The gyu-shi, a standard work of Tibetan medical literature, is considered a work with esoteric content – it is only partly understood even by highly educated Tibetans. It contains a long chapter dealing mainly with leprosy, which is a key to several larger sections on mental illness. The secret correspondences characteristic of the diseases of ‘destiny’, which include both cancer and leprosy, are considered to operate on an ever more subtle level than the equally elusive relationship between diseases of widely differing organs. Examples of the latter include: teeth and joints, the brain and certain functions of the alimentary canal, the nasal cavity and mucous membranes of the lower abdomen and so forth. Such relationships have now occupied Western science for several decades, but have always seemed self-evident to Tibetan doctors.
Cancer occurs far less frequently in central Asia than in the West. This is probably due to the absence of a whole series of precipitating factors in areas such as diet, food preparation and processing, water supply, sex life, mental and emotional states of tension which have been aggravated by technological progress, and so on.
In the countries that border Tibet, the frequency of cancer falls considerably below the world average. And in Tibet itself it is almost certainly lower than that of a country like India.
Nevertheless, Tibetan texts have not neglected to examine this terrible affliction.
In the first chapter we mentioned the Tibetan division of diseases into three areas of causation: the ordinary, the psychological and the fateful. Cancer belongs to the second and third types as far as the root causes are concerned. Environmental conditions, nutritional errors and so forth, only account as additional, precipitating factors.
An irritant, an ‘extraordinary pugnacious demonic poison’, which is said to reside in the sick person’s blood, is held responsible for the outbreak of cancer when conditions are ripe. Its ‘astral colour’ (1) [footnote on the apparently a special colour spectrum of the second body, similar to the first.] is described as copper-red. It is stressed that the irritant is remarkably ‘suitable, minute agitator’, far more difficult to perceive than others; this description is hardly every applied to other illnesses in Tibetan medical works. One of its particular nasty characteristics is the ability to disperse itself with lightning speed throughout the diseased person’s blood, up to the head and legs. Parts of the body expressly stated in Tibetan medical works as possible targets for cancer tumours are: the head, the area of the throat, the stomach, the intestines, the skin, the joints, the musculature and the bones. I have not as yet found any information concerning lung cancer in Tibetan works, perhaps because it belongs to the forms of cancer hardly ever found in central Asia. It is well known that sudden increases in lung cancer in technologically advanced countries has led to campaigns against tobacco smoking. However, mice intensively exposed to tobacco smoking over long periods do not develop lung cancer, although they do develop skin cancer when smeared with carcinogenic substances. At first glance it also seems inexplicable, why, according to large-scale statistics, cigarettes smokers are far more likely to develop lung cancer than pipe smokers. For researchers whose approach to the problem of cancer is similar to that of Tibetan men of learning, in that it takes into account of psychological factors, the simple explanation is that the cigarette smoker is much more nervous than the pipe smoker and seems to be more subject to mental and emotional unrest. The conclusion of both Tibetan and psychosomatic medicine, is that states of stress and anxiety encourage and accelerate cancer.
According to Tibetan schools, when ‘demonic poison’ (virus) appears, the cause which precipitate the cancer produces a disturbance of those parts of the vitalizing second body which correspond to the body afflicted with the cancer. The disturbance also involves an interruption in the supply of the subtle counterpart of digested food. The overall disease of the blood, which manifests itself locally as a malignant tumour, is related to a break or short circuit in the ‘vital current’ caused by cancerous cells. This is combined physically with an insufficient permeation of organs by the ‘breath’; and subtly, on a plane of the second body, with an inadequate circulation of prana, the Tibetan srog-dzin.
[Comment: the Tibetan thinking vis. viruses, brought up a few concepts relating to our Western immunization trends, 60’s, 70’s etc. and what might be sleeping within, waiting for some type of stressor trigger – at least that was my thought while reading.]
The more dense and physically coarse a human body is (a state which occurs especially when the afflicted person is motivated exclusively by material goals), the more difficult it is for the subtle essence of food to be propagated, as described earlier, throughout the second body. Tibetan scholars believe that the Western idea of the necessity for certain levels of calorie intake will be revised in the years or decades to come. It only enjoys such respect in the West because we are such a materially orientated civilization, the product of our technical development.
A general point that should be made mention is the Tibetan view that when a tumour takes hold in the second body it does not necessarily mean that it is malignant, for non-malignant tumours also have their subtle equivalents.
What causes cancer? The Western specialist replies: cancer is an abnormal cellular growth which develops ‘selfishly’ regardless of the needs of the organism, and the cancer cells can reach other parts of the body via the vascular system, and create additional cancer tissues. Whether the second part of this statement requires revision will be shown by the findings of cancer research over the next few years. Since operations on tumours which are performed too early sometimes appear to encourage the formation of metastases (cancerous tissues in other parts of the body), it is not impossible that in this respect another, as yet undiscovered, means of propagation is at work.
The central Asian healer views the aetiology of cancer in terms of a whole series of stratified causes, of which the final, direct precipitating factor is the ‘poisonous demonic concentrate’ (roughly: virus). Some Western cancer researchers are beginning to suspect the hitherto unknown viruses are precipitating causes of cancer. The smallest known virus today are so tiny that they can pass through porcelain and are only visible through an electron microscope. According to the Nobel prizewinner Professor W.M. Stanley, writing in 1956, the fact that we have not been able to detect viruses in cancer cells, does not by any means rule out the possibility of their existence. The extraordinary tiny cancer precipitating virus described in Tibetan texts is possibly this very same long sought after carcinogen.
Various indications and symbolic representation concerning the onset of cancer suggest that a person tainted by his fate carries a cancerous disposition around him for many years until one or more of the various cancer precipitating factors leads to the effective outbreak of the disease. This can take several decades depending on the circumstances. At the appearance of the final precipitating factor, a sort of ‘vibratory infection’ may even occur; this is the transference of a morbid vibration, due to ‘decomposition’ coming from the subtle level. This is possibly identical to the action described in Tibetan works, of the ‘most potent, subtle, demonic poison’. As generally happens in Lamaist healing art where subtle correspondences play a special role, the actual mechanics involved in the outbreak and cure of the disease are virtually impossible to define in habitual Western terms.
The psychological background to the origin and pathology of cancer is not particularly stressed in Lamaist medical work, probably because the connections are considered so obvious that to discuss them would be superfluous. This is the field to which quite a few renowned Western cancer researchers have begun to pay particular attention in recent years. A study was made of the mental characteristics of a large number of patients in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Long Beach, California. The personality structure of patients with carcinomas that had developed very quickly was compared wit that of an equal number of patients whose tumours progressed extremely slowly. It was found in a large number of cases that, in the same environmental conditions and with the same methods of treatment, the more the mental disposition of the afflicted person was subject to psychological tension, the more malignant the cancer was.
Tibetan views concerning insufficient oxygen supply (in a sense, however, which extends beyond that which is purely measurable), coincides with the more recent results of Western research. Of interest also is the relationship between states of depression and tension and marked reduction of oxygen content of the blood, which has been confirmed by research in Canada according to information furnished by Professor T.G. Sleeswijk of Holland. All in all, the position of Tibetan medicine with regards to cancer – i.e. the relationship between cancer, oxygen deficiency and psychological factors – seems absolutely sound.
