Knowing as Beginning Omni-disciplined Views on Intention and Healing; Bernard o Williams (Energies,...

7/30/2019 Knowing as Beginning Omni-disciplined Views on Intention and Healing; Bernard o Williams (Energies, Vol 19 No 1)

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Presidential Address

KNOWING AS BEGINNING:OMNI-DISCIPLINED VIEWS ONINTENTION AND HEALINGby Bernard Williams, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

The long history of healing traditions provides many paths, each offering unique and usefulinsight. Many cultures understand the power in aesthetic experience to repair body and soul.Research on healing with subtle energies and energy medicine requires multiple methods andperspectives; no one view is adequate to capture the rich complexity of our spiritual andembodied life. Understanding our own personal transformation is required to practice holistic

healing with integrity and compassion. This presentation offers multiple working hypotheses andperspectives for the exploration of learning and healing.

KEYWORDS: perception, intersubjectivity, compassion, multi-modal studies, radical empiricism, state-specific science, subjective experience, holistic healing, intention, transpersonal research methods, mind-body medicine

Subtle Energies & Energy Medicine Volume 19 Number 1 Page 77


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This presentation is not going to be linear.There are, however, going to be little cul-de-sacs in it that are linear. That's part of

what I want to talk about: linearity withinmultiple dimensions of rich complexity.

Linear thinking is so powerful and so usefulthat we can get trapped in it. I want todescribe some alternatives to linear thinking.I want to explore the kinds of researches thatI have the joy of working with all the timesince Ive been at Holos University andEnergy Medicine University.1,2 Continuallearning. Of course I was already learning.However, before I joined these doctoral

research programs, I didnt have as many very,very capable people to teach me. Thats whyI joined these faculties, so that I get to learneverything that all of our students create.

Thats what a graduate program is, aknowledge factory. That is the one essentialrequirement in the long tradition of theuniversity, to create new knowledge. Thisformal knowledge factory comes especiallyout of the German tradition, and earlierfrom Italy as well. The institution of theuniversity appeared in the Europeantradition of craftsmans guilds. The univer-sities were guilds of scholars. Guilds wereestablished by agreements with the cities.The guild of scholars had one advantageover other craft guilds: their tools were intheir minds, and if the city started

mistreating them, it was very easy for themto go to a different city. They were guildsespecially in the granting of the Mastersdegree, the master craftsman of knowledge.

But there is an additional requirement in theuniversity, beyond mastery of what is already

known. To become a doctor you mustextend beyond what is already known. Youcan only be a doctor by creating newknowledge thats why the doctoral degreeis awarded. From a less formal perspective,

we are all doctors, because we are all creatingnew knowledge every moment of our lives.Even though governmental regulators dont

want to use that language, we are all doctors.The university formalities have to do withpower issues, professional identities, certifi-cations, and so forth. And as scholars andprofessionals we do all these formal things.

We hang our parchments on the wall. The

formal institutions have a lot to do witheveryones level of comfort. If we are aprofessional, if we are a scholar, then ourknowledge is supposed to be reliable, etc.The formal processes provide people withconfidence and comfort. We do want toraise everyones confidence and comfort, but

we should also recognize that living a life iscreating new knowledge continually, in ourexperience.

KNOWLEDGEWhat I want to think about together withyou is this question: What is knowledge?My argument is that knowledge is only abeginning, and that we have to continuallyrecreate these beginnings. During these

wonderful four days at this conference,everyone has been manifestly teaching us

that there is not only one path toknowledge. Any one path is inadequate. Iam proposing that we need omni-disciplinedviews of intention and healing. Every littlepiece that we can add to our understanding,from every facet, can be important. Toreduce knowledge to one linear stroke is just



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silly. What we are working with inISSSEEM is all the traditions that we canfind.

Krishna advises Arjuna in the Bhagavad

Gita: Greater than any material sacrifice isthe sacrifice born of knowledge so theculmination of all work is wisdom. That

wisdom is what we seek, but not yet whatwe can claim. Knowing is the beginningon that path. I need to thank KrishnaMadappa, my dear colleague, for gracing me

with this quotation from the Gita, andgiving his blessings to our meeting room

today. What I want to share with you allhere is my response to these wonderful fourdays that weve had together, and also tolook forward to one year hence, to the nexttime that we will have four wonderful daystogether, when Jim Oschman will have thepleasure and the joy of doing what I'mdoing now, reflecting on our times together.

SEEKINGTo reflect both on our past and on ourfuture, I want to honor the Roman god

Janus, from whom we take the name of ourfirst month in the Gregorian calendar

January. Janus is the god of portals, wholooks both ways both into the future andinto the past, both into the space and outof the space (see Figure 1). I want to honor

Janus especially because that is our way of

being. We are both in our past and in ourfuture. So I'm going to try to look both

ways at once, in and out, up and down, atthe objective and the subjective, all at once,a view from all directions, an omni-disciplined observat ion. When I amengaged in our community endeavors, the

places that I usually spend my joyful timeare either Holos University GraduateSeminary, or Energy Medicine University. I

want to acknowledge how important it is tome to have the institutional support of these

wonderful gatherings and communities.

But again, how do we make the sacrificeadvised by Krishna, the sacrifice ofknowledge to seek wisdom? Where should

we seek? Where can we find that for whichwe look? Not where we are looking. Wehave to look somewhere else. We have tobe very thorough at looking where werelooking, but we also have to be prepared to

look somewhere else. Im going to beconfessional several times in these ramblings.So, I should make the first of these confes-sions: One of the reasons that I argue foromni-disciplined practice is because I myselfam completely undisciplined. I have nopractice, and I cannot find anything that is


Figure 1. Janus, Roman god of portals,who looks both ways


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images, because it is so integral: essentially,it represents the virgin and the crone. Theexercise that Christine Page presents, of thealchemy of transformations, being both thevirgin and the crone, tells us how importantthis ambiguity is.

