The deep significance of the placebo effect

[Nikolai1]

Hi BES - really good post.

 

Firstly, I accept that the term 'belief' is not good. It's confusing because for most people what they believe is contrasted with what they know. For me, believing and knowing have merged into the same thing, therefore expectation is maybe a better term for that state of mind that leads to healing.

 

It all stands to reason that there is no such thing as an objective truth, against which the power of pseudo-truths can be measured. What we expect to happen will happen, period.

 

 

Building a positive attitude and belief in yourself are the building blocks of cognitive therapy, Works fine for a large group of patients. Changing the mindset to positive things, believe you can do it. But for some people it doesn’t work ( cognitive therapy I mean) do they not believe, are they not able to believe? That's an insult for those people, I know people who feel insulted this way and feel the worse for it.

 

Same with Lourdes, some people will find ( some) healing, others won’t. Is their Faith not big enough, should they believe more?

 

In post #39 I said this:

 

"Actually, and this brings me back to the central purpose of the OP, it doesn't really matter how you understand how carbon monoxide became toxic. All that is required is that whatever way you use is wholehearted. Either 1) believe totally in a deterministic universe where human belief (and therefore the placebo) is falsehood and an illusion 2) believe that beliefs create everything or 3) realise that these two perspectives are actually the same."

 

There are very few modern Catholics whose theocentric worldview hasn't been confused by materialism, and the convincing laws of cause and effect that it has discovered. I'm sorry that they feel guilty about their failure, but that guilt comes from the dynamic of the religion. For myself, there is no moral reason to believe one thing over another - but if you want results try to be wholehearted.

 

 

You made a split between biochemistry based medicine and some other things. You seem to think that healing by taking modern drugs is also partly by belief.

 

I have not suggested any split at all. I am arguing quite the opposite. All healings, under what ever name they occur, are successful because of the power of our inner expectation. Now, there might be different ways to explain the healing - biochemistry and Chi energy to name two - but these are just verbal alternatives to the same process. To quote a serpent we both know well:

 

"There is only one truth, but it has many manifestations."

 

 

I had an experience like that. But you won't believe it, because you haven't experienced it.

 

I do believe you. I know the creative power of the mind. I know that it is the sovereign force of the cosmos and is God itself. And I know that you are part of that and possess the same power. And I know that when you try to renounce your own power and say "it was not me, it was the energies that healed me and I merely helped" then you strip yourself of your sovereign power and make yourself vulnerable to the negative energies that tomorrow you will think yourself too weak to fight.

 

 

Gauss, the healer did produce a field of 10^-3 with his hands while sending.

 

Old Dr Kooij, in the town centre, behind the car park, produces a similar field as he writes out his prescription.

 

This raises the problem of cause and effect and the confusion between them which results when we fail to see them as the thing. When we take a placebo pill, the effects are identical to the active pill, as we see in the studies on morphine and natural endorphin.

 

The biochemistry is merely the manifested effect of the true cause, which is the conscious power of expectation.

 

Likewise with any other measurables, brain waves and so on.

 

But when we insist on taking one of these many different types of manifested effects, and turn it into THE cause. This is where the confusion begins, and the interdisciplinary disputes and all the futile debates between mainstream and alternative medicine, and all the futile attempts at scientific credibility.

 

As an aside, cognitive therapy is particularly obvious in the this regard. The therapy is nothing other than trying to get people to think and act and feel in a "healthy" way. Well if they could do that they wouldn't be ill!! Depression is nothing other than the absence of sufficient will power to lead a fully functional life. And yet the treatment requires and expects the Will to be fully operational and ready to implement all the so-called good advice! The way in which cognitive therapies then try to mimic the hard sciences in order to create an evidence base is actually laughable, but its a topic in its own right really.

 

But broadly speaking the fact the cause and the effect are indistinguishable is the reason why all healing arts contain withim themselves the concept of illness. And when you accept that something heals you, you also accept that something will harm you.

 

You don't have to spend long on this website to notice what I call the energetic hypochondriacs. People who can barely enter a room without first filling their dantien, and even then worrying about the negative energies coming their way. This, in spirit, is no different to those neurotic types who go shopping in face masks.

 

True healing is not only healing of the symptoms, but healing of the very concept of illness.

 

 

But as long as you think energywork is a belief, i won't try to explain how I think that it's working

 

 

All I need to know is that my plants need water; it doesn't mean I'm not interested in how they take it from the soil. I can and do have conversations about health - I like to hear the ways they are described - they are like metaphors for me, poems in their own way.

 

But, yes, fundamentally I am detached and glad that I'm not seriously invested in that stuff. Like you can enjoy a movie but at the same time not want to be caught up in the drama, in reality!

 

best wishes to you

, Nikolai

[Brian]

Why do you believe that your plants need water?

[Nikolai1]

Hi Brian

 

Why do you believe that your plants need water?

 

I've simply observed it, in the same way that I have observed that most people need pills when they are ill.

 

I don't have access to the mindset of the plant, but I do have access to the mindset of another person. And I'm saying, the widespread placebo effect shows that your state of mind, you levels of expectation, determine your recovery.

