From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 12 No 4 (Aug 2018)

Some people with serious, medically incurable illnesses recover unexpectedly. People with cancers, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, Crohn’s Disease, fibromyalgia, and many other diseases have returned to health – with no conventional medical explanation for how they managed to do so.

Modern medicine has occasionally reported the occurrence of these “spontaneous remissions” but has not delved into them to explain how people recover without medical interventions.

Remarkable recoveries have held great interest for me for nearly three decades. My initial focus was on remarkable improvements produced by spiritual healing, as in Therapeutic Touch, Healing Touch, Reiki, Qigong, Traditional healing interventions (e.g. Native American ceremonial healings) and Prayer Healing. These often have been labelled ‘miraculous’ healings in the popular press.

Healers with strong gifts of healing may find them occurring too regularly in their practices to label them as such. In Healing Research, Volume 1, I review extensive scientific research (Popular Edition and Professional Supplement) and anecdotal reports (Popular Edition) confirming that these remarkable recoveries occur with spiritual healing.

Conventional medicine views such unusual recoveries from illness as ‘spontaneous remissions,’ brought about by unknown processes of recuperation of the human organism. I have also thoroughly researched the vast potentials of human capacity for self-healing in Healing Research, Volume 2 (Popular and Professional editions). To some extent, all healings, by any modality, must involve activation of self-healing potentials and abilities.

I was excited in 1993 to find an annotated bibliography of 3,000 reports of spontaneous remissions, gathered from 3,500 references in over 800 journals in 20 different languages by Brendan O’Regan and Caryl Hirshberg, titled ‘Remarkable Recoveries’. I found this collection utterly fascinating. There were tantalising medical notes on remarkable spontaneous recoveries from cancers, skeletal deformities, hormonal abnormalities, and hundreds of other types of physical problems.

However, these reports never included any in-depth considerations of psychological or spiritual issues that might have contributed to the unusual remissions from diseases – that in many cases were expected to be fatal; and conversely, reports from psychological literature rarely included medical details or documentations of the associated physical problems.

The situation has actually worsened in the years since the publication of this annotated bibliography. When I trained in medicine in the 1960s at the University of California, Los Angeles, we had a department of Psychosomatic Medicine. When people had physical symptoms combined with psychological symptoms, or when physical symptoms could not be explained by physical or laboratory examinations, a consultation from this department would often uncover stresses and psychological mechanisms that could explain the unusual symptoms. Psychotherapy could then often relieve the problems.

Here is a typical example of the problems addressed by the doctors in Psychosomatic Medicine, in this case as a psychiatric consultation to the Neurology Department.

‘Tom,’ a 40 year-old married factory worker, was admitted for evaluation of weakness in his right hand and arm that were making it impossible for him to perform at his usual level of competence on the assembly line. Neurological examination was normal, with the exception of weakness in the muscles of his right hand, arm and shoulder. No peripheral nerve or muscle damage, no spinal or brain lesion could be identified. Psychosomatic consultation revealed that the weakness in this very meek and mild-mannered man had started following an uncharacteristic, major argument with his wife. In short, this was found to be a psychological weakness produced by Tom’s unconscious mind to help him control the angry impulses he had been feeling, with a wish to strike his wife. The symptom also served to punish himself for having had this impulse. Brief psychotherapy resolved the symptoms.

There are no longer any departments of Psychosomatic Medicine in the United States, although the subject is to varying extents included in medical school curricula under headings such as Behavioral Medicine or Bio-Psycho-Social Medicine. This is a measure of how much further Western medicine has distanced itself from awareness of the mind-body connection. A Google search turns up only references to European and Japanese listings for Psychosomatic Medicine.

Exploring Remarkable Recoveries

The on-line International Journal of Healing and Caring (IJHC) is undertaking to publish reports on recent, medically documented reports of Remarkable Recoveries. We believe that the life stories of people who have experienced these dramatic improvements in their illnesses can teach us ways to facilitate recoveries in other people with similar problems.

There are many avenues through which such transformations may occur. Wholistic healing addresses body, emotions, mind, relationships (with each other and the environment) and spirit. Each and every one of these levels of our being can contribute to health and illness. Research in wholistic healing confirms that addressing these multiple levels can relieve many illnesses (Healing Research, Volume 2). Remarkable recoveries can add much to our understanding about the relationships of each of these factors to our physical health as well as to every level of our being.

Many factors have contributed to this over-focus on the physical body. The advances in high-tech diagnostic procedures, and the enormous investments in pharmaceutical and surgical interventions have led to increasingly mechanistic approaches to assessing and treating illnesses. We have been sold on the ‘quick fix’ that chemical interventions can offer for physical symptoms. Our successes in these areas have led to several generations of distancing ourselves from the other aspects of our being. This is particularly true in the light of increasingly detailed medical focus on various parts of the physical body – to the increasing neglect of the person who inhabits that body.

Few doctors have more than a cursory training in psychological issues contributing to health and illness. Many psychiatrists today are trained in programs where psychotherapy is an elective, and many of the trainees see little relevance of this subject to their prescription of psychoactive medications.

Subspecialisation is another factor in the distancing of awareness of factors beyond the body that contribute to illnesses. Over several centuries, Western society has assigned care of the body to physicians; of the spirit to clergy; and in the past century, of the emotions, mind, and relationships to various subspecialising therapists in the mental health fields. Each speciality tends to work in varying degrees of isolation from the others. Within this system, care seekers have become used to thinking of physical problems as being only physical in their roots and causes.

These splits often can be bridged fairly readily – between body on the one side and emotions, mind, relationships and spirit on the other. My work with people who have physical pains of all sorts has taught me that the average person can reconnect with psychological and spiritual issues contributing to their symptoms. This is true even when the pains have been present for decades and even when the pains have clear physical causes.

People who have remarkable recoveries often credit the spiritual dimensions of their awareness and beingness for providing strength, inspiration and transformative energies. In all my years of searching, I found only one publication that documents the medical evidence for remarkable recoveries through spiritual healing (of Kathryn Kuhlman). This is by a physician, Richard Casdorph, who documented the evidence of amazing physical changes produced by spiritual healing, including in his reports the medical examinations, laboratory tests and x-rays (The Miracles, 1976).

There are many psychological processes that have led us to distance ourselves from awareness of some of the factors and issues beyond the physical body that may contribute to physical illness. In distancing ourselves from those aspects of ourselves that are not physical, we have reached a place where mind, emotions, relationships and spirit are increasingly unfamiliar to many of us – especially as they relate to physical symptoms and illnesses. Anything that is unfamiliar is easy to reject, especially if it were to require us to re-evaluate our basic beliefs about ourselves.

For many people it is far easier to distance themselves from that which is unknown, and therefore beyond their understanding, than it is to explore a change of their beliefs and explanations for the world – within and outside themselves. I believe it is this distancing of oneself from the unknown that has led us to reject and ignore the challenges that remarkable recoveries pose to our understanding of mechanisms of health and illness.

Examples of Remarkable Recoveries

1. Ellen Marie Schweickart shares her truly awesome odyssey of pioneering ways to successfully deal with her advanced case of scleroderma, which is considered a medically untreatable disease. Ellen’s symptoms began in 2001. She was advised by the eligibility doctor who assessed her for disability in 2003, “I am so very sorry to have to tell you this but you are suffering from a horrible, painful, debilitating autoimmune disease for which we have no known cure and at the rate of your progression you will not survive more than two years. I suggest you go be with your loved ones and do whatever you have always wanted to do, perhaps travel to Antarctica.”

With dogged persistence, Ellen sought all the information she could gather on possible contributors to her symptoms of skin thickening to the point of limiting mobility, pain, weakness, difficulty swallowing and more. Working her way through removing allergens, dietary changes, and other approaches, she was able to slow the progression of her disease. It was when she started using Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) that the progression of her symptoms was halted and then reversed. Ellen is now close to completely free of her scleroderma.

Lest you think that this is an isolated case of a person blessed with extraordinary physiological and/or psychological capabilities, Ellen shares a brief report from Katie, another woman with scleroderma, which was so advanced that she was on renal dialysis. Katie’s disease has similarly been reversed using EFT plus other approaches.

A word of caution, however, to readers who may have the same or similar problems. Some of the treatments Ellen used included medications without the supervision of a doctor.