I want to explore for a moment some of thedetails of perceptual ambiguity. For this Illbe very academic Im going to turn to anauthority, one of my favorites: HermannVon Hemholtz. Helmholtz is the scholar

who had the articulate insight to show usthat perception is similar to problem solving.He also gave us the mathematical descrip-tion of the first law of thermodynamics, the

conservation of energy. As Dean Radinillustrated yesterday, we can see what wereprepared to see. We can solve the puzzles

we are prepared to solve. And bistablefigures like My Wife and My Mother-in-Law are often touted in textbooks as theprime example of how top-down influences

not interesting. Im an academic. Now, Ihave tried to talk this way to the membersof the Council for Healing, to which Ivebeen a representative for a few years now,and they keep pointing out to me that

education is healing. So, I do have apractice. I should acknowledge that. Imformally the representative to the Councilfor Healing for education. What is healingabout education? Learning is transforma-tive. What is healing? Its transformation.

What were really about, both as studentsand as healers, is learning how to transformourselves, so that we are better at sharing our

efforts to support transformation for others.

SEEINGThis need to change ourselves if we are tohelp others transform themselves this needis why we have to look both inward andoutward at the same time. However, lookingboth ways at once can cause an ambiguoussituation. Consider the famous figure/ groundgestalt image of a goblet, with the outlinecreating two faces in profile (see Figure 2).This is a classic image of the perceptualdistinction between figure and ground. Theexpectation is that a person will see either thegoblet or the faces, depending on what theyread as the figure and the ground. But wecan see both as figure and as ground at thesame moment, if we adjust our gaze. I expectthat every single person observing this image

is fully capable of seeing both faces and thegoblet at the same time, or you wouldnt havefound your way here to see it.

Consider another ambiguous figure: MyWife and My Mother-in-Law (see Figure3). This is my favorite of the ambiguous

Figure 2. Face/goblet illusion, afigure/ground gestalt publicized by Danishpsychologist Edgar Rubin in 1915


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in the retina of the eye, used for seeingcontours, surfaces, motion and depth.

It must be remembered that ambiguitydoes not require cleverly contrived images.

Ambiguity is the rule, rather than theexception, and it is usually decided bybottom-up and also co-existing sidewayscues that exploit built-in knowledge of thevisual world. This type of knowledge is

wired into the neural circuitry of the visualsystem, deployed to eliminate millions offalse solutions for interpreting what isobserved knowledge of surfaces, contours,

depth, motion, illumination, etc., but notentire objects, such as goblets and faces.(Although we have seen evidence that facesare very special objects, with entire pre-established templates for recognition).Perception is embodied in multiple ways.This fact is one of the reasons we have tostudy the body.

WHERE HEALING HAPPENSKnowledge has many deep dimensions.Some of these dimensions are embeddedin the tissues and cells, and some of thesedimensions are also far, far afield from theflesh, especially if we understand DeanRadins researches correctly. Deans aptlytitled presentation Superpowers and theStubborn Illusion of Separation isincluded in this issue of the journal. He

has explored the nature of the mind's eyeand its interaction with physical systemsdistant in space and time. As Dean hasdemonstrated, and continues todemonstrate, perception is not merelyembodied its also distributed.

shape perception. Pre-existing knowledgeshapes perception, expectations from higherbrain centers, where so-called perceptualtokenssuch as young or old are encoded.But perceptual assessments are also dynamic.If all perceptual assessments relied only ontop-down processes, theyd be too slow forsurvival. What we have, in addition, arebottom-up processes and sideways processes,all working together to provide perception.

Vilayanur Ramachandran and Diane Rogers-Ramachandran have demonstrated thesemultidimensional perceptual processes.3

They have shown that bottom-up, hard-wired processes also establish perception,such as the edge detectors and hue detectors

Figure 3. "My Wife and My Mother-in-Law"by British cartoonist W.E. Hill, from the

American humor magazine Puck, Nov. 1915.


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four days of this conference, when BrianGreene tried to stipulate that an analogy waslegitimate, because it leads to precision, anda metaphor is not legitimate because it isfuzzy. But at a meta-level, both analogy andmetaphor are models, and I want toemphasize the reality that metaphor is oftenmore precise than analogy; when there are

more dimensions in play than ourbookkeeping can attend. This is the healingpower of poetry.

What I believe our project at ISSSEEM isabout, is not only marrying all the healingtraditions of all the world but also in

So we have to look inward and outward atthe same time. Is that hard to do? No, itis not hard, it is the way we operate. Thisis the easy part! To be! What is puzzlingis how to think, how to know, and how to

share with somebody else the experiencesthat we discover in our being. So thats whatI am playing with here, how to know aboutbeing, because thats what academics do. Weare especially seeking to deeply understandthe ancient traditions about subtle energiesthat have given us the name of ISSSEEM.

ISSSEEM

WHERE HEALING HAPPENSThis is the International Society for the Studyof Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine.

Whats the first S in that name? Society.What does society mean? A community. Wemust have a community, because we requireall the disciplines of knowing. Obviously noone of us can know all the disciplines alone.Thats why we have a society, to bring our

knowledge together. What does a society do?It studies, it explores. This society exploreswhere healing happens. Where is embodiedexper ience? We know its not merelyembodied, because we experience things thatappear to be outside ourselves. So wereimmediately working with several centraldichotomies. These dichotomies are useful theyre mappings. They can be traps also, butthey can be bridges.

RESOLVING DICHOTOMIESWhat kind of dichotomies do we have? Wehave interior or exterior, subjective orobjective. We have also have analogy andmetaphor. This is one dichotomy wetripped over in the very first gathering in the

Figure 4. Asclepius, Greek God of medicine and healing


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simple distinction between objective andsubjective doesnt give us intersubjectivity.The concept of intersubjectivity, a sharingof cognitive and emotional states by two ormore individuals, is essential for under-standing our dynamic relations of being.

The emphasis on empathy in philosophicalphenomenology proposes these sharedunderstandings as the basis by whichobjective observations are constructed. Inmy sense of it, intersubjectivity is wherehealing happens. This is healing, in thesense of not just our own healing (our own

reviving the deep healing tradition from theMediterranean world that weve lost in muchof our approach to medicine, and that is thehealing power of poetry. I propose that weare living in the remnants of Mediterranean

culture, because it has fragmented and fallenall apart as it has spread all over the worldand dominated other cultures in the world.I propose that we have only remnants ofMediterranean culture because we have lostmany aspects of its roots. I believe we arereviving the Greek Asclepian healingtradition, where the holistic being of theperson goes into the sacred temple space and

enjoys all of the creative and restorativeprocesses that can possibly be brought tobear for them.

