Reveals one of the best kept secrets in medical science -- prayer heals.

Larry Dossey is one of the better authors out there. He is an M.D., and in this book discusses the healing effects of prayer. Not many medical doctors are aware of the power of prayer, far less use it to heal their patients.

Experiments have shown that prayer in fact positively affects high blood pressure, wounds, heart attacks, headaches, and anxiety. It was also shown that the “Thy will be done” approach was “quantitatively more powerful than when specific results were held in the mind”. A simple attitude of prayerfulness seemed to set the stage for healing.

The author shares his personal experiences of praying for his patients and of tackling his own health problems. We learn that many saints and spiritual teachers died of cancer, including the Buddha (or one of them), Saint Bernadette, Krishnamurti, Suzuki Roshi and Sri Ramana Maharshi. He discusses this paradox: surely they, of all people, should have been able to heal themselves? Jesus himself in John 9:1-3 implies that there may be a higher purpose to illness that we simply cannot grasp “because we do not know the ways of the Absolute”. There are also people who “break all the rules of good health, smoke and drink with abandon, and live to be a hundred without ever falling ill.”

Disease is part of the natural order, not a sign of ethical, moral or spiritual weakness.

This book is not so much a book of answers, but one in which the author discusses the various aspects of illness, healing and prayer, so we can reach our own conclusions.

Many were perplexed by the terminal cancer of Ramana Maharshi. His pain was immense, and he would scream out at night. Maharshi told people “There is pain, but there is no suffering”.

The author provides us with fascinating stories of miraculous recovery, and refers us to the works of Stanley Krippner, Lawrence LeShan, Joseph Campbell, Rainer Maria Rilke, and so on.

He refers to the “realization that physical illness, no matter how painful or grotesque, is at some level of secondary importance in the total scheme of our existence”. This is because our higher self is impervious to the ravages of any physical ailment whatsoever.

He tells us of the cooperation between Norman Shealy, M.D. ad Caroline Myss. The latter is incredibly skilled at diagnosing people´s illnesses at a distance. She is 93% accurate. We learn about noncontact therapeutic touch, transpersonal imagery, remote sensing and “telesomatic events”.

There is a chapter about prayer and the unconscious mind. People who deny their health problems “survive in greater numbers than those who confront the facts squarely and honestly”. No other psychological coping style is correlated with such a high survival rate in the acute phase of a myocardial infarction.

Learning “how to be” can set in motion not only healing but the power to heal. The author cites the case of de Vaca, the Spanish explorer, and that of Funatsu, a Japanese lost in the snow in Antarctica. The latter was buried alive and had to learn a “being strategy” – a not-doing strategy.

We learn about lucid dreams, healing dreams and shamanic journeying (Sandra Ingerman),

There are chapters about how to pray and what to pray for, time-displaced prayer, your doctor´s beliefs and why they matter, and even one on “black prayer”, which includes shamanic hexing (voodoo) and the Hawaiian death prayer.

This is an immaculately written book by a learned author. I strongly recommend that you read it. It is an encouraging and inspiring book and I will now be adding other books by this author to my long reading list. ( )