How Do We Really Heal?

Excerpted from 1925-1935 writings by Paramhansa Yogananda,
as compiled by Mary Kretzmann in Divine Will Healing

Perfect health is given by God. Disease is man-made. The baby who is born blind, or who is born a moron, brings such a condition from a past form of existence. Diseases acquired from the past or created through transgressions of the laws in this life are the results of human error. God wants His children to enjoy health and happiness, but they create disease and sorrow by breaking His laws.

Human methods are limited

No doubt some medicines have healing power, since God gave herbs and minerals power to affect the body of man. We know from experience that medicine has power to heal, as is demonstrated by the wonderful healings effected by good drugs and good doctors. However, it must be remembered that medicine and doctors have limited power and often reveal their helpless-ness when confronted with chronic diseases. Therefore, to put your entire trust in medicine and not in God’s unlimited healing power, is sure to bring disillusionment.

God is the healer

Convince the mind first that all human methods of cure are limited in their healing power, and that only God’s all-permeating, all-healing power is unlimited. While sitting in silence in the morning and evening, and whenever you have time during the day, mentally affirm: "Father, Thy unlimited and all-healing power is in me. Manifest Thy Light through the dark-ness of my ignorance." In healing, the power of the healer, great or small, is limited compared to the unlimited healing power of God. Hence, all healers, instead of commanding their own powers in healing, should invoke the unlimited divine power of healing to flow through them. Man’s power may fail but God’s power can never fail. Yet God cannot heal us until we open the gates of our own willing-ness to be healed.

The key: "an interested, joyous will"

Life force enters the body through the agency of an interested, joyous will. Learn to perform all your duties with a courageous cheerfulness welling up from within you; then you will see that a flood of vitality will move through your actions and your entire body. Do your daily duties, (even those which you have no interest in), with deepest attention and happiness, remembering that God is guiding and stimulating every worthwhile effort you are making to achieve a noble ambition. With the consciousness of God in your actions, and with the performance of noble actions, God and ceaseless energy will enter your body. Strong will-power pulls energy from the conscious cosmic rays surrounding the body through the door of the medulla oblongata. A man with strong will-power, by his highly vibrating mind, can shake out disease, failure, and ignorance. But the will vibration must be stronger than the vibration of physical or inner disease. The more chronic the disease is, the stronger and more unflinching should be the determination, faith, and effort of will to get well

Negative thoughts shut off the supply of energy

Remember that doubt, mental fatigue, worry, indifference, fear, restlessness, and timidity create counteracting static which makes it impossible for the cosmic energy to tune in with man. Mental and physical laziness are accompanied by listlessness and lack of energy. Enthusiasm and willingness go hand in hand with fresh supplies of energy. The greater the will, the more inexhaustible the energy. Death cannot ensue as long as the "will to live" is present. It is only because man, after his exhausting struggle with disease, relaxes the hold of his will on life, that death can conquer. So omnipotent is the will of man.