Power of prayer, doubts and science

[Guest guest]

Light and Love

 

I began to contemplate more seriously about power of prayer and found it to

be as a virtual tool to spread the sacred thoughts and vibrations. It has

happed that I began to pray by my own way in an age about three (it is correct

- age about three) in conditions of captivity. Then I prayed for the wealth of

'Fields of Nature', for all who are sad and ill, have humiliated. Now many time

have passed, but this custom remains. Thanks for all who initiated this action

in our group.

 

Below is a Larry Dossey's personal story "Healing Words" about author's path

to the awareness of power of prayer in short.

A few years ago, I was surprised to discover a single scientific study that

strongly supported the power of prayer in getting well. Because I'd never heard

of controlled experiments affirming prayer, I assumed this study stood alone.

Somehow I could not let the matter rest, and I began to probe the scientific

literature for further proof of prayer's efficacy. I found an enormous body of

evidence: over one hundred experiments exhibiting the criteria of "good

science," many conducted under stringent laboratory conditions, over half of

which showed that prayer brings about significant changes in a variety of

living beings.

If scientific proof for the healing effects of prayer existed, surely it

would be common knowledge among scientifically trained physicians. I came to

realise the truth of what many historians of science have described: A body of

knowledge that does not fit with prevailing ideas can be ignored as if it does

not exist, no matter how scientifically valid it may be. Scientists, including

physicians, can have blind spots in their vision. The power of prayer, it

seemed, was an example.

The question I then had to deal with made me very uncomfortable: What was I

personally going to do with this information? Would I ignore it, or allow it to

affect the way I practised medicine? These uncertainties distilled to a single

question from which I could not escape: Are you going to pray for your patients

or not?

 

For many years I'd ignored prayer. I considered it an arbitrary, optional

frill that simply was not in the same league as drugs and surgery. I had in

fact tried to escape spiritual or religious influences in healing, fancying

myself a scientific physician.

 

I grew up in a world that no longer exists-the sharecropper, cotton-growing

culture of central Texas.

People gathered at the church twice on Sunday and on Wednesday nights to sing,

pray, testify, and hear the preacher.

As a child I never doubted the truth of what I heard. I took it all

seriously. By age fourteen I was the pianist for the tiny church and an eager

participant in "youth revivals." I planned to become a minister, but aborted at

the last moment my plans. My twin brother, who is today a retired dentist and a

nature mystic, was for some reason blessedly unaffected by all this religious

fervour and took a nonchalant attitude toward it.

When it came time to leave the farm for college, he convinced me that the

wiser course was to enrol in "the University" - of Texas, in Austin. Looking

back, there were strong omens that this was the right choice. The university

proved my religious undoing. Protestant fundamentalists have always had trouble

with scientific materialism, and I was no exception. Under its withering

influence, and aided by my discovery of Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, and

other intellectual giants, my religious fervour wilted like a central Texas

cotton field in September. I became an agnostic.

Medical school followed college, then a stint in the Army as a battalion

surgeon in Vietnam. By the time I eventually finished my training in internal

medicine and began private practice, I had begun to regrow my spiritual roots.

A major event in this process was my discovery during medical school of the

philosophies of the East, particularly Buddhism and Taoism. I was delightfully

surprised to discover that their core teachings were not just Eastern but

universal, appearing also in the esoteric traditions of the major Western

spiritual traditions.

I found that Western mysticism has periodically been just as vibrant as in

the East, although not as well known. Feeling the need for a practice in

addition to a philosophy, I began to meditate. This was somewhat difficult in

Texas in those days.

But a few wise books on meditative practice had just begun to emerge, and I

put their instructions to good use. With immense difficulty and struggle, I

gradually adopted an eclectic philosophy that was more spiritually satisfying

than anything I had grown up with.

Even so, the experimental data on prayer that I turned up caught me off

guard. I really wanted nothing to do with it. Meditation was acceptable, but

the thought of "talking to God" in prayer was reminiscent of the fundamental

Protestantism I felt I had laid to rest. Yet the results of the prayer

experiments kept forcing themselves into my psyche.

These studies showed clearly that prayer can take many forms. Results

occurred not only when people prayed for explicit outcomes, but also when they

prayed for nothing specific. Some studies, in fact, showed that a simple 'Thy

will be done' approach was quantitatively more powerful than when specific

results were held in the mind. In many experiments, a simple attitude of

prayerfulness - an all-pervading sense of holiness and a feeling of empathy,

caring, and compassion for the entity in need - seemed to set the stage for

healing.

Complete article:

http://spirituality.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1151542.cms

 

Namaste - Reet

[Guest guest]

Your contemplative spiritual literature is simply awsome. You do a lot of study.

Please visit the web site, www.icihs.org In 2003 many Psychologists, neuro

psychiatrists and others presented wonderful papers on the role of prayer

curing the illness and Dis-Eases. It cuts teh recedivism. Marquette university

have many research papers on Spirituality and general well being.

and also visit with web search on www.science and spirituality. Dr. Walter Last

wrote a scientific article on the role of thoughts and the fusons, phiotns and

thoughts have a universal strucutre. When we pray for Universal peace and

wellness, we are putting positive thoughts inot the Universe. Who knows more

than Swami about all these things?? That is why we have the Annual Global

Bhajans for Universal Peace.

Meena Chintapalli