Now, I warned you this wasnt going to belinear. Im not going to get to the Asclepianhealing temples until way at the end. WhatI'm going to do is try to go back throughsome of this labyrinthine process by which

weve lost Asclepius (see Figure 4). We losthim, and maybe that was appropriate,because we need to get out of deep patriar-chal habits. Weve kept his daughter Hygeia,because we all know how important hygieneis (see Figure 5). We havent lost any of this its in us we simply may not know whichpieces were looking at any particularmoment so its all delightful rediscovery.

OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVEWe need to play deeply with some puzzlingdistinctions, even deeper than analogy andmetaphor. To my mind, objectivity andsubjectivity are probably the mostimportant, because this distinction keeps usfrom noticing that it is inadequate. The

Figure 5. Hygeia, daughter of Asclepius,Greek Goddess of health


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journal issue.) From his review of healingstudies, Larry has proposed a temporarymoratorium, because the research methodshave usually been inadequate. We need torefine our approaches. I agree, and later in

my presentation will offer an example of arich research protocol presented at thisconference by Melinda Connor.

I'm going to beat up on Harvard again. Irecommend Anne Harringtons recentlypublished and masterful book The CureWithin: A History of Mind-Body Medicine.

Anne is the chair of the History of Science

Department at Harvard. I want to honorAnnes work, but also to describe what thefirst of my graduate students who went toher book discovered. Anne has taken thisapproach and its an appropriate approach that what she finds in the history ofmind/body medicine is the stories that wetell ourselves. Anne surveys the contempla-tive traditions. She presents HerbertBensons work on the relaxation response, hisresearch on Transcendental Meditation, andhis meetings with the Dalai Lama. But

Anne gives only a cursory coverage ofbiofeedback and voluntary control studies.Having made this criticism, I especially wantto honor Anne because she showed the DalaiLama something recently.

If you have not yet read the Dalai Lamas

book, The Universe in a Single Atom: TheConvergence of Science and Spirituality, Irecommend it. (I need to thank ElizabethChandler for showing me this beautifulbook.) The fourteenth Dalai Lama isreflecting on the 24 years of his bi-annualmeetings in Dharamsala with western

personal transformation) but also ourendeavor to aid. Because it has to happenin that common place, we must find thatplace.

POSITIVISM MISSED COMPASSIONWhere is compassion? Thats a fun question.Because the western European traditionsdecided we couldnt manage it, we went intoa positivistic perspective where we wantedabsolutely reliable knowledge, so we wouldnot make a mistake. As proposed by AugustComte, positive knowledge must be clear,logical and tested. Thats a noble endeavor;

just dont get trapped into thinking thatbecause its clear, logical and tested that itsadequate. After several centuries of workingtoward absolutely reliable knowledge, wehave demonstrated that the world is toocomplex for these reducing methods. So,many academic scholars have said, okay, wedont have positive knowledge, but we canhave logically positive knowledge if weconstrain it to only those things that behave

well. That got us the philosophy of logicalpositivism, which eventually devolved into aphilosophy of language solely. So we havemany academics today who say that the onlythings that are well enough behaved to studyare texts! Its important to study texts. I'ma historian, so I respect texts. The usualdefinition is that without texts, you donthave history. I'm going to try to show that

we do have history beyond texts.

Weve been beating up on Harvard at thismeeting. Larry Dossey provided a carefuland sound critique of Herbert Bensonsattempt to study the health benefits ofprayer. (See Larrys presentation in this


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that science is not merely reductive materi-alism. I want to convince you that everyhuman being breathes science. If we donthave knowledge, we dont make our way. So

what is science? It is established investiga-

tion or knowledge, as contrary to mereopinion. Thats what it means; thats all the

word science means. It means: dont giveme your opinion, think together with meabout it. Be togetherwith me about it. Beseriously togetherwith me about it.

FEAR OF ERRORSo what happened with our scientific

pursuits? How did we get materialistreductionism? Loraine Daston has abeautiful paper about how this happened,entitled Fear and Loathing of theImagination in Science, published inDaedalus in 1998.6 Its a fear of error, andDaston details how it is that we got thediscourse we had in the late 19th century,coming out of the interaction between thehighly successful mechanical philosophersand the poets.

The poets knew that knowledge comes frominspiration. The mechanical philosophersknew it in the beginning too. Read ReneDescartes on method but read from thebeginning to the end dont skip to themiddle. Also read Descartes on humanity his Treatise on Man. He hid this book

when he heard about the abuse that Galileowas catching. So Descartes Treatise on Manwas published posthumously. In thebeginning of that book, Descartes says he isnot talking about us. He is talking aboutmachines, automata that are sufficiently likeus that its useful to think about those

scientists, and his writing is brilliant.Here is his description of Anne Harringtonsastute discussion of pathological psychologyat the Dharamsala meetings. In one of themind and life conferences in Dharamsala,

the Harvard historian Anne Harringtonmade a memorable presentation on how, andto some extent why, scientific investigationof human behavior has so far failed todevelop any systematic understanding of thepowerful emotion of compassion, at least inmodern psychology, compared with thetremendous amount of attention paid tonegative emotions such as aggression, anger,

and fear. Relatively little examination hasbeen made of more positive emotions suchas compassion and altruism. This emphasismay have arisen because the principal motivein modern psychology has been tounderstand human pathologies fortherapeutic purposes. However, I do feelthat it is unacceptable to reject altruism onthe ground that selfless acts do not fit intothe current biological understanding of life,or are simply re-definable as expressions ofthe self-interest of the species. This stanceis contrary to the very spirit of scientificinquiry. As I understand it, the scientificapproach is not to modify the empirical factsto fit ones theory; rather, the theory mustbe adapted to fit the results of empiricalinquiry. Otherwise it would be like trying toreshape ones feet to fit the shoes.5

But what is empirical inquiry? As we notedin the panel discussion with the ACEPBoard members, appropriate researchmethods are required. (See the panel discus-sion in this issue of the journal.) Whatmethods? Science. I want to convince you


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as answers. I caution us all to beware oftaking hypotheses for answers.

