NONLOCAL HEALING
by Iona Miller with Dr. Marshall Gilula
Heartstrings
New physics strongly suggests that we are all holistically connected in a shared domain finer than the physical level, which we can call subspace, zero-point field, vacuum fluctuation, quantum foam, or scalar field. The biological basis for this field can be found in communication on a cellular basis. The doorway to the quantum level exists in the extracellular fluid between each and every cell in the human body. Studies of the cell membrane and intercellular communication have led us to an understanding that ultimate communication may be carried by packets of light energy, or photons. By applying healing intentionality, it appears we can influence the mindbody and energy fields of other individuals, animals, plants, and even an entire planet. The words and concepts are all slightly different from what has come before but the functionality is not. Nonlocal or quantum healing side-steps the illusion of separateness which our 3-dimensional perceptual system teaches us to believe.
There is already a group of medical doctors who have dared speak from their hearts about the inner experience of quantum healing and nonlocal effects of focused intention. Physician Larry Dossey coined the term Nonlocal Healing; Deepak Chopra used Quantum Healing, and Andrew Weil and Norman Shealy have described an alternate term, Spontaneous Healing. No matter what the name, it is hardly new. The process draws on 50,000 years of shamanic tradition mobilizing natural mindbody healing. Nonlocal (quantum) healing simply focuses on the human energy field. The method we have studied also employs a cybernetic form of computerized consciousness as part of a healing triad.
We all share an interest in healing and healing relationships. Healing doesn't only come from outside; we all have internal self-healing potentials. Healing can be mobilized by the seemingly irrational, such as healing rituals or beliefs. The relationship of mindbody and the associated energy fields is complex.
Healing is not necessarily synonymous with cure. Sometimes we heal physically, but not emotionally or spiritually. Sometimes we heal spirit and restore soul, but a physical cure remains elusive. In the past healing has focused on the physical body and mind but not on the human energy field. When body, soul and spirit respond in resonance, holistic integrity is restored. Diagnostic medical devices such as the PET, MRI, fMRI often produce results allowing others to claim demonstration of a human energy field that coexists with the physical body. The human energy field can be studied, even with some of the original Kirlian photographic techniques. Magnetic polarities and spin properties of molecules in the extracellular fluids of the body are described in the peer-reviewed and popular scientific literature. There already is a solidly rational basis for understanding health and degeneration of the human organism as well as how one organism may communicate energetically with another through time and space. Imbalances and problems show up in the human energy field before they manifest on a physical plane level. Also, many curative and healing processes begin in the human energy field before manifesting any signs in the physical body. This is the rationale for putting scientifically-based energy medicine into practice.
Psychoneuroimmunology is one scientific basis of holism that has become fashionable. This discipline is an exploration of the interconnections between the central and autonomic nervous systems, the immune system and the endocrine system. Other scientific studies look at the extracellular fluid and mechanisms of how cells communicate with each other. The cell membrane itself is made up of two layers that have a fascinating relationship to structural elements such as microtubules which facilitate communication. Exploring hormonal and chemical intercellular communication reveals a vast framework for further scientific research. A new family of relaxation hormones have been discovered which also lends a biochemical basis for many of the therapies in energy medicine. The physiologic interactions of emotional stress balancing techniques such as meditation and self-hypnosis have profound effects in both health and illness.
No one really knows how nonlocal healing works, but the empathic bond is one important aspect. Chaos theory describes how "emergent" healing depends on the nonlocal principles of nature's own self-organization. From chaos a field "emerges" and directly affects the mindbody energy fields of the organism. We believe that therapeutic entrainment which is present in the healing situation can be intentionally amplified by the mind to mobilize the healing process. The unconscious plays a role in such healing, because all the templates used during healing are located in the holographic records of our unconscious. It is not possible to differentiate local healing from nonlocal healing. All healing is essentially remote healing, regardless of how much distance is involved between healer and patient. Our assumption is that a cybernetic device becomes yet a third focus of consciousness in the healing process traditionally viewed as involving just the consciousness of two people.
From a spiritual point of view, when healing occurs, the process happens at an energy level where all consciousness is one. So by this definition, the cybernetic device has a form of electromagnetic consciousness which can also manifest at an energy level where all consciousness is one.
Because the issue of nonlocal healing is emotional and controversial does not mean we should stop seeking a deeper relationship between psyche, matter, and the human energy fields. On the contrary, it demands further exploration and application with an open mind and an open heart. Although research is important, Western science is obsessed with the mindless repetition of seeking out the smallest data to the exclusion of useful techniques and methodology. There can be a way to balance both in a way that is both sensible and humane.
Nonlocal healing, modulated by the principles and methodologies of Dissonance Resolution Meditation (DRM) and quantum biofeedback (QBF), is rooted in models describing nonlocal principles of time and space irrelevancy when going from the dimensions of quantum mechanics to the finer levels of quantum fields, quantum subspace, and string theory.
Method. Direct application of quantum biofeedback principles makes it possible to create a synergism between the human energy fields and the electromagnetic fields of cybernetic systems, such as computers. Our alternative medicine research combines elements of homeopathic and allopathic healing remedies based on over nine thousand electromagnetic patterns that are each equivalent to one of those remedies. We describe an energy medicine technology researched and developed for over 25 years by William Nelson, a noted NASA scientist.
The quantum biofeedback technology, EPFX-QXCI-SCIO, is sanctioned by the U.S. FDA as a biofeedback device and is currently employed for the purpose of stress reduction by medical and nonmedical practitioners who have been certified as biofeedback therapists or technicians. This technology is considered off-label or experimental in the U.S. for any other use, despite being accepted for medical diagnosis and treatment in the European Union, Russia, and many other parts of the world.
Results. Our observations of stress reduction by medical personnel examine the foundation of this device modeled on principles from electro-acupuncture, homeopathy, and other alternative medical systems. Although the technology regularly employs conductive carbon electrodes attached to all four extremities and the forehead, we used the device to investigate long distance, nonlocal stress reduction. Conclusions. Observations of eight different patterns of stress reduction carried out over distance are correlated with psychophysical theories. The observations strongly suggest the efficacy of a nonlocal healing model, and partially explain epistemological and ideological barriers to conducting controlled research on nonlocal healing.
Dr. Marshall F. Gilula, Iona Miller, Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama (mentor)
DR. MARSHALL F. GILULA is an MD with extensive training and experience in both Psychiatry and Neurology as well as Neurophysiology (EEG). He has taught both Psychiatry and Neurology to medical students and housestaff, and was the first listed editor of the Journal of Holistic Medicine that was published by Human Sciences Press. Dr. Gilula has had extensive experience in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and owns a small recording studio in Miami, where he has produced the CYBERDOCtv music and other compositions.
Life Energies Research Institute, Inc. (LERI) is a non-profit research foundation which has been operating under the direction of Marshall F. Gilula, M.D. since 1970. LERI was incorporated in the state of Florida in 1980. Federal tax-exempt status was granted on January 9, 1981 under Sections 501(c)(3) and 509(a)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code. Dr. Gilula is a board-certified psychiatrist, a board certified neurological subspecialist (Neurophysiology/EEG), and a diplomate in Biofeedback Therapy, and a certified Instructor in Neurotherapy and Biofeedback. Dr. Gilula's personal website at http://www.mindspring.com/~mgilula lists current and past projects of LERI, the nonprofit charitable entity.
His research experience includes being a US-USSR International Exchange Scientist in 1978 (Moscow) and receiving the 1981 (Tokyo) Motoyama-Ben Tov Award. Dr. Gilula became a NeXT Registered Developer in 1990. He has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute of Hearthmath. His private research in Miami involves psychiatry, EEG, and research neurology within a framework of complementary and alternative medicine. Since 1999, he has been at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital for over three years in the Neurology Department (Epilepsy/EEG Fellow) and two years in the Anesthesiology Department, UM-JMH Center for Patient Safety.
Beginning in December 2004, he has investigated the EPFX-QXCI-SCIO cybernetic technology initially developed over 25 years ago by noted NASA scientist, Bill Nelson. At the University of Miami, he has studied Cerebral Electrotherapy Stimulation (CES) as a safer alternative to medications for anxiety and depression. He also is interested in the psychosocial aspects of epilepsy, noninvasive neuromedical approaches to the comorbid depression found in epilepsy and chronic pain patients, and noninvasive, safe cybernetic technologies such as the EPFX-QXCI-SCIO that may one day overshadow many current methods of diagnosis and treatment for ultimate healing.
_______________________
IONA MILLER is a writer, Jungian hypnotherapist, and multimedia science-artist with decades of experience in biofeedback, with both wetware and hardware. Working with Dr. Stanley Krippner (Dream Telepathy; Personal Mythology; The Realms of Healing; Healing States; Dreamworking) as mentor, developing innovative process therapies rooted in chaos theory at Asklepia gave her a healthy respect for shamanic healing and nonlocal phenomena. See http://chaosophy.50megs.com
Her interests include the interface of psyche and matter in the mindbody connection, the holographic concept of reality, psychosomatics, biophysics, bioholography, and nonlocal healing. She has pursued this vocation lately with some of the world's foremost pioneers in quantum physics and biophysics at Emergent Mind and The Journal of Nonlocal & Remote Mental Interactions (JNLRMI). See http://emergentmind.org and
http://biophysics.50megs.com
http://photonichuman.50megs.com
A Transdisciplinary writer, Iona has a vast web presence with multiple portals she calls Ionatopia. She writes Future Science for Nexus Magazine. Rather than a point particle, she considers her existence an indeterminate wave of consciousness smeared cotemporaneously across the whole global mindscape and timeline. She fully inhabits the post-quantum Multiverse. Living nonlocally online has given her a unique perspective on astral travel, remote viewing, and clairvoyance. Spreading across several continents and time zones at once, she isn't IN her body often enough to have an out-of-body experience. As a web-weaver, she has cast her net broad and deep.
___________________
Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama is a scientist as well as a yogi, philosopher and priest. He is a man of many varied interests and talents specializing in oriental medicine, computing and electrical engineering who is also a parapsychologist, spiritual healer and seer. He is head of the Institute for Life Physics, Tokyo, and the California Institute for Human Science, California. He conducted experiment sin the 70s showing the effects one person's mind on the body of another in a screen remote locale. In other experiments he scientifically detected biophoton emission. He is concerned with elucidating the nature of religious experience and the existence of 'subtle energies' using scientific methods. He built two machines: one to measure the 'ki' energy in the meridians (the AMI machine) and another to measure the energy of the chakras or energy centers of the body (The Chakra instrument). The AMI instrument is in use in some American and many Japanese medical institutions as a diagnostic tool and for research into health and disease and also the paranormal.
There is already a group of medical doctors who have dared speak from their hearts about the inner experience of quantum healing and nonlocal effects of focused intention. Physician Larry Dossey coined the term Nonlocal Healing; Deepak Chopra used Quantum Healing, and Andrew Weil and Norman Shealy have described an alternate term, Spontaneous Healing. No matter what the name, it is hardly new. The process draws on 50,000 years of shamanic tradition mobilizing natural mindbody healing. Nonlocal (quantum) healing simply focuses on the human energy field. The method we have studied also employs a cybernetic form of computerized consciousness as part of a healing triad.
We all share an interest in healing and healing relationships. Healing doesn't only come from outside; we all have internal self-healing potentials. Healing can be mobilized by the seemingly irrational, such as healing rituals or beliefs. The relationship of mindbody and the associated energy fields is complex.
Healing is not necessarily synonymous with cure. Sometimes we heal physically, but not emotionally or spiritually. Sometimes we heal spirit and restore soul, but a physical cure remains elusive. In the past healing has focused on the physical body and mind but not on the human energy field. When body, soul and spirit respond in resonance, holistic integrity is restored. Diagnostic medical devices such as the PET, MRI, fMRI often produce results allowing others to claim demonstration of a human energy field that coexists with the physical body. The human energy field can be studied, even with some of the original Kirlian photographic techniques. Magnetic polarities and spin properties of molecules in the extracellular fluids of the body are described in the peer-reviewed and popular scientific literature. There already is a solidly rational basis for understanding health and degeneration of the human organism as well as how one organism may communicate energetically with another through time and space. Imbalances and problems show up in the human energy field before they manifest on a physical plane level. Also, many curative and healing processes begin in the human energy field before manifesting any signs in the physical body. This is the rationale for putting scientifically-based energy medicine into practice.
Psychoneuroimmunology is one scientific basis of holism that has become fashionable. This discipline is an exploration of the interconnections between the central and autonomic nervous systems, the immune system and the endocrine system. Other scientific studies look at the extracellular fluid and mechanisms of how cells communicate with each other. The cell membrane itself is made up of two layers that have a fascinating relationship to structural elements such as microtubules which facilitate communication. Exploring hormonal and chemical intercellular communication reveals a vast framework for further scientific research. A new family of relaxation hormones have been discovered which also lends a biochemical basis for many of the therapies in energy medicine. The physiologic interactions of emotional stress balancing techniques such as meditation and self-hypnosis have profound effects in both health and illness.
No one really knows how nonlocal healing works, but the empathic bond is one important aspect. Chaos theory describes how "emergent" healing depends on the nonlocal principles of nature's own self-organization. From chaos a field "emerges" and directly affects the mindbody energy fields of the organism. We believe that therapeutic entrainment which is present in the healing situation can be intentionally amplified by the mind to mobilize the healing process. The unconscious plays a role in such healing, because all the templates used during healing are located in the holographic records of our unconscious. It is not possible to differentiate local healing from nonlocal healing. All healing is essentially remote healing, regardless of how much distance is involved between healer and patient. Our assumption is that a cybernetic device becomes yet a third focus of consciousness in the healing process traditionally viewed as involving just the consciousness of two people.
From a spiritual point of view, when healing occurs, the process happens at an energy level where all consciousness is one. So by this definition, the cybernetic device has a form of electromagnetic consciousness which can also manifest at an energy level where all consciousness is one.
Because the issue of nonlocal healing is emotional and controversial does not mean we should stop seeking a deeper relationship between psyche, matter, and the human energy fields. On the contrary, it demands further exploration and application with an open mind and an open heart. Although research is important, Western science is obsessed with the mindless repetition of seeking out the smallest data to the exclusion of useful techniques and methodology. There can be a way to balance both in a way that is both sensible and humane.
