While genuine curiosity is always present in humanity, institutionalized forms of it depend on the presence of a suitable ideology. Scientific study of so-called miraculous events, for example, is not undertaken. The scientific ideology just can’t work with the phenomena as these are actually experienced. Let us take something odd like bi-location, thus a person appearing in two places at the same time. Based on the scientific view, bi-location is impossible. Those who claim to have observed it are simply labeled credulous. If such a claim is ever scientifically investigated, the aim of the study is to prove its falsity. Similarly, the Vatican does undertake careful investigation of miracles, but always as part of a process of canonization, not as a general (scientific) undertaking. Thus the Vatican does not investigate claims of miracles surrounding Hindu or Muslim saints. Much as science has a strong view of the necessarily physical causation of any symptoms others might label miraculous, so also the Vatican has a strong view of the causation of miracles; these are necessarily God’s interventions.
For these reasons, we always find evidence for the miraculous in settings where the ideology colors the whole situation. Here and there, in the last two centuries, we’ve seen some few departures from this general tendency. These have been rare because a person, however well-qualified as a scientist, will draw tribal attacks if he or she wanders off the reservation. In the nineteenth century, before the establishment of Science with a leading cap, we have the establishment of the Society for Psychical Research by an elite. An example from our own time is Ian Stevenson, a trained medical man and biochemist, who investigated reincarnation. Near Death Experience studies represent another interesting cluster, also initiated by a doctor, Raymond Moody. NDE work has taken on a certain legitimacy precisely because Moody’s work was then taken up by multiple teams of other physicians—always those who were exposed to the phenomenon directly.
The point I’m after today, however, is not that “fringe” elements in science have “dared” to “dabble” in heresy—and have to some extent “gotten away” with it. Especially in NDE work, fame and fortune—if not in academic circles—may be achieved by heresy. The thought I had was that if the medium is the message, sometimes the framing is the picture. The extraordinary gifts that infrequently become visible surrounding saints or would-be saints—I’m thinking here of Padre Pio, who is, Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth who isn’t yet, and Bruno Gröning who never shall be—appear to me to be of the greatest interest. These are modern people; they’ve all lived during my life time; indeed I once lived a mere handful of miles away from Therese’s town during and after World War II. But I know of many scores of others who’ve lived in the past—and in every culture of the globe. The same stories surround them—albeit figures with stigmata are strictly in Catholic realms, which is itself worthy of careful note. The linkage between reincarnation studies and stigmata has never been noted, except, perhaps, by me (here). But as for other capacities these people have displayed, they are the same: bi-location, precognition, healing and other powers. Each is embedded in a religious culture which explains each in his or her own framing. The total phenomenon, as an established reality, has never been examined as it were objectively, as phenomena but yet with full acceptance of the observed realities. By full acceptance here I mean that to understand these people’s lives, experiences, and actions necessarily requires acceptance of a much more extended kind of reality than we believe surrounds us. (Here I provide this link to some reports on Padre Pio by way of illustration of the nature of this evidence—and how we actually encounter it).
Time still hides many things. The inertial pull of this dimension is enormous, but in due time genuine knowledge of these phenomena, which straddle the zones of here and over there, may become better understood—although, I suspect, never by more than just a minority. As genuine curiosity is always present, there will always be those with one foot in the borderzone.
Showing posts with label Healers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Healers. Show all posts
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Physical Aspects of Faith Healing
I note that at least one visitor to this blog reached it by using what might appear to be a strange search phrase: “bruno groening neck.” Odd although it is, I understood the search phrase immediately. This famed healer had what seems to be a contradictory medical history—which gives me the opportunity to comment on the physical aspects of faith healing. The wider context here? I referred to Bruno Gröning in a recent post on miracle cures and healers.
First some facts. The searcher’s question was no doubt occasioned by the fact that in many photographs, Bruno Gröning appears to have an abnormally swollen neck. Gröning also died at the relatively young age of 53 of cancer. Two of his sons died in their childhood. Why didn’t he cure his children? Why could he not heal himself?
