Posts classified under: Natural Health Information

Standards Of A Good Physician (And How To Choose One)

Glenn D. Wollman, MD, FACEP
Things change and things stay the same. From the beginning our species has enjoyed times of good health; plagued by illnesses and suffered physical injuries. Throughout time someone in the clan or tribe was there to administer healing with herbs, plants and poultices, and there is even evidence of surgical procedures being performed from pre-historic times.

Today the villages are bigger; the herbs and plants are in little capsules, some diseases have been eradicated and some new ones have emerged. We have many types of healers and physicians. We also have medical specialists that only treat specific organs, systems and diseases. As the world is becoming more integrated, so are the healing arts and sciences. In conjunction with Western, allopathic medicine, the partial list of healing modalities includes: Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurvedic, Shamanic, Naturopathy, Homeopathy, Osteopathy, Chiropractic, Energy Medicine, Touch and Movement therapies and Mind and Emotional therapies.

The good old-fashioned family doctor is approaching the status of the vinyl record. The needs and criteria for choosing a physician are different from the past. But again, some things remain unchanged. The morals, ethics, integrity, intelligence, honesty and compassion will always remain on the list of required qualities.

Now, in our “instant society” it is often more about access, fast and accurate service: “How quickly can I be seen and treated?” It may actually be unnecessary to ask these questions because in the modern era, people can go to urgent care centers, walk-in clinics and of course, Emergency Departments, all with a minimal amount of waiting and no need for appointments. Others are getting involved in “boutique medicine” where doctors are accepting a specific, limited number of patients willing to pay an upfront annual fee. This gives the patient access to their doctor (initially by phone) twenty-four hours a day.

The first decision to make in health and healing is to be your own healer   and avoid unnecessary doctor visits. This means taking an active interest in your own body’s wellbeing. Learn the basics about anatomy and body functions. Discover the benefits of proper nutrition, proper exercise, including stress and sleep management. Although these four topics seem obvious and have been discussed in many articles, new scientific information is constantly updating what we know and how we can benefit or be harmed by old beliefs.  For example, certain foods high in omega 6 fatty acids can cause inflammatory responses and may lead to serious chronic illnesses such as degenerative arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and possibly heart attacks. This is contrary to what we were lead to believe before, that all omega fatty acids are good for our health. We need to keep up with the current information in health and healing.

There is now more evidence that exercise, stress reduction and improved sleep play extremely important roles in our health and our illnesses.   I will cover these specific areas more fully in future articles.

Learn about first-aid and simple methods to prevent illness and injury and to promote healing. Along with this it is important to know the right time to make a decision to be seen by a physician. This decision is based on a combination of common sense, experience and the knowledge you have attained in anatomy, illness, injuries and first-aid.

Here are some suggestions for what to look for in a doctor for general purposes such as for yearly check-ups, occasional illnesses and or for a specific specialty:

1. Speak with friends that are happy with their doctor and find out why.

2. Make sure the doctor practices relatively close to where you live and holds admitting privileges at a hospital near you. In case you have to be hospitalized, you can be near home and family and also have the doctor that knows you best, taking care of you. This is also important when specialists they know and trust are required for your care.

3. You can research the doctor through the local medical or national associations, like the American Medical Association, and also through the state and national licensing boards. Do your research.

4. If you have an interest in alternative healing therapies in combination with western medicine, find out your potential doctor’s opinion and willingness to work with other healers

5. Make sure that your doctor is willing to talk and explain things in a way that you understand. This will help you in making clear decisions

6. In choosing a specialist, especially for difficult diagnostic purposes and or for surgery, the skills of the doctor should take some precedence over the personality. If you have a chronic or recurrent medical issue, then it may be equally important to balance the skills and personality as part of the equation.

7. In this day and age, finances are an important part of the decision; make sure that your insurance covers your personal physician.  Most insurance companies are helpful in providing lists of local practitioners and providers under their specific plans. If you choose not to carry health insurance, create a health care savings account. Have some kind of financial plan for your health care. If you live in a country where your health   is covered through the government and you are happy there, remain in that country.

8. Something very rarely discussed in choosing a doctor is his/her comfort zone regarding “second opinions”. Most doctors feel a second opinion is appropriate in complex cases, and may even suggest and encourage other medical opinions. On the other hand, if you as a patient ask for a second opinion on every decision, (“Is it really broken?”, “Do I really need this antibiotic?”) then you may either want a different doctor or you need to examine your own issues.

9. If you are still having a problem choosing the right physician, call a Medical Guide for help. A Medical Guide is a Physician who is dedicated to working with you to make sure that you are getting the best medical care that is in harmony with your values and concerns. Especially in cases where there are conflicting medical opinions and recommendations, a Medical Guide can steer you to the appropriate care for you.

10. I would like to say a few words about choosing a non-allopathic healer. They should have a working knowledge of anatomy, physiology and clinical pathology in order to refer appropriately to an allopathic (western) physician in case of need. The morals, ethics, integrity, intelligence, honesty and compassion apply to this type of healer as well as the first nine points above.

Prescription for “total health”

A healthy body and sound mind are common goals for everyone. First let me focus on the physical body. At the most basic level we are all made of cells, and these cells usually operate to keep the body in a state of “ease”. Through a balanced program of nutrition, exercise, stress management, sleep management, and spirituality we will tend to stay in the state of “ease”. When our patterns of behavior lead us in the direction of bad diet, lack of exercise, poor sleep etc, our lives and cells go into a state of imbalance or “dis-ease”.

In Western Medicine our main focus is in the physical plane and on the physical body, things that we can see, touch, measure and analyze. Diagnoses and treatments are based on a history, physical examination, laboratory tests and various forms of imaging (x-rays, special scans, ultrasound). Most of the other healing methods look at the “being” in relation to nature and the universe. The diagnoses and healings are focused on the energies flowing through “subtle’ bodies, meridians and Chakras.

If you don’t already have an awareness, understanding or belief in these concepts of energies, then may I suggest that you consider this a metaphor. For example, let us look at emotions. We have all had experiences with joy, happiness, sadness, anger and fear .We all can accept that they exist even though they can’t be measured specifically. Emotions cause the nervous and endocrine systems to produce neurotransmitters and hormones that cause certain physiologic changes throughout the body. These changes may be desirable and life saving at the time but if they become chronic or inappropriate they cause harm and disease. New research is revealing connections between the neuro-endocrine system and the body’s immune system .This will certainly change our priorities when it comes to stress and sleep.

It is easy to make a diagnosis of a gastric (stomach) cancer once it has presented itself in the physical form in the stomach. It can then be treated by surgery or sometimes it can be healed through various medications. The cancer does not just appear one day. It must start somewhere. Consider the possibility that long before it manifests in the physical body; it begins with a disruption energetically in the body. Through repeated stresses and imbalances, cellular changes occur. A gene that normally prevents the growth of a cancer cell (tumor suppressor gene) may mutate, thereby allowing a cancer cell to grow unabated. This dis-ease eventually shows up in the physical body. Tune in to your emotions and other subtle energies and observe and correct the imbalances before they move out to the physical body.

This brings up the prescription for “total health”. Actively choose to live a daily life style that includes balance between the physical body, the mind and emotional and spiritual energies. We need to follow healthy nutrition, exercise regularly, manage stress, get adequate sleep, and understand the power of good and bad patterns of behavior. Achieving this balanced lifestyle includes incorporating relaxation, meditation and balancing the subtle energies that are flowing in and around us.

