We will continue our discussion of the medical industry in this article before we move onto the topics of healing, natural therapy, catalyst, balancing, love, forgiveness and service.
Prevention & Inoculations
“Preventative medicine and outlandish expenditures for preventative defense are quite similar.
In each case there is the anticipation of disaster — in one case from the familiar body, which can be attacked by deadly diseases at any time, and is seemingly at least without defenses; and in the other case from the danger without: exaggerated, ever-threatening, and ever to be contended with.
Disease must be combated, fought against, assaulted, wiped out.
In many ways the body becomes almost like an alien battleground, for many people trust it so little that it becomes highly suspect.
Man then seems pitted against nature.
Some people think of themselves as patients, as others, for example, might think of themselves as students.
The idea of prevention is always based upon fear — for you do not want to prevent something that is joyful.
Often, therefore, preventative medicine causes what it hopes to avoid.
Not only does the idea [of prevention] continually promote the entire system of fear, but specific steps taken to prevent a disease in a body not already stricken, again, often set up reactions that bring about side effects that would occur if the disease had in fact been suffered.
A specific disease will of course have its effects on other portions of the body as well, [effects] which have not been studied, or even known.
Such inoculations, therefore, cannot take that into consideration.
There are also cases where alterations occur after inoculation, so that for a while people actually become carriers of diseases, and can infect others.
There are individuals who very rarely get ill whether or not they are inoculated, and who are not sensitive in the health area.
I am not implying, therefore, that all people react negatively to inoculations.
In the most basic of terms, however, inoculations do no good, either, though I am aware that medical history would seem to contradict me.
At certain times, and most particularly at the birth of medical science in modern times, the belief in inoculation, if not by the populace then by the doctors, did possess the great strength of new suggestion and hope — but I am afraid that scientific medicine has caused as many new diseases as it has cured.
When it saves lives, it does so because of the intuitive healing understanding of the physician, or because the patient is so impressed by the great efforts taken in his behalf, and therefore is convinced second-handedly of his own worth.”1
Inoculations & Epidemics
“When you consider epidemics to be the result of viruses, and emphasize their biological stances, then it seems that the solutions are very obvious: You learn the nature of each virus and develop an inoculation, giving [each member of] the populace a small dose of the disease so that a man’s own body will combat it, and he will become immune.
The shortsightedness of such procedures is generally overlooked because of the definite short-term advantages.
As a rule, for example, people inoculated against polio do not develop that disease.
Using such procedures, tuberculosis has been largely conquered.
There are great insidious variables operating, however, and these are caused precisely by the small framework in which such mass epidemics are considered.
In the first place, the causes are not biological. Biology is simply the carrier of a “deadly intent.”
In the second place, there is a difference between a virus produced in the laboratory and that inhabiting the body — a difference recognized by the body but not by your laboratory instruments.
In a way the body produces antibodies, and sets up natural immunization as a result of, say, inoculation.
But the body’s chemistry is also confused, for it “knows” it is reacting to a disease that is not “a true disease,” but a biologically counterfeit intrusion.
To that extent — and I do not mean to overstate the case — the body’s biological integrity is contaminated.
It may at the same time produce antibodies also, for example, to other “similar” diseases, and so overextend its defenses that the individual later comes down with another disease.
Now, no person becomes ill unless that illness serves a psychic or psychological reason, so many people escape such complications.
In the meantime, however, scientists and medical men find more and more viruses against which the population “must” be inoculated.
Each one is considered singly.
There is a rush to develop a new inoculation against the newest virus.
Much of this is on a predictive basis: The scientists “predict” how many people might be “attacked” by, say, a virus that has caused a given number of deaths.
Then as a preventative measure the populace is invited to the new inoculation.
Many people who would not get the disease in any case are then religiously inoculated with it.
The body is exerted to use its immune system to the utmost, and sometimes, according to the inoculation, overextended [under such] conditions.
Those individuals who have psychologically decided upon death will die in any case, of that disease or another, or of the side effects of the inoculation.
In your society scientific medical beliefs operate, and a kind of preventative medicine [of inoculation] is taken, bringing about in healthy individuals a minute disease condition that then gives immunity against a more massive visitation.
In the case of any given disease this procedure might work quite well for those who believe in it.
It is, however, the belief, and not the procedure, that works.
I am not recommending that you abandon the procedure when it obviously works for so many — yet you should understand why it brings about the desired results.
