Contemporary parapsychologists and “subtle-energy” investigators looking into paranormal psi phenomena have In fact amassed a huge amount of evidence indicating that ESP (Extra Sensory- Perception), PK (Psychokinesis) and spiritual healing do occur. For Instance, a colossal incontrovertible database of the anomalous, clearly demonstrating the reality of PK and precognitive remote vision among ordinary individuals, was generated over the 1980s and 1990s by Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne with their Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) project Dr. Stan Krippner edited a multi-volume work on diverse aspects of psi, well-documented by various researchers. William Braud and Marilyn Schlitz have rigorously demonstrated for over two decades the effects of conscious mental Intent upon biological systems at a distance. A double blind study by Dr Randolph Byrd Indicated the power of distant spiritual healing. Dr Daniel Benor examined over 100 studies in peer-reviewed science Journals validating healing prayer.
Dr. Raffaello Cortesini from 1983 to 2002 was President of the Vatican’s Consulta Medica in Rome, the one man ultimately responsible for studying every potential miracle that comes before the congregations, medical board when examining “intercessory” miracles (ostensibly performed by God through saintly people no longer-in-the-body whose causes for beatification or canonization are being processed by the Roman Catholic Church). Cortesini examined the evidence for, and personally witnessed a number of, these miracles. This eminent physician, one of the world’s leading organ-transplant surgeons, and someone who must necessarily take an extremely rigorous and skeptical approach to the field lest the Catholic Church be embarrassed by fraudulent cases, told longtime religion reporter Kenneth Woodward.
There is skepticism about miracles, I know, even in the Catholic Church. I myself, if I did not do these consultations, would never believe what I read. You don’t understand how fantastic, how incredible and how well documented – these cases are. They are more incredible than historical romances. Science fiction is nothing by comparison.
Kenneth Woodward comments,
Cortesini plans to write a book on the inexplicable dealings he has studied and judged. I hope he does. He knows that scientists. of all professionals, are not expected to believe in miracles… But he and the other doctors on the medical board are in a privileged position: they are regularly exposed to data which defy scientific explanation, yet as physicians and medical scientists, they work in a world which relies on the rigorous application of scientific methods. Their experience, their intelligence, and their testimony have to be respected. To say that they believe in miracles because they are Roman Catholics is probably true. It is also beside the point. To assert that miracles cannot occur is no more rational-and no less an act of faith-than that they can and do happens.
Given the massive evidence of miracle-working holy women, one need not immediately recoil in disbelief or derision, but keep an open heart-mind, and remember that life is, on every level physically, biologically, psychologically and spiritually-quite mysterious. The full account of how and why things are the way they are has not yet come in. Many physicists and cosmologists today openly speak of how our universe must contain at least several other dimensions beyond our known four dimensions of space-time. Michio Kaku, author of a graduate- school text on Superstring Theory and books for the laity, states that a being with access to just one more spatial dimension “would have almost God-like powers. Imagine being able to walk through walls…. Imagine being able to disappear or reappear at will. You wouldn’t need an airplane to visit far-away places, you could just vanish and dematerialize where you wanted…. Imagine having x-ray eyes. You would be able to see accidents (and prevent them!) happening from a distance… Imagine being able to reach into an object without peeling it or cutting it. You would be hailed as a master surgeon, with the ability to repair the internal organs of patients without ever cutting the skin, thereby greatly reducing pain and the risk of infection. You would simply reach into the person’s body, passing directly through the skin, and perform the delicate operation…. No secrets could be kept from us. We would truly be miracle workers… For a four-dimensional being, these feats would be child’s play.
On a more prosaic level, in the United States 200 years ago, or in “primitive” cultures in today’s world, phones, fax machines, computers and the Internet would be considered quite miraculous. Yet in the USA and other countries these things are now quite ordinary.
So also in the higher levels of psyche and spirit. Certain spiritual adepts are using (or are being an instrument for) a science of consciousness that allows them to clairvoyantly know events at a distance or in the past or future, achieve PK effects at a distance, bilocate their bodily form at remote places, heal bodies and souls, levitate, influence people’s dreams, and so on, according to “the Divine Will.” That such wonders have occurred, and still do occur, should be no real surprise.