 

Glenn D. Wollman, MD practices as a Medical Guide assisting people in making medical decisions through an integrative, holistic approach. He also provides private consultation in life balance. Throughout his renown career, Dr. Wollman has effectively used a combined scientific and holistic method of treatment. He founded and was the Medical Director of a hospital-based Integrative Medicine Program at Saint Francis Medical Center in Santa Barbara, California. This Program was based on Harvard’s Integrative Medicine Programs combining the best of western and eastern medical practices. He is a professor at the Santa Barbara College of Oriental Medicine where he teaches Cellular Pathophysiology and courses on bridging Eastern and Western Medicine. He is also the composer and a musical artist on the international selling healing musical CD, Sleep Suite. He can be contacted through www.LivingSuite.net

Fan Jie
Translated by Tang Yih Pin

The first time I heard about energy medicine was in a class taught by Donna Eden. Since then I was impressed by Donna’s ability to clairvoyantly read the body’s energy. I felt that energy testing can be quite persuasive. So for a while, I diligently practised Donna’s suggestions on the “Daily Energy Exercise Routine” and “Tracing the Meridian” (Energy Medicine, pg79). When tracing the meridian, my body felt a little numbness, other than that I did not feel any difference.
It was only after a long-distance drive, that I experienced the effectiveness of “energy medicine.” In the past, I had to take some rest after driving continuously for eight hours, this time it was different. I was able to drive for 25 hours non-stop without having to change driver. At the end of the journey, there was still a warm comfortable feeling along my spine. Since I had been tracing the meridian for a while, out of habit every time I stopped to top up petrol, I would trace the meridian once. This experience aroused my curiosity about “energy medicine” and started me on an unexpected journey.

Energy Never Requires Precision, Only Science Does.

What does energy mean? Energy medicine views a person as a body of energy. According to Donna, in energy pathway (meridian network), there are fixed paths (such as the “twelve meridian”), there are some that are hidden on certain parts, and may not necessarily follow specific paths when they move (for instance, the energy of strange flow (eight energy system)). The twelve meridians have the five rhythms movement of strengthening and sedating flows, self adjustments and control. Other important rhythms, such as midnight-noon ebb-flow, all are explicitly explained in the book. What does it mean by Medicine? Energy medicine believes that the way the body is designed allows for self healing. The self healing process is accelerated through “appropriate communication with the body energy,” for instance, massaging certain trigger points. In general, energy medicine is similar to treatments in that it helps speed up self-healing.

I have gradually found that the impact on the application of energy medicine in daily health maintenance, amazingly effective. Let’s share a few practical experiences. For example – once, someone had a sudden backache. The pain spread from the spine to the entire back and then, the entire body including the front of the body. The pain was so acute that the person could no longer tell where the pain came from and was unable to stand straight but only laid down on bed, moaning. Even in lying, one could not lie flat but had to keep finding new angles and positions that was more comfortable. It was hard to describe the conditions clearly under such great pain.

So let’s start with energy testing, to trace the source of this imbalance. Since the patient had to keep lying, I had to treat her like an infant or someone unconscious and did the surrogate energy testing (Energy Medicine, pg39). I held her hand, and through the hand, I let her energy flow temporarily to my body, and then, test the energy through my body. I used the tensor fascia lata muscle (Energy Medicine, pg31) forenergy testing. Although it may not be highly accurate, the advantage was that I could do it alone without assistance. I tried to identify the meridian that went out of balance by following the order of “energy testing the five rhythms” (Energy Medicine, pg183); I found the water meridian (kidney or bladder meridian) to be out of balance.

The imbalance of meridians may be due to too much or not enough energy. The symptoms of pain normally indicate that there is too much energy while poor functions indicate the lack. Excess energy has to be released. I first tried the kidney meridian by using the sedating points (Energy Medicine, pg 99). Since it was possible that the imbalance came from the bladder meridian and not the kidney meridian, I observed the patient’s reactions attentively. If there were no reactions (given the very gentle nature of energy medicine, it allows for the high tolerance of mistakes), the bladder meridian would be checked after the energy for the kidney meridian had been replenished. It turned out that this patient reacted positively to the kidney meridian pacifying treatment, and the pain was lessened immediately.

After that incident, I found out that Donna Eden once treated her daughter’s pain (Energy Medicine, pg 256) around her ovaries; kidney meridian guards the ovaries, and these two cases were very similar. After the above case, I met someone who had menstrual discomfort on another occasion. Being lazy, I skipped energy testing and applied directly the sedating pressure point for kidney meridian. Obviously, her discomfort eased immediately.

Another example was someone with a headache problem. After questioning, I found that it was a symptom of more than 30 years. Although it was better in recent years, the pain returned more frequently in recent days. The dull ache or “tightness” was spread around the rear brain and neck. It looked like the path of the gall meridian, the pain usually occur in times of stress.

After energy testing, I discovered that the gall meridian was out of balance and the energy was flowing backwards. Fortunately, the energy field was in the cross over condition of a healthy person. The condition of the backward meridian flow must first be remedied. Weak foundation gives rise to sicknesses, and wherever there is weakness, sickness abound. When the meridians flow backward, massage or thump the last acupoints (K27) of the kidney meridian (Energy Medicine, pg 203). So I suggested that he thump the K27 trigger point frequently that night. I demonstrated and explained clearly that thumping is to remedy the backward meridian flow. I thought that when the meridians stop flowing backward in the next morning, then I would work on the gall bladder meridian experientially.

This friend was serious in thumping his own K27. The next morning, the headache was gone. This friend seemed quite happy with the thumping and the cessation of the headache. After energy testing, it was ascertained that the meridian was no longer moving backwards. With the thumping and headache gone, I did not proceed to test the gall bladder meridian as there would be no comparison. So I decided to wait for a few days and see if the headache would return. He continued with thumping in the following days, the meridian did not move backwards and the headache did not return.

This friend smiled pleasantly and was very satisfied with the thumping, and freedom from headache. He even demonstrated happily to me on how he did his thumping of the K27. To my great surprise, he was completely off (specifically, he thumped on the areas around the acupoints, not exactly on the points)!

This last case is mentioned to emphasize one important characteristic of energy medicine. The book does not give elaborate descriptions on meridian network, different acupoints or exact acupoints. Actually this is the marvel of energy medicine. “Energy never requires precision, only science does.” The requirement for precision comes from the left brain thinking, whereas the emphasis of energy medicine is on energy, and it is the natural presentation of the right brain. To top that, our intention has an even stronger healing power. This does not mean that massaging randomly is just as effective! “Massage randomly” shows that our main thinking is still on the word “massage” (whether we massage correctly, incorrectly or blindly). It is better to focus on the word “energy” instead. Likewise, it is better to focus on the intention of thumping the acupoints rather than on the location of the acupoints. When thumping, concentrate on the thoughts that the meridians are flowing properly now, rather than wondering if the thumping is on the exact spots, and the outcome would still be as effective.

Energy Medicine teaches various methods of communicating with the body energy. They are all very simple and easy to learn, although from the first glance there may seem to be a wide variety of them. After some time of practice, it will become as natural as primary school students doing morning exercise. Although there are some differences between Energy Medicine’s discussions on triple warmer versus eight energy system and the conventional descriptions, the explanations in the book are quite interesting and unique. The book shares successful cases in enhancing the immune system and in working with the derivation of various difficult illnesses such as multiple sclerosis (Energy Medicine, pg199). Living in this era, if one wish to harmonize and appropriately enhance the immune system, then don’t miss this good book – Energy Medicine!

Original Chinese article is published in February 2008 issue of Lapis magazine

Philip Incao, M.D.
Lightly Edited by Ashyea

Dr. Philip Incao has more than 40 years of experience in medical practice. Since 1972, he adopted Anthroposophical Medicine as the approach in his work with patients. At Crestone, Colorado, U.S. in June 2007, Dr. Incao gave 2 lectures to the participants of Lapis Lazuli Light workshop. The following is an extract from the transcript of the lectures. 

I will say what I felt is most important for the world, for our time and for the work we all need to do. Before we can even understand what the immune system is, we need to talk about the more fundamental things. I would like to say a little bit about how I began this kind of work that I do.

When I was in high school and in college, my motivation and my desire was to understand what a human being is. So I wanted to study human biology, physiology and medicine, and to work towards healing human illnesses. I thought that by going to medical school, I would learn the mystery of human being.

Despite attending one of the leading medical schools in this country, in New York City, I didn’t learn anything about the mystery of the human being. I was only taught that human being is a sophisticated machine. So after medical school, after becoming a doctor, I continue my search and I found the spiritual science of Rudolf Steiner. I found a different kind of medicine that is based on that spiritual science.

The modern medical science that the whole world, East and West, considers as the only medical science is based on two assumptions.

The first assumption is Materialism. This assumption states that all activities, all energies, and all consciousness in the human body are generated by the matter of the body.

And the second assumption is Reductionism. This assumption says that in order to understand any activity or function in the body, you must dissect the body into its smallest parts – to the cells and molecules. And the smaller rules the larger. Reductionism says that everything in the body is determined by the cellular and molecular mechanisms at that level. Reductionism says “as below, so above.”

