The physician is not just a person who is responsible for the cure of an illness. That may be his self-chosen or Nature -appointed work. He is also a conscious soul struggling to liberate himself out of the narrow and limiting bounds of the surface consciousness and outward life.
In a wider sense, the contact of a patient and physician is also the contact of two human beings with a natural and inevitable interchange. The illness only serves as an occasion to bring together two people in a constant evolutionary movement that Nature pursues in the group and individual. The patient brings to a physician not only his illness, but also his hopes and fears, attitudes and beliefs, the unique and peculiar turns of his thought-patterns, even his aims, motives and self-identification. Above all, he carries his own unique claim to live and enjoy a healthy life. Understanding these inner intricacies is necessary if we want to know the hidden elements of the psychology that supports illness. And to understand these, one has to understand the whole person, not merely through cold intellectual analysis, but by a process of empathy, universal goodwill, compassion and identification with the problem itself.
All this means that the physician who helps the cure has to equally confront his whole personality with its peculiarities that are brought forward in the process of this interchange. That means a double labour. The physician has to consciously work not only upon the patient, but also himself. He/she is not a flawless being. He/she is human like anyone else. The only difference perhaps would be that he/she is expected to be much more conscious and sincere in understanding and handling the hidden side of human nature than the patient. Truly, the extent to which one can successfully manipulate the energies of Nature in another person is the degree to which one can manipulate them in himself. In the integral view of life and health, one has to be able to see and live the conscious experience of the fact that all Nature is essentially one and universal. The sharp distinctions the ego raises between ‘my’ nature and another’s are only a contrivance or convenient device created for certain practical purposes. Whatever part of anyone is thrown up frontally and projected onto the surface is supported by a whole universal rhythm, like two separate waves being supported by the one ocean force. The difference lies only in the time-space dimension of the manifested universe and our Self-experience. In other words, if a physician can widen himself (by identification with the inner depth where the false sense of separation evaporates), he can begin to work out the ‘integral cure‘ without always necessarily coming into regular close contact. The outer contact serves only as an immediate pretext to enter into the inner being. The same can be achieved through a photograph or mental image and perhaps even a thought that has liberated itself from the narrow limits of surface and phenomenal life.
To arrive at this state of true identification, one has to, as a first preliminary step, detach oneself from the phenomenal surface appearance which is like a crust that blinds our total vision to hidden areas of our nature. A calm equality, an unperturbed wideness, a constant goodwill for the best to happen in all, a genuine aspiration for the elimination of suffering in all forms, and a psychic self-identification which gives an unerring discrimination and intuitive understanding, these are some of the main conditions for this liberation and universalisation. Only in the measure that he can harmonise ‘his integral personality’, can he be useful for the integral healing of another’s nature.
So, each ‘illness’ serves as an occasion for the growth of both participants. It is an occasion for the change in everything that is still dark, tortuous, unconscious and ignorant in us towards light and awareness, strength and simplicity and harmony. It provides a basis to straighten out the crooked and twisted elements, to open all the knots that limit and incapacitate us. Of course this can happen not only through illness, but through life itself. We must not forget that symptoms are only an outer manifestation or unmasking of a deeper malady. The possibility and source of suffering is hidden and latent in all humanity and waits for its hour. It can spring a surprise on anyone at any time. It may even be that the illness serves as a catharsis from an imbalance in one’s inner life. A physician who opens more and more to the inner life becomes acutely aware of the fact that things are not what they seem, and that appearances (even of health) can be very deceptive. It may even become difficult for the physician at times to draw a line to clearly mentally demarcate his field of work. For as his field of experience grows, the field of work increases too. The strict regulations imposed by commercial motives and legal formalities become difficult to apply and hold a bar to the expanding inner consciousness. All that enters the widening horizon has to be illumined and made conscious. All that pours in from the sea of universal forces has to be observed, patiently worked upon, sometimes again and again, until it is transmuted and set right. The frontal appearances and distinctions become less important, only necessary for the relational aspect of the play and clash of forces. But they can no longer limit the work which indeed has to carry on round the clock.
This challenge content, the ceaseless work upon suffering matter is the sacred task entrusted to the physician, who aspires for the elimination of suffering (which is falsehood) in all forms. Courage and faith as a warrior of Truth, knowledge and illumination as a disciple of Truth and service and love for the Supreme healer of all, the Master-physician, all these comprise the inner make-up of a physician. Above all, he needs a love and will that is unflinching and patiently persevering, happy to labour even in the darkest hell of the human state which gives him the inner capacity to rise to the heights of his own nature. For only he who has scaled the peaks of glory and bathed in their splendour can enter into the abyss to release the light and delight concealed in the dumb, dark depths of suffering and struggling earth.
