It is said that Mahatma Gandhi refused to give his wife on her death bed any other treatment than naturopathy.
My friend’s uncle says that he has used Ayurveda alone since childhood and that is the secret of his health.
We see advertisements and claims that homoeopathy can cure several conditions that would need surgery in allopathy.
There is a widespread propaganda all over that praanaayaama and yoga ensure 100% mental and physical well-being and there is no need for medicines.
We often hear of energy healers of pranic healing or reiki who are able to heal diseases even from a distance.
The adherents of these systems of medicine believe in them so much that to deny them on the basis of lack of scientific evidence is to outweigh the opinion of one party over the other. Perhaps science is still too incomplete for explaining all these phenomena. But can science expand to accept all these varied statements in toto without deflecting their spirit?
Existing knowledge of the human body we gather from sciences like biology, physiology and anatomy which give us details of the gross body pertaining to the physical realm. But it fails to explain the psychological dimension of man which belongs to supra-physical realms. It fails to recognise and include in it the emotional and spiritual aspects of life. But the natural systems of medicine like Ayurveda, homoeopathy, Unani and other energy healing methods recognise this dynamic aspect of existence. Can we extend our understanding of the human body into these emotional and spiritual levels too? Can the continuity that operates between spiritual, emotional and physical levels of existence be traced throughout, making all knowledge synchronous?
This is possible if we realise the fact that the human body is not as static and tight-packed as we are habituated to see it, but is the centre of tremendous dynamic activity with which various rhythms in nature fall in and out of harmony. This understanding can be called the dynamic model of the body. Henceforth we will discuss how we can reverse our understanding from the static or physical model into a dynamic model of the body.
To begin with, let us study the salient features of the three popular systems of medicine, allopathy, homoeopathy and Ayurveda, and try to understand how they can be related with each other.
Allopathy has the background of an in-depth research supported by modern advances in biochemistry, electronics and software technology. It can study the molecular movements in the body by targeting them with radioactive markers. But it does not take into consideration the study of the mind and body as a whole, thereby giving the mind-body relationship secondary importance. It denies the spiritual fact that a cosmic energy governs creation and life and regards the body as an automaton, a self-driven machine comprised of various organs. Most of its treatment modules are planned according to this mechanical understanding of the body.
Homoeopathy was evolved in Germany by Dr. Hahnemann. After getting vexed with the old methods of treatment, he invented, with his incisive knowledge of chemistry and intuitive knowledge of creation, a special method of preparing medicines called potentisation or serial dilution whereby a medicine even in very small quantities can bring about a cure of even the most serious and intractable ailments. In homoeopathy, drugs are experimented on healthy human beings unlike in allopathy which conducts trials on animals. Being very minute in dose, the drugs do not harm the person under-going the drug trial but produce in him certain changes in mood and physical health. These changes are recorded as the symptoms caused by the drug. The symptoms that occur in several such persons are collected together to form the pharmacology of the drug. Any patient suffering from any disease is given that drug whose psychophysical expression is most similar to his symptoms of suffering. Thus is this science named homeopathy.(homeos = similar; pathos = disease). The advantages of this system are:
