Spiritual Healing
I trained as an Advanced Reiki Master under the lineage of Alice Langholt of the Reiki Awakening Academy, formerly associated with the Cleveland Clinic. She is the author of Practical Reiki, an award-winning text on Reiki. She was my mentor and inspiration for my subsequent studies documenting that Reiki can affect the immune system of patients. She also mentored me in pioneering a method of documenting the effectiveness of a given Reiki practitioner’s abilities. I am grateful to have been her student in an intensive nine-month training course.
The word Reiki is a Japanese word meaning “guided life force energy”. The National Institute of Health defines Reiki as one of a number of bio-field therapies which are “intended to affect purported energy fields that surround and penetrate the human body.” These include Therapeutic Touch.
I prefer, however, to use the term Spiritual Healing instead of energy healing. This incorporates the well documented studies showing the positive effect of prayer on health and disease. I prefer the definition of Dan Benor, MD, who has compiled an exhaustive list of over 100 well documented often double blind studies showing that spiritual interventions can do everything from accelerating wound healing, shortening the hospital stays of cardiac patients, and effects on tumor cells in laboratory cultures, enzymes, DNA telomerase activity and even specific brain changes documented with fMRI studies. Many of these studies used ordinary college students. The most astonishing of these are the studies done by William Bengstrom PhD, of St Johns College in New York. He has published in peer reviewed journals over ten studies documenting the healing of tumors in rats, often using college studies as the healers! In other words, we all have this ability to transform and heal. Even the prestigious Cleveland Clinic now has a Energy Healing Department.
Usui Sensei, the founder of Reiki, interestingly enough, did not use the hand movements or seek to control the flow of energy in his healings. Instead he meditated with the patient in mind, bringing the two of them into that source of universal knowledge and unconditional love that so often results in spontaneous healings.
The word Reiki is a Japanese word meaning “guided life force energy”. The National Institute of Health defines Reiki as one of a number of bio-field therapies which are “intended to affect purported energy fields that surround and penetrate the human body.” These include Therapeutic Touch.
I prefer, however, to use the term Spiritual Healing instead of energy healing. This incorporates the well documented studies showing the positive effect of prayer on health and disease. I prefer the definition of Dan Benor, MD, who has compiled an exhaustive list of over 100 well documented often double blind studies showing that spiritual interventions can do everything from accelerating wound healing, shortening the hospital stays of cardiac patients, and effects on tumor cells in laboratory cultures, enzymes, DNA telomerase activity and even specific brain changes documented with fMRI studies. Many of these studies used ordinary college students. The most astonishing of these are the studies done by William Bengstrom PhD, of St Johns College in New York. He has published in peer reviewed journals over ten studies documenting the healing of tumors in rats, often using college studies as the healers! In other words, we all have this ability to transform and heal. Even the prestigious Cleveland Clinic now has a Energy Healing Department.
Usui Sensei, the founder of Reiki, interestingly enough, did not use the hand movements or seek to control the flow of energy in his healings. Instead he meditated with the patient in mind, bringing the two of them into that source of universal knowledge and unconditional love that so often results in spontaneous healings.
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Even Skeptics Agree!
The problem, in my opinion, is that there are too many untreated energy healers as well as charlatans and con artists who prey on the desperate and the gullible. As a survivor of two cancers, I can testify that it is so scary and overwhelming at times, you are willing to believe almost anything and pay any amount of money for a cure. Yet the die-hard skeptic Robert Todd Carroll in The Skeptic’s Dictionary wrote of spiritual healing “there is something extraordinarily interesting going on here and it ought to be investigated….. we might learn that energy healing has nothing to do with energy and has everything to do with complex social interactions, cultural situations, and nonconscious processes we only barely understand”.
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I sought to answer these two basic questions with regards to spiritual healing:
- Is it an energetic process, or does simply meditating and entering into the universal reality of love and wisdom, known by some of us as the mind of God, facilitate the healing process.
- Is there a way to document whether or not a given practitioner can really facilitate spiritual healing? In other words, is there a way to weed out the con artists and charlatans.
Can we learn intuition? Can meditation heal even at a distance? Yes to both questions.
Study Number One:
A triple blind study of controlled remote viewing of tomato plants infected with the Tobacco Mosaic Virus: This study was presented at the University of Arizona’s International Conference on Consciousness in Stockholm, after appropriate peer review.
The study was designed and implemented by the late Mike van Atta, an extraordinary Reiki Master and Remote Viewer. He learned to remote view, as so many of the master remote viewers did, in his service as a military intelligence officer. His PhD thesis is one of the best tracts on the science of spiritual healing.
A group of tomato plants was infected with the tobacco mosaic virus, chosen because of its similarities to the AIDS virus. Another group was healthy. The study was intended to assess the effectiveness of different strategies of intuition to see which were the most effective. The plants were housed in Golden Colorado. Viewers from all around the country were recruited to see if they could, simply by using their intuition and remote viewing abilities, determine which plants were infected with the virus and which were healthy. Remote viewing is the ability to access information from the informational reality that is not otherwise available to the person viewing. Obviously, assessing if a tomato plant in a laboratory across the country is infected or not with a virus is accessing information that is not otherwise available. The study was supervised by scientists from the University of California at Davis.
A triple blind study of controlled remote viewing of tomato plants infected with the Tobacco Mosaic Virus: This study was presented at the University of Arizona’s International Conference on Consciousness in Stockholm, after appropriate peer review.
The study was designed and implemented by the late Mike van Atta, an extraordinary Reiki Master and Remote Viewer. He learned to remote view, as so many of the master remote viewers did, in his service as a military intelligence officer. His PhD thesis is one of the best tracts on the science of spiritual healing.
