'The essential problem of disease is to think you can possibly suffer from an affliction.' B. K. S. Iyengar
My recovery from a long standing illness has been greatly aided by a practice of meditation. For a long time I had expected healing from a source external to the illness, but meditation gave a different, internal approach. Here, I no longer tried to effect a cure by instrumental means, but instead concentrated on changing the way I viewed my interactions with the illness. In the hope that my experiences might be more generally helpful, I will trace the history of the different ways I related to the illness.
Initially, my relationship to the illness was defined by a feeling of separation. The duality was between my essential self and the physical disease and expressed itself both directly - in my psychological reactions to the illness - and indirectly - in the choice of the different healing therapies. There were three different manifestations:
Firstly my impression was of not only being separated from the physical illness, but also that I was trapped within a malfunctioning body. I thought the illness had a physical cause and so looked for therapies which could manipulate my bodily complaints.
After no success with physically based therapies I thought the illness might not be primarily biological. I felt that my lethargic state was only a psychological reaction to a slight physical complaint, and a determined mental attitude could thus dispel it.
The third way I interpreted my sense of separation was to think that my state of mind was the perpetuator of a real bodily disease. Here I attempted to adopt a better state of mind, hoping it would directly produce physical change.
Superficially, the three approaches to healing seemed different: each being founded on an expectancy of activating a different connection between body and mind. In underlying psychological motivation, however, the approaches were identical - they all reacted against the illness as an affliction, aiming to manipulate it as an external object.
After a frustrating lack of success with these instrumental approaches, I had an intuition that a cure might be found intrinsic to the illness itself; I thought that in ceasing to regard the illness as an affliction it might become the answer to its own problem. Meditation was the technique I used to develop this more accepting relationship to the illness. After considerable practice I was able to reach a state where my body no longer seemed to be outside, but was fully infused with my mind. Thus for short spaces of time, meditation transformed my relationship to my body from one between a separate 'Me' and an 'It' to one where there was a sense of ontological unity between my mind and body - in all its aspects, both healthy and ailing. It was this full yet un-coercive awareness preceded healing.
The story of my own search is far from unique and countless other examples of healing through meditation stand on their own. Any attempt to rationalise and interpret them cannot challenge their validity as spiritual experiences. However, I believe that it is important to interpret the consequences of non-duality, as the way we think about such phenomena is vital to their acceptance in our own society.
Using my own experience as a small subject for interpretation, I will use terms from the Yoga Tradition in order to describe the different qualities of relationship I had to the illness. I will suggest that although the healing had physical manifestation, its cause was my Non-dual state of mind. Other explanations which place the quality of mind as an incidental pre-cursor to physical changes - which equally could have been caused in a mechanical way - I will show to be likely inadequate. This primacy of awareness over material change, although contrary to many 'scientific' prejudices, is I believe to be compatible to scientific method - thus admissible to a critical mind.
My illness manifested physically as attacks which occurred at intervals of around two weeks, and lasting for about a day. During attacks, a sensation of burning localised in my abdomen - something like a compact ball - would alternately pause in one place, then swing around suddenly before coming to rest in another. The sensations gave me the impression that different internal organs were involved rather than it being a localised problem. After each attack, I was left in a state of great psychological and physical lethargy which lasted for several days.
My first attempts to find help were in visits to several GP's and to specialists, but they were unable to offer treatment. Indeed, after taking a number of tests, they gave a diagnosis that I was fit and well! This was an inability to reach a conclusion by external observation, compatible with my own internal experience of illness - an experience which seems to be common when main stream medicine encounters some of the more mysterious complaints. In my case, I think this failure was not due to the doctors themselves, but that the 'mechanical paradigm' which defines much of modern medicine: in accordance with this paradigm, doctors took tests designed to show up malfunction in single organs, whereas, my direct experience suggested the illness was manifest in a dis-harmony of function across many bodily systems.
I became disenchanted with mainstream medicine after this inability to appreciate the validity of my illness. I began to search for a cure through alternative medicine and tried Western Herbalism, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Shiatsu, each for several months at a time. From their practitioners I received an acceptance of my illness and a variety of interpretations. Matching closest to my own experience were the interpretations given by Chinese medicine and Shiatsu, where the illness was supposed to be rooted in imbalances in the systems of inter-connected 'energy channels' or 'meridians' in the body.