2. Patsy Anthony-Green suffered from Crohn’s Disease, which produces inflammation for unknown reasons in the lower end of the small bowel, extending sometimes into the large bowel. Her Crohn’s was so severe she had to have the affected portions of her bowels surgically removed. Despite careful adherence to dietary restrictions, her intermittent symptoms continued to plague her periodically. By using EFT, Patsy has been able to halt her Crohn’s disease.

Patsy Anthony-Green also suffered from pains in her knee over several decades, following a ski injury. An MRI showed severe deterioration of the cartilage in that knee. Patsy also cured herself of pains in her knee using EFT.

3. Gary Craig, founder of EFT, reports on success in treating Sally, a 51 year-old woman, six years after she had suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in an auto accident. Sally had severe unsteadiness in walking and suffered from inability to tolerate intense or complex stimuli, such as many people talking in a room, or even walking along a carpet with a ‘busy’ pattern. In a single session of EFT, Sally was cured of her unsteadiness, and in further sessions her sensitivity to complex stimuli was markedly reduced. The EFT treatment was tracked by Donna Bach, ND and Gary Groesbeck, BCIAC with a Mind Mirror III electroencephalograph, which demonstrated interesting changes as Sally’s condition improved. Participating in organising this report, I weigh in with the observations that while it is unclear whether diagnostically it was brain trauma that was reversed or whether it was a post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) causing these symptoms that was alleviated, the fact is that Sally’s condition was dramatically improved.

When we come back to fuller awareness of the interconnections between all levels of our being, then remarkable recoveries can happen. Some would call these ‘miracles.’ I believe that our sense of something being miraculous is just a commentary on our unfamiliarity with the mechanisms that underlie the event.

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The following article, published in New Dawn 173 (May-June 2019), presents important information on the 5G networks currently being erected across urban landscapes in Australia, Britain, Europe, the USA, Asia, and eventually everywhere.

In November last year (2018), the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorised the rocket company SpaceX, owned by the entrepreneur Elon Musk, to launch a fleet of 7,518 satellites to complete SpaceX’s ambitious scheme to provide global satellite broadband services to every corner of the Earth. The satellites will operate at a height of approximately 210 miles, and irradiate the Earth with extremely high frequencies between 37.5 GHz and 42 GHz. This fleet will be in addition to a smaller SpaceX fleet of 4,425 satellites, already authorised earlier last year by the FCC, which will orbit the Earth at a height of approximately 750 miles and is set to bathe us in frequencies between 12 GHz and 30 GHz. The grand total of SpaceX satellites is thus projected to reach just under 12,000. 

There are at present approximately 2,000 fully functioning satellites orbiting the Earth. Some beam down commercial GPS (or ‘SatNav’), some provide TV, some provide mobile phone services, and some bounce radar back and forth to produce images for meteorologists and military surveillance. The Earth is thus already comprehensively irradiated from outer space. But the new SpaceX fleets will constitute a massive increase in the number of satellites in the skies above us, and a correspondingly massive increase in the radiation reaching the Earth from them. The SpaceX satellite fleet is, however, just one of several that are due to be launched in the next few years, all serving the same purpose of providing global broadband services. Other companies, including Boeing, One Web and Spire Global are each launching their own smaller fleets, bringing the total number of projected new broadband satellites to around 20,000 – every one of them dedicated to irradiating the Earth at similar frequencies (figure 1). 

Why this sudden flurry of activity? The new satellite fleets are contributing to a concerted global effort to ‘upgrade’ the electromagnetic environment of the Earth. The upgrade is commonly referred to as 5G, or fifth generation wireless network. It has become customary in tech circles to talk about the introduction of 5G as involving the creation of a new global “electronic ecosystem.” It amounts to geo-engineering on a scale never before attempted. While this is being sold to the public as an enhancement of the quality of video streaming for media and entertainment, what is really driving it is the creation of the conditions within which electronic or “artificial” intelligence will be able to assume an ever-greater presence in our lives. 

The introduction of 5G will also require hundreds of thousands of new mini mobile phone masts (also referred to as “micro-cells” or “base stations”) in urban centres throughout Australia, and literally millions of new masts in cities throughout the rest of the world, all emitting radiation at frequencies and at power levels far higher than those to which we are presently subjected. These new masts are much smaller than the masts we currently see beside highways and on top of buildings. They will be discreetly attached to the side of shops and offices or secured to lampposts. The 20,000 satellites are a necessary supplement to this land-based effort, for they will guarantee that rural areas, lakes, mountains, forests, oceans and wildernesses, where there are neither buildings nor lampposts, will all be incorporated into the new electronic infrastructure. Not one inch of the globe will be free of radiation.

Given the scale of the project, it is surprising how few people are aware of the enormity of what is now just beginning to unfold all around us. Very few people have even heard about the 20,000 new satellites that are due to transform the planet into a so-called “smart planet,” irradiating us night and day. In the national media, we do not hear voices questioning the wisdom, let alone the ethics, of geo-engineering a new global electromagnetic environment. Instead, there is a blithe acceptance that technology must continue to progress, and the presence in our lives of increasingly “smart” machines and gadgets that each year become cleverer and more capable is an inevitable part of this progress. And who doesn’t want progress? Almost everyone loves their sleek and seductively designed phones, iPads and virtual assistants, and regards them as an indispensable part of their lives. 

The question we should ask is whether we also want increasingly intense exposure of the natural environment and all living creatures, including ourselves, to more and more electromagnetic radiation. Is it likely that this does not entail any adverse health consequences, as both government and industry claim? If the electromagnetic waves that connect our smartphones to the Internet travel through brick, stone and cement, then what happens when these same waves encounter our bodies? Be assured that they do not just bounce off us! They travel into the human body. The degree to which they are absorbed can be precisely measured in what is called the Specific Absorption Rate, expressed in Watts per kilogram of biological tissue. When we fill our houses with WiFi, we are irradiating our bodies continuously. When we hold a smartphone to our ear, electromagnetic waves irradiate our brains (figure 2). Do we really believe this could be completely harmless? 

Waves and Frequencies

At present, mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, WiFi and so on all operate at under 3 GHz in what is called the “microwave” region of the electromagnetic spectrum. If you could see and measure their wavelengths, you would find that they are many centimetres (or inches) long. A smartphone operating at 800 MHz, for example, sends and receives signals with wavelengths of 37.5 centimetres (just under 15 inches). Operating at 1.9 GHz, the wavelengths are 16 centimetres (just over 6 inches). WiFi uses the 2.4 GHz frequency band with 12 centimetre wavelengths (just under 5 inches long). 

The introduction of 5G will entail the use of considerably higher frequencies than these, with correspondingly shorter wavelengths. Above 30 GHz, wavelengths are just millimetres rather than centimetres long. The millimetre waveband (from 30 GHz to 300 GHz) is referred to as Extremely High Frequency, and its wavelengths are between 10 millimetres and 1 millimetre in length.³ Up to the present time, Extremely High Frequency electromagnetic radiation has not been widely propagated, and its introduction marks a significant step change in the kind of electromagnetic energy that will become present in the natural environment (figure 4). 

The reason why millimetre waves are to be used for 5G is that much larger bands of spectrum are available in the Extremely High Frequencies than at lower frequencies. This means that there can be much broader “bandwidth.” Broader bandwidth means that larger quantities of data can be transferred and the speed of transfer of the data will be significantly faster. One of the effects of this is that it reduces what is called “latency,” or time-lag, in the system, improving the quality of video streaming. But in so doing, it also enables a greater seamlessness between the data accessible from virtual sources and our perceptions of objects in the real world, as is required, for example, in Augmented Reality applications. Greater seamlessness means that we more effortlessly inhabit the natural and the electronic worlds as if they were a single reality. 

One of the technical problems of using frequencies in the millimetre region of the spectrum is that because the waves carrying the data are so tiny, being only millimetres long, they are less able to pass through physical barriers, like walls and trees, than are the longer waves of lower frequencies. This is why it is necessary to have so many more new “micro-cells” or “base stations.” They will need to be spaced at 100 metres apart in cities because beyond this distance their signals weaken and are therefore less able to penetrate buildings and connect with the devices inside. As well as being more closely spaced, the 5G micro-cells will operate at much higher power than current phone masts in order to ensure that the signals are sufficiently strong. 

