Memorable Contacts with The Mother

V: MEDICAL SADHANA

The story of my reversion to the medical job in spite of my professed dislike for it is quite revealing. With no less dislike had I been compelled in the first place to take up the study of medicine. I must have been born under a medical star whose influence ceased only after it had led me to serve Sri Aurobindo in my capacity as a doctor. Could I not then affirm that to be a medical gent was my destiny?

But the course it followed was a sinuous one. Let me recount what led to my being transferred to the Dispensary in an unexpected manner. One day when I was doing well in my timber-job, I wrote in an unguarded moment to Sri Aurobindo that my medical studies costing me Rs.20,000 had come to nothing since I was made to attend to carpentry. Sri Aurobindo pounced upon my slip of pen and hurled back: "I was under the impression that you were not enthusiastic over medicine," etc., etc. Just at that time my predecessor had tipped his balance and as Sri Aurobindo put it, "We wanted somebody to fill up the hole left by the erratic D. S." A friend of mine told me later that he had suggested my name to the Mother. Very probably Sri Aurobindo put an occult pressure upon me to see how I would respond to it. That could explain my suddenly speaking, as he put it, "lovingly and hungeringly about the Rs.20,000".

The final proposal came in this tentative form making it tempting with the bait of humour:

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"What would you say if the Mother actually proposed to you to exchange the timber-trade for medicine? E.g., to transfer your worldly and unworldly goods and your learned and noble person to the Dispensary and take physical charge of keeping it in order....

"The Mother is rather anxious that you should take up this work; she had the idea, as I told you, when D. S. broke down (which was a pity because he was in many respects the ideal man for the charge), but she did not propose it because she was not sure you would like it...."

Well, I accepted the proposal, with a good deal of diffidence; for I must confess that though I was a "foreign degree doctor", I was not backed by sufficiently solid experience. Besides, I had learnt enough of the Ashram life to give me some qualms about my profession. So for both the reasons I had to rely constantly on the Mother and Sri Aurobindo to guide me in the science as well as the art of healing.

As soon as I took up the work, my duties were underlined in clear terms. The first instruction I received from the Mother was, in Sri Aurobindo’s words, "to keep the Dispensary meticulously clean as D. S. did...." Then asked about the hours’ of attendance in the morning and the afternoon, the reply was: "There are two different things - (1) sadhaks who can be confined to limited hours and (2) workmen and servants who cannot, for the workmen may have accidents and that must be seen to immediately. So you must be available, especially at the times when the work closes. No. (2) is the main thing, for it throws a considerable responsibility upon us." I was informed afterwards that we, being British subjects, had

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no legal right to medical practice. By way of concession the French Government had given us the permission provided we confined ourselves to treating our own people. Hence the use of the phrase "considerable responsibility" by Sri Aurobindo. We had quite a number of workmen and I had to send a daily report of the patients. Accidents were of particular importance; minor troubles were left to our discretion. In any case we were not to take any serious risk, all complicated cases were to be sent to the local hospital. From my medical report which covered sadhaks, servants and workers I found that the Mother went through it very carefully and noted even minor details. If in a hurry or due to my indolence, I was too succinct or imprecise, Sri Aurobindo would draw my attention to it and ask for further elucidation, of course in his sweet taunting manner. I may mention that though it was he who answered the correspondence, all instructions relating to practical questions about sadhana and work were given by the Mother. I observed how thorough they were in all matters trivial as well as serious, be the patient a sadhak or a workman. All were samam Brahma. I could not therefore make any supercilious bourgeois distinction between classes, besides, since everyone had the privilege of approaching the "Queen", I had to be on my guard about my behaviour and medical treatment too. The readers are familiar with my medical image from the glowing pen of the Master. Pulling me up, he wrote "...tradition demands that a doctor should be soft like butter, soothing like treacle, sweet like sugar and jolly like jam."

About the medical treatment I had a lot to learn. In fact, it was in the Mother’s School that I took initiation in the

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Healing Art. Her knowledge of medicine was far beyond any average intelligent doctor’s. I have noted in Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo how she even non-plussed the orthopaedist. This knowledge that she possessed was primarily intuitive, but also partly derived from her vast general experience in which, I am afraid, Europeans in general are superior to us. I had to forget or change many of my accustomed notions about drugs and stop or be careful about their use. I had to learn to employ as few medicines as possible and thereby give Nature a chance to heal. Sri Aurobindo sent me an article by a famous President of the Royal College of Physicians where he advocated the theory that Nature cures 90-99% of our diseases and that medical practitioners are only agents of Nature. Besides, the great secret I learnt was that it is not the germs that cause the disease, nor the drugs that cure it but the doctor - that is, the man, the personality — that counts. In other words, the doctor is an instrument of a higher Force that uses him, and medicines play a secondary role. So I tried at times to be a yogi-doctor, which earned me the semi-serious left-handed compliment that I was more a sadhak than a doctor. I withheld drugs for simple maladies and left the patients to their faith or inner resistance.

