Editor's Note: Jack's first article in this short series on expansive consciousness (June issue) discussed shen and gui.
It is well-known in our profession that one's own consciousness can make or break their healing process. Could it be possible that the consciousness of one individual could heal another simply through their mental intent? If so, how far can this go?
As discussed in my last article, In Chinese medicine, human consciousness is called shen. It is not just a mental process, but an energy with its own properties. According to Maciocia's The Psyche in Chinese Medicine, this is an outward-expanding, light, inclusive energy. This runs opposite to gui, an energetic force that the ancient Chinese deemed responsible for most illness. This energy is contracting, dark and separating.
The Healing Power of Shen
It is possible that our own innate abilities to use our consciousness for self-healing could be due to our shen breaking up these stagnant energy forms, gui. It is like shining the light of consciousness on parts of ourselves left in the dark. If it is true that our shen (consciousness) can heal ourselves, could our shen heal others? Perhaps we could shine the light of our consciousness on others' blockages (gui) and therefore remove them. Could this create seemingly miraculous healing phenomena?1
Is Spontaneous Healing an Expansive Mind State in Action?
There are numerous historic accounts of spontaneous healing of disease from exposure to a individual with a expansive mind state. These include the laying of the hands used by ancient healers including Jesus Christ, and various saints and gurus. Gifted healers have also occurred in more recent years. Dr. Bernard Grad's experiments with the known gifted healer Oskar Estabany in the 1960s resulted in many interesting findings.
In an experiment, mice with chemically induced goiters exposed to the healer had a significant slower rate of goiter development. Another experiment in which mice were surgically wounded showed that mice exposed to the healer had a significantly faster healing time.2
If gifted or enlightened individuals can produce healing with just their presence and intent, can the average person do it, too? Strong research exists that seems to show some dramatic healing capabilities of the average human consciousness.
Dr. William Bengston has conducted numerous studies that demonstrate the remission of fatal cancers in mice using only the power of the human consciousness. All of these studies utilized people with no prior energetic healing experience who were taught a specific visualization-based healing technique. This technique involves rapidly repeating a series of personal desires through the mind in the form of images.
His laboratory experiments involved live mice injected with a cancer with a previous 100 percent fatality rate. The mice were then exposed to his healing method involving trained participants sitting with the mice while actively practicing the technique. This resulted in an apparent "demonstration of a reliable full lifespan cure of cancer in experimental mice, including an apparent immunity to re-injection of the same cancer".
In his experiments, mice injected with fatal cancer cells went into full remission after being exposed to these visualization techniques. This occurred reliably in all 16 experiments with an average 87.9 percent remission rate. Dr. Bengston continues with his experiments to this day and currently has multiple experiments in process at various institutions.3
Shen Counteracting Gui?
While this information is compelling coming from rigorous scientific experiments, it is almost impossible to integrate in our society because it goes completely against our belief of how the world and our bodies work. What could be going on here? I believe part of the answer could be related to the energetic nature of shen and gui.
The specific visualization Bengston uses involves rapidly repeating a series of visualized images of completion of personal desires through the mind. The individuals giving the treatment simply set a fleeting intent to heal the mice, sit down with the mice with their hands on either side of the cage and practice the visualization.
This visualization is reminiscent of the nature of shen discussed previously. It seems to provoke an aspect of consciousness that is expanding, reaching out with positive intention toward desires, aspects of reality that one would like to absorb. By simply acknowledging the mice in this energetic state, natural healing seems to spontaneously arise.
There is no other illness quite as apt to fit into the energetic description of gui as cancer, an illness in which a part of us seems to take on a life of its own, growing in a separate and self-propagating manner. In these experiments, the energy of consciousness appears to break the separateness of the cancer. Perhaps the uniting energy of shen can counteract the separating force of gui inherent in the nature of cancer.
Are We On the Verge of a Healing Revolution?
This information points to the possibility that seeded in our consciousness is the power to heal imbalances in living beings. It seems fitting, as the consciousness is what animates us, that it could be transferred onto others to bring them into balance. If true, the possibility of a revolution in healing techniques seems inevitable.
Perhaps the modern world is on the brink of rediscovering a powerful healing method, possibly the most powerful, that was literally within our grasp the whole time.
References
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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