1. MPD
The truth is, when I was referring to the clinical discoveries of Drs Sarno and Weiss in an earlier post of this blog I forgot to mention this most important, even spectacular, item of evidence about the potential healing power of consciousness. It concerns phenomena related to personality change in cases of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder. Deepak Chopra in his book Quantum Healing says:
Nothing in the mind-body field seems quite so inexplicable, for when a person with multiple personalities shifts from one to the other his body shifts too. One personality might have diabetes for example, and the person will be insulin-deficient as long as that personality is in force. Yet other personalities may be completely free of diabetes, recording the same blood sugar levels as a normal person.
Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and frequent reporter on mind-body topics, describes a child named Timmy who adopts nearly a dozen separate personalities. One of these breaks out into hives if he drinks orange juice. Goleman writes (quoted in Chopra, but see also “Probing the Enigma of Multiple Personality”):
The hives will occur even if Timmy drinks orange juice and another personality appears while the juice is still being digested. What is more, if Timmy comes back while the allergic reaction is present, the itching of the hives will cease immediately, and the water-filled blisters will begin to subside.
Chopra also refers to the work of Dr Bennett Braun, a research psychiatrist and specialist in the field who has studied many multiple-personality cases:
When the patient’s personality shifts, warts, scars, and rashes have been seen to appear and disappear, along with hypertension and epilepsy. A specific personality can be colour-blind, only to return to normal sight when the personality changes back. Almost as a rule, such patients have at least one personality that is a child, and when it emerges, their bodies respond to lower doses of drugs. In one case, 5 milligrams of a tranquiliser made the patient relaxed and sleepy when he was a child, while a dose twenty times stronger had no effect on the adult.
It is as if each personality has the capacity specifically and deeply to impose its medical vulnerabilities (or strengths) on the body, immediately creating a physical disorder or, significantly, cancelling existing ones. Not only is this type of evidence strongly indicative of specificity (the close mind-body match defined in 2nd Fire) it may provide a rich source of information relating to the power of mind over matter. And leading, maybe, to a promising theory of healing in which the mind/personality can produce healing by somehow applying a model of health that is perfect in relation to the disorder to be healed - a clue to the powers that may potentially be available in the consciousness of the personality to influence its own living body.
The power of the deeply hypnotised mind to cause dramatic physical changes may illustrate mechanisms similar to those seen in MPD personality switches but note, there is a distinction: shallow hypnosis such as applied by Dr Weiss, is under the control of the subject he says, and not the hypnotist (see his book Through Time into Healing of which there are some interesting excerpts in 2nd Fire)
2. The chakras
Also of interest, but on a more speculative note, are the various invisible ‘bodies’ that make up a fuller description of man’s invisible (to most of us) constitution. According to several Eastern traditions the etheric ‘double’ lies closest in quality and function to the physical body. The major chakras are spinning centres of energy in the etheric body, are seven in number and spaced more-or-less vertically along the spine.
The concept of chakras provides an additional opportunity for our awareness (consciousness) to make a link between associated anatomical disorders and the particular chakra which governs that part of the personality – without going into detail - whether in the central matters of survival, sexuality, emotion, love, intellect, self-expression or spirituality.
Traditionally the chakras are seven in number, range in colour from red to purple (bottom to top) and govern different parts of the etheric body which if ‘blocked’ or ‘out of balance’ will cause disorders in related parts of the body. There is thus a potential to correct the disorder by attending consciously to a particular aspect of the personality affected by one or more malfunctioning chakras.
3. SIRPA
(Stress Illness Recovery Practitioners Association initiated by Georgie Oldfield, registered physiotherapist, UK) is, as it says, a practitioners association whose purpose is to relieve pain through the application of Dr Sarno’s psychosomatic principles. Because of its fairly widespread usage it can therefore be taken as further evidence of the principle that consciousness controls matter in the bodymind relationship.
But it is also time to note the following: psychosomatism as applied by Dr Sarno and his followers has a different rationale to that of mine; whereas his rationale is that pain is intended by Nature (mind in this case) to distract us from hidden repressions (which it then fails to do) that might traumatise us if exposed. In a more plausible alternate view, Nature’s intention is rather to draw our attention towards the subconscious cesspool where the hidden emotional emanations are damaging our personal and general evolutionary prospects - and therefore need to be neutralised.
At the moment the difference doesn’t matter to the results but eventually, as research takes a broader and more fundamental approach, the distinction may become more important.