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BR74S8 - Alternative medicine and holism
Brockwood Park, UK - 17 October 1974
Seminar 8



0:01 This is J. Krishnamurti’s 8th seminar with scientists at Brockwood Park, 1974.
0:13 David Bohm: We’ll start with Dr Elizabeth Ferris. Perhaps we’ll try to make this meeting a short one – relatively so – since we’ve had another meeting in between.
0:28 Elizabeth Ferris: I shall start also, as many people have, from a slightly autobiographical standpoint and in that way I’ll get into the crux of what I want to say.
0:45 The question I ask myself is: what made me, having qualified and registered as a medical doctor, quit orthodox practice and turn to the apparently rather esoteric field of what I call alternative medicine?
1:00 Well, first of all, what is alternative medicine? In simple terms, it’s any alternative to orthodox conventional practice, in terms of methods of diagnosing and treating people.
1:12 However, at a much more fundamental level, as will become clear in the course of my short talk, it infers a different approach from the orthodox to the concepts of health and of the nature of disease.
1:27 When I was at medical school, I experienced a deep dissatisfaction with the way in which medicine was practised, in the way in which people were treated.
1:36 In fact, people were not treated; bits and pieces of them were dealt with.
1:43 It was fragmented. We were taught to regard the body as a collection of systems and parts but rarely, if ever, were the parts related to the whole.
1:52 I’m talking now mostly about clinical medicine; pre-clinical medicine I found much more enjoyable: one did get a certain overview of the normal functioning of the body whilst learning physiology, biochemistry and anatomy all at the same time.
2:08 But in clinical medicine, we seem more concerned with doing plumbing jobs. Patients were not people, they were cases. A patient would be wheeled in to a student meeting and the doctor would introduce him or her as a case: a case of Hodgkin’s disease, say, or a case of mesenteric tuberculosis, rather as one might introduce a case of oranges or such like.
2:31 We would then be invited to palpate the afflicted part and, with a cursory glance at the patient’s face – if they were lucky – students’ cold hands kneaded the abdomen or any other part that was afflicted.
2:44 Very little notice was taken of the patient’s head or face, unless we were in the ear, nose and throat clinic and then only the orifices were of interest.
2:54 I say sincerely, that I am not caricaturing what happened. I found it very upsetting, so I was distressed at what the patient must have felt about it.
3:05 ‘What was lacking?’ I ask myself. The object of medical treatment were bits and pieces of people, not the person him or herself. It was such a mechanical approach to the body and to the person. This fragmentation seemed paradoxical because, as David Bohm has pointed out in his paper, Fragmentation and Wholeness, the word health has the same root as the Anglo-Saxon word hale which means whole — that is, to be healthy is to be whole.
3:35 This idea is what is encapsulated in the Hebrew greeting, ‘Shalom.’ But it seems in medicine that health is not the issue.
3:44 It was rarely mentioned during my training. Disease was the issue, or rather diseases. Classification of diseases was one of our main areas of study. All our lectures were divided up according to classes of diseases: lung diseases, heart diseases, liver diseases.
4:02 There was a time when this sort of view bore fruit, in terms of understanding disease. In Pasteur’s time in the second half of the 19th century, people were dying primarily of infectious diseases: tuberculosis, pneumonia, syphilis, cholera, etc., so it is not surprising that his germ theory of disease was embraced so enthusiastically and wholeheartedly, and once contagion was discovered sterile surgical procedures became a reality which was also a huge step forward to lessening suffering and death.
4:36 At the same time as Pasteur there was a voice in France: Claude Bernard, the physiologist, who in essence introduced the concept of the whole man in terms of his view of the proper physiological functioning.
4:50 Bernard introduced the idea of homeostasis of the internal milieu and its constant maintenance in the healthy state.
4:58 He opposed Pasteur in maintaining that the important thing in disease was not the germ but the terrain in which the germ flourished.
5:07 After a lifetime of violent disagreement between the two men, Pasteur, on his death bed came round to Bernard’s point of view and said words to the effect that, ‘Bernard was right, the terrain is the important thing, not the bacteria or the germs.’ But that was too late.
5:23 No-one heard him. Medicine had become very tied up with Pasteur’s germ theory of disease, so much so that it permeated the whole context of medicine.
5:33 Germs were things that were primarily outside of a person, and the diseases caused by these germs were something separate from that person, something added on and therefore to be attacked and got rid of, like an enemy.
5:45 This view became so entrenched that all diseases, whether germ based or not, came to be thought of in this way and the patient population regarded this disease as something which is not part of themselves, something visited on them and to be got rid of.
6:01 Thus the notion of health and disease perpetrated by the germ theory became an essential part of the background context in which sick people expected to be treated and cured, so the whole system perpetrated itself.
6:16 I want to go back to personalising the story again. This approach made me very uneasy. It seems to work quite well in acute conditions, especially in those areas where technology has contributed to a huge degree, as in the intensive care units where the prime question is how to prevent death.
6:39 But it’s seen that for chronic, long-standing, non-fatal conditions, it was totally inadequate. Medicine, the practice of medicine, cannot cope adequately with chronic illness and even when these illness[es] are treated, it’s generally symptomatic treatment.
6:55 For instance, the drug used in arthritis relieve the pain and, to some extent, the inflammation but only whilst the drugs are actually present in the body, so they have to be taken continually to gain relief and then the side-effects can become a serious problem.
7:10 The bane of a GP’s existence is the patient who complains of not feeling well, a bit under the weather, tired, lethargic, etc., but after a battery of tests, nothing wrong is detected.
7:23 Of course, psychiatrists are an exception, in that they do attempt to get to the bottom of a person’s problem and therefore to treat the whole patient, but the fact that their discipline is separate from the other disciplines in medicine is an indication of the fragmentation they too are up against.
7:40 The general picture, however, was that medicine is not suited to deal with people but rather to with bits and pieces of people — medicine as it’s now practised, at least.
7:51 This brings me to two themes raised at this conference: one is – the one that’s come up time again and again this morning – of compassion.
8:03 But I ask you, how can we be compassionate to a bit of a person? For instance, it’s difficult to have compassion for an elbow or a knee unless you relate it to the person whose elbow or knee it is.
8:16 To be compassionate in medicine, a holistic view of humankind and his condition or state of health, is essential.
8:23 The second theme is the one of models. I do not have a model myself, but many models have been suggested here this week: Karl Pribram’s model, Julian’s model, Monty’s model of dreams and all the others, and whatever the weaknesses of these models, they are holistic models, in that they are models for the whole person.
8:49 This new or fresh view of man – new in the West, at least – has very exciting consequences in terms of health.
8:57 We can meaningfully talk of stress as a disease, not just as the cause of various diseases, and therefore we can now focus on the treatment, if you like, of stress itself, of stressful conditions, not just on the various disease manifestations of stress such as heart disease.
9:17 Since this has become apparent, people have begun to talk about such things as meditation and biofeedback as methods of treating stress.
9:26 This necessarily involves the whole person and their way of coping with their environment.
9:33 What I suggest is that health and disease are not separate states but rather varying states on the same spectrum or continuum.
