Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

3. Matters Medical

Illness: its Entry and its Prevention

We all believe that as soon as you read our letters we receive the necessary help. Yesterday when I went to R to treat his eye, he told me that he felt your Force working inside it, and inferred that you were reading his letter just then.

It depends on how far the inner being is awake – otherwise one needs a physical avalambana. There are some people who get the relief only after we read a letter, others get it immediately they write or before it has reached us or after it has reached but before we have read. Others get it simply by referring the whole matter to us mentally.

You have said that one can know of illnesses before they enter the body; in that case, one can always stop them and have absolute immunity.

All illnesses pass through the nervous or vital-physical sheath of the subtle consciousness and subtle body before they enter the physical. If one is conscious of the subtle body or with the subtle consciousness, one can stop an illness on its way and prevent it from entering the physical body. But it may come without one's noticing, or when one is asleep or through the subconscient, or in a sudden rush when one is off one's guard; then there is nothing to do but to fight it out from a hold already gained on the body.   Self-defence by these inner means may become so strong that the body becomes practically immune as many Yogis are. Still this “practically” does not mean “absolutely”. The absolute immunity can only come with the supra-mental change. For below the supramental it is the result of an action of a Force among many forces and can be disturbed by a disruption of the equilibrium established – in the supramental it is a law of the nature; in a Supramentalised body immunity from illness would be automatic, inherent in its new nature.

There is a difference between Yogic Force on the mental and inferior planes and the Supramental Nature. What is acquired and held by the Yoga-Force in the mind-and-body consciousness is in the supramental inherent and exists not by achievement but by nature – it is self-existent and absolute.