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Reviewed by: Berthold E. Schwarz, M.D.
Published By: Metamind Enterprises,
Inc.
Post Office Box 15548
Savannah, GA 31416
288 pages, 1999: ISBN: 0-9660843-8-1
Harvey J. Martin III, who hails from Georgia, had his formative religious background in the Southern Baptist Church before relocating to Hawaii in the late 1960s where, as a member of the counter-culture, he immersed himself in numerous Eastern philosophies and practices. He discovered the Philippine psychic surgeons and met the most famous - Alex Orbito - who was visiting Hawaii. Martin's curiosity was instantly smitten.
In observing
Orbito's healing methods, Martin became so inquisitive that he
actually moved to the Philippines to continue his quest for knowledge
of Orbito's methods and to delve into the origins, rationale,
development, and possible future directions of the multi-faceted
Christian Spiritists whose purpose focuses to enlighten the living
and eliminate suffering. His observations, education, and experiences
are presented in The Secret Teachings of the Espiritistas.
In his engaging, clearly articulated compendium,
Martin combines a scholarly account of the history of these extraordinary
healing techniques from before the times of the Spanish conquest
hundreds of years ago and modern-day struggles with prevailing
world theologies and political structures, to the evolution of
a coherently organized Christian Spiritist Union. Martin expands
his understanding by close apprenticeship with mentors Alex Orbito
and Reverend Benjamin Pajarillo where, after establishing rapport,
he observed, learned, and was subsequently ordained a minister
in the methods of mediumship via the Holy Spirit. He experienced
and carefully recorded on videotape innumerable examples of psychic
surgery and with his friend, Mark, prepared a video documentary.
These and other personal and extraordinary experiences
are combined with discovering and having translated early written
documents that reveal the inner workings of the evolution of Filipino
spiritual healing. These documents, never before published, clarify
how the Filipino Christian Spiritists established a verbal dialogue
with a group of Spirits of Light that provided the Espiritistas
with a Key that contained passwords which gave the Spirits of
Light the means to identify toward, and distinguish themselves
from false spirits. As Martin says, "a means through which
Forces of Christ in the Spirit World are externalizing their power
through specifically trained human beings, to restore health,
and deliver a message. This is the paranormal world of the Holy
Spirit."
From his trips to the Philippines, including
excursions to the Communist dominated hinterlands of Northern
Luzon with Reverend Pajarillo to study at close range the healing
of people with various afflictions, to his being caught in the
middle of a revolution when President Marcos was deposed, Martin
stays on target. He blends his personal experiences and observations
in ten, highly readable chapters so that the multi-faceted paranormal
healing practices of the Espiritistas is presented step-by-step
in straight-forward prose that easily opens a person's eyes and
intrigues them with curiosity about what is actually going on,
how the healing occurs, and how the healing methods can be developed
and studied. It addresses the question of whether healers are
born with this ability? Or do they learn these skills?
Martin's numerous close-up observations of genuine
psychic surgery, and the superficially confusing related and often
therapeutic sleight-of-hand psychic surgery, raises controversial
questions - which he handles in a sophisticated manner. He explains
the basis upon which the pragmatic Filipinos sanction these healing
practices, which they see as beneficial, and also explains the
rationale of the debunkers. In his analysis, Martin exposes the
simplistic thinking of the detractors and those methods used by
entertainers in their made-for-television demonstrations of pseudo
psychic surgery. His main focus stays, though, on the presumed
genuine, paranormal effects. He does not sidestep the difficult
problems of separating the wheat from the chaff. In so doing,
Martin presents data for ways to approach, improve, and understand
these skills and also provides clues to the crucial psychodynamics
of the healer-healee relationship, i.e., how to document and study
the healers themselves.
Martin critically reviews objections of fraud,
trickery, and deception in psychic surgery. He discusses these
in the light of contemporary research into such subjects as the
placebo and nocebo effect. Suggestion and hypnosis - dissociative
states - can become ideal venues for psi and, as matter, can be
affected paranormally, the psychic aspects of healing and experimentation,
in many cases possible direct telekinetically induced changes,
will some day have to be reckoned with in the design and analysis
of studies. For example, the experimenter himself or herself can
influence the results paranormally and in ways that can breach
the double-blind controls and other safeguards one takes. Indeed,
a possible wild card. The field of medicine will have to test
psi as psychic healing becomes more commonly recognized; there
is always the need for carefully documented clinically controlled
studies by those whose lives and careers are devoted to the healing
quest.
