Emotion and Bodily Changes
(Excerpts from book “Cure without Medicine”)
Do emotions
bring about organic change? (Physical change)
Our answer is ‘Yes’,
fully documented as well as properly substantiated.
Right from
Hippocrates down to Dr. Alexander, all fully subscribe to the view that
emotions necessarily play a major role in the aggravation of disease
Experiments
reveal that anger stops normal flow of saliva and also affects the adrenal
gland. It is equally well known that all emotions accelerate blood circulation.
Blood vessels are known to burst through anger as well as through joy. It is
also important to be realized that whilst process of thought seems to be
localized in the head, emotions are felt throughout the entire body. When a man
suddenly comes face to face with danger, vibrations of fear course through the
whole of his physical being, he experiences a sinking in the pit of the
stomach, he breaks out in cold sweat, and his skin becomes pale, his mouth dry,
his breathing difficult and his heart races.
The action of
the sympathetic system in an emergency emotion is of special interest to the
student of psychology. It includes dilating pupils of the eye, lifting the lid
over-wide and protruding (swelling) the eyeball, increasing the rate of heart
beat, raising the blood pressure and taking from the organs of sex their supply
of blood with the result that they tend to become flabby (hanging loosely).
History of Nationals, Religion and Science and Emotion’s role
The extreme
extent to which emotions can affect the body (and also beyond body) is best and
most strikingly seen at its highest levels when one considers the history of
nations, religion and science.
Thousands of
patriots have sacrificed their lives for their feelings and faith. Millions
have preferred tortures of the very worst kind giving away life of ease and
comfort. Crores cared nothing for war wounds. They threw themselves in the
imbroglio (complicated and difficult situation) for the sake of their country. Medical authorities may read the lives of
researchers who sacrificed their very lives for success of their mission.
Scientist in Russia like Minch and Mochutkovsky infected themselves with poison
for the sake of experimental confirmation of their analytical theories.
Noguchi, another scientist, allowed his brain to be affected. Sir Ronald Ross
allowed himself to be infected by material-carrying mosquitoes.
From Emotion to Disease
We have seen
that emotions create organic disease is unquestionable. Relationship between
emotions and disease is a concept universally accepted. Now the next question
to be considered is whether –
1. Every disease results from emotion
On our part, we
are convinced that satisfactory evidence exists to prove a relationship between
every kind of disease and emotion.
We shall list
some important arguments but before it is done, we should consider some
important points.
2. An emotion
does not necessarily result in immediate illness
This is the
primary difficulty which should be overcome. A time lag (between emotion and
illness) is certainly possible and it often occurs. On many occasions, an
emotion is suppressed, so that such suppressed emotion does not result in an
immediate observable bodily reaction in the form of disease. Certainly, it is
true that we can defer the disease temporarily, when we suppress emotions. But
in the long run, it will be observed to have erupted with greater intensity.
Hence, the question of paramount important is – Will the
disease never erupt?
3. Immediate
link may not be possible
What begins as
emotion (A) ends in an illness (B). An immediate link A to B cannot be located
on every occasion for Nature gives us a long rope indeed to hang ourselves
with! When no immediate link is observably created, it still does not indicate
its total absence.
4. Can doctors
link real cause to disease?
Any critic has
no right to demand that a proponent of Recipropathy is duty-bound to offer
proof positive on every individual occasion that emotion leads to disease. This
is because critics and even doctors themselves are unable to trace back every
disease at its source or to its first cause, if one prefers that phrase. In
fact majority of the diseases are treated without its true origin having been
located. In the startling yet true words, Dr. Carrel says “Doctors
do not cure disease, they change it”.
5.
Circumstantial evidence supports Recipropathy
Even in those
cases where a direct relationship between emotion and disease has not been
established, the circumstantial evidence is in favor of the hypothesis.
In the state of
emotion an individual prefers the very most tortures, which may be normally
termed as disease (illustration – A soldier
going to doctor for operation vis-à-vis going for
all-out war. Page 46 of the book gives the illustration). This point will be
further established later in mathematical terms. With the help of the laws of
mechanics and mathematical equations, the correlation of emotions and disease
will be established.
6. Purpose of
disease and pain
Suffice is to
say here that modern researchers agree that the purpose of disease and pain is
to teach the human mind through emotions.
7. Can
medicines cure patients?
All thinkers
concede that medicine cannot cure patients en-mass. No two organisms on this
earth are quite alike. Medicine which would cure all and sundry is impossible
to be discovered. Because each individual is absolutely unique and distinct
from the rest of the world. This uniqueness of the individual prevents the
possibility of a mass-scale medicine.
8. Individual
separate identity – The difficulty in proving.
Even the
origins of bodily pains are diverse. Under a given set of circumstances,
various individuals react differently depending on their basic emotional
combination, turning each reaction into different disease. Everything,
including the rate at which emotion is turned into disease, the process whereby
the result accrues, the mode, the intensity, the complications –
all these would differ from one to another depending solely on basic
combinations of emotions in the individual concerned. That is why a difficulty
arises in actually co-relating every emotion with specific disease. Pathways of
emotions and disease stand delineated (just like image of each other).
(To be continued..)
Vijay R. Joshi.
