FROM
TEN YEARS AGO: Health in the 21st centuryóa change in belief systems by Eli E. Lasch, Jaffa, Israel.
Reprinted with permission from Int J. Prenatal and Perinatal
Studies 1990; 2:191-193
Though I have not participated in most of the deliberations
of the 9th International Congress on Pre- and Perinatal Psychology
and Medicine, I have received the impression that its message
is that the nine months of gestation and the following birth
process play a major role in the formation of not only our bodies,
as was believed previously, but also of our psychological profile
and thus in our whole life.
What
I would like now is to use this insight as an analogy for the
recent developments in western society. I think that we all
agree that the most characteristic property of gestation and
early infancy from a psychological point of view is the total
dependence on the environment and, as far as we know, the inability
to change it. This is very similar to the situation of mankind
during most of its known history. The environment was all powerful
and all man could do was to adapt to it as best he could. This
feeling of power and helplessness had a major influence on the
development of his belief systems. He developed what is now
known as 'victim consciousness' and called for help on supernatural
agencies which he approached in a way which is very similar
to the way the infant approaches his (for him all powerful and
almost supernatural) parents-our Father that is in heaven-the
great mother.
All
of this seems to have undergone a profound transformation. Within
as short a period as 100 years man has conquered both external
and internal space. One could almost say that the gestation
and early childhood of humanity are over. Man is finally growing
up and has become independent or even the master of his environment.
The
feelings of powerlessness, the victim's consciousness however,
go on and persist and in the absence of real menaces from the
environment humanity has created for itself a new set of masters
to be subservient to-the body, society and our perception of
time-three self-created idols. While the idol called society
is (wrongly) believed to be amenable to human control, western
man believes to be totally powerless in what concerns his body
and his perception of time-hostage of something which was created
for him and of which he has no control. If we get sick we feel
that our body 'has betrayed us' and aging, which is considered
to be the influence of unrelenting time on our bodies, is considered
to be an unavoidable process. Our approach to our bodies is
similar to our approach to yet another technological device.
Somebody or something (external to us) has manufactured our
bodies for us the way we produce a TV set or a motor car (remember
the stork!). We are still caught in the age old belief system
which finds its best formulation in the Bible: ëand the Lord
God formed man from the dust of the earth.í Modern man has only
exchanged God for nature, evolution and/or pure chance. The
principle has not changed! Having been taught over the millennia
that the body is nothing but a ëmanufactured device,í over which
we have no real control, we have finally come to believe that
we can only cause it damage or at best slow its so-called ënatural
wear and tear.í
The
feelings of powerlessness, the victimís consciousness however,
go on and persist and in the absence of real menaces from the
environment humanity has created for itself a new set of masters
to be subservient toóthe body, society and our perception of
timeóthree self-created idols. While the idol called society
is (wrongly) believed to be amenable to human control, western
man believes to be totally powerless in what concerns his body
and his perception of timeóhostage of something which was created
for him and of which he has no control. If we get sick we feel
that our body ëhas betrayed usí and aging, which is considered
to be the influence of unrelenting time on our bodies, is considered
to be an unavoidable process. Our approach to our bodies is
similar to our approach to yet another technological device.
Somebody or something (external to us) has manufactured our
bodies for us the way we produce a TV set or a motor car (remember
the stork!). We are still caught in the age old belief system
which finds its best formulation in the Bible: ëand the Lord
God formed man from the dust of the earth.í Modern man has only
exchanged God for nature, evolution and/or pure chance. The
principle has not changed! Having been taught over the millennia
that the body is nothing but a ëmanufactured device,í over which
we have no real control, we have finally come to believe that
we can only cause it damage or at best slow its so-called ënatural
wear and tear.í We are certainly not able to regenerate it.
Neither are we allowed to repair it. This has always been the
function of the technician/repairman (who was called in the
past priest or shaman and nowadays physician or health practitioner).
