Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1935
Fragment ID: 16983
1935
For curing the sciatica shall I try the method of detachment?
If you can cure by withdrawing so much the better.
The sciatica has often tried to fall on the Mother and on myself – we have always found that it cannot resist the force quietly and persistently applied. Other illnesses can resist, but sciatica being entirely tamasic cannot. The application of Force does not yet, probably, come natural to you, so it brings a sense of struggle, not of quiet domination, hence the restlessness etc.
You must arrive at a complete separation of your consciousness from these feelings of the body and its acceptance of illness and fix that separated consciousness and open the body. It is only so that these things can be got rid of or at least neutralised.
It is a detachment of even the physical mind from the pain that makes one able to go on as if nothing were there. But this detachment of the physical mind is not so easy to acquire1.
1 Although I tried all sorts of medicines, injections and even asanas, my sciatica was not cured for three years. So I gave up attending to it and, during the periods it was not active I just forgot that I had it. I don’t know when exactly it got cured. I found how total the cure was when once during a cyclone I worked outdoors completely drenched in rain without any bad effect. I realised that to turn the consciousness away from all concern about a disease and living just in the faith that the Mother could take care of everything, was more effectual than even offering it to the Mother by a remembrance of the disease. To take away even the thought of the illness from the physical mind was a powerful help. This mind is a very important medium for both getting and curing illnesses.