Space, Time and Medicine

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Excerpts fromSpace, Time and Medicine

Space, Time and Medicine, Larry Dossey, M.D., Shambhala, Boston & London,1982.

From one of Dr. Dossey's physician patients who learned biofeedback therapy to

deal with headaches: "I watch the River of Time flow gently for a while . . . . Theriver slowly starts to curve so much that it begins to flow back on itself, gradually

forming a complete circle. . . . the circular River of Time . . . starts to flood itsbanks inwardly . . . . and as it continues a giant lake is formed. . . . The surface

becomes calm and still, reflective as a mirror. . . . time itself, has ceased to

flow. . . . This timeless Lake of Time is indescribably serene, like a high alpine lakeyou encounter unexpectedly and never want to leave. It fills me with a sense of

peace and I stay there feeling the stillness of the Lake of Time for as long as I wish.

. . . This patient had himself learned how to manipulate his sense of time to hisclinical advantage. He had learned to experientially slow time and to stop it . . . .

His headaches continued to diminish. . . . Events did indeed enter his awareness

sequentially, yet this process was entirely divorced from any sensation of a linearly

flowing time." p. 20

I began to realize that I was witnessing patients becoming healthier throughacquiring a new experiential meaning of what time was all about.

My patients were learning a strategy that held serious consequences for the

improvement of their health. My own curiosity about this phenomenon evolved

into a serious concern. If, I thought, patients can eradicate certain illnesses through

adopting a nonlinear view of time wherein past, present, and future merge into a

timeless stillness, the obvious question was: do we make ourselves sick byconforming to an idea of a strict linear time composed of a rigid succession of

future, past, and present?

I have come to have little doubt that this is the case. Many illnesses--perhaps most--may be caused either wholly or in part by our misperception of time. Just as the

patient in the above example created bodily health through his vivid perception of a

nonflowing time, I am convinced that we can destroy ourselves through the

creation of illness by perceiving time in a linear, one-way flow.

One of the goals of this book is to examine the evidence for this assertion. We shallsee that the emergence of both human health and disease is coupled to our

perception of time.Without a clear idea of the concept of time we cannot understand its impact on our

health, nor can we appreciate how the sense of time can be manipulated in ways to

make us healthier. p. 21


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We wander through varied sorts of time each day, giving little thought to the

matter. We discard one concept of time in favor of another whenever it is

convenient to do so. Yet we ordinarily maintain the illusion that time is a single

concept, an entity that needs no explanation.Here we are concerned with the time ofexperience, the kinds of time weactuallyfeel. Where does our time experience come from? p. 23

We visualize heaven as an eternal timeless state, and our religious traditions assert

that it is the child who is its natural citizen. It is the child who is at home in anonlinear time, and who fits the beatific visions of antiquity. In a way that goes

unnoticed we conjoin the spiritual sense and the experience of time. Perhaps it isnot surprising that most great religions have always prescribed methods such as

prayer and meditation through which one can become as a child; for in practicingthese disciplines one quickly discovers that the experience of time changes. It

ceases to flow; and experientially one feels enveloped by the stillness of which all

the great mystics have spoken. p. 30

In total immersion in a task, whether listening to lungs or weeding vegetable

gardens, time is abolished. It stands still. p. 34

There are, then, many ways in which we abolish time in our daily rounds, some ofwhich we never think about. It is natural to denigrate in our thinking many of these

ways of annulling time--daydreaming, reverie, fantasizing--relegating thesemoments to "wasted" time. The premium is on linear time--the time of history, the

time of getting things done, the time of goals and accomplishments and rewards. In

linear time weproduce. caught in a culture in which the only sin exceeding that of

allowing capital to lie idle is that of allowing time to go unused. p. 35

How do we experience time? We often speak of a "sense of time," but this impliesa special organ with which we actually sense time, as the eye senses light. No such

organ has ever been identified. . . .

If we indeed had an organ with which we perceived time, this would imply that

there is an external or "real" time that is being perceived. We almost intuitively

take some type of clock time as this "real" time--either hours, minutes, or seconds.

p. 36


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What, then, is Time? The most useful approach, as Ornstein suggests, is to discard

the notion of an "inner clock" or a "real time" and to adopt a purely cognitive andexperiential definition of time. p. 39

. . . we cling to the idea of a real time--a time that flows and is divisible into past,

present, and future. Our belief in a linear real time underlies our basic assumptionsof health and disease, of living and dying. But this kind of thinking is tied to an

older science, which depended on an external reality, a reality independent of oursenses. This view of the world has been discarded by modern physics. If we revise

our idea of time in order to be consistent with the modern physical views, we must

say of it what we have been forced to say of the external world: time is bound to

our senses--it is part of us, it is not "out there." And our concepts of health and

disease consequently must be revised, dependent as they are on our view of time. p.

43

What is an expanded sense of time? It is something we are all familiar with. It is a

state in which we "lose track" of time. The passage of time slips away from our

awareness. Time stands still. It enlarges, it expands. For many of us these momentscome unexpectedly, as when we become preoccupied with a certain task or when

we participate in a pleasant diversion. In meditation, for instance, this sense of timecan be entered routinely, by choice.

In contrast, we experience a contracted sense of time when our awareness of time

passage is enhanced. In doing something unpleasant, moments may seem like

hours. Time drags. The fear of having a tooth pulled or the anticipation of an

uncertain outcome such as passing or failing an examination will constrict our

sense of time.The relativity of the sense of time was expressed by Einstein when he observed, "If

you sit with a beautiful girl, two hours seem like two minutes. If you sit on a hotstove, two minutes seem like two hours. That's relativity."

Persons who experience pain ordinarily live in a contracted or constricted time

sense. Minutes seem like hours when one is hurting. Because the time sense is

constricted, pain is magnified-sometimes far beyond what seems appropriate. Arethere ways to intervene in painful situations, ways to manipulate the sense of time

by expanding it? Can we lessen pain by "stretching" the time sense? p. 46

Without realizing it we do it all the time as physicians. Almost all substances that

we use to treat severe pain modify the patient's sense of time. Patients who receive

these medications do not say, of course, that their time sense was altered, but they

respond with statements such as "that medicine made me float!" or "I became really

drowsy," or "I forgot where I was."There simply is no good vocabulary to use in describing these events which occur


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hourly in every major hospital. What does a patient mean when, after receiving

pain medication, he says, "I really lost track of things for a while," or "Thatmedicine really 'zonked' me," or "That stuff 'bombed' me out?" Undoubtedly altered

time perception is one of the hidden meanings in such statements.

Not only drugs but other techniques as well do much to alter the time sense andhave become valuable adjuncts to controlling pain. Hypnosis is one such example,

and is of incalculable value for some patients in pain control. Biofeedback, which

relies heavily on imagery and visualization in achieving physiologic self-control,has a marked effect on modifying time perception. Meditation, autogenic therapy,

and progressive relaxation have similar effects. In fact, any device or technique that

expands one's sense of time can be used as an analgesic!

It is important to realize that when we experience a technique that diminishes pain

through expanding our time sense, we are not merely exercising self-deception. We

are not fooling ourselves into thinking the pain is not there. Evidence is solid that

mental states can evoke actual changes in brain physiology, changes that alter painperception. p. 47

Just as Pavlov's dogs learned to salivate inappropriately we have learned

to hurry inappropriately. Our sense of urgency is set off not by a real need to act

quickly, but through learned cues. Our "bells" have become the watch, the alarmclock, the morning coffee, and the hundreds of self-inflicted expectations that we

build into our daily routine. The subliminal message from the watch and the clockis: time is running out; life is winding down; please hurry. . . . Our sense of urgency

results in a speeding of some of our body's rhythmical functions, such as the heart

rate and respiratory rate. Exaggerated rises in the blood pressure may follow, along

with increases in blood levels of specific hormones that are involved in the body's

response to stress. Thus, our perceptions of speeding clocks and vanishing time

cause our own biological clocks to speed. As we saw earlier, the end result isfrequently some form of "hurry sickness--expressed as heart disease, high blood

pressure, or depression of our immune function, leading to an increasedsusceptibility to infection and cancer. p. 49

We determine our own reality by mirroring our perceptions of a fleeting time in our

body's function. Having convinced ourselves through the aid of clocks, watches,beeps, ticks, and a myriad of other cultural props that linear time is escaping, we

generate maladies in our bodies that assure us of the same thing--for the ensuingheart disease, ulcers, and high blood pressure reinforce the message of the

clock: we are running down, eventually to be swept away in the linear current of

the river of time. For us, our perceptions have become our reality.

CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE


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Our sense of time is not only a major determinant in our awareness of pain, it

affects our health by influencing the development and course of specific diseases.This is nowhere more obvious that in persons who have been called Type A

individuals by Friedman and Rosenman. Type A persons have "hurry sickness."

Their lives are oriented around goals, deadlines, and objectives, which they seem toreact to in a driven fashion. They are unable to approach a task in a healthy,

balanced way, but in extreme cases seem almost consumed by a need to accomplish

and achieve.Not only do they have an inwardsense of urgency, theiroutwardbehavior suggests

the same quality. When sitting they may be in constant motion, not only with

thoughts, but with body parts--hands, fingers, legs, feet. They are usually vocal,

verbally expressing the products of a mind that cannot rest. This behavior

frequently gener-ates discomfort and tension in those around them.

It is as if Type A persons are "time sick." They resemble patients who are in

chronic pain in that they have an acute sense of time. Only in this case, unlike theperson experiencing pain, there is never enough of it.Type A persons are usually ambitious and frequently are highly successful, having

succeeded in harnessing their high motivation and sense of purpose. Yet for all the

qualities for which they are (p. 50)

admired--their vision, energy, and dedication-they possess, as a group--a

characteristic that nobody envies: they have a high mortality rate from heart

disease.Time sickness is not merely a colorful appellation, it is an actual illness possessed

by the group as a whole. It is not just that Type A persons may experienceexcessive anxiety, that they may be more nervous and discomfited than their Type

B counterparts, in which case their hurry sickness might be counted only as a

nuisance or a bother. The problem is worse than a nuisance: Type A individuals, as

a group, die earlier. Their behavior puts them at risk for the most frequent cause of

death in our society, coronary artery disease.

The importance of the exaggerated response to time, the sense ot urgency displayedby Type A individuals, is that it is translated into physiologic effects. These effects

are pervasive and are seen long before heart disease supervenes. Thesephysiological events are so characteristic of time-sick persons, they could be called

the timesyndrome. Among them are increased heart rate and blood pressure at rest;

elevation of certain blood hormones such as adrenalin, norepinephrine, insulin,

growth hormone, and hydrocortisone, all of which are ordinarily secreted in an

exaggerated way during times of urgency or stress; increased gastric acid secretion;increased blood cholesterol; an increased respiratory rate; increased secretory

activity of sweat glands; and increased muscle tension throughout the body. The

time syndrome is a body-mind process with effects on all major systems. It is not

simply a conscious experience of unpleasant feelings.

The awareness that the time sense is awry in certain clinical disorders is

enormously important, because this understanding can give us clues in treatingthese problems. We noted, for example, that the cholesterol level is frequently


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elevated in Type A persons. We can ask, therefore, if manipulating the sense of

time in humans has any effect on the blood cholesterol level. The answer,interestingly, is yes. Cooper and Aygen have shown that if subjects are taught to

meditate, which is an easily available method of "adjusting" the time sense toward

the other end of the experiential spectrum than that which is felt by Type Apersons, blood cholesterol levels fall by an average of twenty percent.2 Moreover,

other aspects of the time syndrome respond: blood pressure, heart and respiratory

rate, as well as the blood levels of insulin, hydrocortisone, adrenalin, andnorepinephrine are modified to more desirable levels.

The significance of these observations is inestimable: by taking thought in ways

which "elongate" the time sense, time-sick individuals (p. 51)

can alter many of the devastating effects of the time syndrome. The method

involved is not critical, for as we have seen, many methods are effective, such as

meditative disciplines, biofeedback, progressive relaxation, and autogenic therapy.

. . .As we learn to meditate, or when we become familiar with the states ofconsciousness that are peculiar to biofeedback, autogenic therapy, or to other

techniques employing deep relaxation, we develop a familiarity with a new sense of

time. We begin to experience time in new ways. We begin to feel at home with

time as it expands. Phrases such as "the ever-present now" and "the eternal

moment" become full with meaning. Above all, we develop a friendliness with

time.As this new regard for time evolves to deeper levels, new understanding unfolds. It

becomes apparent that one of the motivating forces behind our old way of reactingtoward the passage of time (p. 52)

was fear--an indisputable feeling that took the form of busying ourselves in

needless motion. This frenetic behavior begins to appear as a defense againsttime,

a resistance that assumes its final form in our individual, silent protest against death

itself.

All time-riven events such as illness and demise begin to appear less menacing.Events in our daily lives such as tragic happenings, which used to stir us reflexively

to remorse, now evoke less painful responses. We see the world differently througha new time. And as we learn to see a friendlier face of time, the mask of death itself

becomes transformed--if not into a smile, perhaps at least without a frown. (p. 53)

. . . we persist in focusing on body problems almost exclusively. Is the patientmaintaining his diet? Has the white blood cell count fallen too low to permit further

treatment? Is the clotting mechanism intact, or should we defer chemotherapy fornow? Body problems are real, and should be dealt with; but they are only part of

the larger view, which includes the "time strategy being used by the seriously and

terminally ill.

How can we intervene in the time strategy being utilized by seriously ill patients? Agreat therapeutic reservoir of techniques exists for this purpose, most of which


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make use of the purposeful use of visualization, imagery, and relaxation. Entirely

new disciplines such as biofeedback have arisen in the past two decades, which areknown to be highly effective in modifying the time sense in sick patients.

The importance of these techniques should not be underestimated, for evidence

suggests that they are potent factors in extending life in seriously ill patients. (p. 55)

Since no demarcations in time exist in a nonflowing, nonlinear time, past, present,

and future become arbitrary divisions. The ordinary way of marking life at its polesby birth and death becomes suspect. We can begin to see birth and death as events

occurring at either end of the asymmetric unfolding of happenings that we call life,

but that carry no absolute status as an ultimate beginning or an ultimate end. Death,

in the new view of health, becomes effete. The ordinary goal of health care, that of

forestalling the moment of death, fails as a rational effort on the part of both

physicians and patients, for there is no ultimate end to be saved from. Because theflow of time is seen as a psychological event not representing a true feature of the

physical world, the ordinary sense of urgency that we feel is reduced. Along with

this lack of respect for a pernicious (p. 143)

flowing time, the epidemic of various forms of "hurry sickness" begins to abate.

We cease to destroy ourselves out of a sense that time is running out, that there isn't

enough of it, that we are approaching our final end. (p. 144)

The notion that time flows in a one-way fashion is a property of our consciousness.

It is a subjective phenomenon and is a property that simply cannot be demonstrated

in the natural world. This is an incontrovertible lesson from modern science, a

lesson that has been enormously difficult for modern man to comprehend. A

flowing time belongs to our mind, not to nature. We serially perceive events thatsimply "are," and the serial perception of many such events eventuates in what we

interpret to be an indisputable fact of nature, the flow of time. (p. 151)

There is a curious quality of this process which has to do with our time sense. The

sense of time that we ordinarily have, that of a flowing, linear process comprised ofa past, present, and future, seems suspended in moments of imagination. These

pictures in the mind change as events unfold, yet they do not convey to us the sense

of time flow. In the imagery process there is no sense of time (p. 164)urgency. Time seems suspended, although events clearly "happen" in the image

itself.

We ordinarily think this is impossible. Anything that "happens" must involve a

linear experience of time. How can things happen outside of time?

This quality of time that we experience in the imaging process is strongly similar to

the modern description of time given by the British mathematician-physicistP.C.W. Davies, which we have already examined. Davies contends that a flowing


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time is not a quality of the world itself, but is a psychological illusion, albeit a

mysterious and persistent one. Nowhere in modern physics, Davies contends, mustone postulate a flowing time of past, present, and future to account for the findings

of modern physical science. (p. 165)

Time and IllnessWe are coming to the understanding in medicine that some diseases are the result of

a disorder of time perception. As we have observed several times in this book, thesense of time urgency is associated with a sobering variety of physical problems.

For example, anxiety, stress, and tension figure into the development of

atherosclerotic heart disease and hypertension, the two most com-mon causes of

death in our society.

