In this article we will start a twelve-part series that discusses various topics of health and spirituality including health and illness, the medical industry, healing and natural therapy, catalyst and balancing, love, service and forgiveness.
As with everything in Cosmic Core, we are viewing these topics of health and illness through the lens of idealism – that is, that consciousness creates and affects matter. In this case, our consciousness (our thoughts, beliefs, expectations, emotions, imagination, intention) directly affects our health and body.
These last topics on human life and health will take us through to Articles 251-262 where we will pick up our science and geometry topics once more, focusing on the geometry of planetary bodies, the solar system, Precession of the Equinoxes, galaxies and galactic clusters.
To begin, Plato writes, “The factor that has the most bearing on health and sickness, and on moral goodness and badness, is whether or not there’s proportion between soul and body.” Timaeus 87d
Natural Body Consciousness
“Your body has an overall body consciousness filled with energy and vitality.
It automatically rights any imbalances, but your conscious beliefs also affect this body consciousness.
Your muscles believe what you tell them about themselves.
So does every other portion of your physical body.
Because body and mind operate so well together, one will attempt to cure the other, and will often succeed if left alone.”1
You are a Part of Your Environment
“You are a part of your environment.
You form it. Yet the energy that forms you and the environment springs alive in each of you through your intersection with the physical world.
The sun makes you smile.
The smiling of itself activates pleasant memories, neurological connections, and hormonal workings.
It reminds you of your creaturehood.”2
The Body as a Living Materialization of your Soul
“Your body is you in flesh.
All of your physical experience must be pivoted in the corporeal reality of the body.
The energy that moves your image comes from the soul.
Through your own thoughts you direct the body’s expression, and it can be of health or of illness.
Out of a knowledge of the contents of your own conscious mind you can definitely heal most maladies of the body, within conditions to be given later.
In all cases when you are concerned about your health, there is a choice of directions for you to follow.
The living flesh is yours. It is the materialization of your soul, and through the body the soul will provide you with those answers you require.
You must remember that ideas are as alive as the cells within your hand.”3
The Conscious Mind, the Body & Beliefs about Health
“Because you are a conscious being, you form your physical reality through conscious thought.
You need to be reminded that you are not at the mercy of unconscious events.
You have the body’s innate wisdom behind you and it will always try to correct your errors.
It may seem to you that you do not have any conscious control over your body’s condition in life as you know it, much less before your birth.
You have been taught that there is little connection between your thought and your body’s activities.
A man believing he has heart trouble will finally, through his own anxiety, affect the functioning of his “involuntary” system until his heart is definitely harmed if the belief goes unchecked.
The conscious mind directs the so-called involuntary systems of the body, and not the other way around.
No idea slips insidiously past your awareness to affect your involuntary system unless it fits in with your own conscious beliefs.
Once more, you will not be sick if you think you are well – but there may be other ideas that make you believe in the necessity for poor health.
You are not aware of how the body performs its many involuntary functions.
The conscious mind could not handle all the data, but those functions perfectly mirror your consciously held ideas and beliefs.
The conscious mind is not basically cut off from the inner self or from those deep inner sources of knowledge available to it.
The aware mind is not any one event, for that matter; it represents the various portions of the inner self that “surface” at any given time.
Within the basic framework of the body chosen before physical birth, the individual has full freedom to create a perfectly healthy functioning form.
The form is, however, a mirror of beliefs, and will accurately materialize in flesh those ideas held by the conscious mind.
That is one of the body’s primary functions.
A sick body is performing that function, in its way, as well as a healthy one.
It is your most intimate feedback system, changing with your thoughts and experience, giving you in flesh the physical counterpart of your thoughts.
So it is futile to become angry at a symptom, or to deride the body for its condition when it is presenting you with the corporeal replica of your own thought as it was meant to do.
Your environment and your experience in the physical world also provide you with the same kind of feedback.
It is just as useless to berate your environment or your experience in it as it is to deride your body, for the same reasons.”4
Conscious Thoughts, Beliefs & Emotions Regulate Health
“Your conscious thoughts regulate your health.
To be healthy you must believe in health.
The persistent idea of illness will make you ill.
Your emotions and actions follow your beliefs.
If you believe you are sick then for all intents and purposes you are sick.
If you believe that you are healthy then you are healthy.
There is much written about the nature of healing, but there is also healing-in-reverse, in which case an individual loses a belief in his or her health and accepts instead the idea of personal illness.
