The Holographic Universe (17 page)

This consisted of
walking through fire and hot coals, piercing his cheeks with skewers, driving
skewers into his arms from shoulder to wrist, sinking large hooks deep into his
back, and dragging an enormous sledge around a courtyard with ropes attached to
the hooks. As the Grosvenors later reported, the hooks pulled the flesh in
Mohotty's back quite taut, and again there was no sign of blood. When Mohotty
was finished and the hooks were removed, there weren't even any traces of
wounds. The
Geographic
team photographed this unnerving display and
published both pictures and an account of the incident in the April 1966 issue
of
National Geographic.

In 1967
Scientific
American
published a report about a similar annual ritual in India. In that
instance a
different
person was chosen each year by the local community,
and after a generous amount of ceremony, two hooks large enough to hang a side
of beef on were buried in the victim's back. Ropes that were pulled through the
eyes of the hooks were tied to the boom of an ox cart, and the victim was then
swung in huge arcs over the fields as a sacramental offering to the fertility
gods. When the hooks were removed the victim was completely unharmed, there was
no blood, and literally no sign of any punctures in the flesh itself.

OUR UNCONSCIOUS
BELIEFS

As we have seen, if we
are not fortunate enough to have the self-mastery of a Dajo or a Mohotty,
another way of accessing the healing force within us is to bypass the thick
armor of doubt and skepticism that exists in our conscious minds. Being tricked
with a placebo is one way of accomplishing this. Hypnosis is another. Like a
surgeon reaching in and altering the condition of an internal organ, a skilled
hypnotherapist can reach into our psyche and help us change the most important
type of belief of all, our unconscious beliefs.

Numerous studies have
demonstrated irrefutably that under hypnosis a person can influence processes
usually considered unconscious. For instance, like a multiple, deeply
hypnotized persons can control allergic reactions, blood flow patterns, and nearsightedness.
In addition, they can control heart rate, pain, body temperature, and even will
away some kinds of birthmarks. Hypnosis can also be used to accomplish
something that, in its own way, is every bit as remarkable as suffering no
injury after a foil has been stuck through one's abdomen.

That something involves
a horribly disfiguring hereditary condition known as Brocq's disease. Victims
of Brocq's disease develop a thick, horny covering over their skin that
resembles the scales of a reptile. The skin can become so hardened and rigid
that even the slightest movement will cause it to crack and bleed. Many of the
so-called alligator-skinned people in circus sideshows were actually
individuals with Brocq's disease, and because of the risk of infection, victims
of Brocq's disease used to have relatively short lifespans.

Brocq's disease was
incurable until 1951 when a sixteen-year-old boy with an advanced case of the
affliction was referred as a last resort to a hypnotherapist named A. A. Mason
at the Queen Victoria Hospital in London. Mason discovered that the boy was a
good hypnotic subject and could easily be put into a deep state of trance.
While the boy was in trance, Mason told him that his Brocq's disease was
healing and would soon be gone. Five days later the scaly layer covering the
boy's left arm fell off, revealing soft, healthy flesh beneath. By the end of
ten days the arm was completely normal. Mason and the boy continued to work on
different body areas until all of the scaly skin was gone. The boy remained
symptom-free
for
at least five years, at which point Mason lost touch
with him.

This is extraordinary
because Brocq's disease is a genetic condition, and getting rid of it involves
more than just controlling autonomic processes such as blood flow patterns and
various cells of the immune system. It means tapping into the masterplan, our
DN A programming itself. So, it would appear that when we access the right
strata of our beliefs, our minds can override even our genetic makeup.

THE BELIEFS EMBODIED
IN OUR FAITH

Perhaps the most
powerful types of belief of all are those we express through spiritual faith.
In 1962 a man named Vittorio Michelli was admitted to the Military Hospital of
Verona, Italy, with a large cancerous tumor on his left hip. So dire was his
prognosis that he was sent home without treatment, and within ten months his
hip had completely disintegrated, leaving the bone of his upper leg floating in
nothing more than a mass of soft tissue. He was, quite literally, falling apart
As a last resort he traveled to Lourdes and had himself bathed in the spring
(by this time he was in a plaster cast, and his movements were quite
restricted). Immediately on entering the water he had a sensation of heat
moving through his body. After the bath his appetite returned and he felt
renewed energy. He had several more baths and then returned home.

