About Cancer

Cancer: The Monster That Kills?

For most people, a cancer diagnosis means death. Unfortunately, the world is primed to the idea that cancer always kills. It is not necessarily so. I have often told cancer patients: You don't have to die of cancer. I do not have cancer but I may die earlier than you. So take it easy and don't worry so much. It is not good for your healing. I do not say this just to please them. I have seen so many miraculous healings of cancer cases that I remain in awe, preferring to experience them, rather than to reason.

Karl Menniger (in The Vital Balance) wrote: "Cancer is said to kill some patients who would otherwise not have died so quickly from it". Abraham Khazam (in You Don't Have to Die From Cancer) said: "You don't have to die from cancer and many people die unnecessarily and prematurely from this wrong word, which is a wrong belief that produces a wrong mental set."

Mindset of Cancer Patients

Cancer patients are not ordinary people. They may show the following characteristics:

1) Cancer patients are very frightened people even though some of them do not show their fear. They may put up a false front.

2) Cancer patients are people in distress. At the back of their mind they only think that they are going to die soon. The future can never be certain anymore.

3) Cancer patients are intensely anxious people. They may be in a hypnotic-like state. As such, they are highly gullible and are highly receptive to any suggestion. They would grab at any straw that promises a cure.

4) Cancer patients are emotional people. They are not capable of rational thinking. Reasoning and logic do not apply to the emotional mind.

5) Cancer patients are highly sensitive persons. They will find reference to their problems just about everywhere. Every word and action of people surrounding them appeared to be directed at them.

6) Cancer patients are demoralised people. They feel hopeless, helpless and are in great despair. They feel powerless and frustrated. They feel that there is nothing that they can do to help themselves and there is nothing that others can do to help them. They suffer from the inside and the world does not seem to care or be able to help.

One Person, Two Diseases

When you are told by the doctor that you have cancer, what does he really mean? This is an odd question to ask, is it not? Many of us, doctors included, see only the biological cancer in you; that is to say, all of us think of cancer as the presence of malignant tumors in the body. We have been trained to think in terms of the visible and measurable aspects of the body.

Let me tell you that there is more to having cancer than the mere presence of the biological disease. Medicine tends to ignore or neglect the fact that a person with cancer also suffers from emotional or psychological cancer. This type of cancer does not show up in the X-ray film or blood test results. Emotional cancer is equally serious if not more serious than the biological cancer. Emotional cancer leads to psychogenic death. Such death comes after patients are being diagnosed with cancer. They die unnecessarily so, long before the biological cancer may even have the chance to kill them. Such a death is a result of self-destruction arising from a wrong conviction that one must die when one gets cancer. In short, this is like the voodoo or bone-pointing death curse. Unfortunately, this death goes unrecognised and unrecorded because it is presumed that deaths of cancer patients is caused by biological cancer.

Today, cancer patients could be under a modern day voodoo curse. They are told that they have contracted cancer and with it too come the doctor's prognosis - only three to six months to live, etc.
There is no more chance. Death is inevitable. Prepare yourself. This curse is made real in the emotional mind of cancer patients in two ways:

1) The wrong mindset of the patients themselves. They fully believe in their doctors and what they say. As patients they feel hopeless and helpless. They believe they will die of cancer!

2) The social pressure brought about by the wrong mindset of family members, relatives, friends, doctors, nursing staff and many others. While these people may have good intentions, they may unfortunately have the wrong mindset.

I am reminded of Madam Kiew, a breast cancer patient who came to see me many years ago. She was warded in a private hospital after having her cancerous breast removed. A nurse came to her ward one day and said: "You must realise that you are suffering from cancer. This is a serious disease. You have no chance at all. You will die soon." Madam Kiew was devastated and confused. She came to my house crying and pleading with us to help her. She said she was not ready to die yet -- her only daughter was still small. We understood her distress. Of course the nurse did not realise that what she did and said was very destructive. It amounted to pushing Madam Kiew to her death -- to follow the usual, expected path. Many well-meaning friends, relatives and even doctors commit similar deadly mistakes.

Treatment of Cancer

Having understood the above, perhaps it would be easier now for us to understand that there is more to cancer treatment than the surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and drugs that the doctors ask you to undergo or take. Medical science only addresses the physical aspect of the biological cancer, leaving a big hollow or void with regards to the emotions. This is inadequate and unsatisfactory. What the world needs is to recognise and address the emotional or psychological cancers that exist in the patients. These are equally destructive forces that eat up the patients from within. Psychology is still often viewed with suspicion. Perhaps the study about the problems of the head is only relevant in cases of mad men? I have a strong feeling that it may take too long for modern medicine to come to terms with the new truth that man is not only a physical body but consists of the mind and soul. Healing must address all these three.