Psychic Healing
By
Hans Holzer
The Alternate Way to Well-Being
Contents:
Book Cover (Front) (Back)
Scan / Edit Notes
Inside Cover Blurb
Introduction
1 - What Exactly is Psychic Healing?
2 - Medicine and Unorthodox Healing
3 - Who and Where Are the Healers?
4 - Verified Cases of Psychic Healing
5 - Faith and Other Forms of Religious Healing
6 - Hypnosis and Healing
7 - Psychic Healing and Esoteric Philosophy
8 - How to Heal Yourself
9 - How to Tell the Difference Between Real Healers and Phonies
I have a fair amount of Hans Holzer books; all of which will be eventually scanned. I enjoy his books, and though some 'facts' are clearly 'way out there' when it comes to reality, it detracts little from still enjoying his works.
Sadly this book was not printed properly, some of the text is to far over and runs beyond the page. I have re-typed those end sections (and guessed a few times where the word/words were not clear). When I update this book it will be with another soft/hardback version that is hopefully printed better. As it is though I think I have caught most of the errors.
Likewise no Contents page existed in the original book; so I have added one, making it easier to navigate (and book mark) using Ubook etc.
Two works are mentioned in this book; Jose Arigo (The surgeon of the rusty knife) and Dr. D.C. Jarvis's book 'Folk Medicine' (in two volumes) all of which are in my collection. I will also be scanning them at some later date.
Versions available and duly posted:
Format: v1.0 (Text)
Format: v1.0 (PDB - open format)
Format: v1.5 (HTML)
Format: v1.5 (Ubook-HTML)
Genera: Psychic-Healing
Extra's: Pictures Included
Copyright: 1979
Scanned: August 30 2003
Posted to:
alt.binaries.e-book (HTML-PIC-TEXT-PDB Bundle)
alt.binaries.e-book (HTML-UBook)
Note:
The PDF and the Mobi-Pocket versions have been dropped due to their extreme limitations. The U-Book version is viewable on PC and PPC (Pocket PC). Occasionally a PDF file will be produced in the case of an extremely difficult book.
1. The Html, Text and Pdb versions are bundled together in one rar file. (a.b.e)
2. The Ubook version is in zip (html) format (instead of rar). (a.b.e)
~~~~
Structure: (Folder and Sub Folders)
{Main Folder} - HTML Files
|
|- {Nav} - Navigation Files
|
|- {PDB}
|
|- {Pic} - Graphic files
|
|- {Text} - Text File
-Salmun
A New Dimension of Health and A New Dimension of Healing
"To understand the processes involved in unorthodox forms of healing, it is necessary to understand what man is, as understood in the terms of parapsychological research. The human exists as an outer, denser layer of matter called the physical body, and as an inner finer substance called the etheric body. It is the inner substance that contains the personality itself. At the time of death the outer layer is dissolved; the inner layer continues to function in a dimension properly attuned to it. This 'nonphysical' half of our universe,' as I call it, is that 'world of the mind' mentioned by Professor Joseph B. Rhine, formerly of Duke University; and it is undoubtedly the same realm that religion likes to call Heaven and Hell."
According to The New York Times of June 18, 1978, "the practice of spiritual healing, traditionally associated with pentecostal groups, is rapidly gaining favor in thousands of Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches, institutions that have long been uncomfortable with the ancient Christian practice." The newspaper goes on to explain that healing services in established churches stress long-range spiritual and physical healing, in conjunction with modern medicine and counseling. This includes the traditional "laying on of hands," with results being recorded in increasing numbers.
"The growing interest in healing has been stimulated by the charismatic movement, with its emphasis on the Holy Spirit, by disillusionment with science, by renewed interest in the supernatural, and by a new wave of healers, particularly Ruth Carter Stapleton, who's drawn praise from many sources."
"As long as you're healthy" is a favorite saying of our times and the idea that good health represents a most valuable asset seems to run through all cultures and economic strata. "Be healthy" is a jovial Jewish expression; "Safad, dinero, y amor"
- "Health, money and love" - is a Spanish toast, putting health first; the French toast to "votre sante"; the German to "Auf dein Wohl." In English we do the same, saying, "To your health."
We spend billions on the maintenance of good health, consider the expansion and building of hospitals a major factor in our budgets, have a special department of health in our government, and open our ordinary conversation with a perfunctory question as to the state of one's health. We consider the profession of medical doctor an honorable one and encourage our children to seek it.
Yet, with all this preoccupation with the state of health, and the increased reliance upon the services of medical specialists, we are less and less sure of our well-being. The more sophisticated our method of treating illness has become, the less successful it seems to be in a greater variety of cases. We have become used to the idea that the physician no longer makes house calls except in dire emergencies or when the patient is wealthy enough to insist upon it. We are quite used to having our druggist give us a drug for whatever ails us, making sure that it is the newest and latest discovery on the market.
Moreover, by departmentalizing our lives and putting total reliance on the specialists in health, we have finally abandoned the ancient Greek idea of total health or the totality of illness. To the Greeks, if one part of the body or mind was ailing, there was something wrong with the entire person. To the modern specialist, the ailing part or area is of immediate interest. He concerns himself less and less with the significance such an illness may have for the rest of the person. When the subject of the trinity of personality - body, mind, and spirit - comes up, the majority of medical practitioners look dumbfounded. Of course, not every modern physician insists that man does not have a soul, but there are few who will not just treat the body and leave the soul to the minister.
What is certainly becoming clear to the thinkers among us is that all is not well with a purely mechanistic concept of life. Developments in technology and the increasing ability of man to perform seeming miracles in life and laboratory have been paralleled by a decline in the cult of the individual. Yet it is that very individuality - the uniqueness of the human personality - that lies at the core of perfect health and perfect well-being. In an age when men are increasingly turning into numbers, a minority wants to call attention to another aspect of human development: the danger of ill health resulting from too much conformity and neglect of individual needs.
Along with these concerns, competent observers have pointed out for many years that there is another order of things, apart from those recognized by conventional medicine. People are being treated successfully with methods outside the realm of orthodox medical science - a fact that is a thorn in the flesh of those medical practitioners to whom their own art is beyond all questioning and, conversely, a ray of hope to those for whom conventional medicine has done nothing, or very little.
That "unorthodox" area of healing is the subject of this book, and it must be approached with caution. Whenever we leave the seemingly safe path of conventional science or scientific investigation to look into areas not yet fully charted, there is always the danger of reading too much into one's findings, self-delusion, and plain error of judgment. And since we are dealing here with man's well-being, we cannot afford a very large margin of error. Every precaution must therefore be taken, every attempt must be made to verify and evaluate the information obtained to exclude negative factors.
But with all this in mind, there remains an overwhelming residue of factual information that seems to point in the direction of areas of healing where medicine has not yet dared to tread. This book will concern itself with the theories and facts of unorthodox healing to the extent that these practices and facts can be and have been verified by competent witnesses and authorities.
1 - What Exactly is Psychic Healing?
Take the case of John D. He is ill with an incurable disease. He has been to doctor after doctor, specialist after specialist. He has consulted the best in the medical field and received no hope that his illness can be cured. What is he to do? Resign himself to living with this disease, or dying of it, just because the medical fraternity cannot help him? Most men do just that. Or they ignore their disease and fall victim to it. A few, however go on; they look for help outside medicine beyond medicine.
John D. has a friend who had been ill and who had gone to a healer and been cured. He asks his friend where he can find this healer. He travel fifty miles to meet the man who has helped his friend. John D. is a skeptic. He wonders how a man without medical training can do what all those superbly trained, highly skilled experts could not do for him. But he has no choice; he is desperate. He wants to be well. He puts himself into the hands of the healer. The healer passes his hands above his body, barely touching him, or he shakes hands with him and then quickly grabs his shoulders and holds him for a minute or two. Perhaps the healer massages his neck or the afflicted part of the body gently and for a short time. Rarely does the healer speak as he works except perhaps to reassure his patient that all will be well. The healer does not promise; he tries his best. John D. may have to come back another time or perhaps three or four times. The fee is not high - much less, in fact, than the average physician charges. There is a gentle handshake and John and the healer part.
The following day John D. feels better. Suggestion? Perhaps. Two or three days pass, and there is a remarkable difference in his state of health. If this is suggestion, John D. is all for it. After two or three weeks he consults his regular physician. A checkup reveals that the disease is receding. One more visit to the healer again, the laying on of hands, the gentle touch, the farewell. A month later medical authorities pronounce John D. fully cured. They have no explanation. They call it "spontaneous remission."
With some diseases spontaneous remission is possible. With John D's particular disease it is not. Nevertheless, the physician refuses to look elsewhere for the reason for the improvement. John D. tries to explain that he had gone to see an unorthodox healer, but halfway through his explanation he sees disapproval on the face of his physician and he stops. What is the point? But John D. is cured, and he stays cured. The years pass, and there is no return of the dread disease that would - should? - have finished him off.
The case of John D. is not an actual case from my files. It is a composite of many cases, but it is typical of many occurrences that are happening daily, all over the world.
What exactly is healing? The restoration of complete health and the undoing of damage, temporary or permanent, to one of the three components - body, mind, and spirit. To heal, as the term implies, is to bring back to health, to make someone hale again.
The underlying principle behind healing is the assumption that man is supposed to be in good health at all times, that any deviation from the perfectly functioning organism is contrary to nature's intent. This is the basic law of all healing: illness is not a natural component of human life. Illness is contrary to nature and, if you wish to equate nature with God, to God's image represented by man. To the healer, illness is a state of imbalance caused by a variety of reasons, and if the full organism is to regain its normal state-perfect functioning - that state of imbalance whether it be physical, emotional, or mental, must be corrected.
This, in general, is the approach of the non-medical healer. To him man is one, body mind and soul. Traditionally, in the West man's belief has included the concept that nature or God sends man illness to test him or perhaps punish him. In this framework it is difficult to convince man that he should be well and that any deviation from the state of perfect health is not due to some hostile force outside of his control but, to the contrary, is very much a matter that he himself can deal with.
The healer's approach seems a little strange to Western man, who has been brainwashed by the technological approach to healing and the very limited acceptance by orthodox medicine of anything that cannot be produced, dissected, or reconstructed in laboratory experiments. In the East, a better understanding of the nature of man has always prevailed. As V. and J. Lawson-Wood state in their fundamental work, Five Elements of Acupuncture and Chinese Massage: "Life process, or more appropriately existence process, is not simply a series of static conditions, but complexes of processes occurring as rhythmic creations of tensions and relaxations of these tensions." Chinese medicine men have always been aware of a subtle flow of energy through the human body, and their methods of healing are based upon this assumption. "Every cosmic system in process has its microscopic counterpart in man."
The understanding that man is a whole, unified organism, and that his body cannot be separated from mind or spirit, comes easily to "primitive man." Quite naturally he accepted his being on earth as an act of a deity, and in identifying deity with nature he developed a natural religion in which all power flowed from above, from the deity or the various expressions of that deity into man, at the whim and will of the superior powers, but subject to certain actions and attitudes on man's part. Thus the priest was the healer of primitive society.
Of course, every major world religion contains elements of healing in its priesthood. But there is a fundamental difference between the Western (Christian) attitude to healing and that of other peoples. From the beginning of Christianity, healing was held to take place at the discretion of the deity and for those who had pleased the deity by adhering to "official" Christianity.
As time passed, it is true, Western man acquired a more sophisticated, and scientific, understanding of the human body and its workings. Doctors became professionals in their own right, no longer priests or, as they often were in the Middle Ages in Europe, barbers.
With the coming of modern times, the religious aspect of healing lost out to the scientific. The pendulum, indeed, swung the other way. Instead of extracting that which seemed valid in ancient traditions and even in folk medicine, the medical fraternity tended to pooh-pooh anything they could not reproduce or test in the laboratory. Clinical testing and so-called laboratory conditions became the symbols of medical accomplishment, together with an all-encompassing desire to synthesize as many healing ingredients in nature as possible. Applying technology to the problem of healing man, the medical profession increasingly disregarded the human element, eliminating the uniqueness of each case and its considerations and driving toward a mechanistic, fail-safe view of medicine in which individual failure is of less and less significance.
Today large slices of human experience are simply ignored because they no longer fit in with the edifice of medical philosophy accepted as the norm.
Such an attitude inevitably brings with it the illusion, or rather self-delusion, that one's profession has attained the highest possible state, and that very little that is not predictable lies beyond. That, in fact, is the opinion of the overwhelming majority of medical doctors today: we have reached great heights of medical knowledge, and while we may not know everything, we are driving toward further knowledge along predictable lines. Healing methods not conforming to this medical edifice are ignored for as long as possible. When they can no longer be ignored, "scientific" explanations are arrived at and adhered to.
In such a situation, anyone practicing healing outside the medically approved system is clearly held to be an enemy of the system and must therefore be suppressed. Thus we have the paradox that in a world in which orthodox medical science does not have all the answers and in which multitudes still suffer, unorthodox healers who are successful in their profession are frequently persecuted by medical authorities and, when that is not possible, derided, their results dismissed as fraud, accidents, or "natural remissions."
Curiously, but predictably, many of these orthodox medical men, who are so quick to condemn anything unorthodox or contrary to the rules and regulations they themselves have promulgated, are totally unqualified to determine what is best for their patients.
"In due course I entered medical school and received there, like every other medical student in the world, an inadequate education," writes a doctor in Medicine on Trial. New discoveries are made every day, yet only a minority among medical doctors acknowledges these changes and tries to adjust to the new findings.
For example, orthodox medicine teaches that infectious diseases, such as a common cold, must have some physical origin, probably a virus. Thus antibiotics are given even though most doctors know perfectly well that the common cold will not respond to such treatments.
Arthritis, a crippling disease afflicting millions of people, has as yet not yielded to the science of the physician. No cure is in sight. Yet, the American Medical Association in a small pamphlet on this disease states, "Secret remedies and mystical deception have no place in the care of arthritis." Without examining the unorthodox possibilities for any potential clue to a containment of the disease, the orthodox fraternity rejects them - without offering anything in their stead.
I have already pointed out that illness is the absence of good health, an abnormal state in need of correction. To accept illness as part of one's state of being represents a twisted view of the universe. Of course, generally disease will respond to medical treatment. But what happens if a condition does not respond despite every effort? If good health is the norm for the body, and medical treatment can effect no improvement, then the reason for the illness must be looked for in other areas, such as karmic preconditions, failure to understand self or to live in harmony with self, or psychic incursions. Consequently psychic or other forms of unorthodox healing may well hold the answer to such conditions.
To understand the processes involved in unorthodox forms of healing, it is necessary to understand what exactly man is in terms of parapsychological research. The human exists as an outer, denser layer of matter called the physical body, and as an inner, finer substance called the etheric body. It is the inner substance that contains the personality itself. At the time of death the outer layer is dissolved; the inner layer continues to function in a dimension properly attuned to it. This "non-physical half of our universe," as I call it, is that "world of the mind" mentioned by Professor Joseph B. Rhine, formerly of Duke University, and it is undoubtedly the same realm that religion likes to call Heaven and Hell.
If we assume the existence of a concentric dimension in which mental energy is the sole reality, the phenomena of parapsychology are no longer miraculous or even astounding. Yet we must abandon, in our thinking, the barriers of time and space that we are brought up on if we are to arrive at an adequate understanding of the nature of these phenomena. A psychic person does not perform "miracles" or circumvent the laws of science; a psychic simply leaves the denser atmosphere of the physical world temporarily, for various periods of our time, and partakes of the inner dimension in which the phenomena take place. While doing this, the psychic learns of 1 events in the so-called past of which he normally would have no knowledge; he learns of thought imagery within another person of which he could not have conscious knowledge; he may even learn of situations in the so-called future that have not yet become objective reality.
It is difficult for some to envision a universe in which future events are already in existence, at least in the planning stage, because this concept presupposes a universal law beyond our common law of cause and effect and, moreover, hints strongly at the existence of a superior governing body that administers this law for the benefit of the universe of which we on earth are part. By accepting such a view, we are inevitably approaching a religious orientation, although one far removed from the conventional, establishment religion. Such a rational and universally applicable system contrasts directly with orthodox religion's merit system whereby the good are rewarded and the bad punished.
If the universal law were administered by a superior body independent of denominational obligations, the need for establishment churches would be nonexistent and man could obtain his link with the deity directly and without the need to practice certain rituals or undertake obligations of any kind. Yet the purely scientific evidence does point in the direction of precisely such a system's being in existence beyond the context of rational, scientific knowledge.
The dual nature of man and the existence of the universal law beyond the law of cause and effect are of great importance if one is to understand how healing works. The duality implies that the healer deals not merely with the physical body but more importantly with the etheric body "underneath" it. The existence of a universal law necessitates the acceptance of arrangements permitting healers to draw upon extraordinary powers, involving seeming chance connections and links between people, to make healings possible. It is my firm conviction that there is no such thing as a coincidence or an accidental happening but that all events in our lives are somehow governed by universal law, moving us about in such a manner that we encounter others of significance to us at certain times in our lives. These encounters occur naturally - they are chance meetings - on the surface, but when looked at in the light of esoteric philosophy, they are seen to be important and significant milestones in our lives. I maintain that these arrangements are due not to chance but to a well planned system in which every individual is a subject governed by his own actions, by possibly the actions done in an earlier lifetime, and by the working of the universal law.
Much is made by the medical fraternity of inherited diseases or tendencies. This emphasis is based upon the belief that physical characteristics are of major importance in a person's makeup. Weaknesses or tendencies inherited by a person from his father or mother or even his grandparents are sometimes held responsible for the occurrence of a disease in the patient. That, too, is a mechanistic and materialistic view of the universe. True, we do inherit our physical body from our immediate parents. But our personalities stem from another source. If reincarnation is a fact - and I have demonstrated along with others, such as Dr. Ian Stevenson, that the evidence points indeed in that direction - we must also accept the concept that the individual is free from the karmic debt of his father or mother. Only his own karmic debt can be considered when evaluating the absence or presence of disease in a person's present lifetime.
Much confusion exists in the mind of the broad public concerning healing, what it represents; and what comes under the heading of healing and what does not. Many think that all healing is a matter of belief and suggestion. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unorthodox healing, that is to say, healing taking place contrary to current medical thinking, includes a number of approaches.
First of all there is psychic healing. In this form of mediumship, the healer draws psychic energy from his own self, principally from the solar plexus areas (stomach and top of head), and through his hands places this energy around the body of the patient, in particular in the areas in! which he has seen or felt the presence of illness Diagnosis always precedes healing. Psychic healers are able to look at a person and see discolorations in the person's aura or magnetic field. They will then tune in on that area. The psychic healer rarely touches the skin of the patient. His healing takes place at the periphery of the personality where the aura ends and where it is therefore most sensitive, just as nerve endings are more sensitive than the middle parts of nerve tissue.
Psychic healing takes place whether or not the patient believes in it, in fact whether or not the healer himself believes in it. It is a purely mechanistic ability to draw certain energies from the personality and apply them where they are needed. The ability to be a psychic healer has nothing to do with the healer's religious attitude Some psychic healers are spiritualists and prefer to ascribe their abilities to the intervention of spirit entities, but the fact seems to be that the results are the same whether or not the healer is a spiritualist or merely a person possessing extraordinary healing powers.
Physical healers are those who touch the body of the patient and apply a combination of psychic energy and directional massage, similar to the magnetic strokes of Dr. Mesmer, the father of modern hypnosis. The physical healer may or may not manipulate the body of his subject, and his healing is due primarily to the laying on of hands, through which the process of healing takes place. When a priest or, in rare cases, a layman places his hands on a patient, in order to heal him, physical healing is involved even though there may be spiritual overtones to the process.
In hypnotherapy, and even more in psychotherapy, suggestion is used to promote healing within the patient himself. These forms of healing assume that the patient has unresolved conflicts, which can be brought to the surface and disposed of. Having done this, the healer then places constructive suggestions into the unconscious mind of the patient. When the patient awakens from the hypnotic state, these suggestions implanted in his unconscious begin to work. He may not be aware of them, but they work nevertheless.
Hypnotherapy differs from psychotherapy in that it is a simpler form of healing utilizing only hypnotic suggestion, whereas psychotherapy relies in addition on the psychic energy forces within the patient and the awakening of these slumbering forces to help with the healing processes.
Further along the road to physical forms of healing lies dietetic therapy, in which certain combinations of foods are prescribed by the healer for specific illnesses. These illnesses are not necessarily all physical in nature; they may also be spiritual or mental. Nevertheless, the intake of certain foods or the absence of certain foods are thought to be of paramount importance in restoring the balance of health in the patient. The greatest of all dietetic healers is of course the late "sleeping prophet," Edgar Cayce of Virginia Beach, whose prescriptions frequently puzzled the medical fraternity but were, in retrospect found to be effective.
Similarly, herbal healing, which consists in the use and intake of specific natural herbs in order to combat illness, both physical and mental, is a form of unorthodox healing in the sense that the prescriptions rely on existing plants and natural ingredients rather than on artificially combined or synthetically created elements, the introduction of which into the human body is not necessarily to the body's advantage. Dietetic and herbal healing require an intimate knowledge of nature far beyond that which most professional physicians have today. Consequently there are very few healers who work in this branch of therapy, and one finds most good herbal healers among the followers of the "old religion," the Wicca or White Witchcraft of western Europe, since the knowledge of nature's herbs represents a major tenet of their religion.
A particularly American phenomenon, faith healing, derives its benefits entirely from an assumed link with the deity in which the healer is merely a channel of expression through which divine thought flows directly to the patient. Faith healing works best with mass audiences, apparently because the energy created by the large number of believers present is utilized by the healer to bring about his amazing success.
Faith healings are not necessarily the result of religious belief, fanaticism, or a kind of hysteria. All of these elements are present, but it would appear that the faith healer, in invoking divine guidance, manages to unleash within himself certain forces that radiate outward from his body and interact with the auras of afflicted. Thus, ultimately, the success of the faith healer lies in the freeing of psychic energy within his own personality and the successful communication of that energy to those who need to partake of it in order to be healed, though I doubt that any faith healer will agree with this description of his powers. Most faith healers are devoutly religious, especially those of the fundamentalist persuasion. Any thought that man possesses within himself the powers to heal others would be in contravention of his traditional views of God and the universe.
Other forms of religious healing are related to faith healing in that they too partake of the divine expression as the source of the healing. What happens at places like Lourdes or other less famous shrines is not simply explained by religious sentiment on the part of the believers and the power of autosuggestion, and how religious healings work will be discussed in the chapter pertaining to Lourdes and other such situations.
2 - Medicine and Unorthodox Healing
Even though the august American Society for Psychical Research has maintained a medical section for many years, and even though individual doctors have expressed an interest in psychical research and ESP, the society and these individual doctors did this apart from the medical profession, carefully avoiding any clash with the American Medical Association. To the majority of physicians, the idea that a healer without a degree in medicine could accomplish part or all of what he, the medical doctor, is trained to do is not only unthinkable but downright in conflict with his own best interests as a professional man.
There are exceptions, of course. Enlightened physicians have learned, if nothing else, that their knowledge is limited. Such physicians welcome information and new facts from any source, whether or not that source has been given the official stamp of approval through the bestowal of a medical degree.
Doctors who admit the existence of unorthodox healing are usually quick to explain that we do not know why and how such cures come about. Even though they readily admit the existence of healing outside of orthodox medicine, they are far from recognizing the purveyors of such healing practices as their equals or even as professionals. The only difference between the skeptical doctor and the enlightened one, in this respect, is in the nomenclature: the orthodox physician calls anyone not an orthodox physician a quack; the enlightened doctor, who admits of the possibility that healing works, refers to healers as lay healers or untrained healers. It does not occur to him that the training that the unorthodox healer has had or the knowledge that he has obtained one way or another also constitutes a body of learning, although different from his own conventional education.
On the other hand, there are a few courageous medical doctors who not only acknowledge the existence of unorthodox healing, including psychic healing, as a reality, but who go so far as to include it in their own work if they are fortunate enough to have psychic healing powers in their makeup to the extent that they can be called upon in their medical work. Naturally such M.D.s would be subject to prosecution by their own fraternity as well as by various governmental agencies if they were to admit to this activity openly and freely. We have not yet reached the point in our society where a man can dispense medical assistance to his fellow man outside officially approved channels.
It stands to reason that there would be a certain percentage of psychically gifted men among professional doctors as well as among other segments of the population. Some of these gifted individuals may use their extrasensory powers without realizing that they possess them: the physician whose diagnosis is nearly always correct, the doctor who puts his hands on the patient without giving him any medicine and finds that his patient responds immediately. Such matters are frequently dismissed as "excellent bedside manners," "psychological effects," or, at the very best, intuition.
Even the term intuition is suspect in the eyes of the orthodox physician; for it implies the coming into play of feelings, something the old-fashioned practitioner of the medical arts despises. Emotional reactions and textbook medicine are deadly enemies. But unless more and more medical Doctors with impeccable records as physicians come forward and freely admit that they have used or are using their psychic healing powers to help their patients, and study these effects, and publish them so that the skeptical element among their colleagues might benefit from this knowledge, psychic healing and other forms of unorthodox medicine are likely to remain scorned by the very men who could apply these methods better than anyone.
Not all medical doctors refuse to be identified with some form of research in this area, however. Several years ago I was invited to participate in a forum discussion on psychotherapy. The meeting was under the sponsorship of the Parapsychology Foundation and the late Eileen Garrett. To my surprise, one of the participants was an old acquaintance whom I had not seen in many years, Dr. Walter Engel, the noted psychoanalyst and pupil of Carl Jung. Dr. Engel explained that he had lately become very much interested in psychical research and was no longer hostile to the idea that man might possess extraordinary powers, which a trained researcher could tap and use with favorable results.
Another psychoanalyst of great stature, Dr. Robert Laidlaw, for years worked with the late Eileen Garrett and, after her death, continued his interest in parapsychology, including psychic healing. In fact, it was he and a group of others who lately investigated the English healer George Chapman. While this does not necessarily constitute blanket approval of all healers or all healing practices, it does constitute a step forward in that these eminent medical men are seriously investigating the powers of individual healers. They are not doing so for their own amusement or to gratify their curiosity. They are doing this in order to learn more about the art of healing.
At the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr. Thelma Moss is presently investigating psychic healing with a group of associates. Their investigation includes laboratory experiments in which a healer is brought together with actual patients. The results are carefully observed and recorded. Dr. Wilhelm Beyer, a general practitioner of Uberlingern, Germany, has been interested in healing approaches to possession and obsession for many years.
Another European doctor, the psychiatrist L. Kling of Strasbourg, France, has for some time specialized in the treatment of the so-called possessed with the well-known parapsychologist Professor G. Frei. Dr. Kling has looked into the possibility that some of the schizophrenic cases he had been dealing with might be cases of possession and therefore accessible to treatment by other methods than the conventional ones. In 1967 he sent me one of his patients, J.P. Kieffer, who had been judged a schizophrenic. "Psychiatrically speaking, the diagnosis is clear, but that isn't enough by any means," Dr. Kling wrote. He explained that the subject was rational most of the time and understood fully what implications were involved. I met the man in Paris and questioned him thoroughly. My findings indicated that the individual was indeed mediumistic and subject to influences from discarnates.
The late Dr. Edward Bach, of London, England, was probably the greatest pioneer of herbal medicine. Originally trained as a conventional physician and bacteriologist, Dr. Bach soon broke away from his early teachings and set out to discover the healing powers of plants. "His ideal of a simple way to heal all disease persisted, and as he grew older it became a conviction and the activating force behind his whole life's work," writes Dr. Bach's biographer, Nora Weeks, in The Medical Discoveries of Edward Bach, Physician. "For throughout the years he practiced as pathologist, bacteriologist, and homeopath, his one aim was to find pure remedies, a simple form of treatment to replace the complicated scientific means which gave no certainty of cure." As a homeopathic physician, Dr. Bach followed the dictum to treat the patient and not the disease - that is to say, to treat the characteristics and the personality of the patient as well as the illness itself. Dealing with a part of the body apart from the whole, as is the custom in conventional medicine, is contrary to the beliefs held by homeopathic physicians. Bach's books, notably The Twelve Healers and Other Remedies and Heal Thyself, which is called an explanation of the real cause and cure of disease, are still available, and a newsletter dealing with Bach's amazing herbal treatments can be obtained from the Dr. Edward Bach's Healing Centre, Mount Vernon, Sotwell, Wallingford, Berkshire, England.
In another chapter I will deal with the mysterious but very real Dr. N. of California, a physician and psychiatrist attached to a major hospital, whose amazing prophecies I published for the first time in 1967.
Dr. J.Z. is a young physician attached to a Long Island, New York, hospital. "Since my third year of medical school," the doctor explained, cautiously, "I have often felt diagnoses before they were confirmed by clinical and laboratory testing. I am not saying that these were intuitive feelings, but rather a sort of 'sixth sense' about what the patient had. I am sure that these feelings had a lot to do with my medical knowledge combined with common sense, but these feelings went beyond this realm. I have often diagnosed and been correct despite what the medical signs had indicated. These diagnoses could not be simply explained. They were in the realm of a feeling that came to me. I am not saying that I am some sort of physician mystic, diagnosing by an inner voice. I have not uncommonly been wrong. These feelings, however, have been borne out a good percentage of the times that I have had them - a higher percentage of times than I felt would be coincidental. I am not advocating practicing medicine or diagnosing on the basis of these feelings. I am simply saying that these feelings have occurred, exist, and will probably continue to happen."
Dr. H.W. is the principal psychiatrist at a major correctional institution in the eastern United States. He also has a private practice in psychiatry and is a respected physician. Dr. W. and together have attempted various experiments with healing.
Even though he seeks no patients, having more than enough to do as it is, I have on occasion sent him cases from among those who appeal to me for help. In come cases Dr. W. had paid personal visits; in others he has arranged for absent healing, that is to say, telepathic sending forth of energies channeled to the particular needs of the patient. Dr. W. has never guaranteed any results when unorthodox means were employed, nor does he feel that a healer should ever do so at any rate.
Dr. W., a member of his county's medical association, has been associated with several large state hospitals and a private psychiatric hospital prior to being associated with the state hospital for criminals he is now connected with. He has practiced medicine for about thirty years, primarily as a psychiatrist although he was in general practice for the first ten years of his medical career, and his comments, made during an interview, on medicine, psychic healing, and related subjects, are very significant.
"Do you know of any cases where psychic healing has entered the picture successfully?" I asked him in the interview.
"Yes."
"Have you yourself ever witnessed any cases of psychic healing?"
"I've not only witnessed them, I've done them," he said.
"What were the diseases involved? Were those mental or physical diseases?"
"To my knowledge I have only been able to help mental diseases."
"For instance?"
"I have a very busy psychiatric practice," Dr. W. went on. "I found that I was mentally healing some of my patients without touching them or going near them. This realization came very gradually. I found that I was putting too much of myself into my patients."
"Do you mean to say that you've had actual success healing patients without the ordinary methods of interview and analysis?"
"I felt that there was a psychic thing happening, that I actually helped the patient with the nonverbal part of my mind. I felt that I was actually pushing energy at them to heal them."
"Did you see this energy pass?" I asked.
"No."
"Did you feel anything going from you to the patient?"
"Yes. It felt like I was pushing an invisible beam of energy toward them."
"Did you put any specific thoughts onto that beam or was it just a general power?"
"Just a general force," he said. "I'm sure that this force exists."
"Did some of your patients ever comment upon being healed in this manner?"
"No."
"Did you ever ask them about it?"
"No."
"Have you ever considered yourself psychic?"
