Presentation Pirc

Your Excellency, honoured Vaidyas, honoured Swamiji, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

It is my great joy and honour to speak to you, here in India, the Land of the Veda, about the achievements of the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Centre in Bad Ems, Germany, and about some of the scientific research on Maharishi Ayurveda world-wide.

When we are speaking in this session about the globalization of Ayurveda, we give credit to His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who brought Ayurveda to the West some 20 years ago and made it so well known that it has become a household word in Western countries today.

As a result of Maharishi’s inspiration, my wife Dr. Karin Pirc MD PhD, together with other western medical doctors, took a training course in Ayurveda at Maharishi Vedic University. After this she opened the first Ayurveda Health Centre in Germany, 17 years ago. Seven years later in 1992, the state government of Rheinland-Pfalz asked us to open a Maharishi Ayurveda Health Centre in the well-known spa (health resort) of Bad Ems, in the former residential palace of the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm I.

Over the past 10 years the clinic has become very successful. More than 10,000 patients have undergone Panchakarma treatment – many of them several times. About 70 employees are working in our clinic, which received governmental recognition as a private clinic five years ago. Our guests have included many dignitaries from all areas of society. About 400 journalists have visited the clinic, and more than 1000 press articles and hundreds of television broadcasts have made this clinic very well known. There are also some other Maharishi Ayurveda Health Centres running successfully in Germany.

During the past 17 years we have frequently and successfully treated the common chronic diseases such as asthma, hypertension, arthritis, cancer, gynaecological disorders, stress-related diseases, disorders of the gastro-intestinal tract, in a very effective way and without producing harmful side-effects.

We believe that our success is due to the completeness of the approach of Maharishi Ayurveda which uses not only Panchakarma and the very effective Ayurvedic herbal preparations but also the other Vedic technologies, the foremost of them being Maharishi`s Transcendental Meditation. The technique of Transcendental Meditation gives direct experience of Atma – the pure, silent state of consciousness. The approach is very scientific, repeatable, and confirmed by more than 600 scientific research studies conducted in about 200 different universities around the world and published in leading scientific journals.

In Germany, we founded as early as 1985 the organisation "Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ayurveda" (German Association of Ayurvedic Physicians). By now this organisation has a few hundred members and, in collaboration with Maharishi Vedic University in Holland, offers advanced post-graduate training for medical doctors. This year alone, 60 western medical doctors began their training in Maharishi Ayurveda.

Ayurveda has become so popular in Germany that many companies working in the field of health and wellness wish to make use of its popularity in order to sell various products under the name of Ayurveda, even though their products often don’t have much to do with it! In addition, more than about 100 hotels have started to offer ordinary massages, just adding some oil and then marketing it under the name of Ayurveda.

To prevent such misuse of Ayurveda, and since the term "Ayurveda" cannot be legally protected, we decided about 10 years ago to give our high standard of quality the brand name "Maharishi Ayurveda". Maharishi Ayurveda is appreciated by the experts as the authentic form of Ayurveda which uses also all the other Vedic approaches, such as pulse-reading, Jyotish, Gandharva-Veda, Sthapatya Veda, Vedic Organic Agriculture, and Yoga including Transcendental Meditation and its advanced techniques and the TM-Sidhi Programme. In addition, the high quality of the Maharishi Ayurveda Products is acknowledged. We have about 800 different preparations that are authentic and quality-controlled, free from contamination by such things as herbicides, pesticides, heavy metals, and other impurities.

A very interesting new discovery has been made by Professor Tony Nader, M.D. PhD. He has analysed the structure of the human physiology and compared it to the structure of the different branches of the Veda and Vedic Literature. He has found something amazing: There is an exact one-to-one relationship between the human physiology and the Veda, on both the structural and functional levels.

I would like to show in Dr. Nader’s book a brief example in the case of Jyotish. Here for example you can see where in the human brain physiology can be found the Grahas or planets such as Surya, Chandra, Brihaspati, Rahu, Ketu, Shukra, Mangal, Budha, and Shani. All the planets have their correspondence in the different parts of human brain. The various Devatas too have their direct counterpart in the human physiology. For example, in this chart you can see the correspondence with and the place of Ganesh in the human brain. Since the time is very short I cannot go very deeply into this but I would be very happy later on to show you more details of this fascinating discovery in the book by Professor Nader.

