Chapter 92The Mother’s Attitude towards Music and · The Mother and Eye Treatment

Then why don’t you understand? If medicines can’t help, what’s the use of putting foreign matter in the eye merely because it is a medicine? Medicines have a quite different action on the Mother’s body than they would have on yours or X’s or anybody else’s and the reaction is not usually favourable. Her physical consciousness is not the same as that of ordinary people — though even in ordinary people it is not so identical in all cases as science would have us believe.

1 February 1937

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I am surprised to hear that even “prognostications” are very harmful. So far we have taken these things as simple supersti-tions.

Prognostications of that kind should not be lightly thought or spoken — especially in the case of the Mother — in other cases, even if there is a possibility or probability, they should be kept confidential from the person affected, unless it is necessary to inform. This is because of the large part played by state of consciousness and suggestion in illness.

What is ptosis? Ptosis means drooping of the upper eyelid by a paralysis temporary or otherwise.

But, confound it, there is nothing of the kind. The drooping of the eyelid was quite voluntary.

2 February 1937

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Whatever little doctors have found by experience to be effective, you absolutely disallow. For instance, they recommend Calomel for diarrhoea; you say it is not to be given . . .

It is no use discussing these matters — the Mother’s views are too far removed from the traditional nostrums to be understood by a medical mind, except those that have got out of the traditional groove or those who after long experience have seen things and can become devastatingly frank about the limitations of their own “science”.