The straightforward answer to these questions is that for Gröning himself, the healing stream (Heilstrom), as he called it, wasn’t something airy-fairy but a real energetic flow. He experienced it in his body, and it seemed to concentrate in his neck. He felt that he had to use this energy in healing others; if he did not, it actually harmed him. He is quoted as saying (here), “If I am prevented from doing my work, I will burn up inside.” But he was prevented—by a series of lawsuits—in his healing mission. And, evidently, he did burn up. The surgeon who last treated him is quoted on the site already referenced (Bruno Gröning-Freudenkreis) as saying, “The damage in Bruno’s body is terrible, it is a total internal incineration. How he could live so long and without suffering terrible pain is a mystery to me.”
His ability to use his power was also evidently limited and required the active, perhaps inner, participation of the “patient.” His own first wife did not believe in his powers and did not want him treating the children. His sons died years apart. He could also not heal himself; he thought that he was forbidden to do so, but that may be viewed as an interpretation of what he experienced—namely failure.
Now, to be sure, in my own posting on miracle cures, I was not, repeat not, suggesting that such cures are transcendental in character. Rather, I emphasized the fact that some kind of energy is involved—entirely in conformity with facts such as the above. One of the oddities of our perception is that the unfamiliar and the rare appear to us as transcendental; they don’t have to be so in fact. My objective in all of these postings is to enlarge our sphere of understanding. There is more to reality than our conventional modes of thought recognize.
First some facts. The searcher’s question was no doubt occasioned by the fact that in many photographs, Bruno Gröning appears to have an abnormally swollen neck. Gröning also died at the relatively young age of 53 of cancer. Two of his sons died in their childhood. Why didn’t he cure his children? Why could he not heal himself?
The straightforward answer to these questions is that for Gröning himself, the healing stream (Heilstrom), as he called it, wasn’t something airy-fairy but a real energetic flow. He experienced it in his body, and it seemed to concentrate in his neck. He felt that he had to use this energy in healing others; if he did not, it actually harmed him. He is quoted as saying (here), “If I am prevented from doing my work, I will burn up inside.” But he was prevented—by a series of lawsuits—in his healing mission. And, evidently, he did burn up. The surgeon who last treated him is quoted on the site already referenced (Bruno Gröning-Freudenkreis) as saying, “The damage in Bruno’s body is terrible, it is a total internal incineration. How he could live so long and without suffering terrible pain is a mystery to me.”
His ability to use his power was also evidently limited and required the active, perhaps inner, participation of the “patient.” His own first wife did not believe in his powers and did not want him treating the children. His sons died years apart. He could also not heal himself; he thought that he was forbidden to do so, but that may be viewed as an interpretation of what he experienced—namely failure.
Now, to be sure, in my own posting on miracle cures, I was not, repeat not, suggesting that such cures are transcendental in character. Rather, I emphasized the fact that some kind of energy is involved—entirely in conformity with facts such as the above. One of the oddities of our perception is that the unfamiliar and the rare appear to us as transcendental; they don’t have to be so in fact. My objective in all of these postings is to enlarge our sphere of understanding. There is more to reality than our conventional modes of thought recognize.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
What Does "Higher Power" Mean?
One of the more interesting books around—especially for people who read such blogs as this one—is Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. The book is by Rupert Sheldrake and is subtitled “And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals.” The amazon.com link to the paperback is here. I read the book in fascination. I consider Sheldrake to be one of our time’s most original thinkers about biology. He is also a creative experimenter and a genuine scientist. In certain narrow circles of scientific orthodoxy, to be sure, he is a heretic. But never mind them. What the book demonstrates is that dogs as well as other animals appear to have what for them—for us too, for that matter—are “higher powers.” Telepathic abilities are classed as paranormal at least. Animals also evidently have powers of orientation in the wild inexplicable by ordinary sensory capacities. They seem to have a kind of sight that, traditionally, we call “second sight.” Yes, they’re at home in border zones much as some people are. And, as with us as well, the talent isn’t uniformly present. Nor are these capacities limited to mammals; birds display such powers too.
