We may not always get what we want, but we always get what we choose.

Therefore, choose
wisely

HEALING THE MIND

Walter Last

Our conscious decisions are made on the mental level with our mind. Therefore, all
healing and all improvement in our living conditions start at this level. It is here that we
must take the first step with a conscious decision that we want to improve conditions by
following a suitable program. If we see the progression of our lives as a creative
process, then we may see the mind as the architect.

In our society rational thinking and the intellect are worshipped, while feeling and
intuition are grossly neglected. The reason for this imbalance can be found in the
distorted goals and ideals of our society that has lost sight of the 'inner values' and
externalized all values. Thus, inner riches, such as wisdom, devotion, patience,
compassion, are replaced with material riches; inner purity is forsaken and traded in for
excessive external cleanliness and hygiene, while success is measured as monetary
wealth and dominance instead of self-mastery.

Thinking is the most important tool for achieving such external success, while tender
feelings are a disadvantage for success in our society. However, thinking is basically
neutral and we can also use it to our advantage in healing our body as well as our
emotions. Proper thinking is required to discard unsuitable beliefs and replace them with
an appropriate belief system. If we accept that negative thoughts and beliefs are an
originating cause of our health and social problems, then we may say that our mind is in
need of healing by replacing disease-forming negative beliefs with health-giving positive
beliefs.

THE POWER OF THE MIND

Our mind has truly awesome powers, not only in making as sick or unhappy, but also in
making us healthy and happy. It is like a powerful weapon or tool and it is up to us in
which way we want to use it. In various clinical trials mind therapies have been shown to
be much more effective than conventional cancer therapies. To illustrate the overriding
importance of the mind, I like to relate two examples (from the book ‘Remarkable
Recovery’ by Caryle Hirshberg & Marc Ian Barasch, Headline Book).

An elderly male with huge tumor masses all through the body, according to expert
opinion, had been given less than 3 months to live. At that time trials with the alternative
remedy Krebiozen were being started. Despite not being eligible to participate because
of his short life expectancy, his enthusiasm about the remedy was so overwhelming to
his doctor that he gave him the remedy outside the trial.
A few days after his first injections his tumors had already halved in size and continued
to reduce until they had virtually disappeared and the man felt completely healthy and
well. However, two months later he read a report in a newspaper that the trial was a
failure and Krebiozen was useless. Immediately he fell ill and relapsed with his tumors
quickly regrowing to their previous size.

His doctor was so astonished by these strong responses that he decided to make an
experiment. He told the patient that the first trial had not worked because the remedy
was too old. Now he was waiting for a fresh supply that would be double strength. A few
days later he was given the injection and this time the tumors disappeared even faster
than the first time and again the patient was completely healthy and well.

However, instead of any drug, the doctor had just injected water. Again, a few months
passed and then the newspapers carried stories that the FDA had declared Krebiozen
to be completely useless and a fraud. As rapidly as he had recovered, the patient
deteriorated once more and this time his doctor let him die.

One might think that such a strong mind effect must be very rare but consider this: in a
chemotherapy trial one third of the placebo patients lost their hair. In this rare trial only
half the participants had received chemotherapy and the other half a harmless
substance, which they believed to be an active drug. This means that the hair loss in
one third of the placebo patients was entirely due to their belief.

This finding is confirmed by one of those rare placebo trials in surgery. After 'real'
operations for cardiovascular disease 32% of patients had satisfactory results.
However, a control group that had only pretend surgery reported 43% of subjective and
objective improvement! This means that basically all the improvement came from the
belief but the traumatic effect of real surgery reduced the belief-based success by 11%.

One third is a figure that corresponds with results from other trials as the approximate
size of the placebo effect. I take this to mean that fully one third of patients will either die
or recover just because of their strong belief. This applies equally to conventional
medicine as well as to natural therapy. Those who completely believe that they will get
well will do so regardless of the therapy used, and those who doubt or are fearful will
receive little benefit from any therapy. I am convinced that this is the main reason why
one patient is cured by cancer surgery, while another with the same condition dies
afterwards.

