A: The main idea of the Buteyko method is to breathe shallowly, as the less you breathe in, the faster the healing of the body takes place.
Q: Who is the Buteyko method contraindicated for?,
A: The Buteyko method is contraindicated for people with mental illnesses and mental defects, those with severe bleeding, infectious diseases in the acute period, insulin-dependent diabetes, patients with aneurysm with large blood clots, those with foreign transplants in the body, and those who have bad teeth and chronic tonsillitis.
Q: What is the purpose of the breathing exercises in the water?,
A: The breathing exercises in the water are designed to improve the condition of the respiratory system, develop the lungs, and strengthen the respiratory muscles. Regular exercises in the pool form the correct breathing, develop the lungs, and strengthen the respiratory muscles.
Q: What is the effectiveness of the Buteyko method?,
A: The method of Volitional Elimination of Deep Breathing (VEDB) has been recognized by official medicine and is recommended by many doctors. It is also used to treat a wide range of chronic diseases, including bronchial asthma, stress, anxiety, and depression.
Q: What is the importance of proper breathing?,
A: Proper breathing is essential for maintaining the balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the body, and it is necessary to maintain the balance of the autonomic nervous system.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>For breathing exercises you will need the place in the pool where the water
has the smallest depth - it reaches the armpits. Exer cise 1

Standing in the pool, make circular movements with straight arms forward
5 times in a row, then take a deep breath, immerse your face in water and
exhale slowly. Straighten your body, take another breath and repeat a slow
exhale into the water. Now make circular motions with your hands back and
again inhale twice and exhale twice in the water. At first, repeat the exercise
2-3 times, subsequently - up to 10 times. Increase the load gradually. Exer cise 2
 Lie down on the water with your hands on the pool handrail. To maintain a
horizontal positi on, make movements with your legs, as when swimming
with the crawl style. Breathe in the method of diaphragmatic breathing by
exhaling into the water. The duration of the exercise is 1-2 minutes. Exer cise 3

Standing in the water, take a deep breath and sit down, immersed in the
water with your head. Grasp your knees with your hands, press your chin to
your chest and float to the surface. In the float position, continue holding
your breath for 5-15 seconds (depending on your health condition and
duration of your workouts). Then exhale into the water through half-closed
lips and return to the starting position. Initially, it is enough to perform this
exercise once. After 2-3 weeks after the start of classes, you can repeat it 2-
3 times per workout. Exer cise 4

Walk along the bottom of the pool, lifting your hips high in the water. Respiration counts: 1,2 - inhale, 3, 4, 5 - exhale, 6, 7, 8 - pause. Duration -
2-3 minutes. Exer cise 5

Stand with your back to the pool wall. After taking a deep breath, sit down
and exhale slowly underwater through half-closed lips. Return  to starting
position and after a short pause, repeat the exercise. Repeat 5-10 times. Exer cise 6

Standing in water, jump out of it as high as possible. Start with 3-4 jumps
and gradually bring this number to 10-15. Exer cise 7

Lie on the water on your back. Resting your feet against the wall, take a
deep breath, then push your legs bent at the knees from the pool wall, hold
your knees to your chest and, holding your hands along the torso, slip along
the surface of the water on your back while exhaling. Perform this exercise
1-2 times per lesson. Exer cise 8

Standing in the water, perform movements with your hands, as when
swimming with the breaststroke style, for several minutes. At the end of the gymnastics, swim in the pool for your pleasure or find
yourself company and play ball in the water. The total duration of the lesson
is 30-60 minutes. Chapter 15. Massage of the internal organs with
the help of breathing

In Chin a, practitioners of the Taoist teachings practice almost the same
exercises. They call it "back breathe." During such training, the abdominal
muscles do not relax on inhalation, but tense. The diaphragm moves down. The chest does not expand. Filling the lungs with air is possible only due to
their "inflating" towards the abdominal cavity, and, accordingly, squeezing
the internal organs. At the same time, an active massage of the internal
organs, including the adrenal glands, affecting the hormonal background of
a person takes place. And similar exercises below are suggested by Buteyko followers. These
simple exercises can alleviate and cure many acute and chronic diseases and
health conditions, improve the functioning of the cardiovascular system,
immune, muscle  and nervous system, kidneys, digestive tract, liver, lungs,
eyes, skin and other or gans and systems of a person. Depending on your state of health, you can choose exercises that will help
you overcome the disease and recover faster after the surgical procedure, as
well as restore your physical and mental health and well-being. They will
not take you much time to learn  and perform them. You will feel their deep
healing effect after just a few sessions. They are useful for people of any
age, including children from four years of age, and health status. Massaging the stomach, intestines, liver

Fig. 35

Stomach br eathing or lower br eathing
Starting position : lying, sitting or standing. The muscles are relaxed. Place
one palm on your stomach, the other on your chest. Take a slow but strong
exhale, while pulling the abdominal wall inward. Slowly through the nose,
inhale, the diaphragm relaxes during this movement, the abdominal wall
bulges outward; the lower part of the lungs is filled with air. When you exha le, the abdominal wall is pulled inward, air from the lungs
leaves through the nose. When  performing several breaths in a row, the
stomach performs wave-like movements, massaging the stomach,intestines, and liver, Fig. 35. The exercise is repeated 4-6 times  3-4 times a
day. Massaging the heart, liver, spleen, kidneys

Middle, or chest, br eathing
Starting position : lying, sitting or standing. Attention is directed to the ribs. After exhalation, slowly inhale through the nose, expanding the ribs on both
sides of the chest. The middle part of the lungs is filled with the air. Exhale
through the nose, gradually relaxing the ribs. The abdominal wall and
shoulders are not involved in the act of breathing. The hand that controls
the respiratory movements, located on the chest, rises with the chest. The
hand, located on the stomach, remains motionless. When performing this
exercise, the heart, liver, spleen, and kidneys are massaged. The exercise is
repeated, like the first, 4-6 times 3-4 times a day. Massaging the lungs and lymph nodes of the chest

Upper br eath
Starting position: lying, sitting  or standing. Attention is directed to the
upper part of the lungs. After exhaling, slowly inhale throug h the nose,
lifting the clavic les and shoulders, while air will fill the upper part of the
lungs. Exhale through the nose, gradually relaxing the ribs of the upper
chest and lowering the shoulders. The abdomen and the middle part of the
chest remain motionless. The exercise is repeated 4-6 times 3-4 times a day. With this exercise, massage of the lungs and lymph nodes of the chest
occurs. More intensive massage of your lungs

Fig. 36

Fig. 37

For a more intensive massage of the lungs and increased circulation, a sharp
exhalation is used. Take a full breath, at the same time raise your hands up
and touch the ears, hold your breath for 2-3 seconds. Then bend sharply,
lower your hands freely, relax, and exhale vigorously through your mouth,
as if pronouncing the syllable “ha”. Repeat the exercise 3-5 times. Exer cises to impr ove body function

Everyone knows that it is advisa ble to take air in and out throu gh the nose. But there are times when this "rule" has to be violated. For example, when
swimming, singing and ordinary talking. The structure of respiration
changes during physical exertion. It's offered a set of special exercises that
have a strengthening, training,  regulatory effect on the body. Breathing
rhythm: exhale twice as long as inhalation. • Rhythmic breathing with extended expiration. Take the main stand. Breathe in at the expense of 2-3, exhale at 4-6. Gradually extend the inhale


