Doctors and the Divine
A devotee from the Far East who had been confined to the wheel‑chair for a number of years, is wheeled into the “interview room” at Trayee Brindavan [Swami’s ashram in Bangalore]. Half an hour later he comes out walking, pushing the wheel‑chair in front of him.
It was a Gurupoornima day. A mother carrying a 12‑year‑old boy who had never walked since birth is called in for interview at Prasanthi Nilayam. Swami gives the boy a big pat on his back, and he goes into and comes out of the room walking.
Crowds gather around these patients and express their amazement and share their happiness. Some people in the darshan line start giving their own interpretation of the event.
Doctors in the gathering stand in awe unable to find words to explain the phenomenon. What is their reaction? How can they reconcile their scientific knowledge with all this? They will no doubt accept that the divine force had effected a miraculous cure in these cases. But, perhaps, hardly any of them tries to think about and analyze the great possibilities that lie behind this phenomenon.
Swami Himself has explained these miraculous cures. When His love and the faith of the patient click, the cure is affected. Is it possible for doctors consciously to take the help of this divinity in their healing mission at least to strengthen the healing process if not to effect miraculous cures? The answer to this question will depend on the doctors’ understanding of the inherent divinity of man himself.
The whole and the parts
The bane of modern medicine is that it neglects to treat the patient as a whole person, and because of this physicians are unable to understand and cure many diseases that afflict man today. By reducing the whole human organism to its parts and trying to treat the parts, doctors have lost their ability to understand the coordinating activities of the whole. This whole includes the Self of man, the divinity within him. Because of this fragmented approach, the traditional wisdom of the faith healer, who views his patient as an integral whole, involving besides the body, the person’s relationship to the cosmos and the divine powers in it, is often a subject for mockery for modern medical practitioners.
They are completely ignorant of the fact that even rituals and ceremonies, however crude they may appear to be, have a place in stimulating the natural healing powers that every living being possesses. While it may be unwise to suggest that the modern physician should adopt these methods to supplement his drug therapy, it will at least be useful to go deeper into these practices and investigate how exactly they assist in the healing process.
Healing and divinity
Indifference to spirituality has become characteristic of modern medical practice, as is the case with most other professions. The modern physician tends to avoid philosophical and spiritual aspects connected with illness and healing. From ancient times, healing in our country has been associated with divinity as exemplified by the Ashwini Devas and Dhanvantri, the God of Medicine. This is true of ancient Greek medicine also wherein they conceived of healing deities like Hygieia (Goddess of Health) and Aesculapius (God of Medicine). Similar concepts were held in ancient Chinese medicine, which was greatly influenced by Taoism and Confucianism. All these methods of healing were directed toward treating the patients at a more fundamental level than at the level of the body-mind complex.
The validity of this approach has been demonstrated in recent years by scientific studies. Once feelings of hope, anticipation, and faith are generated at the deeper level, the body starts combating the illness more effectively, with or even without the assistance of drugs, and heals itself. In these circumstances there is no doubt that the Divine takes charge of the physical body and does the needful. When such a self‑healing process is initiated, it is impossible to describe exactly in scientific terms what happens in the organism, and it will not be wrong to characterize it as divine intervention. The modern physician hardly pays any thought to this aspect of his practice and comes to rely more and more on his own treatment. From the patient’s side also, the evolutionary state of man now is such that instead of taking the assistance of the unlimited healing potential within himself he almost entirely relies on outside intervention by doctors and drugs.
Disease and the spirit
An obvious flaw in modern medicine is the narrow view it has taken about the origin of diseases, always trying to find a single cause for each ailment, forgetting the contributory factors, especially those concerning the victim’s psyche. Though “stress” has been recognized as an important cause of many diseases, its varied psychological and spiritual aspects have hardly received any attention from the practicing physician. Nor is there any recognition that spirituality and spiritual practices can have a tremendous influence on the factors affecting health, disease, and cures. This has never been a subject of investigation for medical researchers. That bodily ailments are only one of the several manifestations of a state of imbalance in the living organism and that this imbalance can have spiritual dimensions to it is hardly acceptable to the so‑called scientific mind of the modern physician.
A little deeper inquiry into the phenomenon of spiritual healing will naturally lead us to a discussion of the nature of human consciousness. While physicists have shown that a consistent quantum theory is possible only with reference to the consciousness of the researcher, the psychologists and psychotherapists have only recently started showing interest in states of consciousness. The understanding of individual human consciousness and cosmic consciousness calls for enquiry beyond accepted scientific definitions and concepts, at least for the present. But it was long known to our ancients that the consciousness in every living being is a projection of the Divine and that the individual consciousness is closely linked to and integrally related to the cosmic consciousness. This cosmic consciousness has been equated in our scriptures with Brahman or Paramatma or God. That the individual consciousness can contact the collective consciousness is now accepted by psychologists in what they call Transpersonal Experiences.
Link with the cosmic
That the Self in us can have a tremendous influence on our physical frame was once emphasized by Bhagavan Baba in a private discussion He had with doctors. He told an elderly doctor, “I am three years older than you in age, and see how I look and how you look! “The doctor’s immediate reply was,” But Swami, you are divine!” Swami retorted: “But the physical body is the same.” The implication was that the real “Person” inhabiting the body can have a tremendous influence on the physical system and even counter the ageing process, if only we can learn to respond to the divine force in us. This also explains Baba’s powers to influence the physical bodies of other people, because there are no “others” for Him. All that we need is the ability to link our individual consciousness with the cosmic consciousness that He is. This is possible only when we develop intense faith in Him. But what is faith? It is not just faith in an external Godhead. It really means faith in one’s Self, faith in the infinite potency inherent in every individual.
It is this aspect of the Sai phenomenon that doctors have to consider and give a spiritual dimension to the practice of medicine. However, for “spiritualizing” medicine, the doctor should have a considerable knowledge of the different aspects of consciousness so that he can provide the patient with a spiritually supportive atmosphere to facilitate the healing process. In this process of harnessing the healing power of the Self in the patient, the physician’s own level of spiritual development is an essential factor, since otherwise he will not be able to establish a link with the deeper levels of consciousness of the patient, however much the physician may be endowed with qualities like professional competence, compassion, and empathy.
Educating the patient
The main effort of the physician in this endeavor will be to educate the patient about the cause of his illness and about the unlimited power of the Self in him and how he can utilize these powers to heal himself. This does not mean that the patient has to become an accomplished spiritual sadhaka (spiritual practitioner) before he can cure himself, as this is too much to ask from any patient. It is primarily a question of educating him so that he can develop the required intensity of faith. Thus the doctor has to assume the role of a teacher.
As the impact of the philosophical and existential aspects of life on the physical sciences increases, the time is not far off when medicine will also get influenced by them and an entirely new scientific system of spiritualized medicine is developed. Doctors belonging to the Sri Sathya Sai Organizations have a unique role to play in this development because they have the Avatar Himself to inspire and guide them.
~Dr. M. Balasubrahmanyan
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, Nov. 1987
