Sri Aurobindo's Humour

Medical Humour - General

1935

MYSELF: X has profuse 'whites'.

SRI AUROBINDO: What on earth is this word? 'Winter? Wintes? It may be profuse, but it is not legible. For God's sake don't imitate me.

MYSELF; The word you tumbled upon is 'whites' meaning leucorrhoea. But I thought it should be our ideal to imitate you!

SRI AUROBINDO: Good Lord, what an h! I could not do worse myself.

MYSELF: She took one pill which she says gave her a lot of burning in her eyes. I washed her eyes, but it caused much uneasiness in the head. But the pill was quite harmless.

SRI AUROBINDO: All that is of course X's imagination. She decides in herself that the medicine is the cause of the burning and the uneasiness- Perhaps she decides it beforehand or another something in her decides it. If her imagination was equally effective for cure, it would be a great thing.

She writes to me that her eyes are a little better, but she is in dental anguish and as usual, all that is done by the doctor (dentist) makes her worse!

MYSELF: You have suggested that M's trouble may be a "policeman's disease" which comes from a prolonged standing. It is then quite possible for her to get it, for she is almost always on her heels. Why not apply some force and cure it?

SRI AUROBINDO: She has got too much force herself,

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though the heel may be, as with Achilles, her most vulnerable point; the force may not be able to get into it.

MYSELF: The ophthalmologist said that N's eye-condition has improved. He has advised to give salicylates for past rheumatism.

SRI AUROBINDO: All right—salicylate him as much as the Ost. likes. Queer! One has to be dosed not only for present and future but past ailments. Medicine like the Brahman transcends Time.

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1936

MYSELF: A says he can't work more than he would like to.

SRI AUROBINDO: What's that? Why should he want to work more than he would like to? Do you mean "as much as" by any chance?

MYSELF: Today's microscopic exam. shows that N has a soft sore which is contracted in only one way. And it is very contagious.

SRI AUROBINDO: If it is contracted only one way; why should I tell him it may be due to an indirect contact? If it is very contagious, how is it contagious? Only by one way? If so, nobody here is going to do the deed willingly, I suppose. Please clear this point and don't write Delphic oracles. Leave that to me as my monopoly.

MYSELF: You used an expression—kindly prescribe medically, which was not clear to me, for I thought we have done so. Don't you think that expression is a little more figurative; at least for my brain?

SRI AUROBINDO: Not at all, if you had only used your brains or your intuition or any blessed thing available and not being satisfied with a meaningless and hieratic 'usuals' instead of my matter-of-fact 'urinals'.

MYSELF: R asks me to send you these reports.

SRI AUROBINDO: Reports no use unless the medical hieroglyphs are interpreted.

MYSELF: Today P came for her eyes. All on a sudden she burst out into sobs—God knows why!

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SRI AUROBINDO: God doesn't.
Pis a sort of weeping machine—touch a spring even unintentionally and it starts off.

MYSELF: No medical cases today.

SRI AUROBINDO: Hello! Golden Age come or what? No —for R's pain is kicking cheerfully again. It is telling her "your Nirod's potions and things indeed! I just went because I took the fancy. I go when I like, I come when I like. Doctors—pooh!"

MYSELF: What, Sir, mistake? where is my medical report book? Wrong book has been sent?

SRI AUROBINDO: Kept the wrong book (Reminds me of the Sultan of Johara who when the Englishmen on board his ship were inveighing in fury against the murder of Sir Curzon Wylie by an Indian, wanted to sympathise, and moaned with "Very bad! very bad! shot the wrong man!"

MYSELF: D's temperature was 101-4 in the morning; evening, 103,4. Had two half-boiled eggs in the morning as he was hungry because we starved him at night!

SRI AUROBINDO: A robust patient!

MYSELF: He says he has eaten two eggs out of greed, asks to be excused.

SRI AUROBINDO: Quite safe!

MYSELF: The pain of the patient gone and she had a beautiful long sleep. What do you think of it?

SRI AUROBINDO: Refuse to think—lost the habit.

Good Heavens! After a life of sadhana yon expect me still to think and what is worse think what is right or wrong. I don't think even; I see or I don't see. The difference between

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intuition and thought is very much like between seeing a thing and badgering one's brains to find out what the thing can possibly be like. Intuition is truth-sight. The thing seen may not be the truth? Well, in that case it will at least be one of its hundred tails or at least a hair from one of the tails. The very first step in the supramental change is to transform all operations of consciousness from the ordinary mental to the intuitive, only then is there any hope of proceeding farther, not to, but towards the supramental. I must surely have done this long ago otherwise how could I be catching the tail of the supramental whale?

MYSELF: Mother is giving us doctors very good compliments, I hear, that we confine people to bed till they are really confined!

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. Mother did pass on that epigram. Doctors were born to hear such remarks.

MYSELF: Surely Yogis ought to be able to try to bear a little suffering and you ought to encourage or allow, Sir!

SRI AUROBINDO : She is not that kind of Yogi. She would only scream and get as wild as Durvasa and stop going to the dispensary—apart from copious weeping etc.

MYSELF: A is passing excessive phosphate, shall we make a microscopic exam?

SRI AUROBINDO: Do you want to microscope him out of existence? The loss of .phosphate, I suppose; explains his weakness.

MYSELF: Shall we then turn a deaf ear to his complaints?

SRI AUROBINDO: What complaints? Micturition and phosphates? Tell him to learn to economise his phosphates instead of squandering them and he will become strong and healthy as a tiger.

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MYSELF: X has phimosis.

SRI AUROBINDO: What kind of medical animal is this?

MYSELF: That is a trouble causing difficulty in passing urine due to the narrowing of the orifice.

SRI AUROBINDO: My dear sir, if you clap a word like that on an illness, do you think it is easy for the patient to recover?

