A Revolutionary Approach to the Future of Medicine

Click the play button below to watch the video.

The Full Transcription of This Video is Below…

A Revolutionary Approach to the Future of Medicine

I think that we are in a very unique moment in the history of healthcare, at least in this country.

That’s what every generation thinks.

Well, let me give you some data points. Maybe I can convince you. What I mean by that is, even those of us who may really feel quite attached to the current medical model to re-look at that in a new way, simply because it’s not working. It’s not working in a lot of significant ways. It’s not working financially. I mean, the statistics, and this audience probably knows them well … The amount of money this country is spending in high-tech medical interventions by exceeds any other country around the globe, and yet our health outcomes are worse. Interesting now that I live in the Veteran’s Administration and I interface quite a bit with the Department of the Defense, I was in a meeting not very long ago, and someone from the Department of Defense said, “Do you know this? Health in this country is an issue of national security.” I thought for a minute, “What is he talking about?” Right?

Eighty percent of people that walk into a recruitment office for the armed services doesn’t even qualify to be considered for service, eighty percent, because of their health status. The dominant medical paradigm, is what you were describing, which is we have a disease that we have to fight. It’s revealed in the language that we use, antibiotics, anti-psychotics, anti, anti, anti. The concept that disease sits over there, and the job of medicine is to fight that battle and win.

This whole concept and this approach to modern medicine has come because you need to understand when they thought of medicine, when they thought of developing some kind of medicine and a system of medical treatment, the problem was only with infectious diseases and contagious diseases. How to treat the plague, how to treat the smallpox, how to treat this. Nobody ever thought of a diabetes or a hypertension or a cardiac problem. They never even considered those things. That did not exist in their radar. In their radar only infectious diseases did exist. That has to handled on a war footing. No question about that, because it is a war. An infection means is an invasion from another organism upon our own system, and you have to use chemical weapons. You can’t shoot them.

This whole medical system evolved from the need to handle infectious diseases, contagious diseases, which were taking a huge toll on populations in those times. Today we have come to a place where people are on self-help. That is, they manufacture their own diseases. They don’t wait for any infection to happen to them, because now they’re on self-help. They need another system of medicine, another way to approach it completely, which is a shift we are struggling to make right now.

Now where we are, of course, is that the sciences have advanced, we have complexity theory and systems biology and quantum physics, but the medical model, the dominant medical model, again, I’m making gross generalizations, but the dominant medical model is still designed, our core competency is still designed on the find-it, fix-it approach, which is clearly failing. I mean, even in the chronic conditions in this country, we’re not even holding our own. I don’t know if you’re aware of those statistics, but diabetes, hypertension, heart failure, the percentage of our population … Obesity, the list goes on. Every single one of them across the board in our veterans and in our civilian population are increasing every year. We’re failing.

I believe that uncoupling and removing the boundary, shall we say, between medicine that has been held over here, and health and spirituality and whatever labels we want to put on this over here. You know, one response right now in this country is, even with Affordable Care Act, “Well we have to focus more on health.” One response is, “Well medicine will keep doing disease management over here, and then we can pay a little more attention and hopefully reimburse a little more for health optimization over here.”

I personally think, and then I want your thoughts on this, that that’s better than not including this, but the real opportunity is to remove the boundaries. These are not separate things. The mind and the body are not separate things. In Western medicine, we are taught to diagnose and treat the diseases of the body, the diseases of the mind, but we have missed that the doorway to the health and healing of the body and mind is really, in my opinion, the heart and the soul. How do we re-envision a future of healthcare where there aren’t those boundaries?

To the ideal … The ideal is one thing and what we can do today is a different thing. The ideal would be that we look at human well-being, not human health. If you considered human well-being as a composite subject and an approach, then you would consider what makes a human being complete and approach all of them together. That is the best way to do it. Today, what can we do? If that’s the question. We can only talk about somewhere having a little … We can’t marry them yet. We can only have a date.

I’d kind of like to jump right in.

The situation is not ready to simply get them together. No, because a lot more work has to be done. It’s not going to happen in a short span of time, but we can start interfacing here and there. It is possible that hospitals can have a meditation center going within them. It is possible meditation centers already generally have, but we can make sure that there’s a little bit of health center out there. We can start having a little bit of a skirmish right now. Right now they are not ready for total union, because in both the sides, there are too many opinions about each other.