I want to thank Jim Oschman forintroducing me to T.C. Chamberlin. In

Jims first book, Energy Medicine, TheScientific Basis, he quotes fromChamberlins article, Studies for Students.The Method of Multiple WorkingHypotheses, in the Journal of Geology in1897.7 Chamberlin cautions: "The momentone has offered an original explanation fora phenomenon which seems satisfactory, thatmoment affection for his intellectual child

springs into existence, and as the explana-tion grows into a definite theory his parentalaffections cluster about his offspring and itgrows more and more dear to him."8

Chamberlin advises us to always entertainmultiple hypotheses. And when we considerChamberlins wisdom, we can see why it isthat oftentimes a change of mind is actuallya change of heart.

DEEPER INTO THE BODYJim Oschman has shown us the multipleways by which we are re-learning the body.He talked about some of this during thediscussion panel with ACEP this morning.

Were fruitfully using additional mechanicalmetaphors oftentimes now these areelectromagnetic mechanical but the kindsof things that Brian Greene and his physical

science colleagues know how to describe veryprecisely. Now we are turning to subtleprocesses going on in the body. In previousstudies of biochemistry, we missed many ofthese subtle processes, because we thought

we were studying thermodynamics wethought we were studying the power of

processes. What was Descartes mechanicalphilosophy? It was the proposition that if

we think about forces and the way forceswork, it will be useful. And Descartesdevelops a very powerful analytic tool: he

marries algebra and geometry and you allknow how analytical geometry works. Youcan represent curves with itty-bitty triangles,and its an adequate representation. Wheredoes that eventually get us after a fewcenturies? String theory which in fact doesall the bookkeeping and accounting forevery single degree of freedom that wevebeen able to get out of all the debris that

we can create by smashing things togetheras hard as we can. Physicists hope that wemight in fact see how physics at these deeplayers really works, when the Large HadronCollider begins smashing things even harder.

I make those jokes, because I respect andstudy the physical sciences. I love BrianGreenes ability to explain the most abstrusethings, in clear understandable terms, as hedid at the beginning of this conference fourdays ago. I envy Brian his pedagogicabilities. But I dont envy his tendency tothink that there are some things that arentinteresting.

There is great power in thinking mechani-cally, in thinking about matter in motion.Descartes explained the rainbow! He

understood the geometry of the refractionand reflection inside the drops. Heunderstood how it is we get the secondaryrainbow: that light can take two pathsthrough the raindrop. This is beautiful

work, but again what Descartes did was offerhypotheses. His followers have taken them


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classical systems, although I beg to differwith the comment during the panel sessionthat everybody understands acupuncture.I understand what was meant by thatstatement during the panel discussion:

acupuncture is the one thing that isabsolutely unavoidable on the street in thisrediscovery of ancient human techniques.

Awareness of the chakras is almost ascommon. Thirty years ago if you would saythe word chakras to somebody, there was achance they might know the concept, buttoday most people have some awareness ofchakras.

MULTIMODAL STUDIESWe have continuing research beingaccomplished, studying very subtle effects atHolos University Graduate Seminary andEnergy Medicine University, using multi-modal assessment, to show a more richunderstanding of these processes. Anexample is the dissertation by Muriel Agnes:Toward an Integral Energy Medicine Modelfor Understanding the Vascular AutonomicSignal.12 What Muriel wanted to do wasexamine the consistency across a number ofassessments using the Vascular AutonomicSignal, to see if there really is consistency,or if using the VAS is only an intuition inthe moment. She was able to clearlydemonstrate consistent and useful assess-ment using the VAS, across 58 body areas

identified by the 35 participants.

I have chosen to talk about the VAS becauseits a good illustration of the horse I'm tryingto ride: intersubjectivity. I was taught as aBoy Scout not to take a pulse with mythumb, because my thumb has a pulse but

energy. Now we are studying subtleinformation exchanges, using very littleenergy. From the old thermodynamichypotheses, very subtle signals (such asThornton Streeter and Claude Swanson and

I talked about in our workshop on Friday),should not be affecting a noisy hot body but these signals do affect the body. Thereare a myriad of signaling systems happeningin the body all the time. Jim Oschman hasmasterfully demonstrated some of the mostrecent understanding that we havedeveloped.

Were just on the threshold of these deeperunderstandings of the subtle energetics, butat the same time weve known it all along and we do know and the traditions havethis understanding expressed in manypractices. Felicitas Goodman has found full-body mudras, represented in human artifacts artistic renderings through the entire spanof the record of humanity and theyretranscultural.9

These body postures are somehow biolog-ical; you dont have to have the knowledgeof the culture or the practice of the disciplinefor these body postures to launch you intoa targeted altered state what the postures

were intended to precipitate. Goodmansresearch at the University of Indianademonstrated that these techniques are

trans-cultural.10,11 If you are willing to gointo a trance, and you have adopted ahealing posture, or a divinatory posture, ora posture that will take you voyaging withthe outer beings, you will report experiencesthat have these intended kinds of archetyp-ical structure. We know about many of the


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Barbara Brennans school teaches healingpractice using their clairvoyant observations.Two doctoral research studies at HolosUniversity have focused on the Brennanschool methods. Sandra Egli did A Study

of Consistency in Hara Assessments Usingthe Brennan Healing Science Modelin 2002.In the subtle energy model of BrennanHealing Science (BHS), the hara isconceived as the dimension of intentionalitythat holds the human body in materialmanifestation. Healing the hara is consid-ered especially powerful for healing the auricfield, and thereby healing the physical body.

Sixteen healers trained in the BHS methodsintuitively assessed the hara of fifteenindividuals, previously unknown to thehealers. The healers used a standardizedassessment form, and their responses wereanalyzed for consistency. In the 204 assess-ments, 16 healers with 15 subjects, the cross-correlation between assessments showedsignificant agreement. All of this work is onthe Holos University website the full text where you can find the statistical details,if those are useful to you. Eglis compar-isons found more agreement on the high andlow ends of the evaluation scales, which isnot surprising. It makes intuitive sense thatthe subjects with the most different lookingharas would result in more agreementamong the ratings.

