In a
world of soaring health-care costs and new, horrific diseases, is
it possible to step above and beyond even the worst health problems
using the ancient methods and timeless wisdom of yoga? Absolutely!
I've been doing it for the last three decades, and haven't suffered
a bit from it!
Please understand: I'm not speaking of a "do-nothing" approach
(although there's something to be said for that way of health care
-- I have had pets seeming to be on death's doorstep only to be up
and playful several weeks, later). My way is to deal with any and
all health problems fearlessly, as soon as they appear.
Yes, there are many ways of being effectively responsive to suffering
and distress.
For much of my working life, I have been teaching and sharing information
on "self-health" and various techniques for natural healing.
And since early adulthood, I have lived completely free from doctors,
medical insurance, prescription medications and conventional health
care.
I am now well into my "Social Security years" -- fit, active
and in perfectly fine health, thank you very much. I don't even wear
glasses!
The methods I have used and taught are mostly from the East and have
been used for generations by everyday people. These have ranged from
the very simple -- such as G-Jo Acupressure (see www.g-jo.com ) and
eating in a vegetarian way -- to the more complex (homeopathy and
"isodes" made from one's own bodily fluids, for example).
But in 1995, an important event happened in my life -- one from which
you, too, can now benefit. It was a turning point (a quantum leap,
really) that catapulted me into the world of spiritual healing (a
mainstay from the earliest times for those on the pathway of yoga).
During my third visit to India in as many decades, I was introduced
to a unique system of healing which revolved around the use of yantras,
or sacred diagrams. These, when combined with any prayer or mantra,
were said to perform literal miracles of healing -- sometimes reversing
even life-threatening diseases.
Naturally, I became fascinated.
I learned of this method -- which is called "Sanjeevini"
-- at the ashram of my guru, Sathya Sai Baba, located in a small village
near Bangalore. Sanjeevini had recently become popular with many of
that spiritual community's residents and visitors.
I was able to take a class on the subject at the ashram. During that
session, several of my companions were almost instantly relieved of
digestive distress (an all too common complaint of visitors, there).
Others in the class reported relief from various ailments, as well.
A day later, I found a manual containing the Sanjeevini diagrams,
themselves, in a local bookstore outside the ashram. This guidebook
quickly became a cherished resource for me!
Indeed, at one point it was almost as if I had found, and now possessed,
the Holy Grail. And for some time after that trip, Sanjeevini became
all the rage within my closest group of friends and associates, each
of us committed to "doctorless health."
Time after time, we thrilled each other with the latest stories of
our "Sanjeevini successes" -- both on people we dealt with
directly, as well as those healed at sometimes great distances --
using that spiritual technique's simple methods.
Not surprisingly, this ancient healing system soon found a place in
the classes and workshops we taught through The G-Jo Institute.
The Sanjeevini system may actually be used in any of several formats.
One -- when working directly with a suffering person -- is to make
a remedy in the following way:
Take an ordinary eye-dropper bottle (available from most drug stores)
and fill it with water or other potable liquid. Then place the bottle
atop the appropriate Sanjeevini diagram (there are nearly 400 such
diagrams from which to choose -- see www.saisanjeevini.org for a free
download of these diagrams and instructions. Or order The G-Jo Institute's
authorized version, the Sanjeevini Healing Prayer Program, complete
with the same diagrams and essential information, written for the
Westerner on the G-Jo Institute website: www.g-jo.com.)
Now repeat a brief prayer, mantra or spiritual affirmation -- any
one that you choose -- several times as the bottle remains standing
on the diagram. In 10 or 15 seconds, the remedy is completed.
Or you may place the bottle on another Sanjeevini yantra to include
other symptoms to be treated by this "medicine." There is
no limit to the number of ailments you can add to one remedy.-
Once "infused" with all the diagrams that apply, a squirt
of the liquid is then taken orally, several times a day. This should
be repeated regularly until the "target symptom" is healed.
As you see, it's a very simple process.
Equally simple is its use to "broadcast" a remedy to as
distant a location as the "operator" (as the Sanjeevini
therapist is known) might wish. In that case, a remedy -- which is
called a "healing fragrance" in Sanjeevini parlance -- is
created in the usual way.
Once finished, however, the bottle is just placed on the "broadcasting"
diagram that is part of the Sanjeevini "Operator's Kit."
A piece of paper with the name and address (or even just a photograph)
of the intended recipient is also placed on that diagram.
Then the bottle and paper are left to sit there for a few hours or
days. Nothing more.
In this case, none of the remedy is ever consumed, only "transmitted"
(in much the way that the healing system known as "radionics"
is said to work).