Nonlocal healing, modulated by the principles and methodologies of Dissonance Resolution Meditation (DRM) and quantum biofeedback (QBF), is rooted in models describing nonlocal principles of time and space irrelevancy when going from the dimensions of quantum mechanics to the finer levels of quantum fields, quantum subspace, and string theory.
Method. Direct application of quantum biofeedback principles makes it possible to create a synergism between the human energy fields and the electromagnetic fields of cybernetic systems, such as computers. Our alternative medicine research combines elements of homeopathic and allopathic healing remedies based on over nine thousand electromagnetic patterns that are each equivalent to one of those remedies. We describe an energy medicine technology researched and developed for over 25 years by William Nelson, a noted NASA scientist.
The quantum biofeedback technology, EPFX-QXCI-SCIO, is sanctioned by the U.S. FDA as a biofeedback device and is currently employed for the purpose of stress reduction by medical and nonmedical practitioners who have been certified as biofeedback therapists or technicians. This technology is considered off-label or experimental in the U.S. for any other use, despite being accepted for medical diagnosis and treatment in the European Union, Russia, and many other parts of the world.
Results. Our observations of stress reduction by medical personnel examine the foundation of this device modeled on principles from electro-acupuncture, homeopathy, and other alternative medical systems. Although the technology regularly employs conductive carbon electrodes attached to all four extremities and the forehead, we used the device to investigate long distance, nonlocal stress reduction. Conclusions. Observations of eight different patterns of stress reduction carried out over distance are correlated with psychophysical theories. The observations strongly suggest the efficacy of a nonlocal healing model, and partially explain epistemological and ideological barriers to conducting controlled research on nonlocal healing.
Dr. Marshall F. Gilula, Iona Miller, Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama (mentor)
DR. MARSHALL F. GILULA is an MD with extensive training and experience in both Psychiatry and Neurology as well as Neurophysiology (EEG). He has taught both Psychiatry and Neurology to medical students and housestaff, and was the first listed editor of the Journal of Holistic Medicine that was published by Human Sciences Press. Dr. Gilula has had extensive experience in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and owns a small recording studio in Miami, where he has produced the CYBERDOCtv music and other compositions.
Life Energies Research Institute, Inc. (LERI) is a non-profit research foundation which has been operating under the direction of Marshall F. Gilula, M.D. since 1970. LERI was incorporated in the state of Florida in 1980. Federal tax-exempt status was granted on January 9, 1981 under Sections 501(c)(3) and 509(a)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code. Dr. Gilula is a board-certified psychiatrist, a board certified neurological subspecialist (Neurophysiology/EEG), and a diplomate in Biofeedback Therapy, and a certified Instructor in Neurotherapy and Biofeedback. Dr. Gilula's personal website at http://www.mindspring.com/~mgilula lists current and past projects of LERI, the nonprofit charitable entity.
His research experience includes being a US-USSR International Exchange Scientist in 1978 (Moscow) and receiving the 1981 (Tokyo) Motoyama-Ben Tov Award. Dr. Gilula became a NeXT Registered Developer in 1990. He has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute of Hearthmath. His private research in Miami involves psychiatry, EEG, and research neurology within a framework of complementary and alternative medicine. Since 1999, he has been at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital for over three years in the Neurology Department (Epilepsy/EEG Fellow) and two years in the Anesthesiology Department, UM-JMH Center for Patient Safety.
Beginning in December 2004, he has investigated the EPFX-QXCI-SCIO cybernetic technology initially developed over 25 years ago by noted NASA scientist, Bill Nelson. At the University of Miami, he has studied Cerebral Electrotherapy Stimulation (CES) as a safer alternative to medications for anxiety and depression. He also is interested in the psychosocial aspects of epilepsy, noninvasive neuromedical approaches to the comorbid depression found in epilepsy and chronic pain patients, and noninvasive, safe cybernetic technologies such as the EPFX-QXCI-SCIO that may one day overshadow many current methods of diagnosis and treatment for ultimate healing.
_______________________
IONA MILLER is a writer, Jungian hypnotherapist, and multimedia science-artist with decades of experience in biofeedback, with both wetware and hardware. Working with Dr. Stanley Krippner (Dream Telepathy; Personal Mythology; The Realms of Healing; Healing States; Dreamworking) as mentor, developing innovative process therapies rooted in chaos theory at Asklepia gave her a healthy respect for shamanic healing and nonlocal phenomena. See http://chaosophy.50megs.com
Her interests include the interface of psyche and matter in the mindbody connection, the holographic concept of reality, psychosomatics, biophysics, bioholography, and nonlocal healing. She has pursued this vocation lately with some of the world's foremost pioneers in quantum physics and biophysics at Emergent Mind and The Journal of Nonlocal & Remote Mental Interactions (JNLRMI). See http://emergentmind.org and
http://biophysics.50megs.com
http://photonichuman.50megs.com
A Transdisciplinary writer, Iona has a vast web presence with multiple portals she calls Ionatopia. She writes Future Science for Nexus Magazine. Rather than a point particle, she considers her existence an indeterminate wave of consciousness smeared cotemporaneously across the whole global mindscape and timeline. She fully inhabits the post-quantum Multiverse. Living nonlocally online has given her a unique perspective on astral travel, remote viewing, and clairvoyance. Spreading across several continents and time zones at once, she isn't IN her body often enough to have an out-of-body experience. As a web-weaver, she has cast her net broad and deep.
___________________
Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama is a scientist as well as a yogi, philosopher and priest. He is a man of many varied interests and talents specializing in oriental medicine, computing and electrical engineering who is also a parapsychologist, spiritual healer and seer. He is head of the Institute for Life Physics, Tokyo, and the California Institute for Human Science, California. He conducted experiment sin the 70s showing the effects one person's mind on the body of another in a screen remote locale. In other experiments he scientifically detected biophoton emission. He is concerned with elucidating the nature of religious experience and the existence of 'subtle energies' using scientific methods. He built two machines: one to measure the 'ki' energy in the meridians (the AMI machine) and another to measure the energy of the chakras or energy centers of the body (The Chakra instrument). The AMI instrument is in use in some American and many Japanese medical institutions as a diagnostic tool and for research into health and disease and also the paranormal.
Intent Mediated Healing
EMERGENT HEALING as a model of Intent Mediated Healing
Iona Miller, Asklepia Foundation, 2003
http://emergentmind.org
You ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head,
Nor the head without the body,
So neither ought you attempt to cure the body without the soul
for the part can never be well unless the whole is well.
--Plato: Charmides, 156e
MIND/BODY CONNECTION
For most of human history, healing has had to do with contact with spirit, with consciousness, with rituals intended to create a shared biofield with a shaman who seemingly could exert mind over matter. This spiritual technology has yielded to technological medicine governed by the rational protocols of science. But noting that medical intuition and therapeutic rapport are real forces in the healing process, many practitioners are moving toward a new paradigm or model of healing.
Anomalies such as the proven power of prayer, placebo effect, spontaneous remission, therapeutic intentionality, and remote healing hint that the irrational, the mysterious, is an inherent part of the natural healing process. When we become ill, the fundamental nature of consciousness is revealed as it relates to both mind and matter, psyche and soma. Consciousness may be more fundamental than either energy or matter, as the Vedas claimed centuries ago. At this sensitive threshold, miniscule changes in the situation can lead to large differences in the outcome.
THE QUANTUM SELF
We need to remold our healing institutions to conform with new physics to develop a contemporary understanding of the mind/body. A new model of the human organism is emerging - a holistic rather than mechanistic model that theorizes our basis in the quantum world; it means healing can happen in very subtle ways, perhaps even at the quantum level.
“Emergence” is the process by which order appears spontaneously within a system. It is essential to understanding functional consciousness, the mind/body, subjective experience, and the healing process. When many elements of a system mingle, they form patterns among themselves as they interact.
When the mind lets go of its rational order, lets the old form die, and enters into unstructured chaos, the whole person emerges with a new form, embodied as a creative expression, an intuition, or as healing. Most often it is characterized by an element of novelty and surprise, since it apparently does not originate in what came before. Both healing and medical intuition are examples of emergence. It is a spontaneous solution to a problem.
HEALING PHILOSOPHIES
The healing arts, from conventional medicine to alternative/complementary medicine, and from psychology to pastoral counseling are undergoing a shift from a mechanistic to a holistic paradigm. Science is actually an experimental philosophy whose highest value is empiricism, and conventional healing shares this philosophy. All new scientific theories require some unifying idea, and that idea is, by definition, metaphysical or essentially untestable.
Today’s heresies are tomorrow’s dogmas. In any metaphysical dispute, strong non-scientific arguments can propose new theories, which may become scientific. Speculative ideas have contributed heavily to the growth of knowledge.
Rather than discouraging exploration of fringe areas of knowledge, this awareness makes it mandatory we explore all possible modalities and anomalies without prejudice, no matter how unconventional. Even extraordinary subjects may be approached with rigorous protocols. Though subjectivity is unwelcome in science, we can study the subjective nature of experience (qualia) in various ways. The process of healing is one such subjective experience.
The alchemists, who were students of consciousness in matter, created an elixer of life, a “medicine of philosophers”, a cure-all or panacea. What the modern world yearns for is a “meta-syn,” or visionary synthesis rooted not in a mechanistic model but one using nature’s own forms of self-organization.
This model is based on the peculiar characteristics of nonlocality and probability of quantum physics, rather than classical Newtonian mechanics. Hopefully, the new model has the power to resonate with our whole being and propel us into a more effective healing paradigm. Emergent healing is actually a treatment philosophy, rooted in a worldview born from our current understanding of the nature of Reality.
The emerging paradigm is a more subtle and energetic model of health. In the emergent healing paradigm, healing depends on the nonlocal principles of nature’s own self-organization, as well as on direct causal influences on the mind/body of the organism. It appeals to spirit, soul, and body.
Recognizing the complexity of reality, the new paradigm includes a series of perspectives, which emphasize the positive rather than pathological, health rather than sickness, and a holistic approach to health care.
In this qualitative, rather than outcome-oriented approach, subjective experience and process are valued. The fusion of mind, emotions, body and spirit is recognized as central. In this ecological approach, the individual is embedded within larger systems, not isolated as a disease process. When we treat a symptom or disease rather than the whole person, we treat the part not the whole.
Interdependence of individuals, societies, and nature can be honored. As our knowledge of nature is increased, our knowledge of our own nature also grows correspondingly. Health, self-healing, and therapeutics is a balance supported by many disciplines, including physics, biology, and psychology as well as medicine.
We have all noticed that often the physical body is healed, but not the emotional trauma; or perhaps there is spiritual or psychological healing, but not physical cure. Therefore, it only makes sense to treat the whole person, rather than just the symptomology.
PARADIGM SHIFT
Paradigms underlie the interplay of chaos and order in human culture, at the conscious and unconscious, collective and individual level. These tacit belief systems act as lenses through which all sensory data passes before it is experienced as perception. Some perceptions arrive relatively undisturbed while others are subject to immediate characterization, distortions, and value-judgments.
Old ideas die hard. The established order, materialism, is entrenched. Establishment science is always resistant to new ideas. Science deals with models and metaphors of our perception of reality. We have had science less than 500 years, but in that time it has transformed much of the world technologically, intellectually and physically.
Scientific models change as exploration leads to the discovery of new facts and approaches that work. Still, new models are slow to be embraced. The dominant worldview hangs on as tenaciously as geocentric religious views did in the Dark Ages.
A paradigm is a working set of assumptions and postulates, (a disciplinarian matrix), about a field of inquiry or practice such as healing. How we envision healing is as important as how we proceed to try to heal. It governs our protocols, what we notice and fail to notice, and how we evaluate the results. The theoretical construct defines our approach and methodology. It gains momentum over time.
Scientific exploration is not a linear process, but results from competition among theories. The best results of each system are then woven into a seamless fabric that, at least temporarily, defines the nature of that field. New observations can lead to complete revisioning of a discipline, like the emergence of quantum mechanics did in physics. Filling in theoretical gaps leads toward better explanations and solutions to problems.
Sometimes new paradigms coexist and develop alongside one another, until one supersedes the other. This is paradigm shift. Such has been the case in concurrent development of allopathic and alternative or energy medicine, also called integral medicine.
Both the conventional and integral approaches have long, noble histories, one rooted largely in western culture, the other in Asian systems. Allopathic doctors and patients themselves now recognize that strictly reductionistic and technologically-based medicine has its limitations in contemporary healthcare.
Objective science can be devoid of higher purpose and intentionality. Thus, we find ourselves with a host of ethical dilemmas in genetic engineering, transplant research, geriatrics, pharmacology, cloning, technological intervention, and molecular biology.
The relativism of postmodern deconstructionism has undermined all theoretical perspectives, turning them into or exposing them as social constructions. It is true that the healing arts are riddled with political, religious, and cultural biases. Health care has been delivered in terms of a power relationship over the body, superimposed on its biology.
There is a strong desire from the both the scientific community and public for a health system that values personal relationships, emotions, meaning, and beliefs. They connect body, mind, spirit, and society.
It is crucial to realize there is both rational and paradoxical healing, and both are vital to our well-being. Paradoxical thinking is unpredictable, unique, unforgettable, unrepeatable, and often indescribable. Breakthroughs are often paradoxical in nature, seemingly absurd, yet in fact true. Rational healing relies on doing, while paradoxical healing is rooted in ways of being. Physician Larry Dossey says it requires, “standing in the Mystery.”
There is a yearning to return “mystery” to the mechanistic arena of healing, so we can face illness and disease as whole organisms. Transpersonal forces have a valid place in healing, as they do in all areas of our existence. Many people have a sense of the importance of actively integrating spiritual principles with the material world.
The whole-systems approach co-exists with conventional medicine and is making inroads among its practitioners. Treating causes as well as symptoms, it mobilizes the patient’s will to live. It fosters the inner dimensions of the healing experience. The healing response includes behavioral, mental and spiritual shifts or transformations.
Health is the natural outcome of a meaningful life, not just absence of symptoms. It means a comprehension of the complexities of life that is deeper than the conventional worldview of cause and effect. It proposes that consciousness is the foundation of reality. We do not exist independently from the universe, but the exact nature of that seamless connection is unknown.
