Second Sight (20 page)
Josh's success gave me this same sense of liberation. Though remote viewing wasn't taught to me in medical school, it was helping me to create a style of my own. Having gone through a period of learning, I was making a transition from student to teacher. Now I could share what I knew with my patients. The painful disconnection of my inner and outer worlds was ending; they were beginning to merge. I had tried something new, it had benefited Josh, and I had gained another therapeutic tool. I hung up the phone, relaxed back in my chair, and smiled.
After Josh, I began to teach many of my patients remote viewing. I realized that it could help them in all aspects of their lives. One difficulty for a psychic therapist is that others disem-power themselves by believing that they can't be psychic as well. Or they see someone like me as unique. For such patients, remote viewing is the perfect vehicle. It can be used by everyone. The possibilities are endless. Let's say you're hiring an employee, or thinking of taking a new job, or dating a new person, or are at a crossroads in your life and need to make a decision. Remote viewing can fill in the blanks, convey a fuller perspective, or shed light on nuances you never considered before. This is not meant to trivialize remote viewing but to expand its scope. When done with sincerity and integrity, extra information becomes available, facilitating more informed choices about your life.
Because I see the psychic as a direct extension of spiritual connectedness, I have never taught remote viewing as an isolated skill. Even though people can improve their intuition without a spiritual reference point, the power that comes from this can be seductive, and their egos often get out of control. Thus the importance of ethical values, of using the psychic for service, not for power plays or to take advantage of others, and of remembering its divine source. This is the foundation of my beliefs.
Rosalyn Bruyere was the first healer I ever saw who conducted her sessions in a jogging suit. With perfectly manicured red fingernails, impeccable makeup and color-coordinated sweats, she looked like a mix between a glamorous housewife and an aerobics instructor. Once quite heavy, she had recently lost a lot of weight, disproving the popular myth that psychics, to remain grounded, must be obese. Rosalyn, one of the psychic respondents at Mobius, had founded the Healing Light Center, an outreach clinic and school for healing in Glendale. When she heard about Mobius's latest project, she offered us the use of her facility.
I was already familiar with Rosalyn's work: She'd been treating me for stomach problems the past few months. When she placed her hands on my body, directing energy into my stomach, she would chat about her kids, her work, or anything else that came to mind. Healing was so second-nature to her that she didn't have to keep up any pretenses. My physical symptoms markedly improved during these treatments. Not only did Rosalyn rid me of the annoying tight knot in the pit of my stomach, but her sessions left me with a sense of extreme well-being that would last for hours.
Our current project at Mobius concerned the chemical alteration of water molecules in a healing situation. Based on the research of biologist Bernard Grad at McGill University in Canada, healers “treated” jars of water and reportedly increased the vitality in cell colonies, enzymes, and seedlings. We sought to design an experiment to expand on Dr. Grad's initial work. The idea was to see if water, when placed in the hands of a healer during treatment sessions, would be altered significantly. By actually measuring the changes in the treated water with infrared spectrophotometry, we wanted to prove that healing was more than a placebo.
Stephan opted to employ a wide variety of techniques: therapeutic touch (typically used in a nonreligious context such as medical and nursing settings); laying on of hands (also known as faith healing); evangelical Christianity; and channeling (trance-induced healing). Some of the practitioners were experienced; others, like me, were psychic but hadn't been specifically trained to heal. Getting used to the idea that I could do such work was not easy. I thought it was for the elite few, the gifted ones. As yet, I didn't understand that, like remote viewing, this was an expression of psychic ability, an art that could be learned.
The afternoon of the experiment, I showed up early at the Healing Light Center. I wanted to observe the other healers closely and, hopefully, discover their secrets. Although I couldn't sit in on their therapeutic sessions, I waited in the reception area and took mental notes as they arrived. None appeared as flamboyant as Rosalyn; their ordinariness was outstanding. Both men and women were dressed simply and conservatively, as if straight out of the fifties, and they mostly kept to themselves. Ranging all the way from thirty to sixty years of age, they seemed a bunch who could have easily belonged to an Orange County bridge club.
