The Way Toward Health - May 13, 1984

Chapter 7: The State of Childhood in Relationship to Health, and Hints for Parents

May 13, 1984

For adults, ideas of health and illness are intimately connected with philosophical, religious, and social beliefs.  They are even more entangled with scientific concepts, and with science’s view of life in general.  Children, however, are far more innocent, and though they respond to the ideas of their parents, still their minds are open and filled with curiosity.  They are also gifted with an almost astounding resiliency and exuberance.

They possess an innate love of the body and all of its parts.  They also feel an eager desire to learn all they can about their own physical sensations and capabilities.

At the same time, young children in particular still possess a feeling of oneness with the universe, and with all of life, even as they begin to separate themselves at certain levels from life’s wholeness to go about the delightful task.  Seeing themselves as separate and apart from all other individuals, they still retain an inner comprehension and a memory of having once experienced a oneness with life as a whole.

At that level. even illness is regarded simply as a part of life’s experience, however unpleasant it might be.  Even at an early age, children joyfully explore all of the possibilities of all sensations possible within their framework – pain as well as joy, frustration as well as satisfaction, and all the while their awareness is propelled by curiosity, wonder, and joy.

They pick up their first ideas about health and disease from parents and doctors, and by the actions of those people to their own discomfiture.  Before they can even see, children are already aware of what their parents expect from them in terms of health and disease, so that early patterns of behavior are formed, to which they can then react in adulthood.

For now, we will speak of children who possess ordinary good health, but who may also have some of the usual childhood “diseases”.  Later we will discuss children with exceptionally severe health conditions.

Many children acquire poor health habits through the well-meaning mistakes of their parents.  This is particularly true when parents actually reward a child for being ill.  In such cases, the ailing child is pampered for more than usual, given extra special attention, offered delicacies such as ice cream, let off some ordinary chores, and in other ways encouraged to think of bouts of illness as times of special attention and reward.

I do not mean that ill children should not be treated with kindness, and perhaps a bit of special attention – but the reward should be given for the child’s recovery, and efforts should be made to keep the youngster’s routine as normal as possible.  Children often know quite well the reasons for some of their illnesses, for often they learn from their parents that illness can be used as a means to achieve a desired result.

Often parents hide such behavior from themselves.  They deliberately close their eyes to some of the reasons for their own illnesses, and this behavior has become so habitual that they are no longer conscious of their own intent.

Children, however, may be quite conscious of the fact that they willed themselves to become ill, in order to avoid school, or an examination, or a coming feared family event.  They soon learn that such self-knowledge is not acceptable, however, so they begin to pretend ignorance, quickly learning to tell themselves instead that they have a bug or a virus, or have caught a cold, seemingly for no reason at all.

Parents frequently foster such behavior.  Some are simply too busy to question a child about his own illness.  It is far simpler to give a child aspirin, and send a child to bed with ginger ale and a coloring book.

Such procedures unfortunately rob a child of important self-knowledge and understanding.  They begin to feel victims to this or that disorder.  Since they have no idea that they themselves caused the problem to begin with, then they do not realize that they themselves possess the power to right the situation.  If they are being rewarded for such behavior in the meantime, then the pressure is less, of course, so that bouts of illness or poor health can become ways of attaining attention, favorite status, and reward.

Parents who are aware of these facts can start helping their children at an early age by asking them simply the reason for their illness.  A mother might say: “You don’t need to have a temperature in order to avoid school, or as a way of getting love and attention, for I love you in any case.  And if there is a problem at school, we can work it out together, so you don’t have to make yourself ill.”  Again, the reasons for such behavior are often quite clear in the child’s mind.  So, if the parents begin such questioning and reassurance when the child is young, then the youngster will learn that while illness may be used to attain a desired result, there are far better, healthier ways of achieving an end result.

Some parents, unfortunately, use the nature of suggestion in the most undesirable way, so that a child is often told that he or she is sickly, or weak or overly sensitive, and not as robust as other youngsters.  If that kind of behavior is continued, then the child soon takes such statements as true, and begins to act upon them, until they do indeed become only too real in the youngster’s everyday experience.

The Way Toward Health - May 2 and 6, 1984 - Value Fulfillment and Respect

May 2, 1984

Aside: Advice for Jane and Rob

The expression of emotion is excellent, particularly the release of anger and frustration.

This does not mean those emotions should be concentrated upon, but acknowledged and expressed.  This allows new feelings to take their place – and again, accelerates motion at all levels.

Some of the material may be difficult initially for Ruburt to express, but it is well worth the effort and the momentary outbursts.  Such experiences should be followed, however, by reassurances, both on your part, and by self-reminders on Ruburt’s part that his being and experience are indeed couched and held securely in safety and love.

The free association is indeed then operating as it should, and that expression will clear the mental and emotional roads, so that Ruburt’s natural, innate high spirits can begin to show their faces again.  You are both handling the situation well, then.

May 6, 1984

Remember that each segment of life is motivated by value fulfillment, and is therefore always attempting to use and develop all of its abilities and potentials, and to express itself in as many probable ways as possible, in a process that takes into consideration the needs and desires of each other segment of life.

The very existence of certain kinds of viruses provides safety against many other diseases, whether or not those viruses even exist in an active manner.  It is obvious, of course, that the overall physical stability of the earth is possible because of the ever-occurring storms, “natural disasters”, and other seeming calamities.  Yet such events promote the earth’s great, bountiful food supplies, and serve to redistribute the planet’s resources.

In the same fashion, diseases also, in the overall picture, promote the health and well-being of life in all of its aspects.  Value fulfillment operates within microbes and nations, within individual creatures and entire species, and it unites all of life’s manifestations so that indeed creatures and their environments are united in an overall cooperative venture – a venture in which each segment almost seeks to go beyond itself in creativity, growth, and expression.  In a smaller, individual framework, each man and woman, then, is motivated by this same value fulfillment.

