“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause at 9:42.) That is why belief systems are so important in dealing with health and illness. Each of the systems uses paraphernalia — gestures, medicine, treatment — that are the exterior manifestations of beliefs shared by healer and patient alike.

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.

Let us return to the example of a gentleman who has ulcers. He believes implicitly that certain foods cause his stomach to behave in a particular manner. There is a medicine, however, that will stop his pain. As long as it is effective, the medicine further convinces him that his stomach difficulty can only be relieved in this fashion.

It becomes a counter suggestion, yet it is all a part of the same hypnotic process, based upon his belief in his original illness. While it gives temporary results, the fact that he needs it reinforces his dependency upon it. If his belief in his poor health continues unchecked, the medicine will no longer serve as an adequate counter measure. It would seem only good sense to refrain from the foods that bring on the condition. Yet each time this is done, the individual acquiesces more and more to the hypnotic suggestion.