Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Therapeutic Force and Healing

Therapeutic Force and Homeopathy [2]

Today’s case has again convinced me that X doesn’t know much about physiology, pathology, dieting, diagnosis, etc. You may say, “Homeopaths are concerned with symptoms.” But I shall be the last to believe that he cured this man by relying on symptoms alone.

Because you are tied in your own system and do not understand that Nature is not so rigid as your mental ideas.

All big homeopaths, I have heard, were originally allopaths who knew anatomy, physiology, pathology etc. X is unique and his cures also unique. I am puzzled about the real mystery behind.

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 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.

23 December 1935