Chapter 57Fear and Illness

and you thought that the little work that you were doing was quite sufficient for you and nothing more was needed. It was this attitude that took you out of my protection. I gave you a warning, but you challenged Nature by saying that nothing could touch you. All these things combined and brought your mental difficulties, weakness and illness.

You must change. You must try to fulfil the conditions of Mahasaraswati, make your work more and more perfect, make progress and try for a psychological transformation. Less than this will not help you. This is the minimum and if you try sincerely, my help will always be there.

These days my work is going on at such a speed that unless you make a serious effort, you will be left far behind and not be able to remain with me. But if you do as I say, everything will be all right.§

* Your illness gave you an opportunity to open your eyes towards the need for an inner change. You must take advantage of this and progress.§

* Things that do not want to change in your nature join together and come out in the form of illness. The only thing to be done is to have a strong aspiration and a total change. Then everything will be all right.§

* Be on your guard. There was on X a formation of fear — fear of cold, fear of bad health, etc. — take care that this formation does not jump upon you; you must reject it resolutely.

* You must not fear. Most of your troubles come from fear. In fact, ninety per cent of illnesses are the result of the subconscient fear of the body. In the ordinary consciousness of the body there is a more or less hidden anxiety about the consequences of the slightest physical disturbance. It can be translated by these words of doubt about the future: “And what will happen?” It is this anxiety that must be checked. Indeed this anxiety is a lack of confidence in the Divine’s Grace, the unmistakable sign that the consecration is not complete and perfect.

As a practical means of overcoming this subconscient fear each time that something of it comes to the surface, the more enlightened part of the being must impress on the body the necessity of an entire trust in the Divine’s Grace, the certitude that this Grace is always working for the best in our self as well as in all, and the determination to submit entirely and unreservedly to the Divine’s Will.

The body must know and be convinced that its essence is divine and that if no obstacle is put in the way of the Divine’s working, nothing can harm us. This process must be steadily repeated until all recurrence of fear is stopped. And then even if the illness succeeds in making its appearance, its strength and duration will be considerably diminished until it is definitively conquered.

14 October 1945

* When physical disorder comes, one must not be afraid; one must not run away from it, must face it with courage, calmness, confidence, with the certitude that illness is a falsehood and that if one turns entirely, in full confidence, with a complete quietude to the divine grace, it will settle in these cells as it establishes itself in the depths of the being, and the cells themselves will share in the eternal Truth and Delight.

*