 

Learn therefore to rise above these spurious opinions about your illness. Do not attach yourself to opinions on the causes, learn to be sceptical. Do not attach yourself to your own pet healing, learn to be sceptical of that too.

 

When we have cultivated this ability to be sceptical something remarkable happens. We cease to give the subject any more attention, knowing as we do that what happens is based on our own opinion nothing more. We see that analysis is futile and we naturally desist.

 

This loss of interest is simultaneously a kind of surrender. We are no longer interested in our health and all the theories that surround it.

 

What happens then? Do we still get ill?

 

Actually, yes we do in a way. When there is a bug going round the house, we have moments when we can sense its presence in ourselves. A strange feeling in the throat perhaps.

 

But because we don't give it any further thought whatsoever, we take no actions, no prophylactic hot toddies, nothing. And the illness simply disappears, as gently and as imperceptibly as it came.

 

When you truly confront the significant truths contained in the placebo effect, what happens is that something that once took conscious attention now takes none. One might say that the illness is dealt with unconsciously. Just as we have no need to learn about the biology of our digestion, and then consciously channel all the thousands of enzymes where they are needed, we just simply let it carry on without us.

 

This lesson can be applied to so much of our lives, hence the deep significance of this subject. Life can flow very smoothly if we let it. All the big upheavals could have been much smaller things if we hadn't made such a big deal of them in our minds.

 

Medicine is the cause of so much illness, and I'm not talking iatrogenesis. Medicine is a healing art that has great prestige in our society, but there are higher levels of healing to be discovered.

[Brian]

Why do you believe that your plants need water?

Do you also believe people need water? How about oxygen?

[Nikolai1]

Personally yes, because I see no evidence to the contrary that gets me thinking about it and thus challenging the belief. All I have is times in meditation when the breathing seems to stop but it's hardly the same thing. In order to challenge a held belief our scepticism needs to be provoked, either through circumstances or logically. The existence of the placebo effect provoked my scepticism, my experiments with higher consciousness provided alternative theories.

[Brian]

Biochemistry is "real" until you personally see sufficient evidence to become wholeheartedly of the belief that it is "delusion" and then it suddenly becomes a figment of someone else's imagination?

 

You still don't see that the duality you imagine is the delusion?

[blue eyed snake]

you do not now this snake at all,

but I'll refrain from getting too poisonous, to much work relating to the occasion.

 

wish you luck and hope for you you never really get ill or have a real depression,

even though that might be a healthy impulse to revise your opinions,

 

BES

Edited January 29, 2015 by blue eyed snake

[Nikolai1]

Hi Brian

 

Whenever we try and put this is stuff into words it's duality galore, so I'm not sure which of my dualities you were referring to.

 

But maybe it will clarify things if I outline the stages in the growth of knowledge.

 

1) We accept and hold as truth a particular state of affairs. We can call this the thesis and In this case it will be that illness has a biochemical cause and should therefore be treated biochemically.

 

2) We then come across an alternative perspective, which we call the antithesis. This may be expressed through the opinions of others or there might be some extremely compelling evidence for it. In this case the antithesis is the discovery of the placebo effect.

 

Three possible reactions to the antithesis ensue, all at the same level of wisdom.

 

2A Outright denial that the placebo exists, and the dismissal of the idea on account of its obvious impossibility. Placebo is a myth. In this thread, none of us has reacted this way.

 

2B Outright acceptance of the placebo effect, or the power of the sugar pill ritual as the truth, and dismissing the evidence for biochemistry as outright nonsense - a conspiracy conjured up by Big Pharma. The overwhelming evidence is suppressed. None of us has taken this view, though some in this world do.

 

2C Accept the truth of both thesis and antithesis, but make no attempt at unifying them into a coherent scheme. Somewhat Inauthentically, this person will argue 1 against 2 one day, then 2 against 1 the next day and deny the contradiction they are living in. Their inauthenticity is evidenced by the fact they will feel real irritation at whatever their interlocutor happens to argue, and they feel like they are defending truth.

 

Next we have the third stage:

 

3) Synthesis. This is the realisation that positions 1 and 2 are actually the same thing just viewed from different perspectives. Any apparent contradiction is an illusion. A variable has been discovered that unites the two positions. In this case, I call it the power of subjective consciousness to create reality. Biochemistry is a physical expression of this, and we shall see biochemical changes in the body whatever the healing method.

 

Now, arguing position 3 to a person who has not for themselves made the synthetic breakthrough is extremely difficult. Whatever they hear, they interpret through the only categories they have access to - the binary of position 1 (where primacy of matter predominates) and 2 (where primacy of individual mind predominates). If the reader ofthis thread cannot conceive the difference between 2B and 3 then they are certainly doing this.

 

Because the placebo question invokes one of the most fundamental binaries of the modern mind- mind and matter - the task is especially hard. This is why I've made the point throughout that the leap to level 3 is perhaps only possible through a dedicated spiritual practice that will reveal that their own identity transcends both their individual mind and the individual body and is actually neither. This insight allows mind and body to be equated, allows belief and biochemistry to be akin.

 

The triune path applies to all progression in truth. The synthetic third allows us to understand that the coffee mug is somehow not either right or left handed, even though we only ever use one hand to grasp the handle.

