CHAPTER SEVEN
I'm one of those people who generally avoids enclosed shopping malls because they induce a kind of mild anxiety. The lack of fresh air, the strong fluorescent lighting, and the overwhelming assault of color and sound can make anyone a little anxious. But what if, in addition to these obvious properties, some of us feel a bit peculiar in malls and other crowded places because, at a subliminal level, we pick up the constant chatter of other people's thoughts, desires, and judgments?
One afternoon in the mid-1970s, while still an assistant professor at Tufts Medical School, I went shopping during my lunch hour. The Tufts medical area is a short walk from the heart of downtown Boston and the once-renowned bargain-hunter's paradise, Filene's Basement. Intent on checking out what was billed as a blockbuster sweater sale, I made my way through the crowds, down the long flight of stairs under Filene's, and arrived at the basement, instantly anxious and overwhelmed. But after several measured, deep breaths, I was able to relax a little and press on. Ever the intrepid shopper, I was determined to get to that sale!
The deep breathing helped me distance myself from the anxiety, and I began to think about why I felt so upset. As if in answer to that mental question, songs started to go through my mind. The Everly brothers were just beginning Dream, Dream, Dream—but before they could finish, a Christian spiritual whose words were foreign to me cut across the mental airwaves. A Beatles song came in next, followed by what felt like a brief rush of greed. The entire experience lasted for perhaps a minute, during which time I felt a combination of fear, curiosity, and vulnerability. Remembering an old meditation exercise consisting of enclosing oneself in an egg of light, I mentally created a cocoon of safety and privacy. The music stopped, and I felt safer and more spacious. The blue sweater I bought that day is long gone, but the memory of being swept away in a tide of other's people's thoughts still remains.
Our body/mind, which naturally includes our thoughts, is composed of electrical wave-energy that is still unnamed by Western science. There are, however, names for this life-force energy in many different cultures. It is called Qi (pronounced chi) in China, Ki in Japan, and shakti or kundalini in India. Practitioners of martial arts such as aikido consciously work with their own life-force energy as well as that of their opponent. The martial arts are, in their purest form, mental arts. Yoga, too, is a form of mental control of the body's vital energy.
That day in Filene's Basement, I used the egg-of-light meditation, a form of mental martial arts (which you will learn at the end of this chapter), to protect myself from the adverse effects of other people's thought energy. The shamans, or indigenous healers, from many cultures share the belief that an energy field emanates from all living things. And for many of them, the energy body is not a belief; it is an observable reality. They can experience it just as clearly as I could hear other people's intrusive musical interludes and sense their desires. The balance of this vital energy is considered a key aspect for both physical and emotional well-being.
Physician and researcher Dr. David Eisenberg has been studying Chinese medicine since 1977. His interest was piqued originally by the reports of James Reston, a reporter for the New York Times, who underwent an emergency appendectomy under acupuncture-induced anesthesia while accompanying Nixon and his party to Beijing in 1971. Eisenberg studied the Chinese language while an undergraduate, and honed it during long periods of study and shorter visits to China, both during and after completing his medical training at Harvard. In 1985 Eisenberg led a group of colleagues from Harvard Medical School on a fact-finding tour to Shanghai and Beijing. I was fortunate to be a part of that group and to have had the opportunity to meet both with Chinese scientists and Qi masters.
The Chinese believe that the Qi can be moved internally via subtle energy channels called meridians through the practice of breathing exercises, mental concentration, and the meditative movements known as t'ai qi chu'an (tai chi). By 6:00 A.M. every morning, we were amazed to see literally thousands of Chinese citizens of every age practicing this ancient art of well-being in unison in the public parks. Qi can also be directed externally—moved from one person to another. The ability to control the flow of Qi is called Qi Gong, literally, “the manipulation of vital energy.”
Qi Gong masters have traditionally demonstrated their control of the vital forces in many of the same ways as Indian yogic adepts. In some demonstrations, yogis have reclined on a bed of sharp nails that would ordinarily pierce the skin. In different variations of this performance, they are subsequently jumped on, run over by a truck, or weighted down by concrete blocks. Upon arising from the bed of nails, their skin is completely unmarked! Qi Gong masters give similar demonstrations, some of which we were privileged to see while in China.
When I was a college student, I saw a demonstration that stymied me until I saw it repeated 20 years later in a small village a few hours' drive outside of Shanghai. Just before the end of the school year one May, a traveling circus had come to one of the Main Line Philadelphia towns near Bryn Mawr, where I was a student. One of the side shows featured a handsome, muscular young black man who could “control the life energy.” I was fascinated by the performer's precise, fluid movements—a kind of feline grace, and by his calm presence.
