Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 28/46

Life, Death and ‘Terminal Illness’

“The name of the bow is life. Its work is death.”

Heraclitus

The Greek word for ‘life’ (bios) also means ‘bow’. Yet the apparent truism that life is a span of time drawn out, like the string of a bow, between birth and death, and that the very body that sustains our life will eventually also ‘work’ our death is one that most people would like to forget. Their belief in biological medicine is not just rooted in a quasi-religious respect for the authority of modern science and technology and its medical application. In many cases, it is also rooted in the false belief that birth and death are the alpha and omega of our existence as such i.e. that death brings a final end to our lives, to our consciousness – indeed to our very being – rather than releasing us, like a bow releases an arrow, into different and broader dimensions of existence, consciousness and life. This belief in turn is linked to the modern scientific notion that consciousness is a mere product or property of our bodies and brains – a notion that is actually quite illogical. For given that we only know we exist or have a body through a (conscious) awareness of being and of having a body, to reduce this awareness of our bodies to some product or property of our bodies, is like reducing our entire dream awareness to the product or property of some particular thing we are aware of dreaming.

As for what we think of as our bodies themselves, there is not an atom in them that does not itself ‘survive’ the disintegration of the human organism – or is not imbued with its own consciousness. Yet the body that concerns us here is not what we think of as our ‘mortal’ or ‘physical’ body but rather what in Life Medicine goes by the name of the ‘lived’ or ‘felt body ’. Since this body is essentially nothing but a body of consciousness, a distinct ‘psychic body’ or ‘soul body’, it cannot but survive the disintegration of our physical body and its soul – made up of atomic and molecular consciousness.

For centuries however, the understanding that the soul itself has its own innate bodily shape and form – its own body – has been surrendered to a false separation of ‘body’ and ‘mind’ – or ‘body’ and ‘soul’. Paradoxically therefore, whereas most people believe that the possibility of life after death depends on the body and soul being separate entities, in a sense the very opposite is the case – the soul survives death by virtue of having its own body. Proof of the ‘existence’ of such a body requires no supposedly ‘scientific’ form of experimentation or evidence, nor even the experience of dreaming or so-called ‘out of body’ states in which we inhabit another, entirely subjective body. For in reality this felt body or ‘soul body’ – the body as we subjectively feel and experience it – is and can be the only body that we ever experience. Its existence is therefore ‘empirically’ self-evident and not an hypothesis to be proven.

Even putting such philosophical arguments aside however, the fact remains that the very belief that death marks the ultimate terminus or end point of our being and consciousness is in many cases a principal reason why so many people with actual or potentially ‘terminal’ illnesses resort to biomedical treatments. For if death truly is the terminal point of our existence, then it will seem to them that their ‘life’ depends on such treatments, i.e. life and being as such and not just their existence in this life. So for them any medical means of forestalling death or extending their current life is understandably attractive to them – even if it comes at the expense of further weakening their own bodies through treatments such as invasive surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy, and/or severely reducing their quality of life through other side effects of such treatments.

That is why another important role of the Life Doctor is to help patients come to more deeply considered decisions about whether or not to accept the forms of biomedical treatment that may be recommended to them – often with considerable pressure. Above all, however, the Life Doctor must be able to reassure the patient with absolute personal and philosophical conviction that no one – whether seemingly healthy or severely ill – dies before they are inwardly ready to die for some reason connected with their current life and existence in all its dimensions – and not just the life of ‘the body’ as biological medicine understands it.

“… no person dies ahead of his or her time. The individual chooses the time of death. It is true however, that many cancers and conditions such as AIDS result because the immunity system has been so tampered with that the body has not been allowed to follow through with its own balancing act.”

“Again, however, no individual dies of cancer or AIDS, or any other condition, until they themselves have set the time.”

Seth, in The Way Toward Health (see appendix 6)

Seth also adds the following insights, all of which form part of the philosophical framework of Life Medicine and Life Doctoring:

“People with life-threatening diseases … often feel that further growth, development, or expansion are highly difficult, if not impossible to achieve at a certain point in their lives. Often there are complicated family relationships that the person does not know how to handle … In all cases, however, the need for value fulfilment, expression, and creativity are so important to life that when these are threatened, life itself is at least momentarily weakened. Innately, each person does realise that there is life after death, and in some instances such people realise that it is indeed time to move to another level of reality, to die and set out again with another brand new world … Often, seriously ill people quite clearly recognise such feelings but they have been taught not to speak of them. The desire to die is considered cowardly, even evil, by some religions – and yet behind that desire lies all of the vitality of the will to life, which may already be seeking new avenues of expression and meaning.”

An important role of the Life Doctor in relation to so-called ‘terminal illness’ should therefore be to question how the very term ‘terminal’ is understood by the patient – in other words whether they themselves see death as an absolute termination of their being or can understand it as a return and transition of the soul to a “brand new world”, i.e. a different dimension of consciousness in which possibilities of expression, growth and development frustrated in their current life and world might be fulfilled. For behind the ‘will to die’ do not necessarily lie ‘suicidal’ impulses in the way they are ordinarily understood – as the expression of a desire to annihilate the self. Such impulses may also arise from a conscious or unconscious recognition of what the world to come offers the self in terms of greater fulfilment. This recognition is important in another way too – since many suicides would be avoided were the individual to realise that death does not bring an end to their life – or to important challenges not met within it.

