This prophecy has come true today. Despite all our advances in the technological and scientific fields, man still remains the same. It looks as if he is going to destroy all the natural resources of this earth because of his proclivity for comfort and his greed. Although man has been successful in landing on the moon, he finds it difficult to land happily in his own neighbour’s house with a smile.

The old concept of the East, of "Vasudaiva Kutumbikam" (the whole world is one big family) has to be revived for the good of humanity. We were but one large family even according to the scientific findings. This world was once one land mass which broke up over millions of years, with the sea coming in between, into the present day continents. Studies have shown that the sense of belonging, in the large family system in the old sustenance economies, was responsible for the lower incidence of degenerative and psychosomatic diseases in the past.

The languages of the world give an inkling into this. The Indo-European languages of today were, thousands of years ago, a single language. The words of any language are like the cells of an organism. They change, mutate, and migrate, like the speciation observed by Darwin on the islands of the Galapagos.

If one goes back to the fossil roots of some words this could easily be understood, that we have all come from the same human family.

Sanskrit	Latin	Medieval French	German	Modern English
Brahman	Flamen	Flamen		Flame
Veda	Videre	Wis (dom)	Witen	Vision
Bodathi	Beudh	Beodan
Mathr	Mater	Mere		Mother
Pithr	Pater	Pere		Father

Man is a social animal. We do not behave like social animals under all circumstances. It has been said that the only thing that is innate in us is our language. If that were so, music and language are the two human activities, which will never die out, but might keep us together despite all our efforts to destroy ourselves, with our new technologies. While so much progress has been made in physics, very little has happend in the field of social sciences. Einstein was said to have remarked that " physics is much simpler than social science."

Unlike many animals, we are not genetically programmed to live and work together for our common good. We behave differently at different times and do not think with our minds together. A look at the ants( or termites), which are almost blind and have hardly any brain tissue, and the way they behave in groups, should amaze any thinking man or woman and put them to shame. Ants build such fantastic homes (ant hills); some of which spread over hundreds of meters with hillocks. They have excellent air-conditioning and have special chambers to grow fungi for their food. They have special room on the top for their queen. The whole edifice is based on a simple arch. Even our best engineers and architects should marvel at their ingenuity. Gassi showed in elegant experiments how ants, left in isolation, are almost blind. When they are together they try to build the arch in such complicated ways that it is only possible with a collective Consciousness. This is genetically programmed.

If only men and women could come together with their large brains and their collective consciousness , we could do wonders for mankind. The evolution of the human species resulted in the large brain which in turn favoured the adaptive success of an advanced form. The beauty of all this could be enjoyed in the book Man Makes Himself by a leading archeologist, Gordon Childe. This idea of the individual vis-à-vis a collective Universal Consciousness was well developed in the Sanatana Dharma of the East. Today we have to learn it from the ants and termites! Knowledge and wisdom do not belong to any particular age, race, religion or nation. They are ever present, ever changing, evolving thought processes emanating from individuals and groups. Let us look at a few of these milestones.

We talk of scientific fantasy and the realities today. Consider some of the great Eastern epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. We now have airplanes, missiles, tele-communications, people landing on the moon and mars. We may take these things in our stride, but these realities of today existed as fantasies to our fore-fathers thousands of years ago. The epics might have been novels of their` time; even if we do not accept them as gospels of those days, but they were talking about potential realities of the time, with graphic details of the intricacies of human behaviour. They are a source of eternal peace and tranquillity.

Most of the hi-tech stuff of the present day are only half way technologies. This is very much true in the field of medicine, nay in all the sciences. What is science? Is an excellent question and the best answer is " science is what scientists do", put differently in Dutch it sounds better- Wetenschap Is Wat Wetenschappers Doen. Let us look at some of these. Lewis Thomas, former President of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, in his book The Lives of a Cell classifies modern-technology in medicine into three groups".(1)

1. Non-Technology:- The so-called supportive therapy.
2. Half-way Technology:- Technology designed to palliate ( to cloak ) symptoms and postpone death if possible! Outstanding examples being spare-part surgery, artificial organs, coronary bypass surgeries, angioplasties, cancer therapy etc. They are, in addition, prohibitively expensive from the community point of view. Even today approximately 80% of the world population depends wholly or partially on traditional medicines for primary health care.
3. Really hi-tech: That which comes with good understanding of the disease process. This class is "highly sophisticated and profoundly primitive". It attracts least public notice. Lewis Thomas puts smallpox eradication by vaccination in this category.

