Peace in the Body’s Cells Can Cure Illness

When we conjure up, in our minds, the idea of peace, we tend to give it a form of inaction, a ‘negative’ status. Similarly, peace to our vital nature is the absence of excitement or any form of energetic expression. For the body, we believe peace is a state of quietness that does not ‘do’ anything.

For Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, however, peace is a dynamic, powerful status that can be palpably felt and experienced by the receptive soul. It is a Force, it is solid and immovable, and it fills the mind, the heart, the vital being and the body with a power that cannot be denied. This force is so powerful that it can overcome all manner of oppositions and distractions, and, despite our mental conceptualization of it, it is not restricted to a state of meditation or silent inaction.

Just as we do not generally understand or conceive of the dynamic nature of this peace, we generally have no idea, short of an insight gained through actual experience, of what peace infusing the cells of the body is actually like.

It is this peace infusing the cells that has the power to heal all dis-ease and illness, but it is not something that one gets from sitting for fifteen minutes for meditation!

Our mind, our emotions, our vital and nervous being and our body each have habits of reaction that automatically engage when the right stimulus reaches them. The power of peace, as experienced by the Mother, is one that can shut down these habits of reaction and thereby free the body from vibrating from a force that brings with it a sense of illness or disharmony into it.

The Mother notes: “Peace and stillness are the great remedy for disease. When we can bring peace in our cells, we are cured. … Catch hold of a peace deep within and push it into the cells of the body. With the peace will come back the health. …Establish a greater peace and quietness in your body, that will give you the strength to resist attacks of illness. … To keep quiet and concentrate, leaving the Force from above to do its work, is the surest way to be cured of anything and everything. There is no illness that can resist that if it is done properly, in time and long enough, with a steady faith and a strong will.”

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Living Within: The Yoga Approach to Psychological Health and Growth, General Methods and Principles, The One Way — Quiet, Calm, Peace, pp. 1-2

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The Influence of the Psychic Being’s Peace and Calm Can Overcome the Disturbances of Mind, Life and Body

If we observe how we tend to respond to provocations from outside, things, events or people who impact our lives, either mentally, emotionally, vitally or physically, we see that the first tendency is to internalize the provocation with a pattern of vibration at one or another level of our being. We respond with thoughts, emotions, nervous reactions, or physical symptoms. As long as we live primarily in the external being, we participate in this constant action-reaction pattern and do not find any solution. Sri Aurobindo provides a solution which takes us out of the framework of the external being and thereby puts us in a psychological position that is non-reactive, and which can infuse peace, calm and equality into the mind-life-body complex. The result is a new sense of quietude that overrules the normal vibration. This can work, not only for mental impulsions or emotional reactions, but even for physical illnesses, if the body’s cells can become receptive and if the calm is allowed to penetrate and maintain the body’s poise in the face of the physical disturbance.

Those who achieve this state of peace also report the descent of a palpable force into the being which brings with it many times a solid sense of immutable peace, and a power that fills the being.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “The way in which the pains went shows you how to deal with the whole nature, — for it is the same with the mental and vital as with the physical causes of ill-ease and disturbance. To remain quiet within, to hold on to the faith and experience that to be quiet and open and let the Force work is the one way.”

“The peace and spontaneous knowledge are in the psychic being and from there they spread to mind and vital and physical. It is in the outer physical consciousness that the difficulty still tries to persist and brings the restlessness sometimes into the physical mind, sometimes into the nerves, sometimes in the shape of bodily trouble into the body. But all these things can and must go. Even the illnesses can go entirely with the growth of peace and power in the nerves and physical cells — stomach pains, weakness of the eyes and everything else.”

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Living Within: The Yoga Approach to Psychological Health and Growth, General Methods and Principles, The One Way — Quiet, Calm, Peace, pp. 1-2