ATMA’S DIARY – IN SEARCH OF HEALING - -SATHYA SAI BABA IN SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (BRAZILIAN EDITION).
Dear Diary,
Yesterday I felt an irresistible impulse to buy this publication of the Scientific American – Mind & Brain. The material of the cover - “In search of Healing” – caught my attention as a natural therapist I am. What would the scientific publications be discussing on such matter?
I went straight to page 28 and read eagerly the content: “Science still doesn’t explain what the religious calls “miracle”. But studies have demonstrated that, in some cases, faith can stimulate mental abilities and help increasing health”, informed the first words of the subject.
Before reading the whole news about healing, I decided to skim the magazine when, to my big surprise and happiness, I saw a picture of my dear guru in page 31. Underneath, the statement: “Levitation, bilocation and materializations: Sai Baba followers, now 83 years old, are convinced He is capable of making miracles and swear to have watched hundreds of supernatural phenomena.”
There are some very interesting parts I found in that magazine:
(...) “Religious beliefs also have big influence on decisions of patients who face complicated health treatments. The Journal of Clinical Oncology published (last year on July) a study that was made with 100 lung cancer in advanced stage patients, their close relatives and 257 oncologists. The researchers asked the participants to classify, in order of importance, seven factors that could influence in their decision to face chemotherapy, considering all the uncertainties and discomforts of the treatment: oncologist’s recommendation, faith in God, efficiency of the procedure to heal the disease, side effects, recommendation of family doctor, partner’s request, kids’ request. The three groups (patients, family and doctors) classified the oncologist’s recommendation as the most important factor to make the decision. However, while the first two groups put the faith in God in second place, oncologists considered that question the less important one. This study suggests that health professionals many times underestimate the role that religiosity has on patients’ postures.
The most curious thing, however, is that medicine itself and the therapeutic processes have roots in magician art and in religion. The Shamans, the thaumaturgist kings and the saints – like Cosme and Damian, the so-called “healing twins” – are the ancestors of the current general practitioners. Middle Age’s hospitals, initially conceived as refugees to old people, pilgrims and sick people, were built and administrated by religious people. The practice of cultivating, conserving and studying the medical properties of herbs (which gave origin to the current pharmacology) had its beginning in the monasteries.
Women who developed that wisdom, running from the Catholic Church’s control, were considered dangerous witches – their knowledge was threatening. After all, the ability to relief the sufferings granted power. The act of taking care of and, specially, of healing, has always been considered divine, supernatural, sorcery – considering the influence that doctors still have nowadays.” (…)
(...) the surprise can be provoked by an illusionist trick, as the totally incomprehensible appearing of objects in the hands of the magician. He remember us that, a little bit more than one century ago, flying with vehicles that are heavier than the air would have been considered an impossible enterprise, perhaps miraculous, as today it might seem, for example, the spontaneous healing of a serious disease. Therefore, miracle is a phenomenon that cannot be explained according to the known natural laws, in a way it can only be evidenced in another historical moment after complex investigation.” (…)
(...) “Grammar observes that, as in physics, religion is based on the idea that the universe is built by matter and energy and these categories are closely interrelated. But reality is not built only by the world of molecules, in religion we consider also the spiritual dimension, which gives sense to the other two,” affirms. To the physician, miracle is an uncommon interference of the future into the present, an intelligible and intelligible interchange. He doesn’t see any contradiction between science and faith, between laws of nature and miracles. What is missing is, perhaps, a better understanding of the universe – inside and outside us.” (…)
(…) “After all, what hurts more, the body or the soul?” (...)
(...) “Health in the palm of the hand” (...) “The researcher observed that the rodents that passed by hands imposition showed an increase in the number of defense cells, as lymphocytes and monocytes. Besides that, these cells revealed the double potential to destroy the tumor ones.”(…) (That’s Reiki!”)