The chronic misjudgment of the nature of time should be seen for what it really is:

chronic disease itself. It is a silent process, but for many of us an inexorable oneleading to disease which can be fatal. We do not ordinarily judge it in these terms,

of course, and too frequently ascribe our sense of time urgency to "nerves." Having

misjudged the cause of our distress, we misjudge the solutions-- tranquilizers and

alcohol are too often the most commonly trusted antidotes.

Time and Therapy

Time urgency has been recognized by an increasing number of persons in

medicine, however, for the disease it is. Promising treatments are evolving. It is

interesting to observe that most of these newer methods of treating "hurry sickness"and time urgency--biofeedback, relaxation, and meditative techniques--lure the

subject in very subtle ways into a new way of perceiving time. They ask the (p.166)

patient to step out of a chronic, habitual way of sensing time as an inexorable

flowing proces into an alternative mode of time perception. They ask the patient to

"stop" time. They invite him into the realm of spacetime, although this invitation isnever explicit.

. . .Most persons learn these skills easily and they come to enjoy the imagery process.

Why? The new mode of time perception feels good. To be forever bogged down ina sense of time urgency is defeating. Stress and anxiety for most of us are

unbearable without periodic alleviation. Thus, to involve oneself in a new mode of

time perception is to experience good feelings.

We have seen earlier that participation in the states of consciousness that we typifyas being serene, calm, and relaxed generate physiological changes that can be

measured. The changes that occur are as real as those produced by any drug.Changes in hormonal levels in the blood, variations in heart rate and blood

pressure, and changes in levels of muscle tension and blood flow to certain regions

of the body accompany a subject's imagery efforts. Thus, since the processes of

imagery and visualization are involved in these states, we can begin to see these


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processes as potent therapeutic agents. They are "medicine" in the truest sense, as

real as drugs and surgical procedures. (p. 167)

How is this possible? Regardless of the image that is made, the subjects do at leastone thing similarly: they are exchanging their usual sense of time perception for

one in which time ceases to flow. . . . Even though the events are sequentiallychanging, they are not happening in the usual linear sense; they simply are. (p. 168)

Many pastimes, hobbies, and diversions share this capacity to "kill time," and

frequently those who engage in them are said to be "killing time." This is an

accurate description of the felt changes in time flow. In doing something

repetitive--for example, needlepoint, where repetitive stitches follow one on the

other--one can step out of time into a complete absorption in the project. Althoughthe stitches form a sequence, each stitch can have its own "is-ness." It can escapeits position in sequence, and experientially seems to bear no strong temporal

association to the stitch that came before it or that comes after it. Each stitch stands

on its own. The preoccupied needlepointer indeed "kills time," having stepped into

the nonflowing realm of spacetime through total absorption in his/her work. (p.169)

BRODIE: Often, in the heat and excitement of a game, a player's perception andcoordination will improve dramatically. At times, and with increasing frequency

now, I experience a kind of clarity that I've never seen adequately described in a

football story. Sometimes, for example, time seems to slow way down, in an

uncanny way, as if everyone were moving in slow motion. It seems as if I have all

the time in the worldto watch the receivers run their patterns and yet I know thedefensive line is coming at me just as fast as ever. I know perfectly well how hard

and fast those guys are coming and yet the whole thing seems like a movie or dancein slow motion. It's beautiful. [Emphasis added.] (p. 170)

It is well known that most children have a highly developed capacity for total

absorption in a task. In certain situations children can use this abilitytherapeutically. To illustrate, I shall share the story of Mark, a six-year-old boy who

was referred to my biofeedback laboratory for treatment of hyperactivity.

Hyperactive children

are a literal embodiment of "hurry sickness." They cannot be still for very long.

Their constant activity is disconcerting for their parents and peers. Because they are

constantly in motion they cannot focus their attention. Although they are usuallyintelligent they may be judged to be slow intellectually, for it is only with great

difficulty that they can stay "on track" long enough to complete a task. (p. 172)


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There are a variety of images that can be used effectively in manipulating the

sensation of pain. The technique which Monica used to abort her discomfort was to

visualize the location of her pain as a small glowing red ball. She would focus as

intensely as possible on this image, and when it was extremely vivid she wouldcause the ball to begin to move, ever so slowly, outside her body. She would centerthe ball about six feet in front of her. Then this small red ball of pain, glowing

intensely, would begin to grow. It would enlarge to the size of a basketball,

hovering in space. Moreover, it was suspended in time. Monica's description of this

state was that time "stood still." Although events were "still going on," such as the

red ball continuing to shimmer, time had ceased to flow. This was the time of

spacetime.. . .

Clinical experience suggests that a key to manipulating pain perception--as

Monica's descriptions suggest--is instoppingtime. (p. 173)

The physician, nurse, or therapist who aids the patient in pain is more than a

dispenser of analgesics. He can be a guide. He can be one who shows the suffererthe way through the corridors of time to the still point where time ceases to flow,

and where pain abates. And the patient, the suffering patient--how can we avoid theconclusion?--becomes a time traveler.

The new physical description of time is grist for everyman's mill, as the above

clinical cases illustrate. The relevance of the new definition of time goes beyondthe physics laboratory to impact on the lives of anyone who suffers from a time-

dependent disorder, or hurry sickness--which, unfortunately, includes almost all of

us. (p. 174)

In spite of the fact that the sense of linear, flowing time may have survived as part

of our biological nature because of its survival value, this is surely not the whole

story. I believe there is survival value also in perceiving time in a static,

nonflowing, nonlinear way. We have observed that a sense of urgency is associated

with the perception of time as a linear process of past, present, and future. Ourmodern sense of this urgency is expressed by our feeling that there is not enough

time. We are running out of it. For each of us the flowing river of time will run dry.This moving river translates for most of us into a moving treadmill on which we

attempt to do more and more in Iess and less time. The price we pay is stress,

tension, and anxiety.

There is considerable evidence, as we have seen in Part II, that the psychological

effects of urgency--stress, anxiety, tension--do not stay in the psyche. They are

translated into the body where they eventuate in physical ailments. The sense of

urgency generates infirmity, disease, and death. So although this sense may haveenabled us to behave in ways which facilitated survival at earlier stages in our


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evolutionary history, it surely is a two-edged sword which haunts us in modern

times.In contrast, the psychological sense that accompanies the perception of time as

static and nonflowing is one of tranquility, serenity and peace. This is the time

perception so well described in mystical and poetic literature. It is the sense ofoneness, of unity with all there is, the feeling of calm and release. It is the opposite

of urgency. (p. 179)

HOW HEALING HAPPENS:

EXPLORING THE NONLOCAL GAP

For the entire history of the human race, people have believed that healing cantake place at a distance. How does healing happen remotely? The short answeris: Nobody knows. The situation is rather like that described by Sir ArthurEddington, the British astronomer-physicist, who said, in speaking about theuncertainty principle in modern physics, Something unknown is doing we dontknow what.

The reasons we dont know how healing happens is that the task is remarkablydaunting. We have bumped up against what may be the three most mysteriousentities in the universe: consciousness, space, and time. As we shall see,understanding spiritual or distant healing requires penetrating these mysteries,about which we remain appallingly ignorant. We are like the blind men whoencounter the elephant. Every expert in healing seems to be feeling differentparts, and the version we report represents a different point of contact. Awhole-elephant perspective is lacking. So what can we say about how theseevents happen?

The question of how healing happens is tightly connected with language andtaxonomy, because the language used in this field often presumes or implies amechanism as when we say nonlocal healing or energy healing.

I dont enjoy talking about the importance of language in healing, because thissubject stirs powerful emotions. People take their language personally. We uselanguage to describe what we do, and what we do is connected with our self-image, how we define who we are. To question someones choice of languagecan be perceived as a personal attack or threat. I have seen nice, sereneresearchers go ballistic in formal meetings when their healing language wasquestioned, and it is not a pretty sight.

Language both attracts and repels. W. H. Auden used to say that when he didntwant to talk to someone sitting next to him on an airplane, he simply told themhe was a medievalist. I have been experimenting with this tactic lately. I havediscovered I can achieve Audens result by telling someone Im an explorer ofnonlocal mind. That usually turns them away. But if they ask, Whats that? Irespond, Mind that is everywhere in space and time. That always does it.


