What is health?

Health is defined as the capacity to "work and love", according to Sigmund Freud. The word love needs elaboration here. The original idea is from Greek language. There are three words for love in that language, Eros-carnal love, Phil which means affinity, and finally, agapi, (agape) which denotes that esoteric state of universal compassion. When man could have the capacity to be compassionate, his health automatically improves. In that sense spirituality assumes a new role. Spirituality is simply caring and sharing, being human and humane (humanism).

The word humanism is ambiguous and needs clarification lest the reader should mistake it for various other related words like humanity etc. It is a learned expression coined by a German historian in the year 1808 AD. Pierre de Nolhac, the author of Petrarch and Humanism claims to have introduced this word in French University in 1886 in the course of his lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes.  Braudel claims that by the year 1930 the following different types were known in Europe. New humanism, Christian humanism, pure humanism, technical humanism, scientific humanism as also humanism of Karl Marx and Maxim Gorky. I introduced the word Medical Humanism in my article in the Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in the year 1995 and later in my inaugural lecture to the medical students at the White Memorial Centre in Los Angels in 1996

Humanism could be almost synonymous with spirituality and is against exclusive submission to God; against a wholly materialistic worldview, against anything that neglects humanity and against anything that denigrates human nature. Sociologist Edgar Morin left the Communist Party and was asked why he did so? His answer was all revealing. “Marxism, my friend, has studied economics and the social class. That’s marvelous, my friend. But it forgot to study humanity.” The same could be said of today’s science and religion. They have studied everything that needs to be studied in their respective fields but forgot to study humanity and its needs. That is why humanism is the need of the hour.

The world is standing at the threshold of self-destruction, by the mindless search for the materialistic utopia through scientific and religious route. If humanism does not make its forceful impact on both those groups the future is very bleak, indeed.  Let the warmongers and the materialistic scientists listen to the following advice of the Rg. Veda, which proclaimed that only truth and ethics of the highest order could save this world from annihilation!                    

Spirituality does not neglect scientific research but, by no means, gives it higher priority than human needs. Nanotechnology is not as important as the Giga problems of mankind like starvation, poverty, deprivation, illiteracy, disease and death! Similarly, spirituality does not exclude God, but holds human needs above the ritualistic tenets of religion. Humanism, in its true sense, is spirituality in essence. The future of humankind depends on a judicious synthesis of both these for the common good. Science alone, without a touch of spirituality, would sink man into the valley of moral nihilism, while spirituality without reason would take man down the valley of illogicalism.  Long live mankind using both these sciences in the right quantity for doing good.

Let us examine the human physiology. Every human cell is very keen to join another cell and help, when needed. Interestingly, all living cells of other species also would like to join one another even in other species. But for the immune systems that reject foreign cells, we would all have become one large mass of cells-a syncitium. When we develop our mental attitude to help one another in society our body physiology gets a boost to keep the body very healthy. This is the long and short of human healing, thanks to the concept of spirituality. Doctors, drugs or, surgery do not and, can not heal or, even, cure. Healing is done by the human immune system.

When a doctor does any surgery, s/he could cut and suture but the healing of the sutured structure has to do be done by the body's own immune system. That is the truth of the saying that "doctor could only dress the wound but God heals it." Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, wrote years ago:"cue rarely, comfort mostly but console always." Consoling is the essence of medical consultation where a human being who is ill or imagines to be ill comes to seek the advice of another human being in whom the former has confidence. This confidence leads to healing, which science now understands as the expectation effect or EE. Same concept was being described as the placebo effect. Spirituality, therefore, is at the centre of all healing that takes place in all systems of medicine all over the world. Each one of us will have some cancer or the other getting started in our bodies almost daily! Biologically, cancer is only a cell of the human body that outlives its life span; every cell in the human body, of which there are 1014 in all, have their life span fixed. At the end of that period usually a message comes to each cell from the suicide gene asking the mature cell to die naturally (apoptosis). If for any reason a cell fails to get this message at the appointed time, the cell outlives and then mutates itself to become a rogue cell. Each rogue cell is a potential future cancer. However, a very small microscopic minority of us get to have clinical cancer. The reason is not far to seek. One of the important reasons that encourage those rogue cells to blossom into a deadly cancer is hatred and depression in the mind. The most powerful discouragement for the cell from blossoming into a cancer is the happy mind filled with universal love, an example of spirituality in the true sense of the word-sharing and caring. Bad food, full of fat, is another stimulant for cancer growth.