Balance
The Main Aspects of Healing
Health depends upon the balance between activity and repose in the five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Every sense, in the normal condition of health, must be able to express itself and to respond. The senses need more time for repose than for activity. Therefore, the mystics go into seclusion in order to give a chance of repose to the senses, which are different in every man. Everyone passes every moment of his waking state in activity of the senses, partly by intention, partly involuntarily. For instance, the eyes look at things intentionally perhaps a hundred times a day, but nine hundred times they look at things without intention. This shows a waste of energy in an average man’s life.
In order to develop healing power one must regulate and control the senses by regulating their activity and repose. This, done with a spiritual thought, converts power of mind into divine power. A person can heal with power of mind alone, but the results will be limited; but a person with divine power can obtain through it unlimited results.
It depends on the condition of the health how much activity one can stand and how much repose is necessary; a general rule cannot be made for everyone. A normal amount of activity stimulates and strengthens the body. Therefore, physical exercises are given for physical development, and exercises of concentration and studies are given for the development and repose of the mind. According to psychic law the day is natural for activity and the night for repose. When this is not carried out it naturally works against health. It is not necessary to rest after every little exertion, but a degree of balance ought to be maintained. It is advisable in life to take repose without allowing it to develop into laziness.
Breath
Breath is the principal and essential power that can help in healing. There is a silent healing, healing by focusing the glance, by holding the painful part with the fingers, by rubbing it, by waving the hand over the painful part, by touching and by not touching it. Behind these different ways, there is one
power working, and that is the power of the breath. This power can be developed by breathing practices. When the breath is so developed that it creates an atmosphere around the healer, then the very presence of the healer heals. The power of the breath can be developed by physical exercises, by rhythmic exercises of the breath, by pure living and by concentration.
The power of healing is greater than the power of the channels one uses to heal, such as the fingertips or eyes. The eyes have more power than the fingertips. They are finer, and the power that manifests through them is radiant, while it is not so radiant in the fingertips. However, besides the power of
healing one must have a clear idea of how to recognize the complaint of another person and of the best way to heal him.
Healing with the Finger-tips
Hygiene is the first subject to consider in healing with the tips of the fingers. Hands that have been engaged in any work or that are stained with any liquid must be washed for healing. The healer mustfirst observe the hygienic rules of keeping his body, as well as his clothes, pure and clean; especially at the time of healing he must be absolutely free from all that is unhygienic. The sleeves, at the time of healing, must be rolled back, and the fingernails must be clean and properly trimmed. After healing one should wave the hand, as it were shaking it, to shake off any free atoms, or even vibrations, so that a poison taken from the painful part of the patient may not be given to the patient again.
There are cases in which the sensation of the body is deadened by the pain, and the pain has gone into the depth of the affected part of the body. In such cases waving the hand or touching is not enough, rubbing is necessary. When dealing with the effects of poison from the sting of a bee or scorpion, or from snakebite or the bite of any other poisonous animal, a simple soft touch or stroking of the affected part is indicated. If the pain is more intense touch is not necessary, simply the waving of the hand close to the affected part. In the case of the bite of a mad dog one should put some lime mixed with water on a copper coin and tie it on the part that the teeth have touched, and the rest of the affected part must be healed by touching and stroking it with the tips of the fingers. Bites of mosquitoes and midges may be cured by applying butter that has been boiled and allowed to cool, and then waving the hand over the affected part. Rosewater may be used for bites of all kinds, in cases of severe inflammation.
The Tracing of Disease
The healer’s work in tracing disease is subtler than healing; for in healing power is necessary, but in tracing the disease–its nature, its cause, its secret–psychic power is of no use, there inspiration is needed. A healer without this is an incomplete healer. The patient generally does not know the real cause, nature, and secret of his complaint. He is not supposed to know, for the patient knows the effect of the poison, not its cause, nature, and secret. The healer must trace the patient’s complaint from his face, expression, voice, work, and movement; everything tells. Sometimes the healer mustfind out the cause by asking the patient the details about his pain and the circumstances of his life, and by knowing the attitude and the inclination of the patient.
