Daily Notes and Reflections by Alokda

These three then are the main approaches to develop the outer instruments so as to make them grow constantly toward higher and higher form – vigorous activity is the first, stillness is next, rhythmic activity the last. To combine the three judiciously would perhaps be ideal. But none of these pursued for their own sake would be useful. These must be linked to the indwelling guide constantly so that they receive the newer fresher, invigorating streams of the nectar of immortality to change their substance into the substance of truth and delight. With practice one can them link up all one’s energies to this soul within us. And this can be done simply by offering all one’s activities material and psychological, food and sleep, thought and feelings, all, without exception to the Source. The more we thus link ourselves, the more will our bodies and mind partake in the nature of this psyche in us which is immortal. Thus, our body shall develop faith where it first had fear, our mind develop a luminous view of the self and world where originally there was pessimism, our life develop a true sense of well-being. It is then alone that health would be a natural attitude of the being.

A word of caution is needed here. For we are very likely to be led into a belief that under such a condition one would be free from all illnesses. This would be a grand presumption which is not true, because:

1. Such an ideal state of a total psychic influence upon the physical and psychological parts is itself not easy. It needs persistence and sincere effort for which few are ready.

2. Even when possible, this itself would not grant a total immunity from illnesses but would create an ideal attitude in the body and mind to spontaneously repel illness, and regain an equilibrium. This is because the fundamental nature of matter and mind does not change. It is only brought under a more direct influence of the healthiest part in us – the soul.

3. Even when higher and higher level of energy act, they too being subject to error and falsehood, the chances of ill-health remain though their nature and means of cure may drastically change.

Finally, as a result of this evolutionary process, a time may come, according to Sri Aurobindo when the very nature of the body would change and become the truth substance not subject to falsehood and hence to pain, disease and death. That would be the perfect state of health. Doctors and drugs would cease as would diseases.

What then is the role of our outer modes of living and their relation with this true self in us? As we initially brought out, the science and art of healthful living is a two-fold process:

1. To discover the psychic being and to identify with it is the first fundamental step. It means to live one’s life seeking it and for it.

2. The second step is to live in and by it i.e. to allow it to assume control of our life, our mind and body.

It is necessary to work upon matter, but how? The process can be regarded as akin to the fitting of a bulb to its source. There has to be a wiring to conduct the electricity of the inmost being with the filament strong enough to hear the ‘load’. It is here that a rational system of physical, emotional and mental culture can be extremely useful. It is precisely to make the body and mind more sensitive, more receptive and strong enough to receive, bear and transmit the psychic influence in our lives. Remove this psychic element and all culture becomes meaningless. If exercises alone were enough most animals would be heavenly creatures since unconsciously they adopt the same postures that a hatha-yogin or sportsman does consciously. The same is equally true of emotional culture as art, music and poetry, as of mental culture through philosophy and meditation. All these techniques and many more can give capacity and strength but are not enough to achieve an integral health when solely pursued for their own sake. Along with strength and capacity comes an important element: receptivity to the psychic influence. In other words, all human capacity has to be offered back and linked to the psychic consciousness in us so that we can add health to vigour and the sweetness of the soul to strength.

Physical exercises help to increase plasticity, speed and strength. But this is not enough. For if there is no proportionate increase in receptivity, these capacities exhaust themselves. The same is true in the psychological domain. Something more is needed. Receptivity. Paradoxically, receptivity increases by the opposite process. Receiving is a twofold process: 1. emptying what is already there and 2. receiving the new. Exercise partly helps in the first and thus increases the receptivity. But usually we then pull back the very same forces that have been exhausted. The result is an endless repetition, each cycle of which creates a further groove making matters worse. There is no real progress and ‘fitness’ becomes a static thing rather than a state of dynamic balance. The body and the mind have to learn to receive from higher and higher levels of our being for which the inmost psyche would serve as a nodus. For such a receptivity what is needed is not activity alone but passivity too, not movement alone but immobility too. We can make a simple observation. If we try to make the body immobile, it becomes restless initially since it is not accustomed to such a receiving. Similarly, the mind too shows an initial increase of restless activity when one attempts to immobilise it. This happens because the body and the mind are accustomed to outer movements and activity.

