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Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

3. Matters Medical

Homeopathy (I)

How can homeopathy cure diseases through merely the symptoms and without diagnosis?

Is it not the very principle of homeopathy that it cures the disease by curing the symptoms? I have always heard so. Do you deny that homeopaths acting on their own system, not on yours, have cured illnesses? If they have, is it not more logical to suppose that there is something in their system than to proclaim the sacrosanct infallibility of the sole all-allopathic system and its principle? For that matter I myself cure more often by attacking the symptoms than by any other way, because medical diagnosis is uncertain and fallible while the symptoms are there for everybody to see. Of course if a correct indisputable diagnosis is there, so much the better – the view can be more complete, the action easier, the result more sure. But even without infallible diagnosis one can act and get a cure.

When all doctors have failed, how does R proclaim that he will pull a man out? Self-cpnfidence? Isn't it sometimes too risky to commit oneself like that, however strong one's confidence may be?

Because he has confidence in himself like all who are able to do in any field big things.... Why can't it? How dreadfully downright and sweeping you are in your demands! What ground had Mustapha Kemal for his strong and enormous confidence when he defied all Europe and all the probabilities and possibilities and undertook to save three-quarters dead Turkey?... What does that matter if it succeeds in some places? Napoleon's self-confidence and intuition tripped him up at Waterloo, but before that it had won him Marengo, Jena, Austerlitz.

Was there some extraordinary power behind R before he came here that was responsible for the marvellous results?

Certainly. It was because the Mother saw a great force in him that she accepted him in the Ashram.

I hear he is a very good medium and is a tower of vital strength.

Which means of course full of massive vital force which can be used by the Yoga-force for its purposes and being massive can produce striking results.

Is the strength then the real cause of his success?

Why the flabbergasts not? What's the use of strength if it can't do things?

But I don't understand how a tower of strength can cure a man!

You are very much behind the times. Do you not know that even many doctors now admit and write it publicly that medicines are an element but only one and that the psychological element counts as much and even more? I have heard that from doctors often and read it over reputable medical signatures. And among the psychological elements, they say, one of the most important is the doctor's optimism and self-confidence, (his faith, what? it is only another word for the same thing) and the confidence, hope, helpful mental atmosphere he can inspire in or around his patient, I have seen it stated categorically that a doctor who can do that is far more successful than one who knows Medicine better but cannot.... I did not mean that it cannot be done without medicines. But if it is to be done with the aid of medicines, then the right medicine is helpful, the wrong one obviously brings in a danger.... How does his knowledge prevent intuition? Even an allopathic doctor has often to intuit what medicine he should give or what mixture – and it is those who intuit best that succeed best. All is not done by sole rule of book or sole rule of thumb even in orthodox Science.

How can a patient, as good as lost, leap up, although he knew nothing of faith in yogic force?

That often happens. It is even  sometimes easier to deal with a man of that kind, provided he does not know what is being done – so that there is no room for doubt or mental resistance.

I am thrown out of joint at two miracles, Sir: (i) R's treatment or yours; (2) N's English poetry, though Madam Doubt still peeps from behind. Anyhow, no chance for me! Kismet, Sir! What to do?

Why out of joint? It ought to strengthen your joints for the journey of Yoga. Not at all, sir. Mind, sir, mind. Madam Doubt, sir, Madam Doubt! Miss Material Intellectualism, sir! Aunt Despondency, sir! Uncle Self-distrust, sir! Cousin Self-depreciation, sir! The whole confounded family, sir!

In this resuscitation of G who you say was given up by the best doctors in Pondicherry, V, A and others, and who in spite of their dosing and injecting was near to his last gasp when V ran to R as a last chance, what I am puzzled about is the exact contribution of R's medicines.

Exact? How can one measure exactly where vital, mental and spiritual factors come in? In dealing with a star and atom you may (though it appears you can't with an electron) but not with a man and his living mind, soul and body.

If R were an allopathic homeopath, with a difference only in treatment and not in pathology, I wouldn't doubt his explanations.

What is an allopathic homeopath? Homeopathic principles are just the opposite of the allopathic. So why must the dealings be fundamentally the same with only a difference of drugs? In spite of what you say you have the solid belief that allopathy alone is true. I suppose allopathic homeopathy is something like a biped with four feet.

A symptomatic treatment can't be applied in cases where the same symptom is produced by two or three different diseases!

Why can't it? There is a possibility that you can strike at the cure, whatever it be, through the symptoms and you can kill the root through the stalk and leaves and not start by searching for the roots and digging them out. That at any rate is what I do....

Don't speak of your own cures, please; I can't fight you there!

Why should I not speak of my cures when they are perfecdy apposite and a proof that you can cure by symptomatic treatment?... You mean you don't want to give me the lie or say I am under a delusion?

How can a homeopath ask a high-blood-pressure man who has just risen from the grave to attend his duties in the old way and give him the usual food?

Why can't he, if he has some other means of combating the possible bad results? I have not heard that R asked G to resume his duties. He represents it as if he remained neutral and it was G's own choice with which he did not interfere. That may have been imprudent; but R is daring in everything and that means a stiff dose of imprudence. Besides he has his theories also which may or may not be right, but I can't say they are prima facie impossible if I can judge by the one he put forward for making S eat the full Ashram meals. If S's accounts of his condition are true, they seem to have been justified by a considerable amount of success.

If you say R is led by intuition I'll stop my argument. But then how did he ignore so important a factor as albumen in G's case?