SRI AUROBINDO: Well, I don't know why, but you have the reputation of being a fierce and firebrand doctor who considers it a sin for patients to have an illness; you may be right, but tradition demands that a doctor should be soft like butter, soothing like treacle, sweet like sugar and jolly like jam.

MYSELF: A doctor says that one has to be firm, stern and hard with women. They may not like it superficially, but they enjoy it and stick to the doctor who gives them hard knocks. Cave-man spirit?
Dr. X seems no less a firebrand than myself, but women seem to like him.

SRI AUROBINDO: He must have been he-man. She-women enjoy it from he-men. But all women are not she-women and all men are not he-men. Moreover, there is an art as well as a nature in that kind of thing which you lack.
He is a he-man. Even so the women have ended by saying 'No more of X'.

MYSELF: If the tradition demands, we shall try to be softer than butter but we may be too tempting and evoke a response from the patient's palate for making delicious toast. Who will save us then?

SRI AUROBINDO: Of course, if you are too, too sweet. You must draw the line somewhere.

MYSELF: U now vacillates or hesitates thinking of pain,

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suffering, etc. and says—after all how much can it grow in 1 or 2 years? So I leave him with his tumour (on the neck).

SRI AUROBINDO: Mother was looking at his mango. 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.

MYSELF: Now all this question of operation is useless, because he says he is afraid. After all he has no discomfort and neither is it very big, he says, so let it be. Only I was thinking that if it grows bigger, as undoubtedly it will, unless your Force prevents it, what will be done then?

SRI AUROBINDO: No use doing it if he is afraid. Let us wait on the Gods and hope they won't increase the lipoma till it deserves a diploma for its size. An American skyscraper on the neck would be obviously inconvenient.

SRI AUROBINDO: R is sending me charts of the fever temperature of his cousin B (an Ashram nomenclature) who has been suffering from typhoid, enteric (so the Colonel Doctor of Hyderabad says), with affection of chest which was suspected to be pneumonia. Now in his first chart the progresses were 104°, 103°, 102°, 101º and an uninstructed layman could understand—but what are these damned medical hieroglyphs 30-112, 26-118, E 24-110, 24-110.

MYSELF: Now about the 'damned hieroglyphs' you don't understand, though I don't understand why you don't. If you only read Sherlock Holmes' science of deduction and analysis which I have done lately, you would have at once realised my remark.

SRI AUROBINDO: Sherlock Holmes arranges his facts beforehand and then detects them unlike the doctors.

MYSELF: Well, keep the chart vertically then it should at once be dear to you that the red line is the normal temperature

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line—98.6 and the fever would be about 101.8. Then the figures below, what would they be? Well, your long association with doctors should have taught you (i) that in a fever chart pulse rate is recorded with temperature, (2) If that be so, between those pairs of damned figures one must be of pulse and which is it? Surely not 30, 26 because with that rate no charts would have been sent to you, (3) What are these 30, 26, 24 and 24 then? JUST a little bit of cool thinking would again point out, Sir, that they are respiration rates—normal being 20, 22 or so. Now are they simple and easy or are they not? Can you but say the same thing about your yogic hieroglyphs? By Jove, no!
And I give you only one instance in the other book. Let the Sherlockian vein be pardoned. One independent criticism: I don't know how they suspect pneumonia with s. respiration rate of only 30,26. It should bound up to at least 40. Instead, with a temperature of 102 °, it is only 24!

SRI AUROBINDO: (i) Never gave me one, so far as I remember, I mean not of this problematical kind.
(2) Naturally, I knew it must be the pulse, but what are the unspeakable 30s and 24s attached to them? And I didn't want the pulse, I wanted the temperature. However your red line which I had not noticed sheds a new light on the matter, so that is clear now. I was holding it horizontal because of its inordinate length.
(3) No, sir, it is not. What's the normal respiration rate anyhow? 32 below zero or 106° above? (N.B. zero not Fahrenheit but Breathen-height)
There are no hieroglyphs in yoga except the dreams and visions-symbols and nobody is expected to understand these things.
But what about E? Extravagant? Eccentric? Epatant?
Well, both the doctors did that and one is a mighty man

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there, the Doctor of Doctors. But perhaps it's the fashion in Hyderabad to breathe like that when one has pneumonia. Anyhow pn. seems to have dropped out of the picture, and the 'D of Ds' tells only of typhoid and impossible re-activity of inactive germs of tuberculosis.

MYSELF: I chuckled, Sir, to learn that you held the paper horizontally, because of its length! And E is neither of those high-sounding "extravagant" words. If you had just looked about you for a moment lifting your eyes from the correspondence, you would have discovered that E stands for nothing but a simple evening clear?

SRI AUROBINDO: No. What has evening to do with it? Evening star? "Twinkle, twinkle, evening star! How I wonder what your temperatures are?" But I suppose Sir James Jeans knows and doesn't wonder. But anyhow E for Evening sounds both irrelevant and poetic.

MYSELF: No, Sir, it is not at all irrelevant, though poetic. I swear it is Evening. You know they take these pulse and respiration rates Morning and Evening of which M & E are short hands and one of which I suppose you will make mad and the other, one of the three you have divined! But what it this Jones—knows and doesn't wonder?

SRI AUROBINDO: Jeans, Jeans, Jeans—not Jones!
Sir James Jeans, sir, who knows all about the temperatures, weights and other family details of the stars, including E.
By the way, what do you mean by deceiving me about E in the Hyderabad fever chart? R wrote that E is the entry in the "Motions" column; it evidently means enema. Poetry indeed! Sunset colours indeed! Enema, sir! Motions, sir! Compared with that, ling bling is epically poetic.

