Swami Vivekananda & the Medical profession

Swami Vivekananda & the Medical profession

Respected President, Secretary and Office bearers of Indian Medical Association, Belur-Bally-Liluah
Chapter, respected Councilor of Howrah Municipal Corporation, and dear doctor friends, I am very happy
to be here on the occasion of your Annual Doctors Day celebration for this year. I have come from Belur
Math, as introduced just now. I look after Ramakrishna Mission Shilpamandira which is a premier
Polytechnic College of Bengal. I am from Bangalore originally, although it is over 25 years since I left
that place. With your permission, I will be speaking in Bengali & English. I will not be able to speak in
chaste Bengali as some of the speakers have been doing here today. Some days back, Dr Tanmoy Mondal
came to me and requested me to participate in this program. I will be speaking to you all on the topic:
Swami Vivekananda & the medical profession.
You are all doctors. I am a monk. The interaction between monks and doctors has always been one of
lively interest. Among the ancient Christian monks, for instance, the dilemma between taking the help of
a medical doctor and depending entirely on the Lord for curing their physical ailments is noteworthy.
A Christian father once fell ill. A doctor came to treat him. After the checkup, the father asked the
doctor, What do you say, Doctor? The doctor replied, Well, Father, let me put it this way; you keep me
out of hell & I will keep you out of heaven.
That is how it has always been. Doctors have always played God. Doctors have always had the
special, most sought after power, of postposing death. Everything that doctors do, everything that the
medical profession does, basically revolves around death. Monks also deal with death. Death is the topic
on which both of us meet.
One of our President Maharajjis was Swami Bhuteshanandaji. Towards the end of his life, he was
suffering from various old age related ailments. One day, some senior swamis came to check on him.
They asked him how he was. He replied by telling them a story: A man took his car to the garage. The
mechanic took a detailed look at the old vehicle and then said, Your car is in excellent condition. You
will just need to re-bore the engine, change the battery, repaint the body, re-upholster the seats and change
the tires.
There was a great monk called Swami Yatishwaranandaji in Bangalore. He was the Vice-President of
the Ramakrishna Mission. He was a monk with genuine spiritual achievements. Such men seem to be like
us for all practical purposes, but there is a qualitative difference nevertheless. When he was very old, he
started getting extremely indrawn. His constant indrawn-ness was completely new to those around him in
the Bangalore Ashrama. They misunderstood it as something to do with some ailment. So, some doctors
were consulted. One of those doctors suggested that it was a mental disorder! Imagine! A man such as
Swami Yatishwaranandaji being suspected of having a mental illness. Nevertheless, the inmates of the
Ashrama, decided to consult the best psychiatrist available then. He was a doctor in NIMHANS. The
doctor came and checked Swamiji for a long time behind closed doors. He came out and told, Never
commit this mistake again. He is supremely well. What he has is not a mental condition. The way he has
shaped his own personality, this indrawn-ness is natural to him. That doctor went on to become a great
devotee of the Swami.
This very Swamiji had another very interesting incident with doctors. You see, when our old swamis
are treated by doctors, those doctors turn out to become close to the swamis, almost devotees. So, the
doctor who was treating Swami Yatishwaranandaji too became very close to him. I think it was right here
in Kolkata, perhaps in our Seva Prathisthan. There was a monk-attendant also who stayed with him
throughout in the hospital. He was Swami Samjnanandaji. One day, that doctor and the attendant Swami
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both came to Swamiji and told him, Maharaj, you have nothing to worry. Both of us will be always with
you to take care of you. The Swamiji then told something very surprising. He said, I know both of you
are taking very good care of me. But know this for sure that when my last moment will come, I will be
alone here, neither of you will be there. And that is exactly how it transpired. Both of them were with the
Swami almost like a shadow. But one day, both had just stepped out of the room, to discuss something
with some other doctors. Although they were outside the room, they were just on the other side of the
door. When they entered the room, they found that Swamiji was no more.
I lived with a very interesting monk for some time in Belgaum. He was Swami Purushottamanandaji.
He was the Secretary of the new Center that was started there. When I went to live with him, he was
already over 70 years. And he had been suffering from acute diabetes for the last 25 years. The first few
years, he had no clue what to do about it. Then, some doctor introduced him to the human insulin
injections. Ever since I saw him, I found him taking those insulin injections himself. I used to be amazed
looking at him. He had an uncanny sense of when his sugar level was rising. He would then take a couple
of units of insulin and he would be fine again. I even tried using the one-touch monitor and found that his
sense was always right. A very interesting thing happened once. We heard that a Diabetologist had set up
clinic in Bangalore. I am speaking of 2000 or 2001. Those days, Diabetology as a specialized field was
just starting. So, when we heard that a specialist was there, we got an appointment for Swamiji. We took
the swami to the doctor. We waited outside. The swami went inside and came out in a matter of minutes. I
was surprised. I went in and asked the doctor. He was a bright young man. He said, Well, Swamiji came
in and asked me How long have you studied Diabetes? I told him that I had studied it for over four
years. He went out saying, I have been studying it for the last 25 years. I dont see how you can help me
now.
