How Much Importance Will You Continue Giving Your Sickness?
Questioner: Pranam Acharya Ji. Somewhere I read in Osho’ s book that the body is sick, it will not help you to progress more in the spiritual path, because most of your attention will be on the body then you will not progress like that, is it so? So then if I am sick then I cannot achieve a freedom or…?
Acharya Prashant: It is not absolutely true. There is nobody who is absolutely sick in the body and there is nobody who is absolutely physically healthy.
People are healthy in degrees, similarly, people are sick to various extents. Now it depends on the extent of your inner resolve, how much weightage you want to give to your sickness. There might be somebody who would be perturbed by the common headache. Oh! I have a headache I cannot live truthfully... Why did you miss your daily reading? Because I had a headache…
And there might be someone who is very, very sick physically and yet decides to not to deviate from the path of Dharma. It depends on the depth of your love. In fact, physical sickness is a good way to test your resolve. Episodes of physical sickness are occasions when you can truly test how much spiritual mettle you have. When all is hunky-dory then one can develop the illusion that he is the most determined spiritual seeker. But one fractured bone and all determination vanishes.
So, that is the reason why Dharmik literature is full of unbelievable stories where people have fought holy wars carrying their severed heads in their hands, somebody has fought for many days without a drop of water. Somebody has stood on one leg for an entire year or many years, fasting and praying.
All kinds of physical austerities are mentioned and they all sound so incredible, don’ t they? So, there is this fellow who is sitting still under a tree and he is so still and, he sits for so long that termites grow on all his body, like termites occupy a tree. What do such stories indicate?
They tell of the resolve of the spiritual seeker to not to listen to the body. I will not listen to the body. The body is a conditioned machine whose only job is to continue, continue, continue, seek pleasure, seek pleasure, seek pleasure and reproduce, reproduce, reproduce. That’ s what the body wants. I’m not going to listen to the body so much.
So, when Osho says, that you should have a healthy body, obviously, that is preferable, you do not want to deliberately have a sick body. As far as possible avoid sickness, good! But then sickness is inevitable, just as old age is inevitable, sickness will come.
You might have a case of coronavirus lurking somewhere around here, how will you avoid? tell me. And how much can you avoid? So, sickness will strike and that’ s when your resolve will be tested. It’s a love game. It’ s a love game.
You need to have a heart to continue in spite of a heart attack. No? Otherwise, one episode of even the minor heart attack is enough to give up on all fancy claims toward spirituality. A little bit of physical trouble and vegetarians turn flesh-eaters, immediately. The doctor would say, “You must have chicken soup.” “Fine, fine, fine… yes yes,” and this fellow was a vegan since a decade. Now doctor says, “No, you know, chicken soup will be good for you.”
And it’s an unfortunate situation when in the name of spirituality people start cultivating the body, I’m referring to what yoga has come to mean today. Well-shaped bodies, chiselled bodies, attractive bodies, sexy bodies. That’s not yoga.
