Quantum Doctor: A Quantum Physicist Explains the Healing Power of Integral Medicine - Softcover

Amit Goswami

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1571746552 ISBN 13: 9781571746559

Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2011

Synopsis

In this new edition of THE QUANTUM DOCTOR, Goswami boldly reinterprets the leading methods of alternative medicine - homoeopathy, Chinese medicine, acupuncture and Ayurveda and conventional medicine. He shows how these seemingly different models can be combined into a new system of integral medicine and offers profound insights into the relationship between physics and consciousness.He gives physicians and patients a whole new way of applying medicine with a greater potential for healing. This is a new approach that is the basis for a paradigm shift in medicine.

About this title

About the Author

Amit Goswami is a theoretical nuclear physicist and member of The University of Oregon Institute for Theoretical Physics since 1968. Goswami received his PhD in physics from Calcutta University in 1964. He became best known as one of the interviewed scientists featured in the 2004 film What the Bleep Do We Know!? He is also featured in the upcoming documentary, Dalai Lama Renaissance (narrated by Harrison Ford). Visit him at amitgoswami.org.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Quantum Doctor

A Quantum Physicist Explains the Healing Power of Integrative Medicine

By Amit Goswami

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Amit Goswami, PhD
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57174-655-9

Contents

Foreword, 
Preface, 
Part 1. Introducing the Quantum Doctor, 
1. Never Fear, the Quantum Doctor Is Here, 
2. My Story: How a Quantum Physicist Came to Meddle in Health and Healing, 
3. The Integration of the Philosophies, 
4. Levels of Disease and Levels of Healing, 
5. New Paradigm Thinking of a Few Contemporary Medical Practitioners, 
6. More on Quantum Physics and Its Gifts to Medicine, 
7. The Place of Allopathy in Integral Medicine, 
Part 2. Vital Body Medicine, 
8. The Vital Body, 
9. Ayurveda and the Healing of Vital Energy Imbalances, 
10. Vital Energy Imbalances and Their Healing in Traditional Chinese Medicine, 
11. Chakra Medicine, 
12. Is Homeopathy for Real?, 
Part 3. Mind-Body Medicine, 
13. Quantum Mind, Meaning, and Medicine, 
14. Mind as Slayer, 
15. The Quantum Explanation of the Techniques of Mind-Body Medicine, 
Part 4. The Healing Path to Supramental Intelligence, 
16. Quantum Healing, 
17. Disease and Healing as Opportunities for Waking to Supramental Intelligence, 
18. A Quantum Physicist's Guide to Health and Healing, 
Epilog: Ageless Body—Myth or Science?, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 
About the Author, 

CHAPTER 1

Never Fear, the Quantum Doctor Is Here

What is a quantum doctor? A quantum doctor is a practitioner of medicine whoknows the fallacies of the Newtonian classical physics-based deterministicworldview that was discarded in physics many decades ago. A quantum doctor isgrounded in the world-view of the new physics, also called quantum physics. Andthere is more. Quantum doctors bring the message of quantum physics alive intheir practice of medicine.

You may wonder: What difference does a worldview make in the practice ofmedicine? In contrast to the classical physics world-view in which the world isseen as a mechanical, determined machine, we cannot even make sense of quantumphysics unless we ground it in the primacy of consciousness: Consciousness comesfirst; it is the ground of all being. Everything else, including matter, is apossibility of consciousness. And consciousness chooses out of thesepossibilities all the events we experience.

Now do you see? Physicians of the old ilk of classical physics aficionadospractice machine medicine, designed for machines (that is the picture of thepatient in the classical worldview) and by machines (the physicians who areself-avowed machines). And make no mistake about it, the medicine that thepatient gets, allopathic medicine, is also of a mechanical nature, with chemicaldrugs, mechanical surgery or organ transplant, and energy radiation. A quantumdoctor, on the other hand, practices conscious medicine designed for people, notmachines. What conscious medicine prescribes includes the mechanical but extendsalso to the domains of vitality and meaning, even love. And most important, aspractitioners of conscious medicine the quantum doctors bring consciousness totheir practice.

Admittedly, the quantum doctor is right now only an idea developed in this book,an idea you are probably reading about for the first time. But if the idea ishere, and as I will show, it is an idea with much integrative power, can themanifestation of the idea be far behind? In fact, a partial manifestation of theidea is age-old and continues to the present era.

