The Tracing of Disease
Spiritual Healing Activity of the International Sufi Movement
The healer's work in tracing disease is subtler than healing. For in healing, power is necessary, but in tracing the disease – its nature, its cause, its secret – psychic power is of no use, there inspiration is needed; and a healer without this is an incomplete healer. The patient generally does not know the real cause, nature, and secret of his complaint. He is not supposed to know; for the patient knows the effect of the poison, not its cause, nature and secret. The healer must trace the patient's complaint from his face, expression, voice, work, and movement; everything tells. Sometimes the healer must find out the cause by asking the patient the details about his pain and the circumstances of his life, and by knowing the attitude and the inclination of the patient.
The secret of disease can be traced also by observing what a person desires in the way of food and clothing, and in what environments he prefers to be, what attitude he has towards his friends and foes, his choice of sweet and savory and his attraction to colors. For instance a person with a complaint that originates from melancholy will have a liking for purple. A person who has lost control over his passions will show an inclination towards passion, and he will generally like red; a person, who is lifeless, who has an inclination to emptiness, will have a tendency towards white. A person, who has gone through a sorrow and mourned over things and weakened his heart by it, will have an inclination towards black.
So it is with sweet and savory: the patient who shows an inclination for sweet shows weakness of heart, and by that general weakness; and the patient who shows inclination towards savory lacks circulation.
There are many things in the patient that one can perceive not only from his inclinations but also by noticing his face and features; for in this way one reads more than by any other method. The features tell his general characteristics, and therefore a person knows the weakness that may have been the origin of his complaint, and the general expression shows the thought behind it. Since mind is the cause of all causes, the healer gets at the root of the complaint as soon as he touches the mind of the patient. How true is the saying, man's face is the mirror of his heart.
