From Reinventing Medicine
by Larry Dossey, M.D.
Imagine that, as you read these words, a part of your mind is not present in your body or brain or even in this moment. Imagine that this aspect of your consciousness spreads everywhere, extending billions of miles into space, from the beginning of time into the limitless future, linking us with the minds of one another and with everyone who has ever lived or will live. This is the infinite piece of your consciousness.
This picture of your mind as outside your head may at first seem
foreign. But as we shall see, "nonlocal" or "infinite" describes
a natural part of who we are. Its expressions include sharing of
thoughts and feelings at a distance, gaining information and wisdom
through dreams and visions, knowing the future, radical breakthroughs
in creativity and discovery, and many more. And this part of your
mind can be used today in healing illness and disease in what I
call Era III healing.
Many studies reveal that healing can be achieved at a distance
by directing loving and compassionate thoughts, intentions, and
prayers to others, who may even be unaware these efforts are being
extended to them. These findings reveal the ability of some part
of our mind or consciousness to escape its confinement to the brain
and body and to act anywhere, regardless of distance.
The medical implications of this are profound. For example, the mind's nonlocal nature provides a way for us to help heal one another, making health and illness a collective affair. Era III healing means that "we're in it together," that no one's illness is a purely individual matter. When illness occurs, the fact that I can help you and you can help me eases the isolation and feelings of being alone that are a painful part of being sick.
Era III also provides new tools for physicians and health-care workers. If the mind operates beyond the body, this provides a way for physicians to know directly, intuitively, what is wrong with their patients. All physicians have had the experience of "just knowing" what a diagnosis is, with little or no information to go on. We attribute this to experience, but really it's more. It's intuition too, and intuition is an important hallmark of the nonlocal mind.
But the greatest contribution of Era III to healing goes beyond diagnosing disease and eradicating illness. If our minds are genuinely capable of breaking free from the body, then they are not subject to time. The implication of this is so revolutionary, we instinctively dismiss it. Although our bodies die, the timeless part of our consciousness lives on. Era III provides a cure, therefore, for the "disease" that has caused more suffering for more people than any other -- the fear of death.
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For those of us who believe deeply in science, there are two ways of resolving questions about the nonlocal nature of our mind -- to go unflinchingly through the evidence and not around it, and to permit ourselves to experience nonlocal happenings personally. This dual strategy involved the risk of transformation, which is why entering Era III and nonlocal mind is like handling intellectual and spiritual dynamite.
I shall ask you to follow me into the scientific reasons supporting Era III medicine and a nonlocal view of the mind. But as I do so, I hope you understand that these issues involve more than data.
I once felt differently. I believed that if nonlocal mind were valid, "killer experiments" could be done that would be so persuasive they would sweep away all opposition and quell every argument. This reflected my view of science -- that scientists are completely rational creatures who, when faced with data, respond as objectively as a computer and "do the right thing." I no longer believe this, because I have learned that my idealized image of science was wrong. Scientists are not unemotional computers. They can be as biased and ornery as anyone else, particularly when venturing outside their field. As one respected scientist said when asked to review a scientific paper dealing with nonlocal mental events, "This is the sort of thing that I would not believe, even if it were true."
In some spiritual traditions, teachers have spoken of various "eyes" that need to be opened in order for one to see certain things. In addition to one's physical eyes, which take in light, there is the eye of the mind, which is sensitive to reason, and the eye of the soul, which comprehends higher matters. In order to grasp nonlocal mind, we shall have to open all our eyes. Otherwise we may not see the evidence for nonlocal mind even when it is staring us in the face.
How can we open our various eyes to these matters? The path I endorse in this book is that of nonattachment -- setting aside our ideas about how we think the world ought to work and letting the evidence speak to us. This sounds simple but can be difficult because of our innate tendency to put our trip on the universe.
Writing this book has given me an opportunity to relive my own journey into this area. My venture into nonlocal mind has not been a smooth, unbroken process, but a titanic struggle. I know the resistance many readers will experience -- the tendency of the ego to deny a nonlocal, transpersonal dimension of the self and to protest, "These things can't happen!" This is why I have always been more at home with skeptics who demand proof that with uncritical true believers.
I myself have vigorously denied the existence for nonlocal mind for extended periods in my life. But although I am by nature and training a creature of reason, I have sometimes been reason's victim. I have used reason unreasonably -- to defend my ego and my preferred version of reality instead of being open to fact.
Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healingby Larry Dossey, M.D., HarperSan Francisco 1999, $24.00 U.S.,$35.00 Canada.
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