“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You are paying in advance for illness that you are certain will come your way. You are making all preparations in the present for a future of illness. You are betting upon disease and not health. This is the worst kind of natural hypnosis, and yet within your system insurance is indeed a necessity, because the belief in illness so pervades your mental atmosphere.

Many become ill only after taking out such “insurance” — and for those, the act itself symbolically represents an acceptance of disease. Even more unfortunate are the special policies for the elderly that detail in advance all of the most stereotyped and distorted concepts about health and age. There is a great correlation between the kind of policies that people take out, and the illnesses that they then fall prey to.

One is the cancer drive literature, and television “public service” announcements, in which the seven danger signals of cancer are given. Unfortunately, again, within the framework of your beliefs this also becomes almost a necessity for many — especially for those who, because of previous experience of one kind or another with the disease, are almost irrational in their fear of it. The literature and announcements act as strong negative suggestions, following the nature of natural hypnosis — as a conditioning process, you see, where you are looking for specific symptoms, and examining your body under the impetus of fear.

This does not mean that those individuals might not come down with another disease instead, but it does mean that the belief in disease is patterned and focused to particular symptoms by such methods. No wonder you need health insurance! Illness is not a foreign agency thrust upon you, but as long as you believe that it is, then you will accept it as such. You will also feel powerless to combat it.

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.

A belief in health can help you utilize a “poor” diet to an amazing degree. If you are convinced that a specific food will give you a particular disease, it will indeed do so. 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.

(And: “A chapter on a person’s ‘Effective Personal Reality’ — about the private purposes in one’s life, and the bounds of creaturehood as set by your body; what you choose to be born with as far as health, disease, poverty or wealth, ability, etc., are concerned.”