These two assumptions – Materialism and Reductionism – are not that old. Although Materialism and Reductionism were prepared for a long time before its coming, they only began about 400 or 500 years ago in the west, in the late 15th century. These assumptions were introduced and developed with the scientific revolution in the west at the time of Galileo and Isaac Newton and many other scientists, and was developed stronger since then.

But these assumptions are not proven.

Science never considers trying to prove them because for the modern scientific mind, there is no other way to think seriously or scientifically about anything in the world, except through the thinking modality that’s based on Reductionism and Materialism.

We are all very strongly influenced by this kind of thinking. We are all taught in the school that we are determined by our DNAs, our molecules, our cells and so on. Many of us tend to think that it’s our physical body that makes everything happens in us. It makes our thoughts happen, our feelings happen, and our will happens. But in truth, our physical body, with all the molecules and cells, is an instrument, just like a violin. Violin is an instrument for beautiful music. If it’s broken, there will be no music. If the violin is well designed in a good condition, it can have beautiful music. But you can dissect a violin right down to the cells in the wood that makes it, and you will not find the music there.

Just as a violin cannot make music all by itself; in the same way, the physical body does not create thinking, feeling and willing by itself. Violin must be played by a musician who has knowledge and skill. And our physical body is played upon by our higher bodies where all the knowledge and skills live. So, physical body is the instrument. Quoting Dr Mitchell May, “The healing came from etheric body. Etheric body heals the physical body.” You could also call the etheric body the Life body. I think in ancient Chinese medicine, the Chi is pretty much the same thing as etheric body.

All healing comes down from the Spirit; the Etheric body is directed by the Spirit and Soul which are, so to speak, above it. And all thinking, feeling and willing come down from these three higher members and are manifested in the physical body. All by itself, the physical body is a corpse. It’s a corpse when etheric body leaves and when we die. But almost every scientist in the world assumes that it’s our physical body that somehow generates thinking, feeling, willing, healing and consciousness. Actually all the scientists know these too but they only know it when they are sleeping.

In sleep, the Spirit and Soul, the two higher members, breathe out from us and live for few hours in the spiritual world. It’s only the physical and etheric bodies that stay on the bed. During sleep, our Spirit and Soul are busy and active in the spiritual world. Sometimes these activities are reflected in our dreams. So in sleep, even the most materialistic and reductionistic scientist experiences the spiritual world. When the scientist wakes up, the soul and spirit come back down into etheric and physical body, and he totally forgets that he was in the spiritual world. And I forget it, too. Most of us forget it when we wake up. When we wake up, our spirit and soul fall back down into the physical body, but they are not able to maintain their full power.

We forget because the spirit and soul come too deeply into the physical brain and the physical body. And the sprit and soul are overwhelmed and overshadowed by the very strong physical, earthy forces of the physical body and brain. The cause of materialistic thinking is that we are too deeply incarnated into our physical brain and body. The full knowledge and power of the spirit and soul are not conveyed to the physical brain and the physical body. It wasn’t always that way but today we are all too deeply incarnated. This is the human destiny of the time we now live in.

All the right and healthy spiritual practices for the right and healthy progress of the human soul are designed to gradually loosen our etheric body from our physical body. When our etheric is loosened and pulled up out of our physical body, it can become aware of our spiritual, soul and the universal spirit. The American Henry David Sorrel, in the 19th century, once said, “I never met a man who is fully awake, how could I look him in the eyes?” None of us is fully awake. As Mitchell May said, we have our true self and we have our personal self. We live in our personal self most of the times.

To be fully awake means that the spirit in us is fully in touch with the spirit in the universe. But the spirit in us also needs to be fully in touch with practical reality on earth. The spirit in us needs to be able to fully master and rule over the lower forces that stream up into us through our physical body.

Sometimes it takes a shock to wake us up.

A severe illness or accident can loosen the tight grip that our physical body has on our etheric body. That’s what happened with Mitchell May. It is always very difficult and painful but in the long run, it is a blessing. It is a blessing that our destiny or our karma leads us into such. We wouldn’t choose it ourselves.

Modern science doesn’t realize that today, human consciousness is not the same as it used to be. Today, we perceive and experience the world very differently from the way our ancestors did 5000 years ago. In the last 5000 years, human consciousness and perception has evolved and rapidly changed. In the Hindu tradition, this is called the Kali Yuga – 5000 years of darkness.

I learned about the Kali Yuga from the research of Rudolf Steiner. According to him, the Kali Yuga began in 3101 B.C. and ended in 1899. The human mind was sinking into materialism. Later I found out that in the Ayurveda tradition, the dates are a little different and the Kali Yuga will be over soon. (200 years or so does not made that much difference over 5000). Rudolf Steiner said that he was not permitted from the spiritual world to speak about spiritual knowledge until after the end of the Kali Yuga. So he began teaching in 1900.

His mission in his teaching was to help human civilization move in this direction (i.e. spiritual awakening). But for something that has been moving in the same direction for 5000 years, it’s not easy to turn it around. There is a great tendency right now to be moving in this direction. There is a great tension building between the forces that want to go that way (i.e. the forces of materialism) and the forces that want to go this way (i.e. spiritual awareness).

Before the Kali Yuga and still in the early days of Kali Yuga, human being lived between heaven and earth in a way that is very different from the way we live now. The human being back in those ancient times was naturally spiritual, naturally clairvoyant. In our previous incarnations, we were all clairvoyant. The forces of the spiritual world were very powerful and it influenced us very much. We were not very deeply incarnated into our bodies. Our spirit and soul were not deeply into our physical bodies; instead, they were more of living outside of our bodies in the spiritual world. We walked lightly on the earth and the power was in the spiritual world. That was ancient times. The forces of the earth in ancient times did not influence us so strongly.

Today, the forces of the earth are much stronger. And the human being is much more deeply incarnated. The forces of the spiritual world are not as strong as they used to be. We are now naturally earthy, naturally materialistic. The power now is no longer in the spiritual world but in the human spirit. That is why the Kali Yuga was necessary. It was a necessary evolution so that that the human spirit could be totally free. It may not be total political freedom in the world yet but we are all capable in our human spirit to think whatever we want.

We are free to think and free to choose.

The human being did not have that freedom in ancient times because they were directed from the spiritual world. They were not free in themselves. We had to suffer a separation from the spiritual world in order to become free. Now we can choose to reconnect with the spiritual world. We can choose to go this way or we can choose to go that way. This is the way the modern science with materialism and reductionism seems to want to go (that is, downward).

The whole purpose and meaning of Rudolf Steiner spiritual science is to enable the human being to go this way (ie. upward). This direction (up) is the freedom for the human being to live in balance between heaven (spiritual world) and earth. This direction (down) either denies the spiritual world or says the only purpose of the spiritual world is to make us richer on earth. This way (down) is leading to the destruction of the environment and of the earth because we no longer love the earth as a being that is related to us. In ancient times, it would be inconceivable not to love the earth as a spiritual being related to us. This direction (down) means the destruction of the environment and of the earth, and the attachment of the human being to the earth.

Everything that I have been saying so far and everything that I will say are based on my understanding of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science and my own experience and being a medical doctor for 40 years.

Steiner’s spiritual science is based on his spiritual research. Though it’s not based on the ancient wisdom, it very often confirms and validates the latter. Anthroposophy or spiritual science is first and foremost a science because it is based on observation and thinking. Steiner’s power of observation and thinking were very, very advanced and evolved. He always said that anyone with a healthy mind, heart and will could, through practice, develop the sense organs to perceive the spirit and become clairvoyant.

There are two kinds of clairvoyance. There is a clairvoyance that we all had in our previous incarnations during this time and before this time. Sometimes even today, there are people who are born and who bring with them in modern time some of that old clairvoyance. We can call it a kind of residual clairvoyance.

Then at evolution, the more we learn to think with reason, logic and independence, the more we lost the old clairvoyance. The residual clairvoyance doesn’t help us very much if you happen to have it. It even misleads us. Steiner used to say that there are as many ways of being wrong in the spiritual world as there are in the physical world.