Therefore, perhaps the main concern for patients with 'incurable' diseases should not be
to find an effective therapy but rather to find a way to harness the power of the mind and
become a believer with an unshakable faith.

However, before you decide to believe in eating a piece of cake every Sunday as your
preferred cancer cure, there is another factor to take into account. Whatever you do
must be totally convincing to your subconscious mind. Just believing something on the
conscious mental level is by far not enough. If your subconscious mind is not convinced
that something will cure you, then it will not work.
The subconscious mind is most easily impressed by something that inspires awe, by
authority, by ritual, the unusual and especially by enthusiasm. Whatever impresses you
as a potential cure embrace it enthusiastically. Anything that you just try to see if it
works is not likely to work.

THE LOWER SELF

In order to heal our mind and use it more efficiently, we need to have a basic
understanding of our lower self. This operates on a different level of consciousness than
our normal consciousness or the middle self and has many of the characteristics of a
separate entity. When working with it, it is best to regard and treat it as a faithful servant
and partner.

It is advisable to be on good terms with our lower self because it is the power broker of
the body. To use a contemporary example, the middle self is like the captain of a ship,
the higher self is the shipping line and employer of the captain while the lower self is like
the union boss on the ship. If the crew has any grievances, the boss may call a strike or
otherwise make life difficult for the captain. The body self is comparable to the crew and
very closely cooperates with the lower self.

The lower self supervises the following body functions:

1. It influences the body self and, with this, the physical body
2. It is the seat of our emotions
3. It receives all sense information
4. It keeps a record of all sense information, thoughts and feelings
5. It operates our memory bank
6. It operates our psychic abilities
7. It is the gateway of communication with our higher self

With this, all the real power of the body rests with the lower self, but it has one important
shortcoming: it cannot think rationally and logically. It has only an elementary ability to
think similar to an intelligent domesticated animal or a small child. Therefore, it is
dependent on the middle self to tell it what to do and, as the faithful servant that it
normally is, it willingly obeys the middle self.

However, because it is so simple-minded, the lower self is rather dogmatic. It may take
our early childhood programming and especially our religious and sex-related teachings
as gospel truth, also anything someone in authority may have said. It can be very
moralistic and regard itself as the keeper of any important commitments that the middle
self may have made. To illustrate these characteristics of the lower self, I like to relate a
few examples from the book The Secret Science Behind Miracles by Max Freedom
Long. (De Vorss).

1. A young man with a strong religious upbringing had the urge of entering the ministry.
However, he took a job in a furniture factory instead. There the paint fumes made him
sick. When transferred to the wood working department he developed asthma from the
sawdust. He tried several other occupations, but each time he became sick from
something connected with the job. In the end, a psychologist unearthed the earlier
intention to become a minister. As nothing else seemed to help, he advised the man to
enter the ministry now. This he did and had no more illness.

2. A religious Hawaiian man had an affair. His wife found out but soon forgave him.
Within a year it happened again, but this time his wife did not find out. This seemed to
make it even worse for the man who gradually lost his strength and will to live until he
was very close to dying. A Kahuna (native healer) was called and soon discovered the
truth. He induced the wife to forgive her husband once more and the Kahuna performed
a ceremony in which all the man's sins were washed away. The patient immediately
started a quick recovery.

3. A young woman had been brought up to regard dancing and drinking alcohol as sins.
After her marriage she moved into different circles and gradually started dancing with an
occasional cocktail. Soon she slightly twisted her ankle during a dance. Normally she
would have been fine after a day or two but instead the leg became gradually worse and
a deep running sore developed below the ankle. A Kahuna convinced her that she had
not really sinned against God and in addition forgave her and washed away all guilt of
any kind. The ankle quickly recovered to its full strength. However, the young woman
neglected the Kahuna's instructions to continue affirming that if she had not hurt
anyone, there was no sin. Again she danced and drank a little and eventually the ankle
sore reappeared. However, this time the Kahuna explained that he could not help, as
the lower self had now become too much entrenched in its conviction of sin. The only
permanent cure was to give up drinking and dancing for good.