Rooted in relativity, quantum, holographic and chaos theories, a metaphysical context is provided to justify such a paradigm shift from the purely causal healing model. The interactive field (psychodynamic field) present in healing situations can be amplified intentionally through therapeutic entrainment, or resonant feedback playing off the unified field (universal field).
NEW CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
No science or healing is independent of the realities of our fundamental consciousness. Consciousness is a process not an object. Neuroscientists have begun to study consciousness, both in its functional and universal aspects.
Some scientists try to reduce matter (brain cells) to consciousness while others are trying to reduce consciousness to matter. Some suggest (Newell), echoing ancient philosophies, that Absolute Consciousness may be a field that is always everywhere.
We are not discrete entities but deeply embedded within the fabric of the universe. The essence we share, more fundamental than matter and energy, may well be primordial consciousness. It may be the very basis of materiality, as the Vedas implied centuries ago. Consciousness involves the integration of information, not just a passive array of information itself.
We have many ways, besides our senses, of interfacing with reality, including intentionality, intuition, somatic perception, and direct apprehension. The new integral model of health and mind/body healing recognizes and operates from this expanded perspective and innovative medical options.
Consciousness - the intersubjective dimension - may be a stronger dynamic causal factor in healing than previously considered. Incorporating the full spectrum of human experience into healing promises new possibilities, new outcomes, which have been neglected in the biomedical model.
Conscious intentionality may influence subtle electromagnetic or quantum field energy processes. It affects the exchange of information at the cellular, organismic, and social level. Exceptional states of awareness (such as meditation, shamanic journeying, dreaming, dissociation, etc.) can lead to exceptional results, but they also require exceptional proof that may be difficult to produce in the laboratory or document objectively.
The emerging worldview extends our concepts beyond the domain of purely objective, reductionistic realism or materialism. The trend is moving from biophysical to psychophysical and psychospiritual dimensions without loss of scientific rigor.
Just as physics seeks a unified field theory, so the healing process needs a model that accounts for the mechanisms of natural healing and its anomalies such a placebo effect, spontaneous remission, even distant healing. Consciousness may just be an expression of such a universal field.
Models of healing in which disease is seen as an invasive process and the treatments are also invasive can give way to those following a natural, evolutionary course at the edge of chaos.
Rather than comparing healing to a fight, or war on an external invader, we can imagine it as the creation of healthy processes. New forms emerge from adaptations after the breakdown of old forms. In this synergetic view, the organism interacts with its total environment.
THREADS OF QUANTUM RESONANCE AND BIOFEEDBACK
Science proceeds by way of 'discovery,' as well as simple accumulation of information or even 'invention.' This is the basis of scientific revolutions, and paradigm shifts - "the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science," (Kuhn, 1962). A paradigm can be a disciplinary matrix.. Paradigms are essentially worldviews -- expressing our beliefs about the way things work, including tacit assumptions.
Chaos Theory and Complexity have disclosed the self-organizing inner workings of non-linear dynamics in nature and human nature. Systems (and subsystems) are always connected in various ways to various degrees; energy and information is constantly exchanged. In complex phase interactions and dynamical energy systems, resonance is the key dynamic which couples them, increasing dimensional complexity and leading to emergence of new properties. "Emergent" means what comes from the new and creative resolution of chaos.
Interactive resonance occurs both within and between material systems, through recurrent feedback encoding a complex interactive history. Circulating recurrent feedback interactions (cyclic information) are the fundamental bases of holism. The more rapid the feedback, the more stable the holistic system. This circulation of energy and information allows them to interact as a whole.
According to one hypothesis, emergent healing depends on the nonlocal principles of nature's own self-organization, as well as on direct causal influences on the mindbody of the organism. It is proposed that the interactive field -- therapeutic entrainment -- present in the healing situation can be amplified intentionally to mobilize the psychophysical healing process.
INTRODUCTION TO REMOTE HEALING
Clearly, the whole story of human technology is the the story of the ascendency of mind over matter. Whether that is a triumph or a tragedy for humankind remains to be seen.
Conventional medicine takes an allopathic approach to healing, but Complementary Medicine works holistically in conjunction with it through compassionate intentionality. Historically, so-called spiritual healing or faith healing has been person-to-person, whether local or nonlocal. It works on the premise of evoking the healing potential through a commonly shared field-effect, electromagnetic physiological reactivity.
Today’s technology has allowed distance healers to experiment with technological aids to their healing practices. There are still many mysteries of the interactive field which remain to be explored.
With a phenomenological eye toward field dynamics, this exploration demonstrates an additional theoretical framework within the interactive field applicable to paradoxical healing. It opens creative and healing possibilities and allows for the active, intentional liberation of the psychophysical imaginal realm.
The genesis of the interactive field is rooted also in shamanic realms as a backdrop from which to see field theory. Shamanic expressions, ancient healing forces, of the unified field include mana, chi, prana, qi, kundalini, bioenergetics, psi faculty, universal energy, orgone, wakonda, etc. Field theory is also explored in the world of quantum physics where the universal field is examined from paradigms situated in varied consciousness models.
The somatic unconscious, an intrinsic part of the interactive field in mutual engagement with two or more persons, is also woven into this fabric. In this study it is an intersection between the universal field and the psychodynamic field -- embodying co-consciousness in healing. (Miller, 2003)
Just as traditional medicine identifies itself with the past through the Hippocratic Oath, this new orientation also draws on the ancient Greek and Egyptian healing cults and our collective taproot back into 50,000 years of shamanic healing culture. Like traditional physicians seek to identify themselves with the Hippocratic ideal, we can embody this paradigm, this philosophy, by embracing a worldview which is seemingly new, but older than history -- medical intuition and holistic spirituality. It doesn't negate or even supersede the Hippocratic orientation; in ancient Greece both the complementary methods of healing mind, body and spirit were part of the cult of Asklepios.
When conventional means failed, supplicants went to the dream temples to heal their psyches -- their souls -- they entered the Mysteries. These healing dreams somehow mobilized the nonrational elements of being and healing somehow emerged. But their notion of soul was not disembodied; it meant the whole psychophysical organism.
Ancient Vedic healers based their treatment in the philosophy that the common essence of humankind and cosmos was consciousness. Altering that primal essence, consciousness, could change one's state of health. It isn't really a case of activating mind over matter, but mobilizing what undergirds both mind and matter.
What, essentially, is this consciousness of which we speak? Can it be more than our subjective awareness, our existential experience -- the result of perceptual input and self-referential internal processing? Is it the very basis of materiality, a neutral essence more fundamental than energy or matter, more than microstates of the functioning of human wetware?
But, does psi or ESP even exist, or is it merely an optical illusion of the mind? There are volumes of research (Krippner, Motoyama, Honorton, Tart, Swann, Schwartz, Putoff and Targ, Radin, Utts and Nobel-winner Josephson) to suggest that it does, though skeptics staunchly maintain it does not. Because the issue is emotional and seemingly unresolved does not mean we should stop asking, looking for a deeper relationship of psyche and matter.
In fact, the mandate was laid down several decades ago by physicist Wolfgang Pauli when he worked with psychologist C.G. Jung: " We should now proceed to find a neutral, or unitarian, language in which every concept we use is applicable as well to the unconscious as to matter, in order to overcome this wrong view that the unconscious psyche and matter are two things."
However, as Carl Sagan also said, " Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Therefore, we will approach the notion from a variety of perspectives, from the "soft" science of psychology, and the "hard" science of physics, as well as the median position of alternative medicine -- transpersonal and energy medicine, with their holistic perspective. In this way we hope to create a circumspect view about and investigate the possibility of the role of co-consciousness in healing.
Preliminary research done by Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama in Japan has shown that a person emits very small amounts of visible light. The amount is so small that a photon counter is needed. Dr. Motoyama used shielded cages and custom-made sensors to discover that photon emission is higher at certain acupuncture points compared to a region of skin with no acupuncture point. According to unpublished research done by him in Japan, there is some indication that emission at certain acupuncture points is increased for persons with psychic abilities. The modern healer is moving away from epic, heroic models of power toward imaginative fantasy. Awareness is growing that image-consciousness heals (Miller and Miller, 1994).
The healing dyad is best characterized by its emphasis on intent. Both parties have the intention of engaging in a healing dynamic experience. This is the foundation or underlying raison d' etre of the therapeutic encounter. This intention can deepen into a linking or "hook up" of the individuals into a unified field, a shared resonant interactive field. This field seems to facilitate or mobilize the healing dynamic.
The facilitation of attentional resonance opens the participants to the simultaneous presence of both classical and acausal field phenomena. They are mutually connected through the unified field. The more mutual the process, the more the interactive field manifests. In this interactive field, we are embedded in an imaginally perceived whole situation -- an encompassing, infusing, and mutually interactive field, with conscious attention to the relationship.
SOME HISTORY OF REMOTE HEALING
The genesis of the interactive field is rooted in shamanic realms as a backdrop from which to see field theory. Shamanic expressions, ancient healing forces, of the unified field include mana, chi, prana, qi, kundalini, bioenergetics, psi faculty, Odic force, universal energy, orgone, wakonda, etc. Field theory is also explored in the world of quantum physics where the universal field is examined from paradigms situated in varied consciousness models.
The shaman is the archetype of the wounded-healer and is perceived as having social or personal power for vision and healing. Healers learn not to exploit or identify egotistically with this process of mobilizing the unconscious. Rather, they let it operate through them as guides or mentors, so the other can discover that the healing resources are within and find empowerment -- the dramatic healing breakthrough, (Swinney and Miller, 1993).
The history of modern remote healing is lost in antiquity, in 50,000 or more years of shamanic practice, but modern investigation began in earnest in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the pioneers of this era, is Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama of Japan. Motoyama conducted near- and distance-healing experiments in both screened (Faraday cages) and unscreened situations to test the potency of intentionality, and the ability to one human being to influence the physiology of another without direct contact.
Motoyama also worked with and incorporated the theories of Itzhak Bentov into his protocols. Bentov summarized his early findings in his work STALKING THE WILD PENDULUM (Bantam, 1977), a popular book which educated the public about resonance phenomena.
Medicine is mostly concerned with mass, the material aspect. Matter is a kind of accumulation of energy in a fixed order. Chaos is energy but random, not in order. But when the energy is fixed, in order, in a certain frequency, etc, it becomes quantum, and this quantum is the origin of mass. So this quantum forms an electron or a proton or nucleus and thence an atom. The atoms combine and they make molecules and the molecules combine to make DNA and protein and then us: matter-with-consciousness (Motoyama).
The first Motoyama-Bentov Fellow in Japan was Marshall F. Gilula, M.D., a Neuropsychiatrist with a specialty in EEG. Over the years, Dr. Gilula has employed both software and hardware in his healing practice. Because of his psychiatric background, he has also focused on "wetware" (the human brain and it's relationship to hardware and software. He was one of many pioneers in applying neural stimulators such as TENS and CES during the Seventies and did research in Moscow as a US-USSR Exchange Scientist for NIH's Fogarty Center. CES (Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation) has been shown by some investigators to affect the mean dominant frequency of certain brainwave frequencies such as the alpha frequency.
SUBTLE ENERGIES
Numerous controlled studies suggest that conscious intent can initiate helpful changes in a variety of organisms, including human beings, at great distances. These events appear to be genuinely nonlocal in nature. They do not yield to explanations based in classical concepts of energy, space, time, and causation. Classical models of distant healing, including the concept of "energy," must be reexamined. A new theoretical perspective, anchored in the nonlocal nature of human consciousness, may be necessary if we are to progress in our understanding of nonlocal healing events. (Dossey, 1994)
The International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine was founded in 1989 in Colorado. ISSSEEM was founded to explore the application of subtle energies to the experience of consciousness, healing, and human potential and is designed as a bridging organization for scientists, clinicians, therapists, healers, and laypeople. ISSSEEM encourages experimental exploration of the phenomena long associated with the practice of energy healing. ISSSEEM has made one definition of Energy Medicine.
Energy Medicine includes all energetic and informational interactions resulting from self-regulation or brought about through other energy linkages to mind and body. In addition to various therapeutic energies which we may use, there are also energy pulses from the environment which influence humans and animals in a variety of ways.
For instance, low-level changes in magnetic, electric, electromagnetic, acoustic, and gravitational fields often have profound effects on both biology and psychology. In addition to energies originating in the environment, it has been documented that humans are capable of generating and controlling subtle, not-yet-measurable energies that seem to influence both physiological and physical mechanisms.
Subtle Energies, compared with "energy medicine," is a concept more difficult to define within the current scientific paradigm. Ancient and modern wisdom traditions describe human bioenergies referred to by many names (e.g., chi, ki, prana, etheric energy, fohat, orgone, odic force, mana, homeopathic resonance) that is believed to move throughout the so-called "etheric" (or subtle) energy body and thus is difficult to measure using conventional instrumentation.
In addition, many of the complementary and alternative therapies that are becoming increasingly popular appear to involve the flow of these subtle energies through the dense physical body. In addition, it is traditionally accepted that expansions of consciousness often are related to changes in subtle energies that cannot be quantified. These latter "energies", which are said to be associated with interactions and with transcendence, may not, in fact, actually be involved with known physical fields.
RESONANCE THERAPY
Quantum Resonance is a comparatively new field of energy medicine/vibrational medicine that addresses the body electric. Once tested, energetic therapy helps to neutralize dis-ease and imbalances in the body and provide ordering patterns to harmonize the system. Quantum therapy works to balance physical trauma and emotional trauma by stimulating the mind to naturally balance the body.
Iona Miller, Asklepia Foundation, 2003
http://emergentmind.org
You ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head,
Nor the head without the body,
So neither ought you attempt to cure the body without the soul
for the part can never be well unless the whole is well.
--Plato: Charmides, 156e
MIND/BODY CONNECTION
For most of human history, healing has had to do with contact with spirit, with consciousness, with rituals intended to create a shared biofield with a shaman who seemingly could exert mind over matter. This spiritual technology has yielded to technological medicine governed by the rational protocols of science. But noting that medical intuition and therapeutic rapport are real forces in the healing process, many practitioners are moving toward a new paradigm or model of healing.
Anomalies such as the proven power of prayer, placebo effect, spontaneous remission, therapeutic intentionality, and remote healing hint that the irrational, the mysterious, is an inherent part of the natural healing process. When we become ill, the fundamental nature of consciousness is revealed as it relates to both mind and matter, psyche and soma. Consciousness may be more fundamental than either energy or matter, as the Vedas claimed centuries ago. At this sensitive threshold, miniscule changes in the situation can lead to large differences in the outcome.
