(Part two)
One of the things that Western investigators fail to notice is the context of the healing activity of the so-called faith healers and psychic surgeons of the Philippines. Almost all the faith healers I have observed (over 35 of them) are members of a local religious group called the Union Espiritista Cristiana de Filipinas (or the Union of Christian Spiritists of the Philippines) based in Quezon City, but with thousands of members, mainly from Central Luzon, Bulacan, Pangasinan, Baguio and the Ilocos Region.
Various types of healing, including psychic surgery, were originally part of the Sunday religious service. A medium gives instructions from the spirit world on what to do. The group teaches members how to become mediums and healers. There are many types of mediums.
Some become prophets and make predictions. Others become evangelists and extremely few become psychic surgeons. According to this group, a person does not become a psychic surgeon (or medium operador) by choice, but the spirit chooses him or her. Members of this group are not allowed to accept money for their healing services. But if tempted to accept money, he or she had to resign and establish their own spiritist church.
Most members of the espiritista religion originally come from the rural areas and have little education, but later, there were a few individuals from the upper middle class and professionals who joined the organizations.
Biased views
Cutting the flesh with knives, like what Brazilian healers do, is possible, but doing this with one’s bare hands, taking out diseased tissues and tumors, is impossible. That is why Brazilian healers are more believed than Filipino psychic surgeons.
Just to show you how biased an opinion of the Western mind is when it comes to things that they do not understand, consider the following definition of psychic surgery from the internet:
“Psychic surgery is a pseudoscientific medical fraud in which practitioners create the illusion of performing surgery with their bare hands and use sleight-of-hand, fake blood and animal parts to convince the patient that diseased tissues have been removed and the incision has spontaneously healed.”
Notice that the words “fraud,” “sleight-of-hand” and “fake blood” are already included in the definition of psychic surgery. There is already a conclusion that the process is a complete sham or trickery. But as the Indian guru and philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti pointed out, “When thinking starts with a conclusion, thinking stops.”
European investigators and researchers looking into the phenomenon of Philippine psychic surgery seem to be more objective and open-minded than their American counterparts.
According to Dr. Hans Naegeli, Swiss psychiatrist, although some of the Filipino psychic surgeons may have indulged in trickery and deception, not all the operations or interventions done by those healers can be explained as mere trickery.
No fraud
“In fact,” continued Naegeli, “throughout my years of observations of these healers, I have never personally witnessed a fraud being committed by a healer.”
Naegeli was a member of a group of scientists, engineers and physicians mostly from Europe who conducted some of the most thorough and objective analyses of the phenomena of faith healing and psychic surgery in the Philippines. When they first published the report of their observations in 1973, they were bitterly criticized by the scientific and medical communities in Europe.
“They considered me a fool for believing in the power of faith healers.” Naegeli told me during an interview at his hotel in Manila. “But that does not matter. They are beginning to change their views now because we have the proof.”
I agree completely with Naegeli, because I also believe in the reality of psychic surgery based on laboratory proof in at least three cases: my own prostate gland operation, which was confirmed by ultrasound before and after operation; a lymph node excision confirmed by the laboratory at the University of Santo Tomas Hospital; and a broken splinter of bone that was restored to its place and confirmed by X-ray before and after the psychic surgery.
If you say that all crows are black, all I have to do is produce one white crow to demolish the argument. In the case of psychic surgery, there is not one but hundreds of instances of proof that it is real.