Psychosomatics vol. 7. – Cancer – What does the body tell us?
Psychosomatics cancer. To understand cancer, it is particularly important to think analogously. It is worth becoming aware of the fact that every whole that we feel or define (unity among unities) is, on the one hand, part of an even larger whole, and on the other, at the same time composed of many other wholes. For example, a forest as a defined whole is part of a larger whole “landscape”, just as it is itself composed of a multitude of “trees” (smaller wholes). The same applies to “one tree”. It is part of the forest and consists of a trunk, roots and crown. In this way, a tree is related to a tree as a tree is to a forest or a forest is to a landscape.
A person is part of humanity, and he himself consists of organs, which are part of a person, and at the same time are composed of a multitude of cells, which in turn represent parts of organs. Humanity expects each individual to behave in a way that serves the development and survival of humanity as best they can. A person expects their organs to function as their survival requires. An organ expects its cells to perform their duties as necessary for the survival of the organ.
In this hierarchy, which could be further extended on both sides, each individual entity (cell, organ, human) is always in conflict between its personal, own life and subordination to the interests of the next higher entity. Each complex system (humanity, state, organ) is directed in its function to subordinate all its parts to a common idea and serve it as much as possible. Every system can normally tolerate the departure of a small number of members without being endangered as a whole. But there is no threshold beyond which the existence of the whole would be endangered.
Thus, the state can tolerate a few citizens who do not work, behave antisocially, or are against the state. But if this group, which does not identify with the goals of the state, grows in numbers, it will, from a certain size onwards, be a serious threat to the whole and, if it gains dominance, it will be able to endanger the entire state in its existence. The state will, of course, try to distance itself from such a development for a long time in order to protect its own existence, but when none of these attempts succeed, its collapse is certain. The most likely possibility would be for small groups of citizens who leave the system to return to the common order in due time, so that they are offered an attractive opportunity to participate in common goals. The oppression and extermination of those who think differently, to which the state most often resorts, never proves successful in the long run, but rather it could be said that such behavior accelerates the development towards chaos. From the state’s perspective, opposition forces are dangerous enemies, whose only goal is to destroy the good old order and spread chaos.
This point of view is correct, but only from one point of view. If we were to ask people who rebel against the order, we would hear different arguments, which are also correct — from their point of view. It is certain that they do not identify with the goals and concepts of their state, but oppose them with their own views and interests, which they would like to see realized. The state wants obedience, groups want freedom to realize their own ideas. Both can be understood, but it is not easy for both interests to be realized at the same time without sacrifices.
The point of these lines is not to develop any political or social theories, or, indeed, our own beliefs, but to present the events of cancer on another level, in order to broaden the usually very narrow view of cancer a little. Cancer is not an isolated event that would occur in only one form of the disease, named after it. In cancer we find a highly differentiated and intelligent process, which people also deal with on all other levels. In almost all other diseases we experience how the body tries to cope with a difficulty that threatens a function with appropriate countermeasures. If it succeeds in this, we speak of a cure (which can be more or less complete). If it fails and succumbs to its efforts, we speak of death.
But with cancer we experience something completely different: the body observes how more and more of its own cells change their behavior and, by diligently dividing, begins a process that does not lead to any end in itself, but finds its limits only in the exhaustion of the host. Unlike bacteria, viruses or toxins, a cancer cell is not something that comes from outside and threatens the organism, but is a cell that has so far put all its activity at the service of the organ and thus at the service of the entire organism, in order to have the best possible chance of survival. But it suddenly changes its convictions and abandons the common identification. It begins to develop its own goals and ruthlessly achieve them. It ends its previous activity of specific organic effect and puts its own reproduction in the foreground.
It no longer behaves as a member of a multicellular living being, but regresses to an evolutionarily earlier stage of existence of a unicellular organism. It ceases to be a member of its association of cells and spreads rapidly and ruthlessly through chaotic division activity, ignoring all morphological boundaries (infiltration) and building its own strongholds everywhere (creation of metastases). It uses the rest of the association of cells, from which it broke out with its behavior, as a host for its own nutrition. The growth and reproduction of cancer cells occur so rapidly that the supply via blood vessels cannot be maintained in some cases. Thus, cancer cells switch from breathing oxygen to a more primitive form of fermentation. Respiration is dependent on the community (exchange), fermentation can be carried out by each cell for itself.
This very successful spread of the cancer cell will only end when it has literally eaten the human being, whom it has made its fertile soil. The cancer cell will eventually die due to the supply problem. Until then, its behavior will be successful.
The question remains why a once-good cell does all this! But its motivation is easy to understand. As an obedient member of a multicellular human, it must only perform the prescribed activity that was useful to the multicellular organism for survival. It was one cell among many that had to perform unattractive work for someone else. It did so for a long time. But at some point, the organism lost its attractiveness as a framework for the cell’s own development. A single-celled organism is free and independent, it can do whatever it wants and make itself immortal through its unlimited reproduction. As part of a multicellular organism, the cell was mortal and unfree. Is it any wonder then that the cell remembers its former freedom and returns to a single-celled existence, in order to achieve immortality on its own? It subjects the previous community to its own interests and begins to achieve its freedom through reckless behavior.
