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 | "Mind + Faith Over Matter" |  |
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| The veracity of this next story lies in the fact that the details were written down by the main actor, a young woman named Barbara Daniels. She was one member of a Canadian family of four who had their own situation comedy show with the BBC during the 1950's. The details were published in a popular magazine of the time as part of an article in which she told how she came to be saved by Jesus. Another figure to attain mass-popularity at that time, was the evangelist, Billy Graham. He was scheduled to address an open-air rally at Wembley Stadium and, although Miss Daniels admitted that she had no personal interest in seeing him, she agreed to escort a couple of friends who were visiting her from Canada. Her pleasure was not increased when they arrived to find themselves well back in the crowd, standing on the soggy ground as a fine veil of rain descended upon them. She stated that she soon became very bored with standing there in the crowd, listening to the singsong voice. Her attention wandered and she drifted off in her head. To her own amazement she came round to find herself on her knees in front of the dais with someone holding her face in his hands and repeatedly telling her that she was saved. She told her readers that it was as though a light had burst around her and entered her soul. As to what actually happened, each reader must draw their own conclusions. |
| Each of these stories tell of how people have had their basic thinking patterns altered. In each case it has been by someone else, for that other person's benefit. The vital point is that such alteration can take place. We are all conditioned by other people, and it is seldom that the conditioning is beneficial to us except as incidental. Even that we were conditioned to learn our native tongue, were potty trained, and learned to obey authority, was primarily done for the benefit of those doing the conditioning. Along with those ultimately useful programs, we likewise took on board a lot of garbage. Outdated belief systems, ineffectual behaviour patterns, and a sense of our own inadequacy. Nobody actually lacks self-confidence; people just lack satisfactory ways of expressing it. Few of us are the persons that we would wish to be, yet the remedies are within us. In an interview given shortly before his death, Joseph Campbell (author of 'The Masks of God', 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces', 'Myths to Live By', et al.) was congratulated on the depth and breadth of his understanding of the human psyche. Smiling, he replied with words to the effect that it was the extent of his knowledge that had proved to be the greatest drawback to being able to put it to personal use. I felt an ironic bitterness as I listened, and identified, with what he said. I, too, was familiar with a syndrome described as, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." Too much knowledge, unbalanced by faith, can hold one from what they intellectually know to be true and possible. |
| Literature, and experience had showed me that change could be accomplished at a much faster rate than waiting for the passage of years. Dramatic changes could occur, or be caused to occur, almost instantly. Usually these happened at a traumatic point in one's life, and needed no conscious volition on the part of the person affected. Reports of such events frequently stressed that the change that occurred was not of the type or in the direction that the person had chosen. They were seldom the result of an appeal to reason, the emotional swamping of the intellectual faculties being a prime factor. This type of change went under the label of hysterical or religious conversion. That wasn't what I was looking for. It was my intention to be the architect of my own remodelling. Emotions are an essential part of the driving force behind a successful change but I wanted the intellect to be the guiding light. Frequently I found that the 'cure' for what most disturbed my sense of rightness, required a change in my own ways of doing things, or in my attitude to what was being done. Changes in attitude did not just solve the problem, they created situations where the problem ceased to exist. This raised the question as to whether or not it was possible for people to change or be changed by anything else but the slow process of time. |
| As a child I watched a stage conjurer with wide-eyed awe; caught up in the mystery and wonder of a demonstration of what I just 'knew' to be impossible. I was taken up in the atmosphere of those around me. Being curious about all things, I was soon delving into manuals that described how it was all done, stripping away the power of the illusion. It was not for many years that I came to see that in stripping away the veil between me and a false mystery, I had set in place a curtain between myself and all mystery. Everything, I now saw, could be explained in the terms of cold logic. The search for knowledge was continuously exciting, but was cold comfort. I found myself to be more and more cut off from the wonder of life. Everything could be explained. Life was nothing more than a series of problems to be solved. Then I became aware of the presence of a contradiction that permeated the whole body of knowledge. Just knowing, was not in itself sufficient. I had come to the placebo effect. It is possible that a more accurate term would be the anomaly effect. Things were happening that shouldn't happen; couldn't happen, according to scientific laws as they were then known. People were changing reality in accord with their own beliefs and wishes. |
