Where there is no obvious transgression of the laws of bodily hygiene to account for a case of ill health, there may still be a hidden one not yet uncovered. Where there is no hidden one, the line of connection from a physical effect may be traced to a mental cause--that is, the sickness may be a psychosomatic one. Where this in turn is also not obvious, there may still be a hidden mental one. Where all these classes of cause do not exist, then the origin of the sickness must necessarily be derived from the karma of the previous reincarnation--sometimes even from a still earlier one, although that is less likely. Under the law of recompense, the very type of body with which the patient was born contains latently, and was predisposed to reveal eventually, the sickness itself. The cause may be any one of widely varying kinds, may even be a moral transgression in the earlier life which could not find any other way of expiation and so had to be expiated in this way. Therefore it would be an error to believe that all cases of ill health directly arise from the transgression of physical hygienic laws.
-- Notebooks Category 10: Healing of the Self > Chapter 3 : The Origins of Illness > # 4
