The Names of Life—Thoughts on Classical Medicine

Classical Medicine is not only a science of procedure and cure; it is a Teaching. It is the process of turning event into thought, shades of color into forms of mind, wisdom into word. It is the language of the Spirit. Universal in its simplicity, rich in its meaning, creative in its acts; it is found in all traditions where Man seeks unity and wholeness.

Classical Medicine is the study of life. It is not simply the researching of disease and therapy, but the practice of being. The marks of its history are the marks of a divine inquisitiveness that lies at the root of every wisdom, and is the source of its science. It is an unquenchable longing hidden within the silence of every heart and mind.

Its method is compassion and its teaching is awe. It contains no dogmas, only a spacious creativity - no heresies, only a precise poetry, images of always becoming. It has no beginning, no end - but an ever insistent tradition. Its names arise from the nameless communion of all living, and it is born equally of all.

Classical medicine is a wholeness from which nothing is separate; not a state of being but a being of all states. Disease is not its opposite; it has no opposites, no alternatives. It holds only the clarity of recognition and the persistent call of beauty.

Although it is the Way, it has many paths, for it is the unrestrained call to Life. Its authority is experience, its mode is passion, and its goal is affirmation. It is the nature of all things.

Man is the reluctant phenomena.
The objects he creates to serve him turn to
ashes in his hand, and all his attempts
to master events turn to paradox.
He searches a universe for meaning,
only to experience regret, as each
discovery passes into shadow and
fades into that which he calls history.
A victim of time, he works with the
restless certainty that nothing he builds
will withstand, and that eternity
is beyond his grasp.
The most intimate moments
of his life are mysterious events
that he didn't anticipate until
they had happened, appearing out of
a vastness over which he had
no control, leaving only the
faintest trace of clinging
expectations.

He attempts over and over to master
that which is mastering him. He is
impatient and insecure because even his
greatest passions fragment into a kaleidoscope
of sounding mirrors, and confusing
ambitions.
He fears his life is meaningless
because it is truly meaningful
only in its inconceivable immensity.
But in Creation, Man is the
resolution, not the problem.

Life's events and manifestations have
names but Life itself remains
unnamable, illusive, tantalizing pristine,
irrevocable, and infinitely near.
Man is the very being of life -
this he is, but does not recognize.
His essential response is awe -
this he knows, but does not
remember.
Recognizing and remembering,
he sees who he is,
being and wondering, he lives what he is.
It is
such for all, no solutions, only the
brightness of dreams.
No answers, only
responses.
When there's
nothing to lose, there's no loss.
Man lives; this is enough-
being forever in love.

THE NAMES OF LIFE

Life lives
Simply,
within its Self-
through the touch of
joy and pain,
through peace and restlessness,
through the chaos and need.
Pain is growth reaching out.
Suffering is the dreaming of pain
not its reality.
One,
only One,
always One-
Life resists the names
we give It.
Choose reality-
Choose Life.
Simply.

LANGUAGE and THOUGHT

Language is a creative act, the roots of which lie in the deepest realms of our consciousness waiting for the word that will render life visible; and it requires the imaging rather than the delineating mind, to reveal life's true nature.

The Words used in language have no exact definitions in and of themselves. They are the visions out of which we create the flesh of meaning. They represent ways of knowing, crystallized in the form of sign and sound. They require Man's consciousness, the realm of all embracing clarity, to become revelation.

Language is the mediator of event, events that lie at our very core as we reach out into the experience of relationship. All languages have their root in the emergence of form, arising as it does from an irresistible desire in the heart of Creation for this experience of relatedness. Language is a resonance, a musical play of creative forces precipitated in the visions of sound. It is the hidden seed of thought, the manifestation of a universal and pervasive Consciousness.

The signs utilized by different language systems reflect modes of apprehending and participating in Reality. They make visible the intangible and amorphous, giving body to the urge of Creation. The living and ever present Word of language works in and amongst us, reflecting, causing, and creating.