You will shortly see how diseases are caused by the detriments set up against value fulfillment, often because of fears, doubts, or misunderstandings – and how other diseases may actually lead to instances of value fulfillment that are misread and misinterpreted.

I also want to stress here that all aspects of life experience not only sensations but emotional feelings.  Therefore, there is a kind of innate gallantry that operates among all segments of life – a gallantry that deserves your respect and consideration.  You should have respect, then, for the cells of your body, the thoughts of your mind, and try to understand that even the smallest creatures share with you the emotional experience of life’s triumphs and vulnerabilities.

The Way Toward Health - April 30, 1984

April 30, 1984

Advice to Jane

Above all, Ruburt must not concentrate upon what is wrong.  In the deepest of terms, if you understand my meaning, nothing is wrong.  You have instead a conglomeration of severely conflicting beliefs, so that there is no clear single road to action.

You want to clear the road.  The free association is valuable because it helps to point out those conflicting feelings and beliefs, brings them into consciousness, and into the present moment, where they can indeed be understood in the light of knowledge that has been acquired since – but not been allowed to act upon the old conflicting beliefs.

The expression of emotions in itself is an expression of action, of motion.  To move requires first of all the expression of feeling, and the expression of any feeling makes room for still further motions.  Self-hypnosis can indeed be invaluable in terms of accelerating bodily motion and healing.  Expression, rather than repression, is vital.

Often Ruburt has not been in touch with his own feelings, but would try to intellectualize many away.  He needs to realize that it is safe to express himself – and that expression will not bring about abandonment.

(Rob: Jane had also said today that she’d felt that she had to be careful how she approached me so I wouldn’t get mad and leave her.  Those feelings gradually dissipated over the years, yet they must have had a part to play in the onset of symptoms.)

People who wrote books against the Catholic Church were excommunicated.  Ruburt transferred those fears to society at large.  There was a conflict between creative work and the church even when only poetry was involved.  He should indeed give himself suggestions that the necessary insights will come to him, and that the proper connections be made whether consciously or unconsciously.  But the idea is that it is safe to express himself, and that the true purpose of his life is indeed to express those characteristics that compose his personal reality.

He should also realize that pleasure is indeed a virtue.  By all means express your emotions to each other as they naturally occur.  Ruburt was not taught to love himself as a child, and thought of his talents as a way of justifying his existence – an existence of somewhat suspicious nature, he felt, since his mother told him often that he was responsible for her own poor health.

These issues do all fit together, but they can be unscrambled, brought into the present, and reconciled.  The body is more than agreeable, and more than able, to bring about an extraordinary recovery.

… In other words, Ruburt was given strong creative abilities that he was determined to express – but at the same time early in his life he was given the idea that it was highly dangerous to express the very uniqueness that was inherent in his creativity.  This is a part of the main issue.

He is to realize that if he has any duty or purpose in life, it is indeed to express those very abilities, since those abilities are so natural in his makeup, they also possess their own protective mechanisms.  He must realize that he is free to express his poetic, psychic nature, and to follow wherever it leads – since it is indeed his natural pathway into existence, and his most intimate connection with the universe, and with All That Is.

This session does tie issues together quite well – and can be used to advantage for free association also.

The Way Toward Health - April 27, 1984

April 27, 1984

I am not advising my readers to refuse to have their children vaccinated, since you now have to take vaccination into consideration because of the prominence of it in society.  It is very possible, however, that science itself will in time discover the unfortunate side effects of many such procedures, and begin to reevaluate the entire subject.

It is true that some native populations – particularly in the past – were free of many of the childhood diseases that are considered natural by western medicine.  It is also true, of course, that some primitive societies have lost large numbers of their populations to disease.  Some of the instances, however, were caused precisely by the sudden introduction of modern medicine.

I am not condemning western medicine per se, however, but merely pointing out its many detrimental aspects.  Medicinal science is also in a state of transition, and it is just as important – if not more so – that it examine its concepts as well as its techniques.

The idea of using animals for experimentation has far more drawbacks than advantages; there is the matter of one kind of consciousness definitely taking advantage of another kind, and thus going counter to nature’s cooperative predisposition.

In the distant past some ancient civilizations did indeed use animals in such a fashion, but in a far different framework.  The doctors or priests humbly stated their problems verbally and through ritualistic dancing, and then requested the help of the animal – so that the animals were not sacrificed, in those terms, nor taken advantage of.  Instead, they united in a cooperative venture, in which animals and man both understood that no consciousness truly died but only changed its form.

Animals have indeed often been quite helpful to man in various healing situations and encounters, but in all such cases these were cooperative ventures.

This leads me of course to at least mention here the cruel methods used in the slaughtering of animals and fowls for human consumption.  The creatures are treated as if they possessed no feeling or consciousness of their own – and such attitudes show a most unfortunate misreading of natural events.  As a direct result, at least as many diseases develop through such procedures as would exist in a highly primitive society with unsanitary conditions.

In that kind of setting, however, balances would right themselves because the basic understanding between living creatures would be maintained.  You cannot divorce philosophy from action, and the cruelty in slaughterhouses would not be perpetuated if it were not for distorted philosophies dealing with the survival of the fittest on the one hand, and the egotistical assumption that God gave man animals to do with as man wished.

The Way Toward Health - April 25, 1984

April 25, 1984

Even in situations that involve a so-called host-and-parasite relationship, there is a cooperative process.  Fleas, for example, actually help increase circulation, and constantly comb animal’s hair.  At minute levels, they also consume some bodily wastes, and creatures even smaller than they are.  They also keep the immune system active and flexible.

Many diseases are actually health-promoting processes.  Chicken pox, measles, and other like diseases in childhood in their own way “naturally inoculate” the body, so that it is able to handle other elements that are a part of the body and the body’s environment.