(…) “the evolution of diseases and, particularly, of the degenerative ones, is determined by a complex group of elements, between which the emotional state, that interact in a dynamic way, with an intensity that varies according to the moment. In the reality, we still know very few about the biological bases of the mental processes, therefore the description between the relations amongst the physiological interactions – pathological or not – is still vague. I think this study will only be successful if the dualist mentality of body and mind separated is abandoned, because it offers simplist answers and makes more difficult the scientifical study of more complex phenomenon.” (…)
Attention: All the parts above were taken from the magazine Scientific American (Brazilian Edition) and represent the current scientific debate of the Occident. However, in the Orient spirit, mind and body has never been separated. The three together are the base of the Traditional Oriental Medicine.
Bellow you can read a text I wrote once in my blog, and that will serve perfectly now to illustrate how Earth Medicine feels and thinks… Good reading!
Neijing School, Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro, 2010
(...) Cool! New subject! Shen Qi, psychic-emotional energy.
“For the Traditional Chinese Medicine, the formation of the psychism will be influenced by matters previous to fecundation,” started our dear professor. “Take a look at this, in TCM this matter is not linked to the idea of reincarnation.”
(Although we are free to, obviously, believe in it.)
Professor Victor went to the board and erased the content that was there. He took a white chalk and wrote spirit. With a yellow chalk, he wrote soul. “Soul is different from spirit,” he continued. “dropped the chalk, and sat down next to us on the floor, and continued speaking, “Human beings are in constant conflict. There is a battle between the different “me” inside each one of us. It happens because we receive a psychic heritage of our father and one of our mother, we also bring the psychic heritage of our individual spirit, and we are also affected by the external conditioning that molds our way of thinking.”
I wrote in my notebook: “It is natural that human being is in constant conflict, contradicting himself everyday. It is the fight for the power of our different selfs. Which one of them will dominate?”
The teacher said, “My vegetative soul is formed by my father and my mother’s psyque. I am already born with this memory, recorded inside of me. Besides that, I start having experiences and therefore I produce new understandings according to them. So, now I already have three luggages to consider when it’s time to make a decision. Everytime I need, I will consider my decision on the data base I have. And all conclusions I get will also be stored in my soul.
“it’s complex indeed…” I thought, remembering the time I used to make researches on the Collective Unconscious.
“The external conditioning restricts you,” continued the teacher. Only you are able to see what is really important to you. The external conditioning tells you that you must have lunch at noon. But this time was created to divide the work journey. What if you’re not hungry at noon? What if you want to make a fast for one or more days?”
“I like to make fasts,” I thought with myself.
“To the Traditional Medicine, the sleep is very important so you can process the mental energy generated during the day,” Victor said. “Well, so we saw about the energy of the soul. Let’s now take a look at the energy of the spirit. The spiritual information brings all the information about your spirit. So, observe how many dados we need to cross when we have to make a decision. That’s why it’s so normal that someone is in conflict: because there is this accumulation of informations that, most of the time, conflict between each other.
All the students are very quiet now. Everybody’s paying attention to every detail of what the professor says.
“I want, but I can’t! I can, but I should not!” the teacher is now representing, theatrically, a person in big suffering by his inner conflict. After that, he stood still and, with his strong accent from the South, he concluded, “It’s necessary to have a balance between these parts that compose us. There is a connection between all these parts, between all these selfs… There is an energy that makes this balance work…”
It must have been on purpose that he made a small pause in his speech before he announced the cure to all this anguishing conflict! “Oh, please, just say it!” I thought, almost spoke outloud.
“The connection between all those conflicting parts is your celestial fate!” finally said the master. “If you concentrate on your celestial fate, that means, in your real function in the universe, then you minimize significantly the conflict.”
“Hmmm...” I whispered, with all my classmates together. The folks that use glasses are looking at the teacher underneath their lens, heads a little leaned down, eyebrows slightly up. The crank-arms have their thorax very open. The ones who were leaned in the wall and those who were lying down on the floor are now sitting. It’s funny how everyone loves these subjects about mind, emotion, psyche, spirit! So do I!
“The key to dissolve the conflict is to focus on the virtue, not in the problem,” continued Professor Victor. “The key is not to overvalue the problem. This is a fruit of our culture, which has the tendency to focus on drama. That was a Greek heritage. People live in drama, around their problems!” protested him. “During our breaks for coffee, I always listen to the students speaking about several problems,” confessed him. “Your life is not a problem, you are making a problem out of it!” alerted him.
