Karma and Illness: Soul and Body, Theory and Practice

Anyone who suffers from an illness or injury has probably at least once wondered whether they have bad karma: whether they committed sinful acts in a past life, did something for which they are now atoning, or carry a heavy family karma. Of course, all these things exist, yet they are not as simple as they may seem at first. This article tries to understand why. We will also discuss the inheritance called the human body, why we receive precisely this body from our family line, and what practices can help a person harmonise karma in order to heal from illness.

Karma and injury

Many people are convinced that karmic illnesses cannot be resolved. This is not so — at least, that is what wise people say. We will return to this shortly; first it is important to understand that an illness arising from karma and an injury are completely different things.

A karmic illness is an “informational” illness: it is laid into a person’s energy structure as a distortion or contamination of that structure. A karmic illness cannot be avoided because it is programmed into the person. It can be healed by influencing the energy structure itself, and a person can do this independently; this will be discussed below. Medicine is generally powerless against karmic illnesses.

An injury is physical damage to the organism which only a doctor can heal. If you have a broken arm, no prayers, mantras or other energy practices will help until a surgeon comes to your aid. Physical injury affects a person’s energy structure. Most often an injury happens by accident. There is an opinion that accidents and injuries never happen for no reason. Certainly. But not when they are inflicted deliberately, sometimes on the scale of a country or whole state systems.

A little about conspiracy theories

The modern system of obstetric care, as well as non-physiological lying-down births, leads to catastrophic consequences for a child’s skull. Before the Roman Church spread its influence and conducted its medieval witch hunts, births in ancient communities were vertical. Where nature had once prevailed and experienced midwives regarded birth as a natural process, the Church began to intervene. Women were even forbidden to use natural pain-relieving herbs because “a woman must give birth in suffering”. Later, government medicine offered “scientific” obstetric forceps as help, and the woman in labour changed from an active participant into a passive patient lying down. This has continued for the last three hundred years.

In the Soviet Union, a method of obstetric care that damages an infant’s cervical spine was introduced in the 1950s. One can see what crippling consequences this brings for a person’s physical and psychological health in the archive article on the first cervical vertebra, the atlas. It is worth asking why and by whom such deforming influence on human structure occurs on such a scale. Physical injury is known to affect a person’s energy potential and psychological status.

The “global epidemic” of braces finishes off the cranial deformations received at birth: damage received with braces sometimes causes consequences comparable to traumatic brain injury, not to mention their deforming influence on the spine, one of the most important energy structures of a person. In some European countries, state-level programmes researching the ALF intraoral appliance, which removes cranial deformations, are being curtailed. Braces are plainly much more profitable for corporations and much easier to teach doctors than a holistic approach to the organism. But perhaps there is something else behind this? And should such deliberate damage to a person’s structure and deprivation of information about it be regarded as something caused by their “bad karma”?

The body as the testament of the family line

It is believed that every person is born carrying the potential of the Image of God. But it is not given merely by the fact of birth. A person’s energy structure may be greatly damaged by outside influence during birth, as discussed above; equally, the original Image of God placed in a person is distorted by the lives of many preceding generations of their family line, producing a loss of form and image.

From this point of view, illness and distortion arise when an ancestor separated themselves from unity with Universal Wholeness through unworthy acts and thoughts. Distortions in this structure can be corrected if a person restores the current of connection and circulation with that Wholeness. For this, one must literally cleanse one’s structure of contaminations and, like an archaeologist, descend into one’s own inner excavations.

Children are said to pay for the unworked karma of parents and ancestors up to the seventh generation. This is less surprising if we see how preceding generations form the genetic structure of a person’s body, a carrier into which information about the vices and virtues of the family line is written. A person’s pelvis is the person; the right and left femurs are father and mother; the pairs of lower-leg bones are grandparents on the paternal and maternal sides; the increasing number of foot bones that then go into the ground are great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, and so on. The upper body mirrors the lower according to the principle “as below, so above”. The left and right halves of the body are the female and male lines of the family. It is precisely the preceding generations that transmit every illness and distortion of body and life, again, unless it was a deliberate injury. To heal one’s family line it is important to pray for one’s ancestors, and therefore for oneself and subsequent generations. One healer told me that ancestors often sit “on the other side like hens on a perch”, waiting for someone to come into the family line and pray for them.

