The Blueprint of Perfect Health
The experience of having an eternal living soul has been part of human conviction from antiquity. In the 1940s, Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychiatrist, studied people around the world and reported that approximately 90 percent of individuals—in virtually all cultures—believe in
The soul may be thought of as a personalized expression of the universal field, as the divine aspect of a human being, of God expressed at the level of a single being, or as personhood made manifest through pure consciousness, as opposed to physical or mental form.
Jung stated that people who do not share the age-old beliefs listed above do not thrive. We believe that an existential crisis of doubt about purpose or spiritual meaning in life is a major root cause of many illnesses. Soul connection promotes health, and obstructions to soul connection promote disease.
For a person who embraces the sacred as the foundation for all life, the physical body is primarily a mechanism for soul expression on the physical level. It is consciousness—and its links with spirit or soul, and through that with God—that has the capability to convey the sacred to the material world. Human consciousness can reflect the qualities and intentions of soul consciousness. When human consciousness does not reflect and transmit the qualities and powers of that soul, we discover that significant psychological and physical illness can result.
Modern medicine began to forget the power of sacred healing centuries ago, and embarked on a materially focused healing path. The sacred aspect of human beings has been largely ignored by medicine ever since. Allopathic medical practice does not account for the link between healing, the soul, and God. Yet studies and experiments are increasingly challenging this mechanistic model, and providing us with hard empirical evidence of effects of soul medicine that conflict with purely mechanistic explanations of how life works.
Study of the mechanism of a piano will reveal very little about the nature of sound. The music of the piano will reveal little of the nature of the consciousness of the pianist. A study of the automobile will reveal a bit about the nature of metal and engines but nothing about the driver or the engineers who designed the car. Likewise, the study of the physical body in itself reveals nothing specific about the nature of the spirit or the divine or the sacred. Yet the pragmatic experience of many practitioners from many healing specialties reveals that we are endowed with tremendous resources within to heal both physical and emotional problems.
Doctors, science writers, and researchers have danced around the concept of the soul for a generation. We’ve been prepared to document the correlation between spirituality and health, but we’ve been reluctant to stick our necks out and wonder what’s actually causing all these health effects. It’s one thing to summarize research indicating a link between belief and healing, and quite another to ascribe healing to the thing believed in. In Soul Medicine, we examine the overwhelming evidence for sacred healing. We list the many forms through which it flows. We look at some of the remarkable physical mechanisms that link the spiritual and material aspects of human beings. We assume the existence of the soul. And we also take the next great leap, arguing that if there is a soul, it can express abundantly through the body, mind and emotional realm of each person. It is also our personal experience that healing flows through this soul connection, and that removing blocks to this flow promotes health. The connection between soul and body is made through consciousness, actuated by intention; changes in consciousness trigger changes in health.
The Three Pillars of Soul Medicine
The premise of soul medicine is this: We allow the perfect consciousness of health contained in the soul to express freely in the patient’s energy system. Through this intention, healing is triggered in heart, mind, and body.
Soul medicine rests on three pillars. The first is the concept of the human being as an energy system. Healing is approached at the level of the energy system first, not at the level of the presenting condition. Illnesses, diseases and symptoms are respected. They are considered as valuable guides, prompting both healer and patient to notice energy imbalances and correct them. They are sources of information, rather than simply nuisances to be made to vanish. Energy systems are matrices of connection; a change in any one part changes the whole, and a change in the whole rearranges the parts. A change in the energy field works itself outward into physical change, and can clear a symptom.
Essentially, everything in the universe as we understand it is energy. Every atom in the body vibrates at a certain energy level. Collectively, each of us has a unique individual “energy signature.” We are all electromagnetic entities. Our soul has a field of a certain vibrational frequency, as we will discover when we delve deeply into the subject of electromagnetism and healing. When we consciously bring our minds and hearts to a similar vibration, so that they are functioning in the same vibrational range as our soul, then there is resonance between them, and reciprocal communication between their energies. This allows healing to flow effortlessly through to the body.