The whole purpose of the Kali Yuga was to help human being to develop rational, logical, and independent free thinking. This kind of thinking is directed by our spirit and is based on our physical brain and our physical body. If it is not just based on the brain and body but directed by the forces of our physical brain and body, then it becomes materialistic thinking. But logical, rational and scientific thinking does not have to be materialistic and reductionistic.

For a right and healthy progress of our spirit and soul (conscious soul), we first need to strengthen and transform our thinking in a rational and scientific way. We also need to free our thinking from the tight grasp of our physical brain and body. When our thinking is less based on the physical brain and more on the etheric brain, then it becomes full of imagination. When the thinking can begin to wake up the etheric heart, (when our thinking is more based on our etheric heart) then our thinking becomes inspired. When our thinking is based on the etheric fire that lives in the belly, then it becomes intuitive.

We really think with our whole body, not just with our brain.

As we strengthen and elevate our thinking into imagination of the head, inspiration of the heart and intuition of our gut, we develop a right and healthy clairvoyance. The bedrock foundation and prerequisite for a healthy clairvoyance is a rational, penetrating and discerning power of logical thinking – using the physical brain in our head, but directed by our spirit.

Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science is a path of knowledge. He always said that we would never figure out how to make the earth, the environment and our civilization healthier without the knowledge of the spirit. Many years ago, the American president Lyndon Johnson said, “It’s not doing what’s right that’s the problem; it’s not knowing what’s right that’s the problem.”

Knowledge that does not include the spirit can never solve any practical problem.

There is another very important requirement for a healthy spiritual development of clairvoyance. That is, for every step we make in spiritual and knowledge development, we need to make 3 steps in moral development. Because in developing ourselves spiritually, we are refining our soul. When we refine a metal of silver or gold, we extract gold out. What’s left below is the slag. Whenever we develop a stronger brighter light within us, we also create a darker shadow. We must be morally prepared to master the shadow side of us that is liberated by spiritual development.

The teachers in ancient India spoke of the veil of Maya. This veil or curtain was the limit, the boundary of everything that could be perceived with the physical senses. It was the normal physical reality that we all perceive. But they said that this physical reality was an illusion. It was Maya. They taught that the true reality was the spiritual world which was behind the veil of Maya.

In ancient times, there were temples and mystery schools throughout the ancient world where high priests and priestesses guided the pupils in their spiritual development, in their path of initiation. There were very definite carefully prescribed steps on the path to spiritual enlightenment. It was a path of knowledge of the spiritual. One of the final steps was when the pupil broke through the veil of Maya and was on the other side, in the spiritual world.

To break through into the spiritual world, the pupil had to go out of his body. The spirit and soul would go out of his physical body but they would not fall asleep. We go out our physical body every night, but we don’t remember it. And in breaking through the veil of Maya, the spirit or the ego of the pupil expanded into the universal spirit which was its true home. In this process of expanding and almost dissolving his spirit into the universal spirit, the pupil experienced indescribable bliss. It was an indescribable love.

That was the ancient form of initiation, especially in the East. It was based on a love for the world and it engendered a greater love for the world. At a certain time in our history, I believe it was after the Kali Yuga had begun, Rudolf Steiner described that the teachers from the East began to travel to the West. These teachers began to teach a different form of initiation. It was an inner path.

On the inner path, the pupil came up against another veil, another boundary within his own soul. That boundary is the inner limit of all of our consciousness, thoughts, feelings and memories. Rudolf Steiner called it the memory mirror. It mirrors back to you but you can’t see behind it. Behind that mirror is the darkness of our unconscious soul life – all the unconscious drives and impulses that Freud and Jung and other psychologists wrote about.

On the inner path of initiation that began to be taught in the West during the Kali Yuga, the pupil was assisted in breaking through his inner soul boundary, his memory mirror. But when he broke through, his spirit or his Ego did not expand; instead it contracted. He did not experience indescribable bliss, or love; instead he experienced indescribable fear.

The pupil was assisted to stand up to that fear and to overcome that fear. In doing so, the pupil contracted, strengthened and toughened his spirit. And this is the path of initiation that we are all walking in our modern age. It is a path that will require us to experience and overcome the fearful darkness in our own soul. By overcoming that darkness in our own soul, it will help us to heal ourselves and will help us to heal the illnesses in the world and in our global society. That soul darkness that lies deeper than that our consciousness can reach is the source of all human illnesses. It is also the source of all social illnesses.

If this inner path had truly been followed all the way through to its end in the West, it would have led to a true spiritual science – something similar to Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science. However, at a certain point in western history, the teachers and leaders of this inner path, who remained totally behind the scenes of outer civilization, lost their courage or they became decadent. And the knowledge of the spiritual treasure that lives in the fearful inner darkness of the human soul began to fade. In many myths and legends, this fact is illustrated by the dragon that guards the treasure. The dragon’s cave is the unconscious part of our soul. The treasure that the dragon is guarding is the spiritual knowledge that lives in that part of our soul. In other traditions, it is called the guardian of the thresholds.

However, teachers of the inner path lost their courage, lost their strength to fully penetrate to the spiritual treasure that could have really made a much healthier civilization, instead of the materialistic and destructive civilization we have today. Instead of developing a spiritual science, our western civilization has developed a materialistic and reductionistic science. Our modern science which rules the world today denies the inner reality of the human spirit. It also denies the outer reality of the universal spirit.

Steiner said that the purpose of spiritual science was to lead the spirit of human being to connect with the spirit in the universe. However, one thing that this science could not fully deny and could not fully erase was the fear that was the prevailing mood of the inner path. This fear still lives unconsciously in all modern science, most strongly of all in modern medicine.

Our modern medicine, which now rules the whole world, is totally fear-based. It is based on an ignorant fear of the true meaning of illness. It is based on an ignorant fear of illness and death. In a conference in India, a Tibetan doctor said, “All illnesses have three causes. The first cause is ignorance, the second is attachment, and the third, a lack of love.”

Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science, which is both an inner path and an outer path, is based on love for the world.

It is based on a loving, all-consuming interest in wanting to understand and know the world and the deeper knowledge of human being, in order to serve the world and other human beings.

I wish to end this lecture with this verse:

Seek real practical life,
but seek it in a way that does not blind you to the spirit working in it.
Seek the spirit,
but not with spiritual lust,
not out of spiritual egoism,
but seek it so that you can apply it selflessly in practical life in the material world.

Apply the ancient words:
“The spirit is never without matter; matter never without spirit”
In such a way that you say to yourselves, “We will do all things in the material world in the light of the spirit that it may enkindle warmth for our practical deeds.”

Rudolf Steiner
GA 297, Page 116f .

 

Please look out for 2nd installment of this transcript in next issue.

Further reading: 
For articles by Dr. Philip Incao, please visit  www.philipincao.com
For works by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, please visit  www.rsarchive.org

 

Philip Incao, M.D.

Once upon a time in a far-off realm, seven students of the art of healing were gathered for their final examination. Their mentor, who was old, wise and greatly loved by his pupils, led them to the bedside of a patient they had known well in life. Alas, he had just given up the ghost, and as the students contemplated with sadness and wonder his lifeless form, the master posed the question.

The students were among the best and brightest of that realm, and they pondered deeply the master’s question, but hesitated to speak. Finally, one student, who had been in deep meditation, spoke.

1.   “Honored teacher, you have taught me much, and I have also learned from the wisdom which the stars speak to me. It is clear to me that our friend and patient had lived out his destiny. He had completed his karma for this life. He freely chose his path and followed it to the ends of his god-given capacities. He could make no further progress within the limits of the soul and bodily constitution furnished to him in this life. So he—his spirit–departed his body for higher realms, to begin work on a new body affording his spirit and soul further progress when he returns. It was ordained by his own higher will and of course by God’s will.

The master was silent, but another student spoke up, a bit impatiently.

2.   “Yes, yes,” she said, “we know about karma and reincarnation, but there is a more proximate cause of death here, one closer to the reality of this fellow’s life as he lived it.” The others regarded her expectantly, as she continued, “The spark had gone from his soul, he had lost all interest in life. He had given up, he had lost his will to live. That’s why he died.”