It is to them that we take our bodies in case of mishap as if
they were broken down cars which we take to the garage. Having
received our bodies the doctor/technician will prescribe an
overhaul, a different kind of oil or petrol than the one used
previously or replace a part which has become nonfunctioning.
One often gets the feeling that many hospital physicians would
love to send the patients home and only keep their bodies! It
is only the munition industry which uses more money that this
repair work which falsely calls itself the ëhealth industryí
though it is completely disease-oriented. This belief system
also implies that the better we know and understand this machine
called the body, the better we will be able to repair it, a
postulate which in the last century seems repeatedly to have
proved itself true. Is that really the case? Has modern medicine
succeeded in healing anything apart from infectious diseases?
Are there today fewer sick people than 100 years ago? I think
we all agree that the answers to both questions are negative.
We allow ourselves to be misled by statistics and overlook the
fact that all the diseases which have been vanquished belonged
to the defeated part of our environment, that part of the environment
which has become our victim. We have only replaced one set of
diseases with another one.
Is
wear and tear and its accompanying diseases really unavoidable
or is it nothing but part of an accepted belief system? In Hebrew,
the original language of the Bible, the words for health and
for creation have a common word rootóbara. It thus seems that
as far back as 3,500 years ago the Bible wanted already to show
us that health depends on a constant recreation of ourselves.
This fits in well with the discovery of Sir Charles Dobbs who
showed that the whole of the protein in the human body is replaced
in roughly 160 days and with the findings of the Yale anatomist
Harold Burr who showed that this regeneration is regulated by
what he called life fields which seem to be controlled in their
turn by so-called thought fields. It seems therefore that the
key to regeneration and repair as well as to life as a whole
is organization based on thought processes and free will. If
the means for a constant renewal exist then wear and tear are
not an unavoidable process anymore but something which depends
on our free will. Aging and its accompanying diseases seem thus
to be caused by a slowing down of the regeneration process,
while health is identical with renewal. Both health and disease
are thus dependent on the consistency of the thought field,
or in other words on our free will, on the presence or absence
of joy and happiness and on the state of our vital energy. These
are, however, exactly the qualities which differentiate children
from adults. Our urges, emotions and especially our free will
arc considered as enemies and from childhood on we are taught
to control them, which in reality means to suppress them, using
up the psychic energy needed for the process of healingóregeneration.
So we grow older and slower until all our energy is used up.
At that moment everything stops and death ensues.
Can
we break out of this vicious circle? I believe the answer to
be positive but it all depends on a change in our belief systems.
Only after having learned to free himself from his victim consciousness,
from his feeling of helplessness, will man finally be able to
heal himself: after having learned to accept his emotions and
his free will, after having finally understood that it is not
the passage of time per se which is causing aging but the misuse
of our vital energy over time. How can that be achieved? By
realizing that these feelings have been imprinted on our psyche
during humanityís long period of gestation and have now become
totally inappropriate. By freeing ourselves from our preconceived
ideas which hold us in bondage. It is again the Bible which
shows us the way by the example of the man Moses. After having
left Egypt behind him he finds himself in the ëdesert of the
swordíóHorevówhere he meets with the burning bush, a vision
which was contrary to all he had experienced previously. It
was however not the bush which was not consumed but Moses who
entered a state which we call today an altered state of consciousness.
For Moses time had stoppedóor did he step out of time? Could
it be that at that moment Moses realized that natural processes
and the passage of time are but coincidental and dependent on
our perception. That the reality we are used to is not the only
one there is? We may never know the answer but the Bible shows
us very clearly that from that day until his ëdeath,í which
by itself is unclear, Moses did not grow older or, in Biblical
language, ëHis eyes did not dim and his water did not desert
him.í
Correspondence
to:
Dr. med. Eli E. Lasch, Derrfflinger Str 14, D-10785 Berlin,
Germany.
Neuroendocrinology
Letters incl Psychoneuroendocrinology, Chronobiology:
A peer-reviewed transdisciplinary Journal covering neuroendocrinology,
psyhoneuroimmunology and chronobiology. Publishing research
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research and clinical research.
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