Injuries, operations, delivery of babies, severe illnesses and periods of intense emotional shock all deserve to be handled with thorough and complete assists.

An assist in no way intrudes upon the role of medicine. Medical examination and diagnosis should be sought where needed, and where treatment is routinely successful, medical treatment should be obtained. As an assist can at times cover up an actual injury or broken bone, no chances should be taken, especially if the condition does not easily respond. In other words, where something is merely thought to be a slight sprain, to be on the safe side an X-ray should be obtained, particularly if it does not at once respond. An assist is not a substitute for medical treatment and does not attempt to cure injuries requiring medical aid, but is complementary (adds) to it. It is even doubtful if full healing can be accomplished by medical treatment alone and it is certain that an assist greatly speeds recovery. In short, one should realize that physical healing does not take into account the being and the repercussion on the spiritual existence of the person.

Injury and illness are predisposed (made more likely to occur) by the spiritual state of the person. They are precipitated (brought on) by the being himself as a manifestation of his current spiritual condition. And they are prolonged (extended in time beyond normal limits) by any failure to fully handle the spiritual factors associated with them.

The causes of predisposition, precipitation and prolongation are addressed with assists.

Certainly life is not very tolerable to a person who has been injured or ill, to a woman who has just delivered a baby, to a person who has just suffered a heavy emotional shock. And there is no reason a person should remain in such a low state, particularly for weeks, months or years, when he or she could be remarkably assisted to recover in hours, days or weeks.

It is in fact a sort of practiced cruelty to insist by neglect that a person continue on in such a state when one can learn and practice and obtain relief for such a person.

One does not have to be a medical doctor to take someone to a medical doctor. And one does not have to be a medical doctor to observe that medical treatment may not be helping the patient. And one does not have to be a medical doctor to handle things caused spiritually by the being himself.

Just as there are two sides to healing—the spiritual and the structural or physical—there are also two states that can be spiritually attained. The first of these states might be classified as “humanly tolerable.” Assists come under this heading. The second is “spiritually improved.”

Any minister (and this has been true as long as there has been a subject called religion) is bound to relieve his fellow being of anguish. There are many ways a minister can do this.

An assist is not engaging in healing. It is certainly not engaging in treatment. What it is doing is assisting the individual to heal himself or be healed by another agency by removing his reasons for precipitating and prolonging his condition and lessening his predisposition to further injure himself or remain in an intolerable condition.

This is entirely outside the field of “healing” as envisioned by the medical doctor and by actual records of results is very, very far beyond the capability of psychology, psychiatry and “mental treatment” as practiced in those fields.

In short, the assist is strictly and entirely in the field of the spirit and is the traditional province of religion, though not restricted to religion only.

A person applying Assist Technology should realize the power which lies in his hands and his potential skills when trained. He has this to give in the presence of suffering: he can make life tolerable. He can also shorten a term of recovery and may even make recovery possible when it might not be otherwise.

When confronted by someone who has been injured or ill, operated upon or who has suffered a grave emotional shock, one or more of the following assists should be used to help the person.