MYSELF: I beg your pardon, Sir! Enema didn't strike me at all. But I hope it didn't make any difference in the working of your Force unless you enematised the patient too much.

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It is a pleasure to learn that one can deceive the Divine, however!

SRI AUROBINDO: If the Divine chooses to be deceived, anyone can deceive him—just as he can run away from the battle, You are evidently not up to the tricks of the Lila.

MYSELF: Amrita says no water should drain into the street except rain water. But we have to wash frequently the Dispensary courtyard as it's too hot. What's the solution of the impasse?

SRI AUROBINDO: If it is for coolness, sprinkling ought to be sufficient. Why Noah's flood in a dispensary courtyard merely for antidoting heat?

MYSELF: V suffering from a simple pharyngitis—if that also must run its course of about 4 to 5 days, then the Force is playing the same part as the medicines—if at all, Sir, I am thinking. Feels wretched. Begs for Mother's Grace 'and Force. Is it coming?

SRI AUROBINDO: V's illness is that? However simple, not surprising he should be wretched....Is he receiving it?
Think on! Think hard! Think, brothers, think!

MYSELF: Why Sir, seems you don't read the reports, well? I told you his was a congested throat—that means tonsils, pharynx—everything, and you ask—pharyngitis?

SRI AUROBINDO: Then why do you say a simple pharyngitis when it is "everything" under the sun?

MYSELF: Will R take up B. P. (Trachoma case)?

SRI AUROBINDO: I would rather wait for the moment.

¹ Running away.

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R has A on his hands, two heavy luggages still in the town and Other lighter items.

MYSELF : Please ask Mother to give. some blessings to this hopeless self.

SRI AUROBINDO:

R/

Vin. Ashirv	m. VII
Recept. Chlor.	gr. XXV
Aqua jollity	ad. lib.
Tinc. Faith	m. XV
Syr. Opt.	Zss

12 doses every hour

(Signature)

MYSELF: What's this second item in your prescription, Sir? Too Latinic for my poor knowledge.

SRI AUROBINDO: Chlorate of Receptivity.

MYSELF: And I would put Aqua at the end to make it an absolutely pucca academical prescription.

SRI AUROBINDO : Yes, but I thought of the two last ingredients afterwards.

MYSELF: And 12 doses every hour—these tinctures and vinums?

SRI AUROBINDO: 12 doses—every hour (one each hour. Plagiarised from your language, sir.)

MYSELF: And where is the cost to be supplied from?

SRI AUROBINDO: Gratis—for the poor.

MYSELF: Do you know what my weight is? Only 51 kg—

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102 Ibs—7st. 4 Ibs. I was staggered to find it so low, wondered how I was walking about!

SRI AUROBINDO: Quite a considerable weight. I used in the 19th Century to walk about with less than 100—found no difficulty.

MYSELF: Most of the trouble is with the abduction of the hip-joint.

SRI AUROBINDO: Abduction of a joint, sir? What's this flagrant immorality? What happens to the Joint when it is abducted? and what about the two colliding bones? Part of the abduction? Right! abduct him to Philaire. (Hospital Doctor)

MYSELF: Could not touch her without making her shed tears. They are thinking how heartless brutes these doctors are!

SRI AUROBINDO: Much safer than if they think 'What dears these doctors are, darlings, angels!'

MYSELF: "What do you say?" What else can I say but thoroughly agree with you, second you and third you? Will Dr. R. take the whole responsibility or divide it?

SRI AUROBINDO : Very good. Send him to R. No division, is possible with R. His treatment is an indivisible Brahman, however many the aspects. In his latest cases there was a mass of simultaneous illnesses in each body and he took them all in his sweep.

MYSELF: Isn't it possible by the Mother's knowledge to ascertain the nature of a disease? We would expect some sudden opening as it did in your case of painting.

SRI AUROBINDO: My dear sir, in that case I should have to do all the doctoring.

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So I take care not to let the medico open. Simple measure of prudence.

MYSELF: You said that if right medicine is not given, the Force has to counteract it also.

SRI AUROBINDO: I only meant that it was so much obstacle to the Force which it has to overcome.

MYSELF: What I asked you was that by the very fact of the obstacle, the Force or the giver of the Force knows that some mistake is being made. Suppose you give a certain Force but it fails to produce the desired result, then you say, "Oh that fellow has given wrong medicines—swine."

SRI AUROBINDO: Not at all. The Force (I am out of the picture here) feels a greater obstacle but need not know that it is due to a wrong medicine. Force and knowledge are two different things and in the consciousness below Supermind, may go together or may not. Swine is not appropriate—it should be some other animal.

MYSELF: A carpenter beaten by a rat.

SRI AUROBINDO: Say, say! I never heard of a rat beating a man before! He ought to go to the criminal court, instead of the hospital.

MYSELF: X says Mother has sent him but when I go to apply medicine he says, ask Mother!

SRI AUROBINDO: Nonsense! It is implied. Mother doesn't send him to the Dispensary for a promenade or to dine.

MYSELF: The patient has some signs in the lung, better to make an X-ray etc.

SRI AUROBINDO: Better not X-ray etc., unless it is absolutely

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necessary. Feed him,—him,¹ coddle with cod liver oil and see how it works out before plunging into these soul-shaking measures.

MYSELF: Dr. B. prescribes butter for my amaigrissement and cod liver oil by myself.

SRI AUROBINDO :??

MYSELF: Why 2 interrogations against my using butter? Since the Force doesn't help, I have to seek freshness from butter and cod liver oil. Of course, Dr. B added also cheerfulness to the prescription.

SRI AUROBINDO: Butter and cod liver oil—which is two.
Mother pours scorn on your idea that you are a jutting skeleton. She says that you are less shockingly plump than when you came, but that is all. But if you take butter and oil together, to say nothing of cheerfulness, what will you become? Remember Falstaff.