Because the wavelengths are so much smaller, the antennas transmitting and receiving them will also be much smaller than those of current phone masts and electronic devices. A single 5G transmitter/receiver will have a large number of tiny antennas, grouped together in one unit. An array of just over a thousand such antennas measures only four square inches, so will easily fit into a small base station on a lamppost, while the smartphone in your pocket will probably have sixteen (figure 5). 

Both 5G satellites and 5G land-based masts will use a system called the “phased array.” In phased array, groups of antennas are co-ordinated to radiate pulses in a specific direction and in a specified time sequence. This allows a concentrated beam of radio waves to be exactly aimed at designated targets, to enable signals to be sent or received. Because the beams are concentrated in this way, this adds to their power, which means they are able more easily to penetrate buildings. But it also means that any living creature that gets in the way of such a concentrated beam will be subjected to a powerful dose of extremely high frequency radiant electricity. 

A study published earlier this year demonstrated that certain insects, because of their small body-size, are particularly vulnerable to the millimetre waves of the higher frequencies to be utilised by 5G (figure 6).⁵ Other studies have shown that bacteria and plants are vulnerable, and so also (as one might expect) are the skin and the eyes of animals including, of course, human beings.⁶

As well as its ability to concentrate power in focused beams, phased array technology has a further complicating factor. Either side of the main beam, the time intervals between the pulses are different from the time intervals between those of the main beam, but they may overlap each other in such a way as to produce extremely rapid changes in the electromagnetic field. This can have a particularly detrimental effect on living organisms, because instead of the radiation decaying when it is absorbed into living tissue, it can be re-radiated within the body. The moving charges streaming into the body effectively become antennas that re-radiate the electromagnetic field and send it deeper into the organism. These re-radiated waves are known as Brillouin precursors, named after the French physicist Leon Brillouin, who first described them in 1914. Research suggests that they can have a significant and highly detrimental impact on living cells.⁸ 

The Un-reassuring Assurances of Government and Industry

The government body charged with advising on the health effects of electromagnetic radiation, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), seeks to reassure us that there is no established evidence that Radio Frequency radiation (which radio, television, mobile phones, smartphones and 5G all use) has any adverse health effects on either adults or children.⁹ ARPANSA’s advice is largely based on findings derived from the supposedly independent AGNIR (Advisory Group on Non-Ionising Radiation), which advises the UK Health Department.¹⁰ AGNIR’s report, published in 2012, on the safety of Radio Frequency radiation stated that there was a lack of “convincing” and “conclusive” evidence for any adverse health effects. It was like giving a blank cheque to the telecommunications industry to move into the higher frequencies without any heed for the consequences.¹¹ 

It turns out that far from being independent, AGNIR has a high proportion of members with blatant conflicts of interests, and their report distorted or simply left out of account evidence that should have compelled them to reach the opposite conclusion to the one they arrived at. In a forensic analysis of the report, the environmental health researcher Sarah Starkey makes it clear that only a wilful disregard of the available scientific evidence could explain its internal contradictions and apparent incompetence.¹² Yet it is, it seems, not only the basis of current UK government policy but also Australian government policy, allowing the roll out of 5G without so much as even a nod towards the need for a prior health and safety assessment.¹³ Health and safety simply do not feature in government thinking, despite a veritable mountain of literally thousands of research papers demonstrating adverse health effects which continues to grow at the rate of roughly 350 per year, on average practically one every day.¹⁴

One of the reasons for ignoring this evidence in the hell-for-leather dash to create the 5G electronic ecosystem is the conviction in government circles that unless we introduce it immediately, we will be “left behind” and our economic growth and competitiveness will be put at risk. There is simply no time to consider the possible health consequences. The rewards of the “connected future” are to be measured in billions of dollars worth of revenue. The mind-boggling amounts involved are well exemplified in a recent estimate that the global media industry alone stands to gain $1.3 trillion from 5G by 2025, not least because 5G will “unlock the potential of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).”¹⁵ The irony that the “connected” future is one in which dizzying profits stand to be made from technologies that disconnect us more and more from the real world is entirely missed.

The sums involved are sufficient to explain why the telecoms industry has for the last 25 years done its utmost to ensure that research into the health effects of wireless technologies produce negative or inconclusive results. Since 1993, the industry has financed a large number of studies, saving governments a great deal of expense and at the same time preserving the convenient illusion that the jury is still out on whether exposure to Radio Frequency radiation causes harm. 

Earlier this year, The Guardian published an article citing research which showed that while 67% of independently funded studies found a biological effect of exposure to Radio Frequency radiation, only 28% of industry-funded studies did. Industry-funded studies are almost two and a half times less likely than independent studies to find health effects.¹⁶ The authors of the Guardian article explain that the telecoms industry doesn’t need to win the scientific argument about safety, but simply keep the argument running indefinitely by producing studies with results that fail to verify, or even better contradict, the research that does find adverse health effects. 

One of the most notorious is the mammoth, industry-funded “Interphone Study,” which managed to conclude that holding a mobile phone to the head actually protects the user from brain tumours! This study, which is full of contradictions and suffers from grievous design flaws, is often quoted as the most authoritative to date, while it has in fact been thoroughly discredited.¹⁷ Nevertheless, the impression is maintained that there is no scientific consensus, and so there are not sufficient grounds for action to be taken. Needless to say, this suits government just as much as it suits industry. 

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The Path to Total Immersion

Beyond the health effects there is another level altogether of what the roll out of 5G actually entails. To gain a perspective on this, we should remember that it was not so long ago that the Earth’s electromagnetic field was undisturbed by human-generated electromagnetic frequencies. Before the 1880s, there were only two main causes of electromagnetism, both of them natural: the lightning of thunderstorms, which also set in motion the very weak, low frequency resonances known as Schumann Resonances, and sunlight. Lightning and sunlight produce effects in specific, and very limited, parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. The very idea that such a thing as “electromagnetism” and an “electromagnetic spectrum” existed was not even entertained before the nineteenth century. And, from the point of view of the pre-electrical age, the truth of the situation was that they indeed did not exist as a factor of experience. Beyond lightning and sunlight, the energies of the electromagnetic spectrum did not impact on human life, for they were entirely dormant (figure 8). 

In that pre-electrical world, both lightning and sunlight were regarded with a certain degree of awe, as natural phenomena expressive of powers greater than anything human beings could muster. In antiquity both were associated with gods – lightning with violent storm gods invariably with Underworld associations, like Seth, Baal and Zeus; and sunlight with sublime solar deities like Ra, Shamash and Apollo. In the later Judaeo-Christian era, the widespread sense that these phenomena had a spiritual source persisted, with lightning regarded as expressive of the divine wrath, and light as the garment of the cosmic Logos. We touch here a deeply felt relationship to nature that has been largely eroded in the centuries since the Scientific Revolution. In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, both lightning and light were stripped of their spiritual numinosity, clearing the way for an entirely materialistic explanation of light, and an entirely technological approach to electricity.

In the early days, the frequencies utilised were at the lower end of the electromagnetic spectrum. In the 1890s, the power lines that delivered the new mains electricity to factories and houses were standardised at either 50 or 60 Hz (or cycles per second). When public radio broadcasts began in the 1920s, they were mostly in the longwave frequencies under 500 KHz (thousands of cycles per second). As the century wore on, the frequencies used by new and improved technologies became higher and higher. In the 1930s and ‘40s, medium and shortwave frequencies (between 500 KHz and 1700 KHz) were utilised, while in the 1950s the Very High Frequencies (VHF) of 30 – 300 MHz (or millions of cycles per second) were employed for both radio and TV broadcasting. 

During World War II, a method was discovered for generating even higher frequencies, between 3 and 30 GHz (thousands of millions of cycles per second), which became the basis for radar. With each escalation in frequency, more power was required to transmit the radio waves. The advent of mobile phones, smartphones and WiFi, brought into widespread use the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) part of the spectrum (300 MHz – 3 GHz) for signal transmission. Transmission in these frequencies demands more than ten times the power needed for VHF transmission. 

Today, poised at the threshold of the new era of an Extremely High Frequency “electronic ecosystem,” with frequencies of up to 70 GHz envisaged, yet more power will be required for effective transmission of its millimetre waves.¹⁸ Then the natural environment will be fully saturated with an invisible fog of radiation (figure 9). 

