DISEASE - CURE (Cure Without Medicine -1)

Book: Cure without Medicine
 

In the blogs “Disease – Cure”, we are reviewing the views expressed by Swami Vijnananand (S. V.) on the “Cure of Human Disease”.

He has dealt the vital aspect of disease cure emphasizing the role of mind in a unique way. Besides others the books given below cover these views.

Death of Disease.

Cure without Medicine.

Cure Yourself.

Having covered “Death of Disease” so far, we shall now see the details covered in the book “Cure without Medicine”.

A. Preamble 

1)    Truth – The importance of truth has been emphasized by Christ. In the 20^th Century, Mahatma Gandhi was the greatest advocate, representative of Truth. All religions in the world have given highest esteem to the (practice of) Truth. The book tries to explain clearly in scientific terms the value of Truth par excellence.The book covers in larger context both Health and Happiness.

2) Limitations of words

The conclusions in this book are most difficult to digest, even for ‘thinkers’. Moreover, through sufficient description/notification is given for the points postulated, it is difficult however to claim that conclusions reached are elaborately interpreted in every detail. After all words have limitation.

3) Reconsideration of our ‘Articles of faith’

Five-fold reasons are as follows which make it necessary to reconsider the prevailing faith in order to agree to the arguments put forward in this book.

3.1) If well founded positive in-contestable inferences are not proving otherwise, body mind duality need be taken for granted. (Body and Mind are separate).

3.2) This is true at least when we examine the claims of the modern medicine (allopathy).

3.3) We have to believe that effect of mind theoretically is governed by the laws of physics-mechanics.

3.4) On the consideration of above points, hypothesis be studied in the field of medicine. Then one will see it to be peremptory. (leaving no opportunity for denial).

3.5) The link between real morality and health is incontestable (obvious).

The casual readers may find (primarily) the arguments in this book as absurd but if he goes into the details with full attention he will realize differently. Casual comments will not lead us to our objectives.

It is a casual arguments often made that – Morality, Equality, True prayer, Truth are all good and commendable virtues but they are Utopian Ideals (Ideas of perfection but impossible to practice in day to day life). We all know that laudable objectives are not so much attainable.

4. Important initial comment

Cure without drug is theoretically possible, practically not quite so easily. At any rate, it is far from practicable for those engaged in the routine hazards of life, striving for  living in a hard world.

5. Introspection for improvement.

Begin from a Simple Clue. Continue your present medicine or treatment and just add most modern psycho based ‘one dot a day’ method for your perpetual (long term) good.

Constant and strict vigilance has to be maintained by an individual by means of impartial self- introspection on daily basis. Manashakti Research Center (M.R.C.) recommends a psycho-graph to be filled up by every seeker every day to monitor the day to day self-behavior. The chart is reproduced above. "In morning or while going to bed, at some fixed time in a day, reflect your day's experience and assess whether it was predominantly in which of the following four categories.

         (1) Fear.          (2)Rage.        (3) Courage,  (4) Peace/Balance

The category may be fixed according to the most outstanding overall experience you may have during the day.  It reveals your inner overall condition of the mind during the day and provides feed- back for correction useful for your future life in terms of the "Mind-Body state”.

Far from the narrow interpretation, each mind state includes a wider variety. For instance, Fear includes family discord, misunderstanding, fear of conflicts, laziness. Rage includes monetary, executive or business worries and forgetfulness. Courage includes labor for good of others, or courage in calamities. Balance includes donation for others cause or peace (in disturbing moments). The dotted graph when enlarged, tells its wave story. The dots are joined monthly to prepare your own monthly psycho-graph. This is the broad indication of the person's behavior pattern as well as a tool for introspection to bring about the improvement in the desired direction. The journey from the state of fear/rage to courage/peace is rewarding experience out of honest introspection".

Graph :- Enlarge one dot a day (simplest method for introspection)

In morning or while going to bed, at some fixed time in a day, reflect your day's experience and assess whether it was predominantly in which of the following four categories.

–      Fear.

–      Rage. 

–      Courage, 

–      Peace/Balance

The category may be fixed according to the most outstanding overall experience you may have during the day. The Oscar Vogt method here undergoes a comprehensive, clear change. It reveals also your inner depths and forestalls the necessities of your future life in terms of the "Mind-Body state”.

B Yoga Method without its Dangers 

Yoga/Meditation: It is really a sorry state of affairs that except in a few research institutes, yoga is over commercialized and its stress on psycho-ethical standards is underestimated or often overlooked.

Yogic postures are taught and learn to regain or strengthen broadly the body abilities (organs/systems functioning of the body). Once the body functions are improved, then the idea is normally to have more enjoyment. But if one goes it details, it will be revealed that originally yogic Asanas were, by and large, the means to overcome stupid craving of the mind and flesh (mind and body i.e. physical pleasure and mental pleasures). Patanjali begins with the phrase ‘Control of Mind’ ….