"Yes."
"Have you had ESP experiences?"
"Yes. I can predict the death of a patient within an hour. I did this repeatedly in a hospital; I said that a particular patient was going to die within a particular hour of a particular night."
"What made you foretell these things?"
"It just came into my mind spontaneously along with the particular patient."
"Did you ever diagnose patients by unusual means?"
"No more unusual than any other good internist or psychiatrist. They all do it, but may not be aware of it."
"Have you ever seen the human aura?"
"No."
"Do you accept its existence?"
"Yes."
"What do you think it is?"
"The biomagnetic field of the human being."
"When you send out a force, does it connect with the physical body of the patient or with this bio electric al field?"
"The biomagnetic field. There are two of them in every human being, and they are detectable by instruments; this has been known since 1936. They are the alpha and beta fields."
"Can you tell me some incidents in your medical career where seemingly miraculous healing or spontaneous healing has taken place due to your agency?"
"I've done more with my hands placed close to their head than I have been able to do across a room."
"Have you actually cured a case where orthodox methods have failed?"
"I had one girl just recently who was very hysterical in a sudden attack provoked by fear. I straightened her out in two minutes flat."
"How did you do that?"
"With my hands."
"How did you use your hands?"
"In her particular case I used one hand a couple of inches in front of the head and the other behind."
"Do you stay still or do you move the hands about?"
"I don't move them."
"How long do you stay in that position?"
"A minute or two. That's about all it takes."
"Does the patient feel anything while that goes on?"
"Heat."
"Is this healing permanent? In this specific case you're referring to, did she then have no further recurrence of the problem?"
"Not as far as I know. They would have called me."
"In your stay at the state hospital where, I believe, you were a resident psychiatrist for a number of years, have you ever tried healing on some of the inmates?"
"Mentally, yes. On one occasion five of us took a man over a shock. He had been told in error that he could go home; we had to take him into a room and tell him that he couldn't."
"Who were the others?"
"Correction officer, supervisor, and two professional employees."
"How did he react?"
"He did not go into the violence we had expected, nor did he become depressed or suicidal as we had feared."
"Was this perhaps due to logical thinking and talking rather than any form of healing?"
"No."
"Do you think healing took place?"
"Yes".
"In which way?"
"Simply by the mental force of the five individuals involved."
Dr. W. makes no extraordinary claims as far as his healing powers are concerned, but the fact that he combines orthodox knowledge of psychiatry with a natural gift for healing is in itself remarkable. One must keep in mind, of course, that psychiatry itself deals with mental forces and that therefore the relationship between psychiatry and psychic healing would naturally be a close one if properly understood and applied. But healing has been used successfully in the more physical branches of medicine as well.
One of the most extraordinary medical personalities of our time is Dr. Douglas Baker, a native of London who has spent his growing years in Natal, South Africa. Dr. Baker was slated to take a leading place in commerce and to become the managing director of a large printing concern. Despite his assured position in commerce, he had early taken an interest in the study of zoology and of aboriginal languages and communication. At the University of Natal he became interested in the mysteries of the Zulus, and in studying their strange means of communication became aware of telepathy for the first time. He graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1949, but his interest in the world of the occult persisted, eventually forcing him to enter a retreat to think things out for himself. As a result of this mystical and spiritual experience he decided to change his life and began the study of medicine so that he could devote himself to helping mankind.
At age thirty-five he entered medical school in England. He qualified in medicine in 1964. He edited the medical society journal, North Wing, and while doing research into the history of medicine became interested in magnetism as a possible therapeutic agent. With the late George Delawarr, who had developed a radionic instrument that would prove to be useful in what Dr. Baker came to call biomagnetism, he delved into various mysteries of human personality, including the photographing of thought forms as well as the study of magnetism in relation to human personality and the body. As a result of their researches in 1967 Dr. Baker and George Delawarr published Biomagnetism - Preliminary Studies of the Effect of Magnetic Fields on Living Tissues and Organs in the Human Body, a highly technical book describing the techniques the two men had developed and their applications and possible results from these applications. The same team followed up the first book with Double Blind Clinical Trials to Assess the Effects of Electromagnetism on Serum Cholesterol, Prothrombin Trime and Blood Pressure, and a large teaching hospital in London, St. Mary's investigated some of their findings, undertaking clinical trials using the equipment developed by that company. Subsequently a paper was published confirming that magnetism appears to affect the blood pressure, the level of blood cholesterol, and the clotting time of blood.
In essence, the magnetic therapy units used by Dr. Douglas Baker consist of a console containing a tape recorder with tapes specially programmed for various diseases. These tapes in turn activate the creation of a low level electromagnetic field, which is transferred to various points of the human body through solenoids placed directly on selected spots of the body where, in the opinion of Dr. Baker, the magnetic energy should be applied for best results. (Purely experimentally, Dr. Baker has also developed a larger unit fitting around the head and another fitting around an arm or wrist.)
A low level magnetic field is set up and maintained for anywhere between five and thirty minutes. The treatments are no miracle cures, and frequent application is necessary to obtain results. Dr. Baker's treatment presently works best with the lowering of blood cholesterol and blood pressure, important factors in coronary diseases and in the treatment of post coronary cases. He has also been able to obtain significant lowering of blood sedimentation rates in arthritic complaints. Less spectacular but no less important are beneficial results obtained with this treatment in cases of eczema, shingles, and general hypertension.
Patients feel absolutely nothing, nor are there any side effects from the treatment. Patients can take the treatment at Dr. Baker's country clinic or in London. Dr. Baker has developed ambulatory units, as well, an din certain cases, the patient may use a home unit.
I first met Dr. Douglas Baker at his country house at Little Elephant, Kentish Lane, Essenden, Herfordshire, England, in the summer of 1970. He showed my wife and me around the premises, including the laboratory and the cubicles upstairs used for the treatment of his patients, and we discussed his methods. Later he arranged to send me one of his units, which I've had in my possession ever since.
The presence of Dr. Baker's unit in my office has brought some fringe benefits to the cause of biomagnetism that were not originally expected of it. When Shawn Robbins, a young psychic I have trained and worked with for some time, asked that I attempt to help her with her somewhat restricted eyesight and headaches, I suggested that she try the biomagnetic healing method.
The machine in my office is there purely for experimental purposes, and no treatments are administered to outsiders. However, in the use of Dr. Baker's machine on Shawn Robbins and other psychics I have worked with, such as John Gaudry, a remarkable development was observed: their psychic perception increased by as much as 100 percent. Not only did the magnetic field set up by the machine clear whatever complaints the mediums came to me with, such as headaches or eye strain, but their psychic abilities were remarkably stronger immediately after the treatments.
One can only conclude that the magnetic field in some way joined with the natural magnetic field within the personality of the mediums to create a stronger psychic force. We do not as yet know a great deal about the manner in which psychic ability is focused and applied, so there remains much to be researched in this area. However, Dr. Baker's biomagnetic apparatus has definitely been tied to significant changes in the performance rate of several psychics tested by me over long periods of time.
Dr. Douglas Baker's research is clearly significant, as is indicated by the reaction to his 1970 U.S. speaking tour, arranged by Dr. Robert Laidlaw, the well-known psychiatrist and head of the department of psychiatry at Roosevelt Hospital, New York.
During his many lectures Dr. Baker made no extravagant claims. With his British sense of understatement he merely presented what he had found to be factual.
"It is natural that there are problems to be overcome in presenting a new discovery which is outside current medical orthodoxy," Dr. Baker says. "The caution with which the medical profession treats any new departures is absolutely proper. At the same time caution must not lead to apathy or making impossible the impartial scrutiny of a potentially beneficial discovery. Caution has been a prime concern of Magnetic Research, Ltd., lest anything should leak out which might stimulate unfounded hopes on the part of sufferers from certain serious diseases. The company has not indulged in so-called fringe medicine; nor does it claim to cure - though in fact its case books contain many incidents of difficult conditions alleviated through applications of magnetism. What it does claim is to have discovered a technique of applying magnetic fields with the assistance of medical knowledge in such a way that changes are recorded in subsequent laboratory tests. Thus the company has accumulated clinical evidence that by the methods it has developed new therapeutic approaches may be possible to certain diseases which until now have proved intractable to orthodox medicine."
Between five and ten thousand people have consulted Dr. Baker and been treated by his methods. Psychic News quotes the wife of a medical doctor who had suffered for years with a disease called purpura. The doctor's wife is quoted as stating, "My husband gave me up and was delighted that I had found an unorthodox treatment which helped my complaint." Another patient, a teen-age boy suffering from extremely low blood cholesterol causing frequent blackouts, is quoted as stating that the doctor's weak pulsating magnetic field treatment had raised his blood cholesterol to a normal level. When the treatment was stopped the young man's blood cholesterol reverted to its abnormally low level again.
According to the same source, a middle-aged man with high blood pressure and an arthritic knee testified to general improvement after a session with Dr. Baker's magnetic instrument.
Before the treatment he could hardly walk and had had to change his job to avoid exercise. After the treatment he returned to his original overseer's work, his blood pressure greatly reduced.
One would think that a man with the proper medical credentials who turns out to be a pioneer in progressive medicine, trying to expand the horizons of knowledge by as yet unorthodox but apparently valid methods, would be welcomed by the medical fraternity and officialdom as well. Yet in California, during a talk on "Magnetism, Its History and Current Applications" in which Dr. Baker outlined some of the discovered effects of magnetism and radionics, mentioned his 1967 book, Biomagnetism, claimed that magnetism had affected the blood pressure of his subjects - specifically mentioning Reverend the Honorable Andrew Elphinstone - and described how some twenty out of thirty rheumatoid arthritics had responded favorably to magnetic treatment, two plainclothes detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department taped his talk and then arrested him. It was alleged that these were false claims and that, in fact, any suggestion that magnetism or radionics are healing and treating methods is false. Dr. Baker's radionics and magnetic instruments were confiscated.
Fortunately Dr. Baker was able to obtain the help of a prominent authority specializing in medical jurisprudence, Mark Joseff, Ph. D., who secured Dr. Baker's immediate release and, subsequently, a reduction of the charges.
When news of the incredible charges against Dr. Douglas Baker, a member of the College of Surgeons, was released, researchers all around the world rallied to his cause, and in September, 1971, all charges against Dr. Baker were totally dismissed - leaving only a sizeable debt incurred in the defense of Dr. Baker, not to mention the unnecessary cost to the taxpayer. Why would the Los Angeles District Attorney choose to attack a man of Dr. Baker's standing? Could it be that some of his colleagues in the AMA felt threatened by the possibilities of new methods, methods that seem to be promising in the treatment of disease, and methods with which they themselves were not familiar since their own education lay back some years?
Dr. Herman P. Sausselle was born in Germany. He came to the United States at age fourteen and worked at first in the family baker business in St. Louis. But all through his life he was interested in the esoteric and wanted to dedicate himself to the art of healing. Finally, at age fifty-eight, he entered the Missouri Chiropractic College and completed its four-year course, graduating as a practicing doctor of chiropractic in St. Louis. Before his recent death at eighty-five, Healthways magazine, the magazine of the American Chiropractic Association, reported, "Dr. Saussele is an unusual individual, a bouncing man in his mid-seventies who boasts, 'I haven't been sick since 1929 and that is quite a statement to make in 1968."
I met Dr. Sausselle in St. Louis a few years ago. In a modest suite at 3189 South Grand Boulevard, Dr. Sausselle dispensed a. combination of nutritional counsel, general psychological advice on the art of proper living, chiropractic when and where needed or requested, and a fascinating field of unorthodox medicine called iridology.
Dr. Sausselle follows the teachings of a pioneer in the field of iridology, another chiropractor by the name of Dr. Bernard Jensen, whose book, The Science and Practice of Iridology, published in 1952 at Hidden Valley Health Ranch, Escondido, California, is a kind of bible for the few practitioners of this very special form of healing. "By way of definition," Dr. Jensen writes, "iridology is a science whereby the doctor or operator can tell from the markings or signs in the iris of the eye the reflex condition of the various organs of the body. In other words, it is the science of determining acute, sub-acute, chronic, and destructive stages in the affected organs of the body through their corresponding areas in the iris. Drug deposits, inherent weaknesses, and living habits of the patient are also revealed in the iris of the eyes."
According to this method tissue changes resulting from proper or improper treatment also show up in the iris of the patient. Thus it is possible to determine whether a prescription or treatment actually works through periodical checkup and iris diagnosis. Dr. Jensen points out the comparatively low percentage of accurate diagnosis obtained by conventional medical methods and offers the iris diagnoses as an addition to the storehouse of medical knowledge, not to replace any existing methods. And as Dr. Jensen points out, changes do show up in the color and texture of the human iris. As new tissue replaces old tissue it can be evaluated by the medical doctor. "It is impossible to tell from the eyes what germ life exists in the body, but when tissues have degenerated to the stage where germ life exists in various parts of the body, it will be reflected in the iris," says Dr. Jensen.
It was this system that Dr. Herman Sausselle practiced with all of his patients, prescribing either homeopathic remedies, dietetic supplements, or chiropractic adjustments, as the case might be.
Does it work? Eugene C. Henkel, Jr., father of five children and a railroad ticket office clerk, visited Dr. Sausselle in October, 1953. At that time Henkle was, at age forty-nine, hunchbacked; he had a stiff neck; he could not raise his arms over his head; and he was unable to drive to work. He had been told by an orthodox M.D. to get a wheelchair. Dr. Sausselle's iris diagnosis revealed that the patient had in the past suffered various respiratory disturbances, a matter that was immediately verified. Dr. Sausselle prescribed a treatment consisting of special foods, vitamins, food supplements, and exercises. Today Henkel drives about fifty thousand miles a year in connection with his own business. He is still somewhat stiff and somewhat stoop shouldered, but no longer crippled or in pain.
Mrs. Agnes Ludbeck visited Dr. Sausselle on April 24, 1961, when she was fifty-five years old. She had been under medical treatment for high blood pressure, which Dr. Sausselle found to be 206 over 110. Mrs. Ludbeck had been to an eye specialist for trouble in her eyes. The specialist had treated her for two years but had assured her that there was nothing wrong with her except atmospheric pressure. She herself wondered if there was some systemic condition, but he reassured her and advised her to keep putting drops into her eyes and not to worry about it. On examination Dr. Sausselle found this patient to suffer from diabetes and a blood sugar count of 254 milligrams (the normal limit is 120 mgs.). The woman came to see Dr. Sausselle once a week and received supplements for liver and pancreas treatment.
At that time her blood pressure was down to 158 over 84 and her blood sugar to 158 mgs. But being away from Dr. Sausselle's care did something to her system. Two years later she was hospitalized in Troy, unable to walk. Her disease was diagnosed as diabetic neuritis. Friends brought her back to St. Louis and Dr. Sausselle. Three days after he started treatment, the woman began to limp around by herself; three weeks later she was fine.
Richard Janson came to Dr. Sausselle's attention on November 5, 1963, at age eighteen. He then weighed 72 pounds and was very much debilitated. The boy had been in and out of medical hospitals without success. Dr. Sausselle started to work on the boy at Christmas, 1963. Because of the young man's condition, the doctor had to go to his house to treat him, but Dr. Sausselle's healing worked so well that the young man was able to go back to school by May, 1964, and to graduate. Unfortunately, he had a relapse and Sausselle had to start all over again.
The doctor discovered then that certain psychosomatic factors had also come into play. He began to reeducate the young man's thinking, preaching a positive mental attitude and referring him to a classic book on the subject, Claude M. Bristol's The Magic of Believing. By fall of the same year the young man was able to get a job.
Dr. Sausselle saw him every week until October, 1965. When Dr. Sausselle next saw the young man, at Christmas, 1967, when the boy was home on leave from the U.S. Navy, he weighed 142 pounds.
After I had learned of Dr. Sausselle's work, I had arranged to visit his office to submit to his iris diagnosis. Of course, he knew nothing of my medical history. He put me in his chair and examined my eyes carefully. Employing a large magnifying glass, he scrutinized my eyes minutely, jotting down his findings as he went along. Each sector of the iris represents a different part of the human system, iridologists claim, and according to the coloring and shape of a particular part of the iris Dr. Sausselle drew certain conclusions.
"You have a thyroid condition," he said. "I can see it right here in your eye." I nodded. I had been under treatment for a sluggish thyroid gland for years and was at this time taking half a grain of thyroid extract twice a day.
The doctor shone a light into my eyes, in order to get a reflex reaction. "This is a gastric reflex, and here we have a gall bladder reflex and a liver reflex. In other words you have a nervous digestive system." I nodded an emphatic yes. "And a nervous stomach." Again I nodded. Dr. Sausselle's iridological findings were absolutely true.
Healing is the major component of the teachings of the late "sleeping prophet" Edgar Cayce, about whom many books have been written and whose great work is being carried on by his sons at the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) in Virginia B each, Virginia. Cayce, an untutored photographer, went into trance states during which he was able to diagnose the illnesses of people about whom he knew nothing. The language and contents of these diagnoses were such that only a trained medical doctor could have undertaken them. Nevertheless, Edgar Cayce had no such training nor was there any fraud or delusion involved. Many of the prescriptions given to the thousands of people who sought Cayce's help turned out to be unknown to the orthodox medical fraternity. Nevertheless, these remedies .all worked and much was learned by those willing to learn from the study of the Cayce records.
Today, Cayce's diagnoses in specific cases are carefully filed away for those who wish to consult them when similar diseases require it. Those joining ARE obtain the so-called Black Book, a list of the most common diseases and a record of what Edgar Cayce prescribed in individual cases as remedies. Connected with the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is a pharmacy specializing in Edgar Cayce prescriptions: the Heritage Store, P.O. Box 77, Virginia Beach, Virginia 23458. Items for sale are prepared under strict supervision of the ARE authorities and tie in with specific recommendations or prescriptions made by the late seer. From personal experience I can state that such prescriptions have, not infrequently, proved amazingly effective where conventional medicines have failed me.
Because this is a controversial program, ARE has always maintained close liaison with medical doctors friendly toward their cause - for example, in a recent symposium called the Triune Concept of Healing, held in New York, Edith Wallace, M.D., and Robert G. Brewer, M.D., discussed the Cayce concept of healing as it applies to conventional medicine - because ARE believes that in a combination of Cayce's prescriptions with the methods and prestige of establishment medicine lies the greatest hope for mass acceptance of the Cayce teachings.
As a first step in that direction, ARE maintains a special clinic at Phoenix, Arizona, where medical doctors treat patients with reference to the Edgar Cayce material. The clinic is housed in a pleasant suburb of Phoenix, with the mountains as backdrop. It consists of a complex of one-story buildings and a small garden. By no means comparable to a hospital or a large research establishment, the clinic is nevertheless run along orthodox lines in the sense that patients are seen by appointment, medical records are kept, and the entire operation is undertaken with the full approval and blessing of Arizona medical authorities.
Established in early 1970, the clinic had from the beginning been the special project of Dr. William McGarey and the ARE Board of Trustees. Dr. McGarey lives in Phoenix, the climate is favorable for the treatment of a number of diseases, and the atmosphere is unhurried and free from the sort of pressures prevalent in large metropolitan centers.
On a visit to the Phoenix center, I discussed the program with the manager, Mr. McCaleb.
"How did the ARE hope to benefit the world by establishing this clinic?" I asked him.
"More than 50 percent of the Cayce readings are physical readings. Studying those readings, we try to verify them and learn from them."
"How does this work as far as patients are concerned?"
"First of all, we have to take all the readings on a specific disease and study them. It takes about an hour per reading to synthesize this material and come up with what we think the source of the readings is trying to work from, what attitude or basic laws are involved. Then we come up with a general prescription or a therapy approach for the disease and apply it to a group of patients and see how it works; we modify as we go along."
"In other words, the patients coming here are being treated by methods prescribed by Cayce previously for similar cases?"
"Correct. Modified in some cases by the doctor's own knowledge."
"What range of diseases is being treated here? Is there any limitation?" I asked.
"There are 233 diagnoses that have been discovered in the readings of what we would call separate diseases. We've only started to work on a few of these; it will take a bigger staff to get to all of them."
"Are there any diseases that have not been touched at all?"
"Yes. While we have a young intern studying the readings on cancer, we have not yet tried to deal with it."
"What are the principal diseases you deal with?"
"Epilepsy, my asthenia gravis, spearodermia, arthritis."
"You say there should be a larger staff. Do you have any assistants?"
"We have fifteen full-time people and five part-time people working here. Our limitation is strictly financial. The main source of our funding comes from seeing general practice patients. The doctors work here at a decreased personal salary and the difference goes into building up the staff; we're adding new doctors as fast as we can generate the funds to put them on the payroll."
"How many M.D.s do you have on the staff?"
"Four."
"Are they specialists or general practitioners?"
"Dr. McGarey is a specialist in Cayce's approaches, and of course in neurological diseases, particularly multiple sclerosis. We have a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology; Dr. Gladys McGarey, a general practitioner; and Dr. Arthur Wright, who is a general practitioner who came to us from New Hampshire, and who also understands the general thrust of the Cayce readings. He's here learning to apply that to his medical practice."
"How does the American Medical Association feel about your enterprise? Do you have any problems with them?"
"No. Our doctors are members in good standing; for example, the McGareys have a long association with the county medical society here. This was another reason for being in Phoenix. Had we picked up the McGareys and moved them to Virginia Beach, there might have been some trouble with the medical association there. Here everybody knows the McGareys as good, reputable doctors, and no one is concerned with the fact that they are doing something a little unorthodox."
"Do you cooperate with hospitals in the area?"
"Our doctors are on the staff of several hospitals, and they put patients into them when the occasion arises."
"Are you publishing anything applying to this particular clinic?"
"Dr. McGarey just has had an article published in the county magazine on healing around the world. We're just starting our second year of the Medical Research Bulletin, which goes, free of charge, to all our cooperating doctors and is available for subscription to lay people."
"Who are the cooperating doctors?"
"The cooperating doctors are those who have indicated a desire to receive information from the ARE. They fall into two categories: those who simply want to receive the information, and those who are also willing to take ARE patients who wish to have a Cayce style treatment rather than a standard medical approach."
"How long does it take?"
"Each doctor is working a full schedule, between twenty-five and thirty-five hours of actual patient time each week. A standard unit is fifteen minutes. Consultations take half an hour; complete physicals take an hour and a half. Our complete physical is as complete as any you can get in a general practice office."
"Is there a lab connected with this clinic?"
"We have a small lab for routine work. There is a lab here in town that we send most of our work out to, Arizona Health Labs."
"How are the patients charged?"
"The fees are, in general, the standard fee for the medical treatment in the city of Phoenix."
"There are no extra charges for being treated with ARE methods?"
"No, we try to hold our fees down. We are charging a hundred dollars for a complete work-up and that is considered fairly low."
"Suppose somebody wants to come here and has no funds?"
"We are currently collecting what we call the Indigent Patient Funds.' As time goes on, we will be able to take on indigent patients who have a serious need and who fit into research programs. I might add that when we go into our arthritis project - when there will be fifty patients treated here and fifty 'controls' treated at another clinic - our fifty patients will not be charged."
"Do you work with Blue Cross and any other organization along those lines?"
"Our insurance policy is standard. We have a full-time insurance girl who fills out the forms for our patients regardless of what insurance company they deal with."
"Have you ever supplemented the Cayce readings with related material from other sources?"
"There is great interest on the part of our doctors for all types of healing. However, the Cayce material has so much breadth and depth that it is going to be many years before we can get too far beyond a level of simple interest."
"Do your doctors go outside the clinic to treat patients?"
"We do make house calls on our regular patients who need it."
I thanked the manager for his time and went over to Dr. William McGarey's office. The doctor turned out to be a pleasant, soft-spoken gentleman who worded his replies to my questions carefully and, perhaps understandably - after all, it isn't every day that you can question an M.D. and a member of the AMA on his work in psychic healing.
"Dr. McGarey, how many years have you been interested in the Cayce readings?" I began.
"I've been in the ARE since 1957."
"When did the idea strike you to use the material from the readings in your practice?"
"Almost at once, because I looked at these ideas and thought, if Cayce can search a person's unconscious mind, then there must be some basis for understanding it. When you first read the Cayce material, it is confusing to the medical mind because he talks in strange terms. He talks about 'coagulation' when he means 'cell construction." In the practice of medicine we don't even think of cell construction."
"Do you think that the source which gave Cayce his information was medically trained?"
"I think the source was Cayce's unconscious mind reaching out and contacting the unconscious minds of other people. Cayce had the past life experience of having been a healer himself, back in Persia, thousands of years ago."
"Do you feel that there is an understanding of medical technology, medical terminology in the readings?"
"To a certain degree."
"Is it beyond what he as a conscious person would have known?"
"Yes." Dr. McGarey was emphatic.
"Do you find that any of this material could be derived from the minds of discarnate physicians?"
"Some of it, but not all of it."
"You refer to strange expressions. Are they strange in the use of words, or strange because of the ideas expressed by them?"
"Strange in the use of words. The ideas expressed are physiological ideas. The difference, I think, between the way he talks about the body and the way doctors and other people think about it is the difference between function and structure. Cayce talks as if a function is a real entity. In other words, a function is a living, active process and maybe function actually creates structure. The way he looks at it, an individual is a spiritual being first and manifests, through mind, as a material being. If this is true, then the spirit creates and the physical body is the result. If this is so, the spiritual being is the function, or the power, or the life force, and the physical structure, all parts of it, are there in order to let that life force manifest. Therefore, this structure is a result of function or of life. The function becomes the life process. The structure is just a means whereby it can express itself.
"In medicine we think in terms of structure. We think this man has liver disease, or lung disease, or his heart is abnormal, or he has brain disease, or he has an appendix that is inflamed. The way Cayce talks about it, one of the forces within the body has become unbalanced with the other forces, a system is out of coordination with another system, or the liver is not coordinating in its function with the kidneys because they're both eliminatory organs and the function of elimination has to come about or the individual dies. 'It is a different approach, from the standpoint of function, and the way we currently think about it, the structure is the thing we go by."
"How do you feel about it? Who is right?"
Dr. Me Carey did not pause for a second.
"Oh, I think Cayce is right," he said.
"Would you define then the approach to healing using this, shall we say, progressive medicine?"
"I don't think it is a progressive stance toward medicine, since it hails back to the way Cayce did it ten thousand years ago in Persia. It is as ancient as man. I've come to call it physiological rehabilitation. Physiology is the study of the functioning of the parts of the body, the parts that keep the body alive."
"Are you using Cayce's recommendations as to medicine and treatments?"
"I'm using the principle he talked about, not the specific medications. I think he was talking in principles. He would have someone get a series of colonics and have another person take castor oil, or Epsom salt baths, then he'd have another person take a massage for the same purpose - to stimulate the eliminations of the body."
"But you will adopt the method according to the needs of the individual patient, is that right?"
"That's right."
"What about some of the substances Cayce does prescribe that are at variance with the accepted methods of treatment for these diseases?"
"It depends on what you're comparing it to. For instance, in arthritis we use atomadine, which is a type of iodine preparation. Iodine is used in medicine all the time, as in drops of SSKI (saturated solution potassium iodine). But the atomadine Cayce suggests is an iodine trichloride solution. He says that iodine stimulates all the glands of the body to function more normally. It acts as a cleansing agent and an aid to the function of the cells. Atomadine used over a period of time builds up, and that is the way I use it, in ascending dosages from one drop a day up to five drops, which is still a minimal amount. Then he says use an Epsom salts bath to eliminate through the skin, which is an eliminatory organ. Eliminate some of the toxins. Some people in medicine, especially the physical therapists, use all sorts of physical therapy methods to combat arthritis. But the difference is this: I believe that arthritis is just a result of the body malfunctioning. If I can get the body functioning properly, arthritis will not be present. Aspirin used to contain the disease is not a cure."
"Do you feel the same way about cancer?"
"I have not researched cancer, and so I'm not sure what Cayce said about cancer. He did say there were nine different kinds. With leukemia, he said that tincture of iodine taken and mixed with blood drawn from the patient and then injected back in would cure maybe 50 percent of the cases of nonacidic leukemia."
"Has this ever been done?"
"No. Because he said first of all you have to test it in animals in order to determine the dosage and determine the side effects and so it has never been done. There is a good reason - no money."
"What diseases do you specialize in here?"
"We work with arthritis and respiratory diseases, the usual things that you see in a general practitioner's office."
"You don't concern yourself with physical diseases, accidents, and things of that sort?"
"Not so much, although the healing of the body after an accident is much improved if you pay attention to the functions of the body."
"Have you done any work with mental patients?"
"Some. We have psychiatrists cooperating with the Edgar Cayce Research Foundation Program, and some are using Cayce's suggestions on schizophrenia."
"Which area do you feel strongest in?"
"I would be equally divided between respiratory diseases and arthritis, spearodermia, and pelvic diseases of women, which, I think, respond well to Cayce's suggestions."
"Do you ever get involved with vitamins or other forms of dietary treatments?"
"Not vitamin treatments, diet treatments as such. We're working with a human being who is a manifestation of spirit. We're trying to bring that person to a wholeness. If we give a lot of vitamins to cure arthritis, then we may be avoiding a real confrontation of the human being."
"You are trying to heal the whole organism even though only part of it is affected."
"I think it is all affected. Cayce said that the body, the mind, and the spirit are one. If they are one, then a kink in one is a kink in another."
"Do you do any work with hypnosis?"
"No."
"Do you do any work involving the aura?"
"No. I'm interested, but I don't see the aura."
"Are you aware of the implication of auric treatments?"
"Yes."
"Is there any plan to develop that?"
"Yes, but it is in the future. I think that we need gradually to orient doctors in this field of parapsychology as such, the activity of the spiritual nature of man as it affects medical practice. I think doctors will have to become acquainted with it or they'll pass into oblivion."
"Do you perform surgery here?" I said, changing the subject again.
"Minor surgery. If someone cuts their hand, I sew it up. Or taking off little cysts or something of that nature."
"Isn't that in contradiction of Cayce's idea on wholeness?"
"No, he said that if you have castor oil consciousness, use castor oil, and, to paraphrase that, if you have surgery 'consciousness, use surgery. Some people are in a state of awareness where surgery is the thing, that they need at this time, this place."
"Are there any surgeons operating under the Cayce directive?"
"Yes. There's one in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Robert Brewer. He's going to be on our symposium next year. This is the fifth time. We are also having Dr. Ernie Petche, who is a psychiatrist from California, and William Tiller, who was head of the Department of Material Sciences at Stamford University, a physicist."
"In your treatment do you ever have reference to prior incarnations as being, in some way, connected with disease?"
"Sure, because people who come to me understand about reincarnation and it makes treatment a whole lot simpler. I think that whether reincarnation happens or not, it is much more reasonable to think in terms of it than not and so you can explain and understand things and thus act in accordance with reason a lot better if you know that something may be karmic in its origin."
"Do you yourself accept the karmic origin of much disease?"
"Yes."
"Is there some way of evaluating the karmic element in disease and thus of reversing the process?"
"I think so. I think that the karmic element almost always comes from a manifestation of glandular malfunction."
"In understanding the cause do you feel that the disease can be checked?"
"Sometimes. It depends, I think, on what the person has chosen even before he is born. If he were born without limbs, this is a karmic affliction. We don't know enough yet to help a person grow new limbs, although the potential is there. Potential is in each cell of the human body, and this has been demonstrated by physicians who do research. But that kind of a karmic affliction may be something he has chosen to live with through a whole incarnation."
"Have you had any personal problems with the American Medical Association because of your views and your work?"
