THE PRACTICE OF PRAYING FOR OTHERS:

Eight Examples from Late Twentieth-Century America

A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the California Institute of Integral Studies San Francisco, California

In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

By Birrell Thomas Walsh September, 1999

Copyright 1999 By Birrell Thomas Walsh

May the Almighty bless you, with the power, to take your will and your desire and to make it God's will, so that your work will be God's work. And in so doing, may your work be effective, in reaching many people, and in benefiting many people, and in improving the quality of life for everyone. And may God shine His grace, His graciousness, upon you. And may you merit to be a favorite in the eyes of God.

- Rabbi Shneor Stern

I wish to thank the eight participants. It is their lives that made this work possible. The members of my dissertation group (Tim Lavalli, Michael Holley, David Welty and Scott Hajicek-Dobberstein) suffered through the writing with me. Nancy Grant edited every page, encouraged me from the beginning, and held my hand. May the Rabbi's blessing follow them, too.

CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
I certify that I have read "The Practice of Praying for Others" by Birrell Thomas Walsh, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

__________________________ Steven Goodman, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy and Religion California Institute of Integral Studies

__________________________ James Ryan, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy and Religion California Institute of Integral Studies

__________________________ Brendan Collins, Ph.D. Professor of East-West Psychology California Institute of Integral Studies

Date: ___________________________

Abstract:
This is a qualitative research study about the practice of praying, treating and shamanizing for others. A Religious Scientist, a Baptist minister, a Christian Science practitioner, a Reiki practitioner, a "Somatic" Buddhist, a Lubavitcher Chassidic rabbi, a Franciscan nun and a shaman were interviewed.

Each participant was asked in detail what they did to pray for others, how they relate to those they pray for and to the Blessing Power, and how their practice has affected them. Each participant was asked to review and correct the material about their practice. Among the findings are the following:

-the Religious Scientist worked by systematic identification with Divinity; -the Baptist conversed with God, and asked Him for all her needs; -the Christian Scientist looked for identity as the key to healing; -the Reiki practitioner stepped out of the way, allowing Reiki energy to work; -the Buddhist found and gave space and company; -the Chassidic rabbi brought down light and worked to integrate parts, while praying for the coming of the Messiah; -the Catholic contemplative brought everything to God, within Sacramental experience; -the shaman journeyed to bring back power or missing souls, and removed psychic intrusions.

Some experiences were present in all of the interviews: -Each practitioner showed strong self-discipline. -Each prayed for others in the same manner as for themselves. -Letting go produced frequent unexpected (though positive) results. -The pleasure, or reward, for the practitioner was keeping company with the Holy. Among characteristics shared by only some of those interviewed were:

-Channeling -Contraction as the creation of the universe -Theological reasoning in treatment -Openness and making space, melting within the larger, then reforming -Peace as a sign of completion -"Rising Up into Heaven," and journeys to other realms to get help Participants diverged along the following axes: -Cosmological/non-cosmological -Theistic/non-theistic -Gnostic/incarnational, or "ascender"/"descender." -(Divine) personality/impersonality -Sensory preferences in the NeuroLinguistic Programming sense. -Directivity/non-directivity about results -"Lineaged"/non-lineaged tradition The variety discovered is an existence proof of an extremely various "possibility space" for the practice of prayer. The study will (hopefully) permit sharing of methods and approaches, and preserve them for the future.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Practice of Praying for Others: .............................................................................1-1 Certificate of Approval ..............................................................................................1-4 Table of Contents.......................................................................................................1-7 1 Introduction and Overview .................................................................................... 8 2 Method ............................................................................................................... 13 3 Margaret Stortz: "Constantly Go Back to Your Source" ........................................ 62 4 Jean Delaney: "Because He Said, Ask."................................................................ 97 5 Deborah Klingbeil: "Perceiving Identity" ........................................................... 130 6 Priscilla Stuckey: "Getting Out of the Way" ....................................................... 160 7 Julie Henderson: "Their Clear, Laughing Vastness" ............................................ 187 8 Shneor Stern: "Drawing Down Light" ............................................................... 225 9 Sister Colette: "Prayer Is Not a Function; Prayer is a Life." ................................. 257 10 Antonio Ramirez: "Healing With Knowledge that We Gain in Those Worlds" . 283 11 The Usefulness of Agreements, Overlaps and Divergences ............................. 314 12 Bibliography ................................................................................................. 364

1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

This project began when I found that prayer for others was my favorite spiritual practice. It seemed to serve others, while also allowing me to be in contact with the Divinity.

It appeared, occasionally, to work. But I also believed that I was not doing it as well as I might, and that there was a lot I could learn from other persons who had taken up this practice. I read a great deal about prayer and treatment for others. I quickly found that persons across many denominations did it. Although they did not agree on the nature of the Universe and of Divinity, they did agree that one could act invisibly to help another.

Some of these writings were extremely appealing, but I found that those that spoke to me were not all from the same denomination. If I was to find my exemplars, I would have to give up the idea of a perfect religious group that had all the answers. By this time I had entered a program in Comparative Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The Institute had been founded by disciples of Sri Aurobindo and attracted Alan Watts, other Buddhists, Jews, Sufis, Christians, Neo-Pagans, and Feminists as well as Hindus. The Institute and the program shared my attitude that one profits when one goes respectfully to other religions.

It was not possible to attribute all effective prayer and treatment to an easy perennialism, however. The theologies of practitioners varied widely. They often said that their theology was the essential element in the effectiveness of their prayers and treatments. Christians might rely on their personal relationship with Jesus. One Buddhist might rely

Introduction on a community of Buddha-Nature to permit contact between the healer and the one being prayed for. A Theravadin who did not accept the idea of Buddha-Nature might practice the beautiful and ancient pre-Buddhist ritual of metta or lovingkindness.

Practitioners of different traditions nevertheless borrowed from each other. Sometimes they borrowed directly, as when some Christians 1 and Jews2 took up the Buddhist practice of metta. At other times they were apparently moved by the example of others to rummage in their own attic and dust off ancient practices. I noticed that when Transcendental Meditation had become common in the United States, more than a few Westerners re-discovered The Cloud of Unknowing3, Eastern Orthodox Christian prayerdisciplines such as the Jesus Prayer 4, and Jewish meditation forms. 5 While interest in these had never been completely absent, they blossomed again in the context of interest in Eastern meditations.

1.1 Motive

1 2

Meadow, Gentling the heart: Buddhist loving-kindness practice for Christians Boorstein, That's funny, you don't look Buddhist 3 Ira Progoff had retranslated the Cloud in 1950's (Progoff, The cloud of unknowing: a new translation of a classic guide to spiritual experience revealing the dynamics of the inner life from a particular historical and religious point of view), and it gained some popularity by association with his Intensive Journal process. Brendan Collins tells me that the popular practice of Centering Prayer was actually developed by three Cistercian monks of St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, Mass: in the 1970's: William Meninger, Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington, based primarily on The Cloud of Unknowing. He recommends Keating, et al., Finding grace at the center 4 Gillet, The Jesus Prayer 5 Aryeh Kaplan wrote in part to tell Jews that they had a meditative tradition of their own (Kaplan, Jewish meditation : a practical guide, Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah, Kaplan, Meditation and the Bible, Kaplan, Inner Space: introduction to Kabbalah, meditation and prophecy). Other modern authors have emphasized that Judaism, like Christianity, has a metaphysical self-help tradition. See Hoch, Unity in Zion: A Survey of American Jewish Metaphysical Movements for a history of the Jewish metaphysical movement in America. That tradition continues at this writing in the work of Rabbi Shoni Labowitz - see Labowitz, Miraculous living: a guided journey in Kabbalah through the ten gates of the Tree of Life.

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Introduction 1.1.1 Examples to Follow My interest was practical: I wanted examples to follow. When it came time to do my dissertation, I decided to ask practitioners themselves what their experience was. My purpose was not necessarily to find commonalties at the theoretical, doctrinal level. I wanted to know what they actually did. What did they experience when they were working invisibly for others? Did they get any kind of subjective feedback that guided their work? How did they know when they were done?

I wanted to know what about their relationship with the "Blessing Power." Was it close? Respectful? Friendly? Awed? Utilitarian? Collegial? And I wanted to know as well what sort of relationship they had with the people they were praying for.

Finally, I wanted to know how the practice had shaped them. What had they become by doing this practice?

1.1.2 The Law of Requisite Variety In addition I hoped to provide people who already have a practice with alternative methods. As the methods used by religious practitioners are from their own sacred traditions, it can be a matter of principle to use only one method. It is just the way "our kind of people" do it. But there is another view, that a successful worker always has options. In the words of Robert Dilts, Specifically, the Law of Requisite Variety states that "in order to successfully adapt and survive, a member of system needs a certain minimum amount of flexibility, and that flexibility has to be proportional to the potential variation or the uncertainty in the rest of the system." In - 10 -

Introduction other words, if someone is committed to accomplishing a certain goal, he or she needs to have a number of possible ways to reach it. The number of options required to be certain the goal can be reached depends on the amount of change that is possible within the system in which one is attempting to achieve the goal. 6

Sometimes there was something in the spiritual system that required the practitioner to use one and only one method. But in many cases (I am betting) it was just habit. If a variety of other practices were offered and well modeled, I expected that people might be able to adopt or adapt them without giving up their core beliefs.

1.2 Delimitations: What This Study Does Not Examine

1.2.1 Whether prayer works. This is a valid question, but it is not one that can fit into this study. It is tempting to try to show the success or failure of my participants before I interview them. An examination of the literature of "prayer research" shows that that task is a dissertation in itself I just did not have the time.

1.2.2 Whether a given religious belief is valid, or true. Answered prayer is often used to "prove" that a religion is true. Since I will be interviewing people from different confessions, I will dodge this question.

Dilts, Modeling with NLP, p. 9

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Introduction 1.2.3 The social contexts of prayerfulness I will not be examining this issue, although it has been pursued in other studies like that of McGuire.7 I will be asking instead about the experience of individual pray-ers.

1.2.4 Gender and class issues I do not expect to pursue questions about gender and class. My teachers and those I admire come from a number of classes and all genders.

1.3 What this Study Does Hope to Do.

If successful, I would like to create a collection of reports of experience. Each one will be my best attempt to represent what it is like to do prayer or treatment in a certain way.

Together, they are intended to capture some of the styles of prayer and treatment for others that are in use in the United States at the end of the second millennium. They are not necessarily representative; instead they hope to be exemplary.

McGuire and Kantor, Ritual healing in suburban America

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2 METHOD

2.1 Seeking, then Making, a Method

This study seemed to call for a qualitative method. I had no hypotheses to verify through a quantitative test. I wanted to get some ideas, not to test them. While quantitative methods did not seem appropriate, qualitative approaches appeared ideal. They were based in a trust of the person interviewed. They were willing to allow surprises to emerge from the conversations. They were aware of the difficulties of understanding someone whose experience is very, very different.

I began to read about qualitative methods and to ask others for their opinions. Several courses in qualitative methodology, many books and many long conversations left me convinced that I would have to create my own qualitative method.

In addition to the course work, I used Creswell's overview of five qualitative methods, 8 and materials from various schools in an attempt to find a methodological perspective. Phenomenology's habit of receptive silence before phenomena seemed the most respectful attitude, and I gratefully read Moustakas 9 and Ihde.10 I knew I wanted to imitate their respect for the informant and the informant's experience. I could not stay with Phenomenology, however, because I could not make the assumption that I would

8 9

Creswell, Qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five traditions Phenomenological research methods 10 Experimental phenomenology: an introduction

Method find an essence. Tim Lavalli suggested that I consider the Grounded Theorists. The latter proposed that one would come out with a theory, rather than an essence. This expectation matched my nominalist temperament, so I adopted it. But the Strauss and Corbin approach to Grounded Theory11 is filled with sociological presuppositions which I did not want to adopt. I was grateful to find Glaser's12 insistence on the emergence of themes (rather than a force-fit to sociological assumptions) in his rebuttal to Strauss and Corbin. As I am not a woman Feminist theory was inappropriate; but Feminists have created an opening for feeling-based and relational research, and I took advantage of that opening. Narrative Research13 suggested I look for stories, and Discourse Analysis 14 reminded me to look for poetic structure within what I heard. I did not find a school I could join, but I realized that I had the ingredients for a method I could use.

In the end I made my own methodological stew from these elements. Maxwell15 emphasized that the researcher must reflectively design a personal method based on the issues of purpose, conceptual context, research questions, method and validity. At Brendan Collins' suggestion, I did all the exercises in Maxwell's book. Kvale 16 suggested that I return my write-ups to those I interviewed, and ask them to comment and correct my understanding. Laurel Richardson's article on Narrative and Sociology17 offered me the idea that my research could be "exemplary" rather than informative. She talked about the functions of narratives, and two of those functions were to provide
11 12

Basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques Basics of grounded theory analysis: emergence vs forcing. 13 Riessmann, Narrative analysis 14 Gee, The narrativization of experience in the oral style, Gee, Units in the production of narrative discourse 15 Maxwell, Qualitative research design: an interactive approach 16 InterViews: An introduction to qualitative research interviewing

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Method examples that others could follow. Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) has focused on finding and transferring skills. 18 That understanding dovetailed with my desire to find personal examples, and made me realize that I could offer examples to others as well by gathering these interviews. As I was interpreting people's religious lives, I tried to remain aware of hermeneutic issues, and certainly practiced Brennerman's version of the hermeneutic circle. 19 There were computer programs that would help in organizing this research; I chose one called Atlas/ti for its graphical interface, technical excellence, and humor20. In the end I determined I would assume that the informant lived in a coherent world and try respectfully to understand it, that I would try to allow these understandings to emerge with a minimum of in-advance theory, and that I would return what I wrote to the informant for their correction and emendation. I hoped this compound method would help me find and record the experience of others.

Attempting to find examples incidentally addressed one of the issues that besets Qualitative Research - that of generalizability. Statistical research attempts to be sure that the study that is being done is representative of the larger universe. To do this it tries to guarantee that the sample is representative. Qualitative Research most often does not have sample populations that can be shown to be representative of larger groups, and so the generalizability of a qualitative study is always a problem. But research that attempts to find models for imitation does not need to have generalizability. It only needs to show

17 18

Richardson, Narrative and sociology See, for instance, Bandler, Using your brain -- for a change, Dilts, Modeling with NLP, Knight, NLP at work: the difference that makes a difference in business, Milliner, Leaves before the wind : leading edge applications of NLP 19 Brennerman, et al., The seeing eye: hermeneutical phenomenology in the study of religion 20 Walsh and Lavalli, Beyond Beancounting: Qualitative Research Software for Business

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Method that a single individual reports having done or experienced something. That person can then serve as an exemplar for others, because their report serves as an indication that such an experience is possible. The issue of exemplars and generalizability has its own section later in this chapter.

2.2 How the Literature Has Approached Prayer for Others

This study hopes to explore the life of prayer for others. Two questions in particular stood out: How do people do this practice, and how does it affect them? In looking at the existing writings, I tried to find which of these questions was being answered.

I asked as well what I could imitate or borrow for my own study, and what approaches or attitudes have led other authors away from what I am hoping to study.

The literature about the practice of prayer for others is widely dispersed. It is often found mixed with other inquiries about theology or history. It can be written from a variety of skeptical and believing standpoints. It seems that, broadly speaking, there are four ways to find how prayer for others have been approached. 1. One obvious approach is to read biographies of those who follow the practice. 2. A second is to examine how-to books about pray-ers. 3. A third approach is to seek studies of the process of spiritual healing by some sort of prayer. 4. A fourth is to study the communities that practice healing.

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Method

2.2.1 Biography Much of the literature about the life of prayer for others is found in the biographies and autobiographies of those who have followed this practice. Biographies are acts of narrative. They place the focus on the development of a life over time, and find meaning in the changes in those lives. 21 Narratives often focus on the second of our questions, how the life of prayer has affected the one praying.

Biographies have certain constraints. They are written by persons who have interests, and offered to others whose interests may be the same, or may diverge. In evaluating the information in them it is worthwhile to remember what those interests are. Many biographies are written by people who believe in a denomination, and they may take the life of their subject as proof of the accuracy of the doctrines of that group. I remember the brief lives of saints that dotted my childhood parochial education. Each miraculous deed was taken as evidence both that the person was saintly and that the doctrine they embraced was true22. The hagiographical tendency to ignore "unseemly" elements can remove vital information about the person being studied.

There are three book-length biographies of the founder of Religious Science, Ernest Holmes; and they make a good case study of some of the issues in the biography of

21 22

Richardson, Narrative and sociology Sometimes just the reverse is true; the author is trying to show that a church and its doctrine are ridiculous an example is the life of Mary Baker Eddy by Willa Cather Cather and Milmine, The life of Mary Baker Eddy & the history of Christian Science In either case, though, the life is used to prove a point about the organization.

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Method religious figures. The oldest book was written by his brother, Fenwicke Holmes. 23 It is full of information about Holmes' early life, and not surprisingly about the connection between the two brothers. It is so full of stories and appears so seamless that it did not occur to me that it was not a complete story.

A second biography is a collection of fragments brought together by one of his disciples, Reginald C. Armor. There is no direct conflict between it and the first, but in it you find out for the first time that Ernest Holmes loved bad jokes: There was a psychiatrist who had a patient come in for consultation and treatment. The patient was sitting in a chair in his office, affectionately holding a duck, when the doctor entered and asked, "Good afternoon. Just what is your problem?" "There really isn't any problem with me, Doctor," she said, stroking the duck. "The problem I came to see you about is with my husband here. He thinks he's a duck."24

This part of his public persona never came through the biography by his brother. As I read other writings of Fenwick Holmes25 I came to suspect that there were no jokes in Fenwicke Holmes' biography of his brother because Fenwicke himself was devoid of humor. How often does a quality fail to enter a biography just because the writer, lacking that characteristic, fails to perceive it in the subject?

A third biography, by Neal Vahle, retold all of Holmes' life and reveals information about the first. Although Fenwick Holmes gives credit to the Trustees of the United Church of

23 24

Holmes, Ernest Holmes: his life and times Armor, Ernest Holmes the man

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Method Religious Science for underwriting the book, he does not mention that they edited it. The Church split into two denominations during the last part of Holmes' life. Fenwicke Holmes' book was to include a chapter on the division of the denomination into the UCRS and its rival, Religious Science International. The third biography discloses that this chapter was deleted by the Trustees. But like Fenwicke's story, the Vahle book omits reference to Holmes' sense of humor. Both Fenwicke Holmes and Reginald Armor wrote from within the Religious science movement, and did not speak much about the schism within the Church. Vahle is outside of the RS movement and brings the matter into the foreground.

A similar, but subtler, family of issues cloud the questions of prayer style. Everyone who has studied Ernest Holmes, for instance, knows that Holmes was strongly influenced by the British judge Thomas Troward. Troward focuses largely on the process of creation, and Holmes followed him in that. Thus Religious Science seems to focus on the bringing into being of things, the manifestation of concrete results. It is largely a religion of "descent", as Gadjin Nagao said of the Mahayana. Ascent can be understood as an activity or movement from this world to the world yonder, or from this human personal existence to the impersonal dharmadhatu, the world of dharmata. Descent is the reverse; it is revival and affirmation of humanity, or personality in human existence. These two activities function in opposite directions, so they tend to be paradoxical, at times illogical, even contradictory. 26

25 26

Holmes and McEathron, Philip's cousin Jesus : the untold story From his essay Nagao, Ascent and Descent: Two-Directional Activity in Buddhist Thought, p. 201

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Method There is another theme in New Thought, that of ascent. It comes from the work of Mary Baker Eddy and her breakaway disciple Emma Curtis Hopkins. In order to guess the degree to which Holmes was interested in ascent, one might wish to know how much he was exposed to these two writers. Vahle mentions Mrs. Eddy as important, and twice mentions Emma Curtis Hopkins. Armor's collection of stories does not mention either Troward or the two Americans. Fenwicke Holmes devotes a whole chapter to Holmes' encounter with Hopkins, and dwells at length on Holmes' admiration for Eddy. It is all a matter of emphasis, but I believe that the difference in emphasis is important - Holmes did in fact create a religion of bi-directional movement, of ascent as well as manifestation, at least in part because of his contact with these two women's work.

Biography may a good source of information about people, then, but it is full of emphases and deletions that come from the interests of the author. In this case there were three biographies available, and we could see some deletions and shifts of emphasis. In other cases there is only one biography, and we are left to guess at what is missing. If the hermeneutics of suspicion27 is ever appropriate, it is in the reading of biography.

Biographies of religious leaders tend to spend their latter portions on institutional rather than spiritual history. The Fenwicke Holmes and Neal Vahle biographies of Ernest Holmes do just this. The biography of Nona Brooks, the founder of Divine Science, is similar. In the beginning there is much about her spiritual development and how she

27

I find this expression attributed to Paul Ricoeur (Ricur, Freud and philosophy; an essay on interpretation) in Robinson, Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion: A Brief Overview and Critique.

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Method prayed. Later the focus moves to the extension and success of her Church. 28 There is a similar pattern in the life history of Grace Faus, who brought Divine Science to Washington DC.29 Again, this emphasis takes place because the books were written for an audience of church-members. They were influenced and often edited by the denomination, for those interested in the development of their churches.

Organizational biographies may also overemphasize the uniqueness of their subject. This is not always intentional; to talk about any one person is necessarily not to speak as much of others, and one can unfairly be accused of imbalance. But having read accounts of Jesus in the four Gospels, I found that Geza Vermes' Jesus the Jew completely resituated my understanding of Jesus. I had never known that there were other Galilean wonderworkers near his time. Rabbi Gamaliel's son, for instance, was healed by the prayers of Hinani ben Dosa. And the Talmud preserves stories of Honi the CircleDrawer. He acquired his cognomen by drawing a circle around himself and refusing to leave it until God brought rain to a parched village. 30

Another tendency in biographies is to treat the practice of praying for others, or perhaps the talent for healing, as a gift that cannot be learned. Ruth Montgomery's life of "Mr. A" treats his skill as inborn. 31 While it may be true that some people seem born to this work

28 29

Deane, Powerful is the Light - the story of Nona Brooks Zevgolis, Grace and Truth - the story of Grace L. Faus 30 Vermes, Jesus the Jew: a historian's reading of the Gospel 31 Montgomery, Born to heal

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Method Olga Worrall was healing when she was a child 32 others have learned to pray and to do so effectively.

One can criticize biographies and of the interests of those who write them, but I like to recall that Ricoeur's full phrase is "a hermeneutics of suspicion and hope." A good deal can be learned from any biography. Some biographies do center on the internal life of the protagonist. Harry Gaze's biography of the still-popular writer Emmet Fox focuses on Fox's spiritual life 33. Because Gaze was a practitioner of New Thought but not a direct disciple of Fox, he brought an informed but not adulatory appreciation to Fox's style of prayer. Gaze also understood that Fox's prayer, rather than his successful church leadership and writing, was the center of his life. Harry Gaze also wrote a short biography of Thomas Troward, the British judge who so influenced Ernest Holmes. Troward declined to create a group of followers, so his biography centers on his thought and practice.34

Famous pray-ers are also often prevailed upon to write their own autobiographies, and these autobiographies tend to be more wry and aware of human failings than are the overly complimentary biographies written by others. W. Frederic Keeler's acerbic and funny autobiography stays with Keeler's spiritual development. Keeler retired from the ministry early and remained a spiritual healer to the end of his life. He had a curmudgeonly sense of humor through which he viewed the foibles of the metaphysical

32

Cerutti, Mystic with the healing hands: the life story of Olga Worrall, Worrall and Worrall, The gift of healing: a personal story of spiritual therapy 33 Gaze, Emmet Fox: the man and his work 34 Gaze, Thomas Troward: an intimate memoir of the teacher and the man

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Method movement of which he was part. He also turned it on himself. He tells of having lost the key to a violin case containing a valuable instrument. Having used his legendary intuition to ascertain that a certain locksmith was trustworthy, he left the case and instrument with him. When Keeler returned, the locksmith informed him that the case had never been locked - something Keeler's intuition had neglected to tell him. 35 Conservative Christian healer Agnes Sanford also told her story without much varnish. She recounted the story of own healing from deep depression. She told about the strains her healing practice put on her marriage. And though she knows people would think her a bit mad, she admitted her habit (late in life) of praying for easing of the San Andreas Fault.36

It seems the key is simply to ask what question the biographer has brought to the study. I resolved to bring questions of practice and results to my informants, and not to inquire about organizational or "which doctrine is correct" issues.

2.2.2 Manuals of practice There is another way to write about lives of prayer for others, however; and that is as essentially a-temporal patterns, the paradigms of prayer. 37 Those who wish to learn how to pray for others seek to find those patterns, and they find them in manuals that teach one how to adopt this practice.

35 36

Keeler, My story: a study of victorious living by means of intuition Sanford, Sealed orders 37 Donald Polkinghorne attributes this distinction between narrative and paradigmatic discernment to Jerome Bruner. See Polkinghorne, Narrative knowing and the human sciences, p. 17

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Method Every denomination seems to have lovely books about the skills of prayer and blessing. This literature focuses strongly on how one is to do the practice, and the stories contained are sometimes incidental.

In Theravada Buddhism there is a practice of blessing called metta, or "friendliness." It is one of set of four virtues, the Brahmaviharas, that date back at least to the time of Buddha, and which are also found in Patanjali38 and among the Jains.39 In the third century as Christians count the centuries, Buddhaghosa wrote the Visuddhimagga40, compiling it from much older material. It contains in its ninth chapter the definitive description of the Theravadin practice of metta and the other brahmaviharas. Like many manuals of practice, it is extremely condensed. It discusses developmental strategies, from the easy to the difficult, for learning the practice of wishing well to others.

There are also tales of the effectiveness of metta practice. While there is nothing about Buddhaghosa's own experience, we do find stories of others in the text. One tells of Visakha, a merchant-turned-monk. His practice of metta was so effective that a local deva begged him not to leave because the practice had brought peace to the area. This sense that metta has effects on others is much older than the Visuddhimagga. A modern Theravadin practice pamphlet tells the story of the Buddha's encounter with a lethal elephant: Once the Buddha was returning from his almsround together with his retinue of monks. As they were nearing the prison, in consideration of a
38 39

Patanjali, Aphorisms of yoga, I.33 Gada, Jainism simplified 40 Buddhaghosa, Visuddhimagga: the path of purification

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Method handsome bribe from Devadatta, the Buddha's evil and ambitious cousin, the executioner let loose the fierce elephant Nalagiri, which was used for the execution of criminals. As the intoxicated elephant rushed towards the Buddha trumpeting fearfully, the Buddha projected powerful thoughts of metta towards it. Venerable Ananda, the Buddha's attendant, was so deeply concerned about the Buddha's safety that he ran in front of the Buddha to shield him, but the Buddha asked him to stand aside since the projection of love itself was quite sufficient. The impact of the Buddha's metta-radiation was so immediate and overwhelming that by the time the animal neared the Buddha it was completely tamed as though a drunken wretch had suddenly become sober by the magical power of a spell. The tusker, it is said, bowed down in reverence in the way trained elephants do in a circus.41

Some sixteen centuries later, and at the opposite side of the globe, a Presbyterian layman named Glenn Clark undertook to revive the practice of intercessory prayer in mainline Protestantism. He was inspired by the optimistic, confident prayers of New Thought. He was instrumental in bringing New Thought's style of prayer into the larger American denominations, giving an example of how to carry prayer-methods across confessional boundaries.42 He spoke and wrote a great deal about the life of prayer, and how one might live it, in his writings and pamphlets. He also developed training schools for the practice of prayer, called Camp Farthest Out.43 He also wrote a bit about the lives of those who practiced what he was preaching; he wrote the story of George Washington Carver as a model of a prayerful life. 44 Clark attempted to make prayer a constant

41

Buddharakkhita, Metta: the philosophy and practice of universal love, no pagination This story is also told in Narada, The Buddha and his teachings, p. 625 The practice continues today in Burma and Sri Lanka, according to Fryba, The art of happiness: teachings of Buddhist psychology, p. 157. Fryba adds, "For a first exercise in metta, however, one should not choose a large animal." 42 The story is told in Braden, Spirits in rebellion: the rise and development of New Thought 43 Clark, The soul's sincere desire 44 Clark, The man who talks with flowers: the intimate life story of Dr. George Washington Carver

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Method resource for members of his denomination. He taught people to pray in all circumstances, including sickness and war.45

Buddhaghosa and Clark were both primarily interested in teaching others to practice. They incorporated stories of people's lives because those lives provided exemplars that others could follow, and showed the sorts of results that one might expect. But their focus (like that of others who have written manuals of practice) remained on the patterns that one should follow to adopt the practice. In my study I decided to imitate these writers by attempting to find the practice-patterns that my informants follow.

2.2.3 Studies of healing Another approach to a life of prayer for others is through the studies of the effects of prayer. Most such studies in our culture have focused on one subset of blessing, the process of healing.

In the 1950's Franklin Loehr, a Congregationalist minister with a background in chemistry, attempted to establish that prayer could be tested scientifically. He was able to do so to his satisfaction, measuring the growth in plants that were prayed for against control groups.46 His work was preceded by a study of the use of prayer in therapy groups.47 But it was to be some years before the topic became very popular outside of small groups.

45

Clark, How to find health through prayer, Clark, et al., The third front through the paths of faith, hope and love 46 Loehr, The power of prayer on plants 47 Parker, Prayer can change your life

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Method

During those intervening years the widespread use of psychedelic drugs had brought a new cultural awareness of alternative consciousness, and later studies were likely to incorporate that awareness of other cognitive states. In the late nineteen-sixties Lawrence LeShan attempted to discover what made it possible for successful healers in different traditions to do their work. He published several times on this topic. The first work was a formal monograph48 and six years later there was a more complete and popular presentation called The Medium, the Mystic and the Physicist.49 The healing method he studied was based on experiencing a different reality from that which we ordinarily live within. In common experience there is more truth to separation than to connectedness; time and space are very real, and so are good and bad. In the reality experienced (if just momentarily) by the healers LeShan studied, difference and separation were not particularly real, but unity and connectedness were primary. Time and space could be discerned, but they were secondary to timelessness and spacelessness.

I decided to imitate LeShan in trying to discern the experienced reality of healers.

A number of studies have been made over the years about the effectiveness of prayer and other forms of healing.50 Some of this work has been summarized by Daniel Benor in a four-volume compendium published in Germany. 51 Perhaps the most impressive and
48 49

LeShan, Toward a general theory of the paranormal: a report of work in progress LeShan, The medium, the mystic, and the physicist: toward a general theory of the paranormal 50 Wulff, Psychology of religion: classic and contemporary 51 Benor, Healing research: holistic energy medicine and spirituality: volume I: research in healing, Benor, Healing research: holistic energy medicine and spirituality: volume II: holistic energy medicine and the energy body, Benor, Healing research: holistic energy medicine and spirituality: volume III: research in spiritual healing, Benor, Healing research: holistic energy medicine and spirituality: volume IV: healing in

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Method most often-quoted is the research of cardiologist Randolph Byrd. He showed (in a fully controlled, double-blind project) that patients in a cardiac intensive-care unit did better on many measures of medical well-being when they had been prayed for by fundamentalist Christians.52 Benor includes other studies of healing work by Christians, Jews, and seculars. All of the work that he reviews was done within the framework of standard scientific research.

Larry Dossey, M.D. has introduced many of these studies to a wider audience. 53 As a former Christian who has become agnostic, he parallels many of us in his life experience. Dossey has a twofold message. He says that there is scientific and secular support for the efficacy of prayer, and he says that we can pray without returning to the churches of our childhood. It seems to me that Dossey's role has been to popularize these two ideas in modern awareness. I hoped to imitate Dossey by avoiding jargon, and by asking the informants to interpret their denominational languages for us.

There have been other approaches to the study of healing. Robert Dilts was one of the developers of NLP, or NeuroLinguistic Programming. 54 NLP often asks how skillful persons do what they do, what "strategies" they are using. Dilts brought these questions to the practices of Jesus of Nazareth and asked, "How did he work? What world did he

the light of recent research. For a review of this work, please see my Walsh, A review of Healing Research: Holistic Energy Medicine and Spirituality, by Daniel J. Benor. 52 Byrd, Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population 53 Dossey, Be careful what you pray for... you just might get it, Dossey, Healing words: the power of prayer and the practice of medicine 54 Dilts, Modeling with NLP, Dilts, Strategies of genius, Dilts, Tools of the Spirit, Dilts and Epstein, Dynamic learning

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Method work within?" 55 Because Dilts inquires within the NLP interest in sensory systems, he was able to determine that Jesus' relationship with spirit was visual: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do..." 56 That is a surprise to many of us for whom feeling is the method of connection. This is the sort of surprise that we should expect when we pay careful attention to the way those who pray experience the world: what seem to be dissonances may be exactly what we need to notice. I chose to use NLP questions about favored sensory systems and about the marks that people use to ascertain that their prayer has been a success. These questions about sensory systems and success-indicators became my only a priori questions.

Still another sort of prayer-study has been conducted by Spindrift and its successor organization, Grayhaven. The founders were Christian Science practitioners and a Christian Science nurse. These investigators attempted to find measurable correlates for excellent Christian Science prayer. The Spindrift/Grayhaven researchers argue convincingly that they have been able to make a distinction within the idea of prayer and healing. They feel that they can test when the pray-er is using a forceful kind of mental coercion and when, instead, the pray-er is using an awareness of the identity the one prayed for and the patterning power of Spirit. They also have done work to demonstrate that their distinctions are applicable outside of their denomination. 57 Deborah Klingbeil, who was one of the Spindrift researchers and founder of the Grayhaven School,

55 56

Dilts, Cognitive patterns of Jesus of Nazareth: tools of the Spirit John 5:19 57 Klingbeil and Klingbeil, The Spindrift papers: Volume 1 1975-1993 exploring prayer and healing through the experimental test, Owen, The healer, Owen, Qualitative research: the early years

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Method consented to be part of my study, and will speak about her experiences in a chapter below.

2.2.4 Studies of praying communities In addition to the study of prayer as a process, it is possible to study the communities within which it happens. Three books have done that particularly well.

Fred Frohock has examined non-ordinary healing in its relationship to the law. 58 Focusing on cases in which the state has intervened to protect minors from reliance on faith-healing, Frohock shows how such situations constitute a crisis for the "liberal state." They are contexts in which the state must abandon its posture of neutrality about religion. While Frohock's focus on relations with the state are tangential to my study, his interviews with participants are models of how to understand views we do not share of conveying the reality experienced by others, sympathetically and in such a way that the others would concur. He manages to present conflicting understandings without attempting to smooth over or diminish their disagreements. In several studies he reports the experiences of families that wished to rely on non-ordinary healing for their children. He reveals them as concerned and thoughtful. He tells the story of doctors who brought those parents to court to force them to accept medical treatment for their children. The doctors are also portrayed as ethical people who intervened only after deep, even agonized, reflection. In doing my interviews I hoped to be able to present apparently contrasting experiences without diminishing their divergences, and I use Frohock as a model.

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Method

Thomas Csordas is a cultural anthropologist who has written about Roman Catholic Charismatic healing. He has created what he calls a "cultural phenomenology." It represents a concern for synthesizing the immediacy of embodied experience with the multiplicity of cultural meaning in which we are always and inevitably immersed. 59

Csordas differs from Frohock in that he focuses on a single community and its experience. He also differs from Frohock in that he interprets what he has found in his interviews from a reductionist sociological perspective. That is, he tends to treat the respondents' spirit-based answers as false. Perhaps he would question such a harsh word, but it seems to be the judgment he has made in almost every case: he quotes the respondent's explanation in terms of the interaction of God and spirits, and then follows that with a sociological explanation that does not include or accept the respondent's interpretation. I do not wish to imitate his example in this.

On the other hand, Csordas is a master of phenomenological summary: The series of terms used to describe the experiential modality of the sensorium during resting in the Spirit includes qualities of consciousness as well as sensations: 1) waves or peace or love up and down one's arms, feeling washed over from head to toe, things rushing through one ("probably minister angels flushing through the body"), warmth, dizziness (absence of dizziness in one case of a woman who typically becomes dizzy if lying on her back); 2) removed from sensation, conscious but not aware of surroundings, inattentive to surroundings, not aware of one's body, unaware of pressure from the floor one is lying on; 3) like being in another world/another dimension/somewhere else, letting go of earthly
58 59

Frohock, Healing powers : alternative medicine, spiritual communities, and the state Csordas, The sacred self: a cultural phenomenology of Charismatic healing, p. vii

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Method feelings, forgetting one's self; 4) like being hypnotized, in suspended animation, massively tranquilized under sodium pentothal but awake, lifeless. Once again in this domain of sensory disengagement and transport, the indeterminacy of self creates a crisis for the definition of person. Again the critical theme is that of control, posed as the question of whether one is "conscious or unconscious" while resting in the Spirit. 60

I hope to imitate Csordas in considering the concrete experiential descriptions that respondents give, while avoiding what seems to me to be a sociological reductionism.

Meredith McGuire and Debra Kantor are sociologists who interviewed a variety of persons in healing groups in New Jersey. 61 Their interview technique and methodological considerations are models for the kind of interviews I wish to do. They attempted to elicit both the experience and the world-views of persons involved with Christian, Metaphysical and Occult healing. My interviews will differ from theirs in that I will not be attempting to situate the interviews sociologically, and I will not be attempting to connect the results with sociological explanatory principles. I will imitate them in using an extended questionnaire to prompt the participants. I will also consider the results discovered by McGuire and Kantor in comparison with the results given by my informants. The prime difference between my research and theirs is that they interview individuals as representatives of groups. I am interviewing practitioners as individuals. The membership in a group is one of the true things about each individual, but it is not necessarily the central thing. It is for that reason that the chapters are named for individuals, rather than for the denominations those individuals belong to.

60

Csordas, The sacred self: a cultural phenomenology of Charismatic healing, p. 242

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Method All of these authors have contributed attitudes and approaches to this study. I have not imitated any of them exactly, but have been influenced by them during interviews and analysis. The common threads to those influences can be summarized in two aphorisms: focus on the issues you wish to know about, forswearing other matters; and respectfully interpret your informant's views even when they contradict your (or other informants') opinions. Whether those two aphorisms are compatible is an interesting question.

2.3 The Generalizability of the Results: Existence Proofs, Exemplars, and Jacques Pepin's Cooking
"In the middle of life's journey I found myself in a dark wood." -Dante, L'Inferno

I was a realist in the midst of post-modernists, looking for a realistic method to discover people's subjective experience of their religious life. My view of the research was exactly that which Tierney62 called with some disapproval "the portal" view. It was an attempt to "seek to understand a world different from ours: such understanding will not merely enlighten and enthrall us but perhaps will also enable us to come to terms with a particular social phenomena [sic]".

What was it like to pray for other people as a spiritual path? Because such pray-ers are rarely interviewed, it was clear it would be an interesting and valuable work. Realists

61 62

McGuire and Kantor, Ritual healing in suburban America Life History's History: Subjects Foretold

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Method often favor quantitative approaches, but it was clear to me that a quantitative method would not do this job. I needed a way to discover the experiences of persons who were having an adventure unusual in our milieu, and to allow it to unfold as best it could in my understanding and then in my writing. There was no beginning hypothesis to test, so there could be no quantitative study of such a hypothesis. And those I interviewed would be few in number, so I had sampling problems.

2.3.1 Looking for General Truth How well witnesses can recapture experience is always problematic, as I discover every time I try to remember someone's name; but that matter is not the focus here. I would rather look at a second issue about qualitative research: "Even if the witnesses are credible, how general is the truth we have found?" As a realist, I felt I needed an answer to this question.

One approach to generality is statistical, but the method I had cobbled together was not going to give me a valid sample. The small group of people to whom I was speaking was not likely to be a representative sample even of American religious life. The method I used to find them was simply that somebody recommended someone else. Although this method had names ("key informant" followed by "snowballing") and there were citations for it63, it could not claim to produce a representative sample.

The hope was to find information that had application and implications beyond the small group of people who had chosen to speak with me about their spiritual life. It seemed

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Method more valuable to find generalizable information. "Says who?" might be a reply. Well, in fact, so say most of us: we usually want general truths because they let us pay more attention to life and less to thinking about life. If I know that my bus will reliably come to the corner at eight-oh-five, I can spend the rest of my time making coffee and feeding the cat. If I have no idea when the bus will be there and if being on the bus is important to me I am likely to neglect the cat and the coffee because I must go wait for my bus.

Generally-applicable information can be uninteresting unless we care about the topic. If we do care, though, it interests us deeply. I was asking these people about their spiritual lives because what they said mattered to me. And I think that most people who do inquiry care about the topic they have chosen. Scholarship and research are acts of passion. We search for informants and ask them to join us in our investigation just because we do care very much about what we find. If we did not, we would stay home with the cat.

2.3.2 Doubting The Statisticians I knew that the people who had spoken to me had something valuable to say. They had spent their lives devoted to a rare pursuit. Did they have to be dismissed as an "inadequate and unscientific sample"? A critic with a superficial grasp of statistical methods might think so.

63

Monette, Applied social research, Rubin, Research methods for social work

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Method The kind of generality claimed for statistical studies is interesting, though. Statistical research does not give certain knowledge. Instead, it gives an informed guess. Blaise Pascal began his study of probabilities after he met the Chevalier de Mr. This nobleman was addicted to gambling, and he had an intuitive talent for guessing the odds. Pascal wanted to understand the patterns that Mr was perceiving 64. It was from the Chevalier's passion for gambling and Pascal's passion for understanding that we inherit the quantitative method - a strategy for guessing. Careful statisticians understand that we are forced to guess about the world; their desire is to make the best guess possible. They would be the first to say that what they are finding is not any kind of certain knowledge. That means that statistical studies also have epistemological problems: no matter how rigorous their statistical method, their result remains a guess about the general truth. It is an informed, disciplined conjecture.

The guesswork of the statisticians has one virtue: it does speak about general cases. I knew that my eight informants did not constitute a sample, and might not be representative of anyone except themselves. Were their stories "just anecdotes"? Would the results that I was getting be of a lower epistemological status than the results obtained from a valid quantitative study? I wondered what sort of general knowledge a qualitative study of their experience might have to offer.

2.3.3 Saved by the Chef I was working at that moment in a public television station in San Francisco. The station was taping the second series of Jacques Pepin: Cooking with Claudine. In this show
64

Bernstein, Against the gods : the remarkable story of risk

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Method Pepin was teaching his daughter something of what he had learned in forty years of cooking for de Gaulle, the Kennedy family, and millions of people on television. I had the good fortune to do audio on these shows. I was very excited because I have been an amateur cook for years. Every night I went home and cooked something he had demonstrated that day; my wife wished we would tape Pepin shows every week. To work on a program with Jacques Pepin was to get a master cooking class from the very best.

In the Pepins' show they re-enacted the master-apprentice teaching relationship by which Jacques Pepin had learned, first from his restauratrice mother and later from cooking schools. At one point Jacques showed Claudine how to drain a batch of banana fritters, fresh from the fat. Claudine was spreading paper towels on a cookie sheet, and Jacques said: JP: What are you doing there? CP: I'm getting so you can drain it...and I'll cut the bananas. JP: No No No No. That's no good. I don't drain it...People drain it on paper towels -- This is a mistake. Because what happens, you put it on top, there is no air underneath, it gets soggy, it gets soft underneath. I learn that with the Korean people. And the Korean [ JP puts a slightly elevated cake-rack over the towels] you put a wire rack on top of it, you know. You put a wire rack so there's air underneath it; it can drain. There is air underneath, and that's really what you want to do... 65

I had never heard of this technique before. It was new in my world, and I immediately adopted it.

65

Pepin and Pepin, Jacques Pepin's Kitchen: Encore! Cooking with Claudine

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Method

Is this "just an anecdote"? It happened about the time I was reading Laurel Richardson's article, "Narrative and Sociology"66. She argues that personal stories have a variety of overlapping roles in a culture. Among them are what she calls "cultural stories" and "collective stories." Cultural stories provide exemplars of lives, heroes, villains, and fools as they are embedded in larger cultural and social frameworks, as well as stories about home, community, society, and humankind.

The collective story, she says, gives voice to those who are silenced or marginalized in the cultural narrative.the collective story displays an individual's story by narrativizing the experiences of the social category to which the individual belongs, rather than by telling the particular individual's story or by simply retelling the cultural story.

Jacques and Claudine Pepin had created an "example" and an "exemplar." The dual role of their performance is highlighted by Richardson. By showing that something was possible that I had thought was impossible, they gave an "example." They moved something from the margins of experience, where impossible things live, to the center of awareness where it was undeniable. They had created an existence proof. They had also modeled a behavior which others could follow, and were "exemplars" for other cooks.

66

Narrative and sociology

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Method 2.3.4 Existence Proofs: Give Me an Example Mathematicians often talk about existence proofs. Those are any proofs that show that something exists. The most usual kind of existence proof is constructivist; in Wittgenstein's67 laconic words, Some existence proofs consist in exhibiting a particular mathematical structure, i.e., in "constructing an entity".

Existences are important for several reasons. First, you may for some reason want certain things to exist. If you are seeking way to keep fried food from being soggy, the fact that there is a way to keep it crisp is relevant to you in and of itself.

But that is still a single case. Is there any kind of general knowledge that can be obtained by knowing that X exists? It seems to me that there are two important kinds of universal knowledge that an existence proof gives you.

First, an existence proof shows that we live in a universe in which X is possible. If you have always believed that crisp fried food is impossible, then seeing the Pepin family's demonstration means that your believed-universe suddenly gets bigger. As Deborah Klingbeil (one of women I interviewed) put it, in describing the effect of paranormal demonstrations on those who see them: see, these are the sort of things, somebody shows something like that, and a person responds, "That's interesting." And then they try it, and their world gets bigger

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Method Second, a demonstrated existence disproves all contrary theories. It is a counterexample. If there are theories that say X cannot exist, finding X disproves those theories. One example can prove that many big and pretentious theories just ain't so. You have falsified them, seven at one blow, as in the Grimm tale. Counterexamples are powerful stuff.

So finding or creating an example of X has two very powerful and very general intellectual consequences. It shows that this universe is one in which it is possible for X to exist; and it demonstrates that any theory that denies X is false.

The existence of X does this even if no one ever finds another X. If your informant is the only one who ever experienced X - and if your informant is credible that "anecdote" by itself has enlarged the universe and laid low many theories. This is a consequence of what a postmodern analysis might call the demarginalization of X.

2.3.5 "For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done" 68 There is a second a second meaning to the word "example." It is an exemplar, and an exemplar can be imitated. As soon as I saw the Pepins' method of handling fried food, I started "doing as they had done."

This possibility of imitation is what makes an exemplar so powerful in the world of action. If Rosa Parks sits down in the front of the bus, she has not only shown that the

67

Wittgenstein's lectures, Cambridge, 1932-1935: from the notes of Alice Ambrose and Margaret Macdonald

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Method universe has the possibility of a dark-skinned woman sitting in the front of the bus, and destroyed all theories that say it is impossible. That would be an existence-proof, but she has done more. She has also given an exemplar that others can follow.

It is for this reason that the examples found by qualitative research are consequential. If one informant in a qualitative study has done something, and you record it, you transfer a pattern that others can use as a model. Pepin had learned from Koreans; the show transmitted that exemplar to the viewers. This is one of the roles of narrative mentioned by Laurel Richardson in her 1990 study of the functions of stories 69: they serve as a pattern that people can follow. People live by stories. If the available narrative is limiting, destructive, or at odds with the actual life, peoples' lives end up being limited and textually disenfranchised. Collective stories which deviate from standard cultural plots provide new narratives; hearing them legitimates a replotting of one's own life. New narratives offer the patterns for new lives.

They also say something very important for social beings like us: They say that if you do it, you will not be alone. There are others like you.

The cases I have given above are admirable, leading to good cooking and desirable social change. There are more ominous roles for exemplars: copy-cat crimes, dysfunction transmitted through families for generations, and ethnic hatreds learned in childhood from one's elders.

68

John 13:15

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Method Whether the exemplar given is good or bad, it does remain as a possible model. And that exemplar may persist into the distant future. When I began my research on spiritual practices, I was inspired in part by a document written by the philosopher Philo, giving us our only knowledge of a Jewish-Egyptian monastic community in the desert near Alexandria70. Philo wrote his essay while Jesus was alive; I took it as an exemplar two millennia later. Exemplars are a cross-temporal and intercultural form of knowledge.

2.3.6 Exemplary Research Persons from other epistemological traditions might accept qualitative research without all this extra talk. But I think of myself as an epistemological realist. As a realist I was trying to understand what sort of knowledge was produced by qualitative research. The criticisms I had heard suggested it was inferior knowledge, because it lacked generalizability.

But qualitative research does give general knowledge. It produces what in the austere language of mathematics is called "existence proofs, " and restores significance to the unusual and perhaps statistically anomalous. Qualitative research shows that certain phenomena exist, and falsifies any theory that does not acknowledge its findings. By threatening to falsify any theory that does not make room for what it has found, qualitative research can set criteria for general theories. Whatever else they do, general theories must have a place for the examples discovered by qualitative studies.

69 70

Richardson, Narrative and sociology Winston, Philo of Alexandria: The Contemplative Life, The Giants, and Selections

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Method Qualitative research also provides models to be imitated. What has been done can be done again. In finding these exemplars we offer patterns for others to imitate.

Each of these roles involves examples, and qualitative research seems always to provide examples. Perhaps a realistic name for all qualitative inquiry would be "Exemplary Research."

2.4 The Plan of the Research

This is the statement of purpose and the action plan I created after doing the exercises in Maxwell. 71 It became the concrete plan that guided my research. 2.4.1 Intention The purpose of the dissertation is to gather the experiences of persons who pray or treat for others, so that they can serve as exemplars for others in our culture and the future.

2.4.2 Selection of Participants I will be interviewing five to eight people, from different religious groups. They will be persons I discover who meet four criteria:

A. "Working" for others is a major part of their practice. They pray or treat for others often, and consider it part of their religious practice.

71

Maxwell, Qualitative research design: an interactive approach

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Method B. They have been doing this practice for some years. They may have developed the practice over time, but they have been doing it for more than two years.

C. They are well-known in the field of prayer and healing, or they are known in their community as successful. Either they are a well-known figure such as a researcher or an elected figure in their denomination, or they have a reputation for efficacy in their community which I can check by asking one or more members of their community. Or both.

D. They have signs of balance. Some possible signs are a sense of perspective or humor, and a lack of fanaticism. I include this difficult-to-specify criterion because I hope to find practitioners who will serve as models for other people.

2.4.3 Research Questions I will be trying to answer the following research questions. 72 I may not ask these research questions directly of the participants, unless the interview questions (which follow) and the followup questions which amplify each interview question do not elicit enough information.73 I use the word "prayer," "treatment" and "Blessing Power" in the following questions; in the interview I would use the terminology of the informants, and the words they have given me in the first interview question.

72

The distinction between research questions and interview questions I learned from Maxwell, Qualitative research design: an interactive approach. 73 This follows the "Funneling" strategy of Smith, Semi-Structured Interviewing and Qualitative Analysis.

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Method 2.4.3.1.1 What do these practitioners actually do when they pray or treat for others? This is a question about strategy, in the Neurolinguistic Programming sense. 74 Do they have a preferred sense to represent their experience - visual, perhaps, or feeling? How do they enter the prayer or treatment state, and when (and why) do they leave it? What do they do within the state, and how does it differ from what they do otherwise?

2.4.3.1.2 What is their relationship with those they pray for? Do those they pray for have to be present? Consenting? Likeable? How do they "contact" them if they are distant? Is their connection with this person permanent? What is the feeling quality of their connection?

2.4.3.1.3

What is their relationship with the Blessing Power(s), in what kind of experienced universe? Is the Blessing Power personal or impersonal? Is the blessing a gift or the result of a law in the universe? What kind of characteristics must the universe have for the prayer or treatment to be meaningful and successful? 75

2.4.3.1.4 How has this practice changed them over the years? How did they begin to pray, and what has changed in their experience because they do? How do they deal with success and failure? What do they love about the practice? How has it shaped them?

74

NeuroLinguistic Programming has gathered and developed a variety of methods for discovering the strategies by which skillful people perform their arts. See Bandler, Using your brain -- for a change, Dilts, Modeling with NLP, Dilts and Epstein, Dynamic learning, Dilts, Changing belief systems with NLP, Gordon, Therapeutic metaphors: helping others through the looking glass.

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Method

2.4.4

The Interview

2.4.4.1 Interview Methodology I will visit the interviewees when possible. When it is not practical to visit them in person because they are far away, I will telephone them at a prearranged time. My handout and prior conversations will have explained the purpose of the interview. I will tape the interviews. I will obtain a written permission to record the interview and to use the information.

There will be two interviews. In the first interview I will be asking the following questions. The second interview is discussed under Analysis. 2.4.4.2 The Interview Questions I Plan to Ask Them Include: I will ask the summary question (which are capitalized below) first. The questions that are grouped beneath each summary question are followup questions in case more prompting is necessary. 76

2.4.4.2.1 "PLEASE TELL ME A BIT ABOUT YOUR PRACTICE." What do you call your practice? What do you call what I have referred to as the "Blessing Power?" How long have you done the practice? How often do you do this practice?