When civilized children are medically inoculated against such diseases, however, they usually do not show the same symptoms, and to an important extent the natural protective processes are impeded.  Such children may not come down with the disease against which they are medially protected, then – but they may indeed therefore become “prey” to other diseases later in life that would not otherwise have occurred.

I am speaking generally here, for remember that your individual beliefs, thoughts, and emotions cause your reality, so no person dies ahead of his or her time.  The individual chooses the time of death.  It is true, however, that many cancers and conditions such as AIDS result because the immunity system has been so tampered with that the body has not been allowed to follow through with its own balancing procedures.

Again, however, no individual dies of cancer or AIDS or any other condition, until they themselves have set the time.

There are many other conditions to be taken into consideration, for such diseases certainly do have strong social connections.  They occur in social species.  This does not mean that they are necessarily contagious at all, but that they do bear an overall relationship to the give-and-take between individuals and their social and natural frameworks.

A city might be overrun by rats, for example – a fine situation for the rats if not the populace – but the entire picture would include unrest in the populace at large, a severe dissatisfaction with social conditions, feelings of dejection, and all of those conditions together would contribute to the problem.  Rat poison may indeed add its own dangers, killing other small birds or rodents, and contaminating animal food supplies.  Nor are insects invulnerable to such conditions, in such an hypothesized picture.  Actually, all forms of life in that certain environment would be seeking for a balanced return to a more advantageous condition.

You may wonder why so many forms of life would be involved in what might seem to be self-destructive behavior, often leading to death – but remember that no consciousness considers death an end or a disaster, but views it instead as a means to the continuation of corporeal and noncorporeal existence.

The Way Toward Health - April 20, 1984

Chapter 6: “States of Health and Disease”

April 20, 1984

Before we discuss the human situation more specifically in relationship to health and “dis-ease” – let us consider the so-called states of health and disease as they apply in planetary terms, and as they operate in all species.  This will give us a far vaster framework in which to understand the ways in which each individual person fits into the entire picture.

I used quotation marks around the entire heading for this chapter to stress the point that the heading is written with your own ideas of health and disease in mind.  Actually, however, regardless of appearances and misreadings of natural events, the very idea of disease as you usually think of it, is chauvinistic in health rather than in sexual terms.

Basically speaking, there are only life forms.  Through their cooperation your entire world sustains its reality, substance, life, and form.  If there were no diseases as you think of them, there would be no life forms at all.  Your reality demands a steady fluctuation of physical and nonphysical experience.  Most of you, my readers, understand that if you did not sleep you would die.  The conscious withdrawal of mental life during life makes normally conscious experience possible.  In the same way, there must, of course, be a rhythm of physical death, so that the experience of normal physical life is possible.  It goes without saying that without death and disease – for the two go hand in hand – then normal corporeal existence would be impossible.

For all of man’s fear of disease, however, the species has never been destroyed by it, and life has continued to function with an overall stability, despite what certainly seems to be the constant harassment and threat of illness and disease.  The same is true, generally speaking, of all species.  Plants and insect fit into this larger picture, as do all fish and fowl.

I have said elsewhere that no species is ever really eradicated – and in those terms no disease, or virus, or germ, ever vanishes completely from the face of the earth.  In the first place, viruses change their form, appearing in your terms sometimes as harmless and sometimes as lethal.  So-called states of health and disease are also changing constantly – and in those vaster terms disease in itself is a kind of health, for it makes life and health itself possible.

Later we will discuss what this means to you, the individual person, but for now I want to stress the fact that while it may seem natural enough to consider disease as a threat, an adversary or an enemy, this is not the case.

The subject matter of suffering is certainly vitally connected to the subject at hand, but basically speaking, disease and suffering are not necessarily connected.  Suffering and death are not necessarily connected either.  The sensations of suffering, and the pain, do exist.  Some are indeed quite natural reactions, and others are learned reactions to certain events.  Walking barefoot on a bed of fire would most likely cause most of you, my readers, to feel the most acute pain – while in some primitive societies, under certain conditions the same situation could result instead in feelings of ecstasy or joy.

We want to discuss “disease” as it exists apart from suffering for now, then.  Then we will discuss pain and suffering and their implications.  I do want to mention, however, that pain and suffering are also obviously vital, living sensations – and therefore are a part of the body’s repertoire of possible feelings and sensual experience.  They are also a sign, therefore, of life’s vitality, and are in themselves often responsible for a return to health when they act as learning communications.

Pain, therefore, by being unpleasant stimulates the individual to rid himself or herself of it, and thereby often promotes a return to the state of health.

Aside to Jane

Remind Ruburt – in the meantime – that he is indeed a beloved daughter of the universe, and that his parents are as much the sea and sky as his physical parents.

The Way Toward Health - April 19, 1984 - How to approach difficult situations

April 19, 1984

The following material is for dictation, but I am giving it here also so that Ruburt will take it specifically to heart.  There are certain simple steps that can be followed, whenever you find yourself in a difficult situation, whether the condition is one of poor health, a stressful personal involvement with another, a financial dilemma, or whatever.

These steps seem very obvious, and perhaps too easy – but they will bring an immediate sense of ease and a peace of mind while your inner reserves are being released and activated.  I have mentioned these steps many times, because they are so vital in clearing the conscious mind, and bringing some sense of relief to the frightened ego.

1.      Immediately begin to live in the present as much as possible.  Try to become as aware as you can of present sense-data – all of it.  Often, while you are in pain, for example, you concentrate upon that sensation alone, ignoring the feelings of ease that may be felt by other portions of the body, and unaware of the conglomeration of sounds, sights, and impressions that are also in the immediate environment.  This procedure will immediately lessen the pressure of the problem itself, whatever it is, and give you a sense of refreshment.

2.      Refuse to worry.  This fits in automatically with Step 1, of course.  Tell yourself you can worry all you want tomorrow, or on some other occasion – but resolve not to worry in the present moment.

