Diseases And Disorders

"That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward."

"Graviora quædam sunt remedia periculis."

"Utque in corporibus, sic in imperio, gravissimus est morbus qui a capite diffunditur."

"Vitiant artus ægræ contagia mentis."

"Aëre non certo corpora languor habet."

"D'ogni pianta palesa l'aspetto Il difetto, che il tronco nasconde Per le fronde, dal frutto, o dal fior."

"Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases."

"Against diseases here the strongest fence, Is the defensive vertue, abstinence."

"That dire disease, whose ruthless power Withers the beauty's transient flower."

"Disease is an experience of mortal mind. It is fear made manifest on the body. Divine Science takes away this physical sense of discord, just as it removes a sense of moral or mental inharmony."

"Apoplexie, and Lethargie, As forlorn hope, assault the enemy."

"The remedy is worse than the disease."

"Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as small pox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domestic animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution."

"If it weren't for alcohol, tranquilizers, antidepressants, as well as the illegal drugs, which are all consumed in vast quantities, the insanity of the human mind would become even more glaringly obvious than it is already. I believe that, if deprived of their drugs, a large part of the population would become a danger to themselves and others. These drugs, of course, simply keep you stuck in dysfunction. Their widespread use only delays the breakdown of the old mind structures and the emergence of higher consciousness. While individual users may get some relief from the daily torture inflicted on them by their minds, they are prevented from generating enough conscious presence to rise above thought and so find true liberation. p.67"

"I'll forbear; And am fallen out with my more headier will, To take the indispos'd and sickly fit For the sound man."

"Before the curing of a strong disease, Even in the instant of repair and health, The fit is strongest; evils that take leave, On their departure most of all show evil."

"This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an't please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling."

"Diseases desperate grown, By desperate appliance are reliev'd, Or not at all."

"O, he's a limb, that has but a disease; Mortal, to cut it off; to cure it, easy."

"Molecular biologists may have ignored mitochondria because they did not immediately recognize the far-reaching implications and applications of the discovery... It took time to accumulate a database of sufficient scope and content to address the many challenging questions related to anthropology, disease, evolution, and more."

"It may also strike you, my readers, as quite shocking when I tell you that there is no such thing, basically, as disease. There are instead only processes. What you think of disease is instead the result of an exaggeration or overextension of perfectly normal body processes. You are not attacked by viruses, for instance, for all kinds of viruses exist normally in the body. There are no KILLER viruses, then but viruses that go beyond their usual bounds."

"But just disease to luxury succeeds, And ev'ry death its own avenger breeds."

"As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath, Receives the lurking principle of death, The young disease, that must subdue at length, Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength."

"The horseman on the white horse was clad in a showy and barbarous attire. [...] While his horse continued galloping, he was bending his bow in order to spread pestilence abroad. At his back swung the brass quiver filled with poisoned arrows, containing the germs of all diseases."

"A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part."

"In all wars up until the Russo-Japanese War, it had been known that the “silent enemy”-disease-took a greater toll of lives among fighting men than did bullets."

"Two out of three child deaths in Africa and South-east Asia are due to just six diseases – tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS, measles, pneumonia and diarrhoea."

"[Diseases] crucify the soul of man, attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, shrivel them up like old apples, make them as so many anatomies."

"It will be apparent to the casual thinker that many diseases and many causes of death are due to environing conditions for which he is in no way responsible. These range all the way from purely external occurrences to hereditary predispositions. They might be listed as follows: 1. Accidents... 2. Infections coming to a man from outside and not as the result of his own peculiar blood condition... 3. Diseases due to malnutrition, particularly when found in the young... 4. Heredity. There are, as you well know, certain forms of hereditary weaknesses..."

"All disease is the result of inhibited soul life, and that is true of all forms in all kingdoms... What is disease?... the major causes of disease are three in number: they are psychological in nature; they are inherited through group contact; and they are karmic."

"Only in this age and generation is it at last possible to impart the laws of magnetic healing, and to indicate the causes of those diseases—originating in the three inner bodies—which today devastate the human frame, cause endless suffering and pain, and usher man through the portal which leads to the world of bodiless existence. Only today is man at the point in the evolution of his consciousness where he can begin to realise the power of the subjective worlds, and the new and vast science of psychology is his response to this growing interest. Processes of adjustment, of elimination and of cure engage the minds of all thoughtful people as well as of all suffering people... When one enters the realm of healing, one enters a world of much esoteric knowledge, and of an infinity of conclusions, and one is faced with the formulations of many minds, who, through the ages, have sought to heal and to help. The why and the wherefore of disease have been the subject of endless investigations and speculations, and much definite deduction has been made as to the cures of such complaints; there has been also much formulation of methods, of techniques, of formulae, of prescription, of varied manipulations and of [2] theories. All these serve to fill the mind with many ideas—some correct, some erroneous—and this makes it most difficult for new ideas to enter and for the student to assimilate the hitherto unknown."