If we have any doubts about the existence of such things, let us investigate for ourselves. And of course, the very best way to investigate is by the participant-observer methodology, following in the footsteps of these great souls, undergoing the type of heart expansion, “attentional-retraining” and total purification of awareness they themselves have undergone, so that we might directly determine whether or not such wonders are possible. For instance, that ancient Theravada Buddhist encyclopedia on meditation, the Visuddhi-marga, or Path of Purification, and texts like Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras list a whole array of supernormal powers (Pali: iddhis. Sanskrit: siddhis), and even give the specific “recipes” of instruction for how to develop them as tools to help sentient beings. Yet this purification and the concentration processes involved are so extraordinarily sublime and demanding that most individuals would undoubtedly prefer to wallow in their mediocrity and not undergo such a major change in the way they perceive and behave. But short of such commitment and transformation on our part, any summary judgments of rejection and dismissal we might make concerning the paranormal phenomena would simply be premature and irrelevant, signs of inexcusable laziness, willful ignorance, and “bad science.”
Trance-states and Energetic Phenomena
In the sacred traditions exists a class of behaviors that many holy persons have experienced or manifested, falling into the category of paranormal phenomena. These behaviors would strike the average person, not to mention the conventionally trained psychiatrist or psychologist, as signs of a mental disorder should s/he witness such things. I am speaking of those unusual inner and outer behaviors that are evidently the manifestations of an aroused and quite potent life-force in the human being. In India, where the “science of consciousness” is in certain circles far more advanced than in the West, this life-force is called kundalini-shakti (or praana), a manifestation within individuals of the primordial creative aspect of God known as Mother Sakti. When this life force power becomes highly activated, it expresses itself as the so-called kriyas, “yogic actions.” In the Christian tradition, these things are known as the “workings of the power of the Holy Spirit.” They include spontaneous, often quite involuntary and uncontrollable formless trance states (nirvikalpa samadhi), probably the “purest” form of spiritual expression, as well as laughing, crying (“the gift of tears”), shouting, swooning, trembling, sensations of inner heat or “electricity,” inner visions or locutions, external movements (sometimes quite bizarre), adopting of yogic gestures and postures (some quite advanced). The workings of this life-force may involve even more impressively miraculous phenomena such as visible luminosity around the body, levitations, miraculous healings of one’s body or others’ bodies, etc.
I have made a deep study of such phenomena in the spiritual literature, ancient and contemporary, and witnessed a fair amount of it in colleagues (also experiencing some of this to a small degree mainly in the form of internal heat and bioelectricity and absorptive trances during meditation, especially in the presence of certain spiritual adepts or “power places”). It is quite clear that such unusual things happen among both women and men, and in all those traditions that are invoking God and/or higher energies through deep states of meditation, concentration, prayer, chanting, devotion, fasting, vigils, and so forth. These kriya-phenomena can be induced via 1) invoking the presence of, God, deities, angels, and saints, 2) group energy in a strongly-charged situation (such as in monasteries, meditation retreats, revival meetings, or powerfully ‘charged’ holy sites), or 3) the apparent “transmission” of spiritual energy from master to disciple. As I have documented in another work, instances of these energetic transmission phenomena are described widely in the Hindu tradition, where it is known as Saktipata; they also occur in the Hebrew and Greek Bible (Old and New Testaments), and Christian literature through the ages, from medieval Catholic monasteries to modern day Pentecostal tent meetings; they happen in the Sufi tradition as the effects of baraka (“grace” from the spiritual master-known variously as the pir/ murshid/shaykh – or directly from Allah); in Hasidic Judaism as the blessing power of the charismatic tzaddikim; in Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana tradition as wang (’empowerment’ from great lamas/gurus or from one’s tutelary deity); and so forth. The important discovery by doctors and scientists such as Robert Becker, Richard Gerber, et al., that our physical being is not just a “biochemical machine” but also (and maybe even more importantly) entails electro-magnetic fields of life, provides a model that can begin to scientifically account for such cases of “energetic empowerment.”
In this book we learn of several women from different traditions who manifest these trances and energetic-empowerment phenomena. We must not glibly dismiss these women as hyper emotional hysterics (as, for instance, Freud might have done) simply because they show such kriya-type action. Certain individuals, female and male, simply seem destined to experience unusual behaviors as they awaken into a more profound higher-energy state of consciousness.
10 Our task is not to judge and stereotype such people or the phenomena showing up In their lives, but to try to understand (hopefully, through our own direct experience) what specific energy and dynamics are involved. Rather than dismiss such manifestations as signs of insanity, we must turn Godward (Goddessward) as deeply as possible and not be surprised if we, too, eventually wind up experiencing such things In our own spiritual awakening.