I am talking about practitioners of what today is called alternative orcomplementary medicine, including the age-old systems of acupuncture andtraditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda (developed in India), spiritual healing,the more recent homeopathy, and the very recent mind-body medicine. Alternativemedicine practitioners go partway toward being quantum doctors. Their medicalsystems are designed for conscious beings, and they do have more dimensions thanthe mechanical. Unfortunately, alternative medicine practitioners suffer fromconsiderable amounts of worldview confusion (discussed later).

Although our culture promotes the "great" advancements of machine medicine allthe time, still many people are disillusioned with it. Partly, it is because weall miss the conscious human touch that we expect from a healer. Partly, it isbecause, its "miracles" notwithstanding, allopathic medicine doesn't work wellfor the bulk of our day-to-day medical problems—the chronic ailments, forexample. And it is because machine medicine and mechanical procedures are veryexpensive.

So although the machinists in medicine are openly scornful of alternativepractices, alternative medicine is gaining in popularity. Unfortunately, thisonly aggravates the reaction of the conventional allopathic practitioners.Before, allopaths could afford benign neglect. But now, as their bread andbutter is threatened, for many of them it is all-out war against alternativemedicine. Alternative medicine is voodoo medicine, they declare.

If the world is machine, mind is machine, and even the soul is machine, as someobservers contend, then how can anything but machine medicine have any validity?

Alternative medicine practitioners also strike back. Let's note just two oftheir criticisms. Allopathic drugs have harmful side effects, they point out.Why should we unnecessarily poison the body? Allopathic procedures such asvaccinations administered when we are children weaken the immune system so muchthat we become more vulnerable to disease later in life. Why should we acceptsuch procedures without questioning them?

We all are interested in health and healing, in our physical well-being. We allsearch for it when we don't have it. But with the sharp division of medicineinto two camps—conventional and alternative—it is increasingly difficult tochoose the proper healing method when we need it. What criteria should we usefor such a choice? Is a combination of healing techniques better than any onetechnique? What should we do to maintain our health, to prevent disease in thefirst place? Can we heal ourselves without any physical or chemical instrumentsof healing?

The answers to such questions depend on whom you ask. Are at least some of thestories of spontaneous healing true? Some experts answer yes. But is spontaneoushealing accessible to all of us? Experts from some medical traditions nod yes,while others stubbornly shake their heads no. When we are middle-aged or old,are we to feel fortunate if we suffer from only a few chronic diseases, withoutany major life-threatening illness? Should we accept stress and lack of vitalityas the price we must pay for modern living? Maybe so, some experts say. Why iseconomics such an important consideration for health and healing? We are sorry,say the experts. Is medicine only about pathology? Can we not strive forpositive health where vitality and well-being reign supreme? We don't know, saythe experts.

Truth is, we cannot begin to answer such questions with much credibility withoutdeveloping an integral paradigm that embraces all medical systems that haveadequate clinical data to support their efficacy. We must end the currentconfusion of paradigms that pervades medicine.

Never fear, the quantum doctor is here. The quantum doctor, like his or herworldview, is integrative. In this book, I show that when medicine is formulatedwithin the integral metaphysics of the primacy of consciousness, conventional(allopathic) medicine and alternative medicine (including those already listed)can be reconciled. Not only that, their different domains of applicability, eventheir interrelationships, are clearly understood.

Some effort toward integration has already begun (Ballentine 1999; Grossinger2000), but without the benefit of an integral philosophy, the results are notconvincing. Medicine within the quantum worldview of primacy of consciousness,which gives satisfying answers to all the questions posed in the previousparagraphs, can end the paradigm wars in medicine because it defines a new andconsistent paradigm for all of medicine within an integral philosophy.

Is this good news too good to be true? Don't worry. Medicine within quantumconsciousness is an offshoot of a general upheaval, a genuine paradigm shift,far greater in scope than even the Copernican revolution, that is taking placetoday in all of the sciences, including physics, chemistry, biology, andpsychology.

Definitions

Some more detailed definitions are in order, although it is likely that thereader is already familiar with them.

