Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Therapeutic Force and Healing

Therapeutic Force and Medical Diagnosis [1]

I was under the impression that it is quite possible for the intuition to know the exact condition of a patient without going through any mental processes like deduction from evidence and so arrive at a diagnosis like a shot.

It can if you can train it to act in that field and if you can make it the real Intuition which sees the things without ranging among potentialities.

But I find that it is not so. In several recent cases you have insisted on knowing this or that about the patient’s condition. But what is the need of your knowing these things? Is not Yogic vision more powerful and accurate than our external optical capacities?

As for me, I have no medico in me, not even a latent medico. If I had, I would not need an external one but diagnose, prescribe and cure all by my solitary self. My role in a medical case is to use the force either with or without medicines. There are three ways of doing that — one by putting the Force without knowing or caring what the illness is or following the symptoms — that however needs either the mental collaboration or quiescence of the victim. The second is symptomatic, to follow the symptoms and act on them even if one is not sure of the disease. There an accurate report is very useful. The third needs a diagnosis — that is usually where the anti-forces are very strong and conscious or where the patient himself answers strongly to the suggestions of the illness and unwittingly resists the action of the Force. This last is usually indicated by the fact that the thing gets cured and comes back again or improves and swings back again to worse. It is especially the great difficulty in cases of insanity and the like. Also in things where the nerves have a say — but in ordinary illnesses too.

1 April 1935