Health and Illness

Illness is disharmony, either physical disharmony or mental disharmony; the one acts upon the other. What causes disharmony? The lack of tone and rhythm. How can it be interpreted in physical terminology? Prana, or life, or energy is the tone. Circulation, regularity is the rhythm; regularity in the beatings of the heart, of the pulse and the circulation of the blood through the veins. In physical terms, the lack of circulation means congestion; and the lack of Prana, or life, or energy means weakness. These two conditions attract illness and are the cause of illness. In mental terms the rhythm is the action of the mind, whether the mind is active in harmonious thoughts or in disharmonious thoughts, whether the mind is strong, firm, and steady, or whether it is weak.

Disorder of the tone and irregularity in the rhythm are the principal causes of every illness...

When a person's mind is going at a speed which is faster, or at a speed which is slower than it ought to be, or if a person jumps from one thought to another and so goes on thinking of a thousand things in five minutes, however intellectual he may be, he cannot be normal. Or if a person holds one thought and broods on it instead of making progress, he will also cling to his depression, his fears, his disappointments, and that makes him ill. It is irregularity of the rhythm of mind, which causes mental disorder.

I do not mean that the rhythm of the mind of one person must be like that of another person. No, each person's rhythm is peculiar to himself.

...The body is an instrument, the most sacred instrument, an instrument which God Himself has made for His divine purpose. If it is kept in tune and the strings are not allowed to become loose, then this instrument becomes the means of that harmony for which God created man.

...Whether it is nervous illness, whether it is mental disorder, whether it is physical illness, at the root of all these different aspects of illness there is one cause, and that cause is disharmony.

The body, which has once become disharmonious, turns into a receptacle of disharmonious influences, of disharmonious atoms; it partakes of them without knowing it; and so it is with the mind.

Besides this the harmony of the body and the mind depends upon one's external life, the food one eats, the way one lives, the people one meets, the work one does, the climate in which one lives. There is no doubt that under the same conditions one person may be ill and another may be well. The reason is that one is in harmony with the food he eats, with the weather he lives in, with the people whom he meets, with the conditions around him. Another person revolts against the food he eats against the people he meets, against the conditions that surround him, against the weather he must live in. This is because he is not in harmony; and he perceives and experiences similar results in all things in his life. Disorder and illness are the result.

The life of man is so pulled from all sides, so divided, that he often forgets things that are most essential to his life, which the lower creatures seem to keep more correctly in their lives. Neatness in man's work and balance in man's actions show rhythm in him. When man shows lack of balance in his life and when his life is disturbed and all things seem to go wrong, it is most often that the rhythm of his breath has become wrong. Irregularity of activity and repose in the habits of life causes disorder of rhythm in the breath.

Activity weakens and repose strengthens the mind and the body. By the word "strengthens" is meant that they get life from within, not necessarily from their own element. One may ask, "Would sitting idle help a person to become muscular, and would lack of thinking make one wise?" The answer is, no; activity would help a person to be muscular rather than stillness, and thinking would make man wise rather than the silence of thought; but activity in both the mind and the body would bring them to their own element. In other words, the body by activity would become muscular, and the mind would become thoughtful. But it is stillness alone which can give them the life from within and the light from within. Therefore, the body and the mind of a master Sufi may not seem to be stronger than those of another person, and yet they have a life peculiar to them, which everybody does not possess.

...As a mechanism wants winding every day, or a musical instrument wants tuning, so every person, whatever be his life and occupation, wants tuning every day. And what is this tuning? This tuning is the harmonizing of every action of the mechanism of the body, the harmonizing of the pulsation, of the beating of the head and heart, of the circulation of the blood; and this can be done by the proper method of repose.

A regular life, pure diet, good sleep, a balance between activity and repose, and right breathing, all these help one to health. But the best remedy for healing oneself of all illnesses and infirmities of mind is belief...