So the guy lays his hands on you and you’re healed. Great! Life continues in full health, which is, in effect, a miracle. Which is why so many people are suspicious of healing.
But CAN it work? Can we rationalize a means of explanation? Well, the first hint is given by many healers when they say they don’t heal. What they do is give the patient the authority to heal themselves.
This offers an interesting angle.
We already know that a person can seem to feel better by a pure act of faith. This is known as the ‘placebo effect’, and can have up to a 30% effect on an ailment.
Hormones could also be crucial to an understanding. Many bodily functions are controlled by hormones, but it has been shown that the mind can also have an effect. We seem to have a distinct mind-body mechanism within ourselves.
The autonomic nervous system is also worth study.
This covers the ‘machine like’ function of your body. But phenomena such as vegal inhibition has shown that an attitude of mind can interrupt the system.
The discipline of biofeedback is important here. By concentrating on equipment that shows blood pressure, for instance, the discipline can teach the person how to control such function through intention.
Such abilities suggest a new understanding is required.
I’ve used the term ‘psycho-physicality’ to describe a borderland between ‘physical’ and ‘mental’ illness, showing that the two can actually merge, with mind having a definite effect on the physical.
Now, much healing is known as ‘faith’ healing. And what is faith if not a total belief that something can work, thus allowing ‘mind’ dominion over the body? However, I think we can take the concept much further than this.
We actually live in three realities.
We can look in the mirror and see ourselves as skin and bone. Below this reality there is our cellular form. And below this, we are all reducible to subatomic fuzz.
This third reality is thought to be one of ‘information’ – a kind of ‘software’. Could interaction at this level of reality in some way re-program what occurs further up the reality scale?
Some medical techniques already tamper at this level of reality, such as radiotherapy. And as these realities must, at some level, have an effect on each other, we could argue that what we can do at the level of ‘information’ could rise up the chain.
A further fact about these three realities is that as we move down the chain, we access greater ‘communality’, the subatomic being indistinguishable from the universe. Could this permit information to pass from one person to another, such as from healer to patient, thus affecting the program?
This is, of course, highly speculative. But to think of ourselves in terms of mind-body interaction, combined with the idea of ‘software’ at the root of our health, could open up new areas of research into both health, and healing in general.
© Anthony Norh, July 2008
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