Ayurveda’s knowledge of the disease process differs fundamentally from the conceptions held by Western medicine. Though Ayurvedic science recognizes the role played by viruses and bacteria in disease, it explains that these pathogens cannot cause illness by themselves. Both our bodies and our environment harbor vast numbers of the microorganisms which modern medicine believes to be the source of illness. What actually determines which person will succumb to the influence of these pathogens and which will remain healthy? What are the unseen factors involved in the creation of illness?
There are many modern treatments that effectively destroy the microorganisms which cause many diseases, but in a high percentage of cases — venereal diseases and tuberculosis, for example — symptoms recur after a few years. Anti-bacterial and anti-viral therapies may work in the short term, but they do not seem to eliminate the weakness and susceptibility which allow these diseases to reappear. Such evidence indicates that the allopathic view of pathogenesis is incomplete. To locate the origin of disease, we must look beyond purely physical factors.
The Three Causes of Disease
Just as we are much more than our bodies, morbidity is far more than just a physical phenomenon. As explained, Ayurveda’s conception of human life comprises four basic aspects: soul, mind, senses and body. All four of these components participate in the creation of health and happiness, and all four play a role in the generation of disease as well. However, Ayurveda sees the mind as the key factor in supporting the vitality of each part of life and maintaining its connection to life’s underlying wholeness. The mind ultimately determines the strength or weakness of the body and its resistance or susceptibility to factors which produce sickness.
Definition of Three Causes of Disease
- Pragya Aparadha – Mistake of Intellect
- Asatymya-lndriyartha-Samyog – Missuse of Senses
- Parinam – Effect of Seasons
Pragya Aparadha: The Mistake of the Intellect
Though Ayurveda recognizes three causes of disease, it lists the most important as pragya aparadha, “the mistake of the intellect.” The intellect makes its most serious error when it identifies with individual objects, or parts of knowledge, rather than the unbounded wholeness which is its true nature. Another way of saying this is that we become identified with our limitations, rather than with our unlimited potential. This situation is extremely stressful for body and mind, since it represents a fundamentally false relationship to life. Most people do not make this choice consciously. The behavior patterns and belief systems inherent in our education and culture precipitate and reinforce the intellect’s loss of intimacy with its source in pure consciousness, or knowingness.
Pragya apradha begins at an early age and corresponds with the gradual loss of the mind’s sattva, its brilliance, innocence and joy. As the influence of sattva diminishes, that clear discriminative intelligence within us also starts to fade, and we make other mistakes of the intellect. These errors involve choices in behavior and eating which do not support the natural balance between the doshas in our bodies and the elemental principles that govern our environment. Such decisions inevitably create disharmony with the laws that govern nature’s functioning, and are, in essence, crimes against our own well-being. When we create disharmony or imbalance in our relationship with nature, we simultaneously create internal disharmony, with disease being the natural consequence.
When the intellect ceases to identify with wholeness, the mind becomes weak and makes choices that injure life and generate illness. For example, take the use of alcohol and cigarettes. All cigarette packaging contains a clear warning about their damaging effects on health. Most people are aware that alcohol and tobacco weaken the immune system and cause a variety of serious illnesses. In spite of all this, many individuals continue to use these things to their great detriment.
Asatmya-lndriyartha-Samyog: The Misuse of the Senses
When the mind loses its sattva, it loses its ability to spontaneously make life-supporting decisions, and we begin to use the senses in harmful ways. Ayurveda calls this improper use of the senses, asatmya-indriyartha-samyog, and considers it to be the second cause of disease. Chapter One has already explained the three ways that the senses can be misused, namely overuse, underuse or emotionally harmful use. Sensory abuse disables their functional and protective capacity and, consequently, permits harmful influences to impact the mind and body. Sattva’s influence in the mind then wanes even more, resulting in doshic imbalance and the production of ama.
Parinam: The Negative Impact of the Seasons
Once created, ama interferes with the doshas’ ability to maintain a balanced relationship with one another and to operate effectively. Eventually, the doshas lose their natural adaptability, preventing them from adjusting to changes in climate or season. They can no longer counter the demands placed on the body by changes in the proportion of bhutas in the environment. As a result, more ama forms and new seeds of disease are sown. Ayurveda calls the inability to adapt to changing seasons parinam, which means “the effect of the elements on the body,” and designates it as the third cause of disease.
Though pragya aparadha is the ultimate cause of disease, all three of the above factors generate discord between the bhutas governing the physiology of nature and the doshas governing our individual physiology. When the rhythms of individual life do not align with the cycles of nature, stress, weak digestion and doshic imbalances inevitably result.
Once imbalance in doshic functioning occurs, pressure is put upon the primary agni in the digestive tract as well as the agnis in each of the dhatus. Debilitated digestive fire impairs the system’s ability to efficiently convert food into nutrients. This results in ama formation and inadequate or defective nutrition reaching the dhatus. When the dhatus become toxic and malnourished, immunity breaks down, and pathogens such as viruses and bacteria increase in the body, setting the stage for a host of infectious illnesses and degenerative disorders. From the Ayurvedic perspective, pathogens are, at most, a secondary cause of sickness. In almost all cases, disease on a physical level results first from a breakdown in function, followed by the development of abnormalities in substance and structure.