The WHO Executive Board Task Force on Constitutional Revision proposed that the preamble be amended to read (World Health Organization (1997) Constitutional Revision…, EB 10 1/7, p.2 )
“Health is a dynamic state of complete physical, mental, spiritual and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”
In January 1998, the Executive Board endorsed this Task Force proposal and adopted resolution EB 10 1.R2 recommending that the World Health Assembly amend the preamble to the Constitution accordingly (World Health Organization (1998) Council Executive 101st Session, Resolutions and Decisions, EB101.1998/REC/l, p.52-53)
In 2005, the Bangkok Charter for Health Promotion in a Globalized World endorses a “positive and inclusive concept of health as a determinant of quality of life and encompassing mental and spiritual well-being.”
Since the first WHO definition – “Health is the absence of disease”, we have come a long way. And this is certainly timely because after a long journey through science and discovery, the world is rapidly entering a new era that feels lost due to the lack of healthy answers to many of its questions in its materialistic domain.
Especially when it comes to health and disease, we can only go so far and then draw a blank. There are revolutionary drugs and super-talented surgeons, and yet children die young, babies are born with deformities, organs fail to function before their expiration date, and otherwise healthy people lose their memories. This is in addition to the multitude of mental illnesses that are baffling experts around the world as they use trial and error to “fix” things. And we are in the 21st century!!
Can man really claim to have understood the human body and its reproductive process? Some may use genetics to have acquired all the knowledge, but I always have a question: you know that certain genetic coding leads to certain characteristics and others decide the location of organs in the body and other details, however, who did this coding? super smart genetics in the first place? I mean that is way beyond the extension of the word “Amazing”! The son of a man is born a man with all systems and microsystems in exactly the same place with exactly the same function for centuries together! The system that makes it happen or made it happen in the first place can’t be a random “Big Bang”!! No, it was not a random occurrence that not only humans, but thousands of creatures inhabit this earth with a perfect genetic code and a perfect place in the ecosystem and each with perfect intelligence in the art of survival.
It had to be a superpower and Spirituality is the recognition of that superpower that built the smallest of its creatures with perfection and with a PURPOSE.
This purpose and connection to the superpower makes us all spiritual beings who have been given a human body to experience challenges and learn the very essence of life.
Many diseases are forms of these challenges that come to us with some lessons. There are now many studies available in which energy healing and faith healing methods significantly cured or at least improved quality of life in patients with intractable and life-threatening diseases. Most of these methods work with emotional labor. Many illnesses have been cured by the release of trapped negative energy due to longstanding unresolved issues, sometimes attributable even to past lives.
Experts from various scientific fields around the world have experienced the positive effects of spiritual healing on their patients and that includes American psychiatrist Dr. Brian Weiss who has done groundbreaking work in past life regression and regression therapy.
This is not a way to dispute the role of medicine, however, it is necessary to understand that there are things beyond our physique that determine the quality of our health and, when considering treatment, one must look beyond what is popularize more.
Today’s doctors everywhere are overworked, leaving them with little or no time to understand the needs of the patient as a person. Patients, especially those with chronic and terminal illnesses, suffer much more than physical disability and pain. There is emotional pain from loss of health, family disturbances, dependency pain, financial burden, and much more that needs to be addressed just as much as physical illness.
In this era of specialization, the patient is hardly considered as a person… he is a kidney, a heart, a lung… But the patient is not the kidney or the heart, he is a person who is also much more than the organs , is emotions, needs and feelings. Furthermore, illnesses being a wake-up call of the self, spiritual needs are at their highest point. In the absence of someone to attend to these needs, illnesses spread from physical to mental to emotional to spiritual.
Man has achieved much and science has given us much, however, our truth goes further. The famous theory of the Hierarchy of needs of the great philosopher Sir Abraham Maslow speaks of man’s greatest need to be a ‘transcendental self-realization’ While Albert Einstein, the man of science, said: that a spirit manifests itself in the laws of the Universe , a spirit far superior to that of man, and before which we, with our modest powers, must feel humble”.
“Unless we open ourselves to this holistic definition of humanity, our questions and our efforts will always be half rewarded. We all know what Einstein famously quoted: “Science without religion is pathetic.” Religion without science is blind “