Credit here must surely go to Edward Jenner but the real hero was that thirteen year old innocent boy, James Phipps, who did not know that he was being used as a guinea pig in a possibly fatal experiment, when Edward Jenner gave him an inoculation of live small pox virus. This was based on anecdotal information from a milk maid, Norma, that people who get cowpox (in latin vacca means cow) do not suffer from small pox. Edward Jenner did something which today’s science and medical ethics would not have forgiven. Since the experiment succeeded, we applaud Jenner. If the experiment had failed the world would not have known that an innocent boy was killed by research misadventure! God only knows how many innocent lives have been lost in such heroic experiments where the former were used unbeknownst to them. Few in the West know that we in India had an elaborate system of small pox vaccination, the details of which were documented by Dr. J.H. Holwell, F.R.S. in his letter to the President of the Royal College of Physicians of London in the year 1747 AD. (2)

"On pursuing lately some tracts upon the subject of Inoculation, I determined to put together a few notes relative to the manner of Inoculation, practised, time out of mind by the Brahmins of Indostan; to this I was chiefly investigated, by the great benefit that may arise to mankind from a knowledge of this foreign method, which so remarkably tends to support the practice now generally followed with such marvelous success".
The story of smallpox goes thus: "By the earliest account we have of small pox, we find it first appeared in Egypt in the time of Omar, successor to Mahomet; though no doubt, since the Greeks knew nothing of it, the Arabians brought it from their own country; but might derive it originally from some of the more distant regions of the East".

The sagacity of the above conclusions, later times and discoveries has fully verified, three thousand three hundred years before 1747 AD (five thousand years ago) as the Indian scriptures institute a form of divine worship (Poojah) to the "Goddess of the spots".

Inoculation is performed in Indostan by a particular tribe of Brahmins, who are delegated annually for this service from the different Colleges of Bindoobund, Eleabas, Banaras, &c. Over all the distant provinces; dividing themselves into small parties, of three or four each, they plan their traveling circuits in such ways as to arrive at the places of their respective destination some weeks before the usual return of the disease; they arrive commonly in the Bengall provinces early in February, although they some years do not begin to inoculate before March, deferring it until they consider the state of the season, and acquire information of the state of the distemper.

The inhabitants of Bengall, knowing the usual time when the inoculating Brahmins annually return, observe strictly the regimen enjoined, whether they determine to be inoculated or not; this preparation consists only in abstaining for a month from fish, milk, and ghee, (a kind of butter made generally of buffalo’s milk ); the prohibition of fish respects only the native Portuguese and Mohammedans, who abound in every province of the empire.

When the Brahmins begin to inoculate, they pass from house to house and operate at the door, refusing to inoculate any who have not, on a strict scrutiny, duly observed the preparatory course enjoined them. It is no uncommon thing for them to ask the parents how many pocks they chuse their question on a matter seemingly so uncertain in the issue; but true it is, that they hardly ever exceed, or are deficient, in the number required.

Previous to the operation the Operator takes a piece of cloth in his hand, (which becomes his perquisite if the family is opulent,) and with it gives a dry friction upon the part intended for inoculation, for the space of eight or ten minutes, then with a small instrument he wounds, by many slight touches, about the compass of a silver groat, just making the smallest appearance of blood, then opening a linen double rag (which he always keeps in a cloth round his waist) takes from thence a small pledgit of cotton charged with the variolous matter, which he moistens with two or three drops of the Ganges Water, and applies it to the wound, fixing it on with a slight bandage, and ordering it to remain on for six hours without being moved, then the bandage to be taken off, and the pledget to remain until it falls off itself; sometimes (but rarely) he squeezes a drop from the pledget, upon the part, before he applies it; from the time he begins the dry friction, to tying the knot of the bandage, he never ceases reciting some portions of the worship appointed, by the Aughtorrah Bhade, to be paid to the female divinity before-mentioned, nor quits the most solemn countenance all the while. The cotton, which he preserves in a double callico rag, is saturated with matter from the inoculated pustules of the preceding year, for they never inoculate with fresh matter, nor with matter from the disease caught in the natural way, however distinct and mild the species. He then proceeds to give instructions for the treatment of the patient through the course of the process, which are most religiously observed.

The instrument they make use of, is of iron, about four inches and a half long, and of the size of a large crow quill, the middle is twisted, and the one end is steeled and flatted about an inch from the extremity, and the eighth of an inch broad; this extremity is brought to a very keen edge, and two sharp corners; the other end of the instrument is an earpicker, and the instrument is precisely the same as the Barbers of Indostan use to cut the nails, and depurate the ears of their customers, (for in that country, we are above performing either of these operations ourselves.) The Operator of inoculation holds the instrument as we hold a pen, and with dexterous expedition gives about fifteen or sixteen minute scarifications (within the compass above mentioned) with one of the sharp corners of the instrument, and to these various little wounds, I believe may be ascribed the discharge which almost constantly flows from the part in the progress of the disease. I cannot help thinking that too much has been said (pro and con) about nothing, respecting the different methods preferred by different practitioners of performing the operation; provided the matter is thrown into the blood, it is certainly, a consideration of most trivial import by what means it is effected; if any claims a preference, I should conclude it should be that method which bids fairest for securing a plentiful discharge from the ulcer.

