by Dr. Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman and Dr. Robert Ullman
These three concepts, homeopathy, healing and enlightenment are very dear to our hearts. Having just returned from India, a land in many ways devoted to these very ideas, we are inspired to share with you a few thoughts on their interconnection. Having been involved with homeopathy, healing, and spiritual practice for over twenty years, it is good for us, from time to time, to step back from our own assumptions and understand just what we are doing in our healing and spiritual work.
Let’s start with some definitions, just so we know what we are talking about. Suffering is pain, imbalance and loss of function of body, mind and spirit. Healing is the relief of suffering. Homeopathy is the application of natural substances according to the law of similars in order to bring about healing. Enlightenment is the realization of universal oneness, resulting in the transcendence of all personal suffering by the transformation of individual consciousness into cosmic or Divine consciousness.
All of these concepts have to do with the relief or transcendence of suffering and the restoration of balance and happiness. Homeopathy is one form, among many others, of healing. Healing is a process that relieves suffering and that is not necessary for, though it may be helpful to. enlightenment. Enlightenment may or may not result in physical, or even mental, healing, but it does result in the transcendence of suffering on the personal level.
A basic question that arises in the process considering suffering and healing is “Who is suffering?” The answer to this question is both simple and complex. If you ask a person in pain, “Who is suffering?,” you are likely to get the response, “I am.” This is the personal, egoic point of view of a person attached to and identified with his or her body. Investigation of the “I” in “I am” leads to the inquiry, “Who am I ?”, the basic practice advised by Ramana Maharshi, an enlightened twentieth-century sage who died in 1950. Ramana advised people who were suffering to inquire into who it was that was suffering, in order to acquire the point of view that transcends the body, personal consciousness and death.
Ramana had an experience at 16 of a state very much like death. He later told his disciples about it, saying, “One day I just felt ‘I am going to die’ and began thinking what to do about it… The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: ‘Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies,” and at once dramatized the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff as though rigor mortis had set in and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed… ‘Well then,’ I said to myself. ‘This body is dead… but with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body I? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the “I” within me, apart from it. So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless Spirit.’”
At first glance, to a homeopath, Ramana was probably in an Aconite state. But it’s a good thing no one was there to treat him, because the effect of that experience with apparent death led directly to his enlightenment and to years of spiritual service to others.
Ramana’s actual death was many years later from a sarcoma of the left arm. Though he was enlightened and had transcended his personal pain and suffering, with no fear of death, he was not healed in the bodily sense and “he” died, as a physical person. When asked whether he would be with his devotees after death, he replied, “Where could I go?”
Could homeopathy, acupuncture, diet, herbs or conventional medicine have healed Ramana Maharshi? Perhaps, in the physical sense, a therapy could have been applied to his body that would have worked, ie. removed the cancer and restored his bodily function. And indeed, doctors did try, homeopathic and allopathic. But Ramana was not identified with his body at all, so his bodily pain and deformity was not suffering in the usual sense of the word.
A nineteenth century saint, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, was afflicted with throat cancer toward the end of his life. in the book Sri Ramakrishna, A Prophet for the New Age, by Richard Schiffman, the story of his fatal illness is recounted. Sri Ramakrishna was treated free of charge by Dr. Mahendra Lal Sarkar, a noted Calcutta homeopath, in the 1890s. Even though Dr. Sarkar was not a believer in religion, he was captivated by the saint and spent long hours neglecting his other patients, while listening to Ramakrishna’s teachings. Although the doctor prescribed homeopathic medicines and severe dietary restrictions for Ramakrishna’s healing, the saint’s body was in excruciating pain for months, and the cancer ravaged his physical shell. Through it all, Ramakrishna remained cheerful, and served his many devotees selflessly to the best of his ability. His doctor advised him not to talk and to avoid his usual samadhis (trancelike absorptions in the Divine) because it caused an “irritating rush of blood to the throat”. Ramakrishna could not avoid them, however, because the mere mention of the goddess Kali, his chosen deity, would send him into spiritual ecstasy. In samadhi, the doctor noted, Ramakrishna’s vital signs would completely cease, yet he did not perish during his frequent, blissful trances.
When a learned man once asked why, being a great soul, he didn’t try cure himself, Ramakrishna replied, “You call yourself a pundit and you can make such a suggestion! This mind has been given to God, once and for all. How can I withdraw it from Him, and make it dwell on this worthless body?”
When further pressed by his close disciples to please heal himself, for their sake, if not for his, he responded, “Do you think I am suffering like this because I want to? Of course I want to get better! But it all depends on the Mother (Kali)!” “Then pray to Her,” his close disciple Naren (Swami Vivekananda) urged. “That’s easy for you to say, but I cannot form the words,” Ramakrishna replied. A Later he said, “Let the body and its sufferings busy themselves with one another. Thou, my mind, remain in bliss. Now, I, and my Divine Mother are one forever.” Sri Ramakrishna was indeed soon united with his Mother, as his body passed away within days.
