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New Paradigm for Medicine Explored in Two Books by Dr. Hari Sharma
Dr. Hari Sharma, professor emeritus at the College of Medicine of Ohio State University in Columbus, and frequent visitor to Fairfield, is the author of two new books: Awakening Nature's Healing Intelligence--Expanding Ayurveda Through the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health (Lotus Press, $17.95) and Contemporary Ayurveda--Medicine and Research in Maharishi Ayur-Veda (Churchill Livingstone), a medical textbook published in Britain. The co-author of Contemporary Medicine is Dr. Christopher Clark, Medical Director of the Raj Health Resort in Fairfield.
Elliott James: Your book Awakening Nature's Healing Intelligence is very different from other books on the topic. It is a fascinating exploration of the theme of "nature's intelligence." What inspired you to pick this topic?
Dr. Hari Sharma: First of all, the insight into the body's inner intelligence and how it can be enlivened is central to Maharishi's restoration of the ancient science of Ayurveda. In addition, the understanding of the inner intelligence of nature also happens to be the key missing element both in modern medicine and in other areas of science.
This is important, because allopathic medicine is undergoing some very dramatic changes right now. More and more doctors are opening up to alternative approaches to health care. However, in many cases, the fundamental approach to treating disease remains the same--that is, doctors still concentrate only on the symptoms of the disorder and don't attempt to address the underlying dynamics that are causing the problems. If you go to an alternative practitioner, he or she may give you valerian for insomnia or St. John's wort for symptoms of depression. That certainly is a lot better than Valium or Prozac, but it's still not getting at the subtle imbalances in the mind-body system that are giving rise to the problem in the first place.
So even as medical practitioners are starting to embrace alternative approaches, they are doing so while remaining within the traditional mechanistic understanding of the human body. When this is the case, alternative treatments tend to be used in the traditional "magic bullet" fashion, and because of this they won't have their complete effect.
Could you elaborate on this point?
Dr. Sharma: Allopathic medicine is based on the so-called mechanistic paradigm, a conceptual framework in which the human body simply is viewed as a highly complex machine, a physical apparatus that functions according to purely mechanistic processes, much like a clock. This perspective is very different from that introduced by the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health, in which the mind-body system is viewed as a holistically functioning system. In a system everything is intercorrelated, that is, everything influences everything else.
Now, on the surface, these two perspectives may just look like conceptual differences. But, in fact, the way we think of the human body has tremendous implications for our approach to healing. If the human body is more or less like a machine, it follows that any malfunctioning can be addressed simply by replacing or fixing broken parts. If you adopt a systems perspective, however, it means that when something goes wrong, it's the whole system that is diseased, not just the one part of the body that happens to exhibit symptoms of disease.
This is why simply focusing on treating symptoms--even if it's done through alternative healing approaches--is not enough. You really need to get at the imbalances that hinder the full expression of the natural inherent intelligence at the most subtle level of the mind-body system. More than any other system of health I know of, the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health contains a number of tremendously powerful techniques to accomplish this.
You made the point above that an understanding of the inherent intelligence of nature is a key missing element not only in medicine but in other branches of science as well. This is also a prominent theme in your book.
Dr. Sharma: One of the unresolved mysteries in the life sciences concerns the many manifestations of self-organizing intelligence in living systems. Even the smallest living entity, the cell, is so complex and sophisticated that our most advanced supercomputers are ludicrously primitive compared to it. What makes living systems different from inanimate systems, such as, say, a stone or a computer chip, is their ability to regulate, regenerate, and reproduce themselves. These are all expressions of intelligence and it is something that it is very hard to fully explain within the framework of mechanistic science.
The intelligence of living systems is one feature that you discuss in your book. You also emphasize the primary role of wholeness in maintaining health.
Dr. Sharma: There's a well-known principle in Maharishi's Vedic Science: "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts." If you look around, you'll see that the whole universe can be described in terms of increasingly higher-order wholes that exhibit higher-order properties. Take the simple example of two hydrogen atoms, which combine with one oxygen atom. What you get is a new entity, water, with characteristics vastly different from the properties of its constituent atoms. Water is a liquid, it freezes at zero degrees Celsius and boils at 100 degrees Celsius. So, in other words, you get a whole that is "greater than the sum of its parts." This is a phenomenon that you find in all areas of science. It is because of this feature that we can talk about distinct layers of physiological and biological organization in the first place.
The whole human body can be described in terms of such layers of "emergent wholenesses" nested within each other. At each level we find new entities with new properties that take on regulatory roles and orchestrate the activity at lower levels of organization. So at every level of the physiology, something more is at play than the sum of the individual components. And at every step, each emergent entity contributes to the harmonious functioning of the whole physiology. As we know, wholeness is a fundamental feature at the basis of the universe, and this in turn is mirrored in the manifest universe, which is like an infinite myriad of self-interacting wholenesses.
Again, this understanding is crucial when it comes to treating problems of disease in the human body. As Maharishi has pointed out for so many years, you have to start with wholeness. You can't just focus on individual parts. If you look at all the programs Maharishi has brought out over the years, be it the TM and TM-Sidhi program, Maharishi Ayurveda, Maharishi Jyotish, or Maharishi Sthapatya Veda, they all have to do with helping to restore and maintain wholeness, either by creating greater attunement among the elements of the mind-body system or between the individual and the cosmos. All these programs are so effective, because they attune us to the deepest level of creation. This is the only level at which true healing can take place. The book gives a deep insight into the mechanics of this and also provides a lot of concrete practical advice based on this realization.
You also have another new book out, Contemporary Ayurveda, which is published in Britain.
Dr. Sharma: That book is also very gratifying. It is published by Churchill Livingstone, one of the world's leading medical publishers--they're the ones who publish Gray's Anatomy. The fact that a medical publisher of that stature is publishing a book on Maharishi Ayurveda demonstrates that as the evidence keeps growing, Maharishi Ayurveda is beginning to be recognized in the medical world.
How does this book differ from your other book on Ayurveda?
Dr. Sharma: The premise of this book--which I co-authored with Dr. Christopher Clark of the Raj, who brought a wealth of clinical experience and knowledge to the project--was to create a medical school textbook. But we wanted the writing to be so clear and accessible that our patients could read it easily and find it useful. This book will especially interest those who want to go deeply into the scientific evidence and reasoning behind Maharishi Ayur-Veda, but it also contains a good deal of practical information. It is meant for those who want an in-depth understanding of consciousness and the unified field, panchakarma, the doshas and dhatus, disease formation, and also of the scientific research on the TM technique and other aspects of Maharishi Ayurveda. Yet it also has detailed practical information on diet, exercise, daily routine, women's health concerns, and so forth.
Did you get to emphasize your theme of a new paradigm of health and the body?
Dr. Sharma: Absolutely, and in fact the book develops the idea in detail. It's encouraging that Churchill Livingstone was so accepting of this. It shows that the world is opening up to a true rethinking of the field of medicine.
