V - The Future is Now

An earlier article in this series posed the wonderment of What Might Have Been in the political world. It soon moved to wondering about possibilities in the world of health and healing.

The past is gone, but we may yet learn from it for the betterment of all. When we do not, as often is the case, we pay the price. As Santayana said, “Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We all know that story in surveying personal moments and passages in our own lives. We can find larger examples in the political, military, and international arenas. 

It should be evident, though often unfortunately not, that we are only beginning to make real discoveries in science and medicine. This despite the fact that some researchers and writers believe all the great discoveries have been made. Sometimes, it seems that that might be true. What major contributions have our universities brought forth in recent history? 

Often we are re-learning things long known in centuries and millennia past. Columbus re-discovered the continent of America. Galileo's pronouncements on the Earth circling the Sun only repeated the teachings of ancient Greeks, Persians, and Indians. Einstein, as bright as he was, parroted what great philosophers of old dictated on the energies which stand within all of creation.

What may be even more important for health and well-being are the simple, long-held facts that human beings are ultimately energy in motion. How little have the learnings of the century past in physics penetrated into modern medicine.

Human illnesses appear more often than not when that energy-in-motion is impeded. Then, your physician tries to treat your discomfort with his pills and your surgeon which his scalpel. But, he or she is really acting like a carpenter trying to manipulate a tack with a sledge hammer. 

It can be done, but often ends up in a mess. Thus explaining in part the reasons for so many side-effects, unnecessary procedures, and waste in medicine. When something goes wrong, the patient pays for the next try physically and financially. 

Dis-ease and diseases persists despite proclaimed technological advances. Their names have changed. So have the way they are approached and attacked (treated). People live longer, but often not so well considering all the pills they take and operations to which they are subjected. 

The human race is yet laden with so many inexplicable illnesses. You name a disease and its cause is likely unknown and its treatment less than effective.

Such brings us back to olden times when real healers walked the planet. Unfortunately, they were frequently and basely misunderstood. Then mistreated, and often worse.

I write of the new/old approaches to healing in the likes of Jesus and Apollonius, Paracelsus and Mesmer. All four healed far and wide without labeling of diseases or producing protocols for healing. No diagnoses, no radical therapy. No pills and no knives. And, no ill effects. They simply offered the gift of health much like we are used to offer gifts of goods or money to others who are in need.

Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of Homeopathy - a much maligned methodology, was on the right trail when he said, “There are no diseases, only sick people.”

Anton Mesmer put it a bit differently, “There is only one disease and only one cure.”

Those two quotes, especially the latter, might boggle your mind for a while as they have many scholars and skeptics over the ages. Why then do we need physicians, and so many specialties?

In coming posts, we will explore the works of some of the great healers of the ages - most especially Anton Mesmer. The works that were and might have changed the world to a large degree. 

Yet, they may still do so when re-discovered and shared generously.

Avante. Towards renewal, rejuvenation, and recompense.

Comments welcomed below or sent to theportableschool@gmail.com

IV - Mesmer and Me: Recompense

We left off with the story about being told of “doing my real work in the back room” in San Francisco in the 19th century. 

Although the veil was lifted about that work in 1977, I had very little idea about the hints I received. To me as probably most people who scratch the surface of such things, mesmerism and hypnotism were and continue to be synonymous.

Over the years, I got clues that hypnosis sometimes can be more harmful than helpful to those who come under its influence. Medical training including psychiatry courses never mentioned either mesmerism or hypnotism.

So, it has taken almost forty years for Dr. Mesmer and his animal magnetism to come back to me. Better late in the game than not at all. Researching my most recent book Phenomenon, on the life of Helena Blavatsky, I found repeated reference to Mesmer and his work - indications that our forebears missed an opportunity to recognize not only healing possibilities but also to gain deeper understandings of the how our world really works. 

Modern medicine still doesn’t know how aspirin works, what makes the heart to beat, what happens when we go to sleep at night, etc. My esoteric studies with Helena Blavatsky led to those with Anton Mesmer which have more immediate implications and life-changing potentials for those who are open and ready to receive them. I have been fascinated, amazed, astonished, enlightened and practically thrilled to uncover this long forgotten treasure.