He looked at us with his enlightened intellect. “It’s just like Tamagosh, you know?”
Everybody laughed, surprised we were by the joke in the middle of such a complex and dense matter.
“Yeah, that’s right. I’m talking about that Tamagosh we had to create, give him food so Tamagosh would be happy. Put Tamagosh to sleep,” continued Victor, making joke. (I can’t stop laughing right now.)
“And some people still blackmail you when you don’t care about their problems!” he said, raising his arms to the sky, representing a desperate person. “And you’re not support to care, really! You have to focus on what you like to do in your life, because that’s your celestial fate.”
(Oh, I like to write. I like arts in general, including the digital art.)
“The purpose for health is not to despise that there is no problem at all,” alerted Victor. “The proposal for health is to focus in your virtue! And the rest will be no longer necessary. A person that focus on her virtue will be a happy person,” concluded him. And I smiled, satisfied, because I do what I like, even with the whole conflict I had to win so I could get back to my essential path and fulfill my destiny.
“You know what the problem is? The problem is to get obsessed by the problem!” said the teacher. “While raising a child, for example, you need to focus on what she’s good at, not on what she does wrong.”
A student raised an interesting discussion, remembering that the disease allows certain good things to happen, such as being allowed to sleep in her parent’s bed, or not going to school, or even sleeping later. That way, children learn how to use a problem to get what they want. Everybody agreed, and I think the older people also make use of the same blackmail technique. The affective relations are full of blackmailing. “You didn’t call me!” (Drama voice) “You don’t care about me!” (More and more drama).
I wrote in pretty big capital letters in my notebook: “Focus on virtue!”
Now the teacher went to the board again and, in the left corner, he wrote self, and drew a circle around it. Afterwards, he made another circle, one more, one more, making a series of external layers around the self.
“Many times, you are not able to see one’s true self, because it has money conditioning layers around it. Because the person got used to pretending that she likes this or that, besides liking the things she really does care about!” exposed the teacher. “When one follows her true fate, the self will expand in such a way that the person will not even remember her problems, because they will no longer be important.
I wrote: “Problems loose their power before happy fulfilment of one’s fate.”
“So,” continued professor Victor. “The soul has the nature to be divided into five parts, and each part is located in each one of the five organs. That’s why, each organ has a psychic-emotional nature.”
“Hm… Cool…” I thought, and I wasn’t paying attention to anyone in the classroom anymore, now I was completely concentrated in the subject matter.”
“Can I erase the board?” asked the teacher.
“Yes!” I think I was the first one to answer him. I need to work on my anxiety.
Our adorable master then started drawing a series of circles on the board, five of them. Each circle was in the position of an element of Nature: fire, earth, metal, water and wood. He pulled a chair next to the board, sat down, crossed one leg above the other, and said, “It is good to feel fear. But feeling too much fear is a pathological condition. Everything that is too much or too little is pathological: too much responsibility, too few responsibility. Too much anger, too few anger.
Today the teacher’s not rubbing the top of his head (as he uses to). Besides that, he’s pulling his curls in front of his brow: he makes a quick curling with his forefinger, and then throws it back again.
“Anger consumes too much from your essence,” said the teacher. “The one who wins the other is strong, the one who wins himself is powerful, as Lao Tse said.”
I thought about Krishna and Arjuna... and smiled. I really like this subject on emotions. Now the board has got a series of notes made in each circle: Spleen-pancreas energy: connected to obsession. (Ps.: the obsession itself is not pathological, because one can have a good dosage of obsession to, for instance, fulfill one’s dream, one’s fate. It is the excess or the lack of obsession that becomes a pathology.) Lung-large intestine energy: memories, melancholy. Kidney-bladder energy: fear, responsibility. Liver-gall bladder energy: anger, rage, frustration, decision. Heart-small intestine energy: sadness, happiness. Let me take a note of all this stuff here in my notebook... I told myself I’ll always take notes of all the subjects once more, although I might have already studied all this in the Shiatsu course last year. It doesn’t matter. It’ll be good to memorize it better. And, here in Neijing School, all the subjects have another approach, in a much more tradicional and complex way of teaching, I would say.