I am telling you all these instances for pointing out the boundaries of your medical field. The willpower of man, the mind of man, and finally death; medical science is yet to come to terms with these and
much more. Great are the blessings that this noble profession has bestowed on man. But, it still has a
long, long way to go.
Anyway, when I was invited to come to this program, I felt a need to make a study on Swami
Vivekanandas interaction with the medical profession. I was surprised to find that there is no such formal
study yet. I couldnt find any article on this topic Swami Vivekananda & the medical profession in
Prabuddha Bharata, Vedanta Kesari or in Udbodhan. These are the official magazines of Ramakrishna
Mission. I think the recorded interactions between Swamiji and doctors started with the cancer treatment
of Sri Ramakrishna. There were Dr Mahendralal Sarkar and Dr Rajendralal Mitra. Then, after he became
a monk, we find records of his many ailments. He suffered from lumbago, diabetes and chronic
dyspepsia. He also had neuralgic pain. When he visited Amarnath Cave, he had enlargement of the heart.
We find that when he visited Shillong, he had a very bad attack of asthma. There is a famous photo that
was taken there, where it is clear that he is in real bad shape. In all these cases, he must have approached
doctors. Unfortunately, we do not find any record of which doctor treated him.
When he was in the West too, it must certainly have happened that he had approached some doctors.
However, about his time in the West, we do find references of Swamiji visiting various alternate medicine
doctors. You must know that the period of his visit was the most fertile period of experimentation in
various kinds of alternate medicines. Most of them were subsumed under the name Christian Science.
This was an outcome of a crazy line of thinking. There were many theories. Some of them believed that
they could replicate what Jesus had done with the blind and crippled people by thinking of him. Some
others believed that they were not the body, and since they were not the body, they had no physical
ailment! There was one man called Swami Kripananda, who had been given Sannyasa by Swamiji. He
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was in fact a big time votary of something called the Odo-scope which was an apparatus for
electromagnetic therapy. He claimed to cure even cancer with that thing.
So you see, this was the general situation of the medical profession at that time. I guess it was so
because penicillin had not yet been discovered. It was the discovery of antibiotics that actually led to the
blooming of the medical profession as we know it today. Allopathy developed only after that. I have
heard that in the 1st World War, more number of soldiers died from gangrene infections than from enemy
bullets! That was the situation. As Dr Pradeep Chakraborty pointed out earlier, quoting Akshay Kumar
Duttas words, We do not need God; logic, rationality, the law of cause and effect is enough for making
our lives better. It was the growth of this mindset that led to the development of the medical field.
I wish to however point out one thing here. Time and again, we find Swamiji applying this concept of
causality to address health and medical issues. Those days, many monks in Belur Math used to suffer
from malaria. We find Swamiji writing in a letter, Keep the surroundings clean. That will reduce malaria.
Similarly, drank only boiled and filtered water. You can avoid malarial infections that way. Of course,
we now know that he was wrong about the drinking water connection to malaria. But the way of thinking
he had, the way of linking health issues with cleanliness, well that was new. That was indeed the spirit of
modern medical science.
Since I have got this opportunity to speak to so many learned doctors today, I wish to bring your
attention to one more thing. There is a small book called Raja Yoga written by Swami Vivekananda. In
that book, he mentions that there is a small gland in our body called the pineal gland. It is located
somewhere in the brain. He says that the purpose of this gland is purely spiritual. Last time I checked with
my doctor friends, I was told that modern medical science doesnt know what purpose this gland serves in
the human body. So, I thought I would bring your notice to this claim made by Swamiji, that this gland
serves a purely spiritual need in our body. Maybe this could be taken up as a challenge by someone here.
I wish to now speak on the most important contribution for doctors by Swami Vivekananda. That is,
his conception of man. You see, all of us in general consider man to be the body. We see a person as a
body, much as this microphone in front of me. If this microphone gets damaged, we send it to the repair
mechanic. It gets repaired. Very similar is the conception of man we all have. A person gets sick. We
send him to the clinic or hospital. There he gets repaired, if you will. Swami Vivekanandas conception
of man was something entirely different. He proclaimed that man is essentially consciousness. Doesnt
medical science recognize consciousness? It does. But it says that consciousness is the by-product, the
outcome, the result of some chemicals moving through some nerve cells. Whereas Swamiji says that
consciousness is primary in a man. It is not a by-product. Consciousness is central. Everything else, the
nerves, the chemicals, the body, everything else is a by-product of consciousness. As of now, we all
experience consciousness only in and through a living body. That is the reason we all believe that it is a
by-product of the living body. But, with a little bit of training, we can all experience consciousness per se,
without the mediation of the body. I know it is a little controversial. But then, Swamiji did not make it up.