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I had a lesson in the power of language a few years ago when a friend of minedecided to open a sophisticated restaurant in Mountain View, a tiny town locatedin the beautiful Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas. At the time this sleepylittle community did not have a good downscale restaurant, and whether or not itwas ready for an upscale establishment was debatable. But he was enthusiastic

about bringing culinary excellence to town. One of the choices he offered on themenu was beef Stroganoff. The problem was that nobody knew what it was, andnot a single person ordered it. It was a complete failure. But instead of tossingout all the beef Stroganoff, the next day he reprinted the menu, changed thename of beef Stroganoff to beef and noodles, and made it the special of the day.Beef and noodles was a huge hit and a constant menu feature thereafter. Fromthis event we can derive what I call the Beef Stroganoff Principle: If you want tosell something, be careful what you call it.

Much depends on the audience. The rules for a menu in Mountain View,Arkansas, would not be the same for Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times

recently featured an article on how to design a restaurant menu. The writer says,Spaghetti, $14, sounds steep and not very appealing. But Spaghetti withgrilled sardines, pine nuts, currants, and wild spinach, $14 sounds worth it.Other guidelines: never say boiled, which sounds like youve cooked the life outof the food; say stewed or better yet, roasted.

In the young field of spiritual or distant healing, we are in the process ofdesigning the menu, deciding what to call it. We know that people are attractedor repelled by certain terms. The problem is that there is no accepted taxonomyand the vocabulary is a muddle. We seem to be making it up as we go along,often with little forethought. Metaphors and poetic images mingle with facts, and

it is difficult to tell one from the other. Some of the terms we hear are psychichealing, psychokinesis (or PK, mind over matter), prayer healing, healingintentionality, energy healing, vibrational healing, quantum healing, nonlocalhealing, consciousness-based healing, and just plain healing.

Like my friends beef Stroganoff, which did not penetrate the market in MountainView, Arkansas, until he found a name that was comprehensible and acceptableto the surrounding world, it may be that the market we want to penetrate withspiritual healing conventional medicine and the scientific community will notrespond positively until we begin to speak a proper language.

THE LANGUAGE OF HEALING

To illustrate how language can be twisted and run amok in the culture, considerthe term quantum. It has captured the popular imagination and is being usedto describe everything in sight. In a shopping center near my home, a healthfoods store advertises products for quantum nutrition. Close by is a beautysalon advertising quantum perms. It is impossible to escape quantum thesedays. When I recently scanned the books in my library I saw books on quantumpsychology, quantum healing, quantum physics, quantum reality, and thequantum body. I did a quick search of the Internet and turned up 1,354,310entries for quantum. If you try this, youll discover thousands of listings foritems such as quantum CDs, quantum fishing equipment, quantum consulting,quantum marketing, quantum workshops for success in business, quantumemployment opportunities, quantum creativity, quantum fashions, and quantumcomic books. Why do people use quantum? Attaching quantum to your


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product or service implies that it is chic, modern, and a major advance aquantum leap beyond your competitors. It is obvious that there is apsychology behind naming, which applies not only to commerce but to the fieldof spiritual healing as well.

Of course, we expect advertisers to take liberties with language and to blurmetaphor and fact. But in science we are supposed to follow a different standard.We are supposed to use terms that mean what they say.

But in spiritual healing, we dont. Consider the term energy and its variants,which crop up in terms such as energy healing, vibrational healing, subtleenergy healing, and the efforts of healers to balance the energies or thefrequencies of a person in need. Physics currently acknowledges four kinds ofenergy the electromagnetic, the gravitational, and the strong and weaknuclear forces. Are energy healers referring to these types of energy, or tometaphors? Almost never do the healers define what they mean when they use

these terms. Even if they are referring to known types of energy, can energyexplain spiritual healing?

Certainly not distant healing. In the physics-and-parapsychology community,there is near-unanimity on this point. As a single example, heres what physicistsElizabeth A. Rauscher and Russell Targ say in their recent article, The Speed ofThought, in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, in their discussion of thedistant, nonlocal behaviors of consciousness, including distant healing:

We recognize that every ontology is perishableHowever, we are confident that twofactors will remain: namely that these phenomena are not a result of an energetictransmission, but rather they are an interaction of our awareness with a nonlocal hyper-

dimensional space-time in which we live. [emphasis in original]

Robert G. Jahn, Brenda J. Dunne, and Roger D. Nelson of the PrincetonEngineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab agree:

[W]hile there have been many attempts to interpret conscious-related anomalousphenomena in terms of some physical form of information transmission, virtually all ofthese have explicitly presumed a space/time reference matrix. The demonstration ofnegligible attenuation of the empirical effects with distance, along with the precognitive

and retrocognitive capacities, would seem to call this presumption into question, andspecifically to preclude their attribution to any known form of field radiation, be it

electromagnetic, geophysical, or even subtler physical vectors. [Emphasis added]. Theliterature of psychic research abounds with attempts to transpose various physical

formalisms [to account for these effects]: electromagnetic models, thermodynamicmodels, mechanical models, statistical mechanical models, and others.Although thesecomprise an interesting body of effort, none of them seems fully competent.Indeed, itappears that no simple application of existing physical theory is likely to prevail. In orderto encompass the observed effects, a substantially more fundamental level of theoreticmodel will need to be deployed, one which more explicitly acknowledges the role ofconsciousness in the definition of physical reality.

No one has been clearer about the importance of language in healing thanpsychologist Lawrence LeShan. LeShan has spent more years studying healers,

doing healing, and teaching healing than anyone alive. He says:


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One factor adding to the complications of this particular term ["energy"] is the fact that

we often take concepts meaning something fairly familiar that are used in other ways ofconstruing reality and apply them as if they are synonymous for [the scientific conceptof] energy. I think here of such words as prana, [chi], wakanda, gray force, and

orenda. These are terms that make sense in the particular way of organizing andconstruing reality in which they originated. They make no sense when translated directly

into others. Whatever it is that manifests in a meridian, it is not the same thing thatmakes an electric light bulb glow. You confuse the two at the peril of your possibility ofconstructive thinking.

Unless we recognize the problem [of language] and that it is not only confined tothe one word ["energy"] our progress will continue to be hampered. And forthose who do not think it has been, I might point out that if I have anappendicitis attack, it will make a crucial difference whether my physician hasbeen trained in 1990 or 1590. In one case I will live, in the other I will die.However, if I go to a psychic healer, it will not make any difference in whichcentury the healer was trained. The results will be about the same. Nor have we

learned anything much about understanding, training, or using telepaths orclairvoyants in the past centuries. (I know of no other field except possiblypolitical science of which this can be said). This is pretty shocking when youcome to think about it and when you consider the serious work that has goneinto such areas as psychic healing and spiritual development by intelligent,dedicated and hard-working human potential people. It illustrates that something[is] very wrong. Our attitude towards language appears to be one of them.

Now, I realize that most healers are bored stiff by questions of language andconsider this debate a needless haggling over terms. The main thing, they say, iswhether or not healing works, not what we call it. I disagree. We face serious

obstacles in advancing healing work, and we do not need to compound ourproblems by adopting a language that other scientists find impenetrable andwhich has no accepted currency in mainstream science.

We can create horrendous problems by playing fast and loose with terminology.Consider the flap over Therapeutic Touch (TT) that took place at the University ofColorado a few years ago. For years TT researchers and practitioners havereferred to energy patterns, energy flow, energy fields, blocked energy,and energy balancing, as if these concepts have been empirically demonstratedbeyond reasonable doubt. But although there is considerable evidence for theclinical efficacy of TT, the critical experiments that might clarify the underlying

mechanisms have simply not been done. Most TT practitioners there arenotable exceptions do not appear to realize this, and make no attempts todistinguish metaphor from fact. In adopting this stance, TT proponents at theUniversity of Colorado played into the hands of so-called skeptics who despisethe idea of distant healing. The skeptics launched a campaign to ban theteaching of TT in state-funded institutions and caused immense distress to thenurse scholars who were involved.

As a further example of how confused language evokes criticism, consider therecent hostile paper Experiments in Distant Intercessory Prayer by Chibnall etal in a recent issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. One of their targets is

the undisciplined use of energy and subtle energy. When researchers indistant healing use such terms, one can almost see the cynics gloating, sayingGotcha!


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Is it possible to arrive at a language of healing that is true to the experimentalfindings?

THE THREE PHASES OF DISTANT HEALING

It is helpful to divide spiritual healing into three phases.