I matched the Chinese description of the illness with my experience by associating the 'energy' referred to here with the bodily sensations which I felt during attacks. Indeed, the movements of the compact ball had a striking correlation with the paths of some of the meridians. I assumed that this Chinese description was purely external and physical though - the movements of energy along the meridians perhaps being correlated to an ensemble of physiological processes such as nerve impulses, blood circulation, and hormone diffusion. Any psychological dimension of the illness I took as something outside this description. Thus, when practitioners emphasised both the mind and body nature of their therapies I saw them as only causally connected by separated aspects - a relaxed psychological state perhaps causing my body to relax and thus reducing resistance to the physical manipulation of the therapies.
The most effective therapy for me was Shiatsu. It uses massage to open up the free flow of energy in the meridians. But even this therapy only gave short term relief, and over many weeks the illness gained resistance, and the attacks of energy swings returned undiminished.
With the failure of what I took to be purely physically based attempts, I began to think the illness may have largely been 'psycho-somatic' and that it was a lack of will power and not any physical damage that prevented me from a normal active life. At this time, I still pursued alternative therapies, but determined to adopt a more determined mental attitude to overcome the lethargy which followed attacks. This attitude I called the 'stiff upper lip' and through it I tried to suppress the illness. The initial attempts to re-activate myself only produced more energy swings, but I decided to push past this barrier. Going on with will power proved effective for some days, but once my determination slipped, a violent attack of energy swings immediately followed and I would be laid up for a week or more.
I wish to identify more clearly the underlying psychological tendency common to 'stiff upper lip' and my other attempts to find healing. Here, the terminology provided by the Hindu Yoga Tradition is helpful. In Classical Yoga the three 'gunas' or qualities are used to classify our psychological dispositions to our experiences {1} {2}. The first of the triad is 'Rajas', the active principal. Rajasic states of awareness are characterised by emotions of desire or repulsion for the objects of experience. Rajas is a wide classification to an attention to any object, and in the narrower medical context the relevant experience is of our own bodies. My primary psychological attitude to the illness was expressed by feelings of fear or resentment. To some degree these reactions were constantly present, and represented a continuos Rajasic relationship to the illness.
After some reflection I realised the root cause of these sub-conscious reactions was in the confrontation of my ego with the illness. The illness was out of my control and so could described as having a 'will' of its own. Thus it seemed that my sub-conscious reactions towards the illness were driven by my ego-centred will trying to oppose it. The only alternative being not to react and accept the illness was a greater force - a response I called 'go with the flow'. I associate 'go with the flow' with a second guna in Yoga terminology, called 'Tamas'. Tamas is the dormant principal its states are characterised by ignorance and dis-engagement in their experiences. I will return to these states later.
My sub-conscious Rajasic reactions to the illness inflated my egoic-self against the illness and made it seem an external object to myself. When I later came to think rationally about the illness a sense of separation was already created. Thus, my deliberate psychological attitude to the illness - the stiff upper lip - inevitably fell into this context.
I called the seemingly unavoidable confrontation of myself with the illness, 'the battle of two wills', leaving all my attempts to find a cure locked into the self-assertive or self-pacifying duality Rajas and Tamas. It is possible that by pursuing my Rajasic search I could have found an effective external cure. After nearly two years of searching, however, I had started to have a distaste for the egoic battle with the illness. Indeed, I had a growing intuition that that it was an in-appropriate way of relating to the illness which was holding back a cure.
This intuition can be given a mechanical justification in the correlation of the stressed mental states with physiological changes. Here, the rajasic confrontation I saw between myself and the illness would correlate with the release of hormones - such as Cortisol - which are associated with an activation of the body's sympathetic nervous system - the 'fight or flight' response. Prolonged high activity of this stress reaction is known to inhibit the body's natural self-healing mechanisms. It is was thus possible that a better state of mind might reverse the bio-chemical changes and perhaps cause a physical healing effect {3}.
Following this mechanistic interpretation, I made an effort to socialise more, listen to music and do more relaxing activities. I hoped that the improved the physical health caused by a better frame of mind would in turn make an appropriate attitude more easy - psychological and physical well being becoming mutually re-enforcing in a virtuous cycle. However, my motivation felt wrong. I was engaging in these activities only to gain a cure and the basic attitude was still Rajasic. It was this spirit of relationship, rather than any physiological correlates which I felt was inappropriate. This was my guiding intuition.