In this brief historical sketch, we see higher and higher frequencies forming the basis of each new technological innovation. As each one of the new technologies was introduced, human beings became a little more disassociated from the natural world. Consider how this happened. From the 1890s onwards, the supply of mains electricity to homes, schools, hospitals and factories caused a revolution in living standards, liberating humanity from subservience to nature’s cycles of day and night, summer and winter, by giving access to a new source of light, warmth and power. Then, in the 1920s, radio enabled people to communicate over vast distances, and brought the voices of kings and politicians, singers and poets into our living rooms, even though they were not physically present. 

In the 1950s, television intensified the experience of an absent yet present world, conveyed by the moving image. I remember as a child the addictive quality of television: one is drawn out of oneself and away from awareness of one’s immediate surroundings into the fascinating world of images on the screen. 

With the advent of the smartphone, the trend towards addictiveness was greatly strengthened, partly because the screen became a portable interface with the Internet, and partly because of the deliberately exploitative policies of Facebook, Google and others to hook people into an addictive relationship to their devices.¹⁹ Smartphone addiction both dislocates users from their own inner centre of stillness, and at the same time disconnects them from the natural environment. 

5G will further accentuate this tendency for people to lose themselves, and it will weaken even more their relationship to nature, for it promises to make advanced immersive Virtual Reality accessible to all. While VR headsets have been commercially available for some time now, VR is still in its infancy. The next development in VR technology is to supplement the headset with a “haptic suit,” which enables the wearer to experience sensations of touch – pressure, warmth, hardness, softness, moisture and dryness – in virtual reality. Such opportunities for “total immersion” in virtual reality will lead to an increasing confusion as to which world we really belong: the electronically generated or the natural world. The use of Augmented Reality, made possible through special helmets, electronic glasses, or contact lenses, that overlay virtual content onto the experience of the physical world, will add to the confusion, as the virtual is increasingly integrated within the real world.²⁰ 

People will become adjusted to regarding the virtual world as having as great a claim on their attention, their emotions and thoughts, as the natural world. The temptation will be to give their loyalty to that which not only undermines their relatedness to nature but also, through its assault on the imagination, has a corrosive effect on the inner life of the soul. The confusion will only be exacerbated by a huge increase in the use of 3D holographics that will give virtual entities the ability to incarnate electronically in the physical environment. This is what the saturation of the world with extremely high frequency millimetre waves will enable. The waves themselves are only part of the issue: it is the technologies that ride on the backs of the waves, and their impact on our inner life, that should also concern us.

The Formation of the Global Electronic Brain

But if 5G promises to radically alter the experiential world we inhabit in these ways, there is something further that we must understand if we are to grasp what is really being prepared. At the same time as increasingly sophisticated technologies increasingly disconnect human beings from the natural world, a network of electronic “intelligence,” global in extent, gradually emerged. At first it was under close human supervision, but it has steadily grown more autonomous. Consider the difference between radio broadcasting and the Internet: the former is under tight human control and serves a very specific purpose, whereas the latter has established itself as a permanent, constantly available electronic infrastructure of undefined scope and reach. What has been happening over recent decades is the increasing co-ordination of intelligence-endowed machines, so that they operate without need of human supervision. 

The efforts now underway to create a 5G electronic ecosystem are the necessary precondition for developing and perfecting a global Artificial Intelligence network which feeds on the very fast transfer of large amounts of information. This global electronic “brain,” innocuously called the “Internet of Things,” is already impacting on our lives. 

Through the Internet of Things, more and more things will be linked to the Internet and made “smart” by being given the ability to function autonomously. On smart motorways your car will drive itself while you, wearing your VR headset and haptic vest, play interactive computer games in the back seat; and in your smart house your fridge will autonomously order more eggs, milk and cheese for you via a wireless connection with a supplier. 

But the reality is that the Internet of Things is itself the precursor to what has been called the “Internet of Thinking,” in which human beings will find themselves having to live in relationship to the vast global electronic intelligence. It will be active everywhere in our environment and we shall be obliged to interact with it in order to accomplish the simplest of tasks.²¹ In the Internet of Thinking it is not hard to see the lineaments of an electronically supercharged totalitarian state, with unprecedented control over the minutiae of individuals’ lives. The possibility of this happening will only be increased by the thousands of new mini phone masts and satellites irradiating every inch of the planet with millimetre waves. For this is what 5G means: it means putting in place not just an improved telecommunications system, but rather a new “system of systems” – the infrastructure of electronic totalitarianism.²² 

A Curtain Drawn Against the Light 

As our world is increasingly smothered by a fog of radio waves, microwaves and millimetre waves, it may seem that the gods of the Underworld have taken hold of humanity in an ever-tightening grip, drawing us towards the false lights – the illusory lights of the hell-beings and hungry ghosts that the Tibetan Book of the Dead long ago warned against. The electromagnetic energies that we have summoned, and which promised to give us new powers, now appear to be overpowering us, carrying us down into an Underworld realm of hellish entertainment and distraction, of illusion and disconnection from the reality that really matters – the reality of nature and the spiritual order that infuses nature, the reality of fellow creatures with whom we share our world, living in soil and sky and walking the Earth beside us. 

We must ask: Does the Earth need an electronic ecosystem? Is it going to benefit in any way from being irradiated with millimetre waves? Is there actually any need at all for 5G? Can we even remotely conceive that 5G is the answer to any of the pressing ecological, social and spiritual problems that face us today? We stand at a dreadful threshold, and yet surrender to despair cannot be the right response. What can we do?

First of all, we can protest! There are campaigns against 5G that we can join, there are petitions to sign, letters to write, and legal actions to support. The best place to begin is the “International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space,” which has now gathered over 40,000 signatures, including those of many health professionals, environmentalists and other scientists.²³ But as well as protest there is something further that needs to be done, and that is to bring spiritually informed understanding to the deeper significance of the global electronic brain whose emergence 5G will hasten. 

To this end, we need to develop a clear perception of the moral quality of electricity, and to recognise the kind of spiritual entity or entities that it serves. This will empower us to break the spell that electricity and electronic technologies have cast over us, and enable us to form a more appropriate relationship to them. One of Rudolf Steiner’s most helpful insights into electricity was his observation that it is light in a fallen, degraded state – light that has fallen beneath nature into the sub-natural realm – and that is why we must actively guard against an ever-increasing dependence on it, for it threatens to drag us down.²⁴ 

This points to a third thing we can do, which is really the foundation of everything else. It is to rebuild our relationship to the light, which in its selfless benevolence and purity greets us every morning, and which, unlike the false and illusory electronic lights that would lead us into the Underworld, beckons us in a quite different direction, towards our essential humanity. 

Through a deepened meditative relationship to the light, practised through the hours of the day and the seasons of the year, we can nurture a relationship to the inner light that is the source of all that is creative and good in the world. This inner light the Christian tradition knows as the cosmic Logos. 

As the curtain of electrosmog is drawn across our world, we are presented with a sacred task that, come what may, we attend to all that the light has to give, for therein lies the divine Saving Power. 

The above article originally appeared in New View magazine (Jan-Feb 2019), and has been modified by the author with information relevant to the Australian situation.

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Footnotes

1. One of the best sources for this information is the website of the Global Union Against Radiation Deployment from Space (GUARDS) at www.stopglobalwifi.org, and the related Cellular Phone Task Force website at www.cellphonetaskforce.org. Both organisations are informed and inspired by the tireless research and campaigning of Arthur Firstenberg, to whom this article is greatly indebted.

2. Source: ISEE/ISEA Conference: Environmental Epidemiology and Exposure, Paris, 5/9/2006

3. The rule is, the higher the frequency at which the wave oscillates, the shorter the wavelength will be.

4. Source: Qualcomm, July 2018

5. Arno Thielens et al., “Exposure of Insects to Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Fields from 2 to 120 GHz”, Nature, 8: 3924 (2018): “The insects show a maximum in absorbed radio frequency power at wavelengths that are comparable to their body size… The studied insects that are smaller than 1cm show a peak in absorption at frequencies (above 6 GHz), which are currently not often used for telecommunication, but are planned to be used in the next generation of wireless communication systems.”

6. Cindy Russell, “A 5G Wireless Future,” The Bulletin (January/February, 2017), pp.20-23, reviews the research, and lists a large number of adverse health effects of millimetre wave electromagnetic radiation including arrythmia, antibiotic resistance, cataracts, compromised immune system, etc.

