Mind over Matter – The Placebo Effect and the Power of Belief

The mind exists as an intelligent field of subtle energy that constructs the physical body from the inside out, while also inhabiting and operating it as the vehicle, instrument, and means of expressing through in order to create an experience of itself within its own material construct. The mind exists primarily as memory (soul-pattern) and consciousness (life force) that forms a vibratory frequency that has a holographic blueprint and self-assembling mechanism inherent in it that systematically structures the biological system of the body through a dynamic process of growth and development. It forms both the seed and the ovum of the primordial consciousness that shapes the body as an outer shell or reflection of itself within the sphere of the Earth’s material realm. The inner and outer are direct correspondences of each other that combine to form a single reality of the same essence on both a smaller and greater scale at the same time. The mind literally shapes itself not only as a biological being, but as the outer reality that encompasses, and interacts with itself through the medium of the body. The mind is what structures and regulates the state and all the activities of the physical body, as well as the outer world, which is perceived through the body as an emanation. The mind is an electromagnetic field of intelligence that in-forms its own material creation as a living biological system, which it also resides within and uses to form an awareness of itself as something specific. It forms the personality of the body which contains the embryonic seed for birthing the conscious, self-aware mind fully within its own mental creation.

The mind is structured as a mental model or paradigm comprised of accumulated memory that’s been synthesized into a single, all-encompassing memory, and is equivalent or analogous to the soul. The mind, which has different aspects that perform different functions of a whole system, not only has the ability to fully operate the body, but does so from the moment of conception to the moment of death, which is when the soul both enters and exits the body. It’s the lifeforce that initially creates the body while imbuing it with life, and then gradually subsides and exits the body, ending its life. The subconscious mind is what we call the consciousness of the body, and is what generates and organizes its chemical and molecular structure while holding all the cells together through energetic stresses and tension. The subconscious systematically conducts all automated functions of the body from birth to death, never rests or stops operating throughout the entire lifetime of the body, and produces, regulates, and manages all biological processes without the need of a conscious thought, decision, or any form of awareness from the conscious mind.

Consciousness operates at both the aware (conscious) and unaware (subconscious) levels, as well as between parallel dimensions, at the same time. Consciousness is multidimensional in nature and functions on all levels or planes of existence in a lawful and systematic manner. While we tend to call the subconscious mind the unconscious mind, meaning it operates in our life without our awareness, it’s actually the only fully conscious (always operating) aspect of the mind, and is always present within the body, alert to actual situations and systematically functioning to regulate the body through a form of energetic metabolism. Our subconscious is always exchanging energy with everything around us by absorbing, metabolizing, and assimilating (becoming one with) whatever is of a similar nature (vibratory frequency) to us, as various degrees and levels of consciousness. In this way we always exist in harmony with our environment and remain present as a way of sensing whatever is going on around us. This is a natural form of instinct that keeps us in the same energetic (conscious) state as our environment. As we take in the consciousness of everything around us, we modify and regulate our own mental state to match it. This process of absorption (sympathetic induction), integration (resonance) and equalization (coherence) is the most basic form of evolution that always keeps the body in balance with the environment that it’s a part of and depends on for survival. The subconscious mind is passive and receptive in nature, and always interacting with other minds and forms of consciousness, readily taking in suggestions or impressionistic ideas, and producing (becoming) the physical equivalent.

The conscious, self-aware mind (the one most people think of when you use the term mind) acts as the gatekeeper for the subconscious by evaluating incoming information to decide what to let in and allow to take hold, and what to keep out or reject. This is the rational aspect of our mind that thinks, judges, and makes decisions about what’s true, real, and right or wrong. And while the conscious mind performs this function naturally, most don’t actively use this natural ability as a means of regulating their own health and growth in becoming self-determined. Otherwise, through a lack of knowledge, self-doubt, or the persuasive abilities of others, we readily take in the consciousness of others as a form of information that we accept as true and real, forming a belief around it that acts to shape us by modifying not only our mind through the integration of it, which modifies our paradigm, but also by producing the physical expression of it as a state of health. Whatever we believe to be true, we systematically produce the physical equivalent or reality of that belief as an inward experience. This natural law of the minds ability to shape and determine its own material reality is readily demonstrated in what we call the Placebo Effect.

