“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I would state furthermore that indeed Ruburt did have occasion to be angry at the chiropractor, since with an emotional fear unthinking suggestions such as his, made with only the flimsiest of evidence, can be most harmful and destructive. And in an unwary, emotionally upset personality, particularly if under stress, such a suggestion could cause a harmless and protective nodule to be changed by the strong powers of adverse expectation, or rather expectation poorly used, into the form of what is feared; as a slight but harmless irregularity of heartbeat, with the unthinking suggestion of a doctor, can become through the patient’s fears an actual functional disorder, so could suggestion turn a relatively harmless formation like Ruburt’s into an arthritic condition.

Now obviously the unthinking suggestion alone is not responsible, or would not be responsible, for such circumstances. They would have to fall upon fertile ground; and given great enough emotional and subconscious fear an individual would need no outside suggestion. But those in position within healing professions have great authority, and any suggestions that they may make for good or ill are granted almost mystical validity by those individuals who visit them.

For one thing, individuals who finally visit such offices are oftentimes already emotionally upset. Oftentimes also those in attendance, the doctors or other healers are themselves tired, prone to the patient’s emotional fears, and automatically in self-defense respond by giving voice to the patient’s subconscious dread, picking it up telepathically but feeling it is directed at themselves, on a subconscious level of course.

Despite Ruburt’s understanding, his intellectual understanding of his fear of arthritis, he was thrown into an understandable and regrettable emotional state, with which he grappled with at least some success. But you see here what under other circumstances could have been the final straw, so to speak, the word of authority that would say “Your fears are justified.” In such an instance and under certain conditions such an individual would have his deepest dreads, therefore, fastened upon him.