3.      When your thoughts do touch upon your particular problem in the present moment, imagine the best possible solution to the dilemma.  Do not wonder how or why or when the ideal solution will come, but see it in your mind’s eye as accomplished.  Or, if you are not particularly good at visual imagery, then try to get the feeling of thanksgiving and joy that you would feel if the problem was solved to your complete satisfaction.

These steps will allow you breathing time, and actually help minimize the pressure of your situation, whatever it is.  Then, quieted, you will be able to consider other suitable steps that may more directly address your particular solution.

Aside for Jane

While you and Ruburt embark upon a resolved path of getting to the bottom of Ruburt’s difficulties, it is highly important that Ruburt in particular increase his experience of pleasure, and his concentration upon it, so that pleasure can counter any other emotionally distressful feelings that may emerge along the way.

Again, we do not want a concentration solely upon deeply felt fears.  While these must be uncovered, they should be balanced by a new determination to seek out pleasure – the pleasure will help couch the fears.

We will not abandon book dictation, but the concentration for now will be largely devoted to better Ruburt’s condition by releasing his own energies, health, and flexibility.

I suggest you start with a kind of free association on Ruburt’s part.  With your resolve in mind, almost any subject matter you begin with will start to lead in the proper direction.  Again, we want, say, the release of painful thoughts or emotions somehow balanced by the steps I gave today, so that they provide a kind of supporting framework.

I will interrupt whenever I can be of benefit – and I will also provide sometimes short but pithy session material that can be used sometimes as subject matter for free association.  You can begin of course by free associating with any appropriate subject – his mother, his father, your relationship, your individual or joint sexual feelings, his ideas about his psychic material, his writing, or whatever – and I will also provide guidelines.

The endeavor itself will also activate his own dream mechanisms, and you will find that both of you bring new creative understandings to the task.

The Way Toward Health - April 10 and 12, 1984

April 10, 1984

Worry, fear, and doubt are detrimental to good health, of course, and these are very often caused by the officially held beliefs of society.

Those beliefs paint a dire picture, in which any given situation is bound to deteriorate.  Any conceivable illness will worsen, and any possible catastrophe be encountered.

Such beliefs discourage feelings of curiosity, joy, or wonder.  They inhibit playful activity or spontaneous behavior.  They cause a physical situation in which the body is placed in a state of defensive aggression.  Under such conditions. it seems only rational to look for the worm in the apple, so to speak, and to expect pain or danger in each new experience or encounter.

Play is a very important – indeed, vital – attribute in the development of growth and fulfillment.  Children play naturally, and so do animals.  For that matter, insects, birds, fish, and all kinds of life play.  Even ants and honeybees play.  Their sociability is not just a matter of constant work within a hive or an ant mound.  This playful activity is, in fact, the basis for their organized behavior, and they “play” at adult behavior before they assume their own duties.

Creatures play because the activity is joyful, and spontaneous and beneficial, because it activates all portions of the organism – and again, in play youngsters imitate adult patterns of operation that lead finally to their own mature activity.

When people become ill, worried or fearful, one of the first symptoms of trouble is a lack of pleasure, a gradual discontinuance of playful action, and an over-concentration upon personal problems.  In other words, illness is often first marked by a lack of zest or exuberance.

This retreat from pleasure begins to cut down upon normal activity, new encounters, or explorations that might in themselves help relieve the problem by opening up new options.  Such a person becomes dejected looking – unsmiling and somber, leading others to comment upon such a dejected countenance.  Comments such as these: “You look tired”, or: “What’s the matter, don’t you feel well?” and other such remarks often simply reinforce the individual’s earlier sense of dejection, until finally this same kind of give-and-take leads to a situation in which the individual and his fellows begin to intermix in a negative rather than a positive manner.

I do not mean to imply that it is always detrimental to make such queries as “Are you ill?” or “Are you tired?”  Such questions do indeed predict their own answers.  When a person is feeling in good health, exuberant and alive, such queries will be nonchalantly shoved aside – they will have no effect whatsoever.  But constant questions of such a nature do not help an individual who is having difficulties – and in fact, too frequent expressions of compassion can also worsen a person’s state of mind, stressing the idea that he or she must be very ill indeed to attract such feelings of compassion.  It is far better, then, to make no comment at all under such conditions.  I am not speaking of genuine questions of concern so much as rather automatic, unthinking, negative comments.

On the other hand, it is an excellent practice to comment upon another individual’s obvious zest or energy or good spirits.  In such a way, you reward positive behavior, and may indeed begin a chain of positive activity instead of continuing a chain of negative reactions.

April 12, 1984

I am not telling you to gush out a steady stream of positive suggestions, whether or not they bear any relation to the situation at hand.

I am saying that it is far better to look on the most hoped-for solution to any situation, and to voice that attitude rather than to expect the poorest outcome, or express the most dire of attitudes.  There are some issues highly vital to health and happiness, that are quite difficult to describe.  They are felt intrinsically.  They are a part of the esthetics of nature itself.  Flowers are not just brightly colored for man’s enjoyment, for example, but because color is a part of the flower’s own esthetic system.  They enjoy their own brilliance, and luxuriate in their own multitudinous hues.

The insects also appreciate flower’s profusion of color, and also for esthetic reasons.  I am saying, therefore, that even insects have an esthetic sense, and again, that each creature, and each plant, or natural entity, has its own sense of value fulfillment, seeking the greatest possible fulfillment and extension of its own innate abilities.

This sense of value fulfillment, once more, benefits not only the individual, but its species and all other species.  In a manner of speaking, then, the picture of nature is painted by its own consciously vital, esthetic portions.  Each portion of nature is also equipped to react to changing conditions, and therefore deals with its own kind of predictive behavior, so that it can grow today into tomorrow’s condition.

