Dr. Tracy Gaudet of Duke University in conversation with Sadhguru, discusses some of the fundamental lapses of medicine today. Sadhguru delves into the origin of modern medicine's approach to health and how the yogic science has always seen how to cultivate health in the human system on all levels.

Full Transcript:

Tracey: The….. Interesting now that I live in Veterans Administration and I interface quite a bit with the department of Defense, a statistics I was… I was in a meeting not very long ago and someone from the department of Defense said, ‘Do you know this? Health in this country is an issue of national security’ and I thought for a minute like, ‘What’s he talking about, right?’ (Sadhguru Laughs) Because eighty percent of people that walk into a recruitment office for the Armed Services doesn’t even qualify to be considered for service, eighty percent because of their health status

So the dominant medical paradigm is what you were describing which is we have a disease that we have to fight. And our… you… it’s revealed in the language that we use, you know, antibiotics, anti-psychotics, anti… anti… anti… the concept - the disease, it’s over there and the job of medicine is to fight that battle and win.

Sadhguru: See this… this whole concept and this approach to modern medicine has come because you need to understand when they thought of medicine… when they thought of developing some kind of medicine and a system of medical treatment, their problem was only with infectious diseases and contagious diseases. How to treat the plague? How to treat the small pox? How to treat this? Nobody ever thought of a diabetes or a hypertension or a cardiac problem. They never even considered those things that did not exist in their radar. In their radar, only infectious diseases did exist. That has to be handled on a war footing, no question about that because it is a war. An infection means it’s an invasion from another organism upon our own system and you have to use chemical weapons. (Laughter) You can’t shoot them. So this whole medical system evolved from the need to handle infectious diseases, contagious diseases which were taking a huge toll on populations in those times.

But today we have come to a place where people are on self-help. That is, they manufacture their own diseases, (Laughter) they don’t wait for any infection to happen to them. (Laughs) Because now they are on self-help, they need another system of medicine, another way to approach it completely which is a shift we are struggling to make right now. (Laughs)

I must tell you this experience.

We had a yogic hospital in our yoga center in India. We called it yogic hospital. We did not want it to grow too much because we don’t want to turn into a hospital fulltime; we are a spiritual center. (Laughs) So we’re keeping it low-key. Once when I came here, I spoke and a few doctors… American doctors who were interested, they traveled to India. They came and stayed there for three days and after three days, one of the volunteers came and told me, ‘All the American doctors are up in arms. They want to leave.’ I said, ‘What happened?’ They said, ‘It’s best that you meet them. They’re just… off.’ Then I said, ‘Okay’ and I went to meet them.

Then I said, ‘What’s the problem?’ They said, ‘You said there is a hospital. Where is the hospital? There is no hospital here.’ I said, ‘Right now, there are about sixty and odd patients.’ They said, ‘Where is it?’ Their idea of a hospital is that there must be beds, you must treat sick well and everybody should be… if you treat them so well, they will not want to become healthy. (Laughter) ‘Where are the patients?’ I said, ‘They’re all in the garden. I put them to work. (Laughter) We give them the treatment and therapies and medication but rest of the time, I put them to work. Whatever they can do, they must do. Above all, they must sit and work barefoot and bare hands in… with the soil.’ Just being in touch with the planet because you are just a drop of this planet. You are forgetting that. What you call as my body is just a piece of the planet, isn’t it?

If you lose connection with the source, will you not get disorganized? There are specific scientific ways of doing that. If you cannot do any of those things, at least just let them walk in a farm barefoot, work, do something, you will see at least sixty-seventy percent of them will just come out of their problems just like that, just being in touch with this.