	accumulate	facts. In	the	end,
all	facts	disappear,	and	there	are	none	to	be	known. If	one	realizes	that
one’s	own	Self	is	the	All	of	Everything	that	is,	has	been,	or	ever	could	be,
what	is	left	that	one	needs	to	know? Completeness	is,	by	its	very	nature,
total	and	complete. Q:	How	can	this	be? A:	Because	once	you	become	something,	there	is	nothing	more	to	know	about
it. To	know	implies	incompleteness. That	which	I	am	is	Allness. To	realize
that	one	already	is	and	always	has	been	All	That	Is	leaves	nothing	to	be
added. Q:	This	sounds	confusing. A:	That	is	only	because	the	false	self/ego	identifies	itself	with	limitation	and
form. Q:	What	about	‘learning’? A:	With	awareness	of	Reality,	all	learning	stops. The	mind	becomes	silent. In
peace	and	stillness,	all	that	exists	radiates	forth	its	own	meaning	and	truth
and	reveals	that	the	nature	of	existence	is	stunningly	divine. Everything
radiates	forth	its	Divine	essence	as	Existence	itself. That	which	Is	and	that
which	is	Divine	are	one	and	the	same. Out	of	the	Unmanifest	radiates	the
Manifest,	which	is	also,	in	its	essence,	the	Unmanifest	as	well. There	is	no
duality	of	manifest	versus	unmanifest. All	seeming	differences	disappear
when	one	transcends	perception,	which	is	an	arbitrary	and	limited	point	of
view. It	is	perception	that	creates	duality. This	is	an	experiential	fact,	not	a
philosophical	conclusion. Philosophy	can	be	useful	but	it	is	only	an
intellectual	parallel	to	reality	in	which	no	philosophy	is	possible. Q:	Then	what	are	we	discussing? A:	Descriptions,	but	behind	them	stands	the	subjective,	experiential	reality. Q:	Of	what	value	are	teachings	or	discoveries? A:	Each	piece	of	information	contributes	to	intuitive	understanding	and
recognition. Truth	is	recognized. It	presents	itself	to	a	field	of	awareness
that	has	been	prepared	in	order	to	allow	the	presentation	to	reveal	itself. Truth	and	enlightenment	are	not	acquired	or	achieved. It	is	a	state	or
condition	that	presents	itself	when	the	conditions	are	appropriate. Q:	What	favors	this	occurrence? A:	Humility	is	of	greater	value	than	all	factual	accumulation. Unless	one	hascompletely	and	totally	experienced	the	presence	of	God	in	Its	stunning,
absolute	Allness,	it	is	safe	to	assume	that	one	really	knows	nothing	and
that	all	accumulated	so-called	knowledge	is	but	ignorance	and	pride. Anything	within	that	claims,“I	know,”	by	that	very	statement	proves	that	it
is	false	or	else	it	would	not	make	such	a	claim. Q:	Why	is	knowledge	such	a	block	to	enlightenment? A:	The	thought,	“I	know”	precludes	the	ultimate	awareness	of	the	real	‘I	Am’. The	word	‘know’	is	dualistic	and	assumes	a	dichotomy	between	a	separate
subject,	the	‘knower’,	and	something	external	to	be	known. Q:
Thus,	is	there	no	division	between	‘knower’	and	‘known’,	no
difference	between	subject	and	object? A:	That	is	the	basic	error	of	duality,	which	assumes	the	perceptual	point	of
observation. Actually,	the	subjective	and	the	objective	are	one	and	the
same. To	say	otherwise	is	merely	to	be	arbitrary. Q:	We	hear	that	the	ego	is	the	block	to	realization. Can	you	explain	that? A:	There	is	no	such	thing	in	reality	as	an	ego;	it	is	merely	illusory. It	is	made
up	of	a	compilation	of	arbitrary	points	of	view	supplied	by	mentation	and
powered	by	feelings	and	emotions. These	desires	represent	the	attachments
that	the	Buddha	spoke	of	as	the	bondage	of	suffering. With	absolute
humility,	the	ego	dissolves. It	is	a	collection	of	arbitrary	mentations	that
gain	force	only	because	of	vanity	and	habit. If	one	lets	go	of	the	vanity	of
thought,	it	dissolves. All	thought	is	vanity. All	opinions	are	vanities. The
pleasure	of	vanity	is	therefore	the	basis	of	the	ego—unplug	it	and	it
collapses. In	the	higher	state	of	consciousness,	it	becomes	silent	in	the
Presence. To	even	have	a	single	thought	in	the	presence	of	the	Presence
would	not	be	within	the	realm	of	the	doable	nor	would	there	be	the
likelihood	of	bringing	up	such	an	outlandish	pomposity. Q:	There	must	be	some	tools	to	assist	in	lessening	the	hold	of	the	ego. A:	Ideation	persists	because	it	is	valued. Notice	that	everyone	has	an	opinion
on	everything. Notice	that	all	thoughts	are	merely	pontifications. Everyone
is	enamored	of	their	own	thoughts	and	ideas,	even	though	they	are
worthless. Q:	But	what	about	the	value	of	education? A:	Education	gives	reliability	to	thought	processes	and	therefore	of	action. This	is	useful	in	the	world	but	does	not	lead	to	enlightenment. To	become
educated	is	one	objective;	to	become	enlightened	is	another. Many	are	the
educated,	and	few	are	the	enlightened.Q:	But	is	there	not	reality	to	experiencing	that	which	is	myself? A:	All	seeming	separation	is	an	artifact	of	thought. It	is	essential	to	see	that
the	mind	is	at	all	times	experiencing	a	point	of	view. Q:	What,	then,	is	illusion	that	we	hear	about	so	much? A:	The	entire	perceptual	illusion	that	the	ego	claims	to	be	reality	is
completely	and	totally	the	product	of	positionality. This	is	very	important
to	unravel	and	understand	in	one’s	own	experiential	awareness. If	you
observe	carefully,	you	will	note	that	at	the	time	the	mind	is	taking	a
position,	that	position	stems	from	choice,	training,	desire,	emotion,	or
political	or	religious	viewpoint. From	the	arbitrary	positionalities	of
moralizing,	all	actions	and	events	can	be	categorized	as	right	or	wrong. From	that	positionality	stem	all	the	pointless	sacrifice	and	sufferings	of	the
world. Q:	What	is	the	cause	of	this	error? A:	Judgmentalism. This	is	the	great	vanity	of	all	egos. Scripture	says,	“Judge
not,	lest	ye	be	judged.”	Also,	‘‘‘Judgment	is	mine,’	sayeth	the	Lord.”
Christ	said	to	forgive. The	Buddha	said	there	is	nothing	to	judge	because
perception	can	only	see	illusion. Perception	is	always	partial	and	limited
by	an	arbitrary	context. In	truth,	no	judgment	is	possible. Q:	Is	judgment	ever	justifiable? A:	It	can	always	be	rationalized. From	Ethics,	one	learns	the	basic	axiom	that
the	end	does	not	justify	the	means. To	fail	to	understand	this	basic	dictum
is	to	be	totalitarian	and	subject	to	serious	spiritual	error. A	‘good’	result
can	be	conjured	up	to	excuse	any	barbaric	behavior,	and	it	is	thus	used
extensively	in	our	society	to	justify	socially	sanctioned	behaviors	that
violate	spiritual	premises. These	violations	undermine	the	very	fabric	of
society	and	backfire	as	the	prevalence	of	misconduct,	crime,	and	human
suffering	in	all	its	forms. Q:	How	can	mankind	climb	out	of	this	pit	of	misery? A:	The	swiftest


 some of their characteristics and behaviors as part
of my car efully designed mask to hide my inner ﬂaws and
imperfections. It was a game I didn’t even know I was playing at the
time. If I discover ed something about myself that was notacceptable to my ego ideal, I would sear ch the outer world
to see who was acceptable, and with the sensibilities of a
true artist I sculpted the new me, giving the illusion that I
was the person I wanted to be rather than the person I
feared I was. The pr oblem was that no matter how much I
over-compensated for the parts of myself that I fear ed or
was ashamed of, in the silence of my own mind I knew the
truth about who I was under neath my public mask. Although
some could see thr ough the glorious act that I had cr eated,
for the most part I had become a successful human being
because I could fool those ar ound me. I trick ed people into believing my smok e-and-mir rors act. I
was able to enr oll people in my happy life by smiling and
spouting my many accomplishments of the day. Or I could
invite them into one of my other favorite nar ratives—“W oe
is me”—wher e I played the part of the damsel in distr ess. Either way, I became a master at hiding not just fr om
others, but also, and most of all, fr om myself. I didn’t know
who I was or what I r eally wanted. I didn’t know what truly
made me happy or what lef t me feeling empty and devoid
of emotions. My shadow was in contr ol, even though, in all
my ar rogance, I believed I was the one in char ge. Truly the
dark side had won, until my persona came crumbling down. Just lik e Humpty Dumpty, who fell to the gr ound, by the
time I was twenty -seven I was stripped of my “I have it all
together,” know-it-all persona and lef t wailing on the ﬂoor of
a drug tr eatment center. It was ther e that I came face-to -
face with the r eal Debbie F ord—with all of her ﬂaws,
weakness, and disowned qualities as well as her gif ts,
strengths, and deeply hidden inner needs. It was ther e that I
knew I was mor e than I could ever even imagine and that I
was nothing but one of six billion human beings struggling
to mak e peace with their dark side and their human
vulnerabilities. It was during this very humbling meeting with myself that
I committed to lear ning about who and what I was and why Ifelt compelled to do the things I did. It was at this pivotal
time in my life that I began to understand the human
shadow and the eﬀect it had on my life and the lives of
those ar ound me—not as a theory in a te xtbook, but as a
woman struggling to deal with her own unwanted feelings
and deep insecurities. Driven by deep feelings of loneliness that came fr om not
understanding who I was or why I was her e, I began my
journey of becoming intimate with my dark side, my shadow
self. This moment of r eckoning became a catalyst for living a
life beyond my wildest dr eams. It has led me to study,
grapple with, and dwell in not only my own human behavior,
but the behavior of hundr eds of thousands of people whom I
have been privileged to guide into the ter ritory of their
unclaimed self and the glorious discovery of a life yet to be
lived. It is not my light that has led me to the wisdom I have
shared in my last seven books, but my battle with my dark
side (and the ultimate sur render in the war within) that has
been my guide and continued inspiration. It is the very
darkness that I spent the ﬁrst part of my life running away
from that is now my passion and my fuel to help lead others
in this magical jour ney thr ough the human psyche into living
in the light of their gr eatest e xpression. It is a spiritual call,
a higher voice that asks me to ask you: Ar e you r eady to
embark on this jour ney of r eclaiming all of yourself, the light
and the dark, your good self and your evil twin. Ar e you
ready to r eturn to the love of your true, total, authentic self
rather than stay trapped in the judgmental angst of a
disjointed human ego. Becoming intimate with your shadow is one of the most
fascinating and fruitful inquiries you can ever embark upon. It is a mysterious jour ney that will lead you to ﬁnd your most
authentic self—a place wher e you feel at home with who
you ar e, wher e you r ecognize your weaknesses and your
strengths, wher e you can bask in your gif ts, admit to yourimperfections, and admir e your gr eatness. This self that is
hidden beneath the mask of your human persona is the self
that you ar e thrilled to be, a self that knows who it is and
who honors the human jour ney. This self that you will
discover as you embrace mor e and mor e of your hidden and
disowned aspects is a self that oﬀers you the conﬁdence to
speak your truth and pursue what’s truly important to you. It’s ir onic that to ﬁnd the courage to lead an authentic life,
you will have to go into the dark r ooms of your most
inauthentic self. You have to confr ont the very parts of
yourself that you fear most to ﬁnd what you have been
looking for, because the mechanism that drives you to
conceal your darkness is the same mechanism that has you
hide your light. What you’ve been hiding fr om can actually
give you what you’ve been trying har d to achieve. THE INFL UENCE OF THE SHADOW
From its invisible home deep within our psyche, the shadow
wields enor mous power over our life. It deter mines what we
can and cannot do, what we will be ir resistibly drawn
towar d, and what we will do almost anything to avoid. It
explains the mystery of our attractions and our r epulsions
and deter mines what we will love and what we will judge
and criticize. Our shadow inﬂuences what race or class of
people we will appr ove of or r elate to, whether we will be
religious or an atheist, what party we will vote with, and
which causes we will support and which we will ignor e. It
tells us how much money we ar e entitled to ear n and
deter mines whether we spend it wisely or piss it away. It is
our shadow, our hidden self, that dictates how much
success we’r e entitled to cr eate or how much failur e we’r e
doomed to e xperience. The shadow deter mines the degr ee
of car e or neglect we give our body, the amount of e xtra
weight we car ry around our belly, and the level of pleasur ewe allow ourselves to feel, give, and r eceive. The shadow
casts us into pr eassigned r oles that we blindly follow in
everything fr om work to love. Unbeknownst to us, the
shadow is the author of a pr ewritten script that springs into
action in times of fear, pain, or conﬂict or when we ar e just
going about our business on autopilot. If lef t une xamined,
our shadow will emer ge from the darkness to sabotage our
life when we least e xpect and want it. Our shadow deter mines whether we will r espect our
childr en and trust that they will gr ow up to be independent,
capable adults or whether we will try to mold them into
everything that we ar e not. When back ed into a cor ner, will
we lash out in rage or will we withdraw into venomous
silence. The shadow is an oracle that can pr edict all of our
behaviors and r eveal what mak es us the people we ar e
today. It decides whether we will be pr oductive, inspiring
members of society or invisible lost souls. When we e xpose
our dark side, we understand how our personal history
dictates the way we tr eat those ar ound us—and how we
treat ourselves. This is why it’s imperative that we unmask
it and understand it. T o do this, we must uncover what
we’ve hidden and befriend the very impulses and
characteristics that we abhor. Our shadow deter mines whether we will live a happy,
successful, and str ess-fr ee existence or whether we will
struggle with our ﬁnances, our r elationships, our car eer, our
temper, our integrity, our self -image, or an addiction. The I
Ching  tells us, “It is only when we have the courage to face
things e xactly as they ar e, without any self -deception or
illusion, that a light will develop out of events, by which the
path to success may be r ecognized. ”


	exhausted. Storing	proteins	in	the	blood	vessel	walls	also	means
that	the	body	can	no	longer	pass	adequate	amounts	of	oxygen,	glucose,	and	other	essential
nutrients	to	the	cells. The	cells	affected	by	such	a	“famine”	may	include	those	that	make
up	the	heart	muscle. The	result	is
heart	muscle	weakness
	and	reduced	performance	of	the
heart. This,	in	turn,	contributes	to	degenerative	illnesses,	including	diabetes,	fibromyalgia,
arthritis,	and	cancer. Whenever	the	heart	is	affected,	the	entire	body	suffers. THICKENING	OF	BLOOD	CAPILLARY	WALL
	Figure	8
:	The	beginning	stages	of	heart	disease