 

When we have gained self-realisation, that is, understanding and seeing that we are not individuals, the triune path ends abruptly. Truth is attained and there is no further synthesis required. Such a person no longer lives in duality,except when they open their mouth and utter words that are interpreted by those in duality. But it is their duality, not his.

 

The main problem in this thread is that the synthesiser has transcended two of the fundamental ontological categories. Words do not operate at this level at all. To express himself he must use words from the lower level,and hope that his audience has the intellectual capacities to interpret them at the correct level. To help, he might use capital letters to highlight the level distinction, but even this can go overlooked. I'm sure I could have used Subjective Consciousness instead of subjective consciousness but its too late now.

 

Brian, twice I asked you to explain the placebo effect in your own terms. How do you synthesise the thesis and the antithesis? This would have allowed me to know whether it was my lack of clarity or your lack of understanding that led to you disagreeing with me. I'm still curious to hear it and I won't bite your hand off - I know firsthand the challenge of synthesis.

[Brian]

OK, let's start at the beginning...

 

In unity, there is a single form of energy -- a single energy, in fact -- and there is nothing other than this energy; no time, no space, no nothing. This was the state at the moment of the beginning of this physical universe and it is a state which still exists as a backdrop to this physical universe. (If you have not experienced it, I encourage you to withhold judgment until continued practice leads you to that personal awareness.)

 

Gravity peeled away first, then the remaining energy split into what we commonly refer to as weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and electromagnetic force. Physicists are actively working on the details of these later separations -- two of the most promising candidates for a unifying theory at present were realized within hours of each other in 1974 but the technological challenges is creating the requisite high-energy environment to perform experiments have been daunting. Theories for the integration of gravity are more speculative at this point and will likely have to await a more solid understanding of the unification of strong, weak & EM. BTW, the electromagnetic force breaks down into electric and magnetic components when time-based variations drop out.

 

That actually brings me to the next point -- space-time. In parallel with the energetic expansion and differentiation, there was an unspooling of temporal and spatial aspects. We commonly think of three-dimensional space which can be traversed with freedom and then a disconnected time-dimension which moves in in one direction "like clockwork" but we have know for more than a hundred years that this is not exactly true. (This year is the 100^th anniversary of Einstein's golden year, BTW (some day, perhaps I'll post about the role his first wife seems to have played...)) Instead, we know with great certitude that time and the three familiar spatial dimensions are mutually orthogonal and similar in characteristics. This has profound ramifications. In the last fifty years, tremendous work has been done on the nature of space-time and we now understand that there are many more dimensions than just those four. The ramifications, again, are profound -- and largely unexplored.

 

So, it is against this backdrop and upon this framework that all of reality plays out. It is important to note, however, that this backdrop and framework includes a single energy, interconnected differentiated forces, transformable space-time dimensions, and more dimensions than meet the eye (so to speak). All that science knows of physics, chemistry, biology, etc., as well as all the esoteric and "supernatural," fits within this reality. All the laws of nature, properties of matter & energy, consciousness, religious truths, siddhis, psychic powers, energetic healing, you name it -- EVERYTHING -- is part of reality. We just don't understand it all. (Some may notice that I intentionally didn't touch on "dark" matter or energy...)

 

How does this relate to the thread? Well, it is true that an electron is an energetic probability-density cloud rather than a solid particle in orbit around the nucleus of an atom but it is also true that atoms still behave as if they were the latter. It is true that particles may or may not exist when they aren't being observed but it is also true that Marblehead's chair is solid and is still sitting there in his house when he goes out girl-watching. It is true that electromagnetic radiation is an energy wave but it is also true that photons bounce off a mirror. It is true that people can influence physical mechanisms with thoughts and beliefs but it is also true that physical mechanisms are real. One does not negate the other. The reality of mind-body influences or energetic resonances does not negate the reality of perchloric acid or carbon monoxide or nuclear fission, or the reality of penicillin or aspirin or nivolumab or OTS964.

 

It might be helpful to look at this quote regarding the development of OTS964:

We identified the molecular target for this drug ten years ago, but it took us nearly a decade to find an effective way to inhibit it," said study author Yusuke Nakamura, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and deputy director of the University's Center for Personalized Therapeutics. "We initially screened 300,000 compounds and then synthesized more than 1,000 of them, and found a few that were likely to work in humans. We focused on the most effective. We think we now have something very promising.

What you are claiming, Nikolai1, is that this whole thing is a mass delusion and those 300,000 compounds are totally interchangeable -- and, in fact, could be switched with baking soda or strychnine with identical results as long as anyone involved with the process wholeheartedly believes in it.

 

<sigh>

 

The "problem" with this thread has not been that you are not making yourself clear or that I don't understand what you are saying. The problem, from my perspective, has been that you are taking a totally valid starting point (placebo-effects indicate that mind-body, energetic, psychological or faith-based influences can have a profound impact on health & well-being, including manifesting and eliminating ailments -- particularly those in which the patient reports on condition) and you erroneously extrapolate from this basis that no other influences are "real." Here are just a few of the polar statements you have made in this thread...

 

In this post, you categorically deny any validity to biochemistry.

