Our Bodies Are NOT Machines; They Know How to Heal
Our Bodies Are NOT Machines; They Know How to Heal
2/24/09
By Norm Hirst
It is February 24. The publication deadline for this article is February 25. This is my first day back at my computer after being ill and in and out of hospitals for the past 8 weeks. I cannot begin to write all that I would like to write. Being in the clutches of our medical system made me more immediately aware of many problems resulting from mechanical thinking applied to living organisms. With many thanks to a few doctors in a small community hospital working together with our primary care physician to understand what was going on with my body as a whole organism, I am on the road to a recovery that doctors elsewhere had only compounded.
I have read that amongst world health care systems our system ranks 72nd for quality of care. All I can say is it doesn’t surprise me. What I experienced was a total failure of the system to provide health care. I met many wonderful people who wanted to provide health care. They were unable to because of categories, rules, regulations and government requirements beyond sanity. Talking with nurses I found they loved their work and hated the system. If nurses could say what they really think, it would be revolutionary.
I was shocked to find that activities in our medical system are dictated by “major diagnostic categories” which have been used only since the 1980s. The Major Diagnostic Categories (MDC) are formed by dividing all possible principal diagnoses into 25 mutually exclusive diagnosis areas. The diagnoses in each MDC correspond to a single organ system or etiology and, in general, are associated with a particular medical specialty. MDC codes are primarily claims and administrative data elements unique to the United States medical care reimbursement system.
Our bodies are not machines; they are organisms. Organisms function holistically as a single unity. Dividing them up into parts is totally inappropriate. It is no wonder that such an approach turns our medical care system, the most expensive in the world, in to abject failure.
The system is built around beliefs based on scientific materialism. With such beliefs one can understand machines, but not the living organism. Machines are a sum of parts. Each part is designed to function in a certain way. The parts are connected together by some external agency. For the machine to work each part must perform as designed. Else it requires a mechanic to fix it. I have heard many physicians refer to our bodies as being biochemical machines and they are the mechanics to fix them.
In contrast, I remember that when I was nine years old an accident totally crushed my left middle finger. I was rushed to the office of our family doctor. Everyone was convinced that he would have to amputate. I sat there watching as he just stared at it. Finally he mumbled, “I wonder what would happen if I just bandaged it?” That is what he did. When unwrapped I had a completely restored finger. My body accomplished what no physician ever could.
In the last two decades a great deal of research, including laboratory research, has thoroughly repudiated scientific materialism. Unfortunately it doesn’t make headlines. But for some time, when I tried to talk with colleagues about the death of scientific materialism, they would say, “We already know that, we just don’t know what to do about it.” Now we are rapidly learning what to do about it. I remember being skeptical when I heard talk about our bodies, living organisms, functioning as a single unity. After all I thought, it took, nerve messages some tiny but finite time to connect the components. In 1990 Mae Wan Ho, in her laboratory, discovered that connective tissue has liquid crystalline properties. These properties support blindingly fast communication. Next came a connection matrix that connects every one of the 70 trillion cells in our bodies to every other cell simultaneously.
It is true that living organisms have no parts. As we find separate organs such as hearts, livers etc., we are inclined to think of them as parts. Unlike the parts of a machine, that are designed to function in a certain way no matter what, our organs are themselves living entities capable of adapting to make the most appropriate contributions to the whole. A heart arrhythmia may be what the body requires. Maybe the problem originates in the liver, energetically. In the mechanical model, approaches to treat will beat up the heart with drugs to make it perform right, not recognizing related, corresponding and even supporting roles coming from throughout the whole body/mind organism.
The more we understand life and organisms the more we understand the concepts of energy medicine. Energy medicine is based on viewing our bodies as energy processes. The goal of energy medicine is to cure the patient. In mechanical medicine, illness is approached as a structural problem. Generally the approach doesn’t attempt to cure the problem but help the patient live with it. Thus medical interventions all too often interfere with the body’s ability to find health, and are necessarily violent and destructive and do more to prevent health than generate it. When the doctor tells us we will be on a prescription drug for life he is telling us that a cure is beyond his ability. Drugs introduce what engineers would call a work around. It changes normal operation to make the symptoms go away; thus drugs have side effects. You never know what the forced change may bring about in the individual organism
Energy medicine is the future, and by the way, energy medicine would make universal health care easily affordable. That’s for another article.
Misunderstanding the nature of science
Fifty years ago when I was studying physics there was a generally understood belief that something was different and unique about science. Books were written about how it could be that mathematics, which Whitehead described as the freest creation of the human mind, could be so powerful in dealing with reality. Given the then state of knowledge there were no good answers and the idea has been lost. Today what we call science is rather ordinary and would be better called empirical philosophy.
Given today’s knowledge of the two domains, the living energy domain and the matter domain, and the relation between them, there is a transcendental matrix at work. Transcendental I take to mean there is something we can know but it is not part of experience. Examining the history of physics we find that breakthroughs occur when new mathematics is found. New mathematics is the result of transcendental inquiry. Any discipline, to qualify as a science, must have a transcendental component.
When science is mentioned in connection with various medical practices; know there is no such science. Today the mechanical model of science demands the kind of trials to get approval for a new drug as a scientific “gold standard.” There is nothing scientific about them, but they are great for blocking new drugs. If you happened to find a natural substance that cured cancer it would be illegal to say so unless you could afford a few million dollars for the required trials, and since you can not patent a natural substance there is no chance anyone would want to fund it.
I believe we are close to finding a new form of mathematics that will establish a new and appropriate science.
All this said, let me be the first to say my recovery is occurring due to doctors and individuals treating me with energy medicine, with the use of technology guided by doctors and professionals thinking “outside” the mechanical model; with a mind to see more fully the wholeness, the relationships and unity of me as an organism.
As you may imagine, there are many insights that have been presented to me through these past few weeks. Skye and I have a story to tell that will hopefully help others who enter today’s medical system, not be victims to it, but to use it and benefit by it and perhaps even help it evolve towards greater healing practices away from machine like thinking; towards more fully appreciating our bodies to heal, to find the healing path, and not compromise their integrity. I’ll be sharing with doctors and thought leaders the story I’ve lived and continue to experience of the miracles of life to heal, recover and evolve. Exciting isn’t it?
P.S. Throughout these many weeks journey, we met many readers who told us they read our column and the Inner Tapestry. It was truly a gift to learn of all those who stay with us through the IT Journal. Keep on coming back. We hope to hear from you here more or please visit our website or email me at hirst@autognomics.org