There are a number of variations of these procedures, but each is
as simple as it is subtle. Yet don't be fooled: It's also a very powerful
and effective healing tool, and its results can be nothing short of
amazing.
For example, I once received a telephone call following one of my
radio broadcasts about G-Jo Acupressure. The caller was suffering
from hiccups that had begun after he'd had open-heart surgery (a common
condition arising when the chest is "cracked" for any reason).
The man was desperate. He wanted to know if there was anything that
could be done to ease his distress. He hadn't slept in weeks -- the
spasms came at intervals of only a few seconds apart, and he was nearly
dead from exhaustion.
I talked him through several acupressure techniques, but those didn't
help. Then I had an idea. I knew that there was a healing-fragrances
diagram for "hiccups," so I asked the man for his name and
address, then told him a little about the long-distance experiment
I would try with Sanjeevini.
After he hung up, I created a remedy for him by just folding the paper
upon which was written his contact information. I placed it atop the
"hiccups" diagram. Then I repeated my usual mantra, focusing
my mind on the suffering caller.
After a few seconds of this "meditation," I clipped the
paper to the "broadcasting" diagram and forgot about it.
I didn't hear from the caller for the next, several weeks. But then
he phoned back, again urgently ... but this time, he was desperate
to find a copy of the Sanjeevini manual!
It turned out that only minutes after he had hung up the phone following
his first call to me -- about the time I had begun broadcasting his
remedy -- the hiccups had simply ... stopped!
And they hadn't come back!
But he had been afraid to call me with the good news. He was terrified
that this "cure" was just a momentary quirk, and that if
he said something about it, they'd return with a vengeance.
But now he, as well as his family had other health problems to deal
with, and he wanted to begin using Sanjeevini for those.
There have been many such stories, though few as dramatic as that.
Taken together, however, they paint a most convincing picture about
the benefits available when we exercise the healing power that spiritual
conviction can provide.
* * *
As my
confidence in the power of Sanjeevini grew, I began to wonder if that
system was even necessary. Could I go directly to the God-power I
was invoking, without the "intermediary" of the diagrams?
I believed I could.
For nearly as long as I have been a health educator (now, more than
half my life) I have also been a student of "spiritual yoga"
or advaita Vedanta. During that time, I have read -- then taught and
written about -- a number of the great scriptures of yoga-Vedanta.
These have included The Bhagavad-Gita, the Upanishads, Atma Bodha,
Yoga Sutras, Yoga Vasistha and others.
These texts repeatedly affirm our intimate connection with this God-power.
They also teach us that the so-called "law of karma" --
loosely defined as what we sow we must eventually reap -- is both
valid and immutable.
The knowledge of this principle of cause-and-effect is said to be
vital for understanding and coping with life's many problems.
It had long seemed clear to me that one of the most common ways that
karma -- "unfinished business," if you will -- expresses
itself, is via the health disorders we invariably suffer throughout
life. These can often be foretold in a variety of ways.
For example, astrologers can sometimes predict bodily areas or times
we are most vulnerable and likely to experience distress or sickness.
And nadi readers in India -- who translate cryptic pages said to have
been transcribed millennia ago by such prescient sages as Shuka and
Brighu -- are frequently able to foresee their clients' impending
health disorders months or years in advance.
Less mystically, Western science has also identified various genes
and other attributes which may foretell certain health problems before
they actually manifest. And masters of Chinese pulse diagnosis, face
reading or iridology claim to be able to anticipate much of a client's
health destiny, too.
In short, poor health doesn't normally "just happen." Its
seeds are often sown by our abuses far in the past. That's one side
of the karmic equation.
And if poor health could be predicted, might it mean that one's healing
could also be prophesied? The law of karma would seem to argue in
favor of this ... at least in a round-about way.
For if one believes in the law of karma, s/he must necessarily deny
at least some of the notion of "free will." They are mutually
exclusive viewpoints -- you are either bound by your self-generated,
accumulated destiny or you have no destiny, at all, except that which
you forge as you go.
Yoga-Vedanta argues for the former. For example, in Chapter 18, Verse
60, of The Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna:
Bound
by your own karma, oh Arjuna, which is born of your very nature, what
through delusion you seek not to do, you shall do even against your
will.
Or this,
from 3:33:
Even the (wo)man of knowledge acts in accordance with his or her own
nature. Each being follows its nature; what can restraint accomplish?
And from
11:33, speaking to the hesitant Arjuna about the presumed sin of taking
up arms against his own family, Krishna says:
Therefore, Arjuna, stand up and win glory; conquer your enemies and
enjoy an opulent kingdom. By Me (God) and none other have they already
been slain ...
(all
quotes are taken from this author's A Yogi Explains 'The Bhagavad-Gita':
Enlightenment For The New Millennium).
