What is Esoteric Medicine?
Most people know what Western Medicine entails with surgery, pharmacology, medicine, chemotherapy, radiology and the many sub-specialities that are available to assist with the management and treatment of illness and disease but probably few know what Esoteric Medicine is really about. This blog will introduce you to some aspects of Esoteric Medicine.
As medical students we learn copious amounts of information about the human body and how it works, the anatomy, biochemistry, physiology and the pathophysiology of how it breaks down. We rely on memory and recall to regurgitate facts of knowledge about the body and how it works, the different biochemical pathways, the interactions of the different systems, the enzyme cascades – the list of facts that are to be learned is endless. Thus it is often required that entry to medical school requires a certain level of intelligence as determined by school examinations in order to be able to cope with the intellectual rigours of medical training.
However, even though there are many people who tick all the boxes and pass all the exams and who do well at school and medical school and who are deemed to be ‘intelligent’ in the process, it is not unknown for doctors to smoke, drink alcohol – often to excess, be overweight and eat junk food (and I myself was one of those doctors). So how come we can have this intelligence yet not care for the body that contains the intelligence? How intelligent is the intelligence that permits abuse or harm on the body? Something is surely missing from this intelligence. Some other piece of the jigsaw puzzle is required to explain how this could be. Those missing pieces or answers are for me found in the esoteric understandings of the human person and life.
The word 'esoteric' comes from the Greek esôterikos to mean ‘from within’ or innermost. Everyone has an innermost and everyone’s innermost is the same – it is pure love. This is our true nature. The word medicine, comes from the Latin ‘ars medicina’ and means the ‘art of healing’. So esoteric medicine – is the art of healing oneself by reconnecting with one’s innermost, with the essence of love that lives inside each person. It is about making choices from this essence of love that are honouring of the body and guided by the feelings in the body. For if our true nature is love, then in order to have harmony in the body we need to make choices that are self –loving. Sounds like simple common sense and it is – but we have forgotten how to apply and live this form of common sense or intelligence that is based on love and which is different to the mind-driven intelligence we all call intelligence. This latter intelligence is capable of bringing forth marvelous technology and great feats of engineering and medical progress but it also has created weapons of mass destruction and been responsible for much death and destruction amongst mankind. At an individual level the mind can and does overrule the many messages we get from the body and gets us to do many things to and with the body that are not actually in harmony with the body. In contrast, the intelligence borne of love is all encompassing and if listened to would not drive the body beyond what is natural and harmonious for it, would not feed it substances that are harming for it in any way.
As a consequence of our experiences, our upbringing, education, culture, religion, ideals and beliefs we have lost touch with this intelligence or essence of love and I for one certainly had no idea it was there. Love is the missing ingredient, the missing intelligence that is required for humanity to truly heal and make amends of its errant ways. It is because we have not been living self-loving and self-caring lives that we are in the mess we are in. It is the lack of the intelligence of love in the healthcare system that leads to burn out, disillusionment, stress, demotivation and the current crisis in caring in Western Medicine. There is more to understanding this than I can explain in this one post.
However, Esoteric Medicine can restore medicine back to its healing roots by bringing in the true intelligence of love and all that unfolds from the lived expression of that intelligence. There is no way that someone who truly lives from their innermost, from their essence of love, could do anything that was harming or abusive to their own body or that of another. For example they could not abuse the body with alcohol or cigarettes or do anything that was harming to another – such is the nature of love. For this is not about love that is selfish – for that would not be love, it is not about self-gain, or living in a certain way just for one’s own benefit – the intelligence of love applies to all equally, is encompassing of the whole of humanity. Research has shown that the more doctors’ look after their own health and wellbeing the more they are able to look after their patients also. So by applying the wisdom of love to one’s life, one becomes more self-caring of oneself and others…..it’s a win-win all round! Imagine a medical workforce trained not just in Western Medicine but in Esoteric Medicine such that they knew how to truly look after themselves, did not smoke, drink alcohol, eat junk food, overwork, nor use any stimulants and who were predominantly light hearted and joyful!
To some, talking about an innermost essence of love might sound like airy-fairy nonsense but the fact is this can be felt and known by all people everywhere. There are practical tools that help apply these understandings in daily life such that we become more gentle, self-caring, more self-loving and consequentially caring and loving of others likewise. The more we do so the more we build love in the body, and the body rather than the mind is used as the marker, the barometer and guide. Being guided by what we feel rather than what we think is part of the unfolding path of someone endeavouring to live from their innermost. As we do so we become less emotional, more centred and we tend to give people more space and not take things so personally. We become less affected by the daily stresses and strains of life.
Fundamentally Esoteric Medicine is about developing a way of living and being that is at all times honouring of the body and is self-caring. In doing so, we can be more harmonious and perhaps even prevent our deeper ills from manifesting. It is, if you like, the best and most natural form of preventative medicine – living in such a way that the body comes to know itself as harmony and thus is less likely to deviate from that way of being. We know that most of the non-communicable diseases that affect mankind are due to lifestyle choices – Esoteric Medicine is about understanding how and why that is and what we can do to change it such that we develop a lifestyle that is more harmonious for the body. We need Western medicine because we have strayed so far from our esoteric roots and it is a crucial part of the whole healthcare system to address the health needs of humanity. However, it is clear to me that there is plenty of room within the healthcare system for Esoteric Medicine and empowering people to live in a way that is truly healthy, that improves their wellbeing and produces real tangible results in people’s lives. Esoteric medicine engenders personal responsibility for health and being aware how every choice can and does affect one’s health and wellbeing.
In summary, Esoteric Medicine is the art of living and healing by reconnecting to and making choices from one’s innermost essence of love, from the intelligence of love.
“True intelligence works for the whole of the body that the intelligence is contained in as it does for the whole of every other body, in the knowing that all other bodies are equal to the body in which that intelligence exists”. (from the teaching of the Ageless Wisdom by Serge Benhayon)
Love is the true intelligence that encompasses every other body and love is the missing ingredient in healthcare today, the addition of which could beneficially transform medical education, healthcare and wellbeing for all people. Without love, we may fix, we may mend, we may repair, we may patch up, we may improve function, we may cure…… but never do we truly heal.
