Ayurveda, Allopathy & The Best System Of Medicine

Sadhguru talks about what makes Indian traditional systems of medicine different from allopathy, and delves into the future of medicine in an age of artificial intelligence.

Yogi, mystic and visionary, Sadhguru is a spiritual master with a difference. With an arresting blend of profundity and pragmatism, his life and work serves as a reminder that yoga is a contemporary science, vitally relevant to our times.

Transcript

All medical colleges may have to close down because artificial intelligence will make diagnoses by itself and treat you by itself.

So it is time the young doctors who are coming up now should focus on how you should be able to look beyond the symptoms.

You must allow the deeper intelligence within you to function.

The antibiotic resistance is increasing day by day and Ayurvedic practices are declining day by day.

So how do we create a perfect amalgamation between the practices of Ayurveda and Allopathy?

Ayurveda and Siddha and Naturupathi is growing big time in the west,

Particularly in Europe,

Very big.

In India,

Of course,

It's dying because they have to approve it for us to take it.

Without their approval,

We cannot take it.

But we must understand the difference between Allopathy and these other Indian systems.

Right now,

An Ayurvedic doctor is going to another medical college just like you go for four years or five years or whatever.

So what he's learning is a downgraded medicine,

Downgraded understanding.

An Ayurvedic doctor or one who wants to practice Ayurveda should not go to a four-year course.

You have to invest your life in it,

Otherwise it won't happen.

Traditionally,

From childhood,

They learn to feel the herbs,

They learn to feel the people,

The flowers and this and that.

This is a developing a certain intuition where we don't go by the symptoms that you're showing on your body right now.

We don't see your temperature and say,

This is what it is.

We don't look at those symptoms.

We learn to look much deeper into the system to identify what exactly is right and wrong with your system.

This will take a different level of involvement.

That involvement is missing right now.

You're looking at things,

If I do this much,

I must get this job or I must get this place in the world.

With this,

These systems may not function very well.

You must have heard this,

The same medicine one doctor gives in Ayurveda and Siddha,

The same medicine in one person's hands,

It works very well.

In another person's hands,

It doesn't work well because the person who gives it is as important as the medicine because it's not working just by its chemical composition.

The entire allopathic system is working out of chemical composition.

Anyway,

There is a danger that in the next twenty-five years,

All medical colleges may have to close down because artificial intelligence will make diagnosis by itself and treat you by itself.

Surgeries are all happening now,

Robotic surgeries are happening.

Still human beings are needed because machines need to be upgraded.

But in twenty-five years' time,

Even today in United States,

I know doctors,

I saw a doctor whom I know very well,

He is carrying an old Blackberry,

The first model that came which is that thick and a huge capability.

Every time any patient,

Whatever,

He just goes there into his Blackberry.

I said,

What are you looking in the phone and treating people?

He said,

No Sadhguru,

The entire… all my textbooks are here in this phone.

I'm just looking and telling them.

So if you can look,

The phone can become smart enough now that it will tell by itself.

If you just tell the symptoms to Alexa,

She will tell you what you should do.

So,

This form of symptomatic treatment may become irrelevant after some time because you are just gathering data and processing it and giving an answer.

This a machine will be able to do better than any human being because it can process much faster and much better and not miss anything.

So,

It is time the young doctors who are coming up now should focus on how you should be able to look beyond the symptoms.

This is what Ayurveda and Siddha is significant about.

There was a yogi with whom I volunteered for some time for his medical camps that he used to have.

It was like a festival,

Okay?

For everybody who comes to him,

He has a joke to tell them and it goes on like a festival,

Simply something he will give and people are cured,

Thousands of people will queue up for him every day.

And he himself lived to be one-naught-six.

So if somebody lives for hundred-and-six years of age,

Not in a geriatric state,

Fully active till the last day of his life,

He must know something about health,

Isn't it?

Hello?

My great-grandmother lived to be one-one-three,

Hundred-and-thirteen years of age.

I will tell you,

This is… this may sound absurd to you,

But you must listen to this because if you are not open,

There will be no new learning.

Well,

I saw her only after she is hundred,

But she was still very active.

She was living all by herself in a open field.

She built a small temple for herself,

Not for a god,

For herself.

She built a temple and she sat in it.

Because she felt she deserves a temple.

This is very common in India,

Especially women,

Older women,

Built small temples,

They sat there and they served humanity in a different way,

In their own way.

So when we went there for vacations and all,

She would come home.

If you give her breakfast,

She will take this and put it to the ends,

To the squirrel,

To the sparrows,

Everything.

Most of the breakfast is gone like this.

There are self-appointed advisors who look at this and say,

"'You old woman,

You don't eat anything,

You will die.

' They all died.

" And she will simply sit there looking at these sparrows and ants eating,

Simply tears would be rolling from her eyes.

And when somebody said,

"'You have not eaten?

' She said,

"'I'm full.

'" I thought she was very emotional about the ants because I was just four,

Five years of age.

I was going stamping the ants,

Chut,

Chut,

Chut.

The best thing is she never stopped me.

She never said,

"'Don't do that.

'" She knew she's doing what she has to do for the ants.

Ants are doing what they should do for their life.

I am as a child doing what I have to do as a child.

When I sometimes saw her like this and I asked,

"'What is this happening to you?

' She would just laugh loudly and she would say,

"'Someday you will know.

' It took me over twenty-five years to know this,

That your life is not nourished hundred percent by the food that you consume and things that you do.

Life is a bigger phenomena than what you think in your head,

Much larger.

Before you came,

This cosmos was there,

Everything was working.

After you and me are gone,

Still it will be fine,

Isn't it?

There is an intelligence beyond you.

Don't immediately quantify it as God,

This,

That,

Because you are making a conclusion about things that you do not know.

If you stay here,

This is very important,

If you live here,

Clearly knowing you don't know a damn thing about anything,

Your intelligence will remain alert to everything.

But you make conclusions,

Reading a book,

Listening to this and that nonsense,

You say,

I know this,

I know that,

I know that.

The moment you identify with your knowledge,

You will become very small,

Because it doesn't matter how much you know,

Still what you know is a miniscule in this existence,

Isn't it?

But our ignorance is boundless.

This is called as the intelligence of ignorance.

If you always know that you do not know,

Your intelligence will remain super alert.

Whether your body is awake or asleep,

It will remain super alert.

This is what a doctor must do,

Because… I'm sorry to say such things,

You may know medicine,

You might have read all the books in the world,

You might have treated many patients,

But still,

Everything seems to be perfect,

Somebody will die in your hands.

Everything looks like he's going to die,

He will sit up tomorrow morning.

You will see this happening.

Yes or no?

So there is intelligence beyond you and me,

There's an intelligence which makes us happen,

There's an intelligence which can make a man go into a human being.

If you don't allow that to function within you,

If you think everything is in your head,

You will become a dumb doctor.

You must allow the deeper intelligence within you to function.

Reviews

Beautiful. Thank you 🙏🏻

Great perspective on the medical world 🙂

Computers ??.......not a replacement!!!

This was exactly what I needed to hear, thank you 🙏🏼

Very good. The older I get the less I know.

Very informative, great perspective.