75

Examination of the nature of the experienced reality was the basis of the model developed by LeShan. See LeShan, The medium, the mystic, and the physicist: toward a general theory of the paranormal, LeShan, Toward a general theory of the paranormal: a report of work in progress 76 This follows the funnel method of Smith, Semi-Structured Interviewing and Qualitative Analysis

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Method

2.4.4.2.2 "JUST WHAT DO YOU DO IN YOUR PRACTICES?" What distinguishes the state of prayer or treatment from other conditions? What does the state of prayer feel like? What would you tell someone else to do in order to pray or treat as you do? Do you follow a customary program or ritual when praying for others, or is it created adhoc each time, or is it a mix?

2.4.4.2.3

"HOW DO YOU ENTER THE STATE OF PRAYER OR TREATMENT?" When do you do it? Under what circumstances do you do it? Where do you do it? Do you do it alone? With others? What are the preliminaries? Are they necessary? Some people chant, visualize, breathe in a particular way or visualize? Do you have any such custom? Are there customary postures or gestures associated with this practice for you? Are there certain words you use in prayer?

2.4.4.2.4 "HOW DO YOU CONTACT THE BLESSING POWER(S)?" Can you reach this Power at will, or must you wait on it? Is there more than one Blessing Power? Is the Blessing Power a person? -47-

Method Do you feel a relationship with this Power? Is the Power essentially a law of nature, like gravity? Do you feel you are a separate entity than this power? Does the Power have an emotional quality? Do you enjoy the contact with the Power? How do you recognize this Power, and distinguish it from other entities?

2.4.4.2.5

"HOW DO YOU WORK WITH THE PERSON YOU ARE PRAYING FOR?" Do you work only when the person is present? Do you ever decline to work on a person? How do you "contact" and identify a person you are working on at a distance? If you work at a distance, how do you identify them Is the contact (with the person treated for) like the contact with the Blessing Power? Do you need to know the person you are working for personally? Can you treat a person who has not consented in advance? Is there any person for whom it is not appropriate to pray? Does the contact persist after you have completed a treatment?

2.4.4.2.6 "WHAT GUIDES A TREATMENT WHILE YOU ARE DOING IT?" Is there an inner experience that lets you know you have completed the treatment? Is there an indicator by which you know you have succeeded, or that all is well? Is there an indicator that tells you there is a problem with the treatment? Do you always experience success subjectively? -48-

Method Do you repeat treatments? How do you know if you need to do so?

2.4.4.2.7

"WHAT HAVE YOU HAVE SEEN HAPPEN BECAUSE OF YOUR PRAYERS AND TREATMENTS?" Do you feel it is appropriate to test the effectiveness of your practice and prayers? What results have you seen or heard of that you would call successes? Can you tell me about some prayer interventions and their results? Do you have any validations that would convince a skeptic?

2.4.4.2.8 "HOW HAVE YOU LEARNED TO PRAY?" Are there teachers or books that you value and in whose path you try to walk? Did you have a teacher or teachers? Are there favorite books you turn to often? Have you learned from people outside your communion? Have you taught any others?

2.4.4.2.9 "HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH DIFFICULTY AND FAILURE?" Do you experience any uncertainties? Have you experienced what seems to be a failure of prayer? How do you understand or deal with such apparent failures? How do you understand such things? Are there times you just cannot pray or treat? What do you do then? Do you experience depression or "faith crashes"? Do you ever refer a person to others? -49-

Method

2.4.4.2.10

"HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES DURING AND ASSOCIATED WITH PRAYER?" Do you have negative experiences during prayer? Do any negative personal qualities come up? How do you deal with these experiences and qualities? Are these negativities ever transformed into benefits?

2.4.4.2.11 "WHAT DO YOU VALUE ABOUT YOUR PRACTICES?" What about your practice do you love? What kind of person should follow this practice? What would you like to share with others? What do you expect/hope/look forward to in your practice? How has this practice changed you?

2.4.4.2.12

"WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO PRAY NOW FOR THE SUCCESS AND USEFULNESS OF MY DISSERTATION?" (Here I ask them to pray for my dissertation. I really do want them to do so. And in addition I get to hear their language of prayer.)

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Method 2.4.5 Analysis

2.4.5.1 Analysis of the First Interview I will transcribe the interviews myself. I will code each interview separately, using the software Atlas/ti.77 It is a program that lets the user mark quotations within text and group those marked quotations by theme. It will be used as I try to answer two kinds of questions. 2.4.5.1.1 What Exactly Do They Do? This question uses the tools of NeuroLinguistic Programming to try to get a sense of what they do. I will be attempting to find the sorts of verbs they use (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic) and their sequence in an attempt to guess how they represent their experience subjectively. I will try to find what sets prayer or treatment apart from other states, how they begin and end it, and what they do within it. I will try to discover the nature of their tests for success and failure. This is an a priori set of questions, and the answers it will elicit cannot be called emergent.

2.4.5.1.2

What is their relationship with those they pray for, and what is their relationship with the Blessing Power(s), in what kind of experienced universe?

These questions will be asked within a Grounded Theory framework. During the open coding I will look for and mark in vivo themes using the Atlas software. From those themes I will extract axial codes that group these themes and provide preliminary categories. From those axial themes I will then move to the highest level of abstraction,

77

Muhr, Atlas/ti: the knowledge workbench - visual qualitative data analysis, management and modelbuilding For a comparison of this software with other Qualitative Research software, see Walsh and Lavalli, Beyond Beancounting: Qualitative Research Software for Business

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Method selective coding, and attempt to find the story that accurately represents what the informant has told me. The axial and selective codes will be emergent; I have no idea in advance what they will be.78

I will use Phenomenological79 and Narrative80 techniques, as well as discourse analysis,81 to supplement my understanding of what is happening in the interview.

After I have done my coding, I will write up my understanding of what they interviewee has told me. 2.4.5.2 The Second Interview I will send the interviewee a copy of what I have written, and arrange a second interview. In this meeting I will ask what is right and what is not so correct in what I have written. I expect that their responses will significantly change the "spin" of what I have written. 82 I may bring questions that have arisen in interviews with other participants to find what this person thinks of the issue, allowing the interviewees to react to each other's thoughts and experiences.

78

The primary current reference must be Strauss, Basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques, a useful manual that unfortunately is embedded within a variety of socialscience assumptions. The co-discoverer of the method registered a vigorous dissent and argument for a more "emergent" methodology in Glaser, Basics of grounded theory analysis: emergence vs forcing.. I followed Glaser's wing of Grounded Theory because my studies do not fit easily within Strauss and Corbin's framework of sociological assumptions. 79 Moustakas, Phenomenological research methods 80 Richardson, Narrative and sociology, Riessmann, Narrative analysis. 81 Gee, et al., Discourse Analysis. 82 In bringing the analysis back to the person who spoke with me I follow the recommendation of Kvale, InterViews: An introduction to qualitative research interviewing.

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Method I will transcribe the second interview as well, and code it as I coded the first. The result of the two interviews will be used to create a final (for the moment) representation of the practice of each participant. 2.4.5.3 Comparison and Connection In the final section of analysis I will try to show how the practices overlap and how they differ. My intention will not be only to find common practices: divergences will be as informative as the similarities. And this theoretical coda is not the heart of the dissertation: the important part of the work is in the chapters on each individual. This final section will be used only to note obvious points about similarity and difference. As with the Grounded Theory portion of each chapter's analysis, it is impossible to say what this section will contain. It will emerge only from the interviews, their analyses, and the corrections the participants give me.

2.5 Expectations
No one goes into this kind of research without a few guesses about what will be found. Here I try to confess my prior expectations, or at least the ones that have become conscious, as if I were one of the informants: I expect that analysis will not reveal an agreement in ideology among the pray-ers. I expect that there may be more overlap among their practices than there is in their ideologies. Even in the case of practices, however, I expect that the similarities may be more like what Wittgenstein calls a "family resemblance" than a sharing of any single feature. I expect that each person interviewed will share at least one or two elements of practice with some others. I expect that there may not be a single element of practice which all share, but that there may be considerable overlap of elements - just as some members of a family share eye-color, while others share hair-type or height.

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Method 2.5.1 Leaving the Record (More or Less) Untampered With This method was revised January 28, 1999, after advice from Brendan Collins, and meetings with Daniel Deslauriers, my dissertation support group, and many other friends. It is the plan with which I entered the dissertation, though not exactly what I did. More about the deviations from the plan appears in the final chapters.

2.6 How The Following Interviews Are Written

2.6.1 The Organization of the Interview Chapters I write this much later than the rest of the introductory chapters. Most of the introduction and method chapters were written before the interviews, and (except for minor editing) I have let them stand. I write this part after the interviews have been completed and largely written up.

The interviewees have been asked very similar questions, and one possibility is to present their responses to those questions. The result would be a sort of table, even if it were presented in prose: "To this question the first person said this, and the second said that," and so on.

However, it is my intention to find out what the life of prayer-for-others is like for different practitioners. Those practitioners differ, not only in their answers to the questions but also in which questions seem important; so I am attempting a different sort of organization. At the risk of being totally subjective, I am trying to organize the writeups in terms of the themes that emerged from the transcripts. I attempt to make their

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Method discourse, rather than my questions, be the spine of the writing. One result is that the chapters about individuals may barely reveal that they were asked, in most cases, very similar questions. Even the prayers that each offered for my dissertation are not always mentioned. I am grateful for those prayers, and believe they are very helpful, but I talk about them only when they are part of a theme that seems important.

To avoid unchecked projection of my agendas onto their experiences, I have been asking the eight participants to review and check what I have written. I feel that their opportunity to correct my impressions gives me a corresponding liberty to record more than simply their responses to my questions. I have been trying to find the flavors and textures of their prayer lives.

It did not seem likely at the beginning that those flavors and textures would be variations on some basic theme, and I have not found them to be so. I will say more of this lack of commonality in the final chapter. 2.6.2 Onymity or Anonymity?

Should academic studies of individuals always be anonymous?

If one looks at psychological studies, it would appear so. There seems to be a medical model that is extended into research. When one goes to a doctor, it is wisely customary that what one says is private. The lineage of Psychology in our culture flows from

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Method Medicine, and the privacy rights of psychological "patients" derive from that of medical patients.

If the doctor should speak about a patient's condition, that privacy requires that all identifying information be removed. When ones does medical research, the subjects must not be named, because they are patients. If Psychology is a branch of Medicine, those "on whom" one does psychological research are also patients, and must not be named.

There are other models of research, however: the ones that come to mind are the study of Art, History and Journalism. Each has its own rules, and those rules differ from each other. If one reproduces a work of art, for instance, without crediting a known source, one has committed a serious breach. Authorship of a work of art in our culture is a permanent possession of its creator. One must name the author or be guilty of plagiarism. Although permission to reproduce can be given, the name of the artist must be associated with the creation; not to do so is a form of theft.

As an undergraduate I majored in History. In historical studies one must if possible reveal the names of the ones whom one is quoting. Anonymous sources in history are suspect, because no one knows just who those persons are. One does not know the relationships and connections of their lives, their status and position in their society, the influences that made them who they are and the consequences that emerged from their choices.

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Method Historical students continually attempt to identify a nameless source. Any clue is seized upon and valued. An author who has attempted to disguise a source, on the other hand, is reprehensible. Responsible historical research is "onymous."

Journalism takes a middle road. I have spent more than thirty years around journalists, as a technician on news crews and on news sets. I have also written in a computer news magazine for fifteen years. The rule in journalism is that it is preferable to give the names of informants , but there are situations in which it is acceptable to disguise a source. Information which is attributable is more believable, for exactly the same reason it is credible in historical research: one can place the informants and evaluate what they say from one's knowledge of their positioning. There are situations in which one publishes anonymous information, however. If the informants can only say something from within the protection of namelessness, one can use their information without attribution. In this case the responsibility of evaluation falls on the reporter and the editor; one believes a publication's anonymous sources because one trusts the onymous editors and writers of that publication. The "Shield Laws" that protect a reporter's notes, and prevent authorities from asking the name of the reporter's source, are an indication of the value the culture places on this kind of semi-onymous information.

The world of research then has a spectrum of responses to the question, "Should a source be named?" Roughly it is this:

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Method

Anonymity <> Onymity Medicine Journalism History Art

Which is the appropriate position on this spectrum for research on a life of prayer? If my research were done in a Psychology department, I would have to observe the customs of Psychology. It is not, however: it is part of a department of Philosophy and Religion. That field of study is part of the Humanities, I would argue, and closer to History and Art than it is to Psychology. So the departmental custom would suggest that my sources should be named.

It is certainly true that my research is a collection of interpretive biographies. Such biographies are clearly somewhere in the right-hand three-fourths on the spectrum, from journalism to art. One might also argue that the lives that these individuals have crafted are works of art, and that, even if they have given me permission to reproduce what they have said, they retain the right to be named as the creators.

I have given very extensive quotes, as part of my intention is to provide material for others to interpret. These interviews were done at the same moment or before the permission was signed. It was the speaker's understanding that their name would be used. If I were to give such extensive quotations without attribution, would I verge on plagiarism?

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Method

One might argue that it might be legitimate to tell such stories about anonymous persons if one could give the reader some sort of positioning information, something like "This person is a member of a religious order in the Roman Catholic Church, and has prayed the Rosary for others daily for twenty-five years." That would position the person as a member of a class, and suggest that somehow what is presented represents that class. What is said is from one member of that class, but we have no way to justify the implication that what they have said is typical of the members of that class. It is more honest to say, "This is the thought and feeling of an individual, named Margaret, or Shneor, or Deborah, or Antonio"

In the end it seemed best to let those I was interviewing make the decision, and to abide by their choice. The final version of my consent form, which was approved by the Human Research Review Committee at the California Institute of Integrate Studies, is as follows:

I have agreed to be interviewed on tape by Birrell Walsh as part of his research on the practice of prayer and treatment for others. I understand that part or all of what I say may be published academically and commercially, and I agree that such publication is acceptable to me. I understand that I may be anonymous if I choose, except as provided by law. (Please initial one choice) _____ You may use my name -59-

Method ______I prefer to remain anonymous. You may not use my name. I understand that my denomination may be mentioned in it, and my role in that denomination. _________________________ Signature __________________________ Printed Name _________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________ Address ___________ Date

Each of the persons I have interviewed has indicated on the form that I may use their name, and so I have done so. If someone already interviewed changes their mind, I will of course honor that choice as well.

2.6.3 How the first interview differs from the other interviews My first interviews were with Margaret Stortz. Held in 1996 and 1997, more than two years before the others, they were a trial run and a pilot study. I have re-written them for this document, but after some thought I have left in a lot of information about just how I found themes and arranged them. This same process went on in all the other interviews,

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Method but it seemed appropriate in at least one case to show the churnings and shiftings of ideas. I hope that doesn't get in the way of appreciating Dr. Stortz' austere spirituality. 2.6.4 "Um"'s and "Uh"'s In the following interviews there are many "Um"'s and "Uh"'s and other speech debris. I have removed some of them; but some I have left in to indicate turns in thought, or moments when the speaker decided to reformulate something.

Speech is a very different medium from writing. Even the most articulate person will seem scattered if their speech is transcribed literally. Let the record show that each of these people was very articulate indeed! I hope they will forgive me for keeping some of the artifacts of their speech. 2.6.5 The use of very long quotations In the chapters that follow, I used very extensive excerpts from the interviews. My intention is to concentrate on the participants rather than on my interpretation of them. I recall that when I have read books about interesting people, I have always wished the quotes were longer and the commentary shorter.

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3 MARGARET STORTZ: "CONSTANTLY GO BACK TO YOUR SOURCE"

Margaret Stortz has been a licensed Religious Science practitioner since 1971. She was until her recent retirement the Minister of the First Church of Religious Science in Oakland. She was also the President of the United Church of Religious Science, the larger of the two Religious Science denominations. She has been a frequent columnist in the denominations monthly Science of Mind Magazine. I first interviewed her in December, 1996, at her church in Oakland, California. We spent a bit over an hour talking about her practice of spiritual mind treatment. At the end of that time I asked for a treatment for the success of my dissertation, and she gave one. We met again in 1997, and she looked at an earlier draft of this chapter and commented on it.

The interviews with Margaret Stortz were the basis for my dissertation proposal. In 1999 I re-examined the interview transcripts and rewrote this section, with her agreement.

Religious Science is part of the American Metaphysical movement, a group of denominations that believe in changing conditions by thought. Among them are Christian Science, the Unity School of Christianity, Divine Science and several others. Religious Science was founded in the first quarter of this century, the last large denomination of the movement to come into existence. It was created by Ernest Holmes,

Margaret Stortz a former Congregationalist from New England. 83 Holmes found the writings of British religious philosopher Thomas Troward84 so convincing that he created a church based on them.

Margaret Stortz was also a convert. She was raised a Lutheran, but that denomination did not speak to her. When I went to the Lutheran church as a girl, it filled a great deal of music for me: I learned to sing there; I learned to play the organ there; it filled that. But there was something in me that it didn't fill. I remember being, mmh, probably about fifteen years old, and this particular little church had a communion rail. And I'd go up and I'd practice the organ, and in between I'd kneel at this little rail. I'd look up at some of the pictures or statuary or whatever, and I'd say, "Why can't I feel those things?" And it never came.

Like many people she was not satisfied with the spirituality of her childhood. But there were portents of a future religious life: when I was a young woman, a girl actually, I recall talking with a boyfriend of mine. And we were, I don't know, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, somewhere in there. And I can't remember just what we were speaking about. I do remember his comment, and the effect that it had. He said something to the effect, he said, "Margaret, I don't know you're going to do with your life, but I know it'll have to do with something religious." And at that particular point, I must have had what some people would call some form of opening. It's almost as if I would, I had had a heavy cloak on me, that was invisible. And it was almost as if it fell off. And I was able to stand up, and feel very light.

83 84

Holmes primary text is Holmes, The Science of Mind Troward's best known books are Troward, The creative process in the individual, Troward, The Edinburgh lectures on mental science A biography of him is found in Gaze, Thomas Troward: an intimate memoir of the teacher and the man

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Margaret Stortz She did not immediately find a doctrine she could accept. She married and raised a family. It was in her thirties that a friend of mine handed me the Science of Mind textbook. And I read into it, first in the areas that seemed of most interest. And...I discovered that everything I'd ever thought in an unformed, unrecognized fashion, was there. So that suddenly, all the hopes and dreams and so on, you might say, at deep levels, crystallized very quickly. It was almost as if, from the opening, from the intuitive opening that that young man touched, it moved through the arenas of my life until suddenly, when I was about thirty years old, Boom, there it was. And so, I started to come to the place where that was taught, which was here. And I took their class-work, and all of that was now just an orderly progression. There was no question that I would do anything but that. It seemed absolutely natural. The next steps, you might say. And everything I needed to become a practitioner fell into line.

3.1 The Craft of Treatment

The first impression for anyone who interviews Dr. Stortz is that she is no-nonsense and businesslike. When I interviewed her in 1996 she exuded a seriousness and focus that was reflected in her large, attractive and apparently prosperous church. Her religion was very much the same treatment was a craft, and she carried it out with seriousness. 3.1.1 What are practitioners? More than many denominations, Religious Science is focused around a single practice. That practice is called "Spiritual Mind Treatment," a process for bringing things and situations into manifestation by conscious and focused thought. It is considered a learnable skill, and "practitioners" are taught in a regular training program. While anyone can do spiritual mind treatment, practitioners are professionals at it. They give treatments to clients, using a process that will be described later, and they charge them for the

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Margaret Stortz service. Many, though not all, practitioners are listed in the denomination's Science of Mind Magazine.85

Practitioners are not self-appointed in Religious Science (as they are among, say, Christian Scientists, though CS practitioners generally seek a sort of approval shown by listing in the Church's journals). Instead they are trained by the local churches to which they belong, over a period of time, in a course prescribed by their denomination: MS: Currently, in the United Church of Religious Science, it takes the taking of all, of all what we might call the certified classes, Foundation Class, Spiritual Practice, Self Mastery, Roots of Religious Science those all take 120 hours. Then it takes taking a practitioner course for two years, which is ninety hours each year. So that's another 180 hours. It's about 300 hours. BW: On the average how many years would it take a person to do that? MS: It takes two years for the practitioner course itself; eighteen months to two years for the others.

3.2 A Melody in Five Notes

The process known as Spiritual Mind Treatment has a customary pattern of five steps. 86 They are: "Recognition "Unification" "Realization" "Thanksgiving/Acceptance"

85 86

They are now (1999) also listed at the denomination's website, http://religiousscience.org/ Jaeger and Juline, You are the One: living fully, living free through affirmative prayer: a workbook

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Margaret Stortz "Release"

3.2.1 A Pattern of Prayer I asked Dr. Stortz to treat for the success and usefulness of my dissertation, and all five of these steps were present in the treatment which Dr. Stortz did for me. I use the treatment Dr. Stortz did for my dissertation to illustrate the five steps. 3.2.1.1 "Recognition The practitioner or person treating begins by recognizing that the only real entity is God, despite the appearance that there are many beings. Religious Science is a strongly monistic group. They believe that everything spiritual, mental-emotional or physical is part of God. In this they have obvious analogies to those forms of Hinduism that recognize the physical universe as a manifestation of mind. 87 When I interviewed Dr. Stuart Grayson88 in New York, he said that to him Religious Science is in fact the practice of Vedanta. Monism is its first principle of Religious Science, the major premise from which everything else flows.

The person treating begins by standing in ordinary reality, and affirming (from that ordinary reality) that there is another, true reality that is unitary. When she began the treatment for my dissertation Dr. Stortz said: And I invite you to close your eyes, to rest, to start with a comfortable position, and to know with me: That there really is only one life, God's life, which by its nature is always in manifestation. Creative power of
87

Thomas Troward, the British judge whose writings inspired Ernest Holmes, was a judge in the Punjab. He spoke Punjabi and read Indian religious classics. See Gaze, Thomas Troward: an intimate memoir of the teacher and the man 88 Dr. Grayson is a member of the other major Religious Science denomination, Religious Science International. Their disagreement with Dr. Stortz' denomination, the United Church of Religious Science, is about governance rather than doctrine. For Dr. Grayson's style of treatment see Grayson, Spiritual healing: a simple guide for the healing of body, mind and spirit

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Margaret Stortz God is always in action, always in motion, always creating form after form after form, maintaining, supporting those forms. You and I are part of those forms. And so I accept and know that the essence of God is that by which we were all made 3.2.1.2 "Unification:" In this step a deductive application is made of the first step. If God is all there is, then God is also fully in each part. This is very difficult to make sense of in modern terms, but it was a common thought in Hellenistic times. As Porphyry said about the year 250, When the indivisible is present in the divisible, it is entire in each part 89 then we are God. It is not that we are a part that somehow contains the whole. It is more that there are various ways of perceiving reality: when we perceive holistically, using what might be called the unitary topology90, there is nothing but the One. The first step in treatment asserts that unitary reality. The second step says that the unitary reality must be fully present in oneself. All of Gods powers are present in each of us, and it is with Gods power we work.

While the first step asserted that a Unitary Reality existed, the second step is an entry into that reality. The practitioner now asserts that the unitary reality is immediately and personally true. Specifically, if God is creative, we are creative. If Gods word makes things happen, so does our word. If the universe responds to Gods word, it responds also to ours because our word is Gods word.

Dr. Stortz did not label each section of her treatment, but it seemed to follow the five steps exactly. Her (apparent) second step was:

89

Porphyry, Launching-points to the realm of the Mind, p. 56

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Margaret Stortz and that the mind of God is the mind we use, the life of God is the life we live, therefore I know I can speak my word on behalf of Birrell, because we occupy one mind and we share a divine unity. The words I speak must produce what I declare. They cannot return to me void. They are acted upon by the infinite activities, by the power of God, by the law of mind.

3.2.1.3 "Realization:" The ambiguity of the word realization is deliberate. It means both to come to know something that is true and to make something real. Because Religious Science believes that thought creates, the ambiguity of this word exactly captures the creative process. When one knows something, it comes to be in the external world. In this third step one affirms that what is desired is already present, using the present tense rather than the future. This affirmation in the present tense is based in part on Mark 11:24 Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.(KJV). A widely used manual of this style of treatment, in teaching how to do treatment for money, says of this step: Maintaining a sense of your unity with a Presence and Power greater than you are, know that Abundance and Support exist in place of your money problem. Contemplate this idea, ridding yourself of all doubt or reservation. Become deeply convinced that this new and positive experience you desire is unfolding for you.91 The Realization step is often the longest part of a treatment, because the idea that is to be manifested is described in great detail. Dr. Stortz treatment for my dissertation continued: And so I accept and know, and accept along with Birrell, that all the energies, all the guidance, all the direction, all the footsteps, all the
90 91

Janich, Topology

Jaeger and Juline, You are the One: living fully, living free through affirmative prayer: a workbook, p. 36 -68-

Margaret Stortz thought that is needed to create the best possible project, to create the best possible outcome, to create the best possible dissertation, is taking place right now. Something that adds to the quality of life, something that brings good to all who touch it, this is a revelation of God, in the truest most invitational sense, because together we open our minds, because together we open our minds and open ourselves to the goodness of God in this particular arena. And know that God is making Itself known with love, with joy, with wisdom, with a sense of enthusiasm and, and interest and innovation. I know and I also accept that this wonderful piece of work is accessible to all who want and need it, that it does indeed have a good life. It is blessed, because with joy and openness we receive all that God has for us. And that whatever Birrell needs to know, he knows; whatever he needs to do, he does. If God says "Go" he goes; if God says, 'Stay" he stays. All is in good order; all is in perfect working order. And I accept along with Birrell that the divine activity is revealing itself in his spiritual life, for the best possible path that his creative spirit shall take, be it in the realm of licensed practitioner, or even something else that may loom ahead that is even more wonderful. I accept with him the openness to divine innovation, the way as he puts it to blaze trail, to know new things, to see new visions, to think new thoughts, to be the place where God shows forth in more wonderful ways of revelation, in him, through him, as him, then ever he or I or anyone else could have imagined.

3.2.1.4 "Thanksgiving/Acceptance:" This step is often brief. Its purpose seems three-fold: to express genuine warmth, to reaffirm that what has been said is already so, and to disconnect the one treating from the creative state for return to ordinary experience. The person treating no longer speaks as the one who is creating the desired manifestation. Instead, she speaks as the one receiving and accepting the reality. Implicitly she has returned to ordinary reality and left her awareness of the Unitary reality. Dr. Stortz said:
For all this and the greater good that God always has, the great "more" that God always has, I give deep and grateful thanks even as I now accept an experience of this. And for all of it I say "Thank you, God."

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Margaret Stortz 3.2.1.5 "Release:" This step is simply to leave mind , or Mind, to manifest what one has done. It means letting go of the treatment. This step is often reduced to one phrase, as it was in this case: So it is.

The release, Dr. Stortz suggested during the second interview, is related to a lack of investment in the outcome. BW: How do you avoid the investment? How do you release, if that's what you do? MS: I step aside, you might say, in my mind, and remind myself, when you get invested in something it's because your ego's invested in it. It's because somehow, whether you meant for it to or not, you get the little sense that, egotistically, "I've gotta make something happen here" - for lack of a better generality - "I've gotta make something happen here." When I remind myself of Jesus' commentary, which is "[This?] is not I, but the Father within, who do the work," when I can remember that, and I've practiced to do this, then I don't have a real ego investment in it. And when I don't, there's no investment in the outcome. We try to teach that. BW: What's it feel like to have no investment in the outcome? MS: It feels as if you've, you've, been the open door. You've been the conduit for something to be recognized, for words to be formed, for a thought-form to be made, about something that it wanted. And simply to be that. It comes in this way, it goes through you, it goes out there. It's like the wind going through the door.

This five-step treatment is taught throughout the Religious Science churches, not as a required pattern but as a convenient one. 92 It is taught to newcomers in the Religious Science movement. There is no implication that one needs to be a practitioner or even a member of the Religious Science movement in order to use this pattern of treatment.

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Margaret Stortz There is even a website sponsored by the Religious Science Churchs World Ministry of Prayer in which one can just fill in the blanks, following online suggestions to make a five-step treatment.93

The patterned-ness of the treatment does not mean the work is rote, or that it does not take awareness. The entire purpose of the five-step pattern is to move the person treating to a consciousness that will allow the desired result to manifest. The formation of this consciousness is critical, because Religious Science believes that thought genuinely does form reality. Just mechanically repeating the words may be a beginning; but it takes real acceptance realization to make the treatment effective. 3.2.2 Variations on the Theme If the five steps are a basic melody that is played over and over again in the practice of a Religious Science practitioner, the actual treatments are full of variations and syncopations.

For instance, in her treatment for me, Dr. Stortz moved rapidly and repeatedly between the positions of creator and receiver. I know and I also accept that this wonderful piece of work is accessible to all who want and need it, that it does indeed have a good life. It is blessed, because with joy and openness we receive all that God has for us.

92

Costa, Excuse me while I call God. For other patterns of treatment, see Carter, Your handbook for healing, revised and expanded edition 93 Available in 1999 at http://www.wmop.org/

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Margaret Stortz Knowing is the Religious Science term for the creative awareness that makes something happen. In the first sentence she is "knowing" something into existence; in the second sentence she is receiving that which she has just brought into being.

It is the background monism of Religious Science that makes possible this dance among postures. Religious Sciences belief that all is God makes it sensible to be at one moment identified with the Creator of the Universe, and at another to be identified with the grateful recipient because in Religious Science both identifications are true.

In particular, it allows the treatment itself to be at once an act of creation, in which the practitioner is making something, and an act in which the practitioner is receiving the ideas for the treatment. The treatment bears fruit at first in ideas for the treatment itself. In fact I had a teacher that used to say, he used to use watermelons, as an example. You plant the seed, you cultivate and so on; you get a watermelon. But the watermelon actually in his mind was always a sideeffect, because then you got more seeds, from the watermelon. So the creative process is always, always going on.

Religious Science also understands Gods goodness to flow from Gods unity and universality. There is no room for anything else in a fundamentally unified universe. Like Christian Science, Religious Science affirms that God is all that is real. Unlike Christian Science, Religious Science affirms that physical reality is part of God. So underneath apparent pain which is a real, but not a necessary experience in their view lies the unity of Fundamental Mind. As we recognize that unity, we also access its

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Margaret Stortz goodness. If we swim in the ocean, we get wet; if we access Gods universality, we come back dripping with good. The trick is always to turn towards God. So if you want to make it as clean as possible, in your spiritual mind treatment you constantly go back to your source as cleanly as you can.

Then the ideas that go into a treatment will be both powerful and good.

3.3 The Experience of a Practitioners Life

3.3.1 Sensory Representation Systems Dr. Stortz had a wide variety of sensory language in her discourse. It was not, however, randomly distributed.

Most of the language she used while doing treatment was kinesthetic and auditory. The words I speak must produce what I declare. They cannot return to me void. They are acted upon by the infinite activities, by the power of God, by the law of mind.

The language of treatment itself most frequently employed words about words, as in this excerpt, and about the activity of God or Mind. She used visual language, but primarily in "checking steps." That is, when Dr. Stortz referred to people whose treatment skills were more apparent than real she said that Some people seem that way, that they can roll off a wonderful treatment, and then I look at their lives... So I would be hesitant to say, on listening,

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Margaret Stortz I would say on somebody else's treatment, I could discern whether it was in a good state or less so. In this case she declines to make a judgment based on her own hearing, but is willing to make one based on seeing. She is, however, willing to make judgments based on the verbal reports of others. When I asked how she knew a treatment had been successful, her first reply was based on such a report: BW: Is there a way by which you know that a treatment has been effective? MS: The people will tell me.

While visual and auditory and kinesthetic expressions were all common, she did not make any references to taste or smell at all. The majority of statements about experience of giving a treatment were made in terms of kinesthetic experience. Favorite expressions were "uplift," "opening," flowing" and "fitting together."

In describing the consequences of treatment, she often spoke of external referents: And all kinds of things fall into place: this person signs the contract, or this person stops complaining, or this person gets out of the way, or things line up. It's not uncommon to see things line up, when before there were all kinds of logjams. Divorces settled. Or somebody who has been resisting you stops resisting. In other words, there's a much better flow, when all things are aright.

Dr. Stortz treatment language, however, does not have checking steps she is declaring something into existence, rather than looking to see if it has arrived. The suspension of checking is an important part of treatment, because belief is essential. There are a number of references in Religious Science and New Thought literature to not checking

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Margaret Stortz before something has had time to mature. The most common metaphor is planting a seed, and the damage one would do to that seed if one were to dig it up daily to see if it were growing. In many ways the Release step reflects this commitment to not checking before the work matures.

3.3.2 Emergent Themes There were fifty-three themes that I found in the text, in addition to the a priori questions that I had brought to the interview. These fifty-three were what Strauss and Corbin, quoting Glaser, call "in-vivo" codes.94 In most cases I simply used Dr. Stortz' words to mark the text in which they occurred. In some cases I used the in-vivo code from another place to mark a different piece of text. But these codes were all created from the Dr. Stortz words or close paraphrases. Having found these in-vivo themes, I attempted very carefully to conceptualize them into categories. I tried, when possible, to use names for the second-level categories which also reflected the actual language of Dr. Stortz. 3.3.2.1 Openness One category that emerged early was "openness." I originally thought that this openness would apply only to the person receiving the treatment, and that it would be a metaphor for receptivity.

It was found in that context: ... there may be in that person a sense of openness to what is going on. That's why we do it. Whether people are tuned in or aware or not - the
94

In qualitative research, the process of marking text as having a theme is called "coding." When the name of the code is in the informant's own words, it is called an "in-vivo" code. See Strauss, Basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques

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Margaret Stortz openness can always be there. There might be a little place somewhere in somebody who's attuned to this that says, "Help me." You know, there's the door.

This openness is not confined to a willingness to receive. It is also found in the process of giving a successful treatment. The idea of "opening then becomes transitive rather than intransitive; one does not just open" receptively, but actively makes room for the desired change: ...if one person in a circumstance here holds another place, holds life, holds an opening for something different to happen, then it changes the energy in the whole setup.

There several other in-vivo codes that I included in the category "openness." free:

One was

It's like turning another cheek, and saying, "Wait a minute. Let me just change the energy here." And when that happens, everything around is free. Free to respond in a different way. And frequently does. There was possibility: ... If anybody, if in the mind of people at present there's a little thing that's called 'possibility' that shows up in their minds, then those lines of resistance and intransigence dissolve. And you get something going. A third was letting go, a theme Dr. Stortz emphasized strongly: BW: And you find that ummm... as a practitioner do you find that most situations change easily? MS: It depends. It depends on how much resistance there is to change, resistance to change and/or holding on to what is. Releasing what is and resistance to change is very great. It's not that people don't believe there's a greater power. I used to think the big biggie would be having people -76-

Margaret Stortz believe that there's a power greater than they are. Not a bit. People have accepted that at some level, most of the time. They may not know what it is, but they have some sense of it. It's the practice of not resisting change and letting go of what is - that's the big one.

During her second interview, Dr. Stortz made it clear that a practitioner can tell both when a treatment is working and when it is not yet doing so: I can say as a generality from my own experience and dealing with practitioners and teaching practitioners - the way that they sense it, that it works is, as I mentioned, the sense of internal alright-ness, that takes place in them, a sense of completion. A sense of something having moved, if you will, whether it's completely manifested or not, something's moved in here. So that' s the inner, internal sense that you get, that something is in place. Whereas, you can be doing something in front of somebody, and it's as if you're, you're talking to a wall. And so, you don't get the sense that something has made its way into whatever needs to happen. That you've spoken it, and it lies, as I've also said in here, in abeyance in Mind; there it is, but it may not have created, there may not have been an opening to it, so there it lies in wait, you might say.

When I asked Dr. Stortz for the subjective signs by which she knew that a treatment had been successful, one of the two signs she gave was that there was a sense of enlargement: If, let us say, in the delivery of a spiritual mind treatment, whether it's in front of somebody or by myself, if ..if it's perfect - and by that I mean, if everything falls together, the words, my senses, the atmosphere, the person I've brought in, in mind - if everything simply falls easily and effortlessly into place, and becomes larger, and that place becomes larger than any of the constituent parts - myself, the words, my thoughts, the person and so on - then [unintelligible three syllables] then I think, "That was perfect. Everything fit together." Later she said: In describing the indescribable, that's where I've come: to describing what makes a perfect circumstance. In my mind, a perfect situation is larger than any of the constituent parts. It's larger than me, it's larger than my thoughts, it's larger than my words, it's larger than the person who may be involved. It becomes a greater circumstance. Everything becomes elevated to a much larger level than any of the constituent parts. -77-

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A final quality that I grouped with openness is receptivity/expectancy. I did this partly on the basis of its opposition to "closedness," and partly because Dr. Stortz linked the two in the following passage: ... if for instance I have... somebody comes to me, and they come with the idea, "Now, if she says it, it's going to be so." Now what that really, what that means to me is that they don't complicate it. They don't complicate the coming. They come with a deep expectancy. And if the expectancy is there, the fact that I do the treatment is almost immaterial. It's the fact that the expectancy, I happen to be on the other end of the expectancy, it could it maybe that if "Mary Dokes" was sitting here, the expectancy might not be present, but half the way, half the work is through that. So, if they have a high expectancy, and a reasonable amount of trust in what I do, then they've made a very broad way, to be open. Clearly receptivity/expectancy shades into another category, that of "belief." I allow it to remain in the category "openness" because Religious Science often speaks of a kind of expectancy that does not completely define what is expected. Dr. Stortz elsewhere connects openness with this undetailed expectation of good: ... And if enough people are, let us say, open to good, general good without saying "it's gonna look like this, or it's gotta look like that; and you guys have to shape up," they quit doing that and open, open the lines of mind, to a greater expansion of awareness, people who aren't so tightly bound in mind can receive that. There is even a name, in Religious Science and other Metaphysical churches, for a treatment that is too insistent on spelling about all the details of what must happen. It is called "outlining," and one is frequently warned against it.

The category of "openness" then had these qualities: Open (as not-closed), freedom, possibility, letting go, enlargement, and expectancy/receptiveness. As I was turning this category called openness over in my mind, it kept occurring to me that the appropriate -78-

Margaret Stortz name for this category was not a noun. The best name for the whole category was "open," which might be a verb or an adjective. We have a custom in English and other

Indo-European languages that categories should be named for nouns, as nouns represent substances; and substances have a higher ontological status than do accidental predications represented by verbs and adjectives. It seemed to me that this custom need not be followed in all cases. Therefore, I switched the names of the category and one of its qualities. The name of the quality became openness and the name of the overall category became open. 3.3.2.2 Good Order

There were two marks that Dr. Stortz used to recognize a "perfect treatment." One was that the situation as she experiences it enlarges, a quality I have included in openness. The other is that things fit together into "good order." Some examples of good order are: If, let us say, in the delivery of a spiritual mind treatment, whether it's in front of somebody or by myself, if ...if it's perfect - and by that I mean, if everything falls together, the words, my senses, the atmosphere, the person I've brought in, in mind - if everything simply falls easily and effortlessly into place, and becomes larger, and that place becomes larger than any of the constituent parts - myself, the words, my thoughts, the person and so on - then I think, "That was perfect." In other words, there's a much better flow, when all things are aright, when the person has a good expectancy, and I don't have any concerns particularly either - then we're all in a state of flow, and a lot of things fall right into line. it can be husbands, it can be wives, it can be quarreling into resolution, it can be solving of contracts, it can be the right job, it can be the resolution of something that's been hanging fire - lots of things like that.

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Margaret Stortz This "good order" or harmony is one of the best-known beliefs of the Metaphysical religions.95 In fact, Ahlstrom96 called them as a group the "Harmonial Religions."

The good order is expressed in Dr. Stortz discourse with static metaphors (fitting together), moving metaphors ("flow") and metaphors that begin with motion and come to a static conclusion ("falling into place, ""line up"). Good order is of course found in results: And all kinds of things fall into place: this person signs the contract, or this person stops complaining, or this person gets out of the way, or things line up. It's not uncommon to see things line up, when before there were all kinds of logjams. Divorces settled. Or somebody who's been resisting you stop resisting. In other words, there's a much better flow, when all things are aright, when the person has a good expectancy, and I don't have any concerns particularly either - then we're all in a state of flow, and a lot of things fall right into line. It can be husbands, it can be wives, it can be quarreling into resolution, it can be solving of contracts, it can be the right job, it can be the resolution of something that's been hanging fire - lots of things like that.

The good order is definitely supposed to be found in the external world, in response to treatment. Religious Sciences founder Ernest Holmes was very clear about the need for real results. But we should not fool ourselves about any demonstration... The kind of demonstration we believe in is the kind that can be checked by a physician, if one so desires. If we are treating for the removal of a cancer, we have not made a demonstration until the cancer is gone and the wholeness of the body is evident to everyone. This is not a process of saying Peace when there is no peace. 97

95 96

For a history of these groups, see Braden, Spirits in rebellion: the rise and development of New Thought Ahlstrom, A religious history of the American people 97 Holmes, The Science of Mind, p. 175

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Margaret Stortz But as with the prior category, open, this category of "good order" is not only present externally in the result. It is also sometimes found before the treatment has been done. It shows up in that case as rapport: Many times, if I'm conversing with somebody who's come for a spiritual mind treatment, and we really weave together the energies between us, so that there's a wonderful rapport, then the treatment is just an extension of that very thing. And finally, good order may be part of the treatment itself: At this point, because (and I can only speak for myself) because of having done this so long, there's a there's a place of readiness, you might say; so that when I when I set myself to giving a spiritual mind treatment it is as if all things set themselves in place. As with the category open, there are several qualities to the category "good order." There is the image of meshing, or fitting together. This possibly static image of fitting together was one of Dr. Stortz most commonly used expressions during the interview. Mm-hmm. yes, if I feel, if I come to the place where I have that sense that 'this is perfect, it all fits together,' then I'm done. There are mobile-going-to-static images like line up or set themselves in place or fall together. And all kinds of things fall into place: this person signs the contract, or this person stops complaining, or this person gets out of the way, or things line up.

Then there are fully mobile images like flow and [breaking up] logjams. What is particularly interesting is that these images are found together, interwoven in descriptions of what is clearly the same situation:

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Margaret Stortz they've made a very broad way, to be open. And all kinds of things fall into place: this person signs the contract, or this person stops complaining, or this person gets out of the way, or things line up. It's not uncommon to see things line up, when before there were all kinds of logjams. Divorces settled. Or somebody who's been resisting you stop resisting. In other words, there's a much better flow, when all things are aright, when the person has a good expectancy, and I don't have any concerns particularly either - then we're all in a state of flow, and a lot of things fall right into line. It can be husbands, it can be wives, it can be quarreling into resolution, it can be solving of contracts, it can be the right job, it can be the resolution of something that's been hanging fire - lots of things like that.

I included in the category of good order those images that seem to imply that the fit or flow is no problem. I call this quality easy: if everything simply falls easily and effortlessly into place

A final quality that I have tentatively included in good order is centered. . I sense, I have a greater sense of well-being, a greater sense of being able to return to spiritual center, if you like, more quickly. So it's not a question of never being upset, never being disturbed. Life disturbs. People die, disappoint you, so on. It disturbs you. But, through practice like that, I can approximate my spiritual center more quickly. I don't have to drift off, and be away for weeks and months at a time. Depending on the nature of what I'm handling, it can bother me for a portion of the day, or less. If it's big time, I can be disappointed for a while. But even in the disappointment, it doesn't have to skew my capacity to think clearly, or to come back to center.

I include this quality with some hesitation, as Dr. Stortz used the expressions center and centered only of herself.

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Margaret Stortz 3.3.2.3 Continuity I kept getting the impression that the various major players and goals of treatment were not as separate as I might have expected. For instance, the pairs: Practitioner/Client Before-State/After-State Treatment/Non-Treatment

were not as widely divided as one might expect.

To think about these matters, I tried to think about the different sorts of distance that can exist metaphorically between two conceptual things. 98 This distance can be conceived as separation (How far apart are they?), as difference (How distinct are they?), or as barrieredness (How high or wide or deep is the barrier that separates them?).

For instance, in some kinds of Christianity, the gap between saved and not saved is huge. The distance is effectively infinite, so wide that only an infinite being can bridge it. Consider also the difference between a priest and the laity in Catholicism. There is a major distinction between the powers and abilities of a priest, and those of a lay person: The priest can turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. The priest can forgive sins. Some priests can confer the Holy Ghost. Lay people can do none of these things.

On the other hand, there are religious traditions in which there are no barriers at all. Buddhism frequently speaks of the identity of Samsara and Nirvana. The mind of the

98

I think this is the process of "imaginative variation" recommended by Phenomenology. See Moustakas, Phenomenological research methods

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Margaret Stortz boddhisattva rests unbarriered, says the Heart Sutra.99 In traditions in which nondistinction is emphasized, the distance between two things is zero and there are no distinctions at all. The metaphysical movement in America has had some people who take this position they are called Absolutists. Whether in Buddhism or the Metaphysical movement, one can notice that the abolished barrier is often replaced with another: those who perceive the non-difference are separated from those who dont. Gnostics are separated from those who have not seen.

In general the Metaphysical tradition has lowered barriers without abolishing them. They seem to have a universe characterized by the quality of "continuity." The difference between a practitioner and a client is not one of kind or of transmitted power. It is simply one of practice. Dr. Stortz explicitly approved of people practice their own activity, and then told the story of one of her students who did so successfully: ... And when people practice their own activity actually that's the very best. In class work, what is pleasing is to see people say, "Well, let's see: I've been doing this for eight or ten weeks now. And I decided this, this holiday - we were talking about holidays last night in class - one woman said, Every Thanksgiving we go to whomsoever's house and we always get into huge fights, my husband and I. And I was in the car, and we were doing exactly that. " and she said, This time I said, 'Now wait a minute. I've been learning all this stuff. I've been learning how to think differently and so on. Let me just change my mind about this, and hold it in a different way. I can do that.'" And she did. And then the whole energy shifted. So that's part of what goes on.

Another continuity, another way in which a practitioner and client are linked, is in mind. In this idealistic system, there is only one mind and all beings share it.

99

My translation is from the Sanskrit given in Conze, Buddhist wisdom books: the Diamond and Heart

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Margaret Stortz It's my belief that as we're unified in mind. Even though we're in two different places, and we occupy different space, in mind we are linked. So I can speak the word on behalf of so and so because of that shared unity. I'm doing the talking, in place of somebody else, but they're here in mind with me. As the client and the practitioner are close, so also are other things that might have been separated. For instance, the before-treatment state and the after-treatment state are not totally distinct. A successful treatments conclusion is, to some extent, pre-existing in two ways. One of them is the already-discussed openness of the client that makes successful treatment possible: I can feel on my end for instance, "Boy, that that did it." And if over here - and it doesn't happen very often - but over here if there is a great resistance at some level or a great fear, then I say that the treatment lies in abeyance. It's there, but the door has to be open, on the other end, you might say. When Jesus said to the disciples, 'If you go into a place and the people receive you not, then you shake the dust off your feet and leave," and that to me was talking about the same thing. He could go, with the master awareness, for instance, he could go from town to town. People would say, "Who are you? You are the carpenter's son. Why should we listen to you?" So even though he brings with him the awareness of what he's using, if he doesn't have any receivers over here then... Otherwise it would have been only necessary to go from town to town, wave his hands, and say, "Everybody in this place is healed [unintelligible: "if need be"?]" So that tells me that you need somebody who's open and receptive to what's going on. It also means that I can speak my word on behalf of spiritual leaders, world leaders and so on, who don't know me, haven't a clue as to what I may be doing, all in the idea that we're using one mind, and there may be in that person a sense of openness to what is going on. That's why we do it. Whether people are tuned in or aware or not - the openness can always be there. There might be a little place somewhere in somebody who's attuned to this that says, "Help me." You know, there's the door.

A second kind of pre-existence of the solution in the midst of the problem is the willingness, in fact the desire, of God to manifest as a solution:

Sutras.

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Margaret Stortz For all this and the greater good that God always has, the great more that God always has, I give deep and grateful thanks even as I now accept an experience of this. And for all of it I say 'Thank you God." Because the success of the treatment pre-exists in these ways, the before-treatment state and the after-treatment state are not completely distinct.

Finally, treatment itself is not that far or different from non-treatment. Dr. Stortz asked me to emphasize that people are always treating: I'm going partly by what Ernest Holmes says, and partly by my experience. All thought is creative. This is the thought of Ernest Holmes. It, practically speaking that is so. Prayer is the conscious intention to make contact with the presence of God for a particular reason, for a particular outcome. This is the conscious intent to use the divine energies. Every time we think, we use the divine energies, whether they are consciously used, or by default. So generally speaking, every thought is a prayer. So since we essentially pray all day, every day, the idea would be "What kind of prayer am I creating? And how could I improve the quality of my thought, so that my life will become more enhanced?" And with real knowledge and real intention then you have the reason for working with Spiritual Mind Treatment

The category "continuity" means that the distances (between client and practitioner, treatment and non-treatment, before and after) are neither zero nor infinite. The travel between them tends to be continuous and gradual. One works by increment rather than by sudden jump. Improvements may be dramatic, but they are not discontinuous. More of this will be said later, in considering the effect on the practitioner of a life of treatment. 3.3.2.4 God-Agency To what is one open, and from what or whom does good order come? Because together we open our minds and open ourselves to the goodness of God in this particular arena.

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Margaret Stortz There is amazing change in Dr. Stortz language patterns during the treatment. Outside of the treatment, she mentioned the word God only twice, in the expression intentional contact with the presence of God. She also spoke briefly of Universal Energy, in a manner that was not particularly theist. But in these twenty-seven lines of treatment, she mentions the word God sixteen times.

In treatment language, the implied agent changes. Outside of the treatment, her language implies that the agents are people who act by changing their thoughts or by choosing to be open. Circumstances and other people respond When one takes the energy away from a problem, and gathers it into a place of wholeness, or a holy place if you like; then it means that you've changed the energy. You've moved out of a level of blow for blow, or word for word, or epithet for epithet and stepped over here. It's like turning another cheek, and saying, "Wait a minute. Let me just change the energy here." And when that happens, everything around is free. Free to respond in a different way. And frequently does. There's almost always immediate responses in the people around you Within the treatment, however, her language almost always positions God as the actor: ... And know that God is making Itself known with love, with joy, with wisdom, with a sense of enthusiasm and, and interest and innovation. God directs and people respond: If God says "Go" he goes; if God says, "Stay" he stays. God provides and people receive: with joy and openness we receive all that God has for us. Finally, God is expected to improve the treatment itself, to bring even more and better things than are asked for. I think this latter point shows the degree to which agency has shifted between the extra-treatment and the intra-treatment language. Outside the

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Margaret Stortz treatment, Dr. Stortz asked me what I wanted, and implied that we would open the door to it. Inside the treatment, however, it is God who decides what to do: to be the place where God shows forth in more wonderful ways of revelation, in him, through him, as him, than ever he or I or anyone else could have imagined. For all this and the greater good that God always has, the great more that God always has, I give deep and grateful thanks

How is it possible to reconcile these two different kinds of agency? How can the creature direct the Creator, as the orthodox Christian would ask? I believe the answer lies in the Religious Science insistence that we are not different from God. Theist mystics often say this. But to take it literally implies that one has access to Gods power and wisdom and love because one shares in it. The language that Dr. Stortz uses is the language of one who takes this identity literally.

There is an ambivalence about this identification in the Metaphysical literature. When Religious Sciences founder, Ernest Holmes, studied with the fabled healer Emma Curtis Hopkins, she told him of a convention she held in Chicago, and there was a student, an Absolutist, who began screaming, I am God, and she said, There, there, George, it is all right for you to play you are God, but dont be so noisy about it. 100

The Metaphysical movement is quite aware of the psychic inflation to which this attitude can lead. They therefore tend to encourage people to be humble at the same time they are

100

Holmes, Ernest Holmes: his life and times, p. 197

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Margaret Stortz presumptuous. In practice, this means that as they create, they may switch the active agent from I to God. They then draw on God as "a power greater than they are." 3.3.2.5 Craftswomanship Within treatment, Margaret Stortz' role seems to be that of a craftswoman. It is her job to make the best treatment she can, and to let Mind take matters from there. The balance can be difficult to find, but it is always her job to make the best possible treatment. She thinks about the treatments, and may return to them: If I am not satisfied with something I've done, I'll come back to it later.

Over the years she has developed "a spiritual muscle" that allows her to enter the treatment state quickly and effectively, even when distractions are present. So that when you flex the same spiritual muscle over time long enough, it knows what you want; and it will move you to that place.

Like anyone who practices a craft, she has learned when work is done just right: if I come to the place where I have that sense that 'this is perfect, it all fits together,' then I'm done.

The real test is not subjective but in how the treatment has served those for whom it was made: "People will tell me." Her object is always a useful, applied spirituality.