The secret of disease can be traced also by observing what a person desires in the way of food and clothing, and in what environments he prefers to be, what attitude he has towards his friends and foes, his choice of sweet and savory and his attraction to colors. For instance a person with a complaint that originates from melancholy will have a liking for purple; a person who has lost control over his passions will show an inclination towards passion. He will generally like red; a person who is lifeless, who has an inclination to emptiness, will have a tendency towards white; a
person who has gone through a sorrow and mourned over things and weakened his heart by it, will have an inclination towards black.
So it is with sweet and savory: the patient who shows an inclination for sweet shows weakness of heart, and by that general weakness. The patient who shows inclination towards savory lacks circulation.
There are many things in the patient one can perceive not only from his inclinations, but also by noticing his face and features. For in this way, one reads more than by any other method. The features tell his general characteristics; therefore a person knows the weakness that may have been the origin of his complaint, and the general expression shows the thought behind it. Since mind is the cause of all causes, the healer gets at the root of the complaint as soon as he touches the mind of the patient. How true is the saying, man’s face is the mirror of his heart.
The Chief Reason of Every Disease
According to the mystical point of view there is one chief root, which can be called a common cause, from which all diseases are derived, and that is
disorder of rhythm. The upset of the nerves is stated by scientists to be the chief origin of all mental diseases, and their effect upon the body produces various diseases in the body. Religious people teach concentration and meditation, sitting in a prayerful attitude. The wisdom behind all this is to bring the activity of mind and body to a normal condition. For it is the nature of activity to become more active every moment. The activity itself produces energy, and its consequence is that by so producing energy, its own strength throws it out of its normal rhythm.
This one can see in the burning of the fire. The activity is little at the start; but with every moment that it bums its activity increases and culminates in the end in its utmost speed. The speed of the beginning compared with the speed of the end will prove that the increase of speed of the fire brought about the climax, when it consumes itself. In human nature we see the same tendency. When speaking one is inclined to speak more and more quickly, until the speed is so increased that one leaves out several words of the sentence without any intention of doing so. So it is in walking.The pace increases with every step until a person finds himself almost running. So it is with the imagination, and sometimes one sees the same thing with the pulsation of the body and the circulation of the blood. Uncontrolled increase of speed, in all its aspects, hastens the climax. When unbalanced culminates in disastrous results.
A healer without this knowledge is a blind healer who does not know the cause of diseases; his healing is a chance; but the one who knows this is more than a physician and more than a healer. He will control his own activity. The power of control thus gained will enable him to control the activity of others, to keep it “normal,” which is the true health of mind and body.
The Reason for Tiredness
Tiredness is due to three causes: loss of energy (the chief reason), excess of activity of mind, and excess of body. One generally knows tiredness to be caused by excess of bodily activity. However, one is apt to overlook the fact that excess of activity of mind also causes tiredness.
The activities that specially cause tiredness are worry, fear, anxiety, and pain. There is, however, one mental cause that is less obvious, and that is the thought of being tired. Among a hundred cases of tired people you will find ninety cases of this particular kind of tiredness. When a person thinks, “I am tired,” the very thought creates the feeling of tiredness in support of the thought, and reason brings forward a thousand reasons that seem to have caused the tiredness. There are some who think that the presence of people or of some people, or the presence of a particular person, tires them; some think that their energy, their life, is eaten up by some people; some think that a particular action takes away their energy; some think that their strength is taken out of them by their everyday duty in life or the work they happen to do, such as singing, speaking, doing bodily or mental work. Of course, as they think, so they experience.