Let me give a very brief overview of what I have (re)discovered while I leave the details and stories and phenomena for later:

• Hypnosis and mesmerism (or animal magnetism) come from the same roots but are very different in application as well as in results. Hypnotism uses words and suggestion; magnetism when properly done needs neither of the two.

• Dr. Mesmer himself was the re-discoverer of works done over the ages by great numbers of healers who had profound effects on their fellows in previous epochs. 

• Mesmer’s real claim to fame is that he brought the idea and opportunity, potential and practice of magnetic healing before the eyes of thousands and thousands of the public in the 18th century.

• He made his own discovery, studied, researched and put forth his animal magnetism to his patients and colleagues, scientists and physicians most directly in Austria and France and points in between.

• Anton Mesmer had an extraordinarily keen mind, observing spirit, radiant hand, and clairvoyant eye which guided his studies and work. 

• Many, many were healed and even more were relieved of their ills simply by the touch - although it was a different kind of touch than you might imagine.

• He added inventions of magnetic apparatus which allowed for aiding numbers of sick and injured at the same time. 

• Mesmer’s teachings were spread widely in Europe before the French Revolution, but lost traction for various reasons including obstruction by medical politics and the great turmoil of the period. 

• Mesmer’s magnetism was resurrected in the 19th century especially in England, but never took firm hold to gain a foothold in any medical institutions. 

• Scholars and physicians of the old schools did not understand Mesmer’s simple but subtle work and feared that the dominant, but weak medical paradigm might be swept away by the healing hands of Nature. They used all kinds of tactics including ridicule and slander to prevent this opportunity from spreading Mesmer’s doctrine and implementation of this simple method of healing.

Many times in his several writings, Anton Mesmer spoke that his major desire was for his discovery to touch humanity. His greatest reward would be to know that he had done something which would benefit the whole of humankind.

This writer believes that Mesmer’s recompense is long overdue, that the 21st-century may be able to understand what he was trying to share, and that the gift of healing can be shared much more widely in the coming days.

Let the reader beware that such a gift may not be happily or even grudgingly accepted by the powers that be. Especially as the medical machine has created a vast business and bureaucratic system which portrays that it alone has the knowledge and ability to deal with human illness and injury.

Still at the same time, the medical system always falls back on the healing power of Nature - vis medicatrix nature - to support its pills and operations. The healing power of nature really needs very little of medical and surgical intervention. Particularly since such often gets in the way of Nature’s own efforts.

Let the public and the patient recognize that healing comes from within and that the Nature within them is connected with that in all living beings. The abundance of health in another can relatively easily bring restoration to you in many cases. You can do the same for another in need of healing.

Anton Mesmer brought to public light the gift of Nature for use in the hands of human beings. This is the simple, yet profound message that I apparently studied almost two hundred years ago. [Do understand, I had a different body and name, and lived in a distant land and spoke another tongue.]

But in the interim, I forgot all about Mesmer and Nature and the Gift. [The Angel of Forgetfulness does that to us each time we return into bodies at birth.] And it has taken forty years since I received the first hints in the message of William David about the work to be done. Ah, better late than not at all.

So, I have begun the work in earnest after studying far and wide in the traditional and alternative medical fields and in the arena of life. Now in recent years, I have dived into the “mountains” of material on Mesmer and animal magnetism and comparable disciplines. I have read and studied and read some more. It would be impossible for one person in one lifetime to research all that has been written on the subject. In the decade of 1778-1787 alone, the French National Library collected 14 files of 1000 pages each on the subject. 

But, I have been working hard on the subject and have much to share. Join me in learning about the Healing Gift we all possess and can quickly learn to contribute towards the healing of others. As we do so, we will help Mesmer receive his recompense as we go about the work of Sharing the Health.

The next post will be about the Future of Healing.

Share comments below or send to theportableschool at gmail dot com.