My only experience with direct hands-on healing since Brugh's conference had been when a girlfriend and I practiced on each other a few times at home. We'd both found it pleasant, but I wasn't sure how much difference we had made. We felt like kids, awkwardly playing with something we really didn't know anything about. It seemed too easy to heal someone simply through a loving touch. I knew that's how people said it worked, but it was hard to believe that it wasn't more complicated than that.
When my turn arrived, I followed Stephan into a small back office, hoping I could do some good. Hanging on the wall in front of me was a picture of the Buddha in the lotus position. I listened closely to Stephan's directions. “Allow yourself to slip into a calm state, similar to that of a remote viewing,” he said. “Focus your awareness on a pure intention to heal.”
My patient was George, a burly man in his late fifties. A truck-driver type, he had a raspy smoker's cough, a stubbly gray beard, and was wearing a faded purple-and-gold Lakers T-shirt. George had been suffering from persistent lower-back pain caused by a bulging lumbar disc at the base of his spine. For a period of forty-five minutes, I was to touch his body wherever I felt it would relieve his distress. Simple enough, I supposed, but I was nervous. I felt like a fraud since I had so little direct experience, but I tried not to let that fear consume me. I was quickly swept away by the challenge of the experiment.
Before I began, Stephan strapped a vial of sterile water with a special glove to my right palm. At intervals of five, ten and fifteen minutes, the vials would be changed and analyzed. I recalled the instructions I had received to still my mind; it was better that I wasn't supposed to think too much about what I was doing.
I had George lie down on his stomach on the examining table and propped a small cushion beneath his head. Then I tentatively placed my palm on his lower back. I didn't notice anything unusual happening, but I kept my hand there. A few minutes passed.
“George, are you okay?” I asked, wanting to heat something from him. He sighed and finally replied, “Your hand feels good. Whatever you're doing, just keep it up.”
As I let my hand drift to different parts of George's body, I remembered that when I was a little girl my mother used to sing lullabies and stroke my hair before I went to sleep. The tenderness of her fingertips and the warmth of her presence on the quilt beside me wrapped me in a safe, protected cocoon. I lingered in that image, and the sweetness of the love I had felt back then started flowing through my hands into George. In that moment, a tangible current passed between us, a heat like the rays of the sun on a summer's day. It drew us closer to each other, spirit to spirit. We developed a rapport neither of us expected, but which seemed to stem directly from the healing process itself.
George left the session looking brighter The stress had lifted from his face, his back pain eased. Though I'd always believed there was something special about touching another person, working on George had deepened my appreciation. It was extraordinary to know that I could convey love through my hands. It seemed so basic, so human, to affect another person positively in this way. I now realized that we can help each other more than we know. Such healing doesn't take years of schooling to master. Rather, it requires our compassion, that we temporarily set our fears aside and extend our love to someone else. How many of us go through our lives consumed by work, insulated in protective bubbles, without being touched even once during the day? We walk around starved, deprived of a sweetness that could so easily replenish us.
I came away that afternoon renewed, as if a fresh rain had just fallen. My desire had been to do something for George, but I hadn't anticipated that he would give me something in return. The healing had been mutual. Rather than feeling depleted, as I often did after a long day with patients, I was exuberant. The love I had given George was regenerative, and flowed directly back to me. There wasn't a finite supply: The more I gave, the more there seemed to be.
Over the next month, Stephan analyzed the results of the experiment and found that when the atomic structure of the water was measured for changes, there was a marked difference between the untreated and treated vials. The most dramatic results occurred in the first five minutes of the session, indicating that healing wasn't constant and its effects didn't increase with time. As expected, skilled practitioners did better than novices. However, those who were untrained still produced substantial effects. This suggested that it was possible to alter the composition of water simply if the therapeutic intent was present. The psychic and healer in me had been validated by working with George, but now the physician in me was heartened as well.