In truth, there is no doubt that every kind of activity must take away some energy, more or less. However, by one’s thought one increases the loss; by preserving the energy and using it economically one saves it. Moreover, there is one way, which is a spiritual way, in which one can give out energy with every activity that necessitates one’s giving it out, yet at the same time one can absorb much more energy than one loses, from the life within, without, around, and about one. It is for this reason that religion has given the conception of God being almighty. Those who consider Him to be far away in heaven keep away from Him, but those who realize the meaning of the teaching in the Bible that “we live and move and have our being in God,” feel Him at all times by their side. If consciousness of wealth makes one feel rich, and if consciousness of strength makes one feel strong, how much stronger and richer should he feel who is truly God-conscious!
Balance
A healer often finds patients whose complaints may differ and yet may have originated in lack of balance. Balance is the most difficult thing in life to keep for anybody and everybody. Many times a healer succeeds in curing a patient by just showing him some practices by which he can attain balance. This, besides healing, brings about a most desirable effect. Balance is gained in different ways, even in ordinary actions such as sitting, lying, standing, and walking; standing with even weight on both legs, sitting cross-legged, or on one’s heels, both carrying an equal part of the weight of the body; also kneeling, walking rhythmically with an even force given to the swing of both arms. By regularity of eating and drinking, working and resting, sleeping and
rising, one gets balance too. The first thing a healer should consider when treating a patient is that he must give him balance.
Pain
Pain has two origins: the mind and the body. Sometimes it is caused by the mind and held by the body, and sometimes it is caused by the body and held by the mind. If one were absent or did not partake of the pain suggested by the other part of the being, the pain would not exist, or if it existed it would vanish. The body, being the servant of the mind, can never refuse to bear the pain given by the mind, having no free will of its own. It is only the mind that could refuse, if it were trained to do so.
The doctrine that some people hold that there is no such thing as pain, is very helpful in the training of the mind, although its truth may be questioned. If it is true that there is no such thing as pain, it can only be true in the sense that everything in this world is an illusion, it has no existence of its own, it does not exist in reality, compared with the ultimate reality that is. However, when a person says that it is only pain that does not exist, but that joy exists and all other things exist, then he is wrong.
Among Sufis dervishes have tried to become pain-proof by inflicting upon themselves cruel injuries, such as whipping the bare arms or cutting the muscles of the body, or piercing the body with knives, or taking the eyes out of their sockets and replacing them in their sockets again, which I have seen myself. By this they have discovered a truth and have given it to the thinking world: that the mind can refuse to partake of the bodily pain, and by so doing the bodily pain is felt much less than it would otherwise be. When the mind goes forward to receive bodily pain, out of fear or self-pity, it increases the pain and makes it much more than it would otherwise be. The proportion that fear or self-pity add to the pain is ninety-five per cent. The first thing that the healer must do in curing patients suffering from pain, is to erase the pain from the surface of the patient’s mind by suggestion and also by his healing power. In the absence of support on the part of the mind, the body must give up pain, for it has no power to hold it any longer without the mind.
Healing by Medicine
Very often it happens that a healer or a believer in healing goes to such an extreme that he does not accept healing by medicine. In reality the thought of being given medicine by a doctor and the thought of repeating the treatment he has prescribed so many times a day, apart from its medicinal influence, is psychically helpful. The healers of the East, considering this, have to a certain extent played the part of a physician also. With their healing power, spiritual, psychic, and magnetic, with their hypnotic suggestion and with their mesmeric influence, they gave the patient something to eat or to drink in the form of medicine. Sometimes they gave a charm to keep by him and sometimes magnetized water.
The idea is that man is more conscious of the objective world and its activity than of any other plane of existence, and by eating or drinking, or by holding or possessing a certain thing the impression upon him becomes more real. The thought of the healer, which should ease the mind, is often
hindered when the external senses of the patient are not fully responsive to it. When the patient eats or drinks something, or tastes something, or feels something applied to or touching the painful part, the senses become the medium for the healer’s thought to reach the mind of the patient. Knowledge of the physical medium is most essential for a healer, for every psychic operation requires a medium, and through a distinct and responsive medium every psychical work meets with success
From- ‘Volume IV- Health, Mental Purification, The Mind World’; Chapter I- ‘The SufiMessage of Hazrat Inayat Khan’