Our greatest assets – devotees

Our health has a crucial influence on a quality of our daily life and efficiency in our devotional service. The reality however is that devotees are often deprived of a proper and consistent healthcare due to either lack of resources or proper knowledge, or simply the cost is beyond their means.

How can we on the practical note take care of devotees’ need for a proper healthcare? Are there any preventive measures devotees can practice daily in the comforts of our homes? How can we provide devotees with affordable or even better, a free healthcare program?

Jayapataka Swami beautifully summarized during the ISKCON Leadership Sanga held in Mayapur in 2014: “ISKCON needs to be a caring organization that provides a family atmosphere based on love and trust, just as Srila Prabhupada instructed. The GBC Devotee Care Committee wants to provide the spiritual, mental, emotional, social, and physical care each ISKCON member deserves as a part and parcel of Lord Krishna.

“How can leaders carry this forward on a personal and institutional level? How can we create devotees who are encouraged, inspired, happy, and empowered to make spiritual advancement and expand Srila Prabhupada’s mission? How can we extend that care so devotees can remain committed to their spiritual lives? The Devotee Care Committee defines success in this regard as the creation and maintenance of a strong, happy, and loving Vaishnava community and a society that recognizes that the devotees themselves are its real assets.” 

Krishna – the source of ultimate remedy

Srila Prabhupada’s desire was that our ISKCON society becomes self-sufficient as he has mentioned:  “The first necessity is that you should be self-sufficient. That is God’s arrangement.”  [Srila Prabhupada, Morning Walk, Mauritius, Oct.2 1975 ]

Self-sufficiency refers to all aspects of our lives, including healthcare. Rising costs of doctor’s visits and medications unable many devotees to properly care for themselves and their loved ones. At the same time we have become very dependent in our healthcare on modern, synthetic, often too fast, too much, and with many side effects solutions instead of relying more on cures that are in tune with our body building blocks and organic nature.

In the USA, the current condition of public healthcare has led many to seek alternatives. Economic hardships as well as a massive rise in costs for medical treatments have driven many persons, especially families with young children, to seek more cost-effective ways to meet their healthcare needs. This tendency has steadily grown for many years, shown by a report that there have been more visits to alternative healthcare providers than to conventional medical practitioners every year since 1991.

In that scenario, what would be that ultimate remedy for devotees?

Lord Krishna has mentioned in Bhagavad-gita 9.16, “svadhāham aham ausadham” – “I am the healing herb.”

As we know in the past the remedies derived from fresh herbs were sufficient in themselves for treating maladies and improving one’s health. However, due to environmental degradation, soil depletion, and many similar factors, it is necessary to extract the healing potency from thousands of herbs to experience the same remedial force they were originally instilled with.

Essential oils are nothing else like aromatic compounds carefully extracted from the healing plants and herbs. Thus they are 50-70 times more powerful than dry herbs. Being pure extract, the essential oils have incredible power to heal, invigorate, and revive the body and mind; an experience easily available to those who try them. Through careful extraction processes the aromatic compounds of dozens of seeds, barks, roots, flowers, and herbs are harnessed into powerful elixirs for healing the body and mind.

Essential oils have a remarkable symbiotic relationship with the human body and brain. Being organic substances, essential oils are readily assimilated and metabolized by the body much like food nutrients. Rather than causing the disturbances that many foreign substances inflict on the body, essential oils have shown to have powerful healing effects both in contemporary studies and ancient history. Evidence shows that essential oils have been used as far back as 2,500 BCE, with references to their use both in the Abrahamic texts and the Vedic literature (see Krishna’s entering Dwaraka). In bygone ages the medicinal, therapeutic and spiritual applications for essential oils such as Frankincense, Myrrh, and Sandalwood were well-known. With the reevaluation of modern medicine has come a booming interest in holistic approaches to healthcare and a rediscovery of the profound effects of essential oils.

Essential oils are revolutionizing millions of people’s approach to healthcare, especially in the West. Families and the average individual are not the only ones taking advantage of this shift but also a growing number of allopathic medical practitioners and researchers. To date over 30,000 scientific articles in some of the world’s top medical journals have been published. As the research mounts, more within the medical profession are implementing essential oils into their hospitals and clinics.

In this way the essential oils are used for a wide range of emotional and physical wellness applications. They can be used as single oil at a time or in complex blends. They are comforting and soothing to children and loved ones. They can be applied directly to the skin, inhaled, diffused into the air, and taken internally. They are effective without dangerous side effects and the risk of addiction.

The Ausadham Team

The Ausadham team was established to help every devotee to discover or rather rediscover Krishna’s natural remedies: herbs, in an easy to use form of essential oils.

The rediscovery of these organic healing techniques will provide an alternative to the controversial allopathic model of medicine, thus bringing holistic approaches to wellness into every home. A proliferation of sustainable models of health care, based on what Krishna created for us, will not only impact our bodily vitality but will also provide an opportunity for users to turn their attention back to the real source of healing – the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Sri Krishna.

Srila Prabhupada once commented in a newspaper interview, “…physical life, so you must keep yourself fit to execute Krishna consciousness. It is not our desire that you become sick and you cannot chant… our purpose is to chant and we require the physical necessities just to keep ourselves fit…” [New York, July 4, 1976]

By promoting a safe and effective self-care alternative we are helping others not only achieve relief of symptoms but achieve long-term management of health problems.

There are many essential oils available on a market today. Most of them however are synthetic. Those which are pure are still not made equal.

The goal of Ausadham team is not only to facilitate a medicinal revolution but also to provide an excellent model for individuals in supplementing or replacing their income, contributing even more to devotees’ self-sufficiency. Thus born out of the Ausadham team is the department called Varna Prosperity Network. This initiative is meant to provide the perfect home-based, sattvic business opportunity to all in need.

* * *

For more information, please contact: Krishnamayi & Surapala; Ph: 1 (702) 324-7882; surapala@pamho.net.