Immobility has to be practised. In nature, we find this twofold movement recurring cyclically and rhythmically: inactivity and rest, wakefulness and sleep. Even subtle biochemical events follow this cycle. This movement of nature has to be made conscious, purposeful and concentrated. Just as replacing the restless natural activities of life do much more good when replaced by methodical exercises, practised immobility also helps much more than an unconscious dull passivity. The oriental thought has always experimented with the power and mastery of immobility. It knew that the still pause of the tiger before the leap in an in-gathered, concentrated state is as important as its run and the actual leap. It is the former that prepares for the latter. To increase the receptivity of the body, traditional asanas are useful. But one need not stick to them alone. To remain conscious, concentrated, in-gathered and physically ready to receive from above is the central thing and any movements that help are effective. The whole question is whether we are ready for this state of spontaneous receptivity?

There is a third approach: rhythmic movement. When more psychologically oriented it takes the form of dance, music, poetry. Dance combines the body, mind and motion in beautiful rhythms. Among the more physically oriented are gymnastics and certain types of sports. Here again, one may or may not adopt the elaborate forms but use the essential elements. For instance, walking, a common activity may be done consciously and rhythmically with a sense of balance and proportion.

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

The third route is taken by higher spiritual forces. Although to the onlooker, a genuine spiritual intervention may be mimicked by vital and mental forces in its outer effects, there is a fundamental difference. Vital and mental forces, being those of Ignorance, work through division. They attack the illness as if it existed in isolation without heeding other issues involved in their formation. Spiritual forces work on the basis of oneness and therefore heal holistically. They take into consideration not only the present state of illness and patient’s constitution, but also the past formations, present necessity and future utility of these things, spontaneously, in the grand design of the universe. They may sometimes take time and the effects may be less instantaneous but the work done is more complete, the healing more thorough. They change the course of illness and convert it into something milder and less dangerous. The force of illness is exhausted or purged from the system in relatively innocuous ways — like catharsis through a safer route. It works upon our mind, life and body to help prepare better ground so that illnesses do not recur.

Finally, the very highest spiritual forces (for here too there is a gradation) may penetrate deeper into the subconscient layer and pluck the illness out from its very roots. When this happens, the illness may seem paradoxically aggravated for a while. The poison, held so far within the dark folds of the subconscient nature, is all at once exposed to the Light. The deeply hidden resistances of human nature that prevent our everyday life from becoming a miracle are brought to the forefront so that the highest Light may definitively work upon them once and for all. It is as if a master craftsman had taken upon himself to carve a god-image out of our mud and slowly but surely chips away at all that stands in the way. This takes considerable time and the process may extend beyond the single lifetime of an individual, yet when it is complete it is a masterpiece, a work of tremendous perfection. But hardly anyone calls this a miracle since we are so cabined in our small and egocentric view, our vision imprisoned in a narrow arc that is unable to appreciate the greatest of miracles since they are too vast to behold. If anything, we resist or lose faith and so instead of assisting the highest alchemy of Grace, we only shut the doors to it and thereby complicate and prolong our own misery.

Much group healing is like this. Such sessions are generally full of vital forces thrown out by the group members themselves and the healer or medium, often a strongly vital person, generating a strong field of vital forces that are supported by a collective hope. Functional illnesses, that is to say, not so much physical as psychological, like for example hysterical paralysis or blindness or epilepsy which is more a dissociative reaction, may seem to magically disappear but only to return in a new dramatic form or remain as an undercurrent in the hysterical personality. Many so-called miracle men thrive on this sort of mixed stuff and some make it really big because of the high drama generated by their extremely vital personality that magnetically attracts such a following. These things often rise on the crest of a popular boom and later crash as suddenly as they had appeared. Of course, people may continue to throng around such individuals because that is the usual psychology of the sufferer. They do not mind trying it out even if it does not work for the moment. In any case, the intensely vital atmosphere, combined with heightened expectation, facilitates an emotional catharsis and so attracts people. Most men relish emotions on display and to that extent this catharsis itself partially helps. It is as if by sharing this group enthusiasm, we forget for a while our personal grief and pain. This is not so much caused by any great or astounding power on the part of the medium, but rather due to the very nature of group psychology!

