The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7

Diseases and Accidents

If the body is ill, does the mind too fall ill?

Not necessarily, to be sure. Illnesses are, as I have told you, generally a dislocation among the different parts of the being, a kind of disharmony. It may well be that the body has not followed the movement of progress, it might have lagged behind while the other parts have, on the contrary, made progress. In that case there is an unbalance, a breaking of harmony and that produces an illness, I mean, in the body, for the mind and the vital also might remain all right. There are many people who have been ill for years, suffering from terrible and incurable diseases, and still maintained their mental power marvellously clear and active and continuing to make progress in that domain. There was a French poet, a very good poet, Sully Prudhomme, by name; he was mortally ill and it was during that time that he wrote his most beautiful poems. He was always in a very good humour, charming, smiling, pleasant to everyone even while his body was going to bits. You may remember how the great Louis XIV used to joke and laugh, while, in his last days, his body was being lacerated and given over to leeches by his doctors and surgeons. It depends upon individual and individual. For there are people of the other type who get thoroughly

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disturbed from head to foot if there is the slightest bodily indisposition. Each one has his own combination of the elements.

There is of course a relation between the mind and the body, quite a close relation. In most cases it is the mind that makes the body ill, at least it is the most important factor in the illness. I have said, there are people who keep their mind clear although their body suffers. But it is very rare and very difficult to keep the body healthy when the mind suffers or is unbalanced. It is not impossible, but very very exceptional. For I explained to you that it is the mind which is the master of the body, the body is an obedient and obliging servant. Unfortunately one does not usually know how to make use of one's mind, not only so, one makes bad use of it and as bad as possible. The mind possesses a considerable power of formation and of direct action on the body. It is precisely this power which is used by people to make their body ill. As soon as there is something which does not go well, the mind begins to worry about it, makes formations of coming catastrophes, indulges in all kinds of imaginary dangers ahead. Now, instead of thus letting the mind run amuck and do havoc, if the same energy were used for a better purpose, if good formations are made, namely, giving self-confidence to the body, telling it that there is nothing to be anxious about, it is only a passing unease and so on, in that case, the body would be put in a right condition of receptivity and the illness pass away quietly even as it came. That

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is how the mind is to be taught to give good suggestions to the body and not to throw mud into it. Marvellous results follow if you do it properly.

When an accident happens there is in it a critical moment. For example, you slip and you fall. Now between the moment when you slip and the moment when you fall, there is just a fraction of a second when you are, as it were, given the choice. It can either be nothing or something very serious. Only to make the choice you must have a perfectly awakened consciousness and your being must be constantly in contact with the psychic. There is no time to bring in the contact, one must already' be in contact. So, just between the slip and the fall, If the mental and psychic formation is sufficient, you come out unscathed. If, on the contrary, the body thinks, as it is its habit, "Oh, I have slipped" and becomes apprehensive-it is, as I say, a matter of a fraction of a second, even less-then the catastrophe happens. You have the capacity to prevent an accident happening, you are given the choice at a momentary moment. But for that you must learn to be wide awake, to be fully conscious. When you are in that condition you can prevent an accident, you can sto~ an i\1ne~~ coming into you. But it is just the matter of a split second and you must not miss it.

And yet there is still another moment. When you have fallen and are already hurt; you have still now the open chance whether it will turn well or ill, whether it will stop at being just a mishap or become something

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really serious or as serious as possible. I do not know if you have noticed that there are certain people who do not seem to miss any occasion for an accident. Every time there is a possibility, they have it. And the accident is never slight, it tends to be serious and often very serious. People say, what an unlucky fellow! Chance is never on his side! etc. etc. But all that is sheer ignorance. Everything depends absolutely upon the working of the consciousness. I could cite any number of examples and such striking examples. There are people who might have been killed but came out of the accident safe and sound. There are others for whom what was quite harmless in the beginning turns worse and worse and proves in the end, perhaps, fatal.

But you must understand it is not the working of thought, ordinary thought. The thought may be as good in one as in the other. It all depends upon the moment of choice. There are people who know how to react in the right manner and at the right moment. It is the character that matters. Such people have a wakeful, alert consciousness; they are not asleep, they are on the watch constantly within themselves. And at the right moment they call for the aid, they invoke the divine force, yes, exactly at the right moment. And the danger is warded off. On the other hand, whenever there is something going wrong, some dislocation in the being, if you are seized by fear, dark foreboding or defeatism in the consciousness, then you are done for.