He has intuition but not always the right intuition to fit the case. It is a mental intuition he uses, and mental intuition is a mixed movement.... I have answered all that already. I do not say R was right, but he did not act at random; he gave his reasons for rejecting the albumen which I am not medical enough to understand. I would have preferred if he had dealt with and had kept it under observation before letting him loose, but it is not my funeral. I do not expect G to live long and I don't think R expects it either. But in the case of S he has for the time being at least proved his case. He is by the way dealing with G's kidneys today and admits it is a ticklish job; but the first effects he says  were successful and he is waiting for the night to pass to see what will be the sequel. For the drug, he says, is highly potentised (that is American language), but may produce an upheaval. Well, there you are, that is the man. Right or wrong? God he knows. I put a force behind him and also await the results.

He had by the way hesitated to act at once on the kidneys because the body needed to be accustomed to renewed vigour (so far as I understand) before risking the coup. Contrary to allopathic pathology? May be. But it has some similarity to what I have seen in my experience of action by Yoga.

Certainly, if you are dejected, diffident, desparing, full of doubt you can't produce a favourable nidus in the atmosphere.

Self-confidence, I suppose, presupposes knowledge and experience. Kemal Pasha and Napoleon surely had the stratagems of war and current politics at their fingers' ends. Even so, had Napoleon been a little less self-confident, things might have had different results at Waterloo.

What an absurd statement! Self-confidence is an inborn thing; it does not rest on knowledge and experience.... Who says that? I never heard that Napoleon failed at Waterloo for want of self-confidence. I have always read that he failed because he was owing to his recent malady no longer so quick and self-confident in decision and so supple in mental resource as before.   Please don't write history unless you have data for your novel version.

Please remember that R has studied homeopathy and he has knowledge of homeopathic medicines if not of allopathic pathology. He took a degree in America and the Mother tells me that many of his ideas of which we were so impatient and thought them his own inventions are the ideas of the American school of homeopathy which is more meticulous, intolerant, intransigeant, dead against allopathy, particular about the subtle properties of homeopathic drugs and their evanescence by wrong contacts (quite yogic that) than others.... He was successful outside. While he was outside the Ashram, not yet accepted, he was making remarkable cures and already getting a name. I had to stop him as soon as he became an accepted disciple, even before he came into the Ashram because his practice was illegal. But I had to refuse applications from the town for allowing him to treat patients because he had succeeded so remarkably with them that they wanted to continue. I was not concerning myself in the least with his cures and knew nothing at all about them. And you say all that was luck because his ideas differ from yours? Are you not reasoning like Molière's doctors who declared that a patient's audacity in living contrary to the rules of Science was intolerable or like the British Medical Council which refused any validity to Sir Herbert Barker's cures because he was an osteopath and had no qualified medical knowledge?

The universe is not shut up in the four walls of  allopathic medicine. There are plenty of cases of illnesses being cured by other systems (not homeopathy alone) when they had defied the allopaths. My experience is not wide but I have come across a great number of such cases. If it is not so, why then did V come to R for help surprisingly when he and A had failed with all their capacity and experience? V has known and practised homeopathy to some extent. May we not infer that he knew there were cases in which homeopathy (not allopathic homeopathy but pure) might be successful?

It is not a question of drugs alone. The drug is only a support. If you had not intuition and self-confidence and the same thoroughgoing belief in your own action and the Yoga-force behind you you might have done some good but not had the same rapid effect. R believes in his medicines, but he does not believe that they are infallible in their effects or rely on them alone. He believes in the man behind them and the Force behind the man.... They may all study pathology; but I don't think they all bind themselves to the same conclusions as the allopaths. If they did, they would not be able to have an entirely opposite system.

I don't deny that personality is a big factor though I don't know exactly whether hope, faith etc. operate physically more or bring some occult forces into the field.

You have only to admit that the mind and vital can influence the body – then no difficulty  is left. In this action of mind and vital on the body faith and hope have an immense importance. I do not at all mean that they are omnipotent or infallibly effective – that is not so. But they assist the action of any force that can be applied, even of an apparently purely material force, but the action may be purely material when it is a question of material objects. But in things that have life or mind or mind and life one cannot isolate the material operation like that. There is always a play of other forces mixed with it in the reception at least and for the most part in the inception and direction also.

If a homeopath went by symptoms only, he would perhaps cut off the leaf but I am afraid the roots would flourish as strongly as ever.

That is what A told G that homeopathy only gives a transient palliation followed quickly by a worse catastrophe. After all, if it can raise up a man at the last gasp condemned by a rally of the whole allopathic faculty almost with the sentence “No more can be done” and send him walking about for a few more days of cheerful life, it is a rather big palliation. Moreover, in some cases I have watched I have seen R's drug produce not only a rapid, even an instantaneous improvement, but in the end what seems up to now a lasting one and this in cases of illnesses of ancient standing. However that does not cover K's case which looks more like a lung affair (Mother always was apprehensive that she might be a consumptive case) than a vicarious menstruation  or monstrous vicaration one. R however says that it is his principle to make a diagnosis and never change it or say anything more about it but just go and prove his case by a cure!! What say you to that, sir? Confidence, if you like! However what bothers me about diagnosis is that if you put twenty doctors on a case, they give twenty different diagnoses (in S's we had three doctors with three quite different theories of the illness) and such jokes as a doctor shouting “Appendix”, opening up a man, finding illness neither of appendix nor volume nor chapter and cheerfully stitching him are extremely common. So if a layman's respect for allopathic pathology and diagnosis is deficient sometimes and R's sneers at doctors' diagnoses find occasionally an echo, – well, it is not altogether without “rational” cause.

23.12.1935 – 26.12.1935