COSMOTHERAPY

Pr. OM Lind Schernrezig

INTRODUCTION

Nutrition has become a sort of Science since the discovery of Vitamins and the realization that minerals or physicochemical salts were necessary as foods for the maintenance of life.  But there existed already an “Art of Eating”, age ago, and we were glad to admit it, for it is a positive fact that ancient India and China, Buddhism offered rules for diet that have as yet not been improved, while science is proving, day by day, that the primitive Buddhists or Spiritual Leaders knew considerably about the nature of man and the secrets of Life at large.

But our interest here is solely in presenting NUTRITION as a foundation of righteous living, in the understanding that the results will meet with all the expectations of man, and also will provoke the realization of our best aims.

Religious and political systems of all times have dwelt on the particular of human happiness and welfare, but have not as yet succeeded in affording the world with an acceptable formula or design. They all speak of the same God, in behalf of Heaven, and as missionaries of Perfection itself, yet nowhere do they offer us any evidence of a clear knowledge whereof they speak.  In fact, their doctrines and moral preceptuations draft human endeavor in abstruse metaphysical considerations and mystical purposes, yet they fail to respond to the primary needs of human nature, both, in the spiritual as well as in the purely material sense. It is no wonder that there should such an enormous conflict in constant pungency between the notions of the REALISM and the IDEAL! 

There is practically no difference between the REAL and IDEAL, but how own perception, or capacity of appreciation.  But without HEALTH of the body, the Mind is anything but wholesome.  This was hinted at centuries ago when the famous Latin adage was coined Mens Sana in corpore sano, which means in ultimate analysis that there is no possible mental attainments except through a perfectly healthy body.

Truly enough, a sick body is not a suitable vehicle to the Mind, in any way, and much as we may yearn for happiness and vie for spiritual realizations, or for Divine realizations, the slightest interruptions or sickness in our body will always be a serious obstacle, if not a menace, to our mental accomplishments as well as our spiritual attainments.  In fact, a mere imperfection in the contents of the blood, some nervous derangements, an endocrine dysfunction, kidney troubles, or whatever irregularity in the vagosympatethic system will always be a grave complication, which will have to cope with in our idealistic aspirations and Spiritual yearnings. Even a simple toothache, a poor blood count, a constipation, or gonadic complexities will disrupt our whole vital system, and make our moral designs unattainable.  Our simple ideals are unrealizable, in practical ways, if we withstand even the slightest body irregularity.  Thereupon lies the importance of HEALTH, which is the basis of HAPPINESS and of all SUCCESS in life.

Metaphysical systems have so far exposed us only to promises of heavenly HAPPINESS, while in the immediate realm they have done absolutely nothing to destroy the countless obstacles that hinder our evolutionary advancements and the practical realization of our dearest yearnings.  Biological heritage is still the greatest stumbling block to human evolution, and the systematic displacement of problems and overlooking of the basis cause of human imperfections and shortcomings is not a wise recourse, nor is the modern essays in eugenics any satisfactory perspective insofar as human needs are concerned.  Neither moral preceptuations nor educational ventures have been, as yet, truly effective, principally because humanity has not yet been truly informed about the source of all ailments, or the cause of human imperfections.

The matter of NUTRITION is a very dear problem to us, because we understand that it stands as one of the fundamental factors of human rehabilitation, or psychic readjustments, and of racial regeneration.  That is why we enter into so much painstaking here, for we realise that there is magic’s                                                                                            in diet, and also because we have discovered that human nature is dependent a great deal on what we eat as well as the way we eat.  Our kitchens, instead of ovens for the denaturing of foods, should be a laboratory of nutrition.  And instead of eating just to keep alive, we should make it a wonderful art of eating to create vitality in ourselves and for ourselves.

Certainly, to eat for the sake of regenerating our being and endowing ourselves with new vitality, is the basis of constantly renewed organs, and the creation of new means for the better attainment of our most cherished aims in life.  In fact, there is no need to be sick, weak, impotent, and unhappy.  By simply choosing our foods and balancing our diets, we can help in building and repairing our bone and tissue structure, regulate our body functions, control our neuroendocrine mechanism, and provide our Mind with a fitting means of expression.

Our foods are at once a fuel and an energy providing means.  We should eat, therefore, not simply to satisfy our palate, or to feel our stomach, but, primarily, to pep ourselves up an adequate vehicle for the fulfillments of our better aims.  Wrong diet will only promotes unwholesome purposes and delusive aims.

