The mental illness is becoming a serious health issue that is getting more and more public attention around the world. Yet the word mental illness is only generic and not specific. In reality it can manifest into hundreds if not thousands of categories. Let us examine here about the mental illness and the possible cure using Yoga an eastern technique discovered and practised for thousands of years in India; even though mental illness is more predominant or reported widely in the western world where people have their basic necessities of life such as food, water, shelter and cloth etc.; They also have access to things like basic medicines, sports, entertainments, democratic freedom, social justice and the rule of law etc. which are considered a luxury in certain developing countries. Mental illness is also prevalent in developing countries but it is not taken seriously. In fact, it is a taboo for someone to say that he or she has a mental illness because life is too demanding and fast and Government do not pay much attention. People with mental illness are locked up in mental clinics and asylums with little care or attention. Some people are even chained for the rest of their lives depriving of any hope of a cure.
It is immaterial whether you live in a developed country or developing country the mental illness is a worldwide phenomenon and it is getting worse as the world progresses into modernity. The western world treats mental illness purely as a psychic issue and prescribe drugs targeting specific parts of a brain. It is typically a western approach to treat a specific organ for an illness by dissecting it or targeting it with a specific drug. But the eastern medicines have a different approach. It may sound more like an eastern philosophy than an eastern medicine because eastern approach such as Yoga is always about the mind which is intricately linked with body.
Yoga offers a very clear solution to mental illness. It not only cures the illness but also transforms one’s personality into a very intelligent and productive human being without taking any medications at all! Yoga is more of a doctrine than a mere physical posture or exercise as it is currently projected. Yoga is about mind and therefore indirectly linked with human body. Mind and body are two inseparable unit acting as one. That is why a mental illness can also physically alter one’s personality or individual organ. Yoga traces the root causes of such illness using our ‘intellect’ or “discriminative knowledge” a gift from God and the only available tool for human beings to get out of the cycle of birth, life, sufferings and death.
We are aware that ‘mental illness’ is something to do with our ‘mind’. But what is ‘mind’. Mind is nothing but a bundle of thoughts. Thought is nothing but a memory. Without a memory there is no thought and without a thought there is no mind. In fact, without a mind there is no separate entity called ‘the world”. According to Yoga the world is just a phenomenon and this phenomenal world is the creation of one’s mind. Take for example a man is in coma for 25 years and one day he suddenly wakes up from his deep coma. For him there was no world for the past 25 years and suddenly the world comes into being because his conscience comes into being. Therefore, his mind has created a world which was not there for him for 25 years. People may talk about the past 25 years but he has no proof of a world for the past 25 years on his own but only a testimony from others when he wakes up.
The same truth applies to every human being and the very purpose of human life on earth is only to reveal the truth that there exists only God in eternity and the so called ‘mind’ is only an illusion that creates this illusive world which disappears in our deep, dreamless sleep. When you wake from a deep sleep the world appears because the mind projects it and withdraws it again in sleep.
The mind creates not only a phenomenal world outside us but drives us to take an active role in such an elusive world and suffer in many ways. In truth there is no “Reality” in the phenomenal world but it is full of “duality” such as pleasure and pain, happiness and suffering, good and evil etc. In fact, a
“mental illness “is nothing but a grand illusion created by mind to take an active role in an illusory world. Once you analyse this truth using your only gift from God known as “intellect” then you will stop constructing this illusory world and seek the truth known as God, who is within you. The very purpose of mind is to discriminate the TRUTH from FALSE or LIGHT from DARNESS and discard mind at all times but stick to only the eternal truth we call GOD. There is no medication or exercise but use a discriminative analysis to seek the truth. The TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE. It is only freedom that you are seeking without knowing where to seek or how to seek.
Maharishi Patanjali describes about freedom we all seek in his last and final chapter of Yoga sutra known as “Kaivalya” as follows.
Freedom is at hand when the fundamental qualities of nature, each of their transformations witnessed at the moment of its inception, are recognized as irrelevant to pure awareness; it stands alone, grounded in its very nature, the power of pure seeing. That is all.
The human mind always seeks freedom from the illusory world that it is caught up. It seeks such freedom from external world such as alcohol, drug, women, wealth and other form of pleasure which are not truly pleasures but pain. Thus the suffering of human beings continues indefinitely until one is able to discriminate the truth between the “Reality” and “Illusion” and seek freedom by killing the mind by practising a deep meditation technique known as “Raja Yoga”. Once this truth is known then the mind and its illness will disappear without a trace and you become a new human being full of enlightenment, intelligence, grace and beauty reflecting the Light OF God which is your true Nature and WHO always abides within you.