THE QUANTUM SELF
We need to remold our healing institutions to conform with new physics to develop a contemporary understanding of the mind/body. A new model of the human organism is emerging - a holistic rather than mechanistic model that theorizes our basis in the quantum world; it means healing can happen in very subtle ways, perhaps even at the quantum level.
“Emergence” is the process by which order appears spontaneously within a system. It is essential to understanding functional consciousness, the mind/body, subjective experience, and the healing process. When many elements of a system mingle, they form patterns among themselves as they interact.
When the mind lets go of its rational order, lets the old form die, and enters into unstructured chaos, the whole person emerges with a new form, embodied as a creative expression, an intuition, or as healing. Most often it is characterized by an element of novelty and surprise, since it apparently does not originate in what came before. Both healing and medical intuition are examples of emergence. It is a spontaneous solution to a problem.
HEALING PHILOSOPHIES
The healing arts, from conventional medicine to alternative/complementary medicine, and from psychology to pastoral counseling are undergoing a shift from a mechanistic to a holistic paradigm. Science is actually an experimental philosophy whose highest value is empiricism, and conventional healing shares this philosophy. All new scientific theories require some unifying idea, and that idea is, by definition, metaphysical or essentially untestable.
Today’s heresies are tomorrow’s dogmas. In any metaphysical dispute, strong non-scientific arguments can propose new theories, which may become scientific. Speculative ideas have contributed heavily to the growth of knowledge.
Rather than discouraging exploration of fringe areas of knowledge, this awareness makes it mandatory we explore all possible modalities and anomalies without prejudice, no matter how unconventional. Even extraordinary subjects may be approached with rigorous protocols. Though subjectivity is unwelcome in science, we can study the subjective nature of experience (qualia) in various ways. The process of healing is one such subjective experience.
The alchemists, who were students of consciousness in matter, created an elixer of life, a “medicine of philosophers”, a cure-all or panacea. What the modern world yearns for is a “meta-syn,” or visionary synthesis rooted not in a mechanistic model but one using nature’s own forms of self-organization.
This model is based on the peculiar characteristics of nonlocality and probability of quantum physics, rather than classical Newtonian mechanics. Hopefully, the new model has the power to resonate with our whole being and propel us into a more effective healing paradigm. Emergent healing is actually a treatment philosophy, rooted in a worldview born from our current understanding of the nature of Reality.
The emerging paradigm is a more subtle and energetic model of health. In the emergent healing paradigm, healing depends on the nonlocal principles of nature’s own self-organization, as well as on direct causal influences on the mind/body of the organism. It appeals to spirit, soul, and body.
Recognizing the complexity of reality, the new paradigm includes a series of perspectives, which emphasize the positive rather than pathological, health rather than sickness, and a holistic approach to health care.
In this qualitative, rather than outcome-oriented approach, subjective experience and process are valued. The fusion of mind, emotions, body and spirit is recognized as central. In this ecological approach, the individual is embedded within larger systems, not isolated as a disease process. When we treat a symptom or disease rather than the whole person, we treat the part not the whole.
Interdependence of individuals, societies, and nature can be honored. As our knowledge of nature is increased, our knowledge of our own nature also grows correspondingly. Health, self-healing, and therapeutics is a balance supported by many disciplines, including physics, biology, and psychology as well as medicine.
We have all noticed that often the physical body is healed, but not the emotional trauma; or perhaps there is spiritual or psychological healing, but not physical cure. Therefore, it only makes sense to treat the whole person, rather than just the symptomology.
PARADIGM SHIFT
Paradigms underlie the interplay of chaos and order in human culture, at the conscious and unconscious, collective and individual level. These tacit belief systems act as lenses through which all sensory data passes before it is experienced as perception. Some perceptions arrive relatively undisturbed while others are subject to immediate characterization, distortions, and value-judgments.
Old ideas die hard. The established order, materialism, is entrenched. Establishment science is always resistant to new ideas. Science deals with models and metaphors of our perception of reality. We have had science less than 500 years, but in that time it has transformed much of the world technologically, intellectually and physically.
Scientific models change as exploration leads to the discovery of new facts and approaches that work. Still, new models are slow to be embraced. The dominant worldview hangs on as tenaciously as geocentric religious views did in the Dark Ages.
A paradigm is a working set of assumptions and postulates, (a disciplinarian matrix), about a field of inquiry or practice such as healing. How we envision healing is as important as how we proceed to try to heal. It governs our protocols, what we notice and fail to notice, and how we evaluate the results. The theoretical construct defines our approach and methodology. It gains momentum over time.
Scientific exploration is not a linear process, but results from competition among theories. The best results of each system are then woven into a seamless fabric that, at least temporarily, defines the nature of that field. New observations can lead to complete revisioning of a discipline, like the emergence of quantum mechanics did in physics. Filling in theoretical gaps leads toward better explanations and solutions to problems.
Sometimes new paradigms coexist and develop alongside one another, until one supersedes the other. This is paradigm shift. Such has been the case in concurrent development of allopathic and alternative or energy medicine, also called integral medicine.
Both the conventional and integral approaches have long, noble histories, one rooted largely in western culture, the other in Asian systems. Allopathic doctors and patients themselves now recognize that strictly reductionistic and technologically-based medicine has its limitations in contemporary healthcare.
Objective science can be devoid of higher purpose and intentionality. Thus, we find ourselves with a host of ethical dilemmas in genetic engineering, transplant research, geriatrics, pharmacology, cloning, technological intervention, and molecular biology.
The relativism of postmodern deconstructionism has undermined all theoretical perspectives, turning them into or exposing them as social constructions. It is true that the healing arts are riddled with political, religious, and cultural biases. Health care has been delivered in terms of a power relationship over the body, superimposed on its biology.
There is a strong desire from the both the scientific community and public for a health system that values personal relationships, emotions, meaning, and beliefs. They connect body, mind, spirit, and society.
It is crucial to realize there is both rational and paradoxical healing, and both are vital to our well-being. Paradoxical thinking is unpredictable, unique, unforgettable, unrepeatable, and often indescribable. Breakthroughs are often paradoxical in nature, seemingly absurd, yet in fact true. Rational healing relies on doing, while paradoxical healing is rooted in ways of being. Physician Larry Dossey says it requires, “standing in the Mystery.”
There is a yearning to return “mystery” to the mechanistic arena of healing, so we can face illness and disease as whole organisms. Transpersonal forces have a valid place in healing, as they do in all areas of our existence. Many people have a sense of the importance of actively integrating spiritual principles with the material world.
The whole-systems approach co-exists with conventional medicine and is making inroads among its practitioners. Treating causes as well as symptoms, it mobilizes the patient’s will to live. It fosters the inner dimensions of the healing experience. The healing response includes behavioral, mental and spiritual shifts or transformations.
Health is the natural outcome of a meaningful life, not just absence of symptoms. It means a comprehension of the complexities of life that is deeper than the conventional worldview of cause and effect. It proposes that consciousness is the foundation of reality. We do not exist independently from the universe, but the exact nature of that seamless connection is unknown.
Rooted in relativity, quantum, holographic and chaos theories, a metaphysical context is provided to justify such a paradigm shift from the purely causal healing model. The interactive field (psychodynamic field) present in healing situations can be amplified intentionally through therapeutic entrainment, or resonant feedback playing off the unified field (universal field).
NEW CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
No science or healing is independent of the realities of our fundamental consciousness. Consciousness is a process not an object. Neuroscientists have begun to study consciousness, both in its functional and universal aspects.
Some scientists try to reduce matter (brain cells) to consciousness while others are trying to reduce consciousness to matter. Some suggest (Newell), echoing ancient philosophies, that Absolute Consciousness may be a field that is always everywhere.
We are not discrete entities but deeply embedded within the fabric of the universe. The essence we share, more fundamental than matter and energy, may well be primordial consciousness. It may be the very basis of materiality, as the Vedas implied centuries ago. Consciousness involves the integration of information, not just a passive array of information itself.
We have many ways, besides our senses, of interfacing with reality, including intentionality, intuition, somatic perception, and direct apprehension. The new integral model of health and mind/body healing recognizes and operates from this expanded perspective and innovative medical options.
Consciousness - the intersubjective dimension - may be a stronger dynamic causal factor in healing than previously considered. Incorporating the full spectrum of human experience into healing promises new possibilities, new outcomes, which have been neglected in the biomedical model.
Conscious intentionality may influence subtle electromagnetic or quantum field energy processes. It affects the exchange of information at the cellular, organismic, and social level. Exceptional states of awareness (such as meditation, shamanic journeying, dreaming, dissociation, etc.) can lead to exceptional results, but they also require exceptional proof that may be difficult to produce in the laboratory or document objectively.
The emerging worldview extends our concepts beyond the domain of purely objective, reductionistic realism or materialism. The trend is moving from biophysical to psychophysical and psychospiritual dimensions without loss of scientific rigor.
Just as physics seeks a unified field theory, so the healing process needs a model that accounts for the mechanisms of natural healing and its anomalies such a placebo effect, spontaneous remission, even distant healing. Consciousness may just be an expression of such a universal field.
Models of healing in which disease is seen as an invasive process and the treatments are also invasive can give way to those following a natural, evolutionary course at the edge of chaos.
Rather than comparing healing to a fight, or war on an external invader, we can imagine it as the creation of healthy processes. New forms emerge from adaptations after the breakdown of old forms. In this synergetic view, the organism interacts with its total environment.
THREADS OF QUANTUM RESONANCE AND BIOFEEDBACK
Science proceeds by way of 'discovery,' as well as simple accumulation of information or even 'invention.' This is the basis of scientific revolutions, and paradigm shifts - "the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science," (Kuhn, 1962). A paradigm can be a disciplinary matrix.. Paradigms are essentially worldviews -- expressing our beliefs about the way things work, including tacit assumptions.
Chaos Theory and Complexity have disclosed the self-organizing inner workings of non-linear dynamics in nature and human nature. Systems (and subsystems) are always connected in various ways to various degrees; energy and information is constantly exchanged. In complex phase interactions and dynamical energy systems, resonance is the key dynamic which couples them, increasing dimensional complexity and leading to emergence of new properties. "Emergent" means what comes from the new and creative resolution of chaos.
Interactive resonance occurs both within and between material systems, through recurrent feedback encoding a complex interactive history. Circulating recurrent feedback interactions (cyclic information) are the fundamental bases of holism. The more rapid the feedback, the more stable the holistic system. This circulation of energy and information allows them to interact as a whole.
According to one hypothesis, emergent healing depends on the nonlocal principles of nature's own self-organization, as well as on direct causal influences on the mindbody of the organism. It is proposed that the interactive field -- therapeutic entrainment -- present in the healing situation can be amplified intentionally to mobilize the psychophysical healing process.
INTRODUCTION TO REMOTE HEALING
Clearly, the whole story of human technology is the the story of the ascendency of mind over matter. Whether that is a triumph or a tragedy for humankind remains to be seen.
Conventional medicine takes an allopathic approach to healing, but Complementary Medicine works holistically in conjunction with it through compassionate intentionality. Historically, so-called spiritual healing or faith healing has been person-to-person, whether local or nonlocal. It works on the premise of evoking the healing potential through a commonly shared field-effect, electromagnetic physiological reactivity.
Today’s technology has allowed distance healers to experiment with technological aids to their healing practices. There are still many mysteries of the interactive field which remain to be explored.
With a phenomenological eye toward field dynamics, this exploration demonstrates an additional theoretical framework within the interactive field applicable to paradoxical healing. It opens creative and healing possibilities and allows for the active, intentional liberation of the psychophysical imaginal realm.
The genesis of the interactive field is rooted also in shamanic realms as a backdrop from which to see field theory. Shamanic expressions, ancient healing forces, of the unified field include mana, chi, prana, qi, kundalini, bioenergetics, psi faculty, universal energy, orgone, wakonda, etc. Field theory is also explored in the world of quantum physics where the universal field is examined from paradigms situated in varied consciousness models.
The somatic unconscious, an intrinsic part of the interactive field in mutual engagement with two or more persons, is also woven into this fabric. In this study it is an intersection between the universal field and the psychodynamic field -- embodying co-consciousness in healing. (Miller, 2003)
Just as traditional medicine identifies itself with the past through the Hippocratic Oath, this new orientation also draws on the ancient Greek and Egyptian healing cults and our collective taproot back into 50,000 years of shamanic healing culture. Like traditional physicians seek to identify themselves with the Hippocratic ideal, we can embody this paradigm, this philosophy, by embracing a worldview which is seemingly new, but older than history -- medical intuition and holistic spirituality. It doesn't negate or even supersede the Hippocratic orientation; in ancient Greece both the complementary methods of healing mind, body and spirit were part of the cult of Asklepios.
When conventional means failed, supplicants went to the dream temples to heal their psyches -- their souls -- they entered the Mysteries. These healing dreams somehow mobilized the nonrational elements of being and healing somehow emerged. But their notion of soul was not disembodied; it meant the whole psychophysical organism.
Ancient Vedic healers based their treatment in the philosophy that the common essence of humankind and cosmos was consciousness. Altering that primal essence, consciousness, could change one's state of health. It isn't really a case of activating mind over matter, but mobilizing what undergirds both mind and matter.
What, essentially, is this consciousness of which we speak? Can it be more than our subjective awareness, our existential experience -- the result of perceptual input and self-referential internal processing? Is it the very basis of materiality, a neutral essence more fundamental than energy or matter, more than microstates of the functioning of human wetware?
But, does psi or ESP even exist, or is it merely an optical illusion of the mind? There are volumes of research (Krippner, Motoyama, Honorton, Tart, Swann, Schwartz, Putoff and Targ, Radin, Utts and Nobel-winner Josephson) to suggest that it does, though skeptics staunchly maintain it does not. Because the issue is emotional and seemingly unresolved does not mean we should stop asking, looking for a deeper relationship of psyche and matter.
In fact, the mandate was laid down several decades ago by physicist Wolfgang Pauli when he worked with psychologist C.G. Jung: " We should now proceed to find a neutral, or unitarian, language in which every concept we use is applicable as well to the unconscious as to matter, in order to overcome this wrong view that the unconscious psyche and matter are two things."