Such medical technology is highly specific, however.
You cannot be inoculated with the desire to live, or with the zest, delight, or contentment of the healthy animal.
If you have decided to die, protected from one disease in such a manner, you will promptly come down with another, or have an accident.
The immunization, while specifically effective, may only reinforce prior beliefs about the body’s ineffectiveness.
It may appear that left alone the body would surely develop whatever disease might be “fashionable” at the time, so that the specific victory might result in the ultimate defeat as far as your beliefs are concerned.
You have your own medical systems, however. I do not mean to undermine them, since they are undermining themselves.
Some of my statements clearly cannot be proven, in your terms, and appear almost sacrilegious.
Yet, throughout your history no man or woman has died who did not want to die, regardless of the state of medical technology.
Specific diseases have certain symbolic meanings, varying with the times and the places.”2
Modern Hospitals as Prisons for the Ill
“As I have said before, your thoughts are reality. They directly affect your body.
It seems that you are highly civilized people because you put your ill into hospitals where they can be cared for.
What you do, of course, is to isolate a group of people who are filled with negative beliefs about illness.
The contagion of beliefs spreads.
Patients are obviously in hospitals because they are ill. The sick and their doctors both work on that principle.
Women delivering children are placed in the same environment. This may seem very humane to you, and yet the entire system is structured so that childbirth does not seem to be the result of health but of illness.
Stimuli pertaining to health is effectively blocked in such organizations.
The ill are gathered together and denied all of their normal and natural conditions, including the compensating motivations that alone would sometimes be enough to restore health if given time.
This isolation would be unfortunate enough without the application of drugs meant to help, but often given without understanding.
Loved ones are permitted to visit the sick on but certain occasion, so those who wish them well in the strongest terms, who are closet to them and who love them, are efficiently prevented from exerting any natural constructive behavior.
For all practical purposes the ill are put into prison.
They are forced to concentrate upon their condition.
All of this applies quite apart from any other dehumanizing effects, such as overcrowded conditions, the denial of human privacy, and often the negation of dignity.
The individual is made to feel powerless, at the mercy of doctors or nurses who often do not have the time or energy to be personable, or to explain his (or her) condition in terms that he can understand.
The patient is therefore forced to transfer his own sense of power to others, which further deepens his misery; this in turn reinforces the sense of powerlessness that initiated his condition.
Furthermore, the natural elements of sun, air, and earth are refused him.
The stability of familiarity is withdrawn.
Now with your set of beliefs you are indeed more or less obligated to go to hospitals in severe conditions.
I am not saying here that many doctors and nurses do not try their best to promote healing, and certainly healings occur – but they do so despite the system and not because of it.
In many cases the belief of a doctor in a person who is ill revives him and re-arouses his own belief in himself.
The patient’s confidence in the doctor will then reinforce the entire medical procedure, and he may then be filled with faith in his recovery.
But as there are natural healing processes within animals, so there are in your race.
In your hospitals you take your patients out of their natural environment, and often deny them the comforts of creaturehood.
There is little emotional involvement.
The senile, in their efforts to run away from their closeted rooms in sanitariums, often show far greater sanity in their way than the relative or society who imprisoned them.
For they intuitively recognize the need to be free, and they sense the lack of the mystic communion with the earth that has been denied them.
Small hospitals on spacious grounds, with freedom for all but the bedridden to use their bodies, would far surpass what you have.
But in your system as it is set up, such an environment is impossible except for the most wealthy.”3
Pharmaceutical Drugs
“The body knows how to handle “natural” drugs coming directly from the earth – whether ground or boiled, minced or steamed.
A large variety of “manufactured” drugs offer an unfamiliarity to the body’s innate structure, which can lead to strong defense mechanisms.
These are often aimed directly against the drug instead of the disease itself.
Such a situation means that you must then use another drug to counteract the one just given.
I am not suggesting that you not visit doctors or not take drugs of that nature, as long as you believe in the structure of medical discipline that the Western world has evolved.
Your bodies have been conditioned to it through the use of such medications since birth.
There are many casualties, but this is still a system that you have chosen, and your ideas still form your reality.”4
Food & Belief Systems
“The less contaminated your food the better off you are, but not if you believe that the body in its wisdom cannot handle the ordinary foods with which you are provided.
If you believe that the chemicals in certain foods will harm you drastically and bring about disastrous consequences, then even small doses of these can do you harm.
