Health, sickness and death (chap. Secrets of life)

13 July 1870

"Here you have again three words which, taken in the natural sense, are easy to decipher in their true meaning.
Health signifies the normal state of your vegetative life when all organs fulfill their functions as they should, thereby not preventing you from following your calling or hindering your spiritual development and material occupation.
Health, true health, is only found in a body when man is unaware of the movements and functions of his organs. Where a disturbance sets in these movements, one or more organs involved act in a contrary sense. It causes you discomfort or pain, the soul becomes sad since it feels handicapped in its activity by the body, and out of this discomfort and suffering develops that which you call sickness.
If this condition gains the upper hand, still more organs refuse to function or are disturbed in their functions by the suffering organs, this discomfort spreads, the whole life process is thereby interrupted and with the ceasing of the regular intake of new vital energy and the elimination of waste – finally in the whole machinery the unavoidable stand-still occurs which you call death.
Thereby occurs the breaking up of the as an individual covering body into its former primitive elements. But the soul, divested of its envelopment, must look around for another garment, another body, since the former has become completely useless.

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