I'd been expecting circus hype, but the young yogi went quietly about his business. Dumping approximately 50 glass Coca-Cola bottles out of a sack, he set about smashing them with a sledgehammer. He then invited us to examine the broken glass. I picked up a shard and promptly punctured my thumb. It was definitely the real thing. He then invited us to examine the soles of his bare feet. They were smooth and soft, certainly no more callused than my own. After closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths, the young man proceeded to jump up and down vigorously on the glass for at least two minutes. At the end of the demonstration, when we examined his feet, they were as smooth and unmarred as they had been before.
I was amazed by this demonstration and was unable to figure out any rational explanation for it. But then, magicians such as Doug Henning can seemingly make elephants disappear. It's important not to underestimate the power of suggestion and belief in creating powerful illusions. But when we saw precisely the same glass-jumping demonstration in rural China, conducted as part of a scientific demonstration rather than as a circus amusement, I was amazed anew by the remarkable power of the mind. Certainly these sincere Chinese government scientists had no intention of duping their American colleagues with magic tricks!
In China the practice of external Qi Gong—in which the master's powers are directed toward others—has a 3,000-year-old history. This phenomenon is a venerable one even though scientific investigations just began in 1978, only a few years after the introduction of acupuncture in the West. Western scientists first relegated acupuncture to the “trash heap” of the placebo effect, its efficacy written off as suggestion. But when researchers demonstrated that acupuncture anesthesia worked on donkeys, the suggestion hypothesis began to lose some of its luster! A large volume of studies subsequently documented the efficacy of acupuncture, not only for certain types of anesthesia and pain control, but also for the treatment of conditions as diverse as cystic breasts and hypertension. Similar research is now being done with external Qi Gong.
While in China, some members of our party witnessed a Qi master transferring energy to a fluorescent bulb that he was holding. Although the bulb was not plugged in, he succeeded in lighting it, following a moment or two of breathing exercises! In the same way, Qi can be directed at a patient undergoing surgery to stimulate key acupuncture points without the use of needles. The Chinese believe that this Qi energy is responsible not only for physical health, but for telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis—the ability to cause the movement of objects without touching them.
Such energetic phenomena, which have long been accepted in other cultures, pose a challenge to Western scientific thinking, which is lacking in the notion of a vital force. If external Qi Gong is possible, it leads to an interesting question: While there is no scientific doubt that our minds affect our own bodies, might it also be true that our minds can affect other people's bodies as well?
Some well-known experiments in quantum physics suggest that we may, indeed, be able to influence one another at a distance. They suggest, in fact, that a universal energy connects all things-no matter how separate they might appear—and that this energy transcends the limitations of time and space.
In 1964, a quantum physicist by the name of John Stewart Bell reported an experiment with mind-boggling implications. His data implied that once two particles have been in contact with one another, they remain connected—and are capable of influencing one another—even if they migrate to opposite ends of the Universe! Bell's Theorem states that one atom of a molecule somehow “knows” what another atom it was once paired with is doing. This “knowing” does not rely on forms of energy such as light, sound, or gravity that decrease over distance. In other words, the form of energy that underlies these phenomena is not localized in space or time, but is nonlocal. It acts across great distances.
Physician and author Dr. Larry Dossey has introduced the terms local and nonlocal mind to discuss the relation of quantum physics to the power of the mind to heal. His excellent books, Space, Time and Medicine; Recovering the Soul; and Healing Words present a compelling and readable description of the intersection between the strange, anomalous world of quantum physics, nonlocal phenomena, and healing—what he calls “a world behind the scenes.”
Consider the implications of Bell's Theorem. It is well known that our apparently solid world of people, trees, smokestacks, and dogs is made up of a veritable beehive of busy atoms all in perpetual motion. We can liken the solid human body to the night sky, in which every visible star is like an atom. Most of the sky—like most of our bodies and all things—is made up of empty space. Atoms zip in and out of that space constantly. An atom that was in your brain tissue last week may well be part of the gut of a chicken next week. Molecules in the wing of a fly may recycle into your bone tissue. Atoms that were once part of Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ, Adolph Hitler, and Attila the Hun are still cycling in and out of every one of us. If Bell's Theorem is correct, and at some level all those atoms stay perpetually connected, then in some way, we are all always connected. We share an enormous data bank of experience.
Of course, there is still controversy among physicists as to the validity of Bell's Theorem. Some believe that it will stand as research progresses, while others believe that some other explanation for his results will eventually be found. In the meantime, we can look to a scientific principle known as parsimony to predict whether Bell will be proven right or wrong. Parsimony means simplicity. Generally speaking, the most basic explanation that can account for diverse results turns out to be the correct one. Bell's Theorem is simple, and it can account for phenomena that many people have experienced, although our science considers them anomalous or impossible.