These examples show how our lower self holds on to childhood beliefs that as adults we
have long forgotten. In contrast, the lower self never forgets. Therefore, if we suspect a
conflict between the beliefs of these two selves, we have to convince the lower self that
the old belief is no longer appropriate and patiently and in simple words explain the new
situation instead. For methods to communicate with the lower self see the article on
Mind Tools.

FREE WILL

According to this model, our 'free will' is somewhat limited. Actually, it is even more
limited than indicated so far. Most of the motivation for our decisions comes from
feelings of which we are only partly aware, from suppressed emotions, early life
programming, karmic influences and guidance through our higher self.

We are more or less unaware of these determining influences that cause our inner self
to make a certain decision. Often this may happen when we are asleep and explore
various possibilities during dreaming, while in the daytime our middle self just tries to
find a mental reason to justify this subconsciously made decision. In this way, most of
us have preciously little genuine free will and have not much conscious choice in
building our own future.
I once watched a hypnotic stage show. One participant was given the post-hypnotic
suggestion that at a certain signal he would open the window. After all the participants
had returned to their normal consciousness, the signal was given and the one with the
post-hypnotic suggestion promptly opened the window. When asked why he had done
that, he answered that it was too warm in the room. I believe that most of our conscious
decisions are really based on such quasi post-hypnotic suggestion or rather
subconscious programming.

At other times, the middle self may make a rational decision based on the consciously
known facts, but our higher self may have other intentions. Then the middle self may
come up against a 'brick wall' or may experience suffering until it changes course and
follows the direction wanted by the higher self.

There is, however, one important area in which we do have free will. That is how we
inwardly react to outside events. We have the possibility to change our attitude and
instead of reacting in a negative way, as for instance by being resentful or selfish in a
given situation, we can decide to react positively by cultivating generous,
compassionate and unselfish thoughts and feelings.

This changed internal pattern will be reflected in a beneficial way in our subconscious
decision-making process. In this way we actually can use our free will to make our
future more pleasant and meaningful. Generally, we may say: The more negative our
attitudes are that become part of our subconscious decision-making process, the more
unpleasant will be our future experiences, and vice versa, the more positive our attitude,
the more will our decisions lead towards a happy, healthy and fulfilled future.

Problems do not arise haphazardly, but rather in specific ways as created or selected by
our own attitudes. We encounter a problem that gives us the opportunity to correct the
very attitude that led to the manifestation of the problem. When we have learned the
correct attitude towards a repeatedly arising problem, it will simply vanish and not
reappear again. Instead, another problem area may develop, and so forth, until we have
acquired the correct attitude towards all aspects of our lives. In conclusion, free will may
be true for the soul but is limited for the personality.

HIGHER MENTAL ACTIVITY

In the evolution of our life-stream as well as in each individual life we develop first lower
mental activity based on concrete thinking. Gradually we advance to a basic form of
abstract thinking that consists of rearranging the thoughts or mental building blocks with
which we were programmed in the past. This means we can now understand and reflect
on abstract ideas that we may have read.
A further important step in our spiritual evolution and expansion of consciousness is the
development of higher mental abilities through innovative abstract thinking, by creating
new thoughts, ideas and concepts. Abstract thinking means thinking about intangible
subjects such as the purpose of life. Creative thinking means manifesting new thoughts
that may either be abstract in the way of spiritual realizations or concrete as in a new
invention. A related aspect is commonly called lateral thinking - seeing or realizing new
relationships between ideas.

An additional aspect is intuitive thinking, which I define as manifesting thoughts or ideas

from our higher or guiding level of consciousness. I also like to call this ‘intuitive
meditative thinking’ because this best describes how to do it. A related method in
traditional spiritual practice is ‘contemplation’.

Suppose you want to find an answer to a problem. This may be a health problem, an
invention or a spiritual question. You start by finding out any relevant facts or
information and then examine it from different perspectives with your rational mind. In
this way you may identify the key question that needs to be answered in order to find
the solution to your problem. Keep this key question in the back of your mind and enter
into a meditative state without specifically thinking about anything. Just watch any
thoughts drifting by. If you have thought hard enough about the problem before and now
maintain a reasonably blank mind but with the question still in the background, then the
answer may now drift into your consciousness as an intuition.

