Therapeutic

Expressions researched:
"therapeutic" |"therapeutical" |"therapeutically" |"therapy"

SB Canto 1

An expert physician treats his patient with a therapeutic diet. For example, milk preparations sometimes cause disorder of the bowels, but the very same milk converted into curd and mixed with some other remedial ingredients cures such disorders. Similarly, the threefold miseries of material existence cannot be mitigated simply by material activities. Such activities have to be spiritualized, just as by fire iron is made red-hot, and thereby the action of fire begins.

SB 1.5.33, Translation and Purport:

O good soul, does not a thing, applied therapeutically, cure a disease which was caused by that very same thing?

An expert physician treats his patient with a therapeutic diet. For example, milk preparations sometimes cause disorder of the bowels, but the very same milk converted into curd and mixed with some other remedial ingredients cures such disorders. Similarly, the threefold miseries of material existence cannot be mitigated simply by material activities. Such activities have to be spiritualized, just as by fire iron is made red-hot, and thereby the action of fire begins. Similarly, the material conception of a thing is at once changed as soon as it is put into the service of the Lord. That is the secret of spiritual success. We should not try to lord it over the material nature, nor should we reject material things. The best way to make the best use of a bad bargain is to use everything in relation with the supreme spiritual being. Everything is an emanation from the Supreme Spirit, and by His inconceivable power He can convert spirit into matter and matter into spirit. Therefore a material thing (so-called) is at once turned into a spiritual force by the great will of the Lord. The necessary condition for such a change is to employ so-called matter in the service of the spirit. That is the way to treat our material diseases and elevate ourselves to the spiritual plane where there is no misery, no lamentation and no fear. When everything is thus employed in the service of the Lord, we can experience that there is nothing except the Supreme Brahman. The Vedic mantra that "everything is Brahman" is thus realized by us.

SB Canto 4

Sometimes small animals are killed in a medical laboratory to investigate therapeutic effects. In a medical clinic, the animals are not revived, but in the yajña arena, when animals were sacrificed, they were again given life by the potency of Vedic mantras.

SB 4.13.35, Translation and Purport:

Thus for the sake of a son for King Aṅga, they decided to offer oblations to Lord Viṣṇu, who is situated in the hearts of all living entities.

According to sacrificial rituals, animals are sometimes sacrificed in the yajña arena. Such animals are sacrificed not to kill them but to give them new life. Such action was an experiment to observe whether the Vedic mantras were being properly pronounced. Sometimes small animals are killed in a medical laboratory to investigate therapeutic effects. In a medical clinic, the animals are not revived, but in the yajña arena, when animals were sacrificed, they were again given life by the potency of Vedic mantras. The word śipi-viṣṭāya appears in this verse. Śipi means "the flames of the sacrifice." In the sacrificial fire if the oblations are offered into the flames, then Lord Viṣṇu is situated there in the form of the flames. Therefore Lord Viṣṇu is known as Śipiviṣṭa.

Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures

If you know the root, if you water on the root of the tree, then the tree, whole tree, becomes luxuriantly flourished. So our proposition is: you take the root, Kṛṣṇa, and you will understand everything properly from the root.

Lecture on BG 9.4 -- Melbourne, April 23, 1976:

Prabhupāda: This is an expansion of the energy known as mind. That is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā, khaṁ mano buddhir eva ca. These are subtle matter. So different division. God's creation is wonderful that even if you take the atom, there are so many things. That is... Scientists are... So what to speak of mind, thinking, feeling, willing, and there are so many divisions. So what is your question about the psychiatrist? It is a material thing and very subtle, and there are so many divisions. So what is your question about it?

Guest (1): I just wanted your views on your concept of...

Prabhupāda: Yes, everything is resting on God. This is also resting on God.

Guest (1): Is it necessary to have a therapeutic system?

Prabhupāda: No, everything First of all we have to understand that everything is expansion of God's energy. So if you understand God, then the energies are automatically understood. Yasmin vijñāte sarvam idaṁ vijñātaṁ bhavati. This is the Vedic injunction. If you try to understand God, then His energies also will be understood by you. If you know the root, if you water on the root of the tree, then the tree, whole tree, becomes luxuriantly flourished. So our proposition is: you take the root, Kṛṣṇa, and you will understand everything properly from the root. If you want to understand the tree, whole tree, you try to understand it from the root, not from the top. So disease, any disease, if you understand the root cause of the disease you can give proper medicine and he's cured.

Philosophy Discussions

That is recommended by Freud?

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Devotee: Freud's case is interesting, that he formed all of his conclusions by his observations of what he calls neurotic and psychotic patients. He observed mentally ill people, neurosis and psychosis, and he drew his conclusions about both sick and normal psychology from his observation of abnormal. He observed the normal behavior of neurotic people, psychotic people, crazy people, and from their behavior he tried to infer all about human psychology. So not only was he on bodily platform, but his only subject matter was the insane. So how can he draw valid conclusions about behavior?

