Science Proves Psychic Healing 3

Dr. Miller explained: “Water in the normal state has
many hydrogen bonds normally distributed. When energy is
added, whether by a healer or through the use of magnets,
the bond energies are changed. This in turn causes a change
in the surface tension of the water. However, water which
is so energized will eventually give up its energy and revert
back to its normal state.
“What it means,” he said, “is that we have been successful
in bringing the energy associated with healing from the realms of folklore to its proper place as a recognized energy
on the frontiers of modern science. We have provided missing
pieces in the puzzle of how healing occurs.
“Our results indicate that the healer either transmits
energy to the patient or mentally creates the condition for
the patient to absorb energy from his surroundings. The cells
and the organs in the body resume their normal function
with increased vigor and the healing takes place.”
Dr. Miller, former professor of chemical engineering at
Georgia Institute of Technology and now a research scientist
for the Lockheed Aircraft Company in Georgia, is a member
of the advisory committee of the Ernest Homes Research
Foundation, along with a number of other scientists and
physicians. The foundation is unique in that it represents a
major effort by a church--the United Church of Religious
Science--to verify scientifically “certain religious concepts
that have been known for ages,” including spiritual healing
and the relationship of body, mind and spirit.
The foundation’s research program is supervised by a
board of directors headed by Willis H. Kinnear, publisher
of Science of Mind Magazine, which was co-sponsor of
the symposium. A member of the board is Robert Young,
the Dr. Marcus Welby” of television, who was chairman
of the program.
Another speaker who verified the existence of healing
energies was Dr. Thelma Moss, internationally known
parapsychologist and assistant professor of psychology at
the University of California’s Neuropsychiatric Institute in
Los Angeles. She submitted visual and medical evidence
of the power associated with mental or spiritual healing,
based on extensive studies of numerous healers, including
Olga Worrall and a “magnetic healer” who helped a badly
injured man avoid a seemingly inevitable leg amputation at
the UCLA Medical Center.
Dr. Moss said her work with radiation (Kirlian)
photography verified Dr. Miller’s findings concerning the
objective nature of healing energies. Interestingly enough,
one of the leading critics of this kind of “photograph” as an
investigative took, Dr. William A. Tiller, Stanford University
physicist, also was a speaker at the symposium on another
subject. He did not discuss the radiation findings, but FATE
learned he had changed his mind to some extent about the
significance of Kirlian technique.

Investigators discover that healers such as Olga Worrall
emanate electromagnetic energies which radiation photography
can measure.
It wasn’t too long ago that talk of magnetic healing,
auric fields and etheric bodies was considered thoroughly
unscientific and so traditionally metaphysical as to be outside
the realm of physical research, although certain pioneers--
generally regarded as discredited in their own times--had
laid the groundwork for later explorations.
Now energies associated with these terms are being
observed and measured by laboratory investigators using
physical tools within the guidelines of scientific disciplines.
True, there may have been some raised eyebrows in the
scientific community when Dr. Robert N. Miller, an industrial
research scientist, announced he had been able to detect
healing energies at a distance of 600 miles in a cloud chamber
designed to study the paths of subatomic particles.
Nor were there great whoops of joy from the orthodox
establishment when parapsychologist Thelma Moss of the
University of California at Los Angeles revealed she has
produced visual evidence of these same kinds of energies in
her experiments with Kirlian photography, also supposedly a
discredited technique imported from Russia.
Nevertheless, since both Dr. Miller and Dr. Moss are
respected researchers, their findings cannot be dismissed
lightly.
Thelma Moss is an assistant professor of medical
psychology at UCLA, but her parapsychology laboratory
has won wide recognition for a variety of ESP experiments
conducted there, (Once asked if “they”--presumably the
faculty and administration of the university--were “proud” of
her because of this international recognition, she replied she
felt they were “tolerant, embarrassed, but not proud!”)
The key word in her latest findings, as in Dr. Miller’s, is
energy,” and that is why she too was a speaker at a “Science of
Mind” symposium on “Thought as Energy” at the Church of
Religious Science in Los Angeles in February 1975.
Using the radiation (Kirlian) technique, in which
photographs are taken with high-voltage, high frequency
electrical discharges, Dr. Moss believes she has shown
visually what Dr. Miller and his associate, Dr. Philip Reinhart,
demonstrated in an Atlanta, Georgia, physics laboratory. All
of them believe a perceptible energy transfer takes place
between a proficient mental or spiritual healer and a patient
or for that matter any target toward which the healing
energies are directed.
