INTRODUCTION
I was born in 1942 in Ballymote, Co. Sligo, in the West of Ireland. It was a small town in a rural area, well off the main road. Few strangers called there. During World War 2, and into the late 1950s, there was little employment in the area. This caused great poverty and hardship. People had to make do with very little.
In those days, though there were a few local doctors and vets, medical care was primitive and modern drugs were scarce and expensive. During my childhood, it was normal for healers and "quacks" to treat human- and animal- diseases. Religious faith, though childlike and unquestioning, ran deep in the psyche. That faith was interwoven with ancient myths, superstitions and traditions. A common greeting when visiting a sick person was "God Bless all in this house!". The common farewell, when leaving was "God is good! Sure, you will get better if it is the will of God!".
In Ireland, hand healing is an ancient tradition, especially in the countryside. The 7th son, or 7th daughter, is attributed with special healing power: they "have the cure". Traditionally, the "gift" is passed to one member of the family in each generation. Some "hand-healers" exhibit a strange phenomenon: if they hold an earthworm in their hand, the worm dies within a minute or two. If they go fishing, they need to have a friend with them to put worms on the hook for them. These healers are usually "simple" country folk, who believe they can cure only one or two conditions.
My maternal grandmother was a very wise and loving woman; she was one of the first poultry-instructresses in the county and was famous for two great gifts:
1. In her youth she had a very successful cure for skin cancer. The cure, which was given to her by her mother, involved the application of two ointments containing herbs and simple chemicals. Over a period of 16 years, she cured many hundreds of people from all over the country but she stopped using the cure in the early 1930s, when one of her daughters, a medical student then, told her that the cure was unscientific and worthless.
2. All through her life, grandmother was uncannily accurate in her use of a pendulum for sexing chicken eggs for her neighbours.
My mother graduated in science from Galway University. She was one of the founder-teachers of the first secondary school in Ballymote. She set high standards for all around her. She, and my father, worked very hard to send their six children to secondary school; three of the six went to Third Level.
Until I left Ballymote in 1954, I lived in that simple culture, as happy as a pig in a mudbath. I grew up with an acceptance of these old traditions, including an acceptance of the power of prayer and of unusual ways of healing.
From 1954 to 1964, I had a classical education, 5 years in a Jesuit boarding school and 5 years in the Vet School in Dublin. Those 10 years radically changed my attitude to my Sligo culture. By then, I had rejected the "unscientific" and "irrational" traditions and practices of my people. Many aspects of my (Christian) faith were largely demolished. I thought that I knew the "real way" to live and work.
After a short time in mixed-animal practice, I became a research cadet and eventually a researcher in the Agricultural Institute. I worked critically and "scientifically" in areas of cattle health and nutrition. Statistics and controlled trials were the arbiters of truth in areas of medicine and health for me.
In Spring 1972, I was confined to bed with sciatica. My doctor, a good friend, had diagnosed two slipped disks (L4-5 and L5-S1) and a subluxation of the right sacroiliac joint. After 5 weeks of bed-rest and analgesics, I was still in agony with lumbar and sciatic pain. My doctor advised me to go to a "bone-setter" (quack). My then-boss, a senior vet and a man with little respect for quacks, reluctantly agreed to take me by car. The journey took more than 2 hours. Bent over like a C, I hobbled in to the quack, who diagnosed exactly the same problems as my doctor, but added that the sacroiliac problem was of no significance. He manipulated my lower back; the process took only 2 minutes and I had instantaneous relief. When I walked into the street, I was straight, and could kick with both legs above my own height. I went back to work, almost totally pain-free, next day.
By a series of strange coincidences, one year later I met Mr. Roy Ogden; he was over 70 years old then, and has died since. While working as a civil servant in India, Roy studied homeopathy, radiesthesia, divination and Indian Medicine. He had a very large practice in Dublin and also was interested in acupuncture (AP), in which I had become interested at that time. I had arranged to meet Roy for the first time to discuss it.
I called to his house exactly on time. He greeted me, took one look at me and said "Acupuncture is OK, but it is only a tool; it is not so important. It is the psyche, and how one uses it, which are important. Let me show you!"
He put me sitting down about 2 metres from him and asked me to wait, but not to speak. He produced a "rubbing pad" (see later) and began to talk to himself as he stroked the pad. He got a reaction on "spine", "lumbar", "sacral", "right sacroiliac". After a few minutes, he told me the exact details of my sciatic attack: 5 weeks in bed about 1 year ago, L4-L5, L5-S1 and right sacroiliac out; that the disks were OK but the sacroiliac was still "out". I was gob-smacked: there was no way that he could have known those details, as my first contact with him was by phone at 12 midnight the previous night and I had said nothing about my back.
We had long conversations in the following weeks. Roy who stimulated me to study the psychic methods of diagnosis and healing Though I did not know it at the time, he was probably the greatest human healer whom I have known.
The ancients, mystics held that humans and animals have a psychic (sixth) sense. They also attributed the life force to vital energies (Qi, Prana etc). Many moderns accept that as fact. In Yin-Yang philosophy, a psychic sense (input, storing, Yin Qi) also implies a psychic transmission force (output, dispensing, Yang Qi). These sensory and motor phenomena are the bases of telepathy, dowsing, telekinesis, kinaesthesia, prayer-healing, spells, incantations, symbolic healing rituals, magic (black- and white-) etc.
