Ayurveda

The following quotes are from Ayurveda: The Ancient Indian Healing Art by Scott Gerson MD

From the beginning of human history, man has been engaged in the search for peace and prosperity. Exlcuding the ascetic, who has renounced all pleasures and comforts to lead a conscious life of privation and pain, nothing is to be gained from suffering and disease. The average person suffers, but involuntarily. The object of Ayurveda is to alleviate suffering and to preserve the health of the healthy and heal the diseases of the diseased.
Many people in the world today do not understand the real purpose of their lives. They remain enchanted by the material creation and lack any memory of our true divine nature. They squander their time and energy in selfish and thoughtless pursuits borne of fear and ignorance. This may perhaps seem a harsh view of civilization. However, the loss of memory of our true nature is at the core of many of our individual and planetary maladies. In the human being, the mind-body is the aspect which is subject to decay and disease. The pain and anxiety of its fragmentation and disorder are countered with love and attention in the hope of restoring cohesion and wholeness.
This art of restoring and preserving wholeness is central to Ayurvedic medicine. The ancient rishis (seers) and sadhas (saints) understood that for healthy mind-bodies to manifest we must remember and nurture the subtler aspects of our nature. We must align our lives, our thoughts, our behaviors with the interior, ageless, omniscient Self and then by his grace physical and mental health may ensue. The idea that the well-being of the manifest perceivable body depends for its existence on the manifest, unperceivable Self is foreign to the average modern mind. But this indeed is the reality of our sitation...(1)

Ayurveda is often referred to as the 'science of life,' a system of achieving and maintaining health. Health, however, is not the ultimate goal but rather a necessary condition for spiritual growth. The goal of life is not merely to live, but to realize the true significance of life. Those fortunate enough to enjoy good health should devote our energies to developing the highest of human qualities. Thus, while the body is not the goal of a life devoted to Truth, it is the foundation. For if health is lacking and troublesome, we may become distracted and limited in our ability ultimately to become detached from the body... (5)

According to the wisdom of Ayurveda, the mind-body has the intelligence to heal itself. The same Intelligence which operates in the macocosm - which governs the yearly migrations of birds, the changing of the seasons, the flow of the tides, the orbits of the planets - also operates at the level of the microcosm, the human physiology. It is the sole function of Ayurveda to promote the flow of this great Intelligence through each and every human being. (6)