Conventional medicine or allopathy is based on the premise that disease is dueeither to external toxic agents such as germs (bacteria and viruses) or to themechanical malfunctioning of an internal organ of the physical body. Inallopathy, cure is effected mainly by treating the symptoms of the disease untilthey disappear, via drugs, surgery, and (in the case of cancer) energyradiation. Exotic new techniques such as gene therapy or nanotechnology, thepremise of which is to correct the mechanical disorder at the molecular level,remain only science fiction.

In contrast, in mind-body medicine, the premise is that disease is due to amental problem, for example, mental stress. The cure is to correct the problemwith the mind so that it then will correct the physiology.

In the view of acupuncture, disease arises because of imbalances in the patternsof energy (chi) flow in the body. Cure consists of correcting these imbalancesusing skin puncture with tiny needles at appropriate points of the body. Theenergy referred to in acupuncture is "subtle energy," not to be confused withthe usual manifestations of energy, which are "gross."

Acupuncture is the most well-known example of traditional Chinese medicine, asystem that, in addition to acupuncture, uses special herbs to correct theimbalances in the movements of this subtle energy.

In homeopathy, the basic idea is "like cures like" in contrast to cure by"other" (the drug found by trial and error) in allopathy. The same substancethat produces gross clinical symptoms in a healthy person when applied in amuch-diluted and potentized concentration produces an alleviation of the samesymptoms in an unwell person, which is why homeopathy says, "like cures like."But the cure is made mysterious by often (successfully) applying the medicinalagent in such dilutions as one part in 1030 or even more diluted.

Ayurveda is traditional Indian medicine. Thanks to the work of such luminariesas the physician Deepak Chopra (2000), Ayurvedic concepts such as doshas havebecome the subject of parlor games. Who are you, a vata person, a pitta person,or a kapha person? Vata, pitta, and kapha are the Sanskrit names of the threedoshas, imbalances of bodily structure and movement that we all have in varyingdegrees. A unique dominance of one dosha or another or sometimes a combinationof doshas characterizes each one of us. In fact, we all have a base level amountof each of the doshas. We remain healthy when our doshas remain near ourindividual base-level amounts. Disease happens when deviations occur, taking thebody away from the base levels. Returning the body to the base level of thedoshas, using herbs, massages, and cleansing techniques, effects cure.

Spiritual healing is the idea of invoking the "higher" power of the Spiritthrough prayer and other such rituals to heal (Holmes 1938). Shamanic healing,prayer healing, Christian Science, faith healing, and intuitive healing fall inthis category.

You can see the difficulty many practitioners of conventional medicine have withthe various alternative medicine practices as defined here. Mind-body medicineseems to predicate that a mental thought, presumably a brain phenomenoninvolving a minute amount of energy, can cause disease or healing, whichaccording to conventional medicine requires the emission of neurochemicals andother physiological processes that involve large amounts of energy. "Absurd!"may be the allopathic practitioner's reaction. Chinese medicine talks aboutsubtle energy, but what is this subtle energy? Why can't we find it in the bodyor the passageways (called meridians) through which it moves? Because they don'texist, the conventional medicine person declares in exasperation.

Similarly, if you are scientifically minded and want to understand therelationship of conventional medicine and dosha medicine, you will bedisappointed in your readings of the current Ayurvedic literature. Given thelack of understanding in conventional medical (physiological) terms of wheredoshas originate, the allopath remains skeptical.

About homeopathy, the conventionalist is scornful. In some of the medicinaldilutions that homeopaths prescribe, not even one molecule of the plant or othersubstance from which the medicine was derived is present. According toconventional thinking, the homeopathic medicine must then be regarded as pure"placebo"—an intake of sugar pills disguised as medicine—and the cure must beconsidered entirely fortuitous.

In the same vein, spiritual healing, the idea of relying on Spirit for healing,encounters resistance. The Spirit, for an allopath, is a dubious concept, and,therefore, relying on it is tantamount to relying on the natural processes ofthe body, which are often inadequate for healing. To do so when all the powerfuldrugs of allopathy are available seems preposterous to allopathic practitioners.

