Solving Illness With Insight and Moderation

It is a natural human tendency, and it carries over to those who take up spiritual practice. This tendency sees most things through the mental lens and tries to categorize them as black and white, positive and negative, etc., essentially creating a mental framework of exclusion that looks to thoughts, actions and focus without looking at process, timing or the needs of the various elements being addressed, whether they are individual formations of the mental, emotional, vital or physical basis or more general formations of the social framework. Thus, we tend to extremes and become dogmatic.

This habit of perspective also affects the way spiritual seekers look at the issue of curing illness. We frequently hear the refrain that they do not take any medicines or vaccinations as they don’t believe in them and believe that their faith and their spiritual practice will take care of them. There is certainly a certain element of truth in the pure surrender of the being to spiritual guidance. However, in many cases, when an individual becomes ill, we see a different picture emerge which shows the faith was not as perfect as their mental belief system had professed.

Sri Aurobindo explores the process by which spiritual force can effectuate healing in the physical body. Spiritual force, when it is active in the being, needs to deal with the realities of the mind, the vital being and the physical body. The physical body, in particular, has a material basis and is thus subject to habitual patterns of response and reaction that are deeply embedded and are both difficult to change and which take time even with constant and repeated pressure to change.

While the pressure to change is taking place, the being may require support that is operative on the level to which it is habitually accustomed. The use of a placebo shows us that the mind can more easily accept the healing force in many cases through a physical medium that convinces it that it is being aided. The use of pranayama, mantras or prayers may help the vital envelope strengthen its ability to resist the illness. The use of specific medicines, including homeopathy which works on a vibrational level, may aid the body in its own response to a situation.

The question is not solved by taking an extreme position that does not recognise time, process and circumstances; rather, the constant pressure of the spiritual force can take the temporary and intermediate aid of mental, vital and physical support systems to address illness and help the seeker maintain a strong foundation for the spiritual work to be done.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “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 or 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, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 5, Physical Consciousness — Subconscient — Sleep and Dream — Illness, pp. 105-106