The Mother on the cause of illness

I was in Japan. It was at the beginning of January 1919. Anyway, it was the time when a terrible flu raged there in the whole of Japan, which killed hundreds of thousands of people. It was one of those epidemics the like of which is rarely seen. In Tokyo, every day there were hundreds and hundreds of new cases. The disease appeared to take this turn: it lasted three days and on the third day the patient died. And people died in such large numbers that they could not even be cremated, you understand, it was impossible, there were too many of them. Or otherwise, if one did not die on the third day, at the end of seven days one was altogether cured; a little exhausted but all the same completely cured. There was a panic in the town, for epidemics are very rare in Japan. They are a very clean people, very careful and with a fine morale. Illnesses are very rare. But still this came, it came as a catastrophe. There was a terrible fear. For example, people were seen walking about in the streets with a mask on the nose, a mask to purify the air they were breathing, so that it might not be full of the microbes of the illness. It was a common fear.

Now, it so happened I was living with someone who never ceased troubling me: “But what is this disease? What is there behind this disease?” What I was doing, you know, was simply to cover myself with my force, my protection so as not to catch it and I did not think of it any more and continued doing my work. Nothing happened and I was not thinking of it. But constantly I heard: “What is this? Oh, I would like to know what is there behind this illness. But could you not tell me what this illness is, why it is there?” etc. One day I was called to the other end of the town by a young woman whom I knew and who wished to introduce me to some friends and show me certain things. I do not remember now what exactly was the matter, but anyway I had to cross the whole town in a tram­car. And I was in the tram and seeing these people with masks on their noses, and then there was in the atmosphere this constant fear, and so there came a suggestion to me; I began to ask myself: “Truly, what is this illness? What is there behind this illness? What are the forces that are in this illness?” I came to the house, I passed an hour there and I returned. And I returned with a terrible fever. I had caught it. It came to you thus, without preparation, instantaneously.

Illnesses, generally illnesses from germs and microbes take a few days in the system: they come, there is a little battle inside; you win or you lose, if you lose you catch the illness, it is not complicated. But there, you just receive a letter, open the envelope, hop! puff! The next minute you have the fever. Well, that evening I had a terrible fever. The doctor was called (it was not I who called him), the doctor was called and he told me: “I must absolutely give you this medicine.” It was one of the best medicines for the fever, he had just a little (all their stocks were exhausted, everyone was taking it); he said: “I have still a few packets, I shall give you some” --- “I beg of you, do not give it to me, I won’t take it. Keep it for someone who has faith in it and will take it.” He was quite disgusted: “It was no use my coming here.” So I said: “Perhaps it was no use!” And I remained in my bed, with my fever, a violent fever. All the while I was asking myself: “What is this illness? Why is it there? What is there behind it?”

At the end of the second day, as I was lying all alone, I saw clearly a being, with a part of the head cut off, in a military uniform (or the remains of a military uniform) approaching me and suddenly flinging himself upon my chest, with that half a head to suck my force. I took a good look, then realised that I was about to die. He was drawing all my life out (for I must tell you that people were dying of pneumonia in three days). I was completely nailed to the bed, without movement, in a deep trance. I could no longer stir and he was pulling. I thought: now it is the end. Then I called on my occult power, I gave a big fight and I succeeded in turning him back so that he could not stay there any longer. And I woke up.

But I had seen. And I had learnt, I had understood that the illness originated from beings who had been thrown out of their bodies. I had seen this during the First Great War, towards its end, when people used to live in trenches and were killed by bombardment. They were in perfect health, altogether healthy and in a second they were thrown out of their bodies, not conscious that they were dead. They did not know they hadn’t a body any more and they tried to find in others the life they could not find in themselves. That is, they were turned into so many countless vampires. And they vampirised upon men. And then over and above that, there was a decomposition of the vital forces of people who fell ill and died. One lived in a kind of sticky and thick cloud made up of all that. And so those who took in this cloud fell ill and usually got cured, but those who were attacked by a being of that kind invariably died, they could not resist. I know how much knowledge and force were necessary for me to resist. It was irresistible. That is, if they were attacked by a being who was a centre of this whirl of bad forces, they died. And there must have been many of these, a very great number. I saw all that and I understood.

