse may not be true.
What an absurd statement! Self-confidence is an inborn thing; it does not rest on knowledge and experience.
If Napoleon had been a little less self-confident, he might have been a victor at Waterloo.
Who says that? I never heard that Napoleon failed at Waterloo for want of self-confidence. I have always read that he failed because he was, owing to his recent malady, no longer so quick and self-confident in decision and so supple in mental resource as before. Please don't rewrite history unless you have data for your novel version.
About Kemal Pasha, well, I hear you pumped into him a lot of force.
Napoleon had a lot of force pumped into him also.
Even then these personalities had the stratagems of war and current politics at their finger-tips, like Japan which is reaping a golden harvest out of European tangles. If I could say that about R in his field, then all my doubts regarding his drug-effect wouldn't arise...
Please remember that R has studied homeopathy and he has knowledge of homeopathic medicines if not of allopathic pathology. He took a degree in America and the Mother tells me that many of his ideas of which we were so impatient and thought them his own inventions are the ideas of the American school of homeopathy which is more meticulous, intolerant, intransigent, dead against allopathy, particular about the subtle properties of homeopathic drugs and their evanescence by wrong contacts (quite Yogic that) than others.
His self-confidence and intuition may produce some striking results at the time of crisis, but it must blend with knowledge to give permanent results.
How do you know he has no knowledge of homeopathic drugs?
His lack of sufficient knowledge of things makes me doubt and throw almost the whole balance on the side of your Force. If he had been as successful outside with such a scanty knowledge, I would have said then, all luck! or now that I know, action of some greater Power behind.
He was successful outside. While he was outside the Asram, not yet accepted, he was making remarkable cures and already getting a name. I had to stop him as soon as he became an accepted disciple, even before he came into the Asram, because his practice was illegal. But I had to refuse applications from the town for allowing him to treat patients because he had succeeded so remarkably with them that they wanted to continue. I was not concerning myself in the least with his cures and knew nothing at all about them. And you say all that was luck because his ideas differ from yours? Are you not reasoning like Moliere's doctors who declared that a patient's audacity in living contrary to the rules of Science was intolerable or like the British Medical Council which refused any validity to Sir Herbert Barker's cures because he was an osteopath and had no qualified medical knowledge?
I wonder, then, whether our mode of looking at things is altogether wrong. And if there are really such drugs in homeopathy which can give results in cases in which we have almost none, then it would be worth trying to study it and combine both systems.
Certainly there are—the universe is not shut up in the four walls of allopathic medicine. There are plenty of cases of illnesses being cured by other systems (not homeopathy alone) when they had defied the allopaths. My experience is not wide but I have come across a good number of such cases. And if it is not so, why then did Dr. V come to R for help surprisingly when he and A had failed with all their capacity and experience? V has known and practised homeopathy to some extent. May we not infer that he knew there were cases in which homeopathy (not allopathic homeopathy but pure) might be successful?
Or is it only a question of personality apart from Yoga-force? If R had taken up allopathy, could he not have done big miracles like these, where Valle and others failed? And if I were asked to administer the same drug to this dying man, could it have produced such a striking effect?
It is not a question of drugs alone. The drug is only a support. If you had not intuition and self-confidence and the same thoroughgoing belief in your own action and the Yoga-force behind you, you might have done some good but not had the same rapid effect. R believes in his medicines, but he does not believe that they are infallible in their effect or rely on them alone. He believes in the man behind them and in the Force behind the man.
You can try to logicise me but do try to satisfy me, also!
How can I "satisfy" you when my point of view and basis of knowledge is quite different from yours or R's either?
I could go on writing and writing and multiplying, but I have tried to squeeze my thesis into this space. You said you would try to make it clear. Please do so...
I haven't cleared up anything, I suppose, only logicised and not satisfied you. To clear up things it would be necessary to go to first principles as well as my own experience and view of things (to which you object because you can't fight me there), and that would be going into country foreign to the allopathic and scientific reason.