For my interests in this discussion, GinniSelles earlier study is more fun.23 She lookedat the ability for self-actualization to beassisted by studying at the Brennan school.Sandra Eglis study is useful. It demonstratesreliability effects old paradigm. Ginni

with the VAS, as Paul Nogier developed it,thats the way you do it.13,14 Lay yourthumb along the persons radial artery, andfeel the changes in the pulse. To me, thatlooks like intersubjectivity. It seems to be

like two pulses talking to each other.

ENERGY BODIESThe chakras have become known in the

West partly through the work of theTheosophical Society, and I want toacknowledge and honor the Vedic traditionespecially as it comes into ISSSEEM thoughthose Theosophical roots. We are multicul-

tural. We are multidimensional. Much ofour discourse about energy bodies, andclairvoyant vision of energy bodies, comesfrom these Vedic and Theosophical roots.Recall C. W. Leadbeaters early 20th centuryillustrations of the chakras and aura invarious states.15,16 Rosalyn Bruyer and

Anodea Judith follow in Leadbeaterstradition.17,18,19,20

I wish somebody would replicate ValerieHunts work in Infinite Mind.21 Hunt hadRosalyn Bruyere and some of her colleaguesobserving the colors at the chakras, andHunt correlated the clairvoyant observations

wi th signa l pat terns in the noise ofelectromyographic recordings as thattechnology was available in the 1960s.Hunt identified some highly ordered

processes in the background noise: not onlydomains, i.e. frequency ranges, but alsosignatures characteristic wave forms.

Again, Hunts measurements have not beenreplicated, but people do work withclairvoyant observations.


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ongoing set of observations, Davis foundrobust statistical evidence of the benefits inthe group of birds who were treated.

I mentioned during the panel discussion

that I wanted to talk about Geneie Everettsstudy The Healing Potential of AlteredStates of Consciousness.25 Everett wanted totease out some of the multiple dimensionsfrom these experiences people have withhealing. She used the Phenomena ofConsciousness Inventory. She also used alinguistic inquiry word count, to automateprocessing the descriptions of peoples

experiences. These are descriptions ofmemory recall, with its attendantweaknesses. But this automated linguisticassessment system can analyze 72dimensions in the language we use. Everettalso constructed a pilot questionnaire toinvestigate the experienced locus of control.Do people experience these healings as a gift,or as an accomplishment? So Everett wastriangulating this data from the reportedexperiences of healing, statistically quanti-fying the phenomena of consciousness, andinvestigating the linguistic descriptions ofthe healing, while honoring the personalsubjective experience above all else, becauseEverett was using a transpersonal approach.

TRANSPERSONAL RESEARCHFor innovation in transpersonal research, I

recommend the work of Bill Braud.26a,26bBraud proposes an integral researchapproach, acknowledging pluralistic ways ofknowing, being and doing. I especially likeBills work, because hes following one of myfavorite teachers, William James. Braudsmethods are informed by the radical empiri-

Selles study, however, was looking at whathappens to the people as they learn to dohealing work. Using the PersonalOrientation Inventory, a well-validatedpsycho-spiritual evaluation measure, Selle

found that after four years of studying theBrennan methods, the graduates were shownto be more self-actualized on the POI scalesthan were entering freshman. The POI alsoprovides for assessing self-reliability. Sellefound that the entering freshmen students

were less inflated than were the graduates. Iexpect the graduates learned to seethemselves more clearly after longer experi-

ence with healing practice. I'd like to seeSelles study repeated as a follow-up on bothof those two populations.

ENERGY MEDICINEISSSEEM studies subtle energies and energymedicine. What is energy medicine? Wedont know its all over the place so wereplucking at threads in this beautiful tapestry.

And here is one of my favorite studies. Itwas one of the first Holos demonstrationsof distance healing effects. Sandra Davisused John Veltheims Body Talk System, fordistant healing with captive, traumatizedtropical birds.24 This was a double-blindstudy of distant healing. Davis was inSaskatchewan; the birds were in NorthCarolina. She used a human surrogate. Thebird caregivers knew something was

happening they sent photographs of thebirds somewhere, but that was all they knew.The caregivers were previously tracking thehealth and the behavior of the birds, soDavis was able to analyze changes in thatdata set without changing the activity of thecare givers. With minimal disruption in an


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cism of William James, and by recentdevelopments in natural science, psychology,human sciences, philosophy, philosophy ofscience, parapsychology, spirituality, andtranspersonal studies. You can see why I

propose an omni-disciplined approach. Weneed a little help from our friends, all of ourfriends. As the Native American healers say:all of our relations, the two-legged, the four-legged, the swimmers and the flyers, and theslithering earth dwellers.

William James coined the concept of radicalempiricism at the end of his life. Many

people are familiar with The Varieties of Religious Experience, the Gifford lectures,given at the University of Edinburgh in1901 and 1902.27 James took a very open-minded, open-hearted, and pragmaticapproach to spiritual experience. What didhe say? He doesnt have direct access toanothers experience. How does he come tounderstand it? All he has is what he is toldby the person who has the revelation. But

without direct access to the revelation itself,he needs something more. James hadalready begun to develop the philosophicalapproach he would soon call Pragmatism.In The Varieties of Religious Experience heproposes to look at the pragmatic effect anyrevelation has in the life of the person whoexperienced it. If it looks like this personslife has flowered has improved then he

must take the experience seriously as theperson describes it.

A decade later, after having published hisbook Pragmatism in 1907, James wentdeeper into the puzzle of knowledge and heconcluded that pragmatism is not enough

what can get us closer to immediate being?28

Here James turns to his long-standing thesisthat there is not a monistic universe. Unityis an illusion the only practical, pragmaticapproach is to take a pluralistic attitude

toward being.

