When is a doctor more like a gardener than a mechanic?

It took me 35 years of practicing medicine and a PhD in medical history to learn that sometimes it is better to treat a sick patient the way a gardener nurtures an ailing plant than the way a mechanic fixes a broken machine.

Our modern idea is that the body is a machine; disease is a mechanical breakdown, and the doctor’s job is to find and then repair or replace the broken part. It is a powerful, successful model, but after I’d practiced medicine for several years I realized that not everything fit into it. And I went on a quest for another, more inclusive way of thinking about the body.

Eventually I stumbled upon a surprising book— “Hildegard of Bingen’s Medicine.” Hildegard was a 12th century nun, mystic, and medical practitioner, and her book gave me the second point of view I’d been seeking. Her idea was that the body was more like a plant than a machine.

It is quite a different approach.

A plant grows, develops, and heals.  A machine doesn’t. When a machine breaks down, someone has to fix it.  But when a plant is injured, it repairs itself. Hildegard called this power of self-healing, viriditas—“greening power”—from the Latin viridis, green, and she believed that humans possessed it, too. She was not alone; most pre-modern doctors assumed that the body had an innate healing power—the vis medicatrix naturae—which a doctor should cultivate.

So when Hildegard approached a patient, she did not concentrate on what was broken. She concentrated on her patient’s viriditas. How strong was it? What was depleting it? How could she fortify it?  Thenshe modified the environment inside and outside her patient: what he ate and drank; what medicines he took; how much rest and exercise he had; how much sleep; how much activity; how much noise and how much quiet. She did this slowly, bit by bit. Then she waited to see what would happen.

I studied Hildegard’s medicine for years and finally wrote my PhD on it.

In the meantime I was practicing medicine at a very unusual place in San Francisco. Laguna Honda Hospital was on 62 acres of land and had 1,178 patients. Originally it had been the San Francisco Almshouse and in many ways it still was the city’s almshouse, which meant that we took care of everyone in the city who needed medical care for more than a few weeks.

It was a fascinating place. I had complicated patients with unusual diseases and they stayed for weeks, months, and even years. Since we were over the hill to the poorhouse literally, no one paid us any attention. And sometimes with a difficult case I would ask myself: How would Hildegard have looked at this patient? What would she have done?

What I discovered was that the two ways of looking at the body—the modern and the premodern, the Fast and the Slow, as a machine to be repaired and as a plant to be tended—are both effective when they areapplied to the right patient at the right time. For illnesses that come on suddenly—an inflamed appendix, a rip-roaring infection, a car accident, a heart attack—it is best to think like a mechanic—boldly, reductively. What is broken? What should I do to fix it?  Desperate illnesses require desperate remedies.

But not-desperate illnesses do better with not-desperate remedies. Diseases that come on slowly—chronic infections, complex medical conditions, the aftermath of the appendectomy, the heart attack, the chemotherapy—are best approached like a gardener, asking myself as Hildegard would have done, not what is broken but what is working? What are my patient’s strengths and how can I support them? What can I do to nurture viriditas, the natural power of healing?

It is not a dramatic or heroic medicine. It is fussing and fiddling; examining and re-examining a patient; doing a little of this, and a little of that. It is Slow Medicine, but used at the right time, for the right patient, and in the right conditions, it works amazingly well.

Victoria Sweet is the author of “God’s Hotel <http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Hotel-Hospital-Pilgrimage-Medicine/dp/1594488436/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335376503&sr=8-1> ” and has been a physician at San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital for more than 20 years. An associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, she holds an M.D. from the University of California, Irvine, as well as a Ph.D. in history and social medicine.

   Book by Rosemary Ellen Guiley and George Noory

Imagine one day, being able to take a small device about the size of an iPod out of your pocket or purse, pressing a button and connecting with your dear aunt Sarah in the “afterlife.”

According to paranormal researcher Rosemary Ellen Guiley who co-authored the book, Talking to the Dead, we may be on the edge of a breakthrough in technological advancements in spirit communication that could yield regular exchanges with the other side.

From: http://higherjourneys.blogspot.com/2012/02/talking-to-dead.html.

The book, which debuted late last year by Coast to Coast AM’s George Noory and Guiley describe a spectrum of technological developments in talking to the departed. Those in the field of paranormal research have a working knowledge of some of the more cutting edge spirit communication devices since the advent of EVP or electronic voice phenomena; a process by which inexplicable voices are heard during the playback of a tape recorder, although not heard initially at the time of the recording. But in recent years, a phenomenon called “Real-Time EVP” which as the name implies, allows the experimenter or “operator” to speak to the dead - live - has reached many in the larger community of people interested in making contact, often for their own personal reasons.

Margaret Downey, an LA based spirit communications researcher works with the bereaved to help them have their own communications via real time EVP or as she calls it “simulated real time” – a delayed conversation in which she periodically stops to review the recordings as they go along. Downey also works in collaboration with intuitive channel and film producer Lisa Winther-Huston to conduct sessions for the bereaved. The pair was featured on an episode of the Biography Channel’s My Ghost Story. Like many who actively work in this area of the paranormal, Downey and Winther-Huston claim to have assistance from discarnate entities vis-a-vis the devices they use, to help them perfect the process of communication. Some of these associates even describe themselves as never incarnating in human form. Names such as ethereals have been used to describe entities who exist in higher realms or parallel worlds and have pronounced themselves as helpers to those wishing to hone their skills in using technology for spirit communication.

