Despite advancements, HIV still a challenge

By Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

Today, there have been many developments in science and medicine. Several preventative measures like vaccination have been developed, but in spite of that, we have a situation now where there are several diseases for which there is no remedy. Even as we go on inventing new remedies, nature keeps posing us new challenges.

This will always be so. When a new challenge arises, needless emotions and needless hostility relating to them in society also arise. But, after a while, when everyone understands how to fight these challenges, then it is no longer a big issue.

Currently, there is a lot of hostility in society towards a person infected with HIV. This is mainly because of lack of understanding among the public about the nature of the disease. There is this fear that one may even get it by just looking at an HIV patient. To go beyond this fear, we need to spread the necessary awareness.

There is no such deep hostility in Western countries because they have gained the necessary understanding about this disease. It is important that we bring about a similar situation everywhere. If we make everyone in society have a proper understanding of this disease, it will not be a big issue. There are many diseases which affect a man and cause him to suffer. It is not that he suffers only because he is affected by HIV. 

If you look at it, HIV in itself is not a disease. It is the loss of immunity in the body that weakens it and takes away its ability to resist diseases. If you look around, everyone does not have the same level of immunity. Some people become sick merely by eating something sold on the roadside. Others are not affected by whatever they eat. This is because the power to resist diseases, the immunity, is not the same in every person. With HIV, one’s power to resist disease becomes very low, because of which one may get all kinds of diseases.

Even with HIV, if we maintain our life energies in an intense state, our immunity and the power to resist diseases can be increased to a great extent. We may not be able to restore it completely, but we can surely increase it to a large extent. If we pay some attention to how we eat, how we breathe, how we act, how we live and so on, we can certainly increase our power to resist this disease.

It is our intention to offer this possibility to one and all. When a person suffers, it is natural for another person to be sensitive to his suffering. This much sensitivity and this much humanity exists in everyone. But we have put our sensitivity and our humanity out of action. This is because we have come to all kinds of wrong conclusions about those suffering from the disease.

This is not only the case with HIV. In the world, several kinds of terrible things are happening for various reasons. People have been made to suffer for ages because their religion is not right, their gender is not right and so on. So do not think that this hostility is only with regards to HIV alone. There are all kinds of nonsense going on in society and this is one of them. HIV/AIDS is no more just a medical problem, but a social crisis in the making.

Regardless of the causes which have brought us to this point, it is extremely important that the problem of HIV/AIDS is handled with all the necessary involvement from all groups of people.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is the founder of Isha Foundation, a humanitarian and prominent spiritual leader