<snip>

All this shows that the healing powers of medical drugs are not contained within themselves. Any power they hold is precisely what we give to them through our original beliefs.

<snip>

In this post, you place the power of complete control in "intellectual belief."

<snip>

When I talked about mind over matter I meant intellectual belief creating changes in the physical body.

<snip>

In this post, you assert that biochemistry is just trickery, you claim there is no difference between the results of actives and placebos (which is largely true for certain types of ailments but utterly false for others) and then state that the difference is an illusion, you falsely claim that the active and the placebo are easily distinguishable (revealing a lack of familiarity with clinical trials), you then try to talk knowingly about the difficulties in "inventing a drug that is simultaneously benign yet capable of creating bodily feedback" despite having spent the entire thread until this point saying the whole thing was a farce (if biochemistry is a sham, how can the term "inventing a drug" even have meaning?), you claim side effect and main effect are the same thing (when they are actually totally different by their very nature and the side-effects are almost entirely discovered after the fact), you then casually state that the entire pharmaceutical industry is inherently fraudulent (again, displaying your lack of familiarity with the industry) but then repeat your statement that we shouldn't be "critical of big pharma." LOL This is bizzaro-world stuff, Nikolai1.

<snip>

The science of creating medicines is nothing other than the art of getting people to be convinced.

 

 

The supposed clinical difference between the placebo and the active ingredient is a benign illusion that is based on several factors.

 

 

Firstly let's not forget that the two pills are different. They are different colours, shapes, and most importantly they taste different.

<snip>

And trust me, inventing a drug that is simultaneously benign yet capable of creating bodily feedback is no easy matter. The side effect and the main effect are one and the same thing.

 

 

Beyond this, there are political issues that allow a drug to seem clinically different to placebo. This is today with subtle manipulation of participant recruitment, data processing ,selective publication of positive results, and finally plain chance. A one in a hundred outcome is considered statistically and clinically significant.

 

 

But anyway, let's not get critical of big pharma because they are the vehicle of helping that we as a whole society create, believe in and therefore need.

Here, you repeat your misconception that modern medicine is purely placebo effect.

The art of being a physician is the art of maximising the placebo effect at all stages in the consultation. The drugs are just the icing on the cake and will not be effective if the doctor hasn't first endorsed them.

<snip>

This was your response, in its entirety, to my question about how people slipped LSD can be affected -- your response is that they were aware of it but weren't aware they were aware of it and this unaware awareness constituted wholehearted belief in something they knew nothing about, and that this is proven by the fact that they were affected. Uh-huh...

Hi Brian

 

 

 

Really good question! The key word here is 'unsuspecting'. In reality there is no such thing as unsuspecting, if something is consciously known by one then all is unconsciously known by the rest. At a deep level, all the students knew that they were taking coffee with LSD.

 

This deep level of knowing and its expression is only disrupted by our belief in empirical information. If we believe that we are capable of ignorance, and need to acquire truth through experience, then that belief will obscure our original reaction. In fact, the belief in the possibility of ignorance is the same as the belief in external processes that occur regardless of us. The belief in the active ingredient that obeys laws of chemistry regardless of psychology is therefore failure to understand our own perfect knowledge. This is pure ignorance, sorry Brian.

 

The placebo effect always operates at the conscious level, the level that clouds and distorts pure knowing. If we consciously take a pill then it will operate according to our own expectations. if the pill is taken unsuspectingly, the pill will operate according to the expectations of those who consciously administered it. This is why blinded, double-blinded and now triple-blinded research designs have been deemed necessary. Unfortunately, all the blinding in the world can't remove the placebo effect, if even one person believes in the drug.

 

if the LSD were swallowed without anyone and anything having any conscious expectation then the effects would be void. It would be like breathing air, so to speak.

 

So where did the belief in LSD (or any drug) start? This brings us back to the OP when I talked about the role of revelation. If there is a belief in the possibility of our own ignorance then the aspect of us that knows there is no ignorance will grant us glimmers of compensatory 'truth'. The recipient of the revelation knows in a way that is so powerful and direct that it is enough to influence the whole of humanity. they are creatively inspired. The whole rigmarole of clinical trials are just the modern way of convincing ourselves and spreading the word. They've never been necessary in the past and they are necessary now only because we believe they are necessary - in fact they are nothing more than a kind of show.

 

Those who understand their own perfect knowledge and are not in ignorance have no need for potions and lotions. They don't need to place the healing agent outside of them because they are themselves the healing agent as far as others are concerned.

This is your complete response to the question about how carbon monoxide kills people who know nothing about carbon monoxide -- your response is that someone else knows about it and that's all it takes (even though, by your logic, the fervent belief by the parents that their actions were "safe" should trump some outsider's belief that the fumes contain a deadly poison).

Many people consciously understood the danger of the carbon monoxide. This is a widepsread pattern of belief and is therefore very powerful. No-one had any conscious beliefs about the vent, not even the parents. If they did, then they would not have lit the stove unless they were wanting to poison themselves.

