A Vision for the Future of Medicine by Jane Lister Reis an interview with Rudolph Ballentine, M.D. One of the privileges of working at The New Times is that I get to see all of the new books and CDs that come to the office for review. It’s really quite amazing. Every day, the post office box yields dozens of packages. Each book, like an expectant child, looks up at us hopefully, silently asking, "Will you love me as a unique creation?" "Will you listen to what I have to say?" "Will you appreciate my message?" Such was my first introduction to Dr. Rudolph Ballentine’s book, Radical Healing: Integrating the World’s Great Therapeutic Traditions to Create a New Transformative Medicine. Thumbing through the over six hundred pages of text, I had a sense that this book had a message for me, and perhaps for others. I took the book home over the weekend. No, I didn’t read all six hundred pages, but I did spend many delightful hours in the world of homeopathy, herbs, flower remedies, body maps, and the meaning of diagnosis. (I never made it as far as nutrition, detox, movement and exercise, energy and breath, healing as transformation, and reweaving and planetary healing!) Sound heavy? Not at all; the text was surprisingly light and informative, like a seer who had both the wisdom and experience to bring you the essence of the material as well as the specifics. Rudolph Ballentine is trained as a physician and psychiatrist, and yet he is equally at home in ayurvedic medicine, homeopathy, and herbs. He is also a spiritual teacher. When I called him at his home to do this interview, we had a relaxed, enjoyable conversation about the future of Western medicine. Sound like your typical conversation with a doctor? Sorry, not my experience, I can assure you. I felt no imposed distance or separateness between us as we explored a topic of mutual interest: our own healing and growth as human beings. If this is the new medicine, I thought, it's going to be great!   Jane: What is your vision of a new transformative medicine? Is this why you have brought together the great therapeutic traditions in one text? Rudolph: If you really dig into a particular healing tradition, take homeopathy for instance, it opens all these doors as far as a different way of seeing the human condition: what suffering is about, what healing is about. If you do the same thing with Chinese medicine and ayurvedic medicine, which are first cousins, they also open doors. You become aware that you have a different way of viewing human nature and human suffering. If you do that same process with all the great healing traditions, you’ll find that each time there’s this revelation. When you take these revelations and meld them, certain points reinforce each other. At certain points, there’s an agreement and a reinforcement. There’s a complementarity. One begins to see from one angle and then from another and then from another angle. You develop a more three-dimensional vision of what health and healing is about. Jane: That sounds similar to how people who deeply study the world’s great religions begin to find this "complementarity" that you speak of. Is this what you mean?" Rudolph: Yes, the healing traditions are one facet of the spiritual traditions. We’re talking about the same process of coming to a more universal and planetary consciousness about spirituality and healing. The vision that emerges from melding these powerful traditions is universality.   Not one for just wonderful-sounding phrases and words, I quickly asked Dr. Ballentine the obvious practical question about insurance coverage for the average person. Will insurance companies begin to support this view of health, healing, and personal wholeness? His response was quick and assuring. "Insurance companies," he said, "are the reluctant allies of the medical establishment…probably decreasingly so. Insurance companies are beginning to realize, and this has taken a long time, that this kind of work is their salvation. The concept of going from illness to illness and expensive hospital deaths is their nemesis. They cannot afford this. They’re going broke. They will need to embrace this new model or they won’t survive. It’s one or the other." Again in as practical a voice as I could muster, I asked Dr. Ballentine where we could find practitioners and physicians who had this kind of overview of healing and health. Although he said that they were difficult to find, he felt that we were making progress. His question to me was whether we should provide practitioners who are able to integrate everything or provide referrals so that people can go to practitioners with a certain kind of skill. As he answered his own question, I found his response comforting. "People find their own way. Their healing journey is their own creation, and they will put pieces together. Yes, it’s good to have people who have an overview, for there will be times when those who are ill will gravitate toward this kind of person who will act as a guide or touchstone. There are other times, however, that they will know they need to work with Chinese medicine or chiropractic. They will go out and work with that and then come back. The healing journey is their creation, and it’s a very beautiful thing that they’re creating." As I concluded the interview, I asked Dr. Ballentine what he thought was the greatest challenge we face in integrating these two great traditions, the East and the West. "Getting professionals," he answered, "to be engaged in their own transformation so that they can work with others from a point of experiential understanding — especially those who are working with healing. "The great challenge is to get the people of medicine to make that shift. If we can get that accomplished, the rest will happen. Doctors need to shift to become aware of their sickness and begin to work on their own healing. A Course in Miracles says, ‘Both are healed or neither are healed.’ We’re co-adventurers on this path of healing. I’m learning from you; you’re learning from me. Hopefully I have a little more experience — that’s why you’re paying me — but sometimes I wonder." Well, I don’t wonder any more; I have hope — hope that these seemingly diverse traditions and ways of seeing the relationship among the body, mind, and spirit are finally coming together. Thank you, Rudolph Ballentine, for the loving energy you put into your "creation." May your book and its message find its way into the hearts and minds of those who, like me, want to see such a new vision come into being. If you would like to meet Dr. Ruldoph Ballentine personally and hear more about his vision for a new integrative medicine, he will be speaking on Thursday, March 11 at University Bookstore at 7:00 p.m.