WHAT IS POWER?

By Dr. Dimitri Karalis
A friend of the Greek philosopher Isocrates spotted once a tall young man with large strong arms in a gymnasium of the ancient agora in classical Athens and remarked! “He is an ideal model to become a good boxer with a little training, he said”. “Yes, replied Isocrates, but only if the winning trophy hangs high up and he has only to win it by reaching for it”. We observe in nature that tall trees do not always resist storms more than the smaller shrubs, but sometimes uproot and crumble easier instead. The strongest wood in nature is a little shrub called “crania” which bares delicious read fruit in the mountains of Europe in early winter. It is valuable wood for making shepherds sticks and a reliable defending weapon against any given danger.

In the kingdom of insects, we observe the lice that are the smallest and most disgusting parasite in nature upset whole societies with their microscopic colonial skill. “Weight, said the well-known German physician Louis Kuhn, is not indication of power but rather serious metabolic disease”. A hyper-muscleman may appear stronger than a man of nerve and sinew does, but he cannot do the work or endure the disease as his slimmer brother does. A well-proportioned healthy body is usually elastically supple like weaving reed, and elegant like cypress tree. The impressive power of a boxers and wrestlers is due to the gravity of earth. Outside in space where there is no gravity, mass-weight has no power.

Mass and physical strength does not represent the real inner power. What is power then? Certainly not weight neither lots of food and regular gymnasium. All of them waste energy for transportation, digestion, and exercising when abused excessively. Every gram of food more than the body requires, means waste of energy in expelling it again. If we leave this excess of food and replace it with extra work instead, we will gain both in body‘s strength and business profitability as well.

A physical power is not generated in the stomach with lots of food and drink, but from a long and restful sleep. Tiredness is not an indicator for food, but always for sleep; we renew our energy in the bedroom and not in the dining room. Excess of food usually kills not only many dreary hours, but kills also many dreary people. We observe many enthusiastic athletes who spend lots of time in the gymnasiums to become strong physically, as they say. Of course, they eat a lot if they exercise a lot, but what is the use? When with less food and exercise we become quickly healthy and strong, saving time, money and energy. We know from experience that when the body is overdeveloped the brain usually is underdeveloped.

Corpulent people are often course and make their living by fighting or as bouncers in nightclubs. It has been said, that when the muscles of the ancient Hellenes started to expand, they lost also their admirable culture simultaneously. They violated their well-known proverb “miden agan”= nothing in excess. Perhaps they were misleading themselves by the course and spiritually indifferent Roman conquerors. The ability to do well in our work comes from the heart, lungs, brain and soul. The soul needs no nourishing at all, the brain almost next to nothing and lungs with heart so little, that I do not need to mention here at all. All physical power comes from the breath, mental from the brain and spiritual from the soul.

Man is a gigantic electric dynamo and does not need many coals like a steam engine to produce power; he generates enormous energy with pure food and less of it. We need an alert brain, steady nervous system, elastic body and soul courage to be whole as human beings. None of those qualities must be absent if we wish to succeed in life. No one can think and a waste his energy with heavy meals and hedonistic excessive pleasures at the same time. Saving nerve energy is more vital, than economical thriftiness. The illusive impression that one feels stronger after a meal is the waste of nerve energy to throw off the excess or unnatural food from the body. In other words, it is a reaction of the body against the unwanted intruder. This is the reason that misleads many unfortunate individuals into gluttony, alcoholism, narcotics, insolvency, jail and eventually death.

The orthodox medical profession has a sacred duty to enlighten humanity and to prevent them from early physical and mental degeneration. That prevention is more effective and less costly therapy than the pharmaceutical prescriptions, no one can deny. The healing profession supposed to be educational one, and not exclusively profitable institution that keeps people in ignorance for their personal gain. We need more enthusiastic educating doctors to distribute knowledge to humanity beside with their therapeutic services; and not dispensing of drugs that enriched the pharmaceutical industries and their own coffers.
Dr Dimitri Karalis
South Africa