Many practitioners of alternative medicine are equally scornful of allopathicpractice. Allopathic drugs are mostly poisons to the body with harmful sideeffects, they say, so why should we poison the body when alternatives areavailable? For chronic and degenerative diseases, allopathy is ineffectiveanyway. Finally, allopathic medicine is not cost-effective. As the reader surelyknows, it is the economics of allopathic medicine that are making people lookfor alternatives in medicine.

How do we go from these deep divisions among the practitioners of the two campsto an Integral Medicine that both camps can accept? The answer is this: We haveto go to the philosophical roots of all medical practices and discover theunifying bridge-building philosophy.

The Disparate Philosophies behind Conventional and Alternative MedicinePractices

Our normal tendency is to see things as separate, and the scientist's job is todiscover the thread that unifies, that weaves the separate flowers into oneunified garland.

The various alternative medicine practices sound more mysterious than theyreally are. This is because their practitioners have tacitly been sold on theuniversal validity of the materialist metaphysics. According to thismetaphysics, all is made of matter and its correlates, energy and force fields.All phenomena (this includes what we call mental and subtle energy, even what wecall Spirit) are due to elementary particles and their interactions at asubmicroscopic level.

In this model, causation is always upward causation, always rising up from thebase level of elementary particle processes (see figure 1). Elementary particlesmake atoms, atoms make molecules, molecules make cells (some of which areneurons), and neurons make the brain. The cells make all the energies of thebody that must include the subtle energies of alternative practices if theseenergies exist. The brain makes the processes that we call mental or spiritual.

In this view, to ascribe causal efficacy to an upper level of the hierarchy inwhich matter exists is paradoxical. How can the mind, an aspect of the brain,have causal efficacy of its own to influence the brain to produce a cure? Itseems like brain acting on brain without a cause—a paradox.

In the same vein, to the materialist, the subtle energies of traditional Chinesemedicine must be products of the underlying chemistry of the body cells. Butthen, how can a by-product of the cells or their conglomerates, the organs,produce a cure for what causes that by-product? Paradox again.

How can mere faith (because a "doctor" said so!) make sugar pills curative, asin homeopathy? Paradox, once more.

But if you are a reader of the history of the alternative healing literature, itwon't take you long to observe that there are several paradigms operating there.The vast majority of the healing literature in the West is of coursematerialist—based on materialism, which is the conceptual foundation ofconventional medicine.

In the alternative medicine paradigm, you can see three primary currents: One isbased on the idea of "mind over body," that mind causes disease and mind heals,hence mind-body healing. Mind over body is possible because the causallyefficacious mind is nonphysical. Mind is not brain. The Freudian idea of diseaseas suppressed emotional thought and healing as the awareness of the suppression(Sarno 1998) falls in the same category—psyche over soma, mind over body.

The second current is based on the idea that a nonphysical "life force,"variously called subtle energy, prana, or ITLχITL, is the causal agent behindhealing. Subtle energy is not a by-product of material chemistry; instead, it isthe movement of a vital world. Hence a more appropriate English word for subtleenergy is "vital" energy. Eastern models of healing, both Chinese and Indian,fall into this category.

A third current is the idea of a nonphysical Spirit (or God) who is the healerin all cases of spiritual healing. Spiritual healing is "God's Grace." Here onemakes the distinction between "self healing" (healing when only you are involvedand nobody else) and "other-healing" (healing with the help of somebody else, ahealer). But in either case, the ultimate causal efficacy is given to anonphysical entity called God (or Spirit).

To the materialist, to the practitioners of conventional medicine, a causallyefficacious nonphysical mind, nonphysical subtle energy, or nonphysical God isdualism. And dualism is scientifically untenable. This has been argued since thetime of Descartes, who tried to introduce mind-matter dualism. If mind (orsubtle energy or God) and matter are dual substances, having nothing in common,how can the two interact without a mediator? You may have read the book Men Arefrom Mars, Women Are from Venus, by John Gray. It is about the difficulty menand women have in communicating because they don't have much in common.Fortunately for them, the sociologist or a counselor can act as the mediator.But where is the mediator to mediate the interaction of mind and matter, subtleenergy and the body, God and the world?

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Quantum Doctor by Amit Goswami. Copyright © 2011 Amit Goswami, PhD. Excerpted by permission of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc..
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Edition details

• Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing Company
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1571746552
• ISBN 13: 9781571746559
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320