Once	the	capillary	walls	have	no	space	left	to	accommodate	excessive	protein,	the	basal
membranes	of	the	arteries	themselves	start	taking	up	protein. The	beneficial	effect	of	this
action	is	that	the	blood	remains	thin	enough	to	avert	the	threat	of	a	heart	attack,	at	least	for
some	time. Eventually,	though,	the	very	same	tactic	that	prevents	the	threat	of	sudden
death	also	damages	the	blood	vessel	walls. (
Note:
	Only	the	more	primary	survival
mechanisms	of	the	body,	such	as	the	fight-or-flight	response,	the	common	cold,	or
diarrhea,	are	without	significant	side	effects.) The	inner	lining	of	the	arterial	walls
becomes	rough	and	thick,	like	rust	in	a	water	pipe. Cracks,	wounds,	and	lesions	appear	at
various	locations. Smaller	blood	vessel	injuries	are	dealt	with	by
blood	platelets
. These	tiny	blood
components	release	the	hormone
serotonin,
	which	helps	to	constrict	the	blood	vessels	and
reduce	bleeding. However,	larger	wounds,	as	are	typically	found	in	diseased	coronary
arteries,	cannot	be	sealed	by	platelets	alone;	they	require	the	body’s	more	complex	process
of	blood	clotting. If	a	blood	clot	breaks	loose,	it	can	enter	the	heart	and	result	in
myocardial	infarction,
	commonly	called	a	heart	attack. A	clot	that	reaches	the	brain
results	in	a	stroke. A	blood	clot	entering	the	opening	of	a	pulmonary	artery	that	delivers
used	blood	to	the	lungs	can	be	fatal. To	prevent	this	danger	before	it	arises,	the	body	uses	an	entire	arsenal	of	first	aid
measures,	including	the	release	of	the	blood	chemical
lipoprotein	5
	(LP5)	and	cholesterol. Owing	to	its	sticky	nature,	LP5	works	as	a	“Band-Aid”	to	create	a	firmer	seal	around	the
wounds	and	lesions	within	the	arteries. As	a	secondary	but	equally	important	rescue	operation,	the	body	attaches	specific	typesof	cholesterol	to	the	injured	areas	of	an	artery	(more	on	this	in	the	section	“High
Cholesterol”). This	acts	as	a	more	reliable	bandage	than	LP5	can	provide. Since
cholesterol	deposits	still	are	not	protection	or	fortification	enough,	extra	connective	tissue
and	smooth	muscle	cells	begin	to	grow	inside	the	blood	vessel. Called	atherosclerotic	plaques,	these	deposits	can	eventually	block	an	artery	completely,
thereby	severely	obstructing	the	flow	of	blood	to	the	heart. In	response	to	this	grave
situation—unless	interfered	with	through	a	bypass	operation,	angioplasty,	or	the	insertion
of	a	stent—the	body	makes	its	own	bypasses	by	turning	existing	or	new	capillaries	into
small,	blood-supplying	arteries. Although	this	option	is	better	than	surgery,	it	still	does	not
significantly	reduce	the	danger	of	a	heart	attack. Contrary	to	common	assumption,	a	heart	attack	does	not	occur	as	a	result	of	blood
vessel	obstruction,	but	rather	because	of	blood	clots	and/or	soft	fragments	of
atherosclerotic	deposits	making	their	way	into	the	heart. The	blood	clots	and	soft	pieces	of
cholesterol	implicated	in	triggering	heart	attacks	are	almost	never	released	from	the	rock-
hard	structures	of	the	more	occluded	sections	of	an	artery,	but	tend	to	be	released	from
newly	created	lesions	and	their	protective	cholesterol	patches. For	this	reason,	stent	or
bypass	operations	have	neither	reduced	the	incidence	of	heart	attacks	nor	lowered	the
mortality	rate	from	these	attacks. Although	the	gradual	destruction	of	blood	vessels,	known	as
atherosclerosis,
	initially
protects	a	person’s	life	against	a	heart	attack	caused	by	a	blood	clot,	it	is	eventually	also
responsible	for	causing	such	an	attack. Most	forms	of	coronary	heart	disease	can	be
reversed	by	cleansing	the	liver	and	by	clearing	out	any	existing	protein	deposits	in	the
capillaries	and	arteries. (See	Chapter	3.) High	Cholesterol

Cholesterol
	is	an	important	building	block	of	every	cell	in	the	body	and	is	essential	for	all
metabolic	processes. It	is	particularly	important	in	the	production	of	nerve	tissue,	bile,	and
hormones. On	average,	our	body	produces	about	half	a	gram	to	one	gram	of	cholesterol
per	day,	depending	on	how	much	of	it	the	body	needs	at	the	time. The	adult	human	body	is
able	to	produce	400	times	more	cholesterol	per	day	than	what	it	would	obtain	from	eating
3.5	ounces	of	butter. The	main	cholesterol	producers	are	the	liver	and	the	small	intestine,
in	that	order. Normally,	they	are	able	to	release	cholesterol	directly	into	the	bloodstream,
where	it	is	instantly	tied	to	blood	proteins. These	proteins,	which	are	called	lipoproteins,
are	in	charge	of	transporting	the	cholesterol	to	its	numerous	destinations. Three	main	types
of	lipoproteins	are	in	charge	of	transporting	cholesterol:
low	density	lipoprotein
	(LDL),
very	low	density	lipoprotein
	(VLDL),	and
high	density	lipoprotein
	(HDL). In	comparison	to	HDL,	which	researchers	privileged	with	the	name	“good”	cholesterol,
LDL	and	VLDL	are	both	relatively	large	cholesterol	molecules;	in	fact,	they	are	the	richest
in	cholesterol. There	is	good	reason	for	their	large	size. Unlike	their	smaller	cousin,	which
easily	passes	through	blood	vessel	walls,	the	LDL	and	VLDL	versions	of	cholesterol	are
meant	to	take	a	different	pathway;	they	leave	the	bloodstream	in	the	liver. The	blood	vessels	supplying	the	liver	have	a	quite	different	structure	than	the	ones
supplying	other	parts	of	the	body. They	are	known	as
sinusoids
. Their	unique,	grid-like
structure	permits	the	liver	cells	to	receive	the	entire	blood	content,	including	the	larger
cholesterol	molecules. The	liver	cells	rebuild	the	cholesterol	and	excrete	it,	along	with
bile,	into	the	intestines. Once	the	cholesterol	enters	the	intestines,	it	combines	with	fats,	is
absorbed	by	the	lymph,	and	enters	the	blood,	in	that	order. Gallstones	in	the	bile	ducts	of
the	liver	inhibit	bile	secretion	and	partially,	or	even	completely,	block	the	cholesterol’s
escape	route. Owing	to	backup	pressure	on	the	liver	cells,	bile	production	drops. Typically,
a	healthy	liver	produces	over	a	quart	of	bile	per


