“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Of course we wondered if her taking the medication you sent had anything to do with the little finger’s response. In a very short session Seth said it was related, but didn’t go into any details, so other factors are involved. Jane said one of them was that she felt the changes in the finger take place as she lay on her left side while I changed the dressing, on her ulcer that afternoon. In the meantime, we stopped using the medication.

2. At the same time, I began using the calindula medication on the ulcer twice a day when I would change the dressing. Yesterday Jane felt very uncomfortable as she sat in her chair on the water cushion. Last night when I helped her off it onto the bed, we discovered that she had soaked the cushion under her bottom for an area eight inches or so around—something she hadn’t done before. Mixed in with this were clots of blood. The discharge from the ulcer was much greater than we’d ever noted before. Yet when I changed the dressing the ulcer itself looked okay, although perhaps a bit redder in color. It appears to me healing by filling in a bit around the edges. But again we stopped using the medication. Jane slept well last night, and this morning I noted that there hadn’t been any discharge from the ulcer overnight when I changed the dressing as usual. No more blood, for instance.

Thanks for sending up the medications. Postage is enclosed.

Here are some observations on the medications you sent for Jane’s blue finger, and the ulcer. We don’t know whether there are really any connections between them and the situations I’ll describe, and would appreciate your comments when you have time.

[...] Once again we wondered how much more of a boost her thyroid medication needed, but we haven’t heard from Dr. Kardon about it—or anything else, for that matter, since we had the meeting with Dr. Sobel last Friday, May 28. [...] Jane’s finger continues to improve, and for now at least we don’t even want to hear from any medical people. [...]

You have decided to keep the medical profession more at arm’s length, as Ruburt gains strength and vitality. The organization of life around such a medical pattern in quite unpleasant, to say the least, and so that concentration must be broken as soon as possible. [...]

[...] Jane didn’t appear to be upset by the call, though—perhaps because of what we’d learned about medical methods by now. [...]

(The whole medical bit is turning into a farce, in our view. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) With the latest developments in medical technology, there are all kinds of heart operations that can be performed, even the use of heart transplants. In many cases, even when hearts are repaired through medical technology, the same trouble reoccurs at a later date, or the patient recovers only to fall prey to a different, nearly fatal or fatal, disease. [...]

THE BROKEN-HEARTED, THE HEARTLESS,
AND MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY

[...] She’s still somewhat depressed — said she hasn’t slept as well since taking the night medication prescribed by Jeff. [...]

Chapter 4: “The Broken-Hearted, the Heartless, and Medical Technology.”

I am obviously not saying (pause) that you cut off Ruburt’s thyroid medication. I am saying that you must turn quickly away, however, from any of medical science’s ministrations that are not absolutely necessary. Surely to trust the inner self is far easier than in the long run to put your life in the uncomfortable grip of a nervous medical profession. [...]

(After tonight’s session, and echoing my own ideas of how adamant Jane was becoming about the medical scene, I said that it would be ironic indeed if her encounters with the medical establishment furnished the final great impetus she needed to divest herself of the symptoms and inflate recovery; anything to get away from the massively negative pronouncement of the doctors, to dump old ideas, to set the body free to heal itself. [...]

[...] I kept thinking that she was on her way to adopting a stance in which she would turn against medical help and/or advice if at all possible. [...]

[...] He had a lot of other ideas that are contrary to generally accepted medical belief and practice, and we wished he lived closer. [...]

[...] With the Gentamicin every eight hours, this makes seven medications Jane gets every 24 hours. [...] I had the feeling of being caught in a whirlpool of the medical profession’s making, and being drawn in deeper instead of being able to extricate oneself. [...]

[...] There was some confusion, since Judy told us it was the same medication — Gentamicin — that she’d been getting, only it was in 100 cc’s of liquid instead of 50. [...]

[...] It turned out Jane was being given a second medication without being told. [...]

It is, again, vital that you trust the body, particularity in the light of the medical profession’s suspicions of the body’s natural processes.