MYSELF: Less shockingly plump! Good gracious, was I ever plump? Mother has only to see my bare body and exclaim, 'Oh, doctor like that!..-etc..-'

SRI AUROBINDO: It's your clothes that made you plump?

MYSELF: A says he feels heavy and sleepy and not refreshed. Is it the Force that does it?

SRI AUROBINDO: Good Lord, no! It is forcelessness that does it.

MYSELF: A has malaise, not refreshed.

SRI AUROBINDO: I have been without light, so black, black. Keeping everything in hope of better luck today (this has nothing to do with A's malaise, by the way. Trying to take advantage of bottom of paper).²

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MYSELF: The hostile forces have made my life unbearable, sucking away every drop of blood. Can't sit outside even one minute under the breezy starry sky. Their breeding place is in the thick bushes M has planted. Can't you direct him to Strike them off and save my precious life? What will happen if the Ashram doctor is to die of malaria.

SRI AUROBINDO: My dear sir, M will have a fit and you will have to treat him and probably he will kill you into the bargain. You prefer a violent death to malaria? Where there is life, there is hope, even if there are also mosquitoes. Why not negotiate with Al himself? If you plead with him in a sweet, low, pathetic voice, he may have mercy.

SRI AUROBINDO: By the way, S has consented to take the cod liver oil after all,—so I have agreed to ask you for a whole bottle for her personal absorption. So send her a bottle of this divine but fishy nectar.

MYSELF: X feels "tous les bien!"

SRI AUROBINDO: Good Lord! What's that? French?

MYSELF: At times I think I am really useless as a doctor, I haven't the gift for it. I have done some studies; surely, but even quacks seem to be more successful, What are the elements then wanting in me? I haven't much faith in our drugs but with these very drugs doctors become successful.

SRI AUROBINDO: Book knowledge is necessary but not much use by itself.
Lack of experience, lack of decision, vacillating intuition, want of vision.
They go ahead; don't mind how many people they kill, but they go—human motorcars.

MYSELF: It seems I don't know yet the right way to call

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down the Force or is it because the "canalisation" hasn't been done yet?
I am getting more and more disappointed; still more, in yoga since I heard that you are now trying more for transformation of nature than for experience.

SRI AUROBINDO: Right, that's it.
Because without transformation of nature, the blessed experience is something like gold crown on a pig's head— won't do. Picturesque perhaps, but—

MYSELF: Please give me precise practical suggestions on the art of healing, how to bring down Force etc. One must have the gift, I said. Have I?

SRI AUROBINDO: My god, man! I am not a doctor.
How? is there a how?
You call, you open, it comes (after a time). Or, you don't call, you open, it comes. Or, you call, you don't open, it comes. Or, you call, you don't open, it doesn't come. Three possibilities. But how—? Well, God, he knows or perhaps he doesn't!
Can't say! Had you the poetic gift some years ago?

MYSELF: Regarding A you said he is refractory to big doses.
You can be less mysterious in these explanations, si vous voulez.

SRI AUROBINDO: Even to small doses. Sometimes I get a little surreptitiously and, as it were, against his will. He is much more 'granite' than you.
Not mysterious at all. Succinct and epigrammatic.

MYSELF: Why didn't your Force prove decisive in this patient's case? Failure of the Supermind over hostile forces? I give you the chance to bombard me or else I will,

SRI AUROBINDO: What has the Supermind to do here?

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Who told you that I was using the supramental Force? I have said all along that it was not the supramental Force that was acting. If you want the supramental Force, you had better go to X of Chittagong. I hear from Chittagong that the Supramental Force is descending in him,

(In the medical report I wrote Achanchar instead of Achanchal) Sri Aurobindo commented:

Is this r or /? If r, please transform into I.

MYSELF: If it is l and not r, why do they pronounce Achanchar? Is it like our saying (mango) instead of ? Oh, the very word takes you, Sir, to the land of—!

SRI AUROBINDO: God knows! I have not heard their pronunciation. But it is I all right. R and L are however supposed to be philologically interchangeable since the beginning of human speech.

(While writing a report, I wrote the name of the patient as Ambala, instead of Ambalal.)

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

MYSELF: N has given me a copy (sent by Mother) of effects of betel-nut (pān supāri). So far as I know in India people believe that betel leaf (pān) helps digestion and lime (calcium) is good for health.

SRI AUROBINDO: Even if it stimulated momentarily, that would, not prevent from wearing it out in the end. But the idea is probably a superstition.

MYSELF: Some believe that betel-nut {supāri) taking is a good exercise for teeth, especially since here we don't take any meat etc.!

SRI AUROBINDO: Lord! I have known people who lost

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all their teeth at an early age by the habit.
Meat is good for the teeth? Always heard the contrary— besides, millions who don't take meat have as good teeth as anybody in the world and don't need pān supāri either.

MYSELF: An eye-specialist (European) of Calcutta said that many eye-diseases are due to pān-supāri and he was a dead enemy of it.

SRI AUROBINDO: Very probably; teeth and eyes are closely connected.

MYSELF: But what should I do with this typed copy given by N? To enforce on patients? or others also? A was repeatedly told but—

SRI AUROBINDO: That! like one of my uncles who preferred taking his pān betel to keeping his teeth.

MYSELF: But Guru, you must admit that betel (pān) has a sweet taste or perhaps you are an utter stranger to it?

SRI AUROBINDO: Have taken it—can't say I found it very attractive or enticing. —Tastes differ.

MYSELF: Shall I try some protein injections on S? or let him go on with slight pain and swelling till the Supramental descends?

SRI AUROBINDO: You can try. He is solid and stolid.
No sir. Supramental does not want to have to deal with swelled things: either heads, legs or stomachs.

