Ch. 17 Taking the Mystery Out of "Miracles" (5/25-5/31)

Hannah

Buy one of the hypno-tapes on how to build self-confidence and increase self-healing now widely advertised. (I especially recommend those available from Acoustic Brain Research, 640 Ocean View Drive, Friday Harbor, WA 98250, U.S.A.) Play this tape at every weekly group meeting. Observe any changes in the behavior and/or the general health of the members of the group.
Rewrite the following sentences in E-Prime:

A. Dr. Reich was a quack.
B. Sister Kenny was a quack.
C. "Everybody is a bit queer except me and thee, and sometimes I wonder about thee."
D. Cancer is caused by worry and depression.
E. Cancer is caused by a virus.
F. The cause of schizophrenia is sexual repression.
G. Schizophrenia is caused by genetic predisposition.
H. She is a Catholic, so therefore she is against abortion.
J. "Evolution is no longer a theory; it is a proven fact."
(Variations on this came forth from several biologists during recent controversies with Bible Fundamentalists.)
K. "The whole New Age is Satanic." (Rev. Pat Robertson)
L. "Reality is whatever you think it is."
M. "Nothing is. Nothing becomes. Nothing is not." (Aleister Crowley, Book of Lies (falsely so called)
N. "Bob is. Bob becomes. Bob is not. Therefore, Bob is nothing." (Ivan Stang, Book of the Sub-Genius.)

Rewrite the following questions in E-Prime.

A. Are all diseases psychosomatic?
B. Are some UFOs really alien spaceships?
C. What is Justice?
D. What is Art?
E. What is the cause of poverty?
F. What is the cause of war?
G. Why are there so many homeless people in this rich country?
H. "It's pretty, but is it Art?" (Kipling)

Hannah

Hmmm this chapter I am not into either... I think there is a really delicate line between exploring how powerful the mind is to the body and blaming people's state-of-mind for their unfortunate circumstances. The mind is so powerful but we also live in a world with physical laws and institutional systems producing disease and so forth. I think RAW loses his way in this chapter.

zeph

I have not read this chapter, so I risk talking out of my ass, but:

I would say that while one cannot entirely blame their mind for their circumstances, it is the mind, and personality generally, that makes the biggest difference between “fortunate”, “unfortunate”, and something neutral that is neither of those things.

jjones

I also have some problems with this chapter.

I think that RAW has some wishful thinking about the powers of the mind in this chapter. I think I may have mentioned this in the last discussion, but it seems to me he was writing for a particularly atheistic materialistic audience with this chapter. There's quite a bit in this chapter that would really challenge someone who holds Western Medicine as infallible, but for those who take things with a grain of salt, this chapter can be a bit of a stretch. While I think there may be some truth to some of the things he mentions in this chapter, I largely found him to infer too far past the quantity of evidence he provides. That being said, RAW suffered from polio as a child (which I seem to remember him bringing up in past chapters), so that experience probably led him to attribute a lot of weight to the psychosomatic ideas he brings up in this chapter.

It occurs to me that we are lucky to have much more research at our disposal for these topics than when RAW wrote these couple of chapters. I am reminded that Psychology in the 70s was largely Freudian, largely believed to be BS by the masses, and not taken very seriously by the "hard" sciences. If I am remembering correctly, it wasn't until the turn of the century that Psychology made a lot of headway (pun intended).

Clearly, this chapter has simply not aged well

Hannah

@zeph that is fair but.. viewing one's circumstance as "fortunate" as in the case of a debilitating chronic disease does not make the disease magically disappear. And because the disease doesn't disappear, doesn't mean that person hasn't changed their mindset enough to return to health.

People under oppression of body, mind, and society, can choose to grow stronger as a result of their experience, but just because they are experiencing misfortune (in the objective case of literal oppression) does not mean they are responsible for it in their mind. I personally have a gripe about this interpretation that a lot of religions have that misfortune=punishment.