Chiropractic Foundations
D.D. Palmer's Traveling Library
Volume three

From Chapter 10:

A New Vision

     What if we begin to use philosophy in chiropractic in a new way, one that includes the insights of the Palmers and the criti­ques that abound against the misuse of philosophy and Science, and couple them with Palmer’s call for morality by using Integral Theory. This is not a use of morals as virtues, which we see as the central tenet of Palmer’s book on Confucian Aphorisms (posted here as chapter twenty). Rather these are morals as espoused by the healers he was studying: Caldwell (chapter eighteen), Wilson (chapter nineteen), Severance (chapter four­teen), and Denton (chapter fifteen). This was a moral duty to uplift humanity to a higher sphere of consciousness and health, a moral dictate to awaken the masses to their relationship to the universe that is made of pure spirit while maintaining a clear embrace of Science.

     But Palmer never accomplished this, arguably because he did not have an integral framework. We, on the other hand, can reframe his chiropractic from a new vantage point, one that steps above the professional fighting, the misunderstandings, and the misuses of philosophy and, research, that were a hallmark of the profession’s beginnings.

     What would this use of philosophy in chiropractic to integrate Science, Art, and Morals look like? Can the profession consciously embrace self, culture, and nature with its heart in the very ground of being, the essence of all creation, a boundless spirit that has no better name than universal, or, as Palmer said, I AM? Is there a place for a spiritual ground in a major health profession? How could there not be? Especially if we are talking about a postmodern health profession, one whose core is based in the wisdom from which it sprang rather than just a reaction to what had not worked in the past. Professions based on the modern notion of a separation of mind and matter, with matter devoid of spirit, intelligence, and consciousness, are doomed to fail because they do not represent the fullness of reality. Palmer was taking a stand against that mistaken identity of Descartes and Locke while he was marrying Plotinus with Ficthe and Spinoza, Plato with Schelling and Mesmer. He was taking a stand for Goodness and Beauty and Truth in the highest sense.

Lower Right and Lower Left

    And his stand was bound to fail precisely because he was forced to be in reaction. The social forces (Lower-Right quadrant) and cultural worldviews (Lower-Left quadrant) set the boundaries of his choices and decisions. He knew that the modern world would only embrace Science and so he became a physiologist and left much of his beliefs based on his experiences aside. After the Morikubo case and the creation of the UCA, when the very survival of chiropractic was reliant on philosophy, he brought philosophy in but clearly used terms that he hoped would be embraced, as he knew the world was not ready for his full conception. From Palmer:
 
"In the early years of Chiropractic I used the terms Innate (Spirit), Innate Intelligence (Spiritual Intellect), Univer-sal Intelligence (God), because they were comprehensive, and the world was not prepared to receive the latter terms just mentioned in parenthesis. It may be, even now premature to use them." (542)

     He wrote this after seeing that the court cases could be won with philosophy because he realized that the principles he cherished would eventually be lost unless he took an even stronger moral stance… a religion would do that. Moral and religious duties were mapped out and then he died.

     Still, no distinction was made between the soul and the body, Science and Spirit, and that confusion muddled the would be morality and remained a philosophy that today centers around the body’s ability to self-organize. But there was no depth, no transformative power, nothing like what his son pushed for in his final years, the merging of consciousness with the infinite, for that was the moral: to so uplift the spirit that health and evolution would continue into ever-increasing degrees of freedom and fullness.