 thr ough
a world of strangers, unlik e themselves, living
with their bodies per haps under a common r oof
that shelters neither; in the same r oom and yet
a world apart. A holy r elationship starts fr om a diﬀer ent
premise. Each one has look ed within and seen
no lack. A ccepting his completion, he would
extend it by joining with another, whole as
himself. ”
The purpose of a special r elationship is to teach us to
hate ourselves, while the purpose of a holy r elationship is to
heal us of our self -loathing. In the special r elationship, we
are always trying to hide our weaknesses. In the holy
relationship, it’s understood that we all have unhealed
places, and that healing is the purpose of our being with
another person. W e don’t try to hide our weaknesses, but
rather we understand that the r elationship is a conte xt for
healing thr ough mutual for giveness. A dam and Eve wer enaked in the gar den of Eden but not embar rassed. That
doesn’t mean they wer e physically nak ed. It means they
were emotionally nak ed, totally r eal and honest, yet they
were not embar rassed because they felt accepted
completely for who they wer e. The Course pr esents an image of the special r elationship
as a pictur e set in a frame. The ego is mor e inter ested in the
frame—the idea of the perfect person who will “ﬁx”
everything—than we ar e in the pictur e, which is the person
himself. The frame is bar oque, and decorated with rubies
and diamonds. But the Course says the rubies ar e our blood
and the diamonds ar e our tears. That is the essence of
specialness. It is not love but e xploitation. What we call love
is often hate or at best, r obbery. Although we may not know
it consciously, our sear ch is of ten for someone who has
what we think we don’t have, and once we get it fr om them
we’ll be r eady to move on. In a holy r elationship, we’r e
interested in the pictur e itself. All we want by way of a
frame is a light support that does just enough to k eep the
pictur e in place. W e’re not inter ested in our br other for what
he can do for us. W e’re inter ested in our br other, period. The holy r elationship is, above all else, a friendship
between two br others. W e are not put her e to audition one
another, put someone on trial, or use other people to gratif y
our own ego needs. W e are not her e to ﬁx, change or belittle
another person. W e are her e to support, for give and heal
one another. I was once counsel ing a couple who wer e in the
process of messily completing their r elationship. The man
had moved on to date someone else and the woman was
angry. During our session she said to him about the new
girlfriend, “Y ou only lik e her because she tells you how
wonderful  you ar e all the time. ” He look ed at her very
seriously and quietly said, “Y eah, I think that has something
to do with it. ”How do we ﬁnd a holy r elationship. Not by asking God to
change our partners, but by asking God to change our
minds. W e don’t run away fr om someone we’r e attracted to
because we’r e afraid of specialness. Anytime ther e’s a
potential for love, ther e’s a potential for specialness. I of ten
ask audiences, “What’s the ﬁrst thing we should do when
we’re attracted to someone. ” and they r eply in pep-rally
fashion, “ pray. ” The prayer goes something lik e this: “ Dear
God, you know, and I know, that I have mor e potential for
neurosis in this ar ea than in any other. Please tak e my
attraction, my thoughts and feelings about this person and
use them for your purposes. L et this r elationship unfold
accor ding to your will, Amen. ”
Spiritual pr ogress is lik e a deto xiﬁcation. Things have to
come up in or der to be r eleased. Once we have ask ed to be
healed, then our unhealed places ar e forced to the surface. A relationship that is used by the Holy Spirit becomes a
place wher e our blocks to love ar e not suppr essed or
denied, but rather br ought into our conscious awar eness. We never get crazy lik e we do ar ound the people we’r e
really attracted to. Then we can see our dysfunctions
clearly, and when we’r e ready, ask God to show us another
way. As temples of healing, r elationships ar e like a trip to the
divine physician’s oﬃce. How can a doctor help us unless
we show him our wounds. Our fearful places have to be
revealed befor e they can be healed. A Course in Miracles
teaches that ‘darkness is to be br ought to light, and not the
other way ar ound. ’ If a r elationship allows us to mer ely
avoid our unhealed places, then we’r e hiding ther e, not
growing. The universe will not support that. The ego thinks of a perfect r elationship as one in which
everybody shows a perfect face. But this is not necessarilyso, because a show of str ength is not always honest. It is
not always a genuine e xpression of who we ar e. If I pr etend
to have it together in some ar ea wher e I really don’t, I am
fostering an illusion about myself. I would only be doing this
out of fear—fear that if you saw the truth about me, I would
be rejected. God’s idea of a “good r elationship” and the ego’s idea of
one ar e completely diﬀer ent. T o the ego, a good r elationship
is one in which another person basically behaves the way
we want them to and never pr esses our buttons, never
violates our comfort zones. But if a r elationship e xists to
support our gr owth, then in many ways it e xists to do just
those things; for ce us out of our limited tolerance and
inability to love unconditionally. We’re not aligned with the
Holy Spirit until people can behave in any way they choose
to, and our own inner peace isn’t shak en. Ther e have been
times in my life wher e my thought about a r elationship was,
“This is ter rible,” but upon further r eﬂection I r ealized God
would pr obably be saying, “ Oh, this is good. ” Marianne gets
to see, in other wor ds, her own neur oses mor e clearly. A girlfriend once told me she had br oken up with her
boyfriend. “Why. ” I ask ed. “Because he didn’t call me for ﬁve days. ”
I didn’t say anything. “He knows I need verbal r eassurance on a daily basis,”
she continued. “So I set my limits. Don’t you think that’s
good. ”
“No,” I said. “I think it’s childish. ” I paused. “ Have you
consider ed accepting him as he is. ”“Well, thanks for the support,” she said. I responded, “Y ou’re welcome. ”
I knew she thought of support as agr eement fr om others
that her boyfriend was guilty. Support for the belief in guilt
is extremely easy to ﬁnd. But r eal support is when we help
one another see beyond someone’s er rors, to dr op our
judgments and see the love that lies beyond. Our neur oses in r elationships usually stem fr om our
having an agenda for another person, or for the r elationship
itself. It’s not our job to try to mak e a relationship into
something we think it should be. If someone doesn’t behave
like a gr eat romantic partner, then per haps they’r e not
meant to be that for us. That doesn’t mak e them wr ong. Not
every r elationship is meant to be the ultimate r omance: if
the train doesn’t stop at your station, it’s not your train. The
ego seeks to use a r elationship to ﬁll our needs as we deﬁne
them; the Holy Spirit asks that the r elationship be used by
God to serve His purposes. And His purpose is always that
we might lear n how to love others mor e pur ely. We love
purely when we r elease other people to be who they ar e. The ego seeks intimacy thr ough contr ol and guilt. The Holy
Spirit seeks intimacy thr ough acceptance and r elease. In the holy r elationship, we don’t seek to change
someone, but rather to see


 perceive your partn er as the
cause  o f those feeling s. This means that you project them outward and
attack th e other with all the savage violence that is part of y our pain. This attack may awaken the partner ’ s own pain, and he or she may
counter your attack. At this point, the ego is still unconsciously hoping
that its attack or its attempts at manipulation will be suf ficient
punishment to induce your partn er to change their behavior, so that it can
use them again as a cover -up for your pain. Every addiction  arises from an unconscious refusal to face a nd move
through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and e nds with
pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to — alcohol, food, legal
or illega l drugs, or a person — you are using something or som ebody to
cover up your pain. That is why, after the initial euphoria has passed,
there is so muc h unhappiness, so much pain in intimate relationships. They do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out  th e pain and
unhappiness tha t is already in you. Every addiction does tha t. Every
addiction reache s a point where  it does not  work for you anymore, and
then you feel the pain more intensely than ever.This is one reaso n why most peo ple are always trying to escape from the
present moment  and are seeking some kind of salvation in the future. The first thing that they might encounter if they focused their attention
on the Now is t heir own pain, and this is what they fear. If t hey only
knew how easy it is to access in the Now the power of presence that
dissolves the past and its pain, the reality that dissolves the il lusion. If
they onl y knew  how close they are to their own reality, how close to
God. A voidance of relationships in an  attempt to avoid pain is not th e answer
either. The pain is there anywa y. Three failed relationships in as many
years are more l ikely to force y ou into awakening than three years on a
desert is land or shut away in your room. But if you could bring intense
presence into your aloneness, that would work for you too. FROM ADDICTIVE T O ENLIGHTENED RELA TIONSHIPS
Can we change an addictive r elationship into a true one? Y es. Being present and inten sifying your presence by taking your
attention ever more deeply into  the Now: Whether you are living alone
or with a partner, this remains t he key. For love to flourish, the light of
your pre sence n eeds to be strong enough so that you no longer get taken
over by the thin ker or the pain-body and mistake them for who you are. T o know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness
underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the  pain, is
freedom, salvation, enlightenment. T o disidentify from the pain-body is
to br ing presence into the pain a nd thus transmute it. T o disiden tify from
thinking is to be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior,
especially the repetitive patterns of your mind and the roles played by the
ego. If you stop investing it with “selfness,” the mind loses its compulsive
quality, which basically is the compulsion to judge, and so to resist whatis, wh ich creates c onflict, drama, and new pain. In fact, the mom ent that
judgment stops through acceptance of what is, you  are  free of the mind. Y ou hav e made room for love, f or joy, for peace. First you stop judging
yourself; then you stop judging your partner. The greatest catalyst for
change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or
she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way. That
immediately takes you beyond ego. All mind games and all addictive
clinging are then over. There  are no victims and no perpetrators
anymore, no accuser and accused. This is also the end  of all
codependency, of being drawn into somebody else’ s unconscious pattern
and thereby enabling it to continue. Y ou will then either separate — in
love — or move ever more deep ly into the Now together — into Being. Can it be that simple? Y es, it is that simple. Love is a state of Being. Y our l ove is not outside; it is deep within you. Y ou can  never lose it, and it c annot leave you. It is not dependent on
some ot her body, some external form. In the stillness of your presence,
you can feel you r own formless and timeless reality as the unm anifested
life that animates your physical form. Y ou can then feel the same life
deep wi thin every other human and every other creature. Y ou look
beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love. What is  God? The eternal One Life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? T o feel the presence of that One Life deep within  yourself
and within all creatures. T o be it. Therefore, all love is the love of God. Love is not selective, just as the  light of the sun is not selective. It does
not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the
love of God but the “love” of ego. However, the intensity with which
true lov e is felt can vary. There may be one person who refle cts your
love back to you  more clearly an d more intensely than others, and if that
person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love
relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person
is the same bond that connects y ou with the person sitting next to you ona bu s, o r with a bird, a tree, a f lower. Only the degree of inten sity with
which it is felt dif fers. Even in an other wise addictive relationship, there may be moments when
something more real shines through, something beyond your mutual
addictive needs. These are moments when both your and your partner ’ s
mind bri efly sub side and the pai n-body is temporarily in a dormant state. This ma y sometimes happen during physical intimacy, or when you are
both wit nessing the miracle of c hildbirth, or in  the  presenc e of death, or
when one of y ou is seriously ill — anything that renders t he mind
powerless. When this happens, your Being, which is usually buried
underneath the mind, becomes revealed, and it is this that m akes true
communication possible. T rue communication is communion — the realization of oneness, which
is love. Usually, this is quickly lost again, unless you are able to stay
present e nough to keep out the mind and its old patterns. As so on as the
mind and mind identification r eturn, you are no longer yours elf but a
mental image of yourself, and you start playing games and roles again to
get y our ego needs met. Y ou are a human mind again, pretending to be a
human being, interacting with another mind, playing a drama called
“love.”
Although brief glimpses are possible, love cannot flourish unless you are
permanently free of mind identification and your presence is intense
enough to have dissolved the pain-body — or you can at least remain
present as the w atcher. The pain-body cannot then take you over and so
become destructive of love. RELA TIONSHIPS AS SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
As the egoic m ode of consciousness and all the social, political, and
economic struct ures that it created enter the final stage of collapse, the
relationships between men and women reflect the deep state of  crisis in
which humanity  now finds itself. As humans have become increasingly
identified with their mind, most relationships are not rooted in Being and
so turn into a s ource of pain a nd become dominated by problems and
conflict.Millions are now living alone or as single parents, unable to establish an
intimate relationship or unwilling to repeat the insane drama of past
relationships. O thers go from one relationship to another, from one
pleasure-and-pain cycle to ano ther, in search of the elusive goal of
fulfillment through union with the opposite ener gy polarity. Still others
compromise and continue to be together in a dysfunctional relationship
in w hich negativity prevails, f or the sake of the children or security,
through force of habit, fear of being alone, or some other mutually
“beneficial” arrangement, or even through the unconscious addiction to
the excitement of emotional drama and pain. However, every crisis represents  not only danger but also opportunity. If
relationships ener gize and magn ify egoic mind patterns and activate the
pain-body, as they do at this tim e, why not accept this fact rather than try
to e scape from it? Why not cooperate with it instead of avoiding
relationships or continuing to pursue the phantom of an ideal partner as
an answer to your problems or a means of feeling fulfilled? The
opportunity that is concealed within every crisis does not manifest until
all the facts of a ny given situation are acknowledged and fully accepted. As long as you deny them, as long as you try to escape from them