Ramana and Sri Ramakrishna are examples of how the enlightened person is able deal with bodily suffering by disengaging from the body and becoming absorbed in the Divine. But their experiences beg the questions of “Who suffers?”, “Who dies?” and “What is healing?” Apparently, suffering depends to a great deal on one’s identification with physical existence and whether healing happens or not is part of the Divine plan. For ordinary mortals such as ourselves, however, the body seems all too real, pain also seems real and suffering is a call to action to find a remedy before death relieves the suffering once and for all (at least for the current lifetime). Bliss, self-realization and divine absorption are a possibility for the ordinary person, but hardly commonplace. Nevertheless, to understand the process of healing or not from the point of view of the enlightened, can often inspire us and lighten the burden of our suffering by expanding our awareness beyond our usually self-centered vantage point.
For those not yet absorbed in bliss, homeopathy attempts to find an external agent to stimulate the naturally occurring healing processes of the body-mind in order to relieve whatever suffering is possible to alleviate. We know from experience and experiment that the body has a tendency to be self-healing. Sometimes healing occurs with no outside aid or interference whatsoever, or is stimulated by means of a mental or spiritual process. At other times, the healing process seems to be stuck and healing fails or remains incomplete. Chronic disability or death occurs when the entropy of the body is greater than the forces trying to hold it together and heal it. We all experience this somewhat in the process of aging. Systems falter, cells, tissues, and organs wear out or get cancer. Even saints, like Ramakrishna, Ramana or more recently, Mother Teresa, get old and die. It is part of the natural cycle of birth, growth, decay and death that all living things go through.
In the midst of this natural cycle, we human beings try our best to stave off the inevitable and to remain relatively comfortable in the meantime. We breathe and eat, sweat and excrete, love and hate, recreate and procreate, and try to be useful, helpful and kind to others before we die, or selfish, to the last breath. If we are fortunate, we have the opportunity to rise above our usual, mundane life and glimpse or realize the Divine in all things.
How can homeopathy and other healing methods help in this process? In many ways. Recently, we were on a train in India from Haridwar to Delhi. A sixtyish Canadian man in the row in front of us passed out. His companion, a nurse, slapped his face and called his name to revive him, but without results. It wasn’t clear what was wrong with him, but we offered homeopathic help based on our observations. He was given a dose of Carbo vegetabilis 30 C and he instantly came around and said he was OK, though still a bit groggy and wanting to be fanned. He unfortunately had to endure an hour’s worth further attention and ministrations of staring passengers and a host of train officials and doctors before they would let the train go on, but we could see that the dose of homeopathic medicine had made the difference immediately.
Now perhaps he would have been all right anyway. It turned out he had just been dehydrated due to diarrhea and had succumbed to the heat in the compartment. It was hard to tell. But having the right remedy at the right time definitely had a positive impact on his health and well-being. Did it save his life? Perhaps. Did it enlighten him? Nope. Did it improve his temporary quality of life? Most definitely. Was it worth doing? You bet!
In our experience with homeopathy and other forms of healing, we find them mostly worth doing, usually helpful and sometimes completely life-changing, though not usually spiritually enlightening. We have the most experience with homeopathy as a form of healing, so we can gain some understanding from exploring its parameters.
It still amazes us that homeopathy does so much while apparently giving so little input to the body-mind. Just a little, highly diluted sugar stuff under the tongue, and voila! Not just any sugar stuff, mind you. It has to be the right stuff, which is what makes homeopathy so frustrating and so much fun at the same time. Just a tiny bit of some weird, obscure substance from nature and you’re back in the saddle again. It’s probably too good to be true, but it’s true nonetheless.
What is homeopathy able to do at its best and most effective? Can it relieve suffering? Definitely. Can it help you go beyond the identification with mind and body that is at the root of suffering? It can certainly provide more freedom in that direction. Can it take you all the way to enlightenment? We haven’t seen that, even with remedies that seemed to have remarkably transforming effects on people’s lives. The most we can say is that homeopathy is able to clear the decks and free a person up for the kind of spiritual practice that often is associated with enlightenment, at least in the lives of saints. (As you might have been wondering, one of the things we did in India was to meet and research the lives of enlightened people for a forthcoming book we are writing called Absolutely Free: The Enlightenment Experiences of Mystics, Saints and Sages.) Unfortunately we don’t know of anyone who was treated with homeopathy first and subsequently went on to become enlightened as a result. If anyone out there knows of anyone for whom homeopathy was a useful or necessary step in their enlightenment process, please let us know.
Homeopathic medicines do seem to be responsible for or at least associated with people significantly changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions, as well as deeply healing their physical illnesses. No belief in homeopathy seems to be required. When you give the correct homeopathic medicine, the process seems to happen all by itself, as though the body just knows how to make use of the medicine without any thinking needing to be done.
But most healing is like that, somewhat automatic. The body knows what to do and does it, without a lot of premeditation. That’s a good thing, really, because most of us wouldn’t know the first thing about activating a T-cell to produce antibodies to fight an infection or healing an ulcer, not to mention the routine stuff like exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide or creating electrical impulses to cause our heart to beat.
In the end, life, death, suffering, healing, homeopathy and enlightenment are all somewhat mysterious and automatic. Perhaps one day we will perfectly understand the workings of all of it, so that what once seemed like magic will be matter of fact. We will understand the causes of all the various kinds of suffering and how to bring about healing most effectively. Maybe after enlightenment, we will lose the desire to figure it all out. Perhaps we’ll find out, like Ramana and Ramakrishna did, that we have all simply been playing our roles in the Divine comedy, and it has all been working out just the way God wanted it to. And that would be just fine, wouldn’t it?
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