As Seth points out, it is a scientific dogma “…that life is meaningless, that it has no purpose, and that its multitudinous parts fell together through the workings of chance alone…” adding that “such dogma is far more religious than scientific, for it also expects to be believed without proof, on faith alone. All of life is seen as heading for extinction in any case. The entire concept of a soul, life after death, or even life from one generation to the next, becomes doubtful, to say the least … In such a philosophical world it would seem that man has no power at all… those concepts can have a hand in the development of would-be suicides, particularly of a young age, for they seem to effectively block a future.”

This question of ‘life after death’ then is by no means ‘merely’ metaphysical or philosophical, for every individual bears within them a set of philosophical beliefs or assumptions with a profound bearing on their relation not just to health and illness, but to the relation of medicine to life and death.

“There are those who come down with one serious disease – say heart trouble – who are cured through a heart transplant or other medical procedure, only to fall prey to another, seemingly unrelated disease, such as cancer. It would relieve the minds of family and friends, however if they understood that the individual involved did not ‘fall prey’ to the disease, and that he or she was not a victim in usual terms … This does not mean that anyone consciously decides to get such-and-such a disease, but it does mean that some people instinctively realise that their own development does now demand another new framework of existence.”

“Much loneliness results when people who know they are going to die feel unable to communicate with loved ones for fear of hurting their feelings. Still other kinds of individuals will live long productive lives even while their physical mobility or health is most severely impaired. They will still feel that they had work to do, or that they were needed …”

Specifically with regard to cancer, Seth comments that:

“Many cancer patients have martyr-like characteristics, often putting up with undesirable situations or conditions for years. They feel powerless, unable to change, yet unwilling to stay in the same position. The most important point is to arouse such a person’s belief in his or her strength and power. In many instances these people shrug their shoulders, saying “What will happen, will happen,” but they do not physically struggle against their [life] situation.”

“It is … vital that these patients are not overly medicated, for oftentimes the side effects of some cancer-eradicating drugs are dangerous in themselves. There has been some success with people who imagine that the cancer is instead some hated enemy or monster or foe, which is then banished with mental mock battles over a period of time. While the technique does have its advantages, it also pits one portion of the self against the other.” [my stress]

“Cancer patients most usually feel an inner impatience as they sense their own need for future expansion and development, only to feel it thwarted.” [my stress]

“Again, we cannot generalise overmuch, but many persons know quite well that they are not sure whether they want to live or die. The overabundance of cancer cells represents nevertheless the need for expression and expansion – the only arena left open – or so it would seem.”

(from The Way Toward Health, by Jane Roberts)

The phrases I have italicised above offer important insights that Life Doctoring for patients with potentially terminal illnesses needs to take account of.

On the one hand, they affirm the general understanding of Life Medicine that in seeking to ‘fight’, ‘conquer’ or ‘get rid of’ an illness, one is effectively trying to fight, conquer or get rid of a vital part of ourselves – a part that is showing us how ‘sick’ or ill-at-ease we are with our lives or way of living – and that in a very specific way for which the timing and specific nature of our illness will always offer us clear clues.

On the other hand, they return us again to fundamental issues of life and death – or rather beliefs regarding them. For, if death is seen as the final end of life and being, then there might not only be an understandable impatience both to ‘cure’ any disease we believe can or will kill us – regardless of our will to live – but perhaps also an impatience to ‘live life to the full’ in whatever limited period of time we believe (or are led to believe) we still have. This again is understandable, and yet there is also the possibility that this intense impatience to ‘make the best use’ of our remaining years or ‘live them to the full’ (whether we are healthy or ill) may be a concealed expression of a still unacknowledged will to die – expressed through an impatient desire to get through these years not just as intensely but also as quickly as possible.

Another important key to Life Doctoring for ‘life-threatening’ illness is therefore patience as such. That is because for whatever reasons and in whatever ways an individual may have become or continues to remain ‘a patient’ – this may be a result either of them being too patient with their life circumstances or too impatient to deal with them except through illness, biomedical treatments – or even an exaggerated ‘will to live’. For through this will to live some ‘patients’ may be seeking to impatiently hide from a still unacknowledged ‘will to die’ – or to impatiently deny any remaining inner conflict between their will to live and their will to die. This dilemma becomes even more charged as a ‘life or death issue’ if a patient is or feels pressured to quickly decide for example, whether to immediately accept potentially dangerous forms of biomedical testing and treatment – or simply to be patient – not just to ‘wait and see’ but to give themselves time to see more deeply into themselves, their life and their illness. At such times it might well be of great importance for ‘the patient’ to heed the words of Martin Heidegger: “Patience is the truly human mode of being.”



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