This is what makes translation difficult. The collective thought process and the signs arising in one language are often very different from those in another due to the particular genius of each culture. Meaning belongs not to the definition but to the word itself, and the form creating energies from which it arises. Lexicographic meaning in language is the distillation of event into a collective and stylized definition. True meaning is conveyed by the energy events inherent in the sounds and forms of the word itself; events which arise in the womb of Creation.

LANGUAGE and RELATIONSHIP

The ultimate ground of wisdom is relationship, the interconnectedness of all phenomena with its immanent Presence -- that which Man calls the Divine. When we discover that language does not define things but reveals them in their true sense of belonging and becoming- then we understand.

Language cannot be learned; it must be digested. Like the nutrients we ingest, the signs and sounds of language must become part of our most intimate self, a music that opens and expands the tissues of the mind to a consciousness of participation in the very heart of life.

Each one of us will ultimately have our own definition of a concept, based on our experiences and our way of integrating experience. This is the scintillating and numinous realm of vision, sound, and touch resonating in Consciousness. Socrates claimed that written language was by nature evil. By this he meant that as we become more and more dependent upon conventional meaning, we would forget how to experience and think creatively, and instead become blinded by distinctions and definitions. This seems to have happened to us, especially in the last three centuries of a science that demands objective, measurable, reproducible truth.

LANGUAGE and SCIENCE

In this sense, poetry is still the form of written language which best allows us the freedom to experience reality rather than merely trying to define it. The languages of Classical Medicine still retain this element. We must become used to thinking in flowing, ever changing and enveloping images, to allow our minds to touch rather than grasp, to seek rather than know- to trust ourselves to the promises waiting for liberation from our veiled insecurities.

In our scientific world, this attitude is likely to cause some momentary anxiety, trained as we are in eliminating from our procedures the very factors that produce vision and wisdom. This is why, aside from a certain cultural chauvinism, our medical field considers much of Classical Medicine "unscientific." But we often forget that the word "science" comes from the Latin root scire, meaning "to see" in its truest sense- the emergence of wisdom from the chaotic glimpses of knowledge; a momentary sketch of an eternal process.

The living consciousness is
ultimately creative and
indefinite -- fleeting and flowing in the
momentary shape of an eternal
process. In this way we discover
that the mind is not only a
creator of meaning, but that meaning
is a participation in that to which it
attends, effecting and changing the
traceless path of phenomena itself.

Mind is the limitless field of all that
arises from within the formless origins of
Creation, and is able to touch
It's most intimate tissues.

We might say that Mind is a source as well as motive within the web of Creation. It is the origin of prayer.

HEBREW

Basically there are three major systems of language encountered in the traditions of Classical Medicine. Languages based on glyphs, of which Hebrew is a good example, contain in their written form, the energy patterns to which they allude. The Hebrew alphabet is essentially a physical projection of a specific dynamic energy, capable of carrying both thought process and the manifestation of its reality simultaneously. The glyphs making up the alphabet are therefore energy quanta in their own right as well as carriers of cognitive meaning.

In Judaism, the dynamic and ever present Holy Word of God is contained in the written word itself. Once written, it becomes an Icon- the res et tantum, the reality and the sign, and is never willfully destroyed but carefully and conscientiously preserved. This is not only an act of reverence for the meaningful content of the word, but a conscious and intuitive understanding of the co-creative reality contained in the patterns of the glyphs which make up the written texts. Jewish Spirituality preserves this specific knowledge in both its oral as well as written traditions.

CHINESE

Chinese is basically a pictographic language made up of primary images called radicals. These can be precisely combined in larger image relationships called characters. Both radicals and characters portray a multidimensional image of reality, that in its deepest sense shows us the nature of that which they were meant to convey; bringing us into the fertile current of meaning through their compound images.

Characters and their radicals move us into a realm of dynamic experience, crystallized from the essence of meaning. In the Chinese classical tradition, calligraphy, the visual-pictorial art of the written word, is considered the most concise way of conveying reality. Calligraphy transcends the lexicographic basis of the word, projecting it into the primacy of ongoing creative experience.

