Many of us have either suffered illness ourselves, or known someone with a serious or even life threatening disease. In Advaita and non-dualism, so little is said about chronic long term disease. If it is discussed at all, there is often an aura of blame allocated - as if the disease were somehow indicative of a failing of some sort. Or it is called a ‘challenge’ that must somehow be worked through and accepted. Such viewpoints come usually from those who have not experienced long term serious illness themselves.

• If you put an elephant in a thatched hut, there is bound to be some shaking.
  – Ramana Maharshi, when asked why his hands shook
• “You are not ready to accept the fact that you have to give up. A complete and total ’surrender’…. It is a state of hopelessness which says that there is no way out…. Any movement in any direction, on any dimension, at any level, is taking you away from Yourself…”
  –U.G. Krishnmurti
• “… repeating in a loud voice, over and over again: ‘I hope I’m very ill, I hope I’m very ill!’. He so demoralized the other sufferers that they insisted on his going in to see the physician first. ‘I hope I’m very ill, I hope I’m very ill!’ he shouted at the doctor.”
  Why?
  “I’d hate to think that anyone who feels like me was really fit and well!”
  –from the tales of Nasrudin
• ‘Mind your head!’ warned the rabbit, as a branch began to break off above the owl.
  ‘I have no head,’ he stated with finality.
  ‘No?’ queried the rabbit, looking up at it.
  ‘What you are looking at only seems to exist in your aspect of mind,’ he replied, ‘purely phenomenal, and conceptualized.’
  –O.O.O.

Some years ago a member of our small group suffered serious brain damage following a series of strokes triggered by an accident. After the strokes he became very weak, easily confused, disoriented, and slow. He got lost going to the corner store, could not recognize people, lost the ability to read, had trouble understanding speech, and more. An MRI showed loss of neural function in parts of the brain. Further hospital tests showed he had dropped about ninety IQ points. And of course there was loss of income, career, and a host of day to day difficulties most of us cannot even imagine. He described his life as living in a thick fog.Our friend desperately tried to get well.

It was difficult to watch him try to read or slowly work out who a person was that clearly knew him well, but whom he did not recognize. He contacted several advaita teachers who sent their love. “If that’s all they can do then they are useless”, he said.

For several years our friend stumbled and suffered. He kept saying he no longer knew who he was. He said he was lost.Then one day he came and said that he had lost his ‘me’. When asked to explain he slowly said that he had suddenly noticed that although all his habits and personality where firmly in place, “the ‘me’ behind it all is gone”. We asked what he meant, and he just said that he was bigger than the sky.Our friend still suffers daily from the loss of brain function. But there is a change. He does not speak about it, and when asked just says everything is the same as always, but “The ‘me’ part is missing”. He does not say this is spiritual, or that everything is ‘oneness’ or anything remotely like that. Nor does he say he is free of pain. He just says that the ‘me’ is gone for good, and he is living his life as best he can.

He spends a lot of time sitting quietly outside near some tall trees. When we ask him what he is doing, he just says “nothing”, and smiles.

In our society there is a prevailing belief that a rooted spirituality is protection from illness. This may or may not be articulated either to others, or even to ourselves. Yet many who suffer or whose loved ones suffer from illness have secretly blamed imagined spiritual failing for the onset of problems. This attitude is sadly true of many advaita or similar teachers and seekers alike. How often have we heard that immersion into the self will cure all ills? Such a belief in cause and effect posits both a past and an emerging future.

Yet to a person experiencing serious illness or pain, even while her mind may dart hither and yon seeking relief, the intensity of this excruciating moment is all that exists. In intense deep lasting illness, there is no time for beliefs, mantras, systems, paths, or for that matter, anything else.

There is only the realization of helplessness, and for the very very lucky, an abandonment of everything.

This letter below came from a friend who has been serioiusly ill for several years, writing someone else who’s husband was also ill. It is used herein with permission.This life of ours is so short — an eyeblink and it is gone. I think it is very lovely that you and your husband could hold hands together even while walking through hell. Who knows what may come? In joy or in suffering, this amazing life dazzles us all.You sound as if you might be ill yourself.

That’s what my doctors say. I don’t believe them . My little cat never gives tomorrow or yesterday a thought. Sometimes she hurts, and asks for comfort. Sometimes she is tired and lies gently in the warm sun smiling up at me. What more could there be? No wonder Ramana loved Lakshme so very much. Lakshme and my little cat are not going anywhere. They never have. How blessed.

Rest is greatly undervalued. It seems to me that most people in this society have not had genuine rest since they were young children. No wonder there is such unhappiness. I feel that most of the folks sitting in satsangs are really just looking for a little rest. Animals are so much smarter — they rest when they are tired. Now there’s a sensible life!

It is my own experience that pain is something of an eye opener. Pain that goes on for years tends to drown out the silliness of belief systems in favor of direct contact with life, God, or whatever one wishes to call truth. Intermediaries are a waste of time when the body is crumbling.

I have found that such difficulties tend to make all other sounds meaningless — only the beating of one’s own true heart has meaning.

> I wrote [a teacher] right after my husband was diagnosed and I clung to her “rest and rapture, what else is there”.

It is my own experience that suffering is what most of us do best. And much of that suffering is a result of trying to fend off strong feelings. It is my experience that nothing works anyway — in really serious illness there often is no way out. So why not do the only thing left open — which is to rest and enjoy the light sparkling on the trees.

There really is nothing else.… you will think I’ve lost it, but for me the aloneness has become a very lovely thing. I do not feel alone, as in isolated or cut off. Rather this aloneness is in a sense a powerlessness which is very peaceful. There really is nothing I or anyone can do, so I may as well smile with my little cat in my arms and live as best I can.

As I type, that cat is asking for dinner. She is really good at being present at all times, especially at dinner time. I think she has more wisdom in her little finger than 99.999% of all the so-called teachers out there. And talk about good-looking! Only Ramana had a face as lovely as hers…Illness (and anything else for that matter) are beyond my or anyone’s control. Sigh, I’m not very good with words. I think I’m trying to say that I have found that planning and worrying (which the mind is designed to do) go on of course. But so what — my mind may continue to suffer but that’s not me, so let it suffer if it wants to. It is none of my concern. There is nothing it can do anyway.

> I understand how little energy you have. If I had any choice about the matter, I would just stop everything and be…like your beloved cat.

I feel my friend the cat has more competence as a healer than all of these others combined. Not to mention infinitely more compassion.

> Gurus can be just as bad as doctors.

Yes — why anyone would want to teach (as opposed to sharing) is a mystery to me. I feel that sometimes someone has an experience and thinks he is special, so he puts up a sign and advertises his services. The desperate and the frightened come, invest heavily, and eventually end up with an experience of their own, and then put up their own sign on the street. Invisible prison walls.It has been many years since I felt a difference between guru and student, or awakened and un-awakened.

It is my experience that such terms have no meaning, serving only to get in the way of time spent lying in the warm sunlight with a cat in one’s arms.