Regaining Our Spiritual Health

Health is imperative for a happy life. If we have good health we are able to function and do things in this world. Poor health means restrictions on our activity, diet, mobility and ability to enjoy, and nobody likes to be restricted.

When disease is present various symptoms are visible – perhaps a fever, a rash, pain, discoloration or swelling – and by the symptoms an experienced person can understand the nature of the disease and its cure.

This is all true of course, for our material body, but what about for us a spiritual beings? Does the spiritual body become diseased? And if so, what are the symptoms?
To answer this let’s first understand the nature of the healthy spiritual being.

The symptoms of the spiritual health are sat, cit, ananda – constant bliss, full knowledge and not decaying or ever growing old or dying. More than that the spiritual being is free from illusion and the dualities of happiness/distress, honor/dishonor, etc. If we are not experiencing these then we can understand that we are not spiritually healthy.

Ooops. Guilty.

All of us. Everyone in the material world is using a material body that is subject to death. In fact, our material body is the symptom of our diseased spiritual state. Once restored to a state of health the symptoms disappear – no more material body – and the jiva lives happily in its sat, cit, ananda spiritual body in a pure spiritual environment called Vaikuntha – the spiritual world.

We become material diseased by coming in contact with the ‘germs’ of aham bhogi and aham mameti (thinking I am the enjoyer and I am the proprietor). We are prakriti – meant to be enjoyed by, and give enjoyment to, the purusha, but due to these germs we become illusioned to think that we are the enjoyer and proprietor. But there is only one legitimate enjoyer, the purusha, and the rest are prakriti. When we become spiritually diseased we are placed in quarantine in the material world.

There we continue under the diseased condition, the illusion, of being the enjoyer and proprietor. Thess symptoms are seen and experienced everywhere in this world. Not only do people want to possess things, but they want to possess as much as possible. Not satisfied with one car they want several. Not satisfied with one house, they want more. Not satisfied with one million dollars, they want a billion. And so on, and so on. All this despite the fact that at the time of death it must all be given up and left behind.

And in innumerable little ways we attempt to enjoy this world. All of our so-called enjoyment is limited and temporary, not unlimited and eternal, which is the actual standard of enjoyment. We continue to try to enjoy, chewing the chewed, trying to wring enjoyment from the same stale experiences over and over again. But this is not real happiness of the soul. Material enjoying is actually only a matter of mental adjustment, because often the very things that “made us” happy are the same things that “makes us” distressed.

Just as a person who is ill can become better by proper treatment and hygiene, the spiritually diseased person becomes fit by following proper treatment and mental hygiene. Spiritual medication is administered through the ears by hearing the pure sacred sounds of the Lord’s name and His pastimes and activities. Such transcendental sounds penetrate and cleanse the mind, and go all the way to heal the contaminated heart. With this treatment gradually we are able to give up our ideas of independence and render service to the Supreme Lord.

Good mental hygiene means to keep ourselves free from feelings of desires and possessiveness. We can keep the mind clean and pure by meditating always on the holy names of the Lord, and specifically by hearing the maha-mantra, the great mantra for deliverance, the Hare Krishna mantra:

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare
Hare Rama, Hare Rama
Rama Rama, Hare Hare

Repeated hearing of this mantra will gradually bring us back to a healthy spiritual condition, and upon achieving that we become free from the symptoms of spiritual disease, and are eligible to enter to the spiritual world in a pure spiritual body, the highest goal of human life. ​