Following is a quote from a letter I
received from a student:
"When I spoke about the need for
scientific validation of the statements made from lectrurers at CUIM, I was referring
specifically to health care practitioners who have made unsubstantiated claims about
certain vitamins, herbs or other supplements without any validation of those claims. It
may come as some surprise to you that that happened with some regularity during these past
two years at CUIM. One lectrurer even presented an overhead of a complicated diagram and
informed the class that this was a picture of the "anatomy of a chakra." When
and how, I wondered, did someone surgically excise and pathologically evaluate a chakra?
Actually I had to leave the room because of the audacity of her claims. It is this
unscientific information that I reffered to during a meeting."
This is a critical issue that I also struggled with at CUIM. During the
early period of CUIM's evolution, there were times I also wanted to simply walk out of the
classroom for the same reason. I was troubled because I saw
in those presentations a serious threat to the credibility of the
university. Now I take those types of presentation in stride.
I am grateful to that student for giving me an opportunity to address
this crucial issue. The enlightened ancients developed conceptual models to explain their
empirical observations about healing phenomena. If one were to take their writings at face
value, there are simply too many inconsistencies there to permit anyone to take them
seriously. The ancients, it seems to me, employed some abstractions deliberately. They
seem to recognize that many among their listeners and readers will not differentiate
between what is visible to the eyes (physical aspects) and what remains invisible
(conceptual models). Every culture in every epoch had such models. The three widely
recognized and employed in clinical practice are the seven Indian chakras, the multiple
Chinese acupuncture meridians, and the four Greek humors. Each of those systems has well
served its practitioners and the sick and has stood the test of time. It is also likely
that advances in medical technology will clarify the essential conecpts of those systems
and perhaps provide direct supportive evidence in some areas. I discuss the issue of the
four Greek humors at lenghth in the forthcoming book, The Principles and Practice of
Integrative Medicine.
Having said that, I agree with the student that to present some
elaborate diagram and describe the "anatomy" of seven chakras is a travesty of
the scientific method. Anatomy is a scientific discipline of morphology and concerns what
is demonstrable with dissection and/or microscopy. No one has ever dissected chakras to
examine them with the naked eye, with some microscopic optics, or any other technology for
examining morphology. So for anyone to claim that he/she knows the anatomy of chakras is
grossly misleading. Similarly, I have heard at CUIM the claim that the physics of
acupuncture is known. Next, the speaker spoke of two physics, one of physicists and the
other of acupuncturists. Such claims are unworthy of any serious student of healing arts.
I will gladly accept the physics of acupuncture when technologic advances allow us to
measure the subtle energy pathways implicit in acupuncture meridians. To my knowledge,
such documentation has not been done.
Do such overzealous (and simplistic) presentations put the credibility
of CUIM in jeopardy? In my view, they do. How should the university address this issue? If
we use administrative fiat to exclude such speakers, we face the clear danger of repeating
the serious errors made by the allopathic medical schools. In banning teachers of other
healing arts, they turned their backs on enormously rich empirical experience in those
healing arts. That mistake must be avoided at CUIM. In dismissing empiricism in medicine,
allopathic teachers also sacrificied human intuition. I address the issue of intuition in
healing arts in my editorial entitled "Intuition in Servitude of Analysis,"
included in the Appendix.
I believe the real answer to the problem is: All of us at CUIM must
learn how to separate theoretical (and clinically useful) models from verifiable facts of
human biology and suffering. We learn to graciously look beyond the innocent efforts of
some to bring false prestige to their work by pseudoscience. We must have the strength to
seek out what is of empirical value in the experience being presented. Science is its own
guardian. It needs protection from the uninitiated.
No matter what you hear, from whom, seeking the
truth in what you hear is your wisdom.
Ancient
Sanskrit writings