If the body-mind is made of consciousness, how does illness appear?

If the body-mind is made of consciousness, how does illness appear?

Dear Rupert, 

I would like to hear your thoughts on the implications for healing in the light of this insight into the transparency of things. You write, ‘Whatever the characteristics of the current experience, the reality of it, its essential nature, is present and unchanging’ and ‘experience as appearance is always changing and disappearing. Experience divested of appearance stands revealed as being’. 

You have mentioned that consciousness takes the shape of the body, mind and world, and that ‘consciousness is not simply the Witness but also the substance of every object that appears within it’. So it would seem that illness is merely a reflection of conditioned mind in the body, and from the standpoint of knowing presence it could be healed through the right understanding of our true substance. 

Just to clarify, this is not about manipulating the body-mind as an object to somehow fix it, but rather seeing that the illness is as unreal as the concept of the body (matter) that the mind holds. As you say, in awakening, ‘consciousness reabsorbs the body, mind and the world into itself’. Since there is no entity independent of consciousness, where can illness reside?

Ed

Dear Ed,

When a tree has a disease, the tree does not know that is has a disease. For whom then is the disease? For the tree? No! For the universe? No! Only for the mind.

When a sensation of aching appears ‘in the body’, for whom is the illness? Only for the mind.

I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with the idea of illness or the subsequent attempt to cure it, but simply pointing out, in answer to your question, that ‘illness’ is an interpretation by the mind. It resides in the mind.

So, yes, you are right that the idea of illness is as real as the idea of the body. In fact, they are part and parcel of the same idea.

You say, ‘So it would seem that illness is merely a reflection of conditioned mind in the body, and from the standpoint of knowing presence it could be healed through the right understanding of our true substance’.

However, from the standpoint of knowing presence, there is only itself. Knowing presence simply knows its own unqualified being. There is nothing there to cure. It does not need a perfect body to reside in its own being. The problem is for the mind.

If we acknowledge that the interpretation ‘illness’ is in the mind, then by the same token we acknowledge that that which knows the mind is free of illness.

So the right understanding of our true substance does not imply that illness should be cured simply as a result of that understanding but rather that the idea of illness itself will be seen in the right perspective.

Behind your question is the deep belief that illness and therefore death are a problem and that the knowing of our true substance would relieve this problem. However, when death ceases to be a problem, illness ceases to be a problem.

We simply do what is necessary at the relative level. When it rains we put up an umbrella. When we’re tired we sleep. When the body is ill we treat it in the appropriate way, just appropriate action coming from love and intelligence.

And all the time we simply remain ourself, intimately one with all appearances, acting appropriately from moment to moment, yet at peace in our own being at the same time.

With warmest wishes,
Rupert

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