3.   They all pondered her words in silence. Then another student summoned the courage to speak. He began hesitantly, “We all know that our spirit and soul have a guiding influence on our health in the course of our lives, but it was his body after all that failed him in the end. For weeks before he died his pulses were so weak I could barely feel them. His chi, his life forces were utterly exhausted, and his organs had no energy to function. His adrenals especially were shot. He was utterly stressed out, fatally depleted of the force and energy of life.”

4.   Now a few students began to speak. “Yes, I agree, I agree” said one, “but we’re neglecting the most important factor, his lifestyle. He was a very gifted man, but he neglected his health terribly. He ate, drank, smoked and used drugs to excess. He would work, or party, at night and sleep during the day. Women loved him and he greatly and frequently enjoyed them. His life consisted of chaotic highs and lows, totally lacking in any rhythm or consistency.  And he never got any fresh air or exercise. It’s no wonder he exhausted his life forces!

5.   Now the students became more animated. “Yes, he was very complex and very talented,” said one, “an intense and passionate soul. We will certainly miss him. But I agree that his lifestyle was torture for his body. I’m sure his cells and organs were so stressed that they were unable to properly carry out their breathing, digesting and self-cleansing life processes. This caused stagnation and congestion, leading to a build-up of cellular wastes and toxins. I am absolutely certain that the levels of toxins in his blood were sky high. And that’s what killed him in the end—he was utterly toxic. He died from his own toxicity, and his exhausted organs were unable to eliminate the poisons in his body. He could no longer detoxify, so he died.”

 

6.   The remaining students spoke at once, excitedly. The master’s eyes widened, but he remained silent. One voice broke through, “Yes, one could see from his tongue and from his eyes that he was toxic, but what follows toxicity as night follows day …? Why, infection of course!” he exclaimed. “We all know that as surely as garbage and manure attract flies, much of the toxicity and waste matter in our body will attract the bacteria and other vermin that normally live in, on and around us. I am sure he died of an infection. He had a very high fever, he was septic!

7.   Now, all had spoken save one. The last student looked at her colleagues with admiration, and spoke slowly and thoughtfully. “I can’t disagree with anything that has been said,” she began, “but I have been studying the most recent research, and it seems we have neglected the ultimate and most proximate cause of our friend’s demise. Yes, he had an infection, and was septic, but in the end it was his own immune system that killed him.”

The other students were incredulous. “How can that be?! That’s impossible!” they exclaimed. A faint smile crossed the master’s face, but he remained silent.

The last student continued, “Yes, until recently the immune system was thought to be always protective, except of course in autoimmune diseases. But now science has discovered that our immune system produces chemical agents in our body that can sometimes harm us and even kill us. These agents, called cytokines, are of many different types: the interferons, the interleukins, the tumor-necrosis factors, and others. Some of these cytokines create and intensify inflammation in the body and other cytokines inhibit and shut down inflammation when it has done enough of its cleansing work. When our body works harmoniously, then our cytokines create just enough mild inflammation to destroy excessive microbes and to maintain the ongoing detoxification of our bodies, without causing symptoms. But just as the same fire that warms our home can also burn it down, so too, when our immune system is grievously provoked by severe imbalance, toxicity or infection, it can aberrantly unleash a “cytokine storm,” a massive outpouring of cytokines into our blood stream. These then cause a systemic inflammation to flare up in us and rage out of control, causing high fever, septic shock, or generalized sepsis and a severe dysfunction or shut-down of major organs often ending in death. That is what finally killed our dear departed friend and patient.”

The students were silent, alternately lost in thought and gazing at one another in wonder, reflecting on all that had been said.

Though reluctant to break the rich silence, with great emotion the master finally spoke:
“My dear pupils, your words and thoughts have warmed me to the core of my being, and brought joy to my heart. Though I have but little knowledge, I believe that all that has been spoken is true. Before my wondering soul, you have unfolded a continuous chain of causation from the heights into the inner depths of the human body, stretching from spirit into matter. At each link of the chain, we might discover a different way that the human spirit, soul and life force can work together harmoniously in the body to create health, or work in conflict with each other to create illness in the physical body.
You are now ready to go out into the world as healers. My teaching is done, you will learn from your patients now. But remember always the seven levels of illness you have learned today. None of the illnesses you will encounter will have only a single cause. Many levels work together in health and illness, and you must never judge on one or two levels alone. You must remain aware of all levels of causation from highest to lowest, regardless of whether you can see through them or not. That will give you the necessary measure of humility to truly heal.”

Then the seven students, having passed their final examination, bid farewell to each other and to their beloved teacher and went out into the world to practice the art of healing. They were unsure in their knowledge and understanding, but their will to heal was strong. And they learned much from their patients, and they healed many, and they grew in understanding.

Philip Incao, M.D.

Dr. Philip Incao has more than 40 years of experience in medical practice. Since 1972, he adopted Anthroposophical Medicine as the approach in his work with patients. At Crestone, Colorado in June 2007, Dr. Incao gave 2 lectures to participants of Lapis Lazuli Light workshop. The following is 2nd installment of the transcript, lightly edited by Ashyea.

Today, I’d begin the lecture with a quote from the Buddha.

“Do not believe of what you have heard.
Do not believe in the traditions because they have been passed down for many generations.
Do not believe in anything because it is rumoured and spoken by many.
Do not believe merely because a written statement of some old sage is produced.
Do not believe in conjectures; do not believe in that as truth to which you have become attached by habit.
Do not believe merely in the authority of your teachers and elders.
After observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and gain of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

Some people have questions when I spoke about karma as a source of illness [in my previous lecture]. Let me elaborate a little and see if it addresses the questions.

What is a healthy attitude to an illness?

We should respect illness but we should not fear illness. Illness is like a dangerous animal; if you fear it, the fear might make it more dangerous. However, we should always respect an illness. We should not surrender to it, but we should surrender our personal self and recognize that in the illness, our true self is trying to manifest.

We will place what Dr. Mitchell May calls the Personal Self at the level of Soul. And what he calls the True Self, we will place it at level of Spirit. In illness, we need to get our Personal Self out of the way so that the True Self can come in. And we must always assume that the illness has a good reason for visiting us, even if we have no idea what that is. We may realize the reason much later. If we have no interest in the reason, the illness may keep coming back in one form or another until we learn to take more interest in our health.

We need good judgment and discernment in evaluating what kind of practical help we need in the course of an illness. Some illnesses are self-healing – they burn themselves out like a fire that runs out of fuel.

Anyone who wants to help and support an ill person, must never, never, never blame a person for his/her illness. We also should not encourage the belief that illness has no meaning, that there is nothing to learn from illness.

Those of us who try to help another – healers and doctors – should never assume that we can know exactly what the lesson or meaning of the illness is for a person. We should support and validate any ill person who wants to find and discover for themselves the meaning or lesson of their illness. The doctor must never assume that he can know this patient’s karma. So the doctor should forget about karma and do everything possible within reason to preserve and prolong this patient’s health and life.

No doctors can change his patient’s karma but we can change our own karma by making the changes in our attitudes, thoughts, feelings and habits that our True Self wants us to make. The healer or the doctor can support and encourage the patient to make those changes.

The different kinds of illness

The 4 basic realities of spirit, soul, life and body can combine themselves in different ways. Generally, they combine themselves in 2 different ways to form a polarity. This polarity evolved, and it is similar to the ancient polarity of Yin and Yang, though not exactly the same.

One form of polarity lives in the human head. The other lives in the human gut, digestion. This polarity comes from above. As above, so below. The human being is designed in the image of God. In the ancient times, people perceived a God in the sun. They didn’t believe that the sun was a God. They perceived that the sun was a God because they had a certain amount of clairvoyance. And they saw two aspects in the sun – one aspect was light, the other was warmth. They recognized and we recognize it too, that without the sun, all life on earth would die. They perceived that in the light lived wisdom, and in the warmth lived love.

Wisdom in the Light

When these spiritual forces work themselves down into matter, they create different kinds of matter. The light shines on the matter from the outside and it gives wisdom and form – a pattern along which the matter can form itself. Just like silica.

The wise man said, “Silica is formed by the light and for the light because it’s transparent. And it reflects the light.” These are formed in certain geometric patterns. It is a divine spiritual geometry that comes down to earth. That same formative principle is what forms in the human body, the nervous system, the brain and the sense organs. In forming a crystal, the light gives it its direction. But the crystal is then formed out of physical substance. It is a substance which can reflect, just like the brain can reflect the thinking, the crystal can reflect and transmit light.