Let me say however about R: He is a man who seems genuinely to believe in the Force—even when he was not an accepted disciple and was treating cases in town, he was attributing his cures to the Force (ours), although we did not consciously preside at all over his cases or send him any particular help. So he has the first requisite for being a "medium" of Force. Next, he is a man of great vital push, self-confidence, abounding enthusiasm and energy; such men are the best instruments, not for knowledge, but for successful action. Second requisite there. Next, he is a man with a great power of suggestion and also of inducing auto-suggestions in his patients, and these become remarkably effective, provided they do not resist too much. He is the kind of man who can give pure water, saying, "This is a potent medicine", and the patient would immediately feel better after taking it. (By the way, many allopathic doctors do that, when they think it necessary, according to their own confession). Third help (though the trick would be unYogic); the power of conveying one's own thought-formations, vital energy, will—decisions etc. to others being an element in Yogic action: he has that. Fourth, a knowledge of homeopathic medicines and what seems to me a very supple and daring use of them. Dangerous? perhaps or rather, no doubt; he himself admits that with his more potent medicines a great disturbance occurs before the cure or can do so and a great disturbance means a great risk; but a daring man is a man who takes risks in the hope of great results. He might have killed S? Certainly, but so might an allopathic doctor. My grandfather and cousin were patently killed by the medicine administered by one of the most famous and successful allopathic doctors of Calcutta. An allopathic doctor also takes risks and those who are the most successful are also the most adventurous and decisive in their methods. All that does not militate against his capacity as a healer. They are points in his favour.
On the other hand there are big defects. He is a bluffer; he makes big mistakes and does not admit them even when he knows he has made them—he covers it up by an absurd statement which he thinks the others will swallow. But he does not persist in his mistakes—he sets them right without admitting them. He is not truthful and truthfulness is a great help for the Force, while the opposite induces a wrong vibration. He is vain, arrogant etc.—and men with such defects can easily fall into great blunders. He pretends to have knowledge where he has none. He is ignorant of many things a healer ought to know.
Well, in spite of all he has done remarkably with S. Whether he will carry G through remains to be seen; but that for the time being he raised him up from the half-dead is beyond question. The man has parts—whether his parts will become a whole is a matter of the future. A man being a man can be neither perfect nor worthless. One has to see what can be made of him or what he allows himself to be made or to become. Let us Asquitheanly, for him as for others, wait and see. Why either condemn wholly as a fraud or boost up as a miracle?
There would be much else necessary to say, about allopathy, homeopathy and the elasticity of Nature, about the place of medicine, Force and the medium, about spiritual force, intermediate occult forces and material forces, about the complexity and relativity of "truths" that are only convenient formulas and the inadvisability of turning them into absolute and all-covering truths, etc., etc.—but all that would be long, would carry us into too deep depths- and can be postponed till the blue moon rises in your heavens.
December 24, 1935
Guru, I hope this letter will catch you before you start for the Supramental sleep!
At about 5 a.m. I was called by P as K was having blood-vomiting. R was also there with his medicines. Seeing K's vomiting, I had the impression that it was from the lungs. An examination led me to suspect apex of rt. lung. I don't know what R thinks about it; but at first sight he said it was vicarious menstruation. Anyway he gave her medicines. The bout subsided and she slept quite peacefully. Then again she had blood-vomiting. According to his treatment, food and nourishment have to be given. R told me that he will write to you and give her charge to me as he is busy with many other cases, and his temporary treatment won't clash with mine.
I don't know what to do now. I am at Thy service, Sir.
If you and R don't agree as to diagnosis, it is better to send for a third person, (Dr. Valle is indicated, I suppose), to consult and advice. It is necessary to know what she has. We are informed that K had this once in Gujarat. You can ask P about this and, if it is correct, find out what was the diagnosis and treatment.
I suppose in any case (if it is lung trouble, also) food and nourishment have to be given and it is only if it is liver or stomach that it would be otherwise?
6.30 a.m.
By "allopathic-homeopath", I meant a homeopath having studied allopathy who will have a very sound basis in Medicine. All homeopathy schools are now teaching pathology, etc...