"I had one case, when I was giving a lecture and the people in the city got overenthusiastic and sent announcements to all the doctors. The president of their society wrote a letter to the secretary of our society and said, 'What about this guy talking about the unconscious mind? Is he some kind of a nut?' and our secretary wrote back and said, 'No. He's got ideas of his own and he's a respected member of the medical community."
I was deeply impressed with Dr. McGarey's sincerity and level-headed approach to the problem at hand: how to reconcile orthodox medical training with the Edgar Cayce teachings. Quite obviously the two are on a collision course. If the doctor is right in supporting the Cayce view of man, and I am convinced that he is, then much of what he was taught in medical school can no longer be true For instance, the traditional view of the human as a superior animal, developed through the long and arduous process of evolution from lower animal forms, and essentially subject to the laws of the physical universe only, is diametrically opposed to the teaching of Cayce and most other esoteric teachers, that the physical is merely an expression of the spiritual and that the spiritual has created the physical manifestations, not vice versa.
Surely, an entire new form of medicine lies just beyond the horizon. Fortunately the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach and in the many branches throughout the United States is doing everything within its power to shed additional light upon these amazing teachings of a man without medical training, without superior knowledge and, for that matter, without any ambitions to be anything but a humble vehicle.
The clinic at Phoenix is merely one attempt to acquaint the general public with the Cayce material and to use it in a practical way to heal the sick. On still another level, physical therapy, Harold J. Reilly, of New Jersey, has been active in the field of body conditioning and rehabilitating through exercise and a planned program of physical activity. What makes the Reilly method different from any other form of physiotherapy is of course his relationship with the late Edgar Cayce. "One of the most interesting and intriguing experiences I have had is that of helping to condition hundreds of men and women referred to me by the famous miracle man of Virginia Beach, the well-known psychic Edgar Cayce. For about two years before I had even met the man and continuing seventeen years after until his death, he advised people to come to me for conditioning. As this advice was given in a trance state I felt curiously honored to have been selected from out of the ether to give the special type of therapy I was already using for general conditioning. I was further flattered when this strangely gifted man came in for my personal manipulations," writes Harold Reilly in one of his books, Easy Does It.
Reilly preaches physical conditioning as a philosophy of life. To him, the health and function of muscles, glands, organs, mind, and spirit all depend on the movements of the body. Many public figures, Hollywood stars, and sportsmen have used Reilly's services over the years. Many came to Reilly to improve their figures, to lose excess weight, or to have their health restored when under stress, but many others came because Reilly was the man to see if one was interested in the Edgar Cayce philosophy of life. Somehow Harold Reilly, who holds a doctorate in chiropractics, is the physical exponent of the Cayce teachings. After a patient has been ministered to by someone practicing on the basis of the Cayce readings, he is frequently sent to the Reilly clinic for a combination of rest and toning up. Up to June, 1960, Reilly handled about 1,000 cases referred to him by the Edgar Cayce foundation. He arranged for treatments in his drugless therapy field for patients requiring osteopathy, chiropractic massage, hydrotherapy, homeotherapy, and other forms of treatment requiring no drugs whatsoever.
As Dr. Reilly reported in the Searchlight, a publication of ARE, the patients sent to him fell into four categories: those having to do with the increase of circulation, those having to do with relaxation, and those having to do with the proper approach to eating. Harold Reilly was able to show them the way to better health, but to maintain good health, patients were required to continue a balanced program of specific exercises at all times.
So great was and is Edgar Cayce's impact on the American scene that it was perhaps inevitable that people, sooner or later, would claim to be carrying on the work of the late seer of Virginia Beach. Well-meaning psychics and not so well-meaning opportunists have come forward to claim contact with Edgar Cayce. "Get help now from Dr. Ernesto A. Montgomery, the West Indies prophet. Not since the great Edgar Cayce has so amazing a prophet and healer appeared," is the somewhat all encompassing statement put forward by a well-known Los Angeles psychic reader.
Two housewives in Cincinnati, Ohio, who have worked together for years in what they believe to be a contact with the late Edgar Cayce, I have investigated carefully myself. One of the two women, the medium, received "Cayce's messages" in trance; the other took them down for posterity. As with all such messages, I take great care to differentiate between the patently false or erroneous and the possibly genuine. In the case of the two ladies in Cincinnati, the alleged Cayce speaking to me through the entranced medium was unable to answer a number of key questions put to him. The information had been supplied to me by Hugh Lynn Cayce, son of the late Edgar, and included names and situations that could have been answered only by the authentic Edgar Cayce.
Similarly, a lady dentist in the Middle West laid claim to being the mouthpiece for the late Edgar Cayce. Despite her apparent sincerity and conviction that she was indeed the chosen one, none of the material obtained through her can be verified sufficiently to support her claim.
It would appear that Edgar Cayce will choose his mouthpiece very carefully so as not to create conflict or doubt in the minds of researchers as to the genuineness of the communications. Thus far no one has come forward with sufficient evidence to support a claim of being the mouthpiece of the late Edgar Cayce. This may yet happen in the future, and when it occurs, it will benefit mankind beyond belief; for if the incarnate Edgar Cayce was able to prescribe medications for thousands of people, relying only on the knowledge given him in trance by discarnates, how much greater must the knowledge of the discarnate now be, after he himself has crossed the threshold into the world of spirit and become acquainted with its laws and truths.
3 - Who and Where Are the Healers?
Nearly all healers start out by discovering their gifts accidentally, often over matters concerning friends or relatives, and then develop them by using them on other people. When their abilities become outside their immediate circle, they begin to be called upon by strangers, and before long they feel that they are ready to set up shop in some way, to heal those who want to be healed. At first, this may be merely a part-time occupation, in the evening, after hours; some may not take money for their ministrations, while others will take what is euphemistically called "free-will offerings." Eventually, however, some of the successful healers turn professional, though they are careful not to claim any medical treatments or to promise absolute success to their clients, being well aware of the legal difficulties they can get themselves into. Most psychic healers in America charge fees for their time rather than for their services; there is no law against anyone's being paid for time used in the interest of others, and so long as the healer stays within the letter of the law, he or she is not likely to have difficulties with the authorities.
Unfortunately, most laws are totally inappropriate in respect to genuine psychic healing. They lump together patently fake quacks with authentic healers, just as the archaic laws of some states, such as California and New York, still do not know how to differentiate between a Gypsy tea leaf reader or fortune teller and a researcher in parapsychology. In time, no doubt, these inequities will be straightened out.
For the record, no psychic healer ever caused anyone any physical harm; the application of unorthodox healing has never worsened any illness. The claim, put forward by orthodox physicians hostile toward psychic healing, that a patient who consults a healer instead of seeing a conventional physician is in fact allowing his illness to progress instead of doing something about it does not really hold water. In the first place, good psychic healers do not seek to subvert orthodox doctors. It is not necessarily an either/or situation. In the second, the majority of people consult healers only after conventional physicians have let them down, either directly, by telling them that they can do nothing further for them, or indirectly, by promising them help when in fact they cannot deliver it. Only a tiny fraction of those in ill health seek out healers first, before trying the orthodox route to salvation, because, unfortunately, the majority of the population is not as yet psychically oriented.
Indeed, while this effectively destroys the opposition to healers, this fact tragically limits the effectiveness of the healer. People are far too hesitant about the consulting of healers. One of the purposes of this work is to acquaint the broad masses with the possibilities of finding good health outside the traditional edifice of medicine. In the case of radical surgery particularly, prior consultation with a competent healer may very well prevent the necessity for surgery altogether. Of course one must deal with the time element. In some diseases prolonged lack of conventional treatment can allow the disease to progress. But one of the strong points of psychic healing is that generally a total cure, and if not a total cure, then a substantial improvement, is instantaneous, or at least very rapid. Thus a comparatively small risk is taken on consulting a competent healer prior to allowing radical surgery to take place. In view of the sacrifices involved, an enlightened patient is justified in attempting the unorthodox route first - so long as he is sure of the services of a truly competent and acknowledged psychic healer.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Some healers go through the motions of their art and fully believe that they are healing those in need of help. Suggestion plays a certain part in these unorthodox healings, but not beyond the patient's full cooperation in wanting to be healed and in believing in the healer. Once such a relationship is established, something has to happen between healer and patient that is not under the control of the patient. If a healer has extraordinary results and his percentage of "hits" is beyond expectations - that is to say, the majority of his cases are successfully concluded - inevitably his or her reputation will eventually spread until the name becomes a household word in the esoteric field, among those who accept psychic healing as a reality. If the healer is a modestly successful individual, perhaps someone using his art only intermittently, the name may not mean very much outside of a small circle of friends and admirers. Nevertheless, such unknown healers may suddenly become successful ones because the gift of healing has a way of coming and going in spurts. In the United States and elsewhere there are plenty of examples of both kinds of healers.
Among the modest and sincere healers of my acquaintance who practice the art of laying on of hands is a woman Ritter. She has for years practiced spiritual healing through prayer and the laying on of hands. William Linn, another spiritualist and minister of his own church in New York City, is a good psychic healer, using essentially similar methods to Betty Ritter.
Sometimes spiritualists get together for a healing circle in which as many as eight individuals take part, with the patient within the circle. The concerted efforts, partially prayer and partially the sending forth of healing energies from their bodies and minds, are supposed to cleanse the patient of illness, working through the aura and thence into the body itself. One such healing circle, in the home of the Reverend William Linn, that I tested proved to be an extraordinary experience. For about fifteen minutes I felt waves upon waves of energy surrounding me, and I left the house with a feeling of renewed vigor and at the same time of great calmness.
A London medium, Mary Rogers, a vivacious blonde woman who is active in spiritualist circles in that city, does an excellent job of psychic healing with her hands. I have subjected myself to her ministrations and felt the surge of power coming, as it were, from her fingers onto my neck and thence into my body. Healing is never an attempt to deal with one particular area of the body but is always meant to be general. Illness is indivisible, health is indivisible, to the psychically oriented person.
On the boundary between unorthodox healing and natural treatments lie the methods employed at Buxted Park, Sussex, England. Maintained by Heather and Ken Shipman, independently wealthy English people, Buxted Park relies on osteopathy and nature cures as well as on such esoteric methods as naturopath treatments and color therapy.
Buxted Park is a magnificent country mansion, dating from 1725, standing on high ground overlooking a lake, a river, and a park. Other forms of unorthodox healing, notably psychic healing and the laying on of hands, are not part of the regular routine at Buxted Park but are encouraged when and if a proper medium is in residence there.
Healing does not require a person to be an adult. Twelve-year-old Bonnie Cambell-Best of Winchester, England, acquired a certain reputation for putting her hands on people and curing them of various diseases. Bonnie's father discovered her ability shortly before her ninth birthday when a patient of her father's came to the house looking for relief from back pains. Since her father was away at the time, the little girl impulsively placed her hands on the woman's back, the way she had seen her father do it. To her surprise the patient looked up and confirmed that all pains had disappeared. This encouraged the little girl to try her hands with others. Her success with various forms of illness, such as a twisted arm, throat cancer, and the problem of a little boy who had been unable to speak, encouraged her to continue treating those who came for help. When Bonnie's father realized that his daughter had a greater gift than he had himself, he encouraged her to look in that direction. Neither of them charge for their services but accept free-will offerings.
A German lawyer, Dr. Kurt Trampler, telepathically diagnoses the diseases of patients he never meets or sees. He is not a healer in the sense that he uses his psychic abilities to deal with illnesses themselves, but through his telepathic powers he enables medical doctors to get to the cause of a patient's illness quicker and with more guidance than by probing in the conventional way. Dr. Trampler has been tested by teams of investigating scientists and found to be amazingly accurate in his diagnoses.
There are far too few outstanding healers in America today, but one of the most unusual healers I have met is a housewife living near Atlanta, Georgia, Betty Dye, who is the mother of several children, the wife of a slight, soft-spoken man who works for one of the major oil companies, and a medium. Not just a woman with a prophetic vision of the world to come - and a fine record of past predictions come true - Betty Dye has the power of spiritual healing. Gradually, as she became more and more aware of her psychic powers, principally through predictions and involvement in various cases of murder or mysterious disappearances, she also developed her powers as a psychic healer. Thus after much consultation as to the direction her development should take, and perhaps also influenced by the fact that the spiritualist churches seem to offer protection from law enforcement authorities who still look askance at psychics in some parts of the world, Betty Dye studied for the spiritualist ministry and in due time received her certificate, making her a bona fide spiritualist minister and member of the association, not that, as she herself is fully aware, membership in a spiritualist association has anything to do with her ability as a healer per se. "Please get the idea across very firmly," she told me during one of our meetings in Atlanta, "that healers do not have to be ordained ministers, church deacons, or special ones within the church. They are surely not the only ones God gives the healing power to." To Betty Dye, who comes from a devout Southern Baptist background, the power to heal stems directly from God.
But what about her record?
James Douglas DePass, of Atlanta, an author and officer of the Atlanta Theosophical Society, consulted Betty Dye in December, 1970. In response, Betty Dye went into trance, during which one of her controls, who identified himself as a doctor in physical life, diagnosed Mr. DePass's ailment as being connected with the stomach. Betty Dye had not been told anything about her visitor's problem. The entranced medium then laid her hands on the affected areas of the patient. His pains left him by the end of the first sitting. During the trance, Betty Dye felt completely unattached to the proceedings and at one time grew very dizzy. She has a vague memory of what was spoken through her, but during the treatment itself she seemed to be "outside" her own body. Both the patient and the medium feel extreme heat during the laying on of hands.
Betty Dye feels that the power comes directly from her spirit guides, and the thought and words expressed by her during trance are merely filtered through her at such times is that of a man who has far greater knowledge and vocabulary than she has in her ordinary condition. The medical doctor who acts as her control speaks with authority and sincerity and apparently knows exactly what is to be done in each individual case. The control also gives instructions to the patient to help the healing by placing his or her hands in line with one another. Patients frequently report feeling as if heat were going through their own bodies at such times. There is a question-and-answer period between the control and the patient, and apparently this period is used to calm the patient sufficiently for the healing to take place. While in her trance, Betty hears this voice directly in her right ear, and it sounds to her as if a definite and direct connection is set up between the control and herself, transmitting, as it were, all the sound into one location within her head; she hears nothing in her left ear. When coming out of the trance state she feels exhilarated and far from tired - - though frequently she is dripping with perspiration - and extremely relaxed. Often she lies down and sleeps for a while after a session. She is told that the spirit control also takes care of her health while she is in trance. "If feel the movement of my own body but have no control over it," Betty explains. "Often the movement is awkward and the spirit control asks assistance from the patient in placing the hands or in aiding me to stand. I cannot stand on my own, but when helped to my feet I can remain there until the treatments are over and then I am put back into the chair."
Returning to James DePass, we should note that on March 31,1971, he signed a notarized affidavit stating: "This is to acknowledge and certify that on a Sunday night in December, 1970, Betty Dye with her spiritual healing talent did absolutely beyond doubt heal me of a stomach ailment. I had suffered nausea and stomach pain for a week. I had definitely decided to see my medical doctor the next day. No one knew of my trouble except my wife Hazel. It was an absolute effective spiritual healing case administered by Betty Dye for which I am very grateful."
Mrs. Floyd Cummings, also of Atlanta, came to Betty Dye a frightened woman, unable to look into her face. Her fears were due to what her medical doctors had told her. As Mrs. Cummings later related it, formally: "In December of 1970, my doctor, A.N. Ullea, of East Point, Georgia, to perform surgery and remove the growth. Before going to the specialist, however, I went to Mrs. Betty Dye and she gave me a treatment. During the treatment I experienced a wonderful feeling of healing, cleansing, and extreme heat coming from the hands of Mrs. Betty Dye while in trance. Several days later I went to the specialist. When he examined my throat, the growth was gone. It had not returned. That was four months ago. I have had no further trouble with my throat."
This was a case of instantaneous healing, requiring but a single session with the healer.
Betty Dye holds regular Friday night sessions for healing at which anyone in need of her help may attend. Some come from great distances. In 1971, for example, Sgt. Charles Piper drove in from Alabama to partake in the sessions, and he was so elated at the results of his healing sessions with Betty, both in the regular circle and privately, that he volunteered the following statement. "Since I was six years old I have had headaches. I started to wear eyeglasses and my mother always blamed eye strain. In 1960 I went on sick call for a severe headache and was told by the doctor that I had a chronic sinus condition. Since that time until September 18, 1970, I have had a recurring sinus problem. The attached sheet shows the many times I have been on sick call for sinus or related illnesses. The frequency of my headaches was about once every two weeks or more often." Sergeant Piper then listed each instance in which he was on sick call, the information being taken directly from this military records. There were twenty-one single instances between August 15, 1960, and September 17,1971. "On September 17, 1971," the sergeant continued his statement, "I attended a sitting at the home of Mrs. Betty Dye. During the sitting she went into a trance and a healing spirit entered her. I stepped forward when the control asked me to and asked to have my sinus problem cured. At the time I had a headache and swollen glands in my throat. The medium placed her hands onto the sinus areas and s aid they would be cured. Two hours later the swelling in my throat was gone and so was the headache. Since that time I have not had any sinus problems."
The number of those healed by Betty Dye, sometimes instantly, is large and impressive.
I wish to state that I received spiritual healing from Mrs. Betty Dye for prostatitis. The back ache which often goes along with this condition was helped and the swelling in the prostate was reduced after treatment. -Dr. John P. Bohanan, Veterinarian, Canton, Georgia.
This letter is to confirm that I have received spiritual healing through my dear friend Mrs. Betty Dye and the grace of God. I had a whiplash which was painful to me. After several treatments I received a lot of comfort and feel that with a few more treatments I shall be cured completely. - Thomas C. Bennett, Canton, Geogia.
The treatment I received was for a back problem. Since I took several treatments, the problem completely disappeared. - Mary Elizabeth Bennett, Canton, Georgia.
I have known Betty Dye for the past two years; she has helped in my church with healing. She has helped my grandson. He has not had any asthmatic attacks since she started to come, before Christmas, 1970. - Reverend Irene Hornsby, East Point, Georgia.
This letter is to express my appreciation for the wonderful and complete healing I received as a result of my visits to a few sessions held with you earlier this year. For many years I suffered from nervous stomach as well as inflammation around the tonsils occasionally. Doctors could find nothing physically wrong. Now I seem to be completely relieved of these conditions. - Bill Maye, Atlanta, Georgia.
In the latter part of February, 1972, a nine-year old boy named Peter Love was brought to Betty Dye in the back of a station wagon. Peter Love was in a cast from the waist down and had a steel bar permanently applied between his feet to hold him in a certain position. Doctors had said the child suffered from a bone disease and that he must wear the cast and apparatus for at least three years; he had been in it about six weeks prior to his visit to Betty Dye.
Betty Dye administered spiritual healing immediately. On April 13, 1972, she received word from the boy's father in Alabama that an X-ray had been taken, and that to the doctors' surprise the boy was found to be 90 percent better. As a result of this finding, the boy was taken out of the cast and put on crutches. An affidavit signed by the boy's father, Donald P. Love, stated that the patient's condition prior to healing included "upper extremity of left femur badly deteriorated from perthes disease." In this case, for which Betty Dye received neither a fee nor even a free-will offering, the medium had placed her hands on the affected area.
The boy's father later was visited by a spirit entity and an unseen force moved his hands to Peter's left hip; thus the father's energies were also enlisted in the treatment. The father was not in a trance. It felt to him as if millions of tiny needles flowed down his arms and out of his fingertips into the boy's hip. When he repeated the treatment the following night, the same thing happened, but this time there was no feeling of the needles and the force was much smaller.
For a while the father felt a spirit force within him; then the force moved to the side, and the father felt he was in somewhat of a trance state during the healing treatment.
During the first treatment the boy felt the needles also and winced from pain while the flow of needles continued. On the second night the boy felt much less pain. Donald Love concludes his notarized statement thus: "The condition is nearly gone. All the bones show clearly in the X-ray, indicating good calcium growth. Just a short time is needed to grow the cartilage back. Originally this was to take from sixteen months to three years."
Was Betty Dye responsible? Or the father? Or both? It doesn't matter to Betty Dye whether she gets credit for what she does so long as the results are positive. But the case is an illustration of the diverse ways in which healing can occur.
Upon Betty Dye's request, a registered nurse, Peggy Allison, attended a healing session on October 29, 1971, to take her pulse and blood pressure before, during, and after her trance. According to nurse Allison, Betty Dye's blood pressure, normally 120/80, increased to 170/30 during trance and fell to 126/80 immediately upon the end of the trance state; likewise, her pulserose from a pretrance 74 to a trance 92, and fell to a 68 post-trance level. These readings would indicate the dissipation of energies during and because of the trance state, a situation common to the great healers. Those wishing to contact Betty Dye directly can write to her at 6107 Longino Drive, Union City, Georgia, 30291, enclosing a self-addressed stamped envelope. Betty Dye does not travel outside Georgia, except under very special circumstances. Her fee is modest, and her success percentage very high.
For thirty years the name of John Myers has been respected in psychical research circles and somewhat controversial in scientifically oriented and lay circles. The respect was due John Myers, who passed away in May, 1972, because of his unusual contributions to the field of psychic photography, psychic healing, and the organization of a psychic study society called Psychists, Inc. The controversial aspect of Myer's career stemmed from two events in the British dentist's life; his encounter with a journalist, Lord Donegal, who tried to trap him by substituting marked plates in one of the psychic photography experiments Myers had agreed to submit to for the press, and Myer's own inability to present an effective public image of his talents, because of a personality that was as contradictory as it was unusual.
Myers the man was not without vanity, interested in the good things of life, keenly aware of the advantages of being wealthy (which in his later years he indeed was although not because of his psychic work).
On the other side of the ledger, there was Myers the mystic, the medium, the psychic healer.
Following the traditional spiritualist line of thinking, Myers divided his activities in the field of psychical research between two main areas: to demonstrate his unusual medium ship as a photography medium and as a healer, preferably with resulting publicity in press, radio, or television; and to organize a society of healers and psychics in which he himself would be the dominant figure but which would encompass the work of others as well. I knew John Myers for twenty years. At times his naive approach to scientific controls and his incredible appetite for publicity - any land of publicity - exasperated one, especially since this publicity mania led him to confuse his genuine psychic accomplishments with his mundane affairs. Indeed, it is no wonder that casual observers were easily misled into taking Myers for a charlatan. In fact, he was one of the great mediums - and great healers - of all times.
The cases Myers cured number several hundred; they are on record. But perhaps the most outstanding of his cases was also his first really important one: Myer's meeting with the American business executive R. L. Parish, who was then suffering from a chronic sciatic condition as well as from defective vision. Within a few days after Myers' application of healing, the pain from the sciatic nerve had ceased for the first time in many years. Mrs. Parish was in a north Westchester hospital, and was examined by the family doctor, Donald Richie, M.D. The examination showed multiple bilateral rib fractures, hemorrhaging into the right side of the chest cavity, partial collapse of the right lung, and a fracture of the right shoulder. John Myers, who was then in Mexico, rushed back to New York to be at the bedside of his friend's wife. He requested fifteen minutes alone with the patient. The second day after the healer's visit, Mrs. Parish was out of bed. On the eleventh day she left the hospital. Donald Richie stated at the time that "no medical explanation for a recovery in six days from injuries that would have taken even a young, active person three to four week's time can be offered."
Interestingly, Myers was even able to heal himself, something very few psychic healers can do. In 1957 he suffered a serious hemorrhage and in the middle of the night was taken to Medical Arts Hospital in New York City. His personal physician, Dr. Karl Fischbach, examined him and discovered a growth over the right kidney. Several cancer experts examined Myers subsequently, and biopsies were taken in the operating room to determine whether or not the growth was malignant. The unanimous verdict was that an immediate operation was imperative, that any delay might prove to be fatal.
John Myers steadfastly refused. He informed his doctors that he had no intention of being operated upon but would do for himself what he had often done for others. Myers remained in the hospital for one week for observation. During that time he healed himself, calling upon the divine powers that had helped him so many times before in the case of others. The cancer disappeared at the end of the week, never to return.
A similar happening occurred in 1958, when John Myers suffered an acute inflammation of the appendix. The examining physician, Dr. Samuel Schwartz, insisted that he submit to an operation at once, saying that otherwise he could not be responsible for Myers' life. Myers, unconvinced of the need for the operation, checked into Knickerbocker Hospital in New York City, where the diagnosis was confirmed by a panel of doctors. Again, Myers politely refused to be operated upon. Two hours later all pain had ceased and he spent a peaceful night. Examination the following day revealed that the inflammation had entirely disappeared. Myers had no further trouble with his appendix.
Among the diseases John Myers cured successfully were gall bladder trouble, cancer, heart disease, and many lesser ills, such as headaches, arthritis, and just plain muscular pains. He worked by passing his hands over the afflicted area or touching the patient just as he was directed by what he described as his spirit control, an American Indian who had passed on many years before.
Myers' own death did not come due to illness or any state of general weakness; he lived to a great age, though during the last few years, when he had retired from all active work, he complained of being somewhat tired.
One of the finest, newer healers is Rosalyn Bruyere, who maintains a center for psychic healing in Glendale, California. She can be reached at 244-8607 in the 213 telephone area in Los Angeles.
A 28-year-old young man from Brooklyn seems well on his way to tread in the late John Myers' footsteps. Dean Kraft, who works with medical doctors and sometimes goes into hospitals to minister to patients, with their doctors' approval, discovered his supernormal abilities by accident, as it were, in November 1972. He was driving home from work, when he heard a strange, clicking sound and found the doors locked though he had not touched the appropriate buttons. He asked, more as a joke than seriously, if there were spirits present, and to this amazement received an answer in a sort of code of clicks! At the time he was working in a music shop, and together with his boss, he perfected this code until he could actually communicate with "them. "That night, he heard the horrible sounds of an automobile crash outside the shop. He rushed outside and found a woman on the pavement, who had been badly hurt. Something told him to hold her in his hands until an ambulance came to take her to the hospital. Later, when he drove home, the unseen communicators told him, via the click code, "tonight your hands were used for healing."
He did not understand the message, but when he checked on the woman's condition, the hospital told him she was on the critical list and would undergo surgery in the morning. Placing a telephone call the next day to find out how she was doing after the surgery, he was shocked to hear she had been discharged. Somehow her injuries, he was told, had "healed themselves during the early hours of the morning."
Today, six years later, Kraft is so busy an appointment with him may take weeks to get. He doesn't advertise and doesn't need to. Word of mouth gets around. He freely admits he does not always succeed with patients. But the times he does are impressive. Half of the patients he sees are referred to him by doctors. One doctor he cured was so impressed with his ability he helped him set up a nonprofit foundation, The Foundation for Psycho-energetic Research. Frequently, he has a doctor present when he gives treatments. He starts by slightly darkening the room, then proceeds to touch the patient's head and neck gently; during this stage of the treatment, Kraft feels he is "charging up his batteries."
The healing takes about five minutes, but afterwards Kraft has to rest for a while - it takes a lot of energy out of him, he claims. He has had particularly good success with psoriasis, tumors, and some forms of cancer, and he likes to do laboratory work to find out more about his amazing powers himself!
These powers have worked seeming miracles at times. There was the time he was called to the North Shore Community Hospital where a patient was dying of cancer of the colon. Kraft saw him a couple of times. The man is still alive. He also cured another man who had leukemia. Kraft saw him two days in a row, and saved him. A judge who suffered from an incurable arthritic condition in his knees and back called on Dean Kraft for help. After a few treatments, the pains left the judge and have never returned.
Kraft insists on checking up on his patients after he treats them, to make sure the cure is permanent. He also teaches his methods, claiming that others can acquire his ability too. He has used his method successfully on himself. So has neurologist Dr. Gabriel Rubin. Psychiatrist Dr. Abraham Weinberg of New York considers psychic healing as demonstrated by Dean Kraft a valuable adjunct to medical treatment.
Not all of Kraft's patients have incurable or dread diseases. One of his cases involves a highly respected professional man who suffered from a spinal cord injury which prevented him from having sexual intercourse, though he had the desire to. After two treatments from Kraft, his problem disappeared.
The healer from Brooklyn now sees patients at his East 63rd Street office in Manhattan. There he is close to several big hospitals where most of the patients require his services.
"Doc" Brown of Toccoa, Georgia, is America's best-known etheric surgeon. Because he is often called upon to help people in outlying areas, he gets around in his own small airplane. Most of his patients, however, he sees at his center in Georgia. He recently married Californian Sylvia Maria Nicolosi, psychical researcher and daughter of the famous sculptor William Nicolosi. Brown's personal interest is cosmic law and philosophy, but his body is being used for etheric surgery by discarnate entities much the same as the late "surgeon of the rusty knife," Jose Arigo, worked with spirit doctors. Etheric surgery must not be confused with psychic surgery, especially the kind practiced in the Philippines and frequently attacked as fraudulent in some cases. In etheric surgery, no blood flows, no body openings appear, yet the patient is healed and sent home well and happy. The surgery is applied to invisible, but very real, underlying etheric counterparts of the physical body, which snaps into place automatically when the etheric body is operated upon.
When Brown goes into deep trance, following some meditation, several spirit doctors speak through him, in their own ways and voices. When he treats the patient, he goes through the motions of an ordinary surgeon, including the use of invisible instruments and medicines. Invisible, that is, to the naked eye. But not to the psychic healer.
The patient undresses and lies on the operating table, just as he would in a hospital or doctor's office. Invisible incisions are followed by the removal of equally invisible tissue and then the "wound" is closed. Those who have gone through such operations by the etheric surgeon - and there are thousands now - aver that they felt no pain while the invisible surgeons operated. However, after being told to get up, they did feel "something" - one patient who was operated upon for an abdominal condition, reported he felt "as if a rubber band had been stretched across his stomach." Patients must rest after the etheric operation, and there are recovery rooms at Doc Brown's center, just like in hospitals.
Does it work? A Miss K. had an eye examination in Honolulu and was told she would go blind within three years. After a visit to Brown, she was re-examined and no evidence of tumors or pathology found. Mrs. H. G. evidently had some doubts about the "reality" of etheric surgery. But after visiting the center, she discovered a two-inch scar on her right side and a smaller one across from it. Sometimes multiple healing takes place in one session. "The new ears are wonderful. The bronchial congestion has cleaned up. My injured right leg has healed. My blood pressure and heart beat are excellent," a Mrs. M.G. wrote to Brown. Brown has legions of satisfied patients and testimonials from most of them. In the United States he does work similar to the British etheric surgeon George Chapman, who is entranced by a discarnate eye surgeon, Dr. William Lang. I myself underwent a treatment by Chapman in 1967 and I felt the soaring heat of the healing in the affected ears. One visit did not cure my problem, but I am convinced that multiple treatments would have been more effective. At that time Chapman relied on donations - usually $3 - to pay for his services, and his house in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire was always filled with waiting patients.
Blanche Myerson, a New York healer, discovered her gift through a dramatic accident: When the husband of a friend suddenly collapsed in her presence, Mrs. Myerson was "impressed" to place her hands over his heart. The man, who had suffered a cardiac arrest, responded immediately. Mrs. Myerson then took an interest in psychic healing, and today is one of the busiest healers in Manhattan. A discarnate doctor, whom she calls Dr. Michael, works through her. She has cured a woman suffering from phlebitis, who had not been responding to conventional treatment. Doctors had somehow overlooked gangrenous tissue, but after several treatments by Mrs. Myerson, the gangrene disappeared and new tissue grew. She has also been successful with such difficult diseases as sclera derma, a skin ailment for which there is no known remedy, and she has even healed a dog who had been totally disabled due to two broken hind legs, and now walks again "like new."
