Soul, Mind and Medicine in History
Picture, in your mind, walking into a hospital or clinic. You can probably easily imagine a pile of ancient, tattered magazines in a waiting room. You’re probably familiar with the scent of antiseptic cleansers on scrubbed walls and floors. You see gleaming metal instruments, bright lights, and elaborate machines. The staff dress in white coats or green scrubs, and may wear surgical masks or caps. Everyone is busy. Pagers, phones, machines and monitors punctuate the background noise of mechanical hum. Newness is everywhere. This is the face of technological medicine, the only medicine with which many Westerners are familiar.
Now imagine walking into a church, or a house of worship. Stillness reins. If there is sound, it is subdued. Soft music designed to soothe and uplift the soul may be heard. Priests and church officers wear the traditional garments of their orders. Ancient rituals, symbols, and hierarchies abound. The scent of well-worn pews and ancient leather hymnals may permeate the air, or perhaps the odor of incense. The whole experience contributes to an atmosphere of reverence.
No one walking into a church imagines that they are walking into a hospital. No one walking into a hospital imagines that they are stepping into a religious sanctuary. Yet this clinical separation of medicine and religion is a recent phenomenon. It was not always so. From the earliest human times, perhaps 100,000 years ago, when trepanning (the boring of holes into the skull) was performed to let out the evil spirits, healing and religion have been intertwined. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Many would hold that the most important function of religion has been that of healing—the diagnosis of the cause of evil and mental and physical sickness, and the development of techniques for its cure.” Britannica goes on to state, “Rarely can a religious leader succeed unless he can heal; no religion has survived that does not heal.”
All great religions include healing in one form or another, ranging from blessings and exorcisms to purification. Ritual formulas, prayers and gestures invoke supernatural power; the power of God can protect the devotee and grant everything from health and fertility to the acquisition of wealth. Also, most religions employ charms and amulets, from rosaries to magical mojos, which are blessed in various sacramental ceremonies to perform sacred tasks, ranging from physical protection, to divine guidance.
In many religions, illness is considered to result from behavioral or moral transgressions. The concept of confession or repentance in the face of disease is common. Religious myths speak of gods, heroes and holy people as healers.
The Divine Origins of Disease
Many religious traditions have viewed disease as being caused by deities, demons and devils. Exorcism, purgatives, internal cleansing and surgery have all been recommended as cures for such predicaments.
Some diseases are associated with loss of soul. A specialty of some shamans, especially among Native Americans, is retrieving parts of the soul that are thought to have become dislocated or lost. This process is accompanied by meditation, special magical incantations and ceremonies.
Sinning—when an individual has violated a divine law prescribed by his or her religion—has also been viewed as the cause of illness. In this case, curing comes through confession, repentance, enlightenment or the intervention of a holy healer.
The Bible says that the ancient Israelite King Saul visited a woman at Endor. She materialized the spirit of the great prophet Samuel, who prophesied for Saul. Saint Paul, the founder of Christianity as an organized religion, began his mission after having a vision of Jesus. Though mediums have undoubtedly existed throughout history, human spiritual mediums appear to have achieved widespread acceptance after 1848.
Spiritualism grew out of this mid-nineteenth-century phenomenon. William James, among others, and Gardner Murphy, the great psychologist from the Menninger Foundation, were members of the American Society for Psychic Research. The various spiritualist organizations, ranging from Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship to the Association of Research and Enlightenment, founded by Edgar Cayce and his followers, have emphasized a connection with God and moral principles as the foundation for life. From a spiritualist’s perspective, wrong mental (spiritual) thoughts (belief, intent) precipitate disease. The spirit is directly connected with a universal energy called God.
Traditional Healing Practices
Throughout history, the afflicted have sought religious healing in three ways: traveling to a sacred spot (such as one where there is special water to cleanse themselves); consulting a holy person; or obtaining help through a religious object.
Healing Via Water
Springs or temples have typically been the sites to which pilgrimages have been made. Even the Indian Vedic tradition states, “The waters are indeed healers; the waters drive away and cure all illnesses.”
Water is seen as the source of light both in mythology and science. It is also used in physical and psychological cleansing. Hot springs and mineral waters have long been a feature of spas and health resorts. Evidence from the Neolithic and Bronze Ages indicates interest in such spas in France, Italy, and Switzerland associated with religious and healing traditions. In all, several hundred springs and rivers have been considered to have healing powers:
The belief that water with healing abilities is charged by a divine presence or a blessing is ancient. Lourdes, in France, is perhaps the world’s best-known example. The famous spring achieved its reputation in 1858 after a number of people had visions there of the Virgin Mary. The baths at Scafati, Italy, also contain a shrine to the Madonna. The feast of the Conception of St. John the Baptist is often associated with special healing days. John, of course, baptized his followers by submersion in water.