There is abundant experimental evidence that there are many currents of energy coursing through each human body. They are responsible for the health of all the major systems, and organs. They control the regeneration of cells, the development of the fetus, the speed of recovery from disease, the expression of certain genes, and many vital functions.
We cannot measure the soul in the same way we measure a material phenomenon, yet we are beginning to be able to measure some of ways in which energy shifts during soul healings. Highly intuitive individuals from all cultures have been able tune into this dimension for millennia. They see energy in and around human bodies. Science is now mapping many of the phenomena which they have been able to perceive. Ervin Lazlo reminds us that, “The shift in science’s view of the world is reflected already in the most fundamental notions we have of reality: matter and space… In the emerging concept there is no ‘absolute matter,’ only an absolute matter-generating energy field. Space-time… is a virtual-energy medium that can be perturbed—one that can create patterns and waves. Light and sound are traveling waves in this continuous energy field, and tables and trees, rocks and swallows, and other seemingly solid objects are standing waves in it.”1 Soul medicine seeks to perturb the virtual energy of space-time in the direction of health, and to measure the changes in energy fields produced by this perturbation.
Consciousness: The Second Pillar
The second pillar of soul medicine is consciousness. Energy systems are affected by consciousness. A change of consciousness automatically changes the energy system. Consciousness is the first place to turn when seeking healing.
Consciousness is implicit throughout the universe, and our souls connect our local selves to that greater consciousness. Consciousness connects us to the quantum field in which all things are possible. Physicist Arthur Eddington observed: “the stuff of the world is mind-stuff… The mind-stuff is not spread in space and time… Recognizing that the physical world is entirely abstract and without ‘actuality’ apart from its linkage to consciousness, we restore consciousness to the fundamental position.”2 Soul medicine restores consciousness to its rightful position at the forefront of healing. The conscious person notices the many potential outcomes present in the field, and by intention, nudges the field in the direction of the highest possible outcome. When human consciousness holds a strong intention of being one with divine consciousness, allowing itself to be conditioned by the consciousness of the soul, then the enormously expanded range of possibilities present in soul awareness, including miraculous healings, become possible. The reality picture of the soul becomes the reality picture of the body.
The work of faith healers provides a living example of the healing effects of consciousness. Their awareness appears to be unbounded by the limits of consciousness of most of humankind, and they seem to be able to transmit that healing faith to those that seek their touch. Faith healing has been with us since the dawn of time; a miraculous cure that usually occurs through the laying on of hands, originally by kings or priests, but in modern times by a number of religious and spiritually oriented practitioners. Kathryn Kuhlman, Ostad Parvarandeh, and—the most studied of all—Ambrose and Olga Worrall, are but a few of these modern healers. We have learned much by analyzing them, and discovering how energy flows during their treatments. Yet it has pointed us inevitably toward recognizing that while these miracle healers are particularly adept at channeling energy, there is something happening in their consciousness that sets them apart. They always ascribe their powers to God, and they invariably have strong spiritual practices or religious affiliations.
Even people who don’t think of themselves as spiritual or intuitive may experience soul consciousness during peak experiences. Peak experiences occur when the focus of our identity shifts from our bodies, our minds, and our circumstances—the mire of thinking—to the realm of pure awareness, unmediated by thought. Meditators seek this experience on a daily basis; mystics in every moment. In an ecstatic spiritual state consciousness in which the boundaries of personal and eternal dissolved, the poet Rumi exclaimed:
A secret turning in us
Makes the universe turn!3
Such is the conscious experience of being one with soul. In this state, the distinctions between one’s own personal soul, and the universal soul, vanish. Your participation in the experience of your own soul makes you one with the experience of all soul. Individualized soul is thus our gateway to the experience of universal soul. David Fagerberg, a Catholic theologian at the University of Notre Dame, observes that, “‘The human being is microcosmic.’ Being a microcosm of God, he said, ‘does not mean a fraction of the whole, it means that everything in the whole can be found here in a smaller scale.’”4 During peak meditative and healing experiences, the experiencer sees only the perfection of that macrocosm. Perceptions of limitation, whether they be physical disease, confinement, emotional turmoil, doubt, worry, or anxiety, all fall away. They are replaced by a state of pervasive peace, and a sense that all is well.