The first phase involves the activities and intentions of the individual who isattempting the healing. This usually involves entering a meditative, prayerfulstate which healers sometimes call centering. Healers describe a variety ofexperiences when they enter this psychophysical state feelings of serenity,empathy, and compassion, warmth and tingling in the extremities, and so on. Weknow a lot about this stage. For nearly half a century researchers have describedthe physiological changes that are involved, including EEG patterns, MRI and PETscan data, cardiovascular changes, immune modifications, and so on. Whats themechanism? Most researchers are comfortable using the energy-relatedframework of conventional science in describing these events biology,

chemistry, classical physics, anatomy, physiology.

Lets jump to the third or downstream phase of spiritual healing. This involvesthe response of the individual to whom the healing is directed . These changesmay involve a variety of physical sensations as well as physiological changes.Controlled studies have documented positive responses in cardiovasculardisease, , advanced AIDS, infertility, and so on. In nonhumans, studies havedemonstrated increased healing rates in surgical wounds in animals, increasedgermination rates in seeds and the growth rates in plants, increased replicationrates of various types of microorganisms, decreased hemolytic rates of red bloodcells, altered kinetics of biochemical reactions, and so on. , As with the initial

phase of spiritual healing, most researchers believe these third-phase changescan also be described within the local, classical framework that underlies modernphysiological research.

THE NONLOCAL GAPBetween the initial and final phases of healing lies the most intriguing phase ofall the distance between the healer and healee. We can call this phase thenonlocal gap, because it can be described only by invoking the concepts ofnonlocality, as we shall see. Although we know that this spatial separation can bebridged by the intentions, empathic wishes, and compassionate prayers ofhealers, and by both conscious and unconscious thought, it remains a domain ofgreat mystery. These nonlocal behaviors of consciousness also have the ability togenerate intense emotional and intellectual revolt on the part of those wedded toa thoroughly local view of reality. But these objections are destined to become afootnote in history, because there is nothing in the whole of Newtonian physicsthat can explain how this nonlocal gap is bridged. There is no hope, even inprinciple, of applying classical, causal, local, energy-based explanations to thisin-between phase of spiritual healing. Although energy-based models may doquite well to explain what happens within healer and healee, they dont work inexplaining what happens in this strange world between the healer and healee. Sothis is why no single mechanism is going to explain spiritual healing.

The conventional view within science, of course, is that consciousness iscompletely local i.e., it is confined to specific points in space (the brain andbody) and time (the present moment). In brief, modern science assumes that


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consciousness and the brain are identical. Thus astronomer Carl Sagan: [Thebrains] workings what we sometimes call mind are a consequence of itsanatomy and physiology, and nothing more. And Francis Crick: a personsmental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, andthe atoms, ions, and molecules that make up and influence them.

Yet the confidence exuded by presumptuous statements such as these ispremature. We are appallingly ignorant about the connections betweenconsciousness and the brain. Thus philosopher John Searle: At the present stateof the investigation of consciousness we dont know how it works and we need totry all kinds of different ideas. And philosopher Jerry Fodor: Nobody has theslightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knowswhat it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything materialcould be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness.

A MODEST PROPOSAL

So I have some very simple suggestion. If we choose to do science in this field,lets use the language of science. Let us not invent a private vocabulary for whichthere is no shared meaning in the scientific community. Let us not assertmechanisms of healing which are inconsistent with empirical findings. And whenwe are in the dark about mechanism, let us admit it.

IS SPIRITUAL HEALING SPIRITUAL?What do we mean by the term spiritual healing?

By spiritual, I mean the sense of connectedness with a factor in the universethat is wiser and more powerful than the individual sense of self and that is

infinite in space and time. I choose to refer to this factor as the Absolute. In thegreat religions it is often referred to as God, Goddess, Allah, the Tao, Universe,and so on. By healing I simply mean the restoration of a sense of wholeness,from whence the term healing is derived. Healing involves a sense of onenessof mind and body within the person, but can also include a sense of oneness withall there is, a condition of which the great mystical traditions have alwaysspoken. Healing may or may not be associated with the eradication of aparticular disease.

The differences of opinion about the nature of healing are profound. Most peoplein our culture believe that healing has something to do with spirituality and

prayer. But J. B. Rhine, the founder of modern parapsychology, disagreed. Rhinebelieved that intercessory prayer was nothing more than psychokinesis or PK mind acting directly on matter. He saw no reason to put God in the loop. As heput it,

Religious communication is basically psi communication, pure and simple.All thephysical miracles, whether in the healing of disease, the miraculous movement of

objects, or the control of the elements, had to be manifestations of PK [psychokinesis].

ABOUT DAT

Other experts disagree with Rhines position on psychokinesis, and say that PK isvastly overrated. This view has been most recently elaborated by Ed May, Jessica

Utts, and James Spottiswoode in their Decision Augmentation Theory or DAT.According to this view, people dont push the world around with their intentions


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or prayers. Instead, they intuit what is going to happen in the future and aligntheir intentions with these developments, which gives the illusion that theirintentions caused the pattern of events that ensues. So DAT essentially abolishespsychokinesis in favor of precognition.

DAT is at odds with the views of most researchers in healing andparapsychology. Almost all of them believe that consciousness can both insertinformation nonlocally into the world and therefore actually do something outthere, in addition to acquiring information or knowledge from the environment.Some researchers have lined up strenuously against DAT such as physicist YorkDobyns of PEAR , and philosopher and Whiteheadian scholar David Ray Griffin ofClaremont College, who accepts the evidence for psychokinesis but rejectsprecognition in principle.

If DAT permits only precognition, can it account for healing? I believe it can, atleast for certain kinds of healing. Evidence suggests that individuals can

precognitively acquire information that is relevant to the health of themselvesand their loved ones. If they precognize this information before the unhealthyevent takes place, they may take action to avoid future illness or even death. Forexample, surveys of parents of babies who died of sudden infant death syndrome(SIDS) reveal that these parents have intuitions or premonitions of theimpending death of their infant 10 times more frequently than parents of normalinfants. If this precognitively acquired information were acted on, the deaths ofthe babies may have been avoided. Even groups of individuals appearprecognitively to acquire information of impending disasters, and have used thisinformation to avoid lethal consequences. Precognition-based theories such asDAT, therefore, can be highly relevant to health outcomes.

I believe there are arguments in favor of psychokinesis and intentionality thathave been underestimated by the DAT proponents. Among these are conceptsfrom evolutionary biology that have been elaborated by the Nobel neurobiologistSir John Eccles, among others. Eccles maintained that conscious awarenesswould not have arisen in the evolutionary history of humans if consciousnesswere unable to do something. The fact that consciousness expanded, so tospeak, in higher organisms, is an indication that it lent survival value to theorganism possessing it. If something contributes a survival advantage, then itmust be capable of acting in some way on the world in which the organism findsitself. The arising of consciousness is therefore evidence of its potency. So forEccles consciousness was not effete or an illusion but was causal.

Eccles was not defending PK, of course; but other scholars come surprisinglyclose to doing so. For example, one of the current godfathers of quantumphysics, Henry P. Stapp of UC-Berkeley, says,

the new physics presents prima facie evidence that our human thoughts are linked tonature by nonlocal connections: what a person chooses to do in one region seemsimmediately to effect what is true elsewhere in the universe. This nonlocal aspect can beunderstood by conceiving the universe to be not a collection of tiny bits of matter, butrather a growing compendium of bits of information.And, I believe that most quantumphysicists will also agree that our conscious thoughts ought eventually to be understood

within science and that when properly understood, our thoughts will be seen to DOsomething: they will be efficacious. [emphasis in original]


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NONLOCALITY

Lets look closer at the second phase of distant healing, the nonlocal gap. Whatis a nonlocal event? Nonlocality is a term that literally means, in laymanslanguage, not local. If an event is nonlocal, it is not confinable to the here-and-now. It violates confinement to specific points in space and time. Two books

about nonlocality for laypersons and nonphysicists are particularly recommended physicist Nick Herberts Quantum Reality, and The Non-Local Universe byscience historian Robert Nadeau and physicist Menas Kafatos.