Her practicality showed during the second interview, when she discussed why she uses the step-by-step treatment pattern of Religious Science rather than the powerful spiritual leap of Christian Science: -89-

Margaret Stortz I believe it's possible, as in Christian Science, to go from A to Z, from where you are to where you want to be, with nothing in between. If you have a, a powerful enough consciousness that you can to it, sssst, there you are. For most of us, that is not practical. Most of us need to take the walk from A to B to C to D and so on and so on, to get from A to Z. And if we need to do it that way, that's what you do. Her insistence on complete practicality while dealing with an infinite Spirit brings that Spirit to focus and effectiveness in daily life. This is exactly the tradition of Religious Science. The symbol that Ernest Holmes designed for his movement101 looks like a letter V superimposed over an equals sign. The apparent equals sign divides the picture into the three levels of Spirit, Subjective Mind, and Manifestation. The V represents the wide power of Spirit above coming to focus in the concrete world below. As Dr. Stortz said, Something that used to be extra-ordinary now becomes ordinary.

Her practiced craft makes it possible reliably and repeatedly to make contact with God: When I gather my thoughts, when I gather them consciously and intentionally, to give a spiritual mind treatment - all prayer in my mind, all prayer or all spiritual mind treatment, is intentional contact with the presence of God. Other things become sometimes accidental, sometimes a hunch or a flash, which you can't legislate. This you can. 3.3.2.6 Cumulativity What happens when a person performs Spiritual Mind Treatments over a lifetime? How does it shape a life?

I asked Dr. Stortz if each treatment had an effect on the one treating. She responded:

101

Copied here from the United Church of Religious Science website, http://religiousscience.org/

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Margaret Stortz Always. An old friend of mine used to say, and this was in the days when you had carbon-paper and carbon copies, she used to say, "When you give a spiritual mind treatment, you send out a copy. The original stays with you." And I always thought that was very appropriate. Because whatever the treatment may be, and for whomsoever it may be, the first take goes through me, anyway, since I'm the one who's forming it. It's my particular use of mind that gets exercised first. So it always does something to me. Preparation for treatment is a simultaneous withdrawal and attending. This preparation is in itself much like a meditation. It becomes an accumulated skill, like a carpenter's know-how: I've come to a place where I can pretty much set aside external concerns, and move into that, because of the practice of doing so. That's another spiritual muscle, the state of acquired readiness, over time, to be able to set aside daily concerns, even immediate concerns, to be able to do that. That's what practice will do for you. BW: And when you have set them aside, um, is it simply making something absent, making daily concerns absent, or does something else become present? MS: That's more like it. It's not that these things become absent; it's that something else becomes present. And I become more aware of the thing at hand, that I become more aware of the inherent universal energies that are always present anyway. They're clouded. We would in my estimation we would be aware of these universal energies (as intuition or whatever you want to call it) all the time if we were not taken up by the concerns of everyday living. So to set them aside, make way for this, makes you aware that it's there anyway. Each treatment can be a strongly positive personal experience: And one can feel a tremendous amount of joy. Now at all times, no matter what's taking place, whether you're halfway there or not, at the at the close of delivering any treatment, if it's if it's been done appropriately, there should be a sense of feeling better, right away, from the one who's doing the delivering. Frequently from the one who's sitting in front of you receiving it. You have no way of knowing, if they're at a distance. But there should be right away a sense of lift, relief, better. Just having done it. Just having passed the ideas through you.

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Margaret Stortz The positive effects of treatment can be dispersed if one thinks inappropriately during daily life. As implied in the section on continuity, above, treatment and non-treatment times are not so separate as not to affect one another: Assuming that personally I do not do too many things to dissipate what I'm doing. It's like taking a step forward and taking a step back and taking a step forward, and so on. How much in the livingness of my day I do to undo what I've just done for myself. All of these experiences, repeated again and again, have an additive effect. Dr. Stortz said, "I believe these things are cumulative."

They can accumulate, Dr. Stortz noted on reading a draft of this paper, because God is always working, responding to our thoughts. She called her awareness of this reality "the expectation that God is in action all the time," and considers it a key part of her practitioner's consciousness.

Doing treatment daily is a like lot doing exercise the results last beyond the moment. Hard spiritual work pays off. The full quote from which the above five lines were taken is: MS: Now over time, since I believe these things are cumulative, over time they add to your well-being, and sense of well-being, anyway. Assuming that personally I do not do too many things to dissipate what I'm doing. It's like taking a step forward and taking a step back and taking a step forward, and so on. How much in the livingness of my day will I do to undo what I've just done for myself. But it's a permanent addition to my self any time that I engage in spiritual mind treatment for myself or someone else, it's a permanent accumulation in consciousness to me. Now I can undo a certain amount of it, as I said; but if I don't do that, it puts me another notch up, and then another notch up. And then over time I can see the accumulation of living a life like that, if I engage in that a good deal.

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Margaret Stortz BW: What accumulates? MS: What accumulates that could be recognizable, and I'm putting, I'm giving to you a rational, giving you rational commentaries around things that aren't totally rational, so I'll do my best. I can approximate a state of clear thinking very quickly, more quickly, than lots of people. I always have a sense of belonging to something larger than myself, so that no matter what is taking place I can if you like retreat into that. I can touch it for a length of time or for a brief period of time during the day. I sense, I have a greater sense of well-being, a greater sense of being able to return to spiritual center, if you like, more quickly. So it's not a question of never being upset, never being disturbed. Life disturbs. People die, disappoint you, so on. It disturbs you. But, through practice like that, I can approximate my spiritual center more quickly. I don't have to drift off, and be away for weeks and months at a time. I can uh, if I... Depending on the nature of what I'm handling, it can bother me for a portion of the day, or less. If it's big time, I can be disappointed for a while. But even in the disappointment, it doesn't have to skew my capacity to think clearly, or to come back to center. So it give me a greater level of well-being, that becomes normal now. Something that used to be extra-ordinary now becomes ordinary.

As the livingness of everyday life can (because of continuity) cross the boundary of treatment if one does not isolate oneself by gathering ones thoughts and withdrawing a bit, so also treatments effects cross into the daily life of the practitioner. And then over time I can see the accumulation of living a life like that, if I engage in that a good deal. Among the effects that Dr. Stortz has found to accumulate are: One can enter the treatment state more easily. One can think more clearly One has a sense of belonging to something larger. One can contact that something larger at will. One can retreat into it. One can be disturbed, but one can re-center more quickly. -93-

Margaret Stortz

One has a sense of well being. The sense of well-being is extraordinary, but one has it ordinarily.

Dr. Stortz finds that her practice and her well-being are not limited to her alone. They obviously affect her clients and her students, as detailed above. They also have cumulative results for the whole human race: All right, consider the willingness of a number of people to add a certain energy to a consciousness of well-being. This is a lot of people participating in this, which adds their drops you might say, their drops of water into the ocean of consciousness. And consider some of the things that are taking place in the world and have been over time, that are quite remarkable. I have to feel that at some level, these things have been shifting and moving the general race consciousness up another notch. And if enough people are, let us say, open to good, general good without saying 'it's gonna look like this, or it's gotta look like that, and you guys have to shape up," they quit doing that and open, open the lines of mind, to a greater expansion of awareness, people who are, who aren't so tightly bound in mind can receive that. Under the level, a lot of people's awareness is this sense of "Something's happened." They don't know what it is, but something's up. And I think it's the age of consciousness, really the age of spiritual consciousness, making its way known in a time that perhaps never has because of the ability of human communication to dispense itself everywhere in a way that was not possible before. You can gather millions of people together, by putting out in publications, television, magazines and so on, saying "Guess what folks, we're all going to pray." [Unintelligible] And you get a bunch of people doing it. It all has to count for something. This is the familiar theme of an age of consciousness. It is different, however, for Dr. Stortz than it is for many who talk about such an age. The elements, which she believes are bringing about this changing era, are part of her daily practice: change of thought, willingness to pray, openness. She has seen their specific effects in her work as a practitioner. So when she generalizes to the species, she is doing so on the basis of concrete experience, rather than of theory.

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Margaret Stortz 3.3.3 The Story I Found Interviewing Dr. Stortz as a practitioner, I found a number of themes. People come to her for help with disordered lives. Her craft is to withdraw from daily life and open to the concrete good order of God. Perhaps it would be better to represent the treatment as a state or condition of: Open Acceptance Receptiveness Enlargment Good Order Fitting Together Harmony Flow, Ease

to

This treatment takes place by the Presence and agency of God in a universe characterized by continuity, and cumulativity. When her work is well done, good order is established in the life of her client. Although disturbance and disappointment are still possible, the continuous practice moves her gradually and reliably to an experience of clarity, well-being and centeredness.

In 1996, the same year that she met with me, Dr. Stortz published a book of essays and poems.102 OUR FLIGHT In the warm wings of my knowing, I rise up. I seem clear, But I'm struggling. What holds me back? I have already cast light on my dimness. What else holds me or who? Hands are grasping at me And voices cry to me. They are the hands and voices of others, And yet they are mine as well. I believe I could move on alone, but perhaps I cannot.
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Stortz, I am enough & other wisdom for daily living

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Margaret Stortz The hands and voices Which are mine and not mine Must rise up with me. One Life, One Voice, One Mind, One Flight.

In her retirement she has given up her role as a minister and as president of her denomination. She continues her work as a practitioner.

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4 JEAN DELANEY: "BECAUSE HE SAID, ASK."

Rev. Jean Delaney works at an interdenominational ministry in Knoxville's Montgomery Village, which she calls "a housing development, like a project." Her ministry is to both the physical and the spiritual needs of the residents. She meets with people in need. She drives people to the hospital. She helped to create a child-care center for residents who are being forced off welfare, including obtaining a $60,000 grant. She is extremely active in the community and in her Baptist church.

She talks about all these roles, but in each of them it is clear that she is a partner a junior partner with God. Her prayer life is constant, and threads through everything she does at work and at home. And the quality of that relationship is ease. The God she knows and asks for help is close, a family member, a strong and trusted Father.

I had a sense that there was a non-stop conversation going on between her and God. Wherever she goes and whatever she may be doing, she is likely to be talking with God. There is no need for a special, set-aside ritualized prayer situation: BW: when some people pray, they have customs or rituals that they use, maybe a certain gesture or posture. Umm, is that true for you? JD: Mm-mm (negative.) No, because sometimes I'm sitting down. Sometimes I may be laying down. As I said, I've stood at the sink and prayed. I've stood on the street, and prayed with people. So no, I don't have a certain posture. Wherever I am, and there's a need that's where I pray.

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And conversation is the correct word, too. Of the people I interviewed, Jean Delaney's prayer style seems the most auditory. She has a verbal relationship with God. In her speech, metaphors based on sound (there were 376 of them) were almost twice as common as those based on vision (68) and feeling (123) combined ( = 191). Most of those auditory expressions were based on speech, reports not only of her conversations with God, but also of her exchanges with other people.

Rev. Delaney does not think that speech is privileged. I mentioned that I had interviewed people who preferred to pray in visual and kinesthetic ways as well: BW: OK. Yeah. Umm, this is really interesting, in part because, of the people I have spoken to, one person gets pictures, one person gets feelings, and now we have you who get words. JD: (laughs) BW: It seems to come every possible way (small laugh). JD: Of course! And we should never limit God. See, He'll only come in a way that person can receive Him.

Spoken language is her way, though, and the conversation with God is an ongoing part of her day.

4.1 Just Doing It

Jean Delaney prays on just about any kind of occasion. Her text for this is I Thessalonians 5:17, "Pray without ceasing." While some of the people interviewed

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Jean Delaney learned to pray as adults, Rev. Delaney has been praying this way since she was a child. I asked her where she learned to pray, and she said JD: At church. I grew up in First AME Zion church, where our pastor taught us that praying was communicating with God through Jesus Christ. And that we could ask God anything, we could tell him anything. And I grew up fasting and praying, as a child. And have thanked the Lord for it. I started out like during the Lenten season and our pastor started us out when we were young children. This has been a life of continuation. Umm, I haven't always done the right thing, I haven't always been at the right place. But I thank the Lord for His continuation, for having me in the palm of His hand, and using me That prayer life came from DOING, just doing it. And I look back and see what God has brought me from and how He's answered different prayers.

She has taught her family to pray, as she learned: BW: Have you taught others to pray? JD: My little granddaughter and my adult children have followed my example. Especially my daughters. I haven't taught them by saying "Do this." It's been by doing prayers before them and with them. When my cousin will come over, my little granddaughter will say, "Come on Grandma, we're going to pray. We're going to pray, Grandma."

4.2 God-Encounter Stories

The relationship with God is not necessarily verbal in both directions. Rev. Delaney prays to God verbally. God responds to her in a variety of ways. The most common way is that God acts; God makes something happen. Much of our interview was her description of what God had brought about in her life. In a two hour interview, she described or mentioned 32 different situations in which God had directly acted in her experience.

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Jean Delaney There was a lady that came to Montgomery Village ministry. That's where I minister, that's where God called me to. A lady came in one day and she needed help with food and not-food, and she was having problems with her leg. And while I was working with her, the Lord said, "Pray for her leg." And I said, "Debbie, do you mind if I pray for you?" and she said, "No, Rev. Jean, go ahead and pray." So I just prayed and asked the Lord to help her, because she'd been having a lot of pain in it, umm, you know, how to remove the pain, let the swelling begin to go down, uh, begin to knit back the cartilage or bones or whatever is the problems, He knew and I didn't, but if he would begin a work in her leg, and mainly take the pain away. Once I finished with the prayer, then we went on and I needed to do, she did what she needed to do, then she left. BW: Mm-hmm JD: Well, the very next day she came back. And she said, "Oh, I just need to hug you." And I said, "What's wrong?" and she said, "Do you know, after you prayed for me, my leg began to stop hurting."

Sometime she does not understand what God is doing. One morning she found that she had driven from her house on a very familiar route, but had explicably taken a wrong turn: JD: And (small laugh) when I got up there I thought, "Lord, what am I up here for?" BW: Uh-huh JD: "How did I get here?" and then I said, "Lord, I know you've brought me up this way for a reason!" And, I said, "But Lord, you'll have to show it to me, whatever it is." So I'm driving down Magnolia Avenue, still headed toward my mother's house, and had gone several, several, several, several blocks and I came upon a situation where there were seven carloads of police, and this is a little after six AM, now, there were SEVEN carloads of police. They were parked at this 7-11 or a convenience store. And when I got there, the intensity to pray grew, as I was coming up on this particular scene, not knowing what had happened. Later I learned a lady had been robbed and had been shot BW: Mmmm -100-

Jean Delaney JD: And the Lord brought me to that point, to pray for that lady.

She has come to understand that God will take her to surprising places. Often the results will become obvious, as in the following story: JD: Umm, I had taken one of our residents to a mental health center, near where the ministry is, at UT Hospital and had dropped her off, and later she called me for me to come back and pick her up. Well, instead of me turning right, I kept going! And I ended up over by the hospital; and I thought, "Lord, what am I doing here? What am I doing here, Lord; I passed the turn. I've just gone right by it? How can I go right by the turn" (laughs) BW: (laughs) JD: So I thought, "OK, Lord. Now I've passed the turn; I'm over here by the hospital. There must be somebody here you want me to see." And sure enough, when I drove up, there was another one of our residents, leaned over on the trash can. And she didn't have a way home, and didn't have any money for a phone call. She didn't know that there were phones on the inside, that they have now, where people could make calls to get rides. And, when I got to her, I said, "Elaine." And she said, "Oh, Rev. Jean!" She said, "You're not going to believe this." She said, "I was saying, 'Lord, if I could just call Rev. Jean, she would come pick me up'" It is part of her understanding that God does not do such things as random good deeds, but as part of a larger pattern that intends to let people know of His love. She went on: JD: Can you imagine me missing a turn? (laughs) To go pick up somebody? BW: That's wonderful! (laughs) JD: It's wonderful, because you know what it did? It let her know that God was concerned also about her. God leads her daily, sometimes to concrete action and sometimes to prayer for others.

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Jean Delaney There does not seem to be too much difference between prayer and action for her, because she is led to both by the Spirit. As with the story of being led to the convenience-store robbery so she could pray for the woman who had been shot, she has often been led to pray for people sometimes for people she did not know. JD: But one night, I was sitting here on my living room floor, pinning up some curtains, for a lady, because I used to sew for a living. BW: Mm-hmm. JD: And while I was pinning that I was hemming for a lady, the name "Darryl Dawkins" kept coming to mind. BW: OK JD: And I got up and I went in and I said to my husband, "Bill, WHO is Darryl Dawkins?" And he said, "He's a basketball player." Well, for days, the Lord would have me pray for this man. To this day, I never knew what the results were. To this day, I have never met him. But periodically the Lord would bring this young man's name to mind. And I would pray for him.

I looked up Darryl Dawkins on the Internet, and discovered he played for Detroit in the National Basketball Association. Why Jean Delaney was called to pray for him, I do not know, nor does she.

Sometimes she would be drawn to contact someone just when they needed her prayers: JD: Well, the Holy Spirit will bring people's names to my mind and like I said, people that I don't know. I've had other experiences like that. One daywhen I used to be a teacher's assistant, we used to get snow-days off. And we don't get snows in Knoxville like we used to, but there would be a down time. And I would take my telephone book, and just open it up. BW: Mm-hmm -102-

Jean Delaney JD: And whatever name would leap up off that page, that's who I would call. (laughs) BW: OK. (small laugh) JD: I know you're saying, "This lady is really crazy one." This actually happened: this one particular day I was going through my telephone book and this lady's name is Paulette [a pseudonym]. And, and we all call her "Paula." But her daughter's name is also Paulette So, I dial her up and I say, "Well, Paula, how are you doing?" and we talked. And uh, the first time it happened, her mother was very ill. And I didn't know it. And she said, "Jean, will you pray for my Mama? And my family? We're right now getting ready to leave town, because my mother's really ill." And I said, "Sure I will." So I prayed with her right at that moment, and I began to pray, you know, later, much later, and their mama got better. Well, that happened, oh, I guess several years maybe had passed, and I did it again (small laugh) the same way. Only this time, when I called her, the Lord kept saying "Paulette." BW: Alright. JD: And I said, "Paula, how're you doing?" and she said, "Oh, Jean," she said, "I'm having a bad time." And I said, "You are?" And she said, "Yes." And I said, "Well, I just thought I'd call you and see how you're were doing." And she said, "Jean Delaney, every time you call me, something is going on." And this is what she asked me, she said, "Do you have ESP?" And I said, "No, I have HSP." BW: (laughs) JD: And she said, "HSP?" And I said, "Holy Spirit Power!" BW: Uh-huh. JD: And what had happened you wouldn't believe this (small laugh) when I called her that particular day, the night before, her daughter and her boyfriend had just told her that she was pregnant. You see I didn't know that at the time. I just knew it had to do with the daughter. Because the Lord kept saying "Paulette." And I said, "Paula, whatever problems you're having, I want to pray with you right now." She said, "Jean Delaney, what are you up to? Because every time you call, something is going on." And I said, "Well I don't know, " I said. But the Lord just kept saying "Paulette." And so when I told her, I prayed for her. She didn't tell

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Jean Delaney me then. She didn't tell me for a month what had happened the day, the night before I called. BW: That's amazing. So you, at the time you called, you didn't know that the daughter was pregnant, not 'til much later. JD: I did not know the daughter was pregnant. I knew it had something to DO with the daughter, the reason God wanted me to call her was to pray. But He didn't tell me and I didn't know what the problem was, either. I knew it had to do with the daughter.

4.3 A Personal Relationship

The quality of Rev. Delaney's relationship with God is what struck me most strongly. She is speaking about how she communicates with the Creator of the universe, but she relates directly and personally.

First of all, she experiences God as a person. I asked her: BW: Do you experience God as a person? JD: Yes. He's my heavenly Father. He's Abba-Father, to me. BW: Experienced as a person. And, uh, you have a relationship with him? JD: Yes. Just to be sure, and to distinguish her experience of God from that of some other religions, I asked again: BW: Some people have experienced uh God as being, umm, like a law. Umm, a law of goodness, but a law. And some people talk more about God as a person. Which way would you say you experience God more? JD: As a person.

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Jean Delaney There are three things about this relationship that are important to her: It is God-enabled, it is direct, and it is close.

4.3.1 God-enabled The relationship is God-enabled because it would not have been possible without the action of God in Jesus Christ. but it's through grace. And through the person of Jesus Christ that Ihave that relationship with God. God made it possible through Jesus Christ that I could have a relationship with Him.

Every formal prayer she makes, and many of her brief prayers, end with the phrase "in the name of Jesus" "Lord, in the name of Jesus, I need to know where to go next" You know, saying "Father, in the name of Jesus, I bring this situation, whatever it is, to You." A lady brought her baby in one day, where we were. The baby was sick a little baby dehydrated. And the lady that was with her said, "Let Rev. Jean hold the baby." I said, "Just let me see this pretty baby." So I just grabbed him up, and I began to just um stroke his back, and I didn't pray out loud, I just began to whisper, "Lord, in the name of Jesuswhatever the problem is with this baby, which you know, you made this baby, you formed him within his mother's womb, you know what the problem is, I don't. Lord, whatever it is, bring this out of him." I was just beginning to stroke him, and I was whispering it in his ear. His mom didn't hear me pray. And, he got better.

She does this because it is how she is told to do it, in the Bible: JD: I pray to the Father. to our heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, because the Lord tells us that. -105-

Jean Delaney BW: OK JD: God's word tells us that when we pray in the name of Jesus it talks about praying in the name of Jesus, and believe that when you pray, you will receive. 103

She tries not to "hit people over the head with it," but one of her commonest prayers is that other people should have this same enabling, by accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior. She prayed for someone in a passing ambulance, finishing with Lord, if that person doesn't know you, let he or she have a personal relationship and, in the name of Jesus, do not allow Satan to come to steal their life before they have an opportunity to know you.

When I asked her to pray for my dissertation, she did, and included in the prayer: And Lord, if Birrell doesn't know You, as his Lord and Savior, I right now say in the name of Jesus, pull on his heart, Lord Jesus. TUG on it Not to accept Jesus as one's Savior would be the great tragedy in a life, as she said to a friend whose father was sick: JD: And I said, "Well that's your father, you want to share this, you want to make sure, before anything happens to him BW: Mm-hmm JD: That he has made a decision for Christ. At least you will have brought it to him." 4.3.2 Direct Her relationship with God, through Jesus, is direct. There is no other mediator necessary:

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When Rev. Delaney read this, she asked that I include a reference to John 14:13-14: "And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it."

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Jean Delaney JD: God made it possible through Jesus Christ that I could have a relationship with Him. BW: OK. JD: I don't have to go through the Pope, I don't have to go through anybody else BW: All right. JD: and I don't have to wait on anybody. I can say "Lord, I need you right now." Say, "Lord, this is an SOS prayer, and I know that I'm going to get an answer." 4.3.3 Close This God-enabled and unmediated relationship is also close and warm. That is the strongest feeling you get when speaking to Jean Delaney, that you could say of her as was said of Moses, "And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.104"

I have always thought it would be presumptuous to tell God what to do. Perhaps it would unless you were a very dear and beloved child of that God. And if you were also, insofar as a created being could be so, a friend. Jean Delaney's turns of phrase reveals someone who feels very, very close to God. She talks about what is going on right now in her life when I was sitting at the railroad track, I was saying, "Well, thank you Lord, for this train. I don't understand this, because I was needed to be at my house, at two o'clock She fairly demands explanations: I just say, "OK, what are you trying to tell me."
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Ex 33:11

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Jean Delaney Lord, what are you talking about? (laughs)

in the complete confidence that He will tell her: And I wait on the Lord to give me explanations. I will ask him, "Well what, what do I need to learn from this situation?" and "What do you want me to see?" or "What's happening?" or different questions like that. She is clearly in the presence of an intimate Friend. Her relationship is neither distant nor formal.

4.4 The Pattern of Prayer

Rev. Delaney emphasizes that there is not a fixed pattern that she must follow when she prays. BW: Is there, is there an order to prayer? I mean, you sounded as if you, there is sort of an order to things. First you praise, and then you ask for things. I mean, is that, am I getting that accurately? JD: And I really don't follow a set order. I know there is if we look at Matthew it's to praise, adore Him, you know; and if you use that there, then there's the petition and, you know, you ask for forgiveness. And I really don't know the order, because HOW we do it He doesn't want us to do it in a rote type situation BW: Mm-hmm JD: so if I'm running out of gas and saying, "Lord, I just need to be able to get to a gas station, help me get there." Then I'm not going , you know, I'm not going to try to go through a ritual. I'm going to say, "Lord, this is what I need, and You know what I need better than I know"

Many of her prayers are quick and directed to the needs of the moment, anything but rote. But there are certain things that repeatedly appear in her longer prayers.

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Jean Delaney 4.4.1 Repentance If she is in any kind of conflict with anyone, she needs to repent before she can go on.

JD: I get upset like everybody else. And when I do, and if I say something wrong, or act in a way that I don't think is right, then I immediately want to repent. The flavor of the repentance is not self-absorbed. She does not seems to dwell on what she has done wrong. Instead it is "the negative part I want to get out of the way first." I asked her if there were things that would get in the way of prayer, and she replied: JD: Yes. Umm, sometimes if, the state of mind that you might be in Say for instance if me and my husband have been arguing (laughs) then I'd know that I can't enter in a prayer without saying, "Lord, forgive me for my attitude" first. BW: Yeah. JD: So, if I, if I entered into a prayer right after us fussing and arguing, without saying that, then that's a hindrance.

The specifics of repentance and reconciliation may involve admitting how she feels first, and then asking for help: JD: There was a teacher I was working with. And this teacher was going through some problem. She was having female problems, whatever (small laugh) was going on with her I don't really know. But, she was just carrying on, and we had had a good relationship before then. That day I just had had it with her. I was upset with her; we were going to lunch and I said, "Lord, I just don't LIKE her behavior, I don't like the way things are happening, I don't even like her! But Lord" And that's reconciliation BW: Mm-hmm JD: I could say, "But Lord, Lord, now I've got that part out, about how I feel about it, now let me see her through Your eyes." -109-

Jean Delaney

The object of repentance is not herself and her condition. The object is to remove obstacles from what is most important: JD: I don't want to center on me. I want to center on God. BW: OK. JD: Umm, so whatever the negative parts of me, I want to ask for forgiveness, so I can get that out of the way.

4.4.2 Glorifying & Thanking Glorifying God and thanking God underlie Rev. Delaney's entire prayer life. They seem to be what she turns to first when she is in doubt just what to pray for. For instance, she was delayed in getting home for our telephone interview by a train that had stopped, blocking her road. Her response was to pray JD: And I pray thanking the Lord for situations, like when I was sitting at the railroad track, I was saying, "Well, thank you Lord, for this train. I don't understand this, because I was needed to be at my house, at two o'clock," but I began to thank him for the train. And then I began to thank God for the train. After that, another one came, and just kept past; but the train was still sitting there. BW: Uh-huh. JD: I thought, "OK Lord, now I need to be at home for this telephone call " and I began to just say, "Well, Lord, just let me answer the questions, where they will be a blessing to others, but to glorify You." And then the train started moving!(laughs)

At the end of our interview, when she was praying for my dissertation, she gave thanks at the beginning of her prayer and again at the end. She also asked that -110-

Jean Delaney Lord, as Birrell interviews these other people, Lord I ask as I prayed while I was sitting at the railroad track waiting on the train to go by, Lord, let what he writes, glorify You.

Part of the reason for the thanksgiving in the midst of prayer flows from believing that you have already received (Mark 11:24 "Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.") But it also seems to be a genuine feeling, and to reflect her trust in God in each situation.

Giving God the glory is done partly in imitation of Jesus, who closed his prayer with "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever" (Matt. 6:13). It also is clearly to dispel any claim that Jean herself is the doer. Fundamentally, however, it seems, like the thanksgiving, to be an act of love and gratitude.

4.4.3 Asking When Jean Delaney asks, she asks in detail. It may be that other persons who pray more kinesthetically or visually ask in such complete lists, and that we only know it in this case because Rev. Delaney is putting words to it. But in several prayers she makes very explicit all the details of what she is asking for, as in this passage already quoted: JD: A lady came in one day and she was having problems with her leg. And while I was working with her, the Lord said, "Pray for her leg." BW: OK JD: And I said, "Debbie, do you mind if I pray for you?" and she said, "No, Rev. Jean, go ahead and pray." So I just prayed and asked the Lord to help her, because she'd been having a lot of pain in it, umm, you know, how to remove the pain, let the swelling begin to go down, uh, begin to -111-

Jean Delaney knit back the cartilage or bones or whatever is the problems, He knew and I didn't, but if he would begin a work in her leg, and mainly take the pain away.

I have thought about what is involved with her prayer, looking for the patterns, and I finally realized that it was just what she said. She asks God. Why? Because He has told her to, through the Bible. BW: Let me ask, why, why is it necessary for people to pray, if God's intent is good to begin with? JD: Because He said, "Ask." We are being obedient to His directions. You know, when you look at the children of Israel, and why they ended up forty years in the wilderness on an eleven-days' journey BW: Mm-hmm JD: because they didn't do it God's way. And He tells us, to ask!

Because God told her to ask, she does. She does it in every situation. Because God wants us to communicate with Him: So, He said, "Ask. Tell me. Talk to me."

It was the pattern of prayer she learned from her childhood pastor, Rev. Babington Johnson: JD: our pastor taught us that praying was communicating with God through Jesus Christ. And that we could ask God anything, we could tell him anything.

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Jean Delaney And she does. She asks for very definite things, confidently and definitely. When she prayed for this dissertation, she said: JD: Let everything that people have said, from the Buddhist to the, to the whoever else he asks, let it direct people to a comfort in knowing and loving, praying, communing with You. And knowing that you're going to answer, Lord I ask that you supply Birrell with everything he needs, from the ink cartridge that he may use for his computer, on down to the right paper. Lord, go with his heart and mind, and let him be able to just type this up. And then Lord, as it's read, let the team, whether it's a team of twelve, or a team of six, or a team or four, or a team of two whoever reads it, let them know that he has done the best job that he can do. And Lord, let it come rolling through, loud and clear, what he wants to say, in this dissertation. Lord, bless his efforts, bless his wife. Lord, supply their every need, Lord, whether it's financial, whether it's physical, whether it's spiritual.

She repeated a number of times that "God is specific," and so are her requests. She seems deliberately to have maintained the attitude of a trusting child with her Father, in prayer. In the rest of her life she is an effective administrator, quite capable of bearding a foundation official and securing a $60,000 grant with a telephone call. But in her prayer life, she asks just as one would ask a beloved parent - for exactly what she wants. 4.4.4 Leaving It with God For all the specificity of her prayer, she is very clear that she wants God's will to be done. She asks for things, and then leaves the matter with God. Her prayer for my dissertation went on And Lord, I don't know where it's going, and that's all right; but I thank You that You're going to be blessed in and through this dissertation. She can ask what she wants, but overarching her will is what she call's God's perfect will.

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Jean Delaney JD: there was a friend, umm, her daughter is a Downs child, and was suffering from something, I didn't know what it was at the time, and she was kind of a young girl. And the mother came to me one day and said, "Jean, I want you to pray that God don't take my baby." BW: Mm-hmm JD: And I looked at her, and I thought, "I'm not going to pray that." I said, "I'm not going to let you put me into that kind of bondage, and I'm not going to put you in that kind of bondage. I'm going to pray God's perfect will in this situation, and give you the strength to go through whatever it is you need to go through. But that, asking God not to take that child, is going contrary to His will. I don't know, because see I couldn't say that, because I couldn't say what His will was or is, you see what I'm saying? It was not clear to me, then, what constituted proper prayer. BW: Yet, you mentioned that your uh, that if you know that you've prayed aright that you can go on your way knowing that God will take care of it, and do whatever's best. And it sounded as if you know what it is that means that you've prayed aright. So I was curious, what is it that lets you know that? JD: First of all, giving it to God. BW: OK JD: You know, saying "Father, in the name of Jesus, I bring this situation, whatever it is, to You." And I pray, "Your perfect [will] in this situation, Father." And, entering that person's name, and their situation, saying, "Lord, I don't KNOW what they need but You do." BW: Mm-hmm JD: "I don't know what they don't need, but You do." And when I do it this way, when I, when I, when I give it totally to Him BW: Mm-hmm JD: then I can leave knowing that I haven't taken anything to myself, and I haven't left anything for them.

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Jean Delaney She can leave it with God because she trusts Him either to give her what she asks for or to do His will. JD: I've brought it all to Him, and laid it with Him and not taken anything back. And then leave, expecting Him to answer. BW: OK. JD: I think the expectation of prayer is the ultimate. It's that thing that most people say you need the most, is F-A-I-T-H. And that's leaving, knowing, that He's going to take care of it. BW: OK. JD: Trusting Him in it, even thought when you can't see what the outcome is going to be, or you won't even know what's the outcome.

4.5 Guidance
Many of the people interviewed for this dissertation have had occasional moments of inspiration. For Jean Delaney the guidance is daily and reliable, part of the conversation between her and God. 4.5.1 Daily Guidance She frequently asks for understanding. And I wait on the Lord to give me explanations. I will ask him, "Well what, what do I need to learn from this situation?" and "What do you want me to see?" or "What's happening?" or different questions like that. Sometimes she asks if she has gone astray. JD: Like, with the ministry, I'll say, when things seem to be not really happening the way I think they may need to be happening I ask the Lord, "Are we still where You want us to be? Are we still doing the ministry the way You want us to do?" And so I'll begin to ask questions: "Do we need -115-

Jean Delaney to change? Do I need to change where I am?" Umm, you know, "Is there something I need to repent from?" She will also ask what to do in concrete situations, as when she found herself unexpectedly by the medical center: JD: I ended up over by the hospital, and I thought, "Lord, what am I doing here? What am I doing here, Lord; I passed the turn. I've just gone right by it? How can I go right by the turn" (laughs) BW: (laughs) JD: So I thought, "OK, Lord. Now I've passed the turn; I'm over here by the hospital. There must be somebody here you want me to see."

And there was. Her dialogues with God are far from formal; instead they are like a conversation with a trusted advisor who is not always easy to understand. I just say, "OK, what are you trying to tell me."

Often God initiates the conversation, frequently by bringing something to her thoughts. Very commonly Bible verses come to mind. What marks them as communications is their utter relevance. JD: One time, I, another lady and I were beginning to pray, for someone and the Lord gave the passage of scripture in Matthew, where it says "Cut it off."105 BW: OK. JD: and so we stopped the prayer...because he said, "Cut it off." And he said, "This does not go out without prayer and fasting."106 And we did not really realize that where we were getting ready to go into in praying
105

Again Rev.Delaney asked me to cite the New Testament verses. This one is Matt 5:30, which begins "And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off" 106 Matt 17:21 "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."

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Jean Delaney for this particular family, we were getting ready to get in some big trouble. And so when God gave us that passage of Scripture, while we were sitting, praying, he gave Matthew 5:30, and it said, "Cut if off." And so we stopped, immediately. Other times, the message will be difficult to interpret. She will then try to find the meaning. JD: Well, he's given me some other words, too. (laughs) Like "twin." BW: Mm-hmm JD: OK, we've just opened a child-care center in Knoxville here. Montgomery Village is a housing development. And because of Families First, there's a lot of women needing to go to work to go to school, and to make a transition. So, the ministry had set out to open up a childcare center. Well, this past year, June the 15th of 1998, we opened a child-care center; and after the childcare center got up, opened and up and running, the Lord began to say "Twin." I thought, "What? 'Twin?' Lord, what are you talking about? (laughs) " BW: (small laugh) JD: And He would just say "Twin." And I'd say, "OK, Lord. " and, I'd hear it again. Then I began to talk about it. "OK, there is a twin somewhere," I said. "Now where is the twin?" Well, since then, right next door are two more apartments that we now have possession of, that a youth center is going to be developed in where the kids will be mentored, there's going to be a library there, there's going to an art project, there's going to be a place for suspended and expelled students to be able to come. And it's right next door. Well I thought that was the twin, and I guess it is. But, there're some other activities that've been going on, and one is the youth center. We call it "YMO".107 And for the other activities that have a place where the residents come together, there's a large open field in front of the ministry; and it's going to be called Community Unity Park. Well, what God has shown me since that, that these two projects are being born seeded first, at the same time. BW: You mean like, planted? JD: Yes.
107

Rev. Delaney explained that YMO stand for "Yours, Mine, and Ours"

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Jean Delaney BW: OK. JD: The ideas of both were birthed, the seeds were, were committed at the same time. And then, they are simultaneously coming up. We put in two grants; they went in together, both YMO and CUP and they are the twins. 4.5.2 "Holy Spirit, Pray!" Guidance comes from the Holy Spirit. JD: The Holy spirit is the third part of the Godhead and His job is to teach us. He will direct us. I could be driving down the street, and not really know where I'm going, and say, "Lord, in the name of Jesus, I need to know where to go next" BW: Mm-hmm JD: and how to get there. And, and Holy Spirit, show me." And that has actually happened. And so it's the Holy Spirit, which is the third part of the Godhead, is to teach us and guide us and lead us. And He does. In particular, she will ask the Holy Spirit for help when she does not know what to ask for, or how to ask for it. JD: Have I experienced uncertainty or doubt, in prayer? (long pause) Not really. Because if I really don't know how to pray I will say, "Holy Spirit, pray. I don't know how. I don't know what the prayer is, right here."

The conversation goes both ways. Sometimes she initiates it, and sometimes God does. The continuous, affectionate communion makes up her life of "prayer without ceasing."

4.6 Prayer for Others: The Vocation of Intercessor

"Everybody is supposed to pray, " says Jean Delaney, but some people have a special vocation. -118-

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BW: Do you, um, do you think there's a certain kind of person who should be a pray-er? JD: I think there are certain people who are intercessory prayer people. BW: What, what are they like? JD: Intercessors are people who uh pray regardless of what the situation or circumstances are, when God brings it to them. They will intercede for cities, they will intercede for states, for nations, uh, for people, for things to change. You were talking about the reconciliation BW: Mm-hmm JD: they will pray for, like in my situation, for communities to change, for uh, for Blacks and Whites and other communities to come into a reconciliation. These are prayers of people who will pray for a long period of time, and will not let it go until, until God says, "OK, you can let it go." Even though, Darryl Dawkins, every time He would bring it I would say a prayer, not ever talking to that man, not ever knowing the results Some people aren't, aren't intercessors. Umm, some intercessors will stay on their face before the Lord, for hours praying, crying out, to the Lord. The calling of intercessor is at least as old as the Church. BW: OK. Is it mentioned in the Bible, in, by that name? JD: Mmmmmm I'm not sure if it's mentioned that way, but there's one, when they were in the upper room. BW: Mm-hmm JD: Jesus said to them to stay there til the Comforter came? They were intercessors. because they stayed and they prayed and they WAITED until it came. An intercessor will do that.

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Jean Delaney 4.6.1 Waiting on the Lord Persistence in intercessory prayer is important. She has, herself, prayed for a very long time sometimes without seeing the result. [Y]es, an intercessor will pray, they may not stay in one place and pray but they will continue that prayer until God says stop or it, whatever it is, comes about. Part of the role of an intercessor is to keep praying until God says to stop. God might say it by giving the result, or by speaking to the pray-er in some other way; but until that time it is the pray-er's job to stay with the intercession.

I asked her if she ever felt that prayer had failed: JD: Well, and you know, what somebody else might consider as a failure's like, if the answer doesn't come right away. Maybe that I could only see that somebody might consider that as a failure but I know that when I pray, that I may not see the answer, and I have to say, "Well, OK, Lord" Like I'm praying about a situation now, and have been praying for several years. I'll say, "Lord, I don't know what's happening, and I don't know when the answer's coming, BUT I trust You in the situation." BW: OK. JD: And so I have to trust him, even though I haven't seen the result. But I can't think of any time of failure." BW: So that there, It's specifically if you've prayed for, that a certain thing happen, and it not" JD: Doesn't, mmm BW: You know, the opposite happens? JD: Mm-hmm. But see, uh, just because it hasn't happened right then doesn't mean it's not going to happen.

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Jean Delaney The wait is not part of some test inflicted by God. Instead it is part of God's care for us. JD: And sometimes we have to wait, for answers. Because He knows that, if He gave us the answer right then, we are not really ready to deal with the answer

4.6.2 Prayer and Fasting Part of Jean Delaney's spiritual practice is fasting. It seems rare in the modern world, and I asked her why she does it. BW: What does fasting do? JD: For me, personally, I feel like it brings me where I'm saying, "Lord, I want to get serious, I want to get serious with the prayer, I want to get serious about whatever the situation is. Because I am moving away from the table, I'm moving away from uh, other things" BW: Mm-hmm JD: So, to me, I'm saying, "God, I'm getting serious." As with other elements of her life, she enters and leaves fasts at the direction of God. In fact God often initiates the fast. JD: It's not when I say, "OK, I'm going to do this fast." It's when, He wants me to fast, if I, and I know people think this sounds crazy, but it's like He'll slide me right into a fast, with no stress, no strain, and I'm in a fast, and not even realize it.

She has been fasting in association with prayer from time to time ever since she was a child. Her fasts vary in depth and duration. JD: Well, I have done two forty-day fasts, and what they were at different places He would show me to start dropping off meat, then you drop off -121-

Jean Delaney meat, vegetables, etcetera, until you get to bread and water. The first three days, I got down to bread and water. Then two days of just water; and the last two days, nothing for that period of time as the fast was coming to a close. I fast different fasts. It depends; it may be an Esther fast, which is a three-day fast. It may be an Elijah fast it just depends on what the prayer is, and what the need is. BW: How do you, how do you know which fast to do? JD: I pray, and ask God to show me which fast it is. Many times I find myself in a fast while I'm working, and have not eaten anything. I have sometimes been like so busy, that I've haven't had anything to eat, and just maybe water or juice, and when it comes down to the end of the day, I've been on a liquid fast.

The practice of fasting seemed to me like going into the wilderness, a sort of deprival. Rev. Delaney corrected that impression. JD: Mmm? I don't consider it the wilderness. But, if that's what you think you know, maybe some people consider that as the wilderness. BW: No, it's really I'm trying to find what your experience is and not put mine in. It's just, you said you're moving away, from the table, and I had this JD: OK, for me, it's just, that's what I'm doing: I'm saying I don't need this food, because I don't get hungry. It's like the spiritual food feeds me. The communication with God is filling I really don't think about eating. BW: Mm-hmm JD: So the experience that I have is that, I'm full! You know, and I can go for hours, and days, where I don't even think about eating. 4.6.3 God as the Intermediary While many of those praying seem to have a separate contact with those they pray for through a spiritual or psychic channel, Jean Delaney does not appear to. Instead, she knows things about those people because God has brought her information. -122-

Jean Delaney JD: And I said, "Pat, how're you doing?" and she said, "Oh, Jean," she said, "I'm having a bad time." And I said, "You are?" And she said, "Yes." And I said, "Well, I just thought I'd call you and see how you're were doing." And she said, "Jean Delaney, every time you call me, something is going on." BW: (small laugh) JD: And this is what she asked me, she said, "Do you have ESP?" And I said, "No, I have HSP." BW: (laughs) JD: And she said, "HSP?" And I said, "Holy Spirit Power!" 4.6.4 For Whom Do You Pray Some of the people for whom Jean Delaney prays come to her and ask for her prayers. In other cases someone may ask prayers for another person whom she has never met. You see, other people will call me, like I had a lady to call oh, one day a couple of weeks ago, and she said, "There are some people I want you to pray for, and I said, "OK." And she began to tell me what the situation was. And she said, "I need for you to pray, for these people." And so she began to tell me the people's names. So I don't have to be there, when I pray.

In other cases she will initiate the prayer herself, asking the other person if she can pray for them. Sometimes God will bring a situation to her mind, and indicate without explanation that she should pray for people in it, as happened with the basketball player Darryl Dawkins. Sometimes she will be taken to a situation, as she was when she was brought to the convenience store just after the robbery.

Occasionally she is directed not to pray for someone. The time that the injunction "Cut it off" came to mind is an example of such a negative direction. -123-

Jean Delaney

4.7 God is the Orchestrator

What is the role of prayer, and of pray-ers, in a universe ruled by an all-powerful God? The question was posed in an article in Christian Century. If Jesus' confidence in petitionary prayer is well founded, we are led to an astonishing ontological recognition: that God rules the world in constant consultation with those who pray, that God's determinations are wrought in dialogue with those who call for help. To be sure, the Lord God is Lord indeed. Humanity proposes, God disposes. Nonetheless, we are assured, despite the fact that God is not bound to our pleas, that God's determinations are not unaffected by our pleas. The Lord God is Lord indeed, and therefore, God is free to rule unbounded by the humanly inferred laws of finite nature and free to rule in spontaneous dialogue with us.108 I asked Rev. Delaney about this: BW: Let me ask I saw a quotation that really struck me, and I'm not sure if it's a good one or a bad one: it's a strong one. And I want to find out if you think it's true: That God rules the universe, in consultation with those who pray. Is that JD: Consultation, what? BW: I don't know. It's just I read it, and it stuck in my head, and I said, "Why is this (laughs) sticking in my head?" So here it is. JD: Wouldn't it be nice if it said, "in" what, what's uh "orchestration"? Like God is the orchestrator. BW: OK. JD: It would be better if it was that way for me, it's like "Yes, He is.." but He doesn't need us, but, as He uses us then He's orchestrating things to happen with us praying and of the prayers of other people.

108

Goetz, On petitionary prayer: pleading with the Unjust Judge?

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Jean Delaney BW: So, so that we're part of, almost a composition? JD: Yes! BW: OK. And we're, we're a work of art. JD: And we're going to, and we're working in tune with Him.

This sense of artistic collaboration may explain the excited, pleased tone of much of Rev. Delaney's work. BW: OK. Do you enjoy the, um, the contact with God? JD: Oh, yes! (small laugh) BW: (small laugh) JD: I do. Because it's exciting. And what makes it exciting is, when you have a situation, and you pray, you really don't know how God is going to answer. But the way he answers is far better than you can ever imagine. Or even think about. Our little finite minds, you know, umm It's just, it's incredible how he answers.

4.8 "God is not a fear"

The Christianity I learned as a child had a background of both hope and fear. Hell was always a possibility, and much of the Christian life was an attempt to avoid Hell rather than to approach God. So I must admit I looked for that same attitude in what Rev. Delaney said. I found only one small trace of it, in a prayer she said for the person in a passing ambulance: Lord, if that person doesn't know you, let he or she have a personal relationship and, in the name of Jesus, do not allow Satan to come to steal their life before they have an opportunity to know you.

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Jean Delaney She is certainly aware of human suffering. Much of her work in her ministry deals with people who have serious problems. But her overwhelming attitude seemed to be affirmative rather than avoiding.

I asked her about unholy spirits, because in many charismatic denominations they are blamed for much that goes wrong.109 She replied: JD: Umm, the unholy spirit part, I would be able to detect because there is a , umm, and I don't want to use the word "feeling", but there is a, would be a negativethe unholy spirit part would bring a fear BW: Mm-hmm JD: and see, God is not a fear. BW: Mm-hmm JD: Um, the unholy spirit part would bring a lot of fear, oh let's see, for lack of a better word, frustration, in a negative way, like you could be going somewhere and know, "this is not a goodthing." She did not, however, bring up the matter of unholy spirits until I asked her. And once she had answered the question, she did not mention them again. Much more typical of her attitude toward God and life was her quotation of scripture: JD: I do let sometimes, will let fear run in BW: Mm-hmm JD: and when I do that God will bring me 2 Timothy 1:7. He said, "I have not given you the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sound mind."

109

See for example McGuire and Kantor, Ritual healing in suburban America See also Csordas, The sacred self: a cultural phenomenology of Charismatic healing

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4.9 "BecauseHe wants us to commune with Him."

When I was asking Rev. Delaney why prayer should be necessary in a universe run by an all-knowing God, she replied: JD: He tells us, to ask! BW: Sowe're doing it not because it's sort of necessary in the universe, but because God says to. JD: BecauseHe wants us to commune with Him. He already knows, but He wants us to commune with Him.

Communing with God seems to be the heart of Jean Delaney's spiritual life. The results are, as she says, "the proof of the pudding," but communing with God is what it is all for. She was taught this as a child, when she was first learning to pray. Again, as she said: our pastor taught us that praying was communicating with God through Jesus Christ. And that we could ask God anything, we could tell him anything.

The communication is what God gets out of prayer, if such an idea makes sense. JD: So, He said, "Ask. Tell me. Talk to me." Rev. Delaney added at this point, "Ask. Seek and you will find." BW: So, it's as much a matter that God wants us to communicate with Him? JD: Right.

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Jean Delaney BW: OK. JD: MUCH more of a matter of us communicating. BW: with Him. Rather than it being necessary. JD: Right

God wants this connection with us. JD: He wants to be in communication with us. He loves when we are taking time for Him, not to just talk to Him BW: Mm-hmm JD: but to really commune with Him, where He is, He is speaking back to us

In her prayer for my dissertation, she said: Let everything that people have said, from the Buddhist to the, to whoever else he asks, Lord, direct people to a comfort in knowing and, and loving, praying, communing with You.

Paper is not adequate to convey tones of voice. Rev. Delaney's voice changed when she spoke of communing with God. It softened and took on longing. It is clear that although she works willingly in the world, and though she is successful at intercession for others, it is her communion with God that she loves. And prayer makes it possible. I asked her: BW: [W]hat would you like to share with others, if you were speaking to other people, not only in this time, but in times to come? JD: What would I like to share?

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Jean Delaney BW: Yeah. JD: Always the main thing I would would share with people, is coming to know the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior, that's the first thing. And then, the bond through prayer, that they can commune. And they don't have to close their eyes, they don't have to get down on their knees, but to communicate with God through Jesus Christ, the Father and the Son BW: Mm-hmm JD: to the Father, and then commune have a relationship with Him, through prayer. That, that's our vehicle

Jean Delaney indicated in a telephone call that she was pleased with what I had written. All of her written corrections were to amend the original transcription, and to add scriptural citations. She sent a newspaper with a picture of her and her granddaughter (and word that the Knoxville News-Sentinel has given her an award for her work.) And she added this story: July 27, Friday afternoon about 1:00 two ladies wanted to go to the Mall. I started out of the drive at Halsy Farm and into the City of Clinton. We passed right by Hammer's in Clinton. While driving I was praying, "Lord, I thought there was a mall this way." And just like that the Lord said, "Go to your house." Because near my house is East Town Mall. I would have been still driving if the Lord had not stopped me."

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5 DEBORAH KLINGBEIL: "PERCEIVING IDENTITY"

The Christian Science church has been one of the few Christian organizations to advocate that its members rely solely on prayer and treatment for medical situations. Practitioners assist Christian Science members in situations that need healing. Anyone may attempt to become a practitioner. If they acquire local reputation, they may apply for listing in The Christian Science Journal. But Journal-listing does not mean that the one listed has been tested. It simply indicates that the one listed has been recommended by members of their own congregation and has not been found politically objectionable by the Mother Church.

Deborah Klingbeil is a member of a family of faithful and troublesome Christian Scientists. They have been involved for many years in prayer research. They were convinced that only if the Church did test its practitioners, and the effectiveness of Christian Science treatment could be empirically shown, would the Christian Science Church survive in a society increasingly hostile to it. The Klingbeil family created Spindrift, a prayer research organization that involved Christian Scientists and persons from outside the Church in ingenious experiments to show the effectiveness of different types of prayer.110 The research garnered notice outside the Church; Larry Dossey wrote about it in his books on prayer. 111 The Church disapproved, and for a long time the family

110 111

Spindrift is now a separate organization, and no longer endorsed by Deborah Klingbeil. Dossey, Be careful what you pray for... you just might get it, Dossey, Healing words: the power of prayer and the practice of medicine

Deborah Klingbeil were pariahs. More recently there has been a thaw in this attitude. The Mother Church even invited Dr. Dossey to speak to the employees at its Boston Headquarters. And the Church itself is looking at prayer research. The Klingbeil family has always thought of itself as part of the Church. Following the Christian Science tradition of impersonality, Deborah Klingbeil looks with disapproval on attempts to attribute prayer research personally to her family.

Ms. Klingbeil now operates the Grayhaven School of Christian Science Nursing in Racine, Wisconsin. Prayer has been part of her life since she was a small child: And I can remember as a little girl, my dad wouldn't teach me to pray until I could sit quietly for three minutes, without talking. (laughs) And I got up to about two and a half, and it was just murder. But there were definite steps. And I had excellent teachers, from my Miss Gwalter, my teacher in Christian Science, to my dad, to the nurses that I worked with. I learned from doing it, but to me it was a very helpful thing to have. And I think being exposed to healings from an early age was incredibly helpful, because I just didn't have those barriers in my mind that it couldn't be done. The Christian Science view of prayer and treatment is very different from what we ordinarily think of as asking God for help. Christian Scientists do not beseech God, nor do they attempt to create events forcefully with their minds. As the oldest of the Metaphysical churches, Christian Science teaches the Biblical idea of "knowing the truth" - that simply to know what is really true about a situation is sufficient to cut through a difficulty. This Truth is based on a view of reality that is very different from that of the mainstream.

