Health

In physical space there are many factors that affect human health. We can list them as follows:

* Genetic origin. Some people inherit their ancestors' genes and so have good health, a high resistance in the body, and very slow ageing. The factors that make other people ill do not affect people with these heaven-given genes. Germs are destroyed as soon as they enter; if they happen to eat a lot of fat (cholesterol), the body converts and burns off some; their DNA always regulates cells so that they do not multiply wildly into tumours; their brains are very good, they fall asleep easily, or can stay awake long without tiredness...

The opposite of this kind of fortunate person is those who already carry the seed of illness from the time they were in the egg. They already have latent disease-causing genes waiting for the right time to break out. These are hereditary diseases, hard to cure by ordinary methods. Because genes have not yet been fully decoded, scientists still do not fully know which diseases are truly hereditary and which are not.

* Diet. Every food has its own medicinal properties. A food may cure one illness but cause another. The vitamins and trace elements in food are necessary for the body, while accumulated toxins also do no small harm to it. A food is used by people after a process of "trying it out" that finds no harm. Later, however, under scientific testing, many foods have been considered harmful: cabbage causes the loss of iodine, animal fat raises the risk of cardiovascular disease, vitamin C after a meal causes loss of copper...

The Japanese Professor Ohsawa popularised a way of eating based on the principle of yin and yang. But later, some of it was recognised as correct and some was regarded as wrong.

Some people unwittingly eat foods unsuited to their constitution, and illness arises; conversely, some people suddenly recover from illness for no clear reason, only because a few days earlier they happened to eat a food whose medicinal property was not quite right for the illness.

Scientists tend to study food and publicise it to all humankind so that each person may choose foods suited to themselves for preventing and treating illness. The Soviet biologist Xuren Avakovich Arakelian believed that people could live to 300 years if they knew how to fast by the right method. During the fast, people take only water and vegetables. One can fast three days in a row every month, or one month each year.

* Work and rest. A person who does no exercise weakens the body. But a person who does not know how to rest at the right time also harms the body.

Exercise and rest must be carried out sensibly according to constitution and age. A young, strong person can do much, do heavy work and rest little. But the old and weak should only do token work and rest a great deal. Doctors hold that an hour's rest at midday is good for health and prevents cardiovascular disease.

Stress in life is also a significant cause of illness. When the central nervous system is weakened by stress, it no longer performs its function of regulating the body properly, and very many illnesses arise afterwards. So scientists have praised meditative concentration as a wonderful method of treating the stress of today's century, when human life runs at a dizzying speed. Twenty-four hours in a day are no longer enough for people to use. They squeeze every minute in order to live under great strain.

The mental factor is confirmed as an important one affecting human health. In a person with a serene inner mind, the body will be healthier, and illnesses of the body will also do less harm. Conversely, an unstable state of mind such as sadness, irritability, jealousy, greed... quickly worsens some illnesses of the body.

* Bacteria. Since Pasteur brought germs to light, world medicine has taken a long stride. Invasion by bacteria makes the body ill. Some epidemics spread quickly through bacterial infection. Today the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, terrifies people most of all.

* Geography. Scientists are consolidating the theory linking geography and disease. At the end of the 6th century, Bishop Gregory of Tours described the plague in the city of Narbonne and made an observation: people who fled the region where the plague raged and waited until it had passed before returning fell ill and died at once.

In 1720, plague spread through Marseille. Some fortunate people slipped past the authorities' control to escape from the diseased region and survived. After the epidemic had calmed, they returned, fell ill and died.

In 1896, in Bombay, plague took 400,000 lives. English doctors found plague bacteria in people who had fled from Bombay to Calcutta. But there, for two years, no one caught the disease.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian bacteriologist Vladimir Haffkine produced a plague vaccine that saved thousands of people in Bombay. The same vaccine proved entirely ineffective in Manchuria, and 100,000 people died of plague in 1910–1911.

In 1982, Scandinavian medical researchers discovered that cheese imported from France contained dysentery bacteria that had sent many Scandinavians for emergency treatment. But the French ate that same cheese without a care.

On 25 May 1987 the Times printed a sensational item: Susanna Palerian, a Filipina working as a nurse in Japan, had been sent back to her country after the SIDA (AIDS) virus was found in her blood. But when she returned home and was examined again, medical specialists from several advanced countries concluded that Susanna had been wronged! The woman sued and demanded 1 million dollars in compensation.

From many similar events, scientists put forward the hypothesis that the makeup and properties of each region affect human health, and among these the Earth's electromagnetic field is the one most often mentioned.

* Environmental factors. Environmental pollution is a factor that affects human health greatly.

Toxic emissions into the atmosphere; rubbish; polluted rivers; radiation from electromagnetic waves, noise... raise people's risk of illness.

Besides the countless physical factors that act on human health, there are factors of spiritual space whose influence is no less.