Our tragic contemporaneity is characterized by the despair, the delusions, the morbid yearnings and deceitful ideals of SOUL HUNGRY peoples, and a succession of world wars do not seem to force issues to the point of affording us a solution to all problems.  We still see people unhappy and enchained to age-old democratic ideals still unfulfilled and haggard hearts claiming for Divine justice and kindness among men.  But all this misery is only secondary to a greater problem confronted by humanity, which may be called NUTRITION STARVATION, for most people give a great importance to the problem of alimentary manipulation, but the fact remains that humanity does not know how to eat, and this tragedy is reflected in all the metaphysical systems and schools of mysticism.  Peoples are hunted by the idea of starving hunger, and the anthropomorphism of religious philosophy only reveal this extreme, which deeply  imbedded in the psychic in form of complexes.

Yet most peoples do not satisfy the natural functions of nutritional hunger. They eat anything, and anyhow.   That is why they suffer from “hidden hunger”, or NUTRITION STARVING.  They eat at least twenty time more than they should, and not ever 10% of what their natural needs are.  It is almost a miracle that human beings still can live, after indulging in so many unwholesome practices such as those that characterize civilization, and upon following so insistently the stupid culinary customs that are so dear to modern homosapiens.  In fact, their foods are prepared for killing them.  They eat as intent on committing suicide, and the consequence is a series of ailments, which correspond to “poisoning” and ”famine diet”.  Yet, unbalanced foods create in constant state of poisoning in the body, and also leaves it famished of the necessary elements to vitality.  No wonder real HEALTH is regarded by these peoples as mere UTOPIA!

Diet deficiency, often unknown to the victim and still more to M.Ds. constitutes a hidden hunger, which makes inroads on vitality and endurance, actually lower resistance to disease, and foster mental derangements.

If we want a better idea about NUTRITION STARVING, let us take an example, and then compare it with what actually happen in different countries.  In the United States of America, undoubtedly the country with the highest living standard, of about 1.000.000 men examined for the Army, 400.000 were found unfit for general military service.  Army medical men have stated that probably one third of these were suffered from disabilities, directly or indirectly, connected with nutrition.  The figures are staggering, and they offer a clear outlook of the momentous problem that confront humanity.  That has led Dr. Thomas Parran, Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, to state that “we American want good health to be the heritage of all … we need this heritage for the nation’s safety.  We shall need it later if we are to have the fruits of peace we seek to win”.  And again, we must admit that by the use of modern knowledge of nutrition, we can build a better and a stronger human race, with greater resistance to disease, greater average length of life and greater average mental powers as tentatively stated in the blueprint drawn up at the U.S. National Nutrition Conference for Defense, recently.

Until very recently, just a few years ago, practically nothing was known about the functions of foods in relation to vital economy or to our biological dynamics.  People drank milk because it tasted good, or because it proved wholesome to calves, and eat tomatoes, eggs, apples and bananas, for examples, simply because they were easy to get.  But, today, people know better, so they cater to these products because they are definitely “protecting foods”.  Our fathers and forebears used to enjoy trickles and honey, and indulged in luscious flesh dishes, also because they found them appropriate to their palate, but since then we have learnt to analyze foods, and nowadays we eat only such products that really are beneficial to our system and according to the amounts required at different times.  We eat to live, while of yore people used to live to eat rather than anything else, and never gave diet any more thought than to the cause of the moon’s orbit around the earth!  This conquest of men over NUTRITION is no doubt, more significant than any other single discovery of man in all the ages.

Of course, there is a miraculous romance in the process of digestion, which escapes our control.  But we can, however, present a basis for a still more marvellous result if we watch and choose our diet.  For example, flesh eaters rave over a good sixed steak, but they ignore that an equal size lump of soya beans will give them twice as much proteins, six times more fat, most of the vitamins, iron, manganese, sulphur, silicon, sodium, calcium and phosphorous, and twice as many different amine acids.  Soya beans are richer in calcium than milk, and have twenty times the alkalinity of milk and five times that of citrus fruits.  They are also a much richer source of lecithin – which aids the assimilation of foods – than eggs.  Would it not be easier, more wholesome and more moral to resort to soya beans?  Then, to offer just another example as to the marvellous chemistry of our digestive process, let us recall that about half of our caloric intake (daily) should be of protective foods.  Yet, thanks to the ways of Mother Nature, we actually obtain half of our daily calories from vitamin-free white flour and sugar alone… the which is understandable since a piece of pie supplies some 400 calories and a tomato less than 25.  Nature has her own ways to patch up deficiencies. Yet we should help Nature, not handicap her.

Their greatest suicide is committed by people who believe that only carbohydrates and fats are necessary.  They satiate themselves on such products, and feel satisfied.  But they do not realise that they also need vitamins and mineral salts, which can be found mostly in fruits and raw vegetables, or slightly cooked legumes (corn, beans, etc.)  No wonder they are unhealthy, and, worse of all, mentally unbalanced or undependable, uncreative and in the whole utterly miserable.

