Decoding the riddles of health and life

By Vimukthi Karunaratne

Ranjan was chronically sick for the first 18 years of his life. The suffering he had to endure had such a profound effect on him that at the age of 13 he found himself overwhelmed by a wish for death to end his plight. However, upon going to boarding school in Britain and meeting a healer, he was exposed to Eastern approaches to health and life, and he embarked on a journey towards full recovery which expanded into the study of philosophy of medicine, health, science and spirituality.

Today, in his 60s, Ranjan has been medication-free for over four decades

Today, in his 60s, Ranjan has been medication-free for over four decades. Furthermore, his journey has transformed his life into one imbued with beauty, meaning and happiness.

For the past three decades he has been healing people and helping them discover and reconnect with their life purpose, thus manifesting their inner beauty.

In addition to his private healing work, Ranjan has tutored in British and American universities since the 80s and has conducted workshops around the globe including in Australia, Canada, Britain, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the US. He has also been featured on television in Australia, Britain, Pakistan and the US and has had several academic papers published in the US.

He has even been a guest speaker for the Sri Lanka Medical Association and the Australia and New Zealand Nuclear Medicine Society. The Duchess of York not missing a single one of her weekly appointments with Ranjan when she had access to the best of doctors and healers from around the world stands as testimony to his remarkable work.

Thence, we took the opportunity to interview Ranjan. Here are some of the excerpts:

Could you tell us something about your work?

The 17th century French philosopher René Descartes introduced mind-body dualism. In 1999, Candace Pert in 'Molecules of Emotion' showed this split is unmitigated superstition and exposed that the mind exists throughout the body.

See, science is empirical, and modern physics shows our physical world is a mere perception of the human senses. Only a few realise that this refutes science's much vaunted claim to be objective. In using modern instruments to map and monitor dimensions invisible to our senses, we discover that there never was a separation, either between mind and body or between science and spirituality.

One stunning and radical record of the relationship between life purpose and the body is Anita Moorjani's story in 'Dying to be Me', where she vividly describes her battle with cancer which eventually led to organ shutdown. However, instead of dying she had a 'temporary death' experience where she got in touch with her life purpose. The outcome was a 70 percent reduction in her tumors in four days, a medical impossibility, and total recovery in a matter of days.

So the core of my work is to make people aware that over 90percentof what they were taught in physics and biology is 'secular' superstition. My job is to re-educate people in attaining high level energy. Authentic health is not merely about being disease-free, it is also about having the energy to make your dreams come true. The foundation for this work is the marriage of science and spirituality.

How has this path changed your life?

First and foremost, I converted from being chronically sick to 'chronically' well through shifting from biomedicine's model of disease to an Asian model of health.

One common delusion people have is about the efficacy of biomedicine (Western medicine). Today, prescription medicine is killing more people than heart disease or cancer. Stop and think about that. Do not get me wrong, I would be dead if not for biomedicine, but I would also be chronically sick if not for Asian medicine.

My physical transformation was the result of learning what the immune system needed to better function and giving it what it needed. Recent research validates that the cause of chronic disease, without exception, is immune system malfunction. If the immune system does not malfunction, you cannot get sick. That is a radical thought, but it is scientific, and it has been my experience.

Secondly, living as I do in a sick society (the majority of people today suffer from some chronic disease!) where yesterday's science is still promulgated as knowledge, I am the perennial outsider. I challenge people's core beliefs, so I have become the mad one!

For example, today's science, which uses sophisticated technology to look into invisible realms, is very clear; lying damages your health. A lie detector shows that each time you lie, a stress reaction reverberates through the body, damaging it. Therefore, I refuse to lie. Nonetheless, today lying is of epidemic proportions and is regarded as normal or even necessary. Consequently, my refusal to lie has made me positively 'abnormal' in the eyes of society.

Another example of what makes me an outsider is that I speak against the ubiquitous belief that meat is a nutritional necessity. The fact is, meat is a source of trans fats, and research proves the body has zero tolerance for it. Moreover, research now shows that a vegan diet is a whopping eight timesmore effective against cancer cells.

In The Ascent of Man, Bronowski writes that Galileo thought that all he had to do was to show what was true. He comments, "In this, Galileo was being naive about people's motives". We think what people want is the truth, but what they seek instead is familiarity! The tendency is to think of what is familiar as true and what is unfamiliar as untrue. As my views and perspectives are unfamiliar, based as they are on modern science - not yesterday's science - people tend to dismiss them even though the evidence is compelling.

What is the most unforgettable experience you have had in your career as a healer?

I think primacy has to go to the case of a patient I treated in Colorado, the day before he had surgery for a brain tumor. When the surgeons opened him up they found nothing in the region where previous scans had shown the tumor, just scar-tissue. The tumor had healed in less than 24 hours.

Equally memorable was being invited to Harvard University Medical School along with healers from different parts of the world including from Israel, Taiwan, Mainland China and Poland, for a research to ascertain the efficacy of healing. Their equipment showed that there was a significant addition of energy in samples over which I did 'healing'.

How does this type of healing work differ from means and methods used in Western medicine?