We human beings have inner light within us. We have light in our thinking. We have light that strings through our nervous system. That light is spiritual and cannot be detected with physical instruments. Yet the spiritual light in our thinking, brain and our nervous system break down into electrical impulses that can be detected with physical instruments. This is one aspect of the divine spirit.

Love in the Warmth

The other aspect of divine spirit is warmth or love. It doesn’t just stay on the outside of the matter. It loves matter and it dives right into matter. Then the matter gets warmer and begins to burn. This is a sacrificial fire. In all ancient religions, people burned a sacrifice to appeal to the Gods. Smoke would rise to the spiritual world. Ancient wisdom said, “Fire attracts”. In burning the sacrifice, they hoped to attract the divine spirit to come down and bless them.

It is a destruction when the spirit works this way: it goes right into matter, burns and destroys the matter in order to attract more spirit. It is a death in order to make a rebirth. And this process goes on in our body continually because all our cells are continually dying. It is the fastest in the digestive system and in the muscles, continually replaced by new cells. Working in this way, the spirit would continually destroy and remove the material body. In 7 years, all the cells in our body would have died. All of you who are sitting here now were not here 7 years ago in your physical bodies. Spirit keeps forming based on these two principles so that we are still the same person even though all our substances have changed.

It is fascinating to see how that wisdom appears in different cultures. There was an ancient Greek philosopher, before Socrates, named Empedoeles who also had a little clairvoyance. He saw the same polarity and he called it ‘cosmos and chaos’, ‘hate and love’. In ancient alchemy, it was salt and sulfur. Salt also forms crystal. Sulfur burns. The German poet, Goethe, called it ‘contraction and expansion’. Rudolf Steiner called it ‘cosmic antipathy and cosmic sympathy’. In the human soul, it is ‘thinking and will’. In the human body, it is nerve and blood. In human illness, it’s sclerosis and inflammation.

The American poet, Robert Frost, also artistically perceived the same two cosmic principles and he wrote a poem called “Fire and Ice”. I’d like to read that poem for you.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I’d like to quote Steiner from his book:

“There is no absolute truth. Each truth has its particular mission at a certain time. Truth evolves as does everything else in the world. Truth is the form of the divine spirit. But the divine spirit has many forms. It is our duty to enter into what another person says. We need only make clear to another person that we value him at that stage of truth where he stands. Everyone has to learn for himself and that’s we shall become tolerant for every form of truth. Love is higher than opinion. To be interested in another person is a form of love. If people are interested in one another, the most conflicting opinion can be reconciled.”

Every illness is an exaggeration of a normal process in the body. There is the Yin and Yang; there is warm and cold. Our belly needs to be warm in order to digest in a healthy way. It’s hard to digest when the belly is freezing cold. Head needs to be cool in order to think. You can’t think when your head is very, very hot. We continually have an energy in us that is warming us. It lives in our blood, circulation and our heart. We also continually have an energy in us that is cooling us. That energy lives in our brain and our nervous system. If this warming energy goes too far, it creates inflammation in the body. If the cooling energy goes too far, it creates hardening, scleroses.

What is an inflammation? 

An inflammation is a pimple on your skin. A sore throat. An influenza. Pneumonia. It is all of the diseases that we call infections. The word ‘infection’ is new, only since the time of Louis Pasteur. Now we don’t use the word inflammation, we say “I have an infection, virus or I have bacteria.” But the virus or bacteria is not the true cause of the problem.

There are 4 cardinal sciences that have been known since ancient Greece, ancient Roman and, I am sure, in the East also. The 4 cardinal sciences of inflammation are fever, pain, redness and swelling.

The inflammation is trying to destroy because it’s the fire process, the warmth process. In the warmth process, spirit destroys matter. It’s trying to destroy the matter in our body that is old. Our body is like a house. We are constantly remodeling all the time. But if we get lazy and we don’t want to repeat remodeling the house, we leave it alone. Then when the material of the house gets old, it begins to decay. When it begins to decay, our spirit says we have to get rid of that stuff, it’s turning rotten.

There are other causes of inflammation like any toxic chemicals that we absorb. The cigarette we smoke provoke inflammation in our lungs. As we absorb substances (tar from the tobacco), they are in our lungs, and our spirit does not want anything foreign in our body. So we get bronchitis or pneumonia. Then spirit starts to break down matter in our body, not only the tar but the cells in our body that have absorbed the tar. And it creates a lot of toxicity in our lungs through the process of destruction.

In your kitchen, if you don’t clean up after you make a meal, leaving the food out, it starts to decay and attracts a lot of flies. Then the scientist comes to your kitchen and says, “I have the solution for this. I will kill the flies.” But he does not clean up the kitchen. That is what happens when you take an antibiotic. You go to the doctor because you have smoked cigarettes and you have bronchitis or pneumonia, fever. The doctor takes a culture of your sputum and he says, “You have a bacteria in there, we should kill it. So here is this antibiotic.” And you say thank you because you are getting very frightened about that bronchitis or pneumonia.

The antibiotic kills the germs which were stimulating the immune system to create the fire. The fire (the inflammation) is created by the immune system. The germ is only the stimulus to create fever, pain, redness and swelling. All of that is produced by the immune system. This is an inner fire and the fuel for the fire is the tobacco tar that we took in. The germs are there too, because they like all that garbage. When the immune system creates fire that kills the germs, it dissolves the tobacco tar, pushes it out of the body and we cough up brown mucus. When we take an antibiotic, that whole process is shut down. All the toxicity that was trying to come out goes back into storage in the body. And it stays there until we get the next bronchitis. If we keep going to get antibiotic every time we get bronchitis, after a while we don’t get bronchitis any more. Instead, we will get lung cancer.

Healing versus Suppression

There are two ways to treat inflammation. One is to help it comes out of body and the other is to push it back into the body. The first method, which is to draw out of the body, is healing. The second method, which is used in modern medicine predominantly, is suppression. If you keep suppressing toxicity that wants to come out, you push it deeper into the body and eventually it can become, not always, a cancer.

When the inflammation is acute, which means we will have a high fever, (This is the way pneumonia behaves in the old days before antibiotics), the fire would burn very strongly until it would discharge and the patient would have a soaking sweat. After the sweat, the fever will be gone, and the pneumonia will be gone. That is still the way large part of the world treats inflammation. I once had a young man in my medical practice. He was born in Africa. He looked very healthy, radiating. And I asked him, “When you got a fever, when you were a child, what did your parents do? Did they take your temperature?” He laughed, “No, they wrapped me in blankets until I broke a sweat which would take a long time. After the sweat, I was better.”

The other side of the problem is that when you have an acute inflammation that is burning, it can heal itself or you can die from it – either the spirit pushes out all of the poison, or the spirit leaves and you die. The job of a doctor is to figure out which one is happening. If it looks like the spirit is going to leave, you need antibiotic. It is usually not that difficult to tell. As a patient who is going through an illness, if you are not paralyzed with fear, you can sense how severe your illness is. You can sense whether you have the forces to push out the poisons or whether you are overwhelmed and you need help.

About taking an antibiotic: If you take it on the first day of the illness, you will suppress the illness. If you take it after several days of illness and you really feel you have no energy left, then perhaps you already purged out 80% or 90% of the illness, and you just need help with that last 10%. Here, you take the antibiotic, suppress not the whole illness but only 10% of the illness. And you can always work out that 10% at a later time.

When I was practicing in upstate New York, I saw a lot of children with fevers and inflammations. Most of the time, I was able to help them through the infection, inflammation without an antibiotic. Once a mother called and asked me to visit her house as her little girl was violently sick with a fever and inflammation. You can sense from the intensity of the process that she was overwhelmed by this inflammation. And I knew that either I have to send her to the hospital or to give her antibiotic. I gave her an antibiotic and she responded it and the inflammation cooled down. This was around the time of her birthday. After that was over, the mother said she’s not herself. She’s irritable, feeling really uncomfortable in her body. But she wasn’t sick. The inflammation was over. Yet she was a little bit irritable. This inflammation was pneumonia that cleared with the antibiotic, suppressed. A year later, again around the time of her birthday, she got another pneumonia. This time, it was not so violent or intense. I said to her mother, “I think we can get her through this without the antibiotic.” That was the last 20% of what she did not work out the first time. She worked it through the second time. And the mother said now she’s acting like herself again. So you need to find a doctor that understands the difference between healing and suppression.