From ancient times, a belief has existed in the efficacy of certain rivers in restoring fertility to barren women. Civic, church and private religious healing has taken place at many great rivers. The Euphrates river in Iraq, the Abana and Pharpara in Damascus, the Jordan in Israel, the Tiber in Italy, the Nile in Egypt and the Ganges, Jumna, or Saravati in India have all been associated with purification from transgression, cure of disease and mythical protection into the future.
Healing at Sacred Places
The holy epiphanies are cemeteries or burial places for saints or holy individuals. They are usually surrounded by sacred trees, stones or mountain peaks and are often considered as healing shrines. A good example is the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem undertaken by many Christians at Easter time. It is interesting that more people go there at the calendar-appointed time of Jesus’ death than his birth!
One of the more unusual saints, Saint Rita of Cassea (1381-1456), was reported to have had an incorruptible body. As late as 170 years after her death, Pope Urban XIII viewed the body and reported it to be “as perfect as it had been on the day of her death, with the flesh still of a natural color.” About that time, it is reported that her eyes opened and caused a riot! Reportedly, Saint Rita planted a piece of dry wood, watered it each day, and the sticks sprouted into a healthy grapevine, which still bears fruit some 500 years later. The harvest is distributed to high-ranking ecclesiastics. The leaves are dried, made into a powder and sent to the sick around the world. The Blessed Antonio Vici (1381-1461) is another holy figure said to have an incorruptible body. His burial site is reported to have been the scene of miracles of healing.1
Holy Healers
A number of monastic orders throughout the world were associated with healing. Some examples are the Knights Hospitalers, the Augustinian Nuns, the Order of the Holy Ghost, the Sorrotes Order and, of course, the Franciscan Order in Europe. Various aspects of the Asclepiads in Greece, the Vomans in India and the Vaidya caste in Bengal also practiced healing. The shamans of many Indian tribes in the Americas have long combined religious and healing practices. Often, healers in indigenous cultures as well as Western civilization trace their knowledge back to the gods.
Perhaps the Franciscan Order has been one of the most successful in maintaining the healing reputation. Many Catholic churches in this country were created by various Franciscan orders of nurses. In the Episcopal church, St. Luke has been the patron saint of hospitals. The Lutheran denomination has also been much associated with hospitals and healing.
Not only priests, kings and holy people have possessed the ability to cure. Ordinary individuals have also demonstrated the special power to heal. Sometimes this power comes on spontaneously in a vision; sometimes it has been sought out by the individual through long periods of meditation, or by mortification of the body. Some of the great religions were founded by individuals with the ability to heal.
There were many well-known Christian healers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some of them also founded religions or religious organizations. Among them are John of Kronstadt, Furst zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst, Leslie Weatherhead, Edgar Cayce, Oral Roberts, Kathryn Kuhlman, Phineas Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy, Ernest Holmes, and Myrtle and Charles Fillmore.
Mary Baker Eddy founded Christian Science based on Phineas Quimby’s work. Quimby, the fountainhead for the entire New Thought movement, focused on healing, and out of that work came First Christian Science. Then came Unity, founded by Myrtle and Charles Fillmore, and Religious Science, founded by Ernest Holmes.
Oral Roberts, at one time a Methodist minister, preached his healing services on radio and television for many years before founding a medical school and hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Katherine Kuhlman, also at one time active in the mainline Protestant Church, offered seminars throughout the country and was accepted even among the most fundamentalist of churches in Springfield, Missouri. Hundreds of people would attend her ceremonies, and those that came forward for healing were often thrown backwards onto the floor when she touched them.
Edgar Cayce has had a wider impact in the field than any other modern alternative healer. Cayce went into trances and did almost 15,000 “readings.” Two-thirds of these were related to health, and numerous people attested to healings when they applied the recommendations that Cayce made while in trances. The A.R.E. clinic in Phoenix was founded by doctors Gladys and William McGarey, emphasizing many of the principles first proposed by Cayce back in the 1930s and 1940s. One of these is the use of castor oil, the Palma Christe or palm of Christ. It has been demonstrated that a flannel cloth soaked in castor oil and placed on the abdomen with a heating pad will significantly improve immune functions. It is a remarkable palliative treatment for intestinal flu and cramping. Swollen knees also respond extremely well to this particular process. Using the Cayce recommendations, Dr. Gladys McGarey has inspired total recovery in numerous patients from the “fatal” disease of scleraderma.
Spirituality and Religion
Perhaps the most important book ever written in the field of religion and spirituality, The Varieties of Religious Experience, was penned by William James.2 Born in New York City in 1842, the brother of novelist Henry James, William was educated at Harvard where he also taught from 1872 until 1910. He did classical pioneering work in American psychology and philosophy and was regarded as the leading American philosopher of his time.
Although James admitted, “The field of religion being as wide as this, it is manifestly impossible that I should pretend to cover it,” it is interesting that he stated, “...the founders of every church owe their power originally to the fact of their direct personal communion with the divine.”