However, as Carl Sagan also said, " Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Therefore, we will approach the notion from a variety of perspectives, from the "soft" science of psychology, and the "hard" science of physics, as well as the median position of alternative medicine -- transpersonal and energy medicine, with their holistic perspective. In this way we hope to create a circumspect view about and investigate the possibility of the role of co-consciousness in healing.
Preliminary research done by Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama in Japan has shown that a person emits very small amounts of visible light. The amount is so small that a photon counter is needed. Dr. Motoyama used shielded cages and custom-made sensors to discover that photon emission is higher at certain acupuncture points compared to a region of skin with no acupuncture point. According to unpublished research done by him in Japan, there is some indication that emission at certain acupuncture points is increased for persons with psychic abilities. The modern healer is moving away from epic, heroic models of power toward imaginative fantasy. Awareness is growing that image-consciousness heals (Miller and Miller, 1994).
The healing dyad is best characterized by its emphasis on intent. Both parties have the intention of engaging in a healing dynamic experience. This is the foundation or underlying raison d' etre of the therapeutic encounter. This intention can deepen into a linking or "hook up" of the individuals into a unified field, a shared resonant interactive field. This field seems to facilitate or mobilize the healing dynamic.
The facilitation of attentional resonance opens the participants to the simultaneous presence of both classical and acausal field phenomena. They are mutually connected through the unified field. The more mutual the process, the more the interactive field manifests. In this interactive field, we are embedded in an imaginally perceived whole situation -- an encompassing, infusing, and mutually interactive field, with conscious attention to the relationship.
SOME HISTORY OF REMOTE HEALING
The genesis of the interactive field is rooted in shamanic realms as a backdrop from which to see field theory. Shamanic expressions, ancient healing forces, of the unified field include mana, chi, prana, qi, kundalini, bioenergetics, psi faculty, Odic force, universal energy, orgone, wakonda, etc. Field theory is also explored in the world of quantum physics where the universal field is examined from paradigms situated in varied consciousness models.
The shaman is the archetype of the wounded-healer and is perceived as having social or personal power for vision and healing. Healers learn not to exploit or identify egotistically with this process of mobilizing the unconscious. Rather, they let it operate through them as guides or mentors, so the other can discover that the healing resources are within and find empowerment -- the dramatic healing breakthrough, (Swinney and Miller, 1993).
The history of modern remote healing is lost in antiquity, in 50,000 or more years of shamanic practice, but modern investigation began in earnest in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the pioneers of this era, is Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama of Japan. Motoyama conducted near- and distance-healing experiments in both screened (Faraday cages) and unscreened situations to test the potency of intentionality, and the ability to one human being to influence the physiology of another without direct contact.
Motoyama also worked with and incorporated the theories of Itzhak Bentov into his protocols. Bentov summarized his early findings in his work STALKING THE WILD PENDULUM (Bantam, 1977), a popular book which educated the public about resonance phenomena.
Medicine is mostly concerned with mass, the material aspect. Matter is a kind of accumulation of energy in a fixed order. Chaos is energy but random, not in order. But when the energy is fixed, in order, in a certain frequency, etc, it becomes quantum, and this quantum is the origin of mass. So this quantum forms an electron or a proton or nucleus and thence an atom. The atoms combine and they make molecules and the molecules combine to make DNA and protein and then us: matter-with-consciousness (Motoyama).
The first Motoyama-Bentov Fellow in Japan was Marshall F. Gilula, M.D., a Neuropsychiatrist with a specialty in EEG. Over the years, Dr. Gilula has employed both software and hardware in his healing practice. Because of his psychiatric background, he has also focused on "wetware" (the human brain and it's relationship to hardware and software. He was one of many pioneers in applying neural stimulators such as TENS and CES during the Seventies and did research in Moscow as a US-USSR Exchange Scientist for NIH's Fogarty Center. CES (Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation) has been shown by some investigators to affect the mean dominant frequency of certain brainwave frequencies such as the alpha frequency.
SUBTLE ENERGIES
Numerous controlled studies suggest that conscious intent can initiate helpful changes in a variety of organisms, including human beings, at great distances. These events appear to be genuinely nonlocal in nature. They do not yield to explanations based in classical concepts of energy, space, time, and causation. Classical models of distant healing, including the concept of "energy," must be reexamined. A new theoretical perspective, anchored in the nonlocal nature of human consciousness, may be necessary if we are to progress in our understanding of nonlocal healing events. (Dossey, 1994)
The International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine was founded in 1989 in Colorado. ISSSEEM was founded to explore the application of subtle energies to the experience of consciousness, healing, and human potential and is designed as a bridging organization for scientists, clinicians, therapists, healers, and laypeople. ISSSEEM encourages experimental exploration of the phenomena long associated with the practice of energy healing. ISSSEEM has made one definition of Energy Medicine.
Energy Medicine includes all energetic and informational interactions resulting from self-regulation or brought about through other energy linkages to mind and body. In addition to various therapeutic energies which we may use, there are also energy pulses from the environment which influence humans and animals in a variety of ways.
For instance, low-level changes in magnetic, electric, electromagnetic, acoustic, and gravitational fields often have profound effects on both biology and psychology. In addition to energies originating in the environment, it has been documented that humans are capable of generating and controlling subtle, not-yet-measurable energies that seem to influence both physiological and physical mechanisms.
Subtle Energies, compared with "energy medicine," is a concept more difficult to define within the current scientific paradigm. Ancient and modern wisdom traditions describe human bioenergies referred to by many names (e.g., chi, ki, prana, etheric energy, fohat, orgone, odic force, mana, homeopathic resonance) that is believed to move throughout the so-called "etheric" (or subtle) energy body and thus is difficult to measure using conventional instrumentation.
In addition, many of the complementary and alternative therapies that are becoming increasingly popular appear to involve the flow of these subtle energies through the dense physical body. In addition, it is traditionally accepted that expansions of consciousness often are related to changes in subtle energies that cannot be quantified. These latter "energies", which are said to be associated with interactions and with transcendence, may not, in fact, actually be involved with known physical fields.
RESONANCE THERAPY
Quantum Resonance is a comparatively new field of energy medicine/vibrational medicine that addresses the body electric. Once tested, energetic therapy helps to neutralize dis-ease and imbalances in the body and provide ordering patterns to harmonize the system. Quantum therapy works to balance physical trauma and emotional trauma by stimulating the mind to naturally balance the body.
Fear & Loathing in the Temporal Lobes
EPILEPSY AND SPIRITUALITY “Fear and Loathing in the Temporal Lobes”
Iona Miller, 9/2003, http://ionatopia.50megs.com
Abstract: The origins of individuality can be found in neurological correlates and even in pathologies. Abnormalities in the temporal lobes (TLE) caused by genetics, injury, or infections can lead to amplification of spiritual characteristics in the personality. Temporal lobe seizures mimic or perhaps even embody certain essentially religious experiences. This tendency may be reinforced by a kindling process potentiating pathways to the amygdala and other parts of the brain. Emotional tone and multisensory content of these experiences is dependent on which lobe and portion of the temporal lobes become unstable and subject to seizures, clincal or sub-clinical. The phenomena which appear pathologically in TLE can also appear in the general population, and are often even encouraged by the practice of meditation. The union of brain science and theology is called neurotheology which studies all related religious and spiritual phenomena and their neurological roots.
Introduction
The origins of individuality can be found in neurological correlates. We all have a cortex, hypothalamus, hippocampus (gateway to memory and integration of outer and inner reality), amygdala (mediates motivation, affect and and meaning), and limbic system (emotional center).
However, there are variations in their dynamics from individual to individual for a variety of psychophysical reasons. A tangle of genetic, neuroendocrinal, and neurochemical roots, as well as psychological or physical traumatic experiences, underlie many behavioral anomalies.
The brain regulates the functioning of the body through the release of hormones, and those hormones, in turn, regulate the functioning of the brain. Thus, clusters of neurons carry on complex operations, which influence organs and glands throughout the body, as information moves from one end of a neuron to another and across plastic synaptic junctions.
Populations of neurons interact through excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters. Individual distinctions can be seen in stress responses by inhibition and long-term potentiation of neural networks.
Behavioral biology plays an important role in individual behavior. Our biology challenges us on many levels from survival and adaptation to cherished beliefs and deepest fears. We cannot predict our inner world any more than we can predict the world around us.
Complex cultural settings determine how much of a problem manifestations of these anomalies are for each person. Disorders that were once called witchcraft, demonic possession or thought divine now have medical or neuropsychiatric names with biological explanations.
The biological continuum describes all individuals but provides no clear definition of what is “normal.” Often it is difficult to determine where “normal” stops and “abnormal” begins. This is particularly the case when sub-clinical, non-epileptic (NES) or mini-seizures affect the temporal lobe of the brain.
Among the most electrically unstable portions of the brain, the temporal lobes are quite sensitive to extremely low magnetic frequencies (Persinger). There is a continuum of temporal lobe lability or sensitivity, and even normal individuals have sub-clinical microseizures frequently, particularly during REM or dreams. The full-blown effects of such electrical storms are seen in petit mal and grand mal seizures of epilepsy.
Epileptic seizures propagate across the brain through a process called “kindling.” Nerve signals are amplified exponentially, resulting in a chaotic electrical storm that can entrain more than one brain area. For example, in temporal lobe epilepsy, spreading includes the temporal lobe, underlying limbic structures and hippocampus; all of them fire in an overexcited manner, especially if serotonin levels are low.
Epilepsy is triggered by different parts of the brain. Behavioral changes immediately preceding an epileptic seizure indicate what portion of the brain is the focus of the seizure. Electrical lability, or seizures in the temporal lobes do not usually cause physical convulsions, unless they propagate to the motor regions.
The temporal lobes host many structures and functions including memory, orientation of self in space and time, interpretations of meaning and emotional significance, organization of audio and visual patterns, smell, and language. Local discharges can be potentiated by specific memory recall or extremely low biofrequency magnetic fields penetrating brain tissue.
Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is accompanied by classic personality changes. Though some researchers disagree, attributed characteristics include the following: loss of humor; intense affect; moodswings (peaks or highs, depressions, distortions, aggression); suggestibility; existential anxiety; neophobia; hypergraphia; an intense active interest in dreams, religion and philosophy; reports of psi experiences. Supreme faith is placed in the validity of subjective experience. They accept logical incongruities, displaying a rigid core of private beliefs.
This later spiritual interest can be rooted in subjective experiences of a variety of phenomena kindled by electrical instabilities in the brain. They include, but are not limited to depersonalization, time distortion, anxiety or panic, floating or falling sensations, peripheral imagery, a sense of presence either sacred or malefic, apparitions, downloading of memory sequences and false memory confabulations or fantasies, voices and visionary experiences ranging from heavenly to hellish, and a panoply of psychophysical manifestations.
With TLE, unusual experiences are assigned special personal meaning. We all like to believe we are unique individuals unlike anyone who has ever existed. Our self-images are conditioned by our multisensory interpretations of our experiences and feedback from others as well as our existential situation. The limbic system, which determines how actively we engage our environment, is conditioned by early developmental history as well as other factors.
The amygdala, or “emotional sentinel”, is “calibrated” through early subjective perceptions of what it is like to be in the world, whether it is safe and cozy, or toxic and threatening (Goleman). Such conditioning could begin in the womb where the fetus is subject to both the emotional and biochemical reactions and indulgences of the mother. If the womb is toxic the fetus perceives this in a multisensory way that may condition self-image.
Fear Factor
We all have fears, but some of us experience periods of time when we feel overwhelmed by either vague or specific fears and anxieties. The autonomic system is regulated by emotions as well as thoughts, not to mention the fight/flight responses of sympathetic arousal.
Among all the upsetting notions humans can experience, perhaps the fear of death is at the top of the list. Our mortality is a difficult prospect to contemplate; yet the evidence clearly surrounds us. Death always stands at the ready or rides piggyback with us, ready to be our advisor, whispering in our ear, making its presence known. Even denial cannot keep the natural foreboding at bay.
Confrontations with death aroused superstitious and spiritual feelings in our ancient ancestors that led from increasingly elaborate burial procedures, to shamanic practices to assuage unknown powers, and eventually to the growth of the world’s major religions with their notions of finer planes of existence and the varieties of afterlife.
Coupled with powerful experiential episodes, such as mystic transport with and without shamanic plants, near-death experiences and grave illness, strong beliefs arose within the heart of humanity. They were shared with others becoming fixed ideas, philosophies and organized religions. Historically, perhaps more wars have been fought over competing ideologies than over territory.
Fear of death or powerful subjective experiences can also lead to idiosyncratic spiritual ideas and practices. Again neural networks come into play as the bases of memory, pain, coping, and creativity.
The focus sharpens when one loses self-esteem and self-identity through loss of confidence and “control” in the performance of the body or perceptions of the mind. Both come powerfully into play in epilepsy. This can create a strong sense of conviction, destiny, fate or even mission, which will be aggressively defended.
Is it possible to identify epilepsy as a true cause of sudden religious conversion, such as Saul of Tarsus becoming Paul on the road to Damascus, or the deep convictions of Muhammad who wrote the Koran after the onset of his seizures, or the voices and divine visions of Moses, Ezekiel, St. Teresa of Avila, Swedenborg, Kierkegaard, even Joseph Smith? Black Elk had seizures before his grand “buffalo” vision.
Could a simple head injury, infection or mutation in a single gene, for example, lead to such a fundamental shift or revelation in worldview? TLE is a mixed blessing at best, perhaps at the core of many noted artists and religious figures. TLE shapes the personality, the self-concept. Vast depolarizng waves cascade across the brain. As well as intense periods of creativity and euphoria there may be periods of panic or fear for no reason, even confusion, hallucinations, and rage.
The temporal lobe plays a key role in emotional stability. It interprets and integrates input to give it meaning, in the deeply emotional rather than intellectual sense. Of course not every unusual experience, religious impulse, or bright idea comes from faulty electrical action and cascading seizures, or they would would lose all meaning.
Rapture of the Neurological Deep
How do we get from existential anxieties about death to intensely personal spiritual experience? Many of our spiritual notions come from the reports of the dying, or those with near-death experiences (NDEs). When the brain begins to shut down certain typical experiences appear as each of the major areas of the brain crash and billions of functional neurons heave their last gasp (McKinney).