9:42 And I want to put this question: if health is wholeness, then can we say that disease or dis-ease is in some way unwholeness or non-wholeness?
9:53 I think this is a point for the discussion after this talk.
10:00 What I have found, happily, is that the holistic approach which has been emphasised time and again at this conference is exactly the approach that I think medicine must embrace if we are to come to grips with the ills that are plaguing humankind today.
10:15 DB: Thank you. Does anybody want to begin the discussion? Bryan. Bryan Goodwin: Could I ask in what way you feel that acupuncture is a holistic approach to the organism and whether it conveys to you any particular model of how the organism functions?
10:44 EF: The whole premise behind acupuncture, as I understand it to have been devised and to be used in the East, is as a holistic kind of approach to the person, in that some people use acupuncture to treat symptoms, the same as we use drugs to treat symptoms, but that is not how it should be used.
11:14 In fact, the kind of things one does in acupuncture should be done in orthodox medicine and some very expert doctors with a certain kind of sympathetic approach do do this and that is, when you look at a patient you spend a lot of time observing them.
11:34 You observe certain things about hues as opposed to colour of their face, the way they speak, what words they use, the tone of voice, their posture, what they do, how they look when they walk in the room, and you go in... and what they eat and all this sort of thing.
11:54 Now, mostly, at least in this country, doctors don’t have time to do that kind of thing, even if they were taught to do it which we’re not.
12:04 So, in that sense, one is approaching the patient in a much more holistic way.
12:11 As far as any model that acupuncture can suggest to me, I find that a very difficult question because I’m sort of standing with a foot in both camps, in the sense that, if acupuncture works – which it does, I mean I’ve accepted that it works – then the question is how does it work?
12:32 Now, the only laws I have to go on when I decide where to put my needles at this stage, are the classical Chinese ones.
12:40 I do believe the Chinese were amazing observers and the problem is that their observations, I understand it, have become overlaid or integrated with the whole of their Eastern philosophy, which in no way can we subsume or explain in scientific terms.
13:05 However, when they talk about energy and energy being blocked and this is the cause of certain problems, then I have to hedge my bets because they may be talking about something which we don’t yet know about.
13:20 But if that’s the case, then I’m sure that at some point we will get to know about it and we will be able to, in some sense – measure is not the right word – but use that concept.
13:36 BG: Do you feel, for example, that the explanation that is sometimes put forward in terms of Western medical models, the gate theory of pain, that – I mean, this is all right for anaesthesia perhaps but not for the rest of it – do you think that’s in any sense adequate to explain the phenomenology?
13:54 EF: I think that it’s a very good start to... particularly the analgesic effect of acupuncture, it’s a very optimistic start.
14:06 We should start there because, supposing there is an enormous...
14:14 Of course, in analgesia we have some sense, we know about some of the neurophysiology of – well, we think we know about – some of the neurophysiology of pain, but in terms of other types of treatment, therapeutic action, maybe what we’re dealing with – and this is totally off the top of my head and is just an idea – but maybe what we’re dealing with...
14:36 If what I do when I treat someone is I create a context in which they make themselves well, then that too is interesting because what we’re dealing then with is the psychosomatic aspect of getting well, and then that too we should be able to find some neurophysiological mechanism which would, in some sense, explain that type of mechanism.
15:00 JM: I think acupuncture is a very, very interesting example. Interesting in a profound way, as far as this conference is concerned, because again it reflects perhaps the different sorts of attitudes that people in this conference bring to bear on the whole... on the general sorts of questions that we are discussing.
15:20 You see, if you take acupuncture, on the one hand you have the classical Chinese way of doing it and, as Liz says, most of the people who are using acupuncture now as a method of treatment have to go by the kinds of meridians and points that the Chinese gave because it’s the only one available.
15:35 It’s the only working hypothesis for practising acupuncture that exists. Now, there are people, I suppose, who would say that the sorts of energies and entities, etc. – i.e. those things which we want to quantify over – the sort of things that the ancient Chinese theory presupposes, ought to be taken seriously as, as it were, non-reducible.
15:59 Let’s look for chi, etc., and see... I mean, perhaps I’m caricaturing but they do not want... they find it an affront to do what Bryan just suggested, that is to dip into Western medical science and see whether there is something available that will enable us to incorporate this kind of phenomena, which is prima facie very alien, into our greater body of knowledge.
16:22 Now, there are others – myself definitely included, I think Karl included – who would say, ‘If acupuncture is a valid method of treatment, that is to say if it works, then we’re committed, as it were, to a hypothesis, one that in principle states that if that sort of thing works then it is capable of being subsumed under the body of knowledge as we know it, not that that body of knowledge is static and unmoving and not growing but that the sorts of concepts – again, concepts shift through time within that conceptual scheme – but the attitude is that the sorts of concepts that one finds in the theory that my uncle helped devise: the gate theory, is going to be the sort of thing that will explain how acupuncture works.
17:12 So that, in other words, the ancient Chinese way of describing acupuncture and the relation that it stands to the modern neurophysiological way of perhaps explaining acupuncture, was the sort of the thing that I meant when I said there’s a relationship that abtains between water, the phenomenological stuff, and H2O, the molecular theory which we then use to explain water.
17:34 And I think, I mean, the attitude that we take to this sort of example and what we want to say vis à vis the irreducibility of chi or not, is something that I find beating my – excuse me – beating my head up against all this week.
17:49 I mean, it seems to me that we reach a stage where we understand each other and then there’s this huge profound difference and that’s where, you know, the dialogue stops if you want.
18:03 DB: Can you explain what chi is in our context?
18:06 JM: Well, Liz is better... It’s...
18:08 EF: Chi is the Chinese word for what they call the life force, the life energy, and the classical Chinese view is that we have a certain amount of chi which circulates all around in our bodies, in these what they call meridians – which have never been found, incidentally; I mean, they’re theoretical constructs in the Chinese sense, I think (laughs) to use your phrase – and they... the... when something happens, like when there’s a blockage of chi at any point, then that is equivalent to getting sick in some way.
18:58 And that what the needles are supposed to do, if you choose the right places, is unblock the blockage, like a drain; I mean, you know, get it circulating round again.
19:08 FC: Can I just say one word to chi?
19:09 DB: What? You want…? Yes.
19:12 FC: Can I just say one word to this? I’m practising T’ai Chi with a Chinese master and he teaches us Taoist philosophy on which T’ai Chi is based and he talks a lot of chi, about chi – because in T’ai Chi which is a Chinese type of yoga but in motion, sort of slow, dancing movements and the whole aim of it, one of the principal aims, is to control the flow of chi in your body when you make these movements and send the chi when you go out with a hand, send the chi to the tips of your fingers – so he talks a lot of chi and what he says is that it’s a fundamental error to confuse it with energy, what we call energy in science, that it is not an energy but he calls it, ‘The consciousness in action on the physical plane.’ And he says the chi is your consciousness in action and when it goes through the body, when I do this, it goes out and in going out it draws on all the energies that the body is capable of giving, but itself as such is not an energy and therefore...
20:21 JM: Well, he would be an irreducible chap.