If this part of yoga (i.e. control of mind) is overlooked then there is no justice to the practice. Many experiments on occasions have given warnings against the ill-practice of yoga. The widely sold ‘miracles’ of yoga should be properly and thoroughly examined before accepting such measures for own use. It is highly necessary that yogic postures may be placed in the ‘psychic’ frame of reference. One cannot say with authority that for this particular ailment of the body, this particular asana shall be effective (Thus, only bodily complains, without understanding the psychic role of the person cannot be cured by practice of particular course of asanas).

It is not justifiable to commercialize yoga and particularly Hatha Yoga. Unfortunately, it is lucrative to sell Hatha Yoga to the unwary (not cautious and watchful) people and it certainly brings quick financial returns. But all this is at the cost of the ‘YOGA SPIRIT’ itself. Earnest researchers in the field of yoga are still available for the earnest seekers of the truth.

The great Patanjali, the father of real psycho-based system of yoga, had already advanced this view point. ‘Mind-discipline by Yama-Niyamas’ provide the clue to this. Practicing of ‘Yama-Niyama’ amounts to pain-acceptance, on the face of it.

C. Pain for relief – The Guiding Principle

The concept of causality accepted by science, says that if you create motion for pleasure, the result will be displeasure and that is why if you want to come out of disease, then one has to give-up some ease. This concept is applicable to all the pathies.  Do not all schools of Medicine believe ‘Pain’ to be a process of cure? What is the main principle of cure? The guiding principle is achieving relief is the acceptance of discomfort. All pathies have accepted this vital truth – an apparent paradox.

Allopathy – Treatment involves UN-palatable medicine, painful injections, diet restrictions, occasional operations, Possibility of painful reaction of drugs, vaccination (for prevention).

Homeopathy – Aggravation of symptoms before cure.

Acupuncture – Needles are inserted.

Moxibustion (Burning of skin for cure, Chinese method of cure) – Body is subjected to heat.

Naturopathy/Hydropathy – Dieting, fasting, avoidance of harmful intake, exercising, bathing, mind coat.

Ayurveda – Diet restrictions, rest, prayers

Yoga method – Diet discipline (Yama, Niyama)

(All the details can be seen from Table on page 18 on the book).

Pain to Pleasure – Throughout the life

The theory of such concurrent pain-acceptance appears applicable not only to ‘cure’ but to all walks of life. It is a law common to all and at every place. The ancient sages underwent ‘Tapa’ which meant penance which in the end bestowed strength and comfort to them. Think of a leader of any religion in support of the infallibility (absolute trust-worthiness) of this law. There never lived a single exception that could escape from the working of this law.

From Shuka, Rama, Krishna down to Guru Nanak – all had to cross hurdles and accept all horrors of this law. Moses, Christ, Mohammad had to track the same thorny path. Curiously enough, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and their people have never spared themselves from toll for their material improvement.

For a man or to a nation, pain acceptance can only lead to sunny days. Sleep or meal can be best enjoyed after toil and hunger respectively. The code – axiom ‘Pain to Pleasure’ pervades all life. Happiness or cure cannot be separated from basic scientific life line of physics (action is equal to reaction).

D. Answer to question –What causes disease?

1.   All schools concerned have to find answer to this question according to conscience by proper and thorough investigation. This would enable to find the disclosure (real answer) which will be of the first rank.

2. We cannot prove the ‘cause’ and its connection with the disease. We can only indicate the relationship (between psyche and soma) appears to be there. Such apparent relationship occurs in repeated although numerically few instances.

That is why on strict scientific rationale should be the real approach. It should have bearing on Causal Laws. Since there is disease (reaction) there has to be some cause (action). Only to this limits Recipropathy should be acceptable to the followers of any pathy who honor the concept of causality (The basic law of science).

(to be continued )

Vijay R. Joshi.

DISEASE - CURE ( Death of Disease - 2)

Main Methods of Treatment

This book (Death of Disease, written by Swami Vijnananand,( S. V.) in chapters 4 to 8 briefly discusses some of the major treatment methods giving their history, concepts, broad shortcomings or objections as well as limitations. Excerpts follow.

Evaluation of Allaopth

1.  Here we proceed to analyze the claims of allopath. This is the first major system of modern treatment of disease. We shall strictly adhere to reason and quote authorities from their own group.

2. Hippocrates (the founder) laid down three principles which form the corner stones of science of modern medicine.

 a) There is no authority except facts

 b) Strict observation alone leads one to facts

 c) Conclusions are to be established only from facts

In practice, however, no one ever adhered to these principles.