Over the course of the
next month he felt such an increasing sense of well-being he insisted his
doctors X-ray him again. They discovered his tumor was smaller. They were so
intrigued they documented every step in this improvement. It was a good thing
because after Michelli's tumor disappeared, his bone began to regenerate, and
the medical community generally views this as an impossibility. Within two months
he was up and walking again, and over the course of the next several years his
bone completely reconstructed itself.

A dossier on Michelli's
case was sent to the Vatican's Medical Commission, an international panel of
doctors set up to investigate such matters, and after examining the evidence
the commission decided Michelli had indeed experienced a miracle. As the
commission stated in its official report, “A remarkable reconstruction
of
the
iliac bone and cavity has taken place. The X rays made in 1964, 1965,1968
and 1969 confirm categorically and without doubt that an unforeseen and even
overwhelming bone reconstruction has taken place of a type unknown in the
annals of world medicine.
^*

Was Michelli's healing a
miracle in the sense that it violated any of the known laws of physics?
Although the jury remains out on this question, there seems no clear-cut reason
to believe any laws were violated. Rather, Michelli's healing may simply be due
to natural processes we do not yet understand. Given the phenomenal range of
healing capacities we have looked at so far, it is clear there are many
pathways of interaction between the mind and body that we do not yet
understand.

If Michelli's healing
was attributable to an undiscovered natural process, we might better ask, Why
is the regeneration of bone so rare and what triggered it in Michelli's case?
It may be that bone regeneration is rare because achieving it requires the
accessing of very deep levels of the psyche, levels usually not reached through
the normal activities of consciousness. This appears to be why hypnosis is
needed to bring about a remission of Brocq's disease. As for what triggered
Michelli's healing, given the role belief plays in so many examples of
mind/body plasticity it is certainly a primary suspect. Could it be that
through his faith in the healing power of Lourdes, Michelli somehow, either
consciously or serendipitously, effected his own cure?

There is strong evidence
that belief, not divine intervention, is the prime mover in at least some
so-called miraculous occurrences. Recall that Mohotty attained his supernormal
self-control by praying to Kataragama, and unless we are willing to accept the
existence of Kataragama, Mohotty's abilities seem better explained by his deep
and abiding 6e/ie/that he was divinely protected. The same seems to be true of
many miracles produced by Christian wonder-workers and saints.

One Christian miracle
that appears to be generated by the power of the mind is stigmata. Most church
scholars agree that St. Francis of Assisi was the first person to manifest
spontaneously the wounds of the crucifixion, but since his death there have
been literally hundreds of other stigmatists. Although no two ascetics exhibit
the stigmata in quite the same way, all have one thing in common. From St.
Francis on, all have had wounds on their hands and feet that represent where
Christ was nailed to the cross. This is not what one would expect if stigmata
were God-given. As parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo, a member of the graduate
faculty at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California, points out, it was
Roman custom to place the nails through the
wrists
, and skeletal remains
from the time of Christ bear this out Nails inserted through the hands cannot
support the weight of a body hanging on a cross.

Why did St. Francis and
all the other stigmatists who came after him believe the nail holes passed
through the hands? Because that is the way the wounds have been depicted by
artists since the eighth century. That the position and even size and shape of
stigmata have been influenced by art is especially apparent in the case of an
Italian stigmatist named Gemma Galgani, who died in 1903. Gemma's wounds
precisely mirrored the stigmata on her own favorite crucifix.

