Developing the Power to Remove Illnesses from the Physical Body

An illness is a vibrational pattern that impacts the body and its normal operations. If one does not succeed in rejecting it before it breaks through the protective vital sheath and then, if one fails to prevent it from taking hold at all in the physical body, one is left with having to deal with the illness that is active in the body and vibrating the physical substance. As we see with all physical forms, they attain a type of “solidity” that makes them less maleable and able to be dealt with, and the physical body shares some of that attribute. Thus, an illness, once it gets into the body requires substantially more effort to remove than if it could be kept out in the first place. It is, however, not impossible to do this. The body has its own defense mechanisms, including the entire action of the immune system to destroy invading organisms or slow down or prevent their reproduction and the set up of the corresponding vibrational patterns. Many of the symptoms we experience are due to the action of the immune system when it comes up against the vector that is trying to take control of the body.

Certain actions can help strengthen the body’s response to the illness, including the use of a will that can strengthen both the immune response and the vital sheath. Acute illnesses generally can be dealt with more easily as they are, by definition, not as deeply embedded or in control of the body. Once an illness becomes chronic, there is an implication that it has begun to change the physical substance and embedded itself more deeply — thus, making it more difficult, but not impossible to remove.

There is a qualitative difference when it comes to physical changes, particularly destructive changes that take place either from an embedded disease, or due to either congenital or acquired infirmities that change the body itself. Similarly a disease that has become entrenched in the being can bring about massive physical changes that may remain even if the disease is eventually dispelled. At our current stage of evolutionary development, we are unable for instance to regrow limbs or organs that have suffered partial destruction. The progression of the disease may be stopped, but the restoration of destroyed tissue may not be possible for most.

There is of course research ongoing, for instance, about regrowing lost teeth or limbs, both of which are possible in certain species in the animal kingdom, and for which there may be genes that are simply inactivated in the human dna. Should we at some point gain access to these genes and be able to activate them, restoration of parts of the physical body could indeed become a reality. Simillarly, work with stem cells seems to indicate that entire organs could be regrown at some point. Again, this is a potential future line of development to address the destruction of tissue that can occur if a disease becomes chronic and destructive of physical substance, or in the case of either physical trauma or congenital issues.

There is thus a hierarchy of action in the case of dealing with physical diseases. First, the will to not allow the vector to penetrate the vital sheath, is the first line of action, and this can be done as the awareness and the strengthening of the vitality and the aura develop. Second is to reduce or eliminate acute conditions that have reached the body. Third is to develop the ability to remove chronic conditions. Finally there is the potentiality to reverse physical damage at some point, whether with the help of bio-technology or through some kind of inner transformative practice that we have generally not yet developed.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “Certainly, one can act from within on an illness and cure it. Only it is not always easy as there is much resistance in Matter, a resistance of inertia. An untiring persistence is necessary; at first one may fail altogether and the symptoms increase, but gradually the control of the body or of a particular illness becomes stronger. Again, to cure an occasional attack of illness by inner means is comparatively easy, to make the body immune from it in future is more difficult. A chronic malady is harder to deal with, more reluctant to disappear entirely than an occasional disturbance of the body. So long as the control of the body is imperfect, there are all these and other imperfections and difficulties in the use of the inner force.”

‘If you can succeed by the inner action in preventing increase, even that is something; you have then by abhyasa to strengthen the power till it becomes able to cure. Note that so long as the power is not entirely there, some aid of physical means need not be altogether rejected.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 4, Ordeals and Difficulties, pp..107-108