Deeply embedded neurons in the brainstem are among the last to go. Unless the brain is physically destroyed, dying is a process. It doesn’t instantly collapse, but degrades in a somewhat predictable manner with associated characteristic phenomena.
Meanwhile, there is a regression toward the oceanic feelings of life in the womb as the process of birth gets played in reverse and we return to eternity. We journey back through earlier forms of consciousness, in a dreamy haze once the frontal lobes cease their rationalizing and abstractions.
As in dreams there are irregular bursts of neural static and discharge (Hobson) that affect the visual, affective, motor, orientation, time, and memory areas. There is no more chronological sequencing of events. Our experience of dying is synthesized holistically from the confabulation of all these elements. We may be unconscious and yet still somewhat aware with scintillating electrical surges creating their last faltering messages as they fail.
We dissociate from the body. As in deep meditation, attention is withdrawn from the extremities and external senses. We return to a simpler mode of being, the undifferentiated mind, where time seems endless, if it exists at all. As oxygen levels drop, and opiate-like endorphins are dumped into the system, the sense of peace and contentment may rise along with our spirits. Phantasmogorical images flood our awareness.
Between the dissociation from the body and the last glimpse of light, we may experience a culturally conditioned transcendence. Some might say the soul leaves the body as it journeys into the Light. Bright white light may be the melding of all colors of the visual spectrum once the visual cortex is disinhibited.
Perhaps as many as 1/3 of those coming close to death report a characeristic group of experiences. Bruce Greyson, in a paper in Varieties of Anomalous Experience (Cardena et al), lists the common elements of adult near-death experiences and aftereffects:
Ineffability
Hearing oneself pronounced dead
Feelings of peace and quiet
Hearing unusual noises
Seeing a dark tunnel
Being “out of the body”
Meeting “spiritual beings”
Experiencing a bright light as a “being of light”
Panoramic life review
Experiencing a realm in which all knowledge exists
Experiencing cities of light
Experiencing a realm of bewildered spirits
Experiencing a “supernatural rescue”
Sensing a border or limit
Coming back “into the body”
Frustration relating experiences to others
Subtle “broadening and deepening” of life
Elimination of fear of death
Corroboration of events witnessed while “out of the body”
The reports of those with near-death experiences moving through a tunnel toward the light, accompanied by ancestors, deceased friends and their cultural divinities are now well known (Ring; Moody; Sabom). A minority experience emotional problems requiring psychosocial rehabilitation following NDEs, including anger and depression at having been “returned” perhaps unwillingly, broken relationships, disrupted career, alienation, post-traumatic stress disorder, “social death” (Greyson).
Gradual death is often gentle, creating its own palliative. Heavens and hells are fully immersive virtual reality constructions of our dying neural networks. But when the brain comes close to an irreversible coma on the journey towards death, the great endarkening comes before any great enlightenment. Hence many with NDEs do not report seeing the Light and may even focus on their experiences as being intensely negative in content and tone.
Unable to calm their disoriented mind, their dismal experience is largely one of panic, pain, and terror. This may be the result of toxins in the blood including carbon dioxide buildup. If we die a sudden violent death, we may miss heaven, but mercifully we will never know that.
The whole process may be greatly compounded by the release of powerful endogenous hallucinogenic DMT from the pineal gland (Strassman). In highly stressful situations, such as birth, sexual ecstasy, extreme physical distress, childbirth, near-death and death, the normal inhibitions against the production and circulation of this potent mind-bending “spirit molecule” are over-ridden. Massive DMT dumps may also create intense visions of blinding white light, ecstatic emotions, timelessness, and powerful presence.
A neurobiological model proposed by Saavedra-Aguilar and Gomez-Jeria suggests temporal-lobe dysfunction, hypoxia, psychophysical stress, and neurotransmitter changes combine to induce epileptiform discharges in the hippocampus and amygdala. They contribute to life review and and complex visual hallucinations.
When the visual cortex begins to crash (Blackmore), there is a cascade of distorted imagery, then a shift down the color spectrum toward primeval redness and impenetrable black. Maybe there is still a dull glow or scintillating pinpoints of light, like stars in some inner universe.
As the reticular activating system dies there may be a final burst of distant light, somehow familiar from the very dawn of our existence. As our last cells die, the mind is finally unwound. We have closed the circle of life and entered the Great Beyond.
TLTs and the Spiritual Personality
Are some people predisposed to psychism, mystical visions, or religious zeal? What lies at the root of the personality driven to pursue the spiritual quest, often characterized as a “seeker”? How does one come by an intensely personal, even idiosyncratic relationship with either gods or demons, aliens or nature spirits? Are we hardwired for religious beliefs?
The shamanic personality, which is characterized by an early mental and physical healing crisis, is typically considered to have “a foot in both worlds,” the ordinary and the Great Unknown. It is this quality that makes them able to “journey” to other worlds, the underworld, or the heights. Euphoria and ecstasies come coupled with anxiety and incapacitating terror.
The psychic quality opens them to dreamlike voices and visions, premonitions, ancestral and spectral images and communications, as well as an ability to pass into and return from the realm of the dead. Feelings of oneness with all life can nurture personalities that are charismatic and create instant and powerful rapport, even spontaneous trance states and healing in others. Shamans, nature mystics or medicine people were leaders within their tribal societies.
All these qualities are correlated with the sub-clinical and TLE syndrome. Can this possibly have given rise to the ancient notion that the “falling sickness” was a “divine” disorder, dictated by the gods? Some great leaders, such as Julius Caesar, were perceived as immortals; despite the infirmity; it did not diminish and may have increased their personal power. Rather than bipolar, was Joan of Arc experiencing non-epileptic seizures or left-lobe epilepsy?
Does their seeming fearlessness arise from the intimate knowledge of the eternal “otherside.” Memory works by tapping neural networks necessary to find the information. Temporal episodes, overlapping projections of networks, can simultaneously “download” unrelated memories creating seemingly new meaningful feeling-colored experiences. They correlate with “fugue states”, flashbacks, beatific states, oceanic consciousness, and cosmic insights.
Ramachandran attributes increased emotional intensity to the kindling or potentiating of the pathway between the temporal lobe and amygdala, heightening the significance of stimuli. What is deemed meaningful becomes extraordinarily meaningful. Images of religious images or words can even be preferred over those of a sexual nature.
Some parts of the brain can block input into others. When certain portions of the brain are inhibited, such as the cingulate gyrus and orientation center, out of body experiences create a sense of floating or transport. When the parietal lobe is blocked of sensory input sense of self and world merges. The hippocampus no longer provides a “reality check.” Loss of sense of time leads to atemporal reveries and ecstasies. When cascades spread across the brain, they can entrain the auditory, visual, olfactory, or taste centers.
Overdriving the frontal cortex with induced pain, concentration or steady, regular stimulation to the CNS enhances the effect leading to disinhibition. Personal crisis, oxygen deprivation, low blood sugar, repressed serotonin levels, or fatigue amplify the process. In neurological terms, sensitization is a term meaning a stimulus that did not have an effect on the ANS now does. The effects, either anomalous or from meditation, can be spontaneous or cumulative.
This, of course, also relates directly to stress-induced syndromes. Neuroelectrical activity cranked up beyond a certain threshold creates travelling and rotating waves that form complex interference patterns (Mandell). Physical and psychological stress can cause changes in the amount of hormones secreted, affecting general health and reproductive interest and ability. Conversely hormones affect the brain.
TICKLING THE GOD MODULE
We are wired to experience God. Different researchers have slightly different names for the religious syndrome. Ramachandran calls it “the God module.” Persinger calls it the “God experience”. Both researchers indicate waves of temporal lobe excitation with hemispheric coherence underlie spiritual experience and religious belief. “The Kingdom of heaven is within.”
It is reported Dostoevsky said his seizures gave him “feelings of magnificence, abundance, eternity.” Poe and Lewis Carrol brought their novel distorted perceptions into their writing to the delight of millions. Van Gogh was prolific, though tormented, unconnective, and codependent. Writers from Tennyson to Philip K. Dick have turned their infirmity to their advantage.
When they could easily moderate them with anticonvulsants, many individuals still choose to endure their symptoms rather than relinquish glimpses of the psychic fireworks it brings. Still, neuroscientists are the first to admit that God is not reduceable to a neuroelectrical flux. But stress, particularly loss of a loved one, definitely facilitates the God experience. Elevated stress hormones can trigger the temporal lobe, amygdala, and hippocampus.
Persinger has tickled the temporal lobes of enough individuals to define the parameters of electromagnetic shifts on brain function. The recent medical use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to relieve a variety of psychological symptoms such as depression indicates that the mind may be an electromagnetic field.
Not all those with intense spiritual experiences have temporal lobe epilepsy. Meditators often sit for years before experiencing the slightest tingles or visions of light. But often once manifestations begin, they increase in frequency and tend to stabilize. They can come as sounds, smells, intense feeling, visonary landscapes or forms of living entities, or amorphous lights. These inner experiences feel as real or seem more real than external perception.
The study of how the brain creates god experiences is the province of the embryonic field of neurotheology. As the marriage of brain science with theology, it systematically describes the relationship between humans, God and the universe in neurological terms (Miller, 2003).
But just because we can say the brain declares, “Let there be God,” doesn’t mean a higher power does not exist. When God said, “Let there be Light,” perhaps it also meant the electrical impulses that vivify, provide meaning and enlighten our mundane existence. Visions cannot be judged solely on the neurological basis but must be judged for their own merit and validity. Not all visions are pathological, nor all visionaries or spiritual adepts epileptics.
Subjective experiences are the basis of mysticism and the religious impulse. The brain is hard-wired for mystical experiences, perhaps as an adaptation to soothe the stress incured in daily life. Peak experiences, raptures, epiphanies, even illumination are potentially available to everyone. Spontaneous transient electrical choas in the temporal lobes is perfectly normal, making the God experience an artifact of healthy function.
We can learn to make space, time and personality dissolve. Fear dissolves too as we kiss the feet of eternity. All we have to do is withdraw our attention from the senses and interrupt certain brain circuits. These experiences can also be induced neuromagnetically with new technologies, and non-invasively with “brainwave drivers” such as the frequency-following response or binaural beat technology (Monroe).
The god experience is a process in which one learns to embody spiritual being, infusing life with meaning. The soul soars, freed from the prison of ego, mind and body. It brings in its wake oceanic expansion, suspension of time, space and ego, sudden insight, childlike wonder, exaltation, gnosis, fusion.
Appendix & References Appendix A: The TLE Syndrome
TLE is often undiagnosed as subjects often forget a simple but crucial injury to the head, even in childhood, such as falling down stairs, car wrecks, swimming injuries, or a host of other everyday bumps and jolts. The soft temporal lobes are vulnerable to injury any time they bump against the hard skull.
Dr. Daniel Amen says temporal lobe functions include auditory processes, ventral visual stream, auditory input, visual object recognition and classification, long term storage of sensory input. It links with the amygdala which adds the emotional tone to sensory input and memories. The hippocampus helps us navigate and determine where we are in space.
Primary functions of the dominant side (usually the left) include perception of words and processing of language relatd sounds, sequential analysis, increased blood flow during speech perception, processing details, intermediate and long term memory, auditory learning and retrieval of words, visual and auditory processing, and complex memories.
So instabilities or damage to the left lobe create problems such as emotional instability, decreased verbal memory, difficulty categorizing words or pictures, failing to understand words in context, internally and externally driven aggression, dark or violent thoughts, sensitivity to slights and mild paranoia, auditory processing problems, and reading difficulties.
Non-dominant side (usually the right) temporal functions include perception of melodies, pitch and rhythm, social cues, reading facial expressions, and vocal intonation, visual learning, and increased blood flow during tonal memory. Problems include recall of shapes, faces, and tunes; inept social skills, trouble reading social cues and context; decreased attention to visual input; trouble processing music and visual imagery.
Problems in either or both lobes create troubles with memories, fears, confusion, anxiety, abnormal sensory perceptions, visual and auditory hallucinations, spaciness or amnesia, déjà vu and jamais vu, unusual abdominal pain or headaches, religious or moral preoccupation, excessive writing, overemphasis on trivia, and of course seizures.
Dr. Amen sums up the symptomology with ten defining points: 1). Disturbance of auditory sensation and perception; 2). Disturbance of selective attention of auditory and visual input; 3). Disorders of visual perception; 4). Impaired organization and categorization of verbal material; 5). Disturbance of language comprehension; 6). Decreased long term memory; 7). Altered personality and affective development; 8). Altered sexual behavior; 9). Inability to perceive or remember events; 10). Damage to the inferior aspect of the temporal lobe – decreased memory in proportion to tissue damaged.
APPENDIX B
Personal Philosophy Inventory (Makarec and Persinger, 1990)
(Sample items indicating complex partial epileptic temporal lobe signs.)
While sitting quietly, I have had uplifting sensations as if I were driving over a rolling road.
I often feel as if things are not real.
At least once, before falling down, I had an intense smell from childhood, apparently for no reason.
Once, in a crowded place, I suddenly could not recognize where I was.
I have had a vision.
People tell me I "blank out" sometimes when we're talking.
When relaxed or before falling asleep I sometimes feel pleasant vibrations moving through my body.
Sometimes in the very early morning hours I have meaningful experiences.
I have heard an inner voice call my name.
I use hunches more than simple learning to solve new problems.
Sometimes an event occurs that has special significance for me only.
I have had experiences where I felt as if I were somewhere else.
There have been brief times when I felt very close to a Universal Consciousness.
I have had dreams of floating or flying through the air.
At least once in my life I have felt the presence of another being.
(Sample items indicating Psi experiences or exotic beliefs)
I have been taken aboard a space ship.
I would like to time travel.
When I have a tough decision a sign will be given and I will know what to do.
If God told me to kill, I would do it in His name.
I think there is a good possibility that I have lived a previous life.
Telepathy is a real phenomenon.
An inner voice has told me where to find something and it was there.
Alien intelligence is probably responsible for UFOs.
I have felt as if I have left my body.
APPENDIX C
Subjective Experiences Questionnaire (Ruttan, Persinger and Koren, 1990) {exit survey}
( Sample items indicating targeted experiences test for vestibular, depersonalization, and imaginings.)
I felt dizzy or odd.
I felt the presence of someone or something near me.
There were tingling sensations.
I saw vivid images.
There were pleasant vibrations moving through my body.
