CHAPTER EIGHT
Just before Christmas of 1992, I had the unique opportunity of appearing on Geraldo (the popular daytime talk show) as “an expert on miracles.” While I don't claim that title myself, the producers assigned it to me so that I could comment on the fascinating experiences of a diverse group of panelists. They ranged from a woman who had been healed at Lourdes; to a bright, energetic young boy who had been dying from liver failure and transplant-related pneumonia when his mother begged the local newspaper to publish a plea for readers to pray for him. The paper estimated that more than a million people prayed for the child. Contrary to medical expectations, the boy made a rapid recovery within 48 hours. According to his mother, the hospital referred to her son as “their little Easter miracle.”
Many physicians are fascinated by the occurrence of such healings but blanch at the word miracle because it seems unscientific. In his superb book, Recovering the Soul: A Scientific and Spiritual Search, Dr. Larry Dossey provides an astute scientific framework that can house both medicine and miracles. Dr. Dossey outlines three eras, or epochs, in our understanding of medicine.
Era I is the scientific medicine we know today, which is still in its infancy. This era of mechanical medicine, which views the body as a machine, began to burgeon in the late 19th century. Based on a growing understanding of the cause of disease, specific cures could be found. In 1907, for example, Dr. Paul Ehrlich discovered that the great scourge of syphilis could be cured with arsenic. This was one of the first “magic bullets,” a specific treatment that could wipe out a dread disease. In the years that followed, other magic bullets were discovered. Vitamin C was found to cure scurvy, and insulin-replacement therapy allowed diabetics to live normal lives. By World War II, the sulfa drugs were commonly used to treat wound infections that might have been lethal in earlier times. Immunosuppressive drugs now allow for organ transplants that make the body-as-machine analogy a reality. Era I is a powerful, life-enhancing, life-saving form of medicine.
Era II medicine is the mind/body approach. As I learned from my stress-related illnesses in graduate school, sometimes we cannot be cured by magic bullets. Studies indicate that about 80 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related diseases or problems such as colds or flu that will go away on their own. Only a minority of ills require the magic bullets of Era I medicine. Until modern medicine came along, of course, mind/body medicine was well understood. The more subtle effects of belief, however, were overshadowed by the great breakthroughs in modern treatment. Only as we slowly began to realize some of the limitations of Era I has there been a resurgence of interest in the power of the mind to heal.
Era III medicine represents a quantum leap in the useful but incomplete paradigm upon which the first two eras are based. Era I medicine is based on the metaphor of body-as-machine, yet Era 11 is no less mechanistic. Most of the research in mind/body medicine, for example, really investigates the brain/body connection. Mind is still thought of as a local, mortal function of brain activity. Era III medicine is, in Dossey's words, “a radical departure from this model,” an opening into a world that is unlimited by space and time. Healing through prayer is an example of nonlocal mind acting on the body at a distance.
Caroline Myss' stunning record of remote diagnosis is another Era III phenomenon, as is the occurrence of telesomatic illness. Do you remember my college friend Susan whom we discussed previously? When her sleeping body was thrown from bed half a world away from where her fiancé Vincent's car was hurtling over a cliff, a nonlocal telesomatic event was occurring.
The word telesomatic is derived from the Greek tele, meaning far off, and somatikos, meaning body. Telesomatic events, according to Dr. Dossey, are relatively common. For example, a son in New York has an episode of excruciating chest pain only to find that his father has just died of a heart attack in Boston. Telesomatic events seem to rely, in part, on an empathic bond between the people involved. While reading some of the research studies, I was struck by the way that we bear one another's pain, how we suffer together.
I have personally experienced two or three very brief episodes of depression during which I felt disorganized, unmotivated, and hopeless. These, I believe, were telesomatic events in which I picked up depression from other family members. In effect, I acted out their symptoms. Several of my patients have similarly complained of functioning as psychic sponges at times. The natural corollary of telesomatic illness, however, is telesomatic healing. There may be times when we feel uncharacteristically insightful, patient, compassionate, forgiving, or cheerful only to realize that a loved one has been working hard on their own healing, and we are reaping some of the benefits! The physics underlying nonlocality predicts what spiritual teachers from many traditions have said: Whenever any person heals, the whole community is uplifted.
The potential healing effects of prayer, the ability to diagnose at a distance, and telesomatic illness and healing definitely challenge the Era I world view of body-as-machine and mind as an emergent function of that machine. Yet, physicians and scientists are no less conversant with these possibilities than the rest of us; they are simply less comfortable discussing what can appear to be unscientific. In the late 1980s, I decided to break that medical silence at a meeting of obstetrician/gynecologists who had invited me to update them on psychoneuroimmunology and the body/ mind connection.
I was feeling frisky, so I asked the conference attendees whether they wanted my tame slides or my wild mind! They were tired. They'd seen a lot of slides and were ready for a break, so they opted for wild mind. We had a fascinating afternoon discussing near-death experiences, healing at a distance, and the few scientific studies that have been conducted on prayer. I was half expecting to dodge a volley of rotten tomatoes, if not a visit from the heresy police, but I was pleasantly surprised.
After the lecture, a group of physicians stood in line for over an hour to share cases in which prayer had resulted in miraculous healings. A reception followed, and I've never heard such excited discussion as these physicians recounted their personal experiences of nonlocal mind. One doctor told me that he'd known that consciousness was more than brain function since college. One night at a frat party he had drunk enough to induce alcohol poisoning. When he went back to his room and got into bed, he found himself floating above his body, accurately seeing details of the room clearly above the vantage point of his physical eyes.