Pain:
Even in other fields of medicine there have been major East-West co-operation efforts that do not come to the knowledge of the present day doctor Charaka’s writings and Hippocratic writings have many things in common. Prof. Kutumbiah of the Madras University in his book The History of Medicine has the following explanation for the above. The theory of the three basic faults in the system according to Ayurveda, the Tridoshas, is identical to the humors theory of Hippocrates.

Alexander the Great invaded India and took back Indian books and scholars with him around 400 BC. Even though Alexander did not reach Greece, the books and scholars did go to Alexandria. Hippocratic writings are around 100 BC and were possibly influenced by the old Indian Scriptures.

The following stanza in the Shushrutha Samhita, the most important text book in Ayurveda, clearly describes the pain of myocardial ischaemia (anginal pain) in such great detail that it cannot be bettered even now. The interesting aspect of the whole thing is the reference to the cause of pain in the beginning of the stanza, viz.: "hradrogam" (heart disease). Heberden, an English physician, credited with the first authentic documentation of angina pectoris in the 18th century gave a graphic description of his own chest pain, but had no idea that the pain came from the heart. His student, Edward Jenner, of vaccination fame, thought that his boss’s chest pain was due to syphilis. It was only around 1905 that William Osler, a great medical brain of this century, postulated that the chest pain that Heberden had could have been due to heart disease. Although once called the English disease, angina has its first well documented authentic description in Ayurveda.

Thrichatwarimshathammodhyayah:

" Athaatho Hradrogaprathishedam Vyakyaswamyah
Yathovaacha Bhaghavan Dhanvantharim (suthruthaya)".

Aayammyathe Maaruthaje Hradayam Thudyathe,
Nirmathyathe Dheeryathe Cha Spotyathe Paaticha,
Thrishnoshadaahachoshaam Syuhu Paithikecha,
Dhoomaayanam Cha Moorchaa Cha Swedhahako.

[In this chapter Bhgavan Dhanvanthari, the God of healing, personally describes the symptoms of heart disease and impending death due to heart attacks. Patient may feel pricking pain, vibrations ( palpitations), burning pain, at times the pain may be very severe resembling the pain of splitting the chest into two halves with an axe! He may have unusual thirst, burning all over, breathlessness, extreme exhaustion, mouth breathing because he can not have enough breath through his nostrils, profuse sweating, pale face, stiffness of the body parts, and, finally, even unconsciousness may result! ] (3)

The role of the human mind in disease is a recent thought in modern medicine. The earliest document in this field is that of William Harvey (AD 1648) which goes thus:

" I was acquainted with another strong man, who having received an injury and affront from one more powerful than himself, and upon whom he could not have his revenge, was so overcome with hatred and spite and passion, which he yet communicated to no one, that at last he fell into a strange distemper, suffering from extreme oppression and pain of the heart and breast and in the course of a few years died. His friends thought him poisoned by some maleficent influence, or possessed with an evil spirit ..... In the dead body I found the heart and aorta so much gorged and distended with blood, that the cavities of the ventricles equaled those of a bullock’s heart in size. Such is the force of the blood pent up, and such are the effects of its impulse..... We also observe the signal influence of the affections of the mind when a timid person is arrested, a deadly pallor overspreads the surface, the limbs stiffen, the ears sing, the eyes are dazzled or blinded, and, as it were, convulsed. But here I come upon a field where I might roam freely and give myself up to speculation. And, indeed, such a flood of light and truth breaks in upon me here; occasion offers of explaining so many problems, of resolving so many doubts, of discovering the causes of so many problems, so many slighter and more serious diseases, and of suggesting remedies for their cure, that the subject seems almost to demand a separate treatise...

... And what indeed is more deserving of attention than the fact that in almost every affection, appetite, hope or fear, our body suffers, the countenance changes, and the blood appears to course hither and thither. In anger the eyes are fiery and pupils contracted; in modesty the cheeks are suffused with blushes; in fear, and under a sense of infamy and of shame, the face is pale, but the ears burn as if for the evil they heard or were to hear; in lust how quickly is the member distended with blood and erected ! "(4) .

It is only an year ago that a large study in the USA reported "anger" as the most important risk factor for strokes. A glance at the following stanza will convince one about the ancient eastern thinking in this field.

