[Excerpts from a keynote address given by Dr.S.Rama at a Physicians conference in Madras, September 1992]
As COVID-19 continues unabated, we’d like to shareone of the early lectures our founder Swami Rama gave to an elite group of physicians titled ‘Let body be body’s cure’. In it he laid out that the sages of India were the first to develop detailed foundations of a philosophy of medicine. In Vedic Samhitas are found 170 references to the physician and his therapy; 344 references to oshadhis and 135 references to vanaspatis in general; not to speak of specific medicines, specially factored are 44 references to therapist and therapies in the earliest Samhita, the Rig-Veda.
In Rg-Veda, mind is the primary factor, in all human conditions, including disease. A human being creates his ailments through wrong use of his will in his daydreams, creating sin and guilt within himself. The Vedic Rishi is explicit in saying a physician needs to play the role of both a soother and a disciplinary enforcer; he must find all cures within a patient’s body and personality; he must learn to loosen, to release, the bonds of negative mental acts that have tied the patient’s body and personality into warps and knots of disease. For this loosening of knots, one must aspire for that peace which creates a pleasant and harmonious state of mind. The medicines administered must not only be clean and hygienic but be accompanied by therapies that re-create the patient’s most peaceful personalities. The therapist can do so only if he sees his work as inspired from the divine source within himself and awakens the same in the patient. Only one who sees his work as a sacred sacrifice and administers medicine accompanied with what the mind needs can be truly heal the lesions of the body. For the patient to live a hundred winters through, it is absolutely essential that all hate and dissention must be cast away from his mind. Only the one who teachers to conquer the habits of anger, hurtful words and vain challenging in life can excel among therapists. No wonder that thousands of years after Rg-Veda the ancient Charaka stated that fevers are of two kinds: those arising from the physical causes and those created by the mental ones, and on the whole fever is an incarnation of anger.
Being masters of yoga, the rishis taught the relationship between mind and breath, through the link called vata, later named prana. The autonomic controls could then be accomplished through a number of concentrations so that mind may be led along the channels of prana, bringing about an intensification of life-force which alone constitutes the true healing power from within. Nothing else grants to the body a greater resistance to counter disease and even death. But Swamiji reiterated: No therapy, not even breathing therapy can work unless the mind pacified: only what induces the state of one’s being as that of peace can be beneficial to the heart. Only when one can say enough to desire, can there be peace in the heart.
