All That's Gone Is Not Cured

My Class VIII physics teacher was a grouchy old man who was greeted with a collective sigh of despair every time he walked into class, his arms laden with books or the beginnings of a ‘class project’. Ugh!

He didn’t know it then but through all those excruciating lectures, Mr Ramanathan gifted me something I use every day as a practitioner of a holistic system of medicine and as a human being in communion with the people around me and the universe.

Mr Ramanathan gifted me the First Law of Thermodynamics, and I quote – “energy is neither created nor destroyed, it is only transformed from one state to another”.

Homeopathy applies this very same principle to the disease process (note the word “process” as it crops up through this post) – “disease is not necessarily cured but is transformed and reappears as other diseases”. Also remember this sentence as I walk you through this post because it is the common thread that will link all the aspects I am sharing with you today.

What Is Cure?

“Cure” is perhaps one of the most emotive and oft-used words used by the human race. As life gets increasingly complex, our anxieties mount, relationships get strained and deadlines get shorter by the day. For most people, living in fast-paced metros at least, life is a daily tightrope walk, often making us weak and prone to disease.

Count the number of people in your doctor’s waiting room and that is sufficient proof that our complex lives and unhealthy lifestyles have taken us to the brink of ill-health. Who isn’t looking for a cure, or a cure-all, to their myriad problems?

When it comes to sickness and health, conventional medicine defines “cure” as the “absence of disease” or the “disappearance of symptoms”. How many times has your family physician recommended a course of antibiotics and “set you right”?

So when you use bronchodialators, mucolytics and anti-inflammatory drugs to treat a chronically congested chest, you believe “the worst has passed”. When such an attack is caused by the infectious streptococcus pneumoniae bacterium and treatment includes antibiotics, you believe you’ve been cured of pneumonia.

The promise of quick relief – the absence of symptoms – is very seductive, even addicting. After all, who isn’t looking for quick-fix solutions to just about everything? Indeed, allopathic drugs, for all manner of disease, are awfully effective – in suppressing, managing and controlling disease.

But there’s a fundamental flaw here. According to homeopathy, “cure” is not just the absence of symptoms but a “complete reversal of the disease process”. This means the cure is permanent and complete (and contrary to popular misconception, it’s usually very quick).

                                                                            Watch All That’s Gone Is Not Cured (Dur: 48 sec)

So where is all this leading and what has all this to do with the First Law of Thermodynamics? Well, just as night turns to day and day to night, just as the tides ebb and flow, and just as the seasons change according to the laws of nature, the human body too follows a set of specific laws. These laws are an integral part of the innate intelligence or the innate positive and healing dynamic energy that makes us human and makes us whole.

Among other things, these laws govern the bio-energy and vibrational energy in our cells and tissues; the channels through which this energy flows; our biochemistry and neurological functions including cellular memory; and the expression of our genetic code. These laws are logical and universal.

Just like the computer you’re using to read this post is a solid object but also an energy system (and I don’t mean the power source that keeps it going) at the atomic and molecular level, the human body is a system of vibrational energy.

Contrary to what conventional medicine may lead you to believe – that we are prone to ill-health and that bacteria and viruses are waiting to attack us – the body’s innate intelligence powers us towards good health. Let me put it this way. Life has a natural tendency to maintain the integrity and harmony of the human psyche and body and keep both working together in joyous unison. In other words, we are prone to naturally and automatically heal.

Have you ever wondered why a bud blooms? It’s not just the soil, water and sunlight but the life force within it that compels it to bloom. The life force, by definition and by default, is a positive and dynamic energy that tends towards survival, regeneration, self-preservation and healing.

Sickness is a disturbance in the life force or this vibrational energy. You take ill when your body’s natural channels of energy are blocked. When this happens (the reasons could be purely physical or psychological or both), every other channel in the body – the flow of water, blood and lymph, the functioning of neurotransmitters, your endocrine organs and neural activity – begins to function in a distorted sort of way. This is what makes you sick and weak and the body goes into defensive mode – a reflex-like, natural tendency.

Each individual has a unique way of experiencing sickness at the biochemical and energy levels. And it is this pattern of disturbance and defensiveness that homeopathy calls a “miasm”.