Family-line practices

Many people beginning family-line practices protest: “Why must I now sort out other people’s sins?” The first thing to understand is that a soul does not come to its family line accidentally: certain karmic knots connect it with that line, and the soul can finally untie them. It is still more important to understand not what you are doing, but why.

It is important to approach praying for members of one’s family line not as cleaning something dirty or sinful. You do not perform the reading for that. You do it to heal the family line and restore the flow of Love within it, from elders to younger members. This is crucial, because during such a practice a person often feels themselves to be a beacon who came into the family line to cleanse it, a kind of Jesus Christ. To think this is a great mistake: with that attitude a person may take responsibility for the deeds of family members, and such “karma cleansing” leads nowhere good. You can imagine the consequences of taking such a burden onto your own shoulders.

Therefore it is important to approach the readings from the position of a younger member of the family line, respecting the elders and leaving them all responsibility for what they did; otherwise it is pride. At the same time, you hope for the mercy of the Higher Powers — the Universe or God — in forgiving what was done. You lovingly submit a petition for someone to the Higher Instances, and there it is decided what is forgiven to whom. Before beginning, ask your family line for a blessing. You may place a hand on your heart and address your ancestors inwardly.

The second important point is to set a concrete intention for the practice: first a general one, restoring the flow of Love in the family line, and then a particular one, for example that healing from an illness may come, the soul may feel light, or the heart may be filled with joy. But ask this only from a position of unconditional acceptance, without judging any acts your ancestors committed, leaving all responsibility with them, from the position “I am younger, you are older”, and hoping in Higher Wisdom. From this state one can begin reading sacred writings or mantras.

Christians can read through the female line using the Psalter of the Mother of God first, then through the male line using the Psalter of David, or Ephraim the Syrian, which is easier. The reading should be done without breaks in days, twenty-one times, preferably forty. Once you begin, take no days off and read at least one kathisma daily, even if you feel unwell. This is a frequent companion of the practice: physical illness may worsen, emotions may be shaken, difficult interactions with people may begin, you may lose something, a child may become ill, and so on. One should know these things and not think the reading comes easily.

After asking the family line for blessing, protection and guidance, before reading the Psalter you may read your intention and request to God. It may sound approximately like this:

Supreme God, forgive me and my family line all sins, destructive programmes, attachments and emotions through which my family line and I received destructive connections, all illnesses, ancestral curses, evil influences, fright, fears, stresses, all karmic debts and all negative family programmes. Give me understanding and awareness of these sins, attachments and emotions of my own and my family line, and remove from me and my family line … [then repeat the list beginning with destructive connections].

At the end of every reading, give thanks in the same order: for forgiveness, for being given understanding and awareness, and for the removal from your family line of what you have asked to be removed. Do this with love.

You may also read any sacred writing of your faith. For Hindus, the Bhagavad Gita is suitable; to read it correctly in Sanskrit, one can find chants online, save them to a phone and sing along with the text. One of the strongest mantras, including for reading through the family line, is Shiva’s death-conquering Mahamrityunjaya mantra. The author says it heals the energy body at the level of DNA, where all ancestral programmes that distort it are written. To read or listen and sing along with this mantra for the family line, one is advised to do it 108 times over forty days. In reality few people endure this because people can feel very unwell for the reasons described above. Because the mantra is strong, and so as not to overstrain oneself while allowing time to recover and not breaking the practice, it is better to read it twenty-one times a day for seven months.

Two other effective family-line practices are an offering of rice to ancestors and a donation of time, food or money for the family line. For people who are greatly weakened or exhausted by illness, perhaps only the latter practice is suitable, because these practices are powerful and energy-intensive and often difficult even for healthy people. People who have received injury, especially in the neck and head, should refrain entirely from the practices described above except donation. These practices create strong changes in the energy body, while physical injury to higher centres can greatly block the process and a person may feel literally torn apart. In that case, the practices will only painfully draw energy out of the body, while an injured person instead needs to root themselves in it as strongly as possible. Here the most effective thing is probably simply prayer and praying for a method of healing or for a doctor.