Probably the world's most famous psychic healer was England's Harry Edwards. Edwards heard the cell at a spiritualist séance when he was told by the medium that he should use his gifts for psychic healing. Soon afterward he developed trance mediumship and realized that he had been chosen as an instrument to manifest healing from the spirit world. He was convinced that his spirit guides were Drs. Louis Pasteur and Lord Lister, but he attributed the essence of his powers to God.
From time to time Edwards undertook mass healing services at London's Albert Hall or Royal Festival Hall, places large enough to hold several thousand people at one time. He welcomed the spotlight of the press, radio and television and had an impressive record of actual healings performed in the glare of precisely such spotlights. Crippled individuals stepped up and explained their affliction to the healer. He then made some passes over them or touched their bodies, at the same time praying for divine assistance. Not infrequently, the healing was instantaneous and the crippled person, unable to walk before, in many instances, walked off the platform briskly - cured. At other times, several consultations or healing sessions would be necessary.
The majority of Harry Edwards' work was done at his healing sanctuary at Shere, England, where he used the early morning hours to meditate and tune in on the power he would use during the day. Only a small number of those seeking to be healed by him actually journeyed out to his sanctuary. Many thousands of others, unable to do so, would correspond with him for absent healing, and some absent healing does indeed work, although there is no question that the physical presence of the healer with the patient is much more likely to yield results than a mere exchange of correspondence.
Dr. Danny Abse, in his book Medicine on Trial, states that Harry Edwards told him that "the majority who write to me have been told that they are incurable; as a result of my meditations eighty percent record a measure of improvement, thirty percent of these have a complete recovery."
One of the first cases Edwards worked on involved a neighbor named Gladys Cudd, a teenager dying of consumption. Edwards placed his hands on her head and asked for healing. At that point he became conscious of a power flow through him. His body felt alive with energy, which flowed down through his arms and from there into the patient. Something within him made him tell the girl's mother that she would be up and well within three days; the physician had told the mother that her daughter was about to die.
That same afternoon, the high fever which she had long been suffering from was gone from the girl. The following day she vomited large quantities of red substance and started to take food again as if she were not suffering from any deadly disease. Two days later she was up and about, cured. For a while Edwards kept in touch with his erstwhile patient through absent healing correspondence; then he lost track of her. Over the years she married and raised a family. In 1970 she paid the healer a surprise visit at his shrine in Shere to inform him that she was about to become a healer herself, opening a center for healing the sick in Devonshire, England.
Harry Edwards, who liked to work in his shirt sleeves, was a heavy-set physical type oozing with robust health. When he was in his eighties he was assisted by four other healers, Ray and Joan Branch and George and Olive Burton, and each healer specialized in one particular part of the human body. The mansion at Shere was a sprawling Tudor style manor house, surrounded by greenery and a large garden, secluded from industrial and other pollution, an ideal spot. Edwards maintained an efficient staff to respond to the large volume of mail he got and to set up appointments for those seeking in-person treatments. There was even a bus service from the nearest railroad station to enable those coming for a healing to arrive just before the scheduled appointment and to depart immediately afterward. Everything was done quietly and efficiently, just as if Edwards had been running a quiet country hospital. Payments for all treatments were by voluntary donation.
I arranged for a visit at the sanctuary by my wife Catherine and myself for July 16,1970. When we arrived at Burrows Lea, the sanctuary, we were ushered into a pleasant good-sized study in which the general healing sessions took place. Harry Edwards felt that my witnessing the healing of various patients might give me a better insight into his methods and approach.
A number of books contain detailed accounts of Harry Edwards' amazing healing powers, especially his own Thirty Years A Spiritual Healer, and Paul Miller's Born to Heal, but what I witnessed was a quiet consultation taking place between individual patients and their healer. Evidently some of the people had come to Harry Edwards before. There was quiet, subdued discussion as to the state of the condition; then Edwards placed his hands upon the afflicted area or, in some cases, asked one of his associate healers to take over.
In our case it was Olive Burton. I placed myself into a comfortable chair across from Mrs. Burton. She then extended her arms and made a number of passes over my closed eyes and ears. My complaint was, as ever, an incurable noise in my left ear; my wife's general irregularities involving hormones and other circulatory factors. During the treatment I had the impression of concentric circles surrounding my head, and I felt energy surging from the healer's hands into my ear. I did not expect a single treatment to show dramatic results, and it did not. But I felt better.
After the healing session was over, Harry Edwards sat down with us for a few minutes to discuss psychic healing or, as he preferred to call it, spiritual healing. He attributed the majority of diseases to frustrations on the spiritual level and felt that spirit healing is necessary to undo the damage of such frustrations before the physical body can be healed. I asked whether he was cooperating with medical doctors.
"Not with the medical profession as a whole, but some doctors as individuals come here and bring their patients or send them to us," he explained. "I don't think you can mix up the two therapies. Medical therapy is based on physical science, and this is spirit science. Both are complementary to each other."
"I noticed you always asked your patients whether or not conventional treatment had been administered before you treat them," I said.
The healer nodded. "Yes," he said, "because if conventional treatment has been used and it is the right kind then it obviously will help the person. I think the two approaches are compatible, if there is understanding and one works with the other. For example, let us take the dispersal of arthritis in a joint. If we can get the joint free by our methods, the patient will still need physiotherapy in order to carry on."
"Are you being troubled in any way by the authorities?"
"The British Medical counsel threatened to strike off the register any doctor who cooperates with us. Nevertheless some doctors do. No one has yet been struck off for it. But there are one or two things we can't do, such as advertise a cure for cancer or epilepsy. And we are not permitted to prescribe for animals nor allowed to do dental treatment or venereal treatment."
Some medical doctors explained the amazing percentage of cures accomplished by Harry Edwards and his associates as being due either to spontaneous remission or to psychological therapy. In fact, this holds true only in a minute percentage of actual cases, since he treated physical ailments that could not be "suggested away." In a majority of Edwards' healings, physical changes did take place in the body of the patient. Whether or not the action in the patient's body was triggered by suggestion, prayer, or Edwards' laying on of hands is really beside the point: if the patient was cured, the method worked.
On a much less spectacular scale, the sanctuary maintained by Philip and Kathleen Wyndham at 56 Narford Road, London, England, follows similar avenues of healing. The Wyndhams work through private appointments, prayer links for those tuning in at certain times following individual healing sessions, and public healing demonstrations, generally held at Caxton Hall in London. They also maintain absent healing correspondence, requesting free-will donations only in return. What makes them especially interesting, however, is the fact that in addition to their spiritual healing, the Wyndhams suggest certain dietary approaches, based primarily on Dr. D.C. Jarvis's book, Folk Medicine.
England, in fact, can boast of many important healers - and healing partnerships. But none is so effective as the partnership of William Lang and George Chapman. Dr. William Lang, an eye surgeon and a respectable member of the British medical profession, has much in common with George Chapman. To begin with, both heal the sick in their own way, although Dr. Lang's ministrations are now done in a somewhat unusual manner. George Chapman is the trance medium for the dead Dr. William Lang, who continues his practice in what used to be his old home through the entranced hands and talents of medium George Chapman.
Although a number of books and many articles have been written about this strange partnership, probably the most interesting work dealing with George Chapman and his work is Bernard Hutton's Healing Hands. Those who seek help from the healer include even medical doctors. According to Psychic News, November 27, 1971, "A young staff doctor at a famous London hospital where Lang used to work says the spirit surgeon has cured his pancreas deficiency." A woman doctor from Ireland who visited George Chapman's sanctuary explained that the medium, operating under trance instructions from the dead eye surgeon, "performed various operations in the area of her liver and lower abdomen and finally felt her fingers, confirming their rheumatoid arthritic condition." According to the newspaper, the doctor felt fine on her return to Northern Ireland and on the following day felt as if she actually had had an operation. There was severe pain and she had to lie down. Her husband, also a surgeon, was convinced that the healer and his spirit partner had actually done something to her body. Shortly afterward, she felt fine again.
What George Chapman does is called etheric surgery; he passes his hands over the affected area of the body of his patient and makes the movements of performing surgery - without, however, actually doing any cutting or entering the body whatsoever. In this respect he is quite different in his methods from the so-called wonder healers of the Philippines, who actually enter the body of the patient and extricate unwanted matter from the body. Similarly, the late Arago of Brazil also used actual tools, a penknife in many instances, to operate physically on his patients and in this manner would remove diseased tissue. With George Chapman there is no blood, no surgery tools, nothing physical whatsoever.
Among Chapman's patients was a lady from Puerto Rico on whom the healer performed etheric surgery. Looking at her stomach later, she found that there was a "new mark about four inches long, like a fine scar." The scar disappeared after a week.
According to George Chapman, he has signed a contract with a group of medical doctors, some of whom actually knew and worked with the late Dr. William Lang. The idea is to continue to utilize the late eye surgeon's great talent through the mediumship of Chapman and to make that knowledge available to conventional eye surgeons. Apparently the group of doctors who had known Lang in his lifetime were convinced by the trance performance George Chapman undertook in their presence. The doctors tested the medium by submitting case histories of their patients for Lang's opinion. Since George Chapman has no medical training whatsoever, he would not have been able to diagnose or prescribe for these patients in his own right. Nevertheless, the entranced Chapman was able to give the correct answers in each and every case, convincing the doctors that they were indeed dealing with the spirit of their late colleague, manifesting through the body of medium George Chapman.
On September 25, 1967, my wife and I entered Chapman's healing sanctuary. We had been sent an appointment card in advance, which I now surrendered to Mr. Chapman's secretary. The card instructed us to refrain from smoking and not to bring pets, tape recorders, or cameras into the healer's presence. We were given to understand that each patient could have only one in-person sitting with the healer. After that the healing would be continued by distant healing; we were instructed to link up with Chapman long distance every Monday night at 10:00 P.M. for fifteen minutes. There was no set fee for our appointment, and when I asked afterward what I should leave, I was told that a one-pound note a person - less than three dollars - would be quite enough.
Catherine had gone in first while I was waiting outside for my turn. "He was extremely friendly to me," Catherine explained later. "First he started to show me the room, explaining the various objects in it. Then he told me to sit down and to relax and began to examine me by putting his hands on my back and sliding them down. When he came to the area of my heart he said that everything was fine up to that point. Then he went over the stomach area, sliding perhaps half an inch above the body, and when he arrived in the area of the abdomen he explained that it was there where my problem was. He also asked me not to be surprised if he snapped his fingers and mentioned the names of other people whom I could not see. He was only speaking to his late wife and to the dead surgeon helping him. He then asked me to get up and walk around the room while he explained some of the photographs on the walls to me. After a tour of the room, he told me to lie down again on the couch and this time he would operate on me."
"But he didn't actually operate, did he?" I asked.
Catherine shook her head. "Not exactly," she said, "when he wanted a certain instrument or an injection done he would snap his fingers and call out the name of the operation and then he would hold his hands over my stomach area. He pushed them over it and was moving them and doing all sorts of things which of course I could not see because my head was up and my eyes directed toward the ceiling."
"Did you actually feel anything?"
"Yes and no. I think I felt a slight sensation toward the end, especially on my right side. That was where I had the two injections. It was not painful. I felt it more after I was out of the room. But at the time when it was being done I didn't feel a thing."
"Do you feel anything right now?"
"I still feel the sensation in the area of the abdomen, sort of like mild cramps, but nothing uncomfortable."
My own experiences with George Chapman were similar. After I had taken the chair, I was told that I had a problem with my hair and that something should be done about it. With his eyes closed, the medium then diagnosed my problems as being a matter of being overweight, a problem itself stemming from a retention of water in the body. He described this condition in great detail, at the same time assuring me that my heart and lungs were very strong and in good condition. All this was entirely correct and known to me from previous orthodox examinations, but it is a little difficult to see how a stranger without medical training could so quickly diagnose these conditions without ever touching me and with his eyes closed. In fact, George Chapman does go into trance at the beginning of his day, and he does not leave that state until all patients have left at the end of the day. Most of the time his eyes are closed, and at times when they seem to be open he is not actually acting as himself but as the entranced instrument of the late Dr. William Lang. I looked into his eyes at such moments and am satisfied that he was fully in trance.
Since he had not brought up the primary question of my visit, I brought it up myself, saying only that I had some problem with my ear and what could he do about it. He informed me that the noises were due to a fissure in the middle ear bone, and he then "operated" on me in a manner similar to that applied to Catherine when she was in his "operating room." I felt absolutely nothing at the time, but my ear noises seemed to increase a little after I left Mr. Chapman's house. Later on they were back to what they had been before. Chapman also remarked that he would have to operate on my eyes and remove some "tartar" so that the muscles could be extended and relaxed more easily. While I had never heard a reference to eye tartar, but was familiar with the term from dentistry, I must admit that my eyes seemed a great deal more refreshed after I left the office.
In summing up what Chapman did and did not do, I recall that he promised me nothing in relation to the ear noises but did say that my hair and eyes would improve. The fact is that while I have not grown any new hair since then, I have lost almost none; while I wear glasses occasionally, my eyes are in excellent condition. He also mentioned he was correcting a liver problem by giving me an injection into the liver. He did this by calling out for help from his unseen spirit associates and snapping his fingers whenever that help was needed, going through the motions just like a real flesh-and-blood doctor. He used many technical terms apparently quite correctly, and the entire operation took less than half an hour.
To be sure, Chapman's healing in our case was neither spectacular nor radical. But then our ailments were not of the kind one could not live with. Quite possibly, had we continued the distant healing technique demanded by George Chapman from his patients, and kept it up, additional improvements would have occurred. Two things are certain: he has cured others; during the spirit operation, there was definite change. Something happened. This was not suggestion, imagination, or wishful thinking. We both felt it.
Another London healer is portly, jovial E.G. "Ted" Flicker, who as a child heard a voice that convinced him that he had a mission to fulfill. In 1955, when he himself was seeking help from another healer, he was told that he had the divine gift of healing himself and that he would someday practice it. At that time Flicker worked in an office, in a subordinate position, and the idea of becoming a psychic healer was far from his mind. Nevertheless, this is exactly what happened.
In his biography of Fricker, Psychic News editor Maurice Barbanell says, "Almost every ailment known to man has yielded to his ministrations. He specializes, however, in treatment of those two modern afflictions, ulcers and slipped discs, which, if there are no complications, are cured in a single treatment., .innumerable patients have discarded their spinal belts and supports which they have been told were medically in dispensable... former ulcer sufferers, as their testimony demonstrates, have left his sanctuary and consumed foods that have been forbidden as dangerous to them."
Fricker operates mainly by the laying on of hands although he uses a peculiar form of rubbing them prior to administrating his power. He ascribes this healing power to God and his sanctuary in North London bears testimony to his religious leanings. Fricker's healing work demonstrates the quandary a healer can be in at times, when his desire for worldly position comes into conflict with the essential humility required of a truly great healer. Fricker treats his gifts as if he were a Harley Street specialist. It is true that he may treat the poor without expecting to be paid; it is equally true that he charges those able to pay, at times handsome sums, far beyond the customary one guinea.
In this respect Fricker parallels the approach by the late Austrian physician R. Zeileiss, a miracle healer in the 1920s and 1930s whose name went around the world at the time. Zeileiss touched his patients with a rod of crystal, claiming that mysterious radiation flowed through his staff. The conservative medical establishment had little use for him, but he did not seem to violate the law and thus was left alone. Thousands of people went to see him and came away cured. Whether by suggestion, spontaneous remission, or because of his treatments, the fact was that there were many cures.
Another famous healer, the late Achille D'Angelo of Naples, Italy, known as the "Magus of Naples," also obtained both a sizeable reputation as an effective healer and considerable fees from those he healed, especially among the "well heeled." There is nothing inherently dishonest in such a worldly approach to healing, for the vows of poverty are an individual and personal choice, not something prescribed by either law or custom. To lash out at men like Fricker or D'Angelo merely because they charge some people substantial fees for their healing ministrations is unfair; so do doctors and specialists, without regard to their success.
Probably the most controversial aspect of unorthodox healing involves so-called psychic surgery. In this process untutored individuals physically work on patients with various disorders, extricate diseased tissue, sometimes using nonsterilized instruments in their work. Psychic surgery is controversial both for the claims made for it and for the methods employed, which horrify those trained along orthodox medical lines. In fact, a man such as the late Brazilian healer Arago operating on a patient with a penknife would be inviting all sorts of infections under ordinary circumstances. However, one of the aspects of this type of healing is its disregard for conventional dangers: the power that allows untutored individuals to perform seeming miracles, guiding them intelligently and precisely, also sees to it that infections do not occur. I know of no single case where disease resulted from the intervention of an unorthodox healer or psychic surgeon.
Prior to the discovery of aseptic methods in medicine, the medical profession lived in antiseptic standards - that is, infections were accepted as part of the picture but could be fought by counteragents. Is it not possible that there is a third order of things, known perhaps only to those on the Other Side of life, whereby infection cannot only be fought or avoided, but ignored because of superior powers inherent in the process? I know for a fact that psychic photography, when it is genuine and spontaneous, follows its own optical laws in total disregard of conventional rules of photography. In such instances overexposure does not result in the destruction of the light-sensitive elements in film but, to the contrary, produces psychic images. By the same token I think that something not yet fully understood comes into operation when a psychic surgeon operates, even by primitive means.
The psychic surgery discussed here is not the same as that previously mentioned in the case of English healer George Chapman. In Chapman's case, the motions are undertaken and invisible instruments are used, but the body of the patient itself is not entered. With such world-famous psychic surgeons as Arago and the much-maligned but as yet not fully understood Tony Agpaoa, as well as the half a dozen lesser known healers of the type in the Philippines an din Brazil, the skin is actually broken by the healer's hands and tissue removed from the body. No anesthetic is used; the patient is fully conscious but still feels no pain.
In Harold Sherman's Wonder Healers of the Philippines and Tom Valentine's Psychic Surgery, actual cases are quoted with presurgery and post-surgery statements by medical doctors. "Dr. Tony," as he is popularly called, in particular has been the subject of much persecution and attempts to expose him by journalists and medical authorities alike. Some disclosures indicate fraud, but others show that actual healings did occur due to his work. On balance I see no clear-cut proof that Agpaoa really practiced out-and-out fraud, and Dr. Andrija Puharich, a medical doctor and pioneer in the field of hearing, as well as an experienced parapsychologist, spent much time with Arago and was treated himself by the Brazilian healer. He is convinced of the genuineness of the treatments.
There is a certain commerciality and over zeal on die part of promoters as well as blind belief on the part of some patients who cannot accept the possibility that even so renowned a healer as Dr. Tony may fail in single instances, but too many serious and reliable witnesses have seen healers of this type open skin and put their fingers into the wounds thus created, with no or minimal flow of blood, to dismiss psychic surgery as fraud. Psychic surgery is an observable fact, and sufficient numbers of cases exist to warranty proper scientific investigation.
Not all psychic surgery need be as dramatic as that practiced in the Philippines, of course. For example, the Reverend William C. Brown, known as "the miracle healer of Georgia," is a psychic surgeon who operates as a spiritualist minister and under the protection of the law applying to religion, in Toccoa, Georgia. During his etheric surgery Rev. Brown is entranced by the discarnate English physician Dr. John Geoffrey Spaulding. But the medium has a number of controlling entities, all of them medical doctors in their earthly lives. These medical helpers from the Other Side of life include a diagnostician, Dr. John Murphy; a neurologist, Dr. Sean O'Hara; a heart specialist, Dr. Edward Fredericks; an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Charles Chandler; and many other specialists.
Using methods somewhat similar to those employed by George Chapman, Rev. Brown, in his operation on the etheric body, puts on invisible rubber gloves and gives the patient an equally invisible hypodermic injection. As he moves about the body of the patient, he is handed invisible instruments by invisible nurses. The operations do not take as long as conventional operations, and afterward the patient can walk to his bed in one of the cottages near the healer's residence. According to Rev. Brown, the time required for the body to adjust to the changes initiated in the etheric counterpart varies with the extent of the surgery performed.
William Brown is careful in his letters and in his printed material to emphasize that he does not make any claims to cure people. What happens, he says, is mat people cure themselves; he and his spirit helpers merely induce the cure in the patient. Brown's etheric surgery is performed without set fee, and voluntary donations are the rule. To stay at the nearby cottages costs seven dollars a day, hardly an extravagant figure.
On January 12,1970, Rev. Brown wrotetometo explain how he worked. "Often I become aware of a person's problem when I see them and sometimes without having seen them at all," he wrote, adding, "As I write this my left eye has a dull ache as does the left ear; if this fits your problem then we are on the right track." I had not told him anything about my ear problem, and at the time of our correspondence I also had some difficulty with the lid of my left eye. Finally, people whose judgment I respect, such as medium Ethel Johnson Meyers, have been to Reverend William C. Brown and come back in better health, or at least feeling better.
Brown and his lovely wife, Sylvia, who comes from the well-known California family of the late sculptor Nicolosi, now head the Nirvana Foundation at 4000 Morpack Avenue, San Jose, California, 95117. "Doc" Brown has a long string of testimonials, unsolicited for the greatest part, from people who have been helped through his etheric surgery. He flies his own airplane to help those who call on him. He and his wife are probably in the forefront of psychic healers desiring to blend their abilities with established medicine in order to provide better and more effective health services.
I was introduced to Henry Rucker of Chicago in December, 1972, by a mutual friend, the president of her own psychical research society, Penny South. He had spoken for her group and given her and others known to her remarkable samples of his healing powers. Henry Rucker is in his early fifties, a well-spoken and well-educated black man, with a soft voice and a quiet sense of dedication that struck me immediately as being very much in line with his work. A native of Chicago, he attended DePaul University and since 1969 has headed his own psychic research foundation. Although his specialty is palmistry, on which he lectures extensively, he prefers the healing side of his development and has been very active in an antidrug program of his own. He has taught a course on "Other Dimensions and Sensory Parameters" at Columbia College in Chicago, and though he cannot be classified as a spiritualist in the technical sense of the word, it would appear that his teachings are similar in some respects to the philosophies held by that American religion.
"How did you discover your psychic gift originally?" I asked him during our meeting.
"When I was eight years old, I had a tonsillectomy. While I was still partially under the effects of the anesthesia, I found myself leaving my body. It was frightening; I thought I was dead. Every time I relaxed, I was on the other side of the room. I mentioned this to a nurse, who told me that if I was a nice boy I would have ice cream in the morning. But this did not satisfy me; I had to keep myself in certain positions, so that I would not get out of my body. From that time on many strange things have happened to me. I knew of things that were to happen. People would ask me about their life, and without thinking, I would rattle off the things, I saw; I began to hear voices, even conversations."
"Did you ever recognize any of the voices?"
"Always. I would hear conversations and even the thoughts of other people, people complaining about their children, people praying, people that I knew."
"You mean living people?"
"Living people. There were times when I would sit in a room and hear exactly what a person was thinking. A person would think, I'm getting sick of this, I'm going to get up and walk out of here,' and the next moment I would actually see this person get up and walk out."
"Did the thoughts materially differ from the spoken words? Did they sound differently?"
"No. The voices I would hear would be in their voice."
"Have you ever heard voices from the so-called dead?"
"Many times. Twenty years ago I began to see spirits and had communications."
"What work were you doing at the time?"
"I was a salesman, and at the same time I was working for the Board of Education as a truant officer. I also worked as supervisor in the Post Office."
"When did you first get involved in healing?"
"When I was a child, my mother used to be sick quite often, and I'd touch her or work on her, because I had the feeling I could do something for her and people who were sick."
"How did you heal them?"
"At that time I would heal them just with my mind, in their presence. It used to give me a terrific headache, because there seemed to be tremendous energies coming out of me, especially out of my eyes, and my hands seemed to be burning. One of the ways to get relief from this headache was to heal people, because the energy was backed up."
"Do you have a healing center?"
"Yes, the Psychic Research Foundation at 192 North Clark Street, Chicago. I give no guarantees of success, and there is no charge, either. I stay within the law; it is not illegal to pray for someone, nor to send forth energies from your mind. But we may not make diagnoses or touch a person or prescribe."
"If you don't touch a person, how do you heal?"
"We do etheric surgery. I would do an operation on a person which I can see. The etheric body emanates a color that people might describe as an aura, but to me it is simply the color emanations from one aspect of your total presence. I would see certain discolorations in certain areas."
"Then what would you do?"
"I wouldn't touch the person; I would begin to work on that person by using my etheric hands, and my physical hands would be moving as they are now."
"How close would you be to the person?"
"It wouldn't matter; I could be across the room, or right next to the person; I could do absent healing. If there were someone you knew who was sick, I would get a picture in my mind, and I could see that person through astral projection and work on him."
"Can you give me some recent examples of successful healings?"
"A ten-year-old boy had a brain tumor that had been diagnosed by a medical doctor. The boy dragged one foot and lisped and drooled at the mouth. I did an etheric operation and took the tumor off. The boy felt immediate results; he didn't drag his foot, he didn't lisp, and he stopped drooling. A week later he went back to the doctor to have the tumor removed, but it could not be found. Therefore there was no operation. He has not had an operation to this day; there was no relapse or anything of that sort."
"Can you give me another case where there were definite results?"
"Norman Esserman is my legal counsel. A friend of his, Yalina, was despondent because she had been given a diagnosis of terminal cancer; she had also been told that she would immediately have to have all of her teeth removed. She was in her middle forties. I gave her a healing. When she went back to the doctor the next week to have her teeth removed, it was unnecessary. She went for a further examination of the malignancy and it was found to be diminishing."
"What happened to her?"
"They've been making checks on her for at least four years. She is still alive"
"What diseases yield best to your healing?"
"I've had some good results with tumors and heart trouble."
While we were talking I noticed that Henry Rucker had been looking at my hands. Remembering that he was primarily a palmist, I asked whether he received any spontaneous impressions about me. He took my hands into his, gently touching them, and started to talk about me at a rapid pace, as if he had known me for many years. It was a strictly personal reading, and it was highly accurate. He touched some aspects concerning healing. My professional frustrations, he explained, were causing me a nervous stomach, a heavy feeling in my chest when I was emotionally upset, and a tendency toward diarrhea or constipation under the same conditions. He also mentioned that I had headaches and pointed to the side of the head where in fact I have them frequently. He suggested that I had sinus trouble due to weather changes, especially damp weather. "You can wake up in the morning and for no reason at all have a headache that comes right around in here from that sinus problem which may also affect the ear," he explained, again hitting it on the nose. Then he added, "There is some pressure inside your head; I don't know if you had an accident, it seems as if something damaged your drum or down in the Eustachian tube. Is there scar tissue or something like it down there?"
I was amazed. This man, without knowing anything about it or examining me with complicated and sophisticated apparatus, had come to exactly the same conclusion as four ear specialists had come to over the years. The only difference was that with the ear specialties I had to undergo lengthy and complicated examinations. Also, the specialists had shaken their heads and suggested that I get used to the idea of the resulting ear noises because there was nothing in the medical world that could be done about it. Henry Rucker thought otherwise. Although he felt that Tony Agpaoa of the Philippines could do a better job with psychic surgery, he would take a crack at it anyway.
He asked me to put both my feet flat on the floor and sit back in my chair. "This will make you feel a little buzz in your ear; what I'm doing now will give you a sort of itchy or tickling sensation because you cannot reach where I am working and you feel you want to scratch it but you can't get at it." I knew he was working on me, but I felt nothing more than a vague sensation of pleasant comfort. Rucker then snapped his fingers, explaining that that was the way in which he was building up psychic energy. He wondered whether I felt the energy pulsating through me and added, "If I could describe it to you, you might be able to recognize it; this is not like hypnosis but much more undulating. It goes and it comes." I acknowledged that I felt sensation along those lines going through my head.
Encouraged by my statement, Henry Rucker then offered to do more for me. Seeing that I was a little tired that afternoon, he said, "I'm going to do something to you in terms of working on the etheric body. I'm going to change your etheric body, smooth it out, by lifting it off you and then putting it back on you after it has been exposed to what metaphysicians would call the cosmic fire. I am still working on that ear, too. Put your hands in between my hands and see if you can feel this nervous energy I am taking away from you."
I did and I could indeed feel a flow of energy between his large, deeply structured palms. As the healer continued to work on me, he suddenly spoke something in a language I did not recognize. "What were those words you just spoke?" I asked.
"Those were chants in Egyptian," he explained casually. "Sometimes I use Mongolian chants. These are like prayers and they have power."
My ear was not cured, but I felt very much better all over. The tension of the day was gone, and if nothing else, Henry Rucker had refurbished me with new energy from his own, well-stocked powerhouse.
Undoubtedly there are many undiscovered great healers among us, unaware of their special gifts. It remains for the right time and place and opportunity for them to discover what is within them; I am convinced that psychic healers of various kinds are as much part of the human establishment as are the orthodox medical practitioners, perhaps even more so, since they draw upon a more direct power link with the universal source. But even the greatest natural healer needs to be trained and disciplined, his services channeled in such a way that they are available to those truly needing them. Until we have independent research centers in parapsychology where healers can be recognized, tested, and trained, and where patients can be taken care of not according to their ability to pay but according to the severity and urgency of their illnesses, we will be dealing with the marvelous world of psychic healing merely on a hit and miss basis.
And that is a pity, considering the amount of illness in the world.
Lately a man until now known for his psychic forecasts has also become active as an effective healer. I am speaking of Frederic Stoussel of New York City who has used both present and absent healing to good advantage. For example, Dr. Alvin R., a podiatrist living in the middle west, confirmed to Mr. Stoussel that, "it is apparent to me that your work is indeed with power. During the past twelve years I have been unable to play golf, due to a past injury to my wrist. Last Sunday the thought came to me to hit some full golf shots which I did with some success. The healing of my wrist is incomplete, so please keep up the good work. I could also use some help with the lower abdominal area." Frederic Stoussel may be reached at Box 5012, Woolsey Station, Long Island City, New York, 11105.
4 - Verified Cases of Psychic Healing
A vast number of people have been healed either through their own powers or through the powers of others who were not even aware of the fact that they had them. For example, in many instances the power of healing is intimately connected with religious belief or sudden enlightenment. Some of these cases I have listed among the religiously inspired forms of healing, but it is at times difficult to know where to draw the line between purely psychic and religious healing, because a religious belief can trigger psychic abilities through a combination of positive attitude and the actual activation of dormant powers within. Then, too, the difference between a person quietly meditating upon another and sending healing thoughts and an individual praying to God for the same purpose is merely one of semantics and attitude, not of hard and cold facts. Both types of healing are, of course, paranormal and unorthodox.
Frequently the healing power comes together with other forms of psychic expression such as ESP or clairvoyant dreams. Jean L. of Redding, California, has a long record of psychic ability, including astral projections and experiences with deceased relatives, especially her late father. When her children were down with stomach flu, complaining about cramps, she found herself holding her hands slightly above the stomach area and saying something to the effect that the bad germs would be drawn out of the stomach. She then swiftly moved her hands upward with great emphasis so that the germs could come out.
Mrs. L. does not know what made her do this, but the fact of the matter is that the children said that they could feel the germs leaving and quickly recovered. Mrs. L. thought that her success was due primarily to suggestion, but she has been equally successful at relieving pain and illness by similar methods on other occasions.