I start here with animals to make a point. We have a reflexive way of assuming that higher powers, when they manifest, must come directly from God—and if not from God then still from some higher, conscious entity. I’ve pondered this matter for quite a long time and have another take on the matter. But let’s begin with some sorting.
* * *
By “higher powers” I mean phenomena like miraculous healing, ecstatic states, and prophetic visions. In these cases God does the healing, God manifests in the ecstatic states (or the mystic experiences union with God), and God sends the prophetic vision. To be sure, in all of these instances, the phenomenon itself transcends ordinary experience; it is therefore logical enough to use a word that signifies the Transcendent writ large as its cause. But when people speak of God this way, they have something more concrete in mind. They imagine an Agency, distinct and separate, acting deliberately in this specific case whereas, in all other cases, God acts in a more nebulous and indirect way. This must be what people mean. If God sends me a prophetic message but lets you read tea leaves, the only way to understand the distinction is that God intervenes in reality deliberately in some but not in other cases.
People don’t usually invoke divine action to explain telepathy. It is a paranormal power but mild in effect and common enough to be assigned to a lower agency, say to a “talent” or to a “gift.” But notice that even here, using the word “gift” suggests a divine dispensation given to some, not to others. By contrast, people rarely assign a run of bad luck to God. But why not? If in one case God rewards us for being good, in others he might punish us for our careless acts of stupidity. Finally, when in legalese we speak of an “act of God,” what we mean then is simply “accident”; the lawyers don’t intend to suggest that floods, lightning strikes, or tornadoes are literally acts of God.
I think I’ve outlined the issues sufficiently here to show that referring strange, unusual phenomena to God serves no rational or meaningfully explanatory purpose. I strongly lean toward the view that God cannot be pulled down to our level and assigned roles in our ordinary experience. Technically this is known as negative theology: man should not presume. Furthermore, the use of God as a mechanism of explanation amounts to little more than saying, “It happened because it happened.”
Let’s look at these phenomena from another perspective. Let’s look at miraculous healings. Healers are often involved. They often speak of a flow of energy or of a power that aids them—and they report feeling this whatever in themselves. The consequence, namely healing, is assigned to a “higher” power only because the healing is extraordinary. It is also highly desirable. We give the desirable a “high” value. But what exactly happens in a healing? Some kind of rearrangement of matter takes place. Cancerous cells are destroyed, their remains carried away as waste. Chronic chemical, hormonal balances are restored because the organs that produced or failed to produce them are realigned in proper ways. Something physical happens or no healing could possibly take place. This process requires two factors, it seems to me. One is some kind of knowledge about the right arrangements of the biochemistry and bone structure involved. The other is some kind of energy that removes obstructions and speeds up a process that, in ordinary healing, takes its own sweet time. Let’s examine these factors.
The knowledge may be present in the body already, but the body’s mechanisms may be too weak to implement the healing. In that case the healing stream overcomes weakness, energizes natural processes, possibly catalyzes reactions, and thus leads to rapid recovery of a status quo ante. An alternative possibility is that the healing current itself carries both knowledge and energy. That concept needs special parsing.
When we speak of “energy” in these cases, the justification for using the word is the reported experience both of healers and those who are healed. But the energy involved is not the sort we usually experience—thus mechanical pushes and pulls, gravitational attraction, electrical current, heat, or, more generally, radiation. The very reason why such healings are “miraculous” is because something very different is present. Or is it?
Here things become complicated because, ultimately, we don’t really understand what life really is. We think it is ordinary energy manifesting in material structures. But let us suppose that life itself is just as transcendent a phenomenon as the healing current itself. We don’t think so because we’re all too used to its normal manifestations. One possible explanation of miraculous healings is that they are a temporary intensification of life energy, something that always flows through our bodies but in a relatively thinned-out form. It may be possible to tap into it in such a manner that it flows much more abundantly, and when it does, it will manifest its ordering powers rapidly, setting this right where, in our body, it encounters disturbances in what should be the healthy pattern.