Praying for a doctor

While translating material on biomechanical treatments, I noticed that almost everyone who recovered had prayed for healing. For example, Starecta’s founder Moreno Conte, while in a terrible condition, followed Buddhist teaching, meditated a great deal and simply prayed. In his book he wrote: “Sometimes I would crawl into a corner, pray there and cry. Often alone I went to the seashore and asked the Lord for help — yes, it was I, who had previously believed in nothing. I resisted, repeating again and again that it was all ridiculous, but when painful pride moves aside, you begin to believe in magic and in something greater than yourself.” In the end he healed not only himself but helped thousands of people around the world.

Interestingly, one of his followers, the footballer Simone Cincini, made a pilgrimage to a well-known Catholic shrine in Bosnia and Herzegovina before learning about this method and then recovering. I reliably know that many people make such pilgrimages and pray for healing, sometimes for years, before meeting their doctor. One of the most effective practices in this respect is reading an akathist and a prayer to St Luke of Crimea, the celebrated surgeon. His relics are in Simferopol, and people truly speak of miracles after asking him for help. A friend of mine prayed there for a successful outcome of her husband’s operation, when hope was slight, and both the operation and recovery went in the most favourable way. A prayer can be addressed to any saint whom you feel close to.

Another interesting case happened to an acquaintance of mine. He read mantras to the Hindu deity Ayyappa while his father had a serious health problem. “By chance” a surgeon appeared who performed a very successful operation on his father. That doctor’s surname was Ayapov. I am serious.

Metropolitan Anthony said that the human body is like a surgical glove, the most fragile thing one can imagine; yet it can work miracles if an experienced hand acts through it. In the same way, the actions of the right doctor are filled and directed by the power of God. I remember an episode of House in which a nun was brought in near death and had visions in which she saw Christ. Dr House discovered an intrauterine device inserted in the 1960s that was poisoning her whole organism with toxic metal and causing powerful hallucinations. The convinced atheist asked: “So who won — I or God?” The nun replied: “I prayed a great deal, and God led me to you.” There is something in that, agree?

Crime and punishment?

For some reason, people who are ill and suffering often understand illness as punishment for sins, their own or their family line’s. First, healers often say that these are not sins for which one should now punish oneself and suffer, but transgressions that can be prayed for and atoned for, including through a donation of time, food or money. It need not have been a grave crime or an unjust act. Often it may have been angry words said in the heat of the moment, negative thoughts, or even mental or spoken curses charged with strong emotion. All this can be attempted to be corrected: the distortions of the energy structure can be removed and the flow of Love in the family line restored.

Second, illness can be an event from a past life that was not lived through and has been “recorded” in the memory of the body. Stanislav Grof, known as the founder of holotropic breathing and as a deeply believing person accepting all religions, describes cases in his books: for example, a man had stomach pain all his life and in a session saw himself as a knight in armour being killed by a sword in the solar-plexus area. After experiencing very powerful bodily sensations there, he spontaneously healed in real life. Similar cases involving the heart are described in holotropic-breathing sessions. Perhaps many people’s head and neck problems can also be consequences of such phenomena, when a person did not have time to understand what was happening at death: it might have been a bullet to the back of the head or temple, hanging or decapitation. All this is a mystery, and we cannot know it reliably. But it is certainly not punishment for some “grave crime”.

Third, many healers say that at times an illness or injury may indeed be given for a person’s or family line’s transgressions and needs to be prayed for or atoned for. At other times it is given so that a person may reach a new level of development. Then the person must take not one step backward but ten-mile steps down, from where they must get out independently without prompts. A person may have a particular potential and programme of development; if it is not realised, the energy of that potential becomes blocked within and the person becomes ill. This often shows itself in descendants of healers when someone in their line refused that gift.

In any case, in healers’ view illness is something that helps a person develop, like a programme packed within them. Unpacking it can be hard and painful, but in the end a person receives gifts and benefits they could not previously dream of. In Spain there is a concept, duende, meaning soul, fire and feeling. In Russian one says, “He has no fire”; in Spain, No tiene duende. Its power cannot be grasped if a person has not passed through hard inner trials. The Spanish poet García Lorca said of duende: “It is a demonic force that one must enter into combat with and conquer: it sweeps away cosy, learned geometry; its approach marks the breaking of everything familiar. Yet it is also dawn, an unprecedented, unimaginable freshness — duende, like a blooming rose, like a miracle.”