They may all study pathology, but I don't think they all bind themselves to the same conclusions as the allopaths. If they did, they would not be able to have an entirely opposite system.
I don't deny that personality is a big factor though I don't know exactly whether hope, faith, etc., operate physically more or bring some occult forces into the field.
You have only to admit that the mind and vital can influence the body—then no difficulty is left. In this action of mind and vital on the body faith and hope have an immense importance. I do not at all mean that they are omnipotent or infallibly effective—that is not so. But they assist the action of any force that can be applied, even of an apparently purely material force like medicine. In fact however there is no such thing as a purely material force, but the action may be purely material when it is a question of material objects. But in things that have life or mind and life one cannot isolate the material operation like that. There is always a play of other forces mixed with it in the reception at least and for the most part in the inception and direction also.
I don't understand why I came into this world with doubts and Co. whereas others did so with self-confidence. Why some people go on patiently and honestly and still end their days in misery, whereas frauds etc. flourish so well! I would say Kismet. You may say blessed Karma—it is only another name.
Well, the frauds are capable and clever in their fraudulency, I suppose. And why should not capacity have its results? The others are only moral and the reward of morality is not worldly success but the satisfaction of a conscience at rest. Virtue is its own reward—it can't ask for success in life also!! What would the poor frauds do if having the torments of a bad conscience (?) they had no success to soothe their tortures?
Karma is not luck, it is the transmission of past energies into the present with their results.
Do you hope that a "blue moon" will ever rise in my heavens?...
I trust that a blue moon will rise in everybody's heaven who has on one side the patience to go through and on the other no fundamental and self-expulsive wickedness in his nature. Even for these others the blue moon will rise one day, though later,—if they have, once sought for it.
Even if it does, I would prefer your "blue moon" letters dilating a little the last para regarding mediumship and medical aspects—if you can.
Well, we'll see.
December 25, 1935
You have seen Valle's observations about our patient K. My intuitive diagnosis IS then correct only the intuition was distorted by the mind in misjudging the side affected by the lesion.
It was intuition? I thought it was the result of a prosaic examination.
Still I am not sure that her right side is free; but that can be ascertained by X-ray. R had that "vicarious" impression to the last. I actually asked Valle if it was so, he negatived it at once.
Why not pool results and say it was a vicarious monstrosity that produced a lung lesion in the middle-left together with the right apex? Excuse the levity—the temptation of a joke at doctors has always been too much for any lay resistance.
History and symptoms were so obvious.
But what was the history? I asked for it and you have not told me. Mother was informed it had already happened in Gujarat.
It is for such instances, Sir, that my faith in his drug treatment gets shaken.
I don't know. There are several people besides S and G with whom he seemed to me to have a remarkable success.
If a homeopath went by symptoms only, he would perhaps cut off the leaf but I am afraid the roots would flourish as strongly as ever.
That is what A told G, that homeopathy only gives a transient palliation followed quickly by a worse catastrophe. But after all, if it can raise up a man at the last gasp condemned by a unanimity of the whole allopathic faculty almost with the sentence "No more can be done" and send him walking about for a few more days of cheerful life, it is a rather big palliation. Moreover, in some cases I have watched, I have seen R's drug produce not only a rapid, even an instantaneous improvement, but in the end what seems up to now a lasting one and this in cases of illnesses of ancient standing. However that does not cover K's case which looks more like a lung affair (Mother always was apprehensive that she may be a consumptive case) than a vicarious menstruation or monstrous vicariation one. R however says that it is his principle to make a diagnosis and never change it or say anything more about it but just go and prove his case by a cure!! What say you to that, sir? Confidence, if you like! However what bothers me about diagnosis is that if you put 20 doctors on a case, they give 20 different diagnoses (in S's we had three doctors with three quite different theories of the illness)—and such jokes as a doctor shouting "Appendix", opening up a man, finding illness neither of appendix nor volume nor chapter and cheerfully stitching him are extremely common. So if a layman's respect for allopathic pathology and diagnosis is deficient sometimes and R's sneers at doctors' diagnoses find occasionally an echo,—well, it is not altogether without "rational" cause.