2.1 Experts considered that the ultimate solution was in their hands and maintained so. (Ego of the experts). Pasteur propounded that bacteria will be conquered in the case of every disease, leading to eliminate of all disease. This continues to remain an unfulfilled dream.

2.2 Naming new disorders keeps allopath busy, while every problem connected with cause remained unsolved. A common man remains helpless when doctors name disorders differently, at intervals. For interval of time, the cause of disease according to doctors lay in susceptibility, then it is shifted to inheritance.

2.3 Effective drugs are few, rest are mainly directed at symptoms. According to Dr. A Hutchnecker, out of thousand drugs in pharmacopeia, only a few drugs contribute towards cure of specific disease.

2.4 Surgery is (often) misused in practical life. Authority like Donald Cooley (besides Bernard Shaw) suggests that kidney stones tend to grow more after the operations. Dr. Graefenberg wrote in 1929 – "Many an appendix has been sacrificed to a harmless …… pain, If the pain happened to be in the left lower quadrant, the left adnexa (ovary) were doomed ……. Back pains were at once associated with displacement of the Uterus".

2.5 Drugs old or new, after passage of time prove worthless. Even apparently harmless therapy leads to undesirable reactions.

After decades of X-Rays treatment, the multitude of dangers of X-Rays attracts the scientists' attention. The dangers of radiation are becoming more and more apparent. The disadvantage of chemotherapy, as now revealed, shock us.

"To begin with, the antibiotics shift the balance of body in favor of the patient but, as treatment is continued, it may shift back in favor of organism." – The comments from scientists.

2.6 Many allopathic practices now accepted as erroneous and given up. This has cost humanity thousands of lives.

2.7 Theoretically, modern medicines does consider factors mental or emotional. But one fails to trace a method in allopath wherewith the problems of stress, the original cause of disease is faced. Except possibly occasional lectures to patients to forget stress. Doctors (tend to often) ignore the mind factor in practice, while advocating in theory the essential need of taking it in to account.

3. The claim is not that these points make a full case against allopath. The list of un-solved riddles, as admitted by allopath itself and partly mental (in the book) establish the limitation of allopath.

4. Although, allopath’s bright side too exists.

For instance, of all methods of cure, allopath alone stands very open, frank and unpretentious. In no other schools of Medicine, the top-heads of the world so readily admit the failure of their system.

In many instances, the world knows about the failures of modern medicine through their inventors or their immediate followers themselves. Such frankness hardly comes across where truth about the other cults get placed in the dock.

Another noteworthy fact about allopath is worth mentioning. If experiments prove that standards set forth by its logic are reached, then discoveries receive acceptance even when they come forth from non-medical persons. As we know Pasteur was not a medical authority in the real sense of the term.

5. These highlights of allopath have acquired for the system a supreme honor and confidence, in contrast to the position of other cults.

But there are shortcomings too!

6. Shortcomings

 a) Its non-consideration of and failure to treat psyche in all its aspects. Some experts feel that treatment of psyche continues constitutes a specialized area reserved for psychologists, psychiatrists.  Psychiatrists themselves hold conflicting views on problems of psyche and the allopath’s wisdom in living mind to them, this has brought grief to allopath in every respect.

 b) The second great handicap of allopath lies in the fact that its followers have not the same sense of scientific detachment of their masters that resulted in highest respect for the allopath’s. Therefore, its high value gets completely diluted when we turn to a representative of allopath of our street corner or neighborhood, who undertakes to relieve us of any agony.

Evaluation of Four Other Systems

The discussion in the book also deals with the analysis of other four pathies namely homeopathy, naturopathy, osteopathy, and psycho-therapy.

The details can be seen from the Chapter.

Conclusion

Innumerable objections and very powerful ones can be shown for the theory and practice for each cult. This is again not to totally deny the utility of these pathies, but only to show certain limitations to which each cure system is exposed.

The Incompleteness of Every System

Do we mean that all methods are absolutely wrong? No! We are talking only about limitations.

The afflicted (depressed), nervous patient often forgets the ills done to him by several practitioners (may be from diverse pathies) and he propagates the name of his successful doctor. Thereafter all systems of cure go unquestioned amongst their respective followers – for patients may shift their camps, but they never give-up the faith that someone else will certainly cure them. They feel justified in their faith, when they meet their reliever in the form of some white-dressed doctor. The poor patients never know that so great an authority as Dr. H.W. Haggard, M.D. recorded the verdict that "Ninety percent of diseases are curable without medicine".

The truth remains unpalatable to doctors and therefore, they often oppose it on quite untenable (unsound) grounds in private. Yet every patient in his heart of heart fully endorses the extent of his own suffering at the hands of various pathies.

To sum up – All prevailing therapies thrive on a few grains of truth and the rest are merely experimental speculations.

( to be continued)

Vijay R. Joshi.