Here is an extraordinary new approach to healing by an extraordinary physician-writer - a book filled with the mystery, wonder, and hope of people who have experienced seemingly miraculous recoveries from cancer and other serious illnesses.

Dr. Deepak Chopra, a respected New England endocrinologist, began his search for answers when he saw patients in his own practice who completely recovered after being given only a few months to live. In the mid-1980's he returned to his native India to explore Aruyveda, humanities most ancient healing tradition. Now he has brought together the current research of Wetern medicine, neuoscience, and physics with the insights of Ayurvedic theory to show that the human body is controlled by a "network of intelligence" grounded in quantum reality. Not a superficial psychological state, this intelligence lies deep enough to change the basic pattenrs that design our physiology - with the potential to defeat cancer, heart disease, and even aging itself. in this inspiring and pioneering work, Dr. Chopra offers us both a fascinating intellectual journey and a deeply moving chronicle of hope and healing.

"I have a Chinese patient who is in the terminal stages of cancer in the nasal cavity. His face has been affected, and he is in pain most of the time. But he is also a doctor. I think he should hear this."

I nodded from the other side of the desk. It was a late October day in Tokyo in 1987. I was paying a visit to a Japanese cancer specialist who might help me in testing a new theory. It had to do with one of medicine's great mysteries, the healing process. At that stage I had not yet hit upon the name "quantum healing," but that was what we had been discussing for more than an hour.

The two of us got up and headed toward the wards. As we walked, I caught glimpses of perfectly tended Zen gardens that the hospital had installed outside. Nearby, the children were asleep in their ward, so we walked quietly for a moment. At the private rooms, the Japanese doctor stopped, found the right door, and let me go in first.

"Dr. Liang," he said, "do you have a few minutes?" The room was in shadow. A man in his mid-forties, about my age, was lying in bed. He turned his head wearily as we walked in.

The three of us had several things in common - we were all from the East and had left home to train in advanced Western medicine. Between us we had practiced our specializations for fifty years. But the man in the bed was the only one who would be dead in a month. A Taiwanese cardiologist, he had been diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer less than a year before. Now large bandages came up almost to his eyes. It was a difficult moment, meeting him. As I said hello, I didn't lower my gaze, but Dr. Liang lowered his.

"We've come to talk a little," the Japanese doctor murmured. "Are you too tired?"

The man in the bed made a polite gesture, and we pulled up chairs. I began to sketch in the main ideas I had already told my host. In essence, I believed that healing is not primarily a physical process but a mental one. When we saw a bone fracture mend or a malignant tumor regress, we were conditioned as doctors to look at the physical mechanism first and foremost. But the physical mechanism is like a screen. Behind it, I said, is something much more abstract, a form of know-how that cannot be seen or touched.

And yet that know-how, I was convinced, is a powerful force that has not really come under our control. Despite all our efforts to coax the healing process when it falters, medicine cannot explain it. Healing is alive, complex, and holistic. We deal with it on our own limited terms, and it seems to obey our limits. Yet, when something strange happens, as when an advanced cancer suddenly and mysteriously vanishes, medical theory is baffled. Our limits then seem very artificial.

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© 1990 by Deepak Chopra.

Tags: Healing, Psychology & Psychiatry

About the Author

Deepak Chopra is one of the world's bestselling spiritual authors and the founder of the Chopra Center in Carlsbad, California. If you would like to become part of a global community of conscious peace makers, please visit www.chopra.com and click under "News from Deepak." More