By developing higher mental activities through practicing these forms of higher thinking,
we acquire the insight and ability to perfect our feeling nature or emotional body. We
also construct a new level of consciousness that allows us to operate on a higher
spiritual level.
A good way to practice and develop this ability of higher thinking is by habitually
examining a problem or concept from many different angles. Instead of then selecting
just one of the possible viewpoints, try to unite all of them into a higher form of
realization. In addition, you may think through and apply the principles outlined in The
Science of Spirituality as well as coming to your own realizations.

THE STRUCTURE OF OUR SELF

I regard the ‘Self’ as our total non-physical entity. The Self and the body together are
the whole entity. To better understand inner processes of consciousness we may
distinguish between different parts of our Self. I use a four-fold division:

The higher self or super-conscious level provides spiritual guidance as inner

knowledge and intuition. Commonly this is the soul level or in spiritual individuals the
high self, oversoul or God Self.

The middle self represents our normal consciousness, that of which we are
aware, mainly our mind and mental body, the thinker.

The lower self or subconscious part is the master of our memories and
emotions, including long forgotten beliefs and a Pandora's box of suppressed
feelings and emotions.
 The body self is an elemental (a life-force being) that looks after the biological
functions of our body. This is the level of consciousness that is still active when we
are in a deep coma.

With this, we may say that the higher self operates at the spiritual level, the middle self
at the mental level, the lower self at the astral or emotional level and the body self at the
etheric or life-force level. The middle self can to some degree become aware of the
other levels, but its center of consciousness is based at the mental level. Depending on
our degree of spiritual evolution, this may be the concrete mind or lower mental level, it
may be the higher mental level concerned with spiritual, creative and intuitive thinking,
or it may be somewhere in between.

The higher self is not well defined, as different systems use different names and are
rather hazy in what they mean by them. Even common terms such as ‘soul’ or ‘God’ are
not well defined. I regard the oversoul as our personal God or God Self that created our
soul as a member of a family of souls. The soul level is the consciousness that
periodically incarnates itself or part of itself to form a new personality and build a body;
the totality of the incarnations of our soul is our life-stream. We may also receive
guidance from the high self, which is a level of consciousness between the soul and the
oversoul.

Our personality is composed of our middle self and lower self while the mind is the
active part of the middle self, using the tools of volition and thinking. What we commonly
regard as 'I' is the combination of personality and body. However, there is more to this
as will be shown below. When we speak of our whole self, also expressed as the ‘Self’
then this represents the combination of all four levels of consciousness.

Looking at it in another way, we may also combine the body self with the lower and the
higher self and speak of it as the inner self. The determining influence of our higher self
on our life is the original programming with which we incarnated. It contains our life task
and the program by which it may be realized. This programmed part works closely
together with our lower self in trying to keep us on course and manifest our blueprint in
actual life.

You may compare the higher self to a rider, the blueprint to a training program and the
middle self to a horse while the lower self is the bridle. A good horse will follow the
slightest signal of the rider and both will travel in harmony towards their goal. It is a
different story when the horse is unruly. Both will have a hard time but the horse is most
affected. It may be punished for straying off the course but gets a nice reward for being
a good horse.

The higher self does not overpower the right of the mind to use its free will and it does
not normally interfere but acts mainly as an observer. If the middle self runs too far off
course, it will eventually get into trouble, by having to deal with the karmic
consequences of its actions. An accident may happen, a contract or job may be lost or a
disease may develop and may bring the middle self back onto the right path.
On the other hand, the higher self can make life easy for us when we willingly cooperate
and actively seek guidance. Then we pleasantly move along with the flow of life, money
or resources will be there when we need them, information pops up at the right time and
we are on the road to good health. Therefore, we have a choice either to battle along
through the ups and downs of life, fight or accept a chronic disease, or we may
cooperate, learn to listen and feel in which direction we are to move.

