MEDICINE, ART, AND RELIGION

Spiritual health is the standard set for man... as created in the Divine image and likeness.

             Horatio Dresser, "Spiritual Health and Healing"

Is there indeed anything in common between the three? Medicine is presumably a materialistic science based on pure physiology whose aim is to assist the sick.

Art is a play of mind and soul detached from real life and true pain. As for religion, it could presumably be reduced to cults, rituals, and obscurantism. On the surface, these three fields appear quite separate from each other. A closer examination, however, reveals a more nuanced picture.

For instance, Apollo in ancient Greece was a senior god, a healer, and the patron of all muses. Thus, the combination of healing, art, and deity certainly had a meaning. Many ancient and medieval doctors were also prominent in religious philosophy and music. Medical doctors today often become famous authors. Could it be for a reason?

Panacea, the goddess of universal remedy in ancient Greek mythology and a granddaughter of Apollo.

What is medicine?

The more medicine distances itself from philosophy, religion, and art, the less attention it pays to health.

The subject of medicine is health, or, rather, fighting disease to reach good health. Most regrettably, over the past couple of centuries, this discipline has largely lost its focus on health as its primary aim and area topic of research. Medical science has been increasingly turning into a convoluted system of knowledge dealing mostly with diagnostic techniques and pharmacology while caring little for health, let alone art and religion. This is an intriguing trend: the more medicine distances itself from philosophy, religion, and art, the more it resembles an exact science and the less attention it pays to health. In other words, as doctors concentrate on individual "trees", they gradually lose the ability to see the forest, that is, the capacity for creative, holistic thinking. 

Three components of a single whole

Fundamental truths about health and humanity coincide with those about God.

To see the links between medicine, art, and religion, one needs to use a lot of intuition and imagination rather than cold reason and dry logic and mobilize his or her entire personality with a subconscious and superconscious mind. Once you reach this wisdom and see the world as a whole, you will suddenly discover that borders between science, art, and religion are mostly a matter of convention. Their very existence may be questioned since fundamental truths about health and humanity are the same as those about God. The language that can express these truths sounds like pure poetry, it binds together, rhymes, and harmonizes everything in the Universe. Now recall that Apollo was also the god of harmony and beauty. The circle is now complete.

Our minds are drawn to religion and art for the sake of health that our intuition feels behind them.

The sense of universal harmony attracts our minds to religion and art, often for the sake of health that our intuition feels behind them. Religious zeal, meditation, and inspiration all come from essentially the same psychological and physiological state of inner harmony and unity when all self-control body systems (the hormonal system, the immune system ,and the autonomous nervous system) gain a second wind and perform at peak capacity.

Self-healing as the opening of internal space

It is this state of harmony that explains some miraculous spontaneous recoveries from illnesses incurable by medicine or otherwise. From the scientific perspective, the body in such cases reaches the dead end and its imminent demise. Yet, as if prompted by a magic wand, some patients "make a U-turn." 

Andrew Weil, M.D.:

"I support integrative medicine that takes account of the whole person (body, mind, and spirit) and seeks to embrace the body's innate potential ..."

As the body opens up its concealed inner spaces, like a theater stage hidden by a curtain, it suddenly recovers from illness, as well as from the lack of faith, the frustration with daily routines and the pedestrian confines of our earthly existence. This is how Andrew Weil, a famous American doctor, relates the experience of such patients in his best-selling book "Spontaneous Healing".

Therefore, medicine, art, and religion need not be opposed to each other. We should teach our kids and learn ourselves to see the world as a whole, with our soul and spirit. It is the shortest and most secure path to harmony, beauty, and health.