The question you ask about the inevitability of ill health on this path needs a page to itself. Generally speaking, there is no such inevitability. Indeed the cleansing of the subconscious mind, the discipline of the bodily senses, and the quieting of the emotional nature promote good health. Where, however, the student through ignorance or through outside factors fails to make certain necessary changes in thought, feeling, attitude, or living--necessary at a certain period for his further evolution--then his higher self forces those changes upon him through upheavals or upsets in his environment or in his body. This is done by sending down some karma. In the latter case it means, of course, illness or disease--sometimes "accident." This covers certain individual cases, but there are many others where ill health is only the ordinary karmic result of earlier transgressions of the laws of physical, emotional, moral, or mental health, and not the result of special Overself intervention. Finally, there is the third group where it is the result of the natural imperfection of life on this earth where everything, as Buddha said, is doomed to decay and perish. Nobody escapes this general law. Mrs. Eddy could not escape it nor could Buddha himself escape it, as he once explained when he fell ill with fever. Such imperfection is, however, one of the causes which drive mankind to seek a higher life, a diviner better existence; so it is not useless. This earth is not our true home. We belong elsewhere, nearer to God's perfection, beauty, harmony.
-- Notebooks Category 10: Healing of the Self > Chapter 1 : The Laws of Nature > # 8
