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The Secret Science Behind Miracles, by Max Freedom Long, [1948], at sacred-texts.com
Much healing has been done by the spirits of the dead. Many have been doctors in physical life and, with the aid of mediums, have diagnosed and prescribed much as they did in life.
Spirits have often taken over the body of mediums and have healed by laying on of hands. From many accounts, it is evident that use of the low voltage of vital force is made even while its nature is not well understood.
Mesmerists have made passes over diseased parts of the patient's body for the purpose of healing. The spirits have done likewise. Healing has often been remarkable.
The kahunas, however, seem to be the only ones who knew of the three voltages of vital force and of the fact that vital force could be transferred through the hands from healer to patient, carrying along thought forms of healing to implement the vital force and set it to doing the desired work of restoration.
It is generally agreed that children of less than five years of age do not readily respond to suggestion or hypnosis. Despite this fact, they respond to treatment in which a flow of vital force is made to enter their bodies while the healer creates the thought forms of
healing. Liebault, in trying to prove that suggestion was not responsible for all healing in mesmeric practice, laid hands on many children, making many cures. Some of the children were under three. In later times Ochorowitz had similar success healing children under two. Animals have also been healed in this way. Plants have been stimulated thus to outstrip their untreated fellows.
All the evidence indicates that the kahunas were right in their belief that the vital force of the healer was a potent healing agent, whether the healer is living in the flesh or has died and become a spirit.
The spirits of the deceased have often showed fine powers of psychic diagnosis of the ills of the living. A friend of mine had a son who developed a strange illness while in college. Doctors failed to discover the cause, and mother and son went as a last resort to have a sitting with a famous medium by the name of Cayce. (See the book, There Is a River.) This medium was used by a spirit doctor who was responsible for many amazing cures. He made a psychic examination of the young man and said that the illness was caused by some fractured sections of the spinal column, going on to say that the injury had occurred in a canoe accident. The patient had forgotten the accident, but he recalled it at once as very painful at the time. The spirit doctor said that an operation was needed to repair the broken vertebrae, but that the only man skilled in that type of operation in the United States, was in Europe, although he would be at home in Boston soon. The doctor's name was given, but not his address.
After the sitting the mother and son had an X-ray picture made of the spine and a doctor who was not familiar with the case pointed out the breaks. As the spirit doctor had been correct that far, a long distance call was made from New York to Boston, and it was found that there was a doctor of the name given who had just returned from abroad, and who was the ranking specialist in surgery of the kind needed to repair the spinal injuries. He was engaged, and his operation brought the young man back to normal health.
Spirits frequently practice absent healing of a peculiar kind. When the medium through which they work is given a lock of hair of a distant patient (or some other thing formerly in contact with the patient), a fine demonstration of psychometry often follows. The ills of the distant patient are diagnosed and remedies indicated, or treatment by mental or "spiritual" means is undertaken from a distance. Here again we see the threads of shadowy body stuff used as a means of contacting distant things and people, also as a means of getting information, and as a means of sending back healing forces and thought forms.
In all the foregoing healing practices the spirits work much as do the living, provided the latter are psychic enough to make a proper diagnosis, and provided the spirits can accumulate enough vital force to do the healing. In still another matter there is a close parallel. We pray to Higher Beings and so do the spirits of the dead.
Many a medium, controlled by a spirit healer, has been seen to pray in order to call down healing. The
spirits have spoken endlessly of the High Self, calling it all manner of names, according to their religious training during life.
And, somewhat like the kahunas, a few of the spirits have had sufficient understanding to enable them to call for and get the aid of the High Self for healing the living. (The instant healings thus brought about are very rare, perhaps because so few of the spirits are familiar with the technique of instant healing, and because the patient is not cleansed of guilt complexes and otherwise made ready to accept such healing. On the other hand, spirits make use of the help of the High Self in the production of physical phenomena such as apporting, materialization, the making of ectoplasm and so on.)
Spirits have sometimes appeared to the living in visions, as did the "Lady" to Bernadette Soubirous at the grotto near Lourdes, and have in some way been instrumental in causing miraculous healing.
In some cases no vision of a spirit has been seen, but the presence of a spirit healing agent has been discovered in one way and another. The records of the Church of Rome are filled with instances in which healing has taken place at the tombs of men and women who had lived saintly lives. A conclave of twenty-two archbishops and bishops wrote to Pope Clement XI: "We are witnesses that before the tomb of Father John Francis Regis the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dumb speak."
In 1731 and for as long as twenty-five years afterward there was an invisible and unidentified healing agency at work at the tomb of Abbé Paris, a Jansenist.
[paragraph continues] Many cases were studied, among them a famous one in which a woman, Mlle. Coirin, had been miraculously healed of a cancer which had entirely destroyed her left breast. Her doctors had given up all hope for her. The breast was restored to its original form, even to the nipple, and not a scar could be seen. The case was vouched for by several physicians who made depositions before notaries at the time, and even the royal physician, M. Gaulard, investigated, was satisfied as to the authenticity of the healing miracle and so reported to the king.