20:24 FC: Yes, exactly. Yes, that’s what he meant. Exactly. Yes.
20:29 K: Sir, would the Indian ayurveda and prana [be] similar to this?
20:35 GS: Somewhat...
20:36 K: Yes.
20:37 GS: ...except that the Indian ayurveda for the three – there are, instead of one flow there are three flows...
20:40 K: Three flows, yes.
20:41 GS: ...and it is a balance between the three flows: vata, pitta and kapha.
20:46 K: Kapha.
20:47 GS: And one would say that therefore all disease is brought about by an imbalance of any one of these. There are some diseases which are poisons in the body, in the system, but these are eliminated usually by diet or by putting an oil on your head, not by an emetic or by an antibiotic of a certain kind.
21:02 And they also deal with the whole body as a system...
21:06 K: System, yes.
21:07 GS: ...so that if you have any problem with your head or your nose, instead of dealing with the problem there, they do put some oil on your head and this moves the problem of tissue inflammation or something like that all the way down to a foot or to an elbow or some place like that which is reasonably free from other things, and then bring the whole thing out and then break it.
21:31 Very rarely is surgery done. And the only problem with that kind of treatment at the present time is that it involves very great regimen in life.
21:40 It requires that, for example, you spend a month and your diet is very rigidly controlled and you... it must be during the rainy season and these kind of requirements are very difficult for ordinary people to meet with.
21:53 And also it takes time; if you have some small trouble and you go to them, they say, ‘Well, you have to take it for fifty-six days and during those days don’t drink any coffee and don’t have too much salt.’ Now, this makes it very difficult for most people to deal with the thing, but they say, ‘Well, this...
22:09 You see only just the tip of the iceberg, there is a whole lot of things which are to come out of this particular system.’ And, I mean, the prana and that sequence, of course, is something over and above this particular thing.
22:20 I also want, now that I’m talking, I want to add one other thing: there is one difference that I see between the Indian holistic medicine and Western medicine and that is that diseases of the mind are not treated by a medical doctor in the same fashion, unless it is caused by some tumour or some specific thing of that kind.
22:39 Diseases of the mind are not treated by a medical practitioner but by a practitioner who is specialised in this one. Therefore, at the borderline between ordinary practise of medicine and practise of medicine connected with someone who is mentally ill, is simply absent in Indian medicine.
22:58 What seems to have happened is that, for one thing, the number of people who are practising it have reduced but previously those people who practised it, practised it for no reward.
23:06 You go and see the person, you don’t pay them a fee or anything and they sort of look at you, you talk to them and they occasionally touch you and then they prescribe things for you.
23:14 If you wanted to give anything, you give it to some other place and that person to whom you give does not see you at all in connection with medicine.
23:23 But nowadays, I mean, things have become much more formalised. The problem with this thing is that if you have an immediate problem then it seems that they have no immediate cure, and therefore many people nowadays for short term things they go to a Western medicine practitioner and for a long term thing they go to somebody else.
23:46 For example, allergies: Western medicine is apparently totally incapable of dealing with it in India, so then you go to the Ayurveda man and – by the way, the ayurveda means the veda, the sacred learning of... with regard to life – and he gives you some simple oil and pretty soon everything is gone off.
24:05 But there, it is a balance between three flows rather than just one flow.
24:11 DB: Harsh.
24:14 HT: To go back to acupuncture, I agree with Julian when he says that a time will come when science will explain acupuncture and that we’ll find some kind of neurophysiological reason for why all these things work.
24:38 But, if I understand rightly, in acupuncture one also has an idea of these six or nine – or I don’t how many there are – officials...
24:50 EF: Yes.
24:51 HT: ...who govern the flow of this energy through the body. Now, it seems to me that acupuncture is incomplete without these officials and these meridians to give you the necessary, intuitive grasp that you can face your patient with, when you’re actually dealing with them.
25:08 EF: But they’re just another way of... it’s a rather sort of interesting way of talking about the organs of the body and what the Chinese felt that the organs of the body did.
25:23 HT: Yes, but I’ve also been told that, by acupuncturists, that they don’t actually exactly coincide with any organs as we know it when we cut up the body and look at the actual...
25:34 EF: Well, some of them don’t. I mean, like there’s two things... well, there’s one thing in particular which doesn’t correspond to anything we have, but it’s not supposed to, in the sense that it’s more... it’s a paradox, if you like, it’s not an organ but it has a meridian, but it’s more of a function but it doesn’t have any bits to it.
25:56 It’s a... It’s called the... They call it the triple heater, the triple burner and the upper part relates to the chest and all that’s in there and sort of is like the overseer to that bit and gets all the energy sort of flowing around there, and then the middle part is the middle of the abdomen, with the liver and the gall bladder and the spleen and the stomach in it, and the lower burner is the excretory organs and the reproductive organs.
26:23 And, I mean, there’s nothing we have to... that we can say an equivalent to that.
26:31 HT: No, what I’m suggesting is that when we do in science find out a mechanistic explanation for exactly how this works, there will be a tendency to throw the triple burner away, as a...
26:46 EF: Well, the point is that even now acupuncturists, both in China and in Europe, where it’s been going a lot longer than here, even they are saying, ‘Look, take the triple burner with a pinch of salt because it’s really something that... it’s a nice idea, but it’s little more than an idea but it kind of... it’s useful, it’s a useful concept to have at this time.’ Now, if we get to a point where we don’t need it, why keep it?
27:16 If we get to a point where we can explain acupuncture and know how it works in another way, why hang on to these old concepts which are no longer useful?
27:26 HT: Well, I’m suggesting that these concepts are always useful as a means of understanding the bit of the whole that we don’t yet understand.
27:35 So we will always need a little... some kind of thing...
27:38 KP: Yes, but they may be wrong, you see. Last time I heard that argument was by a psychoanalyst at a psychoanalytic institute and I was giving neurophysiology that Freud gave, actually, of the various structural components which we now sort of embodied in ego, id and superego.
28:04 And one of the analysts got up and said, ‘But look, we must have faith in these things and you can’t shake them up and we can’t change them because if we approached our patients without faith and without this, everything would break down because, after all, they wouldn’t have faith in us if we don’t have faith in our theories,’ and so on.
28:26 But, you see, that is just... I mean, I can’t see... (laughs) HT: Well, I’m not suggesting that we...
28:33 KP: ...Krishnaji saying that. He says, I’m sure, that if you learn something new, you learn something new and that’s it.
28:38 HT: But I’m not suggesting that we throw the triple burner out.
28:40 KP: Well, I am.
28:41 EF: We are.
28:42 HT: That we don’t – I’m sorry – we don’t thrown the triple burner out. I’m suggesting something slightly different. Can I...?
28:48 K: Do you throw out homeopathy?
28:50 EF: Do I, personally? No, I... Again, I’m hedging my bets on homeopathy. I like the idea of homeopathy. I like... because it takes people, again, as whole people.
29:03 K: Whole. Completely.
29:05 EF: And anything that takes people as whole people, I’m willing to listen to.
29:10 KP: Well, I give you some examples which are homeopathic but more acceptable in medicine now, whereas they weren’t once.
