Biological, sociological, or even economic factors may be involved, in that for a variety of reasons, and at different levels, whole groups of individual deaths amount to a mass statement.
On one level the deaths are a protest against the time in which they occur. Those involved have private reasons, however. The reasons, of course, vary from one individual to another, yet all involved “want their death to serve a purpose” beyond private concerns. Partially, then such deaths are meant to make the survivors question the conditions — for unconsciously the species well known there are reasons for such mass deaths that go beyond accepted beliefs.
In some historical periods the plight of the poor was so horrible, so unendurable, that outbreaks of the plague occurred, literally resulting in a complete destruction of large areas of the environment in which such social, political, and economic conditions existed. {Those} plagues took rich and poor alike, however, so the complacent well-to-do could see quite clearly, for example, that to some extent sanitary conditions, privacy, peace of mind, had to be granted to the poor alike, for the results of their dissatisfaction would have quite practical results. Those were deaths of protest.
Individually, each “victim” was to one extent or another a “victim” of apathy, despair, or hopelessness, which automatically lowered bodily defenses.
Not only do such states of mind lower the defenses, however, but they activate and change the body’s chemistries, alter its balances, and initiate disease conditions. Many viruses inherently capable of causing death, in normal conditions contribute to the overall health of the body, existing side by side as it were with other viruses, each contributing quite necessary activities that maintain bodily equilibrium.
If [certain viruses] are triggered, however, to higher activity or overproduction by mental states, they then become “deadly.” Physically they may be passed on in whatever manner is peculiar to a specific strain. Literally, individual mental problems of sufficient severity emerge as social, mass diseases.
The environment in which an outbreak occurs points at the political, sociological, and economic conditions that have evolved, causing such disorder. Often such outbreaks take place after ineffective political or social action — that is, after some unified mass social protest has failed, or is considered hopeless. They often occur also in wartime on the part of a populace [that] is against a given war in which [its] country is involved.
Initially there is a psychic contagion: Despair moves faster than a mosquito, or any outward carrier of a given disease. The mental state brings about the activation of a virus that is, in those terms, passive.
Despair may seem passive only because it feels that exterior action is hopelessness – but its fires rage inwardly, and that kind of contagion can leap from bed to bed and from heart to heart. It touches those, however, who are in the same state only, and to some extent it brings about an acceleration in which something can indeed be done in terms of group action.
Now if we believe in one life only, then such conditions will seem most disastrous, and in our terms they clearly are not pretty. Yet, though each victim in an epidemic may die his or her own death, that death becomes part of a mass social protest. The lives of intimate survivors are shale, and according to the extent of the epidemic the various elements of social life itself are disturbed, altered, rearranged. Sometimes such Epidemics are eventually responsible for the overthrow of governments, the loss of wars.
There are also even deeper biological connections with the heart of nature. We also are biological creatures. Our proud human consciousness rests on the vast “unconscious” integrity of our physical being. In that regard our consciousness is as natural as our toe. In terms of the species’ integrity our mental states are, then, highly important. Despair or apathy is a biological “enemy.” Social conditions, political state’s, economic polices, and even religious or philosophical frameworks that foster such mental states, bring about a biological retaliation. They act like fire applied to a plant.
The epidemic then serve many purposes — warning that certain conditions will not be tolerated. There is a biological outrage that will be continually expressed until the conditions are changed.
Even in the days of the great plagues in England there were those smitten who did not die, and there were those untouched by the disease who dealt with the sick and dying. Those survivors, who were actively involved, saw themselves in a completely different light than those who succumbed, however: They were those, untouched by despair, who saw themselves as effective rather than ineffective. Often they roused themselves from lives of previously unheroic situations, and then performed with great bravely. The horror of the conditions over-whelmed them where earlier they were not involved. The sight of the dying gave them visions of the meaning of life, and stirred new, [ideas] of sociological, political, and spiritual natures, so that in our terms the dead did not die in vain. Epidemics by their public nature speak of public problems — problems that sociologically threaten to sweep the individual to psychic disaster as the physical materialization does biologically.
These are the reasons also for the range or the limits of various epidemics — why they sweep through one area and leave another clear. Why one in the family will die and another survive — for in this mass venture, the individual still forms his or her private reality.
In our society scientific medical beliefs operate, and a kind of preventative medicine, in which procedures [of inoculation] are taken, bringing about in healthy individuals a minute disease condition that the gives disease this procedure might work quite well for those who believe in it. It is, however, the belief, and not the procedure, that works.
I am not recommending that we abandon the procedure when it obviously works for so many — yet you should understand why it bringing about the desired results.
Such medical technology is highly specific, however. We cannot be inoculated with the desire to live, or with the zest, delight, or contentment of the healthy animal. If we have decided to die, protected from one disease in such a manner, we will promptly come down with another, or have an accident. The immunization, while specifically effective, may only reinforce prior beliefs about the body’s ineffectiveness. It may appear that left alone the body would surely develop whatever disease might be “fashionable” at the time, so that the specific victory night result in the ultimate defeat as far as our beliefs are concerned.
We have our own medical systems, however. I do not mean to undermine them, since they are undermining themselves. Some of my statements clearly cannot be proven, in our terms, and appear almost sacrilegious. Yet throughout our history no man or woman has died who did not want to die, regardless of the state of medical technology. Specific diseases have certain symbolic meanings, varying with the times and the places.
There has been great discussion in past years about the survival of the fittest, in Darwinian terms, but little emphasis is placed upon the quality of life, or of survival of the fittest , or of survival itself; or in human terms, [there has been] little probing into question of what makes life worthwhile. Quite simply, if life is not worthwhile, no species will have a reason to continue.
Civilizations are literally social species. They die when those see no reason to live, yet they seed other civilizations. Our private mental states en masse bring about the mass cultural stance of our civilization. To some extent, then, the survival of our civilization is quite literally dependent upon the condition of each individual; and that condition is initially a spiritual, psychic state that gives birth to the physical organism. That organism is intimately connected to the natural biological state of each other person, and to each other living thing, or entity, however minute.
Despite all “realistic” pragmatic tales to the contrary, the natural state of life itself is one of joy, acquiescence with itself — a state in which action is effective, and the power to act is a natural right. We would see this quite clearly with plants, animals, and all other life if we were not so blinded by beliefs to the contrary. We would feel it in the activity of our bodies, in which the vital individual affirmation of our physical being. That activity naturally promotes health and vitality.
I am not speaking of some romanticized, “passive,” flogger, spiritual world, but of a clear reality without impediments, in which the opposite of despair and apathy resigns.