This is the consciousness in which the medicine of the soul may flow into the body. It draws on the power of the universal soul, particularized in the individual soul, to promote healing. It connects with the epigenetic blueprint of healing available at the soul level; at that level, all healing is possible, even miraculous cures. By identifying with that soul level, and the blueprint for health contained at that level, the image of greater perfection can migrate into the concrete physical reality of one’s mind, heart, and body.
Even when a person does not have the faith to gain access to the perfect blueprint of health contained at the soul level, they may be healed by contact with a healer who does have that faith. A healer may see the perfection inherent at the universal level, having the consciousness that, “God sees John as perfect”—and by the strength of his or her conviction, midwife the perfection of the soul’s healing power into a diseased body. A patient’s faith—even in a surgeon or pharmacist—is an enormous portion of the cure. As Jesus said, “Thy faith has made thee whole.”
Intention: The Third Pillar
The third pillar of soul medicine is intention. Affecting energy, projected into the field of consciousness, intention is what shapes a healing outcome. Without intention, the potential in the field of consciousness remains untapped. The healer engages that latent potential through the power of intention. A master healer is able to hold intention even when the patient’s intention has broken down. Weak or conflicted intentions can never be as effective at producing healing as strong and unambiguous intentions.
Intention provides the power, the motive force, to set in motion the complex chain of events that results in healing. The potential for a cure may have been present in a patient’s genome before a visit to a master healer, but it is not set in motion until the healer’s intention begins to condition the patient’s energy field. All the ingredients were there in the field, and the recipe of health was available in the form of a genetic blueprint. Then, the healer’s intention provides the organizing principle around which the healing event takes place. Intention conditions the field of consciousness, reorganizing energy into the configuration required for healing.
The intent of our soul is that our body be healthy. At the soul level, we have access to healing wisdom, and the infinite knowledge of the Great Soul, the accumulated wisdom of the quantum field of infinite possibilities. There are healing possibilities in this infinite field that are completely beyond the borders of our present knowledge. When we still our busy minds, and attune our experience to the vibration of the soul, we have access to those healing possibilities. Intention then trips the switch to put them into concrete expression as wellness.
Healers are people who have become adept at attuning their personal energy fields to the imprints of health present in the infinite field, and holding a powerful intention for healing in another. When a sick person enters the field of a healer, and is infected by the healer’s intention, their field is conditioned by that of the healer and reorganized, producing an effect different from that produced by the sick person. Yet the field exists independent of a particular healer, and, with intention, can be accessed by any of us. The mind itself, we are discovering, can transcend time and space, and enter realms in which time as we know it does not exist. These capacities have seemed mysterious, yet science is now catching up; very recent research is beginning to provide us with an outline of some of the processes at work in soul medicine. Healing—mediated by consciousness, and activated by intention—occurs when the patient’s energy system is triggered to conform to the soul’s blueprint.