develop rapidly and is quite common, because there is no efficient method
for conserving potassium. The laboratory test for serum potassium is used to evaluate clinical signs
of either potassium excess (hyperkalemia)  or potassium depletion
(hypokalemia). It also monitors kidney function, acid-base balance, and
glucose metabo lism, and evaluates arrhythmias, neuromuscular disorders,
and endocrine disorders. Hyperkalemia is common in patients with
excessive cellular K+ entering the blood as in cases of burns, crushing
injuries, diabetic ketoacidosis, and myocardial infarction. It will also be
present where there is reduced sodium excretion from renal failure that
causes an abnor mal Na+-K+ exchange and in Addison’ s disease caused by
the absence of aldosterone, with consequent K+ buildup and Na+ depletion. Note: Although elevated serum potassium is uncommon in Gerson
Therapy patients, if it does occur, supplemental potassium should be
reduced or temporarily discontinued. Then the consulting Gerson-trained
physician should immediately be consulted. The signs and symptoms of hyperkalemia are weakness, malaise, nausea,
diarrhea, colicky pain, muscle irritability progressing to flaccid paralysis,
oliguria, and bradycardia. An electrocardiogram (EKG) reveals a prolonged
PR interval; wide QRS; tall, tented T wave; and ST depression. Indications
of hypokalemia are decreased reflexes; rapid, weak, irregular pulse; mentalconfusion; hypo tension; anorexia; muscle weakness; and paresthesia. The
EKG shows a flattened T wave, ST depression, and U wave elevation. In
severe cases of hypokalemia, ventricular fibrillation, respiratory paralysis,
and cardiac arrest could occur. THE SERUM  CHLORIDE  LABORA TORY TEST
The laboratory test for serum chloride, another quantitative analysis, is a
measurement of blood levels of the chloride ion (Cl-), the major
extracellular fluid anion. Interacting with Na+, Cl- helps maintain the
osmotic pressure, blood volume, arterial pressure, and acid-base balance. Chloride is absorbed from the intestines and is excreted prim arily by the
kidneys. By evaluating the body’ s fluid status, the serum chloride laboratory test
detects two types of fluid imbala nces, acid-base (acidosis and alkalosis) and
extracellular cation-anion. Normally serum chloride levels range from 100
to 108 mEq/liter (mmol/L). Maintaining a normal amount of chloride in the
blood reflects acid-base balance by its inverse relationship to bicarbonate. Excessive loss of gastric juices or other secretions containing chloride may
cause hypochloremic metabolic alkalosis or excessive chloride retention. Ingesting it may lead to hyperchloremic metabolic acidosis. Elevated serum chloride levels (hyper chlor emia ) can come on from
severe dehydration, complete renal shutdown, head injury (which produces
neurogenic hyperventilation), and primary aldosteroism. Manifestations
consist of stupor, rapid and deep breathing, and weakness that leads to
coma. A situation of low chloride levels in the blood (hypochlor emia)  is
associated with reduced blood sodium and potassium levels coming from
prolonged vomiting, gastric suctioning, intestinal fistula, chronic renal
failure, or Addison’ s disease. Congestive heart failure, or edema resulting in
excess extracel lular fluid, can cause dilutional hypochlo remia. The
indications are hypertonicity of muscles, tetany, and depressed respirations. THE LACTIC  DEHYDROGENASE  (LDH) L ABORA TORY TESTThe laboratory test for lactic dehydrogenase (LDH) is a measurement of
five specific isoenzymes which catalyze the reversible conversion of
pyruvic acid present in all muscles of the body into lactic acid. Many
common diseases—myocardial infarction (MI), pulmonary infarction,
anemias, liver disease, kidney disease, erythrocytic damage, and others—
cause elevations  in total lactic dehydrogenase, and the LDH laboratory test
is useful for dif ferentiating between them. The five identified isoenzymes in lactic dehydrogenase are LDH1 and
LDH2 appeari ng in the heart, red blood cells, and kidneys; LDH3 in the
lungs; and LDH4 and LDH5 in the liver and the skeletal muscles. Testing
for these  enzymes is especially appropriate for the delayed measurement of
creatine phosphokinase (CPK) associated with MI and for monitoring
patient respons e to some forms of chemotherapy. Total LDH levels
normally range from 48 to 115 U/L. Normal distribution of the five
isoenzymes is as follows:

LDH1: 17. 5% to 28. 3% of total
LDH2: 30. 4% to 36. 4% of total
LDH3: 19. 2% to 24. 8% of total
LDH4: 9. 6% to 15. 6% of total
LDH5: 5. 5% to 12. 7% of total

Since a vast number of illnesses involve the enzymes of LDH, this
laboratory test for lactic dehydrogenase is broadly employed for
establishing diagnoses. THE ASPARTATE TRANSAMINASE /SERUM  GLUT AMIC -OXALOACETIC
TRANSAMINASE  (AST/SGOT) L ABORA TORY TEST
The laboratory blood examination for aspartate transaminase and serum
glutamic-oxaloacetic (AST/SGOT) is a measurement of specific amino acid
residues left behind by nitrogenous portions of the metabolized aminoacids. Aspartate aminotransferase (AST) is found in the cytoplasm and
mitochondria of many tissue cells, primarily in the liver, heart, skeletal
muscles, kidneys, pancreas, and red blood cells. AST is released  into blood serum in proportion to cellular damage, and
its detection (together with creatine phosphokinase and lactate
dehydrogenase) indicates myocardial infarction. The test also helps in the
diagnosis of acute liver diseas e. It monitors patient progress in healing. AST adult serum  levels range from 8 to 20 U/L. Normal values for infants
are four times higher. Maximum eleva tions of AST are associated with viral hepatitis, severe
skeletal muscle trauma, extensive surgery, drug-induced liver injury, and
passive liver congestion. Levels ranging from 10 to 20 times normal may
indicate severe MI, severe infectious mononucleosis, and alcoholic
cirrhosis. Moderate-to-high levels ranging from 5 to 10 times normal
indicate Duche nne muscular dystrophy, dermatomyositis, and chronic
hepatitis, along with prodromal and resolving stages of diseas es. Low-to-
moderate levels  of 2 to 5 times normal may show hemolytic anemia,
metastatic liver tumors, acute pancreatitis, pulmonary emboli, alcohol
withdrawal syndrome, fatty liver, and the first stages of biliary duct
obstruction. THE SERUM  BILIRUBIN  LABORA TORY TEST
The laboratory test for serum bilirubin, the main product of hemoglobin
catabolism, is a measurement of bile pigment which indicates the state of
health of the liver and gallbladder. After being formed in the retic-
uloendothelial cells, bilirubin is bound to albumin and then transported to
the liver, where it’s conjugate d with glucuronic acid to form bilirubin
glucuronide and bilirubin diglucuronide. These two compounds are then
excreted in bile. Measurement of indirect or prehepatic (unconjugated)
bilirubin helps to evaluate hepatobiliary and erythropoietic functions. The serum bilirubin laboratory test showing elevated levels often
indicates liver damage in which the parenchymal cells can no longer
conjugate bilirubin with glucuronide. Then indirect bilirubin reenters the
bloodstream. Also, an elevated reading alerts the health professional to the
possibility of severe hemolytic  anemia. This test aids in the differentialdiagnosis of jaundice, biliary obstruction, and dangerous levels of
unconjugated bilirubin. Normally in an adult, indirect serum bilirubin measures 11 mg/d L or less;
direct serum bilirubin of less than 0. 5 mg/dL). Neonates have total serum
bilirubin ranging from 1 to 12 mg/dL; if elevated to 20 mg/dL (for them, it
indicates neonatal hepatic immaturity or congenital enzyme deficiencies. An exchange blood transfusion may then be required. If readings of bilirubin are elevated for adults, the test advises about the
possibility of autoimmunity or transfusion reaction, hemolytic or pernicious
anemia or hemorrhage, and hepatocellular dysfunction perhaps from viral
hepatitis. Needl ess to say, elevated levels of direct conjugated bilirubin
usually show biliary obstruction with over


 except love. That’ s how the universe correctsitself, but only if we’re aligned with that intention. The present can’t free us
if we’re insistent on living in the past. When I was a child my sister and I had what were called “add-a-pearl”
necklaces. Every  holiday we would receive another little pearl to put on a
chain, the idea being that one day we would have a full neckl ace. I don’t
remember that either one of us ever did, but I’ve always thought of the Holy
Instant—that moment when all obsession with past and future and guilt and
shame have fallen away—as a pearl we’re adding to a collectio n of perfect
moments. It’s the idea that you could collect these miraculous moments,
which might then turn into a minute, which might then turn into an hour,
which might then turn into a day, and ultimately transform your life. “Happily ever after” means a state of mind in which we live fully in the
present moment, our minds untarnished either by painful memories from
the past or obsession about the future. One of my personal challenges is that sometimes I have difficulty
letting the past go. I’ll obsess about something that happened  in the past
rather than allowing for a miracle in the present. “But you said...!” “But
then why did you do that...?” The past never has a chance to heal if we
ourselves insist on dwelling there. The only thing real about the past was
the love we were given and the love we received; the present is
programmed to correct all lovelessness that occurred there, as long as we
are willing to let it go. In the Holy Instant we are radically open to the only thing that’s real,
casting out what isn’t real and allowing the universe to begin again. But we
can’t be open to “the universe” unless we are willing to be open to people. We cann ot forgive someone, yet at the same time hold them to their past. Whether it’s reminding ourselves of what we did wrong in the past, or
reminding others of how they did us wrong in the past, at a certain point
even going there is just a way of reopening the wound. Obviously, at times we need to process things from the past; but there’ s
a difference between processing  and spewing. There is a difference between
honoring our pain and indulging it. Spirit might need to process, but the ego
wants to hold on too long. There ’s a discipline to knowing when enough has
been said. Of course we shouldn’ t ignore our suffering. We should always honor
the season of our pain. But the ego tempts us to stay on the cross longer
than we need to at times, whic h is just as dysfunctional as ignoring oursuffering altogether. The ego would turn past pain into our personal calling
card, a sly trick of the ego to keep us mired in its suffering. Learn from it,
grow from it, forgive it, and use it to help others. But if I overi dentify with
the pain in my past, I cannot transcend it. What I haven’ t yet transcended, I
can’t help you transcend either. The ultimate question regarding  past pain is
this: How have the lessons I learned from that experience made me a wiser
and better person now? In the Holy Instant we have a chance to both heal the past and
reprogram the future. Jesus is the right alignment of past and future because
his mind is the right alignment of everything. We place our past in his hands
so he can help us reinterpret it. A past that is forgiven is a past that can no
longer touch you, and a future surrendered into the hands of God is a future
that will be aligned with divine intelligence. The Holy Spirit delivers us beyond the limitations of linear time to a
realization of timelessness. He keeps us focused on the present because that
is the only time that ultimately exists. In Him, both past and future dissolve
in the blinding light of what really is, right now. The past is purified of
painful memorie s that do not serve, and the future is programmed to be its
most wonderful best. The most power ful way to plan the future is not by obsessing about it,
but by living fully in the presen t. Miracles occur naturally when we allow
them to. The ego doesn’ t want us to experience the fullness of the present
because that’s where miracles  happen. The ego wants us constantly
obsessing about  past or future  so that our lives will never truly move
forward but remain stuck on a never -ending wheel of chronic anxiety and
pain. Only the enlightened master has made every moment a Holy Instant, but
all of us, with practice, can build the musculature of the Holy Instant. Only
love is real, only the present is real, and nothing else exists. It’s amazing
how many sentences you delete before pushing the “send” butto n, once you
realize how many things really don’ t need to be said again. Miracles collapse time* (T-8), which means we can make a loving
decision in any moment, saving time and jumping ahead to a peaceful
outcome in any situation. “Only infinite patience produces immediate
effects* (T-88). Or we can fill the present with attack or defense, over and
over for however long it takes, experiencing the pain of having chosen
wrongly as many times as we choose until we are willing to choose again.We can choose fear and drag this thing out, or choose love and make an
immediate ascent. Dear God,
Please save me
from the endless torment of attachment
to past or futur e.
Send Y our spirit to heal my mind
of the temptation to enter
the nothingness of time. Keep me firmly in the pr esent
that I might know that I am blessed. Amen
OceanofPDF.comChapter Three
The Temples of Relationship
My holy brother, I would enter into all your relationships and step between you and your
fantasies. Let my relationship to you be real to you, and let me bring reality to your perception
of your brothers. They were not created to enable you to hurt yourself through them. They were
created to create with you. This is the truth that I would interpose between you and your goal of
madness. Be not separate from me, and let not the holy purpose of Atonement be lost to you in
dreams of vengeance. Relationships in which such dreams are cherished have excluded me. Let
me enter in the Name of God and bring you peace, that you may offer peace to me. * (T -357)
DRIVING UP TO a fashionable spiritual center, I saw a large sign near the
entrance. It said, “Love Yourself.”
That’ s become a trendy thing to say these days, but I thought about what
Jesus would have said. He didn’t say, “Love yourself.” He said, “Love one
another.”
Not that loving ourselves is bad. It’s both the foundation and the result
of our ability to love others. Judging ourselves is no less blasph emous than
judging others. But the current glorification of self—the “love yourself” culture—has
helped create an atomized society of isolated beings, struggling to relate to
one another and grieving the loss of love. Looking in the mirror to say “I
love you” all the time doesn’ t quite cut it long term. It’s not even that we’re
looking for love in all the wrong places. It’s that we’re not really looking
for love at all. We’re looking for sales, we’re looking for clicks, we’re looking for
prestige, we’re looking for power, we’re looking for things, we’re looking
to hook up. But that’s not the same as looking for love. Perhaps  we’ve even
given up on that.Love is hard to find out there because it isn’t out there. It’s in here. On
the material plane, what we give away we no longer have. On the spiritual
plane, we only get to keep what we give away. The only way to find love is
to give it.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Please show me the innocence in this person and myself, that I might be at peace. Amen
Prayer changes us on the level of cause. Effects of that change
automatically follow. Every thought is either love or fear. All negative thought is an expression of
fear. There is really only one problem (fear), and there is really only one
Answer (love). Love is our natural state, yet we’re thrown off our natural state as a
result of simply living in this world. That is the spiritual meaning of Adam
and Eve exiting the garden. All of us, including the person who treated you
unkindly, has been wounded by the world. Whereas the love of God is
meant to flow into us and extend through us, our woundedness forms an
obstruction to our ability to allow  that. Ego is when the wires get crossed in
our brains: in any moment, for whatever reason, we can’t see how to
express our love and still get our needs met. We become stuck in that
moment and fall asleep to who we are. That is what happened inside the person who hurt you. They fell asleep
to who they are; and in that state, they