[...] After lunch I explained the situation about the hospital being 30 days late sending her medical records to Blue Cross in Syracuse, their denial of the major medical claim, the $10,000 I’d given the hospital on her current bill, and the payments I’d arranged on the old bill we still owed from last year—all of this just so she’d know what was going on. I also explained that I may get a copy of her medical records for our own files. [...]

[...] However, her statement prompted me to tell her that a few days before the insurance company had denied our claim for major medical benefits because they hadn’t received the hospital records, I’d waked up early one morning and lay there worrying about the possibility of a denial for perhaps an hour. [...]

[...] I was telling Jane earlier that now I wonder about some of what I wrote—stressing that Jane has arthritis, and the medical opinions about it, and so forth. [...]

[...] It should be remembered that it is the beliefs and feelings of the patients that largely determine the effectiveness of any medical procedures, techniques, or medications.

Many of the public-health announcements routinely publicize the specific symptoms of various diseases, almost as if laying out maps of diseases for medical consumers to swallow. There are many techniques apart from medically conventional ones, such as acupuncture, the laying on of hands, or the work of people who may be known as healers. [...]

The body’s own healing processes are forever active, however — which is why I so strongly advise that they be relied upon along with whatever medical help seems appropriate. [...]

[...] Now these medical beliefs are intertwined with your economic and cultural structures, so you cannot lay the blame upon medical men or their profession alone. [...] Many dedicated doctors use medical technology with spiritual understanding, and they are themselves the victims of the beliefs they hold.

[...] Nowhere do any medically-oriented commercial or public service announcements mention the body’s natural defenses, its integrity, vitality, or strength. [...] Medical statistics deal with the diseased. [...]

[...] The first is that other agencies and individuals in the medical and psychological fields are conducting studies of the ties that exist between emotional states and cancer. The second is that Jane and I are perfectly aware of all the good things that medical science has contributed to our worldwide civilization; given our species’ present collective beliefs about the vulnerability of the individual to outside forces, medicine as it’s now practiced is a vital component of that civilization. [...]

Your “medical commercials” are equally disease-promoting. [...]

The medical tests along the way proved that I did not have some of those most frightening conditions. Other tests that I recall made it clear that my heart and liver and internal organs were in good shape—but Doctor Kardon had seen them newly threatened by the vasculitis, and I felt, “My God, what a merry-go-round of disastrous expectations must everywhere color the medical profession and its practitioners and patients.” [...]

[...] Jane also cried on the waterbed that now “it would be harder to do anything on our own, because we had to deal with the medical establishment too,” as well as our own beliefs. [...] I wondered if this was a contradiction, because on the phone last month, Dr. K. had said Jane’s thyroid function was almost up to par from the medication she had been taking, meaning that it had acted quicker than “weeks away.”....)

That position had so many facets that it was hard to follow—that they were hard to follow—and even I had difficulty keeping track of the continuing saga of medical detail. [...]

(9:44.) That summer also seemed to be a time of crisis, as Rob pressed me, it certainly seemed to me, to seek medical attention. [...]

The concept of the survival of the fittest has had a considerably detrimental effect in many areas of human activity — particularly in the realm of medical ideology and practice.

(Long pause at 4:12.) Politically as well as medically, such distortions have led to unfortunate conditions: the Aryan-supremacy biological ideas fostered in the second world war, the concentration upon “the perfect body,” and other distortions. [...]

[...] The handicapped are often given messages, even by the medical profession, that make them feel like misfits, unworthy to survive. [...]

[...] Prentice-Hall is, of course, well-intentioned, and under their belief system it is nearly sacrilegious to be anything more than officially disapproving of medical matters. [...] To attack medical corruption, or medical errors, or particular clinics, for example, is within bounds, but to attack the belief system of the entire structure is something else again.

(See the session for September 22 for our own ideas and feelings, and more of Seth’s material, on the medical/disclaimer situation with Prentice-Hall.)

[...] My stomach has been knotting up because I’m stewing over the reactions of those in charge at Prentice-Hall to Seth’s material in Mass Events about medical matters.

[...] I would interpret the blueness of the finger as a probably [sic] indication that the medication was right on target but tended to make things worse before it got better. [...] However, I think there may have been more activity there than was desirable so I am glad you have gone back to the old medication. [...]