Consciousness Plays a Major Role
Despite the advancements in technological spirit communication over the last 100 or so years including Thomas Edison’s purported interest in possibly dialing up the dead, there appears to be a consistent theme occurring among practitioners who receive a good measure of success. Natural mediumistic ability appears to be a common denominator in effective spirit communication. When psychic ability is active within the practitioner, the device used becomes a tool or perhaps an amplifier but not the actual source of the connection that’s being made. The consciousness of both the operator and the spirit communicator, along with pure desire and intent become the dominant ingredients for the intersection of energy and the resulting communication to take place.

Mark Macy, a practitioner and researcher of EVP and ITC or instrumental transcommunication, was told during a series of dreams and out of body experiences that “too much emphasis just on the technology would not produce success.” The consciousness of the practitioner is of utmost importance in achieving a connection.

Martha Pierce Copeland of Atlanta is one who used EVP in hopes of easing the burden of losing her daughter, but became so convinced of its efficacy she later went on to found one of the most well known spirit communication support groups for the grief stricken. However, one poignant message which came from her daughter during her early experiments using a computer made her realize the necessity for our own internal mechanism for contact. Awakened in the middle of the night Copeland heard the voice of her daughter in her mind saying, “You do not need to use the computer. You can hear me in your mind.”

Could it be that those in the afterlife, higher dimensions and parallel worlds understand something that we can’t fully assimilate as yet? Whether it be divining practical wisdom about our daily lives or dialoguing with the departed, we are the source of the results we seek; it is consciousness creating the connection.

Spirit Communication and Electromagnetic Energy

Rosemary Ellen Guiley even acknowledges that the devices may be tapping into levels of consciousness and processes we don’t yet understand. That said, apparently EVP does have an important role to play. This raises the question as to whether there is some sort of intersection of energy that occurs when an electromagnetic resonance is achieved between the operator, the device and the discarnate communicator.

Guiley who has been a regular experimenter of several real-time EVP devices including one called the “minibox” did an in-studio demonstration prior to going on-air with George Noory for his popular Coast to Coast AM broadcast. During the demonstration Noory asked why there was a need for a lot of background noise. “In order to talk to us, those in another dimension seem to do best when we give them a background of sounds. They’re not using the vocal cords of the living,” states Guiley. The communicators have said that “they manipulate energy on their side and sound on ours.”

As is well known, everything in our known universe including our selves operates within an electromagnetic spectrum. Ultrasonic sound frequencies occur well above 20 KHz, typically outside the range the human ear can pick up. However with the aid of certain background sounds, such as radio static coupled with the frequencies of the human electromagnetic energy field, the device may build a bridge where the EM frequencies can begin a resonance with each other and communication then ensues.

In fact, it has been recently discovered that the human heart actually emits much more energy both electrically and magnetically than that of the brain, making it a powerful conduit for connecting with energy sources well outside of our typical sensory system. This information would support the idea that an emotional connection, pure intent and love play a vital role in making a successful connection with loved ones in spirit.

Clearly, Talking to the Dead is a book whose focus is squarely on the history and advancements in technological spirit communication, however its consistent intimations of the vital role that psychic ability, consciousness and even alchemy play as necessary elements in bridging dimensional realms does not go unnoticed.

The book achieves balance by nicely weaving in correlations with experiments throughout the history of spirit communication, including the common theme that the discarnate communicators often play a support role in helping humans to develop such feats of technological expertise.

Rounding out its offering, the book also covers such elusive aspects as spirit forensics, the dark side in the lower astral realms and even sex in the afterlife.

Talking to the Dead gives readers a breadth and scope of resources for further investigation and also offers suggestions in its appendix for experimenting on your own with EVP.

One question that emerged both at the book’s beginning and end: what will be the societal implications once irrefutable proof of an afterlife is revealed, perhaps through the advancement of technology? Certainly our beliefs will be challenged; perhaps our entire worldview will need to be re-examined. We appear to be on the threshold of a paradigm shift for the entire planet, the information this book offers couldn’t be timelier!

As stated in its final pages: “Proof of the afterlife and communication with the Other Side will give us new knowledge of the process of dying and the transition to a new state of being. Redefining death will lead to a redefining of life. We will alter choices we make about how we live life.”

Give Talking to the Dead a read and contemplate the possibilities of life and beyond.

Alexis Brooks is a researcher and essayist of the metaphysical and spiritual genre, Alexis' philosophies are echoed in her writings that approach questions about the nature of reality, human consciousness and the universe. Alexis retreated from the day to day rigors of corporate America as a broadcast marketing executive and commercial copywriter for major market radio in the mid 1990's to pursue a life long passion as student, researcher and writer of metaphysical concepts. As a result, Alexis has enjoyed success, primarily as an on-line freelance writer, garnering a significant following for her concise philosophical essays which have appeared on numerous web sites. Alexis has had the privilege of working and interfacing with some of the most renowned writers, researchers and experts in the field of consciousness and related studies. Additionally, Alexis' own mystical experiences have fueled her interest in understanding the complexities and innate potential of humanity. One poignant dream account, which she experienced amid the illness of her mother, so inspired best-selling author, Rosemary Ellen Guiley, that the story was published in Guiley's (1998) book, Dreamwork for the Soul.

Patrick Huyghe's classic book...reviewed by: Jeffery Pritchett

Patrick Huyghe's classic book Swamp Gas Times: My two decades on the UFO beat is a fascinating journey through Ufology. I enjoyed the book tremendously and its upbeat non biased approached to those who make up the field and the cases that dance around it. Its no non sense and logical approach was very appealing to me and a brightening breath of fresh air compared to the other drivel i've come across in my journey of over 15 years of reading UFO books and researching. I would highly recommend it to anyone's library to gain more information about a fastly evolving state of affairs called Ufology.