From El Paso Workshop Sept. 1979
[from Marsha: Where does illness come from?
Somehow I never really thought about it and just depended on the opinion of doctors or others whom I accepted as older or wiser. Mostly I thought illness just happens and I had absolutely no control over it. As I see it, the thinking has just been handed down from generation to generation with no scrutiny. I was pretty amazed when I happened to transcribe this particular workshop tape knowing that Dr. Bob had been a medical doctor for many years.. So here we go with the transcription. The El Paso workshop is on the website.]
So illness is suggested that some little entities up here floatin’ around is looking down on us like buzzards look on dead cows; and they see somebody and they say, “Well there’s Agnes, I’m gonna bite her.” Now that was one called arthritis we’ll say. Then there’s another one over there called measles; and there’s another one over there called somethin’ else; and they look down at us and say, “Well, I’m gonna bite him.” Now that leaves you with what kind of a feeling? Tell me about that. What kind of an emotion do you have when you don’t know when illness is going to “strike you down”. Would you have a certain anxiety about health? As you all have heard, cancer is rampant. [noticing that this is 32 years later when the statement was made]
In 1947, I was practicing medicine in Illinois. There’s a little town called New Carmel; and at that time, I got a monthly newsletter from the state medical society. This particular month, I don’t remember exactly which month, but I know the year – 1947; and it said if we would contribute $10, the state medical society would use it to promote us having more examinations for cancer than we were now having of which we had none. There was nobody came in and said I think I got cancer because I found a lumpy here or whatever. They just didn’t bother you (meaning the doctor) about that.
So they said they would do this – and that that would bring us a minimum of ten extra examinations that year which at $10 each and can you even remember when the examinations were $10?
So this was done; and the second year you were to give them the $100 that was made extra; and from then on, they said the public would pay for the examinations.
So they started promoting cancer in 1947 when an average of one out of a hundred people had cancer. Now that is an exact statistic. You can go back and look it up – don’t take my word for it, find out! Average of one person per hundred had cancer in any form in 1947.
But it got advertising going – not as printed advertising , but propaganda – suggestion poured at people. It increased the number of people who became concerned about cancer by ten times the first year at least. And that money was turned into the state medical society; and they took all of that; and since then the physician has only profited and never had to turn in because now/then the statistic says three out of four people will have cancer sometime during their lifetime; and that’s usually the last thing they have, you know – is three out of every four which is 25 percent from one out of a hundred which is 1% — seems like a rather successful suggestion trip, doesn’t it?
Now of course you know that cancer will strike most anybody anywhere; and also you know it’s caused by eating bacon, breathin’ air and now/then all beer except Coor’s. Now Coors will not produce cancer; but all other brands of beer will now produce cancer if you drink it – it’s a carcegentic. About anything and everything you touch is now carcegenic in some way or other, is that right? So what does this kind of suggestion do – it produces anxiety.
Now it has been demonstrated beyond most any reasonable doubt that anxiety will make you sick…period! If it doesn’t make cancer, it’ll still make something else so the suggestion and anxiety is well done anyway – it works 100% if you are anxious. Now is most of the anxiety that we experience – a great amount of it is due to suggestion.
Now it’s very easy to find that if we took the healthiest person in here, we’ll say Tico and everybody met him today and said, “Tico, you look bad – you got a fever? You feel bad?” Have you had an examination lately? You look terrible? I haven’t seen you look this bad in all your life. And if we kept that up on him; and he wasn’t aware of it, he’d be sick before long because you suggest him into being that way.
Now suggestion as we said promises you either a great reward or threatens you with loss. The ones that offer you great reward, you have a tendency to pass off, is that right Jim? They offer you some real big somethin’, but you have a tendency not to buy that one, is that right?
(Yeah, mainly because you start to doubt yourself and believe that they know more than you do.)
Right, that it’s not gonna work; and that there’s all kinds of obstructions; and more and more obstructions to that promise of the real big somethin’.
So there’s a lot of people who go around giving positive suggestion. They don’t usually get very far; but the people who deal in negative suggestion, I’ve noticed, do a great job.
Now what this all comes about is that we have what’s called faith. Now we have tremendous faith in catastrophe. (Audience reacts with lots of laughter). We have tremendous faith in catastrophe. Check yourself out and see? You have very little faith in good fortune – check that out also?
[from Marsha: Here in 2020 with the coronavirus there has been tremendous negative suggestion from the healing arts, politics and the news. We are bombarded with suggestion of the fear of death 24 hours a day. It is terrifying to see so many people all over the globe living in fear of illness and death. What to do? What to believe? Each claims to be an authority and the degrees of fear are alarming – it has created conflict beyond what any of us could possibly imagine.
It can be advantageous to go back to the website and research “the vicious cycle” and “the living cycle” and also how the body adapts to stress.]