Exploring the Frontiers of Mind Body Medicine
by DEEPAK CHOPRA, M.D.
1. HolistÍc medicine, 2. Mínd and body, 3, Psychology. Physiological
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Book Details
Price
|
3.00 |
|---|---|
Pages
| 276 p |
File Size
|
12,336 KB |
File Type
|
PDF format |
ISBN
| 0-55 3-34869-8 |
Copyright©
| 1989 Deepak Chopra, MD, |
Trained in India and the United States, Dr. Deepak Chopra is a
practicing endocrinologist and former chicf of staff of New England
Memorial Hospital in Sroneham, Massachusens. He is executive
direcror of the Sharp HealthCare Institute for Human Potential and
MindiBody Medicine in San Diego, California. His other books are
Cnating Healfh (a selection oí Prevention Book Club), Returr¡ 01 the
Rúhi (a selection of rhe Guild), Hea/th, Unconditional
and the nadona! bestseller Body. Time/ess Mind. His
wriring has been pub!ished in twenry-íour foreign countries, and
he kerures wide!y in the United Srares, Europe, India, Japan, and
Russia.
....
Introduction
"1 have a Chinese patient who is in the terminal stages of cancer in the
nasal cavity. His face has been affected, and he is in pain most of the
time. But he is also a doctor. 1 think he should hear this."
1 nodded from the other side of the desk. lt was a late October day in
Tokyo in 1987. 1 was paying a visit to a Japanese cancer specialist who
might help me in testing a new theory. It had to do with one of medicine's
great mysteries, the healing process. At that stage 1 had not yet hit
upon the name "quantum healing," but that was what we had been
discussing for more than an hour.
The two of us got up and headed toward the wards. As we walked, 1
caught glimpses of perfectly tended Zen gardens that the hospital had
installed outside. Nearby, the children were asleep in their ward, so we
walked quietly for a momento At the private rooms, the Japanese doctor
stopped, found the right door, and let me go in first.
"Dr. Liang," he said, "do you have a few minutes?" The room was in
shadow. A man in his mid-forties, abour my age, was lying in bed. He
turned his head wearily as we walked in.
The three of us had several things in common-we were all from the
East and had left home ro train in advanced Western medicine. Between
us we had practiced Out specializations for fifty years. Bur the man in the
bed was the only one who would be dead in a month. A Taiwanese
cardiologist, he had been diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer less than
ayear before. Now large bandages came up almost to his eyes. It was a
difficult moment, meeting him. As 1 said hello, 1 didn't lower my gaze,
but Dr. Liang lowered his.
"We've come to talk a little," the Japanese doctor murmured. "Are
you too tired?"
The man in the bed made a polite gesture, and we pulled up chairs. 1
began to sketch in the main ideas 1 had already told my host. In essence,
1 believed that healing is not primarily a physical process but a mental
one. When we saw a bone fracture mend or a malignant tumor regress,
we were conditioned as doctors to look at the physical mechanism first
and foremost. But the physical mechanism is like a screen. Behind it, 1
said, is something much more abstract, a form of know-how that cannot
be seen or touched.
And yet that know-how, 1 was convinced, is a powerful force that has
not really come under our control. Despite all our efforts to coax the
healing process when it falters, medicine cannot explain it. Healing is
alive, complex, and holistic. We deal with it on our own limited terms,
and it seems to obey our limits. Yet, when something strange happens,
as when an advanced cancer suddenly and mysteriously vanishes, medical
theory is baffled. Our limits then seem very artificial.
In my own practice, several cancer patients have recovered completely
after being pronounced incurable and given only a few months to live. 1
didn't think they were miracles; 1 thought they were proof that the
mind can go deep enough to change the very patterns that design the
body. It can wipe mistakes off the blueprint, so to speak, and destroy any
disease-cancer, diabetes, coronary heart disease-that has disturbed the designo
The physical basis of science is very solid and, in the eyes of every
doctor, extremely convincing. On the other hand, the healing power of
the mind is considered dubious. Yet 1 was determined to show that this
healing power was a science in its own right. In the months leading up
to that day in Tokyo, 1 had devoted myself to studying Ayurveda, the
traditional Indian science of life, which originated more than four thousand
years ago. Although many Ayurvedic principIes and techniques had
been aH but forgotten over the centuries, I was convínced they would
become an important part of the medicine of the future.
Yes, it would come. Indian thought has always been grounded on the
conviction that Satya, the truth, alone triumphs.
Growing up in India, as I did, does not guarantee that you will learn
much about this ancient science. My grandmother used to rub turmeric
on our insect bites when I was a child, and she warned us never to eat
sour fruit with milk. That was Ayurveda in my house. In general,
Ayurveda has been eclipsed by Western scientific medicine, crowded out
of its own birthplace by progress. Outside the related cultures of India,
Tibet, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, Ayurveda is aH but unknown, although it
has lefr a lasting mark. The popular systems of Eastern medicine thar
have planted a few roots in the West, such as Chinese acupuncture, were
founded on Ayurvedic principIes thousands of years ago.
Over the centuries, the original knowledge of Ayurveda has been
scattered. Indians who Uve according to traditional values, mostly in the
countryside, still tend to follow Ayurvedic practices, but they have subjected
them to many different interpretations. Most of these are very
partial, even one-eyed. Everyvaidya, or Ayurvedic physician, cites the
ancient masters of Ayurveda, such as Charaka and Sushruta, as his authority,
but that does not mean that what he prescribes will be the same
as the vaidya in the next village.