29:23 There are tracer elements, minerals: boron and so on, that are very effective – bromides and so on – in changing metabolism very dramatically, and if they’re absent...
29:35 For instance, in the south of the United States, the vegetables for a long time didn’t have traces of copper in them and many of the diseases that were rife in the south – there’s this feeling of lethargy and all of that – was finally traced to the absence of minute traces of copper which we seem to need.
29:55 DB: Well, I think that...
29:57 EF: The only thing that... I mean, that the concept of minute amounts of something, I would go along with wholeheartedly. What worries me about homeopathy is this faith, if you like, in the fact that if you take something and crush it and shake it up a certain number of times...
30:14 K: Yes.
30:15 EF: ...some other thing happens to it, some other force, some other, what do they call it in homeopathy?
30:22 K: I’ve forgotten. Yes...
30:24 EF: Yes, but you know what I mean?
30:25 K: Yes, yes. (Inaudible) EF: They shake something up so many times and it has a…
30:28 K: You have to shake it and... yes.
30:29 EF: Yes, and in...
30:30 JM: It’s like hocus pocus.
30:31 K: No, no, no, no, no.
30:33 JM: Well, okay; I see.
30:34 K: No, no, no. (Laughs) EF: But what I’d like to say is this: if there’s any... if there is anything in this shaking up and it becoming... having a certain strength and being something else, then we should be able to find out what that is.
30:46 DB: Well, could I say, I mean, I talked with several people who practise it and they propose an entirely different kind of energy, you know, that the more you dilute the thing the stronger it gets, which would run entirely contrary to all our ideas of science.
31:00 And, if it is true, then it means that we must change our ideas very radically. Yes. I think Robin was first.
31:07 RM: Well, I wish to go back to the issue Harsh raised. As came up earlier, in stereo sound you have two speakers, you hear something from between two speakers, there’s a point there with no physical structure, and likewise in subjective impressions from one’s body, there may be points in the body which are, functionally, subjectively important without a physical organ there, and this might be important in healing.
31:37 It’s certainly important in yoga, I believe. By concentrating on certain parts of the body, certain effects take place, without necessarily having a physical organ in those positions.
31:47 KP: Yes, I might just push that a little bit. There’s a paper that someone sent me recently that suggests that the acupuncture points are in fact like that, they’re sets of interference patterns that are created on the basis of microtubular structures and different organs, and he’s plotted these out, and then that the acupuncture points are due to the interference patterns giving rise to nodes at just those points, so I mean, whether right or wrong, at least it is a physical... you know, it’s an explanation.
32:21 EF: But what are the... how would these interference points be...? Do they have a manifestation of any kind: a wave or a...?
32:28 KP: Well, the wave form.
32:29 EF: The wave form.
32:30 KP: So it’s a holographic explanation of acupuncture.
32:37 I have the reprint and I’ll try to get it to you.
32:39 EF: I’d like to see it. Thank you.
32:41 KP: It’s been published in the Chinese journal. What is it…?
32:43 GS: In Chinese?
32:44 K: (Laughs) KP: No, in English.
32:46 EF: American Journal of Chinese Medicine?
32:47 FC: Is this this South Korean?
32:48 KP: Chinese Journal of Acupuncture or some... or Chinese Journal of Medicine — that’s it. I’ll get it to you.
32:51 FC: Is this this South Korean?
32:52 KP: No, no...
32:53 EF: No, not Kim Bong-Hu... Ho.
32:55 KP: ...this is an American, from Arizona or somewhere.
32:56 K: Talking of... Sorry. You were going...?
32:59 BG: No, after you.
33:01 K: Talking of Ayurvedic medicine, Indian medicine, I had some trouble, nose trouble, and he gave me something and it came out.
33:08 And when I next saw him about a month later, he said – they feel it by putting their fingers on your pulse, for two or three seconds only – and he said, ‘In a fortnight’s time, you’re going to have smallpox.
33:31 And I’m going to give you some medicine which will bring it out completely,’ and in a fortnight’s time I had it.
33:39 KP: He gave you small pox. (Laughs) (Laughter) K: I know. (Inaudible) DB: Bryan?
33:48 BG: I just wanted to ask Harsha if there’s any correspondence that you know of between the guardians and the chakras?
33:56 Is there any...?
33:57 HT: Between the...?
33:58 BG: Is it the guardians you talked about? I’ve forgotten, these...
34:00 HT: The guardians, yes.
34:01 BG: The positions of the guardians and the chakras, the positions of the...
34:02 Q: Chakras.
34:03 BG: The chakras.
34:04 HT: Not that I know of, no.
34:05 BG: Not that you know of?
34:06 HT: No.
34:07 JM: Oh...
34:08 EF: See the...
34:09 JM: Just that Elmer Green’s written a paper – God, I think we may even have a copy at home – it’s a paper where he tries to give physiological credence to the chakras.
34:21 I mean, if that makes sense. And I guess, I mean if you’re interested, I was... But it does correspond to certain parts.
34:29 DB: Well, I wonder if we could come back to this question which you raised about the disease, you know, being lack of wholeness.
34:42 See, it’s something which is not common to our thought. You see, I used to think of it this way, that a few germs come into your body and they can’t hurt you at all – they’re too small in number – so the rest of them, you know, are you, you see — you become the disease.
34:57 See, as the germs come in, you become germs (laughs) and therefore, in a sense, you are the disease, you see.
35:05 And, you see, I think that what you say is significant, that when we think the disease is something different from ourselves this is part of the confusion; in a way it may come to the same problem as the observer and the observed, you see, that the disease in the mind is also ourselves.
35:20 KP: Well, let’s not – I was going to say this a little earlier but it’s even more appropriate now, maybe – I think we have to take this in an historical perspective and not go overboard completely, the idea that germs have something to do with it all, as...
35:36 DB: Oh, I didn’t say they have nothing to do with it, but I am – you see? – the germs; I just became germs, you see?
35:42 KP: It was very useful for a while; it just... it was overdone or it has played out its rôle and now I think we’re in a position to take... I mean, viruses, for instance, may well be just the kind of thing you’re talking about. Some very small change is produced by some intrusion...
35:57 DB: Yes.
35:58 KP: ...and then the virus is actually produced by our own chemistry.
36:02 DB: That’s right. Yes.
36:04 KP: And so to look at the virus and say, ‘See, it is that virus out there attacking me,’ isn’t right. It’s really that...
36:11 DB: No, I am the virus.
36:12 KP: ...I am turning into a virus...
36:13 DB: Or I am turning into a cancer, you see.
36:14 KP: That’s right, is a better way of looking at it.
36:17 DB: You see...
36:18 KP: But I don’t want to... you know, we don’t want to throw out some of the good that’s been done by the other view either.
36:22 DB: Oh, I wasn’t intending to do that.
36:24 KP: It’s been very effective.
36:25 EF: Well, I think I said that really...
36:26 KP: Yes, you did.
36:28 EF: ...in its historical context.