Another researcher who
believed stigmata are self-induced was Herbert Thurston, an English priest who
wrote several volumes on miracles. In his tour de force
The Physical
Phenomena of Mysticism
, published posthumously in 1952, he listed several
reasons why he thought stigmata were a product of autosuggestion. The size,
shape, and location of the wounds varies from stigmatist to stigmatist, an
inconsistency that indicates they are not derived from a common source, i.e.,
the actual wounds of Christ. A comparison of the visions experienced by various
stigmatists also shows little consistency, suggesting that they are not
reenactments of the historical crucifixion, but are instead products of the
stigmatists’ own minds. And perhaps most significant of all, a surprisingly
large percentage of stigmatists also suffered from hysteria, a fact Thurston
interpreted as a further indication that stigmata are the side effect of a
volatile and abnormally emotional psyche, and not necessarily the product of an
enlightened one. In view of such evidence it is small wonder that even some of
the more liberal members of the Catholic leadership believe stigmata are the
product of “mystical contemplation,” that is, that they are
created
by
the mind during periods of intense meditation.

If stigmata are products
of autosuggestion, the range of control the mind has over the body holographic
must be expanded even further. Like Mohotty's wounds, stigmata can also heal
with disconcerting speed. The almost limitless plasticity of the body is
further evidenced in the ability of some stigmatists to grow nail-like
protuberances in the middle of their wounds. Again, St. Francis was the first
to display this phenomenon. According to Thomas of Celano, an eyewitness to St.
Francis's stigmata and also his biographer: “His hands and feet seemed pierced
in the midst by nails. These marks were round on the inner side of the hands
and elongated on the outer side, and certain small pieces of flesh
were
seen like the ends of nails bent and driven back, projecting from the rest of
the flesh.”

Another contemporary of
St. Francis's, St. Bonaventura, also witnessed the saint's stigmata and said
that the nails were so clearly defined one could slip a finger under them and
into the wounds. Although St. Francis's nails appeared to be composed of
blackened and hardened flesh, they possessed another naillike quality.
According to Thomas of Celano, if a nail were pressed on one side, it instantly
projected on the other side, just as it would if it were a real nail being slid
back and forth through the middle of the hand!

Therese Neumann, the
well-known Bavarian stigmatist who died in 1962, also had such naillike
protuberances. Like St. Francis's they were apparently formed of hardened skin.
They were thoroughly examined by several doctors and found to be structures
that passed completely through her hands and feet. Unlike St. Francis's wounds,
which were open continuously, Neumann's opened only periodically, and when they
stopped bleeding, a soft, membranelike tissue quickly grew over them.

Other stigmatists have
displayed similarly profound alterations in their bodies. Padre Pio, the famous
Italian stigmatist who died in 1968, had stigmata wounds that passed completely
through his hands. A wound in his side was so deep that doctors who examined it
were afraid to measure it for fear of damaging his internal organs. Venerable
Giovanna Maria Solimani, an eighteenth-century Italian stigmatist, had wounds
in her hands deep enough to stick a key into. As with all stigmatists’ wounds,
hers never became decayed, infected, or even inflamed. And another
eighteenth-century stigmatist, St, Veronica Giuliani, an abbess at a convent in
Citta di Castello in Umbria, Italy, had a large wound in her side that
would
open and close on command.

Images Projected
Outside the Brain

The holographic model
has aroused the interest of researchers in the Soviet Union, and two Soviet
psychologists, Dr. Alexander P. Dubrov and Dr. Veniamin N. Pushkin, have
written extensively on the idea. They believe that the frequency processing
capabilities of the brain do not in and of themselves prove the holographic
nature of the images and thoughts in the human mind. They have, however,
suggested what might constitute such proof. Dubrov and Pushkin believe that if
an example could be found where the brain projected an image outside of itself,
the holographic nature of the mind would be convincingly demonstrated. Or to
use their own words, “Records of ejection of psychophysical structures outside
the brain would provide direct evidence of brain holograms.” In fact, St.
Veronica Giuliani seems to supply such evidence. During the last years of her
life she became convinced that the images of the Passion—a crown of thorns,
three nails, a cross, and a sword—had become emblazoned on her heart. She drew
pictures of these and even noted where they were located. After she died an
autopsy revealed that the symbols were indeed impressed on her heart exactly as
she had depicted them. The two doctors who performed the autopsy signed sworn
statements attesting to their finding.