-merous letters f rom
people who listen to my radio talks and weekly public lectu res, telling
me of the wonderful results they get using this technique in  the sale of
their property. I suggest to those who have homes or property fo r sale
that they satisfy themselves in their own mind that their pr ice is right. Then, I claim that the Infinite Intelligence is attracting to them the
buyer who really wants to have the property and who will love i t and
prosper in it. After having done this I suggest that they quiet t heir
mind, relax, let go, and get into a drowsy, sleepy state, which reduce s
all mental effort to a minimum. Then, they are to picture t he check in
their hands, rejoice in the check, give thanks for the check, and g o off
to sleep feeling the naturalness of the whole mental movie c reated in
their own mind. They must act as though it were an objective rea lity,
and the subconscious mind will take it as an impression, and thro ugh
the deeper currents of the mind the buyer and the seller are brought
together. A mental picture held in the mind, backed by faith, wi ll
come to pass. • The Baudoin technique
Charles Baudoin was a professor at the Rousseau Institute in France. He was a brilliant psychotherapist and a research direct or of the New
Nancy School of Healing, who in 1910 taught that the best way to
impress the subconscious mind was to enter into a drowsy, sle epy
state, or a state akin to sleep in which all effort was r educed to a
minimum. Then in a quiet, passive, receptive way, by reflec tion, he
would convey the idea to the subconscious. The following is his formula: “A very sim-ple way of securi ng this
(impregnation of the subconscious mind) is to condense the idea
which is to be the object of sug-gestion, to sum it up in a b rief phrase
 77  which can be readily graven on the memory, and to repeat it over  and
over again as a lullaby. ”
Some years ago, a young lady in Los Angeles was engaged in a
prolonged bitter family lawsuit over a will. Her husband had
bequeathed his entire estate to her, and his sons and daugh-ters  by a
previous marriage were bitterly fighting to break the wil l. The
Baudoin technique was outlined to her, and this is what she did: She
relaxed her body in an armchair, entered into the sleepy stat e and, as
suggested, condensed the idea of her need into a phrase consist ing of
six words easily graven on the memory. “It is finished in Divi ne
Order. ” The significance to her of these words meant that Inf inite
Intelligence operating through the laws of her subconscious mind
would bring about a harmonious adjustment through the principle o f
harmony. She continued this procedure every night for about ten
nights. After she got into a sleepy state, she would affirm s lowly,
quietly, and feelingly the statement: “It is finished in Divine  Order,”
over and over again, feeling a sense of inner peace and an al l-per-
vading tranquility; then she went off into her deep, normal sleep. On the morning of the eleventh day, following the use of the above
technique, she awakened with a sense of well-being, a conviction that
it was finished. Her attorney called her the same day, saying that the
opposing attorney and his clients were willing to settle. A har monious
agreement was reached, and litigation was discontinued. • The sleeping technique
By entering into a sleepy, drowsy state, effort is reduced to a
minimum. The conscious mind is submerged to a great extent w hen in
a sleepy state. The reason for this is that the highest degree of outcropping  of the
subconscious occurs prior to sleep and just after we awaken. I n this
state the negative thoughts, which tend to neutralize your desire and so
prevent acceptance by your subconscious mind, are no longer present. Suppose you want to get rid of a destructive habit. Assume a
comfortable posture, relax your body, and be still. Get into a sleepy
 78  state, and in that sleepy state, say quietly, over and over ag ain as a
lullaby, “I am completely free from this habit; harmony and pe ace of
mind reign supreme. ” Repeat the above slowly, quietly, and lovingl y
for five or ten minute’s night and morning. Each time you repeat t he
words the emotional value becomes greater. When the urge comes t o
repeat the negative habit, repeat the above formula out loud by
yourself. By this means you induce the subconscious to accept th e
idea, and a healing follows. • The thank-you  technique
In the Bible, Paul recommends that we make known our requests
with praise and thanksgiving. Some extraordinary re-sults fo llow this
simple method of prayer. The thankful heart is always close to the
creative forces of the universe, causing count-less blessings  to flow
toward it by the law of reciprocal relation-ship, based on a  cosmic law
of action and reaction. For instance, a father promises his son a car for gradua-tion; the  boy
has not yet received the car, but he is very thank-ful and happy, a nd is
as joyous as though he had actually re-ceived the car. He knows hi s
father will fulfill his promise, and he is full of grati tude and joy even
though he has not yet received the car, objectively speaking. He has,
however, received it with joy and thankfulness in his mind. I shall illustrate how Mr. Broke applied this technique with
excellent results. He said, “Bills are piling up, I am out of work, I have
three children and no money. What shall I do. ” Regularly every nig ht
and morning, for a period of about three weeks, he repeated the words,
“Thank you, Father, for my wealth,” in a relaxed, peaceful manne r
until the feeling or mood of thankful-ness dominated his mind. He
imagined he was addressing the infinite power and intelligence within
him knowing, of course, that he could not see the creative inte lligence
or infinite mind. He was seeing with the inner eye of spiri tual
perception, realiz-ing that his thought-image of wealth was t he first
cause, relative to the money, position, and food he needed. His
thought feeling was the substance of wealth untrammeled by
 79 antecedent conditions of any kind. By repeating, “Thank you, Father,”
over and over again, his mind and heart were lifted up to the poi nt of
acceptance, and when fear, thoughts of lack, poverty, and dis-tress
came into his mind, he would say, “Thank you, Father,” as often as
necessary. He knew that as he kept up the thankful attitude h e would
recondition his mind to the idea of wealth, which is what happened. The sequel to his prayer is very interesting. After prayi ng in the
abovementioned manner, he met a former employer of his on the
street whom he had not seen for twenty years. The man offered him a
very lucrative position and advanced him $500 on a temporary loan. Today, Mr. Broke is vicepresident of the company for which he
works. His recent remark to me was, “I shall never forget  the wonders
of ‘Thank you, Father. ’ It has worked wonders for me. ”
• The affirmative method
The effectiveness of an affirmation is determined largely by  your
understanding of the truth and the meaning back of the words, ³In
praying use not vain repetition. ´ Therefore, the power of your
affirmation lies in the intelligent application of defin ite and specific
positives. For example, a boy adds three and three and puts down
seven on the blackboard. The teacher affirms with mathematic al
certainty that three and three are six; there-fore, the boy changes his
figures accordingly. The teacher’s statement did not make thre e and
three equal six because the latter was already a mathemati cal truth. The mathematical truth caused the boy to rearrange the figures  on the
blackboard. It is abnormal to be sick; it is normal to be healthy. Health
is the truth of your being. When you affirm health, harmony, and
peace for yourself or another, and when you realize these are unive rsal
principles of your own being, you will rearrange the negative patterns
of your subconscious mind based on your faith and understanding of
that which you affirm. The result of the affirmative process of prayer depends on y our
conforming to the principles of life, regardless of appear-a nces. 80  Consider for a moment that there is a principle of mathem atics and
none of error; there is a principle of truth but none of dishonesty. There is a principle of intelligence but none of ignorance; there is a
principle of harmony and none of discord. There is a principle o f
health but none of disease, and there is a principle of abundance  but
none of poverty. The affirmative method was chosen by the author for use on his
sister who was to be operated


