Mind can keep you healthy. Or make you sick as well

Mind can keep you healthy

With children married and settled at their respective places, the time had come when the ageing duo, without any chronic or major illness, could live happily hereafter. But alas, that was not to be!

“Mind in its own place and in itself can make hell of heaven, and heaven of hell” said John Milton.

Consider a sick, bed-ridden lady down with 104 degree fever. What happens when she suddenly learns that her young baby too has contracted fever though only 99 degree. She abruptly springs from the bed to manage the condition of the child. The message is loud and clear: There is more to sickness than the deterioration in body functioning.

Body: an obedient servant of mind

Much has been convincingly said about mind-body connection. The universally accepted definition of health i.e. not merely the absence of physical or mental diseases but also the ability to amicably adjust to the social milieu, has a serious lacuna. It puts the mental and physical well-being at par. Mind and body are neither two aspects of a single entity, nor complementary to each other. The truth is, the body is an obedient servant of mind.

Except in life & death circumstances when the body responds reflexively as a defence mechanism – something one is attuned to very shortly after birth – it is as if any body organ or tissue eagerly awaits instructions from mind to act upon. From the urgency to escape dreadful situations when confronted with a ferocious animal to carrying out such petty chores like instantly closing eyelids when a flying minute insect approaches the eyes, it is mind that sends command to the body organs. Sickness whether of body or mind, except in accidental cases, is a function of the mind.

Mind can keep you healthy…

Complexity of human mind

Human mind is an intriguing entity, many times defying logic or reason. So we find persons known for poise & equanimity at times behaving crazily or taking bizarre decisions on issues that matters most.

An average human mind is home to some 12 billion neurons, each capable of establishing rapport with 25,000 other neurons. That constitutes a capacity in excess of the world’s largest mainframe computer, mind it. However, because of spiritual nature of mind, the bio-scientists know very little about brain; apropos of the very low survival of brain surgeries compared to that of any other vital organs.

Further, the mechanisms (as well as machinations) of mind, the unpredictable turn it may take, continue to perplex the scientists of all descriptions.

Huge power bank

Human mind can achieve whatever it can conceive and believe, said Napolean Hill, the great motivator of Think and Grow Rich fame. It depends on what stuff you sow, nurture and maintain in the brain. The only condition for the intent to fructify is the unqualified faith.

Among the believing lot, patients with critical illness are known to heal magically with the intervention of a doctor they trust. The classical story, ‘The doctor’s word’ by R.K. Narayan shows how faith works. To save the life of his close friend, a doctor known for excellent prognosis lies to his patient, an intimate friend, that he shall survive though knowing that he will not. A miracle happens; the word saves the friend.

Sadly, most people hardly use a tenth of their mind’s potential, and waste this precious life. Its immense role in upkeep of health and in therapeutics remains untapped. The region beneath our hat is one of least explored and under utilised territories in the world, said the motivator Pramod Batra.

Mind can keep you healthy…

Mind: the spiritual connection

“We are stars wrapped in skin”. Our exterior body is not our true form, only the soul is. Among the Panchtatv, four i.e. the Earth, Water, Fire and Air shall submerge into their native place in a limited time frame and the soul or Consciouness amalgamates with Space,  or Universal Soul. Mind, the store house of thoughts & ideas, is linked to Almighty through ‘Thought’, which to Kahlil  Gibran “is the bird of space [read Brahmand], that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly”. It’s the glamour, the exteriors and the ‘worldly’ achievements that constrain one realising the divine bliss.

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