James gave the last public lectures of his lifeat Manchester College, published as APluralistic Universe in 1910.29 Hisdiscourse was a criticism of the current stateof philosophy. Idealistic monism, one of thephilosophical roots of our materialistreductionism a hundred years later, was in

vogue among the philosophers. James asked,how do we break out of that habit ofthought? He turned especially to GustavFechner and Henri Bergson. Fechner, apioneer of physiological psychology andpsychophysics, was also a proponent ofpanpsychism. James says of Fechner, Forhim the abstract lived in the concrete, andthe hidden motive of all he did was to bring

what he called the daylight viewof the worldinto ever greater evidence, that daylight viewbeing this, that the whole universe in itsdifferent spans and wave-lengths, exclusionsand envelopments, is everywhere alive andconscious. Fechner had this experience,and he articulated it in more than onebook.30,31,32

Only esoteric philosophers and historians of

science go back and read Fechner. ButElmer Green read him very carefully, becauseElmer also was refining the psychophysics

when he was doing his doctorate in Chicago.Elmer settled an argument between Fechnerand Stephenson.33 Fechner had proposed inthe 19th century that the relationship


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between the physical intensity of a whitelight and the perceived intensity was alogarithmic function.34 A hundred yearslater, in the mid-20th century, S. S. Stevensasserted the relation was a power function.

Elmer resolved this dispute by noticing thatStevens had not managed the stimulus overtime in the same way as Fechner. Whentime was properly managed, both in theexperimental stimuli and in the equations,Green showed that both Fechner andStevens were correct, with appropriateconditions. These issues are too fine-grainedfor the time we have available today, but I

want to point out that all of these are threadsof thought in a tapestry thats so interwovenIm just plucking at some beautiful threads.

EXPERIENCE AND TIMEIn A Pluralistic Universe, Williams Jamesexplains that Henri Bergsons description ofexperience, and especially Bergsons observa-tions on duration in experience, were whatled him personally to renounce the intellec-tualist method and the current notion thatlogic is an adequate measure of what canand cannot be.35,36 Get at the expandingcentre of a human character, the lan vital.. . as Bergson calls it, by living sympathy,and at a stroke you see how it makes those

who see it from without interpret it in suchdiverse ways. Does James turn back andforth too many times? I warned you this

was not going to be linear.

James continues, What really exists, is notthings made, but things in the making.Reality falls in passing into conceptualanalysis; it mounts in living its ownundivided life it buds and bourgeons,

changes and creates. So James, at the endof his life, participated in a radical breach

with intellectualism. No matter what thecontent of the universe may be, if you onlyallow that it is manyeverywhere and always,

that nothing real escapes from having anenvironment; so far from defeating itsrationality, as the absolutists sounanimously pretend, you leave it in posses-sion of the maximum amount of rationalitypractically attainable by our minds. Yourrelations with it, intellectual, emotional,and active, remain fluent and congruous

with your own natures chief demands.

Things are with one another in manyways, but nothing includes everything, ordominates over everything. The word andtrails along after every sentence. Somethingalways escapes. Thus does foreignness getbanished from our world, and far more so

when we take the system of it pluralisticallythan when we take it monistically. We areindeed internal parts of God and notexternal creations, on any possible readingof the panpsychic system.29

FORWARD IN TIMEHenri Bergson revised conventional notionsof time. He links us back to William James,and he links us forward to next yearsconference. I told you this was not goingto be linear Im being Janus, and lookingforward to next years meeting. Mae-Wan

Ho is coming next year. She is one of JimOschmans close colleagues, a woman whohas seen deeper into the body than I caneven imagine. At the end of her book, TheRainbow and the Worm, Mae-Wan Ho alsoturns to Henri Bergson. After her extendeddiscussion of living crystalline consciousness



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the embodied processes of consciousness

she notes that Bergson emphasizes theneed for introspection in order to recoverthe quality of experience. . . . He distin-guishes two different selves, one the externalprojection of the other, inner self, into itsspatial or social representation. The innerself is reached by deep introspection, whichleads us to grasp our inner states as livingthings, constantlybecoming.37

Mae-Wan Ho, with Bergson, brings us backto the Dalai Lama. In The Universe in aSingle Atom, the Dalai Lama reminds usthat in his traditions they have verydisciplined understandings of the interiority,and that in collaboration, we are now readyto talk both the interior and the exterior.

Because of this indivisibility of conscious-ness and energy, there is a profoundlyintimate correlation between the elements

within our bodies and the natural elementsin the outside world. This subtle connec-

tion can be discerned by individuals whohave gained a certain level of perception.

He acknowledges that the Buddhists werepaying a lot of attention to experience in itsimmediacy, but they were a little sloppy aboutdetails of the exterior world, such as atoms.The West was paying attention to atoms,

while the Tibetans were attending to very

finely tuned states of being. The 15thcentury Tibetan thinker Taktsang Lotsawaconducted an experiment upon himself andfound a total concordance between hispersonal experience of changes that naturallyoccur in ones breathing pattern and thosedescribed in the Kalachakra tantra during acelestial event like solar or lunar eclipse.5

This is how naturally tuned we actually are.And some in our community have morefinely tuned themselves intentionally. Theflowers I've been showing you, such asFigure 6, are from Elizabeth Chandler. Lizshowed these and many more in her

workshop on preparing flower essencesduring this conference. How does LizChandler interact with the flowers? Shetells us that she has been teaching and

practicing yoga for decades. She has alsobeen practicing LaHoChi, a hands-onhealing practice, combined with decades of

work as an herbal ist. Those mult ipleperspectives lead her into such an intimateinteraction with her worlds that the devasand the elementals come into her practice.


Figure 6. Jack in the Pulpit


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She has articulated what these healingcontributions are in the book she offered toour community this weekend.38

TRANSCENDING LIMITATIONS

Forty years ago, Charles Tart said we needstate-specific sciences, and he revisited thatproposition a couple of years ago, duringhis response to receiving the AbrahamMaslow Award.39 We are ready to do this

work. Historically, psychology attempted tobecome a science of mind, but failed forvarious reasons. As Tart cataloged thestumbling blocks, they included 1) the

apparent barrier between objective andsubjective data, 2) ignoring of individualdifferences, 3) experimenter bias, 4) cultureboundedness, 5) insufficient training ofobservers, and 6) a limited, materialphysical view of reality. Larry Dosseyremarked on some of these same limitationsin his review of healing research at thisconference. We need more sophisticationin research protocols; methods that respectand can represent the unique character ofbeing.

