Robert H. Schneider, M.D., F.A.C.C.

Maharishi Vedic Medicine extends the range of contemporary medical practice to encompass all aspects of life—consciousness, mind, body, behavior, environment, and collective health for society.

The significance of the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health for modern health care and medical education
by Robert H. Schneider, Barry M. Charles, David Sands, Denise Denniston Gerace, Richard E. Averbach, Stuart Rothenberg — College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa, USA
22 March 2008

The following are excepts from ‘The Significance of the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health for Modern Health Care and Medical Education’, by Robert H. Schneider, Barry M. Charles, David Sands, Denise Denniston Gerace, Richard E. Averbach, and Stuart Rothenberg, from The Journal of Modern Science and Vedic Science, Volume 7, Number 1 (1997), The Silver Jubilee Issue, Maharishi University of Management, USA.

‘Maharishi Vedic Medicine, brought to light in our time by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and based on the age-old knowledge of life in accord with Natural Law of the Vedic tradition, provides prevention-oriented, natural health care without harmful side effects. Maharishi Vedic Medicine aims to eliminate the basis of disease and provides the knowledge and technologies for creating a disease-free society.

‘The advent of the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health program is timely, since modern health care is confronted with critical issues demanding immediate practical solutions:

1) the population suffers from high rates of chronic diseases, 2) modern medical practice often fails to prevent disease, 3) pharmaceuticals and high-technology diagnostic and therapeutic approaches frequently have hazardous side effects, and 4) costs for health care soar.

‘In consideration of the global crises in health care, Dr. Bevan Morris, International President of Maharishi Vedic Universities, convened on October 16, 1995 a global teleconference, [which] culminated in a resolution to establish new medical colleges based on Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health. The ultimate goal of these new colleges is to train experts in health care to prevent chronic diseases, promote perfect health and longevity, and create a disease-free society.

‘Colleges of Maharishi Vedic Medicine are being founded to transform medical education by providing key values missing from medical education today, including Maharishi Transcendental Meditation and Transcendental Meditation Sidhi Programs, pulse diagnosis, Maharishi Sthapatya Veda design, Maharishi Jyotish and Maharishi Yagya programs.

‘The harmful effects of modern medicine call for a return to the primary principle of medical ethics—“Above all, do no harm.” The damaging side-effects and the
ineffectiveness of conventional medicine in preventing and treating many diseases have led to patient and consumer dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction is evident in the increasing public demand for more complete and prevention-oriented health care, free of harmful side effects. Increasingly, people are turning to what they consider to be “natural” or “holistic” approaches to health.

‘A recent survey by Eisenberg and colleagues (Eisenberg, Kessler et al., 1993) of Harvard Medical School underscored the extent of this interest. The survey found that one in three Americans consult complementary or natural health care practitioners for the treatment of medical problems, most of which are chronic. According to the survey’s authors, this translates into 425 million visits annually to providers of alternative medical
therapies—more than the total number of visits made to all U.S. primary care physicians.

‘The authors concluded that the frequency of use of natural/complementary therapies is far higher than previously reported, and pointed out the importance of incorporating knowledge about such therapies into standard medical school curricula.

‘Courses on natural or complementary medicine are currently offered in at least 40 U.S. medical schools. While these elective courses may be an important step forward, they provide the student with only brief and fragmented exposures to an eclectic array of approaches. Nowhere in contemporary medical schools is a comprehensive curriculum available that systematically incorporates scientific, prevention-oriented, natural medicine into the education of the future physician.

‘Fortunately, the essential knowledge missing from contemporary health education is now available in Maharishi Vedic Medicine. Maharishi explains that development of consciousness to its highest potential— enlightenment—is synonymous with health. As
discussed above, his desire to eliminate all suffering and improve health has led him to bring out this knowledge of perfect health. Maharishi Vedic Medicine extends the range of contemporary medical practice to encompass all aspects of life—consciousness, mind, body, behavior, environment, and collective health for society.

‘As Maharishi has discussed, illness arises when there is a lack of coordination between the body’s inner intelligence and its expressions. This lack of coordination leads
to violations of Natural Law which further disrupts the holistic functioning of the physiology and lays the ground for illness or disease. Good health is the natural
consequence of a lively connection between the physiology and the inner intelligence which administers it.

‘Professor Tony Nader, M.D., Ph.D., [who was later coronated as the first ruler of the Global Country of World Peace, Maharaja Adhiraj Raja Raam] has discovered, with Maharishi’s guidance, that the different aspects of human physiology are an exact expression of the patterns of intelligence expressed in the impulses of sound available in Veda and the Vedic Literature. In his landmark book, Human Physiology: Expression of Veda and the Vedic Literature, Dr. Nader details one-to-one correspondences between the structure and function of each of the Âk Veda and the 40 branches of the Vedic Literature and specific structures in human physiology.

‘The remarkable symmetry between the age-old description of Nature’s intelligence found in Veda and the Vedic Literature and the understanding of the human body, built up over hundreds of years of biomedical research, provides the basis for a more advanced
and authentic approach to medical education and health care than that currently taught in modern medical schools. Conventional medical education does not include the understanding of the inner intelligence that structures the body and administers its various activities. As Maharishi has pointed out, until intelligence or consciousness as the fundamental aspect of physiology is taken into account by medicine, health care will never be completely effective.

‘Subsequent to the initial international teleconference, physicians from the United States organized to found Maharishi University of Management College of Vedic
Medicine in Fairfield, Iowa, and Maharishi College of Vedic Medicine in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with licensure from that state. Doctors elsewhere in the world are also
founding Maharishi Medical Colleges in their countries. These colleges institutionalize the beginning of a transformation in medical education and health care for the United States and for the whole world.

‘The goal of the colleges of Maharishi Vedic Medicine is to train health consultants and health educators to provide prevention-oriented, natural health care that is free of
hazardous side effects and effective in creating perfect health and a disease-free society. Vedic Anatomy and Vedic Physiology and the study of Professor Nader’s discovery documented in Human Physiology: Expression of Veda and Vedic Literature … forms the foundation of the curriculum.

‘The knowledge and technologies that Maharishi brought out over the last four decades will be made a permanent part of medical education and health care in the United
States and around the world. As a result of Maharishi’s contributions to health care, humankind’s age-old quest for a disease-free society will finally be realized.

Copyright © 1997 Journal of Modern Science and Vedic Science

Global Good News invites you to read the full version of this paper, ‘The Significance of the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health for Modern Health Care and Medical Education’, by Robert H. Schneider, Barry M. Charles, David Sands, Denise Denniston Gerace, Richard E. Averbach, and Stuart Rothenberg, from The Journal of Modern Science and Vedic Science, Volume 7, Number 1 (1997), The Silver Jubilee Issue, Maharishi University of Management, USA.

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