Here the belief itself will generate the negative emotions that will, indeed, bring about a physical or emotional illness.
The imagination will follow, painting dire mental pictures of a particular condition.
Before long physical data bears out the negative belief; negative in that it is far less desirable than a concept of health.
One belief can be dependent upon many others, each generating its own emotional and imaginative reality.
The belief in illness itself depends upon a belief in human unworthiness, guilt and imperfection, for example.”5
Changing Your Beliefs about Health & Illness
“While you believe that you become ill because of viruses, infections or accidents, then you must go to doctors who operate within that system of belief. And because you believe in their cures and that they are the only people who can help you, hopefully you will be relieved of your difficulty.
But the framework itself is limiting; and again, while you may be cured of one difficulty, you will only replace it with another as long as your beliefs cause you to have physical problems.
Because you do not understand that your thoughts create illness you will continue to undergo it, however, and new symptoms will appear.
You will again return to the doctor.
When you are in the process of changing beliefs – when you are beginning to realize that your thoughts and feelings cause illness – then for a while you may not know what to do.
In the larger context you realize that the doctor can at best give you temporary relief, yet you may not be completely convinced as yet of your own ability to change your thoughts; or you may be so cowed by their effectiveness that you are frightened.
So there is a period of stress in between beliefs, so to speak, while you dispense with one set and are learning to use another.
But here you become involved with one of the most meaningful aspects of the nature of personal reality, as you test your thoughts against what seems to be.
There may be a time before you learn how to change your thoughts effectively, but you are engaged in a basic meaningful endeavor.
The truth is then that you form your reality directly. You react consciously and unconsciously to your beliefs.
You collect from the physical universe, and the interior one, data that seems to correlate with your beliefs.
Believe then, that you are a being unlimited by nature, born into flesh to materialize as best you can the great joy and spontaneity of your nature.”6
The Nature of Illness
“Illness and suffering are not thrust upon you by God, or by All That Is, or by an outside agency.
They are by-products of the learning process, created by you in themselves quite neutral.
On the other hand, your existence itself, the reality and nature of your planet, the whole existence in which you have these experiences, are also created by you.
Illness and suffering are the results of the misdirection of creative energy.
They are a part of the creative force, however.
They do not come from a different source than, say health and vitality.
Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you how to stop suffering. That is its purpose.
Illnesses usually represent un-faced problems, in your terms, and these dilemmas embody challenges meant to lead you to greater achievement and fulfillment.
An illness of a severe nature may be used by an individual to put him or her into the most intimate contact with the powers of life and death, to initiate a crisis in order to mobilize buried survival instincts, to vividly portray great points of contrast and summon all of his or her strength.”7
Illness & Suffering – A Religious View
“For many centuries the structure of the Roman Catholic church held [Western] civilization together, and gave it its meanings and its precepts.
The church’s view of reality was the accepted one.
The world’s view was a religious one, specified by the church, and its word was truth and fact at the same time.
Illness was suffered; was sent by God to purge the soul, to cleanse the body, to punish the sinner, or simply to teach man his place by keeping him from the sins of pride.
Suffering sent by God was considered a fact of life, then, and a religious truth as well.
Some other civilizations have believed that illness was sent by demons or evil spirits, and that the world was full of good and bad spirits, invisible, intermixed with the elements of nature itself, and that man had to walk a careful line lest he upset the more dangerous or mischievous of those entities.
In times past in particular, though the custom is not dead, men purged themselves, wore ashes and beat themselves with chains, or went hungry or otherwise deprived themselves.
Some sects have believed that spiritual understanding came as the result of bodily agony, and their self-inflicted pain became their versions of pleasure.
They suffered, in other words, for religion’s sake.
It was not just that they believed suffering was good for the soul—a statement which can or cannot be true—but they understood something else: The body will only take so much suffering when it releases consciousness.
So they hoped to achieve religious ecstasy.
Religious ecstasy does not need physical suffering as a stimulus, and such a means in the overall will work against religious understanding.”8
Illness & Suffering – A Scientific View
“The entire scientific view of illness is quite as distorted.
It is as laboriously conceived and inter-wound with “nonsense.”
It is about as factual as the “fact” that God sends illness as punishment, or that illness is the unwanted gift of mischievous demons.
Ideas are transmitted from generation to generation—and those ideas are the carriers of all of your reality, its joys and its agonies.