What do nonlocal events look like? There is a class of experiments in quantumphysics that demonstrates nonlocal features. For example, if one takessubatomic particles that have once been in contact and separates them atarbitrary distances theoretically, even to the ends of the universe a changein one is correlated with a change in the other instantly and to the same degree.In some strange way, the particles appear to behave as if they are a singleparticle, in spite of their separation. Physicist Henry Stapp says that these

nonlocal quantum connections could be the most profound discovery in all ofscience. How do the nonlocal correlations take place? How can one particleknow that the other has changed? Hypotheses abound, but there is noagreement. In spite of the lack of an explanatory mechanism, nonlocalphenomena are not in doubt in contemporary physics; numerous experimentshave been done since this phenomenon was first theorized by the Irish physicistJohn Bell in the 1960s. ,

Nonlocal events have three essential characteristics that distinguish them fromlocal, common-sense, everyday happenings. They are unmediated, unmitigated,and immediate. Unmediated means that they are not propagated by any known

force, energy, or signal. Unmitigated means that the strength of the correlated,distant changes does not weaken with increasing distance; in other words, thedistant changes do not obey the inverse square law of classical physics,according to which the strength of a signal decreases inversely according to thesquare of the distance from the source. This means that nonlocally correlatedevents are as robust at a million miles as at an inch. Immediate means that thedistant correlations take place instantly; there need be no travel time for anenergetic signal uniting them, because such a signal does not exist.

Why apply nonlocal to the consciousness of human beings? Humans oftenbehave as if they are a single particle, so to speak, even though they separatedat great distances as in distant healing. But not only distant healing. Asphysicists and psi researchers Elizabeth A. Rauscher and Russell Targ state, Theconcept of nonlocality is very reminiscent of the data dealing with identical twins,separated at birth and reared apart, who nonetheless show striking similarities intheir tastes, interests, spouses, experiences, and professions, beyond what onecould reasonably ascribe to their DNA. And not only in distant twins, but invirtually any distant humans who share empathic bonds.

A great deal of evidence suggests that distant healing is unmediated. No one hasever discovered a signal uniting a healer and healee who are widely separated,and they have looked hard. Distant healing therefore resembles psi events suchas telepathy and clairvoyance, which, with vanishingly few exceptions, have notbeen linked with any mediating signal. Moreover, experiments with Faradayshielding does not diminish healing effects, which would be the case if


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conventional electromagnetic energies were involved. (True, ELF or extremelylow- frequencies cannot totally be shielded, but it is not clear how ELFs couldencode enough information to account for complex healing events. Nor is it clearhow ELF waves could operate outside the present moment and account forprecognitive information sharing, as in remote viewing experiments. Of this,

more below.)

Is nonlocal healing immediate? It is difficult to be certain, because we cannot saywhen a healing intention is actually formed in the mind of the healer, and neithercan we determine the moment it begins to act in the healee. But if healing isnonlocal with respect to space, we would expect it also to be nonlocal withrespect to time. As physicists Russell Targ and Elizabeth Rauscher state,nonlocality is a property of both time and space. Princeton researchers RobertG. Jahn and Brenda J. Dunne imply that spatial nonlocality mandates temporalnonlocality. As they say,

[In quantum physics], there is little mathematical distinction between spatial andtemporal behavior, so that any [explanation of the] acquisition of information remote indistance would equally well apply to information remote in time.

Now, physics does not own nonlocality. Parapsychology researchers discoverednonlocal events about a hundred years before quantum mechanics was everinvented. Yet we bow and scrape in deference to quantum physics as if it enjoysa monopoly on nonlocal events the small-is-beautiful syndrome, asphilosopher Stephen Braude calls it. Physics does not own nonlocal events. Infact, there is no proof whatever that nonlocal human experiences depend onquantum nonlocality; therefore we ought to stop holding healing hostage toquantum physics. Physics offers us some helpful images and analogies, for whichwe can be grateful but an analogy is not a homology. Equating consciousnesswith quanta is to commit a category mistake confusing the menu with themeal, to return to our earlier metaphors.

To summarize: When we go looking for the mechanism of distant healing, onesize does not fit all. We can perhaps use classical, energy-based explanations forthe first and third phases within the healer and healee, respectively, but not forthe nonlocal gap between them.

NONLOCAL HEALING

Because nonlocality is the most striking feature of distant healing the quality

that distinguishes it from conventional forms of healing I suggest that theterm nonlocal healing be adopted. This gives a far more accurate descriptionthan energy healing or similar terms, which are incomplete at best andmisleading at worst. On the other hand, if researchers and clinicians choose tocontinue using classical, energy-related terms, they should specify which phaseof distant healing they are referring to. And if they use energy metaphorically,they should go to great pains to say so, to prevent confusing themselves andourselves as well.

Can we learn to think nonlocally? The old classical images grant us somemeasure of psychological comfort about how the world behaves, especially in

healing. For example, when a friend goes to the hospital we often say to him orher, Ill be thinking about you and sending you prayers, or Ill be sending you


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energy. But if healing works nonlocally, there is no necessity for intentions,thoughts, and prayers to be sent anywhere, because they are already there.Nothing reaches out; indeed, there is no out. Yet most of us are wedded todirectionality in healing. For instance, I have never met anyone who felt thattheir healing intentions or prayers traveled backward, downward, or sideways.

Going beyond our classical images in favor of nonlocal thinking is not easy. But,then, major advances in thinking never are.

I used to keep a list of terms that might be less repellent to people extendedmind, cosmic consciousness, the One Mind, Universal Mind, the collectiveunconscious, the collective conscious, on and on. Yet these terms appear datedor are burdened with too much religious and psychological baggage. I settled onnonlocal mind because I believe no other term captures the features ofconsciousness that flow both from experience and experiments. Nonlocal hasadditional cachet because nonlocality is recognized within physics as an innatefeature of the natural world. If physicists have identified nonlocality in their

world, this says were not making it up; and if physicists can talk about nonlocalevents, then surely we are justified in searching for nonlocal events in the humandomain.

But we have to be careful here. The fact that nonlocal events exist both in thesubatomic and human domains does not mean that quantum physics somehowexplains what happens in the human dimension. It explicitly does not. There isno evidence whatever that human beings experience nonlocal phenomenabecause the itsy bitsy particles in their brains behave nonlocally. Quantummechanics therefore provides us with a potent metaphor but only a metaphorfor what is happening between separated humans.

This caution is everywhere ignored thus quantum psychology, quantumhealth, on and on. When we equate quantum nonlocality with humannonlocality, we commit what Whitehead called a category mistake. Or as thelinguist Alfred Korzybski said, we confuse the map with the territory. Heres anexample of the category mistake in action:

All of these mystics have said in one way or another, Were all interconnected.Well, we have discovered a mechanism for that in science called non-locality. Thefirst discoveries, which were made at the particle level, found that particles thatwere ever entangled in a process, if they go apart from each other, foreverremain correlated. Weve recently discovered a mechanism in science that isnon-local called quantum holography, which carries the information about everyphysical object. It serves as the basis, it now appears, for what we call the innerexperience.

SPECIFIC HYPOTHESES

We really should stop beating up on ourselves because we cant explain howdistant healing works. For some reason, many of us think it is fatal to operate ina theoretical vacuum. So, rather than say, We dont know how this stuff works,we pretend to have all the answers. But it is not lethal in science to admitignorance about mechanism. This is particularly true in medicine, where we haveoften known that something works before we understand how it works. Forcenturies we knew that drugs such as quinine, colchicine, and aspirin worked


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before we figured out how. We still dont know how general anesthetics work, butthis has hardly retarded their use.

One of the most common reasons people reject distant healing is that there is nogenerally accepted hypothesis in science that permits it. This leads researchers in

distant healing and parapsychology to imagine that if we just had a super-dupertheory explaining all these anomalous happenings, all the skeptics would comeover to our side. To those researchers who actually believe this, I say, Dreamon. It is not the lack of an explanatory theory that retards this field so much asthe innate resistance to changing ones world view.

In fact, there is an abundance of hypotheses supporting nonlocal manifestationsof consciousness. These have recently been advanced by first-rate scholars in avariety of disciplines. Dean Radin has reviewed some of the main ones in hisbook The Conscious Universe, as have I. Douglas Stokes has reviewed more than40 theoretical models of psi phenomena, and a recent review has also been

offered by Beichler.

Some hypotheses deserve special notice. One is that of William A. Tiller, who haslong been at the forefront of hypothesis development and research in this field.Tiller, most recently with Walter E. Dibble, Jr., and Michael J. Kohane, suggest,on the basis of their experiments, that a single person or a group of individualscan create an elevated and tangible field of consciousness in a specific spatialregion by creating a metastable condition in the vacuum state. Suchintentions can be cumulative; if these intentions are repeated daily over years,this process can raise the local vacuum state to a stable phase change thatmay continue indefinitely. This can convert a mundane site to a sacred space.

