Non-Local Consciousness and the Revolution In Medicine : Part 3

Healing Our Planet, Healing Our Selves: The Power of change Within to Change the World
by Dawson Church, Geralyn Gendreau

(Page 3 of 4)

When I began to investigate this area in the mid-1980s, I found a survey by Dr. David Benor, an American-trained psychiatrist working in England. At that time, there were 131 controlled trials of spiritual healing in a variety of species. Most of these were not studying human beings. Some were. The studies mainly looked at the ability of people-intentionally, empathically, compassionately and prayerfully-to influence biological systems. Some studied the growth rate of bacteria, the replication rate of test tube organisms, the spread of yeast on petri dishes, the germination rate of seeds, and the growth rates of seedlings.

Roughly two-thirds of the cases showed statistically significant correlations in the outcomes of the experiments. Now fast forward to the present. If we confine our interest to just human studies, we can find nine major randomized controlled clinical trials of distant healing or intercessory prayer. Statistics from five of these studies show profoundly significant results. You cannot explain this according to chance. Religious affiliation doesn't appear to matter. As a doctor considering these questions, you ask yourself, "If the science is this compelling, am I ethically justified in withholding prayer from my patients?" I got to the point where I said, "No, I'm not." It changed my life as a doctor, and changed my patients' lives as well. I began going into my office earlier each morning. I devised my own prayer ritual; I prayed for the patients I was about to see on hospital rounds, and for all the patients who would come to my office later that day. I kept up that prayer ritual until I left my practice. Many physicians have told me that they have had similar life experiences as they engage this dramatic and exciting body of information.

I define prayer as, "Communication with the Absolute." I invite everyone to define what this communication might be, and what the Absolute may be within the context of their own wisdom tradition. My personal prayer is non-directed. It doesn't ask for specific goals. I think that the universe and this planet is smart enough to take care of itself without any instructions from me. So I simply pray, daily, "May the best thing happen to this world." Each person can pray in the way that feels most authentic and genuine for him or her. Religious historian Huston Smith writes about what he calls, "the tug from in front." I feel as though I'm being tugged by something out there, attracting me toward it. I've always felt that way. The importance of one's inner environment, a person's spiritual life, has always seemed self-evident to me. Even when I first entered medical school, it seemed to me to be the most important aspect of healing.

The effectiveness of prayer and intention shown by these studies demonstrates to us that our society doesn't have to wait on intractable politicians and corporations to do something about the problems facing our world. We want to bring politicians and institutions along with us. But in the meantime we don't have to sit on our hands. We can put our own thoughts and will to work right now.

Yet I feel a sense of urgency about this transition. I do not believe that time is on our side. While we can rejoice that healing has become a legitimate source of study, we still need to be advancing as fast as we can. About a year before he died, I asked the late great physicist David Bohm if he thought we were going to survive without destroying the earth's environment. He pondered for a moment and said, "Yes, Larry, I think we will-barely."

I think we will squeak by. But we don't want to just barely make it. We need to do better than having to fall into the gutter before becoming motivated. Our society clearly has the understanding and the technologies to initiate a new Manhattan Project to rescue our environment. The technology to meet these tests is already available. I attend the Bioneers conference regularly, and I come away astonished at the solutions that are already in place. We need to incorporate them rapidly into our global culture. This is not complicated. For what we're spending annually in Iraq, we could underwrite these projects and have money left over. What is needed is will and vision. We need to find a source of vitality, and leadership to implement the obvious solutions.

Our society clearly has the understanding and the technologies to initiate a new Manhattan Project to rescue our environment.

Science can be a spiritual path. If used wisely, technology can be used for healing rather than destruction. Today, ninety of the 125 medical schools in the U.S. have courses devoted to exploring the links between spirituality and health. Ten years ago there were only three. This is a landmark development. It is an historic transition.

Medicine is on the threshold of a profound change. It is recognizing that emotions, feelings, and intentions are as much of the healing process as drugs and surgery. This realization is humanizing medicine, not just from a patient's point of view, but from the doctor's point of view. It is not fulfilling, as a doctor, to practice medicine as if people are just physical machines. The whole ambiance of the medical encounter is shifting. As I talk to young students now coming out of medical schools, they hold these values as self-evident. The medical profession has gone from rejecting prayer as "unscientific" to believing in it as received wisdom.

© 2005 by Dawson Church and Geralyn Gendreau