The difference between religion and spirituality lies in that statement. Religions tend to establish ritual and dogma to support their particular ideological beliefs. Spirituality is a personal communion. with God, soul or divine energy. Yet the beliefs of all religions reveal a great deal in common. These similarities were summarized by Dr. Marcus Bach, one of the great mystics and theologians of the twentieth century, in tables on the adjoining pages.
The similarities between the world’s religions, on virtually all the great questions of faith, are remarkable. While their external observances may vary wildly, there is almost complete unanimity in their common values. By focusing on those shared values, we may avoid all of the many conflicts that arise from a fixation on the form of worship.
New Thought and Mind-Cure Religions
William James proclaimed that religion is basically a cry for help. This cry for help might take the form of belief in what he called “mind-cures.” Mind cures were a logical consequence of the positive theology of the New Thought religions like Christian Science, Unity, Religious Science, and Divine Science. These churches he considered to be “deliberately optimistic,” both speculative and practical.
James traced the principles behind mind-cures to a combination of the teachings of the Gospels, to Emersonian or New England transcendentalism, to Berkeleyan idealism, to spiritism, and to Hinduism. Law, progress and development were added to intuitive faith in the healing power of “courage, hope and trust”; “doubt, fear, worry and all nervously precautionary states of mind” were considered harmful.
James went on to state that mind-cures had been observed to heal blindness, lameness and lifelong invalidism. No less impressive were the moral fruits of positive mind-cure belief. James proclaimed that “deliberate adoption” of positive thinking and cheerfulness led to extensive numbers of individuals achieving “regeneration of character.” James mentioned as part of the New Thought mind-cure movement the “Gospel of Relaxation” and the benefit of positive affirmations while going through daily routines.
James considered most mind-cure enthusiasts to be pantheistic (the doctrine that God is the transcendent reality of which the material universe and human beings are only manifestations).3 This movement incorporated the recently “discovered” Freudian-Jungian subconscious into its concept of humankind’s intrinsic unity with God. These beliefs aligned it with transcendental idealism, Hindu Vedantism, and Christian mysticism.
James also believed that the development of a personal core of love and harmony, emphasizing positivity instead of negativity, led to greater peace and equanimity, and freedom from anxiety and tension. He emphasizes the “wonder” that this transformation might be the result of simply relaxing. According to James, religion and spirituality provide us with a zest for life, a sense of peace, and a “preponderance” of love, all of which produce “effects psychological or material” in the physical world of our minds and bodies.
During the same century that scientific technology increased the capabilities of modern medicine, the ideas of mind-cure that James described so eloquently developed in parallel, offering people greater serenity, happiness, and the prevention of certain forms of disease. Both science and positive religion led to improvements in health and well-being. In this way, the separation of soul and medicine that began with the Renaissance began to turn full circle. Today, modern research increasingly confirms the vital links between spirit and health. Rather than looking just at ever-improved drugs and surgeries, medicine is reclaiming its ancient roots in healing. The quality of emotional connection between doctor and patient is again receiving attention in medical settings.
When one walks into the building housing the Integrative Medical Clinic of Santa Rosa, California, a scene meets the eye that is very different from the fast-paced, high-tech, scrubbed and impersonal medical setting with which we began this chapter. You check in with a friendly receptionist, then sit on a comfortable couch in a spacious, sunny room with huge picture windows, while waiting for your consultation. You are surrounded by plants and fountains. A collection of books on healing is accessible in one corner, and an altar provides a quiet focal point for the room. In one corner, there is a play area for children, and a teaching setup for educational classes on enlightened self-care. The open space is used sometimes for movement classes.
You may have a consultation with a highly trained family physician. Alternatively, you may be scheduled for treatment with a nutritional doctor (N.D.), osteopath, psychologist, or somatic therapist. If you receive a prescription, it is as likely to be an herbal formulation as a pharmaceutical drug. If it’s a herbal or homeopathic remedy, the medical center has an onsite herbal formulary and kitchen, where your remedy will be prepared. A computer system allows the aromatherapist, psychotherapist or homeopath to determine what diagnosis the medical doctor has made for your condition. Yet the technology can’t disguise your sense that a spirit of genuine care and concern pervades each interaction you have in the medical center. You, the whole human being, are the focus of treatment.
Establishments like the Integrative Medical Center,4 that look completely unlike our traditional ideas of what a treatment center should be, are paving the way for a whole new paradigm of medicine. For the new medical paradigm, soul medicine is a fundamental assumption. It undergirds every aspect of the design of treatment. We don’t have to give up the wonders of biomedicine in order to benefit from the insights of complementary and alternative medicine. Science, technology, and conventional medicine are integrated into a treatment regimen that honors the whole human being. As the limitations of the old split become apparent in the collapse of our current “health care” system, science and spirituality are again converging to form a brilliant new synthesis in soul medicine.
