Page 12 - All India Magazine May-2020

Causes of illness

Outer forces and inner condition
There are two factors that have to be considered in the
matter. There is what comes from outside and there is what
comes from your inner condition. Your inner condition be-
comes a cause of illness when there is a resistance or revolt
in it or when there is some part in you that does not re-
spond to the protection; or even there may be something
there that almost willingly and wilfully calls in the adverse
forces. It is enough if there is a slight movement of this kind
in you; the hostile forces are at once upon you and their at-
tack takes often the form of illness.

But are not illnesses sometimes the result of microbes
and not a part of the movement of the Yoga?
Where does Yoga begin and where does it end? Is not the
whole of your life Yoga? The possibilities of illness are always
there in your body and around you; you carry within you or
there swarm about you the microbes and germs of every dis-
ease. How is it that all of a sudden you succumb to an illness
which you did not have for years? You will say it is due to
a “depression of the vital force”. But from where does the
depression come? It comes from some disharmony in the be-
ing, from a lack of receptivity to the divine forces. When you
cut yourself off from the energy and light that sustain you,
then there is this depression, there is created what medical
science calls a “favourable ground” and something takes ad-
vantage of it. It is doubt, gloominess, lack of confidence, a
selfish turning back upon yourself that cuts you off from the
light and divine energy and gives the attack this advantage.
It is this that is the cause of your falling ill and not microbes.

CWM 3: 55-56

12 All India Magazine, May 2020