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Deborah Klingbeil

5.1 Looking for Identity

So what does one do about difficulties, if one does not struggle with them and one does not beg God for help? Just where does one seek this truth? One seeks it in what Ms. Klingbeil calls "identity." DK: But you're looking for the particular identity, the true identity of what you're praying for, whether it's a person, or yourself, or a plant or whatever. You're looking for the actual identity. BW: How do you recognize that "identity"? DK: The same way you would recognize people. Umm, it's not through the physical senses. It's tangible in a spiritual way, it's very obvious. 5.1.1 But Is It Looking? Here we came to an epistemological problem. Just how was she perceiving these identities? I had used NeuroLinguistic Programming for a number of years, and I had come to trust its division of experience into sensory modes. One NLP trick for discovering the preferred sense is to examine the language a person uses. If they use metaphors that imply vision (look, see, clear, glimpse, light) they are representing their experience visually. If they use auditory language (sounds like, loud, hear, dissonance, harmony) they are using auditory representation. If they use a language of feeling in its various connotations (feel, touch, contact, tight, relaxed, warm) they are representing kinesthetically. There are also people who think gustatorily or olfactorily.

Ms. Klingbeil used visual language during the interview for almost all her descriptions of perceiving identity:

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Deborah Klingbeil But you're looking for the particular identity, the true identity of what you're praying for, whether it's a person, or yourself, or a plant or whatever. You're looking for the actual identity When I really have a very clear sense of their identity, not just glimpsed from a distance, but when I can truly communicate with that, then I know that Ive gone as far as I can go. But then, when you see your own identity, or someone elses spiritually, its absolutely right. Its like it just falls into place, and you realize, This, this is, this is what it was meant for, this is what it was designed for, this is actually is. And its no longer uh all dressed up in funny clothes. I mean, you just see it the way it is Because of the visual words used for the perception "looking," "glimpse," "see" I was sure that Ms. Klingbeil was perceiving identities visually. When I suggested that to her, however, she responded by email:112 I winced when you said I used visual prayer because it truly isn't, I just don't know how to describe a spiritual sense that isn't physical. It would be like trying to explain the human sense of touch to someone who had never touched anything. There is recognition, but it isn't visual. Ah, the challenges of limited language I wrote back and explained why it seemed that she was somehow representing the experience visually. She responded Its odd that I use so many visual words, which I didn't know until you told me, because physically I am not at all visual, partly from having had such poor eyesight growing up, and, though it's now correctable with glasses and I have made slow slow progress, I still have terrible eyesight. I think visually though, I picture things. I guess I think with my eyes but act with my ears. We explored how a fundamentally non-physical sense might be mapped onto a physical brain. At a later point, while we were discussing her experience of guidance as a voice, she said:

112

Corrections made after Ms. Klingbeil had seen the draft and responded are given in italics.

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Deborah Klingbeil But I know that's a finite translation of God in my case and not the experience of God I have in prayer. Kind of like math where you are working in different bases and the symbol of a seven means a different thing in base 8 than in base 10, but you get used to switching back and forth and the underlying truth is exactly the same despite this switching. So the voice stands for something that is true, it's just not in the right base. Prayer is quite a different base and if its true that a non- physical sense is being mapped onto the physical that would explain things I've always been awed by computer programmers who have to put all the complexities of language into those patterns of zeros and ones, zeros and ones. Then it gets translated back into the complexities of language, but it has to be squeezed through that limited pattern first. It must be sort of the same if a non-physical sense has to be mapped onto a physical one. We only think in terms of five senses, but spiritually you have thousands of senses, thousands of ways of perceiving, they just aren't limited and physical. Imagine trying to map that onto a finite perception like a nervous system. Its the zeros and ones thing. Mortal mind cannot understand infinity and so it invents feet to walk and fins to swim and wings to fly. How crude and funny. [Mary Baker] Eddy talks about a finite sense occasionally peering from its cloister with amazement and then attempting to pattern the divine. I can picture this finite sense in its cloister, i.e. matter, like some quaint and rather deformed little elf looking out from under a mushroom and glimpsing the Milky Way. Finally she suggested this solution: Describe it exactly the way you are doing. I did not mean to become a fuss budget - only to make the point. But since we must use language the visual is the closest we can come to what I was saying so we put it down and trust God to interpret it to whoever reads it with a need. Right? Right.

So with the caveat that the sensory words are only a physical reduction of a much larger and primarily spiritual perception, it appears that Ms. Klingbeil looks for identities. She looks not in the world, but spiritually.

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Deborah Klingbeil Those beings that have identities go far beyond just the human. I knew that she and her family had prayed for seeds and even yeast in their prayer research. I asked her just what had identity, and therefore what one might pray for: To see the identity of anything, whether its a seed, or a cockatiel or a human being, or my dog (laughs) is a tremendously (small laugh) exciting thing. I guess that for someone that loved marine biology it would be the same as, you know, seeing a whale. You know, its just very exciting BW: That's a let me just sort of give a list of things that some people have found unusual to pray for. Is it appropriate to pray foranimals? DK: Oh, absolutely! BW: Umm, institutions? DK: Sure. They have an identity, you know, you can perceive an institutionThe earth itself is an idea, a composite idea. You can perceive that. BW: I realize, relationships are probably appropriate DK: Oh, yeah (laughs) BW: Uh, transitional relationships. You know, people who meet each other for ten minutes. BW: Well, why not? [It doesn't (?)] take longer. I mean, you see a little baby in the store and you love it. You don't need to know it to feel love for that baby; why not adults? Sure. BW: I agree. Umm. Places. DK: Yaah, definitely. BW: Oh, what else can I think of here? (laughs) I'm just trying I was talking to somebody the other day who felt very strange about praying for an animal.

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Deborah Klingbeil DK: People do. And they still believe that animals don't have souls. But then at one time they believed that Black people and Indians didn't have souls, too. So BW: Yaah. Well, it sounds DK: By soul, I mean spiritual identity, you know. Even beings that some people might not enjoy, she said, can turn out to have a beautiful identity when it is seen spiritually: DK: And often its not at all what you thought it was. When I was praying for spiders, it was a very amazing thing. BW: What was it like? DK: Well, it was like uh having a nightmare, and then waking up and finding that, that there was this wonderful being sitting on the bed next to you and it was not at all what you were dreaming about or thought that it was. 5.1.2 Beyond Looking to Loving When she finds the identity of a being she does more than just "look" at it. She also communicates with it, and loves it. The communication is part of the ongoing treatment: DK: I would continue to take time every day, to get into that mental state where I can see and communicate with their identity, that's right BW: What is the nature of that communication? DK: Its certainly not verbal. Uh, its mental. I mean, you know, and they know; and, and thoughts are exchanged. And mixed with the knowing-about is love: I can look for and love and learn as much about the spiritual identity of what I'm praying for, uh and that's really all that I can do is see that and love it: And you can't love until you see what you're loving.

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5.2

The Dream, or Nightmare, of Mortal Mind

5.2.1 "Human life is a dream." Christian Scientists believe that matter and physicality are simply an illusion that God never created. DK: No. Thats one of the places where I think uh mainline Christianity has a problem with us, because they believe that emotions are good and that the human personality, like the human body, is God-created. We dont believe that the body is God-created; we dont believe that the human ego or will is (laughs) God-created either. The life we seem to see around us is in fact an apparition: Well, to a Christian Scientist, human life is a dream, the good stuff and the bad stuff, what's called good or bad You don't judge how things are going by how the dream is going (laughs) you know. This view that the apparent world is a dream was one of Ms. Klingbeil's recurring themes. Again and again she spoke about life as a dream or even a nightmare. On one hand it could be horrifying, but even when it is good its primary quality was its unreality. One of the consequences is that you should decline to agree to the appearances or to join in them. If your child was having a nightmare, she said, and your kid was screaming and you went into the room, and youre not indifferent to that, but youre not going to get into the dream and get a gun and shoot the monster that hes dreaming about. 5.2.2 A Mental Atmosphere As I understand the Christian Science position, they are not maintaining a dualism between mind and body. Instead they are maintaining a dualism between Mind that is accurate and clear, that sees things as they are, and "another mind" that is deluded. The deluded mind has what Klingbeil called a "finite sense," a belief that it is small and constrained and identified with a physical body. The reality is that it is not so: the -137-

Deborah Klingbeil smaller mind's dream of happiness and suffering in a mortal, physical experience is just an error.

Because the error is mental, it pervades as a mental atmosphere. The erroneous belief that there is a body and physical suffering is contagious, ironically, just because it is a mental phenomenon. And ironically again, because the thought is of physicality, it is experienced as solidity and turbulence: DK: For me the things that make it really hard um (long pause) It's so hard to describe There's a sense of stolidity, a real resistant state of mind that's just almost, umm, it seems so solid. I know it isn't, but you know it, a very stubborn stolidity almost. BW: Mm-hmm DK: There's also that most thought is so muddy. It's notTo me God is a real clarity, and sometimes when there's just a real confusion of thought. You will have the family and their fears, and you'll have a lot of differing agendas and so forth. And generally I can rise above that; but occasionally, if it's on a more global scale, where you have large numbers of people like with prayer research where you have whole churches (laughs) that are angry, BW: (mutter of agreement) DK: you have just a lot of people, and you have really hundreds of thousands of agendas coming in I do find that difficult. That's why I sort of have avoided publicity, because I wasn't sure that I could deal with that, you know, that I was ready Ms. Klingbeil objected to my implication that there is dualism in Christian Science: Dualism implies that there are two things. The implication is that both things have reality. Let's back up. I will quote canon - i.e. Science and Health. We (C.Stists) do not believe in a dualism of mind/body such as the physical sciences and apparently religion currently believe in; as far as I can figure this became mainstream around the time of Descartes but you know more about history than I. S&H states "The [physical] body is the -138-

Deborah Klingbeil substratum of mortal mind..." and "matter and mortal mind are but different strata of human belief" and "In reality and in Science both strata, mortal mind and mortal body, are false representations of man" etc. This is one reason my family was pretty sure in prayer research, or perhaps I should say in consciousness research, that consciousness could be mapped as accurately as matter. It's the same stuff. Notice S&H says that this single structure, the mortal mind and mortal body structure, is a false representation. It's the word "representation" I am looking at. Just a way of looking at something upside down. Not a false thing in and of itself, just a false way of seeing. There is no mortal mind. Again S&H states, "Mortal mind is a solecism in language, and involves an improper use of the word mind...Indeed, if a better word could be suggested, it would be used; but in expressing the new tongue we must sometimes recur to the old and imperfect, and the new wine of the Spirit has to be poured into the old bottles of the letter." If I look at you through binoculars and they aren't focused I see a blur. The blur is not separate from you, has no reality apart from you, but it isn't really you. It is a misperception. Eddy states, "Matter is a misstatement of Mind." So I don't like the word dualism because it sounds like I am seeing double, instead of improving my perception of one, which is all there is. 5.2.3 From Vision to Turbulence In terms of sensory words that Ms. Klingbeil uses to describe her experience, there is a striking contrast between the perception-of-identity state and this more difficult mental atmosphere.

In the perception-of-identity state, her experience is described as visual first. She sees the identity, and then loves it. The visual precedes the kinesthetic. Furthermore, the visual enables the kinesthetic: all that I can do is see that and love it: And you can't love until you see what you're loving. In the turbulent state of non-identity-perceiving mental atmospheres, the visual sense dims: DK: Yah, again, there's not that clarity. Umm, you can't get into it. -139-

Deborah Klingbeil BW: What does "not getting into it" mean? DK: Uh, I mean you can't get into that mental state. DK: No. There'll be times when I know that I just can't see that identity. I don't have the purity to do that. I can't get out into the deep ocean

What is experienced first is kinesthetic; and it blocks, stops or impedes one. DK: There's something blocking you getting in, maybe yourself, maybe something from the outside, but you're having trouble getting into it

Klingbeil carefully distinguishes personal emotion from impersonal Divine qualities such as Love. DK: And I find that emotion is muddy. It clouds the water. It doesnt really take me there. Which doesnt mean, um, that theres no such thing as love. But true love isnt emotional. Its we call it impersonal, and people just hate that, cause they want everything to be personal, you know (laughs) Language, which is central to prayer in many communities, is not part of the process that Klingbeil uses in prayer itself. DK: I don't use words in prayer. At all, period.

Instead, speech arises only when she returns from the more "visual" experience of prayer and tries to communicate it: DK: Well language is, you know it is really like you can go out and stand in the full sun and experience that. And when you come in the house and you have Venetian blinds you're going to see interesting patterns on the rug but those patterns, it, is the interaction of the sun withwith the dark, with the human, you know When you're actually praying you're in the sun. Then later you come in and you see the -140-

Deborah Klingbeil manifestation, you see the patterns. But the patterns are just temporary. They're useful to communicate, but they're just temporary. They're interesting, but they're just temporary (laughs seriously) BW: Right DK: And prayer is eternal; it's the real; it's what really is. It's standing in the full sun, so its different. We have then a strong distinction between the sensory I think Klingbeil would prefer to put quotes around it and call it "sensory" words used to describe the two states. Clear visual experience followed by positive kinesthetic experience is the metaphor for the Seeing-Identity state. Turbulent, blocking, negative kinesthetic experience, and dimmed or absent vision, characterizes the opposite "human" mental atmosphere. Ms. Klingbeil questioned my use of the word "human" as one pole of a duality: I notice that you use the word human for something entirely negative - the turbulent, negative absent dim state. Maybe I might have used that terminology in my interview without thinking, which is why you picked that up, but it is not technically correct. Sometimes I substitute the word human for mortal, but it is a lazy way to communicate, the words are not synonymous. Human is not a dirty word. Jesus was still human when he pulled off the resurrection and that hardly meant a turbulent negative dim state. Eddy says that the divinity of Jesus was made manifest in his humanity. Human is the tares and the wheat, it isn't just tares. We need to uplift our humanhood before we can attain Spirit (ascend like Jesus, i.e. no longer perceive ourselves as physical). In other words we need to be good human beings, before we can expect to go farther, and Jesus told us to be good human beings. I am always surprised at how high humanhood can be lifted in the Biblical record. So, would it be appropriate to use a different word? I would use mortal, but others might not know what that means. Or else, put a few good qualities in with the bad so that the word human represents both.

Both are mental, however. And language arises on the interface, where these two types of experience meet.

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5.3 Purification and Bringing The Divine and Human Together

A third mental experience exists, the contemplation of God. Klingbeil's understanding of God differs from that which is more common in Western culture. First of all, in the background culture we share, God is understood to be a person like ourselves. I asked Ms. Klingbeil BW: Do you experience um the God as a person? DK: Never. BW: Never? DK: Never. I use those metaphors reluctantly, because thats what means something to people; but I actually think theyre harmful, because they do lead people to thinking of God as a person, and God, to me, God is not a person at all. The obvious question then was BW: What is God? DK: Haah, Wow! (laughs) BW: (laughs) DK: Its the thing you cant put in language. You know, God is God. God is a completely unique individual being unlike any other force or being. God, God is! God is that which inspires complete allegiance and love; uh, just, God is. BW: Well, let me ask this, then: um, would you say its appropriate to say that God is a, um, like a law? DK: Well, God is the source of all the laws from which the Universe is crafted. Gods nature is law-giving. Unity [The Unity School of Christianity] will use the word "Divine Order," and I never liked that. I think Principle, our word, is better; because Principle is the source of order. Its like saying, "God is loving." God is Love! Its more! Its -142-

Deborah Klingbeil infinitely more. God, Gods nature is perfect, and therefore It is expressed in law, but um God is not a law, or even a set or laws, or a system, God simply expresses Itself through law because Gods nature is perfect. God is perfect, and cannot be changed or you know, It is perfect.

Klingbeil uses the capitalized neuter pronoun "It" in her email when referring to God. She also has a specialized usage of the words "treatment" and "prayer." Treatment is looking for and contemplating identities with love. It is therapeutic. Prayer, in her usage, is the contemplation of God. DK: Oh, prayer is just looking at God. Treatment is looking atsomething particular in God. (small laugh) The most common metaphor she uses when talking about God is the ocean. Again and again she speaks of God as the great sea, and the practice of prayer as being by the shore. That Sea, however, is aware and helpful: DK: Well, in prayer it would be likeSee, the problem is that God is outside of language, so it's so hard to explain it, but I guess you could say like um looking at the ocean all day. But in treatment you might be looking for a particular grain of sand at the ocean's depth, which the ocean will bring to you, and show you God is good and will bring to you um if youre looking for one little grain of sand thats out at the very bottom of the middle of the ocean (laughs) God itself will bring that up and show it to you.

The ocean figures also in Klingbeil's sense of playfulness in contemplation: DK: Oh, it's like running on the beach. There's times when it's nontreatment, and I don't have to look for a particular identity, and I just pick up anything that looks interesting to me. Or I might choose to wade in a little bit, you know, and get bitten by a crab on my foot (laughs). It's so interesting, you know what I mean? Uh, nothing is more interesting than, that reality, and sanity, and clarity; and it makes the dream just look so tawdry. It, it's so invigorating, it's so where else would you ever want to -143-

Deborah Klingbeil be? You know, it doesn't always have to be uh on purpose; you can just, you know, you can go to the beach to look at the storms coming in, you can go to the beach to learn about marine biology; but you can also just go to the beach. Your relationship to God can't be all awe. There's certainly that, but umm, I mean I'm awed even by human beings; but you still have fun with them, you know. I'm awed even by my dad or myself, sometimes; but you're still you. You know what I mean? You can't take it too seriously.

She also compared her experience of God to the time she spent in a Chicago art museum as a child: DK: When I was a kid, before people worried about child-abduction and everything, my mom had an appointment downtown, she'd just leave my sister and I at the Art Institute (laughs) like a baby-sitter. We'd run around, and the guards just hated us. I mean, we'd tear up and down those stairs and hide behind those statues and everything BW: (laughs) DK: And you know, once a year they'd take us on a field trip, and it was just ghastly. They'd have these little folding chairs, and you'd have to sit on them, and they'd talk about some painting. It was so boring, and we just wanted to get to the gift shop and the lunchroom and everything. But many years later, and I know nothing about art, but I would see pictures and statues and I would knew them, because I'd played behind them. I knew what the marble looked like up close. And I loved them. I'd hear about a theft or something and I'd be shaken to my soul, (laughs) BW: ahh! DK: but the pictures we had to learn about (laughs) They're just totallyI remember this one Madonna, and to this day I think it's just the ugliest thing (laughs) a chubby baby. And yet the pictures that we played in front of, we weren't studying them, but we were there. And I think that's true in prayer. You know, if you grow up and you unfold the little chairs, and pray like that, you're going to hate it. But if you're really allowed, from a young age, or even older, if you're allowed to run around in the art museum (small laugh) or in the magnificence of God, you're going to love those things. Because you're absorbing them, at some level. -144-

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5.4 But Seriously, Folks

One of the strongest impressions in interviewing Klingbeil was her sense of humor. In a two-hour interview she laughed over 140 times. Sometimes she laughs the sad laughter of someone who can do only that in the face of some kinds of pain. But again and again she seemed to understand how unusual and even absurd a life of contemplative prayer would seem to others. She could move into that other viewpoint, and from it chuckle at her own life's work. She told me with genuine appreciation of Gary Larson's Far Side cartoon about the "Small-Appliance Healer."

It is fortunate that she has the sanity of humor, because the life of prayer she portrays seems to be deeply serious and demanding. Although her universe includes the contemplation of God's bright oceanlike love, she is not allowed to dwell there undisturbed. Not only does daily life impinge on her as it does on everyone, it also is part of her vocation to confront the negative. She is a Christian Science nurse, caring for the physical needs of patients while she and other practitioners work for their healing. She is currently caring for an Alzheimer's patient in her home, re-founding her school of Christian Science nursing, continuing prayer research (she is at this writing working on making sterile birds fertile), publishing a widely distributed newsletter called The Home Catacomb, and corresponding with people as far away as Mongolia. She also has both birds and dogs as pets. This is not a life withdrawn from the world.

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Deborah Klingbeil 5.4.1 Invading the Shadow It seems that the life of a healer is a deliberate, repeated invasion of the shadow to bring light to situations. it is very painful when you're longing for spirit with all your heart, to willingly walk into the shadow, which of course is what healing is about, you know, being willing to do that. Jesus obviously did that, even though he didn't like it. She repeated that Jesus' 'Way of the Cross' is the model she follows: BW: And, have you seen these negativities transformed? DK: Oh, yaah. BW: I mean so that they become not only better, but they become their opposite? DK: Well, that's what's so that to me is what healing is. I mean, Jesus turned the crucifixion, capital punishment, just about the ugliest thing, into you know the greatest outpouring of love the world ever knew. He turned his betrayal from Jesus, I mean from Judas into true forgiveness and love. I mean, that is what we do.

Many of the situations are objectively awful: We had a fellow that came to a [Christian Science] mental institution. He'd been on a waiting list because we only have one institution, and he's been on a waiting list a couple of years. He'd been very badly messed up in Vietnam. He'd been a chaplain over there, a Christian Science chaplain, he'd had the, the seminary training and everything. And he'd gotten shrapnel in his brain and seen a lot of bad things, and he was very when he came to us he'd been on tranquilizers, because he'd had to be to be in the institution where he was [unintelligible]. And when he came off it was so scary. He literally We had a new wing, and we'd put him in there with some other people; and I heard a noise, and he was breaking the toilet (laughs) with his hands, you know how the adrenaline runs and they get real strong BW: Wow, yeah. -146-

Deborah Klingbeil DK: And I didn't get to work with him too much (laughs) - after that, they used male nurses but he would not wear clothes, he'd lie on the floor, you know, he was so violent and so angry and so agitated. And the practitioner was pretty good, but in the two years I was there I didn't see real progress at all And so I, I sort of wondered about tranquilizers, whether they might not be good. But almost twenty years later I ran into that man happily, he didn't recognize me and he not only was totally healed, but he was a practitioner and I heard later what wonderful work he was doing. The practice of healing requires that healers expose themselves not only to objectively difficult situations, but also to toxic mental atmospheres: BW: You mentioned the mental atmosphere. Umm, could you say a little bit about what it is that makes it hard, or easy, to work in a mental atmosphere? DK: It's mostly getting in and out. I mean the, the state of prayer is totally outside of, you might say outside of that airspace; it's out of the orbit. You know, it's outside of time, or the case, or the physical senses. But (laughs) launching is the place where that would run into trouble. It was just like bad weather can, you know, keep you from launching there. At this point in my progress I can't just do it at will, I need toum, I can do it increasingly at will, but there are things that would hold me back. And there are certain mental atmospheres that make it very hard.

5.4.2 Dealing with the Side Effects of Healing Just as a physician or a nurse in ordinary medicine must understand the ecology and side effects of disease in order to deal with illness, so must a Christian Science healer understand possible collateral results of prayer. Klingbeil's family frequently found that when they did healings or prayer research, some people were not pleased. They could not just ignore these ecological side-effects. They felt they had to seek them out and deal with them. DK: That's part of being a responsible pray-er. Because you are leaving a wake. -147-

Deborah Klingbeil BW: How do you How do you find those patterns and, and how do you deal with them? DK: You specifically look for them. And that is not so much in prayer, that's more like after prayer is over; and you come in, and you, you find the pattern, and you try to decipher it. That's part of what I'm doing in prayer research. I'm looking for where the vulnerable people are, I'm looking for where the resistance is going to be greatest, I'm looking for where, uh, I need to mentally go, to cover my tracks, so to speak. BW: Where do you find what do you do, when you discover that? Those tracks? DK: Then I have to, then I have to pray, then I have to treat that. And I'm not allowed to go forward in prayer until I've done that. BW: Could you give me DK: It could be dangerous. BW: like an example, that would make this concrete? Is there a story that can be, that's appropriate to tell? DK: Well, I think when we started out with some of the tests, it threatened people, at some level. And we had opportunities, at that time, to get some funding and go forward. But we had not done that particular work. We, we didn't really know who. We could feel the mental friction.... BW: Mm-hmm DK: ...We could certainly feel the resistance; it was just like a wave, or you know, just like walking through molasses half the time. But we didn't know where it was coming from. We certainly had not loved, or seen in prayer, the identities of people who were feeling threatened. We'd threatened somebody, and they were hateful; but we didn't know who or where. And so we turned down that funding, that opportunity to go forward, until we did mentally search. It, it, it's kind my dad once said it was like putting your hand down a lot of snake-holes, and something bites, you know you're (laughs) BW: (laughs)

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Deborah Klingbeil DK: at the right one, you know, you just loose (?) it around and "Oh, good, this is where, this is what we have to handle." And so, I like problems because when there's a problem you begin to see the fault lines. There's pressure, and you can see, even in your own mind where you're, where you're weak, you know what I mean? You see where you're going to crack. Then you can shore that up before you go forward (laughs). We did eventually discover who it was, and uh, were able to all come to where we felt we genuinely loved them and were able to protect them, so that their own hatred didn't hurt them. Because hatred is just fear, too, and being threatened, your identity being threatened. And so when that was done, then we were able to go forward. But that would be an example of what you would have to do to be doing this in an ethical way. And, I'm not searching for evil; I'm searching to bless. When somebody just lashes out at you it's because they're hurting, and you want to bless them before you go further.

The danger is not academic. Both her father and her brother committed suicide, apparent victims of an unremittingly hostile response to their prayer research. 113 Klingbeil's own marriage ended in divorce. But despite this personal grief, Klingbeil continues with the practice of praying beyond healing, to a wider 'ecological' context DK: If we come to the end and they call me up and say, Oh, Im healed, Im healed! I will then, very frequently, ask if I can pray another week or so. And they will usually say yes. BW: And what, what youre after is that clarity of their identity which is an issue that is beyond the healing? DK: Yes, and beyond the disappearance of physical symptoms. And then I think what it does is it enriches that healing, and it makes it so much more universal. It makes it good for the family and the community and the world, and it makes it good for their spiritual growth

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The darkness and pain of dealing with this hostility is portrayed in the lightly fictionalized account of the life of her father, Bruce Klingbeil, written by her brother John Klingbeil: Owen, The healer.

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Deborah Klingbeil There is a second source of personal stress. When one does treatment, it is not possible to predict what changes it will bring about. Klingbeil is sure that they are for the best, but they can be very difficult: DK: I have a woman in her fifties that came to me, she has a son his thirties who is developmentally disabled and shes a single mother and hes been living with her his whole life. Maybe the last ten years hes had his own couple of rooms upstairs, but he basically cant function. Umm, and she asked me to pray, and within a week he was in the hospital, very ill; and now hes institutionalized for the (laughs) first time in his life in a group home. But for the first time, too, he has a friend and hes going on outings and she is having to deal with some things, because hes not there and shes having to deal with some things. And to me its a very positive thing; to her its very painful and hurtful. BW: Yeah. DK: (laughs) But I have no control over that. I have no control over the process. I can only bring the love to bear. Umm, I guess another analogy would be, you know, if you were having a nightmare, uh, and your kid was screaming and you went into the room, and youre not indifferent to that, but youre not going to get into the dream and get a gun and shoot the monster that hes dreaming about. So youre going to love him, and you dont know what will happen. Maybe his dream will get better, but youre not changing a monster into a whatever hes dreaming about now, a new puppy. I mean, stuff just like youre not changing a sick body (small laugh) into a healthy one; theyre both illusions. But you are glad that hes having a better dream.

Because "the dream" is so dark and turbulent, and because even the positive results of treatment can be stressful, the life of a healer is not an easy one. One of the apparently essential skills is the ability to move quickly from "human awareness" to the contemplation of identities and of God's perfection. Sometimes the impediment to making this move, which Klingbeil calls "launching," is as simple as her small and noisy dog:

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Deborah Klingbeil (dog barking) whenever I get to the place where Ive just about launched into Spirit, it always seems to be Caleb (laughs). Sometimes the difficulty is more general, like bad atmospheric conditions. The state of prayer is totally outside of, you might say outside of that airspace; it's out of the orbit. You know, it's outside of time, or the case, or the physical senses. But getting (laughs), launching is the place where that would run into trouble. It was just like bad weather can, you know, keep you from launching there. And sometimes the problem is within one's own character, a particularly agonizing situation: DK: But again, that launching process can be very painful, if you have to burn away something that has to be burned away to get in there, and you're not quite ready (laughs)...and you're going to do it anyway. I mean, it really is like cutting off your right arm ...and you do it. Umm, yaah, it's painful. BW: Ow, yaah. DK: It's painful. And you know that you're creating your own pain, but it's still there. Getting into prayer can be very, very painful. But, prayer itself is never.

Part of the solution is to learn to take the shadow and its dramas less seriously: DK: Well, to a Christian Scientist, human life is a dream, the good stuff and the bad stuff, what's called good or bad. It's obviously, I mean we're in that to an extent It's not a huge part of my life, luckily, and happily. You know, it isn't the major part by any means. Um, but like a shadow, it's there that I'm aware of. Another part of her discipline is to use the pain and difficulty itself as an aid to entering the prayer or treatment state, as a bird rises on a blustery thermal: DK: So sometimes problems can push a little bit in a good way. Physical pain is something that can actually be very helpful [inaudible] (laughs). I actually never mind being sick for that reason. -151-

Deborah Klingbeil BW: That's interesting. What is it about physical pain that seems to be helpful? DK: And by the way, the Church would absolutely kill me for saying that. (laughs) But it's true - I don't mind, I'll say it again. BW: That's interesting. I sort of get this metaphor that's emerging for me, and let me check it, that it really is like atmospherics, DK: Yah: again, it's just a matter of getting in and out of the prayer state; and the older I get, or I shouldn't say the more experienced I get you know the more I can walk that at will. I would say with physical pain, you know, you're in a dream and you want to get out of the dream, so what's going to help you - if you're comfortable in it or uncomfortable? Which are you - if you're in a house, if you're a landlord and you're renting a house, are they more likely to leave if they're real happy there or not too happy? I don't believe in creating problems, you know, being sadistic, but I never mind them, I truly don't. BW: Yaah. That's a veryit sounds like a distant echo of the ascetic tradition. DK: I'm afraid so (laughs). BW: (laughs) DK: I would have gone wonderful with the sackcloth and the ashes and the hair shirts and everything (laughs).

5.5 A Life of Prayer

5.5.1 Solitude Klingbeil's life centers around private prayer. As such, it often seems an odd life to others:

DK: And I have a real problem (small laugh) being out in the world unless it's doing my nursing. My husband just used to say, "You'd rather go out on a case than to a party," and I would. -152-

Deborah Klingbeil BW: (laughs) DK: It's hard, you know, what can I say. (laughs) BW: It is a little odd, isn't it? "What do you do for fun?" "Well" (laughs) DK: Pray! (laughs) It does sound funny. But that's because people don't understand how fun it is, you know. People do not understand, and that contributes to the loneliness. She responded to one person's interest this way: DK: You know, Birrell, that is so precious, because believe me, people like that are few and far between. I mean, you'll go for years without really meeting anybody who even (small laugh) cares. But part of her development is that she has grown to love even this aloneness: DK: But now I'm starting to like being out in the desert, too. (laughs) Those stellar winds are ok. So I, you know, you change a little too.

5.5.2 Purification To become pure sounds grueling, and it is clear from Klingbeil's previous descriptions that it is so: BW: That's also one of the questions, I guess, is: do you find that you have what you would call negative experiences during prayer? DK: Uh, I have negative experiences getting into prayer. Never in prayer, no. But again, that launching process can be very painful, if you have to burn away something that has to be burned away to get in there, and you're not quite ready (laughs)...and you're going to do it anyway. I mean, it really is like cutting off your right arm ...and you do it And again: ... But do I ever experience difficulty? Sure. Spiritual growth is very hard, and you know, St. Paul says "I die daily" and I do. Uh, the part of

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Deborah Klingbeil me that needs to die to get out of here, dies daily; and that's not always an easy process. But painful as this process is, it has rewards. It is the impurity that makes it difficult to work as a healer: BW: Do you find um that you always eventually experience success? DK: No. There'll be times when I know that I just can't see that identity. I don't have the purity to do that. I can't get out into the deep ocean, you know. And then, regretfully, I will drop the case. And that's an incentive to work harder. But prayer itself makes one more pure: DK: But the act of praying is a purifying process, and, you bet, everything we pray for is just to pray for a healthy body is an illusion, too, but if it brings you closer to God and to waking up, why not? The process also requires a certain patience with oneself; DK: this is also I don't mean to be too laid back, but I mean, I do accept that it takes hundreds of years to do this. And I, you know, I'm not too strung out about not being able to do it all.

The process of purification, she implies, will eventually allow one to go deeper into God, and take part in even greater wonders, when one has become more pure: Well, in prayer it would be like umSee, the problem is that God is outside of language, so it's so hard to explain it, but I guess you could say, [it is] like looking at the ocean all day. But in treatment you might be looking for a particular grain of sand at the ocean's depth, which the ocean will bring to you, and show you, if possible, some of them, you know; God can't bring a sperm whale up to the shore. You have to go in and you might not be pure enough to do that. There may be timesyou know, a lot of times especially at my stage, which is an early stage, you might not see it clearly. You might like see a dolphin jump out of the water and that might bring healing; but it's a lot different than swimming with the dolphins, you know. Or you might see a -154-

Deborah Klingbeil different mountain peak, or a ship or something, but, and that might bring healing but it isn't always a close-up view. There are things that I cannot perceive at this point, so that I have to give up the case.

In the meantime, this life of prayer and purification, though sometimes painful, has brought about changes in her character: DK: Has it changed me? Oh my goodness yes! Oh my goodness yes. You wouldn't have recognized me (laughs) thirty years ago, Birrell! I had a terrible temper growing up; I was a very wild kid. I always had that love of God, which luckily kept me, you know, protected. But I certainly have done many things I regretted and umm. Yaah, I would just say that I am so different today that umm, it's one reason why I have trouble with relatives, 'cause they don't, you know, they remember me a certain way; and it's just almost impossible It's made me very patient. It's made me very happy, it's made me have a greater grasp of the big picture you know, I don't just look at one side of things anymore. Everything that I was ever intolerant about immediately came into my life. ... BW: Mm-hmm DK: ...So, you know, I no longer have that. You know, if I was against this or against that Even suicide (laughs) you know, I used to be very arrogant about that. "Well, that" It would be like that.; it would come right at me, and I would have to let it go. So it's made me very, uh, very much more loving. It's made me a lot smarter. It's changed me, just even in my lifestyle. You know, like I say, I don't need as much sleep as I used to. I can literally rest in this. It's changed me in so many ways I couldn't even begin to tell you. My whole consciousness. I'm not as emotional as I used to be. I was very emotional growing up. The things that make me happy are totally different now than they were even one year ago, much less five years ago. And I think that's the biggest thing, is our concept of happiness changes. So, the things that make us happy, you know, tend to be better for us. ...

5.5.3 Waking People from the Dream She is able to tolerate this human loneliness and the pain of purification in part because her healing work contributes to the awakening of others.

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Deborah Klingbeil Her use of the word "waken" is dual. She uses it in the ordinary sense, as when she describes people's experiences of prayer in her experimental 'prayer stations' where they work by praying for yeast: DK: Mostly, when people try these tests and they realize that their thought has an effect, it's a real shocker to them. They they're both worried about whether (laughs) they're going to have a negative effect, and realizing that they ought to be doing something. I mean, it does make wake them up; we found that at the prayer stations. She also means it in the larger religious sense, of awakening from "the dream." The healing is important, but it can be dwarfed by the impersonal Knowing and Loving that brings it about. In some ways the metaphysical healing seems to be what merchants call a "loss leader," something that is offered to bring patrons in for what is really important: DK: Your dream also might wake, I mean your love might wake him up temporarily, which happens: people have this experience of God, and the healing almost becomes irrelevant. Umm, in fact I just had that on a case where a woman had a growth on her face. She was very focused on it, and then she had this experience of God, and she doesnt even know when it fell off or what happened. (laughs) BW: (laughs) DK: (laughs) I mean it was just like it wasnt even important any more. DK: she truly was just filled with love. And people will often say that they can't bear to hear a cross word. You know, that they just loved everything and everybody that they saw, (small laugh) from the blade of grass to the neighbor. It's just this wonderful experience that they will never forget for the rest of their life, and which almost makes the healing irrelevant.

5.5.4 Communicating with Spiritual Beings The human loneliness that can arise from giving up social life and doing prayer research all the time is much relieved by other sorts of contact: -156-

Deborah Klingbeil DK: What do I value? First and foremost, the contact with God that it gives me, you know, the fact that, in today's world, there aren't many ways that you can make a living and have time to look at God, all day (small laugh)...That is very valuable to me I think you get to know people at the most important part, time in their lives. It's not a trivial relationship. You get to not only commune with spiritual beings, but you get to see people being, you know, waking up out of the dream. It's so much more meaningful than the average friendship.... To me there is a sense of, of friendship that takes away some of the sting of the dream. You know, it redeems it a little bit. As the prayer life begins it is acutely solitary. It can be a very lonely thing, when you're not good enough to really communicate with spiritual beings, and you're not longer really interested in the dream, it's really a very sad place to be. But when it becomes possible to actually get in touch with spiritual beings, it is exactly that contact and not even the human contact involved in prayer research that comforts: DK: Such a surprise! (laughs) and that to me is the heart and soul of prayer research. I mean, all the rest, the data, and again, thats communication. Its what I need to do, and you know, Im happy to do it, butbut thats not the heart and soul of it. So (laughs) BW: Well, the heart and soul is the contact with other people? DK: The heart and soul is the contact with the spiritual beings. I mean, life would be very lonely without that. I asked her how she knew that this contact was not a mental artifact, and she replied How do I know when I meet you that you are not a mental artifact? Actually, according to Christian Science, the physical personality of Birrell is just that, not real at all. The best I can tell you is that the experience is much more real than meeting someone in the flesh. It's a tangible thing, spiritually speaking, and just like when someone comes to my door and I talk to them I don't stand there and wonder first if they are an illusion. This is a real experience. It's where I live. The other seems much more transitory and shadowy, and hard to believe in, the flesh I mean. The contact with God and the contact with other beings is not, in the end, distinct: -157-

Deborah Klingbeil What I mean is that we are not separate in that way, its like we share a central computer, a central Mind, a central heart, a central source of feeling. When we read something someone has written or said, and its helpful, its not because we are learning but because we are recognizing, God is revealing Itself to us. Its God's basic nature to reveal Itself. It's not Deborah to Birrell or Birrell to Deborah but God to Birrell and God to Deborah, or Mind to us, or Ego to us, if you prefer, and we get to chat about it which is fun but the learning doesn't flow between us. I never could get into clergy or the priesthood thing - the posture was all wrong. God on top, person on bottom, priest figure in middle. Or practitioner in middle. The picture I like better is two people reaching out to God together and God in the middle. 5.5.5 Miracles As a person who prays and who nurses those who are being prayed for, Klingbeil is present at events that seem miraculous to outsiders. To her, they are almost ordinary, and they can even bring logistical problems: DK: One [case] was I was actually on it as a nurse, but this woman was born blind, and was blind her whole life,. She was not a Christian Scientist, not into spiritual healing. But she got married and she was pregnant, and she wanted to see her baby very badly. I don't know why she didn't go to a practitioner near her she lived in Illinois but she got (laughs) on a Greyhound bus with her baby (laughs) BW: No! (laughs) DK: and she was blind, and she didn't want to tell her husband because he'd think she was crazy and weird, and came to downtown Chicago at that time my father had an office, because they all did and was healed in his office. I came on the case it was the first time I'd ever come on a case after the patient was physically healed she couldn't find her way home, she wasn't used to seeing. She didn't understand, you know, perspective and things got bigger when you move toward them BW: Oh! (laughs) DK: She couldn't understand anything, really, and then she was so elated that my dad thought maybe she'd get off at the wrong stop (laughs) so BW: Sure. -158-

Deborah Klingbeil DK: I went home, and I was with that family a month; and it was the most interesting case that I've had because there was no real need for nursing. But she needed time to study. I mean, she had to be taught to read, for one thing, and to drive. And I'd take care of the baby so she had time to study. And also, the family was a little threatened by it all, you know they were scared. And I think being there made it a little more comprehensible(?) to them.

But even these concrete miracles are part of the larger contemplative life: But, this is where physical healing and prayer research come in handy because one way to communicate , or you might say one way to bring the two perceptions into momentary sync, is for there to be a coincidence of the human and divine. When I see the identity of Polly (the bird) spiritually, she is no longer physically sterile. She lays an egg. Things move, it's like they are being sucked into the divine, the illusory perception is being pulled into a higher perception and we interpret this humanly as a "healing". 5.5.6 The Sea and the Shell In the end, despite its difficulties, Klingbeil 's life is a delight to her. She said of her prayer research; DK: Well, for one thing it's made me pray for hours and hoursand for another it's kept me very aware of, of the nature of God. You know it's like being out in a beautiful place, where you're constantly looking at mountains and rivers. It uplifts you, I mean, you're constantly looking, even in the dream world, you're still looking at parts of God all the time BW: Given that, is there any particular sort of message that you would pass on to others, either those who might be in your own path, or just to others? DK: That prayer isn't work. That prayer is something so wonderful that youuh, you know it isn't something you have to do; it's not a duty. It's something so wonderful that, that you will want to do it, and that you should try it DK: It will always be possible to do something, and it will never be boring. (laughs)

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6 PRISCILLA STUCKEY: "GETTING OUT OF THE WAY"

Reiki is a system of healing whose name in Japanese means Spirit Energy. It arose out the Meiji period, a time of rapid social change in Japan. 114 It has spread around the world and has many initiates to its various degrees. 115

Priscilla Stuckey is a Reiki practitioner and teacher who lives in Northern California. Her own healing practice is one of the youngest among those interviewed; she has been using the system since 1995. Her first contact with meditation and spiritual healing came when she herself was very sick, beginning in 1990. PS: When I got CFIDS back in 1990, early 1990 BW: CFIDS? PS: Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome. BW: You dont look ..

114

Practitioners of Reiki tell variants of the same story. In Japan, more than a century ago, a Japanese Christian teacher was asked by his students if he could perform the healings that Jesus predicted and enjoined. The teacher, Mikao Usui, was chagrined that he could not. He decided to go to a Christian country, America, to find how to perform such miracles. He attended the University of Chicago, the stories say, and received a doctorate. But he did not find how to perform the healings Christianity claimed in its early years. He traveled to northern India, and (knowing Sanskrit) studied the holy writings. He then returned to Japan, where he retired to Mt. Kuriyama to fast, pray and read Buddhist sutras for 21 days. At the end of that time a light came and struck him. When he recovered consciousness, he was able to heal by the laying on of hands. See Baginski and Sharamon, Reiki: universal life energy, Haberly, Reiki: Hawayo Takata's story, Horan, Empowerment Though Reiki Other sources challenge many of the particulars, claiming that Usui was never a Christian, and never left Japan. The history of the Usui healing system All do agree that he taught the system, and that it was brought to North America by a Japanese-American woman, Hawayo Takata. 115 Initiation into Reiki was part of my own spiritual inquiries, and I still use it for myself and occasionally for others.

Priscilla Stuckey PS: Isnt it amazing? (laughs) Im younger and healthier than Ive ever been in my life. (laughs) I started, as one of the therapies, because Western medicine didnt help, I tried everything else. And the first thing that helped was acupuncture, and the next thing that helped was homeopathy, and the third thing that helped was this: I started going to this spiritual healer. And thats when my world-view really started breaking open. I had been praying, and Id been acknowledging the nonthree-dimensional world for some years already, but I wasnt really like exploring it. Id had some psychic openings, but I wasnt really Faith wasnt there. I wasnt consistently interacting with that dimension of reality. And I started seeing her once a week, for months. She worked mostly in the aura, but sometimes would place her hands on your body, and she had a tape of Tibetan bells, bowls, bells, you know, that was being played in the background. And she my world-view started cracking open when I realized she could read my life, she could know what was going on in my relationship with my mother (small laugh), she could tell what was happening in my foot (small laugh). And my world-view started breaking open.

When she read my draft, she added:116 Although my Reiki practice only goes back to 1995, my work in laying-on of hands (on myself) goes back to 1990, and the main reason I decided to get Reiki certification was because it appeared to be merely an augmentation of what I had already done for five years.

Her own pursuit of spirituality had led her into graduate work at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, from which she was eventually to earn a Ph.D. with a focus on spirituality and gender. At the same time she was in contact with the extremely varied spiritual offerings of Northern California. She sought out a woman who taught a class in animal communication when she acquired her present dog: she was such a special character that I wanted to know more about what her mission, what her life in the world was about. And so I consulted Heather117, to communicate with her. And then Heather said, Oh, by the
116 117

Corrections and comments by Dr. Stuckey are in italics throughout. A pseudonym

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Priscilla Stuckey way, Im teaching some Reiki classes. And it just had happened that I had laid my hands on a Reiki book a couple of weeks earlier, and had seen how, Oh, this person is talking about how the energy comes out through your, both your hands. Thats what Ive been doing ever since I lay on Pennys118 table, and when Im all in the morning, I put my hands on myself; and it comes through both my hands. OK, Im going to do Reiki!

She received her initiation into the first level of Reiki in 1995. Since 1996 she has taught occasional classes and given Reiki treatments to herself and others.

6.1 The Practice of Energetic Healing

6.1.1 Working Hands-On Basic Reiki consist of laying hands on a client. This distinguishes it from some forms of energy work, such as Therapeutic Touch, in which one works "in the aura" near the body, without actually touching the client. 119 The recipient is usually lying on a massage table, fully clothed, and often with eyes closed. The Reiki practitioner places both hands first on the head, and then works down the body of the recipient. Eyes, ears, the back of the head, mid-chest, mid-back, upper abdomen, lower abdomen, knees and feet are common places to rest the hands. The hands are allowed to remain for a period of time at each location.

118 119

The spiritual healer who had been working on her Therapeutic touch is particularly common among nurses, and one of its primary exponents is a professor at a New York nursing school Krieger, Accepting your power to heal: the personal practice of Therapeutic Touch.

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Priscilla Stuckey Priscilla Stuckey's practice is highly kinesthetic. She experiences the energy kinesthetically, and the indicators that tell her whether the session is going well or not are also kinesthetic. Ms. Stuckey commented: Its not a matter of whether the session is going well or not; the kinesthetic indicators are about how long to stay in each position. I assume the session is going well, because Im doing what Ive been asked to do.

For instance, the amount of time at each location is not fixed; and Stuckey may change hand positions based on her feelings: PS: When Im working on people, I go by how my hands feel. Well, thats not exactly true. I go by how my hands feel and I go by a three to five time limit in each, or three to five suggested, time-frame in each position. BW: Minutes? PS: Minutes, yah. So sometimes I wont feel anything happening, but its a good idea to just stay there anyway. Other times I definitely feel something happening, the hands will heat up, you feel the heat rise, it stays at high temperature for a while, then it goes down and relaxes again, then I move on.

The energy is conceived as a flow and experienced that way, kinesthetically. When Im treating somebody, I generally and I can feel it now because Im tuned into it I feel the flow going through my body, in my head, down to this region, and flowing out my arms

The feeling of heat in the hands is common among practitioners, but it is not a necessary experience. One of the things Stuckey has learned is that the energy may be working

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Priscilla Stuckey even when she does not feel it. In the following account the name of the recipient is replaced with a pseudonym: sometimes things are successful even when I dont experience it. The most dramatic healing that Ive taken part in was a woman whod just had a lumpectomy on her breast that day. And it was cancerous, shed just received her cancer diagnosis she was an RN, so she was not blitzed out by the hospital thing, but she was blitzed out by the anesthetic, because theyd given her the wrong kind for her body, and she was having stomach she was totally nauseated, and was very ill that night. And her friends there was a womens healing circle had gathered, and it happened to be that night that we were to meet, and it just so happened that I was supposed to be giving a presentation on Reiki that night. Well, it didnt happen, obviously, at least not in the way we expected, until we went into Mary Alices bedroom we all decided to put our hands on her. And they gave me the (small laugh) place of honor over her breasts. And I did not touch them, I just held my hands about yea-high, about eight inches off her body, and just beamed Reiki to her. And I felt very clearly the support of the whole circle of women, just gathered sitting on her bed. It was very reverent, and very peaceful, and very calming; and Mary Alice opened her eyes, and thanked us all for being there, and told me later that we all looked like angels (small laugh). And that Reiki silence, that Reiki calm, descended on the room, where everything is in tune, and everything is all right. And I felt nothing happening under my hands. I was going through enormous doubt, mental doubt, like Am I doing anything? Is this working? (small laugh) What am I doing here? I dont know what Im doing here. But I just kept doing it, learned you just keep practicing and dont ask questions and it does the work. So I kept just talking myself through it. And, at the very end, I even tried looking into her body to see, OK, which breast was it and I think I even got the wrong clues, because I just simply was not getting it, mentally, that night. And at the very end then I felt the urge to do something non-Reiki. I felt the urge to wave my hands up as if pulling something away from her body. And then I finished with Reiki, sending Reiki again. And then, the circle dispersed; we went home. Outside the front door, the woman who had been sitting at Mary Alices feet looked at me, she said What did you do! I saw you pulling the stuff right out of her body! and I said, Well, I dont know. I certainly didnt see it. (laughs) I felt like I was doing meaningless motions. I had no sensation in my hands that I was pulling anything. There was nothing to tell me that I was doing something, except that was what I supposed to do, I was moved to do it, I was urged to do it. And I got no feedback, they were giving NO feedback that night.(laughs)

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Priscilla Stuckey She pointed out that I had omitted the crux of the story: Mary Alice called me a week later and reported that we had taken all the pain out of her body that night so that she never needed to use the pain prescription.

Priscilla has found that she may not get external confirmation immediately, if at all, of the effectiveness of her work. She does tend to trust a subjective test that, like the practice, is kinesthetic: a feeling of calm.

I asked her how she knew it was appropriate to give Reiki to someone. Mmm. Just discernment. I pray about it. I check, I check my internal state. If my hearts beating like this, Ive got a lot of stuff (laughs) going on about it, and I should be careful (laughs) If I feel calmer and more peaceful about it, then its perfectly fine to do it.

This feeling of calmness is an indicator that it is okay to go ahead and treat someone. A sense of calm combined with a becoming-clear (which is experienced visually, as a clearing of the vision) sometimes indicates that the treatment has been successful.

Reading the draft, she said: Im still uncomfortable with the judgment of when a treatment has been successful; I dont make that judgment, its not up to me.

And a Reiki session itself is often characterized by what she calls "that Reiki calm." And the absence of calm is a negative signal: when she is stuck in what she calls her "stuff," one mark is -165-

Priscilla Stuckey Im not calm any more, by any means (small laugh).

6.1.2 Working at a Distance Reiki has several levels of practice. All Reiki practitioners do hands-on energy work. Some time after she took the first degree she received her initiation into the second level of Reiki, which also permits distance work, and then the third, which allows one to initiate others. She has used distance work in situations in which she can see what is going on, but is not able to actually put her hands on people. She was at a graduation ceremony: PS: But Im sitting there, and in the row ahead of me is a couple with a couple of kids; and one of the children is being real, well, in Pennsylvania Dutch we would have said ruchy. (laughs) BW: What does ruchy mean? PS: Moving around, talking, walking around, bothering everybody, just not able to sit still, just ruchy (laughs). And the father was ignoring the child, as fathers often do and the mother was over-involved, and was being harsh, which is what parents often do when they get stressed. And I looked at this scene, and I was getting really pissed at that mother for being harsh, and for jerking the kid around, and for everything else. Then I remembered: Ive got Reiki. What if I tuned into the Reiki wavelength, frequencywhat would happen? So I sat there, and I surreptitiously put my hands up as I was beaming Reiki to the situation. And I did it in a way so that it was all masked, and nobody watching could have told anything was going on. And I consciously focused my attention at beaming Reiki to this family ahead of me. And within seconds my own demeanor shifted, I felt more compassion and understanding in myself, and whats more the mothers demeanor toward the child shifted, within five minutes. Sort of shifted. She turned, she really looked at him, she gave him like a meaningful look, then she hugged him.

Much of her practice has been on animals. When our dog Abigail was in surgery for a serious tumor, Priscilla Stuckey was one of those I asked to help her. She did, and Abby -166-

Priscilla Stuckey returned from the very edge of death to be with me as I write this. She has worked with wild animals as well. As a volunteer at a shelter for injured wild animals, she has used the most distant form of Reiki on an owl. She was not able to stretch her wing out. And so they couldnt release her, and they had space and decided to keep her. And they were trying to tame her, to adjust her to human company, and she was very wild she did her owl umm I cant think of the words, you know their behavior when they want to chase somebody off (small laugh). The words fright wig came to mind. (laughs). They put their wings out and their head goes from side to side, and thats how they try to scare things off. And she would go into that anytime a human came close, and so I assumed that it was really uncomfortable for her. I was going through a really tough time in my life at that point, and I was waking up at four, five in the morning, with stress and emotional distress. And so I, as part of my own comforting, partly to comfort myself, I decided to try comforting her. And it seemed like a good hour of the day. Thats an owl-y hour of the day (small laugh), and it felt like I would establish this very clear connection with her. And it got so close, and I did it morning by morning, for a number of weeks, I think, a couple of weeks at least. I felt like I got to know her really well, and like we became buddies, so that when I would approach her in the spirit plane in the morning, shed be happy to see me, Ho! Hi! you know, Cool! (laughs) And I asked her name once, and, and I got an instant answer. She rattled off, it might have been a hundred syllables long. And, of course I didnt catch them, but the first sounded Sa-ra-da-da so I called her Sarah after that. (small laugh) Then, you know I would go to see her in person, and of course my human self still disturbed her. I didnt get much of any indication that she recognized me, except one day when I went and stood by her cage, and I beamed her Reiki, when no one was looking (small laugh). Her name at the center was Dusty, everyone called her Dusty. But I beamed her Sarah-name to her, said Hello, Sarah. Its me. I could have sworn she jumped a bit and looked at me. (laughs)

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Priscilla Stuckey 6.1.3 Putting on Their Skin It would be easy to label Stuckey as a "Reiki Practitioner" and to describe only her practice of the Reiki method, but she is also deeply involved in modalities that are not Reiki-based.120 One of these is the practice of sharing the experience of others.