This paper discusses some common instruments used in dowsing (divination). It also discusses methods of diagnostic dowsing, including autotraining, pulse (VAS, surrogate, Chinese) diagnosis and visualisation, including Westermayer's method ("my body is patient's body; what do I feel ?"). These methods can help to diagnose the location, nature and causes of the problem and to choose the best ways (modalities, remedies (including homeopathic) and AP points etc) to treat that problem. It also discusses some of the methods used in psychic healing, including hand-healing and distant-healing (by broadcast, visualisation).
The paper concludes with the thesis that love and prayer are central to all healing. It suggests that the great healers combine four attributes:
1. a high level of technical knowledge and skill
2. empathy with the subject and a consciously directed intention to heal
3. compassion with the subject and a spiritually directed desire to heal
4. deep wonder and humility at being part of the cosmic creative force, the source of all healing.
SOME DEFINITIONS
A definition of holism is: "A philosophical theory according to which a fundamental feature of nature is the existence of wholes which are more than the composite assembly of the parts and which always tend to become more highly developed and complex". A transcendant element is inferred, i.e. something greater than the sum of the parts. A poet's definition of mysticism is: "Man's dialogue with God, Man-in-the-world-and-why" (Brendan Kennelly 1983).
Some people can sense, by "paranormal" means, the nature and location of human and animal disease. Some do this in the presence of the patient. Others do it from a long distance, using the dowsing (divining) facility or by other psychic means.
The meaning of the phrases "to dowse" or "to divine" is to establish the underlying realities of a situation by a process of spiritual need, detached mental search and disassociated pondering. Dowsing (divination) is a method establishing objective reality by subjective interpretation of learned but involuntary reflex responses while in a state of detached spiritual/mental search. The body of the dowser reacts as a biosensor to a spiritual/mental "search" by an involuntary muscular contraction. The search can be at the examination site (local-physical dowsing) or far away from it (distant-absent dowsing).
AP is a diagnostic and therapeutic system which operates on Holistic principles. It has two levels, the material-physical (reflex and neuroendocrine mechanisms) and the immaterial-energetic. AP does not require paranormal concepts or methods to explain the former. However, paranormal concepts interest those professionals who have experienced some of these phenomena at first hand. They add an extra dimension to the study and practice of the healing art.
Holistic Medicine is based on concepts of Qi and on balance and interaction of this Qi with the two environments, internal and external. The internal environment involves interaction between spiritual, psychic, emotional, neuroendocrine, visceral, somatic and immune elements. The emotions (joy/excitement, worry/obsession, sobbing/grief, fright/fear, anger/envy) influences specific organs (HT, SP, LU, KI, LV respectively) and vice-versa. The external environment involves interaction with local, distant and cosmic elements, including climatic, dietary, traumatic, infectious/parasitic etc. Specific climatic factors (the Perverse Energies: heat/summer heat, damp, dryness, cold, wind) influence specific organs (HT, SP, LU, KI, LV respectively) and vice-versa.
HOLISTIC CONCEPTS AND THE PARANORMAL
By definition, holistic concepts involve all possible component parts, how they interact (fit together), how they fit into the larger plan of Nature and (in the end) an artistic-intuitive search for aspects of the transcendant immaterial blueprint which religious people call God or atheistic physicists see as the infinite interchange of matter and energy. Holism and holistic concepts of health, disease and medicine contain elements of scientific medicine, art, poetry and mysticism.
Mechanistic materialistic medicine has blind spots. It tends to label "Man-who-dialogues-with-God" as duped, irrational or mad. It tends to look on "Man-in-the-World" through half-blind eyes. It does not recognise transcendant "Whys".
Ancient Chinese medical philosophy states that "Man stands between Heaven and Earth." This can be translated as: "The organism is the product of (embodies the characteristics of) Heaven (spirit, mind, non-material forces) and Earth (food, physical environment, material forces)." This can also be translated as: "The organism is influenced by spiritual, psychic arid non-earthly forces (cosmic, solar, lunar forces) as well as forces in its immediate environment (nutrition, climate, electro- magnetic and geophysical forces)".
There is interdependence and interaction between the organs, functions, and emotions of the body. The Chinese regarded man as a unity of Yin-Yang and the Five Phases in body-spirit. Psychosomatic medicine also sees man as a unity of mind (spirit) and soma. Thus, interactions between these components of the organism influence the health (balance) of the organism. The External influences the Internal and vice-versa. Psyche influences Soma and Soma influences Psyche. Those who ignore this reality have a very incomplete view of factors influencing health.
In vet medicine, it would appear that the animal psyche plays a less important role in disease than the psyche in human medicine. Nevertheless, the animal psyche is important and can be harnessed in many practical ways, as any experienced animal handler knows. The psyche (and psychic energy) of the therapist can (and should) be focused to beam compassion, love and help into the psyche of the willing patient, animal or human (Rogers 1996, Holistic Concepts of Health and Disease).
Most countries have examples of healers who use paranormal methods of diagnosis and/or treatment in human and animal conditions. Frequently these healers have no formal training in medicine or diagnosis. However, the diagnostic accuracy of some healers can be incredibly good. Also, there is evidence that hand-healing, telepathic broadcast and "radionic broadcasts" can be an effective therapy.
The whole area of "paranormal" diagnosis and healing is difficult to assess in terms of our scientific methods. Little or no thorough research has been done in the area. Many confidence-tricksters make large sums of money from the public by claiming (falsely) to have these abilities. Nevertheless, the phenomena, although rare and unpredictable, are real. Some people are gifted with natural ability to diagnose disease and to heal in strange ways. In spite of "scientific ridicule", telepathy, telepathic diagnosis and telepathic healing (or injury: voodoo, black-magic) are as real as the dinner-table or bank-loan for many people.