Dr. Naram and pulse diagnosis

[Guest guest]

Dr. Naram sounds like a controversial figure, and it's impossible for

me to have an opinion either way since I haven't met him

 

on the one hand the fact that he has no formal training is irrelevant

to me - there are many historical examples of people with absolutely no

training that have brought about a complete reform in the practice of

medicine - the West, the best example was a fellow named Samuel

Thomson, a poor farmer that single handedly challenged the prevailing

medical notions of the day, and introduced a system of treatment that

in many ways resembles pancha karma - he was also an astute business

man, and by selling his system of medicine in the form of a patent, as

well as the herbs and equipment he outlined in his system, he was the

first multi-level marketer in the world, and became very wealthy in a

relatively short period of time - the system that he originated still

resonates through the practice of western herbal medicine today, and in

Ayurvedic terms, would be seen as an avatar, although he was lambasted

during his lifetime by the medical profession (for interest, i am

attaching an article I wrote that compares and contrasts Thomson with

Ayurvedic practice, that was published a couple years back

(thomson.pdf)

[since our group does not permit attachments file dropped by ]

 

the attraction of formal education is obvious, but it can also blind us

to the fact that healing is imbedded in our relationship with earth -

in this way, the earth actually "grows" physicians, and even though

they may not be all that sophisticated they can often be more effective

because their experience is reflective of this relationship, and does

not hinge on semantical constructs that appeal to the intellect, but in

fact can be ineffective or even dangerous

 

however, there have been some serious claims of impropriety and even

dangerous practices - one post suggests that his medicines seriously

compromised the health of a spiritual master - but i wonder how this

could happen and how someone of such spiritual insight could allow

themselves to be taken advantage of in this regard - we can only

conclude that no-body is immune to suffering, and that the answer to

our ailment lies not in what lies external to us, but in our

relationship with our self-constructed reality - in this way disease

becomes a teacher

 

in regard to pulse diagnosis, i know there are masters of the tradition

out there - tibetan physicians probably posses the most thorough and

highly advanced techniques in this regard, and during the zhang zhung

empire used to hold contests between practitioners of different

traditions and see who had the most accurate techniques - pulse

diagnosis however is a misnomer, because its actually not a diagnostic

technique at all - its an inferential method of assessment (anumana),

where the practitioner ultimately relies more on their intuition than a

specific methodology

 

the pulse is a manifestation of the transient consciousness that

emanates from the heart, the seat of the life principle: if one can

read the pulse then one can also read the pattern of this transient

consciousness, and thus understand that pattern of consciousness that

underlies the matrix of the body - Dr. Naram may simply be very

intuitive or psychic, reading the pulse like a psychic reads the tarot,

and relies upon this instead of a sophisticated understanding of

medicine

 

the problem of course is that this particular skill is difficult to

teach, and very difficult to evaluate - it is also unreliable as the

basis of practice because many things can affect our intuition - that

is why something like the pulse should be grounded in actual

observation: in Ayurveda a complete diagnosis is born of three

components: case history, observation and inference - Charaka states

wherever one component is missing the resulting conclusions in

assessment are more likely to be in error

 

the net result is that Dr. Naram is probably neither a scam artist nor

an enlightened healer, but an astute business man with some basic

knowledge and some intuitive skills - i suspect that he has had his

successes and his failures - the collective opinion on the list would

suggest this

 

todd caldecott