The past few decades have seen remarkable technological growth in the delivery of modern medicine. Pharmaceutical, diagnostic, and surgical interventions have transformed the way in which health is perceived and medicine is practiced. The modern patient has become so dependent upon these therapies and interventions that they take a passive interest in their health. For author Dr. Mark W. Hatcher, this is a symptom of a culture in crisis-doctors treat disease instead of fostering health. Using real-life examples from a busy emergency room, he investigates this health-care crisis and reevaluates what it means to be healthy. In Beyond Desire: Rediscovering Health and Wellness, Hatcher examines the assumptions upon which the modern medical world is founded, explores the healing methods that have been practiced for centuries by healers around the world, and proposes a strategy for health that focuses on the importance of the mind and spirit in achieving and maintaining health. Beyond Desire shows how the practices of meditation, yoga, tai chi, acupuncture, proper eating, and selfless service are the true pathways to healing and rediscovering health and wellness.

Beyond DESIRE

rediscovering health and wellnessBy Mark W. Hatcher

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Mark W. Hatcher
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-4624-9

Contents

Introduction...............................................................1Prologue: Lost in America..................................................5Part I: Disease: Modern Presumptions and Misdirections.....................15Part II: The Pursuit of Self-Knowledge.....................................39Part III: Spirit and Energy................................................51Part IV: Healing: Esoteric and Exoteric....................................61Epilogue: Practicing Wellness..............................................91Sources....................................................................97

Chapter One

Disease: Modern Presumptions and Misdirections

The greatest obstacle to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. Daniel Boorstin

Beyond a given point man is not helped by more "knowing" but only by living and doing in a partly self-forgetful way. Ernest Becker

We currently exist in a culture that is floundering amidst the modern idols of the body and its pleasures and the mind and its distractions. Despite the amazing advances in scientific thought in the past centuries, we are possibly the most perplexed era of people in the history of human discourse. What is one supposed to be doing in this life? Unhappiness pervades the modern world, a deep underlying discontent with the world and the self. How can this be? Leisure time is in abundance, the opportunities for pleasure and comfort abound, and the mysteries of our external world have been tamed.

However, despite a plethora of modern distractions, our world is experiencing an epidemic of ennui. If you are reluctant to admit that our modern disease is despair, then I encourage you to watch any news program, drive through any urban neighborhood, look at the prevalence of modern addictions, engage the diversions of the modern media, or perhaps most revealingly, spend a shift with any ER doctor. Ours is an empty culture, devoid of meaningful dialogue and unwilling to face the realities of the human condition. Most of us are content to be, in the words of T. S. Eliot, "distracted from distraction by distraction."

Let us examine the modern myths that have allowed this modern wasteland to flourish. I will consider four topics that have gradually become ensconced into the modern dialectic:

(1) The predominant worldview is now a materialistic one based on the scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century.

(2) The gradual destruction of societal institutions of authority has elevated the reality interpretations of the individual to become definitive.

(3) Scientism has achieved supremacy in the realm of truth declarations so that there is a complete reliance upon science to give ultimate verification and revelation of truth.

(4) Individuals seek, above all, pleasure and distraction; suffering is seen as anomalous and unnatural.

It is my contention that these beliefs are at best incomplete and at worst incorrect. Modern man needs to rediscover and apply the wisdom of the ages as revealed by some of its wisest teachers.

(1) The Triumph of Materialism

E = mc²

Albert Einstein

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. Paul of Tarsus

Throughout the history of mankind there was thought to be a mysterious unity of body, spirit, and mind that was coordinated in a mysterious labyrinth by supernatural means that was referred to as God, YHWH, Brahmin, and Allah, to name a few titles of the great IS. Then came the age of enlightenment and rationalism. "I think therefore I am" was Descartes's rallying cry to a new birth of intellectual freedom for the human condition. The mind was given reign over the interpretation of reality. Through the means of rational inquiry the mysteries of the universe could be explained and conquered. Mind and body are not mysteriously connected but separate. The course of the last few hundred years has proven this to be a prescient insight. Think of the progress! In every area of science great understanding has been achieved regarding physical reality, leading to inventions that have revolutionized human life. To this era of progress we owe much gratitude and appreciation. Material comforts and relative ease of living have never been at a higher level in those parts of the world that have embraced materialism and capitalism.

The philosophy of materialism maintains that the natural world is composed of measurable, quantifiable substances that can be finitely deconstructed into their ultimately irreducible components. The body is composed of organ systems that can be reduced to tissues that can be reduced to cells that can be reduced to organelles that can be reduced to biochemical substrates and ultimately atoms. The same analysis can be given to anything in existence. The assumption of science is that complex structures can be reduced into simple substrates. These substrates can be measured to give us information about the self and the world.

Biotechnologies have been developed so that the human body can be imaged very precisely and give very accurate information regarding the status of a body system or organ. Tissues and cellular components can be isolated, extracted, and analyzed to reveal subsequent health or disease that is present. Hematology can isolate and measure blood components that reflect certain disease states. The sequencing of the human genome is revealing the substrates from which cells and organs derive. Subsequently, much disease and suffering has been treated and alleviated. Genetic manipulation harbors a limitless potential of health benefits.

This data can be relied upon to make treatment decisions because this information is thought to accurately reflect the condition of the thing being measured. This is the basis of our modern world of scientific inquiry. We are what our measurements tell us we are. However, these disease processes are the results of causes that remain elusive. Let us not forget that science cannot nor has it claimed to give ultimate answers. There are many theories as to the causative factors of certain diseases. Some theories are highly probable. If you smoke cigarettes, then you have a much higher risk of getting cancer than nonsmokers. But many smokers do not get cancer. Why the difference? Science does not know. We do not know why some people get certain diseases and others do not; there are only theories. Certainly there must be other factors involved that are either unrecognizable or immeasurable. Why do the diagnostic tools of the modern physician often fail to give satisfactory clinical answers to many patients' symptoms?

We also stand in the wake of Darwinism, the topic of much modern debate and confusion. Simply stated, Darwin claimed that the macroscopic world changed over the millennia from simpler to more complex in organization as a functional adaptation to the respective organisms'...