Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1935

Letter ID: 1255

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

February 2, 1935

Can we help a patient by aspiring for him? Since the Divine Force is already acting on him, how can my aspiration help him further?

It can. Every little helps.

What is this “confounded quarrel with Matter” you mention? Does this refer to the lower vital and physical movements of the sadhaks?

I am not speaking of the sadhaks, but the resistance of the Earth nature itself in its material parts. But these are things you people cannot understand unless you have less childlike notions about things.

I am still wondering why there should be doctors and a dispensary at all! Isn’t it a paradox – the Divine sending his disciples to the human physician?

Rubbish! This is a world of the play of forces, sir, and the Doctor is a force. So why should not the Divine use him? Have you realised that if the Divine did everything, there would be no world, only a show of marionnettes?

D also thinks the same as I do. Why is it not possible for the Force to cure the patients? Let the Dispensary go to the devils!

Thank you for your suggestions all the same – especially about the dispensary and the devils. D.S. almost sent it there, but it went to you instead.

Coming back to the cure you effected in D by your Force, X says that it might have been due to a combination of unseen factors – not due to your Force.

How does he know? Why can’t my poor force be there among the invisibles, since invisibles there are? If only visibles were admitted, then of course.

In that case all the trouble I took for D was sheer waste of energy, hallucination and chimera. Hallucination also the fact that D’s improvement agreed exactly with the thought I put out in the force? Well, it may be so. Modern science says there is no such thing as cause and effect, only conditions and statistics. But what are these unseen factors? (The Doctor at any rate thought it miraculous. And what about the hundreds of cases of healing by suggestion or other mental forces everywhere?)

You say “natural and inevitable” things make my brain whirl [57.7.55]. But N has been here for so many years, no frivolous company, no lower trouble; on the contrary 7 or 8 hours meditation daily. Yet he was not able to cut his attachment for his dead mother. Then what kind of a sadhana has he done?

What kind of meditation? The only report he gave to me of it was devils. See note on next page.

I have always been at a loss to understand why mere length of meditation should be a title to greatness in Yoga.

Did he ever try? To my knowledge he did not. He was in constant correspondence with wife and son, always thinking about his family, demanding the advent of wife (+ son understood) here in spite of our constant refusals. As for his meditations, in them he was always going to his house, getting attacked there by devils and still returning. Yet you think his keeping attachment unnatural and evitable! Have some common sense.

As for G, I hear that he is preaching the Truth, saying, “Will you accept the Truth from Sri Aurobindo or from me?” What else is insanity!

But he has always been like that.

This fellow has been saying that you have told him that he has played great parts in the Divine Lila, in former births, had beautiful experiences!

Hallo!

How often have I intimated that G was no great clergy. As for experiences, anybody with an occult bent can have experiences. The thing is to know what to do with them.

Am I to say alas, human nature! Or alas, Divine Power!

Excuse me. It was not the Divine Power that told G to be a Teacher. It was his ego.

Please don’t mind our pungent remarks. We don’t look upon you as a Bengali father but as an English one – who is a father and a friend.

That you is who? I decline the adhyaropa¹ of an English or any father on me!

If you find my ravings too much to answer, let me hear something about the patient N.

What about the patient? It is for you to say, not me.

¹ A role or a title imposed on a person.

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