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Recently, much has been written and spoken about the topic of healing. Discoveries in medical science and esoteric methods have greatly expanded the field. This field has also seen an increased amount of expenditures from those wanting to be healed.

One would think that a measure of our total improvement in health would be our ability to live longer. This is no longer true in America. The last big decrease in the death rate was due to vaccinations against childhood diseases. Since then, Americans are dying of different causes. Heart disease and cancer have replaced smallpox and tetanus as the top killers. These diseases did not even exist in earlier cultures such as the American Indians. This would suggest that our complete health has not improved but that our symptoms have changed.

The causative factors for these diseases may very well stem from the diet, stress, mechanization and an increased sense of meaninglessness found in modern day life. Perhaps the increased emptiness in people’s lives has encouraged them to seek renewed meaning through healing. This book provides information on healing by analyzing and interpreting ancient, shamanistic, religious, and modern philosophies. Before you can introduce healing you need to understand what is meant by illness and what does it mean to be healthy.

Illness is a malfunctioning of consciousness. This may be either physical or psychological. Physical illness results in the individual suffering through pain and the inability to function. Psychologically ill people cause others to experience these hardships. These people can be arrogant, brutal, and amoral. Examples are murderers and rapists. A child in a family may exhibit the psychological problems and conflicts of another family member when the parents are unable to deal with these problems. This child becomes the scapegoat. It is known as family casualty and shows that the true source of illness (as indicated by pain) is not always apparent. It may be the person who refuses to recognize his illness who is the greatest carrier.

A more concise understanding of illness comes from defining health. Health is organic wholeness. This means if one part of the body suffers, the whole body and personality suffer. It also means that if a part of our true nature is ignored by our psyche or personality, our whole personality and body suffers. All parts of our personality need to be claimed. The ancient Greeks and American Indian also incorporated these ideas.

Many people measure general health by their peace of mind, their painless existence, and their ability to fit into society. They also prize highly the ability to get what they want and not make mistakes. Is this really a measure of organic wholeness?

The great leaders went through a period of struggle, pain and conflict that made them great. It is the ability to work with pain and to be able to surrender one’s ego that leads to one becoming whole.

Unsatisfactory ways of adjusting include maladjustment and nonadjustment. Criminals and sociopaths are examples of those that threaten others as maladjusted individuals. They are considered to have character disorders. Nonadjusted people include those who cannot cope with life and annoy or disturb others through their behavior. These people are usually institutionalized so society can avoid seeing them.

Kenneth Donaldson challenged his right to freedom vs. being institutionalized. He based his defense on the facts that he was not hurting anyone, could survive on his own, and was not receiving any help for his condition in the institution. Though Donaldson won his freedom after many years in court, his battle was much more difficult than it is for many criminals. It seems that there is more societal support for criminals than for those who have harmless delusions and hallucinations that originate from the unconscious. Donaldson was identified as mentally ill because he did not fit into society’s definition of adjustment and threatened everyone else’s adjustment.

Drug therapy is an example of forced adjustment. When drugs are used discriminately, they are helpful. They are harmful and counterproductive when they are used to help a person avoid pain that this person needs to grow.

There are positive values to adjustment. The mal- or nonadjusted person is often a problem to himself and to others. The nonadjusted person may welcome any form of therapy that allows him to function in life. However, society can go too far in the direction of adjustment as often happens with drugs.

It is also easy to abuse the use of drugs for the institutional care of the emotionally disturbed. Dr. John W. Perry and Dr. Howard Levene instituted a drug-free program for acutely psychotic adults where 10 out of 13 made excellent recoveries. Dr. Perry followed this experiment by another at Agnews State Hospital in San Jose, California. For two years, he worked with 127 young schizophrenic adults in a double blind experiment. Eight percent of the unmedicated vs. 83 percent of the medicated continued to have episodes.

The theory behind the reason for these two experiments was that they believed the human psyche has a self-healing tendency. The results suggest those using drugs for adjustment to society to make a person healthy can have the opposite effect. They also question society’s point of view: does adjustment result in organic wholeness or in illness?

Electric shock therapy is another example. Although temporarily useful in severe cases of depression, electric shock causes permanent memory loss and changes the body’s emotional reaction that damages the personality. It exists because it eliminates behavior that is troublesome to society. The negative side effects are ignored and depreciated.

Behavior modification’s success depends upon adjustment. It works best when dealing with a specific problem. It allows society to dictate the health of an individual. In that way, it is dangerous to one’s organic health.

Institutionalized religions also encourage adjustment through one’s acceptance of doctrine based on faith. This is equated with peace of mind and a sense of security through the explanation of the mysteries of life. Since many people are looking for peace of mind and a sense of security, these religions continue to exist.

Sometimes a person’s lack of adaptation to society shows that he/she is healthier than those who do adjust. One such example was provided by a Jungian analyst in Berlin during the reign of Naziism. A Nazi fighter pilot had developed hysterical color blindness that meant he could no longer fly until he got over this condition. Through dream analysis, he discovered that what he consciously thought was black and bad was, in actuality, white and good. All the Nazi ideals his consciousness assumed to be right were being questioned and contradicted by his unconscious through his dreams of color reversal. When he realized that what he had believed in was now intolerable, he was at his highest nonadaptive point but also at his highest spiritual and psychological point. Unable to survive the destruction of his old ego without a support system, he committed suicide. Here suicide was a result of health, not illness.

The Nazi pilot’s illness laid in the malfunctioning of his consciousness. This cannot be measured by the individual or society. It is only known to the individual’s unconscious mind. Jung called this movement toward wholeness, individuation. This involves a merging of the unconscious and conscious minds. It is a lifelong process and is never completed in one’s lifetime. The movement toward individuation is an unconscious choice; it is not based on what we want but what life sends us. Those of us who do not strive in this direction never reach their full potential. These people become distortions of their true selves, opening themselves up to illness.

Becoming whole is an individual process that involves inner and outer conflict, where mistakes are made and doubt exists, and the elements of good and evil are intertwined. As part of the growth process, we are sent what we need which is not necessarily what we want. Individuation is a means of defining the relationship we have with the pattern of events in our life. It is a way to discover the meaning of life. This involves growth and working toward being complete. It does not involve being perfect, happy or serene.