Sharma - Ayurvedic Healing: Contemporary Maharishi Ayurveda Medicine and Science

Health care in the contemporary political entity of the state of India is a heterogeneous mix drawing on the medical traditions of both Asia and Europe as a legacy of its own history. Various medical systems and traditions are officially sanctioned and supported by the state.

The original medical tradition of the cultures indigenous to present-day India drew on Ayurveda, the way of life, or the science of life, or longevity. At once more and less than a medical system, Ayurveda is a prescription for living (with many proscriptions as well). From this philosophy of life derived from ancient teachings and wisdom a medical system can be articulated. As a somewhat loosely organized set of traditions, the medical aspects of Ayurveda may be highly individuated among patients and practitioners, and to some extent the line between what allopathic medicine might traditionally consider a patient versus a practitioner is somewhat blurred.

During successive occupations of India by Islamic Persian (Moghul), and then European rulers, the traditions of Ayurveda were lost or actively suppressed, and other medical traditions were introduced. To the extent that Ayurveda ever represented an integrated system, it became somewhat disintegrated. Contemporary Ayurveda as treated in this text represents a conscious attempt to revive and reconstruct some principles and practices of Ayurveda (a kind of cultural revival or restoration), to present it as an integrated system and to interpret it in the light of some contemporary theories of fundamental science that reach beyond Newtonian mechanics and typological biology (what I have called pre-Darwinian biology) as an explanation of health.

This particular system of Ayurveda is a fully articulated system that is manifest in its theoretical constructs, body of knowledge, training, and practice and is increasingly available in providing clinical services in Europe and North America. The system described in this text has made a conscious effort to consider the culture and society of contemporary Europe and North America in designing and delivering the type of health care described.

Therefore, this book provides a representation of how Ayurveda as a medical system may be encountered in North America and Europe today. Other Ayurvedic traditions are also encountered today, but are generally not integrated in the manner described above. In India, individual traditions of Ayurveda still flourish alongside Islamic medical traditions, homeopathy (introduced by European physicians during the last century) and allopathic medicine as found in contemporary North America and Europe. It is hard to say which system is dominant in India, and the political state makes no such distinction. The Indian population freely picks and chooses from among different medical traditions depending upon their needs and the availability of resources. This heterogeneous mix serves the second largest national population in the world.

This reality may be a reflection of the recognition that allopathic medicine is neither an appropriate nor an affordable medical technology for many situations. Another view may suggest that the present situation in India, while lower cost than in the West, is associated with a lower standard of medical care. The historical antecedents of the present-day health and nutritional status of the Indian population may be discussed and debated with respect to the role of European contact; the net result is a health care system which actively draws on both Asian and European traditions as a kind of popular medicine in India, and which has provided the basis for a contemporary system that is widely available and increasingly popular in North America and Europe.