Fingertip radiation pictures were taken of a healer who
first placed his fingers on a film while he was in a “normal”
or resting state. The resulting Kirlian photograph shows
what Dr. Moss says is “a very full discharge” from the finger pads. The discharge also is called a corona or aura and
although Dr. Moss does not attempt to define specifically
such occult terms as aura and etheric body, neither does
she shy away from them.
While the healer presumably concentrated on healing,
new pictures were taken, on color film as before. The
discharge pattern had changed. What had been a full
blue-white corona became a blotch of orange-red. Then
as more pictures were made during the healing procedure,
the fingertip emanations began to diminish until they
completely dissipated.
“Something had gone out of it we like to think,”
Dr. Moss says.
Conversely, a patient who is ill and debilitated was
found to show a very small irregular discharge pattern,
usually with gaps in the corona. What the gaps mean is not
certain. Yet after healing the gaps often will have disappeared
and the corona will have filled out. Meanwhile, tests using
non-healers as controls produced no such results.
The experiments have been repeated many times but
since they in themselves do not prove healing power, Dr.
Moss embarked on a separate program in an effort to
authenticate mental or psychic heading.
Two rules were established for the program: (1) the
patient must be referred by a doctor who would provide
medical records, and (2) the referring doctor must admit
it is a “last chance” that he can do nothing more for the
patient. Dr. Moss described two spectacular studies, the first
involving a young man with a paralyzed arm.
“A neurologist sent him to us, saying he could do nothing
more for him,” she reported. “He is now fishing with that
arm. The neurologist is amazed.”
Successive Kirlian pictures appeared to show an increase
in the corona pattern of the patient’s finger pads as the
healing treatments progressed. “The patient seemed to get
more energy,” Dr. Moss commented.
The healer, Jack Gray, uses so-called magnetic passes in
much the same manner as Anton Mesmer used them in the
last century. Gray was the healer in the other “last chance”
case also. Dr. Moss described the circumstances:
“I received an urgent telephone call from the mother of
a young man who was taken to the hospital at UCLA after an
automobile accident. It was an emergency. His right leg was
so totally shattered the doctors insisted it would have to be
amputated. They said if they did not amputate it, he would
never be able to walk again; that the leg could not heal; that
he would become addicted to pain-killing drugs and still
there would be incessant pain. Modern medicine gave him
no hope to saving the leg.”
Gray was called in at about 8:00 P.M. and remained until
5:00 A.M., working with passes at a distance. The young
man was screaming, “Cut it off! Cut it off! I can’t stand it!”
Gray tried to approach as close as one foot but the patient
cried out that this increased the pain. However, as the night
wore on Gray was able to move his hands closer and closer
until finally he was working at a distance of 12 inches. he
continued this for about two hours.
What was happening?
Dr. Moss theorized: “Let’s say that the etheric body or
the energy body had extended itself that much because
of the dire stress the boy was in. But after two hours he
did fall asleep and after a week of this kind of treatment
he was feeling no pain.
“That was two years ago. Today he is walking, sometimes
with a cane, sometimes without, and he has never had an
amputation. The doctors quite agree they do not understand
what happened.
Dr. Edgar Damson, professor of orthopedic surgery
at the UCLA Medical Center, said , sometime after the
success of the treatment, “He was presented to a conference
at the medical school and the general consensus of the
consulting surgeons, as well as the others in attendance at the
conference, was that amputation should be done. By all
odds, this fracture should never have healed. But it did.
I have no explanation for this at all, just as I have no
explanation as to why his pain went away so quickly. We
tried acupuncture. We tried hypnosis. Nothing that I did
and nothing that he did made his pain go away. So I don’t
know what the answer is.”
Dr. Moss commented that X-rays taken after eight
months of therapy by the healer show a change in the “bone
matter” had taken place which “should not and could not
take place according to known medical science.”
Gray used suggestion as well as magnetic healing power,
however that power may be defined. During the latter days
of the therapy he would say to the patient. “Tell yourself, ‘I
can walk! I can walk! Without crutches!’ Walk! Turn around!
Don’t be afraid. Remember, there is nothing to fear.”
But Gray believes the radiation experiments prove he has
a psychic energy that can be transmitted.
“To do effective healing, I myself have to be healthy,” he
says. “Since I am healthy, normal and natural in every way.