But what was the right attitude to take? If the root of my instrumental approaches to healing was the battle of two wills, I would need to escape the realm of egoic action. Taking the advice of Iyengar quoted earlier, this means escaping the fundamental affliction - to think I was afflicted at all. How, then with clarity and honesty can one become satisfied with an imperfect state?
The Yoga Tradition provides a receptive and un-coercive attitude in the last of the gunas called Sattva. Sattvic states are supposed to transcend both the Rajasic and the Tamasic and are perhaps best explained by their similarities and differences to them. Sattvic states are like Rajasic, being of full awareness, but they differ in that one no longer sees one's circumstances as objects external to oneself. This is sometimes described as the usual impression of one's awareness of experience being transformed to a state where awareness becomes intrinsic to the experiences themselves. As there are no external circumstances to react to in a state of Sattva, it resembles the reposed nature of Tamas. The difference Sattva is fully receptive not inert.
In eastern traditions, Sattvic states are given as appropriate to in spiritual practice. The state of absorption means an absence of externalities, where nothing can be expected or willed outside the practice itself. The pure intention forms can be called an 'intrinsic eschatology'. In the narrower context of a self-healing practice, the pure intention must be developed to one's body. I looked for an appropriate meditation technique and eventually found it in the Buddhist practice of 'self observation or 'Vipassana'. Vipassana instructs how to train one's mind to become aware of bodily sensations, at the same time as remaining equanimous whatever the sensations are felt. Such an equi-poised yet full awareness seemed to directly avoid the egoic trap of Rajasic reactions to my bodily ailments, yet not fall into the dissipation of Tamas.
After about a month of practising meditation daily, with some determined effort I was able to bring a palpable sense of my internal organs into conscious awareness. Once I became increasingly aware of my bodily ailments, however, it was difficult to remain equanimous to them, and not react emotionally or with intentioned thoughts. My level of meditation was thus Rajasic and its forced nature maintained the impression of my mind as a separate observer to my body. On other occasions, meditation was effortless and I found a peaceful escape from the viscitudes of my illness. During these states I had little sensitivity to my body and so my relationship to the illness was dormant and classifiable as Tamasic.
For several months my meditation oscillated between Rajasic and Tamasic states. With practice though - usually if I meditated for more than an hour - and always from a Rajasic state there was often a sudden shift in consciousness. Here, my awareness became effortless so that there was no sense of it as something separate to my body. This feeling of ontological unity was the small taste of Sattvic awareness which I had been looking for.
Each time my Rajasic awareness relaxed into Sattva, it signalled a 'wake up call' to my internal organs, and energy swings immediately began to take place within my abdomen. However, they were not the erratic type I had experienced during attacks, but rather more ordered and seeming to progress to some plan. My rational thoughts had virtually stopped during these experiences, but if I tried to activate them and control the energy movements, the non-dual state would disappear. Thus, the sense of these ordered energy movements was very much like the experience of being immersed into playing a familiar piece on the piano: in just the same way as the memory of notes sometimes seems to come from the fingers themselves rather than the brain, so my conscious mind was not involved in the healing process.
After such Sattvic meditations I felt refreshed, with no bodily pain or psychological lethargy. In the longer term, after several more months' practice, the illness became become less and less intense.
The healing effect I encountered depended only on the very simple practice of self-observation and not an intellectual process. In would like to interpret this phenomenon though, in order to place it within a paradigm which touches on both spiritual and scientific perspectives of healing:
The Sattvic intention I developed to the practice meant a cessation of my sub-conscious reactions to bodily sensations and so brought a sense of myself which was intrinsic to my body. As I could no longer be an external observer the grounding for my deliberate attempts to manipulate my illness with mental force were removed. This did not mean that I sat cross-legged in a Tamasic state, withdraw from the world though. In Sattva, my engagement was full with my mind living not just in the brain but through the body. In this way, non-duality created a new psychological potential - the 'intelligence of the body'. Any manifestation of this intelligence must be intuitive - rational or analytic thought would re-create the duality which first suppressed it. Such intuitive wisdom would expresses itself in instinctive action outside of my conscious will. Thus, I interpret my and my experience of spontaneous healing as an expression of non-dual intelligence and - although the healing undoubtedly took place through physiological changes - I take the physical effects to have been directed by this knowledge.