In Hawaii some years ago, two large and oddly shaped stones, supposedly connected in early centuries with kahuna rites, were seen in a dream by a Hawaiian. He later found the stones and had them hauled to a place beside a modern cemetery, and stood on end. A little later the report circulated that a healing agency was to be contacted at the stones. People flocked from all parts of Hawaii to visit them, pray before them, and make offerings of flowers, food, money or whatever their particular religious beliefs dictated. Some veritable cases of healing resulted. The authorities had difficulty handling the crowds for a time, and then the healing power seemed to vanish. One can only speculate as to the coming and going of the invisible beings responsible for healing in these ways and places. While a High Self might possibly undertake such healing work of its own accord, the kahuna theory is that a lower and middle self must make the request before the High Self will take a direct hand in the affairs of the lesser selves, be they in the flesh or spirits surviving physical death. If we are to credit tales of saintly or
sainted persons appearing as spirits at the healing centers, we can conclude that these have learned to call down the aid of the High Self for the healing of the scattered few suppliants who are free of guilt complexes and so are able to accept healing ministrations.
If, on the other hand, shrines and sacred relics act as physical stimuli to aid the suppliants in making a workable prayer for healing, that may be the major answer to the mystery of such miraculous healing. The High Self of any who come to pray for healing might be caused to take action. (The kahunas considered the individual High Self the proper source of all healing. Spirits of a level above the High Self were thought to have less personal things to do than heal earthlings. The kahunas recognized no saints in their lists of High Selves.)
The question of the supply of vital force needed by the High Self for healing at shrines can be answered easily. If poltergeists can steal vital force from the living for their noisy activities, it is to be taken for granted that a High Self can draw vital force from those in its care.
The true picture of a healing at a holy shrine should be something like this: One or more normal departed spirits (each having its low and middle selves united to make them normal) elect to remain at the shrine and do all they can to help heal those who come asking for healing. These normal spirits will have learned to call on their High Selves and get them to heal instantly or in a matter of a few hours or as long as three days (as recorded at Lourdes). Many come to pray, making what may be considered a "circle" of value similar to
gatherings at spiritualistic seances. The normal spirits are supplied with vital force by the living, so also are the High Selves. When anyone who is free of guilt fixations and who has faith, is able to make a good thought form picture of the desired condition (healing), and is also able to make telepathic contact with the normal spirits and/or (1) through them with a High Self, or (2) without their aid contact their own High Selves directly, the miracle of healing results.
Ectoplasm, as known in the seance room is, as we have seen, bodily substances changed to their invisible form through the use of the high voltage of vital force by the High Self. In instant healing, the physical substance of the broken bone, the cancerous breast, the blind eye, the crooked spine, and similar structures is, according to Huna, dissolved into ectoplasmic form, then solidified as healthy substances filling the part of the patient's shadowy body which corresponds to the injured part. It must be remembered that the shadowy body is a mold of each cell, of all tissues, including blood and other fluids of the body. This shadowy body belonging to the low self is not breakable or subject to disease or injury. Theoretically, a leg that has been amputated for years could be restored were there a source from which to draw ectoplasm which would not need to be returned. If the shadowy body of the low self could be injured, heaven would be filled with cripples instead of restored and happy spirit people who have died to find that they have left behind all their physical abnormalities.
There is another peculiar thing about such healing as is under discussion. It has been pointed out by doctors
who have made a study of those healed at Lourdes that often those who have come to pray for the healing of others, have themselves been healed. Mary Austin, the writer, developed cancer. She was given about a year to live, and chose to go to Rome to spend that year studying early documents of Christianity. She became so absorbed in her studies that she was able to forget the cancer. One day, so she wrote in her account of the matter, she came to the sudden realization that the cancer was gone. She had not prayed for healing. But, with her mind on the things of religion, healing came.
The point to this peculiar phase of healing is that it indicates that, if the door is once opened by prayer-requests to the High Self so that it can take a hand in the affairs of the low and middle self person, it may act of its own accord and bring healing when not directly asked. This possibility would account for the help given us, even if not explicitly asked. Nearly everyone can recall some narrow escape from disaster which seems to have been brought about by the guardian angel, or High Self.
The close and constant cooperation and contact between the lower pair of selves and their High Self, is well demonstrated in the case of the strange cult of religionists in Japan whose members walk, or roll with bare backs, on broken glass, cutting themselves, but having their cuts healed instantly and without a scar through a word spoken by the master of ceremonies.
I talked to a woman who had been a member of such a group, although she was a blond American. She had gradually learned to contact the Being responsible for
the healing, and later, to get the aid of that Being in keeping her feet from being cut in her hourly performance of walking up a ladder of naked sword blades.
While suggestion may be used as auto-suggestion to prevent bleeding from small wounds, the instant healing of very considerable cuts from broken glass would demand the instant healing action of the High Self.
Unfortunately, when a missionary group of this Japanese cult came to America to convert us (to them we were the heathen), their work was classed with stage magic or circus trickery. After a few demonstrations they gave up, washed their hands of us, and returned to Japan, all of which is very strange when we consider the anxiety shown by so many to learn the truth about God and religion. Here was a chance to study both from a new angle, but we are so crystallized in our beliefs, taking us as a whole, that we overlook such striking opportunities when they come.