She learned this in part from the woman who taught her Reiki: My Reiki teacher also is an animal communicator, and I took an animal communication one-day workshop with her. And it was just wonderful, because I learned, Oh, Ive been doing this! (small laugh) She taught us at one point to approach well, it was an image. We started with an image, of an animal. Approach that image, in whatever way you do, she said, until, in whatever way it happens, you become one with it." And I realized that the way I became one with it was, I would sit into its skin. Thats the way I do it, is I slip into the skin of the other. Umm, rather than take it on. And it becomes my skin, I really feel inside the skin.

She is able, when she does that, to learn what is happening with beings that cannot communicate verbally: Yeah. Its the same skin. Their skin becomes my skin. And I slip into that easily. I can easily do that. Most of the time thats still the method of choice. And she actually recommended it for working with beings that you cant speak with. Cause thats still the method of choice to really find out whats going on, if theres a health problem in an animal or something, that you cant figure out any other way slip into their skin. You can tell whats going on.

120

Mixing modalities is common in Reiki. German practitioners reported that they and other practitioners they knew had used Reiki with " massage, reflex zone therapy, breathing therapy, Touch for Health, Pretnatal Therapy the injection of procaine into scar tissueacupuncture, acupressure, the massage of acupressure points, shiatsu, kitsu, tai-ki, an-no, do-in, E.A.S., Jin shin jiutsu, chiropractic, color therapy, Bach flower remedies, homeopathy, aroma therapy, Ayurveda, fasting, various forms of psychotherapymeditation, bio-energetics and autogenous training. " The authors added, "For all these reasons, Reiki is especially helpful for all people in the broadest sense, for it will complement almost every kind of treatment we know of in a wonderful and natural way." Baginski and Sharamon, Reiki: universal life energy, p. 103-4

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Priscilla Stuckey She has developed very clear methods of withdrawing from the experience of being within the skin of others. PS: Ive trained myself how to get myself out of it I make a very clear, Im in their skin, and Im sort of looking out through their eyes. And Im feeling what theyre feeling. And then I make a big deal of backing out at some point. When the session or the moment is over. BW: and the back-out is spatial? PS: Yeah. Visionary, visually. BW: So you then move where you can see them. PS: Yeah, uh-huh. And I move away so that I can feel myself, on the inner plane, as separate from the other.

6.2 Stuff in the Way

6.2.1 Entanglement But why would it be so important to be able to distinguish one's own experience from that of another? It is so in part because one can fall into the experience of another. She did when she was working on Abby. I gotI also found myself this happens when I, if I try to contact the patient telepathically and I wanted to help here, so I was kind of doing that. So I was doing more than Reiki. And I was trying to talk to her. And, she pulled me right in, and all of a sudden I found myself overwhelmed with sadness and despair, and I was very nearly shaking in sobs as I was sitting there with my hands on the pillow. Then I stopped and I caught myself and I, like "OK, boundarys not here; where am I? Whats me, whats her? (laughs) Found out she was showing me how heartbroken you guys would be if she left. And, it was such a, it was a heavy thing for her, she was so sad that you would be that heartbroken (small laugh).

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Priscilla Stuckey She often prefers to work with animals, because they are, in general, less likely to entangle one in their "stuff." (laughs) It feels safer to do it with animals. Actually, my partner Jim asked me this the other day: "Do you do this more with animals than with people?" I said "Yah." He said, "Is there something you like better about doing it?" And I said, "Well, the animals withdraw better. They don't like, let their stuff hang around you, as much." So, I think that's whythe boundaries. I can keep a sense of myself better? I do it more with animals and plants because it feels safer that way, energetically safer, than with people.

"Stuff" is a very important term in her description of her practice and experience. Fourteen times in a two-hour interview she used the word to describe a class of interrelated problems. "Stuff" denotes a kind of embroilment that eliminates calm. In trying to get me to understand her, we had the following dialogue: PS: But I, I feel caught up.entangled. I feel entangled, yaah. BW: But in motion PS: Uh-huh BW: youre not stuck. PS: Im not calm any more, by any means (small laugh). BW: But its, the kind of entanglement is not the kind where vines grow around you; its much more like the kind where youre dragged into a dance that you werent planning on being in? (small laugh) PS: Thats ex perfect image, yah. Uh-huh. And then I somatize that and it starts coming out in my body and I get, uh, agitated.

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Priscilla Stuckey To the extent one somatizes one's awareness of another's state, one will experience their experience with one's own body awareness. One might feel sick in one's own body when working with a sick person. Priscilla Stuckey is athletic and active; when she experiences others' "stuff," she experiences it as drawing her into unwanted activity.

It seems to me that this sense of entanglement is increased by the essentially kinesthetic nature of energy practices. The basic experience is of contact, of laying hands on another person. When one does Reiki on a distant being, it is very common to have an object a pillow or even a child's stuffed animal that serves as a proxy for the other. Then one treats the other, at a distance, by touching and channeling the energy into the proxy. The flow into the other of course suggests the possibility of a back-flow. Instead of the Reiki energy going to them, their energy can come to the practitioner. The Reiki books I have read do not suggest this as a danger, but it seems to be an issue for Ms. Stuckey.

For instance, the experience of other people's stuff puts some limitation on the situations in which she will and will not treat. She will work, she said: When somebody has a need for it. I try to distinguish: I have pretty careful boundaries about when I do it, because I know my own tendencies to get sucked into other peoples stuff. And so Ive been trying to watch real carefully when is this something for me to do, and when is it not?

The threat of being involved in "stuff" also limits the people with whom she will work: If I had too much stuff going on, either about the person or had a lot of judgments about what they were, about their life, or something like that. And sometimes, actually, people that are closer to me, I dont do as frequently my blood brother, for instance, who is having a very hard -171-

Priscilla Stuckey time in his life. I tend to pray for him in a non-Reiki fashion, because Im so close to him that I tend to pick up his stuff really easily. And so I pray for him in a very detached manner, like May he find his path, you know, May God be present with him. And let it go at that. Because if I do any more than that, whoom, Im right in there in the middle of his troubles. (laughs)

"Stuff" seems to be complex because, if one can put on the skin of another or otherwise be involved with their energy, then one's own stuff and their stuff may not be distinguishable. But no matter whose it may be, it may involve judgments, as above, unhappy experiences from childhood, one's own desires for the person, "mental loops" and the voices from the past we all hear. It seems to be in many cases the material that makes any of us unhappy. But when one lives in a universe in which one's own experience can overlap and interact with others, one wishes to keep the stuff of others at a distance.

6.3 Getting Out of the Way

"Stuff" from other people can make the experience of contacting them difficult or unpleasant. While it is interesting to discover what is going on with an animal or a plant that does not linger in contact beyond what one would wish, with people the same contact can lead to unwanted entanglement.

One also wants to keep one's own stuff from interfering with the healing effects of the Reiki energy. BW: do you have a sense that youre still in contact with the person after youre done, treating?

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Priscilla Stuckey PS: Yeah, but I try to minimize that; I really try to get out of contact, because I that feels like my ego, my own desires and my own stuff, getting hooked up with them.

A solution to both problems is "getting out of the way." Stuckey repeatedly spoke of moving herself to one side, of getting out of the way to let Reiki work. When I asked her what she thought at one point, she replied I dont analyze whats going on. Its part of my stepping out of the way (small laugh) to let Reiki do the work, is not to get my mind too involved in whats happening in their body.

When she was working on our dog, at first she paid attention to what was happening with Abby. Then she stopped trying to get that information. And then, after I got out of the way and just did Reiki, after some time then everything cleared, psshht!

She also passes on the discipline of getting out of the way to her students: But its a wonderful gift that I can give to students You dont have to know whats going on here. You dont have to sense any shift. You dont have to do anything, mentally. Just get yourself in place, put your hands in place, and get out of the way.(laughs)

6.4 Mulling
Getting oneself out of the way is one method to deal with what Priscilla Stuckey calls "stuff." It does prevent entanglement with stuff, but it leaves one out of contact.

Here Dr. Stuckey and I disagreed. From other things she had said, it seemed that getting out of the way prevented contact. But she commented upon reading the draft: -173-

Priscilla Stuckey This doesnt feel right, doesnt feel like me. Getting oneself--ones ego, small self--out of the way is the perfect way to contact another, really, the only way. As in the next quote, get myself out of the way so I can be present to her. You get the small self out of the way so that the larger Self, divine, love, whatever you want to call it, can work.

See, though, the section on mulling, where we found we agreed on the meaning of getting oneself out of the way.

Another process actually deals with the stuff itself, and offers the possibility of dissolving it. It is a practice that is part of her daily time for herself, something that she does, without naming it, just about every morning: its not very clear to me. Its, its more like Im in a state of meditation, I mull over things (small laugh). And its not even as directed as praying for things. I just kind of like try to get to a place where everything feels all right (laughs). Its like mulling overthinking about what my friend Mimi and I talked about yesterday, and how Mimis in this little small peck of trouble. And so Im thinking about that and Im realizing, Well, Ive got some feelings about that. Well, how could I get myself out of the way there? And how could I be present to her?" And then how I just kind of lift the whole thing to, how could I just kind of relax about it, so it, so it all comes out all right? (small laugh)

It seems that she has developed a private form of meditation that somehow loosens or releases what she is considering. When I asked her how she knew that she was done "mulling" a particular thing, she responded PS: When my ownstate of mind shifts. BW: And the shift is?

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Priscilla Stuckey PS: Toward that sense of clarity, and that sense of I dont have to do anything here. The need, or the have-to-do-something-about-something, goes away.

In part this form of mulling meditation resembles Buddhist teachings: Well, just kind of mulling things over in a state of meditation. To bring a feeling of peace, peacefulness to it. And to identify my stuff, and to become more aware. Yeah, its like mindfulness meditation. I ran into a Buddhist treatise, that talked about starting with your toes. And moving in, working, starting with the top of I forget which end of the body you started with (small laugh), but you work your way through the whole body just become mindful of each of the parts of the body. And work your way through this, and work your way through that, and I thought Yeah, thats what Im doing. (laughs). 121

It is clear that she was "mulling" before she ran into the treatise. She has discovered a method of releasing "stuff" that works reliably for her over time. It seems to involve a daily process of bringing awareness to personal and interpersonal issues, and mulling them lightly, until a sense of clarity and un-urgency arises. Here she commented, "Cool! Sense of un-urgency is EXACTLY what Im after."

Her partial sentence about lifting it And then how I just kind of lift the whole thing to, how could I just kind of relax about it, so it, so it all comes out all right? (small laugh)

makes us wonder to whom or what she lifts it. During her description so many thoughts of my own arose that I am not sure I ever discovered the whole of her method, but I think it is clear that there are other, not-yet-revealed parts to this process of mulling.

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Priscilla Stuckey

Mulling may seem to be an entirely private affair, part of the "therapeutic culture" for which our Northern California area is so famed. But it seems to me that it is more otheraware than that. For instance, one removes one's own stuff so one can be available for others. At this point, Ms. Stuckey commented "Yes!" And so Im thinking about that and Im realizing, Well, Ive got some feelings about that. Well, how could I get myself out of the way there? And how could I be present to her?"

Priscilla Stuckey has discovered personally that the experience of one person can interpenetrate with the experience of another, through her putting-on-the-skin of others. And she knows that one person's "stuff" can adversely affect the experience of another. The balancing brought about by "mulling" can positively affect others. BW: What about the mulling? PS: Since that concerns my own relationship to the rest of the world, more than what Im doing to other people, its like trying to bring my own self into balance. And that can extend to those around me, in so far as I get it.

Mulling is also part of a more general process, shared by creative people. I asked her if it would be something others should learn. I think probably lots of people are already doing it. Maybe in our nonreligious society I mean poets are doing this, artists are doing this. Artists are doing this every time they make a piece, theyre figuring out their relationship to the world. Umm, writers are doing this God I love listening to how writers talk about their stories developing. And its this
121

It may also resemble Focusing, a technique for allowing meaning to arise from bodily experience with which she was not familiar before the interview. Gendlin, Focusing

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Priscilla Stuckey mulling process. Theyre just watching what develops. (small laugh) Who else is doing it? Scientists are, its intuitive knowing, wherever its found. Scientists, artists, writers, musicians.

She is beginning to make a personal synthesis of many of her life themes: the issues of boundaries, of getting out of the way, of healing and of mulling and the connectedness among beings. BW: It sounds as if your diag its not diagnostic, thats the wrong word, its the way you learn about something is to literally to enter that. PS: Yah, Mm-hmm. BW: but do you suffer what they suffer, and enjoy what they enjoy? PS: Umm, well, that happens Ill go back to the recent experience with Abby. When I was communicating with her, it was like I was feeling what she was feeling. And so, momentarily, I am experiencing exactly what theyre experiencing. BW: And so when you do, umm, the mulling, which allows things to change PS: Mmm. Mm-hmm BW: what do you do? Theres something more than the way theyve experienced it, because the way theyve experienced it hasnt made a change. PS: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it feels like it really, it changes my approach to things. It gets, gets me, it, it really umm, its a healing for my own ego approach. Its getting my ego out of the way. So, its really working on me. That part feels like its working on me. But of course it affects everything around me. [small laugh]. BW: Why does that make them better?

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Priscilla Stuckey PS: Yeah, well, Im not sure There a couple of ways to answer. One way is that [long pause] How would I say it makes them better? Because were all connected, for one thing, I believe that really strongly. So that if I get my stuff healed, its going to affect the people Im close to. Its going to affect the people I come in contact with. If my stuff gets healed, its going to call for something different in the other. And that leads to my view of the way the universe looks, if you had to put a picture to it. Its like everyIts like a globe, its like were people standing on the earth, but a part of us goes right to the center, and so at that center point everyones partaking of the same thing. And its manifesting outward in separateness.

6.5 Some Partially Explored Themes

6.5.1 Not Given to Me So much of Ms. Stuckey's language seems be part of current vocabularies that I was struck by the old-fashionedness of one phrase she used: And I didnt even know that, I had no sense that that was going on. Its like the knowledge of that is beyond my ken, it is not given to me. It may be given to me at some point; it is not at this point in time given to me; and so therefore I dont talk about that aspect a lot.

Over-arching her whole spiritual pursuit seems to be a sense of what is "given to her," and even more strongly of what is "not given" at any particular time. She never said what agency gave or did not "give her" to do or to understand something, but it was clearly something she respected very strongly in practice. When I asked her how she felt about apparent failure, she responded, Well, I sort of try to detach from that as much as from success. Because its not given to me to decide whats a success and whats a failure.

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Priscilla Stuckey You know, I dont find myself exploring that dimension of things very much. Its like, its not given to me to explore. So I dont actually do it very much.

To this quote she added: This is my strong conviction that its not my business. So if someone has not asked for my help, it is not given to me to explore their energy. Therefore it would be rude, intrusive, controlling, to try to do it. Another sense of given to me is a coming to terms with my particular proclivities. It IS given to me to help heal others, when they ask for it. That is my inclination, my desire. I do NOT have the desire to go mucking about in their energy fields, and I dont really want to see (psychically) more of my patient than is necessary for healing. Why not? Bec. it would be a violation of their boundaries, poking my nose into their business. And it would spend unnecessary amounts of my energy. So the business of whats given to me is the business of recognizing which work in the world is mine and which is someone elses.

Whatever this guidance or given-ness may be, she follows it. She finds in it the reason to enter or not to enter different sorts of experience. Even when she does not use the same words, it seems to be what she is saying. It might be right for other people, but it isn't for me, and so I justgo down a different road.

She said about this section: Here Im referring to whats given to me to know at the conscious level. Since so much of my life has been spent in rational, conscious awareness, it at first came as a challenge to me that so much of this healing business works without the content of it coming into conscious awareness. So then I had to learn to trust the healing process without understanding or controlling what was going on--to give it over to the larger wisdom and love that we call God or the Universe or the One or the All-That-Is. This is a big part of my practice of NOT CONTROLLING what is going on--to not ask for everything to become conscious. So when I work on a patient, I -179-

Priscilla Stuckey will occasionally see (with conscious awareness) what is going on inside them, but more often it is not given to me, to my conscious self. I just do the work and let God control the process. I feel very strongly that the need to SEE everything--to follow the process with the rational mind--is a form of trying to CONTROL it. (Not to mention, its intrusive and invasive.) And thats a no-no if you want the deepest healing to take place.

6.5.2 Thats Not All of What God is About. A number of healing practices assert that God is only kind and good. Stuckey specifically denies that. To her, Reiki and its gentleness is only part of what God contains: I was preparing, mentally, for this interview, and thinking about Reiki and how, a lot of times we get into when were doing Reiki together, when I do Reiki with students we get into this certain mind-state thats very calm and peaceful and gentle, and compassionate. And I began to feel, with the student I was working with last week, that that was bordering on a dualism I didnt like. That, yaah, Reiki really does induce that kind of calm and peacefulness in people, but that thats not all of what God is about. So its more like, the Reiki is a particular channel on the whole radio frequency list. And so the divine that Im in contact with, when Im doing Reiki, is Its Reiki and its bigger than Reiki. Its gentle compassion, and its also bigger than that; and the divine that I want to be close to also has fierceness and has all kinds of unpleasant emotions (small laugh) .

6.5.3 Native Connections One theme that came up, and which we did not adequately explore, is her affinity with Native American traditions. She only mentioned them in passing, as part of an explanation of something else. She said that she has some connection with a medicine man, who has taught her things including the ability to recognize her own doubt and who has occasionally done healings on her behalf:

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Priscilla Stuckey I have taken people to my medicine man and had him do ceremony for them in absentia, when there was somebody that I cared about that I didnt want to get so personally involved.

She did not volunteer more about her relationship with this man, and I did not pursue it.

When she read the draft she added: He regularly does ceremonies for me, and occasionally I have had him do a ceremony for a person or animal who couldnt contact him directly. Hes a white, suburban guy with a swimming pool and rose bushes and a pot belly. He just happens to have more faith--more of a constant connection with God, with hope, with clear sight--than most anyone Ive ever met. Perhaps thats why he got tapped on the shoulder by Native Americans in Winnipeg to take up the pipe ceremony.

6.5.4 Meaningful Animals She spoke a good deal about her connection with animals. It was her dog, after all, who indirectly connected her with the woman who became her Reiki teacher. I mentioned earlier that animals are more comfortable to work with than are people, and that she is a volunteer with an animal shelter. She has worked on animals she has seen in the wild near her home. I actually treated a deer out here on our hillside distance Reiki a couple of months after we moved in. It was a hot Sunday afternoon, and there was a deer sitting on the hillside across the stream and it was a doe and she was sitting there, for several hours without moving. And she looked comfortable, she didn't look sick; she wasn't drooping, she was just sitting there, on the hillside. But it is so unusual for deer to sit a few yards away from a busy street, unmoving, for hours at a time so, when she was there, after about three hours I went to my sofa and I picked up my pillow (laughs) and I mocked her up on my pillow, and I checked out to see what was going on. The place where my hands heated up was her, her brain, her head. And I got the sense she might have had a little bit of, umm, fever. Like she may have been feverish from something, or else the -181-

Priscilla Stuckey hot day, wasn'tsomething had gone wrong in her circuits, a bit. And then, it kind of like dissipated, the feeling just kind of dissipated. Here's how I tell when to move my hands; it's not always that my hands change I get bored, mentally, too. I can be involved mentally, when something's happening, and then, my interest in what's happening goes away, and I'm bored, and "OH, it's time to change my hand position." And so that feeling of boredom increased until there was like nothing to be done any more. And I just put the pillow down, and I went out to see, and she was gone.

But animals are also deeply involved in her sense of meaning. She worked on one doe, but Deer taught her things through several channels: I was also playing with Medicine Cards, Jamie Sams' Medicine Cards. And I had a really clear experience with the Deer card one day. And then a deer hide came to me, so I now use that as, as a medicine help when I'm doing Reiki. I put it on the chair, and I call Deer in to help. And I have learned about the power of gentleness. I've learned, what Deer showed me was the inevitability of gentleness that something that gentleness sets out to do is not it's gentle in the way that water is gentle. It flows, but it's inexorable. [small laugh] And I've learned the inexorability of gentleness, I think. And I've learned how I don't have to go that other place, to do things in the world. I can do things through gentleness.

Another animal that she finds powerful is Raven, as a manifestation of communication. These animals function in a way that would seem symbolic, mythological and oracular to an outsider who insisted on labeling them. But Stuckey, who has a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union, certainly knows these words and does not use them. The animals seem to be not so much symbols as presences, part of her experience. Here Priscilla commented, "Yes!

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Priscilla Stuckey 6.5.5 Internal and External Teachers As she has experiences of connections with other beings through the inner planes, so she also has experiences of inner teachers. She mentioned even less about them than she did about her connections with her medicine man. there are internal teachers whom Ive never met.

Earlier she had asked herself did I get this from Diane Stein, or did I get this from some internal teacher?

It is clear that at least part of her teaching comes from beings that the world would consider invisible. When she talked about learning gentleness from Deer and other things from other animals on the Medicine Cards, she said, What usually happened was that a quality would come through, pertaining to that creature. I receive it as a teaching from that creature.

She also has "ordinary" teachers. The woman who taught her Reiki is one of them. She considers Hawayo Takata, who brought Reiki to America, to be a "grandmother teacher." And she consults with her teachers frequently, asking their advice about fine points of treatment.

She is herself a teacher of Reiki, and takes the task very seriously. She describes herself as an introvert, but she will spend all day with students, giving them private lessons, or working with a class to initiate a group.

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Priscilla Stuckey

6.6 The Value and Future of Her Reiki Practice

I asked her what she would like to share with everyone else, if she could. She said: Id love it, if everybody became aware of how powerful their own hands are. It changed my relationship to my hands, and it changed the relationship of my hands to the world, to learn Reiki. And I would love that everyone, EVERYONE, have that experience. They couldnt hit people anymore. Their eyes would be opened (small laugh).

She continues to work on improving her practice by getting herself out of the way. Im trying to keep track of myself in the process, and not get lost in the other persons stuff. And so its like a constant checking in: Where am I now? Whats going on with me now? And try to stand out of the way and let Reiki do the work, instead of getting my own preconceptions, or my own desires, for this situation into it. Im really working on getting those out of the situation to let Reiki take over

But even before she has done that, the method works. If youre working on somebody in person, all you have to do is put your hands on them, and its going to start working. And you dont have to put your mind anywhere. And when youre treating somebody at a distance, all you have to do is set your intention, and you really can think about whatever you want, or talk about whatever you want; except one of the grandmother teachers used to say, You can talk about anything, just no gossip. (laughs)

Though her personal theology rejects the idea that God is only gentleness and compassion, she likes to cultivate this 'channel:' PS: The Reiki seems to really bring out the calm. Its just one place on the dial that has a lot, it, when I want, when Im feeling the need, when -184-

Priscilla Stuckey Im starting to get really pissed at somebody and Im noticing it, I can turn to that dial, and find an alternative.

She enjoys it, as do her students: BW: Well, so you enjoy working with this power? PS: Yaah. BW: You enjoy the contact in general with it? PS: Mm-hmm. Yaah, its fun. And like the student I was doing Reiki One with last week, she said, You know Ive done a lot of energy work and I, I kind of expected well, I didnt expect it to be so much fun! (laughs)

So she does the work and teaches the classes, it seems, out of sheer pleasure. PS: Oh, its great fun. Its, its nerve-wracking, actually. It takes me a long time to prepare for a class. And it feels, the class itself feels like it takes a lot of energy. And Im exhausted at the end of the day, but Im also high (small laugh), because its so fun to, it feels like such a privilege to introduce people to this healing modality. And to get them in touch with this frequency. And to get them aware of it. Its like, I just get [changes to little-girl voice] all happy that theres somebody else walking around who knows Reiki. (laughs) BW: (laughs) PS: (laughs) BW: She sounds like shes, maybe eleven. (laughs) PS: (laughs) Yeah, it does, it brings that out in me.

She noted in addition:

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Priscilla Stuckey This sense of joy & fun is vital, I believe. I just ran into a problem in my writing--finding myself regarding it as work instead of doing it for fun. So I went back to a writer who influenced me, Dorothy Maclean, to whom the Deva of Fruit Trees said, Nothing is worth doing unless it is done with joy; in any action, motives other than love and joy spoil the results. Could you imagine a flower growing as a duty and then sweetening the hearts of its beholders? (From To Honor the Earth, HarperSanFranciso, 1991)

6.7 Privacy:
Even after speaking with her for two hours, transcribing the interview for countless more hours, and writing many pages about her, I leave with a strong sense of Priscilla Stuckey's privacy. It is not at all a covertness. I have no doubt that everything she said is very much true and forthcoming. And yet there is a strong sense of veils.

That retirement impacts this study, as it leaves me wondering what great part of her story remains untold. Is it a part she does not know herself, yet? Is it a context that I could not perceive? I cannot tell, but I think I can say that much of her story remains to be known.

And she said: Interesting...I sure would not expect that to come across. Me, with a face that hides nothing! Ive often bemoaned my utter inability to lie...Youve just attributed to me a mystery I always wanted but never felt I had! I chalk it up to the parts of me that will be revealed only in years to come....Thanks for your kind attention to my way of being in the world.

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7 JULIE HENDERSON: "THEIR CLEAR, LAUGHING VASTNESS"

I have been around Julie Henderson for many years now. She is my teacher, in as much as I can accept one. The reader may then wonder if I can be objective in presenting what she says, and if she can be dispassionate in correcting my understanding. There is also the complementary danger of me being too distant, in an attempt to create objectivity.

Objectivity has not been a goal in the other presentations, however. The goal has been fidelity, a faithful presentation of the experience of the persons interviewed. My experience with Julie may give me an opportunity to fill in lacunae that I have missed in the write-ups of other interviews. I simply wanted to be clear that my relationship with this participant is very different from my relationship with the other persons interviewed. My goal remains the same.

7.1 "I am not a Buddhist."

I was introduced to Julie Henderson by my Buddhism teacher at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Steven Goodman. I have taken my work with her to be the lab-work for those Buddhism courses the place where I try out and experience what Buddhist tantrics talk about. Julie Henderson, however, finds the term "Buddhist" too constrictive. I pretty specifically do not consider myself a Buddhist. I find that much toobinding. How much of it has to do with the particular vocabulary that Buddhism has been squeezed into in English, I don't know. Lots of

Julie Henderson things that could be said about that. But I don't think of my teachers as Buddhists. I don't think about Buddha, except as a state.

Immediately after saying this she tells a story about her Tibetan teacher, the 12 th Gyalwang Drukpa whom she calls Drukchen, leaning over in the middle of a ceremony and saying the same thing to a Canadian seeker, "I am not a Buddhist." My conclusion is that she is indeed a Buddhist, a "Western Somatic Topological Tantric Mahayana Mantric Buddhist" if a name is needed. It seems to me that she is no more different from other Buddhists than are the various Asian Schools among themselves. lack thereof, will have to be judged by the reader. Her Buddhism, or

Julie Henderson's first career was as an actress, like both her parents. Her acting training and temperament show in her speech she frequently dramatizes several characters at once, and she always chooses her words with the care of a performer. Her difficult-totranscribe discourse is filled with rhythmic spacers and nonce words "mmmm"'s to which she gives meaning by gesture or expression.

She received a Ph.D. in Somatics and body oriented psychology. Her clinical training was most influenced by George Thomson. She worked briefly but deeply with hypnotist Milton Erickson; and Erickson's storytelling and multileveled realities found a home as well in her sense of drama.

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Julie Henderson Julie says that Erickson is the only Western teacher to teach by transmission. She says his influence changed her perception and style more than any of her other Western teachers.

She is a Somaticist, having worked with a number of teachers: I have been more and more inclined to study and teach somatics itself rather than a kind of psychotherapy influenced by awareness of the body. I describe somatics as a newly emerging natural science that crosses the usual boundaries set between mind and body. I call it an exploration of the practical implications of being a body and being also aware. Western science hasn't yet addressed that simultaneity of body and awareness to my satisfaction!

Her language is constantly based in bodily experience. It is not only personal bodily experience as felt from inside, nor just a distant and objective "study" of the body. It is both of those and a third the awareness of others' experience, through what she calls "finding." These three perceptions of the body braid through all her descriptions, even when she is describing experiences others would call non-physical. Her spirituality is actually, not just theoretically, body-based.

She began her contact with Buddhism while being trained as a somaticist. She encountered Tarthang Tulku in 1975, and received from him a transmission that hybridized with her training in somatics and emerged ten years later as The Lover

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Julie Henderson Within122, a book about living as an energetic being. (It was this book about the experience of energy that convinced me that I had to meet her, which I did in late 1993.)

By the time I met her, the central focus of her work had moved. She had begun to experience all of what she had done before - somatic, energetic and traditionally Western psychological - in a context of "openness" and "loving presence." This context came to her not as theory, but in persons - as a series of Tibetan teachers who came into her life. She did not find them attractive because she had a predisposition to Buddhism she was attracted instead to what they were. 123

7.2 Finding
What might all this have to do with the practice of praying for others? Well, Dr. Henderson does it, but in a way that is a byproduct of both her somatic and her Buddhist experiences.

Julie herself does not think of it as praying, she says, but as a kind of rarified touching. Drukchen, however, does call it praying when speaking of it in English.

In the first workshop I attended with her, she taught an exercise called "finding": When I'm teaching this, I have people sit back to back, and be aware of each other from their back what the set of sensations is so they're not
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Henderson, The lover within: opening to energy in sexual practice A new edition from the same publisher is being released in 1999. 123 Julie discussed how she experienced these teachers in a chapter called "Tulku" in Friedman and Moon, Being bodies : Buddhist women on the paradox of embodiment

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Julie Henderson relying on what this person looks like to them. What is the set of sensations, of being in contact with that person? And then gradually I have them just ooch apart a little bit, so there's a little bit of, like an inch and a half gap, and notice that the sensations are still there. So how does the organism remember those sensations? I don't know. How does it remember anything? But then, those sensations are available for that person. That's how you know them to be them. That's what you're "finding," that's what I'm finding anyway. So, if it's a person that I have met, then I have those, that set of sensations on file. And I look for it, I, you know, I go through the sensation rolodex until I find it. Its a little bit like asking for the data. In the space, I form the intention or the wish, of finding that set. Then I have it (makes flipping-through-cards noise).

The exercise begins as an apparently somatic practice, each person in physical contact with another. Then they are moved apart, and the exercise might be called "energetic," or feeling the energy of the other from a small distance. But the third step involves having one person from each pair go off to another room, and discovering that one can still find the "set of sensations" through some sort of space of awareness. In this first exercise she combined body, energy and awareness. On a base of bodily sensation she invited attention to energetic experience; and in an almost mathematical demonstration ("How is this possible?") showed the existence of a larger space-of-awareness. 7.2.1 Turning Attention "Finding" someone at a distance to work on them involves the same sort of turning of attention as finding someone right behind you or in the next room. We spent part of the interview working with a woman I will call "Jeanine," who lives half a continent away from the San Francisco office where we conducted the interview. Friends on an email list had asked for prayers for Jeanine as she underwent chemotherapy for her melanoma.

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Julie Henderson To find Jeanine, Julie first found me by what she calls "alignment." Alignment is a somatic exercise she teaches, in which one moves the parts of one's body in very small motions, feeling for the optimum comfort-position. [We] have some idea of, of the physical, physiological anatomical concomitants of being in personal alignment, that is to say: that relationship of the various parts of the body that allow the freeest flow of fluid, from one segment to another, at the hopefully most positive rates of pulsation for each of the systems, combined with and supporting a mmmm an alert relaxed trusting neurochemistry which tends to arise anyway if you're But that involves then a freer energy flow, and that means more clarity and blah blah blah. OK, but the thing is then, something happens BETWEEN people that is also alignment. I know what it feels like. It feels like this docking operation. There you are over there, and here I am over here, and I'm in alignment with myself, and you pose a question, I will be able to respond to that question if I come into alignment with you. So I experience, along my midline, a kind of a very slight these days; it used to be bigger very slight degree of lateral travel, until there's a click. You now, it feels just like a click. Then, on that, in that particular dimension we are connected in a way that gives me information from you, and vice versa.

Once she has made this connection with me, she is able to use it to reach to Jeanine. But I do not know Jeanine directly either, so the connection goes on out through those who do know her. BW: And that, that's how you find me, and then you follow me as I find her? JH: Mm-hmm. Your attention moves to her automatically in order to talk about her. That, that's one of the things I think it's Erickson's you can't remember something without accessing it. I mean that, that sounds weird, but you have to access the whole set of data that is Jeanine, including the [email] list and all the things that blah-blah-blah, but there in the, in the it feels like a net, yeah? Indra's net is Jeanine. And you can't talk about her without finding her. It's like "Go into that corner and don't think about green monkeys." You know, tell me about Jeanine without thinking about her.

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Julie Henderson The connection with Jeanine is not conceptual but experiential. For Julie Henderson the "sensations available for that person" are primarily experienced as kinesthetic and proprioceptive. Originally she experienced them in her own body, but many years ago she learned how to move them at need to a space outside (though near) her body.

Her visual experiences are abstract patterns of moving lights. She speaks also of smells and tastes. But the primary experience, and the one most close to conventional reality, is a kinesthetic awareness of the person. With all of these experiences of the other person she attempts to avoid reification or any insistence that the story is "true." Instead, it is a byproduct of her presence with the person in their experience. And I get an image of her umm, and I should say an image, it's notit is vaguely a visual, but it's more a sense of movement and grab, like a ghost of her lifting up off this bed that she might be resting in, and taking me by the throat. Umm, even though she had laid down to rest, it might have been. But I don't know why she, I don't know what that is. So I don't decide what that is. And at the level that I might be doing Chd 124, it doesn't matter if she does that. But at the level that my body might take it seriously, then I might intervene. So at the moment I don't know which way it's going. [Long pause] Uh, my sense is, it's just her desperation.

Her response is based on the feeling-quality, not the story: So what I do then is to, fold in under and hold her. This [is] not like me physically doing that, but to provide a kind of hammock-like container for her to more intimately have that company And I feel protective and I guess you might say, motherly sorts of sensations. Like rocking the cradle. But it's still sort of a hammock shape. A lot of that sounds like I think there's actually something happening. That's not true. That's only a "retailing" of images and sensations that ordinarily I wouldn't even bother
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Chd in Tibetan Buddhism is a visualized ceremony in which all form - including one's own body - is offered for the satisfaction of all beings. For the origins of the ceremony see Edou, Machig Labdrn and the foundations of Chd. For an alternative and very beautiful version of the ceremony, see the chapter "The kusali's accumulation" in Patrul, The words of my perfect teacher.

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Julie Henderson to speak. When I speak them, they tend to solidify them a little bit. And that influences things in a way that I ordinary wouldn't do. Makes them too solid, too real in that sense. [long pause] Uhh, in my mind's eye her form contracts and shrinks and becomes sort of non-human, which is again a reflection of her fear and desperation, not commentary on her; and it's difficult to get or maintain her attention. But it's also a statement you know, God, this all sounds so, you know, so reified, but anyway, fuck that. It's a statement of trust on her part to allow that to happen, because she can't protect herself while she's doing that. She's too out of touch, it's a bit autistic. Yah, a bit autistic. So, then, I do a little bit of, undertake the protection while she's doing whatever that is; and so far I have not been invited to intervene in the situation at all, except to give her company that's all.

Her primary interventions are not a specific attempt to make things better. Instead, they are to "keep company" and to offer space. The company is just that, a good presence: I'm open to spending time in her company. And finding out what information arises about what she wants, as much as I can perceive. But I also, my experience is that.by spending time with her, just ummm, becoming part of the system, it increases possibility. And I don't "make"except for a general wish that she be well and happy and supporting the best possible outcome, which I have no idea what that might be, I don't go in trying to fix.

"Making space" is more complex, but basically it means to offer more room to the system of which Jeanine is a part: JH: If I intend more space for Jeanine's situation, if I'm in that state of the inseparability of form and, and openness; if I'm in that state of the inseparability of awareness and openness, then I flip the light-switch. That's it. BW: You intend the openness? JH: I intend the openness. BW: So, and I know, from talking before, that you intend not infinite openness, but an appropriate amount of openness. -194-

Julie Henderson JH: Just enough to create more possibility.

Just what it means to offer "space" and "presence" will occupy the rest of the chapter.

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Julie Henderson

7.3 Space
One of the words Julie Henderson employs the most is "space." She used it thirty-four times in our two-hour interview, with many shadings and subtleties. The word is used in such a variety of senses that it is worth looking at some of them. 7.3.1 Directly Experienced For Dr. Henderson "space" seems to be a general word for the context in which experience happens. Julie says that a better term than "context" would be "the underlying texture of the reality" in which experience happens.

She seems to experience much of being, as well as her work, spatially. It is not that she just thinks about spaces: she reports direct experiences of space, spaciousness and various spatial topologies.

The metaphors are often kinesthetic. She uses words like "tight" and "folded" to indicate constricted spaces. She talks about the "grain" of spaces. It is as if she were touching the spaces, so she could directly feel their texture and tightness or openness. At other times it seems as if she herself were the space, and felt its permutations by a kind of proprioception. When she was talking about finding someone she said: JH: It's my experience that if you persist in being open to knowing, that gradually the, the common senses extend their range. They go right on feeling much the same, or maybe a little bit finer, kind of, their level of sensation or something, but theyou go right on seeing, you go right on hearing, you go right on (rubbing sound) tactilely perceiving, that sort of thing. And not just finer, but in different directions. For me sensation -196-

Julie Henderson has always been the strongest one. I getI don't know what pale visuals. I know what I would see if I could see it. I could describe what I could see if could see it, but I don't SEE it the way I see in, in apparently outside reality My memory is almost entirely kinesthetic, in that sense. BW: And that's what you meant by "sensation," also, is kinesthetic? JH: Proprioception more than kinesthesis. But, taking them together, yeah. 7.3.2 Multidimensional Some years ago when her focus was more "energetic" she talked a lot about fluid dynamics, and the sense in which energy moved in patterns in space. She offered her students a book of pictures of the patterns that flows could take. 125 As she has turned her attention more to the space of awareness, her awareness of space has become more topological, more involved with connectedness and twists and recurves. There are all kinds of spaces. Some of them have topology and some of them don't. Or, some of them have more obvious whirls and curves and stuff, than others.

Julie's focus has moved from the flows of energy within spaces to the spaces themselves. And the spaces have differences not only in the connectedness and room that they have within themselves, but also in the number of dimensions that they have. I more and more think in terms of, or conceptualize in terms of topologies, or describe that's the word I want describe in terms of topologies, because it has such a, such an opening and closing, folding and unfolding kind of the trouble with that as a metaphor is that we fold and unfold things in the three dimensions of which we're aware, physical dimensions that we're aware of, and this is an unfolding of dimension.

On reading the draft of this chapter, Julie added:

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Julie Henderson Space itself moves in patterns of flow.

I have tried to understand Julie's emphasis on added dimensions, and what follows is my understanding. To add a new dimension to something has two practical consequences. Each new dimension adds a new possible direction in which one can exist. In the jargon of topology, a two-dimensional space is called a "two-manifold," a three dimensional space is a "three-manifold," and so on. For each new dimension you get a larger manifold - and more directions or headings along which you can move and be. JH: you know those things that swivel open and then swivel closed? You know, they're little cup things or whatever. Sometimes there are basket-weave forms that, that rotate on themselves, and then rotate open. BW: So when you rotate them one way they're flat, and when you rotate them another way they're three-dimensional? JH: Yah. Only we're talking, I'm not talking about thatIt's a "hmmmhmmm" manifold, it's a "hmmmmm;" there's moredirections.

When we see a picture like the one here, of a three-dimensional figure that is vaguely like a cube, we understand that it is just the shadow of a cube. A real cube cannot exist in a two-dimensional manifold like this page. But if a third dimension were "rotated in" somehow, the cube would have room to be itself. So one consequence of having more dimensions is that some beings can be more fully themselves.

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Abraham and Shaw, Dynamics--the geometry of behavior

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Julie Henderson The other practical consequence is that things can change, in a larger number of dimensions, in a way they cannot in a smaller number of dimensions. A right-hand shape embedded in a plane can only be a right-hand shape, no matter how it rotates or slides. And as long as it is embedded in an ordinary plane, it cannot change from being a right-hand shape. But if there is suddenly a third dimension available, even for a moment, the righthand can be lifted up through the third dimension, flipped over, and set back into the plane as a left-hand. So if more dimensions were available, we would have two advantages. There would be more room (or less crowding) so that beings could plump out to their natural multidimensional fullness; and "impossible" transformations would become possible.

This all sounds very abstractly mathematical. But it is part of the work that Julie does. In her perception it is not cubes and outline gloves that are confined in an underdimensioned experience it is living persons and sentient beings. When she finds someone, she also finds the topology that they are inhabiting. Very frequently the problem is that they are "contracted." A person feels that their world and the possibilities in it are both too small. Jeanine was having that experience. Then, as I stay open to information about, or associated with Jeanine, and you give me information about chemo, then I feel this kind of burn, uh, toxic burn, and a sense oflike a shrinking and like a shrink-wrap tension, in the rest of her body, at least her torso.

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Julie Henderson What can one do about such a shrinking of world and possibility? First of all, one does not accept their "story," the complex of meanings and implications that people give to their experiences. This does not mean that one denies the story either one just does not fall into it. I know for sure that I am less convinced by stories that I tell myself. Sometimes I am annoyed by that, because it's so much easier when you think the story is what's happening.

Instead one stays with the sensations, and that can be difficult. (It is even harder when someone is being interviewed as one works.) At one point Julie said, " I have to make a story out of it, rather than stay with the sensations, to answer your question."

If one does not fall into the story, though, it is possible to offer an experience of a larger and more multidimensional space, with its two advantages of more room and more possibility. What one is allowing to open is not "Jeanine," exactly, but the experience Jeanine has wrapped her attention onto. Or when, when the spa, the space is, because it's not personal to Jeanine, when, then, if it's too tight, now I shift it open.

But how can a person open a space and bring more multidimensionality to it? Julie does it by connecting a larger and more generous space to the contracted one. One can simply add one's own space to the other person's space. If one is able to find another, then already the two consciousnesses are linked. Julie adds that In fact these two consciousnesses are two topological nodes in [undivided?] awareness.

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Julie Henderson When you feel unhappy or stuck, it's associated with, if not because of, attention has gotten shrink-wrapped onto, into a set of structures that don't allow for something different? There isn't enough room, there isn't enough space for something else to happen. So if I make connection with that system, to the extent that it responds to me, then there's more room. Then something else is possible.

The more-room, more-possibility experience is not only for what we ordinarily call "the person." It also extends up and down in scale, and Julie's experience as a somaticist makes her focus on both smaller and bigger bodies rather than the lifeless systems others might concentrate upon. This is an awareness that Henderson brings from her long history of somatic work undertaken at the same time she was meeting Tibetan teachers. The experience of opening reaches to the very cells of the organism It's like there's more space between the cells, more movement in the ground substance, more space for that movement to take place.

And it also reaches out to larger "organisms" of which we are part, though we do not need to take them any more (or less) seriously than the small and local body. I was, to a certain small extent, engaged in larger experiential processes a bigger body, and a bigger-bigger body and working with the government and stuff like that noticing now, that's a story. That's a structure created to explain sensation, so that it's more tolerable. Absolutely all it is. The other advantage of moving to a larger space is that new possibilities emerge. It is also at this level that the most terrifying reality emerges. To be different to move into another possibility is to lose one's own self. To have someone else change is to lose the person that was there before. The desire to avoid that loss can make us constrain someone so they cannot change. The same constraint can happen even at the seemingly rarified level of consciousness involved in "finding." For Jeanine to change, we have to -201-

Julie Henderson let go of her and of the specific space in which she is en-contexted. That means entering a larger space in which certain constraints in our ordinary reality do not apply including the idea of distance and the idea of boundaries that separate interiors and exteriors. We have to, in some way we have to engage this other arena in which there's no distance, in which there's no inside/outside; or we can't. play, we can'tflow, we can't let things be different, we can't loosen up our attachment to Jeanine enough for things to be different for her.

Julie also uses more traditional Buddhist language for this move, echoing the Heart Sutra: If I intend more space for Jeanine's situation, if I'm in that state of uh the inseparability of form and, and openness;126 if I'm in that state of the inseparability of awareness and openness, then I flip the light-switch. 7.3.3 Nested Basins There are many different experiences of space. Julie likes the metaphor of "attractor basins," borrowed from chaos theory, to describe these spaces. "Attractor basins" are regions that hold something it can move within the basin, but will not escape without special circumstances. A watershed is an attractor basin for liquid water. Ordinary mind is an attractor basin for attention.

Attractor basins can be nested. A horse's hoof-print holds rain-water. If a child splashes that water out, it may be held then in the next largest attractor basin, the stream-bed in

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Compare the Heart Sutra's "From form, not distant emptiness; from emptiness, not distant form" in a literal translation from the Sanskrit of Conze, Buddhist wisdom books: the Diamond and Heart Sutras.. For Indian, Tibetan, Chinese and Korean readings of the Heart Sutra, see dKon-mchog-bstan-p'ai-gron-me, An explanation of the Heart Sutra Mantra, Illuminating the Hidden Meaning, Gyatso, Heart of wisdom: a commentary to the Heart Sutra, Hua, The Heart Sutra and Commentary by Tripitaka Master Hua, Lopez, The Heart Sutra explained: Indian and Tibetan Commentaries, Sunim, Heart Sutra: ancient Buddhist wisdom in the light of quantum reality

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Julie Henderson which the horse left the hoof-print. If it runs off from that streambed, the water may enter the next larger attractor basin, running into Lake Tahoe. If it evaporates from Lake Tahoe, it enters the very large attractor basin of the atmosphere.

Julie uses this metaphor for those things that (as she says) "entrain" attention. Attention just shrink-wraps itself around experiences, she says, and does not move except along the "lines of experience" permitted by the attractor. Attention becomes wrapped around a trauma, or even just a habitual story; and then to the person experiencing it seems that they "are" that trauma and story. It is not that the trauma did not happen or that the story is not true. But by saying "I am my sad upbringing" or "that terrible night destroyed my life," the mind enfolds and restricts the space of awareness and reduces its experienced dimensionality. The remedy easy to say and hard to do is a kind of letting go. [T]hese days my experience of what attention is, is much more malleable, much more flexible, much more topological than it used to be. I used to think of attention as a kind of a point-process. Now I recognize you can shape attention in any way you like, sort of very topiary attention forms, and put it wherever you want; and you can do it in layers. Kath127 and I used to talk about the placement of attention within attention so, you know, there's layering of that sort. But specifically in this case if the focus of your attention is too tight, you can't perceive enough to do whatever it is that is being asked about. So, I guess I would say I relax attention OUT of the entrainment that is common to functioning in this ordinary, three-dimensional semi-Euclidean [space] Well, in the weird vocabulary that I've developed, I believe that the action is to gradually disentrain attention from apparent reality, so that it isn't bound by it. It's not a matter of rejecting it, or ceasing to function, or anything like that, but of not being [entrained] first a little bit, and then progressively and then if what they say is true ultimately free of entrained attention. And that's when they say, "Anything is possible, and nothing is necessary."
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Kathy L. Kain, a fellow Somaticist and occasionally a fellow-teacher.

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Julie Henderson

Julie uses the fact that any space has a larger and more open containing space, to give her access to other beings. There's an attractor basin that is mind, there is an attractor basin that is body; and there is a largerness-than-that, which includes, and you know in my case probably is, yet another attractor, because I am not awake. But it's bigger than the body attractor-basin, which is itself actually bigger than the mind attractor basin. Which does, just like they say, reflect body process, and is an expression of body process and determined by body process by the brain, they say, but it's not that simple. It's the whole body that is the attractor basin, within which, or from which which makes that kind of mind possible, and limits what is perceivable. So what I experience is, when I do this "mmmmmm", which feels like open and spread, that then awareness contains a body, which can think, yaah? But awareness is much bigger, much bigger than mind. Much. And therefore what is perceivable is more ramified. It's like progressively more "directions," as I call them, more directions to perceive in, more dimensions or fields of perception, that have nothing to do with the apparent ones. I think that they probably are very closely related to the kinds of mathematical descriptions of multi-dimensional reality blah-blahblah. Ah, but I don't know that, because I haven't been able to seduce any advanced mathematicians recently. But it FEELS like that. I feel, I feel like I am perceiving, uh, geometries and spaces and directions that aren't here. And it's in those directions that I find people.

At an outermost level, what Julie calls "the space-of-all-spaces," there are no problems. Nothing matters. Ms Henderson adds, " because nothing is happening." At the level of the space-of-all-spaces, there's none of it happening anyway so you can hang out there and kind of cool off if that's necessary

This is not where Julie wishes to remain. In this she follows the Mahayana Buddhist strategy that anchors itself across the border between complete openness and the

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Julie Henderson experience of daily life, for which a mnemonic is "Abiding in emptiness, and not forsaking sentient beings."128 using the Buddhist framework, there's [what?] Tsongkapa said, "Buddha can only perceive Buddha." Which is a statement subject to INCREDIBLE ranges of percepprojection, but I think what that means is, or my version of something like that, would be: if my attention is wholly and fully in the space of all spaces, let's say, then I am not including the folds, the lamination, the complexification that is form. So I'm not paying attention to it. And anything that may be going on with it is just so much hoo-hoo, you know, just who cares? So in order to be of any assistance to Jeanine, or to keep her company, then I need to be able to stretch. I need to be able to, to be body enough to remember the human concerns, body enough to have the body information about what's going on with Jeanine; but awareness enough, openness enough, that I can use it. 7.3.4 Openness "Openness" in Julie Henderson's usage is generally positive: How do I experience it? As a body, (small laugh) as a body I experience it like freedom. Like lightness. As eyes, I see light. I see you, but everything is luminous. You, especially because you're alive, but everything. Umm, the cells, my cells, the cells of this body like it; it becomes part of the ground substance they are relating, that they're floating in. As energy that's a bit tenuous; I don't care much for that word anymore because it's used so many different ways but as extensions of presence into the surround, whatever that turns out to mean, it feels, openness feels again like freedom, like motility, like directional sensitivity, again mult many, many directions. Which direction do you want to go? Not just up, down, sideways, but going to what's over that way, in the direction of mmm, Tara or whatever. If I were hunting for Vajrakilaya, whatever Vajrakilaya turns out to be, then what DIRECTION would that be? And that tweaks mind a certain way. As mind, I experience "smearing." BW: "Smearing "is JH: Read Egan!129 Umm

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dKon-mchog-bstan-p'ai-gron-me, An explanation of the Heart Sutra Mantra, Illuminating the Hidden Meaning

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Julie Henderson BW: (laughs) JH: Umm, as mind, as mind I experience that forms of thought loosen and start dissolving; the snakes of, the movements of mind become a little more diffuse. Everything tends in the direction of openness and light then, because mind tends to dissolve into awareness, which is what's supposed to happen, I gather.