Tiller, Dibble, and Kohane suggest that physical objects can similarly beconditioned, and that such objects may function as intermediary devices; whenmoved to other locations they can condition the new space in the same waythat they have been conditioned by the original intentions of the humansinvolved. Tiller proposes the existence of multidimensional spaces emotional(9D), mental (10D) and spiritual (11D) spaces which, in his view, give rise tosubtle energy fields. These hypotheses are elaborated in great mathematicaldetail. One may object to all these multi-dimensional spacetime manifolds butwhen we compare them to the multi-dimensional theories that currently are allthe rage in string theory within modern cosmology, for example, they can beginto seem downright conservative.

One of the most fertile hypotheses about how healing happens has recently beenadvanced by Robert G. Jahn, former dean of engineering at Princeton University,and Brenda J. Dunne of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR)lab. They propose that we must take into account not only conscious intentionsin the entire spectrum of nonlocal, consciousness-mediated events, but theunconscious as well. They furthermore distinguish between the tangible andintangible levels of the material world. As they state,

The modellends itself to representation of various alternating healing modalities such astherapeutic touch, remote diagnosis and healing, and prayer therapyor even toacupuncture and homeopathy, where stimulation of rather abstract, essentially intangible

physiological information paths or processes appears to yield a variety of demonstrableclinical benefits.


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The role of the unconscious has been too long neglected in hypotheses of howhealing happens. We make much of intentionality, and lodge it almostexclusively in conscious awareness. But Jahn and Dunne also emphasize theunconscious:

Whatever the form of environmental conditioning, the operator would need to achieve adelicate balance between maintaining some teleological sense of intention or desire for aparticular experimental outcome, while still surrendering conscious control or

responsibility for the achievement of that goal to the unconscious mind and its deeperresources. [A] particularly effective strategyis to establish a paradoxical environmentwhich inhibits the operator from focusing on any particular reality.From this state of

innocence (i.e., not tainted by any preconceptions, prejudices, or consensus realities),the mind and the machine [or distant individual, in healing] could establish a new sharedreality that would manifest as anomalous in both sectors[I]n this bonded state, themind does not directly query or instruct its environment, it dances with it, each partnersensing and conforming to the other until a new resonance is reached.

One of the most sophisticated hypotheses compatible with nonlocal knowing andnonlocal healing has been recently proposed by physicists Elizabeth A. Rauscherand Russell Targ. They acknowledge that consciousness is fundamentallynonlocal, not just in space but also in time. Their hypothesis accounts for bothvectors of consciousness its capacity to insert information into the world, andto extract information from the world. In their words:

[Ours is] a geometrical model of space-time, which has already been extensively studiedin the technical literature of mathematics and physics. This eight-dimensional metric isknown as complex minkowski spade and has been shown to be consistent with ourpresent understanding of the equations of Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and Schrdinger. Italso has the interesting property of allowing a connection of zero distance between points

in the complex manifold, which appear to be separate from one another in ordinaryobservation. [Our] modeldescribes the major elements of experimentalparapsychology, and at the same time is consistent with the present highly successful

structure of modern physics.

The systems theorist Ervin Laszlo also proposes that distant, nonlocal events arerelated to the zero point field and the quantum vacuum.

Nobel physicist Brian D. Josephson and physicist Fotini Pallikara-Viras haveproposed that nonlocal subatomic events and our capacity to find or createmeaning may underlie nonlocal consciousness-mediated events.

David J. Chalmers of the University of Arizona has proposed that consciousnessmay be a fundamental property in the universe, not reducible to anything moreelemental, not derivable from anything else. This hypothesis, while not actuallyendorsing the nonlocal operations of consciousness such as distant healing,nonetheless appears cordial to them.

Astronaut-engineer Edgar Mitchell proposes that the nonlocal manifestations ofconsciousness can be understood through quantum holography. As he says, [T[he Quantum Hologram is that which survives. It has the characteristic ofcarrying and retaining all the events of Lifes experience. In other words, the

event history of the self is in the Quantum Hologram. All those events areretained and, since the Quantum Hologram is non-local, are propagated


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throughout the universe as available information. Thereby, Nature does not loseits experience, Nature retains information. . . A Law of the Conservation ofInformation.

British zoologist Rupert Sheldrake advocates nonlocal, immaterial

morphogenetic fields that can be structured by conscious intention.

Physicist Amit Goswami of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University ofOregon suggests that consciousness is associated with some sort of potentialthat can be nonlocally transferred from one brain to another.

Then there is Data Augmentation Theory or DAT, offered by May, Utts, andSpottiswoode, already mentioned.

INFORMATION

Many of these hypotheses employ the concept of information in describing the

nonlocal behaviors of consciousness. What is information? According to Jahn andDunne, information is any array of stimuli that the consciousness, or theenvironment, is capable of sensing and reacting to. Information, they say, isthe sole currency of reality. As they put it, Neither [the] environment nor[the] consciousness can productively be represented in isolation; only in theinteraction in the exchange of information between the two are palpableeffects constituted. I am reminded of the definition of information given byanthropologist Gregory Bateson: a difference that makes a difference.

A final comment about hypotheses of distant healing. Most scholars rejectelectromagnetic theory as an explanation for the minds nonlocal activities, but

physicists Rauscher and Targ urge caution. In electromagnetic theory, Targstates, there are mathematical equations that suggest time reversibility. In the1920s, for instance, physicist Paul Dirac developed a mathematical description ofthe relativistic electron which functioned as an advanced wave that appears totravel faster than the speed of light. This could conceivably permit a person toexperience precognition. But the gain in temporal advantage would be only onenanosecond per foot of distance, whereas the precognitive phenomena studiedby parapsychologists usually involve hours or days. So the advanced wave,Raushcer andTarg state, would provide an hours warning, only for events at adistance of 109 miles or greater. Thus, All electromagnetic or radio wavedescriptions of psi suffer from these same limitations. And what about the

proposal that remote perception could be explained by extremely low-frequency(ELF) waves? Rauscher and Targ: Although this model has received repeatedinvestigation with regard to permissible bit rates and signal propagation itfails to provide any explanation for precognitive psi, whichhas the samereliability and efficacy as real-time psychic perception.

THE FUTURE

In 1992, 3 of the nations 125 medical schools offered courses exploring therelationship of spirituality and health; in 2001, 75 offer such. The impact offollowing a religious or spiritual path on health and longevity is becomingcommon knowledge, and is documented by nearly 1,600 studies in the rapidlydeveloping field of the epidemiology of religion. , Double-blind, controlled studiesof spiritual healing are being done at major medical schools throughout thecountry. , , , Five positive systematic or meta-analyses attest to the validity of


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distant healing. , , , , These are historic developments in which we can take greatpride.

One of the surest ways of derailing these monumental advances is to claim morethan we can demonstrate, such as by playing fast and loose with indefensible

explanations of how these events take place. This will alienate open-mindedphysicians and scientists, will provide scoffers the opening they are looking for,and will prolong the time when spiritual healing is available. It is far better if wesimply stick with the facts, focus on empirical findings, and acknowledge thetentative nature of the hypotheses we offer.

To those theologians who are concerned that healing research will debasespirituality and prayer: You need not worry. Virtually all the researchersparticipating in this field consider healing research to be sacred science, not anexercise in materialistic reductionism. They are acutely aware that for everyquestion answered by healing research, a dozen pop up to take its place. Healing

research is not about proving, disproving, or testing God, as some cynicsmistakenly claim. It is, however, an exercise in restoring a majestic dimension tonature that has been forgotten in modern science. With few exceptions, healingresearchers rightfully defer on questions of mechanism, or they cautiouslyspeculate on how these events happen. Their primary strategy is to investigatewhether or not healing is real, and then to step aside and invite people tointerpret the how of healing in their own way.

Although the field of nonlocal healing is in its infancy, the baby is healthy. Yetthe great unknowns of this field the nature of consciousness, space, and time remain shrouded in mystery. As we go forward, then, let us be bold and

creative, but let us also be humble. As a nudge toward humility, we might adoptas a motto for this field the above comment of astronomer-physicist Sir ArthurEddington: SOMETHING UNKNOWN IS DOING WE DONT KNOW WHAT.