Science however is, all-in-all, a poor healer.
The church’s concepts at least gave suffering a kind of dignity: It did come from God—an unwelcome gift, perhaps—but after all it was punishment handed out from a firm father for a child’s own good.
Science disconnected fact from religious truth, of course.
In a universe formed by chance, with the survival of the fittest as the main rule of good behavior, illness became a kind of crime against a species itself.
It meant you were unfit, and hence brought about all kinds of questions not seriously asked before.
The “new” Freudian ideas of the unsavory unconscious led further to a new dilemma, for it was then—as it is now— widely believed that as the result of experiences in infancy the subconscious or unconscious might very well sabotage the best interests of the conscious personality and trick it into illness and disaster.
In a way that concept puts a psychological devil in place of the metaphysical one.
If life itself is seen scientifically as having no real meaning, then suffering, of course, must also be seen as meaningless.
In a species geared above all to the survival of the fittest, and the competition among species, then any touch of suffering or pain, or thoughts of death, become dishonorable, biologically shameful, cowardly, or nearly insane.
Life is to be pursued at all costs—not because it is innately meaningful, but because it is the only game going, and it is a game of chance at best.
In that framework, even the emotions of love and exaltation are seen as no more than the erratic activity of neurons firing, or of chemicals reacting to chemicals.
Those beliefs alone bring on suffering.
All of science, in your time, has been set up to promote beliefs that run in direct contradiction to the knowledge of man’s heart.
Science has denied emotional truth.
It is not simply that science denies the validity of emotional experience, but that it has believed so firmly that knowledge can only be acquired from the outside, from observing the exterior of nature.
Science, however, seeing the body as a mechanism, has promoted the idea that consciousness is trapped within a mechanical model, that man’s suffering is mechanically caused in that regard: You simply give the machine some better parts and all will be well.”9
Using Illness for Constructive Purposes
“In the overall development of an individual, an illness may also be used as a method to achieve another, constructive end.
In such a case belief would also be involved.
Such a person would have to believe that an unhealthy condition was the best way to serve another purpose.
Other means would seem closed to him because of various personal beliefs that would form a vacuum in his experience – that is, he would see no other way to achieve the same end.”10
Using Illness to Provide an Acceptable Reason for Death
“To some degree, epidemics and recognized illnesses serve the sociological purpose of providing an acceptable reason for death — a face-saving device for those who have already decided to die.
This does not mean that such individuals make a conscious decision to die, in your terms: But such decisions are often semiconscious.
It might be that those individuals feel they have fulfilled their purposes (or maybe that they have nothing more to life for) — but such decisions may also be built upon a different kind of desire for survival than those understood in Darwinian terms.”11
Illness as the Body’s Defense System at Work
“The body must now and then “flush its systems out,” run through its repertoire, raise its temperature, and activate its hormonal actions more strongly.
In such ways it keeps its system of immunities clear.
That system operates always. To some extent, it is a way that the body distinguishes between self and non-self.
If one portion of your own body is injured, then other portions feel the effects of the wound.
An earthquake can be a disaster in the area where it occurs, even though its existence corrects imbalances, and therefore promotes the life of the planet.
Emergency actions are quite rigorous in the immediate area of an earthquake, and aid is sent in from other countries.
When an area of the body “erupts,” there are also emergency measures taken locally, and aid sent from other portions of the body to afflicted parts.
The physical eruption, while it may appear to be a disaster in the area of the disease, is also, however, a part of the body’s defense system, taken to insure the whole balance of the body.
Biologically, illness therefore represents the overall body defense system at work.
I am trying to put this simply — but without some illnesses, the body could not endure.
First of all, the body must be in a state of constant change, making decisions far too fast for you to follow, adjusting hormonal levels, maintaining balances between all of its systems; not only in relationship to itself — the body — but to an environment that is also in constant change.
At biological levels the body often produces its own ‘preventative medicine’, or ‘inoculations,’ by seeking out, for example, new or foreign substances in its environment [that are] due to nature, science or technology; it assimilates such properties in small doses, coming down with an ‘illness’ which, left alone, would soon vanish as the body utilized what it could [of it], or socialized ‘a seeming invader.’
The person might feel indisposed, but in such ways the body assimilates and uses properties that would otherwise be called alien ones.
It immunizes itself through such [natural] methods.”12
Illness as a Social Excuse for Rest
“People’s thoughts and emotions always give clear clues whenever illness is involved, yet most people ignore such information.