The bio-electricity from a mother's hands as she cares for and soothes her child makes the child's body develop better.

The sincere love of people who live close together also makes their bodies healthier without their being aware of it.

The method of reflexology massage is highly rated by the medical world in preventing and treating some illnesses. But in truth up to 30% of it is due to the mental power of the person massaging, with the wish that the patient recover. If the mental power is strong, it is the spiritual energy itself that contributes more than half of the healing.

When people tend plants, the spiritual interaction between plant and person makes both healthier. That is why trees growing near houses are usually better than those growing far from them. So let us cherish every stalk and leaf. Let us set aside a little time to tend the garden and ornamental plants. Our health will be better for it.

If this is so with plants, how much more with animals and people. If we live in an environment where people, birds and animals are all attached to and love one another, where people also love one another sincerely, with no hatred or jealousy, then the effect of mutual spiritual space also makes everyone healthy. This is not a matter of psychology! It is not that our minds feel at ease when we love and are loved, and that ease and comfort make us healthy. It is not so! It is the invisible energy emitted by love that works the miracle, raising the body's resistance.

Some recent statistics show that unmarried people die sooner than people with families. At first medical researchers judged this to be a matter of sexual activity. But even single people who have sexual relations outside marriage (paid) still die early. People then supposed that with a stable family people are better cared for and so their health improves. In fact that is only a secondary reason; the main reason is that the sincere love of husband and wife itself creates a spiritual energy that makes them healthier.

So the key to the problem lies in an environment with love! If we live alone, as monastics do, for instance, let us choose a monastery in which everyone loves one another warmly, and thanks to that, everyone's health will be better.

If one must live alone for quiet practice, let us spend a little time tending a garden and a few pots of ornamental plants. Love for plants also makes our health somewhat better.

Turning the question around, if caring for plants improves health, then surely destroying plants makes human health decline. People who constantly cut down and destroy trees often meet with bad luck and often catch strange illnesses. When a tree is violated, its weak spiritual reaction also strikes the perpetrator. A little each time, and eventually the one who fells trees falls gravely ill.

Some old trees, hundreds or thousands of years old, have very strong spiritual energy. It can emit a spiritual reaction that makes a person who comes to saw it down cough up blood at once. Elders who witnessed this strange phenomenon concluded that a spirit lived in the tree, or some kind of goblin or demon. In truth, it is only that the older a tree is, the stronger the spiritual energy it emits.

Understanding this, let us join forces to protect the forests, to protect the green life of this dear Earth, so that everyone may be healthy.

However, hidden quietly within the Fundamental Nature, the law of karma governs the state of human health strictly.

If a person often uses their strength to help others, or constantly cares for the health of many people, such good karma has become thoroughly ripened, almost fixed as their nature, and it causes this person in the next life to have exceptionally special hereditary genes that regulate the body perfectly and protect it from every harmful invasion from outside. These people will live a healthy life and die gently without pain.

The engineer Eiffel, who built the Eiffel Tower in Paris, famous throughout the world, devoted his whole life to building bridges across rivers. On his 90th birthday, after a party with his children and grandchildren, he felt a little tired and went inside to lie down, and then passed into the eternal sleep calmly and gently.

According to what was ordained by karma of former lives, a person's illness drags on and is hard to cure, or ends quickly. Sometimes they go from place to place looking for healers and are never cured. When the karma is exhausted, they happen to eat a food with medicinal properties, and the illness departs unexpectedly. Or only when their merit is sufficient do they meet a skilled doctor to treat them.

While the karma is not yet exhausted, sometimes they also meet a good doctor, but the karma has clouded the doctor's mind, so that he does not diagnose accurately and cannot cure them.

Moreover, each karma creates a different kind of illness.

For a person who makes dirty smoke and releases it where people are crowded, the karmic result over many later lives is often shortness of breath, bronchitis or tuberculosis.

For a person who steals public lamps, the karmic result over many later lives is dim, poor eyesight.

For a person who damages roads and bridges, the karmic result is crippled legs.

For a person who spills people's blood, by killing animals or by fighting on the battlefield, after paying the main karma, the remaining secondary karma is constant paleness and anaemia.

For a person who despises and belittles a Saint, the karmic result that seeks them out is leprosy with its sores.

For a person who often quarrels, grumbles and causes trouble that makes others anxious and uneasy, the karmic result is some endocrine and nervous disorders that make the brain tense, with difficulty sleeping and agitation.

For a person who hears or sees someone in distress and turns a blind eye, the karmic result is deaf ears and blind eyes.

And so on....

The countless karmas that everyone creates form countless rich and varied illnesses that drive scientists to distraction. Because illness comes from karma, so long as people do not stop creating karma, illness will never end. However much science advances, new incurable diseases will go on appearing in the world to test human intelligence and morality. The AIDS disease of today is a clear example.