"Khrodha Shoka Bhaya Aayaasa VirudhannaBhojana Thaponnalan,
Katwaamla Lavana Theekshnonathi Raktha Pitta Prakopayeth"

[ Anger, sorrow, fear, exhaustion, wrong type of food, sedentary living, acidic diet, salt, too much of condiments in diet will eventually lead on to all the disturbances in every system of the body.]

Death:
Death, the most dreaded aspect of human existence today, and the only certainty in life, is the cause of much of the anxieties in life. Anxiety is the sole basis of modern medical practice. It is either patient anxiety of death and disability or the doctor anxiety of having not done enough for his patient. If one could find an answer for this foundation of human misery, he would certainly be picked up by the Swedish Academy for a Nobel prize. Death is feared by most because their perception of death, the end in itself, could be horrible. There are references to the horrors of death in the literature. The fact still remains that death, as reported by those who experienced near death situations, seems to be a very pleasant and tranquil affair. David Johnson, who was crushed by a lion in Africa, only to be saved at the last minute by a friend’s bullet, describes it as a very pleasant experience.(1) Raymond Moody Jr’s account of his patients after a heart attack and cardiac standstill also looks pleasant.

Be that as it may, the eastern philosophy of life after death or the immortality of the soul, athman,( anima ) gives lot of solace to the bereaved family. Death is inevitable, and has very little to do with diseases. It is connected to diseases by the present day market forces, ( getting into medicine in a big way ) to make money out of human misery. Even if all our cancers, coronaries, and strokes were to disappear ( wishful thinking ) we would still have people dying of old age. Even if death could be postponed, this idea is being sold everyday in the "hi-tech" medical world, the borrowed life would not be normal. It is impossible to prevent or reverse ageing with present day knowledge. This was known to our forefathers who propounded the highest wisdom of the individual consciousness that merges with the Universal consciousness to become immortal.

Let us take another field of our present day knowledge. The heart is described as a muscular pump. Frank Starling, in the year 1917, delivering the Lumlein lecture at the Royal College of Physicians of London, thought that the working of the heart is so complicated that he thought only God could comprehend its action in toto. He said that he would confine himself only to its pumping function for the time being. However, the idea that the heart is only a pump persisted for a very long time up until the present times. It was only three years ago that the International Phlebology Congress had a presentation of data in the cine film showing the sucking function of the heart of columns of venous blood with each diastole of the atria. If you went back five thousand years in history there are references to the latter diastolic function of the heart in Ayurveda. In fact, the very name `heart’ denotes that. ( Hridaya= heart ; Hri=suck and Da= give or pump.)
Teleology ( Why? ) is beyond biology ( How? ). However, the eastern and western wisdom combined together may be able to give solace to the troubled mind, which seems to be at the root of most, if not all, problems of mankind. The farthest that the West has gone in this field is what Rene Descartes wrote " There is a great difference between the mind and body, in that the body by its nature is divisible and that mind is entirely indivisible- this teaches me that the mind or soul is entirely different from the body." This brought all the problems for the West. Up until that time westerners followed Pascal. The Cartesian logic culminated in the present reductionist science, which has reached a point of no return. Science was heading for a crisis of specialisation when, in the distant horizon, appeared the new science of CHAOS, which seemed to have cleared the mist in the area. Chaos has many things in common with the age old wisdom of the East. Both of them look at the world as a whole. This holistic view is depicted in the following stanza from the Upanishads.

" Poornam Idaha, Poornam Adaha..........Poornasya Poornam Aaadaaya, Poornam Evashistathe."

[ This is a whole, That is a whole....If you take a bit from the whole, the bit becomes a whole and the whole remains a whole.]

Descartes was only seventeen when he wrote that piece mentioned above. In his later years wisdom must have dawned on him. He used to advise his friends about matters of health from time to time. He once wrote to one of his Royal acquaintances that her bodily symptoms were the outer expression of the inner anguish in her mind, contradicting his own original hypothesis of "Cogito ergo sum". Unfortunately, the latter aspect of Descartes’ thinking did not find as much publicity as did the earlier one. One of the great Nobel laureate physicists, Werner Hisenberg, meant the same when he propounded the Uncertainty Principle, based on his Gadenkenexperiments on the Hines mountains, almost identical to the eastern rishis(saints).

Western science postulates that Consciousness is a fundamental component of the Universe like mass and gravity. " The brain requires a new theory linking events at the quantum level with those of the macroscopic world" wrote Stuart A.E, a Scotish pathologist, in 1997(5). We are drawing closer these days. Even in the sphere of science the East meets the West. The distance is truly dying, if not dead already! Even in the physical field the distance is dead and the world has become a global village, thanks to the jet aircraft, telephones, television, faxes, and the E-mail.

Let us look for the strongest glue to bring man and man together and keep it that way for the good of the future generations. The missing " gluon" seems to be Human Love, which should be identical in the East and the West. Long Live mankind!.