You continue on for a while with more of the same but it is clear to me that you are firmly entrenched in the belief that anyone who doesn't agree with your belief that beliefs and biochemistry are the same thing and that therefore biochemistry isn't real (despite the fact that, since they are the same thing, this also means the belief-based placebo-effect is also not real and that energetic healing, etc., are also not real) -- that anyone who doesn't swallow this hook-line-and-sinker is therefore clearly stuck in a less evolved state of knowledge than your own enlightened awareness. This is, frankly, amusing.

[vonkrankenhaus]

Brian's point about biochemistry is a good one, because the effects of "the mind on the body", which is a large component of the "placebo effect", is possible because of the "biochemicals" called hormones.

 

"Hormones are used to communicate between organs and tissues to regulate physiological and behavioral activities, such as digestion, metabolism, respiration, tissue function, sensory perception, sleep, excretion, lactation, stress, growth and development, movement, reproduction, and mood" (wikipedia)

 

If any "healing" or other biological changes occur in response to anything, this is a hormonal response.

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Seth Ananda]

Groan. Placebo wont cure this thread...

 

Placebo is tricky. Really really tricky. It is a highly contextual subject for one.

 

1. It depends on the condition. Certain conditions, like some auto Immune diseases are consistently highly susceptible to placebo cure. If I remember rightly effecting as many as 1 in 3 people. Other conditions like bone cancer it does almost nothing to.

 

2. The reason it is banned in many countries is because even in positive placebo conditions, It only works on 1 in 3 people.
It would be a violation of duty of care to give a 'medication' to someone that potentially did nothing to them because it was just a sugar pill.

 

3. Placebo cures can be triggered in people who are resistant to it {that other 2 out of 3} if its with the right condition, by mixing it in and out with real treatments such as chemo, because the person is more likely to really believe they are getting the goods. That is amplified when the real medication has side effects that make the client know and believe they are on it.
One indicator that a client is accepting the placebo is that they display a nacebo {negative placebo} responce to the medication, like hair falling out and nausea from 'Chemo'...
But, Even when that is happening, it still does not guarantee a cure, but just shows that they believe they are on it and are getting better.

 

It can also be amplified by fake surgery, {like arthritic knees} where people think they have been fixed, are told to expect some stiffness for a few days but will be walking fine in a week.

 

4. Generally medicines are expected to perform at much higher success rate than placebo. One exception is anti depressants and anti psychotics, which generally barely scrape past.

[Seth Ananda]

5. Placebo cure sometimes means placebo alleviation, and thats it.

[FmAm]

Matter is underrated. It isn't evil. And no one knows what it is. Appropriately combined, it produces consciousness. (These are just concepts.) Everything is just an epic and impersonal coincidence. Placebo is a change in brain electrics and chemistry. So is the effect of a real drug. A belief in placebo is an electrochemical happening, too - producing changes in endocrine system etc. There's nothing personal going on in placebo or in taking active drugs. There's no one believing in placebo, but there's the feeling of active believing and doing. It's just matter doing its impersonal business, with consciousness along feeling those things happening.

Edited February 1, 2015 by FmAm

[blue eyed snake]

Thank you Brian,

 

I like people who can make some basics of their knowledge available to other people in simple language. The first part of your post I've read with much interest.

 

same for the posts from von krankenhaus and seth ananda, they're clearly knowledgeble about the topics they post about and so give additional useful information

[Nikolai1]

Hi all,

 

I've been away for a few days, but been following the conversation on my phone. I'll just reiterate where we are so far and then hopefully I'll have time to deal with some of your comments.

 

Let's Imagine there is tremendous excitement about a new painkilling Compound and it's efficacy is trialled experimentally against a placebo condition.

 

The active compound is comprised of molecules A, B and X and is 60% effective.

 

The placebo compound is comprised of molecules X, Y and Z and is 30% effective.

 

Now some scientists may be so invested in the active compound that in their excitement they overlook the calls from other scientists to investigate molecule X on its own. Molecules A, B, Y and Z, they say, may have been inhibiting the effects of X - the molecule that was present in 100% of cases that led to a healing.

 

Now in the above example, the active and placebo share molecule X. In real life, great care is taken to ensure that the placebo shares none of its biochemical properties with the active.

 

And yet still they do share one very important property.

 

The property they share is the mental attitude of the patient. All agree - doctors, drugs companies, research scientists - that the beliefs are capable of playing a causal role, but inexplicably they consider belief to be the exclusive role only in the case of the placebo.

 

This is not only obviously unjustified, but a breathtakingly illogical example of circular thinking. So why does it happen? Why do we ignore that mental molecule that is undeniably present in every known healing?

 

That mental molecule which heals whether the active compound is there or not there?

 

Firstly, a state of belief is wholly mental in nature and cannot be conceptualised in biochemical terms. The effects of a belief may be, and often are, seen at the biochemical level, but the belief as a causative agent cannot be. There is a profound epistemological disconnect between the mental cause and the material effect and science has no option but to accept defeat in the face of the 'hard problem' and leave the placebo as an unexplainable. When we insist that the only biochemical remedies are explainable, it takes only one short step further to say that explainable remedies are those that work best.

 

What cannot be considered is that the so called active condition is simply that which most effectively engenders the belief state.