36:31 KP: But also in training, both views again ought to be presented. For instance, if you have someone come into the surgery for the first time, I think you’d turn away an awful lot of people unless you can tell them to particulate for a little while and say, ‘Pay attention to the surgery now.’ If everybody pays attention to that whole human being during surgery, first of all all the nurses pass out and the surgeon’s doing nothing but trying to resuscitate the nurses, and then he may pass out if he really thinks about it.
37:04 I mean, there is a certain particulation that is necessary in order to do the job, and it’s this paradox again: if you are aware of the whole then you can pay attention to the particular when that is necessary and come back to the whole, and there’s some kind of paradox there that you’re really effectively particulate, especially when you have once somehow gotten the holistic.
37:32 I can’t put it into words very well, but...
37:36 EF: I understand what you’re saying.
37:38 KP: Yes.
37:39 EF: It just seemed that there were so few... I mean, obviously I met compassionate doctors...
37:44 KP: Yes.
37:45 EF: ...when I was training, they weren’t all like that, but the ones that were compassionate had, as it were, comes to terms with what they could offer and they weren’t happy about it but they’d come to terms with it.
38:01 They said, ‘Well, that’s what I have to offer,’ and they dealt with the patient as a person as much as they could and they spoke to them and they said, ‘Hello, Mrs Brown.
38:11 How are you?’ and that kind of thing. However, I would say in my own experience – and I come from... British medical schools are extremely hierarchical, they’re very authoritarian – and I would say that those compassionate doctors were definitely in a minority.
38:31 KP: Yes, I would say that in America also.
38:32 EF: And therefore, I think you’re right in what you say, that if we have to carry on having surgery – which I think we probably will – then the ideal thing is to have doctors who are conscious of the whole and then can particulate and other people too.
38:46 But I think that there has to be a much more basic change of attitude, both in the doctors and an education of the population who are going to be the patients – which is all of us – into viewing health and disease in a different sort of way.
39:02 KP: I agree. I wasn’t...
39:05 EF: Yes.
39:07 KP: I didn’t want to...
39:08 EF: Yes. I agree. (Laughs) DS: I think... I do think though that, Karl, you were a little quick there, in the sense that although we do have to keep the particular and of course there’s going to come that, what Gordon has talked about as the kind of black hole where we’re gonna make that turn and we’re gonna be able to look at the patient in a holistic way and be able to particulate out of that, because I do think that we may have to go through some sort of revolution because certainly the work in tuberculosis research has shown that patients don’t get diseases, they somehow or other... the total organism is susceptible to being participatory in the tubercular process.
39:48 KP: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
39:50 DS: So I mean, I don’t think... that was given a ride quickly, the whole idea of the acid-fast bacillus, and I think that there is this problem, that we may have to take a totally different perspective, even on the whole infectious theory of disease.
40:03 KP: No, no, you don’t throw out the acid-fast bacillus; he’s still there, you know.
40:06 DS: Yes, he’s still there but it’s a different relationship you’re looking at now.
40:11 KP: Yes, but what wiped out the disease was the chemotherapy not just the bed rest and taking care of the patient. I mean, you’ve got to keep these things in balance. Yes.
40:20 DS: Right. That’s right, but I think if you come at it from the new way, it’s...
40:22 KP: That’s right. But if you look just at the drugs, they won’t do it either.
40:25 DS: Right.
40:26 KP: Right.
40:27 JM: I’d like to ask – I suppose, David, you’re the best person to ask this question to – I mean, it concerns the seeming, it’s either paradox or maybe a contradiction, about agreeing with Liz about a new approach being needed and the approach needing to be holistic but also, putting it in another way, the diagnostic stage has to be particularised.
40:51 In other words, if you go to a doctor then you just don’t go and say, ‘Treat me.’ He or she will say, ‘Well, you know, what’s wrong?’ So at the diagnostic stage, at least, you’re going to have to particularise some description or other.
41:08 Now, I think it was you in one of your papers, you gave us the image of a vortex in a stream or something.
41:17 Now, it seems to me that’s a good way, maybe a good way, of looking at it. I mean, one can specify the vortex. I mean, you could individuate it spatially and yet it’s really... you can’t, as it were, pluck it out and particularise it from the context.
41:34 So, I mean, one is in a sense... I mean, I’m suggesting a way to resolve your paradox.
41:39 KP: That’s very nice.
41:41 JM: One could diagnose by looking at a particular... but then it’s part of another...
41:45 KP: Again, that’s a holographic, almost, it’s a dynamic or whatever you want...
41:49 JM: Right, right.
41:50 KP: ...where he’s talking about it, or Fritz pattern’s coming to a node; you’re talking about... (inaudible) ...your body, could call it... Yes.
41:57 DB: Could I...? (Inaudible) KP: No, I just get a little... (Laughs) DB: Yes. Well, I think that this point you raised as... the relation between universal and the particular, you see. See, in an ordinary experience we see a lot of particular, individual things and we may see what is in common and we call that the general and possibly the universal but the universal is not that.
42:21 You see, from the general... See, from the abstraction of the common, we have to go to what is universal and necessary to see... which is the whole.
42:30 And now, the universal assimilates or contains the particular, you see, that’s... when you really understand something, you understand the whole and the whole contains the parts; it contains the particular as a particular case or a particular form of many possible forms.
42:47 And so, you see, when we’re thinking of the image of the vortex, we have the stream and we can see... understanding the stream, we understand all the particular vortices that are possible in principle.
42:57 So, see, if someone starts from the universal – let’s say he has a real understanding of the person – and he comes and he can see all the particular symptoms as assimilated into this universal, rather than seeing them as standing there by themselves, little bits, you see.
43:18 Now, so it comes to a different way of thinking or a different way of perceiving, and I think that this is what we have to consider and perhaps this would connect up with something that Fritjof was trying to say.
43:34 I think that, as you were also saying, it’s very hard to have compassion for the little bits because they’re very mechanical (laughs) but, you see, from the whole, these bits don’t actually exist as bits, they are merely abstractions from the whole, and the feeling that you have for the whole is an important part of understanding the whole.
43:56 You see, I don’t think you can understand the whole without bringing in feeling as well as the intellect, because the whole is a whole and it requires the whole of the person to understand a whole.
44:12 Was there anybody...? Yes.
44:14 DS: Yes, I think there’s a good example of this. I think, that we’ve had certainly in training psychiatrists to try to help them into some of these directions that Liz is talking about, namely when we try to help them tune up their particular response to their being in the presence of this patient.
44:30 In other words, where we’ve asked them to listen to what is their physiological process, if they’re feeling tension in their gut, if they’re feeling some sort of headache, if they’re feeling uncertain, if they’re feeling some sort of dryness of their mouth, we try to tune them up to be sensitive to what these subjective responses – or so-called almost registrations while being in the presence of the patient – is giving them information about their total experience therein.
44:59 So in that sense, they are being asked to holistically participate in this event, in this moment, to really be there and use themselves as instruments, so to speak.
45:12 That is sort of holistically diagnosing, if you will, and...
45:15 EF: Right. Well, if you’re talking totally holistically, you have to take the patient relationship, doctor/patient relationship into it as well, like you said.
45:23 DB: Yes. Gordon Globus: I’d like to strike a discordant note here. My feeling as Liz talked was, ‘Yes, I’m in favour of motherhood, too.’ I don’t think that there’re... it’s hard for me to imagine any physician in America who would disagree with anything that you say.
