Daily Offerings from Alokda

Health as an Attitude – The Problem

It is here that we encounter the first difficulty. For, though we all know the healthy habits, it is somehow difficult for man to keep a healthy attitude towards life. Let us take a very small example of tobacco and alcohol. It is now affirmed the world over that they are detrimental to health. Yet, even though reduced, they continue to take their toll and paradoxically more so in the literate population who knows about its ill effects. Thus it is not enough to merely inform the mind of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ habits. Where then is the heart of the problem? We can make an observation here. We find that the body left to itself in its natural state knows how to adopt healthful habits. To illustrate, one can take two examples. One, the lungs repel tobacco by coughing and the stomach repels alcohol, as all noxious substances, by vomiting. Two, animals, particularly those not corrupted by the domestic life often live their natural life span. Thus, our observations lead to the following conclusions:

i) the body, left to itself, has a hidden knowledge, a kind of intuition regarding what is healthy and unhealthy for it. The first aim of all physical culture should be to awaken this body-consciousness which is occult so far.

ii) The mind and its reasoned arguments often corrupt this ‘instinct’ and create a precarious chain of illness – medicine – deterioration of health – more illness. The ‘resistance’ to any illness goes down and one begins to rely more and more on doctors and drugs.

iii) Even when the mind is informed about what is healthy and what is not, it finds it difficult to convey it to the body, as if there was gulf between the two.

iv) Since in man, the mind is the primary element; the body tends to lose its healthy attitude over a period of time.

Health as an Attitude – The Solution

If these be the main problems in adopting a healthy attitude towards life there must be some ways of circumventing them. For nature never gives a problem without also giving the solution. Illness is one such problem whose extreme end is death, the eternal problem that mankind seems to have been grappling with. In each age a different solution is given to make humanity advance a little. The solutions of one age alone do not suffice for another. The unique discovery of the Vedic age by which they encountered death was to discover the principle of immortality in the soul.

Here we find one bright hint for it gives us a glimpse into a secret part of our being for which health and immortality are natural and native, which is not corrupted by the mind and has the will to enforce its law upon the mind as well as the body. This is perhaps one of the greatest boons that man has ever received – the boon of getting in touch with his soul, his inmost being; the inner healer and the unerring guide. Sri Aurobindo gave it the name of ‘psychic being’. Any talk of wholeness, integration, even physical health without including this soul principle is a mere waste and an exercise of digging a well in a desert. To bring this part secret within us, to allow its full play in the physical, (as we shall see later) is to open the inner springs of true health so that health becomes a natural state and an attitude which by repeated impressions upon the mind and body forms into a habit of the being.

To seek, find and identify ourselves with this core of our being, the true person, is then the first fundamental step towards a beautiful healthy and wholesome living. There are several ways to approach this central entity in us which have been abundantly clarified in the writings of the Mother. No single method can be taken as hard and fixed for one and all. Yet, the fundamental thing is to seek it and seek it with all one’s ardour. The rest will naturally follow for one would soon discover that the seeker itself is the sought. All life can be a field of such a discovery and action and any particular method or technique has its value only so far as it helps the individual to getting into touch with his core. But then a question arises whether at all there is a role of the elaborate systems of physical and mental culture that mankind has developed so far. The answer is a distinct ‘yes’ for nothing is meaningless, only things must have their fight place.

