because the tone of your letter did not give much hope for his recovery.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1937
Letter ID: 1833
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
January 25, 1937
J can send her poems on alternate days. You have written that long notes are not possible, then we’ll ask only in case of absolute difficulty, when we can’t help asking you1.
Naturally – but if it [involves] careful reading and [...] writing, I can’t undertake [to] do it that very day; [besides] that I have masses of [work] to do now – not only letters, [but] I have to prepare something [for] A.P.H.2 otherwise the house will collapse, as they have been [waiting] long without a fresh book. There [are] also translations into French [for journals] which Pavitra is [wanting] me to see, etc. etc. [There] are letters from outside some [of] them very important which are waiting months without [an] answer. If I have to [write] an explanation of 2 poems (her poems are sometimes long) every day it would take too much time. That amounts [to] more than I can do.
She says, “If Sri Aurobindo won’t see my poems whom should I write for? I don’t show my poems to anyone else.”
Where did I say I wouldn’t see them? Too much femininity here!
I was discouraged by your answer regarding A’s case, because the tone of your letter did not give much hope for his recovery.
How can one be hopeful when he is morally down like that?
X-ray would help in a negative way. Clinical diagnosis is not always correct. Very often all the available methods of investigation are insisted upon in these difficult cases. If there were no positive X-ray findings, one could change one’s diagnosis and treat accordingly...
All that is merely the standpoint of medical convenience. You ignore my standpoint. If T.B. is declared, rightly or wrongly his consciousness receives a fatal blow and the spiritual action is as good as enrayé. Yet if it is T.B. of intestines, what is there but spiritual action that can do anything? Medical [Science] can only act in such a case if it changes its philosophy. On that I shall send you an article from the Presse Médicale which may throw some light. In France fortunately medical Science is beginning to open its eyes.
1 The original manuscript of the following reply is mutilated. The words in square brackets have been partly or wholly reconstructed.
2 Arya Publishing House, Calcutta.