“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Here posthypnotic suggestion operates as well as constant daily “conditioning.” Now: For an example, take a woman who feels compelled to wash her hands twenty or thirty times a day. It is easy to recognize the fact that such repeated behavior is compulsive. But when a man’s ulcers bother him every time he eats certain foods, it is more difficult to perceive the fact that this behavior is also compulsive and repetitive.

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.

He fully believes he will become ill if he eats the forbidden foods, and so he does. It never occurs to him to dispense with the belief — to realize that it alone sets up the conditioning process through the operation of self-hypnotism.

(Pause, in another fast delivery.) Let us take another example, a very simple one. You are overweight. It is a physical fact. It grieves you, but you believe it completely. You begin a round of diets, all based on the idea that you are overweight because you eat too much. Instead, you eat too much because you believe that you are overweight. The physical picture always fits because your belief in being overweight conditions your body to behave in just such a manner.

The same applies if you are underweight, of course. You can eat a great deal for a while and only gain a few pounds, or find all kinds of excuses for not eating. You can be served the richest diet, yet gain no weight. You are not underweight because you do not eat enough food, or utilize it properly. Instead, you do not eat enough because you believe that you are underweight.

(“The same applies to underweight conditions. In each case frequent attention to the scales serves as another negative stimulus, reinforcing the condition. The effort to eat more will be as resisted by the chronically underweight, as the effort to refrain from eating will be by the obese. Not only will these reactions occur, but opposing tendencies will be brought to bear. The concentration upon not eating, and the resulting tension, may instead cause increased consumption. And the underweight person may actually eat less the harder he or she tries to eat more — the latter being interpreted as an impossibility by the overriding belief in the underweight condition.