Nature always works with probabilities.  In human terms, this means that each person has a vast bank of avenues that lead to value fulfillment, and that individual abilities will ideally form their own boulevards of expression.

Poor health, or simply unhappy situations, arise only when the individual meets too many detours, or encounters too many blocks to the expression of value fulfillment.

With man’s own exteriorized ego, this leads to the question of free will and the making of conscious choices.

The human individual is aware of large numbers of probable activities.  Each individual person literally possesses far more abilities than can be adequately expressed in any given lifetime.  This insures a large profusion of possible actions from which the individual can draw according to changing circumstances.

Each person can also intrinsically sense the direction in which he or she is most inclined.  Inspiration will send nudges towards certain activities.  It will be easier and more delightful for each person to move and grow in certain directions, rather than others.

In this discussion, I am not merely speaking in terms of exterior accomplishments, or goals, though these are important.  Many people, however, will find they have a natural knack for relationships with others, in which the known value cannot be easily judged, as it can, say, in the works of an artist or writer.

Instead, such people will indeed perform a kind of artistry of relationships, composing, say, symphonic, emotional compositions that indeed play as masterfully upon the emotions as the pianist upon the keys.  By looking at your own life, you can quite easily discover in what areas your own abilities lie by following the shape of your own impulses and inclinations.  You cannot learn about yourself by studying what is expected of you by others – but only by asking yourself what you expect of yourself, and discovering for yourself in what direction your abilities lie.

The Way Toward Health - April 8 and 9, 1984 Suggestions and Health

Chapter 5: Suggestion and Health

April 8, 1984

Suggestions are usually statements directed toward a particular action or hypothesis.  To a large extent, suggestions are tied into conscious thought processes, following the dictates of reason.  For example: “If thus and thus be so, then thus and thus must follow”.  There is no magic connected with suggestions – but repeated often enough, and believed in fervently, such suggestions do indeed take on a deeply habitual nature.  They are no longer examined, but taken for literal truth.

They are then handed over to the more automatic levels of personality, where they trigger the specific actions that are so strongly implied.  Many such suggestions are “old-hat idioms”.  They belong to the past, and again they escape the questioning and examination that are usually given to new ideas.

These suggestions may be remarkably long-standing, therefore, and consist of beliefs received in childhood.  Accepted now in the present, noncritically, they may still affect health and well-being.  Such suggestions can be beneficial and supportive, or negative and detrimental.  Here are some examples that should be quite familiar to many people.  They consist of suggestions given to children:

“If you go out in the rain without your rubbers, you will catch cold.”

“If you are too talkative or demonstrative, people will not like you.”

“If you run you will fall down.”

There are many variations, of course, such as: “If you go out in rainy weather, you’ll get pneumonia”, or: “If you tell a lie your tongue will turn to stone”.

These suggestions and others like them are often given to children by their parents with the best of intentions.  When they are young, the offspring will accept some such suggestions uncritically, coming as they do from a revered adult, so that the suggestions are almost interpreted as commands.

A suggestion like: “If you go swimming too soon after lunch, you will drown”, is extremely dangerous, for it predicts behavior of a disastrous nature that would follow almost automatically after the first act is performed.  Obviously, children who go into the water right after eating do not all drown.  The suggestion itself can lead to all kinds of nervous symptoms, however – panics, or stomach cramps – that can persist will into adulthood.

Such suggestions can be removed, as we will explain shortly.

There are other kinds of suggestions that involve identification.  A child may be told: “You are just like your mother, she was always nervous and moody”.  Or: “You are fat because your father was fat”.

These are all statements leading toward a certain hypothesis.  Again, the problem is that often the hypotheses remain unquestioned.  You end up with structured beliefs unexamined, that are then automatically acted upon.

April 9, 1984

The suggestions we have given so far are predictives; they actually predict dire events of one kind or another, following a given original action.

There are many of these, dealing particularly with age also.  Many people believe fervently that with approaching age they will meet a steady, disastrous deterioration in which the senses and the mind will be dull, and the body, stricken with disease, will lose all of its vigor and agility.  Many young people believe such nonsense, and therefore they set themselves up to meet the very conditions they so fear.

The mind grows wiser with age when it is allowed to do so.  There is even an acceleration of thought and inspiration, much like that experienced in the adolescent years, that suddenly brings a new understanding to the aged individual, and provides an impetus that should help the person to achieve greater comprehension – a comprehension that should quell all fears of death.

Thoughts and beliefs do indeed bring about physical alterations.  They can even – and often do – change genetic messages.

There are diseases that people believe are inherited, carried from one generation to another by a faulty genetic communication.  Obviously, many people with, for example, a genetic heritage of arthritis do not come down with the disease themselves, while others indeed are so afflicted.  The difference is one of belief.

The people have accepted the suggestion uncritically that they will inherit such a malady do then seem to inherit it: they experience the symptoms.  Actually, the belief itself may have changed a healthy genetic message into an unhealthy one.  Ideally, a change of belief would remedy the situation.

People are not simply swung willy-nilly by one negative suggestion or another, however.  Each person has an entire body of beliefs and suggestions – and these are quite literally reflected in the physical body itself.

All practical healing deals with the insertion of positive suggestions and the removal of negative ones.  As we mentioned earlier, each smallest atom or cell contains its own impetus toward growth and value fulfillment.  In other words, they are literally implanted with positive suggestions, biologically nurtured, so to that extent it is true to say that in a certain fashion negative suggestions are unnatural, leading away from life’s primary goals.  Negative suggestions could be compared to static sounding on an otherwise clear program.

The Codicils with Comments

The Codicils

1.      ‘‘All of creation is sacred and alive, each part connected to each other part, and each communicating in a creative cooperative commerce in which the smallest and the largest are equally involved.