With this, we may regard disease as a helpful indication that we transgressed a law of
nature and did not properly maintain our body, or that we are heading in the wrong
direction and are out of touch with our internal blueprint. It is then up to the middle self
to improve the living conditions for the body or to change direction, whatever may be
required.

The more we spiritually develop, the more the mind of the personality will merge with
the soul level and become ‘a living soul’ rather than a robot personality only originally
programmed and then remotely controlled by the soul. The higher self of a living soul is
now the high self or the oversoul.

Brain and Mind

The relationship between brain and mind is somewhat like that between the hardware
and software of a computer. The entity is the whole system with operator, computer with
hardware and software, regional network and Internet connection. The body and brain
clearly are the hardware and consciousness is the software. The personality is then a
workstation or laptop computer linked to a master computer representing the soul and
more remotely the oversoul.

Originally the operator of the master computer installed a basic operating system
together with various individualized key programs into a suitable hardware brain
biologically produced by a human couple. Therefore, our brain or hardware did not
produce our consciousness or software. However, our operating system allows our
consciousness to use the brain to modify our programming and to install additional
programs. This makes us flexible and adaptable to a wide range of internal and external
conditions.

Our lower self is in charge of the Windows operating system as well as our program
files and memory files. Because of this record-keeping function the lower self is also
called 'the recorder'. That is actually its real function rather than to frustrate our
conscious mental efforts with outdated beliefs. When we become conscious of specific
memories, then we display the corresponding memory files on the monitor. We are only
aware of what is displayed on the monitor and not of what is going on inside the
computer that is the realm of the subconscious level.

In addition, our monitor displays what we perceive through our senses at each moment.
Recent events are still in the Random Access Memory of our brain computer and readily
recalled, while after closing the computer down for the night they become filed away on
the hard disk. The laptop is also directly linked to the Internet with all the beliefs and
information available to humanity. With this, the laptop personality can greatly enrich or
modify its database on top of its programming through actual experience.

In this way it can expand its knowledge, but expanding its consciousness is something
different. That is the ability to bring up on the monitor screen items that it was previously
not able to display, such as hidden files in the lower self or body self and in particular
accessing additional files from the master computer. The evolution of our
consciousness moves in the direction of being able to access more and more files and
additional programs from the master computer. Eventually laptop and master computer
will become as one when personality and soul merge. What this means is that the
higher mental body of the personality is now directly linked to the will of the soul. In
computer language, master and laptop computer are now linked by permanent cable
instead of just a phone line, and the laptop operates under close supervision or
according to the instructions of the master computer.

I define the mind as the mental vehicle of the personality. Our mind is tied to the brain.
With our mind we are aware only of mental activity that has been processed by the
brain. This activity may be self-generated through thinking or it may come from our
sense organs or from memory recall. However, surrounding and interpenetrating our
physical structure are the various energy bodies seen by clairvoyants as aura. One of
these bodies is the mental body composed of more or less structured mental energy.

Our mental body contains the original mental operating system and programming
provided by the soul, and also other information of which we are not consciously aware
but which can be assessed during meditation, hypnosis or regression, such as past-life
memories. With our conscious mental activity we continue to develop our mental body,
especially by expanding our consciousness through abstract, creative and intuitive
thinking in relationship to spiritual matters. The higher the mental activity of our mind,
the more closely we can interact with the soul level or with the high self. Such close
contact is also enhanced during out-of-body experiences.

Where am I?

If our brain and mind can be compared to a computer, you may well ask where the
operator is, who sits at the keyboard? We say "I have a brain", "I have a personality" or
"I use my mind" but we say not "I am the brain", "I am the personality" or "I am the
mind". I do not quite know who ‘I’ am, but instinctively I know that I am different from my
body, brain, personality and mind, either individually or combined. If I assume that 'I' am
a combination of all of these, that still does not answer the question "who sits at the
keyboard?" I have all these things but that is not who I am. ‘I’ use my brain to think
thoughts and these thoughts are in my mind and help create my personality, but where
am ‘I’?

