How Your Mind Can Make You Sick

Question: Can I cause sickness to myself with my mind and can I cure myself with my thoughts?

Sadhguru: It is possible that you could have caused physical damage or an ailment to your system because of your patterns of thinking. This is because of psychosoma – whatever happens in your mind invariably happens in your body. But once the damage has manifested in the body physically, trying to think it away could just be wishful thinking. I am not saying it is not possible at all, but after all, you have only one life. Do not take such a risk. You should assist the recovery with your thought process also, but if you plan to just sit down and think it away, you may think yourself away! Don’t try such things. Disease or no disease you have no business making a mess out of your mind. You have no business to torture this being because in a way, this is a helpless being. If someone runs after you with a hot iron, you will try to escape or call for help. But suppose you take a hot iron and start putting it into your own body, where will it run? Even a weak person or a child has some defence. But you yourself have no defence. There is no escape. This is like torturing a foetus trapped inside. The cruellest form of torture is self-torture. If you have already taken it so far that you have an ailment or you have caused damage to the system, it is better that it is assisted in all ways possible. You definitely must stop your nonsense but if the system needs medicine, surgery or anything else, it has to be done. Just because you brought it through your mind, do not think that you can take it away through your mind. It is not that it is not possible to do that at all, but do not try such things because you may think yourself away.

Keeping your mind life-friendly

Keeping your mind life-friendly is definitely your business. Your mind should work for this life. If you do not know how to handle the people who work for you, they will turn into your enemies. We need to look at why your mind, which is such a powerful, beautiful, miraculous system, has turned into your enemy. You develop resentment, anger and hatred – poisons that you drink and you expect someone else to die. Life does not work like that. If you drink poison, only you die, not someone else. If your mind is working against you, the first and foremost thing that you should do is take a break from everything that you are doing. Fix this before you enter the world because once you live in this world, either you must do something good to yourself or you must do something good to people around you. Anyone who is not doing any good either to himself or to those around him has no right to call himself human. Nature has put that much intelligence and awareness into you. At least walk gently and joyfully upon this planet. If you walk through this world very joyfully, whatever you look at will look beautiful. Once everything looks beautiful to you, you will naturally shed a very loving glance upon everything that you see. It is important you take some time off and work upon yourself. People always think they have something important to do. Even if you have very good intentions, if you have poison in your head, with good intentions you will inject poison into the world. For example, Adolf Hitler once said that everything he was doing was his duty to his forefathers. The most dangerous thing is that he was not a liar, he believed that this was true. This is what empowered the man so much. More damage is happening to this world with good intentions than with bad intentions. Your good intentions are not going to save the world. How you are is what matters. How you are will change only if you can breathe, walk, lie down, sit down and do everything joyfully. Only when you are pleasant within yourself, you feel pleasant about everything around you. Only when you feel pleasant about everything around you, you move around with a certain sense and value to life around you. Otherwise it does not matter how much morality you carry in your mind or how many scriptures you remember, you will find ways to do the cruelest possible things. The first and basic responsibility for a human being is to ensure that he or she is a joyful human being. One thing we need to understand is, whatever may be happening with your life, there may be many things going on, but you are better off than when you were born because you came with nothing. Look at the beauty of life: you came with utterly nothing. Now you at least have something, so whatever may be happening in your life right now, you are still in profit, not loss. So do not try to think your disease away, think your misery away. If you think your misery away, ailment or no ailment, we can handle it.