45:44 All the medical schools teach about the whole patient; the whole psychosomatic movement which began in the 1930s has emphasised this.
45:54 It is now a part of American medicine; everyone knows about it. Psychosomatic medicine as a specialty has kind of really evaporated, it’s a special research area, because these are current ideas.
46:06 Everyone knows about the whole patient.
46:07 KP: It hasn’t got to England.
46:08 GG: The problem...
46:09 JM: It hasn’t got to a way that you’re treated in America, either.
46:11 EF: Well, exactly.
46:12 GG: Well, if I may finish, the problem is that it’s been very difficult for people to put this into practise, even though the concept is there.
46:23 And the level that I think the problem is at, is not really at the level of medicine, it’s at the level of our descriptions of the world which we learn very early in life, so that we have – and I’m repeating things which have been said over and over again but I think we have to push it back to a much earlier level in life – that even though people know this, they are unable to use it.
46:45 And when they’re faced with patients in the medical situation, they do not act in relation to a whole person, even though they’ve been taught this and they know all about it.
46:57 And I think it’s... I would particularly think of the kind of framework which Julian operates out of – and which he’s brought up over and over again – it’s the kind of thing which gets in the way.
47:08 But this is built into our system at very, very early levels.
47:13 MU: If I may respond to that. I don’t disagree with you but it’s not really taught, you see; lip service is paid to it.
47:24 Because I recall the very first lecture by the Dean of the medical school in my first year was about the patient as a whole person and everybody repeated that over and over again, but the only way we get any leverage on that is experientially, and medical students aren’t taught to experience the patient as a whole person.
47:42 As you say, this is the philosophy: ‘The patient is a whole person,’ but then the dermatologist says, ‘All right, bring the next case in.
47:49 Take off your clothes,’ and, ‘Look at that rash,’ and you don’t care what... I remember feeling such acute embarrassment for patients who were asked to undress before a whole group of medical students, irrespective of the context.
48:03 Well... And I know you mentioned that psychiatry is a holistic science, well, it should be...
48:08 EF: Should be.
48:09 MU: ...but when you’re working with psychiatric residents, for example, and listening to them describe a patient, they describe that patient in just as fragmented a way as if they were describing a case of appendicitis.
48:28 They... And my favourite teaching device is to say, ‘All right, you’ve told me... you’ve given me the history and you’ve told me about the patient, now forget that you’re a doctor, forget that you’re a psychiatrist and just put yourself... rôle play now a situation in which you met this person – not patient, person – at a party the night before, and you try and describe the impact of this person on you to another person.’ And then a whole new phenomenological range comes out, because it never occurred to them to incorporate their own felt response to the patient.
49:13 And that’s a response to the whole person; the others are responses to fragmented bits of information.
49:18 DB: Sudarshan’s next.
49:19 KP: Yes. Before you go... I want to say something more. We tried for a year to teach this to medical students, three of us, psychiatry, and by the Board examinations and everything else it was fantastically successful.
49:36 It was when Stanford had just moved to Palo Alto and everything was going, you know, beautifully in a new place. And the problem comes back to institutions again, because we were very quickly told by the rest of the medical school, ‘It’s time you started teaching something,’ you see?
49:57 And what we did was just the kind of thing you do: we had rôle playing and, you know, we’d bring a patient in and then say, ‘Did you ever think of...?’ and actually got everybody really involved in a whole variety of experiences of this sort, and it was very successful but the institution couldn’t stand it.
50:17 GG: Can I respond on this issue?
50:19 DB: It’s just this point, right? Yes. No, but it’s the same point.
50:24 GG: I think that you could really get this across in an hour to any intelligent medical student, but the issue is: why is it that it doesn’t take?
50:36 It’s not a difficult concept; people teach it all the time. There’s something about the structure of our thought which makes it difficult for us to assimilate this concept into the structure of our thought, and I think that’s a deeper problem than our difficulties in medical school, you know, in teaching in holistic ways, and somehow we have to learn how to deal with that problem.
51:01 K: And also, the structure of your society.
51:04 GG: Which is where it comes from.
51:06 K: Yes; obviously.
51:07 GG: Yes.
51:08 K: I mean, how can a man who is living in Park Avenue in New York, talk about holistic? He says ‘Money is very important,’ he’s very sure, and he knows all that. (Laughs) HT: I think that – to take up Dr Globus’ point – I think it is in the descriptions that we find difficulties: the descriptions that are not conducive to viewing the whole man.
51:34 And this is really the point I was making about the triple burner and the officials. When an acupuncturist is looking at a person and thinking of him as all these officials bustling about, he is seeing an image of society in the man who is doing this and so it helps him.
51:56 It’s a description that helps the person to see sympathetically the whole man, while if you take a completely mechanistic kind of thing like a little machine with cogs and wheels...
52:09 Now, this may not be such a helpful way of looking at the person, which is why I wouldn’t like to throw the triple burner away that easily until I know how to put something else fully in it’s place.
52:22 EF: Even the Chinese description is something which is outside of the experience of most Western people.
52:32 They talk about the ministers to the Emperor and the Emperor himself.
52:40 HT: We know about that.
52:43 EF: (Laughs) And all that kind of thing. But it’s...
52:49 HT: So you see a mirror of society in the person.
52:53 EF: Pardon?
52:54 HT: You see a mirror of society in the person: ministers, kings...
52:57 FC: But not of our society.
52:58 HT: Not our... it was their society, yes.
53:01 FC: And their ancient society.
53:02 HT: Right.
53:03 EF: It talks about the officials to the court and people... you know, things like that, which are sort of nice, visual concepts but they’re out of our story books rather than out of our...
53:13 They’re not mirrors of my existence now.
53:15 MW: I wonder if I can follow the usual practice of referring to my wife.
53:24 (Laughter) But it might be helpful about this point, about how one thinks.
53:31 I mean, doubtless all of us who have been aware of situations where one’s wife is upset about something and one hasn’t been possibly very aware of the fact even that she was upset, and then afterwards it comes out that there was some particular thing which was in her mind, which she may not even have been clearly aware of and unable to articulate.
54:07 And yet, one was deficient in this situation, that one didn’t somehow intuitively discern the nature of the problem.
54:18 And maybe this is the kind of faculty which one needs to develop if the patient is to come in and not be expected to put their finger on what’s the matter with them.
54:30 They simply know there’s something the matter with them and they’re in a difficulty and they want to go to the doctor.
54:39 EF: Well, this kind of lack of communication between doctors and the patients was the subject of Barlent’s work – Michael Barlent, who came to Britain in the early fifties; he was a psychiatrist, you’ve probably read his stuff – and he was concerned about the fact that GPs who were... or doctors that were being trained at that time went into General Practice and then came loud and complaining saying, ‘I just don’t know what... how to deal with the patients.
55:12 They come in and say this, that and the other. I don’t know they want; I don’t understand their language. I do x-rays and there’s nothing there and I just have no concept of what they’re on about.’ So he started holding seminars, to which a few GPs who’re still practising in Britain came, and they started to discuss this whole question of what...
