How to Keep Health – Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

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How to Keep Health – Mahatma Gandhi

 

The Polish Professor with who the reader is now familiar writing on my illness says: As I have been reading in Young India about your illness and discussion with ‘jailors’, let me tell you of my own experience how to prevent such breakdowns. Within the last nine months—September to May—I have visited 40 towns all over Poland, and lectured for 100 days at the rate of 3-7 hours a day. At the age of 64, I feel as young as 40 years ago whenever I stand before the public. My rules are: of joy, light, strength flowing into me. Such a sleep is prayer, is intercourse with the Highest and refreshing. When I wake up from such a sleep, I know exactly what I have to do, and I do it gladly. The professor adds a third rule which is about fasting and diet. As it is incomplete, I have asked for further information before sharing it with reader. But there is no doubt that the two rules above mentioned about absence of worry and necessity for sleep is golden rules.

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever. It is a difficult rule no doubt for the simple reason, that faith in God with the majority of mankind is either an intellectual belief or a blind belief, a kind of superstitious fear of something indefinable. But to ensure absolute freedom from worry requires a living utter faith which is a plant of slow, almost unperceived, growth and requires to be constantly watered by tears that accompany genuine prayer. They are the tears of a lover who cannot brook a moment’s separation from the loved one, or of the penitent who knows that it is some trace of impurity in him that keeps him away from the loved one.

The ability to sleep during odd moments seems to be a necessity in old age. Whilst the first rule is applicable to all, young and old, the rule about sleep is not to be copied by youngsters. It is the privilege only of babies and old people. And to induce such sweet innocent sleep, it is surely necessary to put oneself in tune with the Infinite at every step. This sleep is not to be mistaken for the sleep of the sluggard or the opium-eater. But it is ‘Nature’s sweet restorer’, a tonic for a brain that gets easily fagged in old age.

 

Reference:

 

Young India, 1-9-1927