MYSELF: By the way, please make a rule henceforth not to accept sadhaks before passing medical exam. Don't you realise, Sir, what potential troubles are ahead with so many invalids?

SRI AUROBINDO: You are quite right with a million times of million rightness,

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MYSELF: Regarding M. G., urine examined, contains pus, detailed report tomorrow. Now giving urotropine etc. Perhaps they are Greek to you!

SRI AUROBINDO: Those are the hieroglyphics on the Vallé paper? They arc not Greek to me, but Amharic.

MYSELF: The gentleman had also syphilis. I consulted Vallé, he advised serum injection.

SRI AUROBINDO: Christ! And yet, you attribute the sufferings of these people to the supramental Force!

MYSELF: By the way, what is happening? Supramental descending? P is going phut. All thought that he was doing serious sadhana; as a result Purushottam descended into him and he was calling Sri Aurobindo to come and bow to him; what next? Makes me shake to the bones!

SRI AUROBINDO: It appears that P has recognised that his Purushottama head was indeed all phut! He says he felt some evil forces making him do and say these things but he was so helpless that he was forced to obey them! That is a fall from Purushottama heights, but a return to sanity, if only temporary, (But let us hope it will increase.) But that is evidently what happened.
Serious? You mean not to sleep and all that sort of thing? Well, it is just that kind of seriousness which brings these attacks—earnestness of this sort does call down that kind of Purushottama or rather call him—for it is a horizontal, not a vertical descent.
Next? Perhaps he will want you also to come and bow to him and pummel you if you don't.
Only the bones?

MYSELF: Already I am feeling awfully pulled down, on top of that Madangopal sits; and the Purushottam crowns them all. I ask myself—whither; whither are you going,

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my friend and what awaits you?

SRI AUROBINDO : Perhaps the Paratpara Purusha beyond even the Purushottama.
But why this pulled downness? You are not pulling down Purushottama or any other gentleman from the upper storey, are you? It is strain and want of rest, I suppose. Sleep, sleep! Read Mark Twain or write humorous stories. Then you will be chirpy and even Madangopal won't feel heavy to you.

MYSELF: Goodness knows what inspired you to pick up such a blessed place for your Ashram. A heaven indeed for a Supramental colony!

SRI AUROBINDO: Had no medical standards in view when I came to Pondicherry—nor any views about establishing an Ashram. A Supramental colony obviously ought to have a first class hospital, but no such colony was then intended.

MYSELF: M said, "mixture very bitter, can I take pān after it?" I said 'do'. Now I hear her saying that I've advised her to take pān.

SRI AUROBINDO: Wonderful ladies they are! My dear sir, such ladies are quite wonderful outside the Ashram also. M didn't need to come here to be marvellous in that way.
Were they all respectable and consistent in their former life?
Well, T and S used both to get cured without need of medicines once upon a time. The later development has evidently come for your advantage, so that you may have elementary exercises in samatā. I have had a lot of schooling in that way and graduated M.A. Your turn now.
If you had treated them in the pre-Ashram period, do you think their comments, if not at once cured, would have been more filled with a holy awe and submission to the doctors?

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MYSELF: These ladies come to the doctor disappointed with the action of the Force, and go back to the Divine, disappointed with the doctors! Splendid! They are so touchy. Perhaps you will say 'Judge not lest ye be judged.'

SRI AUROBINDO: Exactly—for these are poor little uneducated people. But are the big brains at bottom less unreasonable and inconsistent? All alike, sir, in one way or another. Man is a reasoning animal; no doubt, but not a reasonable one.

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

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

MYSELF: J's finger was incised suspecting pus, but there was hardly any.

SRI AUROBINDO: Premature incision not safe; I believe, in this kind of thing.

MYSELF: Your belief is right. Guru! I didn't feel happy yesterday after the incision. However, nothing untoward has happened; no pain almost but the swelling persists; asked to foment.

SRI AUROBINDO: Mother suggests hot water 1 part peroxide, 3 parts water and dipping the finger for 15 minutes. Some of these things are cured by that—it ought really to be done immediately but even now it may be effective.

MYSELF: Why; that is almost exactly what we have advised him to do from the very start, only peroxide was not given.

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SRI AUROBINDO: You. are taking daily almost exactly the same thing as Anglo-Indians take in their clubs i.e. a peg. Only brandy and soda are not there—but the water is.

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1937

MYSELF: One thing I find among patients here, especially ladies, that they want to be served quick—5 minutes at most! They can't wait, they must go- they have work, etc., etc.

SRI AUROBINDO: Important people, you see—necessary for the world action, —can't be kept waiting.

MYSELF: P is much better, says bandage is now bondage!

SRI AUROBINDO: Seems much struck by Mother's force as per carbuncle—no gratitude to the doctor. Such is life!

MYSELF: So, Dr. B. has departed! But now perhaps the avalanche will roll down on me. Will you save and help?

SRI AUROBINDO: Help, I can. But save? Well, an avalanche is an avalanche.

MYSELF: L has some burning sensation in the mouth and throat.

SRI AUROBINDO: What cause? She says for months her throat is carpeted with pepper and covered with thin pomegranate grains and she suspects an eruption there. Also you have medicated her throat but under the tongue there is fire. Surrealist Poetry is not your monopoly—even your patients write it. S informed me the other day that her spine had already begun breaking itself into two.

MYSELF: You may congratulate yourself, Sir, on this invasion of Surrealism, However she is better. But what have you done with the spine? I saw her still going strong; result of your operation?

SRI AUROBINDO: The spine was surrealistic—her going it strong is realistic.

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I wrote in my medical report:
D better; pain.