More and more foods, drugs, and natural environmental conditions are being added to the list of disease-causing elements.
Different reports place dairy products, red meats, coffee, tea, eggs, and fats on the list.
Generations before you managed to subsist on many such foods, and they were in fact promoted as additive to health.
Indeed, man almost seems to be allergic to his own natural environment, a prey to the weather itself.
It is true that your food contains chemicals it did not in years past.
Yet within reason man is biologically capable of assimilating such materials, and using them to his advantage.
When man feels powerless, however, and in a state of generalized fear; he can even turn the most natural earthly ingredients against himself.
Generally speaking those who advocate health foods or natural foods subscribe to some of the same overall beliefs held by your physicians.
They believe that diseases are the result of exterior conditions.
Quite simply, their policy can be read: “You are what you eat.”
Some in this group also subscribe to philosophical ideas that somewhat moderate those concepts, recognizing the importance of the mind.
Often though, some strong suggestions of a very negative character are given, so that all foods except certain accepted ones are seen as bad for the body, and the cause of diseases.
People become afraid of the food they eat, and the field of eating then becomes the arena.
Moral values become attached to food, with some seen as good and some as bad.
Symptoms appear, and are quite directly considered to be the natural result of ingesting foods on the forbidden list.
In this system, at least, the body is not insulted with a bewildering assortment of drugs for therapy.
It may, however, be starved of very needed nourishment.
Beyond that the whole problem of health and illness becomes simplistically applied, and here food is scrutinized.
You are what you think, not what you eat – and to a large extent what you think about what you eat is far more important.
What you think about your body, health, and illness will determine how your food is used, and how your chemistry handles fats, for instance, or carbohydrates.
Your attitudes in preparing meals are highly important.
Physically, it is true, but again generally speaking, that your body needs certain nourishment.
But within that pattern there is great leeway, and the organism itself has the amazing capacity to make use of substitutes and alternatives.
The best diet in the world, by anyone’s standards, will not keep you healthy if you have a belief in illness.
If you are convinced that a specific food will give you a particular disease, it will indeed do so.
A belief in health can help you utilize a “poor” diet to an amazing degree.”5
Vitamins
“It appears that certain vitamins will prevent certain diseases.
The belief itself works while you are operating within that framework, of course.
A Western doctor may give vitamin shots or pills to a native child in another culture.
The child need not know what particular vitamin is being given, or the name for his disease, but if he believes in the physician and Western medicine he will indeed improve, and he will need the vitamins from then on. So will all the other children.
Again, I am not saying, “Do not give vitamins to children,” for within your framework this becomes nearly mandatory.
You will find more vitamins to treat more diseases.
As long as the system works it will be accepted – but the trouble is that it is not working very well.
If you are feeling poorly and happen to read an advertisement for vitamins, or a book about them, and are impressed, you will indeed benefit – at least for a while.
Your belief will make them work for you, but your insistence upon poor health persists, then the counter suggestion represented by the vitamins will not be effective for long.
One more note on vitamins: They are most effectively used for periods of two or three weeks, where they act as stimuli and reminders to the body.
Then drop their use for two or three weeks, so that the body then produces by itself those elements you have reminded it you want.
Any steady use of vitamins is not to your overall benefit, for you give the body what it needs too easily, and its ability to produce such material on its own becomes sluggish.”6
Free the Intellect from Hampering Medical Beliefs
“The body naturally heals itself.
The boundaries set are your own.
Instead of taking an aspirin for a headache, sit down, breathe quietly, and remind yourself that you are an integral part of the universe.
Allow yourself to feel a sense of belonging with nature.
Such an exercise can often relieve a headache in no time.
But each such experience will allow you to build up a sense of trust in your own body’s processes.
Examine the literature that you read, the television programs that you watch, and tell yourself to ignore those indications given of the body’s weaknesses.
Tell yourself to ignore literature or programs that speak authoritatively about the species’ “killer instincts.”
Make an effort to free your intellect of such hampering beliefs.
Take a chance on your own abilities.
If you learn to trust your basic integrity as a person, then you will be able to assess your abilities clearly, neither exaggerating them nor under-assessing them.”7
- Roberts, Jane, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1981
- ibid.
- Roberts, Jane, The Nature of Personal Reality, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1974
- ibid.
- ibid.
- Roberts, Jane, Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1986
- Roberts, Jane, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1981
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