The individual ordinarily suffers ailments, illnesses, such other related body pains in the given lifetime. This is the case with most living beings. The exceptions to this situation are extremely far and few.
Causes for these could be many and diverse. The body gets through disease for reasons physical, psychological, environmental, and even for mixed reasons beyond the control of the person yet for which the body is prone without his choice. Obviously, he ought to seek a remedy.
Our ancients believed in the right food to be taken and the correct modes of living. Even for cure, one should eat his way to health as one Chinese adage says. In our case too the remedies are sought in the right kind of eating. If it runs beyond use of herbs and natural substances mostly applied, modern medicine apart.
AMMA too prescribed food for many. Whenever people throng to see HER, AMMA insists on having food first even before the darshan. At times she indicated the same to groups of people coming to HER. When she could not speak, she guided them by hand gestures. Accordingly, they first had the food and then bowed to receive her grace.
This feeding has been accorded utmost priority by AMMA to the point that having food served here is viewed sacrosanct and is deemed verily the medium of AMMA’S GRACE. Many a time, there are countless experiences of the devotee children of AMMA who got cured of their ailments with the food taken here.
Even in early childhood, there is a recorded instance in ‘MAHODADHI AMMA’S authentic autobiography where food is prescribed as the remedy. When Bharathi, daughter of Chidambararao grandfather suffers an ailment like fits. Someone suggests that she should perform circumambulations in the sanctum of Anjaneyaswamy at Pavuluri near Inkollu, Prakasam District. Though she continues this practice for a cure, not much improvement could be observed.
At that moment AMMA intervenes and counsels her mother Annapoorna, the aunt of AMMA to break hundred coconuts or feed a thousand poor people for an effective remedy which was brushed aside by her. This is the early childhood episode when AMMA prescribed food as a remedy for disease.
Later, as time moves ahead, AMMA feeds many countless numbers, even one hundred thousand at a time, on the eve of HER GOLDEN JUBILEE in the year 1973. Even the regular feeding at ANNAPOORNALAYAM, where food is served freely to one and all is considered therapeutic and curative by many. Experiences of the devotee children suggest the same effectively.
At times, AMMA feeds the fortunate few personally just as the mother feeds the child regardless of the age and gender of the person. Such individuals also get cured. To recall in my own case, just before the beginning of GOLDEN JUBILEE in the year 1973, AMMA fed me sweets made of wheat flour, quite a large lump all the while talking to me counseling, rather consoling.
To my surprise, immediately after this feeding, was cured of the ailment even though no medicine was taken from that moment on. The fact is after the feeding AMMA told me to ignore the ailment and address myself to all the works around at that moment which was compiled by me meticulously without any doubt. The symptoms, like burn, pain and all the acidity disappeared without any trace.
In quite a few such cases, without simply accepting the same as a mystic experience we need to verify the same in detail for our limited understanding or perception. Food is the apparent cause for remedy. This is seen physically and hence believed by the devotee. Is merely the food given and eaten verily the medicine?
Illnesses are caused by a variety of reasons as mentioned before. Our ‘Sanathana Dharma’ classifies them into physical, divine and psychological. Traditionally these are cited as ‘Adi Bhouthika’, ‘Adi Daivik’ and ‘Adhyatmika’. Diseases can be caused to humans for reasons that could be categorized under any of these parameters. Here again, this is only the apparent physical fact and the seeming cause evidently.
Ill health, sickness is caused by the disturbance or disharmony within the individual irrespective of the cause. The life force, ‘Chaithanya’ , the vital cause and source of good health is disturbed for some reason or other.
The ancients also consider that ailments are caused by karmic reasons of the past accrued, carried over or the present perpetrated. Hence working out the bad karma is thrust on the individual through illnesses without choice. That is working or exhausting one’s own ‘Prarabdha Karma’. There are other modes of doing the same through atonement, austerities and so on which are selective and optional.
Does taking some food serve this cause of wiping out the effects of negative karma? Quite likely not so. The cure is contained in setting the life force in equilibrium once again, removing the discord and disharmony that has arisen in the vital force within the person. The food deemed the remedy is only an external factor or ingredient that is seen by the individual and believed. Medicine assists the bodily process of cure from within in reality. Cure is affected by the internal process of the body.
Such correction or restoring the harmony, equilibrium within the person only cures the ailment not the food apparently seen. This positive effect, cause, force is the result of grace emanating from a higher consciousness to which the individual is subject, rather exposed at the given moment by the outside input.
This higher positive force could be the generous Guru, the chosen deity, Godman, or verily the divine manifestation that took its advent on this earth like AMMA, the personified motherhood. By AMMA’S GRACE, many were cured merely by taking food in the common food provider, the sacred ANNA POORNALAYAM which is very dear to AMMA’S heart as declared by AMMA herself.
Now to probe this aspect further, does food intake only cause the cure. Not otherwise. To conclude so, are remedies possible only when food is taken? Could this mystic aspect, divine process be so limited and restrictive in its scope and impact on life in general.
To place the issue in its correct perspective, feeding is only apparent. The real curative cause is the divine consciousness that is applied in whatever miniscule dose it could be. Food does not cure by itself. It is the higher volition, divine grace applied in the given cases by means of food. Food or for that matter any other external, physical input, application is nominal, rather superficial.
Viewed in this respect, there are cures caused and remedies effected on their devotees, their subjects, in the instant case the devotee children of AMMA even without any feeding or even direct physical application of any substance.
To be candid, I have seen and experienced such distant, remote remedies caused by AMMA. Here in such cases, food is not the remedy, but intervention of grace that is subtle, intangible not physically seen, but the cure is the effect felt by the person.
This subtlety is very well clarified Swami Yogananda in his well renowned work ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’. He stretches this aspect elaborating that food or any other direct medium are used only to distract the subject and to cover the personal attribution to the person doing such good, giving cure, remedy and so on by the subject the beneficiary.
In all such cases, the subject individual places the entire stress; his whole accent is put on the physical input that he receives from the higher divine source, the causation. The true remedy, cure consists in the intervention of the supreme consciousness setting well the life force of the individual concerned. Yet this is the very subtle, abstract, mystic factor, rather an aspect beyond sight, touch and feel of the individual.
The individual begetting such experiences of cure, remedy is indeed a blessing. He shall be rather persuaded to be intense in his faith, devotion and commitment to such causation. Be he the Guru, Saint or the very divine manifestation which may vary from case to case, individual to individual.
For that fact, such instances are rare and very few to which the individual subject is exposed. Yet the individual shall cherish the same. He shall not get bogged down in the physical aspect but subsist earnestly and steadfast to the divine force that gave the remedy, caused the positive cure. He shall be mindful of such divine persona as priceless boon and set his life in proper perspective.
Devotee children of AMMA receiving graciously, subject to such mystic experiences shall seek recourse to AMMA unflinchingly from then on while cherishing the physical input and applying the same to his person. Thus, begins true and lasting faith in the divine source and cause in the individual life. Truly recourse to the divine is the lasting remedy for all life’s ills.