SRI AUROBINDO: Is it that he has a better pain? or that the fact that he has a pain shows that he is better or that he is better, but still has pain? An aphoristic style lends itself to many joyfully various interpretations.

MYSELF: Have you asked Dr. R his opinion?

SRI AUROBINDO: Haven't asked him. Afraid of a resonant explanation which would leave me gobbrified and flabbergasted but no wiser than before.

MYSELF: We examine chemically first a sample of urine, i. e. by chemical re-agents, which is called qualitative test. You ought to know that from your English Public School chemistry, Sir!

SRI AUROBINDO: Never learned a word of Chemistry or any damned science in my school. My school, sir, was too aristocratic for such plebian things.

MYSELF: It is very strange your school had no chemistry, but for I. C. S. you had no science? Perhaps these new- fangled things didn't come out then?

SRI AUROBINDO: It (chemistry) may have had a corner, but I had nothing to do with such stuff.
Certainly not. In I. C. S. you can choose your own subjects.
They were new-fangled and not yet respectable.

MYSELF: Why the devil does A write all these things to you? Are you prescribing or are we? and what the devil is the use of his knowing the medicines and doses, pray? He could have asked me.

SRI AUROBINDO: Well, what about the free Englishman's right to grumble? This is not London and there is no "Times" to write to. So he writes a letter to me, instead of to the "Times".

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MYSELF: Surely, there is a twist somewhere.

SRI AUROBINDO: There always is a twist, sir, always.

MYSELF: Anyway, I won't fume nor tear my hair.

SRI AUROBINDO: Don't. Losing one's hair is always a useless operation. Keep your hair on.

MYSELF: Only just tell him, please, that he ought to let us know instead, of sending a boy with an empty bottle, if he doesn't want to present his honourship himself, or I will tell him myself?

SRI AUROBINDO: Dear sir, tell him yourself, tell him yourself. I will pat you on the back in silence from a safe distance.

MYSELF: People say I am getting absolutely bald, Sir. Two things I feared—one a big tummy and another a damned baldness. Couldn't be saved from one. If you can't grow new hair, please help to preserve the few I have, Sir.

SRI AUROBINDO: What one fears most, is usually what happens. Even if there were no disposition, the fear calls it in. Who knows if you had not feared; you might have had the waist of a race-runner and the hair of Samson.

MYSELF: I read in Conversation that skin, hair and teeth are very near to Matter and so, spiritual Force takes a long time in acting on them. Is it true?

SRI AUROBINDO: Painfully true.

MYSELF: Then I have no chance till Supermind descends?

SRI AUROBINDO: I suppose not. And who knows what fancies the supramental may have?

MYSELF: A has finished 3 Takadiastase bottles. He finds good effect from it. We require another bottle now. Should we buy it?

SRI AUROBINDO: Buy the take-a-distaste (Takadiastase)

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and keep his liver quiet for God's sake. He shows signs of starting his lamentations again. The bottle to keep the baby quiet.

MYSELF: I have been thinking of studying medical books daily one hour but can hardly manage it, at the same time I am inflicted with doubts as to the utility of studies; for, lacking practical experience, book-study, how much can they help? Please give some Force in that direction also. Must run the horses, what?

SRI AUROBINDO: Why not?

MYSELF : Difficulty is still the lack of living interest in it— What you call enthousiasmos!

SRI AUROBINDO: Enthousiasmos does not mean living interest or enthusiasm—it means the inrush of the creative force or godhead, আবেশ —you don't need that for chewing medical books.

MYSELF: Why, Sir, you didn't know that small-pox fellows are not required to be vaccinated? A book says one attack generally protects for life but second attacks are not very uncommon and the protection tends to wear off in time. My theory smashed? Well, exception proves die rule, what?

SRI AUROBINDO: Well, there are people who say that small-pox attack immunises for only a few years. But if it is as you say, then there are others, I suppose. There is A among the servants, for instance, who nearly died of small-pox. I myself had a slight attack in Baroda after I came from England—so, you needn't try to come up and vaccinate me.

MYSELF: X attributes her trouble to R's insufficient or even negligent treatment. Strange! I saw that R took much care

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and he cured her of that terrible attack. Such is life, Sir! What?

SRI AUROBINDO: X is a liar and says anything she wants to—she is also semi-hysteric and believes anything she wants to. Such is life and such are humans.

MYSELF: X has some intense itching. Whole body swollen and red.

SRI AUROBINDO: But what nature of eruption? She has sent a howl—can't sleep, etc.

MYSELF: B complains of more pain!

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, he has also sent an epistolary howl.

MYSELF: I justify B's epistle, Sir. His thundering scowl burst your ear!

SRI AUROBINDO: It wasn't a scowl, even a thundering one—it was a tympanum-piercing howl—so one had to do something.

MYSELF: I would have tried anti-serum, astringents, opium etc. and I think most of the doctors would have done that.

SRI AUROBINDO: Try everything one after the other and together and see if any hits—that seems to be the method.

MYSELF: The other day as regards that baby you wrote that the Mother has no intuition for infants.

SRI AUROBINDO: No intuition for stuffing infants with heterogenous medicines.

MYSELF: If the "medico" can be revealed from within, why could it not be revealed from without and tell me to give anti-dys. serum to that baby, which I hear, has been administered and found to be effective.

SRI AUROBINDO: Damn it, man! Intuition and revelation are inner things—they don't belong to the outer mind.

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MYSELF: Shall I adopt the surrealist method? i.e. keep quiet for a moment and whatever strikes first, go ahead with it; only be careful in case of poisons! You remember once I told you of this and you cried—Good Lord!

SRI AUROBINDO: I did and I repeat it. I don't want this Ashram transferred to the next world by your powerful agency.

