Great Construction

The Common Cold 

     Now has come the time for an explanation of disease. I will explain step by step where are the greatest defects of the interpretation by contemporary medical science in which has developed the materialistic treatments that are based on looking at the human being solely as material substance. As the example of an actual disease with a description is most readily comprehensible, that is where I begin.
     The one disease that probably every single individual has suffered is the cold. The cause of the common cold, however, has yet to be clarified by medical science, and in recent times only a few of its aspects have been discovered. Possibilities as to the cause of the common cold such as infection through the air and allergic reactions have been put forward. From our perspective, such theories are so primitive that they do not deserve being discussed. These conjectures will no doubt be pronounced meaningless in the near future.
     Latent within the human body are several kinds of toxins, a fact that even medical science recognizes. The toxins of small pox, measles, and whooping cough are only some that have been recognized in addition to the other varieties of toxins that probably remain to be discovered. All of these toxins, however, trigger a natural physiological process and seek discharge from the body. We call this process purification.
     After ingestion, toxins first accumulate in specific parts of the body, particularly in areas most utilized by the nervous system. It goes without saying that the nerves used most frequently by human beings are in the upper parts of the body, particularly more so in regions closer to the brain. While the human being is awake, even though the legs and arms may be still, the brains, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth and such do not rest even for a moment. And so do toxins also constantly accumulate and concentrate in the shoulders, neck, lymph glands, back of the head, or in areas below the ears, although predominately in the area of the brain. Over time the toxins that accumulate in the various parts of the body gradually solidify. When they have hardened to a certain extent, an elimination process begins. The solidified toxins cause blood circulation to worsen, shoulders and neck areas to stiffen, and general physical vitality to decline due to headaches, dull head pain, weakening of eyesight, ringing in the ears, stuffy nose, dulling of the olfactory sense, pyorrhea, weakening of bite, shortness of breath, weakening of the extremities, backaches, or dropsy. Human beings become unable to carry out the mission for which they were born on earth. It is at this point where we observe the providence of nature. In order to restore the human body to health, the Creator fashioned the quite satisfactory process of purification that human beings have misnamed disease.
     The pain and suffering that accompanies the elimination of toxins is what is thought of as disease, and because disease is a cleansing of the blood, it is a process most necessary to maintain health, and is to be considered one of God’s greatest blessings. If the process of disease did not exist or was taken away from human beings, the human body would gradually weaken and the human race would most likely perish. I do state that I will construct a world without disease, which may seem to be a contradiction, but my goal fundamentally differs from how medical science seeks to eliminate disease. When human beings become free of toxins, the need for the process of eliminating toxins will also disappear, and as a result disease itself will disappear. This is the significance to what I will explain here as simply and thoroughly as possible.
     To return to the subject of toxins, I have named the process of eliminating solidified toxins from the human body purification. The purifying process that we know as catching a cold begins first with fever. In order to eliminate the solidified toxins as easily as possible, Nature dissolves and changes to liquid the solidified toxins with the heat of fever. In a truly mysterious process these liquid toxins promptly penetrate the lungs. With the administration of Johrei, the name of our healing therapy, the solidified toxins are dissolved and instantaneously permeate into the lungs. To do so, the toxins pass through even muscle and bone. It is at this step that the solidified toxins (hereafter referred to simply as toxins) in wherever parts of the body they may happen to be usually cause light symptoms in one or two areas of the body, and as the toxins accumulate in these localized areas, symptoms become more severe. This is why a cold which at first feels to be very light seems to worsen with time.