In his fine book, Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine, Dr. Dossey ably reconciles science and prayer in part through a careful investigation of all the studies that have been conducted on the subject of prayer. There are a couple of very interesting ones. Perhaps the most famous of them was published in the Southern Medical Journal in July of 1988 by a cardiologist, Dr. Randolph Byrd, who was working at the San Francisco General Hospital. He conducted a randomized, controlled, double-blind study—the gold standard of good science.
Four hundred patients who were admitted to the coronary intensive-care unit with a heart attack or suspected heart attack were assigned to one of two groups: standard intensive care only, or intensive care plus prayer at a distance. Groups of people who met for the purpose of prayer were given the names of the patients and told a little bit about their condition. Each patient had first signed an informed consent form that specified that they had an equal chance of being prayed for. They could, of course, pray for themselves, or their friends and relatives could pray for them. But with such a large number of people in the study, the laws of chance are such that all other prayer being equal, the specific variable in the study would be the extra prayer from the prayer groups.
Since the study was double-blind, neither the patients nor the staff knew who was being prayed for. This is critical, since if you knew you were being prayed for and if you believed in prayer, you would definitely improve due to the placebo effect—a powerful phenomenon in which your own mind is affecting your body. If the hospital staff knew who was being prayed for, they might have given preferential treatment to one or the other group. So, the double-blind model is an important aspect of this research.
Dr. Byrd found that the prayed-for group fared significantly better than the nonprayed-for group on several counts: They were less likely to develop congestive heart failure and pulmonary edema (where the lungs fill with fluid); they were five times less likely to require antibiotics; fewer needed to be put on ventilators and receive artificial respiration; even fewer developed pneumonia or had cardiac arrests; and fewer died, although this last finding was not statistically significant.
In addition to a handful of studies involving human beings, there is a somewhat larger body of literature that reveals how simpler life forms have been subjected to prayer. Some of the most interesting findings come from the Spindrift Foundation in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, whose purpose is the scientific study of prayer. Some of their early studies involved seeds soaked in salt water to inhibit germination. When such seeds were prayed for, significantly more of the prayed-for seeds germinated compared to unprayed-for controls. (In fact, if you want to replicate this study, you can write to Spindrift for a home prayer study kit at the address in the resource section at the back of this book!)
The Spindrift researchers make a point of distinguishing between directed and nondirected prayer. Directed prayer specifies a particular outcome, such as increased germination. The spiritual healer Agnes Sanford calls this “scientific” prayer and specifies how to go about it in her classic book, The Healing Light. It is a three-step process that involves (1) feeling a connection to the mind of God that is in all things, (2) seeing the results of the prayer as already accomplished, and (3) giving thanks. She hastens to say, however, that if our prayers are not in accordance with Divine will, nothing will come of them. Nondirected prayer is what the Spindrift researchers call a “pure and holy qualitative consciousness of whoever or whatever is being prayed for.” Rather than having a specific goal, it is a prayer for the highest good or for the best potential to manifest. In the Spindrift experiments, both types of prayer were successful in increasing gemination.
The philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm once said that a good mother looks upon her child with a “passion for the possible.” What a great definition of nondirected prayer! In a Harvard study, teachers were given a list of students who were supposed to be ready to make great strides academically according to test results. In fact, the list of their names had been chosen at random. But at the end of the year, those students had blossomed. Their best potential had indeed expressed itself. It may be that the teachers looked for any sign of success and encouraged it outwardly. But perhaps the results were also related to the encouraging mental image they held of these students—a form of nondirected prayer.
Stop and reflect for a moment. Think about your family members, friends and the people you interact with on the job. Are your thoughts about them loving and encouraging, or they are limiting and critical? You don't have to believe in God or invoke a Higher Power to be praying. Every thought and attitude is a kind of prayer.
Read the rest of this paragraph, and then try this exercise before going on. Take a nice stretch, and then allow your eyes to close. Begin to focus your mind by paying attention to your breathing. Notice the way that your body rises gently as you breathe in, and how it relaxes down as you breathe out…Now, bring a family member or friend to mind in as much detail as you can. Imagine that you can look deeply into his or her eyes, directly to their soul….See the beauty and creative promise in this person. Mentally encourage their potential, affirming “What a talented, loving person you really are.” If you feel inspired, do this exercise for a few more people.
When I was a cancer cell biologist at Tufts Medical School, I had a good friend who was a clinical cancer specialist. During those years, I was collecting journal articles and case studies about the small number of people who had spontaneous remissions from cancer. “Dave” used to laugh at me when we discussed these unexpected healings. His point of view was that if cancer could be cut out or burned out before it had spread, you were lucky. Your good luck extended to chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease and a few other lymphomas. But in all other cases, Dave believed, if the cancer had spread, you were going to die. He was sure that spontaneous remissions were all misdiagnoses. Even though Dave was an extremely caring, gentle man, would you want him to be your oncologist? Think about the “prayers” that his limited thinking represent.
Some patients have told me that they have a certain sense about their doctor, an intuition that goes beyond the physician's bedside manner or the decor in the office. One woman told me that she couldn't help thinking of her oncologist as Dr. Death, an eponym that predated the appearance of Dr. Jack Kevorkian (who is well known for helping patients die through assisted suicide). If your intuition tells you that you are visiting Dr. Death, don't worry about people-pleasing or standing on formalities. Resign from the relationship, and seek out a doctor who feels life-affirming to you. Our friend and colleague Dr. Bernie Siegel says that most people invest more time picking out a new car than they do in finding a doctor upon whom their life may depend. The respect, hope, and encouragement of health professionals are prayers that allow the power of their minds to help us heal.
