Integrative Medicine: Knowledge and Intuition
Before healing can begin, a physician must first ask: what is essential? At the foundation of all medical practice lies the distinction between knowledge and belief.
Why is this distinction so crucial?
Because everything involving human beings—and medicine in particular—has always oscillated between these two poles: knowing and believing. Neither is complete in isolation. They are the two legs that allow us to move forward. A healthy integration of both prevents a chaotic mix and supports a coherent, balanced approach.
The Limits of Knowing and Believing
Knowing is grounded in observation, verification, measurement, and reasoning. It provides a sense of certainty, but it often falls short because it overlooks internal dimensions. It measures what is external and below the surface.
Believing, on the other hand, involves intuitive leaps. It can reveal deep truths—or lead to dangerous illusions. It opens access to what is internal and above, yet is easily distorted without verification.
Medicine operates between these two domains. It is not a pure science; it is an art. It requires not only empirical precision and reasoning but also intuitive understanding and lived experience.
Human beings, as Plato noted, are composed of the “one and the other.” Much of who we are escapes measurement. Therefore, when a physician brings together knowledge, belief, and experience, they can attain medical wisdom.
The Dual Nature of the Physician
Doctors are dual beings. We possess two hands, two cerebral hemispheres, two nervous systems (autonomic and voluntary), two legs, and, though seemingly singular, a heart that is both left and right. We have dual kidneys, lungs, eyes, ears—and even the liver has two lobes. Our thinking, too, is dualistic: we grasp only relative truths, never absolutes.
Medicine reflects this duality. Yet one path is often neglected.
Being a science of humans and for humans, medicine must reflect this dual structure. The physician thus has two pathways:
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The objective and rational path
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The subjective, intuitive, and para-rational path
The Objective and Rational Path
This path sees the world through systems, categories, and logical structures. Classification is key. Scientists use it to examine phenomena, describe them, and draw conclusions—but not to understand their inner nature.
They can dissect a phenomenon but often cannot penetrate its essence.
Take, for example, an anthropologist studying a rain dance. The external interpretation might be: “This ritual maintains social structure and group cohesion.” But for the participants, it is an invocation of the gods, a spiritual plea for rain. They are not thinking of sociology.
This gap is typical of empirical science: it focuses on form, not essence. Some key examples include:
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Behaviorism (Skinner, Watson): Focuses only on observable stimuli and responses, ignoring internal experience—represented well in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
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Empirical Medicine and Pharmacology: Driven by observable, measurable data.
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Molecular Biology and Neurology: Concerned with mechanisms and structures.
The Subjective, Intuitive, and Para-Rational Path
This path is interpretive and inward. No matter how closely one observes another, much remains hidden unless the person speaks their inner truth.
Understanding patients requires interpretation and emotional attunement. This is the domain of hermeneutics—the science of interpretation.
It aligns with figures like:
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Freud
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Carl Jung
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Piaget
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Aurobindo
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Plotinus
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Buddha
Medicine also needs this path. Only through interpretation and intuition can we understand a patient’s inner world. Physical ailments may originate in psychological or spiritual disturbances—and only a holistic approach can reach these depths.
It’s not just about identifying tissue damage; it’s about reading the human experience. Deep healing requires insight into the entire person.
When to Use Each Path?
Rational Empiricism vs. Intuitional Hermeneutics in Medicine
Ken Wilber, a pioneer of Transpersonal Psychology, offers a model for understanding this. Imagine a series of concentric circles, each representing an evolutionary level—from matter at the core to spirit at the outer edge.
Each level builds on the previous one.
If we draw an arrow through these levels:
At the lower levels (matter, biology), rational empiricism (red) is necessary.
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As we move outward to more subtle realms (mind, soul, spirit), intuitional hermeneutics (purple) becomes essential.
Modern medicine, as taught in universities, is grounded in the red arrow. It is indispensable for addressing diseases at the physical and biological levels. But it cannot reach higher levels where psychological and spiritual issues reside.
Toward a New, Integrative Medicine
A New Medicine must be integrative—combining empirical knowledge with intuitive insight. It should address not only the physical symptoms but the inner origins of disease.
Take depression, for instance. Pills alone are often insufficient—and sometimes harmful—because they fail to address the root psychological or existential causes.
This approach isn’t easy, nor is it widely supported by current healthcare systems. But it is possible.
In ancient healing temples, patients underwent incubatio—a night of guided dreaming. The healer would then prescribe a remedy, often based on divine insight. Some inscriptions read: “Go and forgive your enemies.”
It seems simple, but how often do we fall ill due to unresolved emotions, stress, or lack of understanding? These may evolve into physical illnesses that could have been prevented through compassion, insight, and human connection.
However, a New Medicine, which is Integrative, that is, which intuitively takes into account the most subtle part of the human being (A+B+C...) and is capable of interpreting the profound, would allow us to manage the problems specific to these subtle levels, while avoiding their negative impact on the physical and biological planes.
Diseases such as depression, so common today, cannot be treated merely with “pills,” which do not always help and often make things worse, since they do not locate or resolve the fundamental knots of the human personality.
This approach is not easy, and our healthcare systems today do not allow it, but it is possible. In the ancient healing temples, after subjecting the patient to an “incubatio” for one night, the priest-doctor would give a remedy, following the advice of the god. Sometimes we find recipes inscribed such as “go and forgive your enemies.” This is just one example, but sometimes...
Precisely, at subtle levels, little is needed, although it must of course be fundamental, while at physical levels, advanced disease is a physiological and anatomical labyrinth that is difficult to solve and certainly requires scientific knowledge.
Everything in its place: subtle cure for the subtle, physical cure for the physical. Anyone who thinks otherwise, that deep-rooted physical illness can be cured with just a few plants or magnetic passes, is mistaken. Let us not be mistaken.
You cannot simply fix depression with pills, nor can you lay hands on someone or perform psychological analysis to cure appendicitis.
The further we advance in this looming Middle Ages, the more diseases we find, both physical and mental, because our society has broken all natural patterns, internal and external, subjecting us to stressful situations that should not occur today.
We have sufficient means to ensure that no one in the world goes hungry, that there is prevention and medicine, and yet chaos, war, and hunger are everywhere. Medicine is increasingly resembling a garbage truck collecting the detritus that society has left behind, because it is no longer a question of sick individuals, but of an entire sick society, which is at the root and cause of so many human catastrophes.
Doctors and patients must seek within themselves a balance between the material, imposing true rationality upon it, and the intuitive, imposing the spiritual upon it.
As the old alchemist saying goes: “As above, so below.”