7. Source: Arno Thielens et al., Nature, 8: 3924 (2018), fig.4

8. Kurt Oughstun, interview on “Brillouin Precursors,” Microwave News, 22, 2 (2002), p.10. According to Oughstun, a professor of electrical engineering and mathematics at the University of Vermont, “A single Brillouin precursor can open small channels through the cell membrane because, as it passes through the membrane, it can induce a significant change in electrostatic potential across that membrane.” See also Arthur Firstenberg, “5G – From Blankets to Bullets,” January 17, 2018, at www.cellphonetaskforce.org.

9. For example, in the ARPANSA fact sheet on “Wi-fi and Health” (“There is no established evidence that the low exposure to RF EME from Wi-fi adversely affects the health of children or the general population”) and on “Mobile Phones and Health” (“There is no established evidence that the use of mobile phones causes any health effects”), for which see www.arpansa.gov.au. Given the vast amount of evidence indicating adverse health effects, one wonders what it takes for this evidence to be “established.”

10. ARPANSA TSR-164 Report, Review of Radiofrequency Health Effects Research – Scientific Literature 200-2012 (2014). This report has been critiqued by Victor Leach and Steven Weller of the Oceania Radiofrequency Scientific Advisory Association (ORSAA) in Radio Frequency Exposure Risk Assessment and Communication: Critique of ARPANSA TRS-164 Report: Do We Have a Problem? (2017), available at www.orsaa.org. Leach and Weller point out the derivative nature of the ARPANSA report, as well as serious flaws in its assessment of the evidence, which simply does not support the conclusions reached. 

11. Report of the Advisory Group on Non-Ionising Radiation, Health Effects from Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields (2012)

12. Sarah J. Starkey, “Inaccurate official assessment of radiofrequency safety by the Advisory Group on Non-ionising Radiation,” Review of Environmental Health, 31:4 (2016), pp.493-503

13. The Australian Government Department of Communication and the Arts, October 2017 strategic report on the roll out of 5G, “5G – Enabling the Future Economy,” does not mention health and safety precautions. 

14. One of the best sources for this mountain of research is The BioInitiative Report (2012), which helpfully gathers it into manageable sections, and is regularly updated. It can be accessed online at www.bioinitiative.org. According to the Report, between 2007 and 2012 approximately 1,800 new studies demonstrated adverse health effects, i.e. on average 350 per year. 

15. Ovum, “5G Economics of Entertainment Report” (October, 2018). The report was commissioned by Intel, and a summary is available at www.newsroom.intel.com

16. Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie, “The inconvenient truth about cancer and mobile phones,” The Guardian, 14 July 2018. The blatant funding bias was first exposed in 2006 by Louis Slesin, “‘Radiation Research’ and the Cult of Negative Results,” Microwave News, 26.4 (July, 2006), pp.1-5. A good summary of the problem is given in “Bias and Confounding in EMF Science,” on the Powerwatch website: www.powerwatch.org.uk/science/bias.asp

17. The Interphone Study is devastatingly critiqued in L. Lloyd Morgan et al., Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern (2009), available online at www.electromagnetichealth.org

18. Ofcom, Enabling 5G in the UK (March, 2018), pp.3-4

19. Jacqui Goddard, “Facebook exploits human weakness, admits former boss Sean Parker,” The Times, 10 November 2017

20. Ovum, “5G Economics of Entertainment Report,” see note 14 above

21. Maynard Williams, “Welcome to the Internet of Thinking,” The Telegraph, 8 May 2018

22. Nokia White Paper, “5G – a System of Systems” (www.Nokia.com)

23. The appeal can be accessed at www.5gspaceappeal.org

24. Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, Rudolf Steiner Press, 2007, p.218

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From New Dawn 144 (May-June 2014)

Physician heal thyself – Luke 4:23

In the past, cures that occurred in shrines, cathedrals, old temples, and evangelical crusades (tent revival meetings, healing camps), faith healing, spontaneous remissions, and inexplicable medical recoveries were considered “miracles” or exceptional occurrences beyond scientific explanation. The cure was credited or ascribed to a saint or a relic, or it was supposedly the result of the intervention of a healer, hypnotist, priest, shaman, minister, etc, who usually had a reputation of having charisma and prestige in the healing business.

The aim of my research is precisely to find a rational and scientific explanation for those cases. The main hypothesis of my new book Healing Without Medicine: From Pioneers to Modern Practice is that all methods of mind/spiritual healing are self-healing. Man has an inner capacity to heal himself. It is said the effectiveness of healing with medicine is due to the fact that medicine and other medical implements remove obstacles that enable the body’s recuperative capacity.

I also have examined the exceptional healing of the most prominent contemporary religious leaders of the New Thought Movement, who recovered their health by mental and spiritual means from supposedly “incurable” diseases, and I elicit the mechanism that triggered their healing. Healing Without Medicine also explains why some people do not respond to any kind of treatment whether with medicine or without it.

The phenomenon of mental/mind healing started in the mid-1800s with a layman known as Phineas P. Quimby (1802–1866); he was an unschooled clock maker in New England,1 who after curing himself without medicine, reached the conclusion that negative beliefs create most human illnesses.

Quimby was diagnosed with a terminal illness by the medical profession of the time; his kidneys were disintegrating and he was also suffering from tuberculosis. Disillusioned with life he abandoned his successful business and retired to his farm expecting to die. To make a long story short, he healed himself with the help of his assistant Lucius Burkmar and discovered what is called Mental/Mind healing. Subsequently, he started curing all kinds of diseases by just changing the frame of mind of the sick person. Quimby came up with bold concepts such as:

• Man creates his own illness in his mind. Change the beliefs and you will cure the disease.
• Illness is an invention of man and has no bearing in the spiritual realm.
• Illnesses are embraced in our belief, and so forth.

In time, Quimby became known as the father of the New Thought Movement, which is a movement that advocates healing by mental and spiritual means. Quimby believed that he rediscovered the method Jesus used to heal people, and freely gave his curing technique to anyone interested in it. Some people who were healed by Quimby became his disciples and also began practicing mind healing on others; that was the beginning of a new way of thinking known as the “New Thought Movement.” Thus, the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth centuries saw a boom in New Thought churches with practitioners spread all over America and abroad. They were devoted to healing without medicine based on the teachings of Quimby. Nowadays there are hundreds of such organisations and churches thriving around the world, including Religious Science, Divine Science, Unity Church, Science of Mind, Quimby Memorial Church and other offshoots in addition to Christian Science.

New Thought is a new way of understanding the world and the position of man in the world. It has been appropriately called an “American practical spirituality.” The beauty of this practical American philosophy is that it empowers man as the creator of his own reality and circumstances of life. The basic postulate of New Thought is that changing the frame of mind of an individual can change his reality. New Thought ideology is the origin of Positive Thinking and other programs of enhancing human potential. Moreover, the application of these metaphysical principles as inspirational tools has been proved to be of extraordinary value to achieving success in all areas of life.

The major contribution of these leaders and their organisations to the welfare of humanity is that millions of people around the world have benefited, recovering their health free of medicine; in some cases, the healing was not only circumscribed to the body but had a ripple effect on their mental and spiritual wellbeing. Additionally, the application of these principles as a motivational device has been shown to be of extraordinary incentive toward achieving success in all areas of life: material prosperity, relationships, and peace of mind.

The Mind & Spontaneous Healing

My investigation of this matter and based on my own experience led me to believe that people can be restored to health using the power of their minds. Modern mainstream medical circles are gradually accepting the mind-body relationship in the healing process. In addition, medical doctors are now propounding a more humanistic and holistic means of healing rather than clinging to the old traditional and materialistic conception based heavily on technology and chemicals. This is exemplified by the medical profession’s incorporation of techniques such as meditation, yoga exercises, unconditional love, fasting, etc. The interesting thing is that this phenomenon of healing without medicine continues developing today through the emerging practice of what is called Energy Psychology, which includes Thought Field Therapy and its derivatives such as Emotional Freedom Technique and other similar modalities.

The capacity of the body to regain health by itself has been called spontaneous healing or inexplicable remission. The problem is that mostly when people develop symptoms of an ailment, instead of seeking detoxification and cleansing the body to give it an opportunity to recuperate its balance, we usually rush into taking harmful medication and drugs that debilitate the body’s immune system; under this condition the body is subject to being attacked by microbes, germs, and virus. They are three fundamental concepts for any healing to take place:

• The mind is the charioteer of the body. This is called mind-body medicine.
• The human body has the capacity to regain health by itself.
• Most of the healing with or without medicine is due to placebo effect.