Largely, people are not looking at the whole health as such. They are trying to impart what they have studied and what they have grasped. It doesn’t matter whether it addresses the whole humanity or the whole human being or not. That attitude and a change is not going to happen just like that. Until a day comes when medical education includes all those things, which may make it even longer than the way it is right now. I would like to see a day when doctors before the touching of the patient first fix themselves internally before they touch somebody else, because this is all important. When I say this is all important, for example, we were talking about Buddhist idea of handling the elements.

Today, sufficient research has gone into, particularly into water, scientific research. What these scientists are saying is, “Water has memory. If you give it a thought, it remembers. If you give it an emotion, it remembers. If you give it a touch, it remembers.” If elements have that kind of memory outside, you can change the quality of water just by touching it, or with a thought, or an emotion, or a hand. The beautiful experiment conducted by a 12-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy in India … What they did was they read about this somewhere on the internet and they came home and they set up two glass pots of water .. Same water in two glass pots. One room, they go and express very loving emotions. They touch it. They kiss it. They hug it everyday for ten minutes. Another room, they go and abuse it and express all kinds of negativity. Mother was very concerned, “I can’t believe they have so much negative emotion in them. They’re expressing it to the water.” In ten day’s time, this water for which they were abusing and expressing negative emotion, it turned dark. The other water remained just like it did. They posted it on YouTube. You must see it.

This is something we have always known. In India in part of whole life, nobody in traditional Indian home ever drinks water from a tap. It doesn’t matter whether its potable or not potable. Even if it said potable, it is not. What we do is we take a copper vessel … See here they put it, otherwise always next to me there’s a copper vessel or a brass vessel, and they will take it, they’ll wash it with turmeric and tamarind and everything in the night, put water in it, they will apply something, some what is considered sacred symbols on it, they worship this. Then only tomorrow morning, it is given to your family, because water has memory.

They’re saying if the water is pumped through the pipe, this … If pumped through the pipe, and it’s taking fifty bends by the time it comes to your house, by the time it comes to your house, sixty percent of it, the molecular change in it is such that it has literally turned into poison. If you take it in your glass and hold it for about twenty minutes, it will undo itself. Just the forceful pumping, not contamination, just the forceful pumping, is making the water in molecular structure in such a way that it’s harmful to your health. If you’re doing that to the water, if you’re treating this with all kinds of emotions and negativities, and all kinds of abuse to yourself and to others, the water here also behaves the same way. This is not new. Always, every human being who lived on this planet with a certain connection, with nature around him, always knew this.

One of the things that we can do, particularly for people who went to war and coming back, whatever … What is the most extreme situation that human beings can create by themselves? For other things you need nature’s help. People who have been put through this ringer, if they’re coming in broken states, one of the best things you could do is all of them compulsorily should go through at least one month of living on a farm, being connected to the soil and water and air around them. Putting their bare hands into the land and doing something simple, just being connected.

I must tell you this experience. We had a yogic hospital in our yoga center in India. We called it Yogic Hospital. We did not want it to grow too much because we don’t want to turn into a hospital full time. We are a spiritual center, so we’re keeping it low-key. One summer, I came here, I spoke and a few doctors, American doctors, who were interested, they traveled to India. They came and stayed there for three days and after three days, one of the volunteers came and told me, “All the American doctors are up in arms. They want to leave.” I said, “What happened?” They said, “It’s best that you meet them. They’re just off.” Then I said, “Okay,” and I went to meet them. Then I said, “What’s the problem?” They said, “You said there is a hospital. Where is the hospital? There is no hospital here.” I said, “Right now there are about sixty and odd patients.” Said, “Where is it?”

Their idea of a hospital is that there must be beds. You must treat sick well and everybody should be … If you treat them so well, they will not want to become healthy. “Where are the patients?” I said, “They are all in the garden. I put them to work. We give them the treatment and therapies and medication, but rest of the time, I put them to work. Whatever they can do, they must do. Above all, they must sit and work barefoot and bare hands in with the soil, just being in touch with the planet, because you’re just a drop of this planet. You’re forgetting that. What you call is my body is just a piece of the planet, isn’t it?” If you lose connection with the source, will you not get disorganized? There are specific, scientific ways of doing that. If you cannot do any of those things, at least just let them walk in a farm barefoot, work, do something. You will see. At least sixty, seventy percent of them will just come out of their problems, just like that, just being in touch with this.