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The Mental Will and Its Influence on the Health and Well-Being of the Body · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  By now, most people have heard of the placebo effect, yet they
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  have not gone into the significance of what this
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  implies. Studies have shown that as much
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  as 30% of a group given an inert treatment have similar healing
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  outcomes to those given an actual targeted treatment.
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  The individual given the placebo does not know he has received an
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  inert treatment. The mind of the individual
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  adopted the sense of being aided and undertook to create a will
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  to heal. What this statistic does not do,
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  however, is provide information on what percent of those who
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  actually received the targeted drug or other type of treatment
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  were benefited by a similar will to heal, regardless of whether
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  the drug or treatment was helping them or not.
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  It has become clear that the mind, the mental will, plays an
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  enormous role in the healing of the body.
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  On the flip side of this healing scenario, there is the question
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  of hypochondria, where the mind imagines that the body is
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  suffering from some disease or disease condition and through
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  dwelling on it, the body actually responds and exhibits
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  symptoms of illness. There is also the factor of fear
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  weakening the vital envelope and thus allowing entrance to a
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  communicable disease. The mind accepts the suggestions
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  about the disease, manifests the fear and thus the disease
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  becomes something of a self fulfilling prophecy.
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  We can also observe different results depending on the
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  intention of the individual. Thus, an individual may
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  undertake a fast, start a diet regimen, or simply not have food
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  available and thus be subject to starvation.
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  In all three cases, the individual is not eating.
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  Those who are fasting with intention tend to report an
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  increase in energy and focus. Those who are dieting tend to
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  report a struggle to maintain the diet while working to
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  overcome temptation, with a focus on the process, not the
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  side effect of increased clarity that the fasting individual
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  reports. The person without food suffers
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  from starvation and focuses on the ways to acquire sustenance.
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  Of course, when any discipline such as fasting or dieting is
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  taken to extremes, it can have negative consequences on the
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  body similar to that of starvation, but that is an
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  extreme result in the short term. 3 individuals, none of
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  them eating food, have three different results and mental
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  frameworks, and their bodies tend to respond differently.
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  In his Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramount's Yogananda described
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  meeting with certain individuals who ate very little or nothing
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  at all for various spans of time.
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  These individuals had a spiritual purpose, a strong
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  energetic action, and a radiant glow about them, despite not
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  relying on material substance. We tend to believe the mental
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  conception that the body requires physical sustenance,
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  and thus we expect it to break down when food is withheld.
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  This may, however, be seen as a habit, albeit a very deeply
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  entrenched habit. The question arises whether
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  there are states of consciousness where the body can
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  find support and nourishment through some other form of
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  conversion of energy into matter, possibly bypassing the
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  transitional steps that lead to the creation of food that needs
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  to be eaten in order to then convert it back into the energy
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  and building blocks of substance needed to sustain and operate
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  the body. While this may not be a reality
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  for most, if not all in today's world, can we not envision the
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  possibility of a future formulation of being that is
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  able to construct and maintain a body through direct action of
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  consciousness and force? At the moment solar energy is
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  absorbed by plants and through the process we call
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  photosynthesis, they produce material substance that converts
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  that energy into a solid form and makes it bioavailable for
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  the plants own needs and for animals and human beings to
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  consume and convert into sustenance and energy for their
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  needs. We thus see energy converted
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  into a form of matter and then matter converted back into a
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  form of energy through the action of the plants.
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  If an individual could gain the power of directly tapping into
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  the solar energy without the intermediate steps, a whole new
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  paradigm of existence, bodily health and well-being and growth
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  could be envisioned. Changing this habit or
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  limitation in the mind and developing a new form of
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  relationship to energy through exercise of the will could
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  remove the expectation that lacking food inevitably leads to
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  a breakdown of health, the mother writes.
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  Quote, The Yogi or aspiring Yogi who does asanas to obtain a
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  spiritual result or even simply a control over his body obtains
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  these results because it is with this aim that he does them.
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  Whereas I know some people who do exactly the same things, but
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  for all sorts of reasons unrelated to spiritual
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  development, and who haven't even managed to acquire good
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  health by it, and yet they do exactly the same thing.
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  Sometimes they even do it much better than the Yogi, but it
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  doesn't give them a stable health because they haven't
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  thought about it, haven't done it with this purpose in mind.
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  I have asked them myself. I said, but how can you be ill
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  after doing all that? Oh, but I never thought of it.
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  That's not why I do it. This amounts to saying that it
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  is the Conscious will which acts on matter, not the material
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  fact. End Quote.
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  Reference Srioro Bindu and the Mother Powers within Chapter 5,
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  Willpower, page 52.