Chapter 56Inner Causes of Illness

I have been having various kinds of small accidents and hurts, and I feel troubled because all my efforts to avoid them seem to go in vain. What should I do?

You need not torture yourself about these small things — they have no importance in themselves and their utility is to show us where inconscience is still to be found in our nature so that we may put light there.

13 July 1937

* You must take this illness as a sign that in spite of all your convictions, perhaps even resolutions, you have to do sadhana and to add to your outer consecration in work the inner consecration of deep understanding and psychological transformation and make use of your seclusion for that purpose.

My love and help are with you.

6 April 1952

* Physical ailments are always the sign of a resistance in the physical being; but with surrender to the Divine’s Will and a complete trust in the working of the Grace, they are bound to disappear soon.

22 May 1957

* Sri Aurobindo says,

“Disease is needlessly prolonged and ends in death oftener than is inevitable, because the mind of the patient supports and dwells upon the disease of the body”,1

and I add, 1 Thoughts and Aphorisms, in SABCL, Vol. 17, p. 126.

“An illness of the body is always the outer expression and translation of a disorder, a disharmony in the inner being; unless this inner disorder is healed, the outer cure cannot be total and permanent.”

1 October 1959

* Physical troubles always come as lessons to teach equality and to reveal what in us is pure and luminous enough to remain unaffected. It is in equality that one finds the remedy.

An important point: equality does not mean indifference.

11 December 1965

* The illness has come like a test and gone like a purification carrying away all that was standing in the way of the joy of an integral consecration.

2 February 1967

* This illness has been put upon you by the hostile forces as a strong test.

You have not met it with the proper attitude. That is why it lingers. Your going back to Madras does not ameliorate the attitude — on the contrary.

You yield to a movement of fear and distrust in the Divine. I cannot see that it will lead to anything good for you.

* Your illness was not a mere accident. You did not give sufficient attention to the inner change, a psychological change with a broadening of your consciousness. You were satisfied with yourself. You were shut up in your small shell and did not try to make any progress. You said sadhana did not interest you