A group of tomato plants was infected with the tobacco mosaic virus, chosen because of its similarities to the AIDS virus. Another group was healthy. The study was intended to assess the effectiveness of different strategies of intuition to see which were the most effective. The plants were housed in Golden Colorado. Viewers from all around the country were recruited to see if they could, simply by using their intuition and remote viewing abilities, determine which plants were infected with the virus and which were healthy. Remote viewing is the ability to access information from the informational reality that is not otherwise available to the person viewing. Obviously, assessing if a tomato plant in a laboratory across the country is infected or not with a virus is accessing information that is not otherwise available. The study was supervised by scientists from the University of California at Davis.
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The results were startling and of interest to anyone who uses their intuition to make decisions. This includes everyone from physicians to entrepreneurs. There were six distinct groups of people who attempted to intuit if a given plant was infected. They were provided only with a single number corresponding to a plant. The study was triple blinded, meaning that no one involved in the study had any idea which numbers corresponded to which plants. An outside person assigned the numbers.
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One group was asked to make an emotional connection with the plants and assess if they were healthy or not. This group was unable to perform better than chance. A second group was given a “placebo” protocol for remote viewing. They were asked to place one hand on their head and another on the target number and “ask” the number “are you a healthy plant?” This group also failed to identify infected plants.
However, viewers who used the Stanford Research Institute’s Controlled Remote Viewing regimen were 100% successful at identifying infected plants. Another group using a protocol devised by remote viewing expect Stephan A Schwartz scored far better than chance would dictate. Finally, those viewers who entered into a profound meditative state as documented by the Psyleron Device developed by the Department of Engineering at Princeton University also were able to reliably identify infected plants. One subject, an Air Traffic Controller for the Air Force entered into such a profound meditative state that she was correct about whether or not a plant was infected 37 out of 50 tries. Husband and wife teams or teams of viewers who had a strong emotional bond between them also scored better than chance.
Most importantly, the diseased tomato plants? They actually flourished, produced more fruit and were healthier than the control plants. The plant biologists were so astounded by this they cultured the plants to make sure that they were really infected. Simply being meditated about and having their unique informational signature accessed by remote viewers was healing to the plants. No special hand movements or energy manipulations were needed.
Implications for Intuition:
This study showed what most long term married couples could have told us: When two people know each other well and have a strong emotional bond, they are also good at decision making.
The second implication was more surprising. We learned that intuition can be both taught and trained. We can learn to be better at intuitive decision making. Our study reinforced the course curriculum of academies such as Alice Langholt’s Reiki Awakening Academy.
However, viewers who used the Stanford Research Institute’s Controlled Remote Viewing regimen were 100% successful at identifying infected plants. Another group using a protocol devised by remote viewing expect Stephan A Schwartz scored far better than chance would dictate. Finally, those viewers who entered into a profound meditative state as documented by the Psyleron Device developed by the Department of Engineering at Princeton University also were able to reliably identify infected plants. One subject, an Air Traffic Controller for the Air Force entered into such a profound meditative state that she was correct about whether or not a plant was infected 37 out of 50 tries. Husband and wife teams or teams of viewers who had a strong emotional bond between them also scored better than chance.
Most importantly, the diseased tomato plants? They actually flourished, produced more fruit and were healthier than the control plants. The plant biologists were so astounded by this they cultured the plants to make sure that they were really infected. Simply being meditated about and having their unique informational signature accessed by remote viewers was healing to the plants. No special hand movements or energy manipulations were needed.
Implications for Intuition:
This study showed what most long term married couples could have told us: When two people know each other well and have a strong emotional bond, they are also good at decision making.
The second implication was more surprising. We learned that intuition can be both taught and trained. We can learn to be better at intuitive decision making. Our study reinforced the course curriculum of academies such as Alice Langholt’s Reiki Awakening Academy.
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Study Number Two:
Can we identify if a Reiki practitioner has the right stuff or not using modern technology. We used the Psyleron, a quantum random number generator developed by Princeton University with a 20 million dollar grant from the McDonald Douglas Corporation. It has been shown to reflect spiritual states of mind. The global consciousness project has shown massive shifts in global consciousness by changes in the Psyleron device during the 9 11 disaster as well as simply New Year’s Eve. |
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This study was published in the prestigious Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.
We documented that Reiki practitioners were able to effect the WBC count in a severely immunocompromised patient. We further documented that when they were able to successfully raise the white blood cell count of the patient, there were associated changes in the Psyleron device. We showed that when the patient’s white blood cell count was not altered, there were not changes in the device. The implications of this are that the Psyleron can document the effectiveness of Reiki practitioners. Our spiritual mentor Mike van Atta routinely used the Psyleron when he spiritually healed patients, and was transparent with them about whether or not a given session effected the device!
We documented that Reiki practitioners were able to effect the WBC count in a severely immunocompromised patient. We further documented that when they were able to successfully raise the white blood cell count of the patient, there were associated changes in the Psyleron device. We showed that when the patient’s white blood cell count was not altered, there were not changes in the device. The implications of this are that the Psyleron can document the effectiveness of Reiki practitioners. Our spiritual mentor Mike van Atta routinely used the Psyleron when he spiritually healed patients, and was transparent with them about whether or not a given session effected the device!
Obviously studies such as these need to be replicated. However they are a start at the charge given to my fellow spiritual healers and scientists to do well controlled studies published in peer reviewed journals to answer the fundamental questions of how exactly does spiritual healing work.
Contact Dr. Morse at [email protected]