The problems for research have many implications
and vagaries. These have been touched upon in challenging parapsychological
experiments (Batcheldor, 1979; Owen, 1975) and the impressive
psychokinetic SORRATT investigations (Richards, 1982; Cox, manuscript
to be published). Psi and psychic healing is often facilitated
and augmented by a 'here and now' status, with suggestive effects,
i.e., a belief and confidence in the proper, positive milieu becomes
the psychic nexus of success. Martin has carefully considered
explanations for these subtle factors which help clarify otherwise
'muddy' waters from situations which cut both ways and which have,
unfortunately, often led to quick and unwarranted conclusions.
Martin shares appealing collateral paranormal
data, as when during a psychic surgical procedure suddenly prevailing
heat abruptly changed to coolness, and another example when he
receives a spiritual injection and was amazed to "discover
a tiny hole in my arm, from which blood flowed following the puncture
and extraction of an invisible needle!" He also relates how
healer Juan Blanche operates on his leg making incisions from
a distance without physically touching Martin's body. And there
is the well-documented materializing and dematerializing of cotton
wool wherein Josephine Sison was "able to stuff through the
skin into the body, where it would disappear and remain until
she was ready to remove it." Reverend Benjamin Pajarillo's
nocturnal out-of-body excursions to his patients at their homes
is described and, according to Martin who checked several of these
events for accuracy, there was subsequent clinical improvement
in the patient. When asked about the role of faith in healing,
Benjamin told Martin "it is helpful, but not necessary, for
the patient to have faith, it is far more important, though, that
the healer have faith, more so than the patient to have it."
Because of the foresight and abiding scientific curiosity of Henry Belk, grand doyen of psychical research, physicians and para-psychologists traveled to the Philippines to document these spectacular healing feats. Henry Belk, always in the vanguard of psychical research, also pioneered Arigo in Brazil, and Hurkos the Dutchman, who came to America. Perhaps, with the newly established Department of Alternative Medicine several of these widespread phenomena and gifted individuals can be studies by multi-disciplinary teams of experts for, as Harvey Martin has shown, there is much value that can be subjected to meaningful scientific and scholarly scrutiny.
Clues to
'miraculous' (spontaneous) healings and hitherto undiscovered
immunological and neurotransmitter mechanisms beg for professional
medical attention. Learning about one psychic surgical effect
might yield basic scientific discoveries and information that
could become helpful to masses of people with various maladies
and lead to better and innovative methods of treatment, inventing
new drugs, and discovering physiological mechanisms.
Martin's theological and philosophical discourses,
such as his expatiations on the little known subjects of dispensationalism
and post-millennial activism, also deserve careful attention.
These out-of-mainstream Holy Spirit considerations that Martin
found at the heart of the Filipino understanding of paranormal
healing make sense and, who knows, these could be closer to the
mark than the current dominant premillennial opinions, if not
right on it. These gifts of the Holy Spirit, that appear to be
facilitated by what is currently referred to in scientific terms
as the paranormal effects of trance, altered states of consciousness,
and dissociation, certainly did not cease nineteen hundred years
ago. These are ALL in the frontlines of a spiritual awakening
of power and potential today, within everyone. There is no worthier
subject of inquiry than human potential, and Harvey Martin in
The Secret Teachings of the Espiritistas addresses these perfectly.
Berthold E. Schwarz, M.D.
Post Office Box 4030
Vero Beach, Florida 32964-4030
(561) 231-5220
Review
Bibliography:
Batcheldor, K.J.: "P.K. in Sitter Groups", Psycho-energetic Systems, Vol. 3, 1979, (77-93.)
Cox, Wm. Edward: "A Scientific Investigation of Recurrent Psychokinesis," SORRATT, unpublished manuscript.
Owen, A.R.G.: Psychic Mysteries of the North, Harper and Row, New York, 1975.
Richards, J.T.: SORRATT - A History of the Niehardt Psychokinesis Experiments: 1961-1981, Scarecrow Press, Inc., Metuchen, NJ, 1982.
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Copyright 1998 Metamind Enterprises Inc. All Rights Reserved