So logic
dictated that if I were to believe the wisdom of yoga and its scriptures,
then both the time of my birth and especially the time of my death,
had longsince been ordained by "my karma." Did it then follow
that my "medical karma" had mostly been predetermined, as
well?
It would seem so. This implication was supported by my studies of
other yogic scriptures, too.
Please understand: I mention these quotes not to proselytize, only
to explain how, through my belief in these words, I came to the conclusions
by which I now live.
I became convinced that if our health problems are pre-ordained, then
any healing we seek -- either from a doctor or from someplace within
ourselves -- must be similarly decreed and perhaps be even beyond
our control.
This further meant that any disease or disorder I might suffer, could
not kill me before my karmically allotted time had expired. Conversely,
if it were my "time to go," no doctor, pill or technique
could prevent my death.
This belief had been strengthened by my successes with Sanjeevini.
After all, Sanjeevini was just an application of the principle of
turning all healing requests over to the God-power (or to my karmic
destiny -- take your choice).
Of course, not all my attempts in using that therapeutic system for
others had proved successful. But I came to believe that my "failures"
meant my "target" had to suffer the distress in order to
learn a valuable lesson.
Anyway, the majority of the remedies that I and my colleagues were
creating seemed to produce beneficial results -- far better than mere
chance or coincidence, I thought. In those instances, I became convinced
that the sufferer's lesson was to learn to believe in the existence
of the God-force.
To add yet another piece to my growing conviction, I came across a
quote from Sathya Sai Baba:
"Medicine
and hospitalization are for those who doubt and hesitate and argue
about this doctor being more efficient than the other, or this drug
being more powerful than the rest. For those who rely on the Supreme
Doctor, His Name is the drug that cures."
And then
I came across another of Sai Baba's pronouncements to people of all
faiths and religions:
"Transfer
the faith that you have in drugs to God; put your trust not in medicine
but in God ... God is the Doctor -- seek Him, rely on Him, and you
will be free from disease."
Could
it be that the healings which my friends and I were "performing"
would have come about anyway, with or without our efforts? To me,
the law of karma would seem to decree that.
If my beliefs were correct, then avoiding doctors like the plague
made perfect sense. I'd avoided them, anyway, since my youth with
no ill effects, so I didn't need much convincing. But now, at least,
I could follow this unusual policy confidently and with no misgivings.
It would just become another of my spiritual practices -- something
like what Christian Scientists do, I supposed.
What was the worst that could happen if I experienced sickness, pain
or disease? Perhaps I'd suffer for a bit, I reasoned; but I already
knew many methods and techniques to erase virtually any type of suffering
I'd ever encounter.
And according to the karmic law, that suffering wouldn't kill me --
couldn't kill me -- at least not before my time.
To me, it also meant that doctors and medicines had little, if anything,
to do with healing. At the most, they were merely junior partners
in the process.
So armed with my successful experiences with Sanjeevini, and girdled
with my belief in the immutable law of karma -- further bolstered
by my guru's clear words on the subject -- I decided to really put
this belief to the ultimate test.
No longer would I even use Sanjeevini, I decided. Simple as its steps
might be, even they now seemed clumsy and pedestrian for one who would
simply turn his healing over to the God-force.
I vowed to just repeat my simple mantra several times as I focused
on the bodily area or symptom which might need healing. And from then
until now, that's exactly what I've done.
The mantra I use -- Aum Sai Ram -- is unimportant; I am convinced
of this. It could be any heartfelt prayer or affirmation of my intention
to let the God-power do the healing. It is now my conviction that
this Power, alone (in any form that God may be visualized), is the
one and only true healer.
And what are the results of this practice? Frankly, they couldn't
be better!
Nearly always, the "target symptom" I focus upon is relieved
in moments, not minutes! If it returns later, another few repetitions
of my mantra erases it again. It has always worked this way from the
start of my "experiment," and I expect it always will ...
until my karmic plug is pulled, that is.
I share my experiences with you at a time when people everywhere are
fearing for their health and worried about the soaring cost of medical
insurance. Admittedly, my approach to health care is a radical one
-- many people would not feel comfortable with that much "health
independence," however possible it might be.
But as a yogi or yogini, do you really need to depend fully on our
failing health-care system?
Perhaps ... but perhaps not.
There are many "first-step" methods you can try before reaching
out to doctors, drugs, hospitalization or surgery. And by all means,
transfer some of the faith you may now have in the medical establishment
to the place where yogis and yoginis have entrusted their well-being
for thousands of years.
If those efforts fail, then take the next, more conventional steps
toward healing -- not before. Instead, try the simpler, more yogic
way first.
If your experience is anything like mine, you may be astounded by
the results!
