True Charity

Charity is commonly understood to consist in rendering material help to your fellow men, giving alms to the poor, medicine to the sick, money or material to those who need them and physical service also where that is required. All this is well and good. The world is ridden with diseases and privations and calamities. And if something is done to alleviate them, it is as it should be, activities in that direction deserve full encouragement. But this does not go far enough, does not touch the root of the matter. It is the human way of dealing with things and must naturally be very limited in its scope and efficacy. There is a higher, a diviner way - the way of the Spirit - for the cure of earthly ills, cure and not mere alleviation. That was the secret inspiration behind the message of the Christ and the Buddha.

It is not true that when one's wants are met, one always becomes or remains happy; all paupers are not unhappy, nor are the affluent invariably happy. Happiness is a quality that depends upon something else and comes from elsewhere: it is not directly proportional to material well-being. Unhappiness too is a psychological entity and consists in a special vibration of mind and vitality - and consequently of the physical being - due to a warp in the consciousness itself, in the core of the inner personality. The material conditions serve only to manifest it, maintain or aggravate it, but do not create it - truly they are created by it. That is why the spiritual healers always refer to the bliss of the Spirit as the sole remedy for physical ills even, for disease, misery and death. And the unhappy mortals are always called to turn to the Divine alone in their distress - bhajasva maam.

True charity consists in laying the healing balm upon the sore that lies hidden behind all external miseries which derive from that source and sustainer. And it is in the sole possession of him alone who has found the bliss of the Spirit and dwells in it always. Such a person does not require external accessories for his work of healing and comforting. He need do nothing apparently; he may even appear to be aloof and indifferent. But his presence itself is a healing power: the patient feels it and wonders at the ease and happiness that come into him as if from nowhere. Many physicians have this kind of healing power; indeed without that, a mere medical man, with his pharmacopoeia, is no physician. It may not be well known and recognised, but it is a fact that a good part of the efficacy of medicines lies in the subtle influence, the vital health, that the doctor puts into his medicine or even directly into the body of his patient. And in the case of a spiritual bhishak, the power can be raised to the nth degree. The healer need not even be present at all physically near the patient; his influence can act very well from any distance. It is quite natural and inevitable that it should be so. For the healing power is in the spiritual consciousness, the inalienable bliss of one's status in the Spirit. One becomes identified with each and every object - person or thing - in one's own self, in the true being and substance; and the light and happiness that one possesses there inalienably go out in a spontaneous flow to others who are not really others but integral parts and portions of the same self.

This condition is attained, fully and sovereignly, when there is absolute egolessness, when there is no consciousness of a separate person, the dual consciousness of the helper and the helped, the reformer and the reformed, the doctor and the patient. The normal human sense of values is based upon such a division, upon egohood, mamatvam. A philanthropic man helps others through a sense of sympathy giving rise to a sense of duty and obligation. This feeling of pity, of commiseration is dangerous, for it puts you in a frame of mind that tends to make you look down upon, take a superior air towards your object of pity. You become self-conscious, with the consciousness of your inferior self, that you are helping others, doing good to the world, doing something that raises your value: this sense of personal merit is only another name for vanity. Vanity and ambition are the motive powers that lie behind the philanthropical spirit born of sympathy. To denote a shade of meaning different from what is usually conveyed by the word 'sympathy', modern psychology has found another word - 'empathy'. Sympathy may be said to be the relation or contact between two egos; it is a link or bridge between two separate and independent entities; empathy, on the other hand, means the entering into the very being and consciousness of another, becoming that other one; it is identification and identity.This again is what spiritual consciousness alone can do. Sympathy leads to philanthropy, empathy is the origin of true charity, the spiritual compassion of a Buddha or a Christ. Philanthropy is human, charity (caritas) is divine.

— Nolini Kanta Gupta *

*Collected works of Nolini Kanta Gupta, Vol. 3. Pondicherry; Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, 1970, pp. 187-9.

 

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Editorial

Why do we want a new approach to medicine and health?

Dr. Soumitra Basu

We are witnessing an interesting transition in the perspective of health as there is a perceptible shift from the 'illness-repair' model to a 'wellbeing' model. The shift has primarily occurred in the consciousness of humanity with ramifications at various levels. It started to manifest simultaneously from different angles, viz.

(a) A growing interest in ecological awareness has been building up in the last few decades. It did not gather momentum solely for the love of environment but with the realisation that environment would no longer be able to support human existence if it continued the same old way.

(b) A realisation began to dawn that a balance between nature and human existence needs not only 'action' at the environmental level but also at the human level. This automatically implied that the health of the human species has to be preserved in such a way that its natural strengths, assets and defences are not tampered or destroyed but rather reinforced and rejuvenated.

(c) Questions began to be raised whether the healthcare system had become overzealous. Our body has been invaded with chemicals in an unprecedented way during the last fifty years. We have been infused with all sorts of medicines as well as pollutants in the form of pesticides, make-up materials (creams, sprays, scents), emissions of all sorts of gases around us (vehicular gas, anti-mosquito and anti-insect fumes, cigarette fumes) and what not!