As you may recall, this morning when Swamiji opened this conference he mentioned that the mantras are even more powerful than the plants. When we consider that our body is made of intelligence, the fibres of the Veda, we can imagine that when a disease is occurring somewhere in the body the intelligence of that part of the physiology is disturbed. And through the appropriate sounds – the mantras – the intelligence of the physiology can be enlivened and diseases can be cured. On this subject there is already quite an impressive amount of research. For those of you who would like to know more about the scientific research on Maharishi Ayurveda, the following are some websites where you can find more information: www.mapi.com and www.amritpro.com .

Now I would like to dwell more on another very important aspect of the theme of today’s conference: the hazards of modern medicine. There are thousands upon thousands of publications that show how many procedures and medicaments create tremendous side-effects that cause very big problems to the modern health care system wherever they have been used. And I can tell you: in Germany the health care system is in very deep crisis – near to collapse. It can no longer pay for medical treatment, in spite of the fact that the fees for health insurance are increasing every few months.

We know from polls that about 79 per cent of the population would like to go for natural medicine instead of allopathic medicine, but the laws of the country make it very difficult for the people because the legislation seems to be very strongly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. Just one example: Can you believe that in Germany there exists a law that prohibits the publication of scientific research on the health benefits of all kinds of treatments to the general public? The law allows ONLY the health professionals to be informed about such scientific research. In this way the law makes it difficult for the general public to make a right choice.

I think it is very important that we collectively undertake efforts to make the wonderful Ayurvedic procedures unrestrictedly accessible for any person who wants them. For this we should first look into the scientific research that has been conducted so far and make use of it and then propagate it.

India, the Land of the Veda, is such a great country with such a wonderful culture and tradition, and I must express my admiration for this. I am aware of the great scholars and Vaidyas assembled in this conference who know of course much more about Ayurveda than I do. But there are two principles that I would like to share with all of you at the conclusion of my talk.

The word "Ayurveda" consists of two parts. One is Ayuh – life, science of life – and the other is Veda – science or knowledge. To me it seems that the emphasis has been more on the Ayuh part, and not enough on the Veda.

"Veda, or Knowledge, is structured in consciousness". Knowledge is not in the books, it is structured in consciousness. And consciousness depends on how well our brain physiology functions. Rik Veda itself describes in the following verse where it is to be found: Richo akshare parame vyoman, yasmin devah adhivishve nisheduh, Yastanna veda kim richa karishyati, ya it tad vidus ta ime samasate. Translated this means: The Richas, the hymns of the Veda, are seated in parame vyoman, in the transcendental self-referral consciousness, where all the devas, the laws of nature, reside. But he who is not alert: what can the verses of the Veda accomplish for him? Those who know this level of reality, they are established in evenness, the wholeness of life.

That means: Partial knowledge of Ayurveda will have only partial achievements. Only complete knowledge of Veda can also achieve complete success in life. And this can only come about when we develop the full potential of consciousness, both individually and collectively.

Maharishi´s plan for the near future is very bright. Maharishi is considered to be the first and foremost scientist and teacher in the field of consciousness. He is sometimes referred to as the "Einstein of consciousness". Together with eminent scientists and Vaidyas, Maharishi has designed very beautiful programmes in the field of health education, both for the general public and for medical professionals. With the introduction of these systematic courses, the health care systems will be strengthened and turned into prevention-oriented health care systems. By implementing this, it should be within the reach of any administration to create a disease-free society.

Maharishi´s Vedic Approach to Health even includes technologies to prevent terrorism and war, and to create waves of positivity and peace in the whole society and in the family of nations. In this area as well, a tremendous body of research has been conducted. For example, in Washington, D.C., the capital of USA, (referred to by some as the crime capital of the world) one huge sociological study showed that a sufficiently large group of people (approximately the square root of one per cent of the population), practising together at one place the TM and TM-Sidhi Programme, is able to reduce the crime rate by more than 20 per cent within a few weeks. The research concluded that the probability that the reduction of crime could have been caused by some other means is smaller that one to one millionth. We will be very happy to present all this research to you in detail.

Currently, Maharishiji is working very hard to create a group of 40,000 peace experts – Vedic pandits – who will be practising these technologies of consciousness along with yagyas to create peace for India and the whole world. 40,000 Vedic pandits in one place in India, and 3000 Peace Palaces with smaller groups in each of the major cities around the world.

In this way, very soon we will see the realisation of what is called in the Vedic Literature "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" – The whole world is my family.

Thank you very much for your kind attention.

Lothar Pirc, Chairman

Dr. Karin Pirc, Medical Director

Maharishi Ayurveda Health Centre Bad Ems Ltd. P.O. Box 1330 D 56120 Bad Ems Germany Tel.: +49-2603-9407-0 Fax: +49-2603-3122 www.ayurveda-badems.de.de email: info@ayurveda-badems.de