Physical
Consciousness—Subconscient—Sleep and Dreams—Illness
Page-5
Physical fatigue like this in the course of the sadhana
may come from various reasons:
(i) It may come from receiving more than the physical is
ready to assimilate. The cure is then quiet rest in conscious
immobility receiving the forces but not for any other purpose
than the recuperation of the strength and energy.
(ii) It may be due to the passivity taking the form of inertia—inertia
brings the consciousness down towards the ordinary physical
level which is soon fatigued and prone to tamas.
The cure here is to get back into the true consciousness
and to rest there, not in inertia.
(iii) It may be due to mere overstrain of the body—not
giving it enough sleep or repose. The body is the support
of the Yoga, but its energy is not inexhaustible and needs
to be husbanded, it can be kept up by drawing on the universal
vital Force but that reinforcement too has its limits. A
certain moderation is needed even in the eagerness for progress—moderation,
not indifference or indolence.
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Sri Aurobindo
Illness
marks some imperfection or weakness or else opening to adverse
touches in the physical nature and is often connected also
with some obscurity or disharmony in the lower vital or
the physical mind or elsewhere.
It
is very good if one can get rid of illness entirely by faith
and Yoga-power or the influx of the Divine Force. But very
often this is not altogether possible, because the whole
nature is not open or able to respond to the Force. The
mind may have faith and respond, but the lower vital and
the body may not follow. Or, if the mind and vital are ready,
the body may not respond, or may respond only partially,
because it has the habit of replying to the forces which
produce a particular illness, and habit is a very obstinate
force in the material part of the nature. In such cases
the use of the physical means can be resorted to,—not
as the main means, but as a help or material support to
the action of the Force. Not strong and violent remedies,
but those that are beneficial without disturbing the body.
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Sri Aurobindo
Attacks
of illness are attacks of the lower nature or of adverse
forces taking advantage of some weakness, opening or response
in the nature,—like all other things that come and
have got to be thrown away, they come from outside. If one
can feel them so coming and get the strength and the habit
to throw them away before they can enter the body, then
one can remain free from illness. Even when the attack seems
to rise from within, that means only that it has not been
detected before it entered the subconscient; once in the
subconscient, the force that brought it rouses it from there
sooner or later and it invades the system. When you feel
it just after it has entered, it is because though it came
direct and not through the subconscient, yet you could not
detect it while it was still outside. Very often it arrives
like that frontally or more often tangentially from the
side direct, forcing its way through the subtle vital envelope
which is our main armour of defence, but it can be stopped
there in the envelope itself before it penetrates the material
body. Then one may feel some effect, e.g.; feverishness
or a tendency to cold, but there is not the full invasion
of the malady. If it can be stopped earlier or if the vital
envelope of itself resists and remains strong, vigorous
and intact, then there is no illness; the attack produces
no physical effect and leaves no traces.
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Sri Aurobindo
Certainly,
one can act from within on an illness and cure it. Only
it is not always easy as there is much resistance in Matter,
a resistance of inertia. An untiring persistence is necessary;
at first one may fail altogether or the symptoms increase,
but gradually the control of the body or of a particular
illness becomes stronger. Again, to cure an occasional attack
of illness by inner means is comparatively easy, to make
the body immune from it in future is more difficult. A chronic
malady is harder to deal with, more reluctant to disappear
entirely than an occasional disturbance of the body. So
long as the control of the body is imperfect, there are
all these and other imperfections and difficulties in the
use of the inner force.
If
you can succeed by the inner action in preventing increase,
even that is something; you have then by abhyäsa
to strengthen the power till it becomes able to cure. Note
that so long as the power is not entirely there, some aid
of physical means need not be altogether rejected.
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Sri Aurobindo
Medicines
are a pis aller that have to be used when something
in the consciousness does not respond or responds superficially
to the Force. Very often it is some part of the material
consciousness that is unreceptive—at other times it
is the subconscient which stands in the way even when the
whole waking mind, life, physical consent to the liberating
influence. If the subconscient also answers, then even a
slight touch of the Force can not only cure the particular
illness but make that form or kind of illness practically
impossible hereafter.
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Sri Aurobindo
Your
theory of illness is rather a perilous creed—for illness
is a thing to be eliminated, not accepted or enjoyed. There
is something in the being that enjoys illness, it is possible
even to turn the pains of illness like any other pain into
a form of pleasure; for pain and pleasure are both of them
degradations of an original Ananda and can be reduced into
the terms of each other or else sublimated into their original
principle of Ananda. It is true also that one must be able
to bear illness with calm, equanimity, endurance, even recognition
of it, since it has come, as something that had to be passed
through in the course of experience. But to accept and enjoy
it means to help it to last and that will not do; for illness
is a deformation of the physical nature just as lust, anger,
jealousy, etc; are deformations of the vital nature and
error and prejudice and indulgence of falsehood are deformations
of the mental nature. All these things have to be eliminated
and rejection is the first condition of their disappearance
while acceptance has a contrary effect altogether.
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Sri Aurobindo
All
illnesses pass through the nervous or vital-physical sheath
of the subtle consciousness and subtle body before they
enter the physical. If one is conscious of the subtle body
or with the subtle consciousness, one can stop an illness
on its way and prevent it from entering the physical body.
But it may have come without one's noticing, or when one
is asleep or through the subconscient, or in a sudden rush
when one is off one's guard; then there is nothing to do
but to fight it out from a hold already gained on the body.
Self-defence by these inner means may become so strong that
the body becomes practically immune as many Yogis are. Still
this "practically" does not mean "absolutely".
The absolute immunity can only come with the supramental
change. For below the supramental it is the result of an
action of a Force among many forces and can be disturbed
by a disruption of the equilibrium established—in the
supramental it is a law of the nature; in a supramentalised
body immunity from illness would be automatic, inherent
in its new nature.
There
is a difference between Yogic Force on the mental and inferior
planes and the Supramental Nature. What is acquired and
held by the Yoga-Force in the mind-and-body consciousness
is in the supramental inherent and exists not by achievement
but by nature—it is self-existent and absolute.
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Sri Aurobindo