III - Mesmer and Me

I write this note with a little trepidation while I ask the reader to be open-minded. The phenomenal healings which will be presented in later posts will be challenging to the modern viewer even as they were to many over the ages. So too, may be the following scenario. Take it as a possibility if not a fact. I still wonder about these experiences myself.

But, I also believe Shakespeare got it quite correctly when he said, “There are more things in Heaven and in Earth than are found in your philosophy, Horatio.” [For whatever it may be worth to the reader, I am of the firm conviction as many others that Shakespeare was the pen and theater name for Sir Francis Bacon. The evidence is rather mountainous in support of the claim.]

My fellow Horatios, read my personal story about healing and history. Consider the possibilities!

The setting for a key moment in my life is San Francisco, California, in the spring of 1984. I had been practicing medicine for nearly seven years when I decided to follow a woman friend from Arizona to California. She had introduced me to Steven, a holistic physician, who was open to me joining his practice. At the same time I was planning to associate with him, I was imagining doing house calls to expand beyond the mundane aspects of medicine.

When I applied to the California Board of Medical Examiners for a license, they wrote back saying, “If you have been out of medical school for more than five years, you will have to submit to an oral examination.”

“Oh, shit!” was the brief dribble that came out of my mouth on reading those words. I had never failed a written exam in my life, but struggled on a number of occasions with performance exams. And, I never had to sit or stand for any such during my medical school days. That practice was common in olden times, but not in the present age as far as I am aware.

Nonetheless, I went ahead with the process even while I spent the interlude of a few weeks working on the manuscript of my first - unpublished - book. I thought the examiners were looking to weed out others than myself and I didn’t crack a book. Testing was supposed to be on Emergency Room issues. I had little such experience in many years, but did not pay much heed to the warning. 

The day of the exam I set out early to drive 100 miles to San Francisco. My car had a flat tire on the way. I arrived to join the other applicants wearing sweater while they were all dressed in suits and ties. The signs were inauspicious. 

The process was short but not sweet. Two sets of two examiners decided I should try again three months later. I was bummed, but proceeded with the plan for the rest of the day.

I had an airplane ticket to return to Arizona to co-lead a workshop on the Chakras which are somewhat distant from modern medical interest. When I got back to Phoenix and shared the news, friends patted me on the back and said, “No problem. Just bone up. You can get past this to be a regular doctor in California.”

Aye, there was the rub. I never was a regular doctor anywhere including California.

While biding time before going to the airport to fulfill that engagement, I took myself down to the beach at the Presidio of San Francisco where I had spent a year in training at Letterman General Hospital in 67-68 before going to Vietnam. While I moped along the sand, I was reminded of a moment spent with an extraordinary man in Houston, Texas, in the in-between time. 

While finishing medical school there in 1977, I had found Mr. William David at the Esoteric Philosophy Center. All during medical training I had been studying and dabbling and investigating beyond the confines of regular doctoring. I took one course in Sound, Vibration and Color with Mr. David. But, I got most from two private sessions as he drew forth information for me from the Akashic Records. [Look it up if you haven’t heard of them.]

I can see his wonderful beaming, bespectacled, balding round face right now. David had a warm, gentle, engaging manner. But, he loved to laugh and make jolly. On my second consult with only days before graduation, he leaned back, closed his eyes and took some deep breaths. He was wide awake but not fully present as he seemed to search above, within and around himself for some thing.

William David

1923-2012

I found this photo on the Net

Eventually, he asked me for questions. But mostly, he just tuned into who I was and where I was going. I had told him little more than that I was going to a medical internship in the Army at Fort Benning.  

Mr. David first made some off-the-cuff comments about Army bases and opportunities. I remember him distinctly saying about my beliefs with regard to upcoming internship, “You can do it. But, don’t talk about it.” Well, I didn’t fully follow his suggestions and was put on probation within the first months of my training at Martin Army Hospital. 