 & Valens, E. G. "Viruses and the Nature of Life" 1962 Dutton. 36. Stefansson, V. "The Lost Franklin  Expedition" in "Unsolved Mysteries of the
Arctic—1962 Collier. 37. Storck, J. & Teague, W. D. "Flour for Man's Bread"—1952 Oxford Univ. 38. Sullivan, B. & Near, Cleo—Ind. & Eng. Chem., Vol. 25, Jan. 33. 39. Sullivan, B. et al Cereal Chem. Vol. 13, p. 318 of 1935. 40. Sullivan, B. Cereal Chem. Vol. 17, p. 661 of 1940. 41. Swern, D. "Fatty Acids" Ed. Markley, K. S. Ed. 2 P. 1429. 41A. Thatcher, F. S.
et al Cereal Chem. 30-71 (1953)
   42. Walde, A. W. et al, Cereal Chem. 7:480-486 of 1930. 42A. Walker, Niles H.
Cereal Chem. 24-39 (1946)
   43. Wells, H. G. "The Discovery of the Future"—Smithsonian Yearbook for 1902. 44. Zeleny, Cereal Chem. Vol. 15, of 1938, p. 580. HOW IT ALL STARTED AND WHAT IS YET TO COME

 The author's long crusade against choked arteries was begun in
October 1961, prompted by early death of both parents from these
strange fatty deposits. Having previously been highly successful in
solving many difficult technical problems where others long had
failed, and having been awarded citations and patents for many important discoveries and inventions, he felt this grisly problem
also might be solved by the same kind of hard-hitting attack. With
the help of his wife Rose and brother Charles, he founded the
laboratory, which was given a charter by the State on November 19,
1961 as a non-profit scientific institution. On December 29, 1965 the federal Internal Revenue Service determined Magnolia Laboratory tax-exempt
under section 501C(3). This means that contributions to this institution may be
included in the deductions on your income tax return in the same space used for
contributions to churches, etc., and have th e same effect toward reducing your income
taxes. The chartered purposes of Magnolia Lab read as follows: "To carry out such
scientific, creative, educational, and ch aritable activities and endeavors as are
calculated to discover a better knowledge of the laws of life and true hygiene, to
advance and improve the physical and mental health, standards of living, and well-
being of mankind through research in the prevention and cure of diseases of man and animal; methods for more efficient production and improvement of food supplies; and
the invention of improved labor-saving apparatus and processes for producing the goods and services on which civilized human life depends, —." This sixth edition has been revised and improved, our work on choked arteries now
being far advanced. We have almost co mpleted scientific explanation of the
remarkable benefits the Fresh Food Diet brings toward cleansing arteries. Better still,
it now seems possible to develop improvements in commercial foods so as to eventually obtain similar results in the whole population with no self-denial.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Cattle
especially thrive on good grass above all,  and beef from grass and grain feeding
combined has a rich red color, fragrant golden yellow fat and a taste that is in a class
by itself. Eggs from chickens receiving gr een grass have brilliant orange colored
yolks that do not easily break in the pan, and a delicious flavor entirely different from the musty tasting confinement eggs. And oldtimers remember how good fresh country
pork used to taste, with its sweet aromatic fat, not slimy and rancid like commercial pork is today. It is still that good when the pigs are raised in green fields. Chicken
feeds now are such a fake that the mills even put in a yellow dye to imitate the skin appearance given by the yellow carotene vitamin normally in a healthy chicken. Feedlot beef often shows dark streaks of ro t in the center of the bones, and if the
segments of red meat are pulled apart one can see that the fibrous muscle sheaths have
already been turned brown by microbes, because the meat lacks the anti-microbic
defensive powers found in normal animals. Most livestock on the market today are like old-time sailors who have been eating stale food on a long sea voyage, weakened
and sickened by scurvy and beri-beri. The livers from confinement fed livestock are abnormal and show the depletion of
vital substances by their pale yellowish or pinkish color. Healthy livers are dark wine
red. This was evidently known in very early times, for weak and worthless creatures
were called "white livered" or "lily livered. " The liver condition is a good indicator of quality. 17. SMOKED AND SALTED MEAT AND FISH
   Food scientists have published extensivel y on the deterioration of fatty materials in
smoked and salted meat and fish. There are certain microbes which are able to thrive
in spite of the salt in these items, and these microbes split up and deteriorate the fatty
materials into fatty rubbish  which causes arteriosclerosis. The bluish or greenish
iridescent colors in hams are due to these microbes. Bacon, ham, corned beef, etc., are really hardship foods invented long ago so the
livestock could be butchered in the fall and the meat preserved for winter use. These
foods have little nutritional value, actually poor foods by any standard, yet sell at a
high price due to the labor expended on them. Now that it is possible to store meat by
freezing there is no longer any reason to eat  these stale items. Thin broiled slices of
fresh or frozen pork taste far better than bacon, and what could taste better than a
roasted fresh leg of pork. There is no longer any reason to eat bacon and ham. It has been known for many years and repeatedly proven by animal experiments that
burned, smoked, or heat browned materials are a powerful and certain cause of cancer
if applied or eaten over a long period of time. These materials are also extremely toxic
to the body in general. Cigarette smoking for instance causes cancer not because of
the materials used but simply because of the burning and consequent production of
tars. There are other known causes of cancer, such as certain chemicals, and some
unknown causes as well, so it certainly would not be correct to say that smoked foods
are the cause of cancer. But they are definitely a contributing cause, and so is any
other food if it is excessively browned or subjected to smoke or oily fumes in cooking
or in processing. 18. GENERAL FOOD PRACTICES
   Many people have a perverse obsession in wanting to "make" something out of food, and keep it
around for days. They mess about with recipes, meas uring cups, grinders, mixers, graters, slicers,
juicers, blenders etc, putting in long hours of work damaging their food so it will choke their arteries
and give them cancer. Those chipped-up slaws, cakes and pies, biscuits, ground-up casserole dishes,
hamburgers, brown gravy, big pots of stew or dried beans and ham that are re-heated for three days, are
slow tickets to misery and the graveyard. Paradoxical as it may be, the people that do such things the
most are often the ones we admire the most, for their conscientious good intentions and energy, even if
it is misdirected and destructive. Some of the nicest widows and sick people I know are like this. They are constantly chipping and chopping, marinating, mixing things together. These good people mean to do the right thing, bless their hearts, but they just have the wrong idea. Original food items should not
be looked at as raw materials to "make" some artifici al thing out of. Foods are very delicate materials,
which can be easily damaged. With few exceptions, anything you do to food reduces its health value. This brings us to the essential point: Treat f ood gently, until it goes between your teeth. Don't grate
and grind it. Prepare and serve it as nearly intact as you can. tutting it up only enough to get it in the pot or serve it conveniently. Don't over-cook it to a mush, don't overheat it, don't brown it. Realize that you
can eat better without all this self-destructive hard work. Try the following menus. Also see diet section
page 39. 19. MENUS AND BEVERAGES

BREAKFAST MENU
FRUIT, VEGETABLE, OR JUICE COURSE
Your choice of raw fruit, like apple, orange, gr apefruit, (no lemon or lim e) pear, grapes, melon,
bananas, strawberries, etc. Your choice of celery sticks, raw carrots, broccoli, cabbage, etc. Your
choice of juice fresh-squeezed then and there. Canned tomato juice as second choice. MEAT OR EGGS COURSE
Eggs (


 states,” the editorial declared, “is largely
folklore.”
In response, letters deluged the journal, most of them
from physicians who heatedly disagreed with the editorial’s
conclusion. It certainly seems unreasonable to discount
mental attitu des as a factor in illness, much less as folklore. Every practicing physician knows that the patient’s will to
recover plays a vital part in his treatment. Wedded as they
are to “hard” medicine, most doctors nonetheless cannot
condone the idea that attitude, belief, and emotions do not
play their part. Hippocrates stated at the dawn of Western
medicine that “a patient who is mortally sick might yet
recover from belief in the goodness of his physician.”Numerous modern studies have corroborated this, by
showing that people who trust their doctor and surrender
themselves to his care are likelier to recover than those
who approach medicine with distrust, fear, and antagonism. In the wake of the edito rial, tempers ﬂared and lines of
allegiance were drawn, while the issues became even more
confused. Three separa te studies of breast-cancer survival
rates from the mid-1980s came up with three entirely
diﬀerent results. In one, the women who displayed strong
positive attitudes tended to outlive those who were
negative, and it did not matter if their diseases were more
advanced—positive emotions, it seemed, helped them
recover from a late-sta ge, metastasized cancer, while
patients with negative emotions died from small tumors
that had been diagnosed relatively early. A second study, however, found that any strong attitude,
if expressed rather than held back, helped in survival of
this very deadly disease. While the ﬁrst ﬁnding bolsters
common sense—the idea that positivity is better than
negativity—the second does much the same from  another
angle, the idea being that it is better to ﬁght than to give
up. Publicity was given to a so-called cancer personality,
who bottles up emotions and somehow converts repression
into malignant cells. The opposite would be the “strong will
to live” type, who can be either positive or negative. All of this follows a certain logic, except for the study that
appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine  to begin
with, second ed by supporting studies, which found no
correlation between any emotional pattern and surviving
breast cancer beyond two years. Even as it grew in
popularity, becoming one of the most welcome innovations
since the Salk vaccine, the concept of mind-body medicine
was shaken. Now, a familiar pattern has emerged, in which
the public is informed of some elating break through,followed by disappointing  clinical results that are generally
known only in restricted medical circles. A classic example was the division of heart-attack
patients, more than three-quarters of them middle-aged
males, into high-risk Type A personalities and low-risk Type
B’s. The Type A personality was supposed to be a hard-
driving, compulsive worker, constantly racing deadlines
and churning his system with stress hormones, as opposed
to the relaxed, tolerant, more balanced Type B. Type A
suﬀered from  “the disease of being in a hurry”; therefore, it
seemed logical that his heart would eventually rebel,
leading to a coronary. Unfortunately, controlled  studies have indicated that this
widely accepted division is not so neat. It turns out that
most people have some Type A in them and some Type B,
and that tolerance for stress varies widely, with certain
groups stating that they thrive on it. Finally, a 1988 study
found that if a man actually has a heart attack, Type A’s
survive better than Type B’s. Their drive to succeed
apparently turns into a beneﬁt once the coronary strikes. The intricacies of the mind-body relation were not to be
easily solved. If one asks why a positive mind cannot be
easily correla ted with good health—it appears to be one of
the most obvious facts of life—the answer has to do with
what you mean by “mind ” in the ﬁrst place. This is not a
philosophical question but a practical one. If a patient
comes in with cancer, is his mental state judged by how he
feels on the day of the diagnosis, long before,  or long
afterward? Dr. Lawrence LeShan, author of the pioneering
studies from the 1950s  correlating emotions to cancer,
went back into the childhoods of cancer patients to ﬁnd the
black seed that poisoned their psychology, and he theorized
that it lay dormant in the subconscious for years before
inducing their disease.In my own practice, I saw a lung-cancer patient who had
lived comfortably with a coin-sized lesion in his lungs for
ﬁve years.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        OceanofPDF. comIn order to ensure the privacy of the patients mentioned in this book, their
names, circumstances, and other identifying details have been changed. Copyright © 1989, 2015 by Deepak Chopra, M. D. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of R andom House,
a division of P enguin R andom House LLC, New Y ork. BANTAM BOOKS  and the HOUSE  colophon are registered trademarks of
Penguin R andom House LLC. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Bantam Books, an
imprint of R andom House, a division of P enguin R andom House LLC, in 1989. ISBN 9781101884973
eBook ISBN 9780804179980
randomhousebooks. com
Book design by Jo Anne Metsch, adapted for eBook
Cover design: V ictoria Allen
Cover art: Francisco Javier Gomez Quesada
v4. 1_r2
ep
OceanofPDF. comContents
Cover
Title P age
Copyright
Foreword
Introduction
Part I: The Hidden Physiology
Chapter 1: A fter the Miracle
Chapter 2: The Body Has a Mind of Its Own
Chapter 3: The Sculpture or the River. Chapter 4: Messengers from Inner Space
Chapter 5: Ghosts of Memory
Chapter 6: The Quantum Mechanical Human Body
Chapter 7: Nowhere and Everywhere
Chapter 8: Silent W itness
Chapter 9: The Mystery of the Gap
Part II: Body of Bliss
Chapter 10: In the Rishi’s W orld
Chapter 11: Birth of a Disease
Chapter 12: “ What Y ou See, Y ou Become”
Chapter 13: Body of Bliss
Chapter 14: The End of the W ar
Acknowledgments
Reading List
Bibliography
Bestsellers by Deepak ChopraAbout the Author
OceanofPDF. comWhenever the word quantum  comes  up, the word physics
follows automatically. This habit of mind made Quantum
Healing  a novel and provocati ve title in 1989, but its
author, a curious-minded endocrinologist outside  Boston,
was implying a legitimate question. If every atom and
molecule in the universe emerges from the quantum ﬁeld,
doesn’t this mean that our bodies do, too. The answer is
undoubtedly yes. In that case, we possess a quantum
mechanical body. Dr. Deepak Chopra then reasoned that
the mysteries of the human body, particularly the mystery
of healing, are inevitably immersed in the quantum ﬁeld. Very few scientists were thinking that way almost thirty
years ago. Medical schools approached the human body
essentially as a machine subdivided into the working parts
of a machine—organs, tissues, and cells. When the body
broke down through illness, something materia l was at
fault. Bacteria had entered to disrupt the mechanical
operation of an organ, or a worn-out part had failed. An
arthritic joint was consi dered similar to a tire with the
tread wearing thin. Modern scien tiﬁc medicin e goes into sophisticated  detail,
but in essence it embra ces the two basic principles that
bind all the sciences together: materialism and
reductionism. Materialism holds that there must be a
physical explanation for every phenomenon. Reductionismholds that complex problems can be broken down into
smaller component parts, wherein lie all solutions and
answers. Quantum Healing  blew the whistle on both
principles, not because they are inherently wrong, but
because they left out some extremely important things,
especially when it came to the human body. Materialism left out the mind-body connection. Mind isn’t
material. Yet our thoughts cause our bodies to move,
something we take for granted the minute we get out of
bed in the morning but which stands as a great mystery. When you break the body down into organs, tissues, and
cells, you can’t ﬁnd the slightest trace of a thought, and yet
the mind must be related to the body. How. Reductionism left out the holistic nature of the body. Trillions of cells cooperate to sustain one another, acting to
preserve overall balance and health. Up to a quadrillion
neural connections in the brain generate a microscopic
electrical storm, and yet the result is organized thought,
not a jumble of static. As skilled as medical science is at
dissecting body and