Mrs. Virginia A.C. of Framin gham, Massachusetts, also has had a number of psychic experiences. At the early age of ten she found herself greatly upset because her mother was suffering from pain in the hip and a weak back. Virginia wanted to stay home from school so she could be with her mother, but her mother would hear nothing of it. As the little girl walked down to the bus stop thinking how nice it would be if someone could assume the pain of another person to give them some relief, she suddenly felt her hip hurt very badly and she started to cry. At that instant she realized that she had assumed her mother's pain. By the time she had reached school the pain had gone away. When she returned home, she asked her mother how she felt. The mother informed her that a strange thing had happened; the pain had suddenly left her shortly after Virginia had gone off to school and had not returned.
Mrs. Lucile M. B. of Los Angeles, California, has experienced almost the entire range of psychic phenomena over the years. On February 24,1968, she was sitting quietly at home meditating on healing. It was about 8:30 p.m., and she felt at peace. Suddenly her eldest son Edward burst into the house, bleeding heavily from wounds about his head. He had been attacked by five thugs on a dark street and beaten with chains and broken bottles. After Mrs. B. and her husband had taken the boy to the hospital and had gotten him patched up, she wondered how the boy could have been so badly hurt at the very time when she was meditating on healing. Several days later he was able to tell her exactly what had happened. Although he had felt the weight of the chains and the force of the blows, he never felt any pain at all during the attack. According to doctors at the hospital, the boy could have easily been killed. Nevertheless, he had felt nothing because his mother was sending him healing thoughts at a distance.
Mrs. Virginia Cameron of Cincinnati, Ohio, has been interested in psychic phenomena for many years. Presently she is lecturing on the subject at a local college as part of an adult education program. She is also the research director of the Cincinnati Parapsychology Forum, a group of people interested in ESP and related fields. Mrs. Cameron is a critical individual, inclined toward acceptance of phenomena but at the same time careful not to base her findings on simple belief. She herself has developed a respectable amount of ESP over the years and is currently testing that faculty whenever there is an opportunity.
Among those attending the regular sessions of the Parapsychology Forum in Cincinnati are a number of amateur mediums and healers. Virginia has for many years suffered from the pains of arthritis, a disease for which there is no known cure. A Mrs. Mildred Barton and Virginia were discussing a case of healing over the telephone on March 11, 1970. Mrs. Barton was telling Virginia Cameron about a Cincinnati policeman who had been wounded in a gun battle and who had been the subject of a prayer Mrs. Barton had sent in a letter to his mother. Unexpectedly, the policeman had recovered without the often-accompanying infection which follows gunshot wounds. When Mrs. Barton offered to repeat the prayer for Mrs. Cameron, she gladly listened. It was 11:30 a.m. when Mrs. Barton started to read. Mrs. Cameron was holding the telephone receiver in her right hand looking at her left wrist, which was resting on her knees. The joints of her fingers were then swollen, painful; her hand felt cramped. As Mrs. Barton continued, Virginia's left hand became rosier and warm as if an extra blood supply had flowed into it. The right hand continued to ache, but pain receded quite rapidly from the left.
By 2:00 p.m. there was no pain in the left hand, and pain was receding from the right hand as well. The slight deformation in the joints was still present, but there was no discomfort. By 8:30 p.m. pain was absent from both hands. Occasionally, Virginia felt slight twinges, and thinking that the pain was returning she took the salicylate ordered by her physician. This remedy eases the pain but does not erase it and the relief is short-lived, about two to three hours. At 10:30 p.m., the pain and discomfort were still absent from both hands. Customarily Mrs. Cameron is awakened at least once a night by cramping and stiffness. This did not happen that particular night.
There was no real discomfort until well into the following day when it began to return. By 8:30 p.m. the discomfort was at its usual intensity, but Mrs. Cameron had been free of all pain for a considerable period of time. This development could not be ascribed to ordinary remission. In her own experience, pain came and went, but the absences of pain were related to clear, warm weather. March 11, in contrast, was cold and damp; March 12, even worse (Cincinnati experienced a blizzard at that time). Even though the arthritic condition returned eventually, Mrs. Cameron is convinced that something happened to it during the period when Mrs. Barton's efforts were effective.
Mack Brockman of New York City is a retired printing pressman foreman in his late sixties. His bouts with the occult are few and far between but remarkable in some instances. When he was in his early thirties, he suffered from a most acute sacroiliac condition. The sciatic nerve was jammed against the base of his spine. He had been to the best doctors in New York City and was told that his case was hopeless. After eight months of suffering, the morphine no longer helped, and he could hardly sleep. He began to contemplate suicide. One night, at 1:00 a.m., when he was sure that his wife was fast asleep, he went to the roof of his six-story apartment building to do the inevitable. As he was about to jump off, his late father's apparition manifested quite plainly in front of him, pushing his hands toward him and telling him to stop. At the same time the apparition informed him that everything would be all right with him.
Brockman simply passed out on the spot. When he woke up hours later, he was covered with sweat. Still shaken, he went down to his apartment and lay down on the couch. He awoke again and saw his wife sitting next to him, informing him that he had slept better than he had for eight months. Brockman got off the couch. His pain was gone. Instead of being bent over, as before, he stood up straight without the slightest discomfort.
Frieda Peternell St. Clair is a middle-aged housewife living near Chicago, Illinois, the mother of four children. Her late father was a professional spiritualist medium who died when she was only sixteen years old, so she did not really come much under his influence. Her husband is not interested in the occult, and she never pursued psychic interests. However, she experienced so much pain after the birth of her third child that she found herself in a state of despair and started to cry. In this condition she sent a prayer out toward her late father to help her, asking him to make the pain go away.
All of a sudden a strange feeling came over her. Fully awake, she s aw a white, luminous spiral over her bed, making a strange, humming noise as it moved up and down over her slowly. At the same time she could see, out of the corner of her eye, three or four spirit forms standing in front of the closet in her room, one of whom she recognized immediately as her father. She was frightened by this unexpected experience and tried to let out a scream, but she found she had no voice and seemed completely paralyzed. After what to her seemed a lifetime, but was in fact only a few moments, everything went back to normal again. She let out a blood-curdling scream and her mother came in, wondering what had happened to her. She explained her experience but was assured that it had only been a bad dream. Too exhausted to argue, Mrs. St. Clair went to sleep. The next morning she jumped out of bed and walked into the living room. There was absolutely no pain or discomfort left.
Rachel Kadan of San Diego, California, suffered from arthritis for years. It had gotten so bad that she could not lift her arm without excruciating pain. Then one night in February, 1968, she saw a large brilliant gold and white light at the foot of her bed. At the same time she was told things she did not quite understand or remember. Confused by the strange flow of words, she said she would rather have her arm healed than listen to such language. With that she felt herself bodily lifted out of bed as a shock went from the bottom of her feet up through her entire body to the top of her head and back again and once more up to her head. It felt as if a tremendous amount of electricity had been sent through her body. For three days she didn't dare try her arthritic arm. When she did, she discovered that her pain and disability had completely disappeared. They never returned; she is able to use her arm even in extremely cold weather.
Olga Atherton of Yorkshire, England, has on several occasions been healed by what she describes as a great healer. He saved her life after a heart attack, when she did in fact pass out of the body, and he has cured her of a slipped disc, dislocated hip, and appendicitis. This shadowy figure has appeared before her three times in her life. She saw his face as that of a young man with a bronzed complexion and brown eyes. Miss Atherton does not understand why this entity has decided to help her. She feels that her life has been a failure; she is poor, lives alone, and considers herself a very unimportant person. Nevertheless, whenever serious illness has struck in her life, this shadowy entity has appeared and she has been cured.
Cases of spontaneous healing, either by parties known or unknown, are legion. A large percentage of these cases cannot be explained on the grounds of spontaneous remission or other natural causes. There is a large residue of cases where only paranormal intervention remains as the sole explanation for the improvements manifested.
Probably no other single disease has plagued mankind as much as cancer in its various forms, not even the plagues of the Middle Ages or the infectious diseases so prevalent in Eastern countries not so long ago. The insidiousness of cancer is that no one really knows what causes it, and all attempts to fight it are therefore no more than hit-and-miss methods at best. Any illness for which orthodox medicine has no cure also offers opportunities to illegitimate practitioners, those who are quacks or perhaps only self-deluded individuals, those who use quasi-religious methods to cure the sufferers or those who invent complex machinery and delude themselves into thinking that their brainchild does in fact have some effect on the disease. None of this type are even included in this report.
Unorthodox methods of getting at cancer must be divided into two general groups. Those methods that use medical treatment but go beyond that which is currently known in medicine, and those treatments that are based on spiritual healing in its various forms and have no need for medical treatment, either as a component or as the framework for unorthodox treatment.
One of the most promising approaches reached in recent years involves the Waldemar Research Foundation of Woodbury, Long Island. Established in 1947, this experimental clinic is probably most noteworthy because it has developed a virus for cancer. The so-called Molomut-Padnos virus discovered at this laboratory has tumor-destroying properties. As yet the virus is not generally available, but medical doctors may refer selected patients to the clinic if they are of the opinion that the particular type of cancer in question will respond favorably to the viral treatment. At Waldemar, viral immunotherapy has been developed with promising results. Immunization against certain types of cancer derived from viral materials together with specific regimen have actually yielded remarkable results in the control and even the elimination of some types of cancer, though this is not the place to go into statistics, which are readily available from the doctors at Waldemar Research Foundation.
Another success story is that of Dr. Moryth McQueen-Williams, a physician and surgeon and a graduate of Yale University, who has earned a distinguished medical and research record at such centers as Johns Hopkins University, Case-Western Reserve University, and the University of California Medical School.
Together with Kegan Sarkisian, a distinguished research phytologist with a background in physiology and nutritional sciences, and a group of dedicated researchers, Dr. McQueen-Williams has been able to isolate a new compound used in the study of germination in plants and animals - compound KC - which was tested out repeatedly as being nontoxic.
After twenty-five years of biological research, Dr. McQueen-Williams and her associates came to the conclusion, backed by actual test cases, that compound KC would significantly arrest or inhibit all kinds of cancers.
In her report to the U.S Congress (hearing of sub-committee on public health and environment, September-October, 1971), Dr. McQueen-Williams states:
We believe that cancer, taken as a whole is a systemic disorder which manifests itself in wild cell aggregates at any time during a lifespan. We believe also that a vertically transmitted genetic mal-coding are two other phenomena, namely the intra-uterine lethality's and the various known "birth defects." KC has proven to reverse the aberrant gene-expression in the wild cell, thus reversing the cancer manifestation itself. KC functions in a broad spectrum.
Most of the patients treated by Dr. McQueen-Williams as part of her extended experiments in conjunction with various hospitals, are still alive, although many treatments go back as much as twelve years.
In the 1950s and 1960s the German physician Dr. Josef Issels made international headlines with his cancer cures obtained at his Bavarian Clinic. Although the orthodox medical community has been skeptical of his results, the English weekly Psychic News documents some of Dr. Issel's successes.
According to Psychic News, quoting in turn from the account of the case published by the newspaper A.V. Times, published by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, a certain Dr. Schauer, a publishing executive, had been scheduled for an operation for intestinal cancer at a Frankfurt surgical clinic. However, when the surgeon saw that the cancer of the rectum had already developed metastases - that is, secondaries toward the aorta - the man was declared inoperable. Instead of operating, an artificial intestinal outlet was made, and death within three months was expected. Dr. Schauer instead went to Dr. Issels and for several months received treatments from the Bavarian doctor at Ringberg Clinic. Three years later doctors at the same Frankfurt surgical center removed the artificial intestinal outlet inserted before. Dr. Schauer was declared medically healthy. There was no sign of any rectal cancer. When the surgeon was confronted with these amazing facts, all that was offered in explanation were the words: "Evidently the original diagnosis was wrong - it wasn't cancer after all."
When Psychic News asked famed spiritual healer Harry Edwards to comment upon the furor involving Dr. Issels' work, he pointed out that while the Bavarian doctor also used orthodox drugs in his treatments, the recovery rate was so much higher than with other doctors using identical drugs in their treatments. Another factor must have been at work in Dr. Issels' case. Harry Edwards said, pointing out that the doctor had gone only halfway toward solving the cancer problem, he had not shown the cause.
"The primary cause of cancer is psychosomatic," says Harry Edwards. "Frustrations within the whole self in which natural desires, ambitions, and emotions have been thwarted. This promotes the cancer potential. When it develops to the extent to cause a cell to throw off the yoke of glandular discipline, the tumor is born." Interestingly enough, U.S. government scientists have been quietly at work developing techniques to discover "cancer prone" people according to a report by the science editor of the New York Daily News, Mark Bloom. "These 'cancer prone' persons are apparently deficient in natural defensive mechanisms with which to fight the onset of a cancerous growth," according to Dr. Donald L. Morton, head of the tumor immunology section of the National Cancer Institute.
In 1968, in my Predictions: Fact or Fallacy? I quoted a California physician, identified only as Dr. N., concerning the future of cancer research. Dr. N. is not only a reputable physician attached to a major California hospital, a leading psychiatrist, and a highly respected member of his community but a psychic with a long record of verified predictions. All his life DR. N. has been plagued - if that is the word - by his ESP abilities, and in August, 1966, he said: "A Dr. Martin will discover a cure for cancer in 1971 or 1972, and it will be found that the cancer virus is connected with the herpes simplex virus, which appears in common cold sores. Cancer is caused not by this virus, but by the failure of antibodies related to it."
Note the similarity in the names Martin, in the prediction, and Morton, in the science report by Mark Bloom. Even more important, however, is Dr. N's reference to a virus as the primary cancer-causing factor and to the herpes simplex as a major link with cancer. In 1966 such ideas were not known to the medical profession. Reality caught up fast. For example, the Houston, Texas, Medical Tribune reported on a possible cancer vaccine based on viral theory. According to this medical trade journal, Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman of the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research at Westpoint, Pennsylvania, mentioned a recently developed vaccine against a chicken cancer called Marek's disease caused by a v-type virus. Likewise Mrs. M.N., a laboratory research technician in Canada, called my attention to a report in the Phoenix (Arizona) Star, linking a virus known to cause venereal disease with the cause of cervical cancer in women and prostate cancer in men.
By April, 1972, popular medical newspaper columnists were speaking of the herpes virus as a cancer suspect as if it were the most generally known medical news. "Laboratory research on herpes viruses is being conducted throughout the world," writes Dr. Theodor R. Van Dellen for the Chicago Tribune syndicate, "the tumor forming ability of these microbes is still widely debated."
Then in November, 1972, new evidence began to emerge linking the common cold virus to cervical cancer.
Even though attention is now being focused on a virus as being the causative agent of cancer, and even though cures as such have not been found, a glaring oversight seems obvious to me at this point: in concentrating on what causes cancer, orthodox medical researchers do not pay enough attention to the question of how these substances cause it. The key lies in die method by which viruses, whatever they are, are able to induce perfectly normal cells to behave abnormally.
In this connection information from the spiritual side of life has been of amazing interest in the case of a lady by the name of Ruth Plant, a writer and researcher of Jordan, England. I have known Miss Plant for many years as a professional historian and library researcher, a student of psychic phenomena, and a person of impeccable reputation. Miss Plant always has had a great interest in healing and over the years has developed her own latent psychic abilities to a point where, while not claiming to be a medium as such, Miss Plant nevertheless has demonstrated her clairvoyant faculties and her amazing ability to "tune in" on past events or seemingly to obtain information from discarnate entities without especially seeking them. Here, in her own words, is a report concerning a psychic dream which bears on the subject at hand.
"On Saturday, 10th August, 1957, I heard a voice speaking to me quite distinctly in a dream which told me that the explanation of the cause of cancer was this:
"When it happens that two quite normal elements in a person come into a particular relation to one another, these elements fuse, and touch off the beginnings of cancer. It is not that there is necessarily an excess or minority of either, it is only their relationship to one another that is fatal.
"I gathered that these two elements were neither of them evil in themselves, so that was why this factor had never been recognized, and the relationship of the component parts measured. If this could only be recognized, and the measuring done, great work might be achieved, both preventive and curative, by breaking up the collaboration before, and even after, it has reached the point of illness.
"These words were spoken very clearly by someone I did not see, and were probably, I felt, from some higher source.
"After this, the dream continued and I saw a doctor from Jordan called Moynihan, whom I did not really know personally, giving a lecture. I did not feel that either he or the lecture were important, like the first part of the dream, but he was somehow an illustration of something or a link. As he was a relative of the great Lord Moynihan I felt that this dream was probably linked with the latter.
"For many years I searched for the doctor for whom this dream might mean something, feeling that it was an urgent matter to pass these facts on. My doctor friends to whom I sent it were sympathetic, but unable to explain the dream at all. Then I heard a Dr. Holman lecture at an adult college in Shropshire; he spoke on the difficulties of modern living generally, including the prevention of cancer. I wrote him after this, and received a most sympathetic reply.
"There is no doubt in my mind at all that the cause, treatment, and prevention of cancer lies in the combination of two perfectly normal constituents of the human body,' he wrote. 'There are catalose and hydrogen peroxide. If not in a proper state of balance the result can be the production of tumors.'
"He also stated that he was a disciple of Lord Moynihan's.
"Dr. Holman then went to the U.S.A. and later to Canada to a conference about this. I asked him to come and stay on his way to Canada on 16th August. He left London by plane on 17th August. "On Friday, 27th July, before I met him, I had a dream of a very thin, energetic man, with prematurely gray hair, in contrast to his young, alive face. His face resembled a portrait I had just seen at Hughen den House, Disraeli's home; his hair was cut in an unusual way; it was not as short as a crew cut, but it stood up and bounced about rather buoyantly when he moved, almost like a schoolboy's.
"I felt he had something to do with cancer research.
"I asked several friends if they knew him, without result, and then mentioned it to Dr. Holman when he came to stay. He told me that it was a clear description of his great friend, a doctor who had died of a heart condition, making him very thin, as I noticed. His hair was just as described. He was of the Jewish faith, hence the link with the Disraeli picture at Hughenden.
"This doctor had appeared to Dr. Holman's wife in a dream when he was dying, and after his death they had felt his presence for three days.
"My great anxiety was to get some more information about this, and I did have one quite long dream which I realized was significant. It was mainly about these two qualities and their relationship to each other, I believe. But unfortunately, I was at that time very worried about two cats and I confused the word catalase with lazy cats and thought the dream related to this. Only as I woke up did I become aware of Dr. John Gordon (Dr. Holman's friend) saying to me that I had the whole character of catalase laid before me and stupidly not realized it. He then indicated that he would show me something else at this more waking state of consciousness which would at least show I had been with him though I gathered it would not really be what he wanted to tell us. He then showed me two tall glass receptacles - one had a great deal of stuff in it which, it was explained to me afterward, was called a media, with a small top which I believe is called a 'culture,' and the other one was vice versa in quality. When I drew a picture of this and sent it to Dr. Holman he said it was an exact description of what he was working on in his laboratory at that time."
If anything, Ruth Plant's interesting dream experience proves the apparent attempt by those who have gone on to help those in the flesh combat cancer. It seems perfectly logical to me that a doctor who has passed on and found the reality of spirit life may wish to continue helping mankind through appropriate sensitives. Since Ruth Plant's mind was well schooled and well organized, I can understand that the late doctor wished to use it to communicate with someone in the physical world who might make good use of his rather technical knowledge.
Evidently Dr. R. A. Holman, consultant bacteriologist and senior lecturer in bacteriology, School of Medicine, University of Wales, was such a man. In a brief article in Mother Earth, journal of the Soil Association, April, 1961, Dr. Holman states: "We now know that catalase is one of the most important enzymes known to man and is responsible for the most rapid enzymic catalyzed processes known in living cells," explaining that the discoverer of catalase, Doctor O. Loew, had already realized in 1901 that the general occurrence of this enzyme in the organized world could not be accidental and must have a specific significance. Dr. Holman continues: "Hydrogen peroxide is formed as a result of many enzymatic reactions and it seems to be general agreement that it is a metabolite normally produced and destroyed by a wide variety of cells. In many living systems there are to be found four very important substances known as haemoproteins. They are all important. Dr. Loew already knew that catalase protects the cell from the incursions of peroxide (H2 O2).
Dr. Holman continues, "Because H2O2 can be demonstrated in such a wide variety of living things, it is more than likely that there is a specific catalase-H2O2 balance for each type of cell whether bacterial, fungal, plant or animal. If this balance is interfered with, either by diminution of the catalase content or by exposure to increasing amounts of H2O2, then abnormalities may occur. One is never neutral with respect to H2O2; its presence is either desirable or undesirable." Dr. Holman summed up his views on the importance of his work on catalase: "It is obvious that if the balance between catalase and H2O2 is upset then all grades of malfunction may appear, ranging from wild disturbances in the behavior of cells down to death. This means that cells can be so deranged that their normal activity is changed, resulting in altered biochemistry and hence disease. Many physical and chemical agents which are deliberately placed on or around or in cells can interfere with the catalase peroxide (H2O2) balance and hence induce widespread illness in animals and plants.
"Perhaps the most terrible scourge of our day is the disease known as cancer, a condition which is intimately connected with a catalase-peroxide (H202) balance."
In a subsequent article in the Cardiff Nurses League Journal of October, 1962, entitled, "The Cancer Problem," Dr. Holman wrote, "One of the few well-established facts about cancer is that the important enzyme catalase is progressively diminished in the host as well as in the tumor. Catalase inhibition is known to be associated with mutagenic processes and the development of viruses and it is known that some of the proven carcinogenic agents can inhibit this enzyme." Dr. Holman then pointed out that the widespread distribution of catalase in living cells is essential for the ability of those cells to live in the presence of oxygen. "Numerous workers [Dr. F. Totney, Dr. A. Voisin, Dr. P. Puig, Dr. D. Atansoff] are coming to the conclusion that the key to the cause, treatment and prevention of cancer lies in this altered fundamental biological mechanism."
Dr. Holman readily admits that the environment has always contained some disturbing factors causing cancer in man. The disease has been known for thousands of years. Solar radiation has always been connected with the increase or incident of skin cancer in certain occupational groups such as sailors and agricultural workers; water, air, and food stuffs have been found to be contaminated by radioactive materials in some areas as a result of which certain cancers increased in those areas. In urban areas, the increase in soot and poisonous fumes in the air is responsible for the increase in cancer incidence, and civilized living in general is more likely to produce the disease or encourage it than life in a natural environment free from as much industrialization as possible. "If the catalase-peroxide balance is interfered with for a long enough time by physical and chemical agents present in our environment, whether in food, drink, drugs, or in the air we breathe, then we shall see in races so exposed a progressive increase in the incidence of cancer. By contrast, in those primitive communities where such agents are not used or encouraged, the incidence will remain at a very low level."
Dr. Holman is much more concerned with the prevention of cancer than with its cure, following in the footsteps of Dr. Louis Pasteur, who had held that it was more important to prevent a disease than to treat it after it occurred. "The direct treatment by chemotherapeutic and antibiotic agents has not been, and never will be, responsible for its elimination." Dr. Holman's plan for the prevention of cancer is a threefold attack: (1) increase our intake of catalase, (2) increase the manufacture of catalase by our own cells, and (3) curtail the intake of agents which destroy or inhibit the action of our cell catalase.
To increase our intake of catalase we must eat as much fresh food as possible. The heat used in the preparation of food destroys many enzymes including catalase. Dr. Holman suggests that the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables should be markedly increased, thus insuring a far greater intake of catalase and the enzyme peroxidase. He notes, parenthetically, that literature is full of references to the fact that garlic-eating people have an increased resistance to cancer. "This is not surprising when one realizes that garlic is very rich in the catalytic systems containing catalase and peroxidase."
To increase the manufacture of catalase by our own cells, we must exercise as much as possible. Physical exercise promotes the intake of oxygen. That, in turn, creates a larger concentration of catalase within us and a resulting detoxification of our bodies.
The curtailment of the intake of agents that destroy or inhibit the action of our cell catalase is of course the most important program of the three, and we ingest many toxic substances. For example, the chemical agents added to food and drink in order to increase shelf life and the dyes, sweeteners,; and flavoring agents - all alien agents - may cause cancer. The argument that these chemicals prevent bacterial food poisoning in the consumer does not hold water, in the opinion of Dr. Holman. "It is not only that catalase of the bacteria which is destroyed but also that of the food." And he warns: "The majority of chemicals added to food and drink for preservation, coloration, or sophistication could and should be abolished. Most of the additives are not essential and many are harmful." He also points out that the sodium fluoride added to public water supplies is a potent catalase poison and is cumulative in the body. "Its use is not backed up by sound medical facts, and in any case it does not deal with the prime cause of dental decay which is generally recognized as being due to a sophisticated and chemically adulterated food supply," he says.
Many poisonous chemicals pollute the air we breathe. Large amounts of sulphur dioxide and sulphurated hydrogen, both very powerful catalase poisons, are released into our environment in large quantities as a result of the burning of fuels of various kinds. "It is obvious that the control of air pollution demands our most urgent attention. A good oxygen intake is essential for good health. Some workers go so far as to explain the high incidence of cancer in the human race on the basis of poor or diminished oxygen consumption, and in a sense they are right. Oxygen is essential for the removal and destruction of many toxic agents present on or in our cells, and it is therefore quite obvious that the more actively oxygenated our bodies, the better we shall be able to combat the toxic agents which help to influence adversely our normal cells," says Dr. Holman.
Dr. Holman warns against in discriminate use of injections to fight infection. Sulphonamides in particular, which have for a long time been known to inhibit catalase, are in some cases proven carcinogens. Likewise, the use of X-ray devices and other forms of radiation, all of which are increasingly used, are known to inhibit the formation of catalase within us. Dr. Holman feels that we must study the safe levels of these practices in order to determine that we are not creating health hazards by the use of such radiation.
Many authors and medical authorities recognize the value of special diets in the fighting of cancer. The German naturopath J.C. Leuchtenberg states, for example, in The Light That Conquers Cancer, that the best diet for those suffering from cancer should be fully vegetarian, consisting of food that has in no way been treated chemically. A diet poor in milk and lactic acid but rich in raw vegetables and vegetable juices, sweetened by natural honey, is suggested as an effective way of reducing tumors.
The literature concerning health food and dietary treatments of various diseases is rich and mostly enlightening. But cancer in advanced stages may not easily yield to long-term dietary treatment. The question whether healers can dramatically reduce or destroy cancerous growths is therefore of paramount importance. Some unorthodox healers, fully aware of the difficulty of dealing with this dread disease, and not sure that they can make inroads on it, will frankly refuse to treat patients who suffer from cancer because they cannot promise them anything. It is perhaps the earmark of the genuine healer that he will not promise to heal each and every disease but only that which he believes can be dealt with by the powers within himself or flowing through him. A quack, even one with a medical degree, will promise anything and everything. Unfortunately, there are far too few psychic healers and other unorthodox practitioners who have the power to heal cancer cases.
In the following paragraphs I report on one such pair of healers, a husband and wife team, since a case I referred to them was successfully dealt with by them and since I have access to all the necessary details and medical evidence to report on it for the benefit of those who wonder whether such healings do indeed take place.
One of the prettiest and at the same time brightest young students in my classes at the New York Institute of Technology was a petite brunette by the name of Paulette. She took the spring term in parapsychology and seemed unusually interested in the subject. She believed herself to be psychic. A few times Paulette could not attend classes, and instead of her, the man she was then married to came with a tape recorder on her behalf. Eventually I lost track of her.
To my surprise I heard from Paulette again in late November, 1971. She was writing to me from Los Angeles where she had moved. She wondered whether I was going to teach any classes in parapsychology in the Los Angeles area in the near future. Her life had changed drastically, she s aid. She and her husband had separated, and he had remained in New York. Also, she had changed jobs and was not working for a recording company. She was in fine health, and she had somehow run into an old childhood friend of hers and the two of them had fallen in love.
The meeting between the two old friends had intriguing overtones of having been arranged by fate. Four months after her arrival in Los Angeles Paulette received a call from a musician named Jim K., asking her to pick up some airplane tickets he was unable to call for. She obliged him and dropped them off at the recording studio. At that very moment a man who turned out to be Ron, her childhood friend whom she had not seen since age sixteen, five years before, also was waiting for Jim K. Paulette and Ron picked up their old relationship and expanded it. Both were still married at the time but arranged for divorces immediately and began to plan their marriage in the near future.
As they were discussing things, Ron discovered that Paulette had not had a physical examination in four years and persuaded her to make an appointment for a routine examination with a gynecologist, Dr. -Frances Holmes, of Los Angeles.
There was no overt reason for Paulette to seek an examination, no symptoms of any kind, no discomfort, merely the idea of not having had an examination in four years. The appointment for the examination was made on November 1,1971. Two weeks later, and one week before the initial appointment with the doctor, Paulette wondered whether perhaps she might not be pregnant because of a delay in her normal menstruation. She and Ron had been living together for some time.
However, the results of the routine examination disclosed not a pregnant condition but a Pap three, a fairly high rate of abnormal cells. In medical terminology the smear test showed "atypia - consistent with severe dysplasia or squamous carcinoma in situ." There are five classifications in the Pap test. The first means negative, the second refers to the presence of various benign changes; Pap three, four and five indicate the presence of cancer in various degrees. Dr. Holmes confirmed, in a statement dated March 2, 1972, that at the time of the first consultation "a Pap smear taken showed some abnormal cells which were suggestive of carcinoma."
The report also recommended that a biopsy be taken immediately. Paulette, almost overcome with anxiety at this unexpected turn of events, reacted by recalling that there were other ways to deal with a malignancy than the conventional ones. In particular, the idea of a biopsy or exploratory operation did not sit well with her at all, since I had mentioned that psychic healing rarely works where surgical procedures have already been used. Thus, shaken by the disclosure of the test and torn between conventional medical treatment and high hopes for some other, unorthodox help, she telephoned me in New York and asked for my help. Did I know of any good psychic healer in Los Angeles?
The same fate which had brought her together with her former sweetheart evidently had more things in store for her in the future. Ordinarily I would have had to say, regretfully, that I really did not know of anyone sufficiently recommended or established through successful performance, to take the risk of undergoing unconventional treatment at this time. But it so happened that more than a year earlier, in March, 1970, a close friend who is deeply steeped in the esoteric had suggested, not because they desired publicity but because of my interest, that I interview a pair of psychic healers in the Los Angeles area, Mr. and Mrs. K.
Thus I was able to immediately suggest that Paulette contact Phyllis and Sidney K. She telephoned Mrs. K. and described her condition in every detail. To her surprise, she was told that a personal meeting between herself and the healers was not necessary, not even desirable - to this day, Paulette and Ron have not met the K.'s - but Mrs. K. seemed confident that Paulette could be helped.
Mrs. K. told Paulette that she would meet with several of her associates, people with whom she worked in a healing circle, and would call her back as soon as she knew more about the case. A few days later she telephoned Paulette to say that she had gotten an image and that it was to be positive. She instructed Paulette to breathe in and out in a certain rhythmical pattern and to believe that she was getting rid of bad cells through breathing. In addition, every evening just before she fell asleep and upon awakening in the morning, Paulette was to try to picture a circle of blue neon lights - Mrs. K. explained that this was a healing light - around the infected area. Paulette was to continue these exercises as instructed indefinitely; Mrs. K. told her she would call her again when she and her circle received a different image.
Paulette, somewhat taken aback by the simplicity of it all, was disappointed that the healer did not want to meet her in person, but she accepted the instructions wholeheartedly and without question, remembering that I had frequently discussed unusual methods of healing in my classes. At first she had a hard time picturing the blue light, but her fiancé helped her by picturing it for her and as a further aid put a blue light bulb into a lamp, which they kept lit all night long.
