Chapter 6
Evidence of Things Unseen
Proof
of the Power of the Mind
"This is the sort of thing I would not believe, even if it were true!" said a doctor asked to review a scientific paper dealing with non-local events—the ability of the mind to affect events at a distance.
Even though information supporting healing and the mind has found increasingly popular reception over the past thirty years, we still aren't sure we agree with the idea, except in theory. Books about the mind-body approach by Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil, and Bernie Siegel make the bestseller lists. Bill Moyer's popular public television series, "Healing and the Mind," entranced countless viewers. But countering our seeming enthusiasm for evidence of the power of the mind on health is our continuing discomfort with this message. This uneasiness is directly related to how difficult it is to accept that the invisible energy of thought can lead to actual changes in the body. This is, truly, the sort of thing most people can hardly bring themselves to believe.
Only by investigating all possible sources of knowledge for clues about the effects of consciousness upon the body can we begin to understand the principles of a concept today’s science cannot contemplate objectively. The clearest and most useful information about healing and the mind comes from metaphysical teachings—which the current scientific paradigm rejects as having no reliable information about anything. A review of the history of science and medicine gives examples of other major changes in knowledge that eventually overcame the same kinds of scientific objections to become taken for granted today.
Quantum physics provides tantalizing glimpses of the reality behind physical reality, supporting metaphysical teachings. Examining biofeedback, psychoneuroimmunology, the placebo response, spontaneous remissions, cognitive therapy, and hypnosis gives us more information about the power of the mind. Other evidence can be found in studies of how health is affected by prayer, intimacy, love, and social ties, and in the power of conditioned response as a trigger for everything from nausea to allergies to asthma.
Adding up all the information and evidence points to the existence of an undetected energy field that can be manipulated by the also as yet undetected and subjective energies of emotion and imagination. Like the force of gravity, this existence of this energy field must be assumed from observable effects, even though we can't yet measure it, don't understand it, and aren't too comfortable about believing it.