MYSELF: I wonder why you flared up at my 'go at it'. By 'go at it' I didn't obviously mean sending your Ashram to the next world. No, not at all. I meant only this: say a case comes with pain in the stomach etc. I simply keep silent, and suddenly comes to me the suggestion: gastritis.

SRI AUROBINDO: I didn't flare up. I was cold with horror.
Doctors don't mean it, when they do that kind of thing. It is not deliberate murder with them but involuntary or shall we say, experimental homicide.

MYSELF: S and Co. refuse vaccination point blank! Till now none has succeeded in doing them, they say! Well?

SRI AUROBINDO: Nothing to be said, unless you tell them to go and be d-d in their own way!

MYSELF: ...to go and be dead^ S and Co. be dead?

SRI AUROBINDO: No, sir, not dead, but damned! damned! damned!

MYSELF: S has hard red swelling about left elbow joint; no cause.

SRI AUROBINDO: Sir, in this world there is nothing without a cause—unless you hold the ultra-modern view that causation does not exist.

MYSELF: No luck about Intuition?

SRI AUROBINDO: None! Too thorny a subject, to tackle without leisure and space.

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By the way, S must be added to the list of vaccination impossibles. R asks me to warn you and A that if you vaccinate, you will get back your old friends, the boils and A, his old companion the stye. I pass on the warning to you without further piling up the agony. A very nasty affair, this vaccination, in any case.

MYSELF: Quite agree with you, Sir, about the beastly nastiness of vaccination...though in which way, we may disagree.

SRI AUROBINDO: It is beastly and nastly in all ways, so there is no room for disagreement.

MYSELF: S has been put out of the ring before and so also A.

SRI AUROBINDO: Then add I and M to the Vaccination Untouchables.

MYSELF: Can you not or rather isn't it high time that you should open up the medical channel in me, Sir? I feel ashamed that I am a doctor and can't cure cases! You gave me a godship in Timber Godown work and compliments for my ability etc. In my own field I shall be a failure?

SRI AUROBINDO: Medical channel? Rather rocky perhaps and sanded—but if poetry could open, why not medicine?

MYSELF: Medical channel rather vicky? vichy? and— what? It means anyhow the thing is not easy, but why not?

SRI AUROBINDO: Rocky, sir, rocky—sanded—silted up with sand from both sides. No place for the current. Have to blast rocks, dig out channel, embank.

MYSELF: By the way, you have absolutely forgotten to send me that Presse médicals with your notes. Brooding over it?

SRI AUROBINDO: No. Went to limbo.

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MYSELF: Will you wake up from limbo and scratch on the paper something?

SRI AUROBINDO: How can I when the whole thing has gone to limbo?

MYSELF: I wrote to you that K fell down unconscious with froth at the corner of the mouth. Throughout the morning he was in a dazed condition though he answered all my questions correctly. He says he concentrated in bed in the morning quite consciously for 20 monutes or so. I don't find anything wrong with his system. We must eliminate the possibility of Force. I heard about A who fell down once while meditating in standing posture.

About epilepsy I'm not sure for it usually doesn't occur at his age. Mother's suggestion about worms is very good.

SRI AUROBINDO: Bunkum about Force. Obviously if a man goes into trance while standing or walking, he may fall down—Ramakrishna had often to be held up when he went off suddenly while standing. But it doesn't produce results like that. I don't believe he is such a mighty sadhak as to go off into nirvikalpa samadhi for several hours. However it does not give froth at the lips.

Quite so. If sure that nothing happened like this before, it can't be epilepsy.

MYSELF : Where is pneumonia or T. B.? In one night everything over! Perhaps it was due to simple over-exhaustion; —or Force did it?

SRI AUROBINDO: Shobhan Allah! With your diagnosis one would have expected him to be already in Paradise. Of course, I put a Force.

MYSELF: No, sir, not in Paradise but in hell of agony, suffering, fever, brown hepatisation, grey hepatisation etc.,

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etc. (nothing to do with liver though). But is this a miracle of Force or miracle of diagnosis?

SRI AUROBINDO: What on earth is this hepatisation? where? lungs? pneumonia? what else? Kindly be less cryptic.

MYSELF: Well, red and grey hepatisation are parts of morbid anatomy. When there is pneumonia; lungs undergo pathological changes from red to grey and get the solid appearance of liver. So the stages are called red or grey hepatisation. Nothing alarming, you see.

SRI AUROBINDO: But hang it all! Has he pneumonia or not? Is there fever now? Alarming or not, what is his present condition?

MYSELF : But I told you long ago that he is hale and hearty and that was the miracle; no fever; nothing at all. You said according to our diagnosis you expected him to be in Paradise. I said, no, not so early but in hell of suffering etc., etc.. .that's all—that grey hepatisation troubled you, eh?

SRI AUROBINDO : Naturally, if you say that a fellow who is supposed to be hale and hearty, is brown and grey with a mysterious hepatisation and suffering a hell of agony and not yet in Paradise.

MYSELF: No, Sir, no! You didn't read between the lines. You wanted to send him to Paradise; I objected and said— no, he would have suffered i.e. in hell of suffering.

MYSELF: Procured another tube. Any amount can be had now.
But you seem to be much behind time, Sir! You don't favour these new discoveries?

SRI AUROBINDO: How is that? About the blood injection juggle? I told you it was fashionable and you could fash along with it if you liked or rather if J liked—provided André did it.

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MYSELF: You said it was fashionable but hinted that you don't like the fashion. 'If you liked or if J liked'—don't they mean that?

SRI AUROBINDO: Nonsense, sir. Where on earth did I hint anything? Where did I write that? I said it must be done by André, if at all—which had to do with the person who is to do it, not with anything else. For the rest, I said if J consents, you can try it. Where the hell in that simple phrase is there anything about either my disliking or your liking or anything else that you have put into it? Really now!