 

The second problem for science is that thoughts are not amenable to conscious manipulation in the same way as matter. Indeed it seem that thoughts and beliefs must remain unconscious if they are to operate to full efficacy. In other word, there is no understanding as to how belief states can be consciously manipulated to effect a physical healing and so suggestion that they might be sounds profoundly unethical.

 

These two problems taken together lead many to believe that a belief has such a precarious state of material reality that it cannot be the subject of either conceptualisation nor technological implementation.

 

Is this true?

 

Well, for the vast majority of mankind, yes it is.

 

It takes considerable intelligence and application to do the inner work required to transcend our beliefs and achieve an internal healing. (Where external healing means that which requires the expertise and technology of an outsider - whether it be a medical doctor, a faith healer, a voodoo practitioner and so on.)

 

I say therefore that it is most ethical for the status quo to be maintained. All should seek healing where they believe they shall be healed and this is the position I have maintained throughout and why I've been careful not to sanction an attack on Big Pharma. The drugs companies and the profession they serve perform a vital role and should be left to continue. Hopefully my ethical stance is sufficiently clear by now.

 

In another post I'll detail the cosmogony of my system, and this will provide the rationale for actual self-healing for those rare beings capable of such. Before that I'll try and clear up some of your objections point by point maybe tomorrow

 

Best wishes, Nikolai

[soaring crane]

Timely article:

 

http://www.cracked.com/article_21932_7-creepy-things-your-mind-can-trick-your-body-into-doing.html

[Nikolai1]

Hi Brian,

 

I've finally got time to reply to your long post. You had many objections so i'll have to be quite brief with each one:

 

In this post, you categorically deny any validity to biochemistry.

 

I deny that biochemistry is playing the causal role in a healing. Biochemistry is one of many valid paradigms within which to view the effects of Belief, but to view it as cause is untenable. The power of belief is demonstrated in the placebo condition, and it is also present in the active condition. Parsimony requires that we select one overarching cause, rather than take the belief that Belief for some reason falls into abeyance when the active pill is used.

 

 

In this post, you assert that biochemistry is just trickery

 

Trickery is deliberate deception. I've never asserted that. The belief that the medical/pharmocological industry has in their approach is sincere. I merely point out that there is a higher, truer perspective that few are aware of.

 

 

you claim there is no difference between the results of actives and placebos (which is largely true for certain types of ailments but utterly false for others) and then state that the difference is an illusion

 

I've never said this. There is a difference when the active is introduced, but this is because the active pill has greater power to influence the beliefs of the patient. They are different in colour, taste etc and these factors affect the patients state of mind. Most importantly, somebody somewhere believes in the active, and has negative belief in the placebo. Double and triple blinding has been proved necessary to reduce this, but it is impossible to eradicate it altogether.

 

 

you falsely claim that the active and the placebo are easily distinguishable

 

Yes that is my understanding, but tell me if I'm wrong. In the real world deliberate efforts are made to design the drug. Research has shown that giving a drug a name with a Z or an X in it makes it more effective, because these letters are associated with science and the future and progress.

 

 

you then try to talk knowingly about the difficulties in "inventing a drug that is simultaneously benign yet capable of creating bodily feedback" despite having spent the entire thread until this point saying the whole thing was a farce (if biochemistry is a sham, how can the term "inventing a drug" even have meaning?),

 

In the R&D phase the side effects of a drug are systematically scrutinised. Any hint of a side effect is seized upon, and these are then believed in more and more until there become part of the profile of the drug. Ethics require that these side effects are then presented as possible to the trial participants before participation. Although placebo produces side effects, they will more likely to appear in the active group because of the beliefs of the research team. These side effects will then enhance the active agent in the participant because they will feel the effects of the compound and this will produce the belief that they have taken something powerful. The concordance between their feelings and the warning before the trial will keep the participants believing that the scientists know what they are doing.

 

 

you claim side effect and main effect are the same thing (when they are actually totally different by their very nature and the side-effects are almost entirely discovered after the fact),

 

The side effects therefore play a shared role in the healing. And they are not discovered after the fact but are investigated even at the animal trial phase. They are well known before the clinical trials which is the last phase and are basically about demonstrating costs against benefits for the sake of the consumer. Nowadays, the side effects for chemically related compounds are believed possible and so are in everyone mindset from the start.

 

 

you then casually state that the entire pharmaceutical industry is inherently fraudulent (again, displaying your lack of familiarity with the industry) but then repeat your statement that we shouldn't be "critical of big pharma." LOL This is bizzaro-world stuff, Nikolai1.

 

I addressed this is my last post. I am not calling for the end of medical science! I would happily donate to any research fund, I broadly speaking support the pharmaceutical companies. If they appear a bit cut throat i am sympathetic to the imaginable costs that go into R&D and just how astronomically difficult it is to get a drug to market.

 

Pharmaceuticals are for the masses, and it is on behalf of the masses that I support them.

 

But, when it comes to healing there is a better way for those few who are capable of it. But first they need to understand the deep processes that underlie medical science so as to loosen their belief. This is hard and requires traits that completely transcend intelligence, and are spiritual in nature.

 

 

This was your response, in its entirety, to my question about how people slipped LSD can be affected -- your response is that they were aware of it but weren't aware they were aware of it and this unaware awareness constituted wholehearted belief in something they knew nothing about, and that this is proven by the fact that they were affected. Uh-huh...