The irony is that most people get sick due to a negative suggestion given unintentionally and sometimes with “good intentions” by family members, teachers, and neighbours, who believe that sickness is normal and that we will all be affected sooner or later. The same message is conveyed by the news and the mass media, and by the publicity generated by companies that manufacture prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars in proposing new illnesses with every change of seasons; the medical industry encourages people to have surgeries when most of the time these are not needed. Most people believe in these messages that are usually endorsed by medical doctors; these are potent suggestions for unaware individuals. Another indirect way of promotion is through medical doctors – pharmaceutical companies often give doctors free samples of prescription drugs to encourage physicians to prescribe them.

“Healing Suggestions”

One of the conclusions I reached in my studies on this topic is that the healer and whatever technique he practices only gives the patient a suggestion (or placebo). In other words, the healer impresses a “healing suggestion” upon the mind of the individual. Furthermore, the so-called “miraculous healings” that take place in religious places such as the Shrine of Lourdes, old cathedrals, etc., are plain and simple “collective suggestion.” I call this the phenomenon of an “egregore.”2 Therefore, the person who takes on the role of healer actually does not do the healing per se; he or she only activates the inner mechanisms within the sick person for the healing to take place. In other words, the healer’s effort is a placebo in action. In these cases, the subconscious mind needed the incentive, the “push” to activate the healing power of the body. The positive expectation and desire of the sick person for the cure to happen is also very important; in other words, his/her belief will do the work.

Hence, the effectiveness of a placebo lies in the fact that it bypasses the conscious mind and instils a positive healing suggestion in the subconscious mind. The role of a real healer is to bring the sick person from a place of fear to a place of empowerment.

To the question of why people get cured with different methods or therapies, consider the old saying, “Different strokes for different folks,” which encapsulates the idea. There is another aphorism, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” The healing realm works by the same principle. A specific therapy that is effective for one person may not be so for another. Among all the healing modalities on the market, one will fit the specific individual needs and the healing will follow. The above is also true in the medical field where different medicines work for different kinds of ailments; a specific medication that is beneficial to someone could have negative consequences for another. Likewise, varied kinds of complementary and alternative therapies work for different people; this is because everybody is unique and has special idiosyncrasies and predispositions.

In the realm of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), sometimes the confidence of the healer positively influences the sick person. This is in accordance with the principle that every human being has psychological dispositions to respond positively or negatively to different kinds of treatments. It is well known that some people feel relief from their maladies by writing journals or poems, others by dancing, or being close to nature in a forest; for those who are inclined to religious or spiritual practices, engaging in praying, contemplation, spiritual retreats or reading biographies of saints and spiritual topics will do the job. Others are inclined to ascetic practices, and for them fasting and meditation are good alternatives. Some people have gotten well just by being cheerful, laughing at funny movies or TV shows, and reading the cartoons of newspapers, as described by the American editor and author Norman Cousins.3

One question remains: why is it that people are not healthier in our society where medical technology and medicine have made huge progress? My take on this is that in our modern materialistic and consumerist societies it appears there is a huge conspiracy to keep humans in misery, illness and suffering. The main reason being there is a social consensus that covertly holds the thesis that getting sick is a natural part of being human. This ‘conventional wisdom’ in reality is not ‘wisdom’ at all but half-truths that humans take for granted. This ‘conventional wisdom’ leads humans to believe that when we get sick, it is because the illness runs in our family, or it is in our genes, or it is due to the change of seasons, and so on. We have been socially indoctrinated that drugs and medication are the solution. This idea is supported and emphasised by the mass media. In addition, pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars in well-crafted advertisements to promote their medicines.

Mind as Charioteer of the Body

The way to counteract this social suggestion (or egregore) is to acknowledge that the mind is the charioteer of the body, that the body has the capacity to heal itself, and to redirect the mind from a negative condition to uplifting and constructive ones. The metaphysical conception is that we live in an ocean of pure electromagnetic energy called ‘Life-force’ energy or ‘universal consciousness’. This school holds the theory that this Life-force energy is available for anybody. Indeed, we have been using it all our lives through our thoughts and emotions. The problem is that most people are unaware of this and misdirect their energy to negative thoughts and feelings, such as anger, resentment, hate, envy, etc. In doing so, they build a shield of negative energy around their bodies that prevents the free flow of the Life-force. Thus, the body becomes depleted of the vital Life-force, and is predisposed to the invasion of viruses, germs, and microbes from the external world.

The right use of this Life-force is attunement with the feeling of peace and love for ourselves and humankind. This activates one’s inner mechanism, allowing the Life-force to flow through the body. The results will be reflected in a balance and harmony with one’s inner nature and with the corporeal body. This requires gaining access to our inner Self, which has been overshadowed by the influence of the material world and the demands of the physical senses.

The metaphysical truth is that thoughts and feelings create our reality. Whatever one’s subconscious mind accepts as true will take place in his or her reality sooner or later. Think of illness as inevitable and natural, and you will get it. Maintain an optimistic attitude and things will work out favourably. You have the power under your belt to control what kind of ideas are running through your mind. Therefore, it is recommended that instead of dwelling on depressing and negative thoughts, a person should feed his or her subconscious mind with constructive and uplifting thought-patterns, and the result will be the crystallisation of those thoughts into his or her reality. “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7).

CAM & Placebo

Healing Without Medicine also analyses most of the alternatives and complementary therapies, and provides coherent explanations for their success and failure. Regarding this aspect, R. Barker Bausell, Ph.D., a retired University of Maryland professor and Research Director of the National Institutes of Health-funded Complementary and Alternative Medicine program, wrote a book entitled Snake Oil Science: The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine, where he makes a comprehensive investigation of most of the complementary and alternative therapies in the market. The author claims that he penned the book after he had enough scientific evidence to permit a rigorous evaluation of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). He concludes that all complementary and alternative therapies are only placebos. He closes the book with the following two statements:

CAM therapies are nothing more than cleverly packaged placebos.

And that is almost all there is to say about the science of CAM.4

Dr. Rick Ingrassi complements the above idea when he says, “The placebo effect offers dramatic proof that all healing is essentially self-healing.”5 Another M.D., Bruce Moseley, a celebrated orthopaedic surgeon, conducted a study regarding the effectiveness of placebo on people with debilitating knee pain. He concluded: “In this controlled trial involving patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, the outcomes after arthroscopic lavage or arthroscopic débridement were no better than those after a placebo procedure.”6 In lay language the result of the surgeries he performed were no better than the result of the “fake surgeries” that patients were told to believe were performed.

Bausell’s book is well documented by many years of research and written at a rigorous academic level and endorsed by physics professors and medical doctors; however, and there is always one however, he neglects to consider the tremendous ability of the human body to regain its health; a phenomenon that medical scientists refer to as “spontaneous healing” or “spontaneous remission.”

All Placebos are Hidden Suggestions

My take on the issue is that the placebo effect can only be understood in psychological and metaphysical terms. The effectiveness of the placebo resides in the capacity to make the patient believe that something was done. A placebo is a suggestion that bypasses the conscious mind and instils a suggestion in the subconscious mind; once the subconscious mind accepts the suggestion, the healing process will occur as long as the patient has an authentic desire to get well. Thus, all placebos are hidden suggestions; they change the expectation of the subject from a mindset of illness to “get well.” There resides the whole matter.

The issue is also with the patient’s belief – if the individual does not believe in the practitioner or in the treatment, the placebo will not work and the healing will not occur. The reason that different therapies work for different people is because one will ‘strike a chord’ with the patient and activate his subconscious mind. The whole matter of the placebo effect comes down to the individual’s belief. Ultimately the patient heals himself with the help of a placebo that acts as ‘psychological support’.

My definition of placebo among the thousands already formulated is that placebo is a psychological phenomenon, a concealed suggestion that is conveyed to the patient through means such as pharmacologically innocuous substances, complementary and alternative therapies, New Thought modalities, and so forth, with the aim of making the patient believe that something was done to alleviate his or her ailment. That is, to change his/her mindset from the state of illness to the state of healthiness whether by using fake medicine, CAM, or positive thinking. Once the belief is accepted by the subconscious mind, the healing occurs.