MYSELF: S comes today with a sad and determined face. Says "I have borne enough, can't bear any more. Pain all the time, now no sleep, to add"
You kept silent twice over his treatment. Silent again?

SRI AUROBINDO: How can I prescribe? It is your business.

SRI AUROBINDO: There is a blood-curdling letter from S. If it is to be taken as accurate, the whole affair must be nervous, Mother says. She asks if you have tried charcoal tablets with him.

MYSELF: No, this time we haven't tried charcoal, but yesterday we began and continue it now. Yes, the letter is blood-curdling and his symptoms too, if they are true.
God knows how to cure.

SRI AUROBINDO: If he does, send him a telephone!

MYSELF: I can't increase evening meal yet. My idea is to build up gradually the diet so that the system may be accustomed and strengthened at the same time. No use upsetting the stomach, liver etc.—what?

SRI AUROBINDO: I suppose so. Don't understand the ways of a fallen stomach—sounds too much like a fallen angel—

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but S is not that (no angel—that is to say), whatever his stomach may be.

MYSELF: Same trouble continued or worse. Why are you silent on liver extract?

SRI AUROBINDO: Extract liver—no objection.

MYSELF: Pain, burning "normal" i.e. you understand I hope, this normal pain.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, of course. It is the patient who is abnormal.

MYSELF: Again bad, pain started right after lunch and other troubles also.

SRI AUROBINDO: Does he remain quiet after the meal for a sufficient length of time or prances about?

MYSELF: We have exhausted our means. One thing remains—liver extract which I have withheld till now.

SRI AUROBINDO: You can try that—since it is his liver. Let's see if it extracts him out of his agonies.

MYSELF: I couldn't very well take in L's history, for it is quite unnatural to get a wound in that position by falling, unless one had fallen head down. In the evening a different story came out, which is quite the opposite, you see.
I suppose, better to trust than distrust, what?

SRI AUROBINDO: Amen!

MYSELF: Servant has boil on the face. Not very happy about it.

SRI AUROBINDO: He is not? Hard to satisfy these people!

MYSELF: I am sorry! I meant I am not happy.

SRI AUROBINDO: I supposed so.

MYSELF: André says anti-anaphylactic is very good for eczema and asthma.

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SRI AUROBINDO: I don't know what anti-anaphylactic means ("my proficiency in —* Greek is not very great) but it sounds swell. No objection.

MYSELF: R came and asked for apomorphine. This drug is only used in urgent cases of poisoning where evacuation is immediately called for. We don't know anything about the case. We are asked to give certain drugs, we give, for what case etc. we don't enquire because he may not like it. What should be done in such cases in future?

SRI AUROBINDO: God knows! Perhaps, if it is anything really dangerous, play the Artful Dodger and, otherwise, pray fervently to God that nobody may be poisoned. But for whom does he ask this, I wonder? A? He has no other patients except L perhaps, at the moment.

SRI AUROBINDO: I send you the letter of a diabetic sadhak asking me if he can take rice once a day. I can only pass on the question to you. What shall I reply to his piteous and pathetic request? For enlightenment, please.

* word not decipherable

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1938

MYSELF: Adenoids and tonsils, you know, to a great extent dull the intellect.

SRI AUROBINDO: Aided by self-imprisonment, I believe.

MYSELF: So whatever you sanction, please write against each one; otherwise he will bother me about your sanction and permission first.

SRI AUROBINDO: What to sanction when the doctors can't say what's what?

MYSELF: Why do you say doctors can't say?

SRI AUROBINDO: Because you say "It may be either" and "if" and "if". According to ordinary logic, that means "we" does not know but either guesses or infers.

MYSELF: I don't find any localising sign but I suspect K is going for pleurisy.

SRI AUROBINDO: !!!

MYSELF: Iodine is very often given, especially collosol iodine injection is very good. But I heard from Dr. Banerjee that you don't favour internal iodine medication, is it true?

SRI AUROBINDO: What's this word? Cousin of colossal?
Mother does not favour in certain cases; as in those cases it has a bad effect. Can't say for N. But his subconscious is contradictory like S's and inclined to say No to any medicine.

MYSELF: And if it is due to extreme self-annihilation, why not tell him so?

SRI AUROBINDO: Where did you get this self-annihilation? I wrote self-centredness. N's self is not annihilated; it is there active and kicking and governing everything.

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What's the use of telling him? It won't go by the mere telling.

MYSELF: He comes and bothers and bothers saying that medicine has no effect, I am not looking carefully..--Is his sight really so bad that he can't take up any work? I don't know that eyes have to be much used in his electric supervision work.

SRI AUROBINDO: So he believes.
You don't allow for the potency of auto-suggestion.

MYSELF: S is really extremely difficult to deal with.

SRI AUROBINDO: He always has been.

MYSELF: Is it his disease that has made him so or his nature?

SRI AUROBINDO: His nature made the disease.

MYSELF: Please read T's report tonight. I am absolutely staggered at her sudden voracious appetite. Finished one cabbage in the evening! Have you pumped some Supramental Force into her stomach or what?

SRI AUROBINDO: I have of course put pressure for no fever and a good appetite, but did not expect any supramental effects in the latter direction.

MYSELF: I hear that X is now shedding tears of Joy at the sight of apples, oranges; prunes etc., etc. She has forgotten all her troubles. Tears of sorrow, tears of joy, oh dear!

SRI AUROBINDO: 'Fruity' tears of joy. They move me to poetry.

"0 apples, apples; oranges and prunes,
You are God's bliss incarnate in a fruit!
Meeting yon after many desolate moons

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I sob and sniff and make a joyous bruit."

Admit that you yourself could not have done better as a poetic and mantric (romantic?) comment on this touching situation.

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