Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Therapeutic Force and Healing

Therapeutic Force and Homeopathy [7]

I believe that an allopath would have been as successful as X if he had the backing of your Force.

The Force needs an instrument and an instrumentation also sometimes. The instrument was X, the instrumentation partly at least his drugs. I don’t believe in the story of the inefficiency of homeopathic drugs only because they are homeopathic. Also, I don’t believe that X knows nothing about them and can’t properly apply them. I have noted almost constantly that they have a surprising effect, sometimes instantaneous, sometimes rapid, and this not on X’s evidence alone, but in the statement of his patients and the visible results. Not being an allopathic doctor, I can’t ignore a fact like that.

Some symptoms like headache, vomiting etc. may be caused by many diseases, such as brain-tumour, syphilis, high blood-pressure, etc. If you tell me that a homeopathic medicine for headache, vomiting etc. will be a panacea for all these diseases, it will be difficult for me to accept it.

Tumour, syphilis etc. are specialities, but what I have found in my psycho-physical experience is that most disorders of the body are connected, though they go by families,— but there is also connection between the families. If one can strike at their psycho-physical root, one can cure even without knowing the pathological whole of the matter and working through the symptoms as a possibility. Some medicines invented by demi-mystics have the power. What I am now considering is whether homeopathy has any psycho-physical basis. Was the founder a demi-mystic? I don’t understand otherwise certain peculiarities of the way X’s medicines act.

Allopaths after all are not yogis and have no third eyes! Still I should say that mistaken diagnoses of appendicitis, for example, are very rare.

Good heavens! It happened in scores and scores of cases when there was the appendicitis mania among doctors in France — and they have other manias also.

Why ignore the wonderful things due to thousands of right diagnoses and let sporadic cases of error loom large in your eyes?

Sporadic cases! I have heard of any number of them, they are as plentiful as blackberries in Europe. And as for difference of diagnosis it is almost the rule except when doctors consult together and give concessions to each other. Don’t try to throw allopathic dust in my eyes, sir! I have lived a fairly long time and seen something of the world before my retirement and much more after it.

28 December 1935