An Integral view of health will include the body, mind and soul as one unit. That is to say even in their distinctions; these three elements of our being interact with each other and mutually fulfill. To divorce one from the other is to create an imbalance in the being, the consequences of which may be serious enough. It is for this reason that the well known but misunderstood ancient Indian system of Hatha Yoga is often misapplied to mean a purely physical culture. At best, we admit the mind, at least the material mind, in this scheme. At worst, we confuse the yogasanas as being a synonym for yoga – an aim too high and an ideal too lofty to be limited by this or that system and set of techniques, however useful to a few or even the many. The consequences are a whole lot of confusion which is made worse by a rapid increase in popular easy-to-do reading material on the asanas and pranayams with often astounding claims which only serve to excite the glamour seeking elements in us rather than persuading subtly the nobler parts of our being. A novice often feels (and we all are novice) that by practising a set of asanas for an hour or so, he will find a panacea for life. A panacea it is but not the way it is often believed. For man’s restless mind is often happy if it does ‘something’ concrete visible and seemingly tangible. It finds it difficult and exasperating to sit quietly or even while in activity to observe and shift the subtle psychological elements of his being. Even of meditation, it makes a cut and dried technique – a ritual of a particular mantra for it appears tangible and relatively easy. But no yoga is easy. There are no royal roads to wholeness & integration. So the first dictum in any true healthy living is to understand that health is an attitude – a total attitude as much of the body as of the mind and psyche.

We see that a miracle has two requirements, which represent two ends of a single continuum. On one is the nature of the force that performs the miracle, at the other, there is the ground and recipient on whom the miracle is performed. The force responsible for the miracle may come from the subtle physical, vital, mental, rarely the spiritual or even the very highest Divine Grace. Each brings its own stamp on the nature of the induced change. The Divine Grace works thoroughly and therefore may need more time, as it is not bound by human calculations. The other forces may sometimes seem to work instantaneously but their work is incomplete and the malady is mostly held in check rather than truly healed. It may erupt later with similar or altered appearances, necessitating repeated interventions. The ground conditions that facilitate a miracle by the intervention of the highest are faith in the Force or the one who represents it. It is further facilitated by an atmosphere of calm and peace. Detachment in the mind and nervous vital parts from the suffering is a further help. Above all, an absence of fear and anxiety about the illness and its possible complications immensely helps the process. Of course, most miracles need some kind of call from the subject, but this call should not be confused with anxiety. It may be intense and full of a luminous trust in the Divine. Luminous in the sense that one should be full of confidence that the Divine is there, looking after our bodily existence and even if it seems apparently painful and even if we do not understand it now, it is for the best in the highest sense.

Of course the materialist might always object that all this talk of unseen forces is simply an imagination. To him, all such instances of unexpected recovery are due to chance (a scientifically approved term that conceals ignorance of the forces and factors involved). Or else he points to nothing more than cases of spontaneous recovery that have run their natural course. There is, of course, some truth in the latter logic since many illnesses indeed seem to recover without any intervention, if we only allow sufficient time. But the time taken in spontaneous recovery is precisely due to this play of forces behind the scene. There is no other miracle but a conscious handling and use of these concealed forces. After all, the material scientist is simply stating a fact that illnesses do spontaneously recover and there can be no objection since this is a well-known truth. Indeed some so-called miracle makers credit themselves with this type of recovery. But these facts do not discredit the play of deeper forces. The materialist does not understand or has an a priori bias against them. He is unable to explain the phenomenon or reproduce it, though he sometimes does try to explain it away. That is to say, he plays with words that sound high and scientifically authentic, but where there is equally no evidence. The charlatan, on the other hand, simply makes a false claim of having a hold over these forces whilst he has none. The matter cannot be proved or disproved on the physical plane. It is like small children trying to guess what propels an engine or lights a bulb. So long as the process is unknown it appears a miracle; when it is known and understood, it is simply natural. So too, in the deepest sense, there is no miracle but only a play of Nature, or indeed, Supernature. Once we have understood and known its process it becomes natural to us, though it may still seem miraculous to the one who has not yet ventured into that territory. Just as children stop regarding commonplace events as magical or miraculous when they grow up and learn the process of things, so too we must grow out of our infancy and play with energies and learn about other forces in God’s world of infinite wonders. Then the scientist and the occultist shall speak with one voice. Then the miracle shall cease to be. Or perhaps the whole of life and its most seemingly insignificant events will appear as a wonder and miracle!

Alok Pandey