SANSKRIT

Sanskrit is a language built around archetypal sound units. When combined into word patterns, they recreate the forms that reveal meaning. Both in Buddhism and Hinduism the chanting of sacred texts fulfills a greater purpose than re-educating the mind. It is a co-creative participation in the realm of cosmic forces, reproducing formative sounds that underlie physical events. This is the sacred music of language that creates rather than defines meaning.

CONSCIOUS BELONGING

In presenting the concepts that are used in Classical Medicine, we need to look and listen carefully, and let ourselves be carried by the vehicle of language. We must make no assumptions, nor unwittingly confine and inhibit the terms by which language communicates life and experience. Rather, we must be sensitive to the precise way in which language helps us to create meaning. For this is what language does. It does not define things, nor is it merely a piece of information, but is rather a particular experience, clothing itself in vision, and moving us towards a fuller participation in the limitless visions of life.

We are not observers but participants,
made of the dust of stars, formed
in the crucible of color and sound,
quickened in the quiet whisper of
Spirit that ever hovers over the
Waters of the first Day's irresistible
Moment. This is our place and our
Time - now and forever.

The consciousness is clear. It doesn't see, but belongs; does not grasp but flows. It is the subject of things and recognizes no object but sees all things as ultimately belonging to self. It embraces the dynamic reality of being, universal and immanent.

This is essentially different from the workings of the psyche. The psyche is the body's knowledge of itself as a physical expression of life. The psyche is the mentality of organs and tissues, their dream of life as form. The content of the psyche emerges from biological phenomena that are physically manifested as body, and it is dependent upon the body's metabolism, the alchemy of all evolving forms.

Thought process belongs to the realm of the psyche. The psyche's nature is to create objects of thought, words and images that reflect and stimulate the relationships necessary for the organism to continually re-create itself. Feelings and emotions are the energy purveyors of thought, and along with their images and impulses, play as great a role in metabolism as the elemental nutrients we ingest and the biochemical events of digestion.

The emergence of new cells in a tissue is essentially no different from the emergence of a "cell" or object of thought, the word. Both are created of the same biological necessity that underlies the nature of all living processes. In the non-human world, "thought" is the flash of sensory image reflecting in organ tissues as experience, and the silent embrace of tropism that gleams in crystals and turns the flower to a distant sun.

MEDICAL VISION

Classical Medical training is the training of vision, a glimpse into that which can never be mastered but which can be lived. It is a journey into one's Self where the wisdom of Teachings lie, into the commonness of life that is limitless Compassion. Its basis is the work of Creation, the constant, ever present element of change and transformation -- the silent conception, growth, and resolution of all being. It recognizes the presence of the Sacred in all manifestations and appearances, affirming the true dignity and nature of Life.

The subject of Classical medical training traditionally begins in the fertile darkness beyond form, in the swirling nebula of the Divine intention. It follows the emergence of forms from the vast sea of energies to the cell and its tissues, reflecting and containing the infinite processes from which they were born. It sees all life as an appearance of the cosmos, affirming its presence, its glory, and its necessity.

It is an ethic without power, and seeks the cooperative nature of life rather than its manipulation. It affirms life in its greatest potentials rather than reducing it to controllable units that reflect the shadows of separateness and vulnerability. It is not the practice of control but the release of fertile potentials that lie at the heart of every event and the core of every being. This is the true nature of healing.

CHANGE and TRANSFORMATION

Classical Medicine describes life as a dynamic process of Change -- the incessant arising and transformation of phenomena. A metamorphosis so intimate, so complete, that it can only be glimpsed by the images of the Mind. Here the Mind has no exclusive position from which to view this living -- no place it can claim as its own -- no separate space to be-in.

The Mind must instead understand itself as the very flesh and bones of the Cosmos, bearing life's fullness into time and space. Both parent and child, the inseminator and the birth, the seed and its promise -- inseparably One. Still, this Oneness can never be understood as an indiscriminate whole. It is not defined by any opposites. It is not the whole as distinct from its parts -- not a loss or dissolution, an invisibility nor a vacuum - it is Life, the fullness of being in Being.