A successful undertaking, the errors of which become visible only very late — namely, only when it is noticed that sacrificing another and using him as fertile soil also includes its own end. The behavior of a cancer cell is successful as long as a human lives as a host — its end also means the end of the development of cancer.
Herein lies a small but far-reaching misconception in the concept of achieving freedom and immortality. We separate ourselves from the old community and realize too late that we still need it. The man is not thrilled to sacrifice his life for the life of the cancer cell, but the body cell was not thrilled to sacrifice its life for the life of the man either. The cancer cell has the same arguments as the man, only its point of view is different. Both want to live and realize their interests and ideas about freedom.
Each of them is ready to sacrifice the other for this. In our “example of the state” it was no different. The state wants to live and realize its ideas, a few who think differently also want to live and realize their ideas. That is why the state first tries to sacrifice the usurper. If it fails in that, the revolutionaries will sacrifice the state. Neither party has any regard for the other. The man of the cancer cell operates, irradiates and poisons as long as he can – if they still win, they will sacrifice the man. It is the ancient conflict of nature: eat or be eaten. Admittedly, man sees the recklessness and short life of cancer cells, but does he also see that he himself behaves in the same way, that we humans strive to ensure survival according to the same concept of cancer?
This is the key to cancer. It is no accident that our age is like this
Cancer is an expression of our time and our collective worldview. As a cancer, we experience in ourselves only what we ourselves experience. Our time is marked by reckless expansion and the realization of our own interests. In political, economic, “religious” and private life, people try to expand their interests regardless of (“morphological”) borders, they try to establish strongholds of their interests (metastases) everywhere and let only their own ideas and goals be valid, while everything else is put in the service of their own advantage (parasitic principle).
We all argue like a cancer cell. Our growth is so fast that we can barely keep up with our own needs. Our communication systems have been built all over the world, but we still cannot communicate with our neighbors or partners. People have free time without knowing what to do with it. We produce and destroy food products in order to manipulate prices. We can travel the world in comfort, but we will not get to know ourselves. The philosophy of our time knows no other goal than progress and growth. We work, experiment, research — why? For the sake of progress! What is the goal of progress? Even more progress! Humanity is on a path without a goal. That is why it must always set new goals for itself, lest it fall into despair.
The blindness and shortsightedness of the people of our time are no less than the cancer cell. For decades, in order to encourage economic expansion, the environment has been used as a fertile soil and host, so that today we would not be “surprised” to find that the death of the host also contains our death. People experience the entire world as their fertile soil: plants, animals, raw materials. Everything is there only so that we can expand endlessly across the earth.
Where do people who behave in this way have the courage and impudence to complain about cancer? It is only our mirror — it shows us our behavior, our arguments, and the end of our journey. Cancer does not need to be defeated — it needs to be understood, so that we can learn to understand ourselves. Why do people always want to break the mirror when they do not like their own face? People have cancer because they are cancer.
Cancer is our great chance to discover our own errors and misconceptions in it. Let us therefore try to discover the weak points of the concept that serves Cancer and us as a picture of the world. Cancer will ultimately fail due to the polarization of “me or the community”. It sees only this “either-or” and therefore decides for its own survival, independent of the environment, noticing only too late that it is still dependent on the environment. It lacks the consciousness of a larger, more comprehensive whole. It sees unity only in its own limitation. This misunderstanding of unity is shared by people with Cancer. And man limits himself in his consciousness, which only creates a split between Me and You. People think in “units” without realizing the nonsense of such a concept. Unity is the sum of all beings and knows nothing except itself. If unity is divided, a multitude will arise, but this multitude will ultimately remain an integral part of unity.
The more the ego limits itself, the more it loses the sense of the whole, which is always only a part. The ego has the illusion that it can do something “alone.” But it literally means all-one and implies being one with everything, not the highest limitation from everything else. In reality, there is no real separation from the rest of the universe. Only our ego can imagine it. To the extent that the ego becomes cocooned, man loses “religio,” the feedback loop with the original reason for being. The ego now tries to satisfy its needs and dictates the path for us. In doing so, it likes everything that serves to further limit and differentiate, because with each emphasis on the boundary it feels more clearly. The ego is afraid only of becoming all-in-one, because that would presuppose its death. With much effort, intelligence, and good arguments, the ego defends its existence and puts at its service the most sacred theories and the most noble intentions—the main thing is to survive.
This is how goals that are not goals arise. Progress as a goal is absurd, because it has no end point. The true goal can only consist in the transformation of the previous state, but not in the mere continuation of what is already there. We humans are in polarity — what use do we have for a goal that is only polar? But if the goal is called unity, it means a completely different quality of being than we experience in polarity. It is no less attractive to offer a man sitting in prison another prison, even if it has more comforts — but to give him freedom is a qualitatively important step. But the goal called “unity” can only be achieved by sacrificing the I, because as long as the I and the Thou exist, we are in polarity. “Rebirth in the spirit” always presupposes death, and this death concerns the self. The Islamic mystic Rumi sums up this theme magnificently in this story:
“A man comes to the door of his beloved and knocks. A voice was heard: ‘Who is it?’