A had mild diarrhoea; his relatives made a great fuss over him by caressing, fondling and surrounding him all the time!
Killed with kindness?
I hear that R has prescribed butter-milk for K. Valle himself prescribed light food.
I hope you don't prescribe "absolute repose". R wants her to move about, do light sedentary work not involving any pull on the body and, generally, so arrange that she may not think herself seriously invalided. This has always been the Mother's principle in dealing with illness, or she approves that wherever possible.
December 26, 1935
While crushing my rigid mind, do you want to establish the long-neglected and much-maligned merits of homeopathy as beyond all dispute and harangue by allopathy?
Not at all. I don't care a penny for homeopathy (or allopathy) I only wanted to poke some jokes at your allopathic mind.
My attack is against two things: R's efficiency and capacity as a doctor; and the rationale of homeopathy on symptomatology alone.
If you question that, you destroy homeopathy altogether.
I asked R about his patient G: "Is there no thickening of the blood vessels, high blood-pressure, no dyspnoea, etc.?" He said, "None at all." Yet Dr. Prasad Rao found all these and signs of heart-failure.
You went when G had a setback. R had written to me about headache, liver and some other difficulties before you went.
Dr. Rao further said that the patient was still in the danger zone. Any exertion, indiscretion might bring about another attack.
But it seems Valle has different ideas; he does not find G in a dangerous state or on the point of death, as he was before. Admitting P.R.'s infallibility, is Valle then a fool? Why does he give credit to R or keep him there? If R is such an incompetent ass, why does V support him, cover him, keep him there? This is a thing which seems to me a little unintelligible. Doctors differ? Why so much in this case? Valle who does not believe in Divine Force, is I think, the only doctor here who has a practical knowledge of homeopathy—he was struck with the justice of R's treatment from the first in S's case; he approves of his treatment in G's. Would he do so if R were merely a blundering ignoramus?
R gives a high blood-pressure patient on the verge of heart-failure "moderate" licence in eating, drinking, etc. He calls it "leaving to Nature"!
Well, I have followed that system with myself and others and gone on the basis that Nature is very largely what you make of her—or can make of her.
Since his heart, kidney cannot be regenerated, his habits have therefore to be adjusted accordingly. He can't remain a "bon vivant" any more.
In that case isn't it better that G should die? What's the use of life under such conditions?
If R is concerned only with symptoms, why does he ask me to find out the signficance of high blood-pressure etc. or ask Valle to build up a diet for G?
Because he found you very competent at it. As for the diet he had to cede something to Valle so that the family might see there was a necessary collaboration.
... People will acclaim that allopathy has failed and homeopathy has succeeded. But my point is that Valle, an allopath, would have been as successful as R if he had the backing of your Force.
The Force needs an instrument and an instrumentation also sometimes. The instrument was R, the instrumentation partly at least his drugs. I don't believe in the story of the inefficiency of homeopathic drugs only because they are homeopathic. Also, I don't believe that R knows nothing about them and can't properly apply them. I have noted almost constantly that they have a surprising effect, sometimes instantaneous, sometimes rapid, and this not in R's evidence alone, but in the statement of his patients and the visible results. Not being an allopathic doctor, I can't ignore a fact like that.
I quote to you an instance of the symptomatic riddle. Some symptoms like headache, vomiting etc. may be caused by many diseases such as brain-tumour, syphilis, blood-pressure and others. If you tell me that a homeopathic medicine for headache and other symptoms will be a panacea for all of them then l am afraid it will be difficult for me to accept it.
Tumour, syphilis etc. are specialities, but what I have found in my psycho-physical experience is that most disorders of the body are connected, though they go by families,—but there is also connection between the families. If one can strike at their psycho-physical root, one can cure even without knowing the pathological whole of the matter and working through the symptoms is a possibility. Some medicines invented by demi-mystics have this power. What I am now considering is whether homeopathy has any psycho-physical basis. Was the founder a demi-mystic? I don't understand otherwise certain peculiarities of the way R's medicines act.
