Sadhguru, everyday I see so much disease and suffering around me. Many times it has deeply bothered

Now how can karma cause disease? There is something called prarabdha. Prarabdha means the allotted karma for this lifetime. There are many aspects to this. To make it simple, prarabdha karma is written into your mind, body, sensations, and your energy. It is most basic on the level of the energy; it is the fundamental recording. How can information be recorded on the energy? It can be recorded. I’m not sure if it is being explored scientifically, but I know that some day science will find a way of recording information on energy. At one time, whatever we wanted to record, we had to write on stone tablets. From there, we moved onto books. Now, what could be written on a thousand tablets can be written in a single book. What could be written in a thousand books can be recorded on a compact disk. What could be put onto a thousand compact disks, we can now store on a small chip. Someday, what we now store in a million chips will be recorded on a little bit of energy. This is a living experience within me. I know it is possible because it is happening within me all the time, and it is happening within you also. The energy itself functions in a certain way. Everybody’s energy, or prana, does not behave the same way. It behaves according to their karmic bondage. So the deepest recording is in the energy. This is like karmic back-ups. If you lose your mind, it is still in the body. If you lose your body, it is still in the energy; it remains in the backup systems. So energy has allotments.

There are many complexities to this. To put it very simply, there is a certain amount of energy dedicated to action, another amount to your emotion, another to your thought process, and yet another for the experiential dimensions within you. Let us say you have this much energy dedicated for emotion. Today, in modern life, in the present way of living, people’s emotions are not finding their full expression. That part of the energy, the unexpressed emotion, cannot become something else. Either it has to find an emotional expression or it will turn inward and do funny things within you. That’s why in Western countries there are so many mental problems. It is said that one out of every three Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of two of your best friends, Frederica. If they’re okay then it must be you (laughs). One of the major factors for this is that there is no room for emotional expression. Anything emotional is looked upon as a weakness in those cultures, so it is suppressed. People are emotional, but there is no free expression for their emotion. Ninety percent of the people in the world, or even more, never find full expression for their emotions. They’re afraid of their love, they’re afraid of their grief, they’re afraid of their joys, they are afraid of everything. To laugh loudly is a problem, to cry loudly is a problem; everything is a problem; and they call this ‘modern culture’. I would say this is a restrictive culture, which causes you to behave in a certain way. So if your emotions never find full expression then that energy can turn around and do many damaging things to you.

The major portion of your prarabdha karma is the energy that is allotted for activity. The physical body is the major thing in you, even today. So the maximum amount of prarabdha goes toward activity, always. Ninety-five percent of the time, the maximum allotted energy goes towards activity. This proportion may vary from person to person, but usually it is like this. Now, the activity level in modern life has come down dramatically because people do not use their body the way they used to. If this unused energy stays there, it could easily cause disease. The modern mind is going through a unique kind of neurosis which was not there in the past, because man has stopped using his body to a large extent. When you involve yourself intensely in physical activity, a lot of your neuroses are worked out because your nervous energy is used; but modern man has become more inactive and more neurotic than ever before. It has become a common phenomenon in society that everybody is in some level of neurosis. This is simply because the energy allotted for physical activity is not worked out. It is trapped because the physical activity is so low. Today you can see this; people involved in high levels of activity in the form of a sport – like say, a mountain climber – because of the full utilization of physical activity you will find him or her in a different level of balance and peace. You will not find such a person so entangled in sexuality and other physical drives. This is simply because one aspect of him has found full expression.

One result of this inactivity is disease; and above all, the lack of activity and trapped energy cause restlessness. It causes agitation in the body. This agitation may become a physiological disease in some people. In many people it may not become disease, but they are agitated; they are anyway at ‘dis-ease’. Their energies are always struggling within themselves. There is no ease in them. They cannot even sit quietly. Even if they just sit, there is no ease. If you observe people, the very way they sit and stand shows they are not at ease. They have brought practiced gracefulness to themselves – how to walk, how to stand and how to sit. If you take away the unease in your movements, it will build into your energy, because it’s not finding expression there. It shifts to yet another dimension where it is easy for it to find expression. So disease is happening because of this, because the energy turns inward.

This is one reason why our bhramhacharis are into so much activity. Anybody seeing their level of activity would ask, “Why are these people who came here to pursue their spiritual practices or sadhana working twenty hours a day?” In people’s minds, spirituality means someone half-dozing under a tree. This is not so. Their work is part of their spiritual growth. Now that Isha is expanding – we want to bring in a significant transformation to the rural areas of Tamil Nadu1 – our life will become twenty-four hours of activity. Right now, it is already twenty hours; it will increase to twenty-four hours.

The reason for this is, I want them to finish all the allotted energy in their prarabdha karma, let us say, in five years’ time. So we keep them this active. If they expend this karma, then there will be no need for action. The action will be by choice. There will be no compulsion to be active. Now if you ask him to just sit here, he will simply sit. There will be no struggle. That’s what we are doing in the higher level programs, Bhava Spandana and Samyama, immense activity, body-breaking activity, because you use up that allotted energy for activity faster than you would in normal life. This gives you a space to sit, unmoving. Then meditation will come naturally to you. When there is still unused energy allocated for activity, you cannot sit because the energy is trying to do more.

There are other aspects also to disease. There are karmic reasons why your energy functions in a certain way and causes disease. If people are diseased for karmic reasons, that’s different, but many people in the world need not have disease. Today, medical science is more advanced than ever before, yet people have not become free of disease. So both the physical and emotional energies, though they are large allotments, are not being used. The only thing being used is mental energy. What is allotted for thought is being used to a large extent in today’s world. For example, let us say there is money allotted in your country’s budget: this much for education, this much for development, this much for industry, and this much for power. The major allotment goes toward energy, but it’s not used. If you do not use it, your economy suffers. That is all that’s happening in the body.