“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:36.) Your medical technology may help you “conquer” one disease after another — some in fact caused by that same technology — and you will feel very efficient as you do heart transplants, as you fight one virus after another. But all of this will do nothing except to allow people to die, perhaps, of other diseases still “unconquered.” People will die when they are ready to, following inner dictates and dynamics. A person ready to die will, despite any medication. (Emphatically:) A person who wants to live will seize upon the tiniest hope, and respond. The dynamics of health have nothing to do with inoculations. They reside in the consciousness of each being. In your terms they are regulated by emotions, desires, and thoughts. A true doctor cannot be scientifically objective. He cannot divorce himself from the reality of his patient. Instead, usually, the doctor’s words and very methods literally separate the patient from himself or herself. The malady is seen almost as a thing apart from the patient’s person — but thrust upon it — over which the patient has little control.³

The condition is analyzed, the blood is sampled. It becomes “a blood sample” to the doctor. The patient may silently shout out, “That is not just a blood sample — it is my blood you are taking.” But he [or she] is discouraged from identifying with the blood of his physical being, so that even his own blood seems alien.

Give us a moment … The complete physician would be a person who learned to understand the dynamics of being, the soul-body relationship — one who was healthy in his or her own body. Unhappy people cannot teach you to be happy. Sick ones cannot teach you to be well. Psychiatrists have a high suicide rate. Why do you think they can help you live happily, or add to your vitality? Physicians are not the healthiest of men by far.⁴ Why do you think they can cure you?

(With emphasis:) Now in your framework of beliefs the psychiatrists and the doctors are helpful. They know more than you do about the techniques upon which you all agree. While the society accepts these techniques, then you are to some extent dependent upon them, and you had better think twice before you let them go. But in greater, more vital issues, the sick doctor does not know as much about health as an “uneducated, untrained,” but healthy person — and I am speaking in quite practical terms. The person who is healthy understands the dynamics of health. In your framework it seems that his or her understanding can be of little practical value to you if you are, for instance, unhealthy. But a true medical profession would be, literally, a health profession. It would seek out people who were healthy and learn from them how to promote health, and not how to diagram disease.

(That “earlier session” is the 687th, in Section 1, and in it Seth mentioned parallel man, probable man, and alternate man. But actually his material therein [and part of the heading for Section 2] grew out of the discourse Jane had come through with on her own the night before the 687th session was held. See Appendix 6.

1. While discussing probabilities and his units of consciousness in the 682nd session, in Section 1, Seth told us: “The idea of one universe alone is basically nonsensical. Your reality must be seen in its relationship to others. Otherwise you are always caught in questions like ‘How did the universe begin?’ or ‘When will it end?’ All systems are constantly being created.”

3. See the 661st session in Chapter 17 of Personal Reality. In his material after 11:23 especially, Seth discusses the doctor-patient relationship, and the feelings of powerlessness that can beset the individual during times of illness.

4. Current statistics show that in the United States the suicide rate for psychiatrists, doctors, and dentists is three to four times higher than it is for the rest of the population. There’s much discussion now of the additional stresses and frustrations encountered by those in the medical disciplines, aside from personality traits or conflicts that can lead an individual to take his or her own life; the suicide of a doctor, for instance, may be triggered by his inability to fulfill the role society expects of him.