All of us react differently to an illness. We ask ourselves, that apart from doctors and medicines, what is it that we can do to cure ourselves. We would like to understand:
What is the relation between the body and the mind? Can our thoughts be the cause of an illness? Can we use our mind in a positive way to speed up the cure?
Here the Mother replies to some questions of the children and explains to them, in a very simple manner, the relationship between the two and the importance and power of positive thought formations.
Question: When the body falls ill, do the mind and vital also fall ill?
Not necessarily. Illness comes usually from a dislocation between the different parts of the being, from a sort of disharmony. Well, it can very well happen that the body has not followed a certain movement of progress, for instance, that it has remained behind, and that, on the other hand, the other parts of the being have progressed, and so that disequilibrium, that rupture of harmony creates the illness, and the mind may be in a very fine state and the vital also.
There are people who have been ill for years-with terrible, incurable diseases- and who have kept their mental capacity marvellously clear and progressed mentally. There is a French poet (a very good poet) called Sully Prudhomme; he was mortally ill; and it was then that he wrote his most beautiful poems. He remained charming, amiable, smiling-amiable with everyone, and yet his body was going to pieces. That depends on people. There are others still-as soon as they feel the least bit ill, everything is upset from top to bottom-they are then good for nothing. For each one the combination is different.
It is said there is a relation between the body and the mind. If the mind is not quite all right, then what?
But certainly there is a relation between the body and the mind! There is even more than a relation: it is a very close tie, for most of the time it is the mind which makes the body ill. In any case, it is the principal factor.
And if the body is not well?
That depends on people, I told you. There are people-as soon as the least thing happens to their body, their mind is completely upset. There are others still who may be very ill and yet keep their mind clear. It is rarer and more difficult to see a mind that’s upset and the body remaining healthy – it is not impossible but it is much rarer, for the body depends a great deal on the state of the mind. The mind is the master of the physical being. And I have said the latter is a very docile and obedient servant.
Only one doesn’t know how to use one’s mind, rather the opposite. Not only does one not know how to use it, but one uses it ill – as badly as possible. The mind has a considerable power of formation and a direct action on the body, and usually one uses this power to make oneself ill. For as soon as the least thing goes wrong, the mind begins to shape and build all the catastrophes possible, to ask itself whether it could be this, whether it could be that, if it is going to be like that, and how it will all end.
Well, if instead of letting the mind do this disastrous work, one used the same capacity to make favourable formations – simply, for example, to give confidence to the body, to tell it that it is just a passing disturbance and that it is nothing, and if it enters a real state of receptivity, the disorder will disappear as easily as it has come, and one can cure oneself in a few seconds – if one knows how to do that, one gets wonderful results.
The Mother