But “hidden hungry” is not only due to ignorance.  It can also be provoked by indifference, over refinement of foods, improper storage, unwise selection, wrong preparation, and undue combinations, and this is true in peoples of all stages of civilization, even the teeming masses of New York City like among those or Shanghai, Calcutta and London.  In fact, it is claimed that more pilgrims are treated in Bellevue Hospital in New York City than in the pellagra clinics at Atlanta, Georgia, where conditions of life are so different, among the peoples of those two regions.  And we must add to this discouraging outlook, the reducing diets and food fats, which are responsible for the “secret Starvation” of most civilized peoples, especially the women folks, who will eat barely to stand erect on their feet as long as they kept that youthful style and complexion.  The truth is that these peoples are committing suicide at their own leisure.  Nutritional deficiency saps vitality in so insidious way that the victim may be unaware that enough is wrong to call the doctor.  The milder degrees of this curse constitute in fact, the hub of the problem is malnutrition, and should not be despised.  The worse of it though, is not that they weaken organic functions and lower our capacity of resistance to disease, but it wrecks our moral abilities, destroy our courage, undermine the will to do, depress the mind, and cause the individual to abandon himself to whatever may come.

We have been interested in a VITAMIN AND MINERAL (VITAMINERAL) THERAPY.  Our experience rules that large initial doses are convenient in all treatments, whether preventive or curative.  This process has been found so important that in June, 1940 the British Ministry of Food decided to fortify white flour with thiamine (Vitamin B(1)) and calcium, a step which will leave its imprint in coming years in the form of improved health of the population.  Likewise, in the U.S.A., the National Research Council, in conjunction with the Council on Foods and Nutrition of the A.M.A. and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, standards for the enrichment of flour have been set up, allowing an addition of Thiamine, Riboflavin, Nicotinic Acid, Iron, Calcium, and Vitamin A as well.

The Vitamins offer a wide range of investigation, and they are referred in the form of letters, preferably, for the sake of facility.  These Vitamins are questioned by a great number of scientists even today (1944).  But if unsuccessful medicos prefer to doubt, it is no motive for investigators to deny their own discoveries and experiences.

We have attempted the simplification of reference to the many Vitamins by making a specific alphabetic Chart, which will help students.  This VITAMINERAL THERAPY CHARTER is available separately, and we recommend it.  The complete explanation about the value of Vitamins will be found in our book “THE FUNDAMENTALS OF LIFE”.

 The problem of malnutrition is not so much one of lack of food, but one of overeating and wrong combinations.  Malnutrition is oftime unapparent.  In fact, it does not mean wasting, emaciation, underweight or undersize necessarily.  Most malnutritioned peoples are of normal average size and weight or overweight, and their external appearance of malnutrition are often attributed to sheer laziness, careless or stupidity.  Yet most people’s suffer from this basis of all maladies. In the true sense of the word, NUTRITION stands for the actual value of foods as they are utilized by our system.  The processes concerned in building up cells and tissues or our protoplasm, of which they are composed, and its destruction incidental to life, is a chemical elaboration that provides the energy necessary for the vital functions and for the performance of all organic dynamics, as well as to afford the material needed for repair of wear and tear, is known as metabolism.  But this metabolism, mind you, is not exactly dependent of what we eat, but, rather, on how we eat.  This is where an ART OF DIETETICS comes in, most useful and wise.  

It is a rather well known fact that many individuals who have little appetite are overweight or obese, and many who have good appetite and consume more than they need in amount of food are underweight.  Moreover, we know from daily observation that many individuals who are overweight and frequently go easy on sweets, candy, sugar, pastries, nevertheless do not quite satisfy the hunger they feel, the constant appetite that drives them to such excess although they know that such indulgence only aggravate their condition.  This, in fact, is due to metabolism.  Most people do not make good use of their food organically, because there are functional difficulties somewhere, either in their digestive tract, in their absorption capacity of the blood, or in the neuroendocrine system.  It is very important to realise that NUTRITION is not a mere matter of taking in food, but, rather, one of biological economy and dynamics.

In connection with vitamin deficiency, we know that B (1) is responsible for vague pains, usually elicited only by pressure over the nerve roots, general malaise, anorexia (lack of appetite) and constipation.  Small amount of sugar may appear in the urine, without any hyperglycemia (too much sugar in the blood), and there is usually a large carbohydrate (sugar and starch) intake, often associated with a tendency to obesity.  Mineral deficiency is equally noticeable, since those so-called mineral salts are indeed the basis of our structural constitution.  As for the neuroendocrine secretions (chemical and physical hormones or stimulants), their deficiency or disharmonious combinations are positively of vital importance, since they are the factors of functional capacities.  Nutritionists will take those facts, into consideration, more and more as time goes on.

In connection with the neuroendocrine system and its diverse functions, we beg the earnest student to consult our books on Biopsychosomatics.