Psychosomatics
During the last two decades of the twentieth century, in Russia they spoke a lot about a crisis of the modern “western” medicine. It manifested as a fact that despite the number of physicians has increased, new drugs have been invented, the medicine equipment has been improved, etc, the number of the sick has not decreased, it increases. In the medical world they had even a sad joke: “The more doctors, the larger is the number of the sick”… Among the signs of this crisis is poor health of the physicians themselves — it is hardly better than the health of other people…
As a justification of this situation, a concept emerged that diseases are something natural for man. Some of the sick became even proud of their serious illnesses, believed they deserve more respect because of this, and were out few months per year on sick leave. The majority of people adopted passive attitude to own health. “Our task is to be sick; your task is to treat us”, they say to doctors.
They who do not agree with such position try to find the solution by turning to “unorthodox” search for healthy life.
The main methodological fault of the “western” medicine consists in its directing the efforts of doctors and scientists not to removing the causes of diseases but to “smoothing down” their symptoms.
Each disease has a whole chain of interrelated causes. For example, a running cold. An obvious cause of this is inflammation of the nasal mucous membranes. One of the possible causes of this inflammation is multiplication of microbes, whose activity resulted in it. If we found the reason in someone’s sneezing near our patient and directed all our efforts only to suppression of the microbes, we would be wrong and can make harm to the patient. Yet, such cases happen quite often.
The really important reason for such a situation lies deeper. The point is that microbes affect mainly the organisms which are potentially sick already, which are weak, vulnerable. Therefore, the main cause can be, for example, disregard of the methods of cold tempering (tempering the body), i.e. violation of this aspect of the personal ecology. And why we do not temper the body? Because of laziness.
Or the cause can be a wrong (i.e. “killed”) nutrition, which results in contamination of the body’s vessels with salts of the uric acid. And this causative factor has a deeper cause — the one which led to such a way of nutrition.
There is another variant of analysis of this situation of an ordinary cold. People who temper the body and keep to the “correct” nutrition can also catch cold, though it happens very rarely. According to our observations, such cases happen when one gets emotionally involved in some difficult situation and enters the state of negative-emotional stress. Such negative emotions as fear, irritation, anxiety in many cases result in loss of the energy potential of the organism and lead to the state of vulnerability to adverse outer influences, including energetical ones. Training in psychical self-regulation allows one to eliminate this cause of diseases.
It is known that the probability to become ill with cancer is much higher for the people who smoke and drink alcohol. But isn’t the main reason for such addictions in weak will and irresponsibility of people surrendered to pernicious habits (vicious)?
From our experience of work with thousands of people we can conclude that anyone can be healthy if wants to. But for this, one has to make efforts on the path to spiritual Perfection.
In medicine there is a direction called psychosomatics. Its main concept, based on proved (established) facts, consists in asserting that somatic (corporal) ailments are of “nervous” (and if to look deeper — of ethical) origin. But in general, psychosomatics was not widely recognized (acknowledged), because it had no strict scientific theoretical basis explaining the origin of all diseases, not just some of them. (The classical psychoanalysis does not meet these criteria; besides its approach does not comply with the highest principles of spiritual self-perfection for it forms in man the vicious egocentric posture (position).
Based on the knowledge presented in this book we can trace the cause of concrete ailments to ethical imperfections. Such an approach allows one to regard any sickness as a sign of an ethical error or fault, to plan out the way to its elimination and thus to somatic recovery. We have already considered several schemes of such an analysis. Let us consider another scheme — the most essential one.
Vulnerability of the body’s organs to outer harmful factors increases significantly if they lack energy, which is provided by chakras corresponding segmentally to the organs. For example, there is a clear dependence between anahata’s defects or a lack of its development — and cardiovascular or pulmonary diseases, between energetical disharmonies in the manipura — and diseases of the digestive apparatus, in the svadhistana — and diseases of the urogenital organs, in the muladhara — and neurotic manifestations, in the vishudha — and diseases of the neck, in the head chakras — and disorders in the head organs. Dedicated work with chakras supplemented by conversations on ethics and by other psycho-energetical methods can be an effective means of helping people sick with various serious diseases.
And now let us recall the information about correspondence between the level of chakras’ development and the features of the character [26,30]. From this it becomes clear about interdependence between our ethical flaws and predisposition toward certain diseases.
Chakras are organs with certain functions. The system “an organ and its function” can be developed through natural functioning (or weakened, made atrophy through inactivity). Another approach is special “artificial” methods of training the organ. In this particular case, they are exercises for chakras accelerating the development of the specified systems.
The idea of man’s achieving ecological harmony implies, first of all, man’s benevolence and making no harm (as much as possible) to other people and all living beings; this should go together with an active constructive position in life. They way of transforming oneself is hard and long (yet, it is infinitely joyful!). On this path, the knowledge about the spiritual Perfection has to transfer, as G.I.Gurdjieff said [70], into the beingness of each one of us. That is, we have to really transform, under influence of knowledge and practical efforts on changing oneself, and not just to memorize some fine words, quotes, and sayings.
Different is deepness of encompassing of the ethical principles by different people. A former criminal may pledge oneself not to kill anymore and see this as the acme of perfection. But another person harms others neither by deed, nor by word, nor by thought. Such a person would not drop a used ticket on a pavement, would not leave garbage in the forest — in order not to make to others even this little harm of violation of the purity and esthetical harmony of the environment.
Sometime it is so difficult to find the ways of fighting — from the position of benevolence and love — the malicious attacks of people who go to the opposite ideal — to aggressive self-assertion. It is hard but possible to do if we aspire to the higher goal of attaining the Perfection.
The Perfection comprises three main components: Love, Wisdom, Power. And all three of them we have to develop in ourselves to full realization.
The way of spiritual self-perfection, which is free from serious errors, begins with development of Love in oneself. It is Love that forms the basis, foundation of the true Wisdom and Power.
Wisdom is stayed on Love. It is composed of broad knowledge about the world, God, and man, of the ability to create intellectually. It is manifested, in particular, in the ability to lead other people to the Perfection, understanding the vast diversity of the different people’s paths.
The true Power has to base on Love and Wisdom. It consists not just in power of the muscles. And, of course, it is not about the aggressive intent to become superior (to gain, to win superiority, gain the mastery) to the adversaries: this is the false path of developing egoism in oneself. The true power is, in particular, the perfection of the body, but, first and foremost, it is the perfection of the egoless willpower based on Love and Wisdom. The concept of Power includes also an energy component called personal power. A power lacking Love and Wisdom is of no value.
In this connection, let us look view once again “withdrawals” from the society with the purpose of living in “seclusion” in mountains, woods, deserts, propagandized by some religious preachers. It is one thing, if one spends a vacation in solitary reflections, but is quite another, if one unconditionally withdraws from the society as from the “enemy” of spiritual self-perfection. It is an illusion to try to develop love to everything without having learning to love some particular people. And what kind of wisdom can be found in self-isolation if the wisdom’s foundation is laid through aquatinting oneself with knowledge stored in books, through a living communion with spiritually advanced people, through developing in oneself the ability to help people by serving them. And is it true power that develops when one avoids “worldly” difficulties? (With kind, soft humor V.Svenitskii narrates about such monks-hermits fearing women and robbers — [51]).
Many believe that power is about one’s being armed or hard-fisted, being able to abuse, to play mean tricks on others, to express outbursts of anger. Yet the true spiritual Power is the power in Love and Wisdom, in subtlety and purity.