 

No, when we are unaware of something we become passive to somebody who is consciously aware of something. The beliefs of the guy who planted the LSD created the effects in the coffee drinkers. The LSD was incidental to the story, or worked only becuase the guy believed in LSD.

 

Likewise, the could have got people tripping out, without the LSD but simply by saying 'OMG, did you drink that coffee cos I accidentally dropped acid into it'. If he was a good actor he could have got many people tripping out.

 

 

This is your complete response to the question about how carbon monoxide kills people who know nothing about carbon monoxide -- your response is that someone else knows about it and that's all it takes (even though, by your logic, the fervent belief by the parents that their actions were "safe" should trump some outsider's belief that the fumes contain a deadly poison).

 

Before self-realisation our knowledge is split up into conscious and unconscious. What is conscious we have 'ourselves', what is unconscious is had by 'other people'. When we become conscious of knowledge then it is ours to use to shape reality, and it gives us the power to shape that which is unconscious. This is how the LSD man gained power over the unwitting coffee drinkers.

 

The people who were poisoned knew the presence of the CO unconsciously and were therefore vulnerable to all those who consciously declare CO to be toxic.

 

The process of self-healing is therefore the process of raising all our unconscious knowlegde to the level of consciousness. This isn't as hard as it sounds because all the knowledge in the world is in fact pure ignorance and we can dispel it all, root and branch, by getting to the very false predicates of all this knowledge and raising it to consciosness.

 

A self-healed person would not have been poisoned in this manner. They simply would have left the room, or known not to be there. Or, if forced, they would have tackled the widespread belief in CO toxicity and reversed it for themselves. Transmuted the warning conditions into safe ones.

 

OK, I think that's pretty much it. I quite enjoyed your worldview speech and thought it had a certain amount of poetic power. But it didn't answer my question at all. I asked how the placebo works and you merely said that everything is connected energetically, and then something quite vague about how an electron is both a thing and a potential. i think you're on the right lines, but now actually bring it to the real world.

 

All that you talk about is directly and concretely observable to the rightly orientated mind. You don't need to read lots of science books, you don't need to learn hard maths. You don't need to build microscopes or particle collliders. We don't need any further experiments to confirm anything.

 

This science stuff is nice but you're following a lesser road. You're talking in tropes, metaphors. Realise it yourslef and you wouldn't dream of talking about Unity in such convoluted terms. You would not dream of being so abstract when you could use the everyday language of human experience. The intimate and direct fact that is reality is the thing you will emphasise first because it is the most obvious and the most helpful.

 

But first, face up to the placebo! It is seriously difficult to make sense of it, but you must make the effort. Help me! Stop falling back on half-useful dogmas like laws of biochemsitry. Even if placebo cured only one in 100, then that should be enough to rouse the sincere seeker of truth from their dogmas.

[Nikolai1]

Hi Vonkrankenhaus

 

 

Brian's point about biochemistry is a good one, because the effects of "the mind on the body", which is a large component of the "placebo effect", is possible because of the "biochemicals" called hormones.

 

There are two ways of conceptualising what is happening:

 

1) A healing belief heals the mind, and this then shapes and directs the chemicals and hormones until the mind healing is reflected physically.

 

2) the only reality is mind and there is no interaction between mind and matter. Biochemical changes are a 'story' told by mind. They are a kind of metaphor for mental processes but essentially just more of the same mind stuff.

 

Both recognise the primary of mind, which is the important thing. The first translates it into the language of time, cause and effect but encounters the hard problem of mind-matter interaction.

 

This problem is only soluble to those capable of understanding, living and being the position 2. The downside of 2 is that it is beyond time and space, therefore beyond the realm of multiplicity and therefore beyond language. Everything I write is from position 2 but there are severe problems in translation for anyone who is not hearing at the same level.

[Nikolai1]

Hi

 

 

I have a great deal of interest in the placebo effect, because it has been documented as performing some really phenomenal feats, but my brain reels at the idea that this somehow negates the physical effects of drugs.

 

Everyone's mind reels at the placebo.  To accept it and understand requires nothing more than a complete revolution of the mind.  It requires the adoption of a worldview that only the cream of humanity's intellects have been capable - Buddha, Hegel, Dogen spring to mind but not many more.

 

Any medical cure is undermined by it.  Every time, I mean every time, we must realise:  'but maybe it was my beliefs that did it. The science is just the attempt to convince - there's no truth beyond my own suggestibility.

 

This is a very scary phase in our development.  We feel called to make an attempt at synthesis that seems so big and far-reaching that it is beyond us.

 

Denial is self-protection.  If you go into denial against what I'm saying then that is by far the best and safest place for you to be.  But if you try and discuss it with me then it shows you are strong enough to understand what I'm saying and have the conversation.

 

 

In many ways, I take it as proof of magic, but as you point out, not a replacement for physical science. 

 

Now see that magic and medical science operate according to the same principles.  Both use methods to inculcate belief.  Magic uses the methods that are 'too rare and powerful for the masses'.  Medicine 'uses the methods that are supposedly so wide and universal that even the masses can take a pill.

 

Both convince in their own way...