I heard an inner voice call my name or speak to me.
I experienced anger.
I experienced sadness.
The experience did not come from my own mind.
I heard a ticking sound.
There were odd smells.
I experienced terror or fear.
There were odd tastes in my mouth.
I felt as if I were somewhere else.
I experienced thoughts from childhood.
The same idea kept occurring.
I felt as if I were spinning around.
There were images from dreams I've had.
The red light became brighter or darker.
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Last Updated: 9-18-03
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The current hypothesis is that Positron Emission Tomography can demonstrate which specific limbic structures are involved in the expression of these altered states on an approximately linear relationship between the continuum of emotionality and the continuum of involvement of cerebral structures ranging from cortical temporal lobe to hippocampal/amygdaloid structures to core basal limbic structures; in effect, the deeper the activation, the deeper the emotion. Retention of the null hypothesis would require either a) subjects who represent a normal population demonstrate no affective experiences on the SEQ as a result of the stimulus, or b) affective experiences are reported but limbic regions are not shown to be involved.
NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE RESEARCH
http://www.stnews.org/News-787.htm
Having a near death experience can change a person’s entire life, including one’s brain, researchers have discovered.
Researcher Willoughby Britton, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, studied the brain waves of people who have had positive, transformative near death experiences and found their brain patterns distinctive when compared with people who didn’t have a brush with death.
“It’s interesting to see why some people are transformed and why some people aren’t and whether studying people with positive near death experiences can help the people who have negative experiences,” Britton said. “It’s a profound personality overhaul.”
Britton compared the brainwaves of sleeping subjects and found a distinct spike in activity in the temporal lobe of people with near death experiences.
The brain’s temporal lobe has often been implicated in reports of near death experiences that closely mirror what epileptics feel during a seizure: feelings of peace and tranquility, encountering a bright light and increased sensitivity to smells and sounds.
The temporal lobe, Britton said, is considered “the God module, the part of the brain that connects with the transcendent.” Surprisingly, however, all of the activity that Britton recorded was from the left half of the brain not the right half, which is more often associated with visual and spatial creativity.
“One hundred percent of the activity came from the left side, which, in itself, is very unusual,” said Britton. “There’s no reason for someone to have an accident and just have one side of their brain affected.”
All those in Britton’s study who came close to dying scored higher on an evaluation of their ability to cope with stressful situations than their counterparts.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9D06E4DE1E38F930A25757C0A9629C8B63
The scientists assumed that the near-death group would show patterns of brain activity similar to those seen in temporal lobe epileptics, who often describe undergoing spiritual out-of-body events during seizures. The abnormal activity, however, did not spring up in the right temporal lobe, as is sometimes the case with epilepsy. Instead, the activity appeared almost exclusively in the left temporal lobe.
Unexpectedly, the researchers also found that the participants, like many people who suffer depression, had abnormal sleep patterns. But unlike people with depression, who move unusually quickly into the rapid eye movement or REM phase of sleep, the subjects who reported near-death experiences took an unusually long time to move into REM.
PDF: Near-Death Experiences and the Temporal Lobes by Willoughby Britton
http://matrix.aklab.psych.ubc.ca/uploads/Amelia_Neardeath_PS.pdf#search=%22temporal%20lobes%20willoughby%20britton%22
Iona Miller, 9/2003, http://ionatopia.50megs.com
Abstract: The origins of individuality can be found in neurological correlates and even in pathologies. Abnormalities in the temporal lobes (TLE) caused by genetics, injury, or infections can lead to amplification of spiritual characteristics in the personality. Temporal lobe seizures mimic or perhaps even embody certain essentially religious experiences. This tendency may be reinforced by a kindling process potentiating pathways to the amygdala and other parts of the brain. Emotional tone and multisensory content of these experiences is dependent on which lobe and portion of the temporal lobes become unstable and subject to seizures, clincal or sub-clinical. The phenomena which appear pathologically in TLE can also appear in the general population, and are often even encouraged by the practice of meditation. The union of brain science and theology is called neurotheology which studies all related religious and spiritual phenomena and their neurological roots.
Introduction
The origins of individuality can be found in neurological correlates. We all have a cortex, hypothalamus, hippocampus (gateway to memory and integration of outer and inner reality), amygdala (mediates motivation, affect and and meaning), and limbic system (emotional center).
However, there are variations in their dynamics from individual to individual for a variety of psychophysical reasons. A tangle of genetic, neuroendocrinal, and neurochemical roots, as well as psychological or physical traumatic experiences, underlie many behavioral anomalies.
The brain regulates the functioning of the body through the release of hormones, and those hormones, in turn, regulate the functioning of the brain. Thus, clusters of neurons carry on complex operations, which influence organs and glands throughout the body, as information moves from one end of a neuron to another and across plastic synaptic junctions.
Populations of neurons interact through excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters. Individual distinctions can be seen in stress responses by inhibition and long-term potentiation of neural networks.
Behavioral biology plays an important role in individual behavior. Our biology challenges us on many levels from survival and adaptation to cherished beliefs and deepest fears. We cannot predict our inner world any more than we can predict the world around us.
Complex cultural settings determine how much of a problem manifestations of these anomalies are for each person. Disorders that were once called witchcraft, demonic possession or thought divine now have medical or neuropsychiatric names with biological explanations.
The biological continuum describes all individuals but provides no clear definition of what is “normal.” Often it is difficult to determine where “normal” stops and “abnormal” begins. This is particularly the case when sub-clinical, non-epileptic (NES) or mini-seizures affect the temporal lobe of the brain.
Among the most electrically unstable portions of the brain, the temporal lobes are quite sensitive to extremely low magnetic frequencies (Persinger). There is a continuum of temporal lobe lability or sensitivity, and even normal individuals have sub-clinical microseizures frequently, particularly during REM or dreams. The full-blown effects of such electrical storms are seen in petit mal and grand mal seizures of epilepsy.
Epileptic seizures propagate across the brain through a process called “kindling.” Nerve signals are amplified exponentially, resulting in a chaotic electrical storm that can entrain more than one brain area. For example, in temporal lobe epilepsy, spreading includes the temporal lobe, underlying limbic structures and hippocampus; all of them fire in an overexcited manner, especially if serotonin levels are low.
Epilepsy is triggered by different parts of the brain. Behavioral changes immediately preceding an epileptic seizure indicate what portion of the brain is the focus of the seizure. Electrical lability, or seizures in the temporal lobes do not usually cause physical convulsions, unless they propagate to the motor regions.
The temporal lobes host many structures and functions including memory, orientation of self in space and time, interpretations of meaning and emotional significance, organization of audio and visual patterns, smell, and language. Local discharges can be potentiated by specific memory recall or extremely low biofrequency magnetic fields penetrating brain tissue.
Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is accompanied by classic personality changes. Though some researchers disagree, attributed characteristics include the following: loss of humor; intense affect; moodswings (peaks or highs, depressions, distortions, aggression); suggestibility; existential anxiety; neophobia; hypergraphia; an intense active interest in dreams, religion and philosophy; reports of psi experiences. Supreme faith is placed in the validity of subjective experience. They accept logical incongruities, displaying a rigid core of private beliefs.
This later spiritual interest can be rooted in subjective experiences of a variety of phenomena kindled by electrical instabilities in the brain. They include, but are not limited to depersonalization, time distortion, anxiety or panic, floating or falling sensations, peripheral imagery, a sense of presence either sacred or malefic, apparitions, downloading of memory sequences and false memory confabulations or fantasies, voices and visionary experiences ranging from heavenly to hellish, and a panoply of psychophysical manifestations.
With TLE, unusual experiences are assigned special personal meaning. We all like to believe we are unique individuals unlike anyone who has ever existed. Our self-images are conditioned by our multisensory interpretations of our experiences and feedback from others as well as our existential situation. The limbic system, which determines how actively we engage our environment, is conditioned by early developmental history as well as other factors.
The amygdala, or “emotional sentinel”, is “calibrated” through early subjective perceptions of what it is like to be in the world, whether it is safe and cozy, or toxic and threatening (Goleman). Such conditioning could begin in the womb where the fetus is subject to both the emotional and biochemical reactions and indulgences of the mother. If the womb is toxic the fetus perceives this in a multisensory way that may condition self-image.
Fear Factor
We all have fears, but some of us experience periods of time when we feel overwhelmed by either vague or specific fears and anxieties. The autonomic system is regulated by emotions as well as thoughts, not to mention the fight/flight responses of sympathetic arousal.
Among all the upsetting notions humans can experience, perhaps the fear of death is at the top of the list. Our mortality is a difficult prospect to contemplate; yet the evidence clearly surrounds us. Death always stands at the ready or rides piggyback with us, ready to be our advisor, whispering in our ear, making its presence known. Even denial cannot keep the natural foreboding at bay.
Confrontations with death aroused superstitious and spiritual feelings in our ancient ancestors that led from increasingly elaborate burial procedures, to shamanic practices to assuage unknown powers, and eventually to the growth of the world’s major religions with their notions of finer planes of existence and the varieties of afterlife.
Coupled with powerful experiential episodes, such as mystic transport with and without shamanic plants, near-death experiences and grave illness, strong beliefs arose within the heart of humanity. They were shared with others becoming fixed ideas, philosophies and organized religions. Historically, perhaps more wars have been fought over competing ideologies than over territory.
Fear of death or powerful subjective experiences can also lead to idiosyncratic spiritual ideas and practices. Again neural networks come into play as the bases of memory, pain, coping, and creativity.
The focus sharpens when one loses self-esteem and self-identity through loss of confidence and “control” in the performance of the body or perceptions of the mind. Both come powerfully into play in epilepsy. This can create a strong sense of conviction, destiny, fate or even mission, which will be aggressively defended.
Is it possible to identify epilepsy as a true cause of sudden religious conversion, such as Saul of Tarsus becoming Paul on the road to Damascus, or the deep convictions of Muhammad who wrote the Koran after the onset of his seizures, or the voices and divine visions of Moses, Ezekiel, St. Teresa of Avila, Swedenborg, Kierkegaard, even Joseph Smith? Black Elk had seizures before his grand “buffalo” vision.
Could a simple head injury, infection or mutation in a single gene, for example, lead to such a fundamental shift or revelation in worldview? TLE is a mixed blessing at best, perhaps at the core of many noted artists and religious figures. TLE shapes the personality, the self-concept. Vast depolarizng waves cascade across the brain. As well as intense periods of creativity and euphoria there may be periods of panic or fear for no reason, even confusion, hallucinations, and rage.
The temporal lobe plays a key role in emotional stability. It interprets and integrates input to give it meaning, in the deeply emotional rather than intellectual sense. Of course not every unusual experience, religious impulse, or bright idea comes from faulty electrical action and cascading seizures, or they would would lose all meaning.
Rapture of the Neurological Deep
How do we get from existential anxieties about death to intensely personal spiritual experience? Many of our spiritual notions come from the reports of the dying, or those with near-death experiences (NDEs). When the brain begins to shut down certain typical experiences appear as each of the major areas of the brain crash and billions of functional neurons heave their last gasp (McKinney).
Deeply embedded neurons in the brainstem are among the last to go. Unless the brain is physically destroyed, dying is a process. It doesn’t instantly collapse, but degrades in a somewhat predictable manner with associated characteristic phenomena.
Meanwhile, there is a regression toward the oceanic feelings of life in the womb as the process of birth gets played in reverse and we return to eternity. We journey back through earlier forms of consciousness, in a dreamy haze once the frontal lobes cease their rationalizing and abstractions.
As in dreams there are irregular bursts of neural static and discharge (Hobson) that affect the visual, affective, motor, orientation, time, and memory areas. There is no more chronological sequencing of events. Our experience of dying is synthesized holistically from the confabulation of all these elements. We may be unconscious and yet still somewhat aware with scintillating electrical surges creating their last faltering messages as they fail.
We dissociate from the body. As in deep meditation, attention is withdrawn from the extremities and external senses. We return to a simpler mode of being, the undifferentiated mind, where time seems endless, if it exists at all. As oxygen levels drop, and opiate-like endorphins are dumped into the system, the sense of peace and contentment may rise along with our spirits. Phantasmogorical images flood our awareness.
Between the dissociation from the body and the last glimpse of light, we may experience a culturally conditioned transcendence. Some might say the soul leaves the body as it journeys into the Light. Bright white light may be the melding of all colors of the visual spectrum once the visual cortex is disinhibited.
Perhaps as many as 1/3 of those coming close to death report a characeristic group of experiences. Bruce Greyson, in a paper in Varieties of Anomalous Experience (Cardena et al), lists the common elements of adult near-death experiences and aftereffects:
Ineffability
Hearing oneself pronounced dead
Feelings of peace and quiet
Hearing unusual noises
Seeing a dark tunnel
Being “out of the body”
Meeting “spiritual beings”
Experiencing a bright light as a “being of light”
Panoramic life review
Experiencing a realm in which all knowledge exists
Experiencing cities of light
Experiencing a realm of bewildered spirits
Experiencing a “supernatural rescue”
Sensing a border or limit
Coming back “into the body”
Frustration relating experiences to others
Subtle “broadening and deepening” of life
Elimination of fear of death
Corroboration of events witnessed while “out of the body”
The reports of those with near-death experiences moving through a tunnel toward the light, accompanied by ancestors, deceased friends and their cultural divinities are now well known (Ring; Moody; Sabom). A minority experience emotional problems requiring psychosocial rehabilitation following NDEs, including anger and depression at having been “returned” perhaps unwillingly, broken relationships, disrupted career, alienation, post-traumatic stress disorder, “social death” (Greyson).
Gradual death is often gentle, creating its own palliative. Heavens and hells are fully immersive virtual reality constructions of our dying neural networks. But when the brain comes close to an irreversible coma on the journey towards death, the great endarkening comes before any great enlightenment. Hence many with NDEs do not report seeing the Light and may even focus on their experiences as being intensely negative in content and tone.
Unable to calm their disoriented mind, their dismal experience is largely one of panic, pain, and terror. This may be the result of toxins in the blood including carbon dioxide buildup. If we die a sudden violent death, we may miss heaven, but mercifully we will never know that.