Prabhupāda: So what is your answer?

Devotee: Yes, his observation is correct, but at the same time it doesn't invalidate Freud's use of psychology for supposedly normal people.

Prabhupāda: (indistinct) psychology.

Śyāmasundara: He didn't analyze only crazy people; he also analyzed his friends, his mother, his wife, other people also, healthy people.

Devotee: The point is in Revatīnandana Mahārāja's argument is that we have to define, then, what is crazy and what is sane.

Prabhupāda: He is saying that he had studied only some crazy people.

Śyāmasundara: No.

Prabhupāda: But that is not the fact. He analyzed some sane people also. But one psychiatrist's opinion is that (indistinct) was a civil servant, he was called to give evidence in a case where the criminal was pleading (indistinct) became insane while he committed the murder. So the civil servant was called to test him, whether actually he was insane or (indistinct) insanity. So he gave evidence that "I have tested so many persons, so I have seen that more or less everyone is insane. More or less. They are bewildered. So in that case, if insanity is the only plea that he should be excused, he can be excused. But so far as I know, everyone is more or less insane." And that is our conclusion. We say (indistinct), anyone who is infected with this material nature is more or less insane, crazy. He is crazy, not more or less. Anyone who has got this material body must be crazy. And therefore everyone is speaking in a different way.

Devotee: As a result of Freud's philosophy he prescribed, and many of his students prescribed, certain activities. This is one thing we forget to mention—that they prescribed certain activities to help relieve the patient of the trauma, and that is called therapy. Actually there is a higher therapy. Actually one of Freud's students would say that we are all involved in therapy in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, which we are, and that therapy is chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. Therapy is a certain kind of activity which will relieve the anxieties and stresses of the mind.

Prabhupāda: That is recommended by Freud?

Śyāmasundara: No. He wasn't a therapeutical psychologist.

Devotee: No, but as a result of his...

Śyāmasundara: Later on they devised that theory of therapy.

Prabhupāda: (indistinct) in support of our movement.

Devotee: According to our philosophy, everyone in this material world is under the spell of the material nature, māyā, "that which is not." So Freud observed that not only in crazy people, but in so-called normal people, everybody's lives are based on some types of illusion. So his psychoanalytic therapy is to trace out how I have come to this illusion or that illusion, that due to some childhood experience with my mother and father or my mouth or my genitals, something like that, all of these experiences are contributing to my unreal perception of the world. But the point which you made is that although he may have worked out what is one particular illusion, who is to prevent that there will not be another illusion? So our process is not to bother tracing out each and every illusion that we have, but to become free from the whole process of being controlled by illusory energy.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is our position: not to be affected by any more illusion.

1973 Conversations and Morning Walks

It is very easy, very easy. Just like we, we recommend this chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra. Anyone can chant. Even child can chant.

Room Conversation with Dr. Christian Hauser, Psychiatrist -- September 10, 1973, Stockholm:

Prabhupāda: Reflection. I, in morning walk, the sun was reflected in a glass exactly it is brilliant as sun. So I showed him: "This is called māyā, illusion. There is no sun, but it appears like sun. Exactly. And it is illuminating also." Reflection of the moon. So one who is less intelligent, he'll see: "Oh, here is a sun, another sun." So he's a madman. One who sees the sun reflection in the glass as sun, he's illusioned. He's mad. So our Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is also psychiatrist movement.

Dr. Hauser: Is that a...?

Haṁsadūta: Psychiatric.

Paramahaṁsa: Psychiatric movement.

Dr. Hauser: Oh, yes, yes. In a way... I... Yes.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes. We are taking away a person from the illusionary stage to the real stage of Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Dr. Hauser: But it also seems to me that you have, by gaining this consciousness, you can skip a lot of hard work that it takes in ordinary analysis or in a group therapy, for example...

Prabhupāda: No hard work.

Dr. Hauser: You have to work a lot with yourself to gain...

Prabhupāda: No.

Dr. Hauser: ...insight.

Prabhupāda: It is very easy, very easy. Just like we, we recommend this chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra. Anyone can chant. Even child can chant.

Haṁsadūta: His point is that we, our processes skips all this work that they do in an ordinary psychiatric ward or...

Dr. Hauser: No. Yes. Or in specific processes which are directed towards insight, the same kind of insight that I imagine you are striving for.

Prabhupāda: Yes. We ask them to refrain from four prohibitive principles. No illicit sex, no gambling, no meat-eating, no intoxication. And chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. That's all. Refrain from these prohibitions. And chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. And he becomes sane, Kṛṣṇa conscious. Very easy.