Positive Health Online

Conventional paradigms in medicine decree that a living creature is nothing more than complex of molecules and electromagnetism which have somehow self-organized themselves into entities we call living bodies. In this scenario, mind and consciousness arise entirely, like invisible vapours, out of the molecular and electromagnetic complexity of cerebral function.

Furthermore, all our daily subjective experiences of: kindness-affection-generosity-love, intolerance-anger-hatred- jealousy-greed-fear, aesthetics-beauty-appreciation of harmony and rhythm, morality and ethics, identity and self-awareness – all these and everything else which make up our days, have all arisen from self-organizing material substance – from molecules. Even mystic, psychic, near death and out-of-the-body experiences are all supposed to have arisen from a dance of molecules, much of whose behaviour is considered to be quite random and chance. Especially the content of the genome.

Yet, conventional medical and scientific wisdom has not the slightest idea how all these subjective experiences actually arise. In fact, the theory or model is actually without a single shred of evidence to support it. The recent decanting of mentally sick people from psychiatric hospitals is a monument and admission that not only does the conventional model have no idea what is going on, but they hold out no hope of finding out. They have all but given up.

Everyone acknowledges that the electrical activity of the brain has something to do with brain-mind function. Yet electroencephalographic (EEG) activity is so little understood that Dr Paul Nunez comments in his seminal work on the subject, Electric Fields of the Brain: "What is badly needed in EEG is a comprehensive theoretical approach in order to obtain a rough idea of answers."

"What is badly needed in EEG is a comprehensive theoretical approach in
order to obtain a rough idea of answers."

Similarly, work such as that of Roger Coghill, John Evans and Harry Oldfield is very good, but the electromagnetic level of energy function is still only physical. It tells us nothing of thought, emotion and of our subjective life, as we experience it every day.

In short, the one who studies the human mind and subconscious from an experiential point of view can hold no useful dialogue with the brain specialist who sees life as nothing more than the result of self-organized physical substance. The two are supposed to be working in the same field, yet they have almost nothing to say to each other that has any practical advantage.

We do not even know how we decide – and then waggle – a finger. We have no idea of what a thought is, nor of the nature of self, mind or volition. On these matters, material medicine is almost completely silent.
When one studies the matter carefully, it seems quite bizarre that much of so-called medicine is based upon administering particular, individual molecules. Looked at physically, there is no doubt that a body consists of a dynamically integrated wealth of ultra-active molecules. These little fellows move and vibrate so incessantly within themselves, at hundreds and thousands of miles per hour, that one wonders where all the movement and variety comes from? It is not present in the same way to one fraction of a degree in inert and dead matter.

But drug-oriented medicine seeks to find magic molecules which have such far-reaching effects on body function that when added to this incredibly organized and ultra-complex melee, they miraculously cure particular imperfections in its functioning. It is an amazing fact that this paradigm, this methodology, has come about almost entirely due to the financial motivation of drug companies. There are notable exceptions, of course – especially in the early days. One thinks of the isolation of insulin, for example. But increasingly, the real healers – the doctors and therapists – have hardly been involved. Where they are involved, and where they really use their own independent judgement and perception, they tend to use alternative methods – alternative medicine, it is called!

It is the amazing integration and wholeness of body function which makes it practically impossible to enhance or 'cure' by means of one individual manufactured molecule. The body system is far too complex for such a naive treatment, however costly it may be. Insulin, as a one-molecule cure, works simply because it is an important and natural key molecule. But man did not invent insulin. He merely noted that in diabetes mellitus, it was insulin which was missing. Supplying it, solves much of the problem. But there are absolutely no instances of man inventing a brand new molecule (drug) which so meshes with bodily processes that certain disorders are cured with no other (so-called 'side') effects. Man does not understand bodily processes. Therefore, his best 'cures' – conventional or otherwise – are always those which trigger nature into doing all the work. Miracle drugs simply do not exist.

Yet – when drugs are administered, in over 30% of cases, patients do actually get better! Almost regardless of the drug they are given. In fact, you can even give the patient a pill of almost inert calcium carbonate and over 30% will get better, or at least improve. It is one of the most important, yet most neglected discoveries of drug-oriented medicine that NOTHING will actually do the trick. Nothing can cure. Regularly and frequently. It is called the Placebo Effect and it is a part of that area of medicine known as psychosomatic.

Let us be very clear what we are discussing. The placebo effect and all psychosomatic phenomena indicate that the mind affects body function – dramatically. We cannot say that, "there was nothing 'wrong' with the person anyway", for even pathological and physiological symptoms can disappear when the individual's mind is convinced that they will get better. And the reverse is also true.