Disease – or your miasm – is therefore your body’s way of adapting to forces that thwart the life force. It is a signal that something is amiss and in serious cases, terribly amiss. Chronic illnesses typify this process as they are a manifestation of a defensive and destructive, self-defeating cycle. Still, burdened beyond being able to fend off destructive influences, it is the only way the body knows how to preserve the integrity and unity of the human entity. It is a cycle of repeated attempt leading to repeated failure leading to repeated attempt and so on…

What this basically means is that your body is trying to self-heal but cannot and your life force gets trapped in a self-defeating loop. Chronic illnesses are a failed attempt at healing.

Law Of Suppression

So what happens when disease – renal failure, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, peptic ulcers, hepatitis, cardiac arrhythmia – is so generously treated by an allopathic specialist? The result is that the thwarted life force and energy raging through your body now dodges steroids, painkillers, diuretics and the like and must find other channels of expression as it is inexorably propelled forward. The energy thus changes direction, goes deeper into your organs and systems and further disguises itself. Ergo! When one ailment disappears, another one shows up! This process could take weeks, months or even years.

The Predictive School of Homeopathy, with whom I have bee associated, reveals just how the disease process can be meticulously traced, step by painful step. This is the Law of Suppression of Disease and is illustrated in the chart below. Since the Law of Suppression is universal, it can be applied to every individual to predict the course of disease in that individual.

                                                                                                         Chart of Suppression

To make this simpler to understand, let me give you an example. For instance, when you use an ointment to treat a skin disease, the rash may disappear but you’re likely to develop a cough and cold. When you regularly take antacids to kill your acid reflux and ease diarrhoea, aches and pains in your joints, neck or back (spondylosis) mysteriously show up. When you use painkillers to treat recurring backaches or an ache in your shoulder, you’re likely to develop hypertension or cardiac problems.

According to the Predictive School of Homeopathy, when repeatedly suppressed (by allopathic drugs or otherwise), the disease process progresses through seven layers of suppression. Take a closer look at the organs responsible for the various ailments mentioned in the Chart of Suppression. In ascending order, they include the skin, respiratory tract, gastro-intestinal tract, joints, blood vessels, vital organs like the heart, reproductive system, nervous system and, finally, your very genetic template.

The seventh and final layer or stage of disease is the genetic level. A disturbance at this level is characterised by seriously destructive diseases such as auto-immune syndromes such as HIV, cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Can homeopathy reverse these serious, debilitating and crippling conditions? For sure!

The Chart of Suppression can be used as a compass to gauge the direction the disease process has taken in an individual, and as the homeopathic remedy reverses the disease process, the direction of cure as well. It is like a map that plots the disease and the organs and systems it has travelled through as the disturbed life force raged across the body, going deeper every time.

The most effective suppressants are our own attitudes and feelings, our own denial of disease, our own defense and coping mechanisms – and allopathic drugs.

I’ve worked with countless patients over the last two decades and the Chart of Suppression been a beacon though every single case. Remember Mrs Sushma Karnik, who we met in our third post? Beset by several chronic ailments, she was the school teacher who gave up all that was familiar to her to move from Mumbai to a small town when she got married.

Mrs Karnik had suffered for 30 years and was on strong allopathic drugs which she had taken for many years before she came to my clinic. These drugs had suppressed her symptoms, consistently pushing the disease process further inwards.

                                                              Watch Mrs Karnik’s Layers of Suppression (Dur: 2.10)

She had first developed a thick eczema (Layer1), followed by asthma (Layer2), which was followed by arthritis (Layer3). The steroids she had been taking to treat her eczema, did not really cure it and the problem kept flaring from time to time till it formed a virtual second skin over parts of her body.

More allopathic drugs and steroids led to Mrs Karnik developing varicose veins (Layer4), which was followed by hypothyroidism (Layer5). Underproduction of thyroxin made her bloat, her hair turn dry and brittle and it made her very dull and lethargic. Finally, Mrs Karnik grew depressed and lost interest in living (Layer6).

So where does all this leave us? In my next post, we’ll take a look at the path to Healing and the Healing Crisis.

PS: Just a reminder to download and save your Chart of Suppression.