Frogdev Worship

illness is not a tool, it dulls the senses and it prevents you from using your mind and body to serve God, one has to try to prevent illness and sickness... to do that you have to be clean both in body and in mind and live in clean surroundings. Also, one should not over indulge in anything. Krishna himself says this in bhagavad gita, you are not to over indulge in things. It is okay to have desires but one cannot let them take control of oneself and finally we give up all desires and only desire God , but that is only a very high level of bhakti.

 

and God intends that you should be free from it, although it hurts your body , you are not your body therefore nothing will happen to you and when you realize this and stay mentally free from it , you realize that the disease is not really affecting you.

 

I agree broadly with what you say Jedi. A healthy body is a great asset in any kind of Yoga practice. I think the idea that God inflicts illness on people, either to teach them something or for some other purpose is simply untrue.

That's not to say though that getting ill can't teach one a lesson as often illness indicates some imbalance, or need to change something in one's life. But all that is karma.

 

Although I agree that illness can be a detriment in spiritual practice, I disagree that it completely shatters it. Look at Ramana Maharshi, who lived many years with cancer, without any treatment. Or the countless rishis whose sadhana was in the absence of all physical comfort, lack of food, shelter, clothing, etc. They used it as an advantage, a means to tame the body attachment.

 

Ramana Maharishi though was a Jivan Mukta - a great illumined seer. For the ordinary person illness may be much harder to deal with. To try to detach from it is probably the best thing.

 

But not if the healthy body is used in a way that is detrimental to spiritual development, thus illness to mold the intent of the soul within 'the body'.

God does use illness to mold intent. Observe yourself with a light heart as your God given 'illness' molds what you believe.

 

Kharakov, I see what you mean- if an illness helps you advance in spiritual knowledge then it is a blessing but actually it is not the illness that is helpful, it is the mind that is all of a sudden his friend and not because of the illness. Because really it is your own mind that is trying to teach you something.
Because it is trying to be your Friend!!!
If you learn something because you got a flu virus, it is not the flu virus that is teaching you something, it is your own mind. The flu virus could have caused you to more lament about why you couldn't go out and enjoy the new king kong movie with your friends, but really your mind gives you a positive attitude and tells you that this is the time you need to catch up on other things- like lets say giving yourself a day to relax with some hot chocolate. (although this conversation is strictly in material terms ... it is also applicable to spiritual conditions as well)

 

or maybe not... virus' and background radiation are considered by science to be two driving forces of our evolution from germs that began so many years ago

evolution is certainly learning

 

You are not your body, and you are definitely not your body... molly- you are not your body did I just say that? or did I say you are not your body...? Anyway, it does not matter, you are not your body anyway.

 

what is the connection between what i wrote and your post?

 

Well, you see evolution has to do with the body, the viruses are linked to evolution because sometimes if it is a retrovirus or something because it is incorporated into the host cell DNA or something like that, anyway, evolution usually takes place with mutations in the organisms genome... the genes are like a blueprint of the body and are not really related to the soul... or anything spiritual... well atleast in my thinking.

 

I see the 'natural world' as God behaving in patterns to teach and feed (metaphorically) the souls within God.

 

that's not the thinking of the bhagavatam

"THE FIRST SIX INCARNATIONS OF VISHNU DARWIN'S and THEORY OF EVOLUTION
Matsya (Fish)- Life starts in water (600 million-400 million years ago)
Kurma (Tortoise)- The first amphibians emerge (100 million years ago)
Varaha (Boar)- The first mammals evolve (60 million years ago)
Narasimha (half man-half lion)- Half man-half animal appear (30 million years ago)
Vamana (short man)- Homo Erectus, Upright, yet short and weaponless (5 million - 2 million years ago)
Parashurama (parashu=axe, Rama=name of God)- Bronze age; the coming of Ramapithecus; development of first weapons such as axe. Homo Sapiens (350,000-100,000 years ago)"

 

Maybe the genes are the storehouses of prarabhda.

 

You see molly- its funny how humans are such curious species in that we try to relate things and make sense out of them although they may not truly have any connection at all... anyway it does not matter , the truth remains, we are spirit souls and our bodies are like clothes, the bodies however are just a big mush of proteins encoded by our genome and if the soul is not the body and if you are the soul, you are not affected by the virus, just like a stain on your shirt does not have an effect you.

 

Speculations are good things to undertake bhaskar but speculations that are not 'proven' scientifically or things that we cannot truly prove scientifically remain only in the realm of wishful thinking (nowadays anyway), therefore I think we should just stick to our sadhana.

 

But the question is where did the ordering principle in this 'big mush' come from?
Is evolution the method used by the Divine for the manifestation of all these varied forms? That seems very likely to me. There must be a connection because the soul has to incarnate in the appropriate body according to karma.

 

BBB, in time we will figure it out, but you cannot answer this question today logically because that will just be wishful thinking. How do you even know that evolution is going on for millions of years? - Now this may seem like a silly question but really, why can't it be a recent phenomena, and how can we say everything evolved anyway-- some of these things that we say happened in science are begging to be things that involve divine intervention...
For instance, there are many types of "forms"- "the three dimensional structures" a protein may have... but only one form called the native form gives you a working protein- the protein that works, now according to levinthal, if you take a 100 residue protein (a reall small protein) and lets say each residue can have three conformations and we say it will take 10^-13 seconds to convert from one structure to another, it will take you about 5*10^34 secs to go through all 5*10^47 structures - according to years that equals to 1.6*10^27 years-> our universe is much younger than this let me tell you that. - This is called the levinthal paradox. So, it is ridiculous for us to really think evolution is a fact, it may be a fact because not everything is explained by it and sometimes our calculations are downright wrong according to common sense.

 

I have to tell you Jedi that in this, your thinking is the opposite of that of Sri Aurobindo, who successfully reconciled evolution with Yoga teachings.


I don't accept that science has got it wrong somehow about the age of the earth, or the time it has taken to produce the current spieces which inhabit it.
I do agree though that science has much more to uncover yet before we fully understand the mechanisms involved in the process of evolution.

 

::nods:: I most def. agree. There are a lot of different ways of dating that can determine the age of the earth....so scientists are very close. And there is even more proof for evolution (I don't know really about the animals as much because my studies are of humans...)....we are still learning but there's def. proof that it happened....the details are what's being worked on.