Chapter 6: “States of Health and Disease”
April 20, 1984
Before we discuss the human situation more
specifically in relationship to health and “dis-ease” – let us consider the so-called
states of health and disease as they apply in planetary terms, and as they
operate in all species. This will give
us a far vaster framework in which to understand the ways in which each
individual person fits into the entire picture.
I used quotation marks around the entire
heading for this chapter to stress the point that the heading is written with
your own ideas of health and disease in mind.
Actually, however, regardless of appearances and misreadings of natural
events, the very idea of disease as you usually think of it, is chauvinistic
in health rather than in sexual terms.
Basically speaking, there are only life
forms. Through their cooperation your
entire world sustains its reality, substance, life, and form. If there were no diseases as you think of
them, there would be no life forms at all.
Your reality demands a steady fluctuation of physical and nonphysical
experience. Most of you, my readers,
understand that if you did not sleep you would die. The conscious withdrawal of mental life during
life makes normally conscious experience possible. In the same way, there must, of course, be a
rhythm of physical death, so that the experience of normal physical life is
possible. It goes without saying that
without death and disease – for the two go hand in hand – then normal corporeal
existence would be impossible.
For all of man’s fear of disease, however,
the species has never been destroyed by it, and life has continued to
function with an overall stability, despite what certainly seems to be
the constant harassment and threat of illness and disease. The same is true, generally speaking, of all
species. Plants and insect fit into this
larger picture, as do all fish and fowl.
I have said elsewhere that no species is
ever really eradicated – and in those terms no disease, or virus, or germ, ever
vanishes completely from the face of the earth.
In the first place, viruses change their form, appearing in your terms
sometimes as harmless and sometimes as lethal.
So-called states of health and disease are also changing constantly – and
in those vaster terms disease in itself is a kind of health, for it
makes life and health itself possible.
Later we will discuss what this means to
you, the individual person, but for now I want to stress the fact that while it
may seem natural enough to consider disease as a threat, an adversary or an
enemy, this is not the case.
The subject matter of suffering is
certainly vitally connected to the subject at hand, but basically speaking,
disease and suffering are not necessarily connected. Suffering and death are not necessarily
connected either. The sensations of
suffering, and the pain, do exist. Some
are indeed quite natural reactions, and others are learned reactions to
certain events. Walking barefoot on a
bed of fire would most likely cause most of you, my readers, to feel the most
acute pain – while in some primitive societies, under certain conditions the
same situation could result instead in feelings of ecstasy or joy.
We want to discuss “disease” as it exists
apart from suffering for now, then. Then
we will discuss pain and suffering and their implications. I do want to mention, however, that pain and
suffering are also obviously vital, living sensations – and therefore are a
part of the body’s repertoire of possible feelings and sensual experience. They are also a sign, therefore, of life’s
vitality, and are in themselves often responsible for a return to health when
they act as learning communications.
Pain, therefore, by being unpleasant stimulates
the individual to rid himself or herself of it, and thereby often promotes a return
to the state of health.
Aside to Jane
Remind Ruburt – in the meantime – that he is
indeed a beloved daughter of the universe, and that his parents are as much
the sea and sky as his physical parents.
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