Gallup polls and the National Social Survey conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Council indicate that the majority of Americans routinely experience phenomena consistent with a nonlocal model of mind. Surveys conducted in 1973 and then repeated in the mid-1980s indicate that the incidence and variety of experiences ranging from contact with dead relatives to déjà vu have risen sharply in recent years. Nearly one-third of the American public reported having visions in the mid-1980s, as opposed to only 8 percent in 1973! Fully half of all adults believe that they have had contact with the dead, up from 25 percent in 1973. And a whopping two-thirds of people reported extrasensory perception, up from 58 percent in the earlier survey.
Until fairly recently, people have argued that experiences of nonlocal mind might indicate psychosis or other mental illness, which is one reason why (as these topics have become more socially acceptable) the apparent incidence may have risen. Perhaps we are simply more comfortable talking about experiences that might previously have been judged as unbalanced or “far out.” Or perhaps, as Caroline Myss suggests, we are actually undergoing an evolution as a species in the ability to perceive more of the reality in which we live.
Priest, sociologist, author, and researcher Father Andrew Greeley investigated people who had mystical visions to find out what they had in common. His findings do away with the hypothesis that people who have such experiences are either religious fanatics or candidates for locked wards. His research indicated that people who have nonlocal encounters tend to be quite ordinary, slightly above average in education and intelligence, and a bit below the median in religious involvement. When tested psychologically, they scored at the top of the scale for healthy personalities.
Now, while experiences of nonlocal mind may be common, the challenge is to demonstrate scientifically that we can affect one another with our thoughts. A fascinating experiment conducted at the Mind Science Foundation in San Antonio, Texas, shows just that. Researchers William Braud and Marilyn Schlitz did 13 separate experiments in which a total of 271 volunteers from the community were hooked up to sensitive biofeedback equipment that monitored their level of tension or relaxation. The individual ability of a total of 62 other volunteers to influence their tension or relaxation levels at a distance was assessed. The influencers were instructed to either try to calm or excite the research subjects, who were in a distant room, by creating mental images of tension or relaxation for themselves and then strongly intending to send those images to the subject, while also imagining the output of the biofeedback equipment moving in the desired direction.
The subjects had no idea whether they were being sent calming or exciting thoughts, and yet they responded to these mental intentions consistently and reliably from trial to trial at a level that reached statitistical significance. Many subjects reported picking up specific images that the influencer had, in fact, sent.
These experiments indicate that the ability to influence others with our mental images at a distance is common, rather than confined to a few people with special ability. As Larry Dossey has noted, this is both good news and bad news. On the positive side, he comments in Healing Words that “Subjects with a greater need to be influenced—that is, those for whom the influence would be beneficial—seem more susceptible,” and also that “the transpersonal imagery effect is not invariable. Subjects appear capable of shielding or preventing the effect if it is unwanted.”
Do you have friends or family in whose presence you feel particularly peaceful, while others make you nervous or seem to suck the energy right out of you? Many cultures recommend variants of the following egg-of-light exercise to shield your energy body from being polluted by other people's thoughts, and to protect other people from being harmed by your thoughts.
Try reading this exercise through once or twice and noting the main points. Then give it a try. We recommend using it every morning when you get up. You may wish to tape it for yourself, repeating the directions slowly until the exercise becomes second nature. Pause briefly at the dots until you have experienced or imagined what the instructions say.
EGG-OF-LIGHT EXERCISE
Begin by taking a good stretch, and then allow your eyes to close…. Focus lightly on your breathing, noticing the way that your body rises slightly as you breathe in and relaxes down as you breathe out…. As you settle gently into observing the tide of your incoming and outgoing breath, your concentration can become more and more focused….
Now, in the space above you and slightly in front of you, imagine a great star of loving light…. Allow the light to cascade over you like a waterfall and to run through you….Imagine the light entering the top of your head and running down through and between every cell, the way that a river washes through the sand on its bottom…. Allow the river of light to carry away any fatigue, illness, or negativity and wash it out through the bottoms of your feet into the earth for transformation….
As the river of light washes through you, imagine that it is scrubbing away any darkness around your heart, allowing the light within you to shine more and more brightly….joining with the river of light….filling you and extending around you for two or three feet in every direction like an enormous, luminous egg….
Make a firm mental declaration that any thoughts of love and encouragement will penetrate the egg and reach your heart, while any negative thoughts will bounce off the egg and return to the sender as a blessing. Declare also that your own loving thoughts will penetrate the egg and reach their destination, while your negative thoughts will bounce off the interior of the egg and return you to the awareness of lovingkindness and encouragement.
Anytime during the day that you feel anxious, assaulted by someone's energy, or fatigued, try the egg-of-light exercise. After you are used to doing it, you can place yourself in the egg almost instantaneously.