"Openness" seems to mean several things at once. It is the spacious opposite of enfoldedness and contraction (though on reading this Julie notes that "even folds and contractions are open in essence), it is possibility, and it is an increase in awareness. It is also apparently a translation of the Buddhist term shunyata, which is more commonly translated as "emptiness." 7.3.4.1 Spacious opposite of enfoldedness and contraction It is clear that for Julie form is a kind of contraction and that openness is the opposite of that enfoldment and contraction. More descriptively what I meant when I said, "I came back," because it's a very specific sense of attention refolding itself out of a relatively spread awareness, relatively open, back into local mind.

if my attention is wholly and fully in the space of all spaces, let's say, then I am not including the folds, the lamination, the complexification that is form. Here Julie wrote "Aaah!"(the mantra of opening) or maybe it was "Aargh!" or even "Ach!" and she corrected me to say: Form is a kind of condensation and enfolding of openness. Openness itself is the state from which enfoldment and condensation arises. Partly
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Australian Greg Egan wrote a novel about the ability to maintain quantum uncertainty not just on a microscopic level, but also on the ordinary macroscopic level. He called this ability to maintain many possibilities as simultaneously real "smearing." See Egan, Quarantine: a novel of quantum catastrophe

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Julie Henderson openness permeates all things just as they are. When the form perceives its own openness, unfolding begins. More is possible. The move to openness is an unfolding movement, not within a space but of spatial (and more than spatial) dimensions I more and more think in terms of, or conceptualize in terms of topologies, or describe that's the word I want describe in terms of topologies, because it has such an opening and closing, folding and unfolding kind of the trouble with that as a metaphor is that we fold and unfold things in the three dimensions of which we're aware, physical dimensions that we're aware of, and this is an unfolding of dimension. 7.3.4.2 Possibility Possibility is just the opposite of stuck-ness, but in a very general sense. Here Julie finds her intervention to be like that of the Tibetans. When you feel unhappy or stuck, it's associated with, if not because of attention has gotten shrink-wrapped onto, into a set of structures that don't allow for something different? There isn't enough room, there isn't enough space for something else to happen. So if I make connection with that system, to the extent that it responds to me, then there's more room. Then something else is possible. One of the most EFFECTIVE, well, one range of things that the Tibetans do that's most effective, is SIMPLY to introduce more space into a system. That's it; that's the whole shot. Possibility is also that which could be: That's one of the lovely things about telling guru storiesit reminds the heart. Telling these stories, just as we are doing now, reminds us of what's possible. 7.3.4.3 Increase in awareness Julie teaches that the relaxation and unfolding implied by awareness of openness also leads to more, or at least wider, awareness. This is particularly true insofar as one becomes less self-centered, less focused on one's own experience, less narcissistic. Most of the time it is sadly true, that because of the effects of the localization of attention, NOTHING happens that isn't about us. That's -207-

Julie Henderson really kind of pitiful. So it's actually quite difficult to moveyou know like, originally, why did I do this? Because I felt better. I got, I got some jollies out of beingcompassionate. But it was "me!" And all that whole neurotic base definitely operated. "People will like me." "I'll get it right." "I'll find my one true love." But as attention relaxes and, and there's less "I" as a referent, something, something else happens that I don't know the words for that is a little more graceful, but is also not about "them." You know, that split BW: The person you're working, it's not about people you're working on? JH: Yeah, again, it's not about inside/outside.

The widening has immediate practical implications. Awareness that expands spatially can also be less attached to a point of view that is focused in one place. I remember going to Julie in the middle of a conflict with a fellow worker. She had me expand my awareness until it was the size of San Francisco. There was immediate access to much interesting experience, much ease and oh, yes I couldn't have been less interested in the conflict. Of course, when I contracted my awareness back down to "my own size" things were not so open, as Dr. Henderson said at another point when attention relocalized: So when attention is more or less inseparable from openness, there are no folds. And when it re-localizes, it has to fold, in order to do that, psssht! And that's what yanked you, was the folding

Nevertheless, the repeated practice of expanding and delocalizing attention creates the actual experience that attention does not have to be self-centered: Once I said to Gyalsay Rinpoche, I am aware of being, but as nobody in particular. "You are doing very well," he said.

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Julie Henderson Julie once said that she was first attracted to the Tibetan teachers because of the way they were in their bodies. Here Julie added, "They were embodied bodhicitta." What we call "the body" experiences openness as well as what we call "the mind." And I experience that as or I associate it with freedom from attitude. That attitude is topological. Attitude has a shape. And when you relax attention out of the commonly, whatever attitudes you're wandering around with most of the time, the tonicity of let's say the nervous system, but not only the nervous system, but the tonicity changes so there's freer fluid and less contraction, and neurochemistry changes, and all that sort of thing.

7.4 Loving Presence

After my first euphoria with "having more space" wore off, I found myself wondering if the spaciousness was not a bit distant and cold. Intellectually it would seem that it could be cool; but the very process of contacting others, what Julie calls "finding," cuts through distance, both geometrically and emotionally. "It's a practice of love-touch," she says. 7.4.1 Keeping Company "Keeping Company" was Julie's primary intervention with Jeanine: I'm open to spending time in her company. And finding out what, what information arises about what she wants, as much as I can perceive. But I also, my experience is that.by spending time with her, just ummm, becoming part of the system, it increases possibility. And I don't "make"130except for a general wish that she be well and happy, and supporting the best possible outcome, which I have no idea what that might be, uh, I don't go in trying to fix.

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Julie uses the term "make" to indicate any attempt to force or create something by psychic strongarming. To this footnote, Julie added: It's more than this, more basic, more pervasive a primordial act of intention that shapes space and creates time as a direction.

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Julie Henderson Bringing some space "Just enough to create more possibility" is one part of the process. "Keeping company" means being with Jeanine while she experiences what she experiences, being present physically or (as in this case) through "finding" in the space of awareness. It includes allowing the person to be exactly what it is she is being, to actually support the transformation taking place by providing shelter for it my sense is, it's just her desperation. So what I do then is to, fold in under and hold her. This not like me physically doing that, but umm, to provide a kind of hammock-like container for her to more intimately have that company And I feel protective and I guess you might say, motherly sorts of sensations In my mind's eye her form contracts and shrinks and becomes sort of nonhuman, which is again a reflection of her fear and desperation, not, not commentary on her; and it's difficult to get or maintain her attention. But it's also a statement you know, God, this all sounds so, you know, so reified, and that's but anyway, fuck that. It's a statement of trust on her part to allow that to happen, because she can't protect herself while she's doing that. She's too out of touch, it's a bit autistic. Yah, a bit autistic. So, then, I do a little bit of, undertake the protection while she's doing whatever that is and by letting Jeanine know (even at a distance) that the opportunity is there. When Julie does not know what is happening, she responds by offering her more presence and space. So when I said to her that what was happening was actually real it wasn't just a circus trick then she showed up in a different way. Now that's where I am at the moment and I don't know, uhhh.. then, yah, then I just don't know. So then I open, make space for it. 7.4.2 Presence and Energy In her book The Lover Within Julie made the idea of energy her primary metaphor. Now she has begun to question the use of the word energy; and in this interview she called it "extensions of presence into the surround." That carries some of the sense of the word as

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Julie Henderson it is commonly used - presence and power that is not limited to a body. Yet in her discourse she still sometimes uses the word "energy" as she did in the past.

Henderson talks about three ways of being aware of something. These also seem to be ways of being progressively more present to something. You can be aware "of, in, and as." To be "aware of," for instance, is to be aware as some sort of outside observer. It is the way we usually first come to notice something. To be "aware in" something or someone is to step into the person or thing still not identified with them or it, but now inside of the person or the thing's space. To be "aware as" is to take on the experience of someone or even of some thing, to be present to the point of identification. "This," added Julie, "is a Tantra yoga." Each step of increasing involvement is a step of greater presence. She spoke of this three-stage understanding both with regard to teaching her students, and with regard to working with Jeanine: Well, the way I came to it was different from I think how I would teach it. Because of course I understand differently now, I experience being differently now than I did then. I well "aware of, in and as"? I would do that: I would do "of, in and as" body; "of, in and as" energy; "of, in and as" mind to the point of recognizing awareness. Stacking! You know, the more you are present as a body, the more you are present as energy, the more you are present as awareness, the more you touch everything you interact with. The more you are integral with it non-dual. So if I find Jeanine, and I'm really getting serious, and I'm not just talking about "OK, there's that" but I enter into the Jeanine-ness of it all.

It is clear that while spaciousness gives room, presence gives contact. It is this contact, while ever so delicate and open, that keeps Henderson's system from being cold. During -211-

Julie Henderson the whole time she spent with Jeanine, she remained in contact with her and did not leave her unsupported.

Moreover, Henderson believes that "relationships are indefinite." She does not disconnect herself from those she has worked with when she is done just the opposite. She had to learn to keep this connection, however, as she said when she was finishing up working with Jeanine. JH: one of the things that I have learned from my teachers, is how to allow her to remain present in my awareness even when I am paying attention to something else. So I don't have to off her, just because I'm not paying attention to her at the moment. BW: So she can summon you, or? JH: Well, if that turned out to be something she wanted to do. But it's very, very distressing for people, for you to give them intense, caring, intimate attention and then disappear. So, that's the main thing, is that she continues for me. I haven't annihilated her, in turning my attention someplace else. I used to do that all the time. I didn't know, I didn't KNOW I was doing it, but I didn't know anything else to do. And then, somebody was angry with me about it. Didn't know how to say that he was angry about it, but Bairo story Bairo Tulku 131asked me, totally out of the blue, "How is so-and-so?" And I said, semi-jocularly, I said, "Oh, Rinpoche, he's very angry with me." He said, "Oh? Why?" Well, it took me two years to figure out why, but it was a fruitful two years. And now I don't have to do that any more. 7.4.3 Teachers Much of Julie's relationship with Jeanine is like her relationship with her students: providing space and presence, whether immediately or at a distance. Her teachers have that relationship with her as well. It is related to the experience she calls "transmission." At least one meaning of that word is that the teacher creates a consciousness for the
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Bairo Tulku is the father of Julies primary teacher, the 12 th Gyalwang Drukpa Drukchen.

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Julie Henderson student, which the student then experiences. The process is frankly telepathic, but not in the more restricted sense of communicating bits of information from one mind to another. Instead it is a global set, attitude plus perception. The student usually receives it as a novel (and often delightful) state of consciousness. It is only when the student speaks to the teacher about it that the student finds that the teacher knows all about it, and has apparently deliberately created it. It is the student's task to become such a person that they can maintain (and perhaps someday transmit) this consciousness.

Her primary teacher is the Drukpa Kagyu teacher Drukchen, the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa. Among her other personal teachers are Bairo Rinpoche; and "Dzongsar Khyentse, Chagdud Tulku, Gyalsay Tulku (the Sakya one), and H.H. Dilgo Khyentse." She has spent time with them in India, Nepal, Australia and the United States.

She is also often in contact with them both by dreams and by a process much like the "finding" we used to connect with Jeanine. There is a connection from student to teacher, and to the teacher's teacher, of transmission. If the process has really happened, the result is not just informational commonalty. There is a linkage of consciousness.

One time when fellow student Margaret Clarke and I were having a session with Julie, she invited us to "find" Drukchen through her. Most of the time when one "finds" another person, the sensation is like discovering a thickening, a personalized density in whatever nameless space we are reaching through. It is not impersonal just the opposite but the experience of perceiving another person is like finding a more

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Julie Henderson concentrated region in that space. Julie calls this a "tangle." When we reached "through" Julie to find Drukchen, the experience was just the opposite. Julie herself often feels roomier than most people. Finding Drukchen was like feeling a very large, very open space with just a small and ironic flavoring of personality.

I suspect that the more one experiences openness, the more able one is to reach through this chain of transmissions. Earlier teachers are very likely to be dead, but this doesn't seem to bother those in the Tibetan networks. These connections through transmission are what is called a lineage. As a beginner I cannot say much about it from experience, but Julie constantly uses her connection to her teachers. When she is working with a person like Jeanine, she will often begin by "remembering" her teachers. It is not just a utilitarian relationship, though: Well, I find "me" and I find (I would say) my teachers, I find the Wisdom Presence; and I rest "me" in Wisdom Presence and let there be as full a permeation as I am currently capable of.

By soaking in the Wisdom Presence of her teachers, she both invokes them and allows herself (and the situation or person she is working with) to transform as much as they can. And the direction of transformation is towards the qualities of her teachers: My experience of my teachers is that they are love and clarity embodied. Love and clarity without limitor at least any limit that I can find. I don't know how to talk about these things without sounding loony. It's not usual. I mean, you don't usually meet people who are evidently wise and loving and playful and generous and full of laughter. They are utterly entrancing. Even the tissues of their bodies are happy and aware. It sounds extraordinaryit is extraordinary. (As a somaticist, these are the sorts of things I am inclined to notice. Other people might more likely be drawn in through other means.) I realized that if I wanted to learn about -214-

Julie Henderson these thingshow my teachers came to be what they arethen I would do well to hang out with them. I wanted to know how they became so fully happy and loving and present and wise. Unbelievably wise. In the most ordinary way, not at all pompous or arrogant. Just simply, moment by moment, responding accurately to what is arising and what is needed.

Her practice of working with others, then, is part of a larger practice of union and presence. She offers her own openness and presence, and she soaks herself in the openness and presence of her teachers. This is the practice of Guru Yoga, when applied to assisting other beings. 7.4.4 Wisdom Beings In addition to her living teachers, or teachers she has met in person though they may no longer be alive, Julie also works as in the Tibetan custom with "Wisdom Beings" who do not appear as physical bodies at all, beings known in Buddhism as Tara and Vajrasattva and such. I asked her about them, and she responded wryly: BW: OK, about these here wisdom beings JH: Oh, God. Yes? (in nasal voice) "What are you talking about? Angels or what?" No. Yes? OK.

She then tried to explain the experiential difference between individual teachers and Wisdom Presence: BW: So when you reached for some wisdom presence why did you do so? JH: So I could stay relaxed. It's friendly. It's there. My heart eases. And that's bodily and personally and emotionally and every, in every other way. BW: And the do you get a sense of personality? -215-

Julie Henderson JH: It depends. I would start by saying it's like finding anybody else, so so it involves the same just-bringing-attention-to. So, if for example I bring my attention to Druk, or I bring my attention to Bairo Tulku, or I bring my attention to Chagdud Tulku, or I bring my attention to whoever, then it has a specific flavor, because they do. Sometimes when I just bring attention to Wisdom Presence whatever that turns out to be -- it doesn't have a personal flavor. But again, that's probably like "This space has no, has no texture," and then later on I would discover because I'm not awake so there's a lot more out there that, you know, my attention is still a lot more entrained than the free state.

In my draft, Julie wrote notes about the Tibetan words she is translating with various English phrases: Wisdom presence prob. = chku Wisdom being " = longku "teacher" " = Tulku W.p. not "up to" anything. It doesn't intend. W.b.'s intend "on request."

Julie uses the expression "Wisdom Presence" a good deal, choosing a partitive noun rather than a countable noun. Partitive nouns are words like "water," "air" or "butter." The implication when one uses them is that that to which they refer is fundamentally undivided. To get individual units of a partitive noun you must have a measure of some sort, whether concrete like "a cup of water" or indeterminate like "These potatoes need some butter." Countable nouns imply that they refer to fundamentally separate entities; they need no measure but can use articles and be counted "a dog," "the Count of Monte Cristo," or "the three Fates." Julie seems to be emphasizing that her experience of Wisdom Presence is fundamentally undivided. I then asked her BW: So how do you distinguish, in a moment you said "Tara no I think it's more like Vajra.." JH: Vajrasattva -216-

Julie Henderson BW: ..sattva. How do you make that distinction? (pause) Something had come when you asked for it, right? JH: Mm-hmm BW: and how JH: That was for her [Jeanine]. BW: For her, right. For you and for her both, sort of? JH: No. From uh Tara, Vajrasattva, blah blah blah, are handy labels for specific functions of Wisdom Presence. And some Wisdom Presence is more differentiated than other Wisdom Presence. I think it's again these baskets, uh, basins, or something; but in any case if you go looking for Wisdom Presence with a specific function, you can find that. And, in this case, Vajrasattva is for that function of Wisdom Presence is healing and purification. It in fact they would say it about all of them, but anyway Vajrasattva IS the Wisdom Presence aspect that is essentialized by "Ah." So "Ah" is opening, access to space, stuff like that. So you could make the argument that that's how come I came to Vajrasattva, but what I thought to start, and it probably was a little trickle of thought to start with Tara, because of the need for help. But when I went to find Tara, there was no light-up, there was no uh brilliance, so I kept tracking. And what came next was Vajrasattva. BW: And how did, how did Vajrasattva in this [unintelligible] come up? JH: I don't know. BW: How would you recognize that it was Vajrasattva and not Ralph? (small laugh) JH: (laughs) A very good question. (long pause) I really don't know. That was the name, that's the label that arose with the next quality of Wisdom Presence that showed up.

Julie frequently uses traditional Indo-Tibetan mantras when she is working. I asked her why.

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Julie Henderson JH: I experience that mantras are a way of touching form with openness. I experience that mantrasare information in the form of that particular pulsation called sound. And because form is touched by pulsation, and particularly when the pulsation conveys information that is more open, that has more possibility like if it's the Tara information that information is, "You're not stuck. You CAN get help. You may not believe it for a moment, but eh let's run a little bit of this, this eh, this pulsatory stream that is structured to contain the information Om Tare Tam Soha or whatever, that in this particular experimental model that we're trying out contains the information 'Help is available.'" What happens when we, when we rattle the form with this particular pulse or "Om Benzasattva Hung," what happens when we rattle the form with that information BW: What's that mantra? JH: "Om Benzasattva Hung"? BW: "Om Benzasattva" Yeah, that one. JH: That's the after you've done the long form Vajrasattva mantra BW: Vajrasattva? JH: Yeah, then Vajrasattva gives you "permission" to touch with his force, and you do it with "Om Benzasattva Hung." BW: I've often wondered, do you have a sense of presence, when you use the mantra. Of the one whose mantra you're using? JH: (pause) Well, the mantra, one way of describing the mantra is that it's a homing beacon. Or that it's aa tuning device. So in our terms, if you bring your bodily mind, blah blah blah, into alignment, or into union with the mantra, you do that perfectly, then you are, not only in, but you are the dimension of function, the dimension of perception and action which is Tara, Vajrasattva. That's the max-out, you know. Before that, "you achieve the darshan of" BW: And that means? JH: You rest in the presence of. But at the very least that it does is give that aspect of Wisdom Presence a beacon to find you, yeah? And then you can do this ridiculous little thing called "channeling." And my personal -218-

Julie Henderson experience is that the way we do mantra is sort of the jet plane version, that because it is a yoga of union, body energy (as sound) and awareness, so that it has many times more impact than just going "blahduhblahduhblahduh." I wish I had you know how people say, I wish I could go back and live that..." Well there are times when I wish I could go back, and have the access day by day by day to my teachers as I did at the time, so I could ask them certain things, you know like, "Rinpoche, I'm sitting here; and when you move, my mind moves. What IS that?" It's a little bit related to that, you know; when you're not LOCAL, and not in avoidance of local, then what you touch, moves. Julie bracketed the preceding sentence and wrote, "This is central." Soit's different, very different than just locally changing something. So to answer your question sometimes I experience the flavored presence of the person who gave me the mantra. Sometimes, I feel uhhh, like a quality of openness that goes with that function. Sometimes, I'm just riding on the sound and hoping for the best.

Mantra seems, then, to bring together many elements of Henderson's practice: her teachers, presence and Wisdom Presence, non-locality, openness and a willingness to trust in them in unknown situations.

Whatever Wisdom Presence may be (and it is clear that Julie is not satisfied with the vocabulary) it offers her alliance in working with someone like Jeanine and Jeanine's experience of chemotherapy: Well, then, what I understand from the body, "tissue-tissue communication" I will call it, is that her, um, especially her surfaces, her inner surfaces, feel burnt. And she would like very much not to be experiencing that. So she feels uh, that explains, OK she feels like a burn victim. To herself. So, then what I would want to do, would be to offer these other dimensions of, of perception or presence, these other QUALITIES of presence that are not so commonly available in our usual set, as an emollient. And because of the fact that I learned some names from my Tibetan teachers, then I'm likely to say "Tara" or something, but it, it really doesn't matter. I think actually Vajrasattva, when I say that I am experiencing a a Jeez a white-ness, uh, flowing fascially -219-

Julie Henderson between layers, creating some space and some motility, and relieving some of the scarring sensations from burn. 132

Sometimes I have heard Julie singing mantras, very gently, as a singer sings a love song.

7.5 "An operation without anesthetic"

If it seems that this is an easy practice, Henderson would disagree with you. It is all very well when one is floating on waves of bliss, or a teacher has just given a particularly juicy transmission. But the teachers and Wisdom Presence are both up to something - the transmission of enlightenment. Eventually that transmission begins to dissolve the tangle that is the ego and the sense of self, and that is very ("reasonably," corrected Julie - but from watching it go on I would stick with "very") painful. Julie tells a story of trying to manipulate her teacher into investing her with a shawl that implied special "higher practitioner" status. Her teacher with an amused eye kept dodging her manipulations until, after a few days, she understood the point: My experience is that as I continue to open to my teachers, my projections and insistences are gently loosened or, as in this case, radically stripped away. Simple presence has always been profoundly met and received, but any manipulation I might get up to on behalf of "me" has been refused with knife edged sharpness. In this case, Rinpoche helped me to realize that deep down, I did want to be treated as special, to be the favorite daughter, and to be savedand, much more importantly, that none of that was necessary. He was withholding nothing from me, so no manipulation or self-distortion was necessary. Part of my survival strategy all my life had been to work out what people wanted and then to do my best to be that for themor, rather (of course!) for "me" so that, in the end, they would do what I wanted. I began to realize with my teachers that there were no hooks. There were no preferences in them, no clues to follow in order to
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Three months after the interview, Jeanine is out of chemotherapy. She had a bout with pneumonia that she was not expected to survive and she did.

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Julie Henderson distort myself into what they specially wanted. The reality of shared presence is a thousand times better than my hopes. Looking back she can say it easily. But when it is going on, she calls it "stripping," a state of torquing disorientation and discomfort.

Julie added here: I have played with some of the language to bring it closer to my experience. The discomfort of hatching is not the same as the discomfort of guruyoga. Hatching is experienced as developmental pressure, the urge to break out of a confining space; guruyoga, as stripping or torquing sometimes as soaking in solvent to allow the unfolding into multidimensional presence. Almost a re-unfolding impossible to describe like smoothing out something crumpled, only as an nmanifold. Even hatching can lead to disorienting discomfort: And I would add that it tends to come up most often when I'm hatching, because then everything that I have learned seems at risk, or irrelevant; and I don't know anything, so it seems very likely that uh it's all been a big mistake. I get gradually less likely to impose that story line on the fact that I don't know what's happening, and that I'm uncomfortable. But, you know, you can only be uncomfortable so much of the time without deciding that you must have made a big mistake sometime, somewhere if only by being born. No, I think it is a habit of my mind, to make the formation "I've been bad," or "I've made a mistake. And I'm uncomfortable because I've made a mistake, and I'm being punished." That's, that's a very common habit of mind, but it's certainly a common one of mine. And I don't pay it much attention.

When Henderson works with someone in pain, like Jeanine, she offers a gentle presence. But it is clear that Julie herself is often in discomfort from the hatching process, and so are her students. Even Jeanine did not receive simply a balm, but an offering of a chance to open herself by stepping just momentarily into non-being.

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Julie Henderson To go into, into or nearly into a place where Jeanine isn't, just like you aren't and I'm not, in order to let that move enough so that when we come back, and I'm here and you're there and Jeanine is wherever she is, then things are a little bit different.

Julie's practice of working for others is a part of her own practice. To the degree the recipient turns toward it and receives the full thrust of the lineage's offering, the ego will be threatened. I'm pretty sure that people have no idea in the beginning how uncomfortable it is going to be to expose "I" to this processthe impact on what and who we think we are. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche says that doing guru yoga is like hiring someone to annihilate your ego. Choegyam Trungpa called it an operation without anesthetic. Even when we hear these things, we still feel there is some "I" that is essential and won't be stripped away. The "I" of us is made up of an incredibly complex lamination of sights and sounds and thoughts and sensationsinner and outer experiencesthat are awareness as a body. We gradually learn to experience that agglomeration as what we are. The process of letting go of identification with all of thatletting go of the conviction that we are the thoughts, feelings, sensations, history, and experiencescan be vividly painful. Eventually, no matter how committed and enthusiastic you are, you are almost certain to run across one or two "aspects of self" that you feel justified in hanging on to! That bit will be painful, no question about it.

7.6 "Their clear laughing vastness"

Why would anyone take on a practice, even for the benefit of other beings, that involved so much discomfort? Why would anyone turn toward a lineage like the one Henderson represents? I suspect that it is because of the transformation offered. For Julie it was not offered in words and not found in books about Buddhism. It is embodied in her teachers, and they serve as an invitation to be touched by the extraordinary openness.

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Julie Henderson How do you make the extraordinary ordinary? By embodying this practice of loving presence in the present moment. There are simple exercises that help a great deal if you are persistent and consistent about doing them. Gradually and spontaneously, you become more open, more clear, and more loving. Awareness of self eases and becomes more cellularyou and all beings coming and going in one bigger body. The fast track is to let yourself rest in awareness of your teachers, in their clear, laughing vastness. If you do that, inevitably you will be touched by them and influenced and changed by what they are. When I remember them, I am eased. They are. That's central. It's a relief to my heart. When being feels too hard, just to know that they are possible, that eases me.

At the end of the chapter Julie wrote: I think this is very fine. I recognize "myself" in your rendering. As I am drawn by your questions and interest to notice my direct perception of "what I am doing" as sensation rather than story what I experience is this: I am spread or stretched between two cultures, their assumptions, training and demands. If I "collapse the probability wave" into either one of them, I am "wrong" misguided, foolish, etc. But as I hold the wave open as I am the wave of potential then the possibility grows more probable of something fruitful arising that's neither one nor the other but informed and benefited by both. That benefit, of course, I hope goes out beyond me. I would emphasize that I approach the process as an experiment that I have to do so, or I will be forced into deciding what's true when I don't know. Insufficient data! The experiment is to engage the inquiry: what will be the effect of allowing myself to be as influenced as deeply "taught" by them as possible, taking it according to my culture as well as theirs. On a psychological level, the experience that they "are" love, persistently though provocatively, hooks into my dynamic and draws me on to continue the experiment even when it is difficult or ambiguous.

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Julie Henderson

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8 SHNEOR STERN: "DRAWING DOWN LIGHT"

Shneor Zalman Stern is a Lubavitcher rabbi. He is assistant rabbi at Chabad 133 House in San Francisco, the movement's outreach in this city. He agreed to speak with me about prayer in the Lubavitch tradition. He also suggested that I read Proceeding Together, volumes I and II. These are early writings of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson. I did read the first volume, and will cite it from time to time in this chapter.134 In addition I used Rachel Eliors analysis of early Chabad theology. 135

The Lubavitcher tradition is part of the Chassidic movement. The Chassidim began with the life of Rabbi Yisrael ben R. Eliezer, one of the most fascinating figures in Western religious history.136 He lived from 1698 to 1760 of the common era. He was called the Baal Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name. He taught a form of Judaism that focused on personal experience and on joy. 137 One of his disciples was The Maggid of Mezritch. The Maggid had a disciple named Shneur Zalman, who created the Chabad movement.
133

Many outsiders refer to this movement as Habad and call its practitioners Hasidim. Rabbi Sterns group spells the name of the group as Chabad and calls its members Chassidim. 134 Schneerson, Proceeding together: the earliest talks of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, after the passing of the Previous Rebbe Rabbi Yosef Yitzschak Schneerson on Yud Shat 5710 (1950) I shall cite Proceeding Together, volume I, as PTI. 135 Elior, The paradoxical ascent to God: the kabbalistic theosophy of Habad Hasidism 136 Persons who are not members of the Chassidic movement, like Martin Buber, have been drawn to his charisma. See Buber, The legends of the Baal-Shem 137 In its glossary, PTI defines Chassidus: Chassidism, i.e. (a) the movement within Orthodox Judaism founded in the eighteenth century by R. Yisrael, the Baal Shem Tov, and stressing: emotional involvement in prayer; service of G-d through the material world; the primacy of wholehearted earnestness in divine service, the mystical in addition to the legalistic dimension of Judaism; the power of joy, and of music; the love to be shown to every fellow Jew, unconditionally; and the mutual physical and moral responsibility of the members of the informal Chassidic brotherhood, each Chasid having cultivated a spiritual attachment to their saintly and charismatic leader, the Rebbe.

Shneor Stern Members of Chabad consider it a trend {movement} within Chassidism. R. Shneur Salman is called the Alter Rebbe. From him the lineage descends to the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, who died {ascended} in 1994.

Lubavitcher Chassidim dress in distinct dark clothes that remind outsiders of the Amish. Unlike the Amish, they do not disconnect from the modern world. Rabbi Stern is a computer consultant, and knowledgeable about current psychology and music videos. Chabad House in San Francisco has computers, and at the end of our interview Rabbi Stern turned his attention to a printer problem.

8.1 Prayer as the Maker of the World

Prayer to Chassidim is an essential part of all life. Rabbi Stern said it has been so from the beginning of creation. SZS: according to the Jewish tradition, when the first human being was created, the earth was barren. It had been planted, but there was no vegetable life, because there was no rain. And the rain did not fall until the first human being prayed, to the Most High, for rain. From the very beginning of the creation of the human being, prayer was an integral part of the functioning of the earth. In this sense, the blessing for the rain that was necessary in order for the vegetable life to flourish, was activated through this praising of the Most High. It was a praising and an asking. On one hand it was an acknowledgement that the power is Gods, and on the other hand it was kind of a gracious positioning of the human being to say, And will you please let it rain? And in this way, HaShem 138 built into the creation this reciprocal relationship between human beings and the Almighty.

138

"The Name" in Hebrew.

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Shneor Stern 8.1.1 There is a Ladder The context for prayer is a dual awareness. On one hand is the utter transcendence of God. On the other is Gods utter presence. The transcendence of God is understood in the tradition of high monotheism. Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One is the confession of faith in all of Judaism. Not only is God unified, rather than multi-personal, but God is the only one of His type. The angel Michael took his name from his challenge, Who is like God? Judaism continues that challenge to all claimants of Divinity. There is only one God. The transcendence of God becomes the theme of the last part of this chapter.

Nevertheless, God is present as well. There are sparks of Divinity scattered through the universe. While the expression sparks of Divinity is used in other traditions, in mystical Judaism it is a central concept. God is present as and in these sparks throughout creation. The spark of Divinity is one's most real identity the answer to the question Who am I? SZS: instead of feeling like I have to justify my existence by putting on an act and a faade and by eliciting a response from people by formulating my self-image based on looking into the mirror of other peoples eyes, I stop and say, Who AM I? I dont fit in a breadbox. I am a spark of God. There is no definition to who I am. And what does it mean to be a spark of God? It means that, that ultimately I am a spark of Divine joy and creational capabilities. I am an expression of the compulsion to share the pleasantness and happiness and beauty of being. In fact, the traditional Chabad position is that God alone is real. The sparks are but God in concealment. For there exists in the world no entity other than HaShemfor there is no true substance other than HaShem. For if, because of the vessels and the concealment, other entities appear to be substantial, in reality they are not -227-

Shneor Stern substantial at all. For He, blessed be He, is the essence of all essences, and there exists in reality no other substance but HaShem. 139

Human beings are created to be godly, in Rabbi Sterns words. That means, among other things, that we are given the chance to choose to be godly, to be the creator, to transform darkness to light. But its not the darkness out there. Fixing the darkness out there is, as they say, Memelah oomehalav . . . an automatic benefit of having transformed the darkness in our own hearts. One cant fix the external world until they fix their own internal world. There is an isomorphism between the struggle within a person and the cosmic transformation which is also in progress. Our work on ourselves is not just self-directed it is one front in a larger war.

In that struggle, it is the task of human beings to channel higher qualities into the ordinary world. There are many of those qualities, but the highest is joy. The joy comes directly from God: Its the compulsion to share the love, beauty and majesty; its the joy of sharing the wealth. It is the purity of intent through which we achieve the primary alignment down here, with the immutable happiness of God. This quality of character causes the integration of the physical, spiritual, and Divine aspects of this highest power, the power of causal joy. Such joy originates from the happiness of Being, alone.

The response to this joy is not a floating bliss. On the contrary, the response to joy is an experience of what Rabbi Stern calls "the compulsion."

139

R. Aharaon Halevi in Shaarei ha-Yihud ve-ha-Emunah I:2 in Elior, The paradoxical ascent to God: the kabbalistic theosophy of Habad Hasidism, p. 51

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Shneor Stern SZS: So in other words, when a person can see from within themselves potential for joy and love and beauty; and they look outside and they see ugliness, and hatefulness, sadness, etcetera BW: Right. SZS: Then what happens is, because the person can see the potential from within, there's a dynamic tension created by virtue of the fact that it does not exist in actuality. And that tension becomes the catalyst for this Divine compulsion to share the wealth, to beautify the ugliness, to bring love into a place that is full of hatred, etc. BW: Yeah. OK. And that also provides you with your navigating, in, like "What do I do now?" SZS: Right. According to the Kabbalah, when a person enters into this state of dynamic tension, where the joy of it all has given rise to a creative problem-solving process, whereby to bring all this goodness that we found inside of ourselves into the world outside of ourselves, the person will, then, discover their highest destiny. They will discover that not only were they endowed with the seeds of paradise, to plant in God's eternal garden, they will also discover how to do this.

There are at least two ways to take part in the struggle. The low road is to abstain from doing wrong. Having fought many struggles in my heart, I could appreciate Rabbi Stern's tone of understanding when he said that the low road is when a person is living a life of, of affliction and is maintaining their human qualities despite it all. BW: Right. SZS: Not to stab somebody in the back, when the person feels like it

The "low road" of not doing ill is no small task. But the task of the Kabbalist, is what Rabbi Stern called "the high road":

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Shneor Stern The high road is when a person is manifesting and channeling light and Divine revelation. 8.1.2 According to the Kabbalah There are certain powers or realities that are higher than ordinary reality. These are not God, except insofar that God is in everything; and Judaism has been careful not to deify them. But they are cosmic as well as personal powers. They are customarily arrayed in a tree. Rabbi Stern revised my attempts to describe the Tree as follows: Chabad itself is named after three of these sephirot that are just below the top of the tree: Wisdom (Chokmah), Understanding (Binah) and the semisephirah Knowledge (Daath). At the top of the tree is Keter, the Crown; below Wisdom, Understanding and Knowledge are found Kindness (Chesed), Restraint (Gevurah), Beauty (Tiferet), Interminableness (Netzach), Attunement (Hod), Loyalty (Yesod), and Rulership (Malkuth).

The study of these powers is part of Kabbalah, the mysticism of Judaism. It is often viewed with apprehension by many Jews, but in Chabad it is central.
Gevurah Severity Binah Understanding

Keter Crown

Chokmah Wisdom

Da'ath Knowledge ee Chesed Mercy Tiferet Beauty

The tree diagram, and the many connections it has with other patterns in Kabbalah, make Kabbalistic thought both structured and hierarchical. The left and right sides of the tree, for instance, are often identified with difficult and easy situations, or even evil and good. The vertical
Hod Splendor

Netzach Victory Yesod Foundation Malkut Kingdom

structure makes the Kabbalist able to clearly identify what is prior and what follows. A Kabbalist can use the tree in both thought and action. There is a speculative Kabbalah, of course; but for a person working within the Lubavitch tradition, the Kabbalah is

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Shneor Stern ultimately practical. 140 When Shneor Stern talks about integrated consciousness, for instance, he is talking about integrating all of these sephirot within oneself: SZS: Regarding the custom of praying with ten men, it says in Jewish mysticism that if one cannot pray with ten men, then at any rate, one must pray with the ten powers of their own soul. And this is what prayer is about, the integrating of the physical, spiritual and Divine dimensions of the ten powers of the soul. BW: Are those the sephirot? SZS: Those are the sephirot Coming down through the very top of the tree is irresistible joy: SZS: And so it serves to create a context, an inner spiritual feelingawareness context where nothing contradicts the ultimate goodness of God and purposefulness of life. And theres one point here, which is that when the person leaves the exercise of prayer, then they are, ideally, empowered with this consciousness, with this force, with this alignment, such that they can actuate the power of essence and be in alignment with what is called the Divine immutable happiness, at all times and under all circumstances, in their normal daily life, whether its dealing with family and friends, or working for a company, or whatever. BW: But that pervades their daily life as well. SZS: Right. This idea that they have transcended opposites, that they have transcended contention, conflict and resistance. And in this way, the person can enthusiastically pursue their visions and dreams, without creating a war of resistance around them. Because the joy and happiness that is exuding from deep within this person is irresistible

140

The expression "Practical Kabbalah" has traditionally been used for Kabbalah as a system of magic. For a modern, perhaps more psychological interpretation by a member of the Lubavitch community, see Wolf, Practical Kabbalah: a guide to Jewish wisdom for everyday life. Another Jewish, but non-Lubavitch, application of the Kabbalah and the tree diagram is Labowitz, Miraculous living: a guided journey in Kabbalah through the ten gates of the Tree of Life. The Kabbalist tree of life is also widely known outside of its native Judaism; see for instance Regardie, The garden of pomegranates

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Shneor Stern 8.1.3 The Other Side But that is only the top of the tree. Below that is the rest of a complex structure that exists both in the universe and in the individual. In particular, the tree splits from a vertical column to become three parallel columns, right, left and central. While all are part of the creation of God, all part of the plan as Rabbi Stern says, this complexity makes possible the existence of unfriendly powers. The vertical split also makes it possible to construe one world this physical world, the very bottom of the tree as the only world. The unfriendly powers and the illusion that this is the only world combine to oppress and contain us.

Rabbi Stern frequently used the expression "the other side." This is a translation of the Aramaic expression "sitra achra," which Proceeding Together glosses as "that aspect of the universe which is opposite to the aspect of holiness; the forces of evil." 141

The other side feeds on what we give it. Rabbi Stern described those who practice "selfishness and deception" as opening themselves to a kind of parasitism: SZS: Whatever level the person is on; that is, to whatever degree selfishness and deception remain that will cause the universe to victimize the person. BW: Resonate with that. SZS: Right. BW: Is that, is that an accurate translation "resonate with "? SZS: Yeah, to suck their energy, because the forces of the other side represented by the serpent in Bereshis, in Genesis, was cursed to eat of the dust of Eve's heel. This is explained in the Kabbalah to mean that
141

PT1, p. 189.

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Shneor Stern emotional selfishness and negativity causes leakage on the emotional plane, which feeds the illusions of the other side. It's our own selfishness and deceptiveness that creates the angels of darkness. BW: OK. They're like thought-forms. SZS: Right, and through prayer, we lift up our hearts out of our selfish and deceptive states.

8.1.4 "To close up these leaks I arrived at Chabad House just as Rabbi Stern was talking on the telephone to a young woman we can call Sarah. She was very distressed, said Rabbi Stern, because she was under attack. She had been trying to make a spiritual life for herself, and people around her were jealous and mocking. Their selfishness and deception was being upset by her sincerity. SZS: And as I spoke to her, it became apparent that the problems that shes experiencing financially and socially, are coming primarily from a way that shes perceived by many people. And shes gotten herself into this situation by playing victim. There are people who sadistically enjoy tormenting her. One thing they do is embarrass her in public Like all realities in the understanding of the Kabbalah, this event existed at multiple levels simultaneously. One the ordinary level, Sarah was being harassed by unpleasant people and allowing herself to be vulnerable. But on a parallel level, she was (by allowing herself to be upset) feeding evil powers: And the serpent, the other side, will be fed through the dust of Eves heel, which again, the Mikubbalim 142 say means that the leakage of the Divine life force to the other side is through emotional negativity, through fear and doubt, through being a victim and lashing out. Only by making us play victim or aggressor can the other side, the illusory creation, continue to exist.
142

Practitioners of the Kabbalah.

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Shneor Stern

Sarah needed to learn the disciplines of the Kabbalah both to protect herself and to take part (On reading this, Rabbi Stern suggested "prevail") in the cosmic struggle. SZS: First I explain to her the mystical art of the double-edged sword, which is a spiritual way through inner work, to make ourselves invulnerable to those forces that feed off our evil and ego-illusions, and seek to destroy anyone and anything that threatens their precious illusions. The art of the double-edged sword is the way that we stop feeding those illusions. When the animals bark at us and growl at us, and we get scared, then they can attack us and even eat us. When they bark at us and growl at us and we dont react, they have no power over us, because were not feeding them. Theyre just an ephemeral illusion. BW: So the power of the double-edged sword is the ability to not respond? SZS: Right. On reading this, Rabbi Stern added: "It is the ability not to respond that comes from ones total alignment with the immutable Happiness of Being."

The calling down of blessings is based on need: SZS: When people are needy it indicates that they are weak. They are in need of empowerment, courage, and resources. They need a blessing; they need strength.

8.1.5 Integrating Consciousness Sarahs problem is part of a larger, cosmic drama; and the Rabbis response to Sarah was three things at once: personal therapy, religious instruction, and a Kabbalists intervention. All three are necessary, because they are part of the same work. SZS: we are given the chance to choose to be godly, to be the creator (Rabbi Stern added "within the creation,") to transform the worlds darkest -234-

Shneor Stern devastation into light and beauty. But it's not the darkness out there thats the main problem; its the darkness in our own hearts. The transformation of the outside world is an automatic benefit of having transformed the darkness in our own hearts. One can't effectively fix the world until they fix their own internal world. BW: OK. SZS: One cannot cause or bring about integrated consciousness within the world, until their own consciousness is integrated.

He taught her how to recognize her part in her own victimization. This is very much like therapy. He taught her a method of invulnerability that was therapeutic and religious at once.

He also, and simultaneously, was channeling the Divine joy that is the mark of Chassidism: SZS: the thing is that during the phone call, while I was explaining this to her, I was actually positioning myself in a very strong dynamic stance, meditatively, so that I was perceiving the seeing-hearing-smelling-tastingfeeling experience as a wonderful Divine revelation. You know the movie Matrix Well, this is the real matrix. BW: Right. SZS: And I was feeling this joy, this happiness to beand smiling with my voice, and with my face, which she couldnt see, and so through this means I was not only explaining to her what to do, but I was actually channeling Divine revelation to her. BW: Yeah, that seemed to be what was going on. And, what is revealed isprimarily the happiness? Or is it more complex than that? SZS: Well this is the first quality. Its where we have to start. When there are conditions for happiness that are not being met, and thus we are not happy, or less than optimally happy, then, that must be dealt with first.

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Shneor Stern What we are doing is focusing on the one thing that we really want, which incorporates enduring happiness, enduring love and enduring pleasure. This is the practice of hamshachah, which is defined as the eliciting or drawing down of Divine energy.143 As the energy is drawn down, Rabbi Stern suggested, the joy from the very top of the tree is only the first step. Rabbi Stern described one sort of hamshachah. I quote the Rabbis comments at length to show how the various sephirot are brought together, how an integrated consciousness is generated, in the process of drawing down the energy. SZS: The power of cause is within the effect. The Divine creational passion and power to effect the creation has been instilled in each and every one of usWe want to be effective. In order to be effective, we must be able to relate to life, through a position of cause and make things happen. This is what prayer is about. With the woman we had spoken about earlier, Sarah I want to give her access to whats called Magen Avraham, the shield of Abraham, which is the Divine quality of joyous love that has no opposite in the order of creation. (Rabbi Stern added, "The quality of this love is such that one is shielded through its expression. It supplants the need for defense mechanisms.") BW: Is that Keter?144 SZS: Yes (Rabbi Stern added, "and its integration with Chesed, the attribute of love and kindness.) BW: Its on the center channel so it doesnt have an opposite? SZS: Right, (Rabbi Stern added "and it transcends and is the source for both left and right." And then he edited in this paragraph my disastrous attempts to transcribe Hebrew) From there the inner joy, this joyousness of being, ignites whats called chitzoniut Keter, which is the outer realm of Keter, which is called Arech Anpin, long faces literally, which is the origin of passion and vision the passionate inner vision .

143 144

in the glossary of PTI, p.181. the highest sephirah in the tree

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Shneor Stern BW: Oh, longing SZS: of what could be and what wed like to see that that comes about by virtue of the inner joy. And then in the inner column, is daat, which is concentration and focused attention on bringing that joyous vision into manifest revelation. And then in the center column we have beauty, Tipharet; which is, that in order to share the love, Chesed, we must first restrain ourselves and be respectful toward boundries and appropriate to the protocol of the situation, Gevurah, and only then will the expression of ones inner vision come into the world in a way that is beautiful and harmonious. BW: YeahOK. SZS: And then in the center column we have Yesod, which is, after achieving harmoniousness, Teferit, then comes Netzach, interminable determination. And now that you are relentless and invincible, youve got to have Hod, the quality of being modeh al haemet, admitting to the truth, by which means you can pace yourself, be flexible, and go with the flow. Now comes in the center column, Yesod loyalty. Now be loyal to God and man, and dont take advantage of the fact that youve got everybody spellbound by how beautiful the truth is that you are sharing with them. Just because you have put the restraints on your love, have found the harmony, and are pursuing the issue relentlessly while pacing your audience diligently, doesnt mean you can take advantage. BW: Yeah. Yeah, thats the issue of being ethical with charisma. SZS: Right. And thats the final gate that brings us to Malchut, which is rulership to take command of the situation, to speak the words, to do the deeds, to share the information, to paint the picturein such a way that we are loyal to the cause and do not interfere with peoples free will process.

So the drawing down of the light involves moving through all the sephirot, integrating all of them by means of the traversal, and bringing that integration to bear at last in the concrete world.

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Shneor Stern

8.2 Traditions: Torah and Kabbalah

8.2.1 It says Rabbi Stern, more than any other participant except perhaps Jean Delaney, cited what earlier authorities had said. It was never a simple citation; he always had a thought-out connection with immediate life. It was clear from what he said that he belongs to an active tradition, in which the thoughts and insights of earlier rabbis and mystics are applicable to living today. He sometimes seems to speak impersonally, as do people in traditional societies, preferring to offer what elders have validated rather than putting forward his own experience. 8.2.2 A lineage from Torah and Kabbalists alike In reading many other Jewish authors one gets a sense of an ongoing exegetic conversation. The colloquy is among scholars of the Torah and of commentaries on the Torah; it stretches across several thousand years like the discussions that sometimes fill the night after the Sabbath.

Rabbi Stern's discourse has this quality as well. But as a Chassid he also draws on the perceptions of the Kabbalah. One of the characteristics that distinguishes Chassidim from other Jews is their strong adherence to the Kabbalah, the "received." This mystical inheritance traditionally goes back at least to the time of Abraham. 145 There is a large body of information in the Kabbalah that interprets the Torah and turns it into a mystical and blessing practice as well as a body of commandments. When Rabbi Stern cited predecessors, he spoke of the Kabbalah twenty-six times (When he read this, Rabbi Stern

145

The principles of the Sefer Yetzirah, for instance (said Saadia Gaon ) were first taught by Abraham. Other authorities disagree; but there are frequent assertions that Kabbalah precedes the written Torah historically. See Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation, in theory and practice

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Shneor Stern remarked, "Gemotria Shem Havaih. Twenty-six is the numerical equivalent in Hebrew of the Tetragrammaton, Yud-He-Vav-He", of the Torah directly nineteen times, and of unidentified (to me) sources many other times.

There is a tension within Judaism about the Kabbalah. On one hand it is part of Jewish heritage. On the other hand it is viewed with apprehension by those outside of the Kabbalistic traditions This rabbi told me his father told him when he was going through hard times, because there was a lot of community backlash against him, because they thought he was going too much into Kabbalah and mysticism and they had considered him to be a great scholar of the revealed Torah, But within the Chassidus, the study of the Kabbalah and the study of Torah go together seamlessly, encouraging and illuminating each other. Rabbi Stern began by speaking of a line from Torah, and then explained it within the Kabbalist understanding. Now just as it says, "I am who I am," which was the name that God told Moses to tell the Jewish people when Moses asked, "Whom shall I say is sending me?" the scene at the burning bush so, in Hebrew it says, "Ehiyeh asher E-hiyeh," "I am who I am;" and in the Kabbalah it says with regard to the word "Asher," it can also be read "Osher" which would mean "I am happy I am." And "Osher" is a type of happiness, which, as I said, is beginningless. Immutable. Unchangeable. So, it is the state of being. And so what we want to be able to do is say, "I am happy I am." "I am happy to be." Why? Because God is happy to be; and if God is happy to be, I'm happy to be, too.

The Kabbalah reminds me, as an outsider to this tradition, of the world-view now called Hellenism. It was in fact the understanding of the educated classes (Greek or not) of the Mediterranean world during the first few centuries of the common era. To Hellenism, the physical world was at the bottom of a gravity well, so to speak, surrounded by concentric -239-

Shneor Stern spheres. Each sphere was governed by those above and ruled those below. 146 Some of those spheres were friendly to those of us in the "sublunar" world, and some were not. In his explanation of the power of evil in the world, Rabbi Stern speaks of "astral powers"147 SZS: In the Torah, according to the Torah tradition, we're taught that ultimately human beings are higher than stars, and that humans were created to look down upon the astral spheres, as opposed to be controlled by them. However, one would be a fool to deny the fact that they are under the influence of these astral spheres. There's a concept also, from the Torah, known as "Ayin Ra" or "Ayin Horah," which means an evil eye. And this is kind of the opposite of prayer. (clears throat) it's a type of divination, or witchcraft, or sorcery, you know; it's a demonic, psychic type of stuff. And what people are doing, is channeling bad vibes, bad energies, and drawing bad energies upon a person. These bad energies are always, to my knowledge, drawn down through the influences of the astral spheres. BW: What are the astral spheres? SZS: The astral spheres, if you look at astrology in the Kabbalah, astrology is the physical - metaphysical vortexes for a continuum of life-energies which are channeled through angels, which are higher level of vortexes and conduits. It's the process by which the Divine light is filtered in such a way as to create this projection (Rabbi Stern added "that is, the experience of this sensate reality.")

The universe is created by a multiplex process of condensation that most people never perceive. SZS: And so, now it comes down through an order, "seder hishtashilus," a chain of descents, an order where the energy is contracted and goes through many contractions and emanations and convolutions in this process of creating this realitythis seeing-hearing- smelling-tasting146

The presence of these elements that resemble Hellenism supports the Kabbalistic assertion that the Kabbalah existed in writing at least a thousand years before the thirteenth-century publication of the Zohar and the work of Rabbi Abraham Abulafia. 147 This same tradition is passed through Christianity, in the words of the apostate rabbi Saul of Tarsus, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." (Eph 6:12)

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Shneor Stern feeling experience that most of us perceive as distinctly physical and quite independent from any higher source.

The creation/emanation is at its highest level undivided. At lower levels, however, it splits into good and bad, all of which is from God. But this does not remove our obligation to do good. The filtering of the Divine light that has created this projection calls for two responses on the part of a practitioner. On one hand it is appropriate to "draw down the light" into what Rabbi Stern calls "this seeing-hearing- smelling-tastingfeeling experience" as we have already said. A second and more radical response will be discussed later.

8.3 The Senses of Practical Mysticism

8.3.1 Athletic language Rabbi Stern is wiry, and the language that he uses is muscular. Other participants have used receptive kinesthetic language, emphasizing feeling. Rabbi Stern also speaks of feeling and emotion; but unlike them he repeatedly uses words that reflect physical, athletic movement and struggle.

Some of those words are traditional. "Drawing down" is a traditional phrase, a translation of the Hebrew "hamshachah." But it is very different from the language used by a practitioner of another tradition of Divine energy, Reiki practitioner Priscilla Stuckey. She allows the energy to move through her, or stand aside and allows it come pass. Rabbi Stern repeatedly uses active, mesomorphic words: "draw down," climb," and "compel."

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Shneor Stern 8.3.2 "Drawing down light" However, this is far from the only language that the rabbi used. He also spoke frequently of light. First he made it clear that light is not God but a creation of God, in talking about the prayer shawl he wears: The garment is called a tallith, a tallis; and it's a prayer shawl. And it represents the Or En Sof, the endless, infinite light. As if we wrap ourselves as "Oter Or kesalmah, " HaShem wraps Himself in light as a garment, as if to say "God is NOT light." God is beyond light. Light is a creation. That's why we say "Asher Kid'shonu b'mitzvasov, b'mitzvatov," "Who sanctifies us through his commandments," and it says in the Kabbalah, don't read it Asher, "who" read it Osher, "happiness," the immutable happiness of the Divine Essence sanctifies us through the commandments. And it says that the sanctification that occurs through the commandments is the integration of the physical, spiritual and Divine light, which requires that there be a power that equally transcends the physical, spiritual and Divine light. Twenty-six times Rabbi Stern mentioned light, more than two and a half times as often as any other participant. Light is the quality a person puts forth when they are traveling the better spiritual path. And that's why I said before that the high road is when a person is manifesting and channeling light and Divine revelation. Light is that by which God created the world itself. The context that I chose was that, from the immutable happiness of being, there came to be a Divine light and creational energy, which is called the joy of the Creator, which has resulted in this matrix of seeing-hearingsmelling-tasting-feeling experiences that results in this world. Light is part of what we bring into the world when we pray and meditate. Once we realize the eternity of now, then we can realize and this is what we're doing, we're climbing a ladder, it's in a sense, a meditative ladder, as if we were going up to the higher resources, and drawing down light and life energy, and then bringing this creational energy into the world to heal and enlighten and transform the world. -242-

Shneor Stern

Because ultimately, the light is God's joy. It's explained like this, that the Or En Sof, the endless infinite light, is like the glow of a diamond as if to say, the diamond has certain phosphors in it, which cause it to glow in the dark. And that glow is the stuff of creation. And that glow is called Tainug Elyen, the Supernal delight, the joy and delight that HaShem derives from sharing the pleasantness and happiness of being

8.3.3 "In our teaching, in our voice" Speech has a special role in the rabbi's discourse. It is by speech that the traditions of Judaism have been passed down. The discourses of the Rebbe, the head of the Chassidic community, are often called just "words" or maamarim. The connection of the Chassidim to their Rebbe is among other things through the study of these maamarim, as it says in Proceeding Together: The Rebbe [Rayatz] used to say: "A bond with me (hiskashrus) is made by studying my maamarim of Chassidus, by fulfilling my request concerning the daily recital of Tehillim, and the like." These words of the Rebbe [Rayatz], concerning hiskrashrus with him, still apply today.148

Prayers are another form of speech.

