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7. How Does the Disease Arise?

I would like to tell you about a case in which I learned the principle of how illness develops. I have been able to observe it again and again in the same way in all subsequent patients and have not found any exception.

Case 5

A patient in her early 30s had been suffering from persistent, severe headaches for 14 days that simply did not subside, despite taking painkillers. She had been treated by her GP for these headaches without success, then he referred her to me to rule out a sinus infection. I examined the patient thoroughly but found nothing abnormal. As the woman made a very distressed impression, I thought of a brain tumor or a cerebral hemorrhage. A CT scan of the head on the same day showed no abnormal findings.

The woman's pain was initially inexplicable. She had suffered no head trauma or other physical impact. Was her pain just a figment of her imagination? You can't see pain, of course, but you can make it visible in a functional MRI scan by detecting activated areas in the brain. We know that people feel pain when certain activation patterns occur.1 Pain is a chemical reaction from the limbic system to the cerebral cortex, which signals pain to the spirit.

How should I proceed with the woman? She had plausible severe complaints. Pain cannot be imagined. However, it can be produced by imagination. But if it is there, it is physiologically experienced. I can confirm this from my own experience. When I attended a morning lecture on the danger to life in appendicitis during my medical studies, I began to feel pain in the appendix region around midnight that same day. Fearing that I might die, I immediately went to the emergency room, where I was admitted as an inpatient. After two days of examinations to determine whether I had appendicitis or not, my appendix was removed to be on the safe side. It turned out that it was not inflamed.

Case 5 cont.

Since no physical cause for the pain could be found, the only thing left was the spiritual component. I asked whether something had happened 14 days ago that had affected the patient. The woman then reported: "A fortnight ago, I found out that my boyfriend had cheated on me." The relationship had been going on for a year and she had given up a lot to move to him from far away. She had left her family members behind to live with him. Now she found out that he had been unfaithful to her.

We have the need for fidelity anchored in our spirits and infidelity is the opposite of this. Since we have needs that must be satisfied, we automatically react to an anti-need with rejection. So did this woman. What interested me, however, was which train of thought led to the headache. So, I asked her what thoughts she had about her boyfriend before she found out the news and what her thoughts were like afterwards. She only had loving thoughts towards him beforehand. Loving thoughts are basically free thoughts, i.e. they correspond to our spiritual needs. Every free thought leads to decisions that trigger an electrical impulse appropriate to the body and cause a positive emotion in the limbic system. This is the physical confirmation that the electrical impulse was appropriate for the body and gives the spirit the information: "Keep it up!" Loving thinking cannot trigger a disorder and therefore also cannot cause illness in the body.

But now the woman receives the bad news about her boyfriend's infidelity. This information violates the spirit's need for fidelity, truthfulness and justice. Because if the man cheats, he is not only breaking faith and not being honest, he is also committing an injustice. How does the woman react to the breach of trust? She feels disappointed, is hurt and also has thoughts of revenge.

These negative thoughts generate an electrical impulse that obviously harms the body. It is the unfree thoughts that the spirit thinks and with which it blocks itself. Whenever the spirit imprisons itself, it makes decisions that are not in accordance with the body, which trigger an electrical impulse in the brain that is not in accordance with the body. This false drive leads to damage to the brain and all other organs connected to it. To summarize: Negative and unfree thoughts always lead to a non-body-compliant electrical impulse with varying degrees of damage to the body.2

Generally speaking, human need is felt when someone does something that does not meet the needs of their spirit. This anti-need is taken as an opportunity to take action against it. However, as the other person cannot (usually) be changed, this endeavor is an imprisonment of one's own ego. The more one holds on to these unfree thoughts, the more they multiply and further unsolvable problems arise in the spirit. The patient was trapped by yet another thought that had been tormenting her for 14 days: "I would like to keep my boyfriend if I had the guarantee that he would never be unfaithful to me again." This puts her in an impossible situation, because where is there a guarantee that her boyfriend will remain faithful in the future? She knows herself that there is no such guarantee, but she still holds on to her boyfriend and would force him to be faithful if possible. This compulsion within herself leads to her headaches.

Now the question arises as to the reason for our relationships. Why do we enter into them? The general belief is that we need our fellow human beings to satisfy our spiritual needs. This patient also believes that she needs her boyfriend to fulfill her spiritual needs. She believes that he can satisfy her needs for love, loyalty and security. That is why she has chosen him and lives with him. Can her boyfriend satisfy her needs at all? Is her request realistic? Does the law of nature allow for the possibility that one drinks, eats or thinks for the other?

As I have seen time and again, everyone reacts against themselves when someone else does something that is contrary to their spiritual needs. They hurt themselves without realizing it and without wanting to. This is also the case with this patient, she takes herself mentally captive and produces her own headaches because she is convinced that her boyfriend owes her fidelity. And I agreed with her until I realized that her spirit was harming her body with this request and that the law of nature does not allow what she wants. It was only when I took a closer look at the whole thing that I realized the error in my thinking.

As a doctor, I assume that anything that harms the body should not be done to the body. If I give the body the wrong food, it will react negatively to it. If the body reacts negatively to my thoughts, then they can't be right. Then I have to change these thoughts, just as I do with food that is harmful to the body.

What is the thought error that I was thereafter able to recognize in all subsequent patients? It lies in an unconscious self-deception that is not considered a lie. And since it is common to us all, everyone is their own enemy and destroys themselves when their loved ones, their caregivers, do not do what they should or when they die. This unconscious self-deception would have remained unknown to me if I had not taken illness and the law of nature as a yardstick.

  1. Kröner-Herwig, B. et al, (2011): Pain Psychotherapy: (7th ed.) Springer, p. 6 ↩

  2. Thoughts reach the bone marrow as an impulse via the limbic system as the next point in the human circulatory system. Even the wise Solomon wrote that a troubled mind causes the bones to wither (Proverbs 17:22). He knew that all physical illnesses come from the bone marrow. This is where the blood is produced, i.e. all antibodies and immune cells. Everything that takes place in the bone marrow happens at the command of the spirit. The activity of the bone marrow influences the function of all other organs in the body. Material elements such as air, water and food only enter the functional cycle of the human being via the lungs, stomach etc. after the thoughts. At the beginning of the human being is love as a spiritual element, not chemistry. From the organs, the information flows back into the limbic system, then to the cerebral cortex and from there to the spirit, thus completing the functional cycle of the human being. ↩