Editorial

In this issue, the spotlight is on “Health and Healing”, a subject that has been a vital part of human life on earth since antiquity. According to Cochrane (1996, An Illustrated History of Medicine, Tiger Books International, PLC) man has been at healing for 12,000 years, since pre-historic times. Health and healing were very much associated with religion, since the cause of ill-health was supposedly a mystery. However, from the time bacteria was understood and described and later the virus, medical science progressed in leaps and bounds and health and healing became closely associated with medical science. However, health and healing never have dissociated themselves from the religious or the spiritual. Since health and healing are fundamental to man’s survival, there is no surprise that they be associated with man’s deepest core, his spiritual realms or even religious, for that matter.

The indulgence in health and healing appears to be an expression of a special instinct especially developed in animals and man, the survival instinct, born out of nature’s need to preserve herself. Of all creatures on earth, as in most cases, man has been largely successful in understanding the nature of diseases and their cures and modes of prevention. He has been able to systematize processes towards health and healing through centuries of seeking, finding and refining. As always, we can, to an extent, ascribe this to his spectacular mind, ceaselessly seeking and searching for greater levels of perfection. However, it is only an extension of life, really, that he has succeeded in arriving at, in temporal terms. The rare fruit of immortality eludes him and lures him on his march forward and onwards.

Why preserve life? Would it be to enjoy life to the fullest and then perish, satisfied? Would it be to fulfill certain needs of the body or the vital, after whose satisfaction life could end? Who decides? Or is there something else behind this apparent body that, whilst clothed in the apparel of a body, seeks out some experiences for itself, as an actor on stage, and discards the apparel as would the actor, after the show? Healing implies some disorder, disequilibrium or disharmony that has to be set right or “healed” in the affected part of the being, be it the mind, the vital or the body. It implies restoring the being back to the condition of equilibrium prior to the setting in of disequilibrium (or was there such a state of equilibrium to begin with, or was it just another dimension or level of disequilibrium?). We can move a step further and ask ourselves, “How and why, the disequilibrium, the disharmony or the disorder?” A suggestive finger points to balance. What then is balance? Balance in what? When is balance no more?

Health houses in it suggestions of some stability of being, a state of equilibrium, of well-being in all parts of the nature, the mind, vital and body. Associated with “health” words such as joy, happiness, peace and calm float in, and the possibility of new adventures, new discoveries and growth that a prolonged life and a happy state may offer.

Is health a given or has it to be nurtured, systematically and with discipline? What is the nature of a healthy mind, life and body? In this issue, we present some ways of approaching this special area of importance to all of us. The Mother, with Her luminous words, refers to a perfected state of being, while at the same time giving us a concrete idea of the cause of excellent health:

A perfect harmony in the proportions, suppleness and strength, grace and force, plasticity and endurance, and above all, an excellent health, unvarying and unchanging, which is the result of a pure soul, a happy trust in life and an unshakeable faith in the Divine Grace.

Health and Healing demand a disciplined life, systematically organised, consciously balancing every aspect of our being from the food we eat, the way we carry out our physical activities, to the way we think and feel, interact and communicate, to the very way we live life, in our very being, our consciousness. One more important ingredient stands out. The Mother states, “If men had an absolute faith in the healing power of Grace, they would perhaps avoid many illnesses.” Flip the pages, find out more.