The (non) surgical healing

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"I am here because of my Guru," Acharyaji told a few of us as we gathered around him at an ashram somewhere on the clear and sunny outskirts of Tirupati. Acharyaji was the head priest of the temple and had been a staunch disciple of his Guru for over two decades. "I was pronounced dead in a car accident when Guruji teleported himself from a live event that he was at, a few hundred kilometres away, and revived me. Passengers behind me saw the door of an upturned car being opened and shut, and my body being given CPR, but with no physical entity present," he said, as he described an unbelievable event.

I didn't want to openly express my disbelief, but I knew that my face wore an extremely sceptical look. "You will never believe in miracles unless you experience them yourself," he added, adjusting his thick glasses and running his hand through his long, white hair ending in a ponytail. His forehead was adorned with vibhuti and a saffron shawl was draped around his bare chest that sported half a dozen
rudraksha malas.

He clearly wanted to narrate more stories until the nihilistic look on my face changed. "I don't know if you heard of the floods in Rajasthan a few years ago, but this is me pouring more than 38 litres of water into Guruji's mouth," he said, showing me a photo on his phone. "My hands were trembling as I was doing so, but within a few hours, the floods regressed and the lives of thousands of people were saved," he breathed a heaving sigh. "This is his supernatural power," he explained, professing his love. "He doesn't have any kidneys, and drinks only one glass of juice every few days," he added, giving us some more implausible insight. "Can we meet him?" I asked. "He's in his sadhana in a small cottage behind the temple. If it is written in your destiny, you will see him, but he is already aware of your presence," he warned. "His disciples are present in more than 168 countries, and it is his students from America who have installed this system that you have come to see."

My wife and I had travelled over the weekend to check out an Energy Enhancement System - a device that promotes healing by creating multiple bio-active fields through scalar waves, which can allow cell regeneration, improve immune function, provide relief from pain, detoxify the body, elevate moods, and assist in balancing the right and left hemispheres of the brain to increase energy levels. This technology, developed over 20 years by Dr Sandra Rose Michael, uses custom-installed computers to generate morphogenic energy fields that can promote healing by repairing DNA, and is touted to cure numerous medical conditions to which science does not yet have the answers. "This is the future of medicine," my esoteric wife insisted, while I argued that any therapeutic intervention needed consistency and reproducibility. "But I agree: faith is also so integral in any form of healing," I said, trying to fill the chasm between the nature of our knowledge and the mystery of our consciousness.

We entered a large, marble-floored meditation hall inside the temple, where the system is installed in its four corners. The system is simply a series of six computer screens stacked on top of each other that emit a pattern that looks like a TV trying to catch a signal. The pattern appears scratchy and multicoloured. There is no blue light or white noise. All we must do is sit within its field with our eyes closed for a minimum of two hours.

The number of sessions or the time spent within the confines of the system to cure a particular ailment are still largely unknown, but Rashmi - one of the other girls present in the room - told us that just after she had finished her first session, her feet which were crooked suddenly appeared to have straightened out. " I've suffered from juvenile arthritis since the age of six, and I've always had the kind of pain you can't imagine," she said, showing me how the arthritis had afflicted her hands and legs. "But just as I finished the first session, I felt like a heavy load had been lifted off my back and joints, and that's why I've returned a few months later to reap some more benefit," she said with a sublime smile that one cannot imagine someone with her ailment could possess. "I, on the other hand, always feel drained and sleepy when I sit within the system," her sister, accompanying her, told us. I guess no two bodies are the same, and the only truth is the one that you experience. As people of science, we must be willing to explore newer avenues to healing because our understanding of it still remains so suboptimal.

"You won't believe me, but a few years after my accident, I was diagnosed with a tumour in my kidney that needed to be removed in a semi-emergency," Acharyaji interjected once again. "The doctor, upon completion of the operation, told me that he was about to inadvertently cut into an artery but felt a force that gently moved his hand to the right spot," he gestured. "Why would a leading doctor confess to being so foolish during an operation?" he said, as he tried to justify the miracle. The surgeon, a man of science, had the humility to accept the presence of a higher power he could not explain. I did not find this hard to believe, because there have been a few occasions when I haven't been able to control bleeding on the operating table and I've prayed really hard for it to stop… and it has. "It was Guruji operating on me through the surgeon," the pandit said with unflinching fervour.

"You still look like you are full of doubt," he told me, smiling. He wasn't wrong. "Doubt as much as you want before you trust, but once you trust, don't doubt," Acharyaji yielded his final words of wisdom. "You have not come here… you have been sent," he said as he bid us adieu, raising his eyebrows prophetically.

As we returned to Mumbai, a decked-up lady in a saree standing in front of us was asked to open her bag as it went through the scanner. "Does it have talcum powder?" the hefty, dark-skinned security lady asked. "Yes," the lady sheepishly nodded. "You look so beautiful, why do you need talcum powder to look prettier?" she questioned her boisterously. "My husband uses it," she retorted, instantly pointing at him, as he quickly walked in from the other line, put on his belt, picked up his shoes, and disappeared into the distance. I recalled one of Guruji's sayings inscribed on the ashram walls: "Khushi ke liye nahin, khushi se jiyo."

The writer is practicing neurosurgeon at Wockhardt Hospitals and Honorary Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at Grant Medical College and Sir JJ Group of Hospitals mazda.turel@mid-day.com