In psychiatry, touching a patient is considered taboo. Yet the healing experiment had aroused my curiosity about how the therapeutic use of touch could be applied to my work. I had been deeply moved when I observed Jack's sessions in the UCLA lab years before. But in my own practice I was afraid that the act of touching might be misconstrued. If it hadn't been for Lilly, a young woman I met through Mobius, I would probably never have experimented. But she specifically requested that hands-on healing be part of her therapy.
The cousin of a researcher on staff, Lilly was beautiful enough to have been a high-fashion model. Unfortunately, she was in constant pain from debilitating rheumatoid arthritis, and because of extensive joint damage in both legs she had to walk with a cane.
During our second appointment, Lilly had a full-blown panic attack in my office. Hyperventilating and riddled with fear, her face a ghostly white, she was convinced that the disease was ruining her life. This was not the first time she'd had such an attack. Doctors had prescribed Valium to quell her anxiety temporarily, but it always returned. As I watched Lilly unable to sit still, pacing around my office, wringing her hands, I tried to console her. Despite my reassurances, however, her panic escalated.
The difficulty is that medication and talk therapy may only take one so far. Deep-seated panic can be an earthquake rocking the foundation of one's being. It doesn't listen to reason; it feeds on itself, cycles relentlessly, sometimes for months or years unless the underlying cause is healed. For Lilly, Valium was not a solution but rather a tiny Band-Aid covering a gaping wound. She needed something mote; I had to act fast. I persuaded her to take off her sandals and lie down on the couch. I remembered the relief in George's eyes. Why couldn't transmitting love through my hands work as well for anxiety?
Lilly's body looked thin and frail; she was quivering like a frightened bird. Panic can be contagious. I tried not to get swept away by its intensity. I set one of my hands over her heart, about two inches above her diaphragm, and the other directly on her stomach. I felt her pulse racing erratically beneath my fingers. Centering myself, I became incredibly lucid and directed, my palms growing warm. I simply sat on the couch, hands steady on her body, allowing myself to be a vehicle through which love could flow. To be successful, healing requires a transparency, a passive receptivity, rather than any purposeful effort. Just as in remote viewing, I cleared my mind of all thoughts. Instead of receiving psychic information, however, the sweetest feeling of love came through.
At first Lilly didn't respond. But a voice inside me said, “Don't give up. Keep your hands still and be patient.” I paid attention and waited. Slowly, I felt the love pulsing through me and into Lilly. Not strongly at first, but then building, the luxurious, almost blissful feeling mounted. Within minutes, Lilly's body went limp, her breathing became heavier, and her tension began to melt. A half hour later, when I lifted my hands from her body, I saw a wonderful clear light in Lilly's eyes.
She told me that, during the session, she'd drifted into a daydream. In it, she had been walking down a mountain trail on a bright spring morning. A balmy breeze was filtering through the branches of the trees. With each new breath she took, the breeze gently lifted her anxiety. By the time we finished it had completely gone. I had never witnessed such a rapid turnabout of a panic attack without the use of Valium or similar antianxiety medication. Neither of us had expected the results to be so dramatic, but Lilly most definitely left my office more at peace than when she first walked in. Had Lilly just been extremely suggestible? I wasn't sure, but for the moment she was better, and I was satisfied.
In subsequent meetings we would spend about thirty minutes talking, and for the rest of the hour I would work on her with my hands. Often, while she rested quietly, that same tranquil breeze would return. As Lilly became more accustomed to the feeling, she was able to re-create it on her own whenever she was in anxiety or pain. This served as a built-in biofeedback device she could call on whenever she was in need. By learning how to draw on her memory of our sessions, she eventually was able to translate them into real-life situations. After six months, our therapy came to a close. Lilly had begun to heal herself.
For me, Lilly's success offered several special rewards. To begin with, I received verification of an added dimension that healing could lend to traditional psychiatry, and this contributed to my own sense of competence. At the same time, I was able to offer my patients a new kind of self-empowerment.