David continued by touching on a lifetime he said I experienced as surgeon during war. Eventually, he went on to tell me that [in the 19th century], “You were trained as a physician in France. But, you studied after Mesmer and learned his methods. At some point, you traveled to America and settled in San Francisco. You had some real disappointments there. The medical officials would not accept your credentials from France. So, you set up some kind of apothecary shop and did your real healing work quietly in the back room. Do you realize, you are repeating some of that now?”

Well, I realized but little of what spoke. Because I got in trouble right out of the chute once I started my internship. I did get through it. I learned to keep my mouth shut and be more circumspect by the end of the year. But, one year postgraduate medical training was enough. I went on to finish my Army obligation as a Flight Surgeon for three years at Fort Riley Kansas.

For years, I carried this knowledge or awareness or possibility that I had been a hundred years past a physician from France, who moved to San Francisco and had to do his real work behind closed doors. I have come to believe that I am not unusual in having to repeat things from previous times, and even lifetimes. 

Anton Mesmer (age 72)

portrait by Charpentier

But, there were really two parts to the story - at least two parts - that Mr. David told me. He mentioned Mesmer. Well, who was Mesmer? Wasn’t he that man who started the process to create hypnosis?

Yes and No. In any case, I missed a big clue way back in 1977. The name of Mesmer would appear here and there from time to time. Mesmerize is a relatively common word which finds its way into many vocabularies and conversations. I must have used it over the years, but I was practically oblivious of Dr. Mesmer and what it really means to mesmerize until …

The next post will provide The Rest of the Story, or at least as far as it has unfolded in the last few years and months. It will be called Recompense.

Post comments below and/or send them to theportableschool at gmail dot com.

Thanks

II - What Might Have Been

I have imagined for some years writing about “What Might Have Been.” The idea has been politically focused.

What Might Have Been - If John F. Kennedy had avoided assassination, if his brother had not been gunned down. If Martin Luther King Jr. had continued his ministry. If such acknowledged great leaders had persisted into old age or even just a few more years, wouldn’t America be a different and better place today? And, wouldn’t that have spread positive effects to the rest of the world?

What if we had found different ways to live besides fighting wars in placed like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. What if America and Russia learned to just take care of their own business?

Those scenarios might have promoted some relatively happy endings in fact or just in imagination.

But, the imagined writing seems really too far afield from most of my experiences and studies to ever eventuate. Maybe somebody else will compose those stories, some day. Maybe they have and I have just missed them.

In any case in recent years, I have received the gift of discovery and re-discovery of healing works accomplished over the ages by a number of truly great men. Surely women did much of the same kind of work, but as far as I know their names have been lost to posterity.

But, stories of the wonders worked over centuries by great healing humans persist in many places to be told and retold. This is especially so now since many writings, cached in libraries around the world and only available in the past to scholars who could travel widely, are now digitized and freely accessible through websites like books.google.com, archive.org, gallica.fr and several others. 

These three are my usual sources which have given me access to dozens [potentially thousands, but I am selective] of books to study about extraordinary healing personalities, methods, and cases which cover particularly the last few centuries.

I had already dipped to greater or lesser degrees into the lives and works of the ancients and of Jesus and his disciples. Coming into the second millennium, I recently have gotten expanding pictures of Paracelsus and Van Helmont, Greatrakes and Mesmer, Elliotson, Esdaile, and Newton. That is JR Newton rather than Isaac. 

Maybe this is the place to briefly tell the stories of these Great Healers and to begin to give suggestions of how they did their works. 

Jesus and disciples

Have you ever wondered how Jesus healed? Were they all miraculous, or are the methods he used still available? Well, the short answer is that he used many methods according to the need of those who met him and asked his aid. Sometimes, they didn’t even ask. As when the woman with the issue (hemorrhage) of many years reached out to him. She was instantly healed as “virtue” was drawn from Jesus to the woman.

A miracle! Yes, because it was and still is generally not understood. No, because the “virtue” was merely a shooting forth from the radiant aura of the Great Physician to fill in the void in the force field of the depleted woman.

This mechanism is surely the main one which Jesus used actively and directly with the sick and lame. It is also the one which he taught his disciples, telling them to share with those in need that the healing force might refill them, relieve their weakness, and make them whole - at least for the time. 