Time-honored methods of treatment

In many traditional medicines, there are three time-honored methods that have been used for thousands of years to treat inflammation. These three methods are designed to bring out the illness. There is an old saying “You must bring out what is within you. If you bring out what is within you, what you bring out will save you. If you do not bring out what is within you, what you do not bring out will kill you.”

One of the real causes of illness is chronic resentment. Resentment is an anger that we don’t let out; we hold it inside for years and years in time. The healing of resentment is to let it go and forgive. If you do that, it will save you. If you bring out what is within you, what you bring out will save you. If you do not bring out your resentment, it can become a cancer and kill you. Poison on the consciousness or soul level eventually becomes a poison on the physical level. Resentment works in us like a poison in our soul. Eventually the soul wants to get rid of it so it pushes into the body and then it becomes a cancer. Just like the rain coming down onto the earth; the resentment is the cloud in the sky, but when that falls down to the earth, it becomes a sclerotic, contracting, hardening illness because resentment is hard. Forgiveness expands, resentment contracts.

The first method is the one that the African patient told me – sweating. The second method is fasting. And the third is purging the bowel. These work very well. Usually when I had a person sick with the inflammation, I told them to get in bed, get warm, sweat and take laxatives. I told them not to eat any protein. The old saying: “Starve a fever.” If you have a fever, don’t eat eggs or meat or fish or even tofu, just take very light food.

If you have a tendency toward the cold diseases, toward storing your feelings, then the best thing that could happen to you is to get a good strong fever. A fever is the natural enemy of cancer. It can prevent a cancer. If you already have a cancer and you are able to get a fever, it can break down the cancer. Not just cancer but other sclerotic illnesses.

Back in 1922, there was a psychiatrist in Europe who won a Nobel Prize for healing what was up until then incurable syphilis sickness with fever therapy. Syphilis is a disease that starts as an inflammation but ends in a sclerosis in the brain. Now in this country and all over the world, we have lyme disease which also starts as an inflammation but can sometimes ends in nervous system as a sclerotic problem. It starts on the hot side and progresses to the cold side, so it was a form of degeneration.  It de-generates the nervous system. This doctor injected the patients with malaria. His patients got high fever and he healed thousands of patients in that way and he won a Nobel Prize. That just demonstrates the principle that a fever can cure something that is stuck in the body. If you have this (holding a big piece of crystal) that’s stuck in your body, it is very uncomfortable. You should pray for a fever and then this dissolves, you cough it up and spit it out. This (crystal) is resentment.

• To be continued in third and last installment…

Further reading: 
For articles by Dr. Philip Incao, please visit  www.philipincao.com
For works by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, please visit  www.rsarchive.org

Zhu Lan
Translated by Juno

The English nutritionist, Dr. McCarrison conducted an experiment at the National Institute of Nutrition, India. He divided a thousand mice into 3 groups –

Group A eats the Hansa meal (Hansa, a mountainous region in the uppermost north of Pakistan, reputed as a paradise and also known worldwide for its many centenarians), consisting of freshly made full oat biscuits, some fruits and vegetables without meat.

Group B eats the Indian meal, consisting of grains, vegetables, meat and spices as seasoning.

Group C eats Western meal, consisting of refined white bread, ham, sausage, butter and cheese.

After 2 years and 7 months (approximately equivalent of human age of 50 – 60), an inspection was carried out for all the mice. Every mouse in Group A is very healthy, with no pathological changes discovered.

Half the mice in group B have pathological changes, primarily at the stomach, intestines, liver and kidneys. At the same time, tooth decay and hair loss are also discovered.

All the mice in Group C have pathological changes. Besides physical conditions, mental changes also appeared in this group, with the physically stronger mice gobbling up the weaker ones. During the experimental period, mice population decreased by 20%.

Which group do we want to become? Looking at the present social situation which is astonishingly similar to group C, it is believed that everyone already knew their answer.

Living in today’s environment, we definitely have to be choosy about our food!! Head of the International Natural Medicine Association, Director of Japan Ochanomizu Clinic, Keiichi Morishita (M.D.,Ph.D) said, “With the collection of a 20-year basic research and 35 years of clinical experience, he subscribes only one formula to each variety of chronic illnesses and cancers:

• No Drug Consumption
• No Meat Consumption
• No Consumption of Refined White Foods.
• Take Brown Rice Vegetarian Diet
• Take Enzyme Supplements

No Drug Consumption

There’s a saying, “All drugs are 30% poison.” The nature of the human body and of synthetic drugs is in essence completely different. Once the drugs enter the human body, the body’s metabolic function starts the immediate attempt of detoxification. In the period of time before the completion of the entire process, the vivo visceral organs in the body would have certain reaction to the drugs, resulting in short term excitement or numbness. Based on this, modern medicine ignores the source of illnesses and prescribes widely all kinds of drugs. One drug is used to suppress the drug-induced side effects of another, developing the style of treating symptoms rather than root causes of diseases. If one does not start improving one’s diet which is the key, even if one tries all kinds of healing methods, the efficacy will be limited, not to mention a full cure.

No Meat Consumption

The arrangement of the teeth, length of the intestinal tracts and extended period of dietary habits, are all reminding us human on the disposition of our herbivorous nature. All the protein required by the body can be self produced by our digestive system. Malnutrition due to non-meat consumption is an extremely misleading and harmful misunderstanding. It is very difficult for our body to digest and absorb meat. Compared to vegetarian foods, the load on our stomach and intestines are many times more. Long term weariness of them would definitely cause closely related liver lesions. At the same time, meat foods often ferment abnormally in our intestines, producing massive amounts of aged material and toxin which enters our blood stream through the intestinal walls, creating acid poisoning in the blood, causing decline in cell function, thus, leading to kidney diseases. Hence, meat eaters will definitely have pathological changes in the liver and kidneys and also disorders of the autonomic nervous system. If one does not give up meat, diseases cannot be fully cured. Recurrence of health problems is only a matter of time.

No Consumption of Refined White Foods

Rice, noodles and sugar that are white not only lack nutrition, they also cause massive loss of our minerals. Moreover, they acidify our blood stream with toxins. They are too easy to chew upon, digestive enzymes are not easily produced, and they cause degeneration in the function of the organs.

Brown Rice Vegetarian Diet

This diet is rich with wheatgerms of the brown rice and contains all the vitality of cereals and vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, B12 and E. They can effectively lower cholesterol, prevent atherosclerosis and enhance vascular function. Chlorophyll in plants can launch a greening of the environment in vivo, enhance metabolism, stimulate cell activation, constrain bacterium, accelerate healing, relieve allergic problems, and have remarkable curative effects towards digestive diseases like gastric ulcer, gastritis and gastroptosis. Not only are diseases cured but they can also be prevented.

Take Enzyme Supplements
Enzymes are the magicians of life. They detoxify excretion, heal inflammations, replace cells, purify blood and prolong life. They have remarkable curative and preventive effects towards heart diseases, stroke, diabetes, hypertension, myocardial infarction and so on. However, the harm of improper diet, environmental pollution, medication, alcoholism, food additives and so on, have resulted in serious enzyme deficiency in modern people, who are in dire need of supplements.
In facing the steady rise of cancer incidences, Dr. Morishita emphasized that cancer is the final outcome of various chronic diseases, and animal food products (meat, egg, milk), refined white foods (white rice, white flour, white sugar) are the most direct conditions for producing pathological changes. If every household is still faithfully eating these carcinogenic foods as before, then a decrease in cancer incidence rate would truly be inconceivable!

Skin allergies

In Japan, one in every three persons suffers from skin allergy, with especially high incidence among children. The root cause lies in over consumption of animal food products. Digestive enzymes in children are lesser than adults and their intestinal mucosa have yet matured enough, causing injury to be greater. A constitution prone to allergy is often prone to cancer. Total change in diet in order to improve the body constitution is an imperative solution.