I further learnt that behind illnesses also there are forces. These forces, psychological or occult, attack first of all the subtle sheath that envelops the body and weaken it. Then only germs can produce an illness. Anyone who has a strong and sound sheath can go about in germ-infested areas during epidemics and will be immune to any contagion or infection. All this was an illumination to my

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orthodox medical mind which knew only the British Pharmacopoea with its thousands of drugs and their curative properties. I do not know, however, what practical use can be made of the knowledge of the subtle sheath. A patient, if he is perceptive, can feel an attack coming upon him and ward it off in time before it enters his body, but what will be the doctor’s role in it unless he too is an occultist and helps the patient in an occult way?

The greatest thing I learnt was that spiritual Force can cure diseases. Though I believed in it, my outer medical being probably lacked a total faith. Or else my doubting nature stood in the way and I had to put up with the Master constantly drilling my brain and pouring in more and more faith.

Medical practice itself in the Ashram was not as easy or simple as it is outside. The patient here had a right to appeal to the High Court of the Mother if his cure was delayed or if he fancied that the doctor was giving wrong or strong drugs. In short, all kinds of complaints real or imaginary were sent up because they did not cost anything! Sri Aurobindo would jocularly make inquiries or humour me with some tit-bits of gentle instructions. Of these there are plenty of instances in my book Sri Aurobindo’s Humour. But the Mother always observed the rules of the game: once she had given authority to a person, she rarely used her absolute power.

I have said that the Mother used to read the medical reports very carefully and follow the progress of the patients from day to day. Even at Pranam time her eyes would penetrate not only into the psychic being, but into the physical being as well and if something was wrong, she

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would refer the case to us. Here is an instance in point: A sadhak had an innocent tumour on his neck. I advised an operation; he vacillated. Sri Aurobindo replied, "The Mother was looking at his ’mango’ at Pranam. It looked to her as if it was rather deep and would need more than a local anaesthetic. If he is afraid of the operation, no use operating." The patient was finally operated upon after many years.

As a rule, the Mother was not well-disposed towards operations. She had also many "divine objections" to our "human remedies".

I wrote once, "I find that many things recommended for diseases are not much favoured by the Divine. So it is better to ascertain your opinion before using drugs." Sri Aurobindo answered, "There are some remedies which cure the disease temporarily but are bad for the system like quinine - others which suit some people but harm others, others which have a good effect one way, but a bad one in another way. That is why Mother does not like them to be used indiscriminately. Some she disapproves of altogether e.g. quinine. She also disapproves of the excessive use of purgatives." I may also add atropine, bismuth, etc. among her bêtes noires. Once many bottles of castor oil came from outside and were sent up to the Mother. She looked at me and said, "You can now poison the patients with your castor oil!" And giving it to a baby was to her a murderous act. Again, she did not consider that tuberculosis was a contagious disease. When I heard this for the first time, and the authority of the French doctors was quoted, my medical blood was on fire and I was on the point of throwing defiance but thought better of it. Since then we

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have had the case of a woman suffering from TB. She was kept together with all the other inmates of the Ashram and shared a common life except that she used to have her meals in her room. When Dr. Ram Adhikari, a well-known TB specialist, visited the Ashram, I showed him the case. He was surprised to see her living with the others and pleaded with the Mother to send her to a sanatorium. The Mother listened quietly and said to me in private that we need not take notice of the specialist’s views. The patient is still alive and going about like any other woman. Nor has anyone been infected by her as far as I know.

In situations where children were involved, the Mother was more conservative. Quite often differences of opinion would arise between the Master and myself. Sri Aurobindo, while respecting the doctor’s views, would uphold his own and the Mother’s. Once he seemed to get a bit nettled when I wrote, "Whatever little the doctors have found by experience to be effective is not acceptable to you. For instance, they recommend Calomel, (in a particular case), you refuse." He wrote back, "It is no use discussing these matters - the Mother’s views are too far removed from the traditional nostrums to be understood by a medical mind, except those that have got out of the traditional groove or those who after long experience have seen things and can become devastatingly frank about the limitations of their own ’science’."

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