They censor their own thoughts.
Many therefore “fall prey” to epidemics of one kind or another because they want to, though they might deny this quite vigorously.
I am speaking particularly of epidemics that are less than deadly, though danger is involved.
In your times, hospitals, you must realize, are important parts of the community.
They provide a social as well as a medical service.
Many people are simply lonely, or overworked.
Some are rebelling against commonly held ideas of competition.
Flu epidemics become social excuses for much needed rest, therefore, and serve as face-saving devices so that the individuals can hide from themselves their inner difficulties.
In a way, such epidemics provide their own kind of fellowship — giving common meeting grounds for those of disparate circumstances.
The [epidemics] serve as accepted states of illness, in which people are given an excuse for the rest or quiet self-examination they desperately need but do not feel entitled to otherwise.
I do not mean to assign any hint of accusation against those so involved, but mainly to state some of the reasons for such behavior.”13
Children & Illness
“The child is innately honest. When he gets sick he intuitively knows the reason why, and he knows quite well that he brought about the illness.
Parents and physicians believe, instead, that the child is a victim, ill for no personal reason, but indisposed because of elements attacking him — either the outside environment, or [something] working against him from within.
The child may be told: “You have a cold because you got your feet wet.” Or: “You caught the cold from Johnny or Sally.”
He may be told that he has a virus, so that it seems his body itself was invaded despite his will.
He learns that such beliefs are acceptable.
It is easier to go along than to be honest, particularly when honesty would often involve a kind of communication his parents might frown upon, or the expression of emotions that are quite unacceptable.
Mother’s little man or brave little girl can then stay at home, for example, courageously bearing up under an illness, with his or her behavior condoned.
The child may know that the illness is the result of feelings that the parents would consider quite cowardly, or otherwise involves emotional realities that the parents simply would not understand.
Gradually it becomes easier for the child to accept the parents’ assessment of the situation.
Little by little the fine relationship, the precise connections between psychological feelings and bodily reality, erode.
I do not want to oversimplify.
The child who gets the mumps with a large number of his classmates, however, knows he has his private reasons for joining into such a mass biological reality, and usually the adult who “falls prey” to a flu epidemic has little conscious awareness of his own reasons for such a situation.
He does not understand the mass suggestions involved, or his own reasons for accepting them.
He is usually convinced instead that his body has been invaded by a virus despite his own personal approval or disapproval.
He is therefore a victim, and his sense of personal power is eroded.
When a person recovers from such an ordeal, he [or she] usually grants his recovery to be the result of the medication he has been given.
Or he may think that he was simply lucky — but he does not grant himself to have any real power in such an affair.
The recovery seems to occur to him, as the illness seemed to happen to him.
Usually the patient cannot see that he brought about his own recovery, and was responsible for it, because he cannot admit that his own intents were responsible for his own illness.
He cannot learn from his own experience, then, and each bout of illness will appear largely incomprehensible.”14
Fear of Disease & the Mind-Body Connection
“The body exists with the mind to contend with — and the mind produces an inner environment of concepts.
The cells that compose the body do not try to make sense of the cultural world.
They rely upon your interpretation for the existence of threats of a non-biological nature.
They depend upon your assessment.
If that assessment correlates with biological ones, you have a good working relationship with the body.
It can react swiftly and clearly.
When you sense threat or danger for which the body can find no biological correlation, even as through cellular communication it scans the environment physically, then it must rely upon your assessment and react to danger conditions.
The body will, therefore, react to imagined dangers to some degree, as well as to those that are biologically pertinent.
Its defense system often becomes overexerted as a result.
The overall sense of health, vitality, and resiliency is a generalized condition of contentment — brought about, however, by multitudinous specific responses.
Left alone, the body can defend itself against any disease, but it cannot defend itself appropriately against an exaggerated general fear of disease on the individual’s part.
It must mirror your own feelings and assessments.
Usually, now, your entire medical systems literally generate as much disease as is cured — for you are everywhere hounded by the symptoms of various diseases, and filled with the fear of disease, overwhelmed by what seems to be the body’s propensity toward illness — and nowhere is the body’s vitality or natural defense system stressed.”15
- Roberts, Jane, The Nature of Personal Reality, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1974
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- Roberts, Jane, Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1986
- ibid.
- Roberts, Jane, The Nature of Personal Reality, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1974
- Roberts, Jane, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1981
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
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