Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1756

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

October 19, 1936

[The first report was written by Dr. Becharlal.]

L came to the Dispensary and said she had fever, cough, cold for the last three days. She refused to take anything internally, without Mother’s permission.

She has full permission to take any medicine or treatment you think necessary.

About U’s lipoma – we don’t see the rationale of the treatment by mercury, so don’t know its effectiveness. We can try it in small quantities.

If it grows it will have to be cut. As to this treatment, well, I don’t know –

For T’s support – I don’t know whether the equipment will fit her thin structure. Even then the adjustable ones may do.

Can’t she measure herself, if she is shown the designs?

S is better now. All Pancrinol exhausted. Shall we buy more or wait and see?

“Wait and see” is always a very good formula.

Y’s trouble is much less, still a sort of nondescript sensation is there.

What the deuce is this nondescript? How is it he can’t describe it? There are sensations that are due to descent and not troublesome or dangerous at all, there are others that are physical. But the description is necessary in order to distinguish.

He says he can’t read or write. Lies down quietly for a time, but all on a sudden the thing descends and produces the sensation. Fears if something may happen at night.

The difficulty is that he has got the fear and the association in his mind of the descent with the disturbance.

You wrote to him at the end: “... before there can be a resumption of the sadhana.” Does it mean he should not go to pranam or meditation?

I meant by sadhana the positive side (descent etc.). What I indicated was that there was a part of the being which was afraid of the descent, didn’t want it and by its fear got this trouble. This must be found out and put right before calling any descent again.

I wasn’t thinking of pranam and meditation – he can go there; if he finds it all right to go, he can continue.

He had no vomiting, only nausea.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “nausea”.]

Well, that’s a physical ailment, not a Yogic phenomenon. Can’t it be got rid of? Whatever the cause, there is evidently disturbance of the stomach.

From your replies I presume that it may have been the descent, but since he got into a panic, he got these nervous troubles. Or was it the result of pulling?

That seems most probable unless there was an illness already breeding there (digestion, circulation?). But you say you found none.

Y showed me a letter of yours where you have said that it is not due to pulling; it is the right tapasya. And he has been following the same practice since then and has now a control. It can’t be the effect of a dark Force.

Not through the descent, but through the fear a dark Force might strike in. That is what it is trying with many people.

If illness rises up by the descent of Force or a hereditary taint of madness manifested later on, it would be a very bad affair.

Illness does not rise up by the descent of the Force; nor hereditary taint nor madness. They come up of themselves, as in D.S.’s case who never had even the smallest grain of a descent or a Force anywhere. It is only after he went off his centre that we are putting Force (not as a descent, but as an agent) to keep him as straight and as sound as possible.

In this case, though the descent wouldn’t be the cause of these troubles, would it not indirectly flare up a latent focus?

No. I never found it doing that.

And in such an experience as Y’s, some amount of fear is inevitable, isn’t it?

What experience? Descent? Sensation in the head? Plenty of people have had that here and elsewhere but no one got into a panic or nervous upset.

N told me that Mother didn’t approve of Y’s staying at D’s place...

Up to that, it is correct.

... because adverse forces may act on D also and harm him.

This must be N’s own interpretation. The Mother said nothing to that effect. D had already got into a depression by J’s visit, next Y’s upset, finally something else and was preparing to head for Cape Comorin – so naturally Mother didn’t want visible food for that to be supplied him. She said nothing of all that to N.

Do you go by the description of one’s experience to decide whether it was an experience or the action of a dark force or the recrudescence of an illness?

Yes, certainly – just as you go by the symptoms of a case as seen by you and as related by the patient.

I thought that it is not possible for us to have spiritual experiences, especially major ones, without your previously knowing that so and so will have such and such experiences.

Previously? My God, we would have to spend all our time prevising the sadhaks’ experiences. Do you think Mother has nothing else to do? As for myself, I never previse anything, I only vise and revise. All that Mother prevised was that there was something not right in Y, some part of him at odds with his aspiration. That might lead to trouble. That is why, entre nous, I want him to find out what part of him didn’t want the descent.