A talk by Blzebuub in Oregon USA 2008
Illness can come in a number of ways: through accidents, neglect, karma, and through the path. It’s very difficult to deal with having a body and not realizing the wider implications of it, being locked in the five senses, and therefore unable to see what goes on beyond them.
Because of the limitations in perception of the body it’s as though a person is nothing more than a body, and if it’s sick, it’s a disaster, it makes it really hard to do things, and it’s like your whole word is just pain and illness, and the things that you used to do you can no longer.
Much depends upon how illness is faced—you can treat it as best as you can and let time take its course to repair the body. But the attitude toward it is very important. This is easy to say and not easy to do, but, you have to learn to suffer. It’s part of life. No one will go through this life without escaping suffering.
Illness and the Tests of the Path
There’s a reason why illness is part of the path; on the path, we do our best to change, and in spite of it, get knocked back by illness. When sick, even being aware is painful, because you just become aware of the pain in the body and you can stay in low inner states. Yet it’s in those low states that you see other egos that you wouldn’t have seen if you’d have been fit and well. And it’s in those states that you can be tested on your faith and endurance.
It’s one thing to keep going when everything is going well, and it’s another thing to keep going when things are really difficult, when you can hardly move, and illness goes on and on.
With illness, you see emotions that are buried in the subconscious; these can make you act differently. Then on the path we’re tested on our actions. If this didn’t happen, no one would ever be tested on those things and would never see the egos that arise in those situations. To go through the path, you have to trawl up everything that’s in the subconscious—everything has to come up so that you can see it and overcome it. A lot of it is on the dark side of the psychological moon; it’s psychological substance that’s hidden from view—it doesn’t normally come out in everyday life. And illnesses are one of the things that bring out the egos on the dark side. That’s faced on the path and if you are tested and endure, if you stick to your purpose, then you will pass the test—you’ve been seen to be trustworthy.
But there is also illness that comes from karma. Everything that’s done has an effect, whether it’s seen here or not. The three-dimensional effects are more easily seen, but what may not be seen are the karmic causes and effects, which take place in the higher dimensions. Many believe they live just this one life, but they live a series of lives. And the karma is not just upon a single life. A life doesn’t usually start with a clean slate—there are consequences from the past. Everything in the past that had produced a karmic debt has to be paid for, even having a physical body has to be paid for. Even if you had paid all of your karma, you would still have to make payments every now and again just for having a physical body. That’s usually paid with illness, everything costs; nothing is really free.
Each person has a set of accounts over there. It’s like money. Each gets the payments that are due to them, and payments that they have to make, they are to do with actions. If you can progress on the path up to the end of the first of the three stages or mountains, then you would have paid off the ordinary karma you have accumulated until then. If there is some remaining it can even be forgiven, or paid off at the start of the second mountain, because it’s negotiable. If you have good deeds, you can pay off karma and illnesses can disappear. I’ve gone through so many illnesses, that when I went to a doctor once, she tried to persuade me to write a book on overcoming serious illness! More recently I’ve been tested at a top medical centre and was discovered to be as fit as highly trained athletes, in the top 2% of the population fitness wise, yet with relatively moderate exercise. This is due to help from above, which rejuvenated my body after going through illnesses of the path. I’ve gone through so much in terms of illnesses, of many different kinds. If you can endure them, then you pay off the things that you need to pay, or, you go through the test that you need to go through.
So, illnesses are not just physical things. It’s really amazing that an illness is under such control from the other dimensions. I’ve seen how when there’s been a certain point on the path, where an illness is part of it, at the precise time the point on the path arrived the illness arrived too. At the time I overcame something psychologically, that illness vanished. Even major illness just came and went, because they’re manipulating the body from over there. You can’t see the level at which things are being affected here, but they are, from the other side.
In the spiritual dimensions all actions are being put into a book of accounts by the beings that administer karma. So there’s a book of yours with an illness in it, which will appear at a certain time, and then you have to deal with it. Other illnesses can be provoked, by doing something harmful like drinking a bottle of arsenic, that kind of thing is not karma, it’s self-harm, obviously. Then there’s katancy, which is a heavy karma, and that gets paid with very serious illness, or, it’s paid it with the work. That goes on even if other karma is paid. Certain Karmas get paid at the end of the work, there are different kinds of karma.
If you have an illness, then you need to do your best to treat it—to do whatever you can to treat it, and then, endure whatever you need to endure, because that’s what life has brought you. And it can either be endured in psychological misery, or endured in the state that is the best possible one you can be in. It’s easy to say this, but difficult to do. But, when you realize that everything has a cause, and that the causes extend beyond this world, then you put that illness into its context. And if you take up the path properly and walk along it, then an illness won’t stop you.
Q: Why should we learn through pain? Most people when they experience pain become angrier and they get worse…
Belsebuub: It would be more pleasant not to have to learn through pain, instead to learn just by doing esoteric exercises such as disintegrating the egos or analyzing them in pleasant times, thus gaining understanding and knowledge. But there are egos that are hidden in the subconscious that can only appear through pain and difficulties, there are weaknesses that arise with pain and with those, the tests come. Pain brings learning, it’s like you put your hand in the fire and you learn that it burns, if it happens again, it burns every time. And in the same way, through painful consequences you would have learnt that doing actions that are born from the egos bring consequences over a long period of lives and over time.
No human being is new, everyone has been through many, many things in the past and have behind them a lot of experience. So with this experience, with the mind and the biological genetic inheritance, there is a sense that some things are harmful, and some are useful. This experience has been born through suffering. It’s the suffering which really enables learning. Suffering must be gone through on the path in order to crystallize the spiritual within and to value it once it’s acquired. In times of suffering, true repentance is greatest. Many people when they really suffer turn to the spiritual, even if throughout their lives they never have.
It’s less painful to change within and to change actions without having to go through that kind of unconscious suffering, because it’s just too horrible to suffer not knowing why.
What about people who have an illness—is there any way to help them?
There’s always the asking to the divine for help, but medical problems generally require medical examination.
It’s responsible to make sure you get medical attention for medical problems and do what you can to get cured. You can even gain karma if you don’t.
What if someone has a mental illness?
If someone is mentally ill then they tend not to be able to understand these things and should stay away from them; they have to be normal to study them. It’s difficult enough for what we could call a normal person to understand these things, let alone someone who’s mentally ill. In fact, some people can become a bit unstable when they become fanatical about spiritual matters, which is why you need to keep your feet on the ground, and to base yourself on experience. If someone has mental problems that are curable, they should get cured before starting to study these teachings.
Is it true that the beings of Karma call up every so often and ask people to show their work in the internal world?
Yes, that’s called a “call to account.” They happen from time to time. In one, you can see yourself in a court in a dream, or with Masters of karma, and an account is made of how you’re doing. And then they weigh it all up and the karma and dharma follow in the physical world.
So we have to show both the external work and the internal work?
They’re all part of the same work to progress.