I began this post with a reference to Sheldrake. I’ll also end it on that note. Sheldrake’s theories of morphic fields suggest a way of thinking about miraculous cures along the lines I’ve just sketched in above. I’ll discuss that application of the morphic field theory in a future post and continue this outline then. For now, as the medievalists used to say, satis.
I start here with animals to make a point. We have a reflexive way of assuming that higher powers, when they manifest, must come directly from God—and if not from God then still from some higher, conscious entity. I’ve pondered this matter for quite a long time and have another take on the matter. But let’s begin with some sorting.
* * *
By “higher powers” I mean phenomena like miraculous healing, ecstatic states, and prophetic visions. In these cases God does the healing, God manifests in the ecstatic states (or the mystic experiences union with God), and God sends the prophetic vision. To be sure, in all of these instances, the phenomenon itself transcends ordinary experience; it is therefore logical enough to use a word that signifies the Transcendent writ large as its cause. But when people speak of God this way, they have something more concrete in mind. They imagine an Agency, distinct and separate, acting deliberately in this specific case whereas, in all other cases, God acts in a more nebulous and indirect way. This must be what people mean. If God sends me a prophetic message but lets you read tea leaves, the only way to understand the distinction is that God intervenes in reality deliberately in some but not in other cases.
People don’t usually invoke divine action to explain telepathy. It is a paranormal power but mild in effect and common enough to be assigned to a lower agency, say to a “talent” or to a “gift.” But notice that even here, using the word “gift” suggests a divine dispensation given to some, not to others. By contrast, people rarely assign a run of bad luck to God. But why not? If in one case God rewards us for being good, in others he might punish us for our careless acts of stupidity. Finally, when in legalese we speak of an “act of God,” what we mean then is simply “accident”; the lawyers don’t intend to suggest that floods, lightning strikes, or tornadoes are literally acts of God.
I think I’ve outlined the issues sufficiently here to show that referring strange, unusual phenomena to God serves no rational or meaningfully explanatory purpose. I strongly lean toward the view that God cannot be pulled down to our level and assigned roles in our ordinary experience. Technically this is known as negative theology: man should not presume. Furthermore, the use of God as a mechanism of explanation amounts to little more than saying, “It happened because it happened.”
* * *
Let’s look at these phenomena from another perspective. Let’s look at miraculous healings. Healers are often involved. They often speak of a flow of energy or of a power that aids them—and they report feeling this whatever in themselves. The consequence, namely healing, is assigned to a “higher” power only because the healing is extraordinary. It is also highly desirable. We give the desirable a “high” value. But what exactly happens in a healing? Some kind of rearrangement of matter takes place. Cancerous cells are destroyed, their remains carried away as waste. Chronic chemical, hormonal balances are restored because the organs that produced or failed to produce them are realigned in proper ways. Something physical happens or no healing could possibly take place. This process requires two factors, it seems to me. One is some kind of knowledge about the right arrangements of the biochemistry and bone structure involved. The other is some kind of energy that removes obstructions and speeds up a process that, in ordinary healing, takes its own sweet time. Let’s examine these factors.
The knowledge may be present in the body already, but the body’s mechanisms may be too weak to implement the healing. In that case the healing stream overcomes weakness, energizes natural processes, possibly catalyzes reactions, and thus leads to rapid recovery of a status quo ante. An alternative possibility is that the healing current itself carries both knowledge and energy. That concept needs special parsing.
When we speak of “energy” in these cases, the justification for using the word is the reported experience both of healers and those who are healed. But the energy involved is not the sort we usually experience—thus mechanical pushes and pulls, gravitational attraction, electrical current, heat, or, more generally, radiation. The very reason why such healings are “miraculous” is because something very different is present. Or is it?
