Better Than an Apple a Day

Swami Sivananda Saraswati

The world is now flooded with multifarious injections and tonics. People are carried away by pompous advertisements. Money is wasted enormously in paying doctors’ bills. They immediately run to find relief in outside objects and from physical doctors, who despite their qualifications and degrees, are still ignorant of many things, who are still groping in darkness, who are yet not able to diagnose when there is a complication, who have no real genuine specifics to cure diseases like asthma, malaria, lumbago, phthisis, cerebrospinal meningitis, typhoid, diabetes, blood pressure, who are still only experimenting on the patients.

In olden days, an ordinary Vaidya would cure a disease with some bazaar drugs worth about two pies. In these days of modern civilization and scientific advancement, allopathic medical treatment has become very costly. Poor people cannot afford to have this. The patient has to get his blood, urine, faeces, and sputum examined. He has to visit the Saptarishis of the medical profession. He has to go to a bacteriologist first for this purpose and has to jingle something on the table. The bacteriologist directs the patient to go to a dentist to remove the tartar and treat his pyorrhoea which is believed to be the root cause for all diseases. He has to pay for this Rs. 10/. Then he has to go to the radiologist for taking a skiagraph. He has to pay him Rs. 25/. Sometimes he has to pay a board of doctors for expert diagnosis. He finds no real relief even after spending so much money.

Vedanta for health

The best medicine or tonic for any complaint, physical or mental, is constant thinking: ‘I am the Spirit, the Atman which is independent of the body and the mind, which is Anamaya, diseaseless’. Repeat this formula mentally several times daily. Meditate on the meaning. Chronic incurable diseases that are declared to be hopeless by boards of eminent doctors can be cured by this method. This is an unfailing infallible divine remedy. Sometimes you will have to wait patiently for results.

Auto suggestion is only an offshoot of Vedanta. The formula of this school – By the Grace of God, I am becoming better and better, day by day, in every way – is only a vedantic assertion and affirmation.

People say, ‘One apple a day keeps the doctor away’. This is costly. This is doubtful. I say, “Live in the spirit of the vedantic formulae. This alone can keep the doctors away. This is dead cheap. This is a sure sovereign specific and a sheet-anchor and a cure-all. This is a potent, easily available medicine that lies at your command, that is very close to you, that is within easy access or approach. Doctors’ bills and money can be saved. This will give you Self-realization as well.”

Believe me. Give up doubting. I assure you, my dear brother! Thou art not this perishable body. Thou art the immortal, all-pervading Soul. Tat Tvam Asi – Thou art That.