According to Osho, there is no method to take another’s illness, even out of love; karmic fruits are nontransferable. The heartfelt wish to bear someone’s suffering is beautiful and becomes your own meritorious karma, yielding inner joy and growth, but the disease does not transfer. Honor rita, the cosmic order: serve, pray, and care, yet accept personal responsibility and limits.
You can’t take someone else’s sickness, but truly wishing to can make you kinder inside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, if someone has a longer life ahead, can he take this illness upon himself or not? If he can, what is the method?
No—there is no method, and it cannot be taken. Because taking an illness would mean that the fruit of my actions could be received by someone else. Then all order would collapse. And if the fruit of my actions could go to another, then in this world no law, no rita (cosmic order) would remain. Then even my freedom could be given to someone, and my jivanmukti (liberation while living) could be given to someone. My sorrow, my happiness, my knowledge, my experience, my bliss—then everything would become transferable, could be handed over. No, in this world nothing is transferable. There is no way for it to happen. No way. And it is right that there is no way. Yes, such a feeling does arise in the heart; that too is appropriate and auspicious. Someone who loves Ramana may wish, “Let me take your cancer upon myself.” That wish is…
Prem means love, nishkamo means desireless. Love with desire is lust. Love with a motive keeps one tethered to the body, to the mundane. Love without desire immediately frees you from the mundane and the door to the sacred is opened. Love without desire is no more lust; it is prayer. That is the only difference between lust and prayer. Both are love. Love plus desire is lust; love minus desire is prayer. To have a certain kind of motivation means falling from the height of love. To ask something in return, to make love conditional, makes it ugly. Not to ask anything, not to make love conditional but simply to give for the sheer joy of giving... then love starts soaring high. And my whole effort here is to help your love to become desireless. It is very easy to be desireless and without love.
One who never knows any difference through intellect between jiva, the embodied soul, and brahma, or between brahma and nature, the creation, is called a jivanamukta, the one who is liberated while living.
RESPECTED BY THE GOOD OR INSULTED BY THE WICKED, ONE WHO EVER REMAINS IN EQUANIMITY IS CALLED A JIVANAMUKTA. FOR THE ONE WHO HAS KNOWN THE BRAHMA ESSENCE, THIS WORLD NO LONGER REMAINS THE SAME AS BEFORE. IF IT IS NOT SO, HE HAS NOT KNOWN THE BRAHMA STATE OF BEING AND IS STILL AN EXTROVERT. AS FAR AS HAPPINESS ETCETERA ARE EXPERIENCED, IT IS CALLED PRARABDHA, ACCUMULATED PAST ACTION-IMPRESSIONS; BECAUSE THE ARISING OF ANY FRUITS IS FROM ACTIONS IN THE PAST. THERE IS NO FRUIT ANYWHERE WITHOUT ACTION. JUST AS THE DREAM ACTIVITY CEASES UPON WAKING UP, SIMILARLY PAST ACTIONS ACCUMULATED OVER BILLIONS OF EONS DISSOLVE INSTANTLY UPON ONE'S KNOWING: "I AM BRAHMA." In the next depiction, a front encounter has happened, the soul has been caught by its horns. In the depiction after this, the soul has not only been caught by its horns, but it has also…
If faith can move the mountains, why can you not heal your own body?
I don't have any body. This feeling that you have a body is absolutely wrong. The body belongs to the universe; you don't have it, it is not yours. So if the body is ill or if the body is healthy the universe will take care of it. And a person who is in meditation should remain a witness, whether the body is healthy or ill. The desire to be healthy is part of ignorance. The desire not to be ill is also part of ignorance. And this is not a new question -- this is one of the oldest questions. It has been asked of Buddha; it has been asked of Mahavir. Ever since there have been enlightened persons, the unenlightened have always asked this question. Look... Jesus said faith can move mountains, but he died on the cross. He couldn't move the cross. You or someone like you…
[A sannyasin has been diagnosed as having Hodgkin's Disease, a cancer of the lymph gland which is usually terminal. She said she had been taking heavy drugs, but stopped taking these.] Death knocking on the door is one of the greatest opportunities of life -- the greatest, the suprememost opportunity. There is only one thing that can compete with it a little, that is love. But it can compete with it only a little. When death knocks at the door, it depends on how you react to it. If you can react in a friendly way, in a receptive mood, death can be transformed into eternal life. If you cling to life, you are possessed by it; then you missed one opportunity more. Death is going to happen to everybody -- what excuse it takes is irrelevant, Hodgkin's or hiccups, it doesn't matter; those are just excuses.