According to the Upanishads, this body is not impure. The so-called religious people are full of a deep condemnation for the body – as if the body is evil, something to be hated; as if the body is the cause of all the unhappiness, the misery, the bondage in life. For them it is as if the body is the gate to hell. But this so-called religious concept has no foundation: only the sick-minded think like this.

The body is not binding you, it is not holding you. How can it hold you? It is you who are holding the body. You have chosen this body: it is the manifested form of all your desires and longings. So the first thing to be understood is that whatever body you have, whether it is human or animal, bird or tree or stone, whether it is of a woman or a man, beautiful or ugly, healthy or sick – whatever body you have – it is the manifestation of your desires, your passions, your longings. You have exactly what you have desired. But you cannot see this because there is a great distance of time between the desire and its fulfillment.

A man sows a seed and after many years it sprouts. In the meantime, he has totally forgotten that he had sown the seed. You will be surprised to know that there were many tribes around the world, and even today there are some African tribes, that don’t know that a child is born out of sexual intercourse because months have passed since the intercourse took place and here, now the child is born. So many tribes could not understand this connection. And each sexual intercourse does not create a child. Out of hundreds one results in the birth of a child and that too takes nine months.

Sometimes it takes a very long time to see the fulfillment of your desires, longings and wishes: you yourself have forgotten that you had desired it. Psychologists say that you invite many diseases: at some time you have desired them and that desire has remained suppressed in your unconscious mind. Then gradually the body creates that disease. It will be a little difficult to understand it because nobody likes sickness. Then why would someone desire to be sick? Why would someone sow the seeds of illness? There are profound reasons for this in the life of a person and it is a very complex network.

Whenever a small child becomes ill, people give him much attention and they care for him. When he is well nobody pays any attention to him. So in his unconscious mind it becomes clear that it is to his advantage to be ill because only then people will pay attention to him.

Everyone wants attention. It is a deep longing that people should pay attention to you because attention is food. Whenever someone looks at you you feel nourished and you become sad when nobody looks at you. Slowly, slowly a small child experiences that whenever he is ill something important happens – his father gives him more love and his mother sits near him. He has always wanted his father to be more loving towards him, for his mother to sit with him and everyone to care about him, but nobody ever bothered about him. But all his wishes are fulfilled when he is ill. Then his longing for attention becomes connected with illness. Later on, after many years, whenever this person feels neglected by others his unconscious desire to be ill will become very strong. This desire will not be conscious, it will be deep in his unconscious mind.