Now the teacher is philosophizing, talking about a Vinícius de Moraes song that talks about cherish and sadness. He’s talking about a certain degree of being able to feel yourself… you heart… Who told you that you should never feel sad? People feel forced to put a smiling mask all the time on their faces always. This song talks about a poetic vision of sadness. The sadness you allow yourself to feel when you’re supposed to. I was thinking it’s a petty Victor’s guitar isn’t here right now so he could play the song for us.
“Two few sadness is a self-sacrifice,” said the teacher. “It’s natural to have some low moments during the day or the week. Having to laugh and saying everything is fantastic all the time is not natural. There is no reason to be so intensely happy all the time. It’s healthy to live a certain touch of sadness.”
“Otherwise there wouldn’t exist the lung’s energy…” I thought. I wrote: “The lung expands, is filled with prana. But it also contracts itself. The lung is sad and happy, such as each human being is.”
“It’s good to learn how to play chess,” suggested the teacher. “Playing chess develops a lot the reflection on actions and reactions.” Oh, so cherish of him to instruct us in actions of that kind. He’s like a real master that tries to teach us all he can to his pupils.
Now the teacher is talking about trauma. No, no! Trauma does not mean something bad! It’s just something that has marked a lot. Let me write it down in my notebook: “Mental energy is processed in the different organs. There are deep energy channels that transport Shen Qi so it can reach each organ.
Wow! This subject’s really cool, Diary!
“Wei Energy circles externally over the skin... but it doesn’t travel alone: it travels alongside with Shen Qi, that’s why it makes the relation with the exterior, and also absorbs the energy from the exterior. After that, fifty per cent of that energy goes back to the interior of the body, through the muscle-tendons. That means all the musculature is conditioned to your mental energy.”
“Each movement of ours is ruled by our emotion,” I wrote in my notebook.
Deep channels. Principal channels. Secondary channels. Energy flow. Each ones passes through each one. Wei Qi and Shen Qi. Reunion Points. Energetic branches of each organ (zang).
“All the energy produced by each organ góes to the heart, because it is the heart that completes the circle,” concluded Victor. “It is the heart that gives the final dictate. It is the heart that takes all the final decisions. That’s why it is called the Emperor.”
Oh, how beautiful it is to look at the human being from this point of view...
Oh, what a petty! End of class! Ok, balance, harmony: everything that is too much is not good. Now it’s time to finish the class.
I got on my legs and asked Firmina to give me a ride til the subway. From there, I went to my boyfriend’s house, my beautiful philosopher… I already missed him. He got a sun tan. We talked a lot, he told me about his first surf class, and I was fascinated admiring how a man is happy and cute when he does what he loves.
Bye, bye, Diary. See you on the next adventure!” (...)
SECOND PART OF NEIJING CLASS:
(…) “Each resonator (acupuncture point) has, sometimes, even seventeen different names in Chinese, each one of these names describing a function that that resonator can operate in all the energy system,” continued professor Victor, saying how bad it was what they had done in the Occident with acupuncture, reducing each resonator to a poor name, dry names, with no life, with no root, taking away their real deepness and multiplicity of each resonator.
“It’s a sin!”, I muttered. It gives me a bad mood to think of what certain schools made out of acupuncture science here in the Occident. Thank God I am in Neijing, where I can learn real Oriental Medicine, in its real root and deepness.
“Each resonator’s name is very important because it tells us which are its inherent characteristic,” continued professor Victor. He told us that, in ancient China, all the time a baby was born he still didn’t have a name. It was necessary to wait for the baby be be born and then the Wise men would observe the babie’s characteristics and, only after that, they would give the baby a name that could really represent him.
“It sounds pretty fair...” I considered.
O looked at my classmates. Some of them were taking notes of each word the teacher said, such as I did. Some others, however, didn’t even have a notebook: they only recorded the class audio in their MP4. “Very modern,” I thought. But I can’t study like that. I have to write and write and write. Otherwise it doesn’t work for me. Some other students. (the ones who were next to the glass door) were watching the class with their bodies leaned behind, supporting their weight over theirs stretched arms that formed a sustaining crank. It considered it was a good way of watching the class, because the heart’s center of energy was, that way, widely exposed to receive the Tradition’s knowledge.” (…)
Atma :)
