Ch. 15 Psychosomatic Synergy (5/11-5/17)
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Each member of the study group had a particular gloss or reality-tunnel imposed in childhood. Discuss your parents' gloss and to what degree this still determines the universe you perceive.
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Play-act that your group have all grown up in a Moslem nation. Discuss how that would influence your reception of the ideas in this chapter.
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Try the same exercise with the group play-acting a class of engineers in a Moscow university.
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I have to say... I didn't like this chapter as much, there was just too much emphasis on curing cancer through the mind which strikes me as irresponsible and kind of grifty. But, the exercise is very interesting... I think we do a lot of that particularly practice in initiatory work, uncovering the way in which our mind is a lens that either distorts our magnifies certain aspects of our environment.
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I have to say... I didn't like this chapter as much, there was just too much emphasis on curing cancer through the mind which strikes me as irresponsible and kind of grifty. But, the exercise is very interesting... I think we do a lot of that particularly practice in initiatory work, uncovering the way in which our mind is a lens that either distorts our magnifies certain aspects of our environment.
@Hannah I agree.
My response to reading this chapter (having read it before) was that it has not aged well. I wasn't sure how to say that without coming off somewhat disparaging, so I'm glad I wasn't the only one who felt that.
The first time I read this chapter, I found it somewhat interesting, though mildly conspiratorial.
I think RAW wrote this chapter to really attack the atheist materialist view of medicine, which seems to neglect the role that psychology plays in healing. While revolutionary at the time, walk into any Whole Foods now and you'll be met with a store full of people who claim, "Mind over matter!" that forsake Western Medicine altogether.
While it would be nice to know that faith-healing works, the method does not replicate results as readily as we would like. So I found myself feeling similarly, that this chapter can justify a certain class of delusions and superstitions if taken at face value.
That being said, when I read this chapter the first time, I did not expect RAW to write anything in favor of Faith Healing (since the rest of his writing seems relatively rational and faith-healing seems largely non-rational). It really forced me to analyze some of the projections I was putting on RAW (specifically my positive projections I was placing on him).
I heard a podcast once that a guest said he asked RAW about faith healing (and Timothy Leary's Starseed doctrine) near the end of RAW's life. RAW supposedly said he didn't believe those ideas much anymore, but he was glad to keep his writings about them out in the world. He felt there was value in letting people see where he went wrong and how his ideas changed throughout the course of his life. I am reminded that RAW said, "I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions."
Or in the words of Michael Scott, "I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious."
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@Hannah I agree.
My response to reading this chapter (having read it before) was that it has not aged well. I wasn't sure how to say that without coming off somewhat disparaging, so I'm glad I wasn't the only one who felt that.
The first time I read this chapter, I found it somewhat interesting, though mildly conspiratorial.
I think RAW wrote this chapter to really attack the atheist materialist view of medicine, which seems to neglect the role that psychology plays in healing. While revolutionary at the time, walk into any Whole Foods now and you'll be met with a store full of people who claim, "Mind over matter!" that forsake Western Medicine altogether.
While it would be nice to know that faith-healing works, the method does not replicate results as readily as we would like. So I found myself feeling similarly, that this chapter can justify a certain class of delusions and superstitions if taken at face value.
That being said, when I read this chapter the first time, I did not expect RAW to write anything in favor of Faith Healing (since the rest of his writing seems relatively rational and faith-healing seems largely non-rational). It really forced me to analyze some of the projections I was putting on RAW (specifically my positive projections I was placing on him).
I heard a podcast once that a guest said he asked RAW about faith healing (and Timothy Leary's Starseed doctrine) near the end of RAW's life. RAW supposedly said he didn't believe those ideas much anymore, but he was glad to keep his writings about them out in the world. He felt there was value in letting people see where he went wrong and how his ideas changed throughout the course of his life. I am reminded that RAW said, "I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions."
Or in the words of Michael Scott, "I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious."
@jjones I think post-COVID, stuff like faith healing is so much more emotionally-charged and extreme. It is difficult because I think there is a continuum where the mind does have a very powerful role to play in the health of our body, but sometimes healthy minds have failing bodies, and they are not responsible for that sick body... nature just works in mysterious ways.
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@jjones I think post-COVID, stuff like faith healing is so much more emotionally-charged and extreme. It is difficult because I think there is a continuum where the mind does have a very powerful role to play in the health of our body, but sometimes healthy minds have failing bodies, and they are not responsible for that sick body... nature just works in mysterious ways.
@Hannah I am reminded of something a friend told me he got from his teacher at a Zen center.
"When we are sick, the body is innocent."
My friend explained that this aphorism points to the fact that we get sick and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no, "I should've done this..." or "I should've done that...", and that it's useless to be upset at the body for being ill.
I think the aphorism might be one of the best attitudes to have towards things of this nature, since often times what faith healing actually causes is relaxation, the most important physical state for healing. Even still, it doesn't change the fact that faith healing is hard to replicate over the span of many trials, and that sometimes we just genuinely need Western Medicine.
I am probably preaching to the choir
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@Hannah I am reminded of something a friend told me he got from his teacher at a Zen center.
"When we are sick, the body is innocent."
My friend explained that this aphorism points to the fact that we get sick and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no, "I should've done this..." or "I should've done that...", and that it's useless to be upset at the body for being ill.
I think the aphorism might be one of the best attitudes to have towards things of this nature, since often times what faith healing actually causes is relaxation, the most important physical state for healing. Even still, it doesn't change the fact that faith healing is hard to replicate over the span of many trials, and that sometimes we just genuinely need Western Medicine.
I am probably preaching to the choir
@jjones I love that!!! I think there is a lot of stigma directed towards people who are sick, even towards people who have experienced intense deaths like sudden and traumatic circumstances, which points towards an elementary belief of punishment vs. reward. But this is just not the case.
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@jjones I love that!!! I think there is a lot of stigma directed towards people who are sick, even towards people who have experienced intense deaths like sudden and traumatic circumstances, which points towards an elementary belief of punishment vs. reward. But this is just not the case.
@Hannah Agreed.
There's all kinds of Nephesh stuff that goes along with that.
A lot of people seem to operate that they are somehow contaminated or sinful for being sick and/or being around sick people. I had a family member once remark that I was somehow undermining myself by helping friends that have chronic illnesses and/or disabilities. I think this family member thought that I could do more in life if I was around healthy, able bodied people, but it was misguided on this particular person's part haha
Very rarely does punishment cause the desired outcome. One of the best examples I ever received in my Psychology classes was the child who breaks something. Almost every child has broken a precious vase or some other object, usually by accident. In terms of conditioning, unless you immediately punish the child right after the vase broke, punishment fails to communicate a lesson because it does not get associated with the incident. Generally, the child will wait for a moment, then tell the parent what happened. When the parent punishes the child after the child told the truth, it simply trains the child to lie next time. Too much time passed between the actual incident and the child alerting an adult for the punishment to link to the behavior that caused the incident. Instead, the child learns that sometimes when they tell the truth they will get punished for it.
Adults would like to think that the child has the conscious awareness to distinguish what is actually being punished, but the subconscious, not the conscious mind, keeps the score. So the subconscious records the act of telling the truth about what happened as the event being punished because the subconscious has moved on from the initial state that caused the incident and the punishment occurs seemingly in response to telling the truth. The better course of action would be the recognize that the broken vase was not intentional and to remind the child to be more careful next time.
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