When someone came to see me, I asked to be left alone, I lay quietly in my bed and I passed two or three days absolutely quiet, in concentration, with my consciousness. Subsequently, a friend of ours (a Japanese, a very good friend) came and told me: “Ah! You were ill? So what I thought was true.... Just imagine for the last two or three days, there hasn’t been a single new case of illness in the town and most of the people who were ill have been cured and the number of deaths has become almost negligible, and now it is all over. The illness is wholly under control.” Then I narrated what had happened to me and he went and narrated it to everybody. They even published articles about it in the papers.

Well, consciousness, to be sure, is more effective than doctors’ pills! The condition was critical. Just imagine, there were entire villages where everyone had died. There was a village in Japan, not very big, but still with more than a hundred people, and it happened, by some extraordinary stroke of luck, that one of the villagers was to receive a letter (the postman went there only if there was a letter; naturally, it was a village far in the countryside); so he went to the countryside; there was a snowfall; the whole village was under snow... and there was not a living person. It was exactly so. It was that kind of epidemic. And Tokyo was also like that; but Tokyo was a big town and things did not happen in the same fashion. And it was in this way the epidemic ended. That is my story.

- The Mother, 22-Jul-1953


(CWM Volume 5, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1977, Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry 605002)

Sri Aurobindo's thoughts and aphorisms

• Medical Science has been more a curse to mankind than a blessing. It has broken the force of epidemics and unveiled a marvelous surgery; but, also, it has weakened the natural health of man and multiplied individual diseases; it has implanted fear and dependence in the mind and body; it has taught our health to repose not on natural soundness but a rickety and distasteful crutch compact from the mineral and vegetable kingdoms.

• We laugh at the savage for his faith in the medicine man; but how are the civilised less superstitious who have faith in the doctors? The savage finds that when a certain incantation is repeated, he often recovers from a certain disease; he believes. The civilised patient finds that when he doses himself according to a certain prescription, he often recovers from a certain disease; he believes. Where is the difference? One could say in conclusion that it is the faith of the patient which gives the remedy its power to heal. If men had an absolute faith in the healing power of Grace, they would perhaps avoid many illnesses.

• The healthiest ages of mankind were those in which there were the fewest material remedies.

• We ought to use the divine health in us to cure and prevent diseases; but Galen and Hippocrates and their tribe have given us instead an armoury of drugs and a barbarous Latin hocus­pocus as our physical gospel.

• The spirit within us is the only all­efficient doctor and submission of the body to it the one true panacea.

• God within is infinite and self­fulfilling Will. Unappalled by the fear of death canst thou leave to Him, not as an experiment, with a calm and entire faith thy ailments? Thou shalt find that in the end He exceeds the skill of a million doctors.

• Medical Science to the human body is like a great Power which enfeebles a smaller State by its protection or like a benevolent robber who knocks his victim flat and riddles him with wounds in order that he may devote his life to healing and serving the shattered body.


(CWM Volume 10, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1977, Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry 605002)

Prayers and meditations

When physical conditions are a little difficult and some discomfort follows, if one knows how to surrender completely before Thy will, caring little for life or death, health or illness, the integral being enters immediately into harmony with Thy law of love and life, and all physical indisposition ceases giving place to a calm well-being, deep and peaceful.

I have noticed that when one enters into an activity that necessitates great physical endurance, what tires one most is anticipating beforehand all the difficulties to which one will be exposed. It is much wiser to see at every moment only the difficulty of the present instant; in this way the effort becomes much easier for it is always proportionate to the amount of strength, the resistance at one's disposal. The body is a marvelous tool, it is our mind that does not know how to use it and, instead of fostering its suppleness, its plasticity, it brings a certain fixity into it which comes from preconceived ideas and unfavourable suggestions.

But the supreme science, O Lord, is to unite with Thee, to trust in Thee, to live in Thee, to be Thyself; and then nothing is any longer impossible to a man who manifests Thy omnipotence.

Lord, my aspiration rises to Thee like a silent canticle, a mute adoration, and Thy divine Love illumines my heart.

O divine Master, I bow to Thee!
- The Mother, 17 March 1914

Peace and stillness are the great remedy for disease. Catch hold of a peace deep within and push it into the cells of the body. With the peace will come back the health.
- The Mother

Peace can be brought down into the physical – to its very cells. It is the active transformation of the physical that cannot be completely done without the supramental descent.
– Sri Aurobindo

Question of the month

Q: Nirodbaran: The Mother once said that there is hardly a disease that cannot be cured by Yoga. Can cancer be cured by it?