The placebo effect is where a person is given some form of medication while being told what the medicine will do, and even though the medicine is what we call a sugar pill, not medicinal at all, they will produce the physical effect they believe it will produce. This is because the placebo as a symbolic image or idea, given with the instructions of what it will do, is readily taken into the subconscious mind as a suggestion, with no resistance from the conscious mind (doubt), and it produces the effect in the body it was told to produce. The subconscious is the mind as the operator of the body and manifests whatever it’s told to manifest as a physical condition that it accepts as true and therefore real. Truth as a perception is made into a reality by the mind.

When the person administering the placebo knows it’s a placebo, and therefore doesn’t actually believe in it, it’s called a single-blind test, where the only blind person is the one receiving the placebo. So there’s only one belief involved. This level produces results of roughly 30 to 40% accuracy. This is because the intention and conscience of the person falsely administering it and giving the instructions as to what it will do, conveys the deception through subtle means of body language, voice quality, and how they’re saying it and acting, which are picked up on subliminally by the mind, and introduces a form of doubt. When a double-blind test is performed instead, involving three people, where only the one giving it to and educating the person who administers it knows it’s a placebo, and the administering person also believes its real medicine, so two beliefs are involved making the delivery a lot more natural, the percentage of effectiveness increases substantially to 50 to 70%.

These type of experiments clearly demonstrate the obvious ability of the mind to produce the physical equivalent of whatever it believes to be a fact. We can actually regulate any biological process in our body through purely mental means. In a like manner, the placebo idea was taken a step further and placebo surgeries were performed (in non-life threatening situations), with the person believing a surgery was actually being performed, while being told exactly what it would do and what it would fix, or what problem it would solve and how, while only an incision was made to create the illusion of an actual surgery, and the surgical process mimicked to convince the subconscious mind, which stays aware when the conscious mind is put to sleep, and the person again created the effect they believed the surgery would do. They literally corrected the problem and healed themselves. Naturally this brought up many ethical issues, as apparently working with the belief system of a person and utilizing their own mind to heal themselves is questionable as obvious deceit, while bypassing their own power to heal completely and actually doing an unnecessary surgery, is considered above board and honest, even though the actual surgery can cause many other side effects or snowballing type of problems, as well as cost an insane amount of money. Again, we would have to look at what we’re calling ethical practice and define the actual meaning of the word deceit. Of course, if the person knows their ability to heal is a power they possess based on belief, they won’t believe it, and the process won’t work. At this point in our evolution, we have to fool people into using the natural powers of their mind.

This same principle is operating in our life all the time and at every level of our being. It comes routinely through various forms of propaganda, seemingly informative and factual articles, the news media, formal education, what a seemingly authoritative person tells us, and so on, where we are programmed with a false knowledge base that serves to form our belief system, where we engage, co-create, and cooperatively participate in the reality as the experience of that belief, and it serves to literally shape and determine us, because it forms our mind as a model, which is a reality producing machine. While many believe reality is not something we willfully create or determine, and that it exists a part from us in an objective and neutral manner, and while this may be true in terms of a mass or shared reality, the fact is we can never really know that for sure, because reality as we know it is always subjective as a correspondence to the mind observing it, that reorganizes the outer elements to match the belief of the mind perceiving it. In the most basic sense of the idea, perception is reality, where the objects being viewed and the person viewing them are a part of the same event and work together to co-create a new version of reality by the perspective it viewed through and the mental paradigm that’s used to interpret it. In the ultimate sense, the mind determines how matter that’s of its same vibration, organizes into a cohesive and coherent pattern with natural behaviors and tendencies, and how it functions as a result. Whatever the intention, perspective, and desire of the person, determines the nature of their reality as a personal creation.

Dr. Linda Gadbois

Transpersonal Psychologist, Mind-Body Medicine Consultant, and Spiritual Teacher