Here things become complicated because, ultimately, we don’t really understand what life really is. We think it is ordinary energy manifesting in material structures. But let us suppose that life itself is just as transcendent a phenomenon as the healing current itself. We don’t think so because we’re all too used to its normal manifestations. One possible explanation of miraculous healings is that they are a temporary intensification of life energy, something that always flows through our bodies but in a relatively thinned-out form. It may be possible to tap into it in such a manner that it flows much more abundantly, and when it does, it will manifest its ordering powers rapidly, setting this right where, in our body, it encounters disturbances in what should be the healthy pattern.
* * *
I began this post with a reference to Sheldrake. I’ll also end it on that note. Sheldrake’s theories of morphic fields suggest a way of thinking about miraculous cures along the lines I’ve just sketched in above. I’ll discuss that application of the morphic field theory in a future post and continue this outline then. For now, as the medievalists used to say, satis.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Miracle Cures and Healers
If no human being had ever experienced a miracle, faith healing, or the operation of some kind of strange, inexplicable power, I am sure that we’d still have religious practices, but they would all be of the variety we know as the worship of the collective. All rise. And now some celebrity will sing the National Anthem, possibly in a way we don’t even recognize. Three soldiers stand down there with the flags. And many people have a hand over their heart. State religion. Patriotism. Play ball.
We carry within us a vague intuition that all this stuff around and about us isn’t the be-all and the end-all here, but when we encounter the transcendental up close and personally, then we really know something. Then we take it seriously. And nothing gets our attention more swiftly and fully than hearing about cures. It is an astonishing fact—but nonetheless a fact—that great healers keep appearing among us, not many, but they keep appearing, and they do so no matter what stage of culture we have reached. When they do arise, a cult will invariably form around them either within the bosom of some established church or external to it.
Solanus Casey (1870-1957), a healing saint and a Capuchin priest, is one such figure in my own neck of the woods. As the author of the brief Wikipedia article about him puts it: “Many miraculous cures have been associated with Father Solanus’s intercession, both when he was alive and after his death. Pilgrims from around the world continue to make pilgrimages to the tomb of Father Solanus.” Casey is on the way to sainthood, having been given the “Venerable” designation by the Vatican. He is an example of a healer whose cult is embedded in a church.
Another modern example is the German Bruno Gröning (1906-1959). He was a carpenter by trade and later earned his living as a factory and general laborer. He emerged from obscurity in 1949 and became a very popular faith healer; his powers caused him to become embroiled in controversy. Controlling elements of the medical community opposed him; the state eventually forbade him to engage in healing activities. Thanks to the efforts of Greta Häusler, one of his early followers, the Bruno Gröning Circle of Friends has become a global organization with footprints in many countries. We find the same patterns wherever we go, never mind the locally dominant religions. Hopeful believers visit the graves of many famous Muslim saints with the same expectations—and occasional miraculous healing experiences—as they visit Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, and Jewish figures.
The fascinating aspects of this phenomenon are three-fold. The healing power flows through a person, comes to be associated with a fixed place—hence pilgrimages to grave-sites or regions where the figure was active—and cures continue to take place after the individual passes away. It is also evident that the powers of the healer, and most likely the power of the person to be healed, both arise spontaneously. In the healer the power comes first; alignment with some religion or independent activity follows. Neither Casey nor Gröning were intellectuals. Gröning had very little formal education; and Casey, although he graduated from seminary, was ordained a “simplex” priest; this meant that he could neither hear confessions nor give homilies: his superiors didn’t think he had the intellectual capacity for such tasks. One smiles. The power in the person healed manifests, it seems to me, in response to the stimulus of the healer—but the healer need not be there. Otherwise post-mortem healings would not take place.
I have no doubt that some kind of energy does flows from or through these saints—but I suspect that it is always all around us. They manage somehow to concentrate and to direct it. It flows through them with great strength perhaps because something in us that normally blocks or weakens it is absent in them. It is very difficult to credit that the healing power is associated with a geographical location—easy to assume that it is everywhere. Casey lived decades in New York before he arrived in Michigan. But location—a grave-site, for example—may have bearing on the person to be healed. The healing may be a process in which receptivity to the “current of healing,” to use Gröning’s phrase, must first be stimulated. This receptivity may be enhanced by faith. Being at the place where the saint is buried or where he or she spent a life may heighten the receptivity.