Interestingly, Bausell offers scientific evidence to corroborate the ideas expressed in my book. Furthermore, another scientist in the medical field, Edzard Ernst, M.D., Ph.D., and his team researched CAM for 20 years and arrived at the same conclusion as Bausell. Ernst asserts that even some conventional medical procedures are placebos.7

A comprehensive discussion of the subjects discussed in this article can be found in Albert Amao’s book Healing Without Medicine: From Pioneers to Modern Practice (Quest, 2014), available from all good bookstores and online retailers.

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Footnotes

1. The New England region is one of the earliest English settlements in the northeastern part of the USA. The New Thought movement is an American made “product” that originated and flourished in New England and then spread around the world.
2. “A composite thought-form charged with psychic energy. It is an ‘astral entity’ usually generated by a collective group mind when people come together for a common purpose or espouse collective aspirations and ideals.” (See my book, Healing Without Medicine, 167)
3. See Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient, W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1979.
4. R. Barker Bausell, Snake Oil Science, The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Oxford University Press, 1977, 275.
5. Quoted in Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s, Tarcher, 1980, 249.
6. Bruce Moseley, “A Controlled Trial of Arthroscopic Surgery for Osteoarthritis of the Knee’, www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa013259
7. Edzard Ernst, MD, Ph.D., indicates in his official website, “I have researched alternative medicine for two decades. My team and I have conducted about 40 clinical trials and published more than 100 systematic reviews of alternative medicine. We were by far the most productive research unit in this area. For 14 years, we hosted an annual international conference for researchers in this field. I know many of the leading investigators personally, and I understand their way of thinking. I have rehearsed every possible argument for or against alternative medicine dozens of times.” Accessed March 30, 2013, http://edzardernst.com/2012/10/a-new-blog-on-alternative-medicine-why/

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From New Dawn 133 (Jul-Aug 2012)

Fever is generally regarded as an enemy to be fought and defeated. The majority of patients and their families feel fear at the appearance of a fever, a fear that grows stronger with the intensity of the fever and faithfully follows its ups and downs. Peace of mind for the patient or the parent of a feverish child returns only when the fever has vanished.

Yet fever is an intentional action produced by the body to defend itself. Fever’s beneficial nature has been emphasised by numerous health professionals.

Édouard Auber (1804-1873), an expert on the work of Hippocrates, states in his own Philosophie de la medicine, “Fever is one of the most powerful healing methods employed by nature.”

André Passbecq (1920-2010), one of the best known naturopathic doctors in France, writes: “Nothing works as well against illness as a good fever…. Fever can be a source of discomfort but, thanks to it, pathogenic substances and toxins are promptly broken down and eliminated. The temperature will remain high as long as the bulk of the toxins have not been eliminated.”

French naturopath Pierre Valentin Marchesseau (1911-1994) echoes this sentiment: “Fever is a means of self-defense.”

What To Do with a Fever: Using Fever as Therapy

Fever possesses so many therapeutic benefits that a variety of practitioners, aware of its usefulness, have sought means for creating it artificially. These pyrotherapy techniques included injections of substances that would not be tolerated by the body in order to force the body to defend itself by creating a fever. For the most part, these pyrotherapy methods have been abandoned because of the numerous problems they caused due to their anti-physiological nature. The fact remains, nonetheless, that the practice was based on a correct evaluation of the healing virtues of fever.

Fortunately, there is a physiological process that exists for intentionally creating fever: thermal baths. With a hot bath, a person can easily and rapidly escalate and intensify the metabolic activities and defense reactions of the body, which will produce a temporary fever. This method is something that can be turned to for preventive purposes. By correcting the biological terrain, you can prevent illnesses from finding an opportunity to develop.

Good or Bad? Fever Is a Welcome Friend Not a Foe to Slay

Many people find it surprising that fever can be considered a friend and ally. But, fever is evidence of the intense labour performed by the body to break down and eliminate toxic substances and germs. Fever is nothing but the consequence of the defensive activity engendered by the body itself as a means of protection. Countering it would therefore be extremely disadvantageous.

During infectious diseases, the salutary effect of fever is twofold. On the one hand, raising the temperature of the body makes the environment untenable for the germs. These high heats are, in fact, fatal to them. Germs can thrive at the regular body temperature of 98.6°F but let the temperature rise a few degrees to 102°F, 103°F, or 104°F and their living conditions are made adverse to their continued existence. The heat will greatly weaken the germs and severely limit their ability to reproduce.

Using Fever for Purification of the Cellular Environment

Fever also alters the living conditions of germs by purifying the terrain, the interior cellular environment of the body. Just like mosquitoes require the stagnant waters of marshes and swamps to thrive, germs need a terrain overloaded with wastes in order to survive and multiply. So, once the biological terrain has been cleansed, it becomes unfavourable for their continued existence and precipitates their disappearance.

Fever is the body’s preferred method for treating itself. Consequently, fevers should not be lowered or eliminated thoughtlessly. Cutting a fever short goes against common sense. It would amount to hoping a patient can be cured while opposing every attempt that is made to heal them.

Fever Can Be Your Friend: The Benefits of Fever

• Burns away toxins
• Eliminates toxins
• Weakens germs
• Stimulates the immune system
• Accelerates the transportation of lymphocytes to the site of infection

When to Stop a Fever

Stopping a fever is justified only when the profusion of germs overtaxes the patient’s weakened state. If the germs have multiplied in too high a number and are too virulent, the defenses of the patient may no longer be powerful enough to counter them. There is a risk of irreversible and fatal lesions.

In these extreme cases, which are also extremely uncommon, a treatment based on antibiotics and antipyretics is essential. The antipyretic or febrifuge artificially lowers the temperature of the body and provides relief to the patient. Antibiotics will kill the germs in place of the body’s defense system.

In the majority of cases, though, the fever should be respected; the body is fully capable of stamping out the infection with its own forces. The immune system exists precisely for this purpose.

The Downside of Stopping a Fever

Halting a fever prevents the body from killing the germs attacking it and from burning away the poisons that are stagnating in its terrain. It also prevents these toxins from being transported to the excretory organs where they can be eliminated. In addition, when antipyretics are used the body also has to deal with the poisons imported by these medicines.

The propensity to cut fevers short has certainly brought about a diminishing number of acute illnesses, but the consequence of this has been an increase in the number of chronic diseases. By systematically thwarting the body’s natural healing efforts, anti-fever therapies that repress symptoms only increase the contaminants in the biological terrain, which, over time, leads to the major lesions and functional disorders of chronic disease.

The objection that is most commonly raised against taking a more respectful approach to fever is based on the danger to the patient’s very survival caused by too high a rise in temperature. Of course, this danger is real. But refusing to cut short a fever, in other words, respecting its existence and purpose, does not mean doing nothing. Respecting fever means understanding its action, supporting its work (when, and if, necessary), and temporarily curbing it if it becomes too severe.

Remedies to Stimulate the
Body’s Immune System

By Christopher Vasey, N.D.

The body is therefore not always up to the task of properly protecting itself. It is sometimes necessary, depending on the case, to strengthen and stimulate, or reawaken, the body’s defense mechanisms. There are a host of various remedies that make this stimulation of the immune system possible. We will look at a few of the most effective ones.ll humans have a defense system at their disposal to confront whatever dangers threaten them. But the effectiveness of the immune system is more or less dependent on the basic physiological forces received at birth, though its abilities can also vary over time. The immune system can also be diminished by fatigue, stress, poor nutrition, and the body’s accumulation of toxins and poisons.

Echinacea Root Helps Get Rid of Toxins

Echinacea angustifolia, a member of the Asteraceae family, is a native of the North American prairies. It was used often and with great success by Native Americans to treat all kinds of ailments, and it plays a very helpful role in fevers.

It has an exceptional ability to stimulate the body’s defense system by, among other things, producing white blood cells (macrophages) that attack and destroy the germs and poisons in the body’s biological terrain. Echinacea also stimulates perspiration, which helps rid the body of these toxins. Furthermore, it reduces cellular exposure to infection and has an antibiotic effect against certain pathogenic germs. For all these reasons, echinacea is a major remedy for supporting the body’s fight against disease.

The root of the plant is the primary part that is used. It is prepared in the form of an easy to use tincture. Several small doses repeated throughout the day have a better effect than larger doses taken less frequently.

