A radio listener asked me recently, “Is it true we can use our thought or mind to heal ourselves and others?”
I said, yes, because our mind is so powerful it can even affect matter and move objects.
I think it was the philosopher, William James, sometimes called the Father of Modern Psychology, who said that the average human being uses only 10 percent of his mental capacity. I think we use even less than that.
There are vast recesses of the human psyche that have remained untapped, and only in the last two decades have neuro scientists begun to probe deeper into its mysteries and powers.
My guest on radio when this question was asked was an internationally known Filipino faith healer and psychic surgeon who is now based in Europe.
Some listeners asked him to heal them at a distance, and gave him their full name and age. He said he would do so, and that he regularly included distant healing as part of his daily practice.
At this point a skeptical listener sent us a text message saying that my guest was a fake healer because only psychological or psychosomatic illnesses could be cured by faith healing and not organic ailments. He even added an insulting statement that my guest “ought to have his mind examined.”
I replied that obviously this listener was not aware of several scientific studies done on the power of our mind to heal. I mentioned, for example, the study conducted by Dr. Larry Dossey at the San Francisco General Hospital.
He divided heart patients into two groups. He gave the names of the members of Group A to a group of monks 50 miles away to pray for. Group B was not prayed for. None of these people was told about the experiment.
At the end of the experimental period, the results were compared. Those in Group A who were prayed for exhibited remarkable and unexplained recovery, whereas those in Group B did not exhibit the same degree of improvement.
According to Dossey, if what was given to Group A was a drug or pill, it would have been considered a miracle drug. But since it was prayer that did it, the results were completely ignored by medical scientists.
Largely ignored
The same thing happened to the studies of visualization or imagery to heal cancer patients which were done by Dr. Carl Simonton. Despite the statistics he presented to the medical communities, his findings were largely ignored by mainstream science. They are still largely ignored.
This is not surprising. To admit that such an intangible and rather subjective thing as imagery or prayer can heal would be to admit that medical science has been wrong all along about the causes of illness and their cure.
There are many safe modalities of healing that are completely ignored by the medical community because, for one thing, not all alternative healing modalities always work. This is true, but no medicine is 100 percent effective, either, and if you don’t die of your disease, you may die as a result of the drug’s side effects.
As far as I am concerned, if a particular healing technique or modality is at least 60 percent effective, even if 40 percent of the patients don’t get healed, I consider that technique worth trying, and it should not be ignored.
It is unfortunate that medical scientists, who ought to be more open-minded, tend to simply ignore and even immediately condemn a treatment that is new, unorthodox, or strange, without giving it a chance to be tried and tested.
As well-known neurosurgeon, Dr. C. Norman Shealy, pointed out in his 1975 book “Occult Medicine Can Save Your Life,” “No honest objective observer can dispute the fact that faith healers do heal–but there are still those who try to disprove it by citing individual instances of failure.”
I strongly believe that our minds play a very crucial role in our own health and well-being, and any healing modality that ignores the patient’s mind is bound to be inadequate, if not a failure.
ERRATUM:
Suicide attacks done by Japanese pilots during World War II are called “Kamikaze” and not “Hara kiri,” which is suicide due to dishonor. I wish to thank readers Dr. Eduardo Go and Emman Abalos for pointing out my error.
NOTE:
My next Inner Mind Development seminar will be held July 23-24, 2011 and The Soulmates, Karma & Reincarnation seminar on July 30, 201. Call tel. nos. 810 7245 and cell phone no. (0920) 9818962 for details; email the author at jaimetlicauco@yahoo.com. Visit our website at www.jimmylicauco.com.