Now the diagnosis, about which you have joked. Why take a muddle as an instance and ignore other cases? I should say that a mistaken diagnosis of the appendix, for example, is very rare.
Good heavens! It happened in scores and scores of cases when there was the appendicitis mania among doctors in France—and they have other manias also.
Why ignore wonderful things due to thousands of right diagnoses and let sporadic cases of error loom large in your eyes?
Sporadic cases! I have heard of any number of them; they are as plentiful as blackberries in Europe. And as for difference of diagnosis it is almost the rule except when doctors consult together and give concessions to each other. Don't try to throw allopathic dust in my eyes, sir! I have lived a fairly long time and seen something of the world before my retirement and much more after it.
We know only a few big cases of success of R, but how many of his failures do we know? In the Asram itself Rajangam is one. I saw R's most furious letter to you, on Rajangam's lack of faith.
But I have Rajangam's letters also. He seems to have had a curious mixture of superstitious hope and strong doubt, especially as R bungled badly at one point. However the body of an allopathic doctor can't be expected to respond to a homeopathic fellow, can it?
Then I hear he has failed in L's case also.
If L's case failed, then L in her letters lied to me. She related a complete cure of all that she had been suffering from for dreary months and years in which she was writing blood-curdling letters to me relating all her symptoms and miseries in voluminous detail. Once feeling well, she declared she did not believe in treatment but in Divine Force only, gave R a kick and sent him away. He was of course furious. For some time I had no letters, then little by little they began again, but as yet they are not so blood-curdling as before. Question: If D.F. alone does it without drugs, why is not L cured now as she was then under R?
I don't know of the other miraculous cures, nor do I know what rational grounds he has put forward for S's taking Asram food.
Rational, from the point of view of his experience only—not from allopathic pathology.
I think an allopath like M would be able to cure many people just as R has done—and also without some of R's mistakes.
M has an admirable knowledge and masterful movement in his treatments, but Mother finds that he is an overdrugger. He pours drugs on his patients as some painters overload their canvas with colour. He almost killed himself in this way, and we had all the trouble in the world to tone him down. He admitted it frankly, but since professional bias was too strong for him, when he fell ill, he could not help drugging and drugging.
Now about K's case. R boasts that it is not his principle to make a diagnosis, but to prove a cure and you ask me what I say to that. Well, R proclaimed after hearing the symptoms that it was a case of vicarious menstruation, even after seeing the blood-vomit which is characteristic of T.B. I call it bluff Sir. Let him stick to his sacred principle and not bluff us with his queer vicarious animal! Dr. Valle who has a big experience to his credit has clearly pronounced it to be T.B. And why vicarious, pray? because she was having some menstrual troubles? But her last period was quite normal. And what about her past history of cough, pain in the chest, blood-vomit?
K's case may be T.B., though Valle dragged in a "vraisemblablement"137 and X-Ray is required—very probably it is, though I am not quite sure. R swears that ordinary doctors who have not had sufficient gynaecological experience can and do take V.M. for T.B. It does not follow that it is so in this case and his statement may be all bluff ... Now if we look beyond pathology to what I may call psycho-pathology (non-allopathic, non-homeopathic), this hysteria is usually accompanied with some disorder of the genital parts; wrong menstruation is itself often due to sexual trouble. T.B. again is always (psychologically) due to a psychic depression—I use psychic in the ordinary, not the Yogic sense; this psychic depression may arise from sex-frustration of one kind or another or from some reaction of the sexual order. So if R is wrong in suspecting V.M., psychologically he may be right—there may be, not vicarious menstruation, but its psychological equivalent. All that may no doubt be Greek (not medical Greek) to you, but I know what I mean—and so long as that is there, the cure of the T.B. by D.F.138 is rather problematical. In X's case I saw at once that nothing could be done. That is why R got his chance. The allopaths could have cured the T.B., but it would have come back worse than before. However he is so disgusted with the storm of opposition raised against him that he seems inclined to throw up the cases and even (other things aiding) to leave the Asram. If so, all will be peace in Jerusalem, S will go back with his fiver into orthodox hands, G fulfil his allopathic destiny and an interesting phase will be over.