The whole process may be greatly compounded by the release of powerful endogenous hallucinogenic DMT from the pineal gland (Strassman). In highly stressful situations, such as birth, sexual ecstasy, extreme physical distress, childbirth, near-death and death, the normal inhibitions against the production and circulation of this potent mind-bending “spirit molecule” are over-ridden. Massive DMT dumps may also create intense visions of blinding white light, ecstatic emotions, timelessness, and powerful presence.
A neurobiological model proposed by Saavedra-Aguilar and Gomez-Jeria suggests temporal-lobe dysfunction, hypoxia, psychophysical stress, and neurotransmitter changes combine to induce epileptiform discharges in the hippocampus and amygdala. They contribute to life review and and complex visual hallucinations.
When the visual cortex begins to crash (Blackmore), there is a cascade of distorted imagery, then a shift down the color spectrum toward primeval redness and impenetrable black. Maybe there is still a dull glow or scintillating pinpoints of light, like stars in some inner universe.
As the reticular activating system dies there may be a final burst of distant light, somehow familiar from the very dawn of our existence. As our last cells die, the mind is finally unwound. We have closed the circle of life and entered the Great Beyond.
TLTs and the Spiritual Personality
Are some people predisposed to psychism, mystical visions, or religious zeal? What lies at the root of the personality driven to pursue the spiritual quest, often characterized as a “seeker”? How does one come by an intensely personal, even idiosyncratic relationship with either gods or demons, aliens or nature spirits? Are we hardwired for religious beliefs?
The shamanic personality, which is characterized by an early mental and physical healing crisis, is typically considered to have “a foot in both worlds,” the ordinary and the Great Unknown. It is this quality that makes them able to “journey” to other worlds, the underworld, or the heights. Euphoria and ecstasies come coupled with anxiety and incapacitating terror.
The psychic quality opens them to dreamlike voices and visions, premonitions, ancestral and spectral images and communications, as well as an ability to pass into and return from the realm of the dead. Feelings of oneness with all life can nurture personalities that are charismatic and create instant and powerful rapport, even spontaneous trance states and healing in others. Shamans, nature mystics or medicine people were leaders within their tribal societies.
All these qualities are correlated with the sub-clinical and TLE syndrome. Can this possibly have given rise to the ancient notion that the “falling sickness” was a “divine” disorder, dictated by the gods? Some great leaders, such as Julius Caesar, were perceived as immortals; despite the infirmity; it did not diminish and may have increased their personal power. Rather than bipolar, was Joan of Arc experiencing non-epileptic seizures or left-lobe epilepsy?
Does their seeming fearlessness arise from the intimate knowledge of the eternal “otherside.” Memory works by tapping neural networks necessary to find the information. Temporal episodes, overlapping projections of networks, can simultaneously “download” unrelated memories creating seemingly new meaningful feeling-colored experiences. They correlate with “fugue states”, flashbacks, beatific states, oceanic consciousness, and cosmic insights.
Ramachandran attributes increased emotional intensity to the kindling or potentiating of the pathway between the temporal lobe and amygdala, heightening the significance of stimuli. What is deemed meaningful becomes extraordinarily meaningful. Images of religious images or words can even be preferred over those of a sexual nature.
Some parts of the brain can block input into others. When certain portions of the brain are inhibited, such as the cingulate gyrus and orientation center, out of body experiences create a sense of floating or transport. When the parietal lobe is blocked of sensory input sense of self and world merges. The hippocampus no longer provides a “reality check.” Loss of sense of time leads to atemporal reveries and ecstasies. When cascades spread across the brain, they can entrain the auditory, visual, olfactory, or taste centers.
Overdriving the frontal cortex with induced pain, concentration or steady, regular stimulation to the CNS enhances the effect leading to disinhibition. Personal crisis, oxygen deprivation, low blood sugar, repressed serotonin levels, or fatigue amplify the process. In neurological terms, sensitization is a term meaning a stimulus that did not have an effect on the ANS now does. The effects, either anomalous or from meditation, can be spontaneous or cumulative.
This, of course, also relates directly to stress-induced syndromes. Neuroelectrical activity cranked up beyond a certain threshold creates travelling and rotating waves that form complex interference patterns (Mandell). Physical and psychological stress can cause changes in the amount of hormones secreted, affecting general health and reproductive interest and ability. Conversely hormones affect the brain.
TICKLING THE GOD MODULE
We are wired to experience God. Different researchers have slightly different names for the religious syndrome. Ramachandran calls it “the God module.” Persinger calls it the “God experience”. Both researchers indicate waves of temporal lobe excitation with hemispheric coherence underlie spiritual experience and religious belief. “The Kingdom of heaven is within.”
It is reported Dostoevsky said his seizures gave him “feelings of magnificence, abundance, eternity.” Poe and Lewis Carrol brought their novel distorted perceptions into their writing to the delight of millions. Van Gogh was prolific, though tormented, unconnective, and codependent. Writers from Tennyson to Philip K. Dick have turned their infirmity to their advantage.
When they could easily moderate them with anticonvulsants, many individuals still choose to endure their symptoms rather than relinquish glimpses of the psychic fireworks it brings. Still, neuroscientists are the first to admit that God is not reduceable to a neuroelectrical flux. But stress, particularly loss of a loved one, definitely facilitates the God experience. Elevated stress hormones can trigger the temporal lobe, amygdala, and hippocampus.
Persinger has tickled the temporal lobes of enough individuals to define the parameters of electromagnetic shifts on brain function. The recent medical use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to relieve a variety of psychological symptoms such as depression indicates that the mind may be an electromagnetic field.
Not all those with intense spiritual experiences have temporal lobe epilepsy. Meditators often sit for years before experiencing the slightest tingles or visions of light. But often once manifestations begin, they increase in frequency and tend to stabilize. They can come as sounds, smells, intense feeling, visonary landscapes or forms of living entities, or amorphous lights. These inner experiences feel as real or seem more real than external perception.
The study of how the brain creates god experiences is the province of the embryonic field of neurotheology. As the marriage of brain science with theology, it systematically describes the relationship between humans, God and the universe in neurological terms (Miller, 2003).
But just because we can say the brain declares, “Let there be God,” doesn’t mean a higher power does not exist. When God said, “Let there be Light,” perhaps it also meant the electrical impulses that vivify, provide meaning and enlighten our mundane existence. Visions cannot be judged solely on the neurological basis but must be judged for their own merit and validity. Not all visions are pathological, nor all visionaries or spiritual adepts epileptics.
Subjective experiences are the basis of mysticism and the religious impulse. The brain is hard-wired for mystical experiences, perhaps as an adaptation to soothe the stress incured in daily life. Peak experiences, raptures, epiphanies, even illumination are potentially available to everyone. Spontaneous transient electrical choas in the temporal lobes is perfectly normal, making the God experience an artifact of healthy function.
We can learn to make space, time and personality dissolve. Fear dissolves too as we kiss the feet of eternity. All we have to do is withdraw our attention from the senses and interrupt certain brain circuits. These experiences can also be induced neuromagnetically with new technologies, and non-invasively with “brainwave drivers” such as the frequency-following response or binaural beat technology (Monroe).
The god experience is a process in which one learns to embody spiritual being, infusing life with meaning. The soul soars, freed from the prison of ego, mind and body. It brings in its wake oceanic expansion, suspension of time, space and ego, sudden insight, childlike wonder, exaltation, gnosis, fusion.
Appendix & References Appendix A: The TLE Syndrome
TLE is often undiagnosed as subjects often forget a simple but crucial injury to the head, even in childhood, such as falling down stairs, car wrecks, swimming injuries, or a host of other everyday bumps and jolts. The soft temporal lobes are vulnerable to injury any time they bump against the hard skull.
Dr. Daniel Amen says temporal lobe functions include auditory processes, ventral visual stream, auditory input, visual object recognition and classification, long term storage of sensory input. It links with the amygdala which adds the emotional tone to sensory input and memories. The hippocampus helps us navigate and determine where we are in space.
Primary functions of the dominant side (usually the left) include perception of words and processing of language relatd sounds, sequential analysis, increased blood flow during speech perception, processing details, intermediate and long term memory, auditory learning and retrieval of words, visual and auditory processing, and complex memories.
So instabilities or damage to the left lobe create problems such as emotional instability, decreased verbal memory, difficulty categorizing words or pictures, failing to understand words in context, internally and externally driven aggression, dark or violent thoughts, sensitivity to slights and mild paranoia, auditory processing problems, and reading difficulties.
Non-dominant side (usually the right) temporal functions include perception of melodies, pitch and rhythm, social cues, reading facial expressions, and vocal intonation, visual learning, and increased blood flow during tonal memory. Problems include recall of shapes, faces, and tunes; inept social skills, trouble reading social cues and context; decreased attention to visual input; trouble processing music and visual imagery.
Problems in either or both lobes create troubles with memories, fears, confusion, anxiety, abnormal sensory perceptions, visual and auditory hallucinations, spaciness or amnesia, déjà vu and jamais vu, unusual abdominal pain or headaches, religious or moral preoccupation, excessive writing, overemphasis on trivia, and of course seizures.
Dr. Amen sums up the symptomology with ten defining points: 1). Disturbance of auditory sensation and perception; 2). Disturbance of selective attention of auditory and visual input; 3). Disorders of visual perception; 4). Impaired organization and categorization of verbal material; 5). Disturbance of language comprehension; 6). Decreased long term memory; 7). Altered personality and affective development; 8). Altered sexual behavior; 9). Inability to perceive or remember events; 10). Damage to the inferior aspect of the temporal lobe – decreased memory in proportion to tissue damaged.
APPENDIX B
Personal Philosophy Inventory (Makarec and Persinger, 1990)
(Sample items indicating complex partial epileptic temporal lobe signs.)
While sitting quietly, I have had uplifting sensations as if I were driving over a rolling road.
I often feel as if things are not real.
At least once, before falling down, I had an intense smell from childhood, apparently for no reason.
Once, in a crowded place, I suddenly could not recognize where I was.
I have had a vision.
People tell me I "blank out" sometimes when we're talking.
When relaxed or before falling asleep I sometimes feel pleasant vibrations moving through my body.
Sometimes in the very early morning hours I have meaningful experiences.
I have heard an inner voice call my name.
I use hunches more than simple learning to solve new problems.
Sometimes an event occurs that has special significance for me only.
I have had experiences where I felt as if I were somewhere else.
There have been brief times when I felt very close to a Universal Consciousness.
I have had dreams of floating or flying through the air.
At least once in my life I have felt the presence of another being.
(Sample items indicating Psi experiences or exotic beliefs)
I have been taken aboard a space ship.
I would like to time travel.
When I have a tough decision a sign will be given and I will know what to do.
If God told me to kill, I would do it in His name.
I think there is a good possibility that I have lived a previous life.
Telepathy is a real phenomenon.
An inner voice has told me where to find something and it was there.
Alien intelligence is probably responsible for UFOs.
I have felt as if I have left my body.
APPENDIX C
Subjective Experiences Questionnaire (Ruttan, Persinger and Koren, 1990) {exit survey}
( Sample items indicating targeted experiences test for vestibular, depersonalization, and imaginings.)
I felt dizzy or odd.
I felt the presence of someone or something near me.
There were tingling sensations.
I saw vivid images.
There were pleasant vibrations moving through my body.
I heard an inner voice call my name or speak to me.
I experienced anger.
I experienced sadness.
The experience did not come from my own mind.
I heard a ticking sound.
There were odd smells.
I experienced terror or fear.
There were odd tastes in my mouth.
I felt as if I were somewhere else.
I experienced thoughts from childhood.
The same idea kept occurring.
I felt as if I were spinning around.
There were images from dreams I've had.
The red light became brighter or darker.
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Word Count: 4,800
File Created: 9-14-03
Last Updated: 9-18-03
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The current hypothesis is that Positron Emission Tomography can demonstrate which specific limbic structures are involved in the expression of these altered states on an approximately linear relationship between the continuum of emotionality and the continuum of involvement of cerebral structures ranging from cortical temporal lobe to hippocampal/amygdaloid structures to core basal limbic structures; in effect, the deeper the activation, the deeper the emotion. Retention of the null hypothesis would require either a) subjects who represent a normal population demonstrate no affective experiences on the SEQ as a result of the stimulus, or b) affective experiences are reported but limbic regions are not shown to be involved.
NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE RESEARCH
http://www.stnews.org/News-787.htm
Having a near death experience can change a person’s entire life, including one’s brain, researchers have discovered.
Researcher Willoughby Britton, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, studied the brain waves of people who have had positive, transformative near death experiences and found their brain patterns distinctive when compared with people who didn’t have a brush with death.
“It’s interesting to see why some people are transformed and why some people aren’t and whether studying people with positive near death experiences can help the people who have negative experiences,” Britton said. “It’s a profound personality overhaul.”
Britton compared the brainwaves of sleeping subjects and found a distinct spike in activity in the temporal lobe of people with near death experiences.
The brain’s temporal lobe has often been implicated in reports of near death experiences that closely mirror what epileptics feel during a seizure: feelings of peace and tranquility, encountering a bright light and increased sensitivity to smells and sounds.
The temporal lobe, Britton said, is considered “the God module, the part of the brain that connects with the transcendent.” Surprisingly, however, all of the activity that Britton recorded was from the left half of the brain not the right half, which is more often associated with visual and spatial creativity.
“One hundred percent of the activity came from the left side, which, in itself, is very unusual,” said Britton. “There’s no reason for someone to have an accident and just have one side of their brain affected.”
All those in Britton’s study who came close to dying scored higher on an evaluation of their ability to cope with stressful situations than their counterparts.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9D06E4DE1E38F930A25757C0A9629C8B63
The scientists assumed that the near-death group would show patterns of brain activity similar to those seen in temporal lobe epileptics, who often describe undergoing spiritual out-of-body events during seizures. The abnormal activity, however, did not spring up in the right temporal lobe, as is sometimes the case with epilepsy. Instead, the activity appeared almost exclusively in the left temporal lobe.
Unexpectedly, the researchers also found that the participants, like many people who suffer depression, had abnormal sleep patterns. But unlike people with depression, who move unusually quickly into the rapid eye movement or REM phase of sleep, the subjects who reported near-death experiences took an unusually long time to move into REM.
PDF: Near-Death Experiences and the Temporal Lobes by Willoughby Britton
http://matrix.aklab.psych.ubc.ca/uploads/Amelia_Neardeath_PS.pdf#search=%22temporal%20lobes%20willoughby%20britton%22