2.      ‘‘The physical senses present one unique version of reality, in which being is perceived in a particular dimensionalized sequence, built up through neurological patterning, and is the result of one kind of neurological focus. There are alternate neurological routes, biologically acceptable, and other sequences so far not chosen.

3.      ‘‘Our individual self-government and our political organizations are by-products of sequential perception, and our exterior methods of communication set up patterns that correlate with, and duplicate, our synaptic behavior. We lock ourselves into certain structures of reality in this way.

4.      ‘‘Our sequential prejudiced perception is inherently far more flexible than we recognize, however. There are half steps – other unperceived impulses – that leap the nerve ends, too fast and too slow for our usual focus. Recognition of these can be learned and encouraged, bringing in perceptive data that will trigger changes in usual sense response, filling out potential sense spectra with which we are normally not familiar.

5.      ‘‘This greater possible sense spectrum includes increased perception of inner bodily reality in terms of cellular identity and behavior; automatic conscious control of bodily processes; and increased perception of exterior conditions as the usual senses become more vigorous. (Our sight, for example, is not nearly as efficient as it could be. Nuances of color, texture, and depth could be expanded and our entire visual area attain a brilliance presently considered exceptional or supernormal.)

6.      ‘‘Each person is a unique version of an inner model that is in itself a bank of potentials, variations, and creativity. The psyche is a seed of individuality and selfhood, cast in space-time but ultimately independent of it.

7.      ‘‘We are born in many times and places, but not in a return of identity as we understand it; not as a copy in different clothes, but as a new self ever-rising out of the psyche's life as the new ruler rises to the podium or throne, in a psychic politics as ancient as humanity.

8.      ‘‘Civilizations both past and present represent projections of inner selfhood, and mirror the state of the mass psyche at any given time. We hold memory and knowledge of past civilizations as we hold unconscious memories of our private early current-life experiences.

9.      ‘‘From our present, we exert force upon the past as well as the future, forming our ideas of the past and reacting accordingly. We actually project events into our own new past.

10.  ‘‘Each generation forms such a new past, one that exists as surely as the present; not just as an imaginary construct but as a practical platform – a newly built past – upon which we build our present.

11.  ‘‘Options and alternate models for selfhood and civilizations exist in a psychic pattern of probabilities from which we can choose to actualize an entirely new life system.’’

Comments on the Codicils

General Comment on Codicil 1-5

Acceptance of these first codicils would expand practical knowledge of the self, break down barriers that are the result of our prejudiced perception, and restructure personal, social, and political life.

Concepts of the self and practical experience of the self must be broadened if the species is to develop its true potentials. Only an evolution of consciousness can alter the world view that appears to our official line of consciousness.

Comment on Codicil 2

This next step is as important as the birth of Christianity was in the history of mankind. It will present a new structure for civilization to follow. Christianity represented the human psyche at a certain point, forming first inner patterns for development that then became exteriorized as myth, drama, and history, with the Jewish culture of the Talmud presenting the psyche’s direction. The differences between Jewish and Christian tradition represented allied but different probabilities, one splitting off from the other, but united by common roots and actualized in the world to varying degrees.

The traditional personified god concept represented the mass psyche’s one-ego development; the ego ruling the self as God ruled man; man dominant over the planet and other species, as God was dominant over man— as opposed to the idea of many gods or the growth of a more multifocused self with greater nature identification.

Neurological patterning of the kind we know began with the early old-Testament Jews (known, then, as God’s people), looking forward through time to a completely one-ego focused self: Before, neurological functioning was not as set; and in our world today some minority peoples and tribes still hold to those alternate neurological pulses. These will not appear to our measuring devices because we are literally blind to them.

The Jewish prophets, however, utilized these alternate focuses of perception themselves, and were relatively unprejudiced neurologically. They were therefore able to perceive alternate visions of reality. Yet their great work, while focusing the energy of an entire religion, and leading to Christianity, also resulted in limiting man’s potential perceptive area in important ways.

The prophets were able to sense the potentials of the mass psyche, and their prophecies charted courses in time, projecting the Jewish religion into the future. The prophecies gave the people great strength precisely because they gave their religion a future in time, providing a thread of continuity and a certain immortality in earthly terms.

The prophecies were psychic molds to be filled out in flesh. Some were fulfilled and some were not, but the unfulfilled ones were forgotten and served their purpose by providing alternate selections and directions. The prophecies ahead of time charted out a people’s probable course, foreseeing the triumphs and disasters inherent in such an adventure through time.

They provided psychic webworks, blueprints, and dramas, with living people stepping into the roles already outlined, but also improvising as they went along. These roles were valid, however, chosen in response to an inner reality that foresaw the shape that the living psyche of the people would take in time.

But as a snake throws off old skin, the psyche throws off old patterns that have become rigid, and we need a new set of psychic blueprints to further extend the species into the future, replete with great deeds, heroes, and challenges; a new creative drama projected from the psyche into the three-dimensional arena. For now, we no longer view reality through original eyes, but through structures of beliefs that we have outgrown. These structures are simply meant to frame and organize experience, but we mistake the picture for the reality that it represents. We’ve become neurologically frozen in that respect, forced to recognize the one sequential pattern of sense perceptions, so that we think that the one we’ve chosen is the only one possible.

Comment on Codicil 3

Thus far we’ve projected the unrecognized portions of our greater selfhood outward into God, religion, government, and exteriorized concepts. In this existence, selfhood is dependent upon sense perceptions, so that our neurological prejudice and rigid focus have limited our concepts of identity. When we do become aware of unofficial information, coming through other than recognized channels then it seems to come from “notself,” or outside.

A great deal of energy has been used to repress levels of selfhood and to project these into religious and nationalistic heroes and cultural organizations. Government and religion try to preserve the status quo, to preserve their own existences, not for political or religious reasons, but to preserve the official picture of the self around which they are formed.