[Nikolai1]

Hi FmAm,

 

 

There's no one believing in placebo, but there's the feeling of active believing and doing. It's just matter doing its impersonal business, with consciousness along feeling those things happening.

 

Your post is excellent because it speaks of unity between mind and matter, and unity is actually all I hope for. If I'm getting unity I couldn't care less whether you call it mind or matter.

 

You are showing analysis at the level it is required.

 

So it is found that saltwater kills pain when painkiller compound X is absent!

 

Excellent news! So now how would you take this new data and improve on your compound X? what are the ingredients you wish to incorporate?

Edited February 9, 2015 by Nikolai1

[vonkrankenhaus]

Re:

-----

"There are two ways of conceptualising what is happening:

 

1) A healing belief heals the mind, and this then shapes and directs the chemicals and hormones until the mind healing is reflected physically.

 

2) the only reality is mind and there is no interaction between mind and matter. Biochemical changes are a 'story' told by mind. They are a kind of metaphor for mental processes but essentially just more of the same mind stuff."

-----

 

These are two ideas commonly associated with this phenomena - but I feel that they are both inaccurate as real descriptions of what is happening.

 

"Mind" and "matter" are not separate. "Biochemistry" is a made-up way of looking at reality, as is "psychology", and neither one of these confabulations actually reaches truth, nor were they ever designed to.

 

We use these ideas as "conveniences", but they become limits. So, they are effective ideas for trading in a consensual but imaginary lexicon of explanations such as an "industry" or "society" or "culture" that aims for consistency and repeatability.

 

This is something like the way people assume there really is a "fast food" reality, or "the world of entertainment", or "scientific progress" - all just bold yet inaccurate constructs, assumptions that would fall away if not reinforced continually.

 

So I am just suggesting early caution in seeing delineations as we explore this. We might be making assumptions from the start that end up standing in our way and shaping our view unnecesarily.

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Nikolai1]

Hello VonK

 

 

"Mind" and "matter" are not separate. "Biochemistry" is a made-up way of looking at reality, as is "psychology", and neither one of these confabulations actually reaches truth, nor were they ever designed to.

 

We use these ideas as "conveniences", but they become limits.

 

I couldn't agree more!

 

I've only been able to allude so far to the true healing, which is nothing other than the realisation that who we are is neither body nor mind. NOT body and mind which is the usual way.

 

When it comes to medical science there is a strong need, for those that are ready, to deconstruct the illusion that our bodies are the location for our illness.

 

There is no better way to deconstruct the belief in our embodiment than to recognise the placebo effect and to see that ALL our illness can also be understood as mental belief.

 

So, we are left in a situation where we are kind of paralysed. We try to understand our illness physically, then, we realise that the paradigm is open to contradiction by the mind cure paradigm.

 

We are stuck, stuck, stuck! Intellectual equipoise!

 

And there is no better condition for insight and true healing than to realise we are stuck.

 

We shy away from this stuckness by taking what I've called the inauthentic approach, whereby we accept that mind are body cures are somehow both true. Brian has been particularly guilty in this regard, but in fairness, this is the position of most people.

 

In my own mind, i've been fully aware that my advocation of the mind-healing has been ironic. I've needed people to see the validity of the approach - that't to say - the equal validity of the approach to the biochemical cure, before they can realise that neither of them gets to the heart of the matter.

 

Getting to the heart of the matter - understanding that our selves are neither body nor mind - is itself the healing!

 

Phew, ! feel like you've hauled me out the closet!

[FmAm]

-

Edited February 10, 2015 by FmAm

[vonkrankenhaus]

Re:

-----

"There is no better way to deconstruct the belief in our embodiment than to recognise the placebo effect and to see that ALL our illness can also be understood as mental belief."

-----

 

Belief is "deconstructed" or, better "mooted", in the face of fact and experience - so first we need to see and experience the answers to such questions as "what are we?" and "how does all this happen?" - the very basics.

 

Our experience of consciousness of "body" and "mind" is exemplified in our early development, when the embryo divides into two parts, which become on one hand the digestive/intestinal organs (the center of "physicality"), and on the other, the brain and nervous system (the center of "consciousness"). In an infant, these grow together and first - babies have a big belly and a big head compared to the adult.

 

The part that deals with the physical environment is simpler and more expanded, and the part that deals with vibration is more dense and complex. One part deals with space, the other with time.

 

There is a balance of functionality of these two parts. When imbalance arises we experience these as physical or mental "illness".

 

This is just one example of why we may be conscious of a "body" and "mind" in the first place.

 

But there is much more to this.

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[blue eyed snake]

Our experience of consciousness of "body" and "mind" is exemplified in our early development, when the embryo divides into two parts, which become on one hand the digestive/intestinal organs (the center of "physicality"), and on the other, the brain and nervous system (the center of "consciousness"). In an infant, these grow together and first - babies have a big belly and a big head compared to the adult.

 

The part that deals with the physical environment is simpler and more expanded, and the part that deals with vibration is more dense and complex. One part deals with space, the other with time.

 

There is a balance of functionality of these two parts. When imbalance arises we experience these as physical or mental "illness".

 

That is an interesting view that I hadn't heard of before,

thanks