     As described above, the liquefied toxins promptly enter the lungs, and in rare cases can turn into phlegm and immediately be discharged, but in cases where the toxins are denser, the elimination processes cease temporarily and presently coughing acts as a pumping action to discharge the toxins through the trachea. This process is obvious as can be seen that after coughing, phlegm is always eliminated. The same principle applies to sneezing where mucous is always dispelled afterwards. Aches in the head, soreness in the throat, tympanitis, lymphacitis, and pain in the joints and the groin area are all signs that the toxins in those areas have dissolved and are seeking an exit point. There is pain because the toxins irritate the nerves. Toxins can be either thick or thin. Thick, denser varieties are dispelled as sputum, nasal discharge, or diarrhea, but very thin varieties are discharged as watery stools, night sweats, and through the urine. Purification as such is the most natural, logical process that one cannot but wonder at the Creator’s consummate skill. Why did God, the Creator, who fashioned human beings, also contrive such things as disease that makes human beings suffer? There certainly was no reason to give human beings something that would interfere with their activities. In spite of the fact that human beings should always be healthy, through the development of erroneous ideas human beings created toxins and caused these toxins to accumulate in their bodies, so an action to dispel these impurities became necessary. Sickness is a purifying function that dispels impurities, so if one happens to catch a common cold, if left alone without any medical treatment one’s condition will gradually get better when the toxins have been purified to a certain extent and the level of health increased. Thus, individuals should try to catch as many colds as possible so that terrible diseases such as tuberculosis can be eradicated.
     To be sure, in the development of erroneous ideas, some time in the faraway past, human beings construed the purification process in a negative way, and thereafter it was felt imperative to try to prevent the outbreak of sickness and halt the purifying process because the pain that accompanies purification was interpreted to be the pain of a worsening condition. Fevers thus came to be dreaded, and effort made to lower them. When fever is lowered, the dissolving of toxins ceases, so all the symptoms, such as coughing and so forth, decrease. Sickness appears as if it were cured. Simply put, the toxins that had just been starting to dissolve are solidified again. This method of solidifying toxins is medical therapy. Ice packs, plasters, drugs, and vaccinations are all therapies that harden toxins and suppress symptoms. People are happy because they think they have been cured, but it is not perceived that the process that was meant to eliminate toxins and cleanse the physical body has been suppressed. This interpretation can be easily demonstrated by facts. The expression “a cold develops complications” is often used, but what actually happens is that due to the body’s natural purifying function being interfered with, recovering from the cold takes longer owing to the friction produced by the conflict between the purifying function and the solidifying interference. This process can be understood in the often-observed phenomenon that even if one recovers from a cold, soon after another cold will certainly break out. So, judging by its results, medical science is not the way to cure or heal illness, which means it is a way of prolonging and not truly healing disease. Actual healing occurs when toxins are discharged from the body, the body cleansed, and the cause of disease eliminated. A true healing treatment will aim to dissolve toxins as quickly as possible when purification starts to occur, and then bring about as much as possible their discharge out of the body. Anything else is not a true healing therapy.
          To illustrate, allow me to compare disease to a financial debt. As interest accrues and the deadline for payment closes in, paying back all the debt becomes difficult, so money to cover the interest is borrowed as a stopgap. When the next deadline comes, money is again borrowed, but as payment is prolonged, charges in addition to the original interest accrue, and the bill collectors get nastier. Repayment becomes even more impossible. The lender finally loses patience, and either puts a lien on the borrower’s property or tries to have the borrower declared bankrupt. Payment cannot be made so bankruptcy is declared. A cold works in the same way. When the first call for repayment in the form of purification comes, difficult as it may be, even if uncomfortable or painful, as it is paid, the debt of toxins is soon eliminated. If because of suffering the debt is increased, payment may be temporarily avoided. Increasing a debt of toxins is the medical therapy based on drugs and medicines. As payment is prolonged, the amount of toxins grows, and when the bill comes, the sickness this time is not a cold but pneumonia. In consideration of the debtor’s lack of ability to pay, the amount on the demand for payment is lessened which is how to think of tuberculosis.

Creation of Civilization, unpublished manuscript, 1952
    translated by cynndd

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“Kanbō,” a chapter from the unpublished manuscript titled Bunmei no Sōzō (Creation of Civilization), has appeared previously in translation. Citation is given below for reference.

“What Is Illness? / A cold,” Creation of Civilization, 1978, page 37.