Hindu Medicine c7.202

c7.202

The telling and dramatic display of allegorical figures serves at the same time to assign to medical wisdom its proper place within the wider sphere of pious endeavor, aiming at the highest goal of man. It seeks to coordinate the physician's and the layman's attention to physical well-being with the goals of faith, devotion and yoga practice, the striving toward the beatific experience of the divine in human nature. Health, vigor and longevity, though their possession naturally is of vital interest, do not constitute the self-sufficient ends of medical discipline. They are not ultimate values. They are subordinated to the higher goal of fulfilment on the transcendental plane. They are prerequisites of the everlasting quest, along the paths of pious exercise and austere discipline, to win for man a divine freedom beyond all the needs and bonds of human nature.