And like brain and mind function, nobody – from a conventional point of view – has any idea what on earth is going on. When all possible avenues have been explored and still we remain as far away from an answer as before, it is then time to consider that the answer could lie in a radically different direction altogether. Further analysis within the existing framework will not supply the necessary breakthrough. What is required is a totally different way of seeing things. This is what people call a paradigm shift.

Can we suggest, then, that the answer to these and all other conundrums and paradoxes facing medical science actually lie in a radically different perception of what a mind-body system actually is? Simply analyzing the ramifications of more and more of the physical pieces is not solving the problem. The 'pieces' are only analyzed according to the existing model and that has already been proved defective.

There is no point in throwing good effort after bad! Yet the momentum of this kind of science, egged on by the immense motivation of the drug and medical equipment industries to keep the same old ball rolling, is tremendous. Very few people have creative, independent minds. Most people think only along the paths in which they have been conditioned. Their response is automatic and predictable. They take the line of least resistance.

So we have a deep-rooted problem. We know that mind influences the body and we have no idea how the brain and mind are interfaced. Nor do we know how the amazingly dynamic and integrated complexity of a living body comes about. As in electricity, we have spent an entire century making electrons do things for us. But physicists are still no nearer knowing just what an electron is. We have been lost in the game and forgotten to ask how the game first arose.

So since the conventional approach leaves us totally lacking in any idea of how a body and mind really function, let us turn the matter upside-down. Let us vigorously apply an alternative perception. Let us assume that our self-organizing molecular perception of brain and body function is actually quite wrong.

What then, is the alternative?

We have conventionally decided that mind and consciousness arise from bodily complexity. And the theory does not seem to work. Too many paradoxes remain.

So turn it upside-down and what do you get? That the body arises due to the activity and presence of mind and consciousness. If consciousness were the innermost essence of life, a primal source of undifferentiated Energy, Power and Being. If mind were the great pattern-maker spun out of and weaving a web of dynamic activity across the face of this Primal Consciousness or Energy. And if our human mind were only a small part of the totality of Mind, and our consciousness just a small part of the totality of Consciousness, then indeed is everything seen to be upside down from our original conception of it.

For suddenly we find that integration is intrinsic because the primal energy is One. And Mind is the great weaver of the tapestry, the creator of form and pattern. This Cosmic Mind we can call the Formative Mind.
Our individual minds are thus a part of this Formative Mind. And our bodies arise from inward activity of Mind; mind does not arise from the body. The body is thus an aspect of the Mind, rather than mind being an aspect of the body. Now, if consciousness and energy are ultimately the same thing, and if the Formative Mind weaves all the patterns, then we can see how so-called material substance is also nothing more than a dance of energy. And its 'laws' – the 'laws of nature' – are simply a reflection of the intrinsic oneness of its origins. Holism is thus not an intellectual philosophy; it is a inherent, implicate principle of Nature.

Now we have a model of mind-body function worth the name. Now we can see that the Formative Mind must possess a vast hierarchy of energy patterns and blueprints, like an ascending scale. The higher or more inward automatically pattern the more outward layers. And these layers include the real energies of thought (hence, the saying: "Thoughts are things"), emotion and the more esoteric and subtle structures and patterning of the chakras, nadis, pranas, tattwas and all those other subtle energy entities we hear about.

The functioning of the physical body can still be happily analyzed at a molecular and electromagnetic level, as before, but now we realize that molecules and electromagnetism are only effects, like images upon a screen. The hidden pattern maker is the Formative Mind itself.

If, for example, we were to assume naively that electricity originated in the three holes of a wall socket, we could still do a great deal with it. Yet our fundamental perception of electricity would be wildly awry. Similarly, if we think that the body comes into being all by itself, we can still analyze that body and determine some of the repeating patterns, without our ever knowing what lies beneath the material surface in the more subtle realms of energy and being.

But when we turn our understanding on its head, suddenly everything falls into place like it never did before.
Therefore, if the mind is convinced that health will ensue by swallowing a pill of calcium carbonate, then health will ensue. And if the mind is convinced that ill-health will continue, then all the drug-molecules in the world will not help. And this is what doctors see on a daily basis and find impossible to understand by the conventional material-substance-only paradigm.

So the mind is a multilayered, multifaceted, hierarchical energy field which patterns and administers the functioning of the physical body. A clear-sighted, 'non-whacky ', study of the structure of these subtle realms of mind energy is therefore a science of the greatest importance, which will occupy science for much of the next century. This one could call the realm of Subtle Science, its subdivisions being Subtle Physics, (the study of inert matter), and Subtle Biology, (the study of physical mind-bodies).