Many Ayurvedic techniques have disappeared outright, and unfortunately
these are the very ones that might contribute most to modern
medicine. The ancient doctors of India were also great sages, and their
cardinal belief was that the body is created out of consciousness. A great
yogi or swami would have believed the same thing. Therefore, theirs was
a medicine of consciousness, and their way of treating disease pierced the
body's matter and went deeper, into the core of mind.
When you look at Ayurveda's anatomical charts, you don't see the
familiar organs pictured in Grais Anatomy; rather, you find astonishing
diagrams of where the mind is flowing as it creates the body. This flow is
what Ayurveda treats. Or rather, did treat until this priceless knowledge
IJ'-\..a.u.,-, obscured over time.
Until recently, even 1 had assumed that Ayurveda was folk medicine,
because all 1 saw of ir were the herbs, diets, exercises, and the incredibly
intricate rules for daily life that are just "in the air" when one lives in India.
But now my interest had come to center on the "lost" Ayurveda, and
on its ability to cure patients through nonmaterial means. Now that I
had beco me familiar with those means, I wanted ro teH people how they
worked. That was why I wanted to talk ro interested physicians, such as
my contact in Tokyo.
Now I was repeating this to aman who was dying in a hospital bed a
thousand miles away from home, and who knows how far away from his
spiritual ancestry. My words trailed away in the guiet of the shadowy
room. Ir was obvious that Dr. Liang was very tired now. He hadn't
spoken, but as we got up to leave, he touched my armo "Let us hope that
you are right," he said. "Thank you."
As we walked back through the wards, I looked again at the tiny Zen
gardens outside the windows. Tucked in alcoves not much bigger than a
hospital room, each one was a model of devoted care. The clipped yew
trees, cut so precisely, looked beautiful in the warm October light. We
walked out to the parking lot, and at my car the Japanese doctor and I
shook hands warmly. I told him 1 would start testing my new technigues
in America tirst, but 1 would keep him informed every step of the way.
Every doctor must make an inner journey, taking his understanding
beyond the limits of the physical body and into the heart of a deeper
reality. His responsibility is to solve the riddle of life and death. The
soludon is beckoning over the horizon with the same urgency and joyas
that which moved the ancient Leaping across the void of Lime and
space, surviving the waves of destruction that swallow up mankind, the
ancient Vedic wisdom speaks to us with profound simplicity: In nature's
perfect design, nothing ever dies. A human being is as permanent as a
star; both are illuminated by the spark of truth.
Every day 1 the importance of the inner journey. 1 belíeve that 1
am still taking my first steps, but 1 want to retrace them for others in
this book. Practicing medicine is full of hope for me now. 1 didn't need
Ayurveda's knowledge to find out that doctors are battling against
death. 1 needed it to find out that we will win.
....
Table of Contents
A Personal Introduction 1
PART 1: HIDDEN PHYSIOLOGY
1. After the Miracle 9
2. The Body Has a Mind of lts Own 19
3. The Sculpture or the River? 35
4. Messengers from Inner Space 53
5. Ghosts of Memory 73
6. The Quantum Mechanical Human Body 91
7. Nowhere and Everywhere 111
8. Silent Witness 127
9. The Mystery of the Gap 147
PART II: BODY OF BLISS
10. In the Rishi's World 163
11. Birth of a Disease 183
12. "What You See, You Become" 201
13. Body of Bliss 221
14. The End of the War
Bibliography 257
Index 259
Screenbook
....
PRAISE FOR
QUANTUM HEALlNG
"DRAWING ON BOTH MODERN SCIENCE
AND ANCIENT WISDOM, HERE IS A
MODEL OF HEALTH Al\'D ILLNESS THAT
CAN STAND THE TEST OF SCIENTIFIC
SCRCTINY BECAUSE OF ONE SIMPLE FACT:
IT WORKS."-larry Dossey, M.D., authorof
Space, Time and Medicine
"A BEAUTIFULLY BAlANCED W'EB OF
DRAt\fATIC E.x:AlVIPlES AND REASONED
SPECUlATION."-CraigA.lambert, Ph.D.,
Harvard Magazine
"DAZZLING." - The Washington Post
"HIS CASE HISTORIES ... TAKE THE OlD
'MIND-BODY' CONTROVERSY TO NEW
lEVELS OF COMPlEXITY AND
FASCINATION."
-San Francisco Chronicle andExamíner
"ILlUMINATING AND INSPIRING."
-East West
"THIS BOOK IS A]EWEL. DEEPAK CHOPRA
WRITES WITH WARMTH AND HUMANITY
ABOUT A SUB]ECT THAT TOUCHES US
ALL."-F. David Peat, author of
Synchronicí~v
"BRILLIANT AND ENTERTAINING."
- The London Daíly Telegraph
"THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN WITH
THE HEARTIMIND OF AN ARTIST, THE
PRECISION OF A SCIENTIST,
THE COURAGE OF AN EXPLORER."
-Laura Huxley, author of The Child ofYour Dreams
HA PROFOUND INVESTIGATION
OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND HEAlTH."
-Yogajoumal