The interpretation of intuitive wisdom describes my own experience, but I must consider this was just a superficial impression of an underlying physical process. Here, a psycho-physical mechanism might be possible, where there was an accidental correlation between a particular state of mind and physical change. The mechanism being very much like the one by which I expected a cure through by attempting to adopt a more cheerful frame of mind; with the perpetuation of the illness is dependent on the Psycho-physiology of the 'fight or flight' response associated with Rajasic states. Meditation, as a well known anti-stress therapy, could reverse these bio-chemical changes and in-turn release physical healing - the so called relaxation response {4}. I point out that such changes occur in Tamasic as well as Sattvic meditation. Thus, unless physiological processes additional in a state of Sattva can be located, all the physical correlates exist without awareness. The question to be addressed by the mechanical explanation is then - Why was full awareness required to precede change? Unless a convincing case can be given, one must conclude that the ground of non-duality was a cause and not a side-product of the physiological process of healing.
In terms of the Yoga Tradition, the causality of intuitive wisdom is classifiable in terms of the concept of 'Praj' (TM) '. Praj' (TM) is generally any knowledge obtained 'where the object is apprehended directly and from within itself' {2}. Thus my experience falls easily into this system. How though can a non-dual cause be accepted by the western science?
Initially, a scientific view would seem problematical, as any projection of the non-dual into a dualistic format inevitably captures only the objective aspect - describing the body and leaving out the mind. Take the example of the description of my illness given by Chinese medicine. When I was being treated, I saw that the meridians gave an accurate physical description of the illness. A consequence may have been the treatments I was given were in fact appropriate to effect healing - only my sub-conscious dualistic mentality restricted them. I found out through my healing that the physical view of the meridians was incorrect; a Sattvic attitude was required to reveal the mind-body nature of the meridians and their full capacity [1] . In this way, the meridians cannot be fully objectified and although they can be written down in the form of a diagrammatic theory, the subject matter only fully exists when accompanied with an appropriate state of mind. This feature is unique in scientific activity, as although mental attributes of imagination and creativity often form part of scientific enquiry , here, the nature of mind, is necessarily part of the theory itself ! In wider terms, the words of Rabindranath Tagore ring true {5}:
' I know, I know, you would not find any difference between matter and consciousness, if only the distinction between truth and imagination could disappear. '
In order for a scientific world view to appreciate the reality of non-dual causes there must be an extension of its validity criteria; where dependency of consciousness on matter must complemented with an acceptance that mind can precede material phenomenon {6}. This in no way contradicts the scientific method, only a metaphysical belief about the direction of causality - which has become synonymous with 'science' in contemporary times {7}. What is fundamental to the scientific method however, is the testing of hypothesise. Certainly, we cannot perform the appropriate experiments with detachment, as the causal nature of non-duality displays itself only in direct experience; one must operate with the quality of ones own awareness, and not with an external apparatus - the results lying in a transform the experimenter not the experiment. Thus, the verification of hypothesise derived from meditation must come from the commonality of the Praj' (TM) between different people carrying out the same introspective experiment. The crux lies in accepting the subjective as inextricably bound with the objective and only then can we begin to investigate this forgotten realm of human potential.
{1} B. K. S. Iyengar, The Tree of Yoga , Aquarian Press, 1988.
{2} G. Feuerstein, The Philosophy of Classical Yoga , Manchester University Press, 1980.
{3} E. Sterberg and P. Gold, The Mind Body Interaction in Disease , Scientific American, Special Issue, 1997.
{4} H. Benson, The Relaxation Response , Fountain Books, 1977.
{5} R. Tagore, Essay on the MeghadÒta, in Selected Poems , Trans. W. Radice, Penguin, 1993.
{6} K. Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality , Shambala, 1995.
{7} W. James, The Sentiment of Rationality in The Will to Believe and other essays , Longmans, 1897.
[1] I mix Indian and Chinese descriptions, but this is admissible as the meridians have been shown to be equivalent to the Yogic 'nadis' {1}.
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