I had the privilege to hear Dr. Andrew Weil speak at a hippie gathering at a hot spring in 1977. He had just graduated as a doctor, and was famously the author of From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs.
Enough said.
That was then, this is now.
Since those beginnings, he has founded the Center for Integrative Medicine at University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. He has been attacked by those who discount alternative therapies as “unproven.”*
Nevertheless, like Naturopathic Physicians, Dr. Weil treats patients, not diseases. He has accepted the challenge to remake the health care system into one that is integrative.
Daunting? Yes.
Urgent and necessary? Also, yes.
This is his compelling argument from the book Ecological Medicine:
If there is any chance of saving ourselves and the planet, it can only come from a change in consciousness.
Although the root meaning of the word “medicine” is “thoughtful action to establish order,” the word has become a synonym for physical remedies, especially drugs.
This is in contrast to Native American usage, which emphasizes thoughtful action in the nonmaterial realm. Medicine men and medicine women are shamans, trained to mediate between the visible world of effects and the invisible world of causes. When Native Americans talk of “medicine” they are using the word in a much broader sense than most of us do.
We desperately need that larger kind of medicine if we are to avoid the catastrophe that looms before us.
(from the Introduction)
Dr. Weil goes on with his promotion of a paradigm shift and his dedication to making it.
He likens medicine in our culture to religion in other cultures.
One of the reasons that I feel compelled to do the work I do is that I believe medicine is a big piece of the logjam that keeps the world going in the destructive direction it has been going.
One could make a convincing case, and some people have actually done it, that medicine in our culture serves the same function as religion in traditional societies. Medical doctors are the priests of technological society. People invest the same kind of belief in doctors that they do in shamans in shamanistic cultures.
In a shamanistic culture, if an event happens that’s never happened before, like an eclipse of the sun, people go to the shaman to ask for an interpretation as to whether it is good or evil. In our society, if something new comes along, we go to medical scientists and ask if it is good or bad for our health. It’s the same process.
I pause and reflect on what is happening now that over and over is being called unprecedented – it has never happened before.
Going to the doctor to ask for an interpretation whether is is good or evil gives different answers, depending on if the doctor is following the guidelines of the AMA, CDC, WHO or the natural principles of Naturopathic and Integrative Physicians. Those answers reveal the paradigm under which each is operating.
Which paradigm – philosophy or belief system – most serves healing?
Dr. Weil distinguishes between the visible and invisible worlds, highlighting the problem.
The problem is that medical doctors today are unable to serve the function of priests and shamans because of their limiting philosophy and belief system.
The essential function of a priest or shaman is to serve as an intermediary between the visible world and the invisible world, between the world of matter and the world of spirit. If you don’t believe in an invisible world, if you don’t believe that there is anything other than matter, how can you possibly serve that function?
Medical doctors are continuously taught that things can’t get better, that things can’t heal, and they give this belief back to patients. In my experience, shamans who serve as healers do much better.
What could the doctors be doing better as healers? Perhaps they can learn from the shamans.
Regardless of what methods they use—from sucking out invisible darts to giving people hallucinogenic plants—they are master psychotherapists. Shamans are especially good at taking the belief that people project onto them and reflecting it back in the service of healing.
That’s what doctors should be doing.
All this belief is being projected onto them, but too often what doctors send back is a negative message. “You can’t get better. You’ll have to live with it. There’s nothing we can do for you. You’ll have to have surgery. You’ll have to take this drug for the rest of your life.”
The call to action becomes urgent because he sees it as key to healing our society. Seeing healing as a natural process and embracing nature is the road to salvation, according to Dr. Weil.
This has to change. If we could get change in medicine—because it is so central in our society—I believe we would see positive change in many other areas of our culture.
The medical profession has painted itself into a corner by preferring treatments that are so dangerous, so expensive, and so reliant on technology. It has also separated itself from nature.
Doctors fail to see that healing is fundamentally a natural process. They are unable to use the power that people give them in the service of healing.
We can change this situation.
( from Chapter 15: Healing, Nature, and Modern Medicine)
excerpted from
Ecological Medicine Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves
Edited by Kenny Ausubel with J. P. Harpignies
Copyright © 2004 Collective Heritage Institute
* The irony is that according to medicine’s own standards, 85% of prescribed standard medical treatments lack scientific validation.
Please comment on what you can do to change this situation.