The other form of a miracle is through the intervention of a higher determinism, or bringing into play higher forces than the physical, say vital (pranic) and mental energies for example. These forces may intervene, changing the course of illness or may simply superimpose themselves on the physical manifestations of illness leading to temporary reprieve. The illness may then remain dormant for years but may never leave completely. It can also erupt again after a certain period. Or else a new malady may appear in place of the old one. Otherwise it might stay as an undercurrent of life, maiming us from within, even though we may seem to be free of the illness from outside.

These interventions sometimes appear miraculous since they relieve and heal without the aid of physical methods. We are so used to thinking and believing that material forces are the only effective means that we feel any other intervention without material support is truly miraculous. But if we look behind the magic and try to understand the play of forces, then we discover that even this is effective only to the extent that the body consciousness secretly supports the will to cure and the mind gives assent through its faith in the process. In reality, the body is cured only when it has decided to be cured and the means it uses is the one in which it has faith.

In other words, miracles have a pathway. A miracle is not a rope trick that hangs from nowhere. Neither does a miracle necessarily ignore the conditions of earthly existence. Take the common example of a miracle cure. Now, the miracle cure may take place without the use of drugs, but it may also employ some material support in that form to shorten the course of illness. Sometimes the illness may be allowed to run its full course and yet the power working out the miracle works in such a way as to avoid possible complication. At other times, it may reduce the need for drugs and their dosage and the response is much faster than usually observed. Finally, it may not change anything in the outer form of the illness, but the mind of the patient is free from suffering, his heart spontaneously lifted to a calm gladness in spite of everything. All these are various forms and shades in the working out of miracles. To understand this, we have to delve a little into the pathway of events and dynamics of a miracle in this great chain of cause and effect.

Any event on earth passes through a chain of processes. Science, or more accurately material science, has studied some of these more outward links in the process. But behind the observed there lies a chain of subtle and hidden forces interlacing through the complex cosmic fields of existence. These forces act and interact with each other to shape outer events, much like those in the physical field. Man is himself a part of that great machinery and is used for the shaping of events. Now one can intervene at many levels in this chain. The first level is the most outward, the physical one; and science has done much to study and master the field of physical forces. One should not think this field inferior since it is merely physical. Its mastery is necessary. Nevertheless, the full significance of this field itself cannot be understood until we have understood its relation to the whole. Yet some of the physical interventions themselves are no less miraculous when seen through the eyes of people living in the previous century!

Behind the physical is another range of consciousness termed the vital. Nature’s primal energies of life are the field of its play. Deft occultists and expert pranic and reiki healers manipulate this domain and, by bringing it into play, alter the balance of physical forces in favour of speeding up the healing process. And beyond the play of life-energies, there is the play of mind-energies whose role in health and healing has already been explored and accepted even by main-stream medicine. Meditation, visualisation, biofeedback are only some of the recognised ways of altering the balance of illness in favour of cure. But mind and life energies are still powers of cosmic ignorance and so they also work much like a physical pill, unable to do anything more than flatten the physical effects of illness by intervening at an earlier chain of events. They cannot tackle the subconscient roots of illness. Of course by altering appearances they too can, like modern medicine, act with swiftness and sometimes give an illusion of cure since the symptoms may disappear. But Nature’s chain persists and, like a spider’s web or hydra’s head, it springs up again in another illness. This continues till death befalls us, unless we try to grapple with the problem at its subconscient roots. This is possible only through higher spiritual forces that are sometimes activated through ardent prayer. This takes time since the roots of the malady are very deep and since it is we who nourish these roots. It is as if we try to push away illness with one hand while clinging onto it with the other.

Miracles can take several directions. The most elementary and stunning are of course those done by modern medicine through a combination of material forces. This is necessary for those not used to invoking higher forces or those not invested with the necessary trust and patience. Some people neither want to take drugs nor fulfil the conditions for a higher intervention on a diseased body. To wait with an occasional prayer expecting a miracle to suddenly appear is to play the fool with oneself. Not that a miracle cannot happen suddenly or that prayers are useless. Prayers may yet be effective and a miracle may still happen, but it may take time.