Gastrointestinal Diseases

In the pervasive culture of social competitiveness between oneself and others, many people contract illnesses of the stomach and intestines, which are also known as ‘stress-related illnesses’. Gastrointestinal diseases allude to the Chinese saying, “Illnesses have origins in what goes into our mouths”. Unnatural diet damages stomachs and intestines directly, while at the same time, contaminates the blood. Various pressures from unnatural diet injure the internal organs, resulting in dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system. Under these serious wounding, if one still insists on worshipping animal source foods (meat, egg, milk), the consequences would be unimaginable. Increasingly, younger people are suffering from gout due to over-nutrition and over-burdening of bodily organs. This has been a consistent warning sign.
Animal source foods and refined white foods cause abnormal metabolism of body uric acid. Excess from that which cannot be completely excreted gets deposited under the skin and in the joints. Out of self-defence, the body tries to get rid of these excess deposits that are obstructing the movements of the joints; henceforth, inflammation and joint pain occurs. If one does not strictly abstain from meat or change one’s diet, one can expect obvious joint distortion and dysfunction. At the same time, kidneys which share 2-thirds of the work in excreting uric acid, face increased burden, leading to greater health crises.

Headaches

In pharmacies in Japan, the best selling drug is painkillers for headaches. Pain is the most real alarm mechanism for the start of health problems. Once pain arises, it is most important to become aware of its root causes and then work on improvement. If the conditions for the pain ceases, naturally the pain would go off. Regardless of whether it is lesion headaches, temporary headaches or chronic ones, crazed consumption of pain killers not only numb the body, stop the pain temporarily, but will also damage the body’s nature due to increased dependence on the drugs, resulting in the obstruction of the gastrointestinal functions. Long term usage would also weaken the liver’s detoxification function, affecting the kidneys and bone marrows. There is no doubt about the harm inflicted upon the body. It is as if when the fire alarm goes off, instead of checking for the source of the fire, we just turn off the alarm and make believe that all is well already. If one wishes for a full cure, then the key is still in the diet. With the aid of a brown rice vegetarian diet, one can remove the accumulating toxins in the body, strengthen the body’s metabolism, purify the blood and improve the body physique. One should also pay attention on how one copes with pressure to avoid an imbalance in the autonomic nervous system, from which the origin of pain can be eradicated.

Cancer

Cancer – the disease that is feared by all when mentioned, is not really “incurable”, as so believed. It is just an extension of all other illnesses, and is not special. Like all other ailments, with appropriate treatment, the possibility of recovery definitely exists. Modern medicine regards cancer as devil, hence much extremely aggressive treatment methods like surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and so forth are used. Even if these treatments damage and remove part of the cancerous cells, they did not touch on the fundamental obstacle of the bodily functions, and improvement on problems like blood pollution and so forth. Thus, cancer recurrence and transfer rates are alarmingly high. Studies have shown that majority of the gastric cancer, breast cancer, uterine cancer and lung cancer patients prefer and enjoy animal source foods (like meat, eggs and milk) and almost all the patients consume refined white foods frequently (white rice, wheat flour and white sugar), as well as chemical seasonings. The greatest root cause to the production of cancer cells is blood contamination while the greatest cause to blood contamination is inappropriate diet and body-mind disharmony. The production of cancer cells due to the unnatural circumstances surrounding the body and blood pollution, is just a kind of notification and reminder to us. Contemplating upon this significance, not only is cancer not our enemies but a warning that we want to thank.
In face of current day massive propaganda and misguided information, it is every patient’s unavoidable personal journey to discern right information about cancer. This is also the key to recovery and healing. Speaking of diet, reduction on food intake or fasting is much effective to patients in the early stages. If the condition of the illness has developed to a certain stage, a brown rice vegetarian diet conforming to the human body natural design when implemented strictly, gradually purifies the blood, improves the physique and is the best way to recovery. At the same time, the stomach function of cancer patients is extremely weak. When dining, one must pay attention to fine chewing and slow swallowing, to stimulate the secretion of saliva. The digestive enzymes from the saliva are much better than any pharmaceutical digestive medication in the market.
Normally, whenever the body has any uncomfortable disposition or illness, we would habitually head towards the hospital. For mild cases, medication is given for outpatients while diagnoses of serious ones are treated with surgery and hospitalization. During these processes, much medication is used. Sometimes when illnesses or pain is slightly relieved, one would erroneously believe in the illusion that the illness is cured by the medicine. Can chemical medication really bring about full cure? Or is it just temporary numbing? Do we want complete healing or just temporary relief?
When the siren of the alarm sounds, let us swiftly locate the fire venue, put out the fire, relieve the disaster and walk towards health, instead of switching the alarm siren off through every means, and suffer the eventual spread of problems in blind faith.

Original Chinese article is published in August 2008 issue of Lapis magazine and is available online at: http://www.lapislazuli.org/TradCh/magazine/200808/20080802.html

Compiled from Dr Lai’s Sources

The liver and gallbladder are connected. It is beneficial for people who have liver problems to clean their gallbladders. Although many people did not show any symptoms, their gallbladders may still have stones. Gallstones are usually a result of overeating, strong flavourings, and especially, excessive consumption of fats, sugars and refined starchy foods. People who do not like to drink water are also susceptible to gallstones problems. (Editor’s note: the persons mentioned in the article above are vegetarians who ate little refined and processed foods. So for most people in modern lifestyle, gallstones could be a common problem because of the pollutions on the environment and drinking water.) Further, medication prescribed for lowering blood pressure that are used as a diuretic, can easily contribute to the formation of gallstones.

For those who are above 30 years old, whether you feel it or not, tend to have some gallstones, and in those who suffer from flatulence easily after a meal. The method of discharging stones described below uses apple juice. This method has been tried and tested by thousands of people, and they have shown that we do not need surgery to get rid of gallstones; it’s definitely a less painful and less expensive way. Even if you do not have stones, it is harmless and safe method to try. Personally, my family and I have tried this flush and it works.

Gallstones, whether large or small, can be discharged using this method. They could be as big as strawberries or small as fine sands. If you discharge a lot of stones at anyone time, you will need to do it again after a week (or repeat a few months later). This is to ensure that the stones have been completely flushed out of the body; thereafter, you may repeat the flush once a year.

Method:

Day 1- Day 5:

Use 10 fresh apples (about 1-1.5 kgs) daily. Eat directly or juiced them; or drink bottled organic apple juice (100% in content). Drink a cup (approx. 250ml) in the morning, noon, evening and night-time — four cups a day make up to 1 litre per day. Drink before meals or in-between meals. Continue for five days; eat normally but maintain light meals with less oil during these five days. The purpose of the apple juice is to soften the stones for easier discharge. (Note: the quantity of malic acid content in organic apples must be

sufficient for this method to be more effective.)

Day 6:

After 1 pm, start fasting. Stop drinking apple juice, and abstain from food.

∗ No food from 1 pm onwards until the next morning when diarrhea stops. Observe the following at specified time:

1. 1. 6 pm – use 1 teaspoon (5 grams) of Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) and dissolve in 250cc of warm water, and drink it.
   2. 8 pm – Repeat procedure at 6pm.
   3. 10 pm – juice 1-2 medium-size lemon, and add to 120ml of cold- pressed olive oil. Mix well and drink.

(Note: The lemon juice softens the stones; olive oil induces bile duct to secrete large quantity of bile to flush the stones out of the gallbladder.)

Day 7:

In the morning, stones will be flushed out when defecating. The stones will float on the water and are green, round and oily.

Note:

1.If the discharge of stones was large or in huge quantity, you may experience discomfort. Just rest for one or two days.

2.After discharging the stones, appetite will improve. But please do not overeat immediately, to prevent injuring the stomach.

3.Epsom salt is magnesium sulphate; it is very effective and cheap. Be mindful not to use too much.

4.If you had gallstones previously and had undergone cholecystectomy, but still found stones at the bile duct, it is worthwhile to try this method.

5.This method is NOT effective for stones in the kidneys or bladder.

 

Original Chinese article is published in the Nov 2010 issue of Lap magazine and is accessible online at: http://www.lapislazuli.org/TradC magazine/201011/20101108.html

The original Chinese article is published in the Nov 2010 issue of Lapis magazine and is accessible online at:
http://www.lapislazuli.org/TradCh/magazine/201011/20101108.html