But the structured reality in which that kind of a self can exist is breaking down. The official picture no longer fits or explains private experience which is growing out of it. There is a momentary rift between the inner psyche and its creations.

Besides this, the experienced self is not the same through the ages. The experienced self is a psychic creation, responsive to exterior conditions which it creates as the psyche dives into the waters of experienced earthly selfhood. Only a portion of the potential self is experienced, but different portions as intents and purposes change. It is possible, though, to actualize more of our potential.

Comment on Codicils 4 and 5

The answers and solutions lie in using levels of consciousness now considered eccentric or secondary. This includes far greater utilization of the dream states and altered conditions thus far thought to be exceptions of consciousness. These “exceptions” represent other kinds of focuses, greatly needed to broaden our concepts of the self; and our experience of personal selfhood by increasing conceptualization, giving direct experience of alternate views, and bringing other kinds of data to bear upon the world we know. In the past, the attitudes surrounding such perceptions brought about their own difficulties. The perceptions are biologically acceptable, however, and will lead to a clearer relationship between mind and body.

The Way Toward Health - April 4 and 6, 1984

April 4, 1984

This chapter consists of a potpourri of different ideas – merely to hint at the multitudinous issues connected with health and well-being.

Your ideas about yourself are, again, vital in the larger context of a healthy lifetime.  The condition of your heart is affected, for example, by your own feelings about it.  If you consider yourself to be coldhearted, or heartless, those feelings will have a significant effect upon that physical organ.  If you feel broke-hearted, then you will also have that feeling reflected in one way or another in the physical organ itself.

Obviously, as I mentioned earlier, each individual also has many options open.  Everyone who feels brokenhearted does not die of heart failure, for example.  The subject of health cannot be considered in an isolated fashion, but must be seen in that greater context that gives health itself a value and a meaning.  As mentioned earlier, each person will also try to fulfill their own unique abilities, and to “fill out” the experience of life as fully as possible.

If an individual is hampered in that attempt strongly and persistently enough, then the dissatisfaction and frustration will be translated into a lack of physical exuberance and vitality.  There is always an unending reservoir of energy at the command of each person, however, regardless of circumstances, and we will also discuss the ways in which you can learn to tap that source and better your own health situation.

The sooner you can rid yourself of rigid beliefs about the survival of the fittest, the better you will be.  All philosophies that stress the idea of the body’s impurity or degradation should also be seen as detrimental to bodily and spiritual integrity.  Such beliefs clutter up your conscious mind with negative suggestions that can only frighten the exterior ego and impede the great strength and vitality that is your heritage from lending you the fullest possible strength and support.

Later on we will indeed discuss various methods of healing, conventional and unconventional.  Medical technology alone, however expert, cannot really heal a broken heart, of course.  Such a healing can only take place through understanding and through expressions of love.  In other words, through emotional transplants rather than physical ones alone.  The emotional factors are extremely vital, both in the development and in the healing of all dis-ease.

We will not stress particular diseases in this book, and mention symptoms only to identify the cases associated with such symptoms.  It is actually far more important that we stress the symptoms of health and those methods, beliefs, and healings that promote them.

April 6, 1984

(Advice to Jane and Rob)

It is natural enough in your situation to have blue periods now and then.

These can often serve as springboards, however, leading to greater understanding, and the feelings themselves do indeed help rid you of fears and doubts that are expressed through such a medium.  I am sure that I mentioned this before, but I wanted to refresh your memory, and this applies, generally speaking, to all individuals.  It is far better to express those feelings than to inhibit them.

At the same time, you both should – and do – try to turn your minds in other directions, so that the periods do not linger.  Generally speaking, you have handled such situations well, and what I said about your activities in Framework 2 does still apply.

Aside: Framework 2

In Jane/ Seth’s The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, which was published in 1981, I wrote: “Seth maintains that Framework 2, or inner reality, contains the creative source from which we form all events, and that by the proper focusing of attention we can draw from that vast subjective medium everything we need for a constructive, positive life in Framework 1, or physical reality.” Seth has a lot to say about Frameworks 1 and 2 in Mass Events. For example: “Those unique intents that characterize each individual exist first in Framework 2, then — and with birth, those intents immediately begin to impress the physical world of Framework 1.”

The Way Toward Health - April 2 and 3, 1984

April 2, 1984

There are many large issues that touch upon the circumstances involving the health of individuals, and these concern questions that we have not yet discussed.

They will indeed be covered later in this book, but for now we will only be concerned with them in a general way.  They are more divorced from ordinary medical thought, and would indeed be considered sheer quackery in the majority of medical circles.

The fact is that each individual lives many lives, and that the inner self is quite aware of its own spiritual and physical dexterity.  The body consciousness alone understands that its physical existence in any one life is dependent upon its physical death – and that that death will assure it of still another existence.  The “drive for survival” is, therefore, a drive that leads to death and beyond it, for all of consciousness understands that it survives through many forms and conditions.

Reincarnation, therefore, also is part of the larger framework in which any individual’s health and well-being must be considered.  The reincarnational influences are most apparent in what would be considered bodily defects dating from birth, and these will be discussed later on in this book.

Reincarnational influences are not nearly as rigid as many believers in the concept think.  That is, reincarnational influences usually leave many options open to an individual in any case.  It is quite simplistic, for example, to say, as some people do, that any given particular event from a past life leads inevitably to a particularly matching effect in a present one.  There are too many other elements that also apply to the human personality.  No one is “fated” to have bad health.  No one is punished in one life for “evil” activities in a previous one.

A person who has been cruel in one life may choose to experience conditions in the next life in which he or she understands the meaning of cruelty, but this does not mean that such a person would then necessarily experience an entire lifetime as a victim.