| An elderly man was killed in an accident, and the post mortem discovered unusual things. His lungs showed old scars of healed lesions typical of the onset of tuberculosis, and his heart showed the marks of initial damage that should have progressed to major problems. That too, had been halted. Throughout his body were the traces of the damage of time and life. In each case the wounds had been healed. His widow was asked how often, during his life, he had been hospitalised. "Never", she told them. "He didn't believe in being ill. Oh, there were brief periods when he wasn't up to his usual self, but he soon shrugged them off." Report of his case inaugurated a flood of reports of similar occurrences. Enough to initiate serious experimentation. Researches of this nature follow a set of procedures incorporating control groups and 'double-blind' methods. It works along these general lines. To test the efficacy of a drug to cure a particular complaint, about 90 people suffering from that complaint will be assembled. These are split into three groups of thirty people in each. Group A will be given the drug, and told that it is a cure. Group B will be given the drug, but be told nothing. Group C will be given a pill made of nothing more than a paste of something as innocuous as flour, flavouring and water; but are told that it is a new 'miracle' cure. The double-blind effect is achieved by not informing those who are dispensing the drug as to which group is getting what. This is to ensure that no clues are passed along by word or body language. The expectation would be that Groups A & B will show signs of benefiting from the treatment, while Group C will show no effects whatsoever. In fact, it often happened that more favourable results were exhibited by group C than by Group B. |
| Another experiment further refined the tests. Two groups were given identical medication. Group One had their pills dispensed by an earnest person in a white coat with a stethoscope dangling from the pocket. Group Two had their pills casually handed out to them by someone dressed as a member of the cleaning staff. Group One showed marked improvements as a result of their treatment, whilst Group Two showed a percentage of improvement well below that which the experimenters had rational cause to expect. From these, and many other experiments along the same lines, it became clear that the minds of the patients were largely determining the outcome of the experiments. Those who had been treated by a 'proper' doctor received far greater benefits from the treatments than those who had their medicines dumped in their lap by a 'nobody'. Even a tablet containing nothing useful was frequently seen to have beneficial effects if it was administered in a convincing manner. Science was doing a good job, but faith was having its own say, either reinforcing or undermining the operation. Wherever I looked I saw that science was mapping new paths, but faith - a person's emotional belief - was frequently selecting who was to walk those paths that led to the places that I wanted to go. This left me in a quandary. I knew the facts to be true, but I, who had never made a leap of faith in my life, was seemingly barred from fully using them to my own benefit. I could, and did, teach others; and saw them benefit from it, but could not do it myself. I had a sort of faith in the facts, but it was an abstract faith, unempowered by the engine of emotion. I could find no springboard from which to make a leap of faith. I felt like a person with the task of writing out invitations to a party to which he was not admitted. I buried myself in my studies, attempting to accept that was the way it was. Crumbly cookie time. Outwardly I carried on with my life. Inside my mind there stretched the Desert of Vanished Hope. Half ashamed, I wished that I had faith in something. It was in the small hours of a dark morning that I rose from a dream. I stood there, half awake, feeling an intense excitement thrill through me. The room appeared to be filled with a diffuse, sourceless light, and I felt strong and invigorated. The dream still lived within me. "You do have faith. It is faith in faith itself." It was a time that was timeless; as I experienced my own epiphany. As I came towards full awakening, the Left Brain locked in, demanding to know what had happened, wanting to examine and intellectualise the process. No way! I went back to bed. There was no need to write down the details, it was not something that would fade with the coming of daylight. Writing of it now, I feel again those feelings for which words are a pale substitute. Looking back over the passage of time that has elapsed since that night, I see it as the moment when it became possible for me to write this book. |