You’ll See It When You Believe It…

What do death curses and healing miracles have in common?

Psychological literature is peppered with accounts of how witch doctors have brought about the death of young, healthy people by cursing them. As soon as the unfortunate learns of her ‘fate’ she sickens and dies. But has the witch doctor ‘done’ the evil deed? Or, through complex biological processes, has the victim’s wholehearted belief in the curse caused her internal pharmacy to destroy her own body?

Why do people go to Lourdes? If the waters were laced with healing elixirs, surely everyone immersed in their depths would be cured? Which, of course, they are not. Could ‘miracle’ healings at holy shrines have more in common with a witch doctor’s hex than the ministrations of an external God? In other words, could they also be caused by unwavering belief, belief in the healing grace of a benevolent power, and not by the ‘benevolent power’ itself?

My grandmother, who was a kindly soul and saw the best in everybody, also believed in gurus and spiritual healing. She visited a ‘holy man’ in India, looked into his eyes (which she described as ‘pools of love’, though I suspect she saw her own loving nature reflected there) and was told her cataracts would be healed. And so they were. By the time she returned to Ireland her eyes were crystal clear. She attributed her healing to the guru’s boundless love. After her death he was exposed as decidedly dodgy! But she believed in him. And it worked for her.

The key word is belief. A witch doctor’s curse would have no effect on someone psychologically immune to its power and refusing, from the depths of his being, to picture himself as doomed. Likewise (or conversely!), ‘miracle’ healings do not tend to happen in people who do not implicitly trust the external agency deemed capable of bringing them about, whether that agency be God, medicine, healing vibes, or a can of Coke.

Through the brain’s imaging ability, human beings can picture things that are not actually ‘there’ and, what is more, react bodily to such images as though they exist in the real world. For example, if you see a rope curled up in the corner of your room but are convinced it’s a snake, your body will produce a cascade of chemicals needed to fight or flee the sneaky one, even though it’s nothing more than an innocuous string of hemp. We don’t need to encounter a snake for this to happen; our body-minds just need to think we have! Or try this experiment. In your mind’s eye, picture a ripe, juicy lemon. Take a knife and cut it into quarters. Bring a quarter up to your lips, bite into it and suck it. Has anything happened to you? Has your mouth filled with saliva? Mine still does, even though I know the trick. Where’s the lemon? Only in your mind. But the mind – and its imaging power – is key.

For decades, science has been charting the links between mind and body – how the mind affects the body and how the body influences the mind. Researchers working under the umbrella discipline of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) have found the common perception of mind and body as separate entities to be false. Neuroscientist Dr Candace Pert, former head of the brain biochemistry section at the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States, discovered that surface molecules on the walls of our bodies’ cells, called receptors, regulate physiological functions as well as brain communication in the body. Our brains, affected by our feelings and ideas, promote the production of chemical messenger molecules called neuropeptides, which attach themselves to cell receptors in a key/keyhole system. Depending on the primary image(s) we hold, this results in our producing neuropeptides that cause us to experience euphoria (when falling in love, for example), despair, and everything in between. I also believe we can experience, consciously or unconsciously, more than one state of mind at a time, e.g. hope and cynicism, each producing its own set of chemicals, which might explain why affirmations for healing don’t always work.

The kind of messenger molecules produced in our brains (which affect our levels of pain and euphoria) and their keyhole-like receptors are also found on immune system cells. These chemical messengers can activate our immune cells to destroy cancer cells, for example, or to stimulate the production of new cancer-fighting cells. The rate at which our bodies produce the chemical messenger molecules is determined by our emotions – how we view the disease, our chances of survival, and any number of other feelings. It stands to reason that a deeply positive attitude will produce more disease-fighting cells than a fearful or ambivalent outlook.

Discoveries over the last 30 years have led Dr Pert to propose a theory that emotions are the key element that causes the conversion of mind to matter in the body. Emotions are not just in the head or the brain; they are part of the body and we can no longer make clear distinctions between our brains, minds and bodies. Pert refers to white blood cells as ‘bits of the brain floating around the body’. She also says, ‘Brain and body make and receive the same messenger molecules in order to communicate effectively. They “speak” the same language – the language of neuropeptides.’ (1)

The implications of these discoveries are immense. In addition to what they mean for the big diseases, think of comments we hear every day: ‘It’s all downhill after 40,’ or ‘Don’t go out with wet hair; you’ll catch cold.’ How many fears for the future or snotty noses have resulted from such pieces of wisdom? It may be helpful to try to uncover negative assumptions we hold about life and to work at changing them. Who knows what we might accomplish then…?

(1) Quoted in Russell Targ and Jane Katra, Miracles of Mind, California, (1998, 1999), p. 252

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