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Vision Cafe
Healing Through Sadhana
by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
Physical existence is always happening between cause and effect. Suppose there is an infection. You ate or drank something somewhere and got infected. The cause was bacteria.
Now there is an effect: the infection. So you try to remove the cause by taking antibiotics. You kill the cause with medication, because it is external to you.
Other diseases are not caused externally, but rather, occur from within. In these situations, the cause is much deeper when compared to that of an infection. For this type of disease to manifest, there is an imbalance or a malfunction in the energy-body, which reveals itself in the physical body, or sometimes in the mental body.
Now with something like pranic (energy) healing—or any kind of healing for that matter—you are only appeasing the effect. In a way, what you are doing is attaining a little control or mastery over your own energies so that you are able to put a screen between the cause and the effect. The effect dies out, but the cause stays buried.
As far as nature and life energy are concerned, the effect was only their way of telling you that there is a cause inside of you. What we refer to as “cause” is the disturbance of energy trying to manifest itself in a certain way.
Let us say you have asthma. If we take away your asthma, you still have the same kind of energy within you. It may manifest in some other way, as some other calamity. Your asthma was only an indication of a deeper disturbance. This is because your energies are still the same, but only the effect was taken away. So, next time, it may take effect in a deeper or more acute manner to inform you again.
On the other hand, if you bring awareness to your disease, you get connected to the cause of it.
When we talk about bringing awareness to your disease, we talk about accepting what is there. This does not mean becoming defeated about your disease. If you truly become aware of the disease, then you become aware of the cause as well. In terms of energy, the moment you bring awareness to any part of your body, it will immediately become active.
Just as an experiment, carefully attend to any part of your body. Put your attention in this place and just be with it. You will see that so much energetic activity will begin to happen there because if you bring awareness and consciousness to that part of the body, your natural life energies become enhanced. This way, you can heal and change the energy situation to some extent.
Now, why did the energy body get disturbed in the first place? For this to happen, improper elements of lifestyle, thought patterns, emotions or a combination of all these are present. There is a certain karmic structure that you have built which is causing some kind of turmoil to your energy, which manifests itself in the physical body as disturbed energy or disease.
But even if you settle the energy situation to some extent with healing, mental focus, or a certain level of awareness, the karmic substance which is causing this remains. The karmic substance is recorded in your energy as the fundamental software. It can work only within the bounds of the programmed software.
The life energies within you created your whole body. All the bones, blood, flesh—everything, including your brain, was created by this energy. When you were born, your body was so tiny and today it has become so big. Nobody stretched you from outside, did they? Whatever is creating the body is within you. So, when it can do so much, can it not fix a tiny cartilage or a hole in the heart?
Now this whole activity of trying to heal somebody is, in some way, trying to play God, or trying to manipulate energies in an improper way.
Healing happens naturally when the objective is not healing, but sadhana, which is the dissolution of karma by itself. When the cause is dissolved, the effect is no more.
Sadhguru is the founder of the Isha Foundation, a non-profit organization advancing physical, mental and spiritual health through yoga and self-transformation. The Foundation comprises over 100 yoga centers, an ashram, residential complex and medical center in India, and conducts public programs around the world. For more information about Sadhguru, please visit www.ishafoundation.org.