Chapter II.  Ayurveda Keeps All of Your Organs Healthily

(from "Tru Keesey's Ayurveda Report")

One thing we gotta understand about ayurveda, it is not about treating a specific condition or symptom.  If you have kidney stones, for example, ayurveda doesn’t say, “Well, take this and that for kidney stones.”

You will find people who will tell you specific remedies that usually work to get rid of your stones, but that is not using ayurveda as ayurveda.  That would be using ayurvedic remedies as symptomatic medicine, the treatment of symptoms.  Kidney stones are symptoms.

Ayurveda would treat your total condition, and that would cure the stones.

If you think that you are (or that somebody is) doing ayurvedic medicine, and you (or they) are just taking a diet or some herbs, that is not a total treatment, and you (or they) are doing symptomatic medicine.  Same thing if you get a short treatment.  Some ayurvedic treatments takes many days, for example 40 days.

But it doesn’t stop there.  Ayurveda is a lifestyle, and some have even called it a religion, but that depends on your definition of religion.  To some people there is no difference between the meaning of the words “lifestyle” and “religion”, and to others there is a big difference in how they define or conceive of those words.

To be accurate, we would have to say that ayurveda should include one’s daily diet, consecration of the food (saying “grace”, for example, before eating), early bedtime, regularly timed singing or chanting of hymns, invocations of celestial personalities, and so on.

By “covering all the bases” according to the ayurvedic view of things, in one’s daily life, perfect health and perfect balance interfacing with the environment are sought.

Chapter III.  Demon-Riddance

(from "Tru Keesey's Ayurveda Report")

Every imbalance, every disease, was assumed to be caused by sin (Anglo-Saxon word meaning “error”), and engineered by demons affecting the mind, and causing one’s own mind to turn against one’s own body.

Prem Rawat said that when you take away the blocks, everything flows.

I will translate this into ayurveda by saying, take away the sins (repent) and remove the interference (remove the demons affecting the mind) – remove the interference that interferes with automatic unconscious regeneration and maintenance, then all four lower bodies are regenerated and maintained.

This is what the Vedic healers believed also.

Many types of demons were identified.  Remember, these gained admittance into the body (or are sent to the sinner as punishment) through aberrations in the mind, or aberrations in the pattern of spiritual cognition.  During good health, these mental or spiritual patterns are regulated by following moral principles, and by ayurvedic practices.

Sometimes the patient’s healthy mental pattern might have been disrupted by seiđr, or psychic attack by a sorcerer.  This would also be karmic; or else the victim became vulnerable to the sorcerer by making some mistake or sin.

Or, if they didn’t make a mistake, the victim was deficient in performing actions that would strengthen them spiritually.  They didn’t do enough  of something, to make them strong and protected.

This spiritual strength, if they had gotten it, would have protected them against the attempted seiđr.  In other words, the person being attacked wasn’t strong enough, and was not relying on a strong enough divine protector, or else they neglected to form a strong enough tie to that divine protector.

Thus they became vulnerable to seiđr, and thus demons were able to enter in and block the automatic flowing of the victim’s healing energy.

One type of demon, mentioned in the Vedas, is a demon associated with general internal disease that was to be found in Mankind and in cattle.

The modus operandi, of this particular type of demon, was to enter and possess every part of the body, to disintegrate the limbs, to cause fever in the limbs, heartache, and pains in all parts of the body.

Many types of demon speak like a child and like an adult:

• The unknown yáksma
• The royal yáksma – rájayáksma

Often these are associated with other entities that cause internal disease.  Many of these other entities require separate mantras for their removal:

• The jaundice group.  These are treated as a single phenomenon in a mantra found in Atharva Veda 19.44.2
  • Jāyānya
  • Jaundice
  • Disintegration of limbs
  • Visálpaka
• Takmán, a cause of fever – mantras found in Atharva Veda 5.4.9, 5.30.16
• Demons causing diseases of the head – mantra found in Atharva Veda 9.8.1
• Balása -- mantra found in Atharva Veda 9.8.10
• Visalpá, vidradhá, vātīkārá, and alají, -- mantra found in Atharva Veda 9.8.20 (c.f. 9.8.5)
• Kşetriyá, a hereditary disease, or hereditary disease -- mantra found in Atharva Veda 2.10.5 and 6 [Note I use here the “ş” with the cedilla in lieu of one with a dot beneath it, because there was not one available in my word processor.  I do not know whether or not the pronunciation would be the same.]

There is a celestial personage known by the name Yama.  Yama is also known outside of Indian lore as “the angel of death”.  It has been suggested that Yama is the same as the “I Am” who spoke to Moses.  In the olden days, “I Am” would have been pronounced as “Ee-Ahm”.

As the angel of death, Yama has often been found to associate with demons:

• Nírŗti, who is a demoness/troll of destruction – mantra found in Atharva Veda 8.1.21
• Grāhi, a demon of seizure – mantra found in Rig Veda 10.161.1, in Atharva Veda 3.11.1 and 20.96.6

Another set of demons originates in the relatives of the bride, and follows the wedding-procession.  These are found in Rig Veda 10.85.31, which is the same as Atharva Veda 14.2.10.

Some demons are sent by God, or by the servants of God, because of énas, which means a mistake, such as a dishonest man pressing the juice of soma, or allowing a cow’s hair to become hurt.

For each type of demon, there is a plant or plants to be held in the hand of the bhişái [healer], and stroked or waved over the patient, while mantras were recited, quite likely with the bhişái attending to his own breath.  This combination of actions caused the demons to leave the patient’s body, and to fly away with the birds.

A lead amulet dispels the demon downward, an ointment removes it from the patient’s limbs.  A varaņa-tree amulet restrains the Devas from dispatching demons toward the patient.

Since the demon was sent by God, or by God’s servants, the Devas, they have the power to destroy it.  The most helpful Devas, to this end, are Agni, Savitŗ, Vāyu, and Aditya.  Water is also used.  Smoke of the gulgulú-plant disperses certain demons.