Question: I heard that, spiritually speaking, sometimes when a person becomes very sick, that sickness may be from the person's past deeds. It is the law of karma. When that is true, how can a spiritual seeker be cured if he does not want to go running for medicines?

Sri Chinmoy: It is very simple. If one does not want to go to a doctor to be cured, then one has to dive deep within. The real Doctor is God. When you go to God to be cured, you have to know that you are going to the doctor’s Doctor.

The human doctor has learnt something from someone, and that someone has also learnt it from somebody else. This way, if you go back to the first doctor on earth, whom did he get to teach him? The very first doctor had someone who taught him in silence, either intuitively or spiritually. That first teacher was God.

Perhaps you do not want to go to a human doctor because you do not believe in the doctor, or you feel that it is the law of karma that you are suffering from. You feel that your illness is due to your previous incarnations. You did something-call it wrong deeds or misdeeds, or something which was not advisable, and now you are meeting with the karma. In that case, you have to go to the Source. To negate the karma, or to do something infinitely more powerful than the so-called uninspiring, unaspiring or undivine thing you did in the past, you have to pray to God and meditate on God. Your prayers for perfect health will definitely reach the real Doctor inside your heart, provided they are sincere and provided they are enduring — that is to say, provided the prayers have been going on for years and years.

There is nothing wrong in not going to the doctor. But again, inside the doctor there is also God. God Himself is the real Doctor, true. But if you can think of the human doctor as someone who is nothing but an instrument of the real God, then there is nothing wrong in taking assistance from that person. You know perfectly well that that particular individual will take assistance from somebody else, somebody who can be of real help to you. And that Person is God.