New learning would always be involved, and thus new options would always be open.  There are, in fact, so many distorted ideas connected with the concept of reincarnation in general, that I think it far better to simply concentrate upon the idea of multiple existences.  Because of the true nature of time, and the interrelationships of consciousness, a future life affects a past one, for in actuality all of these existences happen simultaneously.  All systems are open-ended, particularly psychological ones.  In greater terms, you are working “at all levels” and at all of your own existences at once, even though it is useful sometimes to think of reincarnation as a series of lives, one after the other.

April 3, 1984

The concept of the survival of the fittest has had a considerably detrimental effect in many areas of human activity – particularly in the realm of medical ideology and practice.

The whole idea was developed in the most mechanistic of terms, stressing competition among all aspects of life, pitting one life form against another, and using physical strength and dexterity, swiftness and efficiency, as the prime conditions for the survival of any individual or species.

It is quite true, however, that in the wild many animals protect and provide for wounded or disabled members, and that the wisdom that comes with age is indeed appreciated even in the animal kingdom.  The survival of the fittest concept, however, has been exaggerated far above those of cooperation.

Politically as well as medically, such distortions have led to unfortunate conditions: the Aryan-supremacy biological ideas fostered in the second world war, the concentration upon “the perfect body”, and other distortions.  The idea of the ideal body has often been held up to the populace at large, and this often sets forth a stylized “perfect” physique that actually could be matched by few individuals.  Any variations are frowned upon, and any birth defects considered in the most suspicious of lights.  Some schools of thought, then, have it that only the genetically superior should be allowed to reproduce, and there are scientists who believe that all defects can be eradicated through judicious genetic planning.

As a result of such long-held theories, people have grown distrustful of their own bodies.  The handicapped are often given messages, even by the medical profession, that make them feel like misfits, unworthy to survive.  When people become ill, they often blame themselves in such a way that unnecessary guilt is the result.

In the past, some religious groups have also promoted beliefs that illness is a sign of God’s punishment, or vengeance for sins committed against his “goodness”.

The same beliefs often spread to economic areas in which people who met pleasure in God’s eyes were therefore gifted with wealth and prosperity, as well as good health.  Therefore, God was seen to be on the side of those who competed most strenuously, so that to be poor or sick was almost seen as a sign of God’s disfavor.  All such concepts appear in one form or another at most official levels of thought and education.  The whole idea of the esthetics of nature is forgotten – a subject that we will touch upon further as we continue our discussion.

The Way Toward Health - March 25, 27 1984

March 25, 1984

Later on, we will discuss more thoroughly distorted ideas about the self and the body in particular that stand in the way of natural exuberance and good health.

Without going more deeply into the reasons for such beliefs until later, let me discuss several of the ways in which they impede general well-being.  Right now it is socially fashionable to take up some kind of exercise, gym work, or strenuous sport, so it seems obvious that the general populace must have a great regard for the physical body.  Unfortunately, large segments of the population feel uncomfortable with their bodies, and do not trust the body’s spontaneity, strength, or overall dependability.  They have been taught that medical science knows more about bodies than any private individual knows about their own bodies and their ways and workings.

People have been taught to trust X-rays for a picture of what is happening within their bodies, and cautioned not to trust their own feelings.  Some public-service announcements stress the “fact” that the individual can be gravely threatened by high blood pressure, for example, even though he or she feels in excellent physical health.

The populace has embarked upon this strong exercise program because of a mixture of very unfortunate beliefs.  Since they feel divorced from their bodies, many people suspect what is going on inside.  Some religious beliefs suggest that the body is impure, and the heir to disease and infirmity.  Often people exercise over-zealously to punish their bodies, or to force the body to respond at its best, since they do not trust it to do otherwise.

In many instances people exercise quite simply because they are afraid of what will happen if they do not.  They may run to avoid heart disease, for example, while their own fear can help to promote the very eventuality they fear.

The body’s health is the expression of inner well-being.  Poor health is an expression also, and it may serve many purposes.  It goes without saying that some people become ill rather than change their activities and their environments.  They may also become ill, of course, to force themselves to make such changes.

March 27, 1984

I do not mean to imply that exercise is detrimental to good health.  It is true, however, that the reason that you exercise is actually more important than the exercises that you do perform.  The reason can promote your good health or actually impede it.

Thus far in this book, we have barely begun to touch upon the multitudinous issues involved in good health or in its absence.  Before we are finished we hope to give you a far greater framework in which to consider your own well-being and the many options that are open to any individual.  We will discuss the aspects connected with a long, healthy, fairly happy lifetime, and those involved with early death, severe illnesses, and suicide – particularly with the suicides of fairly young persons.

Earlier we spoke about the incredible impulse on the part of all of nature toward exuberance and well-being.  It is as if nature always tries to exceed itself, and certainly to increase the quality of its existence.  The individual person is also involved in an ever-continuing process to increase the quality of life as it exists at all levels of personal experience.  Reality is so constructed that each individual seeking such fulfillment does so not at the expense of others, but in such a way that the quality of life is increased for all.

Each person impulsively tries to grow into his or her sensed potentials – even when they are not immediately apparent.

In one way or another each segment of consciousness is aware of each other segment, through an instantaneous communication that exists on many levels.  It is important that your ideas circulate freely, and that the ideas of the peoples of the world circulate freely, just as it is important that your individual body has good circulation.  Your ideas about your own health are even more important than those steps you take to promote it.

Your ideas about foreign countries, allies and enemies, also have a vital role to play in how you handle your own bodily defenses.  People who are afraid that their nation will be invaded by an enemy will often also consider viruses or diseases to be enemies, ever about to threaten their personal survival.  Such attitudes will, of course, be detrimental to feelings of well-being, health, and exuberance.  While it is true that medical technology has many serious defects, it is also true that many people believe in the medical profession to such a degree that it would be nearly impossible for them to survive in good health without it.

Later on in this book, we will also discuss the ways in which you can use your own beliefs about the medical profession to reinforce your overall sense of health, rather than to undermine it.