55:37 You see, you must understand that General Practitioners in this country don’t have much, if any, training in psychological medicine.
55:45 It’s changing a bit but very little; it certainly was... there was nothing at that time. So they were trying to get the root of it – with Barlent being the chairman, rather as David is here, and talking about it amongst themselves – to say, ‘Well, what do you see when a patient comes in?’ and, ‘When they say something you’ve... it’s like they might be talking a different language, you actually have to interpret what they say.’ Like one patient kept saying, ‘I must have an x-ray!
56:11 I must have an x-ray!’ I don’t know the full story but really what he wanted was something completely different.
56:18 He wanted, maybe, some understanding from the doctor or maybe he was impotent. I mean, there was some problem that he couldn’t talk about at that time, so he wanted an x-ray. And unfortunately the Barlent society has... doesn’t... it’s not... is inactive now; none of the younger medical students are doing anything about it, although sometimes these doctors go round and give talks.
56:42 Just a bit of information.
56:45 JM: I just want to register dissent of what Gordon said before; I mean, good-hearted dissent.
56:54 The thing is, what frustrates and surprises me is – how shall I put it? – the lack of understanding of behaviourism that some people have.
57:05 I mean, people criticise views labelling it ‘behaviourist’ and what they’re really talking about is a very naïve, simple, very, very outdated and admittedly erroneous view.
57:16 And although, I mean, in one sense, the kind of model that I put forward when I gave my little talk was behaviourist, it certainly was in no way naively behaviourist.
57:28 And I would say that what prompted me to think along the lines that I’m now thinking is precisely that I am embracing this holistic view of man.
57:37 I mean, it’s not... far from being compatible with it, I’m trying to, in one little way, explain it. So I don’t think... I mean, it pains me when I hear that, you know, the sorts of concepts that I use are precisely those that are blocking embracing this holistic view, it pains me because I’m trying to describe and explain precisely the sort of view that Gordon wants to have embraced as well.
58:05 And it just seems that... Well, I mean, I can go on but that’s all I want to say.
58:11 KP: Call it subjective behaviourism.
58:12 JM: Well, okay, someone else once described it as ‘empirical realism’ but all these ‘isms’ and ‘istics’...
58:19 I mean, you know, really... All right, it might be good to switch around the terminology, to strip away certain connotations that have, in the past, blocked the way but I really don’t think that’s...
58:29 You know, what’s important is to grasp what the hell is going on, not... and to see that there’s a world of difference from the sort of thing that you and I are both trying to do when we construct models.
58:40 I mean, we have different sorts of models but methodologically we’re, I think, identical. And how different the sort of methodology that we presuppose is from, say, Skinner’s.
58:53 DB: All right. I mean, I understand you say you’re very different from Skinner. Is that it?
59:01 JM: Of course. Oh, yes.
59:03 DB: Yes. Good. (Laughter) JM: And Gilbert Ryle, if you want to be, I mean...
59:07 DB: All right. I think that you have something? Were you...? Then you next.
59:11 GG: Well, okay, you keep... you kept telling us that your model of the human being was that of a Turing machine, but what you never said was, ‘From my perspective, the model of a human being is a Turing machine,’ and you never talked about the perspective of the human being on himself.
59:36 I consider that approach to be quite consonant at a very basic level with behaviourist paradigm which I think is a paradigm which leaves out half of what there is to account for.
59:55 JM: Well, I mean, it’s just – how shall I put it? – it’s just not true that introspection is essentially left out of such models.
1:00:04 I mean, introspection, I think, is one of the things which we’re trying to capture.
1:00:07 KP: Yes, but if you...
1:00:08 GG: But you left it out. It’s not that the model leaves it out...
1:00:12 JM: Yes.
1:00:13 GG: ...but in your way of talking about it, you leave it out. I’m not talking about the model, I’m talking about what you did over and over and over again, you left it out. And I think...
1:00:21 JM: Well, could you be... please, be more precise about what I left out. I mean, did I leave out a description of the model from the model’s point of view? I mean, what do you...? Precisely, what did I leave out?
1:00:31 GG: Yes. Yes.
1:00:33 JM: A description of the model from the model’s point of view?
1:00:40 Do you think that that necessarily is the case?
1:00:43 KP: Well, there are two issues here: one is the admission of introspection as a datum.
1:00:50 JM: Sure.
1:00:51 KP: And I think you’ve agreed to that – that that’s all right – that’s why I would call it subjective behaviourism rather than a scenarium or any...
1:00:58 See, the moment you do that, you really do split with classical behaviourism, very radically.
1:01:04 JM: Sure. Yes.
1:01:06 KP: So that’s one step, and that one you’ve taken. Now, the other step is a much more complicated step that I can’t really give you the logic for.
1:01:16 Don MacKay has done a fair amount of work on this and it’s a very complicated logic. It isn’t just saying what you did, Gordy, and saying, ‘Well, he should just simply say: I as a model builder form this model.’ I mean, that’s sort of implicit in almost every statement.
1:01:35 That’s not it. There’s a much more complicated relationship between a model that tries to describe itself, logically.
1:01:47 And I think Krishnaji has given us techniques here that are very thought provoking logically.
1:01:56 That is, if you stay with the cogito ergo sum, that is the thought and the thinker must be the same.
1:02:06 K: And the introspect...
1:02:07 KP: Yes, he’s given us techniques to get into this but I wouldn’t know what they are logically. I think this is something that needs to be addressed and I wish we would get to it here, in a way. Yes.
1:02:20 JM: But all I’m saying is that, I mean, we could construct... It’s not so hard, it’s easy to construct models that will then describe themselves.
1:02:25 KP: No, I don’t think it’s easy. I think there’s some logical tacks here that are terribly, terribly difficult.
1:02:30 GG: Excuse me. You can get into the (inaudible) staring problem for example, for one thing.
1:02:33 JM: No. If you want a complete description, then it won’t be...
1:02:35 FC: Isn’t this getting a bit technical?
1:02:36 DB: Yes. (Inaudible) I think that maybe this could best be discussed in a smaller group because it’s getting more technical.
1:02:42 GS: Yes. Could I ask a very, very...
1:02:44 DB: I think... Yes, just...
1:02:46 GS: ...quick question to Karl? Karl, you said some time earlier, something which a physicist is forgiven for saying. You said something about viruses forming because of the condition of the body. Did you mean that or...?
1:02:58 KP: Yes. The viruses, in fact, since they’re parasitic formations... you see, something gets in there.
1:03:07 You inoculate a cell, let’s say, with a particular biochemical construction and then the cell, in a way, transforms itself in... it becomes modelled by the...
1:03:22 GS: That I realise, but my question is that that thing which is injected – I mean, with my layman’s knowledge of biology – that thing which infects the cell I would identify as the essential part of the virus, as to how it modifies itself.
1:03:34 After all, I eat a potato and I become a little fatter and that I consider as part of myself. I take this picture, extrapolate it back, to say that when the cell is inoculated with the material of the virus, then that particular virus replicates through the cells replicating the cancer.
1:03:54 But that little thing...