The biomedical approach predominantly takes what I call a 'colonial' approach; the local is pushed out of the way, and the foreigner goes in and does the job. As such, the pharmaceutical industry pushes the immune system out of the way and fights diseases with drugs. Furthermore, the biomedical approach consists of symptomatic treatment. The pharmaceutical industry deploys drugs addressed at the symptoms of the disease, not the cause.

My life demonstrates the efficacy of the Asian causative approach over the Western symptomatic approach.

At the core of Eastern healing lies the idea that illness is caused by an imbalance in the body, which is seen as a self-sustaining system. Its objective is to correct the imbalance. Then the malfunction stops and the disease evaporates. Anita shows that even someone at death's door can fully regain health if the immune system receives what it needs.

If you were not a healer, who would you be today?

I see healing as manifesting or restoring beauty. If not healing, I would be doing something else that created beauty. Let me expand on this idea. To me beauty is the signature of balance at a very deep level. It can manifest in myriad forms; healing, singing, painting, saving a rainforest or a whale are all things of beauty. So it would be in some field where I was creating something beautiful.

What are some of your other passions in life?

The things I am most passionate about in life are truth, fair play and love. To me, ultimately beauty is balance between these three. Also, modern science suggests that it is these virtues that govern our biology.

However, the conventional idea of love is a mockery of the reality. Unconditional love is neither overlooking people's incompetence nor allowing them to wallow in their delusions. Love is about nurturing spiritual growth; that can be pain, not pandering.

Consider the Zen master who trails an acolyte to periodically hit him over the head. Ouch! Nevertheless, the final outcome is that the student increases what the Californian HearthMath Institute measures as 'coherence' (think of 'coherence' as a mechanical measure of spiritual growth), and learns to sense the attack without even seeing the master. Birthing this higher level of coherence (awareness) takes pain, not pandering.

Sadly, religious institutions too, focused on mass appeal, have degenerated into repositories of superstition and sentimentality, where emotional indulgence masquerades as spirituality. A Zen monk studying theology at King's College, London was asked about the course; "it's like trying to learn to sing from people who have never heard music!"

What is your favourite place to go for inspiration?

Anywhere beautiful in nature inspires me; Ella is a favorite, as is Kashmir. Besides, research identifies a frequency, the 'Schumann resonance', that envelopes the Earth, and finds it to be imperative in maintaining good health and sustaining life. When you are in nature you are bathed in this energy.

Three things you do every day?

I meditate, exercise and look for opportunities to be of help to someone. Let me elaborate on what I mean by helping someone. A number of studies of philanthropy show that a great deal of our efforts to help someone merely creates a dependency. For example, research shows that after natural disasters such as tsunamis, communities who do not receive any outside help do much better in the long run.

As the Emperor Ashoka's edict preserved in stone proclaims, "the hardest thing in the world is to do a truly benevolent act". So, to get the opportunity to help someone help him or herself instead of creating a dependency is something I look forward to as an exciting spiritual challenge. It is in tackling spiritual challenges that we grow spiritually.

In your opinion, what is the most valuable virtue a person can possess? Why?

It is integrity. For me it is the starting point, for without it you cannot taste the deeper satisfactions of life. Without integrity you are condemned to be bogged down in the superficial. When you stray from the truth you enter a world of fantasy that self-sabotages. You might gain riches, but without integrity, instead of happiness you get enmeshed in a web of insecurities. As Bernard Shaw comments, "the liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else". Science now shows that it is notcompetition but cooperation that is the engine of evolution. If you cannot trust, you cannot cooperate, and if you cannot cooperate you cannot evolve and grow spiritually.

What advice could you give our readers that would help them lead a better, healthier life?

Today, we live in noise cocoons. The outcome is a society that is terrified of silence. Many seem to be frightened of what they might discover and experience in silence. So, many come to me saying, "I don't know what to do with my life". They have difficulty perceiving their life purpose. The evidence suggests that purpose is the pivot on which everything else in life spins, be it health, wealth or happiness.

There are three steps to finding life purpose:

Stop the constant noise in your head and become silent within; engage in meditation.

This would profoundly transform your life. Furthermore, Last year 'New Scientist' published a research showing that meditation actually puts into recession genes that contribute to ill-health and activates genes that contribute to health.

Ask to be shown your path from within and listen to the promptings that come to you. Be obedient to that inner prompting, the experiences that come to you, once you ask, even if it means engaging in something that society tells you is rubbish and is of no use. Know that if you follow your inner prompting, you can manifest the impossible.

If you accomplish these three, the life that you taste will be delicious, and it will not matter that society reviles you because what you do will be deeply satisfying.

Here is an example from my personal experience. Despite being from the Third World and repeatedly told by every authority that it would physically, legally and financially be impossible, by being obedient to this inner voice, in 1968 I established the first independent radio station in Britain to be licensed after the BBC; University Radio York (URY).

Four decades later, when I was invited to be the chief guest at the celebration of the 40th anniversary of URY, I was deeply moved to be told by numerous guests that URY had transformed their lives.

What I had thought to be just a training exercise for me to learn to be obedient to my inner prompting turned out to be a thing of beauty in many people's lives.