The world is passing through a calamitous situation with the ongoing pandemic of Covid-19 striking the global population in multiple waves since its onset in December 2019. The pandemic has severely challenged the administrative machineries of the governments and the prevailing healthcare system.
We were revelling in the marvels of modern technology with novel inventions of wireless telephony, genetic engineering and digital systems and also latest systems of healthcare, comprising potent chemical drugs and sophisticated surgical procedures. But the onslaught of the pandemic and the death toll of over three million humans that it has taken put big question marks on our technologies and systems. I would like to add that it has cast shadows on our lifestyles and beliefs too.
Pandemics in olden times were regarded as the curses of gods. But even in the present times of professedly high scientific achievements, are we in a position to explain it any better? So many theories were advanced about its origin in scientific terms but there is no satisfactory explanation yet. We seem to be wallowing in confusion and at a total loss to steer our way clearly out of this calamity.
That brings us back to the ancient theory of the curse of gods and prompts us to take a holistic, a scientific-spiritualistic look at the phenomenon.
Our primordial scriptures say that pandemics are the fallout of adharma i.e. violation of the tenets of righteousness by humans. This view is further corroborated by the ancient treatises on medicine authored by Sage Charak who was the greatest exponent of Ayurveda, the science of healthy living.
Righteousness is dharma—the 10 principles of human living that promote peace, progress and prosperity in the world. Let us recount these cardinal principles. These are—patience, forgiveness, mind control, regulation of the senses, cleanliness, honesty, application of intellect, true knowledge, abjuring anger and truthfulness.
It is not difficult to see how many of the above tenets of dharma and to what extent are being violated by the present generation of global humans. But the most significant violation in the current context is lack of true knowledge and its application. We are predominantly reductionist in our approach to various things in all walks of life. Modern systems of healthcare regard the human body as a conglomerate of various physical organs carrying out their specific tasks and human physiology as a play of various chemicals in the body internals. We do not take a holistic view of the body—a view that takes into account human mind, intellect, ego self, the soul and the supersoul, God. Our view also fails to consider the interconnectedness of all sentient beings in the infinite spiritual medium which is God. We are working with half knowledge, and half knowledge is dangerous.
We have a largely mechanistic outlook towards dealing with Nature. We think that we are entities outside of the inert Nature and the latter can be milked at will. We have defiled our environmental elements—polluted the air with harmful gaseous effluents, soil with chemical pesticides and fertilisers as also plastic waste, water with hazardous waste of factories and ether by microwave radiation. We have thus polluted the ‘Panchabhut’, meaning all the five primal elements of nature—air, earth, water, fire and ether. This is the result of using wrong, environment-unfriendly technologies which are not in line with true knowledge. Our medical technologies and systems are also largely misaligned with true knowledge enshrined in Ayurveda.
We are paying a huge price for all this.
The pandemic is a stern reminder to the current crop of humans to revisit and refine its understanding of material nature based on the eternal wisdom of the Vedas. We need to shed our intellectual arrogance and bring about suitable changes in our living paradigms to align them with eternal true knowledge.
We need to adopt a holistic approach in dealing with Mother Nature in which all sentient beings are regarded as intimately linked in both material and spiritual terms with their creator God controlling and regulating them real time. We will then be working in line with true knowledge handed down to us by the omniscient creator. Only there lies a lasting solution to the present set of catastrophic problems confronting us.
Atul Sehgal is the author of Guide to Inner Wellness (Rupa Publications, Jan 2021). Email: atul4956@gmail.com