The Magic of Tibet

When I began studying Tibetan Medicine, I naively thought I would be learning a cultural variant of Ayurvedic Medicine. Instead, I encountered the rich cultural heritage of Tibet and the valuable gifts it has to offer to a modern world in need of healing and spirituality. My presumption about Tibetan Medicine as a variation of Indian Medicine is a common presumption to all things Tibetan. Tibet is often relegated as a mere byproduct of Indian and Chinese influence, but this presumption overlooks the significance and import of Tibet's ancient indigenous culture. This presumption also misunderstands the broad-minded cross-cultural exchange that is characteristic of Tibetan medicine and spirituality. Tibetan Medicine possesses unique insights and values that Ayurvedic and Chinese physicians would find not only interesting but compelling. Tibet’s universal disposition also enabled its culture to preserve and translate much of what was lost in its neighboring countries. Ayurvedic physicians cannot afford to forgo a proper study of Tibetan medicine, as I’m certain they will gain insights into the roots of their own medicine while encountering lost paradigms, now only extant in the Tibetan medical system. While I am heartened to see how much of Tibetan culture and knowledge is being preserved and regenerated, I know there is a still long road ahead. The future of Tibet depends not only on politics but a shift in consciousness.

In honor of the 62nd anniversary of Tibetan Uprising Day, I am sharing a passage from a talk given by Avatar Adi Da, published in 1984 in The Transmission of Doubt. In this talk, Avatar Adi Da discusses the significance of magical cultures and the need for humanity to re-awaken to a psychic and magical association with the world:

Magic, you see, is of many types. There are vitalistic, older magical cultures, of which the Native American is an example, as are the Mexican, the South American, and the Hawaiian. Many vital magical cultures still exist in little pockets of activity. First they are usually studied by anthropologists, then the missionaries come, and then the territorial politics starts enclosing them. Eventually they are assimilated.

Other magical cultures of a higher type exist, although calling them a higher type does not mean that they rightfully or in absolute terms dissociate themselves from the domain of vital magic, but they presume a more expanded, spiritual purpose for magic and are less associated with the negative or black magic that tends to be pursued obsessively in vital cultures. These so-called higher magical cultures include certain aspects of Hinduism or the culture of India in general.

In our own time and very recently we have seen the destruction of such a culture in Tibet. There has been no great outcry about what has happened in Tibet, and yet one of the principal philosophical magical cultures that has ever appeared on Earth has been systematically destroyed within our lifetime by the encroachment of the Chinese in Tibet. Many Tibetans have had to flee from their homeland. Those who stayed have been systematically washed out of their magical world into the idealism of Communism and a kind of objective, occidental Man's view of things. The Tibetans have been dispersed, just as were the Native Americans, the Jews, and many other groups. Today these peoples are trying to survive as groups by regenerating their traditions in other places. But in general we see a movement all over the Earth to destroy all vestiges of the spiritual, magical disposition and the kinds of culture and human life created on its basis.

. . . Ultimately it is a war between the left-brained model of Man and the transcendental development of Man, which is not magical in the old sense but Magical in the perfect sense, wherein Man is unified and enjoys a unified understanding of the universe and his position as a process or as an expression of the active Principle that is manifesting and evolving in the apparent world.

. . . In the culture of magic the world is approached as it is, not as it becomes after human beings have manipulated and changed it.

—Avatar Adi Da
The Transmission of Doubt, pp. 231-233