There is ample evidence from many cases that the “faith” required to be healed is not something intellectual. Complete unbelievers are actually healed. But how great, really, was their disbelief? They went to see the healer, after all. This coincidence of intellectual doubt but contradictory action of the will illustrates how complex we are. What we think is often not even half the story. And many of us are far from sufficiently integrated.
We carry within us a vague intuition that all this stuff around and about us isn’t the be-all and the end-all here, but when we encounter the transcendental up close and personally, then we really know something. Then we take it seriously. And nothing gets our attention more swiftly and fully than hearing about cures. It is an astonishing fact—but nonetheless a fact—that great healers keep appearing among us, not many, but they keep appearing, and they do so no matter what stage of culture we have reached. When they do arise, a cult will invariably form around them either within the bosom of some established church or external to it.
Solanus Casey (1870-1957), a healing saint and a Capuchin priest, is one such figure in my own neck of the woods. As the author of the brief Wikipedia article about him puts it: “Many miraculous cures have been associated with Father Solanus’s intercession, both when he was alive and after his death. Pilgrims from around the world continue to make pilgrimages to the tomb of Father Solanus.” Casey is on the way to sainthood, having been given the “Venerable” designation by the Vatican. He is an example of a healer whose cult is embedded in a church.
Another modern example is the German Bruno Gröning (1906-1959). He was a carpenter by trade and later earned his living as a factory and general laborer. He emerged from obscurity in 1949 and became a very popular faith healer; his powers caused him to become embroiled in controversy. Controlling elements of the medical community opposed him; the state eventually forbade him to engage in healing activities. Thanks to the efforts of Greta Häusler, one of his early followers, the Bruno Gröning Circle of Friends has become a global organization with footprints in many countries. We find the same patterns wherever we go, never mind the locally dominant religions. Hopeful believers visit the graves of many famous Muslim saints with the same expectations—and occasional miraculous healing experiences—as they visit Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, and Jewish figures.
The fascinating aspects of this phenomenon are three-fold. The healing power flows through a person, comes to be associated with a fixed place—hence pilgrimages to grave-sites or regions where the figure was active—and cures continue to take place after the individual passes away. It is also evident that the powers of the healer, and most likely the power of the person to be healed, both arise spontaneously. In the healer the power comes first; alignment with some religion or independent activity follows. Neither Casey nor Gröning were intellectuals. Gröning had very little formal education; and Casey, although he graduated from seminary, was ordained a “simplex” priest; this meant that he could neither hear confessions nor give homilies: his superiors didn’t think he had the intellectual capacity for such tasks. One smiles. The power in the person healed manifests, it seems to me, in response to the stimulus of the healer—but the healer need not be there. Otherwise post-mortem healings would not take place.
I have no doubt that some kind of energy does flows from or through these saints—but I suspect that it is always all around us. They manage somehow to concentrate and to direct it. It flows through them with great strength perhaps because something in us that normally blocks or weakens it is absent in them. It is very difficult to credit that the healing power is associated with a geographical location—easy to assume that it is everywhere. Casey lived decades in New York before he arrived in Michigan. But location—a grave-site, for example—may have bearing on the person to be healed. The healing may be a process in which receptivity to the “current of healing,” to use Gröning’s phrase, must first be stimulated. This receptivity may be enhanced by faith. Being at the place where the saint is buried or where he or she spent a life may heighten the receptivity.
There is ample evidence from many cases that the “faith” required to be healed is not something intellectual. Complete unbelievers are actually healed. But how great, really, was their disbelief? They went to see the healer, after all. This coincidence of intellectual doubt but contradictory action of the will illustrates how complex we are. What we think is often not even half the story. And many of us are far from sufficiently integrated.
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