Re : Attempts to modernise ayurveda.

[Guest guest]

Dear Dr. Aashish,

 

Namaskar. I am happy to note that you are on our list. Please do contribute

regularly. And yes, I'm not a doctor, though I am a Reiki channel and like to

keep abreast of alternative health care. My own personal experience with modern

medicine has left a very bitter taste in the mouth. In the course of my search

for a better alternative I came to know of the sorry state of affairs in the

alternate health sector. In many cases I found that, via the anatomy/physiology

and the diagnostic procedures classes, the modern doctors had tried to put their

own ideas in the heads of the students in the alternate medical colleges. Facing

the shortage of patients in their own hospitals, most of these students also

pursue their internship in allopathic hospitals thus furthur puzzling them and

building a sort of inferiority complex within them. Therefore, like many others,

I decided to come on to the net and try to put some confidence back into them by

pointing out that it is the modern doctors who

should be ashamed of themselves and not the other way round.

 

I know modern medicine is good for emergencies, but many of us feel that the

alternative healing arts should not loose their identity by trying to

"modernise" themselves as per allopathic norms and under the supervision of

allopathic doctors. By doing that they would loose sight of their own basic

principles of holism and the elements that constitute the body. In this aspect

the condition of homeopathy is far better as Hahnemann had started his crusade

with a scathing criticism of allopathy. But unfortunately our ancestors, the

ayurvedic acharyas, had no inkling that one day such a "science" would come to

rule our land. It was unthinkable at that stage.

 

I live near Puri, a tirtha of India. Here lived a very famous saint, Sri

Achyutananda Das, who also had the power of prophecy, a la Nostradamus. He was a

contemporary of Lord Chaitanya and the two were very close friends. He had

predicted in Oriya in his magnum opus, Malika, written around 1500 AD (approx),

that in the later stages of the Kali Yuga would emerge a group of people who

would no nothing about disease and neither about cures and yet be called

doctors. "Roga na janibe, nidana na janibe, baidya bolaibe."

 

I think that about sums it up !!!

 

Contemporary philosophers like Sri Aurobindo have remarked, "The Mother and I

have no preference for allopathy. The doctors only make disease worse through

unnecessary medications and interference." Swami Vivekananda did not directly

attack the science but had confided that ultimately only those systems that

recognise the "prana shakti" would survive. He had urged the modern doctors to

research along those lines, advocating a spiritual approach to health. Mahatma

Gandhi had only contempt for allopathy and preferred his own naturopathy to

modern science. I don't think those savants were being unnecessarily cocky.

 

Today even modern medicine has realised it's limits and if their experiments

with stem cell research and genetic manipulations fail, which they certainly

will, they are ready to invade the bastion of ayurveda and homeopathy with

nanotechnology. This new branch exists on the premise that substances which

cause harm in raw and bulk doses could have curative properties in altered

states/minute doses. This is exactly what ayurveds (through bhasmas) and

homeopaths (through potentisation) do !!! However those efforts too will fail

because those new medicines won't have any principle of cure behind them and

will be used indiscriminately.

 

Please don't take offence at my words. I have undergone intense suffering at the

hands of the so called "doctors" and I really don't know whether I'll fully

recover. Today, bereft of any regular source of income and facing a very

uncertain future, my only goal in life, other than God realisation, is that

others should not undergo what I have been through.

 

Regards,

Jagannath.