“Health is natural, death is natural, but disease is not natural. Disease is simply an indication that something is going wrong in your nature. For example, you have eaten too much and there is pain in your stomach. This pain is not natural, you have done something unnatural.”
“You have not slept for two, three days, because you were running after money and it was not possible for you to sleep. Or you were fighting an election and it was not possible to sleep, or to afford that much time for sleep. You were on an election campaign, so you have not slept for three days and now the head is becoming neurotic, bursting; there is great pain in the head. This is just a symptom. Nature is saying to you. ‘Come back to me. You have gone too far away.’
Man is free and he can be unnatural. Many kinds of diseases happen only when we go somewhere astray from nature. If man lives naturally there will be no disease.
But man cannot live naturally continuously because man also has freedom. Sometimes you can eat a little too much — that is your freedom. And sometimes you can go on a fast — that too is your freedom. Man is the only animal in the world who has freedom: that is his dignity. But freedom brings dangers. The first danger is that you can go against nature. And nature is so polite that it does not shout, it whispers. Nature is very silent; its voice is very still and small. It goes on saying, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it,’ and it goes on tolerating. There is a point beyond which it cannot tolerate and the disease erupts.
Now, what is the physician meant to do? In the East the physician does not fight disease, the physician is not meant to destroy the disease. The physician is simply meant to bring the man back to nature.
The questioner asks: BUT INTRINSIC IN MY WORK, IN MY ACTIVITY, IS A REFUSAL TO ACCEPT ILLNESS, DISEASE AND HUMAN SUFFERING. VERY DEEP THEREFORE, IS A REFUSAL TO ACCEPT LIFE OR EXISTENCE AS IT IS. VERY DEEP IS A DESIRE TO CORRECT SOME OF THESE MECHANISMS OF NATURE.
Yes, the desire is perfectly right. But it is not to correct some mechanisms of nature, it is to correct some mechanism which has gone against nature.
The physician is not correcting nature, he is only correcting man. This is a totally different vision. The physician is not correcting nature. Nature is always correct. Sometimes man can be wrong, because he has freedom.
The physician corrects man.
You will be surprised to know that in China there has been a traditional concept — a very ancient tradition — that when a person falls ill he stops paying his physician. Otherwise he has to pay, if the person remains healthy he has to pay; if he falls ill then he stops paying. That means that the physician has not been looking at nature and has not been helping nature and has not been helping him to keep ‘right’, in tune with nature. The physician has failed.
This is a very strange outlook. When you are ill you go to the doctor and you pay. In China, for centuries they have been paying when they are healthy. They go to their doctor and pay because they are healthy — the doctor keeps them healthy. When they are ill, they stop paying. Why should they pay? The doctor has not been doing his job. His job is to keep people natural. This will be the vision of the future. Sooner or later, this vision has to come.
The doctor is not against nature, the doctor is only putting people right because people have the freedom to go wrong. They can.
So there is no need to keep yourself miserable — that you are doing something good, but then there is a refusal to accept disease and illness. Yes, there is a refusal to accept disease and illness, but disease and illness are not natural, they are a going astray. Put man right. You are not fighting against the whole, you are fighting for the whole against man. Let it be looked at in this way.
The questioner says that he is afraid — it is as if he is fighting against the whole. If the whole wants disease then let it be there. If this is the will of the whole then let it be there, he should surrender.
You are not fighting the whole when you are fighting the disease, you are fighting a part which is going against the whole. If the part is in tune with the whole, in harmony, there will be no disease, no illness.
But man has freedom. And with freedom many dangers enter.
If you go into the forest, into the jungle, you will be surprised to see that animals are almost never ill. I am not talking about the animals who live in a zoo — they are ill. They have become human imitators. To live with humans is very dangerous. But in a jungle, living in a wild situation, animals live and die — they are never ill. They never eat too much because they don’t have that much freedom. They never fast, they don’t have that much freedom, they don’t have that much consciousness. They don’t do anything that is unnatural. They go on doing the natural thing, and they keep healthy.
Once I went into a reserve forest with a few of my friends. One lady was with me who was really fat, exceptionally fat. She was just sitting by my side in the jeep when we went into the forest. That forest has thousands of deer, and a row of deer was passing and we were watching. I told the lady, ‘Just watch for one thing. See if you find any deer that is fat.’ Thousands of deer passed and the lady became very, very embarrassed because she could not find a single deer that was fat. They were all alike, there was not a single fat deer — because deer can’t eat too much. And when deer don’t eat too much they never have to diet, there is no need. A physician is not needed.
Illnesses like tuberculosis or cancer don’t happen in nature. Cancer-happens only in a very higher kind of civilization.
In India the ancient name for tuberculosis is ‘the royal disease’. It used to happen only to kings. It is called RAJ YASHIMA — only to the kings. It never happened to poor people. It couldn’t happen. A poor person can’t suffer that much for tuberculosis to happen. Then by and by poor people became rich, then the tuberculosis became more and more available to everybody.
Cancer is a new phenomenon. It is absolutely new. It is not mentioned in any ancient medicine manual — Taoist or Hindu — it is absolutely new. It had to wait for the twentieth century to happen. A great tension is needed for it to happen. So much unnatural tension is needed for it to happen that it was not possible before. Only we can afford cancer; we have become affluent enough to have it. And our minds are becoming neurotic with desires — we are running in all directions, we are falling apart.
You need not be worried that you are fighting against nature or against the whole. You are not fighting against nature, you are fighting against the stupidity of the part which has gone against the whole. You are bringing the person back to the whole.
And remember always, a physician never heals, he cannot heal. He can only make the healing force of the whole available to the patient. It is the whole that heals. It is not the physician and it is not the medicine either that heals. The medicine and the physician and the hospital all bring the part back closer to the whole, where healing happens. the physician and the medicine were just instrumental.
You need not be worried. You are in the service of nature. You can be happy that you are doing something beautiful.”
~ OSHO. Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol-2, #6, An Eternal Recurrence, Q-4