. That is the ultimate glory of being a human being, and
it cannot be attained without total freedom. —
The West clearly has mixed feelings about the whole idea of
higher consciousness, compounded of longing, baﬄement,
and distaste. I travel at least two days a week, year round,
talking about Ayurveda to many kinds of audiences, both
medical and nonmedical, and very quickly I learned how
sensitive a chord I was striking. A CBC interviewer in
Canada introduced himself to me by demanding, “Can you
give me ﬁve reasons why you are not a fraud. ”  A more
congenial interviewer in Los Angeles leaned toward me
with mystical anticipation and said, “Tell me, Doctor, have
you been here—before. ” I was so startled I blurted, “We’re
all here all the time. ”Since the 1960s, the proliferation of casual knowledge
about the East has been a blessing and a curse, for
although many people have picked up a few catch phrases
like nirvana, Atman,  and dharma, and almost everyone can
let the word karma  pass by in conversation without
blinking an eye, the actual sense of these words has been
garbled. I have tried to show that Vedic knowledge is
systematic and sound; that it is as far-reaching as our most
advanced science; and that many of the things we most
desire for ourselves, such as freedom from diseas e and an
unimpaired old age, can be approached through this great
body of understanding about human existence. But I would betray the rishis’ knowledge if I did not
present its ﬁnal expansion, which has no clearly deﬁned
precedent in the West—o r at best is conﬁned to religious
doctrine. The rishis were after a state of total awareness. For them, this was not philosophy or religion but a natural
form of human awareness. The fourth state, it turns out, is
not an end point but a doorway. And what is on the other
side. The only complete answer would have to come from
the thousands and thousa nds of pages of Vedic texts, which
function as the encyclopedia of experiences the rishis
recorded. The simplest answer is to say that what each
rishi encoun tered was the Self. An extremely accurate
depiction of meeting the Self was given by a meditator from
Connecticut:
One of the most regular experiences in my
meditation is of expanded awareness, of no longer
being conﬁne d to the inside of my head, but being
as inﬁnite or more inﬁnite than the universe. Sometimes I feel the boundaries of the mind
being push ed out, like the ever-widening
circumference of a circle, until the circle
disappears and only inﬁnity remains. It is a feeling of great freedom, but also one of
naturalness, far more real and natural than being
conﬁned to such a small space. Sometimes the
sense of inﬁnity is so strong that I lose the
sensation of body or matter—just inﬁnite,
unbounded awareness, an eternal, never-
changing continuum of consciousness. Everyone will have to respond to this in his own terms. I
hope that we have laid enough solid groundwor k so that
the account can appear  in its true light, not as a self-
delusion but as an actual encounter with the silent ﬁeld of
intelligence. Earlier, we noted that the body in its real
nature is non-change mixed with change. The reason why
that is so is that all of nature exhibits these two paradoxical
yet complementary states. As awareness expands, the huge
scope of change and the equally huge scope of non-change
dawn on the mind. An ancient Chinese poem  by Hsu Hsu
says:
The ﬁrst wave is receding
The second wave promptly arrives
So many layers of time
So many lives. Can we grant this beautiful openness of perception, at
once serene and all-encompassing, to an ordinary person
from Connecticut. I think we have to, for the same
biochemistry that sustains such an experience is available
to anyone, regardless of time. Our DNA has remembered
all the things that have ever happened to human beings. It
would be ridiculous to suppose that only Chinese or Indian
DNA can trigger higher states of consciousness; it would be
impoverished to claim that they are not real. Themeditator’s statement ends with this wonderfully exact
appreciation of quantum reality: “Sometimes there is an
interesting paradox of activity and rest all in one, and I feel
within my awareness that I am moving inﬁnitely fast and
remaining perfectly still at the same time. This is the
experience of the ever- changing along with the never-
changing. ”
Anyone who wants to take the full beneﬁt of the Vedic
knowledge must come to grips with the fact that such
normally inconceivable states as inﬁnity, eternity, and
transcendence are real. These words  do not belong to the
vocabulary of the ordinary waking state, but they are not so
distant from it, either. We all have the power to make
reality. Why make it inside boun daries when the boundless
is so near. EXPANDING THE TOPIC
I often  refer  to skeptics in these expanded topics because
Quantum Healing  caused the skeptical beehive to buzz
rather violently. Skeptics view themselves as guardians of
scientiﬁc truth. They can just as easily be seen as the
society for the suppression of curiosity. Yet I sympathize
with anyone who can’t buy into Aham Brahmasmi,  the
Vedic assert ion that “I am the universe. ” From the
viewpoint of everyday life, this simply seems impossible. At
best, Aham Brahmasmi  migh t be the otherworldly state
reached by enlightened sages long ago and far away. Yes and no. A person’s consciousness has to shift in order
to realize, in a higher state of awareness, that “I am the
universe. ” But the statement can’t apply simply to these
few people. Only someone with medic al school training can
look through a microscope and identify T cells from the
immune system, yet everyone has T cells. So it’s not thetruth of Aham Brahmasmi  that we should doubt; either it’s
true or it isn’t. The real issue is how to arrive at the state of
consciousness that reveals this truth. A Buddhist maxim holds that it takes a thorn to remove a
thorn. In other words, the mind encloses us in boundaries,
but only the mind can get us beyond boundaries to
experience the unbounded. In modern terms, we can refer
this paradox to the brain. The brain is the receiver of mind,
the instrume nt whose physical processes parallel every
thought, feeling, sensatio n, and image that passes through
our minds. The Buddhist maxim applies to it, too. The brain
is a thorn in that it reduces reality to ﬁxed bound aries, but
it is capable at the same time of registering the unbounded. In this regard, I became fascinated by the work done by
the Polish-American mathematician Alfred Korzybski
(1879–1950), because he worked out what the brain does
when it processes reality. Billions of bits of data bombard
our sense organs every day, of which only a fraction gets
past the brain’s ﬁlterin g mechanism. When people say,
“You’re not hearing me” or, “You only see what you want to
see,” they are expressin g a truth that Korzybski tried to
quantify mathematically. Sometimes the things a person can’t see are simply
outside the range of human experience, like our inability to
see ultraviolet light. But a great deal more depends on
expectations, memories, biases, fears, and simple closed-
mindedness. If you go to a party and someone tells you that
you are about to meet a Nobel Prize winner, you will see a
diﬀerent person than if you had been told he is a reformed
maﬁa hit man. When all the ﬁltering and processing is
complete, there is no doubt that the brain doesn’t actually
experience reality but only a conﬁrmation of its model of
reality. The model of reality you are following right this minute is
wired into the synapses and neural pathways of your brain. Some of this is so-calle d hard wiring, which means it
belongs to the brain’s intrinsic structure, such as the
wiring that leads from your eyes to the visual cortex. Other
wiring is formed through personal experience and is much
more ﬂuid; this is known as soft wiring. Between them hard
and soft wiring deliver a model of reality to you, and
whatever is outside the model doesn’t exist. Korzybski was
one of the ﬁrst analysts who pointed out that if the brain is
capturing only a fraction of the raw data being fed to it, one
cannot claim that the brain is an accurate vehicle for
experiencing reality. Two interesting points follow:
1. All models are equal as viewed from the level of the
brain. 2. Reality transcends any model we can possibly make of
it. These two