Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo

10th January 1939

Disciple : My friend "X" has begun to give medicine to some of my patients.

Sri Aurobindo : So, you have your "o-Allo" alliance or axis!

Talk on opathy was going when the Mother came.

Mother : Do you know about a school of opathy in Switzerland which is very famous in Europe? It prepares medicines also. They have books in which symptoms are grouped together and remedies are indicated for a group of symptoms. It is a very convenient method; only, you have to have the book; or good memory. But are you allowed to practice opathy without license?

Disciple : Oh, yes. No license is required in India.

Disciple : But Dr. S was telling that using great potencies might harm, or even kill the patient. It is dangerous if everybody beings to practice it, they say.

Disciple : In Bengal it is practiced everywhere.

Sri Aurobindo : Is Yunani medicine practiced in India?

Disciple : Yes, in cities where there is Mohammedian population, and in Muslim states. In Delhi there is the Tibbi college founded by Hakim Ajmal Khan. It seems, it is the only school of Unani medicine in the whole of Asia. Students from Turkey, Egypt and Afghanistan used to come there to learn. Ajmal Khan was the direct descendent of the court Hakim to the Mogul Emperors. Where from is it derived?

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Sri Aurobindo : It is from the Greek school. They use animal products and salts. Besides curing which is common to all the systems the Unani lays claim to rejuvenate the human system. Many diseases which require operation for their cure in Allopathy are cured by Unani and Ayurvedic medicines without operation.

There were many specific cures known in India but I am afraid they are getting lost. I remember the case of Jyotindra Nath Banerji who had a remedy for sterility from a Sannyasi and he used it with success. Many cases of barrenness for ten or fifteen years were cured within a short time. The direction for taking the medicine were very scrupulously to be observed. He knew a remedy for hydrocele.

Mother : Do you know about the Chinese medicine? Once they had a rule that you paid the doctor so long as you were well. All payment stopped when one became ill, and if the patient died they used to put a mark on the doctor's door to show that his patient had died.

But the Chinese method of pricking the nerve and curing the disease is very remarkable. The idea is that there is a point of nerve where the attack of the disease is concentrated and if you prick the point, or the Devil, on the head, the disease is cured. They find out this nervous point from the indications that the patient gives, or sometimes they find out by themselves also.

Disciple : I do not think that any system of medicine can succeed in curing all diseases. I believe that only yogic power can cure all diseases.

Disciple : Even that is not unconditional; otherwise, it might be very nice. There are conditions to be fulfilled for the yogic power to succeed.

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Sri Aurobindo : Do you expect that the yogic power, or consciousness will simply say "Let there be no disease and there will be no disease"?

Disciple : Not that way. But cases of miraculous cures are known, that is, cures effected without any conditions.

Sri Aurobindo : That is another matter. Otherwise, the Yogi has to get up every morning and say "Let everybody in the world be all right" and there would be no disease in the world! (Laughter)

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