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It is not the mind, as I say, which decides. It is an inner attitude, a poise of the being, the right consciousness which reacts in the right manner. Its effect goes very far. You do not know what a power it is. Even if it is there just for a fraction of a second, it works miracles. Only it must be there already, you must be already in the state of wakefulness, you cannot order it at the moment, you have no time.

You may say again that it is the Divine Grace that saves. But would you explain to me how it works? It would be interesting indeed to find out who had precisely the awakened consciousness, had the faith and the inner trust, had called for the help and had in him that which answered automatically—and even in a way unconsciously—to something that came in. Human intelligence is a relative thing and has varying degrees of power. Usually it understands by contrasts and contraries. It does not understand a truth in its absoluteness. For example, I have received hundreds of letters thanking me because they were saved from dangers. But I do not remember to have received a letter thanking me because things were normal and nothing had happened. Men perceive the action of Grace only when there is the atmosphere of the pessimist and there is a danger and they have escaped from it, that is to say, when there is already the beginning of the accident, when the accident has come to pass. When they come out of the danger safely only then they take note of the force that saved. Otherwise they would not have even thought of it.

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If the voyage they undertook came off without any accident they would not think of any action of Grace present there. They would take it as a matter of course. But precisely because it is so, there may be acting here a Grace of a higher order and there may be existing already a deeper preexistent harmony between the consciousness of the person and the higher force to which it responds. The chance of an accident is already the beginning of the dislocation I spoke of. But the situation becomes complicated if it is a case of collective accident. The result here depends upon the atmosphere of the persons involved. It is the proportion of these two elements in the personnel of a collective accident that determines the character and magnitude of the accident.

I will tell you a story, I mean a true story, in this connection. There was a pilot who was considered what is called an ace among his fellowmen in the first Great War. He was an extraordinary aviator and the hero of many victories. Nothing had happened to him at any time. But towards the end of his life, an event occurred-some private tragedy-and all at once he had the feeling that something was going to happen to him; an accident perhaps, and it was all finished with him. He had come out of the war but was still in the army. He wanted to make a flight to South Africa, from France right up to the south of Africa. He started from France and made for Madagascar, so far as I remember, and then wanted to fly back to France. Now, my brother was at that time the Governor of Congo and needed to join his post as soon as possible.

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He asked for a place in the aeroplane of the pilot I am speaking about. It was not a regular service plane, but one of those used for experimentation to show what the machines were capable of and the skill of the airmen. Many tried to dissuade my brother from making the journey, saying that these adventurous trips were always dangerous. My brother however did not mind the risk. Nothing serious happened, but for a slight breakdown in the middle of the Sahara which was easily got over, and the plane made safe journey and deposited him at his place in Congo. The plane continued further down, to Madagascar, as I said. Now the pilot started back, he did half the journey, his plane crashed and he was killed forthwith. I shall explain to you what really the matter was. What happened had to happen, it was a foregone conclusion. My brother had an absolute faith in his destiny, a certainty that nothing would touch him. The consciousness of the other was on the contrary full of doubt and apprehension. So the mixture of the two atmospheres brought about this that in the first instance the accident could not be prevented, but it stopped short of catastrophe. But once the destiny of my brother was not there with the machine,—like Caesar's destiny that made the boatman go safely across the river through a storm—the protection was also withdrawn and the pilot had to go down under the full blast of his bad fate. I can narrate another analogous story, it is with regard to a ship. There were two persons, husband and wife. They went by air to Indo-China. They had an accident, a very serious accident. All were killed

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except only these two. Now they had to return to France. They did not want to travel by air, they had the experience of it. So they took a boat, I mean a ship, which they thought would be quite safe. Now what happened was absolutely unexpected, quite extraordinary. In the middle of the Red Sea, in broad daylight, the ship struck against a reef and sank—a thing that does not happen even once perhaps in a million cases. All the passengers were drowned except, miraculous again to say, the pair. There are people like that, they carry misfortune with them, but the misfortune is for others, they themselves escape somehow.

If you look at the thing in an ordinary way, you do not notice it. But the fact is there. You must be very careful about your associations. An unfortunate association may prove disastrous to you. The karma of others may fall upon you, unless you have the inner knowledge, the vision and the necessary power. If you see a person with something like a dark whirl around avoid him at all cost. The moral of it all is that it is very useful to look into things a little more deeply than to observe the surface only.

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