As Charles Tart reflected, Early introspec-tionists wanted an objective science, they

wanted to get at the basic elements of mind,just as chemists had discovered the elementsof matter. I believe they overlooked therealities of important individual differences

between introspective observers, so theywere averaging apples and oranges, comingup with standard elements that differed toomuch from what actually happened inpeoples mental processes. They committedthe error that [Gunther] Stent calledpremature parsimony.39

Humanistic and transpersonal psychologyhave a major advantage here, because wenot only respect, we often treasure theindividuality of the people we work with.

We will study each apple and orange in

detail, as it were, instead of mashing it allinto mush. An excellent survey of the widerange of transpersonal research methods canbe found in Braud and Anderson.26,39

A DYNAMIC APPROACHI want to celebrate what Melinda Connorpresented here at this conference. She hasbeen doing this rich multimodal research

for years, in her Optimal Healing ResearchProgram, at the Laboratory for Advances inConsciousness and Health, University of

Arizona. Connor is developing a dynamic,multi-causal complex systems perspective.

Melinda is using Beverly Rubiks concept ofthe biofield, and she is articulating thedimensions she can observe. She proposes thata partial list of biofield components includes:

1) Gas Emissions from the skin2) Gasses being drawn into the skin3) Magnetic fields extending past the surface

of the body, created by the organs4) Electrical flow over the nervous system

and fields created by any nerve plexus.5) Heat being generated by cellular

processes6) Oscillation of the waters in the body

Her empirical testing has included:1) Biophoton Imaging2) Triaxial ELF Magnetic Field Meter3) GDV gas discharge visualization4) EEG electroencephalography5) EKG electrocardiogram



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6) Broadcast Frequency Counter7) Gamma and X-ray detectors

For studying interior experience, Connor hasused these types of State-Trait Testing:

1) Marlowe Crown2) International Personality Item Pool3) Arizona Integrative Outcome Scale4) Paranormal Belief Scale5) Daily Spiritual Experiences6) Global Mood Scale7) Openness to Spiritual Beliefs Scale8) The Tellagen Absorption Scale

Connors evaluative and exploratory testshave included:1) Questionnaire on the Energy Healers

lived experience.2) EEG on States of Being3) Homeopathy reading the waters of the

remedy4) IQ Testing WAIS III

Her first study with these methods includedseventeen Usui Reiki Practitioners. Asecond study included various forms ofpractice: five Bruyere, five Brennan, twoResonance Modulation, two Reconnection,and one Natural Healer.

Melinda Connor has one of the mostmultidimensional minds among us.Dawson Church in his introduction this

morning accused me of having a multidi-mensional mind I cant hold a candle toMelinda. She experiences all these things atonce and organizes them. If you didnt seeher presentation on Friday, seek her out. AsI said, shes been doing this for years. Themultidimensional ways in which she assesses

the experience and the results are delightful:she explores the interior beings of the healers the interior relations of the healers and theprocess that theyre working with. This is

just lovely work.

AN INTEGRAL PERSPECTIVEBoth my call for omni-disciplined perspec-tives, and my proposition that intersubjec-tive processes resolve the objective/subjectdichotomies share much common ground

with Ken Wilbers integral methods. Hisrecent attempt at a comprehensive theory ofsubtle energies is obligatory reading for any

serious researcher.40

Kens foreword An Integral Vision ofHealing, in Consciousness & Healing;Integral Approaches to Mind-BodyMedicine, is a masterful description ofhealing with compassion in an intersubjec-tive process. This collection of state-of-the-art perspectives by sixty-one leaders in thefield, edited by Marilyn Schlitz, Tina

Amorok, and Marc Marcozzi for theInstitute of Noetic Sciences, is a finedemonstration of how we create acommunity of effort.41

Kens foreword adroitly details the essenceof an integral healing practice. Body andmind and spirit are operating in self andculture and nature, and thus health and

healing, sickness and wholeness, are allbound up in a multidimensional tapestrythat cannot be cut into without loss. Anintegrally informed medical practicechanges the practitioners first; they can thendecide which of the treatments conven-tional, alternative, complementary, and/or



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holistic they wish to utilize, individuallyand collectively when practicing medicine

with integrity. The crucial ingredient inany integral medical practice is not theintegral medical bag itself with all the

conventional pills, and the orthodoxsurgery, and the subtle energy medicine, andthe acupuncture needles but the holder ofthat bag. The one thing that will havechanged in adopting an integral approach istheir own awareness, their own conscious-ness, their own map of human possibilities this map that has dramatically expandedfrom organic interventions to caring for a

human being in all of his or her extraordi-nary richness across an entire spectrum thatruns from dust to deity, from dirt todivinity, even from here and now.

Ken describes practicing with integrity. AndI want to announce that were succeedingin opening these larger views into the wider

world! The National Academy of SciencesInstitutes of Medicine reported in 2005 thatthe key thing needed to understand alterna-tive and complementary medicine was arevision of the science to use appropriatescience, not reducing the observation tofinite single variables.42 Their sense ofappropriate science is still fairly narrow theyre a bit stuck on provings, rather thanon beings. Still, this progress is wonderful.

Analytic science is useful, in its place.Descartes is useful and he warned us notto be fooled by our models. As theBuddhists say: dont look at my fingertip,look at the moon.

RETURN TO THE TEMPLEI believe we are reviving the spirit ofhealing, returning to the Asclepian temple.In the temple, the healing culmination is inthe dream. All of the Muses were

summoned in support of healing, withmusic, dance, and poetry. Every Asclepiantemple included an amphitheatre. Greekpoetry, Greek theatre, Greek tragedy, Greekcomedy, all were offered in support ofhealing.

[music plays . . .]

In ancient days, Krishna told Arjuna:Greater than any material sacrifice is thesacrifice born of knowledge so theculmination of all work is wisdom.

In our time, the poet Leonard Cohen advisesus inAnthem, this heart-rending cautionarysong:

Give up your perfect offering. There is a crack,a crack in everything.Thats how the light gets in. Thats how thelight gets in.

[music continues . . . .]

This paper is based on Bernard Williams PresidentialAddress , pr ese nt ed at th e Ei ghtee nth Annua lISSSEEM Conference, Energy, Intent, and Healing(June 19-26, 2008).