Rabbi Stern uses traditional prayers, from prayer-

book services to the reading of Psalms; he is, as he says, "speaking directly to God, with the words that God gave us to speak to Him." Praying in traditional words is frequent in the Chassidic community (as in all of Judaism). When Rabbi Stern's brother was sick, this is just the practice given him by the Lubavitcher Rebbe:

148

PT1, p. 23. Hiskashrus is a synonym for the bond. Chassidus is Chassidism; Tehillim are the Psalms.

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Shneor Stern BW: Does it tend to be umm repetition or fixed language? Or does language get created at the time? SZS: Well when we're reading the Tehillim, then it's repetition of fixed language, because it's Psalms: we're reading the entire book from cover to cover. And you know, one time it happened that my older brother was in brain surgery, and they did not expect him to live. It was more or less an experimental surgery, at that point. And, I had asked the Lubavitcher Rebbe what he suggested, because I was upset that they were using him as a, you know, experiment. And the Rebbe said that, if I would gather ten men to say uh, to recite the Psalms, the entire time that he was in surgery, that he would live. And I got some very serious guys together, and we sat there; and the surgery was sixteen hours, and we sat there for sixteen hours, and we didn't take a break to eat, or drink. We just sat there, ten of us, for sixteen hours and recited the Psalms. And he lived. And the doctors said it was a miracle.

Beyond speech is song. The Chassidic tradition is famous for its songs and its wordless, lilting niggunim. I remember long ago seeing a rabbi trained in the Chassidic tradition who had come to speak at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center. There was a large and talkative crowd, all of whom had come to hear him, and none of whom seemed ready to stop talking. Instead of trying to speak over their conversation, he began to sing very quietly. Row by row the audience grew silent, leaning forward to hear his song.

Rabbi Stern also spoke about song: SZS: In the Kabbalah, it says that prayer and song are really one and the same, except to the degree that one can enter into song and not achieve higher consciousness. Song can be uplifting and entertaining and consuming and distracting without being enlightening. BW: OK. SZS: So according to the Kabbalah, it says that one of the frontiers, um, major issues that will be dealt with during this time of transition and transformation, as we move into a state of Divine revelation, will be the -244-

Shneor Stern purpose of music. The power of music. What is predicted in the Kabbalah is that musicians will enter into a, you know, three-dimensional psychedelic realm of music, which is like a living cathedral of music. Which is where the song itself, the playing of the song, takes on another dimension, as if it's an entire world, you know, that you can see, hear, smell, taste and feel; so it says in the Kabbalah that from there, there will be a transcendence into a state of awakeness, into a Divine awakening, a state of Divine awakening. And that a major source of prophetic vision and insight and information will be music.

Rabbi Stern is himself a singer, and at my request he sang both a traditional song and one of his own composition. Chassidic music is sung in a pure voice, without vibrato, filled with longing and nostalgia for God. It is not like a hymn or a chant. It is too personal, and sounds like a love-song or a keen.

The songs have an effect on the space in which they are sung. Rabbi Stern and I were sitting in the prayer space at the Chabad House. We had been talking about our mutual interest in sound, and in people who can make their voices resonate in a room. SZS: One of the issues, according to the Torah, in integrated consciousness, is the conquering of space. BW: OK. SZS: And the conquering of space means to literally imbue, or integrate into that physical space, the spiritual and Divine dimensions of that space which comes about specifically, and most powerfully, throughprayer and song, which resonates in that space, and with the vibrations of that space in such a way that the space starts to take on that quality and vibrate and resonate with that consciousness, by virtue of the harmonics that we generate BW: Mm-hmm SZS: in our prayers and songs. -245-

Shneor Stern BW: Yep, OK. SZS: AND in our teaching, in our voice. Now this space right here: there's a resonance, there's an echo. My voice is attuned to this space. And you may notice, I notice this is a transformed space.

8.4 It is noon on the Eve of Sabbath.

One of the two tasks of prayer (and the one most understandable to outsiders) is the drawing down of Divine power into the world of manifestation, which Chabad calls the Yesh, the Hebrew for There is But there is a second task of prayer. As Rachel Elior says, These two dimensions, (1) bringing the Yesh into existence as an expression of the divine will to be revealed and (2) the abolition of the Yesh as an expression of the divine will to be concealed, are parallel to the two major imperatives of divine worship. The first is the drawing down of the divinity into the Yesh: The essence of worship is to draw down the infinite light specifically into the Yesh, so the glory of God is revealed particularly as an aspect of the revelation of the Yesh (Shaarei h-Avodah I, Chapter 33). The second imperative is the nullification of the Yesh in divinity: As [the worlds] are united in His blessed power as an aspect of the upper unity, thus one must unify them as an aspect of the lower unity, abolish them into Him, blessed be He, so that they will not be revealed as a Yesh and as separate being in their essence (Shaarei ha-Yihudve-haEmunah, V, Chapter 19)149

The utter transcendence of God calls for an abolition of the diaspora. Insofar as the diaspora is metaphysical as well as historical, it is the scattering of the Shekinah into exile, the hiding of the Divine presence. The second task of prayer is to ask that the Divine presence of unity be unhidden, and the exile of multiplicity end.

149

Elior, The paradoxical ascent to God: the kabbalistic theosophy of Habad Hasidism, p. 132

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Shneor Stern 8.4.1 An Apocalyptic Context The Lubavitch movement is expecting the Messiah daily. The Messiah, the Mashiach, will be a king chosen by God rather than being self-appointed in the usual bloody ways. SZS: Well, the redemption is earmarked by the arrival of the Messiah. But you have to understand that in the Torah context, the Messiah, Mashiach is called Melech Mashiach, which means "anointed king." BW: Uh-huh. SZS: Meaning the leader of the people who will be appointed by God as opposed to assuming that position BW: Right. SZS: Not by climbing the ladder to success by putting his feet in other people's face. 8.4.2 An end of Beirurim Part of the Mashiach's appearance will be the end of the world as it is now constituted, a phase transition to a new kind of world.

The purpose of life until this time has been embryological. The appropriate work of this now-ending time is called beirurim, which is defined in the glossary of PT1 as (lit, "clarification"): the spiritual task of sifting and refining the materiality of the universe by using it according to the directives of the Torah and thereby elevating the Divine sparks embedded within it.

We have been going through a developmental process not just in this life, but for many lives. Rabbi Stern mentioned karma and rebirth parenthetically, as an explanation for how someone entered into a situation:

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Shneor Stern and I don't know what the reasons are, and you could say it's karmic, it's from you know past life and

This remark is not just an import from the popular culture of Buddhism and the New Age. It is in accord with the Kabbalistic understanding that we are born and reborn through time.150 This process has gone on throughout our history.

If I understand Rabbi Stern correctly, the entire struggle of integration, of dealing with evil and unintegrated forces, is an instrumental illusion that has been part of the process of development. SZS: Evil's an illusion. Evil is only giving us that against which to resist. It's a temporary state whereby we are given the chance to choose to be godly, to be the creator (For a second time, Rabbi Stern added " within the creation", to emphasize that human beings are created beings, and that it is not a goal nor a possibility to embody the Totality.) to transform darkness to light.

This labor of beirurim is now coming to an end. The task of purification which has gone on for so long is now coming to fruition. Pregnancy is ending; it is time for birth. SZS: And the animal and the human being are in a symbiotic relationship, going through a process of uplifting the world in such a way as to be able to dwell in the open revelation and presence of the Divine. In this context, the Jewish tradition explains to us that this period of 7000 years which is the supernal weekthat this is actually the second phase of our process of being created, of the process of creating us. The first phase was the conception process, before pregnancy, and this phase of creation is the pregnancy process. And so we are going through embryonic phases, where we take on the likeness of animals, as we evolve and mature into the human form. The time of the redemption will be, will earmark
150

At a wedding banquet the Baal Shem Tov recounted the previous life together of the bride and groom. See "The soul which descended" in Buber, The legends of the Baal-Shem.

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Shneor Stern this line of demarcation when we will officially, spiritually, cosmically, be born. We will emerge from the dark womb of creation, as Divine children, ready to grow from babyhood to fruition. BW: Will we still bematerial? SZS: Yes. BW: And human? SZS: Yes. Well, but now the question is "Will we STILL be human?" No. We will be human.

8.4.3 The urgency of life in these times There is a certain leisure embedded in the idea of reincarnation. 'If I don't get to it this life,' such an idea seems to say, 'I will get to it next life.' But the cyclicity of death and rebirth is overshadowed for Rabbi Stern by the urgency of the much larger, cosmic transition that is coming. We do not have much time to finish the process of selfdevelopment that has been our task in this embryological era. And this era is the only chance we have. SZS: the fact is that the advantages that can be gained in this phase of creation, will never be duplicated. This is a once-in-eternity opportunity for us to do something, so to speak, for God. To, so to speak, do something for God. What? 'Cause WE are making ourselves exist. And God wants to have some friends, or some lovers or playmates or whatever it is that we are, children, all these relationships, but it's up to us to decide that we want to really exist as godly beings, as the children of the Most High, the children from the palace of the Divine. Right? And because of all of that advantage that we're gaining in this world, as we prevail over the forces of darkness BW: Right. SZS: even when we just, you know, maintain some kind of human stature in the face of it allwhen it's over, it's over forever. It will never -249-

Shneor Stern be again. We will never have the opportunity to become godly, to develop ourselves into godly beings. To the extent to which we have succeeded in becoming godly, we will be godly from now on. And to the extent to which we have not succeeded, we will not be. BW: So it's a one-life deal? Or it's a one-universe deal? SZS: It's a FOREVER deal. And what we're doing now is, we are in a sense fulfilling, you know, as if God has put His fruition in our hands by dint of necessity. What is it that we could possibly do for God? All God wants to do is to share the pleasantness and happiness of being with us. But we wanted to do something for God, so HaShem said, "OK. I will let you prepare yourself and the world to receive My revelation, My indwelling, My gifts and treasures." BW: "Build me a tent," huh? SZS: As if God put his fruition, so to speak, in our hands. BW: Hmm! SZS: And so, it says that once it's over, and the jig is up, and everybody realizes what was really going on here, we will cry the bitterest tears in creation over opportunities lost. That will be kind of our final like connecting to God, saying, "Wo, we're so sorry, so sorryWe didn't realize, you know, we didn't realize." And a lot of the un-, you know, -raveling there, is going to be us dealing with the extent to which we did and didn't realize what was really going on, the extent to which we blocked our inner impulses what we knew, somehow, most of us, deep inside that that was the purpose of life. BW: Huh! SZS: And so, in order for us to move on, to the next phase of creation, which is a collective journey in, within the glory of God's open revelation, we must put an end to this phase of creation.

8.4.4 Praying for the End of This World The Lubavitch movement is not only expecting the Mashiach daily, they are actively praying for his appearance. They are aware that if this prayer is answered, the current world will be ended. -250-

Shneor Stern Now, prayer which is the only means that was given within the creation for created beings to elicit a response from God directly, IS the way that we put an end to this phase of creation.

Both of Rabbi Stern's songs were calls on the Messiah to come. One was in Hebrew, which he translated into English as well: And this is from Psalms, from Tehillim, (singing) "Roye Isroel, haazina, nohaig katzon Yosef; yoshev hakruvim hoifiya hoifi-I-I-ya. Shepherd of Israel, please attend now, who leads his people Yoisef, like a flock of sheep. Adorned by the cherubim, please appear now, please appe-e-e-ar now. Hanananaya, yamamah! Yanananaya, ya-ah. Ya-amamaya-nah! Hey! Hey! Yanananaya, yamamah, yanananaya, ya. Ya-a-oyeh no-yeh nam. Hey Hey Hey, Yanananaya, yamamah, yananaya, ya- ah. Haayanaya, nah. Hey Hey Hey Yanananaya, Yamamah, hayanaya, yah, yoo-y'no, yo no." {Very Funny}

The second song, which any reader should understand is copyrighted by Shneor Z. Stern in 1999, was his own composition and in English: And we'll all be glad, even if the time is sad, cause everything fits in Your plan. Simple man going down the road, who knows what he knows, and he does not disclose, follows his will to the place it goes, where the Lord is one. Simple man knows what can be done, though he doesn't much care for what's under the sun, wakes to the day, a new song must be sung, the Creator is coming to dwell. Now's the time, to make Your stand, to show Your power and Your glory. Upon You we do depend for You are the Father of All. With heart and mind, and by our hand, the chapter's written in our story. And we'll all be glad even if a time was sad, cause everything fits in Your plan. Simple man never growing old, 'til the end of time he'll be standing bold. Telling a story that has not been told, -251-

Shneor Stern about how the Lord is one. Simple man knows the time is now; he sees the need, doesn't question how. Come what may, he will never bow, except to the only One. As You turn to make Your stand, to show Your power and Glory, upon You we do depend, for you are the Father of All. With heart and mind, and by our hand, the chapter's written in our story. And we'll all be glad even if a time was sad, cause everything fits in Your plan.

To pray for the end of the universe, the coming of the Mashiach, and the end of the diaspora is both happy and sad. On the one hand, it is a generous act on the part of humans. By praying for the end of time, humans remove the burden of ending it from God. On the other hand, when the game is over, everyone is left with the hand they are holding when the end comes. The long, many-lived process of beirurim is over, and what one has created of oneself is basically what one will be forever. SZS: And so then, what it means is that God doesn't want to pull the plug on us, because He wants us to have the merit of being godly. He doesn't want to stop this creation at a certain point, and then everybody's like frozen; that's it. The jig is up; game's over. You know: you're a millionaire; you're a billionaire; you're a quadrillionaire; and I'm sorry, you know, you didn't make it. BW: Yeah. So the role of prayer in that transformation SZS: is to demand the end. BW: And it's the end of the universe, by having successfully completed it? SZS: Or, to say, "We're calling this the end. We're taking it on ourselveswe know You don't want to end this, God, because you don't want to take the brunt of causing any of us to lose out, to lack anything; and some of us will still be lacking that's the nature of the game, -252-

Shneor Stern because HaShem couldn't interfere; he had to let us go through our own evolutionary process. BW: OK SZS: So, prayer is the way, according to the Kabbalah, ideally, to end this phase of the creation, and to bring about Divine intervention and revelation. BW: And is that a process SZS: And that's by DEMANDING that God end this. And what we're doing is we're demanding that God put an end to this, even though the implication is BW: We're not complete SZS: I'm not complete. And how do I know I'm not complete? Because I'm still alive. BW: But, yes, exactly I mean, why would you want to do that? If you're not complete? SZS: This is the ultimate sacrifice that we can offer God, is to say "We know that You want to get on with sharing the pleasantness and happiness of being, and that this is also for You a very trying phase of the creation." And, we're going to be big about it, and we're going to say, "HaShem, reward us." BW: No matter what. SZS: "Whatever we've earned, we'll take it. Whatever we haven't earned, we'll accept it."

As Rabbi Stern's song puts it, "And we'll all be glad, even if a time was sad, cause everything fits in Your plan." I told him that I found this difficult - "an athletic position" is what I said. And he responded

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Shneor Stern SZS: Right. That's why the Lubavitcher Rebbe said that this was the most difficult and the most crucial issue of the day was wanting the redemption in our songs, in our prayers, in our movies, in our heroes because of the fact that we're pulling the plug on our own evolution.

8.4.5 Hard and Urgent Choices The fact that the world as we know it is soon to end brings Rabbi Stern back again and again to a difficult choice. If Sarah does not succeed in forming herself, in stopping the leaks, the consequences are eternal for her. But each person with whom he works, to whom he channels Divine revelation, may take a long time to learn autonomy. SZS: Now you're getting into like one of the in a sense it's a very sensitive area in my life. And many people come into my life, and they're in a very needy state. And sometimes such people, when they, in their neediness, enter into OTHER people's lives, get booted out real quick. If I see that I can connect with their humanity, with their higher self, with their inner self, that there is the basis for a true relationship, and a beneficial relationship, usually I will be open to that relationship. Quite often such relationshipswell, maybe it's due to my own lack of evolutionare draining, because the people just continue to be needy; and I'm constantly making these fine- line distinctions with them, where I'm teaching them that loving them is notmeans that I am NOT enabling them. At the same time I'm not rejecting them because of their neurotic and phobic and defensive behavior, and their selfish and deceptive behavior. So, what happens is, I end up with these people, meditating with them, in a sense meditating them almost mesmerizing them and hypnotizing them to bring them into a higher state of consciousness for the moment and sometimes through music as well. And for the moment at least to close up the leakage. And, then, too for instance, through praying out loud in their presence, in Hebrew, or English and allowing them to go through whatever they go through as they listen to me pray, until they often will say to me that it starts to send shivers up their spine. BW: Right. SZS: And because what I'm actually doing, is I am overtly demonstrating to them, now that we're connected and they can hear me, and feel me, what it means I'm demonstrating to them what it means to stand in the presence of the Most High, what it means to be a child of God, a creation -254-

Shneor Stern of God, to be godly, to be a partner of with God in creation. At that time I'm also very deliberately chanting to channel Divine revelation. And, this has the effect that it lifts the people up, into a state of consciousness and experience that they may not have achieved on their own in this incarnation. BW: But do you find a way of knowing when, "enough"? SZS: Yeah, because when it's enough is when, either the person says it's enoughor, the person FINALLY starts to stand on their own two feet. And then I will hear the person say a blessing and I go, (claps hands once) "Thank God! Finally, they're actually speaking to God. They got it. They're waking up now." They're developing the compulsion. They are able to be considerate enough, for others, to include others in their prayer.

But there is not now the sort of leisure to do this work forever. Rabbi Stern feels strongly that he has another mission, to reach people through the media, and that he has to make a choice. SZS: The question is, though, where do you draw the line? And this has been an issue in my life, because sometimes I'll look back and I'll say, "Wow. You just spent four months with three people, and they're doing great. And, if you would have actually continued to produce your meditation series and a couple of songs, and put them on the Internet, you could have reached forty MILLION people, maybe." BW: That's a tough choice. SZS: So the thing is that we see, from the great sages, that they always saved the world one soul at a time; AND were working on everybody at once also. So there is a grass-roots approach that I must continue to teach classes and work with people individually. At the same time, I do need to I believe develop a center where I can work together with other people, so that I do not end up spending four months on three people BW: Right SZS: and not reaching the forty million.

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Shneor Stern As the end of this world approaches "It is already past noon on the eve of Sabbath" 151 Rabbi Stern finds himself wondering which path to take.

Whether he is praying for the redemption, working with a single individual, or creating media to reach many people in this end time, Rabbi Stern finds that his life has a selfreinforcing excitement to it: SZS: So it means that, that then it comes kind of a self-propelling process, where our alignment brings us into a higher alignment; and the new alignment causes more energy to channel through us, which brings us even more into alignment; and the idea is to ultimately reach the state where, literally, at all times, and under all circumstances, we are the children of the Divine, we ARE the children of the Most High. We arerunning an errand, so to speak, for our Father the King.

BW: Right. SZS: And uncovering the Divine presence, within the creation, discovering it. Rabbi Stern added, "So what do I mean by 'it' ? I don't mean to be disrespectful. I might rather put it, 'Discovering the Presence of the Divine.' The goal in life is for us to believe, perceive, feel, think, speak, and act in such ways that we are in alignment with the Happiness of Being. "

151

attributed to Rebbe Rayatz, the father-in-law and predecessor of the most recent Rebbe, in PT1, p, 151

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9 SISTER COLETTE: "PRAYER IS NOT A FUNCTION; PRAYER IS A LIFE."

Sister Colette is a Poor Clare. She is a member of the order of nuns founded by St. Clare and St. Francis about seven hundred and ninety years ago.152 In her order, members remain within the cloister for their entire life. In addition to the customary three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience they make a fourth vow of enclosure. They live by alms given voluntarily to the order. The order's vocation is contemplation and prayer.

9.1 "All love has to have some kind of enclosure." 153

Sister Colette has been a member of the Poor Clares for twenty-five years. She entered the order when Richard Nixon was still president. As Portress of her monastery of

fifteen women, she is the liaison with the outer world. She is the only one in the house (for instance) who reads the newspaper. On the day I called, she was involved in the decision about what sort of termite control to get for the monastery. Though she has more contact with the world than most of her order, she is still an enclosed contemplative.

152

Clare of Assisi set the pattern for her order, living almost her entire life in enclosure in a monastery church in the town. Some of her writings survive, as does the hair she cut when leaving her noble family to found the order. See the article "Clare" in Farmer, The Oxford dictionary of saints Sr. Colette wrote back, "San Damiano was actually located on a hill outside of Assisi. It is the Church in which Francis heard the Crucifix speaking, where he hid from his father, and which he later restored as it was falling into ruin. It was from the walls of San Damiano that he prophesied about us, 'Come and help me in the work of the monastery of Saint Damian, for in that place later on will be ladies by whose renowned and holy way of living our heavenly Father will be glorified throughout all his holy Church.' After Saint Clare's death, the Sisters moved inside the walls of Assisi to what is not Santa Chiara's, what we call the Protomonastery." 153 Colette, An open letter to the family of a prospective Poor Clare

Sister Colette The nuns of the Immaculate Heart Monastery154 live within their house in Los Altos Hills for their whole life. Such a life is called "fully enclosed." Even those who visit their church may not see them, because the nuns have their own cloistered chapel. Cloistered chapels are separated from the public chapel by a screen, so the nuns are seen only dimly.

Upon reading this Sr. Colette wrote: We cannot be seen because the choir and the chapel are also separated by the main altar which is higher than both sides. I am sure that is clear as mud but anywayWhile we cannot be seen, we can be heard and people often attend our praying of the Divine Office, or just come to pray themselves. In the parlor we have a screen like the screen of a window. The portress is clearly seen as is the Sister visiting with her family when that happens. The signs of our enclosure are meant to show the joy of our life "hidden with Christ in God."

The life of an enclosed monastic is very deeply regular and rhythmic: we pray the Divine Office seven different times during the day and one of those times is in the middle of the night The Divine Office is a liturgical hours. They're set up by the church. Matins, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. Those are different divine hours. And then there's the psalms that are from the Bible and then there's also readings and scripture and from the authors of the church. We always have private prayers before and after the Divine Office and then we also have times of adoration and two periods of meditation. Before mass, one before mass and one in the evening after Vespers.

Sr. Colette added: The Divine Office is the official prayer of the Church and is prayed in the name of the Church. Adoration is that time slot given

154

Not all monasteries are for men, nor are all convents for women in the Catholic Church. Monasteries are for those religious who practice a "stable" life, living in one place, whether men or women. Convents are for the religious whose life does not confine them to one place. There are convents of men such as the convents of Franciscan friars and monasteries of women.

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Sister Colette to each Sister before the Blessed Sacrament. Meditation is time before the Blessed Sacrament spent together. Her life is thus ordered in space and in time. But she has chosen this sort of life for a purpose, which she described in a flyer she wrote about life in the enclosure. All love has to have some kind of enclosure. When you are married, you have set up an enclosure as to the types of relationships you can now have with others, of where you will live, of what activities you will be doing. Would you want me to be half-hearted in doing what God has asked me to do? And are you afraid that the enclosure will cut me off completely from you? I am asking you to take that leap of faith that already knows we are and will be always united no matter that course our lives will take. 155

9.2 Sacramental Reality

Reality as experienced by the Catholic Church is not "flat," or equally valued in all its parts. Instead, certain parts of it are more valuable and sacred than other parts, because they have been taken up into the sacramental system.

Sacraments to the Catholic are not just rituals, and they are not just symbols. They are both rituals and symbols, of course; but they actually transform the nature, the substance, of those things that they touch. Baptism transforms the natural person into a redeemed child of God; Penance reconciles the sinner. Confirmation brings the Holy Spirit into a person; Holy Orders creates a priest. Marriage makes "one flesh," a family in God's pattern; and the Anointing of the Sick is for the health of both body and soul. But the most Catholic of all the sacraments is the Holy Eucharist, the transformation of bread and wine into the literal Body and Blood of Jesus in the Mass.

155

Colette, An open letter to the family of a prospective Poor Clare

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Sister Colette 9.2.1 The Mass as the Center The life of prayer that the Poor Clares live has a center and a source in the Mass. Of course the main prayer is the holy sacrifice of the mass. Well, the holy sacrifice of the Mass is the main thing. And that is Jesus offering up himself to the Father, to sacrifice himself on the cross, which he did for the redemption of the world. And so within that prayer it's very rich; there's prayers for everyone. And actually making particular intercession for particular people is part of it. Then the Divine Office flows from that. Sister Colette added: Our entire life is summed up in that action, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And not just the life a cloistered nun but the life of everyone.

When I was brought up in parochial school, we were taught that the Mass is not a reenactment of the Crucifixion of Jesus it is identical with it. This requires an understanding of the underpinnings of the universe that is a bit different than that of most modern persons. Sacred time and space are not the same as any other time and space. Instead, as Mircea Eliade said, Religious participation in a festival implies emerging from ordinary temporal duration and reintegration of the mythical time reactualized by the festival itself. Hence sacred time is indefinitely recoverable, indefinitely repeatable. From one point of view it could be said that it does not "pass," that it does not constitute an irreversible duration. It is an ontological, Parmenidean time; it always remains equal to itself, it neither changes nor is exhausted. With each periodical festival, the participants find the same sacred time the same that had been manifested in the festival of the previous year or in the festival of a century earlier. 156

As the nuns attend the mass, they are attending the actual event that founded Christianity. It is not a re-enactment or a commemoration; it is the source itself. That is why Sr. Colette said in mixed tenses

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Sister Colette that is Jesus offering up himself to the Father, to sacrifice himself on the cross, which he did for redemption of the world.

9.2.2 "This is a holy place" The event which took place on Calvary is the same as that which takes place daily in the monastery chapel. As the Mass is the most sacred time, so is the chapel itself a sacred place, and it is entered with affectionate but serious ritual: SC: Um, no. You see before you come into the chapel or choir you make a sign of the cross with holy water, and that's normal in the Catholic Church. And the whole purpose of those little things is just a reminder (as being human beings we need) that we're in the presence of God. And then you have to focus because we're human; we tend to get dissipated. (small laugh). So you have to remind yourself of a reality that's always with us, which we have to remind ourselves of, that God is with us. That our attention is focused on him. BW: Are there certain postures that are customary? SC: We kneel, prostrate, we prostrate and kneel. Usually kneel. There's parts of the Divine Office we sit and we're allowed to sit if we need to but [mostly] kneeling. You know, there's parts we stand, there's parts like in a church. BW: O.K. You mentioned being aware of the presence of God. Is there a particular way to become aware of that presence? SC: Well, we are in His presence in the Blessed Sacrament. You know, all those things like when you come into making the sign of the cross with holy water, this is a holy place. And then you genuflect before the tabernacle because He's God. BW: Mm-hmm. SC: And when we prostrate we kiss the floor because He became flesh. And see all these things are reminders to us, and put us in His presence. We keep silent; it's not a place you have conversation, in the choir when
156

Eliade, The sacred and the profane, p. 68

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Sister Colette you're praying. And all these things that show your reverence for our Lord.

So as the time of the mass is sacred, so the choir which is in the chapel is also sacred. The nuns are constantly coming into a sacred place and a sacred time; the rhythm of their day is built around this pilgrimage. 9.2.3 Sacramental Presence: "It's the center of my life." All Catholic churches have a tabernacle. It is the small gold cabinet on the altar by the rear wall. In it is kept the consecrated bread that to the Catholic is actually the Body of Christ. The small red candle lantern that burns near is called the sanctuary lamp. It is only lit when the tabernacle is occupied. Sr. Colette quoted St. Francis' prayer: SC: We, when we come into choir we prostrate and say a prayer that Holy Father Francis always prays. And um... BW: Which prayer is that? SC: We adore you O most Holy Lord Jesus Christ here and in all Your churches which are in the whole world and we bless You because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

When the round wafers are to be displayed, they are often put in a small shrine called a monstrance. It is a small gold tower a foot or two high. Near the top is a small window through which one can see the Host; the window is surrounded by a sunburst of gold. In contemplative orders a monstrance is often on the altar all day and all night. Praying before the Body of Christ is a central part of the devotion of the nuns. 157

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Sister Colette The Real Presence, as it is called, or the Sacramental presence of Jesus on the altar gives a very concrete, very real feeling of Christ being with them. I asked Sr. Colette about that experience. BW: And, is there an experience that you would call the experience of the presence of God? SC: Um. Experience is usually an emotional thing and I suppose yes, sometimes. I mean you, you definitely like during Holy Week? On Good Friday? He's no longer there, and there's a real difference, even though we pray in the same room. 158 BW: What... SC: His sacramental presence is not there. It's His, His godly presence is always there. BW: Sure. SC: But His sacramental presence. And there's a real absence. Sister Colette added: When I was speaking about Good Friday, I was trying to say that when the Blessed Sacrament is removed from the chapel you definitely "feel" something, Someone, is missing BW: What is, what is that sense of presence like, maybe defined in terms of the absence on Good Friday? SC: (long pause) Like you're in the room with someone you love very much that loves you very much. When you walk into a room say, with the wife that you love very much or the child that you love, it's like that. Um, and for God, it's your, your very source, your very center is present. He always is, but Does that help with that?

157

The sisters of Perpetual Adoration in their monastery on Ashbury Street in San Francisco, beside the former location of CIIS, have a monstrance on their altar. Their chapel is often open to the public. There is at least one nun keeping vigil 24 hours a day, behind the semi-opaque screen of the cloister. 158 On Good Friday the Host is removed from the tabernacle. The tabernacle remains empty until the Easter-Eve Mass.

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Sister Colette BW: It helps a great deal. Um, I've, I've been trying to find a way to explain a difference between what you call the sacramental presence and the godly presence. SC: That's, it's like um, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton,159 I don't if you're familiar with her, but she was not a Catholic and yet when she walked into a chapel for the first times she wanted to kneel down because she could feel that presence, that sacramental presence, because our Lord said, "This IS my Body," He IS present in a very special way. Even though He is everywhere He left us that presence and it is very real. BW: It seems to be a very real experience and the reason I, I mentioned it is it seems to be central to what you do. SC: Yes. It is, that is, you're exactly right. It's the center of my life.

9.3 Suffering
The Poor Clares are a penitential order. It is part of their vocation to make sacrifices for others. Sr. Colette did not go into great detail about her own penances, and I did not ask. But suffering seems to serve two purposes in the life of the nuns: it unites one with the suffering God; and it teaches, and allows one to open. 9.3.1 "He walked a suffering road." The nuns do penances and mortifications to unite with Jesus, who did it before them. Catholic doctrine teaches that one can join in the sacrifice that Jesus made at Calvary. To do so one "offers up" one's own sacrifices. One also makes an offering of one's life, as Sr. Colette wrote in a flyer:

159

One of the first American-born saints of the Catholic Church. Born 1774, into an Episcopalian family in New York, she became a Roman Catholic and then nun after her husband died. She founded the Daughters of Charity, a service order. One of their hospitals is Seton Medical Center in Daly City.

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Sister Colette I am saying that my vocation is to give my entire life solely to God in a life of prayer and sacrifice, hidden in the cloister. 160

The Catholic Church is very familiar with the dangers of excess asceticism, and regulates penitential practices closely. Each nun has a monthly conference with the Mother Superior, what Sr. Colette called "Living Waters." But they still can and do give up many things. Sr. Colette brought many central ideas together in one short exchange: SC: Yes. Yes. the sacrifices we make, the penances we do, you know, we just know we should do them. But how they're used, God alone knows. BW: So you offer your sacrifices and your penances to go for His disposal? SC: Yes. Yes, and uniting our self with Him, um, our Spouse who wore a crown of thorns, you know, He... BW: Yeah. SC: He walked a suffering road. In fact at our solemn procession we receive a crown of thorns. 9.3.2 Learning from suffering When I asked Sr. Colette how she had learned to pray, she mentioned Julian of Norwich and the novitiate process. Then she said: SC: Um, I've learned a lot from my sisters. From my Superior. I learned a lot from an orthopedic surgeon. (small laugh) I had sympathetic dystrophy. BW: Mm-hmm. SC: And I didn't understand it and it was quite a process for me and just going through that helped me a lot. It taught me a lot about life in general.

160

Colette, An open letter to the family of a prospective Poor Clare

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Sister Colette How can one learn from suffering? If there was ever an idea that is contrary to current American culture, it is this: that the effects of suffering can be positive. Yet the Catholic branch of Christianity emphasizes the suffering of Christ as exactly that which has saved humanity. Jesus offering up Himself to the Father, to sacrifice Himself on the cross, which He did for redemption of the world.

The difference in emphasis between Catholic and Evangelical Christianity seems to be that to the Evangelical, Jesus has already offered Himself. The deed is done and is complete; resurrection has followed and the cross is empty. In the Catholic feeling, the great instants of the Christian drama are all eternal and present to us at every moment. The incarnation and suffering of Christ are always present, and especially in the Mass and Eucharist.

By the practice of penances, one joins in that suffering, and therefore in that redemption. The nuns offer their suffering to God just as Jesus did. In particular, they do not always know how their offering will be employed by God: The sacrifices we make, the penances we do, you know, we just know we should do them. But how they're used, God alone knows.

9.4 The Nuns and Their Bridegroom

The Catholic Church treasures its monastics. Monastics are not considered to be people who have fled the world because they cannot deal with it. Instead they are central to the life of the world and of the church. -266-

Sister Colette

The image of the heart came up repeatedly in Sr. Colette's description of her life. She lives in a monastery named for the heart of Mary, the mother of Christ for whom Catholics have great reverence and affection. She repeats the phrase I also heard in parochial school, that contemplatives are the heart of the church. Well, we're supposed to be like the heart of the church that pumps the blood to the rest of the members.

The relationship between the nuns and Jesus is particularly intimate, because each one is married to Christ. They wear a wedding ring that they receive when they make their final vows. The words in a pamphlet about the order are frankly romantic: And Christ is a Lover who will never fail her, never desert her, never grow tired of her. Unlike a woman entering human wedlock, the novice making the marriage vows of religion can perfectly forecast the future as far as her Bridegroom is concerned. He will be forever faithful, loving, devoted to her. With His grace, she will be so to Him. And out of this union of God and creature will issue blessings for all the world. 161

Sr. Colette used very similar language. SC: Our experience of love on Earth is very faulty because we are faulty. And somebody might say to you I love you and then two weeks down the road deny he doesn't even know you. BW: Mm-hmm. SC: But see God's love isn't like that. God's love is unchanging.

When I spoke to Sr. Colette the first time, she put it very directly.

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Sister Colette Jesus is our Spouse. We do not get to walk down the beach hand in hand with Him, but He is.

9.5 Opening the Heart

9.5.1 Don't Play Poker with Sr. Colette Sr. Colette has a sweet and pleasant presence, even when you talk to her on the telephone. It takes a while to realize that she is extremely canny. I discovered this while asking her a question about her experiences of prayer. BW: Do you ever find that you have negative experiences during prayer? SC: Um, ah, could you give me an example of what you mean? BW: Well, actually I was leaving it open. SC: Oh. (laughs) BW: (laughs) SC: You didn't want to be specific. BW: These social scientists. We're supposed to find a way to ask a question that gets a specific answer without actually asking a specific question. SC: Oh. BW: And I call that a miracle. (small laugh) SC: I call that sneaky. (small laugh)

There is a saying, "If someone asks you what those pretty pictures are on the cards don't play poker with that one." I would not play poker with Sr. Colette, and it does seem
161

Anonymous, The Cloistered Poor Clare Nuns, p. 12

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Sister Colette to me that the Monastery was wise to appoint her the extern sister. But it is the application of her acute mind within Franciscan spirituality that is of interest here. 9.5.2 Franciscan Spirituality "Knowing" is not traditionally the center of Franciscan spirituality. Even though there are many miracles in the Franciscan tradition, they are also not the center. The center of Franciscan spirituality is love, and Franciscan thinkers focus on that communion. Sr. Colette has spent many years thinking about the God of love, and has distilled her experience down into extremely compressed chains of reasoning: SC: God is love. And therefore to pray is to be in communion with that love. So to be in communion with love is to learn to love. To learn what love is, to learn what it is to be loved. And all that's involved in prayer, because prayer is primarily adoration. Prayer is primarily praise of Him with Whom we pray.

First, it is by that love that we exist at all: SC: And without that love we would not be in existence at all. No one. BW: Yeah. SC: From Hitler to, to our Holy Father. God is, she says, your very source, your very center.

The person who prays and the Person to whom prayer is directed pray together. There is the distance between them because one is the creature and the other is the Creator, but the primary reality is that they are both involved in Love. Prayer is a conversation with Somebody who loves us immensely. -269-

Sister Colette

Learning to love could be difficult for a creature, except for the great positive paradox: the best way to learn to love is to be loved. you love by being loved. So the people who have loved you have taught you a lot about praying. In language that is very reminiscent of Jean Delaney who said that God wants us to commune with Him Sr. Colette revealed something of the experience of Gods love. 9.5.3 How Sr. Colette prays

The process of learning to pray is a sort of positive feedback loop, reminiscent of the feedback process in energy in the work of Rabbi Stern: And so, the closer I come to God and to understanding Him and loving Him and, the more I'll be able to pray better.

In this context of Love, prayer is not a utilitarian act. It is instead an act of community. When Sr. Colette prays for someone, she simply thinks of them during the time that she is praying and praising God. 9.5.3.1 I picture them as they are I asked her what sense she uses she is praying for others. SC: Let's see... what do I do? Like many of the sisters do, I have in our breviary of Divine Office, I have a picture of my family. BW: Mm-hmm. SC: And I like pictures. I like to see, I have little holy cards I made of my nieces and nephews um, you know, that I put scripture quotations around. I very much like pictures. I like to picture things. So, usually if

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Sister Colette I'm praying for someone, I do picture them. I can forget a name but I can remember a face. (small laugh) I asked her if she tried to imagine how things should be for the people for whom she was praying. BW: Do you find that the prayer process itself involves picturing them in new condition or... SC: Oh. No, usually I leave that to God. I, I just, I picture them as they are, and pray, ask Him to give them what they need. BW: O.K. SC: And, I like to leave that to Him because He knows so much better what they need than I do, even if I have someone I know who's suffering from cancer and my inclination would be that they be cured, but that may not be the best thing for them, but He knows. BW: O.K. So generally you, you ask for what's best for the person? SC: Yes. Yes. Because I, I trust Him. BW: Yeah. SC: He knows so much more than I.

It is not that she has no sense of the person for whom she is praying. On the contrary, she sometimes has a feeling, and that feeling leads her to bring them to mind and then to let them go as well. The connection with the person I am praying for could best be described as empathy, experiencing what they are feeling. I do not have many extraordinary experiences. They come into focus, and then (at a certain point) the focus moves on.

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Sister Colette But the emphasis in her prayer is not on the person for whom she is praying or on their need. The focus instead is on the praise of God.: I guess being in a state of prayer you're totally focused on God and on His praise, and then the rest of your life flows from that. 9.5.3.2 On Results I found it difficult to understand how the praise of God could help a person who needed intercession, so I asked her. BW: O.K. If you were telling somebody else how to pray for others in, in the way you do, ah, what would you tell them to do, if you were sort of instructing them? SC: I make the praise of God primary in your life, because if you make the praise of God primary then you know that all things come from Him, that He is love and therefore He will answer in the way that's best for every person. One of the issues in prayer research is the testing of results. It has a lot to do with ones opinion of what prayer is. For some people prayer is a faculty. It is a faculty given by God, but it is (like, say, intellect) given to us to learn to use, and we need to polish our skill and measure how well we are doing by its fruits. Sr. Colette has a different view. Prayer is not a function; prayer is a life. People make that mistake, thinking prayer is a function. Specifically, while she has no quarrel with those who believe otherwise, she does not wish to evaluate prayer by results. I do not feel it is appropriate to test God, because prayer is a loving relationship. I do not want to test One I love. And one is not to evaluate prayer by how one feels. some days you may not feel anything. Other days you may know His, His loving presence in a tangible way. But we believe, you know, you -272-

Sister Colette should pray all the same. (small laugh)Whether you feel it or not, because that's our life of faith and when you love someone you don't always have to feel good. Nevertheless, the prayers of the Poor Clares have a good reputation among those for whom they pray. SC: But people say that they ask us to pray and things happen right away, that they're asking for. Some people are sure they want the Poor Clares to pray because (small laugh) it always happens. And, you know, things like that. BW: (laughs) You mean you guys are, are fairly reliable? SC: That's what they say. 9.5.3.3 To become aware of the presence of God How then are we to pray? To pray is to become aware of the presence of God. He's always present, of course but we are to become aware of it. That is the summary we are to become consciously aware of the presence of One who loves us totally. I asked her about the connection between that practice of knowing Gods loving presence and the practice of intercession for others. She said that the model was the love and exchange inside the Trinity itself. BW: I want to be able to convey to people how your relationship of love with God interacts or is connected with the practice of praying for someone if someone, a patron of the monastery or someone has asked for prayer help on a particular topic. SC: Yes. BW: How the love and the intention and you all come together in a concrete moment of prayer for that intention. SC: Without getting, hopefully too deep, although I don't know how you can not get too deep (laughs), anyway relationship with God, God is -273-

Sister Colette Trinity. So Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They're always pouring themselves out on each other. It's a constant, in a sense, self emptying and self-fulfilling at the same time. BW: Mm-hmm. SC: But any relationship with God has that same aspect of, It's no longer I who live but Christ. No longer I who live but God who lives in me.162 BW: Mm-hmm. SC: And therefore, the more that we grow in prayer, the closer that we grow to God, the more we become totally absorbed in Him and in what is more important to Him which are His children. And therefore, everyone's intentions, everyone's needs, everyone's hopes, everyone's dreams, everyone's sorrows, everyone's joys become your own. There is a tendency, when one is in prayer, to float in bliss. But that is not appropriate in part because that is not what God does. Instead, God is concerned with each person and their concrete needs. SC: Were human beings, we're limited, so we need, we need to focus. You know, you can't always be in this um, ah, you know, ah, not real clear state. You need to say I pray for my mom, I pray for my dad, I pray for Mr. Smith who has cancer...I pray for this little child who is tempted to suicide. You need specifics also. You know, God is totally other but you can't always be in oblivion because we're human beings. Because I think God is immensely practical also, you know, He's not, um, it's hard for us to express in words. BW: What is that practicality like? SC: I mean, He's just as concerned about little Bobby who has a test in math as He is with the, the mysteries of the Trinity. You know what I mean? BW: Mm-hmm. SC: For us it's ineffable. It's inexpressible. And we can go Ah, ah, ah, but we also have to live. And I think God is just as involved in that living,
162

A paraphrase of Galations 2:20

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Sister Colette that daily, He's told us He is. You know, like I said before, a sparrow doesn't fall to the ground and He doesn't know it. The, you know, every single hair of our head is counted. His love is, is particular. It's intimate. It's real. BW: Mm-hmm. SC: It's not just, ah, beyond us. You know, incomprehensible. BW: Mm-hmm. SC: But it's both. (small laugh). If I understand Sr. Colette correctly, the model for our prayer is the love and mutual concern within the Trinity itself. Within God there is infinite love and self-giving. As we turn to God, we are met by that Love, and it teaches us to love as well. The more deeply we turn to it, the more we praise it. And as we love and praise God, we become like him, filled with love because He is. This love not just oblivious although it is that, ineffable delight it is also specific. As Sr. Colette said at one point, quoting her pastor, "God has skills." God knows what His children need. When we bring them to Him, He cares for them in exactly the way they need: SC: People have said that prayer makes a big difference. Like I mention that one lady who called and said, Last time my husband had a biopsy I asked you to pray and everything went well, so pray again cause he has to have another one! (laughs) BW: Oh. (laughs) SC: But people say that they ask us to pray and things happen right away, that they're asking for. Some people are so sure they want the Poor Clares to pray because (small laugh) it always happens.

It can be very difficult to leave matters in Gods hands, but it is part of her discipline as a praying person to do so. -275-

Sister Colette You give it to God. Of course, you often take it back, but then you have to give it back. He's the one who does it.

9.5.4

Contexts for Prayer

9.5.4.1 The Community The Poor Clares are enclosed, but they are not hermits. They are a community. The nuns pray together seven times a day, during the Divine Office as well as at Mass. They are constantly in contact with people who may be of a very different temperament. For Sr. Colette it is an opportunity to deal with people, an opportunity that might not be available outside of the cloister. She said of the occasional conflicts: SC: You know, you, we learn, you learn, hopefully, depending on your temperament, not to get tense about it... BW: Mm-hmm. SC: But one of the main factors of our life is dealing with other people and that's always interesting. Not necessarily because of other people, but also because of myself. But it's a wonderful thing, too. It's great adventure. Because in the world you can really separate yourself from that challenge if you want to. And a lot of people do. You know, you can pass people on the street and they never smile at you. Poor people. People are so it's such a sad life if you don't meet that challenge.

The most important part of dealing with other people may be to have a sense of humor. SC: That's what they always say is the proof of the, um, validity of contemplative life... BW: Mm-hmm. SC: That fifteen women can live together in the same house.

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Sister Colette 9.5.4.2 The Communion of Saints In the Catholic tradition the community reaches beyond the immediate people one worships with. It includes, in particular, the Communion of Saints. SC: Well, the saints are like your friends, they're like your family members, they're, um of course our Lord is too, but still He's God so your saints are people who have lived the same life we have lived and made it. (laughs) BW: (laughs) SC: So they're, you know, they're very good friends. And they're very interested in helping us. BW: Do you have a sense of different temperament among the saints? SC: Oh, sure. Oh, yes. (laughs) They were human, so they are still yes. BW: How is, how is that experienced? SC: Well, it just depends on what saint you happening to pray to. Saint Jerome is supposedly had a great temper. You know, saints are just human beings that cooperated with God's grace wholly. So they each had their own temperaments just like we all do. They are 100% human. (small laugh) 9.5.4.3 The Devil The Devil does not get center stage in Sr. Colettes spiritual experience. But he is an old and familiar opponent. The devil loves to get us agitated... The devil loves discouragement. The feeling that is associated with the Devil is fear. He likes to appear as an angel of light, but that doesn't last

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Sister Colette For each of these aggressions of the devil there is an antidote. The cure for agitation is not to worry about those things that are beyond ones control. SC: I was very impressed by one of the articles about Mr. Kennedy. It said that the thing that he'd learned the most from his mother was not to become upset about things you can't change. The devil loves to get us agitated... BW: Mm-hmm. SC: Because when we're agitated we can't do a thing. You know, even in our holy rule Saint Clare says to be very careful that we not become upset about the faults of others... BW: Mm-hmm. SC: Because that hinders charity in ourselves. BW: Mm-hmm. SC: And charity and love in prayer. And it's like in my own failure, and we all fail, or my own inability seeming to pray, we just can't get upset about it. For discouragement and for fear there is the remedy of remembering the love of God. SC: He loved us when we were still sinners. So even when I feel I've failed, and I do, you have to keep going. That's the difference between Judas and Peter. We don't know, of course, what Judas was thinking at the last moment before he died. You know, Judas denied our Lord; well, so did Peter. Sister Colette added: What I meant about the last moment is that Judas could have recognized God's love and mercy before his last breath. We don't know. BW: Mm-hmm. SC: But Peter believed in God's love and Judas didn't. If you want to put it that simple. (laughs)

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Sister Colette BW: Yeah. SC: He despaired. He gave up. He didn't think God could forgive him for such a horrible thing. But He would. God would. God does. BW: So, so the, the context in which you experience you own failure is to turn to the awareness that God loves you. SC: Yes.

9.6 Look This Way

I was raised Catholic. We learned that the contemplatives were the heroes of the church. The monasteries really were praying heart of the world. While I was thinking about my conversation with Sr. Colette, the image came to my mind of hearts within hearts. The monastery is the heart in the world; and within the monastery the chapel is the heart. Within the chapel the Mass is the heart; and within the Mass the heart is the Sacrament. And that Sacrament is where God, your very source, your very center is present. For those called to this life and on a good day it is a very intimate hiding-away with their beloved, whose ring they wear and whose work they do.

The sense of intimacy in Sr. Colettes voice, as she spoke about God, is one of the strongest impressions I carry away from the interview.

The work is praising and loving God. In the powerful updraft of that love they put what God loves all the world and bring it before God.

I asked Sr. Colette what she would say is her purpose.

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Sister Colette BW: What do you, what do you think of as your role as a Poor Clare in the life of the church and of humanity? SC: Um, as someone who lifts up her hand and her life in prayer, in praise of God and for the salvation of his, his children.

If intercessory prayer is a kind of work, of being "careful and troubled about any things, the path of Martha; and contemplation is the path of Mary, "the one thing needful;" 163 then Sr. Colette is clear that contemplation is the one thing necessary. Even intercession comes from that "one thing." SC: I think the most valuable thing is getting to know God. And praying for others, flows from getting to know the One who is most concerned about them.

When one enters a Catholic church, there may be many candles burning before the images of Jesus, Mary and the saints. Or the church may be almost dark. But there is always one candle lit, in a red glass, somewhere near the altar. That is the light that says that the Host is present in the tabernacle. In an image familiar to anyone who has spent time in a Catholic Church, Sr. Colette says that part of the nuns' function is to direct the vision of the world toward the same contemplation they practice. SC: And by our, giving our whole life just to the praise of God we remind people that that's what life is really all about. That's what we're going to be doing for all eternity, all of us. And that by starting it right here and now and being willing to give up all the things that people think are so essential, we remind them. We are, um, a little light that says, Look this way. BW: Look this way. Like a night light.
163

Martha, who was working to serve Jesus, asked Him to rebuke Mary who was simply sitting with Him. But Jesus refused, saying Mary had chosen "the good part." This story is traditionally taken as Jesus' endorsement of the contemplative life. See Luke 10:38-42

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Sister Colette SC: Yeah, exactly. Just a little one. A little sanctuary lamp. (small laugh) When Sr. Colette returned her corrections and comments, she also sent along: Some further reflections After praying about some of my answers to your questions, I wanted to add these clarifications: Prayer is our personal experience of and union with God. Not only do different faiths pray differently but every individual prays differently. We are each unique and thus our prayer will be unique. If you asked each member of my community how she prays, even how she prays for others, you would probably get 15 different answers! Some people need more structure in prayer, some need specific prayers, some need longer periods of reading, reflection, meditation. So, I have tried to answer your questions of how I pray, especially intercessory prayer. When I spoke of praise being primary, I meant praise as adoration our love of God, our acknowledgement of His greatness, of His love for us. Sometimes we (people in general) can treat God so badly. We only talk to Him when we need something. If He gives it, we forget Him; if he doesn't give it, we get upset with Him. Prayer is an intimate conversation with God. He has told us to ask, to seek, to knock, to trust. I tell Him everything that is on my mind and in my heart. I ask His grace for my loved ones. For example, I pray for strength for my mom in her suffering with cancer and emphysema. I ask His grace for my sisters who care for her. I beg His protection for all in this so dangerous world. I not only picture them, I talk to Him about them and I entrust them to Him. And then it is the very fruit of our cloistered contemplative life that our hearts are enlarged to hold the whole world. Our Holy Father Pope John Paul II wrote in his letter honoring the 8 th centenary of the birth of our Mother Saint Clare: "In reality, Clare's whole life was a eucharist because, like Francis, from her cloister she raised up a continual thanksgiving to God in her prayer, praise, supplication, intercession, weeping, offering and sacrifice. She accepted everything and offered it to the Father in union with the infinite thanks of the only-begotten One, who lives at the right hand of the Father."

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Sister Colette In regard to community life, I left out an essential point. Jesus has asked us to love one another AS HE HAS LOVED US. Can you imagine a love like that? Yet, we can do it with His grace. That is the challenge. Also we are to see Him in one another. One Abbess (superior) put it this way, "Each Sister is so unique a Christ." Because we are all wounded, that vision is not very clear. But remember Jesus said, "I was thirsty and you gave me drink, hungry and you fed me, naked and you clothed me" It is in his needy ones (and that is all of us) that we show our love for Him. As for the penances we do, we know we should do them because He has asked to us "Take up your cross and follow me." Saint Paul writes, "It makes me happy to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that still be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church." Colossians 1:24-25. The footnote in the Jerusalem Bible is very interesting. "Jesus suffered in order to establish the reign of God, and anyone who continues his work must share this suffering. Paul is not saying that he thinks his own suffering will increase the value of the redemption (since that value cannot be increased) but that he shares by his sufferings as a missionary in those that Jesus had undergone in his own mission. These are the sufferings predicted for the messianic era and are all part or the way in which God had always intended the Church to develop." May God reward you for everything! You would enjoy thiswhen I asked my Superior what she thought about the interview, she said, "Um." Gratefully, in Our Lady, Sister Colette, P.C.C.