I am able to direct the energy to the body of the patient.
There it is picked up and goes wherever it is needed. This
is how I believe it works.”
For two days before they appeared as speakers at the
“Thought As Energy” Symposium, Dr. Moss tested Olga
Worrall at UCLA using radiation photography. The results
were similar to those obtained with Jack Gray and other
healers. First, pictures were taken in her “normal” state and
then while Mrs. Worrall was healing. When the Worrall
pictures were developed Dr. Moss found “there was an
enormous increase” in fingertip corona discharges.
The Baltimore healer also demonstrated the spectacula
effect of her energy on a piece of black and white film which
she simply held between her fingertips without exposing it
to light. After about two minutes the film was developed. The
resulting picture showed a strange cloud-like wave pattern
with what one observer called “surrealistic bands.”
Asked what it was Dr. Worrall said, “I don’t know
what you modern scientists call it but we used to call
it ectoplasm.”
She had done the same experiment at the same
laboratory two years before, which led Dr. Moss to believe
that healing energy was being photographed without a
camera, without electricity or other artificial agent. This
time, however, skeptical laboratory assistants decided to
repeat the experiment with five layers of film, stacked one
behind the other. Meanwhile, the developer was changed
and carefully checked. A control film was put through (with
no effect) and then Dr. Worrall was asked to hold the
layered pack. Again there was the “ectoplasm” effect--on
all fives pieces of film.
When other persons in the lab held the film under the
same conditions, some indications of an energy affecting the
film were seen but the results were not nearly so spectacular
as those obtained by the healer, Even so, Dr. Moss considered
these results significant.
“We don’t know what we are looking at in these pictures
but this may be one of the first examples in current research
in which we can get on film an energy that people are
emanating,” she said.
She explained that she uses the word “current” because
Baron von Reichenbach and others in the past noted similar
photographic effects, “but no one believed them or paid
any attention to them.”
Dr. Worrall also succeeded in producing “phantom leaf ”
effects on film, using Kirlian photography. Where a part
of a leaf had been cut away, after the healer treated it
“little blue bumps” appeared to outline the “phantom” or
severed part of the leaf.
This “phantom leaf ” effect has been previously reported
by Russian researchers using Kirlian photography. They
named the mysterious force “bioplasma” and called the
strange pattern of the cut-away portion of the leaf its
“bioplasma body.”
“We call it an energy body,” said Dr. Moss. “We would
say perhaps that the leaf has, as in acupuncture, an energy
system that is still photographable when the physical leaf
has been cut away.”
The UCLA research team worked two years and took
thousands of pictures before being able to film the “etheric”
or energy body of a cut leaf. They saw on the severed side
of the leaf “fluky little lines” and tiny balls of light that were
similar to what the Russians had seen. As the work progressed
these developed into visible patterns, as if the ghost of the
severed portion of the leaf were still there.
“I want to make the point very strongly that other
laboratories all over the world are replicating this work,”
Dr. Moss said.
Another pioneering development in the phantom leaf
research (apparently not previously reported by Simeon
Kirlian and his late wife Valentina in Russia) was disclosed
by Dr. Moss. For some reason, in June, July and August
1974 Kirlian photographs of phantom or energy bodies
diminished until the images failed entirely. The mystery
apparently was solved when it was hypothesized that the
pattern shows up best in the spring when the leaf is coming
into maturity and is being molded by the matrix of the
energy body, whereas by summer it has reached maturity.
Gradually in the normal course the leaf begins to die and
ordinarily would fall from the tree and wither away. Perhaps
the energy body would be the first to go, leaving fainter
and fainter images on the radiation photographs until they
disappear entirely. In the spring of 1975 new severed leaves
again showed the familiar energy patterns, thus, at least
tentatively, confirming the hypothesis.
The idea that all living matter is supported by an
etheric nonphysical matrix or mold called the etheric body
is almost as old as man. Dr. Moss referred to numerous
experiments that seem to confirm the belief that this is true
of animal forms as well as plants. She described the work
of South American scientists who photographed the “auras”
of caterpillars with radiation equipment. Color pictures were
obtained showing “gorgeous” yellow, white and other colored
emanations, but when the caterpillars were anesthetized the
colors faded away until the larva died. This is consistent
with the long-held tradition of many people that the etheric
or astral body (Egyptians called it the “ka:) departs from
the physical body at death. And presumably this is the
same as the “etheric double” involved in spontaneous and
experimental out-of-the-body experiences.
