Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
9 February 1940
Nirodbaran: We are confronted with a difficult diagnosis. Although clinically the case looks like septicaemia, the blood culture is negative.
Sri Aurobindo: What does that mean? It is not septicaemia then?
Nirodbaran: One can’t say that. Dr. André says that there is something in the blood – some infection, even though the culture is negative.
Sri Aurobindo: Then why is it negative? Can the case be septicaemia even if it is negative? If it can, medical science is not very exact.
Nirodbaran: It may be septicaemia. Sometimes one has to make repeated examinations. For instance, in T.B. one has to search for the bacillus plenty of times.
Purani: Even if they find the bacillus, it may not be T.B.
Nirodbaran: That doesn’t happen.
Purani: Why? In stools they sometimes find the T.B. bacillus.
Nirodbaran: Stools are a different matter.
Sri Aurobindo: It is thought that bacilli and germs are the cause of a disease. But they may have nothing to do with it.
Nirodbaran: If not the cause, they are an instrument. In diphtheria, for example, when the antitoxin is given, many patients are cured.
Sri Aurobindo: That may be coincidence.
Nirodbaran: Coincidence in thousands of cases?
Sri Aurobindo: Why not?
Purani: If not, why in some cases does the antitoxin fail? Or why are some people attacked by a particular germ when exposed to it while others are safe?
Sri Aurobindo: Doctors don’t recognise any factors beyond these organisms.
Satyendra: In homeopathy, something prior to the disease is said to be there. In allopathy, this is called “low resistance”.
Sri Aurobindo: The yogic view is also of something prior. There are unseen or unknown factors which operate in the causation of a disease and the germs are only concomitant factors.
Purani: Otherwise I don’t see why among people working in cholera epidemics some are attacked and others escape. I myself worked in their midst but nothing happened to me.
Sri Aurobindo: I lived in areas where there was plague all around.
Satyendra: I have myself removed with my own hands plague-infected rats.
Purani: Medical men sometimes build up their theories and then try to fit facts to them.
Nirodbaran: Everybody does that sort of thing – including the philosophers!
Sri Aurobindo: The difference between medical science and proper science is that in medical science one negative instance doesn’t disprove the theory, while in proper science a single negative example will throw out a whole theory and the scientists will have to begin work on a new basis.
Evening
Nirodbaran: Satyendra is rather worried over A’s case.
Sri Aurobindo: Why?
Nirodbaran: He thinks he is responsible for her disease.
Sri Aurobindo: How?
Nirodbaran: It started after the wisdom-tooth trouble. Although he didn’t used a knife, still he feels himself responsible.
Sri Aurobindo: A knife? What for?
Nirodbaran: For cutting the gums. Sometimes one has to cut them to make more space.
Sri Aurobindo: Why should he be responsible?
X considers it a great crime to cut the gums. He denounces in strong terms all who do it. He says it causes madness in the patients. If you tell him that there are plenty of people who haven’t gone mad because of it, he replies that they just don’t know they are mad! (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: Perhaps just as he himself doesn’t know it?
Purani: I was staggered when he said that Anilbaran ran the risk of madness if his headache remained uncured.
(after some time) Dr. Kantilal has two questions to ask. First, can one have more than one Guru? Dattatreya had about twenty Gurus, he says, and profited by each. From a bird he learnt something, from a butcher something else and so on.
Sri Aurobindo: Such Gurus one can have even twenty thousand of. Why only twenty?
Purani: His second question is: Can’t one make spiritual progress by seeing the Divine in the Gurus?
Sri Aurobindo: The Divine is in everybody. So he can see the Divine in all. Why only in the Gurus?
Nirodbaran: But in the spiritual teachers one can feel the Divine more easily because they have realised Him.
Sri Aurobindo: That does not mean that the Divine is not in everybody. If one actually sees the Divine, it is a different matter. But if it is a question of thinking, one can think as well that the Divine is in all.
Purani: He asks if one can’t have more than one Guru and if it is disloyal to change one’s Guru.
Sri Aurobindo: If one wants to get somewhere, it is better to have one Guru and stick to him. Only under exceptional circumstances can the Guru be changed.
Purani: He says he has visited many Gurus but nobody has satisfied him.
Sri Aurobindo: That is not the fault of the Gurus. If he goes on changing like that, he will get nowhere. Moreover, there will be a play of contrary influences.
Champaklal: But if one visits spiritual people one can get some help on the spiritual path. They say that Satsang has a great value in life.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, one can get some influence, but that is for ordinary people who want some good influence to help them in their lives, not for those who want to do Yoga. Besides, even then there may be a conflict of influences – different people’s good influences may also conflict.
Purani: What one has gained from one may go counter to what one gets from another. Now I understand why you asked Dr. Kantilal to quiet his mind. His mind seems to be roaming about from place to place. (Sri Aurobindo was smiling at this.)