A: Sri Aurobindo: Of course it can, but on condition of faith or openness or both. Even a mental suggestion can cure cancer – with luck of course, as is shown by the case of the woman operated on unsuccessfully for cancer, but the doctors lied and told her it had succeeded. Result, cancer symptoms all ceased and she died many years afterwards of another illness altogether.

(Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, Nirodbaran, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1969, published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry)


Q: Can one get ill through fear?

A: Mother: Yes. I knew someone who was so full of fear that he got cholera! There was cholera in the next house and he got so frightened that he caught the illness and without any other reason, there was no other reason for his catching it: it was through sheer fright. And it is a very common thing; in an epidemic, it is so in the majority of the cases. It is through fear that the door is opened and you catch the illness. Those who have no fear can go about freely and generally they catch nothing. But still as I have said there, you may have no fear in the mind, you many have no fear even in the vital, but who has no fear in the body? Very few.

A very strict discipline is needed to cure the body of fear. The cells themselves tremble. It is only by discipline, by yoga that one can overcome this fear. But it is a fact that one can catch anything through fear, even invite an accident. And, you see, from a certain point of view everything is contagious. I knew a person who got a wound through the kind of fear that he felt seeing someone else’s wound. He really got it.


(CWM Volume 5, Centenary Edition Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1976, Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry- 605002) .

From Savitri

Then in the process of evolving Time
All shall be drawn into a single plan,
A divine harmony shall be earth’s law,
Beauty and Joy remould her way to live:
Even the body shall remember God,
Nature shall draw back from mortality
And Spirit’s fires shall guide the earth’s blind force;
Knowledge shall bring into the aspirant Thought
A high proximity to Truth and God.


(Savitri, Book 11, Canto 1)

And when that greater Self comes sea-like down
To fill this image of our transience,
All shall be captured by delight, transformed:
In waves of undreamed ecstasy shall roll
Our mind and life and sense and laugh in a light
Other than this hard limited human day,
The body’s tissues thrill apotheosised,
Its cells sustain bright metamorphosis.
This little being of Time, this shadow-soul,
This living dwarf figure-head of darkened spirit
Out of its traffic of petty dreams shall rise.

(Savitri, Book 2, Canto 5)

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.

Integral Enrichment Programme – A review of the toddler’s group

The 6th Integral Education retreat brought me back to the first one held in June 2004. I was amazed at how time flies, especially since I was out of the programme for more than two years. It felt good to be back in the familiar environment of the center. However, this time I saw the morning’s programme from the viewpoint of a facilitator as well as a parent.

I was excited to bring my daughter, Ananya, along with me to the center. We started out with meditation on Mother’s music. After that, Shreevalli narrated a short story from the Mahabharata relating Arjuna’s concentration while shooting a toy bird’s eye. Although all of us knew this tale, it helped to reinforce that we need to concentrate on our activities and always be present in that moment.

We then moved on to the ice-breaker session. We played “Whacko”. The game helped all of us to know each other’s names. For the older children, it was a good test of memory plus a good warm up session for the subsequent physical activities. For the younger ones, it was just fun to watch everyone run in circles! Later, we split into two groups and I went to help out with the youngest group of children, aged two to five.

The first activity we had was making ‘clean mud’. This involved unrolling lots of toilet tissue and mixing it with soap and water. The texture then became that of a mud that the kids enjoyed exploring. It was great to see mothers pitching in and making some ‘mud sculptures’ with their little ones. We noticed that the children enjoyed getting their hands ‘dirty’. The main joy for them was that they played in an unrestricted environment.

After a round of outdoor games, we moved indoors for a short break. The next session involved some story telling and art work. The children were given flash cards of various animals that they imitated. Kiruthika narrated the story of the very hungry caterpillar using props. Each child was given a character from the story. It was nice to see everyone alert and attentive during this session. The art session that followed was interesting too. The children were given access to a ‘salad bar’ of art supplies and they came up with original pieces of art work. What struck us most was how the children got along with each other and worked on their individual art without any fuss and noise. Everyone was polite with each other, quietly taking turns when needed. And all this was done with minimal supervision from parents and facilitators.


The morning ended with a light lunch with everyone chattering happily about the day’s activities. Indeed the Sunday of 28th June was different – one well spent – a day that gave immense satisfaction when one reflected on it.