1:03:55 KP: It’s one way to look at it...
1:03:56 GS: ...that little thing which goes into the cell in the first instance, isn’t that a live, specific... bio-specific thing? I mean, could it be produced by... because my, I mean, humours are not in balance or...?
1:04:08 KP: It can’t live by itself...
1:04:10 GS: No, but does it not have to come in from some place else?
1:04:13 KP: We’re not sure of that.
1:04:16 BG: Yes. I mean, yes, it must; most viruses come in from outside and...
1:04:18 KP: Most.
1:04:19 BG: There’s no question... (inaudible) GS: I mean, is there any case of...?
1:04:22 BG: They’re not... No, if you’re in a bad physical condition, you don’t just generate viruses to suit that condition.
1:04:27 GS: You would say that is impossible?
1:04:28 BG: Well, I mean, it’s...
1:04:29 GS: No, I mean, as far as we know.
1:04:31 BG: It’s conceivable but it’s very unlikely.
1:04:33 JM: It’s logically possible, empirically not happened yet.
1:04:35 BG: We don’t know.
1:04:36 GS: No, what I’m asking is, is this a possibility which we should keep open or something that should be shut out?
1:04:42 BG: Well, there one thing: there are these viruses which can be part of the actual genetic material of the cell.
1:04:49 GS: I see.
1:04:50 BG: And they become incorporated into the genes of the cell and into the genome and replicate with cells and these may be present in many of us, different kinds of virus in our actual genetic material.
1:05:03 And under certain conditions, these can express themselves, or cells with them can become carcinogenic. They can become cancers. So that’s a case where this really would apply.
1:05:17 KP: That’s close, really very close to... (inaudible) HT: But isn’t it true that viruses are coming through into our body all the time and sometimes we get ill and sometimes we don’t, so...?
1:05:28 BG: Yes, of course. I mean, there are the immunogenetic... immunogenic responses which...
1:05:34 HT: The virus is not a sufficient condition for... (inaudible) ...so you cannot really call it the agent.
1:05:38 BG: No. No, no.
1:05:40 JM: No, no.
1:05:41 BG: No, no. I mean, there must be other conditions too.
1:05:43 DB: (Inaudible) EF: I’d like to come back to what Gordon said originally. I’m sorry he found what I had to say rather obvious, but I think his analysis incorporated a truism itself, in the sense that the whole problem was in the very early days of the lives of the doctors that we’re talking about.
1:06:09 And I found it, in a sense, depressing in that if that... – I’m sure it’s, to a certain extent, the case – but that if our problem is only solved by going back to the way we bring up our children, then the whole culture will have to change very, very radically and it may take many generations before we produce young children who are doctors to be, who would be different and not have these problems.
1:06:35 Now, I don’t want to wait that long, and I think there are ways in which we can... I mean, people are intelligent – we’ve all said that – and you say that you could tell people of this in one hour, but I think there are also things we can do, like if we’re concerned about how we react to our patients then perhaps we should get medical students interested in such things as non-verbal communication – this kind of... – broadening their horizon, their perspective in respect to the patient, patients that they’re going to deal with.
1:07:11 DB: Could I just say now, it’s five o’clock, or slightly after, if we probably just set aside five more minutes and then we’ll finish.
1:07:19 Now, I think David Peat and then David Shainberg.
1:07:20 DP: When you spoke of looking at the whole rather than looking at the individual part of the person – to look at the whole person and to take the view of the disease and the person as one – now, where exactly do you draw the whole?
1:07:35 Because suppose, you know, you get the flu and we’re all sitting round here and I get the flu and I give it to him and it spreads out, but in some cases you get the flu and I don’t get it and he doesn’t get it and it stops there, and to what extent do you take the whole as embracing all this room and embracing society, and to what extent are these germs sort of a social product?
1:07:53 EF: You mean in what...?
1:07:55 DP: To what extent can we stop the disease? I mean, you get it and it stops there, it doesn’t go any further.
1:07:58 EF: Well, you’ve chosen a bad example (laughs) because we can’t stop flu. If the terrain is right, you get flu. I mean, it’s a virus. What can we do about flu?
1:08:07 DP: Well, any disease. Yes. I mean, any disease. You say, at one time we just said it was something that happened in the head or the nose, then we say it’s the whole body.
1:08:13 EF: Well, look...
1:08:14 DP: But why don’t we include society as well in the disease?
1:08:16 EF: Fine.
1:08:17 DP: And then how do you treat the disease?
1:08:20 EF: Well, for instance, I mean, including the society in a disease, if you go to India where there’s an epidemic of cholera, then presumably one of the reasons that the cholera is taken on is because of the form of the society when it’s taken on: the people are underfed, they’re in damp conditions, they’re drinking...
1:08:40 You know, they haven’t got the kind of resistance that somebody else who wasn’t in that kind of society would have. So in a sense you’re right, you have to include…
1:08:47 DP: But can it also be psychological conditions that give rise to this...?
1:08:50 EF: Absolutely. I would agree with that, yes.
1:08:52 KP: Oh yes.
1:08:54 DB: Right. Go ahead.
1:08:56 DS: I wanted to underline what Gordon says, because I think that he did put his finger on something that’s very important in this discussion, and that is that there is a difference, that if we do approach it in terms of the thought structure that I think that that might be really much deeper and that there is that...
1:09:15 For instance, you used the notion of teaching the doctor to react to the patient or teaching the doctor non-verbal communication.
1:09:24 I have a feeling that if we really begin to understand what we mean by holism, that we will move from a whole different perspective, we won’t be in terms of actions and reactions, we’ll be at a much deeper ground, so that then this won’t be so difficult to get through.
1:09:40 I mean, it’s my feeling that there you put your finger on it, in the sense that when you said, ‘React to the patient,’ that’s exactly where the problem is because when we begin together, so to speak, in a holistic continuum then out of that will come new forms of participation with people and with patients, so that we won’t be reacting, we will be in some way or other developing – I think, and I’ve seen it happen – new forms of conceptualisation.
1:10:07 EF: I’m sure you’re right, except that I thought you said that that’s what you were teaching the students.
1:10:12 DS: No, I’m not teaching... I don’t consider it a reaction. In other words, when I say that we try to help people be there with the patient and register their participatory experience, I try to de-emphasise the reactive notion and help it be more seen as kind of a participation.
1:10:29 It’s quite different.
1:10:31 KP: Transaction. Yes.
1:10:33 DS: More than a transaction.
1:10:35 DB: I think then perhaps we’ll call the meeting to a close now and start at the usual time tomorrow morning.
1:10:43 JM: Can I ask...? I mean, how many more of us are left and then what after that...?
1:10:45 DB: Well, after that, I’m going to talk briefly tomorrow morning and the plan is that after that Krishnamurti will talk as much time as he wants.
1:10:52 FC: Tomorrow afternoon?
1:10:53 DB: Partly tomorrow morning, partly tomorrow afternoon, partly Sunday morning; whatever time is...
1:10:58 K: Do I have to talk, sir? (Laughter) FC: Yes!
1:11:03 DB: Well, I think that by now it’s necessary. (Laughs) DS: By command. (Laughs)