He was just stating the accepted point of view of the Upanishads. He was merely paraphrasing the ideas
of the Upanishads in modern language. He even goes to the extent of saying that consciousness is the true
man, the essential man, the Real man. These are the terms he has used. You know, once when he went to
the town of Alameda in USA, a friend met him there and said, Swami, it is so nice to see that you are in
Alameda. Swamiji corrected him and said, I am not in Alameda; Alameda is in me. That was the
conviction he had about man.
Why do I consider this idea as Swami Vivekanandas greatest contribution to the medical field? I will
tell you. In the medical field, as in most other fields like teaching or governing, we run the terrible risk of
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Dehumanization. We lose touch with the living aspect of the people we work upon. Students become
things for us. Patients become things for us. A couple of deaths is just a statistic, you see. This terrible
situation can be avoided only if we start seeing man as essentially consciousness.
What is required is a sense of sacredness with respect to the work we do. Doctors serve. But I ask
you, what is service if it is devoid of the sense of sacredness? There is a small book Swami Vivekananda
wrote called Karma Yoga. Both this book and the other one I referred to earlier Raja Yoga are
available in English and Bengali. In this book, he has introduced the idea of how any work we do can be
converted into something that enhances our personality. And the idea revolves around this sense of
sacredness. There is a small story he narrates. This story is actually from the Mahabharata. It concerns a
Vyadha. Vyadha is a Sanskrit term for a butcher, one who kills animals and sells their meat for his living.
The story is as follows:
A young Sannyasi went to a forest; there he meditated, worshipped, and practiced Yoga for a
long time. After years of hard work and practice, he was one day sitting under a tree, when some dry
leaves fell upon his head. He looked up and saw a crow and a crane fighting on the top of the tree, which
made him very angry. He said, What! Dare you throw these dry leaves upon my head?! As with these
words he angrily glanced at them, a flash of fire went out of his head such was the Yogi's power
and burnt the birds to ashes. He was very glad, almost overjoyed at this development of power he
could burn the crow and the crane by a look. After a time he had to go to the town to beg his bread. He
went, stood at a door, and said, Mother, give me food. A voice came from inside the house, Wait a
little, my son. The young man thought, You wretched woman, how dare you make me wait! You do not
know my power yet. While he was thinking thus the voice came again: Boy, don't be thinking too much
of yourself. Here is neither crow nor crane. He was astonished; still he had to wait. At last the woman
came, and he fell at her feet and said, Mother, how did you know that? She said, My boy, I do not
know your Yoga or your practices. I am a common everyday woman. I made you wait because my
husband is ill, and I was nursing him. All my life I have struggled to do my duty. When I was unmarried,
I did my duty to my parents; now that I am married, I do my duty to my husband; that is all the Yoga I
practice. But by doing my duty I have become illumined; thus I could read your thoughts and know what
you had done in the forest. If you want to know something higher than this, go to the market of such and
such a town where you will find a Vyadha (The lowest class of people in India who used to live as hunters
and butchers.) who will tell you something that you will be very glad to learn.
The Sannyasi thought, Why should I go to that town and to a Vyadha? But after what he had
seen, his mind opened a little, so he went. When he came near the town, he found the market and there
saw, at a distance, a big fat Vyadha cutting meat with big knives, talking and bargaining with different
people. The young man said, Lord help me! Is this the man from whom I am going to learn? He is the
incarnation of a demon, if he is anything. In the meantime this man looked up and said, O Swami, did
that lady send you here? Take a seat until I have done my business. The Sannyasi thought, What comes
to me here? He took his seat; the man went on with his work, and after he had finished he took his
money and said to the Sannyasi, Come sir, come to my home. On reaching home the Vyadha gave him a
seat, saying, Wait here, and went into the house. He then washed his old father and mother, fed them,
and did all he could to please them, after which he came to the Sannyasi and said, Now, sir, you have
come here to see me; what can I do for you? The Sannyasi asked him a few questions about soul and
about God, and the Vyadha gave him a lecture which forms a part of the Mahabharata, called the VyadhaGita. It contains one of the highest flights of the Vedanta.
When the Vyadha finished his teaching, the Sannyasi felt astonished. He said, Why are you in that
body? With such knowledge as yours why are you in a Vyadhas body, and doing such filthy, ugly work?
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My son, replied the Vyadha, no duty is ugly, no duty is impure. My birth placed me in these
circumstances and environments. In my boyhood I learnt the trade; I am unattached, and I try to do my
duty well. I try to do my duty as a householder, and I try to do all I can to make my father and mother
happy. I neither know your Yoga, nor have I become a Sannyasi, nor did I go out of the world into a
forest; nevertheless, all that you have heard and seen has come to me through the unattached doing of the
duty which belongs to my position.
Notice the sense of sacredness associated with the mundane work that the lady and the butcher
performed. That is what we will have to start doing. I will bring my lecture to an end here.
I once again express my gratitude for having invited me to spend this evening with you. Thank you.
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