"I don't care about all that," he will say. "I will prove by my cure." If one is dealing with a case of T.B. or of heart-disease, I assert that some knowledge of pathology is necessary so that one can understand how far other organs have been involved. R would be quite ignorant of it and therefore can't treat the case effectively whereas an allopathic-homeopath would be in a better position...
But the allopaths can? Then how the devil do non-allopathic homeopaths (R is not the only example) succeed at all in their pathological cases? They do, you know, and that needs some explaining.
Actually, apart from anti-allopathic jokes and speculations, I don't say anything. I am not in the habit of jumping at conclusions when there are many possibles without a complete certitude, but wait till knowledge comes. I do not believe that D.F. has done everything in all these cases and they would have been ameliorated equally well if anybody else had been there. I count R for a remarkable though too resonant instrument. I see there is something in his treatment and medical ideas which is out of the ordinary and cannot be gauged by traditional standards. I am trying to see what it is. Is it that he has an intuition into psycho-physical forces and throws his drugs at them in a successful way, partly intuitional, partly experimental, while his physical renderings of them (attempts at diagnoses) are mere facade or error—except when they happen to be right? It may be, but that sounds too easy and plausible an explanation to be true.
December 28, 1935
About my Bengali poem—I wrote the lines marked and then the Muse failed. NK saw them, picked them up and completed the poem. Naturally he has expressed his own sentiments. They are not mine, neither did I know what they would be when I started. I intend someday to write one myself with those lines as they seem quite good. What's your opinion?
Your lines are very good. N's poem is very fine; but his style is too strong to agree with yours. It is as if a trumpet were to take up the notes of a flute.
By the way, J all on a sudden told me, before B, about a correspondence regarding the supramental descent on some anonymous sadhak and your remarks—exaggerated ego etc.; I hope J didn't mean B and myself, because very often we cut many jokes about your Supermind.
Not yourself—He quoted some silly remarks of X about Mother being Jivatman and myself Paramatman and his own atmajnan139 and of Y having the Supermind descending up to his chest etc. I keep back the names. I said if anybody made such a claim it was only exaggerated ego.140
I now close the chapter for ever on R and his treatment, with this last note that I quite agree with you in your psycho-physical theory of T.B. etiology ... though I don't understand at all how blood-vomit can be vicarious menstruation and not T.B. in origin ...
Well, even experienced doctors can make a mistake!
R has left some reports of blood-urine analysis for you to see. Yesterday he took me again to G and I found he looked much better. His blood-urea has come down to normal. Something! How? Don't know!
Of course not. The Py doctors say it is magic and contrary to science; others refuse to believe it unless they see the analysis. A little too much noise about the matter.
December 29, 1935
You are silent on B.P.'s New Year pranam! In a fax?
Forgot all about it. He can come.
I have made quite a vigorous programme to start from the New Year: English metre with Arjava—he is willing to teach, and French with Sarala, provided Mother finds no objection. So?
No objection at all. Enthusiastic approval
May I ask you for that promised poem as a New Year present?
You may ask; but who has time for it? Not yours truly.
My friend I whose photo I sent you the other day, expresses a desire to come here.
No recollection of it at all! But the Mother remembers and she has given me a glimmering and gleaming reflection of a recollection. Yes it was the photograph in which you qualified for Abyssinia. Right.141
Is permission for Darshan possible though he hasn't asked for it, because I suppose he doesn't know about it?
It's the only thing possible for a beginning.
P is complaining of shooting headache due to her eyes etc. Can't you do something to make the shoots and her also quiet? She says, "What can poor Nirod do? He is trying all he can." Poor Nirod, what!
December 30, 1935
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