"And I'm afraid of thinking, That somewhere at the edge of nature I'm just as blind With a face turned up to the sky. Only in the darkness of the soul am I observing the spring waters, Conversing with them Only in the sorrowful heart of mine."

"In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression. I loved it because it was all I had. I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my pain."

"The best thing for being sad … is to learn something."

"When you suffer, think not on how you can escape suffering, but concentrate your efforts on what kind of inner moral and spiritual perfection this suffering requires."

"For a moment, I was able to stand back from my own mind and see it from a deeper perspective, as it were. There was a brief shift from thinking to awareness. I was still in the men’s room, but alone now, looking at my face in the mirror. At that moment of detachment from my mind, I laughed out loud. It may have sounded insane, but it was the laughter of sanity, the laughter of the big bellied Buddha. “Life isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.” That’s what the laughter seemed to be saying. But it was only a glimpse, very quickly to be forgotten. I would spend the next three years in anxiety and depression, completely identified with my mind. I had to get close to suicide before awareness returned, and then it was much more than a glimpse. I became free of compulsive thinking and of the false, mindmade “I.” p. 23"

"How can we drop negativity, as you suggest? By dropping it. How do you drop a piece of hot coal that you are holding in your hand? How do you drop some heavy and useless baggage that you are carrying? By recognizing that you don't want to suffer the pain or carry the burden anymore and then letting go of it."

"Your unhappiness is polluting not only your own inner being and those around you but also the collective human psyche of which you are an inseparable part. The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner psychic pollution: millions of unconscious individuals not taking responsibility for their inner space. Either stop doing what you are doing, speak to the person concerned and express fully what you feel, or drop the negativity that your mind has created around the situation and that serves no purpose whatsoever except to strengthen a false sense of self. Recognizing its futility is important. Negativity is never the optimum way of dealing with any situation. In fact, in most cases it keeps you stuck in it, blocking real change. Anything that is done with negative energy will become contaminated by it and in time give rise to more pain, more unhappiness. Furthermore, any negative inner state is contagious: Unhappiness spreads more easily than a physical disease. Through the law of resonance, it triggers and feeds latent negativity in others, unless they are immune - that is, highly conscious. Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess? You are responsible for your inner space; nobody else is... p. 53"

"I have little use for the past and rarely think about it; however, I would briefly like to tell you how I came to be a spiritual teacher and how this book came into existence. Until my thirtieth year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I am talking about some past lifetime or somebody else's life.... What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live. “I cannot live with myself any longer.” This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.” “Maybe,” I thought, “only one of them is real.” When someone goes to the doctor and says, "I hear a voice in my head," he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don't realize you have the power to stop. Introduction"

"All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or another. All negativity is resistance. In this context, the two words are almost synonymous. Negativity ranges from irritation or impatience to fierce anger, from a depressed mood or sullen resentment to suicidal despair. Sometimes the resistance triggers the emotional pain-body, in which case even a minor situation may produce intense negativity, such as anger, depression, or deep grief. The ego believes that through negativity it can manipulate reality and get what it wants. It believes that through it, it can attract a desirable condition or dissolve an undesirable one."

"Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry, or hard-done-by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane."

"The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all – from the most simple task to the most complex. If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others."

"Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease. The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by "watching the thinker," which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence. When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You'll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind."

"If you are trapped in a nightmare you will probably be more strongly motivated to awaken than someone who is just caught in the ups and downs of an ordinary dream."

"When you create a problem, you create pain. All it takes is a simple choice, a simple decision: no matter what happens, I will create no more pain for myself. I will create no more problems. Although it is a simple choice, it is also very radical. You won' t make that choice unless you are truly fed up with suffering, unless you have truly had enough. And you won't be able to go through with it unless you access the power of the Now. If you create no more pain for yourself, then you create no more pain for others. You also no longer contaminate the beautiful Earth, your inner space, and the collective human psyche with the negativity of problem-making. If you have ever been in a life-or-death emergency situation, you will know that it wasn't a problem. The mind didn't have time to fool around and make it into a problem. In a true emergency, the mind stops; you become totally present in the Now, and something infinitely more powerful takes over. This is why there are many reports of ordinary people suddenly becoming capable of incredibly courageous deeds. In any emergency, either you survive or you don't. Either way, it is not a problem."

"Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable."

"The pain that you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering - and free of the egoic mind."

"The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life."

"My profession of psychiatry still views depression purely as an illness. Insurance limitations have pushed many psychiatrists away from talk therapy and toward the more efficient prescription pad. So “there’s a lot of institutional and scientific investment in the exclusively disease model of depression. I’m basically telling colleagues they’re medicating people when they shouldn’t be. That’s not going to be welcome news."

"What had been drapetomania became depression. ... Modern man runs away from a life that seems to him a kind of slavery."