(d) There has been a spontaneous instinct not to take unnecessary medicines. The 'psyche' of the patients as consumers has undergone a qualitative change. There has been a growing interest all over the world to understand the truths embodied in the various complementary and alternative systems of medicine that exist parallel to the mainstream.

(e) With the growing importance of the psychosomatic dimension as evidenced in diseases like essential hypertension, diabetes mellitus, rheumatoid arthritis, bronchial asthma etc., an emphasis on lifestyle management has been consolidating. This phenomenon necessitated techniques like hatha yoga, stress management and relaxation to be included in the armamentarium of mainstream healthcare. Lifestyle management also ushered in awareness of correct diet, importance of exercises, and modification of one's vital urges.

(f) With the emergence of newer diseases like HIV, with more attention given to terminal subjects and with a growing geriatric population, the healthcare system has been forced to acknowledge that existential issues as well as meta-physical questions cannot be de-linked from healthcare delivery.

(g) With the growth of the 'human rights' movement, the urge to live as well as to die with dignity has come to the fore. Legal suits filed for improper treatment have their own implications but have done a positive job in making the healthcare delivery system more transparent and accountable.

(h) Finally, with the statistical rise of depression and an increase in suicides, one is tempted to ask if all our intervention strategies (pharmacological as well as psychological) have reached a saturation point and need a complete overhauling.

The net result of all these allied movements has been a shift from the 'illness-repair' to the 'well-being' model of health. This has led to a healthy appraisal of the truths contained in our traditional archives and in the complementary and alternative systems. This trend has become so important that it cannot be ignored and medical textbooks have started incorporating separate chapters on this issue - an index of 'consumer' demand! The healthcare industry has also taken up this idea and is devising all sorts of 'organic' health products to meet the new market. It is also trying to 'patent' age-old organic products and time-tested herbs - a sort of robbery of our ancient cultures!

A paradigm shift

The shift from the 'illness-repair' model to the 'wellbeing' model of health is again not a final consummation of our knowledge but a transitional stage. Why?

The answer is not merely the fact that the 'wellbeing' concept has begun to turn into another new commercial venture.

The answer is based on Sri Aurobindo's revelation that the human being itself is a 'transitional' being capable of further growth in consciousness. The growth in consciousness can be so dramatic that higher models of man can emerge leading to the eventual emergence of a very high consciousness (the Supramental Consciousness) on earth.

If this endeavour of growth in consciousness is not pursued, then humanity will be faced with a resurgence of the primitive barbarism in man. We know that the individual's subconscious (what Freud termed as 'unconscious') contains unresolved conflicts that can surge up as neuroses as well as relapses of chronic diseases. Similarly the subconscious of the human species contains unresolved barbarian conflicts, internecine rivalries and atavistic traits. All these can surge up and like a tsunami, volcano or earthquake; usurp and destroy all that we have achieved in civilisation and make a mockery of our 'wellbeing' model of health (we are already witnessing the beginnings of this resurgence of barbarism in various incidents around the world - in our killing fields, in our teenage crimes, in our 'modern' cannibalistic acts, in our new diseases like HIV).

The evolutionary growth

Sri Aurobindo envisages an evolutionary growth in consciousness leading to a transformation of the present human structure into newer and higher models. He has previsioned that the newer models of man will bear progressively newer characteristics like:

(a) The organs of the body will become more subtle in their functions.
(b) The body itself will not have the present rigidity.
(c) There will be a better harmonisation between the different parts of the body.
(d) The body will not be easily affected by extraneous forces as is the case now.
(e) Unique functionings ( like the capacity to bear a child without the usual way - a fact towards which genetic engineering is now proceeding) will become possible.
(f) The body will not have the grossness it now has and will be beautiful and luminous.
(g) Such 'evolved' human beings will form qualitatively higher 'gnostic' collectivities.

Naturally, our whole perspective of health has to change if it has to make itself ready for the emergence of higher models of man. The 'well-being model has to be supplemented by a 'growth-in-being' model. Such a 'growing' model of health can be constructed if we attempt to understand the dynamics of health from a consciousness paradigm.

Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga provides us with a deep understanding of the planes of consciousness that are represented both in universal nature and in individual human beings. His framework provides us not only a view of our present system but also heuristic spaces to take evolutionary steps.

It is the need of the hour to prepare ourselves for the new humanity. One of the preparations needed is a flexible, growing model of health that has not stagnated at a mere level of optimal wellbeing. Such a model will give rise to progressively newer concepts of health and will also necessitate the emergence of 'new' medicines in accordance with the demands of the Time-Spirit.

We call this approach 'new' because it serves a new evolutionary paradigm - 'new' because this paradigm has been visioned and fashioned by Sri Aurobindo for the first time in the history of the earth. Prior to him, spirituality was also dissatisfied with the limitations of the human being but gave a solution to be 'liberated from life', not to be born again. Sri Aurobindo is concerned with a 'transformation' of life and hence had to bring in a new paradigm. Our constructs of health have also to 'evolve' to tune into the new aspirations.

— Dr. Soumitra Basu