Thinking back, I believe that I had a practical demonstration to answer this question. I
was then sailing with my family in a small yacht across the Pacific. An annoying weather
pattern developed in which ever so often a big black cloud would come up from behind
to overtake us with heavy squalls and rain. Running before the wind, it was rather
inconvenient to take the sails down each time for the duration of the squall. So I got the
idea to ask upcoming clouds to move to the side and leave us in peace and that is what
they usually did.

However, one cloud filled the whole horizon and clearly could not move sideways to
avoid us. Instead, it split up right behind us and then recombined again in front of us.
We had storm and rain behind us, in front of us and on both sides but remained dry and
with moderate wind in the middle. We knew that we had no special powers to make the
clouds do anything that they did not want to do, we could just ask nicely from one
consciousness to the other. More recently I learned that some Polynesian fishermen
have a tradition of defusing dangerous waterspouts and storms by talking to them.

The Consciousness of Clouds

What makes a cloud conscious, and being conscious, does it have an ‘I’? I believe that
the ability of the cloud to respond to my request shows that it has ‘someone sitting at
the keyboard’ which must be some form of ‘I’. Of course, the cloud that we see is only
its body. The consciousness of the cloud is in its energy field. This energy field is at the
etheric or life-force level and attracts water molecules to build itself a body composed of
water droplets. I believe that the ability of clouds to respond demonstrates a general
principle.

Our planet is enveloped in an etheric or orgone field. Obstructions in the flow of this
field, which usually moves from west to east, create turbulence or vortices. This is also
the origin of the clear air turbulence that causes so much headache for the airline
industry. Each vortex creates a condensed field of orgone energy, which tends to attract
water molecules to form a body. If you look at the under-site of a big cloud you can
often see the circular motion due to the vortex action. However, only properly formed
clouds, such as big cumulus clouds, may have individualizing vortex-induced energy
fields.

Furthermore, we must understand that the energy field of our projected request needs
to have an emotional component that is sufficiently polarized to be able to interact with
the etheric field of the cloud. If there is a real need, then there is a much greater chance
that our request has a sufficient emotional charge than when we are simply driven by
curiosity. The same applies also to telepathy and other psychic phenomena.

Similar energy fields also exist within water. These are usually very short-lived with
bodies consisting of small numbers of aggregated water molecules, but in energized
water may form long-lived domains consisting of millions of water molecules. These
energy fields are assumed to be the reason that water has a memory as demonstrated
by Benveniste and utilized in homeopathy. However, in contrast to microbes and plants,
clouds, water aggregates and minerals are not 'living' creatures, but only energy fields
at the life-force level of consciousness.

Here I Am
With its creation, each energy field inherits the tendency to individualize itself by forming
a body. This, then, gives it the opportunity to experience itself as an individualized
being, as an ‘I' or Ego. This individualization occurs on all levels of consciousness, from
the level of subatomic particles to the life-force level, the astral-emotional level, the
mental level and the many spiritual levels.

At the emotional level we have the nearly empty emotional field of a baby attempting to
build itself an emotional body by soaking up feelings radiated onto it by its parents and
siblings. In the same way children begin to build their own mental body by accumulating
thoughts and ideas. Thoughts are used as individual building blocks to create great
ideas, belief systems and structures of knowledge. And who builds these structures of
the mental world? It is the same principle that collects the water molecules to form a
cloud body, just on a different level. It is the inborn individualizing consciousness of
each energy field. This is the ‘I’ or Ego that sits at the keyboard. It wants to experience
itself as an ‘I AM’ by building itself a body with which to be creative in order to express
who it is.
Therefore, we may say that the middle self consists of two basic parts, the mental field
and its body, the mental structures. The unstructured mental field is the 'I' or Ego, while
the mental structures, composed of memories, beliefs and knowledge, are part of our
personality and character. However, when tied to a biological body, the brain limits the
three-dimensional awareness of the Ego to a single focus. With this, consciousness
becomes sequential and is aware only of those mental structures that have been
processed by the brain. This makes the Ego dependent on the lower self to operate the
brain computer.
Continue Part 2

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