What of the controversy over the reliability of the Kirlian
method as a research tool?
Numerous critics contend that most of the effects
are electrical and photographic artifacts which in no way
substantiate the concept of an aura or energy body and
that the photos are unreliable because of the many variables
involved--differences in apparatus, humidity, temperature,
variations in finger pressure and many other factors that
are not easily controlled.
Dr. Moss said, “In other laboratories in this country,
in South America and in Europe, experimenters working
independently are repeating our experiments and are
obtaining the same sort of results that the Russians did.”
This does not mean that the photographic patterns, the
coronas and emanations are always the same, she pointed
out, but rather that different conditions. However, she feels
significant conclusions can be reached on the basis of the
experiments as a whole--for example, the replication of
“phantom leaf ” radiation images and the apparent picturing
of healing energies, whether or not coronas or “auras” are
consistently the same.
One of the leading critics of “extravagant claims” for
the Kirlian technique has been Prof. William A. Tiller,
Stanford University physicist. However, it was learned that he
made a new preliminary report to the foundation somewhat
amending his previous reviews on Kirlian photography. In
part this report read:
“The contact photography technique was studied with
controlled finger spacing, moisture control, etc., to see how
the results would compare with the earlier transparent
electrode studies. The results showed the same features as
found earlier; i.e., the pictures were very reproducible, the
finger spacing was critical in the obtaining of a particular
and the non-blue colors came from discharges occurring on
the back side of the film.
“These results strongly suggested that Kirlian photography
had negligible utility for the obtaining of reliable and
convincing data concerning altered energy or consciousness
states in living systems. This made the principal investigator
(Dr. Tiller) very unhappy.
“Recently, the picture has changed. The principal
investigator now begins to see a mechanism whereby both
his data and that of others may be compatible and whereby
the Kirlian technique can be a valuable physiological state
monitor.”
Meanwhile, the whole field of psycho-energetics is
widening on many fronts. Research is beginning to show
that energies seemingly projected by the so-called “mindbenders”
like Uri Geller actually can change the molecular
structure of metals as well as affect laboratory instruments--
compass and magnetometers, for instance.
In London Uri proved in Prof. John Taylor’s laboratory
at King’s College that he can activate a Geiger counter
with the energy produced by his will. (It indicated an
emission 500 times greater than normal.) Among many
other spectacular experiments, he “buckled” an aluminum
disc inside a plastic container.
Professor Taylor reported, “I held my hands between his
and the container to prevent any possibility of his directly
manipulating the disc.”
Uri also used his power to bend an aluminum strip
enclosed in a wire mesh container, to break into several
pieces a small crystal of lithium fluoride while it remained
in a plastic container and to bend a small iron rod sealed
in a “perspex” tube.
Dr. Taylor originally met Geller on a British television
show on which he was to have been the “hatcher man”
debunking the phenomena.

“Here was I,” Taylor wrote later, “a trained physicist,
a researcher for the past 20 years into the mysteries of
matter and the mind, witnessing something that I knew
I could not explain to myself--let alone to those millions
of observers.”
In Los Angeles Dr. Moss and her staff observed what
Professor Taylor called the “Geller effect” and recorded
Uri’s mysterious power on film with Kirlian equipment. The
resulting pictures seem to indicate that he can transmit his
mental energy to a metal object so that its corona appears
almost to pulsate with energy, as contrasted with the usual
static discharges observed from inanimate objects.
Where is it all leading? Is psychic phenomena finally
emerging from the mumbo jumbo of dark age superstitions
into the light of scientific inquiry, with hard-core techniques
in use to examine the phenomena? Is the subject of
bio-energetics to be the new frontier of science?
Conceivably in time scientists will understand more
about the psychic energy of the seance room, the “paraelectricity”
postulated by Ambrose Worrall and Dr. Miller,
the ectoplasm of Olga Worrall, the psychokinetic force that
can move and distort objects without physical contact (as
in poltergeist manifestations and the “Geller effect”) and the
apportation of materials over considerable distance.
Telepathy, the transmission of thought from person to
person, also may yield to the tools of physical science. Some
Russians think that electromagnetic radiation is involved,
although metaphysicians generally insist it is a manifestation
of different degrees of consciousness.
The various reports seem to indicate that the division
between physics and metaphysics is narrowing and the
“universal energy” spoken of by philosophers may be subject
to rational examination.