A word about the future. We need a Manhattan Project of Healing, a coordinatedresearch effort that brings together the best and the brightest researchers in thisfield to examine methodology, protocols, and hypotheses. Currently researchersare doing their own thing, using research designs that are so disparate that it isnot surprising that some result in positive outcomes and some do not. Somestudies require healers or pray-ers to devote an hour or more to healingintentions, while other studies prohibit them from spending more than fiveminutes doing such. Some studies recruit healers with decades of experience,other studies recruit healers with virtually no experience. No wonder results vary.These disparate methods result in a lot of wasted time, energy, and scarcefunds. We can do better.

Above all, let us try mightily to avoid the curse of pragmatism as healingresearch proceeds. Some people seem to regard the positive findings merely as anew tool in the physicians black bag a new penicillin, as it were, foreradicating illness. Distant healing is about healing and we should use itpragmatically. Indeed, the failure to employ distant healing in concert with otherproven techniques may be unethical. Yet healing research goes beyond usinghealing intentions or prayer to cure disease. The most important issue in thisresearch is not how large the effect sizes are in any given experiment, butwhether or not the effect exists at all. If it does, the universe is utterly different


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from the picture given to us in modern science. Why? If consciousness, throughwhatever mechanism, can exert nonlocal effects elsewhere in the world, then itis, itself, in some sense nonlocal. And if consciousness is nonlocal, then it isinfinite, because a limited nonlocality is a contradiction in terms. Nonlocalityimplies infinitude in space and time, and thus eternality and immortality. This

realization dwarfs whether or not we can use prayer or intentions to benefit aparticular disease.

Sometimes the realization of the infinite, nonlocal nature of consciousnesssprings forth nearly whole and complete in the vision of great scientists. Anexample is Erwin Schdinger, the Austrian physicist who was awared the NobelPrize for his wave equations that underly quantum physics. I close with hisvision:

A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like you, he gazed with aweand yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you, he was begotten ofman and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else?

Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours?What clearly intelligible scientificmeaning can this someone else really have?Looking and thinking in [this] manner you

may suddenly come to see, in a flash,it is not possible that this unity of knowledge,feeling, and choice which you call you own should have sprung into being from

nothingness at a given moment not so long ago; rather this knowledge, feeling, andchoice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in allsensitive beings. But not in this sense that you are a part, a piece, of an eternal being,an aspect or modification of it.No, but inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you and all other conscious beings as such are all in all. Hence this life of yours which youare living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is, in a certain sense, the

whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one singleglance.Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother

Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you. You are asfirmly established, as invulnerable, as she indeed, a thousand times firmer and more

invulnerable. As surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forthanew to new striving and suffering. And not merely some day: now, today, every dayshe is bringing you forth, not once, but thousands upon thousands of times, just as everyday she engulfs you a thousand times over. For eternally and always there is only now,one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.

Larry Dossey, MDExecutive Editor

David: What role do you think ones mind play in the health of the body?

Larry: I think that bodily health is practically an oxymoron. One cant talk

anymore about the health of the body without bringing in the effects of

consciousness--by which I mean belief systems, meanings, emotions, attitudes,

feeling-states, and so on. The day is long gone when we can separate the two.

Its just inconsistent with the data. When we try to do this we really come up

short, even when we attempt to treat the body as just a physical system andignore the mind. We have to acknowledge the numerous double-blind,


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randomized controlled studies that take into account the placebo response,

which clearly is an indication that the mind cannot be ignored. The placebo

response is simply an expression of expectation, suggestion, and optimism about

how a treatment is going to turn out. There may have been a time when doctors

could get away with focusing on the body and ignoring the mind, but those days

are gone forever.

David: Can you talk a little about the research that has been done in remote

healing and why you think that these studies are important?

Larry: Theyre important because they force a total revision of our ideas about

the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the brain and body. The old

idea is that consciousness was simply an epiphenomenon of the brain; the brain

made consciousness sort of like the liver made bile. In any case, the effects of

consciousness were confined to ones own body. They had no ability, in principle,

to reach out and make a difference remotely in someone else--but thatsprecisely the new image that is forming on the medical horizon.

Its an image of what I call nonlocal mind. Nonlocal is simply a fancy word for

infinite. Nonlocal mind is unrestricted to specific points in space, such as

individual brains and bodies, and its unrestricted to specific points in time, such

as the present moment. This sounds nutty and off-the-wall to people whove

bumped into this for the first time, but if one has the willingness to look at the

data emerging from healing studies, I think that the picture becomes quite

compelling--at least it has for me and many other researchers in the field.

So, just to summarize where we stand data-wise, Dr. Wayne Jonas, who is the

former director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative

Medicine, recently did a review and came up with 2,200 papers and citations in

this field of remote healing. Over two hundred of these studies were controlled

clinical trials and laboratory studies. The quality of the studies is quite good.

Using what are called CONSORT criteria, he was able to assign either an A or a

B level of excellence to these studies in remote healing. Eighteen of these

studies are major controlled studies in humans, eleven of which show statistically

significant results. The laboratory studies look at the effects of peoples

intentions on nonhumans--rabbits, mice, rats, plants, even bacteria growing intest tubes, fungi, yeast, and so on.

Occasionally the subjects of these lab studies are inanimate objects, such as

random event generators. The majority of all these studies yield statistical

significance, which shows that something is going on that you cant ascribe to

chance. This is just a huge area. Its infuriated skeptics, who really arent very

much inclined to look at the data or even read all the studies. All told, this data

calls into question fundamental assumptions about the nature of consciousness,

as Ive mentioned, and its forcing a revision of how consciousness operates or

manifests in the world.


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Theres a paradox here, because for most of human history people believed that

these things actually happen, but its only in the past two hundred years that

weve developed a tremendous level of intellectual indigestion over this idea that

consciousness could function remotely. So its ironic that were getting back to

this ancient idea. Whats further ironic is that science, which has denied for two

hundred years that these things are possible, is pointing the way back. So, in asense, science is shooting itself in the foot by producing this sort of evidence that

contradicts what it has claimed regarding consciousness for two centuries.

David: Why do you think that the study of consciousness and research into

psychic phenomena has important relevance for medicine?

Larry: There are several reasons. One is that it has health consequences. In my

judgment the studies clearly show that peoples intentions, prayers, and healing

efforts at a distance can make the difference between life and death in people.

Its important also because we really do want an accurate idea of the nature ofour own consciousness. Its important because honoring this information leads us

to a view of consciousness which is full of hope about our origins and destiny.

If we acknowledge that consciousness is nonlocal--that its infinite in space and

time--then this really opens up all sorts of possibilities for the survival of

consciousness following physical death. If you reason through this, and follow the

implications of these studies, you begin to realize that consciousness thats

nonlocal and unrestricted in time is immortal. Its eternal. This is as hopeful as

the current view of the fate of consciousness is dismal. This totally reverses

things. So we are lead to a position, I think, where we see that even though thebody will certainly die, the most essential part of who we are cant die, even if it

tried--because its nonlocally distributed through time and space.

Our grim vision of the finality of death is revised. Death is no longer viewed as a

gruesome annihilation or the total destruction of all that we are. So there are

tremendous spiritual implications that flow from these considerations, in addition

to the implications for health. In fact, I believe that the implications for health are

the least of it. A lot of people who encounter this area take a practical, bare

bones, utilitarian approach to it. They say, wow, now weve got a nifty new item

in our black bag--a new trick to help people become healthier. Certainly thesestudies do suggest that this is a proper use of healing intentions and prayer, and

Im all for that, but the thing that really gets my juices flowing is the implication

of this research for immortality. For me, thats the most exciting contribution of

this entire field.

The fear of death has caused more pain and suffering for human beings

throughout history than all the physical diseases combined. The fear of death is

the the big unmentionable--and this view of consciousness is a cure for that

disease, that fear of death.

David: What role do you think that spirituality plays in health?


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Larry: There are a lot of people who just dont want to get close to this prayer

stuff because they think its just parapsychology and that all parapsychology is

crazy. However, they often feel a little more comfortable when they look at

another set of data having to do with the impact of spirituality on health. There

are over 1,200 studies which look at the connections between religious behavior,such as attending worship services, and health outcomes. Currently meta-

analyses of these studies show that people who follow some sort of religious path

in their life live an average of seven to thirteen years longer than people who

dont. Thats just a huge health benefit. There isnt a whole heck of lot tha

Space, Time and Medicine

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