Paracelsus and Van Helmont

Paracelsus was a renowned physician and healer of the 16th century. Interestingly, he is often regarded as the progenitor of chemical medicine. But he was really a largely misunderstood alchemist who was able to use whatever means be needed to raise up and heal the needy. His greatest tool was in his conscious connection with Nature and his ability to funnel its forces where and when required. 

Paracelsus burned medical books in Basel and told physicians and students to look to Nature for answers rather than to the ancient palaver of Galen and others. He healed many princes as well as paupers mostly by the power of his presence and the radiations of his being.

Van Helmont lived in the next century and drew upon the teachings of Paracelsus. He too is largely remembered as a purveyor of chemicals and iatrochemist. Again, he was misunderstood even as he healed many with his hands during the plagues of his time while dozens were dying at the hands of ordinary medicine.

Greatrakes and Mesmer

Valentine Greatrakes was an Irish merchant of 17th century who observed his wife’s healing works at the same time many suffered the King’s Evil and other ghastly diseases of the time. He sensed the call to heal. His wife scoffed for a time.

His work was as a Stroker. [Seems a fitting occupation for a man named Greatrakes.] He stroked people’s bodies with his hands producing thousands of healings. Many, many were relieved and healed in Ireland. He eventually traveled to England at the request of a nobleman whose wife was ill. He was unsuccessful in her case but aided many others while the chemist Robert Boyle looked on in amazement.

Anton Mesmer was an 18th century Swabian physician who made his own separate discovery through the gift of a mind inquiring into the wonders of Nature. He taught that all beings emanate and transmit currents of magnetic fluid. That fluid was capable of healing, relieving and preserving humans and animals. Mesmer tried to share his discovery in Vienna, but was met with disbelief and denial despite the amazing cures and phenomena he produced.

Eventually, he moved to Paris where he demonstrated greater wonders. The people were enthralled and thrilled. The scholars and physicians were scared. They did everything they could to suppress, slander, and destroy his potentially universal healing work. 

Elliotson and Esdaile

John Elliotson was a highly respected professor of medicine at the London College in the middle of the 19th century until he took up Mesmerism (aka animal magnetism). He also did amazing things, healed many incurables, and got attention from a wide spectrum of the society. It appears that Elliotson like Mesmer was too public about his work and brought down the wrath of his peers.

Elliotson eventually resigned his teaching positions and worked independently while producing a journal of magnetic healing [The Zoist] for a dozen years. All manner of medical, surgical, religious, and healing folks as well as grateful patients gave great praise to him. But, the powers that be did not abide his efforts. They feared to be put out of work. Elliotson’s healings and teachings were soon lost because there was no system or organization to fill his shoes and his ideals.

James Esdaile was a surgeon contemporary with Elliotson who was assigned to duty in India. At a loss to treat his patients humanely when they needed drastic surgeries, he ventured to begin work with animal magnetism. He had only heard and read about mesmerism, never seen it practiced. A native assistant had seen the process done a time or two without success.

So, Esdaile set himself and helpers to work magnetizing patients prior to surgeries. Sometimes, the process was strung out over several days. But, a large swath of patients were anesthetized with mere passes of the hands over their bodies. (This was before the advent of ether and chloroform.) Esdaile was able to remove all manner and sizes of tumors with little blood loss, no pain and no memory of the operation retained by the patient, and rapid recovery after surgery. The British government set him up for a time with his own hospital devoted to using magnetism. Sadly, the very successful experiment was lost in the shuffle and kerfuffle of the times when Esdaile gave up India to return to his native Scotland.

Newton and Olcott

James Rogers Newton was one of the most recent of the great healers of the ages. He was in middle age before he determined he had the gift. Something told him he had a work to do. Newton gradually put his hands and faith into action.

He eventually relieved or healed thousands with methods similar to Greatrakes and Mesmer. He worked often with one sick person at a time. But he also stood before hundreds on occasion and produced healings at a distance in the midst of larger crowds.

