john morgan wrote:You are obviously not going to read the book I have recommended earlier in this thread because you have bought into the myth that doctors are always right. Any person that does what you suggest would severely handicap their chances of living a fruitful life.
John ... initially I supported your position to a degree.
Germany, for example, prescribes anything from 3 to 25 times the amount of St John's Wort than Prozac (depending on whose figures you accept) and Ivan Illich's book, "
Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health" on 'social iatrogenesis' is a good primer to start with.
The figures for any 'mild' psychiatric treatment, whether chemical or talking are very poor and, from my point of view, utterly conjectural (
... how do you feel?). 50:50 is your best odds and the medical system is thick with ill health of its own, including killing off 100,000s every year with wrong treatments, drug company corruption (see Eli Lilly et al alleged burying of contra-indicative evidence and rigging of the FDA re Prozac), drug companies testing drugs on develop nations' citizens etc, consultant's blind faith and arrogance, governmental underfunding and so on ... Illich and others have said it all so much better than I.
However ...
What the hell can James Allen offer a 200 lb autistic leaving 3" deep teeth wounds in his mother's arm!?! At that point even I start to reach for the tranquiliser dart gun. I have to utterly agree with Jay that beyond a relatively near line, its time for all the New Age stuff to BACK WELL OFF. In fact, we should ask, where exactly does everything from the New Agey stuff to Jesus casting out demons fit within "the market place".
On this forum members have documented from their own experience incidents where individuals have has psychotic/mental illnesses induced or brought upon by the Brahma Kumari's practise ... one of which I recollect actually happened in an Australia retreat and, I believe, involved Charlie Hogg carting off some man who thought he had met God and was an angel of light etc (as BKs do) ... Brother Hogg can correct me if he wishes. Another case in Japan where a women flipped out completely. I would add another incident I was party to of a women anorexic going, basically, hyper-manic and destroying her family. BKWSU, come sue me if I am wrong.I am highly critical of the BKWSU's targeting of vulnerable individuals with false hopes and high promises. Of the case above, we do not know what happened long term. Of course, the "market place" the Brahma Kumaris and New Ager are targeting in the West ... and it is all about the market ... is not the serious mentally ill (although there was an autistic child of a BK in the early to mid period), but the "lifestyle market" of nice middle class people that might have a twinge or two, some melancholia or little emptiness inside them.
What do you or James offer the serious ill? I think you have to draw some limits on your statement or else admit you are talking about two different things entirely.
Like Jay, I have also been inside a serious mentally and physically handicapped wing of a psychiatric hospital (and not as a patient) albeit to a FAR, FAR, FAR lesser extent. I have seen how far the 'mind and body' can corrupt to forms that I found hard to consider "human", I have had friends flip ... I have also had friends flip coming off Prozac and detest it from what I have seen. But like Jay, it too re-shaped my view of the world and placed 'spirit healing' (which I also believe in with caveats) and 'lifestyle enlightment' into another place altogether.
Of course, the other targeting the BKs do is of individuals working in such environments and, until we resolve the anomalies and contradictions, I am equally unsure of that. See their foray into the Royal College of Psychiatry and hospitals in India etc. But, again ... what other support does society have to offer doctors and nurses? Its all highly complex. There does, however, need to be more dialogue between spiritualism and scientism and that is happening.
Scientism does also have limits and I feel that right now, science is as almost unable to admit its limits as spiritualists are ... however, they have sent a man to the moon and made a whole heap of new medical treatments and technologies whilst spiritualism is still, mostly, in the middle ages. And that comes from someone that has also watched some batty Christian attempt to curse out demons from someone having an epileptic fit.
Its another topic thread and, probably, well of forum but what is the Brahma Kumaris' position on
Euthanasia and how does it fit in with the wonderful fruitcake mix of Karmic Laws. Frankly ... I am pragmatically "Pro".