After several weeks, Paulette and Ron felt that something was happening. The next morning Paulette received a call from Phyllis K. to tell her that she felt something good was happening and to be sure to continue with the exercises. Paulette still went to the regular doctors whenever the doctor thought that necessary, and on December 17, 1971, a second Pap test was taken. The test showed that the disturbance had now receded to Pap two. Instead of recommending an immediate biopsy, the laboratory report, prepared by the same clinical laboratory medical group that had prepared the first report, recommended a follow-up test in three to six months. As the clinical report commented, "Occasional dyscaryotic squamous cells are still present but the changes are less severe than previously noted." Dr. Holmes, in her statement of March 2, 1972, commented that when Paulette was seen again on December 17, 1971, for the repeat of her Pap test, "There was present a rather severe inflammation of the cervix. This responded to treatment." However, the treatment, consisting of a gel prescribed by the doctor, had been discontinued by Paulette after two days because it had caused her discomfort; thus the improvement cannot be ascribed to this particular treatment prescribed by a medical doctor.
Although Paulette's health seemed to be on the upgrade the young people were still very much worried about the future. With that in mind they made an appointment to see the famed spiritualist medium George Daisley in Santa Barbara, on December 9,1971. Daisley, a British psychic who resides in die United States, was instrumental in bringing evidential messages from the son of the late Bishop James Pike to the father. To Ron and Paulette's surprise the reading turned out to be something else than what they had expected. Not a word was said about Paulette's state of health. Daisley elaborated about the strange way in which the two had met, though of course he had no prior knowledge of the couple. Finally, Paulette asked whether he received any impression concerning health. Daisley nodded and pointed to Ron, saying that his spirit informants were telling him that there was something wrong with Ron's left eye and that his glasses had to be changed. The young people were taken aback. Ron required prescription glasses, and it so happened that the left lens of his glasses had been popping out for several weeks prior to their visit with George Daisley. But they could not understand why so excellent a medium did not pick up the very serious business of Paulette's illness.
Back in Los Angeles Paulette continued with the exercises prescribed by Phyllis K. On January 26, 1972, a third Pap smear test was taken. Would the clinical test show improvement or deterioration of her state of health? When the report came, it was negative. There were no further recommendations by the laboratory, which commented only, "There is no demonstrable residual atypia." Paulette was free of cancer; her normal menstrual period had returned January 7; she had recovered. Shortly after this third report, Phyllis K. informed Paulette that she had received an image change and that Paulette was now to imagine the circle of blue light enlarging, with the outside ring much darker than the inside. Paulette was to visualize herself holding the ring, like a hula hoop, and jumping through the ring ten times forward and ten times backward. This was to balance out the whole condition of her body. Later, since the doctor's report stated that Paulette was now well and there was no evidence of malignancy, Paulette discontinued the visualizations but kept in close contact with her healers. On June 11,1972, Paulette and Ron were married. Just to be sure Paulette took another Pap test in August, 1972, which again proved completely negative.
I saw the young couple in April, 1972. Paulette was radiantly beautiful; her young man was happy and busy working on a new record album; I was curious about their attitudes and about that of Paulette's regular doctor.
"When you had the first treatment with Mr. and Mrs. K.," I asked, "did you honestly believe that it would work in getting you well again?"
"Yes, I did, and that was important. I was very positive about it. The healers told me that it was very important in having it work."
"Did you have the firm conviction that it would work in your case?"
"I had hope."
"During the treatments, did you ever have any doubts that it might not work?"
"No. Never."
"After the first treatment, did you feel that some process was going on within you?"
"I did feel something. I couldn't describe exactly what, maybe an enlightening, but I did feel that something was happening."
"Have you told Dr. Holmes anything about the treatment you received at the hands of the healers?"
"I asked her if she believed in psychic healing, and she got very flustered and said that mentally she did, but that on the physical level she wasn't sure."
"Did you tell her about the treatments?"
"I didn't go into detail, because I thought it was useless."
"Didn't she wonder how it was that you were cured?"
"No. I did tell her that I had spoken to a healer, but she didn't go into it any further."
"What, then, is her explanation for the fact that you are well?"
"She didn't say much of anything, but she was definitely amazed."
I of course wanted to interview the healers themselves, to get their point of view on this particular case and perhaps learn more about their methods in other cases, but the meeting was not easily arranged. Mr. and Mrs. K. were publicity shy, and only my insistence that the discussion would benefit psychic healing and its understanding by the lay public as well as by some orthodox medical circles persuaded them to meet me. The couple turned out to be- soft-spoken, pleasant professional people, impeccably dressed, in their middle ages, almost indistinguishable from any other couple of their class and background.
Mrs. K., who had been born in England, had trained as a teacher. She had lived in the United States since 1937 and since then had taught school, mainly mathematics and art. Mr. K., an attorney in the city of Los Angeles, was, because of his status in the community, particularly reluctant to be identified as a healer. Their children are grown up.
Phyllis was thought to be psychic even when a child, but her family had suppressed this unusual talent. She had rediscovered it within herself some twenty-five years before our meeting. Eastern religions interested her and her husband a great deal, but above all the healing aspects of psychical research fascinated them.
"What was your fist instance of psychic healing?" I asked.
"Well, this is rather difficult to answer because there are so many different ways in which we can heal. Some of it is purely mental; we concentrate. Sometimes we don't even meet the person. We can do it at a distance. At other times, if it seems indicated, I put my hands on a person, but it depends on how I get the message inside me what I am supposed to do."
Mrs. K. could not remember how many people she had healed, what percentage had actually been helped, but she said that there were quite a few.
"I work with other people - I rarely work alone - usually in a pair. On the telephone, usually two people, myself and someone else," she explained.
"How do you work this?" I asked.
"I go into what I call a reverie, and some of the people I have been working with also go into a similar state, sometimes at the same time. Then we go back and forth quickly and we see symbolic pictures of the condition and what the remedy would be, and then we concentrate on those."
"But have you met the patient at that time?" I asked. Somehow the method of seeking out an ailment at a distance reminded me of the late Edgar Cayce.
"Not always, no," Phyllis replied. "In some cases I never meet the patient, such as with Paulette."
"But how do you make the contact then?"
"I think that we do contact healing forces. I really haven't the slightest idea as to who these forces are, but I would say that they were personifications to make it simpler for us to get in contact with them. Perhaps an emanation from the Godhead."
"Have you actually identified a person on the other side of life as helping you with this work?"
"Definitely. Yes. But mostly they are personifications of forces."
"When you attempt to heal a person," I asked, "what is the first thing you do?"
"I get in touch with one of the friends with whom I work. There are about half a dozen of us, all women. Sometimes we get together physically and then we go into a meditative state, and sometimes we do it on the telephone. Since we have been working at it quite a while it is very easy for us."
"What is the next step?"
"We have the person's name, and then one of us sees a picture to symbolize what is wrong with that person and what can be done to help. It is very much like an active imagination in a way, except that we do not do it ourselves. It is almost as if it is given to us on a screen."
"Are you given some sort of diagnosis at that point?" I asked.
"Not necessarily; that doesn't seem to be a bit important. It is more important to know what is to be done. Or what we give the afflicted person to do - and with Paulette, some patients are fortunately able to work themselves, and that is always better."
"The patient has to tune in as well?"
"If possible. But of course it is not always possible. Sometimes they don't know what we are talking about, but that doesn't stop the healing."
"It works better if the patient takes part?" Mrs. K. nodded emphatically. "Naturally," she said. "That is why Paulette's healing was such a success. She was very conscientious." "You give your patients certain instructions?" "Yes, but only if they are able to understand them and are used to this sort of thing. It would almost get in the way otherwise."
"But could you heal a person without his cooperation?"
"Sometimes not; it doesn't always work out." "You mentioned the laying on of hands. Is there always healing following, this?"
"There's always an alleviation. Actually, there are two different methods of laying on of hands. One person who taught us was a Mrs. Dakota who lived in Hawaii; another, an Indian in Bombay, taught my husband and me how to heal. We have to do exercises at midnight for a certain number of days in order to get ourselves to the point where we can do the healing. It involves meditation and concentration upon our hands. The Indian healer taught us tantric yoga, and by this method we are -able to heal. Both my husband and I do it. In some cases I put my hands on a patient and it gets extremely hot and I feel the pain. It builds up to a peak, sometimes as far as our shoulders, and then it gradually conies down again. We have to shake our hands and always wash them afterward."
"What about dealing with your own illnesses, if any?" I asked.
Mrs. K. laughed rather uncertainly. "I am particularly sensitive to our Los Angeles smog. I haven't found any remedy for it. But as with any other kind of illness, either I or my husband or one of the other people I work with will tune in on it and meditate."
"Do you do this work merely for your own gratification or to help others?"
"We practice yoga and self-development, and along with it goes the helping of others in many ways. One of those ways is through healing."
The K.'s never take a penny for their help, do not seek new patients, are not interested in glory or publicity. Yet they can be found if it is meant for a sufferer to find them. Evidently, Paulette was directed to me, and I to the K.'s, so that I might serve as a link between Paulette and them.
We do not as yet know enough about the nature of psychic healings to come to any final conclusions why unorthodox treatments for various diseases sometimes work and at other times do not. But it is sufficient to know that there is always hope, no matter what the conventional medical doctor may say.
5 - Faith and Other Forms of Religious Healing
The basic difference between religious healing and psychic and other forms of unorthodox healing is the insistence on the part of those who do the healing, and usually also on the part of those who are healed, that the power comes directly from God or at any rate from divine sources, and that both healer and recipient of the healing are merely instruments of that divine power.
For religious healing to occur, a religious attitude on the part of both healer and patient is essential. While it is true that many psychic healers, who use the life forces within themselves to heal, are also religious people and never fail to emphasize that they would be nothing if it were not for the power of God to heal through them, they also admit that the power itself comes from or through their physical organisms and minds. Since such healers also consider their personalities, both physical and spiritual, part of the Godhead and ruled by it, they are in a way indirectly committed to a form of religious healing. But the true religious healing requires no intermediary gifted with extraordinary powers. Anyone may be chosen by the deity to perform the seeming miracles. Sometimes the deity heals the afflicted person directly, without even the intermediate role of a channel or healer. Sometimes, as in the case of Lourdes and other sacred shrines, certain environments are necessary to effect a cure.
Religious healing is not necessarily Christian in origin; the Jewish religion accepts divine healings, as do most other world religions. But Christianity, with its emphasis on the holy trinity and, at least in the Roman Catholic version, on certain elements of mysticism, is particularly well suited for divine healings. In every religion, however, the religious healer leaves the matter of whether or not a patient is to be cured up to God. Thus the healing becomes a matter of arbitrary choice on the part of God. With religious healing, the patient is encouraged to apply for help and to direct his request either to God or to one of His intermediaries, a saint or holy man. There is no guarantee that the prayer will be answered in the affirmative. Whereas the psychic healer stands on his record of past healings and accepts his gift on a scientific basis as well as a matter of faith, the religious healer merely voices the patient's request, leaving the execution of the request to the higher power.
It is obvious that the acceptance of the existence of such a higher power - God, the deity, or the universal law - is necessary on the part of both healer and patient. It is difficult to explain the successful cases of religious healings on any other basis, and if I offer suggestions as to the methods followed by various forms of religious healings, I do so not in order to deny the divine origin of the entire process but merely to point out how divine power manifests itself; for even the will of God, in order to be effective on a physical level, must perform certain physical or mechanical functions. Nor, of course, do I wish to suggest that a scientific explanation in any way eliminates the need for a spiritual or religious cause. Dividing the art of healing into "medical science" and "religious intervention," as happens today all too often, is by no means a desirable state of being. "Division leads not to progress but to confusion. The fruits of division are dissension, intolerance and waste," writes the celebrated American philosopher, Manly P. Hall, in his marvelous work, Healing: The Divine Art.
Having discussed the necessary attitudes one must bring to bear if one is to understand religious healing, let us now look at some case histories.
Probably the best-known of all religious healing centers is the Roman Catholic shrine at Lourdes, in the south of France, close to the Spanish border.
In 1858 a four teen-year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous, her sister, Toinette, and a friend, Jeanne, went into the woods to look for things of value, such as old bones or rags that they could sell for a few pennies. At a grotto near the Gave de Pau, a tributary river of the Pau, Bernadette saw an apparition.
"I saw a lady dressed in white," she recounted. "She was wearing a white dress and a blue sash and a yellow rose on each foot the color of the chain of her rosary."
Thus the story of Lourdes began. The details are common knowledge, having been written about endlessly and even filmed, so suffice it to say that after the twelfth apparition of the "Lady of Lourdes," on March 1, 1858, a woman named Catherine Latapie bathed her injured hand in the spring discovered by Bernadette and recovered the use of two fingers that had been paralyzed before.
This was the first recorded cure at the shrine. The following day, when Bernadette returned to the grotto, there were, according to police figures, 1,650 observers with her. This time the message was to tell the priest that people should come to the grotto in procession and to have a chapel built there. By the time of the fifteenth apparition, on March 4,1858, Bernadette had become somewhat of a local celebrity and people sought her out even after she had left the grotto. Evidently the healing power traveled along with Bernadette even when she had left the grotto. A blind girl named Eugenie Troy was kissed by Bernadette on her way from the grotto and was restored to sight.
As the apparition appeared to Bernadette on further occasions, controversy continued to rage, with the authorities generally ten ding to be critical of Bernadette's story. But while the debate continued, an event of great importance for the future of Lourdes transpired. The two-year-old heir to the French throne, Prince Eugene Napoleon, suffered a sun stroke at nearby Biarritz. The Imperial governess decided to seek supernatural support for the boy's recovery at Lourdes. By that time the grotto had been barricaded and declared off limits to all, in order to play down the importance of the shrine. But after meeting Bernadette and being instructed where to look for the Lady, the governess went to the grotto in the company of her two daughters and a nun to get some of the miraculous water of the spring and take it back to the Imperial prince. Sprinkled with the water, the boy recovered almost instantly. As a result, Napoleon III ordered the barricades at Lourdes removed and opened the gates wide for the subsequent cult centering around the miraculous shrine.
It would take pages even to list the many cures effected at Lourdes between 1858 and the present time. When the grotto became an accepted institution even by the generally anticlerical government of France, and when the treatments were carefully supervised by the medical profession, thousands upon thousands of people came to Lourdes and many went away cured. Controls have since been tightened and purely nervous diseases declared inadmissible as evidence.
In recent years an average of ten so-called miracles have occurred each year. But the number is misleading, since many other healings, less spectacular than those accorded the extraordinary position of a so-called miracle, may also have occurred at Lourdes. In any case, there are miracles enough to demonstrate religious healing. Dr. Alexis Carrel, for example, the man who created the "artificial heart," observed how a cancer dried up before his very eyes and fell off the patient's hand in a matter of moments.
Moreover, the miraculous healings at Lourdes are by no means a matter of the past. In August, 1972, a case involving a six-year-old girl from Glasgow, Scotland, Frances Burns, made headlines. The little girl had been suffering from cancer for three years and had been given up by English specialists. As a last resort, she was brought to the shrine at Lourdes. On her return the doctors declared her cured of the malignancies.
On August 6,1967,1 met a lady in Paris who had herself demonstrated dramatically what a healing at Lourdes can be like. On June30,1966, Madame M. Etienne, of Paris, was alone in her apartment when in a cooking accident a large portion of her body was burned. For a year she stayed at the hospital Bechat. During that time she received forty-three separate skin grafts. Despite the skin grafts there was doubt that her legs could be saved, since most of the burns were in that area. In particular, her right leg seemed to be beyond salvation. But she refused to agree to the amputation, hoping against all odds that she could save her right leg. As she was lying in her bed, unsure of her hopes for a future, a Catholic woman suggested she get on the "White Train" to Lourdes - since, as she put it, "in her situation she might as well."
When Mme. Etienne arrived at Lourdes she was placed in the hospital on the ground floor of the establishment situated inside the grotto. There she was to stay for four days, after which she would return home whether or not a cure had been effected. On the last day she was particularly depressed, wondering what would now become of her. The doctors had carefully examined her and ordered cold compresses put upon her, standard treatment for third-degree burns. Other than that, no remedies were given her. At the morning Mass on the day of her scheduled return to Paris, Mme. Etienne prayed in silence, asking God to make her well again. It was almost a challenge. Then, as she was being given communion, she noticed something very strange going on within her.
Suddenly she felt rather well. But she didn't say any thing to the officiating priest or anyone at the hospital. Routinely she was brought back to her bed after taking communion and instructed to lie quite still. She was dressed, for shortly afterward she would be taken to the train on a stretcher to go back to Paris. To the attendant's amazement, however, she asked for her slippers and proceeded to put them on her feet, ready to walk on her own, something she had not been able to do for more than ay ear. The walk from her bed to the train would take somewhere between five and six minutes. As she crossed the outer office of the hospital - on the arm of the attendant, to be sure - she was stopped by the hospital staff, who insisted on having her examined. But there was not enough time for that, and Mme. Etienne insisted on being taken to the train. She slept most of the journey home, taking a taxi at the railroad station and returning to her own apartment without any difficulty whatsoever. Afterward her doctor confirmed that she was completely cured, her skin perfect and only a few marks to show where she was burned.
"Was the healing instantaneous?" I asked her.
Mme. Etienne nodded emphatically. "Immediate. The priest was raising the host, and I was thinking how cold I was, when all of a sudden I felt this gentle warmth go through me."
A few years later she contracted an infection on her leg, leading to an ulcer. When the doctors saw it, they cautioned her as to the possible seriousness of the infection, in view of the fact that it had occurred in the same area where her burns had been. To everyone's amazement, however, the ulceration healed quickly, leaving no further difficulty behind. It was as if the entire area had been covered with some invisible, very special protective shield. When she returned for another examination a year after her cure, and submitted to the thirty-two doctors comprising the medical establishment at Lourdes, one of the doctors told her, "What a pity you didn't see us before you left, so that we could have certified a miraculous cure in your case." Since then Mme. Etienne has gone back to Lourdes in gratitude, every year, just so she can stand in the grotto and tell God how glad she is He listened to her.
Perhaps the most famous, Lourdes is not, of course, the only place where religiously inspired miraculous healings take place. St. Anne de Baupre in Canada, Knocke, called the Irish Lourdes, the shrine of the Madonna of Guadalupe of Mexico, and many lesser known holy spots throughout the world claim to heal the sick miraculously. Then there are the singular miracles, the ones attached to holy persons that, by Catholic law, are elevated to the position of saint. Thus in June, 1968, a Papal Court considering sainthood for the late Pope John XXIII heard the amazing case of Sister Caterina Capitani of the Sisters of Charity of Naples, who claimed to have recovered from a critical illness after Pope John had appeared to her on May 26, 1966, in a vision, dressed in a white tunic and saying, "Don't despair, my child. You will be healed."
A little Belgian boy named Herman Wejns, who died in May, 1941, worked as a miracle worker for five of his ten years. Despite his young age, he spoke like an adult and, being a devout Catholic, frequently helped the people of his village in times of distress, especially during the German occupation. After his death many were healed in his name, people who would go to Herman's grave in the cemetery, pray, and await a miracle.
Rabbi Solomon Friedlander of 2176 Grand Concourse, Bronx, New York, is a healer of some renown. He is the eleventh generation of a family of Chassidic rabbis, belonging to an ancient sect that believes in possession and other forms of psychic phenomena. The number of those who have been healed by the "miracle rabbi" include one Harry Kalinsky who suffered a skull fracture in 1955. Although his physicians thought he would not last the night, he survived after intercession by the rabbi, whom his mother had telephone for absent healing. The rabbi asked for the patient's name and a photograph and predicted full recovery. Two months later, the patient walked out of the hospital, completely recovered.
Cecile Diamond, fourteen, suffered from inflammation of the brain and according to physicians had only one chance in a hundred for survival. The rabbi saw her in the hospital and placed an amulet in her hand, praying for her. The child felt better the following day and left the hospital cured.
Healing runs through almost every religion. The Church of Ireland, a Protestant denomination, speaks of the church's ministry of healing in its pamphlets; in the United States, the revivalist ministry of David Nunn of Dallas, Texas, calls its publication the Healing Messenger. These people try to heal both spirit and body at the same time but expect religious loyalty in return. At Lourdes and other shrines no one cares whether the patient is a believer or an atheist. Nor are there ever any charges for services rendered.
If one would consider an alternate explanation for what happens at Lourdes and other shrines, one would have to come up with something truly tangible; for the argument for divine intercession is indeed formidable. The fact, however, is that no tangible explanation has been offered. On the other hand, if we accept the possibility of psychic healing in a religious setting, all sorts of interesting theories suggest themselves. For example, no one, to my knowledge, has pointed out the amazing similarity between the grotto, enclosed as it is on three sides, and the spiritualist's cabinet in which manifestations take place under controlled conditions. Could it be that the grotto has a similar effect on the patients, and that the healing power is really the psychic power brought down to the sick by various spirit forces detailed to heal and help them? In some cases perhaps the life force in the patient himself joins up with the force being sent down to him to make the healing possible. Instantaneous psychic healing is not uncommon, as the process involves a "burning out of diseased areas of the aura," and replacing those areas with fresh power particles from the healthy portion of the aura.
There is no doubt in my mind that a supernormal process occurs at Lourdes when healings take place, but not necessarily a supernatural one. Whether the vision seen by Bernadette was indeed the actual Mother of Jesus Christ or some other spirit is not even important. I do not doubt that Bernadette saw a vision as described; what it was at this point can be merely speculation. What is hard fact, however, is that many desperately ill people, unable to find help through orthodox medical sources, were cured and are being cured at Lourdes.
Individual religious healers are of course legion; many of them simply believe that their faith can not only move mountains but also remove physical illnesses from those who come to them for help. Yet if honest prayer alone could heal people then everyone praying honestly would be a healer, but that is simply not so. Consequently, something other than the religious prayer, something beyond the healer's own faith, must be at work when such unorthodox healings occur. Quite likely a combination of personality factors, peculiar abilities on the part of the healer involving a strong life force in his body, strong emotional cooperation from the patient, and ultimately the bond of combined prayers that do not only invoke the deity to help but also evoke the powers within the healer to get into action.
Carrie Taylor, nearly seventy, is by profession a real estate salesman, by avocation a freelance missionary in the field of spiritual healing and a professional dowser. In his area of Pennsylvania, the town of Zelienople, he is renowned for his accurate dowsing ability as to water, oil deposits, and maps.
Taylor did not realize he had psychic healing power until he reached the age of fifty. Then he suddenly became interested and read all he could put his hands on. In 1957 a friend brought a young man in terrible pain to Taylor because no doctor or dentist could apparently discover the cause of his pains. The patient was a welder by profession. The pain was in his mouth, but X-rays taken that same morning showed nothing amiss. Taylor took the young man to a quiet room and started to pray for him. When Taylor had asked the Holy Spirit to descend upon everyone present, the young man walked out of the room and lay down on a sofa in the living room. Taylor was then impressed to pass his hand over the man's face. As he did so, he felt a great surge of heat coming from the face. Immediately, the young man felt that Taylor had accurately pointed out the area of his troubles and went back to his dentist, who took another set of X-rays and discovered that, in the short time since the earlier dental consultation, an abscess had formed in the roof of the man's mouth. The dentist was now able to treat the matter, and two days later the young man was well.
"I practice spiritual healing without touching the person," Taylor explains in his quaint Pennsylvania Dutch way. "I believe in Father, Son and Holy Spirit and that Jesus is my personal savior and that eternity is always now and that God is in the center of everything everywhere at one and the same time and that I am part of God."
On one occasion he had agreed that he would pray for a friend living in Missouri and that the friend would tune in on Mr. Taylor's prayer at a certain time of the day. Taylor kept his part of the bargain, but at the appointed hour the man's cows got loose and he had to try to get them back into the stables, thus being unable to sit quietly and tune in on the healer. Suddenly the man felt himself filled with the power of divine healing and was instantly cured of his condition, even though he had not tuned in on Mr. Taylor.
"When I pray for the sick our Lord shows me in my own body where the affliction is; I then relinquish the ailment of the person to God and then I relinquish the area in my own body to God," Taylor says. "I see everyone as perfect pure spirit."
Another case involving Taylor was that of a doctor who himself was ailing. The doctor's disease, phlebitis, had prevented him from lying down to sleep for a long time. Unable to walk, he spent most of his time in a large chair. Although the doctor had not called upon Taylor's services, the healer, who was a school chum, decided to pay him a surprise visit anyway since he had not seen him for many years. The patient was not exactly happy to see the healer, because he was not a believer in that sort of thing and knew only too well what Taylor was up to. But Taylor, remaining polite, eventually was asked to come in. Taylor asked the doctor's permission to pray for him, which the man answered by reminding him that he was going down to hell anyway, but to go ahead and try. Earnestly, Taylor began to pray, "I am perfect pure spirit. There can be no congestion in body, mind or soul, where there is only peace; or where there is only tranquility, serenity, peace." He then asked the Holy Spirit to descend upon them all and heal the man in front of him.
Something happened to the non-believing doctor, for he began to cry, explaining that this was the first time he had been without pain in nine years. That night he was able to lie down to sleep in the normal way. The next morning the doctor was able to get into his car and drive for nineteen hours straight to St. Louis to his mother-in-law, also sick, in order to bring her back and have her treated by Carrie Taylor. Taylor obliged cheerfully and relieved her of whatever her trouble was.
Taylor passes his hands over the afflicted areas and prays at the same time. A neighbor who had an accident in his garage, cutting off a thumb and sawing through some of the fingers of his hand with a power saw, had been in a veteran's hospital for four months, but the pain was still unbearable. Taylor passed his hands over the man briefly and then walked out. He did not see the man again for four months, but when he did the patient no longer wore his arm in a sling. When Taylor inquired how he was, he explained that the pain had now gone into his little finger but that he was otherwise fine. Taylor gave him another treatment, and when he checked him out half a year later, the man was well and able to use his hands as if nothing had happened.
Maurice Olinkiewicz operates a light factory in a loft on lower Broadway in one of the oldest parts of Manhattan. He emigrated from Poland in 1913 when he was ten years old. For more than fifty-five years he has lived and worked in lower Manhattan, and during all those years he has had many psychic experiences, from premonitions to visions of the dead to being visited by the ghosts of those who lived at one time where his factory now stands. None of these things faze him. He accepts them as perfectly natural, but he has learned to keep his mouth shut about them, unless he talks to someone who understands such things.
Three years ago something happened to change his outlook on life completely. Olinkiewicz thinks that God wanted to show him that he need not be afraid of anything and there fore sent these strange experiences to him. Having had his encounters with ghosts and visions, he decided that God wanted him to help people through his psychic powers. Being devout Roman Catholic, however, he could see these powers only as part of prayer.
"I pray for people to get well. There was a black woman of about thirty-seven years of age who lived across the street in that hotel over there," he told me once, pointing through the window. "She would come out of the hotel day after day and start to hit her fists against a lamp post. She was a mental case." One Saturday afternoon she stood in the center of the road, trying to direct traffic. The healer saw this from his window and realized that she might get killed at any moment. He started to pray for her: "Please, Lord, make this woman calm." A moment later something came over the woman; she walked out of the road, quietly, and back to her hotel. The following morning she came out again as she had done so many times before; only this time she was quiet and dignified. Olinkiewicz inquired at the hotel about what had happened to the woman when he failed to see her sometime after and was told that she had gone home to her people since she felt well again. Olinkiewicz likes to look out the windows of his second-story factory and watch the traffic below.
A week after the original incident with the black woman he noticed a man with a brand new crutch having difficulties trying to cross Broadway. Olinkiewicz began to pray for him, asking God to make the man walk without crutches. As the healer watched, the man walked another block to Mercer Street, then, suddenly, took his crutch and threw it into the gutter.
So many people got well as a result of Olinkiewicz's prayers that he began to wonder whether he had some special gift. As yet he was not ready to accept this, being extremely modest and simple. Further proof came as a result of a visit by a real estate man, Joseph Medynski, of Ramsey, New Jersey, who had heard of Olinkiewicz's ability as a healer. Medynski went to see Olinkiewicz at his factory in September, 1971, to ask the healer for help with his wife, who suffered with cancer of the lungs. A medical specialist from England had recently given her no more than three months to live.
Olinkiewicz promised to pray for her every day. He did not see the man from New Jersey again until two weeks after Christmas, 1971. When he saw him come up the stairs, he feared that the wife had died despite his effort. "I have big news for you," Mr. Medynski said cheerfully. "A week before Christmas I received a call from the hospital to come right on over. I feared the worst, but when I got to my wife's room, she was sitting up." He questioned his wife's doctor and learned that he could take his wife home now. The reason?
On examination it was discovered that the cancer had disappeared. Medynski offered Olinkiewicz money, but the healer refused to take any. He never takes anything for his efforts.
Perhaps the most dramatic case of instantaneous healing occurred at a most unlikely time and place. In April, 1971, Olinkiewicz was riding the subway when he noticed a young girl sitting across from him who was evidently blind. With her was her seeing-eye dog. When Olinkiewicz realized that the girl was blind, he started to pray for her, so that she would see. Although the healer prayed in silence, a man sitting next to the blind girl looked straight at him and smiled as if he were tuned in on Olinkiewicz's silent thoughts. Suddenly the dog jumped up as if someone had stepped on his tail. But Olinkiewicz continued to pray for the blind girl to see. After three minutes of this, the blind girl started to look in his direction. Little by little her eyes opened up and she started to see. Amazed, she looked at her hand, then at her dog and then turned around looking at the passengers.
When the train stopped, she started to get off, at first following her seeing-eye dog in the direction he was trained to take her. But seeing the crowds going in the opposite direction, she insisted on following the crowds. Soon she disappeared among the people leaving the station. Olinkiewicz never talked to the girl. The girl never talked to the healer. Yet he was able to help her see.
Olinkiewicz was looking out the window of his house into his little back yard one night not long ago when he noticed a lily he had grown blinking on and off like a light. It was around 11:30 p.m., and the yard was lit only by the moon. As he kept staring at the lily and its strange behavior in amazement, he saw the figure of what to him appeared a saint of some sort on top of the tree, with hands outstretched toward him. He pointed it out to his wife, but she could not see the vision. On another occasion Olinkiewicz has seen a cross in a circle in the sky, a blue light that signified healing to him. He has looked out the window into the sky and seen the Northern Star, surrounded by many other stars blinking on and off.
Eventually so many people came to Olinkiewicz for help that he had to organize his healing activities in some fashion. He composed a letter in which he promised to pray for the afflicted provided the patient would also pray and believe in God. Nowhere is there any mention of money or even free-will offerings. Olinkiewicz is truly God's man. "I accept requests for prayers regardless of religion, nationality or race. We are all God's creation, so don't hesitate to write me," he adds, giving his factory address, 681 Broadway, New York, New York 10012.
Mrs. L.C. is in her late thirties, divorced, and works as a nurse in a general hospital in the Middle West. She had many psychic dreams that later proved to be significant. Since she is a religious person, she believes in the power of prayer to heal people. On one occasion, she decided to pray for the recovery of a particularly ill patient in the hospital. This woman had been unconscious for three weeks due to deterioration of the brain, and the doctors had given her up.
On the night of June 20,1968, as she was praying for her patient, Mrs. L.C. suddenly felt a deep heat, a very warm feeling going over her body, and she fell into a kind of trance. In this state she saw Jesus Christ, surrounded by a glistening bright light, touch the body of her woman patient in the hospital. At that instant she was released from her trance and quite herself again. The next morning, prior to her going to work at the hospital, she told her family what had transpired during the night. To her disappointment the woman patient did not seem any different that morning, nor the following day. But on the third day after Mrs. C. had seen Jesus Christ touch the woman's body in her vision, the woman woke up and rose from her bed Later she told the nurse that on that particular night when Mrs. C. had prayed for her - of course unknown to her - she had felt a deep heat go through her body.