The Many Faces of Soul Medicine
Many therapies facilitate soul healing. The method that you use to connect with the consciousness of perfection contained in your soul is less important than the fact of connection. It is making the connection that allows healing to flow. Many therapies—perhaps all therapies—make the connection. Even drugs and surgery may have their most powerful effects by stimulating the patient’s belief system. In later chapters we will review some of the hundreds of research studies showing that most of the results of drugs and surgery are attributable to patients’ belief in their efficacy. Drugs and surgery, where they are effective, may derive most of their effectiveness from soul medicine, the engagement of the patient’s conscious belief system. Edgar Cayce observed that, “Perhaps, in reality, the doctor, psychologist, and priest are the workers at the same laboratory table, the molders of the same ductile clay, three tenders of the same divine fire.”5
Soul medicine seeks to safely remove the blocks and barriers to the flow of energy through our systems according to that soul blueprint, whether those blocks be spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, or energetic. The concept of soul medicine ties together many consciousness- and energy-based therapeutic healing modalities. Therapies that put us in touch with that soul connection are all part of the field of soul medicine. They include many of the modalities grouped together as “complementary and alternative medicine,” or CAM, as well as prayer, healing touch, and faith healing. Some of those we will delve into in subsequent pages are:
Soul medicine is a unifying concept that explains why so many different therapies work. By fostering the understanding that human beings are energy systems, it tells us that whenever some portion of the energy field is affected by a treatment, the entire system is affected. An intervention at any one point affects the whole energy body. Professor Helen Graham of Keele University writes, “These new conceptions of reality require bodies, health and disease to be viewed as dynamic processes rather than discrete entities, and understood in terms of patterns of relationships with the organism and its environment rather than in terms of separate parts.”6
A treatment that promotes the free flow of energy, or an increase in energy at some point, is an effective treatment. Soul medicine is a collection of treatments that remove energy blockages and permit the free flow of energy. Which treatment is used depends on what is most effective for that condition or that patient. Any of the above modalities can be effective at promoting increased energy flow. Soul medicine is not invested in any one modality; it is invested in increasing the energy flow in the whole system. Soul medicine does not favor Ayurveda over chiropractic, or biofeedback over prayer. It recognizes that certain modalities work well for certain conditions, and that some patients are more responsive to a particular therapy than another.
As a conceptual approach to healing, soul medicine is invaluable. By focusing on the energy system as a whole, and by portraying treatment as a means to increasing energy flow, it simultaneously explains how many different treatments can be effective, and seeks to pinpoint the particular therapy that provides the most powerful leverage point for each patient’s energy system.
Energy Healing as Primary Care
Soul medicine consciously focuses on therapies without negative side effects. Rather than going first to metabolism-altering drugs and risky surgical procedures, you can open up the vast natural pharmacopoeia of your body by engaging the positive beliefs and intentions that reside in soul consciousness. Safe and noninvasive procedures like prayer, energy healing, acupuncture, lifestyle change, electromagnetic stimulation, and the others on this list, are much safer than drugs and surgery—and have none of the miles-long list of side effects associated with many of them. Soul medicine is the first step in responsible medical treatment.
Soul medicine redirects the focus of healing away from symptoms, and away from a focus on the outer manifestations of disease. It focuses on the spiritual connection between the soul and body, and seeks to remove blockages to the free flow of energy between soul and body. It operates on the assumption that removing those blockages and allowing a free flow of energy will have an effect on the symptoms, and open the door for “miraculous” cures such as the ones described above. The therapies in this list all have the potential to remove such blockages and open the gates of energy to permit healing.
While a concept such as soul medicine would have been a metaphysical curiosity a generation ago, today it is on the leading edge of scientific research. In this book, we reference hundreds of scientific studies that point to the link between spirituality and healing, between energy therapies and healing, between beliefs and intentions and healing, between prayer and healing, and between faith and healing. Some were performed a century ago; some were published just days before this book went to press. The evidence is piling so high that it is impossible to ignore. We also examine some of the thousands of accounts of miraculous cures that occur in the course of soul medicine.
Yet for all the weight of research quoted in this book, our scientific understanding of soul medicine is at its infancy. We believe that medicine is on the threshold of an explosion of new research into the links between spirit and body that will illuminate the mechanisms by which healing takes place. The reason for this research interest is that the effects of soul medicine on healing can be enormous, often far more dramatic than the best drug or surgery available. As the research studies pile ever higher, they are stimulating a revolution in the practice of medicine and healing that ripples through every corner of the world.