If earlier, however, Ruburt had the erroneous idea that he was going too fast—or would or could—and had to restrain himself and to exert caution, now he received the medical prognosis, the “physical proof” that such was not the case—and in fact that the opposite was true: he was too slow. If our words could not convince him, or his own understanding grasp the truth, then you had the “truth” uttered with all the medical profession’s authority—and if once a doctor had told him years ago how excellent was his hearing, the medical profession now told him that his slowness [his thyroid deficiency], helped impair his hearing to an alarming degree. [...]

Moreover, here is the medication necessary—the Synthroid—that will right that balance. [...]

(We were very encouraged by two points especially that Seth had mentioned this evening: that Jane’s thyroid had repaired itself before—which event now could free her from dependence upon medication—and that the Sinful Self’s superhuman image had “cracked and crumbled in the hospital experience.” [...]

In your time, medical men, again with great superiority, look at primitive cultures and harshly judge the villagers they think are held in the sway of witch doctors or voodooism; and yet through advertisement and organization, your doctors impress upon each individual in your culture that you must have a physical examination every six months or you will get cancer; that you must have medical insurance because you will become ill.

[...] Unfortunately they are trying to gain respectability in medical terms, and are therefore emphasizing the “scientific” aspects of their work, and playing down the intuitive elements and natural healing. [...] The medical profession is fond of saying that such individuals prevent patients from seeking proper treatment. [...]

In the medical field, as in no other, you are faced directly with the full impact of your beliefs, for doctors are not the healthiest, but the least healthy. [...]

[...] Here Seth referred to the American Medical Association.)

[...] They’re trying out two medications — Gentamicin and Bactrim — to see which will do the job best. [...]

[...] Temperature 98.7. Medication still dripping.

[...] Nor are they surrounded by medical professions. [...] A mass meditation, it has an economic structure in back of it: The scientific and medical foundations are involved. [...]

[...] The distorted ideas of the medical profession or the scientists, or of any other group, are not thrust upon you, therefore. [...] Medical men, for example, are often extremely unhealthy because they are so saddled with those specific health beliefs that their attention is concentrated in that area more than others not so involved. [...]

Behind such announcements there is the authority of the medical profession, and the very authority of your systems of communication as well. [...]

[...] That susceptibility is a medical fact of life. [...]

It seemed to me that once medical science got hold of you it wanted to justify its existence, to exercise its wonders for those fortunate or unfortunate enough to be considered “proper candidates” for its full ministrations.

Being a proper candidate meant that I would turn my life over to medical science in the hospital for at least a year: a year spent in therapy, surgical procedures, and more therapy, until I ended up having at least four separate operations. [...]

[...] Medical science would be willing to try, however. [...]

[...] As I listened to the doctor talk, poor hearing or no, I could almost feel medical science starting up all of its gears, ready to go to work on my behalf—and I wasn’t ready to make any such decision right then. [...]

[...] For some time, as you became involved with the hospital and medical habits and people, Ruburt in particular grew very frightened. He began to look at his own experience—to some extent, now—through that medical cast. [...]

[...] I think the medication would also help the ulcer on her right heel. [...]

Neither of you had much experience of a particular nature in dealing with the medical aspects of the world. [...]

[...] I explained that I’d included material in my intro for Dreams that echoed Seth’s comments here as to why we became involved in the medical arena. [...]

The medical environment is highly detrimental at this point in time. The necessary medical help you might need can be achieved at home, but in any case your best solution lies in that immediate direction and in that necessary move. [...]

Medically much can be done in your framework to alter bodily parts. [...] People in seemingly good health, for example, all parts functioning normally as far as you know, medically, can suddenly die, or become ill, while no reason can be found. [...]

[...] There are for example pressures that do not show, strained relationships between, say, organs that are not apparent medically. [...]

[...] Those relationships affect physical organs, but the medical profession is not used to thinking in terms of relationships that cannot appear under a microscope.

[...] You have categorized by part, certainly it seems, the great part of emerging knowledge, when in your terms taboos were broken and medical men were allowed to dissect corpses, to see what was before hidden. [...]