Illness Is a Deformation of the Physical Nature

When an individual takes up a spiritual path, he has to work through the seemingly fine lines of distinction that the various prescriptions and directions for progress along the path appear to carry. For example, ‘equality’ and ‘equanimity’ are counseled as essential characteristics for progress. This leads some individuals, for a time, to take these terms to extremes that were never intended, due to the dogmatic nature of the mental understanding, the desire to have a clear cut, uniform and neatly defined process for the needed progress. One of the extremes that we occasionally hear relates to accepting illness rather than rejecting it outright. The thinking goes, that the individual has surrendered himself to the Divine and whatever the Divine chooses to provide is to be accepted without question. This is a form of tamasic surrender that allows any force, no matter how much it may weaken the being, to have sway, without discrimination or any filtering process.

Not every force that comes to an individual is a force for the progressive manifestation of the Divine in the world. Some forces actively work to hold back that progress, to maintain the status quo, and to prevent the transformation of life that will undermine their sway. These forces may work on the mental level, the vital level or the physical level. Attacks of illness work to undermine the strength and stability of the body. For a practitioner of the integral yoga, the body needs to be strong enough to hold and respond to the Divine Force. When illness undermines this strength, it becomes an obstacle.

It is through our conscious choices that we aid in the transformation process or become tools of those forces that want to deny the transformation. If we choose to accept and embrace mentally the vibrations of any illness, we are opening the door to it, building grooves of response in the physical cells, and thereby making it easier for those vibrations to act on the being. If we reject those vibratory patterns, we strengthen the barriers against the illness, and thereby support the strong, vibrant and receptive physical foundation needed to practice this yogic endeavour.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “Your theory of illness is rather a perilous creed — for illness is a thing to be eliminated, not accepted or enjoyed. There is something in the being that enjoys illness, it is possible even to turn the pains of illness like any other pain into a form of pleasure; for pain and pleasure are both of them degradations of an original Ananda and can be reduced into terms of each other or else sublimated into their original principle of Ananda. It is true also that one must be able to bear illness with calm, equanimity, endurance, even recognition of it, since it has come, as something that had to be passed through in the course of experience. But to accept and enjoy it means to help it to last and that will not do; for illness is a deformation of the physical nature just as lust, anger, jealousy, etc., are deformations of the vital nature and error and prejudice and indulgence of falsehood are deformations of the mental nature. All these things have to be eliminated and rejection is the first condition of their disappearance while acceptance has a contrary effect altogether.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 5, Physical Consciousness — Subconscient — Sleep and Dream — Illness, pp. 106-107