CORRESPONDENCE: Bernard Williams [email protected]



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REFERENCES & NOTES1. Holos University Graduate Seminary,

www.holosuniversity.org2. Energy Medicine University, www.energymedi-

cineuniversity.org3. V. Ramachandran & D. Rogers-Ramachandran,

Ambiguities & Perception, Scientific AmericanReports, Special Edition on Perception, 18,2(July, 2008), pp. 56-59.

4. A. Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (W. W. Norton, NewYork, NY, 2008).

5. Dalai Lama XIV, The Universe in a Single Atom:The Convergence of Science and Spirituality,(Broadway, 2006).

6. L. Daston, Fear and Loathing of the Imaginationin Science, Daedalus, 127,1 (Winter, 1998), pp.73-95.

7. J. Oschman, Energy Medicine: The Scientific

Basis, (Churchill Livingstone, 2000).8. T.C. Chamberlin, Studies for Students. The

Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses,Journal of Geology, 5 (1897), pp. 837-848.

9. B. Gore, ed., Ecstatic Body Postures: An AlternateReality Workbook, (Bear & Company, Rochester,Vermont, 1995).

10. F.D. Goodman, Where the Spirits Ride theWind: Trance Journeys and Other EcstaticExperiences, (Indiana University Press,Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana, 1990).

11. F.D. Goodman, Ecstasy, Ritual and Alternate

Reality; Religion in a Pluralistic World, (IndianaUniversity Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis,Indiana, 1988).

12. M. Agnes, Toward an Integral Energy MedicineModel for Understanding the Vascular AutonomicSignal, (doctoral dissertation, Holos University,2002).

13. P. Nogier, Auriculotherapy to Auriculomedicine,(Maissonneurve, Sainte Ruffine, France, 1983).

14. R. Klowersa, Auriculomedicine as Developed byNogier and Bahr, (Mediman gmbh, Hartheim,Germany, 2000).

15. C.W. Leadbeater, The Chakras, (TheosophicalPub. House, Wheaton Ill., 1972, 1974).

16. C.W. Leadbeater, Man Visible and Invisible:Examples of Different Types of Men as Seen byMeans of Trained Clairvoyance, (TheosophicalPub. House, Wheaton, Ill., 1925, 1987).

17. R. Bruyere, Wheels of Light: A Study of theChakras, (Bon Productions, 1989).

18. R. Bruyere, Wheels of Light: Chakras, Auras, and

the Healing Energy of the Body, (Fireside, 1994).19. A. Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the

Chakra System, (Llewellyn Publications, 1999).20. A. Judith, Eastern Body, Western Mind:

Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to theSelf, (Celestial Arts, revised edition, 2004).

21. V.V. Hunt, Infinite Mind; The Science of Human Vibrations, (Malibu PublishingCompany, Malibu, California, 1989, 1995).

22. S.R. Egli, A Study of Consistency in HaraAssessments Using the Brennan Healing ScienceModel, (doctoral dissertation, Holos University,2002).

23. G. Selle, Schools of Self-Actualization: A NewParadigm in Well-Health and Healing, (doctoraldissertation, Holos University, 2001).

24. S. Davis, Evaluation of the Body Talk System forDistant Healing with Captive Tropical Birds,(doctoral dissertation, Holos University, 2001).

25. G. Everett, The Healing Potential of AlteredStates of Consciousness, (doctoral dissertation,Holos University, 2001).

26a. W. Braud, Distant Mental Influence: ItsContributions to Science, Healing, and HumanInteractions (Studies in Consciousness),(Hampton Roads Publishing Company,December 2003).

26b. W. Braud & R. Anderson, TranspersonalResearch Methods for the Social Sciences: HonoringHuman Experience, (Sage, 1998).

27. W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience,

(Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,1983).

28. W. James, Pragmatism, (Harvard UniversityPress, Cambridge, Mass., 1975).

29. W. James, A Pluralistic Universe, (HarvardUniversity Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1977).

30. G.T. Fechner, Zend-Avesta; Gedanken ber dieDinge des Himmels und des Jenseits vomStandpunkte der Naturbetrachtung, (Insel-Verlag,Leipzig, 1922).

31. G.T. Fechner, The little book of life after death,translation of Das Bchlein vom Leben nach dem

Todeby M.C. Wadsworth, (Reprint of the ed.published by Little, Brown, Boston, 1904; ArnoPress, New York, 1977).

32. G.T. Fechner, Die Tagesansicht gegenber derNachtansicht, 3rd ed. (Breitkopf und Hrtel,Leipzig, 1919).

33. E. Green, Psychophysics, An Answer from theUnconscious, Subtle Energies & Energy Medicine,10, (1999), pp. 1-15.



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34. G.T. Fechner, Elemente der Psychophysik, 2nded., (Breitkopf und Hrtel, Leipzig, 1889; firstpublished 1869).

35. H. Bergson, Matiere et memoire: essai sur larelation du corps a lesprit, 13th ed. (F. Alcan,Paris, 1917; first published 1896).

36. H. Bergson, Matter and Memory (translation ofMatiere et memoire), (G. Allen & Unwin,London; Macmillan, New York, 1911).

37. M. Ho, The Rainbow and the Worm: ThePhysics of Organisms, 2ed, (World Scientific,Singapore, 1998).

38. E. Chandler, Fleuressences,http://www.fleuressences.com

39. C. Tart, Future Psychology as a Science ofMind and Spirit: Reflections on Receiving theAbraham Maslow Award, The HumanisticPsychologist33,2, (2005), pp. 131-143.

40. K. Wilber, Towards a Comprehensive Theory

of Subtle Energies, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing1,4 (July, 2005), pp. 252-270. [previously posted athttp://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptG/part1.cfm/]

41. M. Schlitz, T. Amorok & M. Marcozzi,Consciousness & Healing; Integral Approaches toMind-Body Medicine, (for the Institute of NoeticSciences) (Philadelphia, Pa.: ChurchillLivingston/Elsevier; 2005).

42. Institute of Medicine, National Academy ofSciences, Complementary and Alternative Medicine

in the United States, (National Academies Press,Washington, D.C., 2005).



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Knowing as Beginning Omni-disciplined Views on Intention and Healing; Bernard o Williams (Energies,...

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