Newton’s work which occurred in America in the late 19th century was and is well-documented from reports of newspapers all across the country and during visits to Great Britain.

Henry Steele Olcott’s healing career was short-lived at little more than a year’s length during his time in India in the 1880s. It appears that his work was intended to be more of a demonstration of the potential for healing with the touch than a specifically founded mission.

Colonel Olcott was founding President of the Theosophical Society. While he traveled around South Asia promoting the Society and indigenous religions, he was struck by the medical needs of many whom he encountered. Why not offer the gift of magnetic touch? He had studied it, but never put it into practice until he was fifty years old in a foreign land. Many successes followed.

These extraordinary healers and many other ordinary ones doing extraordinary things are the starting point for our journey into a wider world of possibilities than most people dare imagine. We will pick up the thread next time as I share some fascinating bits and pieces from own healing journey which - after 40 years - I trust will be of aid to people in need in the coming days.

Post comments below and/or send them to theportableschool at gmail dot com.

Be well, Robert

I - I've Got A Secret

I’ve Got a Secret

I see there is a new movie out called The Secret Life of Pets. I wonder how many Secrets it presents. An animated feature with furry creatures, it should be enjoyable especially for the young people. Apparently the film has done well at the box office, to the tune of $725 million. 

Quite a few years ago, there was a great book called The Secret Life of Plants. I can recommend it highly, even though it may be old “news” to some. Still if you haven’t read it, the information in the book may astonish you. 

There are many other supposed Secrets continuously being offered to the public, but at a price. The one I wish to present - it might be called A Secret in the Life of Human Beings - is priceless and free. 

It is one of those Secrets that has been widely known at one time in ancient history, but got pushed into the background. Then, reared its head into broad daylight off and on over the ages. But unfortunately, the Secret got more than its share of bad press, ridicule and opposition because of personal, political, and professional prejudices.

The Secret has come into my hands over recent years and must be shared. I don’t want to keep it a Secret. Discussing the Secret with a friend some months ago prompted her to say, “You are talking about a whole new paradigm.” Which might change many things including jobs while putting some people out of work.

The Secret might be a new paradigm for the present era but it is really quite an old paradigm waiting to be resurrected. And, it is one of those things which must pass around freely once it is honestly and reasonably noticed.

The best things in life are free and this will cost you absolutely nothing except time spent reading, maybe cogitating, and hopefully eventually using the ideas and information shared. 

I will give you some feeder lines to begin the journey of Secret Discovery. The new blog will have posts done fortnightly. Visit whenever you are a mind. 

Here are some quotes - which should drawn your attention - from a variety of folks over past generations regarding the focus of the new blog:

• One of nature’s secrets. English surgeon

• One of nature’s mysterious motive energies. Augsburg Council - Germany

• A key to the mystery of man’s inner nature. German physician

• God’s TRUTH and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. English physician

• Any body in health can [share it]. English woman of rank

• A touchstone of Truth. English medical officer

• It was itself truth and nature. American attorney

• Of infinitely greater direct practical importance than the admission of the truth of the circulation of the blood. English surgeon practicing in India

~~~~~

Much will rise again that has long been buried, 

and much will become submerged that is held in honor today. 

Horace

The introductory quotes give some hints about the Secret. Let me add a few more.

• By far the best remedy for all those languors and pains. English physician

• [There is] no disease in children in which it should be omitted. English physician

• [I was being] convinced of its truth and its great power as a curative agent. English curate

• [Every human being contains] this ... and can communicate the superabundance of it to another by an exertion of the will. English writer

• Nature offers a universal means of healing and of preserving human beings. Austrian physician

The mission of The Healing Post is 

• to resurrect a wonderful discovery which has been shared intermittently over the ages

• to bring it back to light

• to see it given renewed life, thence

• to do the same for modern humans.

Look for the next Post on the Secret in two weeks, to be entitled What Might Have Been.

You may append comments below or send them to theportableschool at gmail dot com.

Thanks for reading.

Take time to visit: http://peoplemedicine.info and http://peoplemedicine.net