‘It is I,’ he answered. Then the voice said:
‘There is not enough room for you and me here.’
And the door remained closed. After a year of solitude and renunciation, the man came again and knocked. From within, a voice was heard again: ‘Who is it?’
‘You are’, said the ‘man. And the door was opened for him. «
As long as our ego strives for eternal life, we will perish like a cancer cell perishes. A cancer cell differs from a body cell in that it overemphasizes its ego. In a cell, the nucleus corresponds to the brain. In a cancer cell, the nucleus constantly gains in importance and therefore also increases in size (cancer is also diagnosed on the basis of morphological changes in the cell nucleus). This change in the nucleus corresponds to the overemphasis of egocentric thinking with the head, which is also characteristic of our time. The cancer cell seeks eternal life in material reproduction and expansion. Neither cancer nor man yet understand that they are looking for something within matter that cannot be found, namely life. Content and form are confused and an attempt is made to obtain the desired content by multiplying the form. But Jesus already taught: “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it.”
All initiatory schools have therefore taught the opposite path from time immemorial: to sacrifice the formal aspect in order to obtain the content, or, in other words: the I must die, so that we may be reborn in the self. Of course, this is not my self, but the self itself. It is the center that is everywhere.
The self does not possess a separate being, because it encompasses everything that is. Here, finally, the question falls away: “I or the other?” The self does not know others, because it is all-in-one. Such a goal rightly seems dangerous and unattractive to the ego. Therefore, we should not be surprised if the ego makes every attempt to replace this goal of becoming one with the goal of a great, strong, wise and enlightened ego. On both the esoteric and religious paths, most travelers fail because they try to reach the goal of salvation and enlightenment with their own selves. Only a few of them even consider that their Self, with which they identify, can never be saved or enlightened.
A great work always means the sacrifice of the Self, always the death of the ego. We cannot save our Self, we can only separate ourselves from it in order to be saved. The fear that we will then no longer be, which usually arises at this point, only proves how much we identify with our Self and how little we know about our ownness. It is here that the possibility of solving the problem of cancer lies.
Only when we learn to slowly and gradually question the rigidity of our Self and our demarcation and to open ourselves up, do we begin to experience ourselves as part of the whole, and thus to take responsibility for the whole. Then we will understand that the well-being of the whole and our well-being are one and the same, because as a part we are at the same time one with the whole (pars pro toto). Thus, each cell contains the entire genetic information of the organism — it would only have to understand that it is truly a whole. “Microcosm = macrocosm,” Hermetic philosophy teaches us.
The error of thought lies in the distinction between Me and You. Thus arises the illusion that as I one could survive especially well precisely by sacrificing oneself to You and using it as fertile soil. In reality, however, the fate of Me and You, part and whole, cannot be separated. The death that the cancer cell inflicts on the organism will also become its own death, just as, for example, the death of the environment includes our own death. But the cancer cell believes in an outside separate from it, just as people believe in an outside. This belief is deadly.
The medicine is called love. Love heals, because it opens the boundaries and lets the other in so that we can become one with it. Whoever loves does not put his own self first, but experiences a greater whole. Whoever loves feels with the beloved creature as if it were his own. This is not only true among people. Whoever loves an animal cannot possibly observe it from the scientific aspect of a food producer. Here we are not referring to sentimental pseudo-love, but to that state of consciousness that truly feels something of the community of all that is, and not that frequent behavior in which one tries to compensate for one’s own unconscious feelings of guilt through one’s own repressed aggressions through “good deeds” or excessive “love for animals”.
Cancer shows unlived love, cancer is perverted love:
Love overcomes all boundaries and fences. In love, opposites merge and merge.
Love is becoming one with everything, it extends to everything and stops at nothing.
Love is not afraid of death – because love is life.
Whoever does not experience this love in consciousness, runs the risk of his love slipping into physicality and trying to realize its laws there like cancer:
And the cancer cell overcomes all boundaries and fences. Cancer abolishes the individuality of the organ. And the cancer spreads to everything and stops at nothing (metastases). Not even the cancer cell is afraid of death.
Cancer is love on the wrong level. Perfection and becoming one can only be realized in consciousness, not within matter, because matter is the shadow of consciousness. Within the transitory world of forms, man cannot achieve what belongs to the impermanent level. Despite all the efforts of those who want to improve the world, there will never be a healthy world without conflict and problems, friction and strife. There will never be a healthy man without illness and death, never all-encompassing love, because the world of forms lives from boundaries. All these goals can be achieved — anyone can do it at any time — if they see through the forms and free themselves in their consciousness. In the polar world, love leads towards retention — in unity towards dissolution. Cancer respects only true love. The symbol of true love is the heart. The heart is the only organ where we cannot get cancer!
Based on the book by Rudiger Dahlke – Disease as a Path
*Ključne riječi: psihosomatika rak, somatic experiencing terapija, psihoterapeut zagreb
*Foto: GettyImages
*Kontakt: Dogovori termin
*Za firme: Kreativni Direktor