Dosage: Take 10 to 20 drops of the tincture, five to six times a day, with a little water.

Vitamin C Kills Microbes and Viruses

Vitamin C is a useful substance for maintaining the body’s general functioning, but when taken at higher doses it has amazing therapeutic virtues that have been confirmed by modern studies.

Vitamin C stimulates the body’s defenses by making white blood cells and antibodies more effective in their battle against infection. It kills microbes and viruses, and neutralises numerous poisons.

Because it stimulates the overall health of the body, vitamin C is always recommended for the additional support it provides the struggling body during a fever. During a fever the body needs more than 1,000 mg of vitamin C a day. According to some authors, the daily amount ingested can even be equal to several grams. The natural vitamin C supplements available in the market generally have a fairly low dosage (50 to 100 mg), but there are some preparations that are 500 to 1,000 mg. These are the ones you should obviously use to obtain effective therapeutic results.

Dosage: Take 1 to 3 grams a day, broken up into several doses over the course of the day.

Trace Elements: Tiny Sparks That Keep the Body’s Motor Running

Trace elements are minerals that are present in very small amounts in foods. They contribute to the sound and proper functioning of the body. A deficiency in a trace element will cause reduced capacity of the function dependent on it. This reduction in the physiological function will grow worse as long as the body receives no intake of this trace element.

Trace elements are like tiny sparks that keep the body’s motor running. They are therefore even more valuable when the body becomes exhausted in its struggle, as can be the case during a fever, and requires assistance to perform all its functions properly.

The trace elements of copper, gold, and silver are most apt to stimulate the exhausted defenses of the body. There are liquid preparations available commercially that contain all three of these trace elements. To encourage maximum absorption, it is best to take the remedy on an empty stomach and hold it beneath your tongue for a minute before swallowing. This part of the mouth has a vast number of blood vessels, which permits the active properties of these elements to enter the bloodstream rapidly.

Dosage: One dose is generally around 30 drops of the preparation* and should be taken once or twice a day before eating.

* Always follow manufacturer’s instructions to account for different preparation strengths.

Reprinted from The Healing Power of Fever with permission of the publisher, Healing Arts Press, an imprint of Inner Traditions International. © 2012 (English translation). www.InnerTraditions.com

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The word “Tao” means way, or path. In Chinese thought, Tao includes both meanings. On the cosmic level, the Tao means the war of Nature, the subtle laws and forces animating the patterns of change in the universe. On the human level, Tao is the path or war of life that we must follow in order to discover the universal laws and to live in accord with them. Then we can live our lives in balance and harmony with Nature, with ourselves, and with society.

Those who seek to incorporate the cosmic laws into the microcosm of their own lives are called Taoists. I have studied the Tao under many great masters. Through my studies I discovered that out of all the methods in the Tao, ranging from meditation, Chinese Medicine and Chi Kung to the martial arts, successful practice all comes down to one thing: understanding Chi. Out of this understanding, I have created a straightforward and systematic approach to working with Chi that I have named Universal Tao.

What is Chi?

Chi is the force that moves everything in the universe. Chi is energy. In humans, it is our life force energy, that which enables us to see and hear, to walk, to work, to think, and to feel. Thus, Chi is not just some philosophical idea; it is the essence of our everyday life.

When we get angry, it’s angry Chi. When we feel love and when we make love, it’s sexual Chi. The stars, the Sun, the Moon, and the wind, the ocean are all Chi, but it is energy with no intelligence.

Living things have the intelligence to take in the Chi of the Universe and combine it within themselves to create a living Chi, one that can create and build things.

How We Come into this World

Our Chi is intimately connected with the Chi of the Universe. When our parents made love, the Yang Chi of our father in his sperm met the Yin Chi of our mother. The two became one; the meeting of their sexual energy formed a new cell called a zygote, our first cell. The Chi of this cell is our Original Chi, the Chi that we inherited from our parents.

Our Original Chi then drew in from the Universal energies, the Chi of Earth and Heaven, our Cosmic Mother and Father. Out of this meeting and blending of Heaven Chi, Earth Chi, and Human Chi, came the power to make that original cell divide and subdivide trillions of times until it eventually formed into a fully grown human being.

How Negative Chi Affects Us

In the Healing Tao, physical health, mental health and spiritual growth are different parts of the same process; they are all related to keeping the Chi flowing strongly and smoothly through our body. Our emotions are intimately related to both our health and our spiritual development.

Negative emotions, like anger, explode and chase the energy out of our body. Similarly, when we feel afraid, we contract so much that we literally squeeze the Chi out of our body. I am sure that you have noticed how depleted you feel after bouts of strong negative emotions. This is not to say that you should never feel fear or get angry; these emotions are natural and appropriate at certain times, and if you didn’t feel them then, something would be wrong.

But if they become your chronic way of responding, your energy becomes stuck in these emotions and you feel them at times that are inappropriate. Your Chi will become blocked and will drain out. Emotions can be one of our biggest energy drains, and without strong Chi, health will eventually suffer and spiritual practice will feel difficult or impossible.

Our Good Virtue Chi

Our positive emotions are also Chi. Chi is the basis of our love, happiness, kindness, and gentleness. These emotions nourish our life and health, and enhance our energetic flow. Sadly, many people today hardly know how to love, and feel guilty or selfish about letting themselves feel happiness. Part of this comes from distortions and misunderstandings of religious truth, and part comes from poor or “toxic” parenting.

The True Inner Child:
The Immortal Fetus

Many people today talk about rediscovering their Inner Child, and this is very good. In Taoism we refer to the true Inner Child as the Immoral Fetus. Taoist practice provides a time-tested method for achieving just this.

We don’t try to suppress our negative emotions, condemn and hate ourselves for feeling such negative things. Nor do we wantonly express our anger, fear and sadness in ways that are not constructive, complicating matters and causing even more problems as we dump our feeling like garbage on other people and injure the ones we love.

Instead, we listen to our child within, we turn our attention with unconditional love and acceptance to what we are feeling inside, to what our Inner Child is trying to say; you yourself become the perfect loving parent for your Inner Child. In this way, our feelings are acknowledged and respected, and thus they can be transformed into healthy and productive attitudes and actions that can constructively change and shape our lives.

We can clear out our negative feeling and allow the Chi that is associated with those emotions to flow freely once again. That also clears and cleanses our inner energy channels and organs, it opens us to receive a purer frequency of Chi from the Universe.

We can then work with this pure frequency of Cosmic energy to affect real and lasting inner transformations and growth on all levels of our being; we call this “giving birth to the Immortal Child” or giving birth to our Higher Self.

When you can open your heart and feel happy, feel love, feel joy, then you will also feel a strong surge or Chi releasing and moving in your body. This in itself is an important part of Inner Alchemical transformation.

How To Do It

In the Universal Tao System, we use a “three pronged approach”; that is, we have many different practices from which to choose, practices that approach the processes of health, healing and spiritual transformation from three angles: body, Chi, and mind. Depending upon the personality of the individual student, one approach may work better than another.

For example, some people are out of touch with their body tensions and sensations, but are very much in touch with their thought and emotion. For this type of person, affecting and healing the body and Chi can be approached on a mind/emotion/spirit level, such as the meditation practice of the Inner Smile. Still another person may be very much in touch with his physical side, but out of touch with his feeling and energy.

The doorway for this person’s opening to their totality of being may initially be the Microcosmic Orbit Meditation, Tai Chi Chi Kung, Iron Shirt Chi Kung, or the Six Healing Sounds, practices that are more physical in nature, but which will in time connect that person with his or her emotions as well as his or her physical body.

Taoism Follows The Way of Nature

The Taoist approach follows the way of Nature. We do not try to force the student to adapt to one method; instead, we have many different practices to suit the nature, capacity, and unique needs of each student. Ultimately the goal is to know ourselves as we really are, and to reclaim all aspects of ourselves on every level. And since part of who we are is our energy body, our Chi network, all of these Taoist practices help us to discover and sense Chi as a part of our continuum of being: the Chi in our bodies, in other people, and the Chi of Nature all around us.

Thus, in the Taoist system, body, Chi, and spirit are interrelated aspects of the totality of who we are. Over centuries and millennia, Taoists have devised man exercises and training to nourish all three aspects, or “three bodies.” But, it is not enough just to understand that working with our energy is important. You have to do it! If you practice, you will soon see results that will transform your life.
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