Mrs. R.E. also is from the Midwest. One of her three children was born Mongoloid; there was nothing to be done about it, the doctors said. Through friends the mother contacted a prayer group in Oklahoma, hoping that something could be done for the baby. On coming home from the hospital, and filled with suicidal ideas, she had a dream in which she saw the famed faith healer Oral Roberts speaking to her and saying, "A miracle has taken place in your home." A short time after the dream she saw an announcement that Oral Roberts would in fact, be conducting a healing crusade in a town not too far away.
At the appointed time her town and the town where the preacher would appear were separated by heavy floods, but nothing would stop her. She made it in time for the healing service. Afterward, she started to cry, for she felt no different. That night she stayed over with her baby, determined not to go back to the crusade. She went to sleep feeling very tired and disappointed. Suddenly she awoke and saw what she calls a "foggy substance" flowing from her feet toward her body and then disappearing; it felt pleasant and warm. Looking at the clock she realized that she had slept late and that the healing crusade was already under way. Something made her get up fast and get over there, for she somehow knew she had to join the crusade after all. When her turn came to be prayed for, she took the baby, sleeping peacefully, onto the stage, where she suddenly saw herself standing on the platform holding the baby, yet at the same time another part of her was to her own right, suspended as it were in midair two or three feet above her. With her inner eye she could see the baby's body like a large black egg, and through it from one end to the other went golden strings or flashes. This seemed accompanied by "heaving thuds" or rumbling noises as if she were in the center of an earthquake.
Shortly after, the child got better. Although there is still some problem with the baby's eyes, it is a healthy baby and bound to grow up with a minimum of difficulties.
Kathryn Kuhlman is a slight, gentle woman whose appearance belies her fervor on the platform. Thousands say they have been cured in her meetings, and thousands more await her appearance in their areas with great eagerness. Mrs. Kuhlman herself disclaims any healing powers whatever, always putting it down as the work of God and taking no credit for the cures. But this is merely a way of shifting the burden of proof. All evangelists do this, and despite the healings effected during her services, Kathryn Kuhlman is more of a religious preacher than a true faith healer. Even more so is the famed Billy Graham, whose healings are never anything but spiritual and very denominational. Evangelists like to invoke Jesus and let "Him" do the work; more esoterically minded healers would refer to God rather than to Jesus.
It is a moot point whether anyone gets healed at an evangelist's meeting through the power of God, singling him out for a healing, by the prayer and personal power of the evangelist, or by the energy reservoir of a feverish mass audience, or all three together.
Undoubtedly, there are cases of mass hysteria and individual "hysterical hypnosis" induced by a combination of religious fervor and verbal stimulation. In the end, the majority of such cases draw largely upon hidden power reservoirs of the patients themselves, opened up through the devices of religious healing.
It seems to me that the available energies from a religiously oriented crowd, working in unison as it were, would furnish the energies to burn out diseased areas of a person's aura and allow healthy aura particles to flow in and straighten out the etheric body. Whether this effect is achieved by intellectual means, by experimental means, or by the invocation of divine powers is really beside the point. The fact remains, however, that religious healing works often enough to make it a respectable form of unorthodox healing.
In recent years hypnosis has become more and more accepted by the medical profession as a valuable tool in the treatment of nervous disorders, personality problems, and deep-seated anxieties. Unfortunately, it has also been abused by stage hypnotists for the amusement of the masses and on occasion been dealt with as kind of a parlor game by people who know nothing about it - or not enough, at any rate, to be cautious in its application.
In hypnosis, the conscious mind is temporarily shelved so that the unconscious may take over. Actually, hypnosis is a two-way street: material is brought out of the unconscious of the subject or material is placed into the unconscious by the hypnotist. Many misconceptions about hypnosis continue to be believed by the uninitiated, sometimes even by medical doctors or other professionals. For one thing, one cannot be hypnotized against one's wishes; stories along the lines of the famed Svengali and Trilby relationship, a fictional account of the total dependency existing between a subject and a hypnotist, are simply fictional. Indeed, the majority of those who wish to be hypnotized cannot be hypnotized because they are unable to relax sufficiently to "go under." Frequently people will request hypnosis in order to rid themselves of certain bad habits, such as cigarette smoking or excessive drinking. Many of these individuals cannot be hypnotized because their desire is not sincere but merely a social cover-up and what they hope for is failure rather than success.
The one in five people I have found to be good subjects for hypnosis are generally emotional yet stable individuals, people who are trusting and like to rely on guidance, especially guidance given by professional people. They are individuals who like to talk a good deal, have artistic or cultural interests, and are frequently either liberal or flexible in their views of such things as morality, social customs, and politics. People with fixed ideas, prejudices, preconceived notions, fears, or those very much set in their ways are less likely to make good hypnotic subjects.
The personality of the hypnotist plays a major role because hypnosis is 90 percent good relationship between hypnotist and subject and 10 percent suggestion. This relationship need not be an intimate one, but it should be friendly and personal rather than clinical and impersonal. For that reason medical hypnosis, undertaken by medical doctors in connection with certain treatments, does not always succeed as well as hypnotic treatment by hypnosis specialists who get on friendly terms with their prospective subjects.
There are three basic degrees in the hypnotic process. First-degree hypnosis, sometimes called suggestion, consists of verbal relaxation, with the subject either in a chair or prone on the couch. At this stage, the subject hears and remembers everything said by the hypnotist. The first stage of hypnosis is used when minor problems are to be taken care of, such as general nervousness without deep-seated factors, minor bad habits, fear of impending exams in school, or uncertainty about meeting the boss and other forms of everyday occurrences.
In the second stage of hypnosis deeper levels are reached. Here the patient does not always remember everything said to him yet acts according to the commands if such are inserted into his unconscious mind. I always use the second stage of hypnosis during a second visit by the same subject in order to make sure the process is orderly and no shock results. The second stage can be used to suggest the discontinuance of bad habits, such as smoking or alcoholism, and in reverse strong suggestions can be inserted into the unconscious mind of the subject when the second deepest level is reached. It is up to the hypnotist to program the subject to forget or to remember the instructions given under hypnosis.
In the third or deepest stage no memory of what is said to the subject or by the subject to the hypnotist, should remain. If there are traces of memory just the same, then the third stage was not complete and a new attempt should be made to bring the subject down to that level at another time. The third stage of hypnosis is used when serious emotional disturbances are to be dealt with. This, however, should never be undertaken by a hypnotist unless a medical doctor has approved the attempt, or when conventional psychoanalysis has failed. Only if third-stage hypnosis is undertaken for other reasons, such as psychical research, especially regression into alleged earlier lives, need a medical doctor not be present.
Under no circumstances should anyone undertake hypnosis with known mentally disturbed individuals or with those suffering from serious illness at the time. Hypnosis should also be avoided when the subject is very tired, with women during the menstruation period, and with children unless special conditions make it advisable.
Hypnosis works through the power of suggestion. In removing temporarily the conscious mind with its editing and deliberating faculties, the hypnotist lays bare the unconscious mind, which- is uncritical, wide, open for suggestions.
Hypnotherapy consists of two avenues of approach. First, the hypnotist reaches down to the third stage - in degrees, of course - to probe the unconscious of the patient for any suppressed hostilities or other disturbing thought material. Since it is the conviction of those practicing healing that wrongful thought process can cause illness, it stands to reason that suppressed negative and destructive thoughts are just as dangerous as those brought up to the surface and exteriorized. As a matter of fact, in bringing them to the surface and airing them, the hostilities and other wrongful thoughts are taken from the system of the individual concerned. Cleaning out, so to speak, the unconscious of the subject does not, however, by itself restore the proper health balance. For that reason the properly trained hypnotist will insert certain positive suggestions, anything pertaining to a particular case, ranging from thoughts of love where hostility was prevalent before, to specific instructions on wholesome habits or living patterns. If the patient suffers from physical illness as well, healing processes can be stimulated by suggestions implanted in the unconscious.
Normally, the patient will not be aware of these suggestions, but they will work, even though the patient is not conscious of the stimulations and the hypnotist will not disclose them until full recovery has been accomplished.
Hypnotic regression can also be used in the research of potential former lives. If reincarnation material can be brought to the surface and if it is authentic material capable of some verification on conventional sources, the knowledge of such conditions can benefit the subject because the patient is made aware of certain conditions in past lives as having caused his health predicament in the present one. In this respect hypnosis is used as an adjunct to the better understanding of karmic law and indirectly contributes toward a stronger stand in the present life in dealing with the ill health caused by mistakes or omissions in a previous one.
Hypnosis is, further, very useful if the subject is psychic or capable of "dissociation of personality," a term used to describe trance mediumship. By suggesting that the patient allow his own personality to step aside temporarily and create a kind of void within the body (although linked with it through the so-called silver cord), the hypnotist allows spiritual forces to operate the body of the patient directly, thus opening the subject up to treatments by these entities in a much more effective way than if they were consciously aware of this intervention. This process, of course, works only if the subject has strong mediumistic abilities. On numerous occasions, spiritual entities have complained, through their mediums, of their inability to "get through" to certain individuals in order to perform healing because of that individual's resistance or because of a natural tendency to hold on to the conscious mind. In this respect hypnosis acts as a gateway, loosening the bonds between conscious and unconscious minds rather than as a direct healing factor.
Those unfamiliar with the various techniques of hypnosis may shrug off results as being imaginary or, if the disease yields to hypnosis, will hold it to have been imaginary to begin with. But this is simply not so: hypnosis triggers definite actions in the personality of the subject. Hypnosis also allows outside forces to enter the etheric body of the patient and to adjust it so that the physical body may fall in line with it.
By itself hypnosis does not heal. But hypnosis causes actions and reactions in the sick person which in turn heal the individual. These actions and reactions either would not normally take place or would take a much longer period to become effective. In many ways, hypnosis is a short cut to action. Visualization techniques form part of hypnosis. For instance, if the hypnotist suggests to the patient that he see himself wholly well, when the patient is obviously not so in the present condition, then the hypnotist is stimulating the patient to project a recovered image of himself. By doing this, the hypnotist performs a service similar to that of the psychic or unorthodox healer, without possessing any of their psychic energy gifts. The difference lies in the method: the healer applies forces within himself, whether or not they are inspired by an outside power; the hypnotist merely stimulates forces within the patient and makes them work for him. Both methods may result in recovery.
There are some physical ailments or injuries where the conscious effort of the patient will not be sufficient to "straighten things out." On the other hand, it may be medically desirable for the patient to make a certain effort toward this end, such as in the case of muscular spasm or vascular cramps, to name a few such conditions. Under hypnosis, the patient can easily perform the necessary exercise, which he could not undertake while conscious, partially because it would be a painful effort and partially because of fears. Upon bringing the patient out of the hypnotic state and through appropriate suggestion, no residue of pain or discomfort would remain.
Just as described earlier as a method of healing oneself, the blocking of pain from wound or injury to nerve center in the brain can also be accomplished by the hypnotist. In suggesting that pain does not proceed along a certain nerve strand, and that it is in fact wholly blocked from reaching the control center in the brain, the hypnotist automatically shuts off the sensation of pain in the hypnotized patient. Even after the patient comes out of the hypnotic state, pain will not return. But the hypnotist must be careful to parallel these suggestions with constructive suggestions to initiate the recovery or healing of the wound or injury itself. Since pain is frequently necessary to alert the subject to an existing difficulty, eliminating pain is in no way the same as a cure. It should only be undertaken hypnotically when a cure is also being used simultaneously.
7 - Psychic Healing and Esoteric Philosophy
The concept of psychic and unorthodox healing has always been part and parcel of all occult teachings, no matter what specific philosophy was involved, whether Western or Eastern in origin. No esoteric concept is imaginable unless the healing of body, mind, and spirit is also involved. The separation of material and spiritual things, or of body versus mind as it is practiced in Western thought and orthodox medicine, is totally alien to the occult sciences, which view man as a whole, the components of which are inseparable and indivisible.
Wrongful thoughts create illness, and thought processes reverse the conditions. Such matters are entirely in the hands of the sufferer - no one is forced to think wrongfully, and once the mistakes are realized, a person is capable of reversing the trend.
There is no superior power in operation to prevent one from seeing the light and doing something about one's conditions. The act of acquiring knowledge, of looking into a problem of health, of initiating a process of healing is a voluntary action the part of the patient. The results of this act are not necessarily guaranteed: he may or he may not succeed in locating a proper healer, and the healer may or may not succeed in helping the condition. In the case of self-healing, the sufferer may or may not succeed in his efforts, even if he applies himself thoroughly and according to the techniques he has learned.
According to the law of karma, free will is that which we exercise upon our own judgment, whether motivated by emotional or logical factors. What we accomplish by our own decision will of course affect the final outcome - in various ways, depending upon the abilities and powers of the individual to carry out a determined course. But the condition requiring some action on our part is not entirely of our own making. According to the philosophy of reincarnation, of which the law of karma is a part, conditions are in existence independent of us. We move toward them or become involved with them in order to react to them, rather than the other way around. According to this widely held belief, illness may result from wrongful thinking, or from a variety of causes as in accidents, but the causative factors were brought together by the law of karma, which required such a condition to exist at that point in our lives.
Generally unaware of this influence around us, we then proceed to deal with the situation as it arises and in the best way we know. Thus we control the outcome to a large degree; we do not control the incident, which is determined by a superior law and order.
We may ask ourselves, why do some people become ill in certain ways, while others living under similar circumstances do not. To say simply that wrongful thinking in this particular case has caused disease is not sufficient. Why did such and such an individual think wrongfully, thus causing disease? Why was he not led to sources of information that would have prevented this wrongful thinking while someone else, under similar circumstances, was helped to find the information that would prevent his having wrongful thoughts. What determines the fate of the individual, the destiny that begins and ends with the state of health?
According to the philosophy of reincarnation, widely accepted in the eastern part of our globe and among many esoteric people in the West as well, one's previous incarnation and what one accomplished during it determines progress in the current one. One works out through ill health what one committed in a previous lifetime. For example, crippled individuals or those with birth defects are believed to have been culprits of one kind or another in another lifetime, causing others to become crippled or injured in similar, though not necessarily identical, ways.
This belief postulates a law of retribution in which the wrongs of one lifetime must be worked out by the right doings of another. The problem is that the average person is not aware of his previous lifetimes and thus has no way of focusing his actions in such a way that he can undo the wrong of a previous incarnation consciously. He must do so purely out of his own initiative, intuitively. By doing something correctly in the current incarnation, without knowing why one does so, the individual cancels out ancient debts.
On those rare occasions when people have snatches of memory of previous lives, they are permitted this "bonus" because a previous lifetime had been cut short or been tragic in some other way. To the extent of these bits and pieces of information they are able to check back upon earlier incarnations and learn, perhaps even profit, from such memories. But unless these individuals work with a reputable hypnotist to regress them and dredge up from their unconscious the deeply embedded memories of past lives, they will be unable to make much practical use of that information. By and large, people do not recall previous lives, and those purporting to supply "life readings," going into great detail over dozens of former lives, are perhaps only dealing in hopes, if not outright fantasies.
Genuine reincarnation memories are of the kind that contain names, places, and details that are capable of verification in historical records. Fantasy reports on previous lives frequently include fanciful countries, nonexistent names, or conditions that cannot be properly checked out. This is not to say that some of these life readings do not contain true information as well, but one must use extreme caution in accepting material from earlier incarnations, especially if one tends to base one's present activities upon them.
In accepting karmic causes for specific diseases, we are not necessarily forced to live with them as incurable or unalterable. The fact that the disease exists in this incarnation only means that something caused it to be in a past lifetime: what we do about it in this life is our own concern, and we are quite free to do everything within our power to relieve the condition.
Simply by having the condition in the first place, karmic law has been satisfied. Once that is so, an individual may use esoteric or orthodox methods to rid himself of the condition without affecting karmic law in the least; for it is no man's destiny to suffer with or without cause. To suffer with cause is unnecessary if one recognizes the cause and does something about it, and to suffer without cause, when there is no recognizable reason for it, is even less acceptable, for in such cases the absence of any notion of guilt makes the healing effort so much more plausible.
Psychic healing, of course, is in itself part of the occult sciences; the majority of mediums, whether professional or amateur, have some healing gift and are able to perform healings - largely because the force that makes healings possible is the same force that makes psychic phenomena in general possible. It may be utilized to make communications between the so-called dead and the living available to those seeking them, or it may be used in one of several ways as the driving power behind physical phenomena, clairvoyance, psychometry, and the entire range of ESP phenomena. The choice is the user's.
Although astrology is not strictly part of the occult sciences, it is frequently considered an allied art and those interested in psychic phenomena are nearly always also interested in astrology. Basically, however, astrology relies on mathematical considerations, on conclusions drawn from certain positions in the heavens and on earth, rather than on any intuitive, emotional processes. However, astrology has long held that certain planets "rule" or influence and dominate certain parts of the human body and mind, and if we accept the validity of astrology on -the basis that it represents cosmic radiation primarily from the nearby planets, the sun, and our moon, then this concept does acquire scientific validity. Cosmic radiation bombards our earth at all times, is measurable, and can be evaluated as to possible results. Some cosmic radiation is definitely harmful whether of natural or man-made origin. Other radiation is beneficial, and astrology has pinpointed these effects and placed them in the appropriate relationship to the human personality.
Basically, there are two relationships to consider when one deals with the astrological impact upon one's health. First, the astrological chart of the individual at the time of birth reflects the strength and weakness of the individual, the areas in which he or she may expect trouble, and the areas in which he may not. Certain planets "rule" certain parts of the body; thus the parts of the body so ruled will be strongly affected when these planets are in certain positions. If the positions are in a "friendly position" to the rest of the person's horoscope, then beneficial results will prevail and that part of the body will feel fine. Conversely, if the planets are badly related, illness in those areas is possible, though not necessarily inevitable. (Nothing in astrology is ever inevitable - especially if the person, by being forewarned, looks out for potential difficulties and tries to avoid them.)
Second, the "aspects," or relationships between individual planets, the sun, and the moon at certain times in the current life of the person involved, also have a lot to do with the state of health at that time. While the natal chart - the horoscope at the time of birth - reflects permanent and basic conditions in the organism, the temporal configurations in the heavens relate to the state of health at specific times in the life of the individual.
No one should follow the advice of a brief newspaper column on what to do on a certain day, as such material is neither scientific nor accurate. But careful scrutiny of an individual chart drawn by a competent astrologer for the person involved will disclose certain trends existing at certain times. One should study these conditions and then make one's decisions as to what one might do under those "transits" and what not. A calm, rational approach to astrological data can be utilized to preserve one's good health and prevent accidents.
Somewhat on the fringes of the occult sciences are the various forms of yoga. These teachings of Indian and Tibetan philosophers are very ancient and very basic. Hatha yoga, dealing with the physical body, is particularly valuable to those living a life according to esoteric concepts. Hatha yoga should take the place of ordinary calisthenics or gymnastics. The principal difference between this yoga and all other forms of exercise is simply expressed In ordinary exercise, body parts - muscles, limbs and breathing apparatus - are used rapidly or consecutively in order to test their abilities. Doing twenty push-ups in the morning leaves one exhausted. Running as fast as one is able is equally ill advised in many cases. Lifting weights beyond one's capacity may be dangerous. Playing tennis or handball, if one is not really used to it, causes undue strain on ligaments, wrists, and ankles and results in fatigue rather than in a strengthening of the bodily apparatus.
In yoga, on the other hand, emphasis is not on performance but on the holding of certain positions for as long as one is able. By taking on certain carefully designed positions and stayed in those positions for a few seconds, gradually adding seconds until one accomplishes the maximum suggested by the teacher, one gives the affected muscle or limb a chance to expand without also using up precious energy. The secret of Hatha yoga lies in the calm and deliberate holding of positions. At the same time emphasis is put on the right frame of mind accompanying these positions and breathing at a comparable rate is also very much emphasized. Breath is the essence of life itself: many of the yoga exercises stress improved breathing techniques because the oxygen introduced into the lungs materially affects the operation of the body during the positions.
Calisthenics and other forms of gymnastics as well as most ordinary sports pay no attention to mental or - heaven forbid - spiritual attitudes during the performances. Yoga, on the other hand is effective only if mind and body coordinate their activities completely. By stressing this duality of purpose, yoga recognizes and utilizes the interaction of the physical and etheric bodies simultaneously and for mutual benefit.
Lastly, certain pagan religions, such as Wicca, stress healing among their most urgent goals. In Wicca, healing those present in the circle or those at a distance is accomplished by a community effort called the raising of the "cone of power." Energy is drawn from the participants through singing, chanting, and dancing in unison. As the energy potential becomes higher and higher, and just when it reaches the zenith of its power, the community is ordered to stop abruptly, usually dropping to the floor. By this abrupt action, the energy cone is released and sent forth in a predetermined direction. I have seen this method work repeatedly and know that energies thus produced and sent out to an ailing person can affect the state of health of the individual.
Such practices do in no way involve miracles or even strong belief on the part of the recipient. They are primarily scientifically acceptable transfers of energies raised by a group of human beings for a single purpose. In some way, this is a form of telepathy, except that thoughts of wellbeing are transmitted together with raw energy to burn out the diseased parts of the patient's aura.
Most likely some other emotionally tinged religions, such as the Holy Rollers, who work themselves up to fever pitch through religious singing and dancing, accomplish their healings in similar fashion. In either case, it is not necessarily the deity descending personally and touching the sick who performs the healing, but the religious practitioners themselves through the use and channeling of their bodily energies. The deity concept serves primarily as a focal power.
If the seemingly miraculous results are later ascribed to a supernatural agency, in a manner of speaking and indirectly that is correct; for if it were not for the concentration point represented by the deity symbol, the outpouring of energy would not have been accomplished.
Finally, some individuals wonder whether their illness may not be due to psychic incursions, that is, a kind of possession by external spirit entities, who bring with them an ailment from their own physical past.
It is perfectly true that mediums, especially the trance variety, take on the passing symptoms of the dead individual speaking through them or the sufferings and memories of illness that occurred in the life of the person using the medium at that moment. But these re-enactments serve primarily to identify the individual and to exteriorize past sufferings in this way. After the trance state ends, nothing of the symptoms remains and the medium rarely remembers what went on while in trance.
Ordinary individuals may become host to possessing entities in various ways, usually by permitting the contact either consciously or unconsciously, but the health condition of the possessor does not become a major factor unless the takeover is complete - in which case the host personality is in deep trouble all around and needs a good exorcist.
People who are sensitive may enter a place where sickness has been prevalent in the past and feel the "bad vibrations." This is a kind of psychometry, and a change of location usually ends the discomfort. True psychic incursions of the succubi or incubi variety (demons of either sex to the kabbalistically inclined) do not invade healthy, self-possessed individuals.
"Physician, heal thyself" was the admonition the pupils of Hippocrates, called the father of medicine, would toss one to the other. Anyone wishing to help the sick should first of all be in full control of his own health, both physically and spiritually speaking. At least that was the way the ancient Greeks looked at it.
Modern doctors are no different from ordinary people when it comes to illness: when they get sick they go to other doctors, or to hospitals or to specialists who are better equipped to handle the particular illness from which they suffer. Very few medical men are able to deal with their own troubles. Somehow there persists the fantasy that physicians are less likely to be ill than ordinary people. Nothing could be further from the truth; even though medical doctors understand the symptoms of disease better than laymen, they are just as prone, perhaps more so, to become ill as are those unaware of what the symptoms mean.
Yet while perfection in mind and body is desirable for all, not only doctors, being afflicted in one or another area does not necessarily prevent the individual from being a good doctor as well. Thus Dr. Robert Laidlaw, who has for much of his life walked on crutches, is nevertheless one of the most renowned and respected psychiatrists in the world. Physicians have treated patients while they themselves were in wheelchairs; cancer specialists have died of cancer. For all that, it is nonetheless true that the command to "heal thyself," addressed to everyone, can often be obeyed by everyone, whether healer or layman.
Since the number of reputable and successful healers is very limited, and the number of afflicted unfortunately very large, it stands to reason that many of those in need of healing treatments will never get to a healer. Then, too, there are a number of diseases and conditions that yield frequently to personal treatment and do not even require the ministrations of another person. Disease is not local; it affects the entire organism, body, mind, and spirit, and must therefore be attacked on that basis. In the words of Edgar Cayce, "The body is not structural, but functional." Spirit manifests a physical body, consequently spirit can heal a physical body.
In practical terms, all self-healing involves thought processes. Thoughts can influence specific illnesses. Orthodox medicine holds that illness is due to one of three major causes: invasion by foreign bacteria or viruses; damage to the system through accident; degenerative processes through usage, aging, or other forms of weakening of the system. Psychic healing, on the other hand, holds that disease is the result of imbalance in the total system, body, mind and spirit. Disease exists only so long as this imbalance is not corrected. Once it is corrected, disease must vanish.
In this view - the view not only of Edgar Cayce but also of most leading metaphysicians and esoteric thinkers - the spirit-mind combination has created the body and continues to influence it. Thoughts, therefore, can cause disease; just as other thoughts can undo disease. Physical symptoms, pain, and afflictions are merely the outer manifestations of parallel situations existing in the etheric or "inner" body. By correcting the situations on that inner body, the outer, grosser body must fall in line automatically and mechanically; it has no choice.
The psychic healing system holds that disease results from causes other than those put forward by orthodox medicine as the reason for disease. The three esoteric causes of disease are erroneous thought processes, improper living habits, and accidents. Only the third cause coincides with the cause orthodox medicine recognizes as being the origin of possible disease, and there the similarity stops; the treatment prescribed for accidents differs again markedly from the orthodox view. False thinking - the inability to accept human conditions in the proper light, applying one's energies to alter these conditions unintelligently, without understanding the underlying causes of dissatisfaction and thus leading to a state of frustration - can cause disease. Frustration - a condition where one cannot do anything about one's cherished goals - allows energies to break out from the containment of inactivity. The manifestation of these energies causes damage to the human system, taking the shape of one or the other physical disease. Once the disease becomes physical and affects the organism, the underlying cause, even if recognized as the originator of the disease, cannot be forced to "take back" the disease, as it were. Fresh thought processes are necessary to reverse the trend and fight the disease at that stage.
Thus no matter what the nature of the disease, the approach to personal healing must be a twofold one. First, there is the long-range approach, expressed primarily in an optimistic attitude that one will overcome the effects of the disease and eventually conquer it. This end is accomplished most successfully by verbalizing in brief but salient sentences a command to oneself to overcome the effects of the specific disease one suffers from and to repeat this exact command at frequent intervals, especially on retiring and arising. While speaking aloud, one must also visualize oneself in perfect health, with particular emphasis on that part of the body that may be afflicted at that time. In seeing oneself either in one's inner eye or as a projected vision outside of oneself, in a perfect state of health, one actually makes this come true.
All this may sound farfetched to the materialist or logically thinking person, but it is an established fact that thought processes are tiny electric charges emanating in the brain by direction from the mind. These charges go out from the brain into whichever direction they are aimed. In sending thoughts from one's own brain to one's own body, one is in a manner of speaking rearranging one's electrical molecules, purifying and programming them positively and returning them to that part of the body where they are needed. At the same time these positively programmed electrical particles will set the body's own defense mechanism into motion, thus causing physical action as well as suggestion: the physical action works against the diseased areas by mobilizing antitoxins, or the natural healing abilities of the cells. The mobilization of the suggestive apparatus in the psyche creates a more positive climate for healing to take place while at the same time dealing with anxiety states. Such anxiety states are not only unpleasant and at times dangerous but impede the natural processes of healing through depressed or even traumatic states that affect the circulatory rate and bodily functions in general - thus closing the vicious circle that delays recovery.
How to deal with pain through thought processes is a problem perhaps more urgent than that of long-range healing. Once one masters immediate agony, it is easier to approach the underlying causes in a calm frame of mind.
Now both orthodox and unorthodox medicine accept the view that pain comes through our consciousness only because it travels from the area of trouble in the human system to the control center in the brain, which tells our conscious mind that something is wrong somewhere in the body.
In order to deal with the existence of pain anywhere in our body, we have two avenues of counteracting it through thought processes. The easier one of the two is blocking the message of pain somewhere between the origination and the control center in the brain. We do this by visualizing the area of affliction connected with the control center in the brain by a highway-like strand of nerves along which the message of pain travels. Halfway in between we visualize a block, very much like a roadblock. We see the pain energies streaming out of the diseased area and coming to a halt at the roadblock. We then visualize the rest of the road, that is the nerve tissue, empty of pain messages, and therefore the control center cannot receive the impulse reflecting pain. This thought message is coupled with verbal suggestions, tightly expressed in as few words as possible, that pain will not go through. We acknowledge its existence, but at the same time we command it to stop at the artificially created roadblock along the way. The more strongly we visualize this division between a nerve road filled with pain impulses and a portion free of it and therefore calm, the more successfully we will be able to block the pain from coming to our conscious attention, and thus we will stop feeling it within a very short time.
A second method, somewhat more tricky, addresses itself directly to the area of disease or injury in the body. If we are completely cognizant of the nature of the illness or injury and what is the cause of it, we visualize the wound or injury in great detail in our mind's eye; having visualized it and verbalized the fact of its existence and the causes of it, we then proceed to build a protective wall around it, effectively shutting off all outgoing stimuli. We are aware of nerve fibers leading from the affected area toward the control center in the brain, but at the same time we visualize and accept the total protection of this invisible shield around the wound itself. Then we begin to visualize the rapid recovery of the wound or injured area, first holding the thought of it in its injured or diseased state, then gradually visualizing its changing to a healed or perfect state.
This process can be accomplished very rapidly, taking perhaps no more than five or ten seconds altogether. At the end of this period we hold the visualization of the area as completely cured. By attacking the area in which pain originates we are in effect killing pain, not merely blocking its transit from the origination point to the control center.
This method works whether the diseased area is due to infection, degenerative illness, or accidental injury.
It seems, at first, farfetched that thought forces could deal effectively with living organisms, such as bacteria or viruses. But esoteric theory, and the conviction of psychic healers in general, holds that the presence of bacteria and viruses in the system is natural; only when there is an imbalance between good and bad bacteria and viruses does disease result.
Although orthodox medicine considers invasion by outside bacteria or viruses the cause of most diseases, it has never been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that these invasions of foreign entities cause disease. It may well be that they link up with the existing bacteria and viruses in the system to create an imbalance of specific entities, which in turn causes disease. Psychic and unorthodox healing helps the body's own defense forces overcome either imbalances or invasions by activating them to the fullest. Thought commands do create electric forces that go into action where needed in the body. We do not as yet know enough about the importance of polarity to health, but it appears that the balance between positive and negatively charged electrical particles within a cell and thus within the entire system is at the very heart of the well-being of man. When the polarity is upset, the entire system suffers, even if only one part of it manifests a physical disease or injury. I would even suggest that the polarity or balance between positively and negatively charged electrical particles in the human system is the life force or operating power through which man performs all of his functions, whether physical, mental, or spiritual.
The second approach in combating disease on a psychic healing base involves "proper living habits." By that I do not mean any thing remotely connected with morality or the social order. Proper living habits simply means a way of life in which the pressure balance between positive and negative forces is not impaired. Minimally, this program demands a person to have the correct amount of rest and sleep, as indicated for each individual (and ft may differ from person to person) and not go against his or her natural inclination in terms of being a day person or a night person. If one is a nocturnal person, one should adjust one's living rhythm accordingly; conversely, if one is diurnal, one must not strain the system by living a nighttime existence.
Proper living habits also include a certain amount of physical exercise, although not necessarily calisthenics or gymnastics. They include the use of a largely organic or at least balanced diet. The less one partakes of artificial stimuli, such as drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, the more the system will be in balance. This does not mean that a glass of good wine will make one sick; it does mean that alcohol per se is hostile to the harmonious way of life.
Proper amounts of oxygen in one's breathing air are also necessary to maintain the balance in the system; much illness derives from living in polluted areas or unhealthy climates. Proper eliminations of poisons and waste stuffs and periodical purification of the system are extremely valuable to the avoidance of illness; toxic matters in the system cause much disease. None of the foregoing alters my view that all disease is caused by improper thinking; the very presence of such toxic substances in the system is due to the fact that one is ignorant of the dangers and thus guilty of improper thinking. Accidental injury to parts of the body, especially as a result of someone else's carelessness, cannot validly be blamed on improper thinking, of course. But in dealing with such injuries the same principles apply as if the damage to the system had been caused by disease. Pain is blocked in much the same way as with a disease caused wound; suggestion as to quick recovery of the affected area will not eliminate the healing period entirely but will speed up the recovery process immeasurably.
Much has been said about the healing power of "love." What exactly is love? Seen through the eyes of the parapsychologist committed to the concept of psychic healing, love is a particularly strong positive electric force, created in the emotional system of one person and directed toward one or more other individuals. This positive energy carries various messages with it; it may be a personal one involving a desire to share, unite physically and emotionally, or it may be a desire to bring various values to large segments of the population. Either way, the love force is probably the maximum potential an individual is capable of generating within his or her system.
Conversely, hatred can create a parallel negative force. I have already pointed out that frustration, or the inability to express oneself as desired, whether in one's professional, artistic, religious, or emotional life, can lead to external manifestations through various diseases. These diseases are not necessarily connected with the immediate area of frustration. For example, a frustrated lover does not develop heart disease or problems with his sexual organs, but the outgoing power, having no outlet outside the system, turns within itself and causes havoc wherever the system is weakest. In some people, this may be a foot, or a hand; in others, it may be a joint. Or it may manifest itself in loss of hair. Everyone's system has certain weak points where an attack will yield the most severe results.
There is no foretelling which way this deflected energy will go in any particular case, and consequently diagnosis of illness is difficult. Starting with the symptoms of disease, it is not always easy to trace the way back to the frustration at the base of it. Of course, if we eliminate the particular frustration that has caused an illness by simply changing the circumstances, we would effect an instant healing. Most frustrations do not yield that easily, however, simply because the conditions cannot be so easily, if at all, changed. It is therefore much more important to change the patient's attitude toward his particular frustration, thereby allowing energies liberated by the frustration to flow into more constructive channels.
Next to frustrations, fears cause numbers of illnesses, not only mental but physical. Fear is simply the absence of information. To cure fear it is important to pinpoint the exact nature of the fear and then to proceed to obtain as much information on the subject as possible. By informing oneself on the subject, fear will dissolve. It is important to remember that fear is brought on by the one who experiences fear, not by some outside force. It is further important to realize that that which we bring on ourselves, we are also able to do away with ourselves. This is not a question of belief or something available only to a favorite few; it is a cardinal law of nature that the fears we create in our own minds we can also undo in our own minds.
If fear is merely the absence of information, then suppression of natural instincts is the absence of freedom of expression. Within the boundaries of our society, and short of causing damage to others, we should be free to express our natural instincts whether or not they coincide with our upbringing or environmental standards. Irresponsible promiscuity is as wrong as is carefully channeled sexual selectivity. What is freely derived from our libido should be expressed equally freely, if it is indeed an honest expression of our innermost desires. Sex for its own reward is worthless and can lead to further frustrations, but sex as an outward expression of inner emotional impulses is a valuable tool in the prevention of disease, since it offers a safety valve to the pent-up energies within the system that might eventually turn inside and against the system otherwise, and without a chance to control the direction.
Although thought processes can be used to heal oneself with good results, even including the use of suggestions from one nerve center to another part of the system, the same does not hold true when it comes to psychic and physical healing through the laying on of hands or making passes for oneself. In the latter case some kind of "short circuit" seems to result, and the healing does not take place as desired. With the laying on of hands or the making of passes the healer is contacting the aura, and when one part of the aura enters another part of the same aura, energy is simply drawn from one part of the system to another. Evidently this is insufficient to cause restoration of diseased areas of the aura. The practice requires someone else's auric force for success.
Such trite generalizations as "you are what you eat" have a great deal of truth in them; the food we take in determines our state of health to a large extent because the fuel determines the performance of the engine. It is not so much the amount of food or even the combination of foods we eat but the quality of the ingested nutriments that is significant. There is hardly a well-read or reasonable individual alive today who is not aware of the struggle going on between the forces of unadulterated foodstuffs and those who wish to close their eyes to the increasing numbers of chemicals added to foods in order to preserve them for longer periods. The matter is no longer one of concern to the esoteric fringe: it has been aired publicly and many books have been written on it.
My reference to diet in connection with healing is more in the nature of the preventive attitude toward foodstuffs in the long run rather than of any specific prescription. In partaking as much as possible and as much as is practicable of pure foods, one is automatically excluding the variety of diseases that crop up in time if one eats adulterated foodstuffs containing preservatives and other additives, such as color and artificial flavors.
Certain categories of foodstuffs are altogether damaging to health: the various cola drinks, the majority of sodas, anything containing large amounts of white sugar - ordinary ice cream - white bread, and many more. Anyone familiar with health food standards will be able to avoid these foods and thus prevent much disease that would ordinarily come his way in time.
But there is much more to the health aspect of proper foods than the simple avoidance of certain foods and use of others. It is not just what you eat but the state you are eating it in that counts. Food that may be totally harmless when eaten in a relaxed state may suddenly act up and cause gastric pains if the person eating it is upset or emotionally unbalanced at the time. Digestion and absorption of foodstuffs is a highly complicated process, involving not only the gastric tract but the mind as well. A number of lateral processes are vitally important in the proper disposition of the foods taken into the body - including the glands of the body and the production and release of enzymes. If the emotional apparatus is upset, the nervous system is automatically and immediately affected. As a result, irregularities of the glandular functions may occur, in turn leading to malabsorption or gastric upsets.
Ideally, a few minutes of total withdrawal from one's problems are advisable prior to eating a meal. If that is not possible, a few deep breathing exercises of the yoga method would be helpful in relaxing the diaphragm and various other muscles of the body that may be tense as a result of stress. Above all, it is vitally important to put a divider between the moment of activity and the moment of food intake. For example, "grabbing a sandwich" instead of lunch while discussing business is very harmful. By creating an intermediary period, no matter how short, between the mentally active process of daily living and the calm, well-regulated intake of food, we insure ourselves against chemical upsets in the body. After we have eaten, we must insure the continuing digestive process by observing a few moments of calm reflection or rest. A brisk walk after dinner helps prevent obesity, but this walk should not be taken while the mouth is still filled with half the dessert. It is all a question of timing, of pauses between one activity and the next.
As Edgar Cayce abundantly made clear in his writings, certain combinations of foodstuffs are chemically incompatible in the human system. By themselves and taken individually they are perfectly harmless. Brought together within the body simultaneously they can create damage or at the very least ill health. A good example involves coffee.
Cayce was not particularly in favor of coffee as such, but he suggested that those who needed this stimulant at all costs should at least avoid taking it with cold milk or cream. He recommended that coffee be taken either black or with hot milk. The aromatic acids in the coffee that are so harmful to the stomach lining will be "bound" by the hot milk but not by the cold.
Sugar, especially white sugar, in one's tea is harmful to the functions of the liver; honey is not. The reason is that sugar represents a refined product turning into starch within the body while honey, an invert sugar, does not. Taking milk products together with fruit is not recommended. In this respect we should be aware that some of the dietary laws of ancient religions, such as the Semitic, are not so much divinely inspired as they are the result of contemporary health problems. By warning the Hebrews against the absorption of pork, Moses merely turned a health factor into a religious command, realizing that it would be obeyed more as such than as the former. The custom of eating either milk products or meat and cereals also is a health-based religious command. The ancients knew very well how certain foodstuffs would combine chemically in the body.
Those able to accept vegetarianism will find that the absence of meat does in no way interfere with their balanced intake of food, provided they learn to enjoy certain milk products and protein-rich nuts and soybeans. Recent discoveries have shown that the incidence rate of cancer is highest among people eating a great deal of meat. It is my firm conviction that all meat, being a secondary food supply, carries within itself the danger of infection and must be considered the cause of many illnesses.
When illness has struck, for one reason or the other, a proper diet can restore good health even in the most severe diseases. Diet can be used to exchange the toxic elements in the system with healthful ones. This exchange takes time - the replacement cannot be done overnight - and to be effective demands that the affected individual must adhere to a very strict diet and cannot deviate from it. Instead of drugs and synthetic medicines, natural remedies are resorted to. The largest number of these remedies comes from herbs and other plants, concocted in such a way that the natural characteristics of the plant are completely preserved (in contrast to the synthetic putting together of chemicals.)
Today the remedies prescribed by D.C. Jarvis, M.D., from Vermont, are widely used. In a popular work entitled Folk Medicine, Dr. Jarvis lists the most common complaints and the natural remedies prescribed by him. A similar book, containing remedies for many common diseases, is Richard Lucas's Nature's Medicines, which has a foreword by Dr. Harry Benjamin. Mr. Lucas's book is on the shelves of many medical practitioners today because of its practical listings and common-sense approach to even the most unusual and esoteric herb remedy. Lucas quotes actual cases that have been helped by this type of prescription, and his recommendations are supported by solid evidence of previous healing successes.
Putting exercise and diet into their proper perspectives in the healing picture and warning against the currently fashionable drugs, reducing pills, and other remedies so glibly prescribed by the average practitioner, Maryloud McKenna's valuable Revitalize Yourself is another recommended book of recent publication. Carrol Righter, the venerable astrologer, speaks of the relationship between astrological factors and health and diet in his recent Your Astrological Guide to Health and Diet. He explains the relationship between certain birth signs and certain diseases common to these signs and the dietary precautions people born under those sun signs should take to avoid illness. Finally, I recommend a little pamphlet by Lionel Stebbing. "Honey as Healer," in which the immense and varied healing properties of honey are stressed.
Some basic dietary truths are age-old, although the people who make use of them are not aw are of the reasons for their preferences. A case in point is the liking for garlic by people of "older nationalities," especially in Eastern Europe and the Orient. Chewing the bulb of garlic is considered to offer protection against various forms of disease and infectious illnesses. Only recently has it been discovered that garlic is the only substance known to medicine capable of combining with viruses, thus destroying them. For that reason the intake of garlic is probably the best remedy for the common cold and other respiratory infections. Richard Lucas calls garlic "the bulb with miracle healing powers." He quotes an older source Dr. W.T. Furnie, who wrote of it in 1897, "It is stimulating, antispasmodic, expectorant, and a diuretic. Its active properties depend on an essential oil that may be readily obtained by distillation."
We have had much of this knowledge available to us for the last hundred years. Yet we have largely ignored it and searched for artificial means of dealing with diseases of body and mind. In rejecting the natural means to heal, man is foolishly disregarding the wisdom of the ages for the mirage of modern machinery. Because he puts together chemicals in a way that allows him to see everything happening as a result of his own power and decision, he feels that he is progressing toward a better understanding of the human body. Accepting existing natural cures, frequently without fully understanding the mechanics involved, requires a degree of faith in a universal balance that many modern practitioners lack. Yet, as has been proved again and again, the natural way of healing is the best way because man is a natural creation, just as are the herbs and plants used for healing. The synthetically produced pill or drug, in contrast, does not share man's vital force field. It is in fact a dead substance. Introduced into a living organism, it can do more harm than good.
One of the greatest healers in recent times, opening exciting new horizons for natural treatment of disease, is the French medical doctor Jean Valnet. Dubbed "Dr. Nature" because of one of his early works on natural healing techniques, Valnet has written extensively on the several forms of natural healing he champions. The Valnet methods consist of treating the entire patient, not the area in which the complaint lies. In this respect, his methods are similar, although not identical, with the homeopathic methods used by certain German practitioners. Valnet is a "regular" medical doctor who has learned to improve on his orthodox knowledge from the unusual sources that have opened up to him during his career. In 1972 Dr. Valnet's Phytotherapie, subtitled Treatment of Illnesses Through Plants, appeared. Both well-known and exotic plants are listed in the book with their properties, side effects, if any, and the use they can be put to in healing. Exact prescriptions on how to get the essential part of the plant from them, the amount to be used, and the methods of application make this book an enormously valuable adjunct to any medical library.
In his The Treatment of Illnesses Through Vegetables, Fruits and Cereals, based upon an earlier edition along the same lines with much new material added, Dr. Valnet lists many well-known and many other little-known food plants and fruits and gives their particular properties and the use they can be put to. Far better than any cookbook, this work deals with the very essence of foodstuffs at our disposal and teaches us how to get the most out of them. With each food is an indication of the diseases for which it is usable and the way in which it is best applied.
Using foodstuffs and plants in the treatment of disease even in the excellent and in many ways unique manner devised by Dr. Jean Valnet is still within the generally known area of natural medicine. But the doctor has also developed a third approach to health and the treatment of illnesses. His latest book, Aromatherapy, subtitled, Treatment of Illnesses Through Essential Oils of Plants, is immensely popular in France. The term "aromatherapy" has passed into the common language, and numerous articles have been written about this exciting new approach to health.
Using essential oils containing, in concentrated form, the most potent properties of the plants from which they come is an ingenious way of introducing powerful remedies directly into the body of the patient through the pores of the skin rather than into the stomach, where they must undergo various chemical attacks before they are assimilated and utilized, through the orifice of the mouth. The method also lends itself to certain cosmetic treatments on the border line between health and personality improvement. Dr. Valnet does not object to this aspect of utilization which his discoveries have found. He considers the concern for cosmetic well-being an extension of general health and as such an integral part of the homeopathic concept of treating the entire person rather than a mere part of the body. As the practitioners see it, cosmetic treatments merely restore the appearance of health, while the Valnet treatment is genuine healing by which skin and other bodily conditions are actually dealt within a therapeutic fashion. The results are due to healing, not to cover-up or purely cosmetic manipulations.
With the help of Sylvia Maria Nocolosi, a Californian deeply involved with unorthodox healing studies, I met one of the students and practitioners of Dr. Jean Valnet's methods. Madame Micheline Arcier has practiced aromatherapy for many years in England and recently set up a treatment clinic in Beverly Hills, California. When I met her, I was able to learn firsthand what aromatherapy is all about.
Since the essential oils are introduced into the body through the skin, it is only natural that skin care is an essential part of the treatment involved. But it would be wrong to assume that aromatherapy is merely another advanced form of skin care or conventional beauty treatment. We are dealing here with an authentic and fully developed form of unorthodox healing, administered either under the direct supervision of a medical doctor or following strict rules laid down by Dr. Valnet himself.
Madame Arcier met with me at the Continental Hotel in Hollywood to discuss her work with Valnet's aromatherapy.
"The treatment we give is partly for relaxation and partly to help skin conditions," she explained. "Those are the two main problem areas we deal with. Our work is unique in that it involves the complete care of the whole body; with one treatment we work on body and face." "How exactly do you approach this 'wholeness' of treatment?" I asked.
"May I give you a typical example. Mrs. Hicks comes to me with some problems. I would take about two hours with her. My assistant records her medical history, background, her way of life. After that, I do the examination and treatment; by giving a treatment I find out with my hands what I already know from the question period."
"What do you do with your hands?"
"I apply pressure on the nerve points."
"Is this similar to acupuncture?"
"We have a few common points with acupuncture, but we do it with the thumb. I find out exactly what the reaction of the body is. A treatment starts on the back of the head, going right down the spine level; we work on the nerve ganglia all along the spine. The ganglia are responsible for messages to different organs; we call this reflex therapy. If the organ is not in good condition, congested or tired, the back becomes 'like a map' and you can read what is happening in the body by seeing the reactions on the back. For instance, if the kidney is badly infiltrated we will see a red mark. We also see the condition of muscles and tissues. Women have great problems with tension; 80 percent of all women, young or old, who come to me, do."
"What do you do next?"
"I tell my patient what I have found, and then we start treatment. Sometimes people find it difficult to understand that by working on the lower lumbar and coccy geal region, you also work at the same time on their feet. This is very helpful sometimes in conditions involving bad legs where you can't touch them. But you can stimulate the blood."
The hands stay on the body for about five minutes. By touching the person's body the operator also learns more about that particular person's reactions to touch and pressure and indirectly gives indication of bodily conditions. The application of aromatic oils, specially prepared for each individual case by Madame Arcier, comes immediately after the massage. She follows the Valnet prescriptions as to which oils are useful for specific maladies. For instance, sandalwood is recommended by the doctor in cases involving kidney conditions or food poisoning. Sage is used for rheumatic conditions because it helps eliminate toxins. The oils used for people in need of slimming down are the same oils used for kidney infections, Madame Arcier explained, since stimulation of elimination is the goal in both cases.
Oils used are never standards; they are individually prepared like prescriptions depending upon what Madame Arcier has discovered during the examination. She then combines the necessary ingredients to make an oil that is likely to yield results in the particular case she is treating. None of the oils are synthetic; all are pure and of natural origin.
Once the oils have been applied to the skin, the operator continues with the pressure point treatment. There are some other movements, such as lifting of the patient's body, finding out the condition of certain muscles, and in many cases vibration of the spine. All this is done by hand, of course. No machines of any kind are used in the Valnet techniques. The reason for this insistence on manual operation lies in the need to adjust pressure and relaxation of every inch of tissue in the patient's body.
Patients return for additional treatments in about five weeks' time. If the condition for which the patient consulted the therapist has not improved, Madame Arcier may change the treatment or prescribe different oils, depending upon the needs of each individual case. In addition to the essential oils and herbs, the treatment includes oil baths and diet, and eventually exercise is added to the recommendations.
I asked Madame Arcier whether her technique had ever helped a medical condition where standard medical procedure had failed (though she never deals with the seriously ill unless a medical advisor is in attendance). She recalled the case of Michele J., a patient of Dr. Valnet. This man had a problem involving in growing hair in his beard which created continual infections. Because Madame Arcier has for many years specialized in skin conditions, working closely with Dr. Valnet, he referred this particular case to her. The man, twenty-eight years old, worked as an attorney, and his public appearance was of prime interest to him. From London, Madame Arcier evaluated the condition and sent the man some special oils; one oil to soothe the condition and another to be used as an antiseptic. By the next mail she received confirmation that her treatment had worked. As soon as the infections had died down, the patient was able to have the excess hair removed by electrolysis. The condition never came back.
Although Madame Arcier is careful not to undertake any medical treatments, she does so out of fear of being accused of malpractice rather than for lack of confidence in her treatments. She was trained in a school supervised by a medical doctor, studied aromatherapy with Madame Maury, a specialist in the field, and with Dr. Jean Valnet. Among her own contributions to this field is a special treatment for pregnant women. Because pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to poisonous influences, essential oils placed on the skin must be right for both mother and expected baby. Most practitioners of skin care are not aware of these problems. Dr. Valnet declared her treatment for pregnant women both harmless to the child and useful to the mother.
Her treatments are not physical alone. She explains, "The action of the s cents on the brain has been extensively studied by continental scientists and practical experiences show the value of essential oils in achieving calming or uplifting results."
9 - How to Tell the Difference Between Real Healers and Phonies
Whenever I am asked by someone unfamiliar with psychic research: how does one know the difference between the real and the false? I give them the same stock answer: by the results. Thus it is with psychic and unorthodox healing as well. Only by the results can one adequately judge whether or not the person is effective.
The faker is never likely to heal anyone, while even the honest but inefficient healer can bring forth positive if limited results.
Some element of the lay public seem to think that there are vast numbers of fakers walking around the world, bent on taking money from the unsuspecting, preying on the afflicted, and doing all sorts of harm. Nothing could be further from the truth. To begin with, the number of professional healers of one kind or another, outside orthodox medicine, is comparatively small - simply because unorthodox healing in most countries is still on the forbidden list, or, at the very most, tolerated within limits.
Second, while the gift of psychic healing may be more common than most outsiders believe, the realization of that gift and the practical application of it is a matter of instruction and knowledge which not too many people possess.
Third, the number of out-and-out fakers and quacks in the unorthodox healing field is very small because the psychical healing field polices itself very well indeed; no one is more likely to discover manipulations or fraudulent practices than those most closely involved, the afflicted themselves. The reputation of a successful healer depends heavily on word-of-mouth fame, which in turn is possible only if actual healings occur.
A fraud operating on a major scale, seeing many patients and fleecing them of their money, would be brought to the attention of the general public by the howls of the deceived, long before any governmental agencies could get into the act. On the other hand, one must always remember that it is not uncommon for self-professed medical experts to declare an unorthodox healer or healing fraudulent without investigating all circumstances, or simply because the conditions under which the healing took place are different from orthodox medical conditions. The opinion of orthodox medical practitioners as to the value or lack of value of psychic healing is seldom unbiased; frequently it represents the defense mechanism of a threatened element.
Yet for all the internal and external safeguards against fakery, quacks are to be found. Hence, here follow some common-sense suggestions on how to avoid being taken by fakers or quacks in the unorthodox healing field. First, have the patient checked out fully by at least one recognized orthodox medical doctor, if possible by more than one, and by a specialist in the patient's particular area of illness. If, as so often happens, the disease will not yield to conventional medical treatment, have the medical doctors state this in writing. Second, before consulting a healer, speak to others who have been treated by that particular healer and examine the results even if their diseases are radically different from the one of the patient at hand. This kind of information may be supplemented with the answers to queries placed with psychical research societies, with newspapers or magazines specializing in this field, or with individuals known for their integrity as investigators or researchers. Such people will always be glad to pass on any information they may possess on a particular healer, if they have met or investigated the healer themselves.
Third, before letting a patient undergo any kind of unorthodox treatment, ask the healer whether he thinks he can deal with the disease in question, how long he thinks it will take, and what his fee will be. Reputable psychic and unorthodox healers will not take on any patient unless they are reasonably sure they can help him. A quack will take on anyone, make very broad promises, and demand a substantial fee. No one expects healers, who devote their entire lives and all of their professional time to the work of healing, to do so without proper compensation. Where proper compensation ends and exorbitant fees begin, one can frequently discover the quack, though some eminently successful genuine healers have at times charged large sums of money to patients well able to afford it, while asking very little or nothing of those who could not. Then, too, some ineffective healers may charge very little for individual visits.
There are those healers who practice their art very much the way a Park Avenue specialist might. If they are good healers, and their reputation holds up over the years, one cannot take issue with them on either legal or moral grounds. If anything, one might charge them with lack of humility, but that is an entirely personal matter and, I think, secondary to the question as to whether or not they perform valid healings. What it really boils down to is that one pays both an orthodox physician and an unorthodox healer for his efforts, not for any guaranteed results. The only difference is that one has gone through medical school and received a great deal of orthodox training, while the other relies primarily on a divine gift. But men of both schools of healing may be equally dedicated to their tasks, and putting their best foot forward is all they are expected to do.
Fourth, observe very carefully what happens during the healing session. If the patient feels that "something is going on" that had not been going on prior to the healer's entering the picture, or if the patient has an immediate reaction as soon as the healing has been completed, then something did indeed pass from the healer to the patient. It is not as difficult to differentiate between the suggestion of healing and actual healing energies passing between healer and patient as one might suppose. Very few genuine healers make verbal suggestions to their patients prior to or during treatment. Whatever suggestions are involved are almost always made by the patient, who puts forward a hopeful attitude, or on the part of the patient's loved ones, who encourage him to have a cooperative frame of mind. Genuine healers do not need the power of suggestion to accomplish their ends; the patient does it for them. Conversely, if the patient is negative or hostile, an authentic healer will nevertheless proceed and frequently succeed in healing the patient, since the healing power does not depend on suggestion. Positive thoughts are the icing on the cake: because of them, the healing power is more readily absorbed, but the power of suggestion alone does not heal, make no mistake about that.
Fifth, and most importantly, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof of the healing is in the well-being of the patient. Depending upon the nature of the ailment, if there is recovery and if recovery continues to be felt for a considerable amount of time, again depending upon the nature of the disease, then the healing must be pronounced a success. The majority of all unorthodox healings are instantaneous or the result of short treatments, though absent healing frequently is continued in order to reinforce the initial "shock treatment."
Many conventional physicians will not prescribe new and untried medicines even if the patient's life is at stake and there is no other hope. Likewise, the fact that a number of people were materially helped by the drug Krebiozen was considered insufficient evidence to those insisting on its suppression. Yet, many terminal cancer cases received benefit from Krebiozen, and had research continued on its properties, perhaps enough would have been learned to convince those unwilling to accept its partial usefulness.
Some authorities, such as government medical authorities or the Food and Drug Administration, are quick to declare certain natural medicines as "useless" because by current medical standards they do not fit into any existing treatment methods, even though, if one uses different channels of healing, these very same substances may indeed yield positive results. On the other hand, these same authorities allow dangerous synthetic substances, such as Thalidomide, to be dispensed, only to discover much later the damage they have caused. The same authorities who worry about the effectiveness of Ginseng root capsules and try to suppress their sale because they do not think the capsules enhance virility (and perhaps they do not), permitted the wholesale use of DDT for many years until it was discovered that the substance was dangerous to insect and man alike; these same authorities permitted the use of tar products as sugar substitutes until they became convinced that these substances were cancer agents.
In short, for all their erudition, the constituted authorities are not necessarily correct in their judgments.
Perhaps the best example of the conflict that can be seen in unorthodox and orthodox attitudes to psychic healing can be seen in the way psychic surgery is regarded.
In another chapter I briefly touched on psychic surgery as performed in the Philippines, and the controversy surrounding these unorthodox practices still has not died down. Actually, Brazilian psychic surgeons preceded the Philippine clinics by several years. Brazil, which has a large spiritualist population, has always taken a more up-to-date approach to unorthodox healing. According to John Frances-Phipps, and the Psychic News of November 29,1969, there are hundreds of psychic surgeons in Brazil. In a series of articles Frances-Phipps described in vivid language his personal experiences with the then still living healer Jose Arigo and with Lourival de Freitas.
The late Jose Arigo saw at least one thousand patients a day at his clinic in Congo has Do Gompo. Arigo's guide was a spirit doctor by the name of Dr. Fritz, who spoke with a marked German accent or in German, which Arigo did not understand. Through the entranced medium, this doctor would prescribe various medicines and treatments for those seeking his help. In some ways the approach resembled that of the late Edgar Cayce. Dr. Andrija Puharich, who spent much time with the late Arigo is fully convinced of the genuineness of the phenomenon, and he himself had a growth removed from his arm by the spirit healer.
Arigo was killed in an auto accident at a time when he finally was getting recognition and protection from a jealous medical establishment that had attempted to jail him several times, and when a special hospital of 160 beds was being built in his honor and for his use. But he, the Brazilian psychic surgeons and the Philip pine's Tony Agpaoa and others, less well known, practicing along similar lines, are by no means isolated cases. Thus, in 1967 a British medium and healer, Isa Northage, performed psychic surgery on a Scottish bus driver by the name of Tommy Hanlon, who suffered from a stomach ulcer. The surgery was witnessed by the man's aunt, a registered nurse named Margaret Sim. Miss Sim was in the fortunate position of observing the healer's work from close by. To begin with, the healer massaged the patient's abdomen. Then, before the witness's astonished eyes, the man's stomach wall was opened up - in her words, "opened like arose" - and the ulcer was taken out in two pieces with forceps. The healer then closed the wound. There was no trace of a scar. According to a reporter for the Psychic News, the man was able to eat normally an hour after the operation.
Isa Northage, of Nottingham, England, works with a spirit doctor by the name of Dr. Reynolds. Photographs of malignancies were offered in evidence of another psychic surgery success by the same healer. These malignancies came from the jaw of a certain Mrs. Sylvia Hudstone, who signed a testimonial to the effect that she was cured completely by Mrs. Northage. During the operation by the entranced psychic surgeon, the patient felt no pain whatever and the entire proceedings took place in front of a large audience in Mrs. Northage's spiritualist church at Pinewoods, Nottingham.
On the other hand, B.S. Sharma, a spiritualist from Delhi, India, who went to Manila to watch the Philippine psychic surgeons at work, claimed that the material taken from the bodies of the patients was in fact "a waxy substance dexterously palmed and skillfully twisted to make it appear as if it is drawn out of the patient's body. Few operators are ready to part with such a substance for chemical examination." In fact, when a team of "investigators," more accurately described as would-be exposers, visited Tony Agpaoa, they obtained some of the tissue removed from patients' bodies, and had it examined in a laboratory. The tissue was then declared, on the opinion of one medical researcher, to be of animal origin, and, again on the testimony of one researcher, the entire field of psychic surgery called fraudulent and the "wonder healers of the Philippines" referred to as charlatans and frauds.
In a similar vein is the complaint registered with me by a forty-five-year-old man disabled with rheumatoid arthritis for the past thirteen years who had borrowed money in order to go to the Philippines in 1967. He admits to having been helped "slightly" and later met the healer again in the United States. According to this witness, Tony offered to teach him psychic surgery and, as a result, he was shown "all the tricks of the trade." My correspondent wanted me to warn researchers of the terrible fraud going on under their very noses. For my part, I would have been a little more impressed with this complaint had he not added, "I will give you all the details but the actual fact should be worth some money to reimburse the money I had to borrow for the trip."
In November, 1972, New York State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz obtained a court order to stop the practice of acupuncture in New York by ten "unlicensed Chinese" that had been carrying out the ancient Chinese needle therapy. These men were working under the supervision of three medical doctors, but to the Attorney General this was apparently not enough. How the practice of the ancient art of acupuncture, which involves no pain or other bodily dangers whatsoever, could, in the words of the Attorney General, constitute a "clear and present danger to the health and welfare of the people of the state of New York" remains a mystery. Quite possibly, the complainants against the thriving acupuncture clinic were losing business in their regular hospitals or private practices.
You cannot tell a faker or a quack by listening to official opinions, to the majority of medical doctors - or even by assessing the size of the fee he charges. If you have been helped, the healer was genuine; if you follow the five steps outlined above, you stand a good chance of avoiding quacks.
With all that, a word of warning is in order. Strange-looking contraptions, electrical apparatus, unless they offer clear-cut reasons for their existence and methods of application, may very well be instruments of fakery. This does not mean that legitimate inventions in the advancement of medical knowledge cannot work well and perform healing services. Earlier in this book I have spoken of Dr. Douglas Baker and his biomagnetism and the machines that Delawarr Laboratories in England are manufacturing for that purpose.
It would also be wise to treat with caution unusual suggestions by suspect healers, such as an order to obtain certain ingredients in the middle of the night, from specific areas, or to perform peculiar rituals in mixing the concoctions. Much of what passes for authentic witchcraft prescriptions, such as the famous "eye of newt or the head of a toad," are in reality nothing but fantasies.
Lastly, Gypsy recommendations concerning healing, according to which you must secrete certain sums of money in a way that the Gypsy will find it, are of course not to be taken seriously.
In essence, healing is a straight interaction between healer and patient; something must pass from one to the other and results must be obtained, whether temporary or permanent.
-End-