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10 ANTONIO RAMIREZ: "HEALING WITH KNOWLEDGE THAT WE GAIN IN THOSE WORLDS"

Antonio Ramirez is a shamanic practitioner." He journeys to other worlds to retrieve lost souls. Using power given to him by spirit, he sings those souls back into their bodies and restores the life of those who have lost their vitality. Ramirez sees shamanism in very ancient terms: what shamans in general do is we think of the world as divided in three different worlds: the upper world, middle world and lower world. And we go out in these worlds and we gain knowledge about the middle world or any of the other worlds, and bring it back. Knowledge and power, I should say. We bring it back and then we do the healing with that knowledge that we gain in those worlds. He is also an opera singer and an email user; and he is now enrolling in a Ph.D. program in psychology. In his spiritual practice as well as the rest of his life he is fusing a variety of cultures and times into a living thing.

10.1 Helpers & Teachers

Ramirez training is complex. He was raised in Mexico, in a culture with its own indigenous traditions of healing by spiritual means. But those traditions did not connect for him. He was far too much a modern man to accept what was already present in his own culture. I'm from Mexico and I grew up in the midst of talking about curanderismo and black magic and all these things it didn't cut it for me. My mind was too Western. I was ready for computers.

Antonio Ramirez Like most modern persons, he suffered from spiritual far-sightedness, and first found a teacher outside of his culture of birth.164 Despite a strong spiritual sense as a child, he had become a firm Marxist when, in his mid-twenties, he had a clairvoyant dream. I was an adult, I was about 28 that this spiritual stuff started to awaken in me again. And the way it happened was through a dream the first time. I had a dream that my father was having surgery. So I was talking to the doctor and the doctor said you need to sign these papers and I said no, I'm not signing. She said you have to sign immediately because we need to do surgery. This was Thursday morning about 4:30 in the morning California time. I called my parent's home; nobody was there. I don't have any brothers and sisters but my mother is usually home. I couldn't get her until Sunday and said, "Mother, what's happening?" And she said, "Oh, son." And I said, "Oh, I know, my father had surgery on Thursday morning, right?' She says, "Yes."

10.1.1 Three Perspectives on Shamanism

The accuracy of the dream set him looking. His first teacher was Jose Silva, the founder of Silva Mind Control. so somehow I heard about this group, this guy who had created something very interesting. It was very useful to me at that time Silva Mind Control. And, very clever. Very clever guy. He took all the shamanic practices, translated them into contemporary jargon and he sells it to people and he doesn't talk about spirituality. So that was perfect for me.

His primary Western teacher was Michael Harner. Harner began as an anthropologist, investigating shamanism in the Amazon. Subsequently Harner began to teach shamanism

164

I can sympathize with that position; all my teachers in early adulthood were from far away. I still spend more time with Buddhists than with members of Western religions. But eventually one must come home. It was turning to discover what was available in my own culture that was the inspiration for this dissertation.

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Antonio Ramirez to North American students, using a combination of elements from Siberian and other indigenous traditions that he called Core Shamanism. 165 This practice teaches people to travel through the three worlds, using a drum to provide support for the trance.

Ramirez has recently been studying with indigenous teachers as well. I cannot call of course myself Pomo. But I very closely tried to follow in their tradition because it's appealing to me, because of their spiritual basis. And by this, I mean how we live makes a big difference in terms of how we connect with the spiritual world. For example, if I don't eat sugar or salt; or if I need to do some very serious healing work, I fast until I do the healing and that brings a lot of power. So what I do in my daily life has an impact on how much power and how much ability I have to heal people, which is what Pomo people believe.

He has also traveled to the Amazon basin, as Michael Harner did before him, and worked with healers from Peru.

Along with his human teachers, Ramirez has a variety of non-incarnate helpers and instructors. His discourse about them was so continuous with his discussion of incarnate teachers that at one point I had to ask. The other teachers live in the other worlds that a shaman frequents. 10.1.2 The Three Worlds The shamanic world-view typically has other realms that are reached by ascent or descent. Each has its own character. The lower world for me has a lot of spirits of nature. A lot of the animals, a lot of plants, water and so on. It looks very, um, nature-like. And the
165

Harner, The way of the shaman: a guide to power and healing

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Antonio Ramirez upper world has more human spirits, ah, someone would call them gods, if you want, but we prefer to or I prefer to call them teachers. They are there to teach us some things. And for me, the upper world is also the land of the dead where people go when they die.

In the lower world one meets helpers in the form of animals or birds, as power animals. It is against custom to ask the identity of another persons power animal, but Ramirez said that he had them. He also has teachers in more anthropomorphic forms, from the upper world. Teachers and helpers can be in our lives for a while before we realize what their role is. I've been moving through teachers. The first teacher I had came to me even before I knew that she was a teacher. She came to me through a book. Actually a story that I wrote one day in '89. Ah, and she was kind of the main character of the story. As I developed the book and then I started to do shamanic work I realized she was my spiritual teacher. (Laughs) Like, "oh, duh."

Teachers can stay with one for ones whole life, or they may send us on to other teachers.166 But then she, one day she started to disappear in my journeys and someone else came. And that has been a little bit of the trend. They are still present but they say, "O.K., go somewhere else to look, to look for this other person or this other spirit, this other teacher," what you want to name it.

166

There is a similar pattern of teachers who refer one to other teachers in other traditions. The student Sudhana was referred from instructor to instructor until he had visited 53. Some of them were apparently incarnate humans; others were Bodhisattvas like Manjushri and Samantabhadra. See the chapter "Entry into the Realm of Reality" in The Flower Ornament Sutra: a translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra A more accessible summary was written in China: Li, Entry into the realm of reality: a guide

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Antonio Ramirez

10.2 Journeying
The distinctive mark of shamanism is the journey. The shaman experiences going to a non-ordinary reality, and doing business there. Other healers may have other skills such as herbalism or the projection of energy, and a shaman often has those abilities too; but what makes a shaman bear that name is the habit of journeying to other experienced realms.167

Harner and his associates at the Foundation for Shamanic Studies 168 teach just this sort of journeying as the foundation for shamanic practice. Journeying in Harner's synthesis is accompanied by drumming, usually that of an assistant or a leader. Those journeying lie on the ground, with their sides touching those for whom they are journeying. In their subjective experience they find a passageway into the underground and travel through it. There they meet one or more helpers. The most common ones are animals.

One beginning journey is to find a "power animal" for someone. The journeyer makes the trip to the underworld and brings back any animal seen four times. That animal is then blown into the head and the heart of person for whom the journey is made. After that the journeyer and the client discuss what has been found. Subsequently the client may make use of the animal as an ally in the client's own journeys. 169

167

Eliade (in Eliade, Yoga: immortality and freedom) defines the ability to make ecstatic journeys as the second of four marks of the shaman. The other three are an initiatory experience of dismemberment, the mastery of fire, and the ability to take other forms or be invisible. By the time he published his classic on the subject, he had made "technique of ecstacy" the definition of shamanism, and said further "hence any ecstatic cannot be considered a shaman; the shaman specializes in a trance during which his soul is believed to leave his body and ascend to the sky or descend to the underworld." (Eliade, Shamanism: archaic techniques of ecstacy) 168 http://www.shamanism.org/ 169 This journey is described in the "The Journey to Restore Power" in Harner, The way of the shaman: a guide to power and healing

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Antonio Ramirez

10.2.1 Journeying for Knowledge and Power Antonio Ramirez's speaks of journeying in two contexts. He often speaks of journeying to learn and acquire power And we go out in these worlds and we gain knowledge about the middle world or any of the other world and bring it back. Knowledge and power, I should say. And then we bring it back and then we do the healing with that knowledge that we gain in those worlds.

Sometimes the knowledge is protective for him: I see people. I look into people. If I need, I look deeper and I see what's happening with them, and I see, if I feel something that's, bad is going to happen to me, I know it.

And sometimes it is the vision of the universal power. I've been able to contact that universal power about three times. More when I was a child, frankly, and I didn't know it but it's an experience of ecstasy.

10.2.2 The Retrieval of Souls The second purpose of journeying is soul retrieval. This is the shaman's classic task. People sicken or die, in the shamanistic understanding, because a part of their soul has gone away. I say "part" because in the shamanic worldviews the soul is not unitary. Part remains and keeps the body alive what ke Hultkrantz calls the "life soul" while a

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Antonio Ramirez second part, what Hultkrantz calls the "free soul," may wander or be spirited away. 170 Hultkrantz's division into two souls may not be adequate to capture Ramirez's experience: he has experienced that a person may have lost a number of these soul-fragments at different times.

The lost fragments of soul, according to Ramirez and the Core Shamanism school, fled or were taken for different reasons. I asked him where the souls had gone: AR: Could be anywhere. Usually they are the moment of trauma, lost in time and space. So usually I find them, I find a lot of those parts are children, which is again it reinforces this psychological idea, the Freudian idea that childhood is very important. Well, we know that; but we don't how and we don't know what to do about it... BW: Right. AR: Unfortunately. Um, but I usually find children's souls by themselves, lost by themselves in a corner or in a place away from people and from themselves.

Shamanism is not a religion in the usual sense. It is rather a family of religious experience that is experienced and interpreted within the local cultural milieu. In Latin America it is common to hear shamans pray Christian songs. 171 In Asia we have Manchu shamanic journeys interpreted in Confucian-Buddhist terms172 and much Tibetan experience is seen in a Tantric Buddhist context. 173 It could certainly be argued that the

170

Hultkrantz, Shamanic healing and ritual drama: health and medicine in Native North American religious traditions 171 As in the "Gloria al Padre e al Hijo e al Espirito Santo" song on the recording of Ayahuasca songs from Peru ( in The songs the plants taught us) Maria Sabina of Huautla de Jimnez in Mexico also includes involcations of God and the angels in her work. See Estrada, Maria Sabina: her life and chants 172 Nowak, Nisan shaman-i bithe The tale of the Nisan shamaness: a Manchu folk epic 173 An example is Dawa Drolma, Delog: journey to realms beyond death

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Antonio Ramirez entire Near Death Experience literature is shamanic. The man who set Raymond Moody on his inquiry, a psychiatrist named George Ritchie, interpreted his own experiences within his own Protestant Christian view. 174 Whatever shamanism may be, it is usually experienced with settings and characters from the shaman's own culture.

It is therefore not surprising in a society in which psychology is the authorized "healer of the soul" that shamanism in our culture is interpreted in terms from popular and clinical psychology, and finds practitioners and advocates in that community. Some therapists are so supportive that they send clients to shamanic practitioners. 175 AR: We did a soul retrieval with someone who, she knew the moment her therapist told her that she needed a soul retrieval, she knew that that was true. They called me and we saw a change, immediately... BW: What was the change? AR: during the session. She was very scared. I could see the fear, right here, and she was, so she was fidgeting, she was moving a lot and kind of very tense. And we did the soul retrieval and we sat again in chairs because at the end, then I process what we did. Ah, she was sitting there, she was very calm. Her face was very relaxed. Throughout before her foot was moving and um, the therapist was there luckily, ah, so the therapist mentioned that, "Do you realize that your foot's not moving." And she said, "That's true, I don't feel as anxious." BW: And the fear that you marked in the upper chest was gone? AR: Yep. BW: And what had replaced it? AR: The new souls, a couple of souls that we brought back.

174

Ritchie, Return from tomorrow

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Antonio Ramirez The souls are aspects of the personality that have left during trauma or stress. What differs from psychotherapeutic theory is that the shaman finds the missing soul-part for the client.176 This gives the shaman particular responsibility for attending to the consequences and sequelae of soul retrieval. AR: I had a case where we did a soul retrieval, well, I was in the middle of doing a soul retrieval and I had to stop and ask the client if they, if they were ready to go on because if I were to retrieve that part of the soul, it would have tremendous repercussions on someone, meaning that that person could die. So I wanted to make sure that the client knew about it. BW: That the client could die or another person? AR: Another person. Yeah. Because they were holding on so tightly to this person that they were risking I mean, they were sucking so much energy from the client that they didn't have any energy themselves. So if, when I removed the energy of the client this person could just since they didn't know how to survive any more it could be dangerous for them.

10.3 The Economy of Power

Power is central to Ramirez's spiritual world. Much of Ramirez's practice is involved with power and its management, its application and its ethics. The power is what makes him a healer. And it was a perception that power was missing that sent him out of the customary spirituality of his childhood: AR: We were talking about the Catholic Church, and I, of course I wanted to be a priest, so I was an altar boy. But then something didn't match, right? And I knew that the energy that was being used was not right. So one day I decided to really look. I said, O.K., I'm going to find out what's this all about and I'm going to see if this priest really has a spiritual power. I didn't put it into those words, I just said, O.K., I'm going to find out. So when he was doing the, what do you call this thing that they raise the...?

175 176

Ingerman, Soul retrieval: mending the fragmented self Both Harner and Ingerman point out that during the retrieval itself the client is essentially passive.

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Antonio Ramirez BW: Consecration? AR: Consecration, right. I concentrated and I was seeing inside the priest and I realized that he was empty. It was an intellectual understanding. So I was totally destroyed, you know, because I thought well, that's not spiritual. He still sees the presence and absence of power in people, but now he sees it as part of his healing practice.

He finds power by the classic shamanic method, journeying and returning. 177 the way I do it is, as I'm in the upper world, I allow the power to come into my spiritual being, right, in the middle of my body. Then I come back into my body and then my body gains this power. So if I put the power in my eyes then I can see, I can see into people's bodies and so on. Ah, the nature of this power, it's always there. It's in nature. The Pomo tradition, for example, uses two plants that are sacred to them. So I go out and do a ritual and get some of the plants and have them as tea. So that starts to give me the power, but the power is everywhere.

Further, it amazes him that others cannot perceive the power that is available: for example, the power of water, I already use and it's there for us to use. See, it's very simple. To me it's very amazing that, that we are so disconnected from ourselves, even. Ah, water is one of the most powerful elements that we have. And most people forget about it. But I can go down to a creek or to a river, especially if I go to a big river, but if I can go down to a creek which I have close to my home and just put my hand in the water and that creek gives me the power of the water. So I have that power in me already. Of course, I did already some kind of ceremony in asking for that, for that power to be used.

177

Going forth (prohodos) and returning (epistrophe) as the Neoplatonists would say. Were the Neoplatonists shamans? Well, given the shamanic practice of soul retrieval, it is interesting that Porphyry gave this advice: "...you would practice to ascend into yourself, collecting together all the powers which the body has scattered and broken up into a multitude of parts unlike their former unity to which concentration lent strength. You should collect and combine into one the thoughts implanted within you, endeavouring to isolate those that are confused, and to drag to light those that are enveloped in darkness." (Porphyry, Porphyry's letter to his wife Marcella concerning the life of philosophy and the ascent to the Gods,:10) But I digress.

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Antonio Ramirez 10.3.1 Songs While others may heal primarily by soul retrieval and Ramirez does use that method frequently his primary intervention is to allow the power to flow through him to another. He does this by touching people, or sometimes by just sitting in front of them. But in either case he is likely to be singing. AR: Now the other thing that I use, the other method that I use to enter these world is singing. It's very interesting also because many traditions use singing for praying, actually. So I find that singing is a very powerful method to do healing work, because many people don't want to be touched. So when I realized that, it's like I don't touch them. Touching them, it makes it easier because they'd feel the power of my hands. But when they don't want to be touched, we sit... many times in front of each other, you know, and I just sing, and they feel the power coming through at that time.

His complete strategy then, seems to involve these elements: He uses his rattle or drums, and visits other worlds. Usually I go to the lower world, first, and one of my teachers there says "O.K., you need to do this." Usually what they do is they give me, they start to give me their power; and then if I need to go to the upper world, I go to the upper world and, and then, I gain information and power, also, from the upper world. What I'm finding that is interesting that seems to recur, a recurrence that I'm just realizing lately, is that physical illnesses are better dealt with from the lower world, for me. And any spiritual illness or any psychological or mental, mental problem or illness, it's better dealt with from the upper world.

He gets power and information to do the work from the spirits who work with him in the Lower and Upper worlds. That empowerment enables him, among other things, to see what in the body is not right. Then he gets power, from the natural world or perhaps from spirits in the other worlds. That power comes in large part from singing. By singing, and perhaps by touching as well, he brings that power into the client. - 293 -

Antonio Ramirez

The following is his full description of a shamanic session: AR: I check in with my teachers and then they tell me more or less what is going to happen. So I explain to the person ahead of time a little bit of the sequence that we're going to follow. Once we do that either we sit face to face; or if it's a more physical illness I have them lay down on the table. Then I get my rattle and I use my rattle to start to journey. I go to the lower world first and then if it's necessary to the upper world. And ask for the spirit world to allow me to use the power. So I come back and then I rattle on top of the person. As I'm rattling I start to see what's wrong with the person. I see if there's a problem in the brain; usually there are problems with the brain. Generally most people use one side of the brain more than the other, so they are unbalanced when that happens especially if there is some physical problem the brain is trying to get a hold of, or heal that part of the body so the other side is, is wasting how do I say? it's like running a car or running some power in one generator when you're supposed to use two. So usually the brain has a problem. I look inside and see what's wrong with the person. Once I see what's happening, then I will stop rattling, and usually what happens I use my hands into people's bodies. Now at that point I can start to sing. Usually, um, it's becoming more and more that I start to sing over the person. I can use the power of my voice, it's like through the waves that come with my voice, I can use them through the body of the person. So as I'm putting my hands, for example, I usually start in the head, I put my hands on the head... BW: You do touch them? AR: of the person. Yeah. And I put my hands, as I'm singing I'm moving the power through their bodies. And usually I go to the shoulders and the hands. Somehow the hands are, it's very difficult for people to get power in their hands. It's fascinating. I don't know why that happens. But I go to the hands and start to move the energy through their hands. Sometimes here, the stomach, and then the feet. I'm asking them as I move along what, what is it that they are feeling; and it varies, widely. (Small laugh) Some people feel emotions. Some people feel tingling. Some people feel electricity. Some people feel nothing. So it changes. And then once I did that I check again with the rattle and seeing into their bodies and see what is necessary. If we are working with some kind of physical illness, then what I do is to play the drum and to sing to help them relax. Because what I do is with the drum and my singing I can alter their brain waves (Small laugh) that's a way to explain it

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Antonio Ramirez BW: (Laughs) AR: (Laughs) and that allows them to relax to the point where their body starts to vibrate in the right, in the right frequency. So I usually sing for a while, and people love that. It's a very relaxing, people are actually feel like they are sleeping. So it feels very comforting, very calming. So I drum for a while and sing. Some people get very disoriented. Some people who are very sensitive get very disoriented, because it's really like deep sleep. And then while I finish, I usually cover them with a blanket. I let them stay there for a while until they move, or they ask a question, or they say "Can I go now?" (Laughs) BW: (Laughs) When you're singing and drumming, ah, you've diagnosed a specific thing. But the singing and drumming doesn't sound specific but it's a rather a relaxation? AR: It can be specific, it can be specific, also. See, some illnesses are so powerful that we cannot extract them or move them in one sitting. So as I'm drumming again, as I'm singing I visualize again this part of the body that doesn't have a lot of energy. And through my singing, I'm putting the power again into that part of the body.

I believe an important part of the world-system shamans experience is the fact that they work in three spiritual worlds. In addition to the upper and lower worlds, there is as well a spiritual world that is equivalent or parallel with the world of ordinary reality. That additional middle world gives some "room," if that is the right word, for energy and spirits to work and move around the events of ordinary reality. 10.3.2 "Power is neutral, in a way." With these words, Ramirez introduces a difficult part of his experience. The power that he uses is not guaranteed to be beneficial. Although a lack of it can damage a client, too much can also hurt a person. AR: See... we have to take off a little bit of the New Age I'm going to call it New Age view about spirituality, right? And know that this - 295 -

Antonio Ramirez power could also be used to harm people. I mean if, if some people use all their power to try to heal someone immediately, this other person could die, you know, because they're not ready to use, to take that kind of power. I'm working with a client who told me from the beginning, "Go very easy on me because I'm extremely sensitive." And it's true; sometimes I touched her, her head, she absorbed tremendous amount of my power and I knew that there was enough. BW: Right. AR: If I put more she stays awake for, for two or three days and just, that's not useful anymore. So power is neutral, in a way. Ah, we need to learn through the traditions that we have here, in the middle world, how to use that power. The other aspect of the power's neutrality is that power is available also to malevolent spirits and persons. This means that a shaman's life is often a life of discipline and combat. The outcome is not guaranteed. 10.3.3 Discipline and the Acquisition of Power In order to acquire and maintain the power that he uses to heal, Ramirez must follow disciplines that increase his power, and give up what dissipates it.

One of the things that Ramirez likes about the Pomo is their clarity on the price of power, and on the power-consequences of how one lives: I cannot call of course myself Pomo but I very closely tried to follow in their tradition, because it's appealing to me because of their spiritual basis. And by this, I mean how we live makes a big difference in terms of how we connect with the spiritual world. If, for example, if I don't eat sugar or salt or I need to do some very serious healing work, I fast until I do the healing and that brings a lot of power. So what I do in my daily life has an impact on how much power and how much ability I have to heal people, which is what Pomo people believe. But he is not solemn about his required asceticism:

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Antonio Ramirez AR: On the other hand, it's hard. Because I see chocolates and I go, "My God! oh, oh. (Laughs) " BW: You can't eat chocolate? AR: Ah, no. BW: (Laughs) AR: I, I can, I mean, but... BW: It lowers your power? AR: Yeah. BW: Yeah. AR: Yeah. So... BW: No mole?178 AR: I cheat sometimes! (Laughs) BW: (Laughs) AR: Ah, but yeah, I try to stay from, from sugars

He rises each morning to recharge himself: This is something I do every morning, before breakfast, I put power into my body. I want to make sure that I keep replicating the power that I use in doing healing work and try to keep myself healthy. He also uses that time to check on his patients, reaching them at a distance each day: When I have a client I continue to work with them, so I'm constantly checking in with them and helping them; and every morning I sing, I pray

178

Mole is a Mexican sauce for meat, made with a variety of ingredients and chocolate.

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Antonio Ramirez for them. For me singing is praying. So I think that's important to know, that while they are in the process, I continue to work with them.

Sometimes his ordinary processes for acquiring power are not sufficient. In that case he may make a physical journey to South America to use a stronger but more harrowing method, the drug made from Banisteriopsis caapi.179 This is Ayahuasca or Yage, one of the great tools of journeying and vision. He says of his work with the Xipibo tribe in the Amazon: Ah, they use Ayahuasca, which is a whole different way of getting to the other spiritual worlds. It's very interesting, very powerful, very fast; and it has the spirits of the jungle, which are very useful but they don't, they are not, they are not soft. They go for the thing. Um, so Ayahuasca is very hard on the body, on the mind, and on the spirit, actually. It really, really pushes people to some boundaries that people never thought they would go through (small laugh) at least for me.

Ayahuasca gives one the ability to do things that are very hard to do without it: Many times also when the illness is very, very, very dangerous or very powerful, ah, then I may resort to, to go down to the Amazon and use Ayahuasca. In that way I visualize I see actually, as I'm working and singing the Icaros, right, which is the songs that they use as I'm singing the Icaros I see, literally the illness leaving as snakes or any other animal. He tells of his first experience with Ayahuasca, in the Amazon: AR: We were out in a community, very, very far out and, there are a lot of illnesses, of course, there because of the climate. When we were going to do an Ayahuasca ceremony the shaman brought his, a couple of his patients; and one of his patients was a 12 year old, about, very small, for his age, who was totally yellow. He had not eaten in about seven days and he could barely drink. So I looked at him and I thought, this young man is going to die. So I told my guide, you know, "I'm sorry but we need to take
179

Michael Harner and several others wrote about the use of Banisteriopsis for shamanizing in a book which he also edited. See Harner, Hallucinogens and shamanism

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Antonio Ramirez this kid to a doctor, a western doctor." I said, "I know at least that they could check for yellow fever or whatever, or hepatitis..." BW: Yeah, liver failure. AR: Oh, yeah. And my friend said, "Well" oh, because we had to boat, the boat was actually an hour away (Small laugh), also. BW: Right. AR: But we could get the boat easier to come and pick us up. Ah, he said, "Well, let's wait. Let's wait and see what happens." So we did, we did a ceremony that night and it was very, very powerful because that was the first time that I took Ayahuasca and, and it was the first time that I saw how, what it looks like for the power of Ayahuasca to work on people. It's real, the snakes were coming out of the kid. It was very awful. And I could see that someone had caused the damage, also. The next day, the kid started to move, in the afternoon he started to eat. By late afternoon, he was outside of the house talking to other people. He was actually sitting he couldn't sit the day before. He got better. For all its power, Ayahuasca is not his favorite path. AR: Usually ah, I use a drum. I like to drum, much better than Ayahuasca... BW: (Laughs) AR: Because with Ayahuasca, if I need to take a very strong dose, I still carry it the next day for a while. And it's hard on the body. I mean, sometimes, it makes you throw up and, or makes me throw up, (Laughs) or feel sick or something. The drum is very safe. I can stop at anytime. I can come back anytime. I feel more in control, when I use the drum. There instances where I don't have a drum then I've trained myself enough that I can concentrate and, and just quiet a little, get quiet for a little bit... BW: O.K. AR: And just bring the power into my body.

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Antonio Ramirez 10.3.4 Spiritual Warfare The reason one needs power and discipline is that not all is friendly out there in the triple world. There are several sorts of threats with which a shaman must deal.

The first is depletion. This is both a condition in itself, and the result of soul loss. When Antonio Ramirez passes power into someone's body, by hand or by singing, he is remedying that loss of power. When he puts power into his own body, he is dealing with the same issue of possible depletion.

The other sort of threat is a hostile entity of one sort or another. Among these entities are the malicious non-physical being that causes illness, the incarnate being who has projected malice, the soul-thief of one sort or another, and the rival shaman. It is the shaman's job to combat each of these to whatever degree is necessary to rescue the client. It is not a vocation for the lazy or timid.

The malicious non-physical being is typified by the snakes that Ramirez saw leaving the boy in the Amazon. One often does not know where they come from or why they are within the patient. But their mere presence compromises what might be called the spiritual immune system. AR: And that weakens the person, of course, and then other, other intrusions come in. BW: How, if I could ask, is it appropriate to ask, how do you remove them? AR: I see them. I see them. Usually what I do when I see them they are, they have almost physical form. And, so I use my hands to remove them. - 300 -

Antonio Ramirez Many times as I'm working my hands feel like they go inside the body of the person. So I grab the intrusion and I take it out. And because they are dangerous, extracting them can be a perilous task. Ramirez has a method he has learned for blowing out the particularly noxious ones. One can do this because the intrusions are not clever: AR: If I feel there is something else that needs to be worked in a different way for example something that would harm me, because there are some powerful things out there I prefer to sing, to the intrusion, and blow on it. This is something that I learned in the Amazon. If I concentrate and I bring the power through my mouth, I can blow, "poof!" and in that way I extract things. BW: You blow it out? AR: I blow it out. BW: O.K. AR: Right. BW: Um, do intrusions have intelligence? AR: ... Usually not. Usually not.

The source of intrusions may be unknown, but it is often from human malice. This does not mean that the person from whom the harmful intrusion came deliberately and consciously set about cursing the client. Intention is such a powerful, um, instrument, that people may not know anything about spirituality, people may not know about black magic but just the intention is so sharp and so powerful that I'm starting to find illnesses in people just by the intentions that some other people have. More and more I'm realizing again, the issue of intention, that many people are carrying the bad, ah, bad raps? (laughs) that other people are putting in them. And unfortunately it's true that many of these intrusions - 301 -

Antonio Ramirez come from the very family people come from, sometimes brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, very, very close, closely related envies, and so on.

More difficult are the intelligent opponents. Some of these are ordinary persons who are somehow functioning satanically: I've been attacked a couple of times in the spirits-world, and I have to be very careful with that. So it's literally like physically fighting someone. I remember very distinctly ah, I was working with a woman and I realized that she had been in a situation where she was kept, she was not fully kidnapped but she was kept in a place where she did not want to be. I got to that place again and she was not only kept physically but spiritually. So when I started to retrieve that soul part, I was attacked by these two souls. That really was very hard, luckily these two people didn't have a lot of power, so I was able to call in my spirit helpers and they protected me very well, very easily; but the struggle at first with them was very hard because they came after me immediately. So that was very exhausting. When there are energies like that, it is very wearing.

One of the purposes of frequent journeyings is to create friendships and alliances with benevolent beings in the spirit world. They are good company for the excursions one makes to their realms. In times of crisis, they are more than friends: AR: As I'm gaining more and more power, I'm starting to create a tribe, um, of my people; and some of them are warriors. So when there is a problem, I call them in and they can stop the other spirits from hurting me. BW: Are they, are these embodied people or...? AR: No. Spiritual.

There was an entity that came in very strongly, it was someone who had harmed oh, now, now I just made a connection, this is exactly what happened someone who had harmed a kid long, long time ago. And for some reason this guy had a lot of power, I don't know how he found that - 302 -

Antonio Ramirez power, so he was attacking us but it was very easy when I tried, I told him "Stop, because I don't want to fight." And when he insisted I just pulled these people and said "O.K., just protect us" and all this spiritual help, uh, guardians, came to us and protected us. So that's tiring, that time, because it requires a different level of power. Ah, but most of the time that doesn't happen. Shamans often actively struggle with each other. Not every fellow shaman is necessarily an ally. This happened this time when I was in the in the Peruvian Amazon. And it happened last time also, but this time it was easier to deal with. Last year I've gone twice now last year, um... There is, there is a lot of competition, also, between shamans, especially when, in places like the Amazon where there are a lot of people who want to be shamans, (clears throat) or are shamans. So when we were doing the work, there was someone attacking us, attacking the group that was doing the work, but they were attacking me not in the sense necessarily to hurt me, but to blow me away, which would be hurtful for me anyway. So it was a very difficult thing for me to keep focused because there was this presence attacking me right behind me. I had to make a big effort to, to keep my power intact.

This is why the shaman needs to maintain strict discipline: When there are energies like that, it is very wearing. Now what I find is that, this is why it's important for me to be very disciplined with my life. Because the more power I have, the less of a problem those things are for me. Because I can either use my power frankly, I have more power than they, so when I have more power than them, I can do something to stop them.

The management of power, then, is a matter of survival for Antonio Ramirez. It also makes possible his healing journeys on behalf of others.

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Antonio Ramirez 10.3.5 "The Universal Power" Mircea Eliade said that "it would be more correct to class shamanism among the mysticisms than with what is commonly called a religion."180 And at the higher reaches of Ramirez' experience, it seems, there is indeed mystical experience. I've been able to contact that universal power about three times. More when I was a child, frankly, and I didn't know it but, um, and ah, it's, it's, it's an experience of ecstasy. It's, it's very hard to explain and it's a totally fulfilling power that exists out there. I only saw it, literally, in a fraction of a second. Or I experienced it. Seeing, shamanic seeing is very different than seeing. I don't mean visually. It's a full experience when people are able to be there, it's the whole body, the whole mind is fully there.

This is the classic mystic experience found records of different religions across the planet. One is totally present and sees with the whole being. The first time it happened, when I came back from that place I didn't realize that my body was crying. My spirit was totally fulfilled but my body was crying, you know, so when I came back it's like oh, you start to cry like a baby, you know, because it's, it's such a powerful instance of getting to that energy.

I do not know if Ramirez would endorse this thought, but this sounds like the Catholic doctrine of the Beatific Vision, the rapturous vision of God that is the real reason why heaven is Heaven.181 I do not mean that Ramirez borrowed the idea from the Church of his (and my) birth; I mean instead that what he experienced sounds like what was experienced by the person who first spoke the words, "Beatific Vision."

180 181

Eliade, Shamanism: archaic techniques of ecstacy, p. 8 Thomas Aquinas wrote about this vision in the Summa contra Gentiles, titling one of his chapters "That "by the Sight of God One is Partaker of Life Everlasting."

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Antonio Ramirez As William James says, "Mystical states cannot be sustained for long." 182 Lawrence LeShan's belief was that the prolonged mystical state was not compatible with incarnation.183 Ramirez' dis-incarnate teachers told him exactly that: So I asked one of my teachers "Why, why? Give me more," you know, "why not more?" And, oh, because there's another component here. If I were able to move to that realm, I would know everything about anything. And I said, I said "Why, why not?" And they said "Well, you can do it; but then you die as a human. Is that what you want to do?" And I said, "No, no, I'm not ready to... (Laughs)

These teachers serve as more than instructors. They also serve as step-down transformers, bringing the power that exists in the universe into humanly comprehensible and tolerable dimensions. AR: Partly, the power is too much for the body to handle. And partly the mind of humans are, is not ready to deal with that kind of understanding. So that's why we have teachers in the middle to help us. So this is the upper world teacher. BW: How do they deal with that, with that problem of too much-ness? AR: They are in direct contact with that power, with that energy. And they transmit, they translate the messages into an understandable form for us. So they filter a little bit, is my understanding, as I'm getting it right now, is they are a filter, both for power and for the messages that we are ready to understand.

10.4 A Skeptical Eye

Antonio Ramirez views his own experiences with skepticism. AR: One of the major problems I have in practicing shamanism, frankly, is believing it. (Small laugh)

182 183

James, The varieties of religious experience, p. 372 LeShan, The medium, the mystic, and the physicist: toward a general theory of the paranormal

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Antonio Ramirez BW: Yourself. AR: Yeah, oh, yeah. BW: O.K. AR: I go around, I mean, I leave a place and I think, "I've been drumming and singing for an hour, this is crazy" BW: (Laughs) AR: "It doesn't make sense. I'm driving my car." (Small laugh)

Ramirez is relentlessly Western, and modern Western thinking prides itself on its experimental checking.. I wish there were a, there was a way to actually do some kind of empirical work. It's very difficult because it's very costly, you know.

So he has been collecting stories of what worked. His own first encounter with a Pomo healer is among them. AR: I told you that I'm a singer, right, I sing opera actually. Some time ago, and that's how I got in contact with my Pomo teacher, some years ago I found out that I have vocal nodules. So my voice teacher said, "You better go and see what's happening with your voice because this is very strange." So I went and, and the doctor said, "Oh, yeah, you have vocal nodules," nodes or whatever they're called, "and we can do several things. We can do nothing and just, you take it easy; and or we can do surgery. We have the best surgeon here, next door" his friend! It's true, also. "Or" what was the other possibility? "Or you can go on a program where you don't speak or sing for a year and then we'll wait for a year and see what happens." And he says, "I suggest for you to do surgery. We clear this out and then you retrain with your teacher and no problem." I said, "well, but what are the odds?" And he said, "well, we don't know." (Small laugh). BW: (Small laugh) - 306 -

Antonio Ramirez AR: Ah, he said, "usually are very good but with the laser they could cut a little bit off, more than necessary, in which case your voice will change. So you'll have a different voice and we don't know that you'll be able to sing again." I said, "No, no, no. Wait." So I went to see my teacher, right, and I said "how long does it take for this to start to, get, go away?" And he said, "About a year." Someone had told me about this Pomo healer. So I went to see him... (Laughs) it was very weird. I explained the problem to him at the beginning of the session and then he moved on to talk about his accident that he had some years ago and how his leg hurts so much and then two hours later he said, "Oh, but you came for healing, right?" BW: (Laughs) AR: I said "Yes." "Oh, O.K., so take this root and take this herbs and have this as tea." I say, "Is this, is this all? You're not going to sing, you're not going to drum?" "No, no, no, that's all." So here I go, right, thinking, I'm so crazy. This is bizarre. But half way though I said I have, I don't lose anything by trying to sing. I mean, I already spent a whole day with this man. He's a very cool man. So we'll see. So I started to drink the tea. I went back the next month for my test. And this was worse, because I did not necessarily stop singing and I did not, I couldn't stop talking, I mean, I talked for a living. You know, I teach classes. So I went the next month and the doctor said, "What did you do? You're healed. It's 99% gone. So you can consider yourself healed. What did you do?" And I laughed and I said, "Well, you will not believe this but I went to a healer." And he said, "Oh, if walking backwards on your head works for you, do it."

10.5 "To be able to help people and stop their suffering."

When I asked Ramirez to define himself at the beginning of the interview, he said I'm a student of shamanism or a shamanic practitioner. And to me what this entails is a finding, for me personally what this involves is finding what is making people suffer. And help with that suffering. I want to be able to help people and stop their suffering. From his own healing he went on to work with other people. Sometimes the confirmatory experiences are small.

For example, another friend of mine called me up and said, "You know, I don't know what to do. I cannot sleep." And I said, "Oh, oh, I'll do - 307 -

Antonio Ramirez something." He says, "I don't believe in this, I have to tell you. But I'll try it." (Small laugh) The next week he said "You know this is incredible, man! I went to bed at 10 o'clock at night, I woke up at 9:30 the next day (Laughs) And I felt great. That's what I needed." I said, "I know." (Laughs) So I constantly get some kind of empirical proof that this works. Sometimes he works with persons with very serious diseases. I've seen major changes lupus, cancer, kind of stomach problems. Stuff that seems very hard to deal with. My friend who had cancer, she went back after some treatments and the doctor said, "This is gone." She had surgery first and then she was going to have surgery again because they found that there was still more and she said "No, it's impossible." So I worked on her a few times and she went back in two weeks and the doctor said, "It's gone. We don't know what's, what's happening."

In the Amazon his shamanic work with others was a replacement for Western medical care. Other times he works as a complement to medical teams. Another story that was actually very interesting was this woman was having surgery, right? It's a whole different thing but she was tying her tubes; right, and my thinking was the man should get a vasectomy, better, because she, she has some kind of a problem, I think some kind of diabetes or something that makes surgery very dangerous for her. "No, no, no." They didn't want to do that. So they called me in the day, right before the surgery and she was totally freaked out. She didn't know if she could go through with that and there were a lot of consequences of going through that or not going through the surgery. So I said, "O.K., so what would you like for this, for us to do?" She says, "O.K., I just want to go through this surgery and just, be calm." So we did, so we did a ceremony and surgery was a breeze. The doctors apparently said, "God, what was the problem with you? You seem to have no problem whatsoever." So yeah, people, people are used to not paying att it's not that people don't see miracles, it's people don't pay attention to miracles.

His practice has now blossomed to the point that he puts it before any other activity. Yesterday when I was walking to my friend who has cancer in the eye or had cancer in the eye, no, I think she's cleared (laughs) (coughs) and she was saying, "Well, I don't want to call you because you are too busy" - 308 -

Antonio Ramirez and I say, "Yeah, but healing is my, my primary task in life now, so I can drop anything." If someone calls me for healing, I'll do it. No matter what happens, I'll do it.

10.6 Singing and Power: One Case

I have been asking each participant in this research to pray for the dissertation itself. As I said before, this request has two purposes. One is that I really want them to treat for the dissertation, because it is important for me. The other (as I also tell them) is that I want to have a taped record of how they do their work.

I had not told Antonio Ramirez that I would be making this request, and he had not brought his rattle and drum and other tools. Some people think that such paraphernalia is the heart of shamanism. 184 Ramirez looked out the window of the San Francisco office building where we were conducting the interview, saw the moon in the sky, and said : AR: O.K. ... We'll do something very cool, I think. Um. (Long pause) Phew O.K. I've never done this; but, but let's try it. BW: (Laughs) Alright. AR: Um, interesting, interesting. O.K. What we're going to do... is... we're going, I'm going to work on you a little bit. Um, so we're going to release a little bit of the anxiety... BW: (Laughs) AR: Uh, and then we're going to, I'm going to try and I don't know if this is going to work but I'm going to sing a song, ah, that will come, I don't know if it's a song of my own, or it'll I think it'll come. And then we're going to put, we're going to go on a journey, but we're going to put power into the future. And we'll see what happens.

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Antonio Ramirez He stood behind me as I was sitting in a chair, and put his hands on my shoulders. Then he began to tremble, with about the same frequency as a hand-trembler's hand shakes,185 and put his hands on the back of my head. I could feel something flowing down inside my head, down from the mid-rear into my torso. He continued to move his hands and question me about my experience until at one point he leaned over and blew into the top of my head. I have no idea what he was blowing in or out the gesture was compatible with methods used in soul retrieval and power animal acquisition by students of Harner, and also with Ramirez' own description of blowing out and intrusion. My vision cleared with a snap, the table in front of me coming suddenly into focus. I felt suddenly very, very present.

After touching my body on the shoulders, arms, head and stomach and apparently channeling power into it for a while, Ramirez began to sing a song with words that sounded very much like American Indian songs. He said of it later, AR: My voice sounded very strange to me at first. It was like someone else was singing. Ah, the words... well, the sound was carrying a motion that was, that goes always ahead kind of the future. So I saw these kind of tentacles going... BW: Mm-hmm. AR: Into the future. (Clears throat) And ah, when the, the other part, the high part of the song came, that was the call, it was extremely powerful, because it was vibrating with, ah how to explain this? It was moving
184

The Confucian authorities in Manchuria were determined to punish the Nisan Shamaness, so they destroyed her drum. My guess is it had as much effect on her as the lack of a drum had on Ramirez' work. See Nowak, Nisan shaman-i bithe The tale of the Nisan shamaness: a Manchu folk epic 185 For a summary of the diagnostic role of hand-tremblers among the Navajo, see Hultkrantz, Shamanic healing and ritual drama: health and medicine in Native North American religious traditions, p. 133-4. For more information, see Leighton and Leighton, Gregorio, the hand-trembler: a psychobiological personality study of a Navaho Indian

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Antonio Ramirez way beyond this building. It was really reaching, psst, very far. Ah, so it was like, sshwwwwww. BW: Yeah. AR: Ah, it was moving like that. Ah... The words, I have no clue what they mean. I wonder what kind of language it was.

While he was singing the song, and before he had told me about what his experience was, I too had had a vision of something reaching out and branching, like a silvery river rising and spreading down channels. The experience of being present that came that day has lasted until now, as I write about it, nine days later.

10.7 "Life came back."

Like some other healers for whom we have biographies, Antonio Ramirez has known his whole life that healing was his calling. 186 There were some switchbacks in his path. AR: See, it's, (small laugh) it's very amazing to talk about this, actually. I mentioned before, that as a child I knew I had a path in the spiritual world and, and that it had something to do with healing and helping people. When I lost this I was extremely depressed. I was extremely uncreative, (clears throat) even though I've never been totally lacking in creativity; and I was very angry. I felt that something very important had been, had gotten taken from me; but I didn't know what it was. And rather than, or, yeah, I guess it was, I needed to go through that. So it was a period of isolation, loneliness, searching, not finding, feeling ugly, feeling sad. Ah, really not caring about living or dying. Ah, when I talk about political activism, we conceive of political activism in a very different way in Latin America. There it's a question of dying for a cause; it's an extreme way of living. And I was willing to be that extreme. For example, one day I was walking with my ex-wife who was very blond from the States and we
186

Olga Worrall was known in her Russian-American neighborhood as a healer. Sometimes she was not allowed to go out to play until she had healed a neighbor's headache. See Worrall and Worrall, The gift of healing: a personal story of spiritual therapy W. Frederic Keeler's first healing experience was also with a neighbor's headache, when he was very young. See Keeler, My story: a study of victorious living by means of intuition

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Antonio Ramirez were in Mexico, there were a lot of problems at that time, '79 or maybe '80, major, major political problems in Mexico. And we stopped, we were walking by some military, two trucks of military personnel who were guarding because there was big demonstration. And they started to whistle to my ex-wife and another friend from Switzerland who was with us, and saying things, and I stopped, in front of these two buses and told them in a very loud voice that this was the ignorance of our people. You know, and so I start to insult soldiers with machine guns, and frankly I didn't care. And of course, I didn't care much for people, either. Um... so, when, when these experiences started to happen to me and especially when I realized that it was spirit talking, life came back. (Laughs) BW: Yeah. AR: All of a sudden it's like, "I see, this is what I've been missing." It was not even spirit. It was myself who came back. It was probably a soul retrieval that I got, spontaneously. My joy of life came back. All of a sudden what I remembered as a child, See, I loved Mexico as a child. Mexico in the fifties when I was a child was clear, clean, right? And there were a lot of fields around and I would love to go out in the springtime after, a little bit after a rain, if it rained, and look to my left out of my parents' home and look at the volcanoes, right, volcanoes had special meaning, I didn't know what it was. And then just look at the flowers with the mist on them, you know, all the different flowers around and just knowing that those flowers were there was just incredible. And then, then I didn't care for flowers or for anything. BW: Mm-hmm. AR: And, so later on when I started this spiritual journey I started to see those flowers again. I started to see people in a different light. I started to have compassion, and I started to have compassion for myself. Ah, before I was very judgmental. I couldn't do anything right. Right. So everything was lacking so why doing anything? Everything was going to be wrong, anyway. But I feel like I've recovered more than I ever thought I would recover. What I'm recovering is, goes ways out of time, actually. Ah, what I'm recovering is my connection to very deep roots that are in preHispanic Mexico. Ah. And there is an assurance about having a task, on this life that I have to fulfill.

His life has exposed him to a wide variety of traditions, from Mexican Catholicism and curanderismo to Marxism positivism, formal musical training, Western psychology, and - 312 -

Antonio Ramirez the "neo-paleo" shamanic revival of Harner and of the indigenous traditions Harner has drawn from. Instead of grasping one and rejecting the others, Ramirez has attempted to keep them all present in his work. His focus, he said at the beginning of his interview, is "to be able to help people and stop their suffering." His means is the power he has felt and seen since he was a child. And his discipline is to learn how to do it, from all available teachers. We need to learn through the traditions that we have here, in the middle world, how to use that power.

Antonio Ramirez found time in a very busy schedule to look over this chapter. He sent email: I would only change the tenses so they are consistent. The document has power, so it is a good thing. Sorry I can not help more. Go for it, and finish it.

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11 THE USEFULNESS OF AGREEMENTS, OVERLAPS AND DIVERGENCES

Since this study began, there have been a number of surprises. The reality of the study diverged from the planned method in many ways. A number of my expectations were not fulfilled; and much of what I found was unexpected. The main expectation I had, though, did pay out. These interviews explored a world of amazing variety.

Steinar Kvale, in his very excellent book about interviewing, says that there are two metaphors for interviewing the image of the miner digging for ore, and the image of the traveler. In particular, he says interviewing is what in German is called a Bildungsrise, an educational journey. 187

I have gone visiting in the worlds of eight different people. There must be much I have missed; but there is much that I have found, because the people who spoke with me chose to show it to me. I am grateful to them for showing me their lives, for enlarging my own world, and for defining a larger world of prayer-possibility.

11.1 Method: Best-Laid Plans

Before looking at what I found in this study, it seems worthwhile to revisit the methodology. Some of it worked out just as expected; some did not. If I had any sense I

187

Kvale, InterViews: An introduction to qualitative research interviewing

Conclusion would just rewrite the prospectus to reflect the a posteriori reality, but it is interesting to see what worked out and what did not. 11.1.1 The four criteria I set four criteria for participants. These were (1) that working for others was a major part of their spiritual practice, (2) that they had been at it for some years, (3) that either they were well known in the field or that their community recommended them as effective, and (4) that they have signs of balance and humor.

All of the participants met criteria 1, 2 and 4. The third criterion, their community reputation, was more difficult to find. I found that in a number of cases I was relying on one recommender or none, so I cannot say that in every case I met the third standard. Specifically, these are the 'credentials' of the participants:

Margaret Stortz is a certified practitioner and (at the time of her interviews) was national president of her denomination.

Deborah Klingbeil is a Christian Science nurse and a member of the family that created Spindrift.188

Jean Delaney was recommended to me by JoLynn Cunningham of the University of Tennessee as a model of prayer.

Priscilla Stuckey I met on an email list. I came to respect her intellect and balance on that list before I interviewed her. She also worked on my dog while

188

Spindrift's research is discussed in Dossey, Healing words: the power of prayer and the practice of medicine

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Conclusion Abigail was in critical surgery, and Abigail did miraculously well in surgery and after. Julie Henderson teaches students in somatics and Buddhism in the United States, Australia and Germany. I have watched lives change through contact with her. You can't call me objective in this evaluation, however, as mine is one of the lives that have changed. Shneor Stern was recommended by his chief rabbi at the Chabad House. Sr. Colette's congregation was recommended by Fr. McSweeney of the Carmelite House of Prayer. When I called her monastery, Sr. Colette volunteered with permission from her Mother Superior. Antonio Ramirez was recommended by my dissertation chair. During the interview he worked on me, a remarkable experience that is described in the section about Ramirez.

I did not, therefore, poll each person's congregation in a secret ballot to ascertain their reputation. I cannot say the third criterion was met in every case. I can say that I am glad I interviewed each of them; I found each one compelling and I would recommend them.

11.1.2 Transcribing the interviews I said I would transcribe the interviews. I did in fact transcribe seven of them, a total of 563 pages. Those were the two interviews with Stortz, and one each with Klingbeil, Stuckey, Delaney, Henderson and Stern. At that point I ran out of time and willingness, and the professional transcriptionist's rates no longer seemed so exorbitant. I hired a

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Conclusion transcriptionist used by the News Hour on PBS to transcribe the interviews with Sr. Colette and Antonio Ramirez. 11.1.3 Software markup and the selection of results I was delighted with Atlas/ti, the software I used to keep track of the themes I found. It made it easy to discover themes, to mark quotations, and to retrieve those quotations later when I wanted to do write-ups.

I think that using this software actually made me more sensitive to the variations and subtleties of each person's experience. The software handled the clerical work for me, so I could add new discoveries without worrying about the added effort. A number of times I found a new theme half-way through a document. I had an autocoding device that could code any sentence that contained a key word, and I could quickly search the document for all instances of the word. The autocoding made me more willing to try new ideas: it became the work of a moment rather than requiring hours. 11.1.4 Feedback from those I wrote about. Even with the clerical help that Atlas/ti provided, I had to write about some things and not others. As I look at what I wrote, I am satisfied that everything I mention is reasonably accurately portrayed. What about those things that I did not mention? I followed a rule that if a person mentioned something a lot, it was probably important to them. But what about those things they mentioned only once? Did I pass in silence over a hint of some deeper layers to their thoughts and feelings, because it was mentioned only once? I just do not know. I think the issue is important, and it may be an undecideable within this dissertation. One could create a whole methodological research project trying

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Conclusion to discover important points omitted in qualitative write-ups, but that is not my project. The feedback from the participants (below) may be a partial solution.

I said that there would be a second interview with each participant. Instead I sent the write-up to each participant and solicited their response. Those that had email all except Rev. Delaney and Sr. Colette responded by email. In several cases this made multiple cycles of write-and-response possible. But I did not do a second interview with anyone except Dr. Stortz; the task was simply overwhelming.

I had an agreement with the participants that I would use some, but not necessarily all, of their commentary. I also told them that if we disagreed about something, I would likely leave my opinion in and put their contrary opinion beside it. The individual chapters have a number of examples of this parallelism. This agreement allowed both of us to present our cases to the reader.

The most commonly requested correction, not surprisingly, was to the transcript transcribed speech looks incoherent even when it sounded completely coherent. Several of the participants said I could remove all the "umms and ers." I did remove some; a few I left in because they clearly marked a moment when the respondent took thought..

Soliciting the responses of those I interviewed was a stunning success. Knowing that the participant would read what I wrote let me know that my own projections and guesses

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Conclusion would have some correction. If there is a single element of my method I would recommend for others to use, it is this solicitation of reply by those you write about. 11.1.5 "Emergent" organization of the chapters Seven of the participants were asked similar questions, while Dr. Stortz was asked an earlier version of the question-set. I had the list of questions from my methodology section in hand throughout the interview, checking off each topic. In some cases the participant volunteered answers; if not, I asked explicitly. The exception is Dr. Stortz, who was interviewed before the dissertation methodology was finalized.

I found that though they were asked similar questions, the themes that emerged from the interviews were very different. It was then necessary to decide whether to organize each chapter in terms of the questions asked or the themes that emerged. It seemed appropriate to organize in terms of the emergent themes given that Grounded Theory was the primary methodology even though that meant that each chapter centered on different topics.

11.2 Findings for a Theory?

It is important to note that the participants have not seen nor responded to what I am saying in this chapter this is a space for my thought, and it is possible that I am wrong in some judgments about them.

Each of the participants said what they said in the context of a private conversation; but if we were to imagine them as speaking in a symposium, we could posit that in these

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Conclusion interviews we have seen agreements, overlaps and disagreements. By "agreements" I mean that a theme is present in all of the participants' reports. By "overlaps" I mean that a theme is present in several participants' discourse, but not a majority. By "disagreements" I mean that the theme is present in one or two reports and not in the others.

It seems to me that agreements, overlaps and disagreements have different uses. The agreements are possibly the basis for generalization. They may be groundings for a theory. The disagreements, on the other hand, offer the chance to expand what seems "possible."

In the rest of this chapter I try to make four uses of what people have said in the interviews. First, I examine the agreements and create a bit of inductive theory, based on what seems to be in common among these persons who pray for others. Secondly, I consider the usefulness of overlaps as "trade zones" between otherwise different cultures. Third, I look at the disagreements and try to say how they define what I call a "possibility space" for the practice of intercession.

My initial goal was to find exemplars for the practice. In the fourth section I describe how the practitioners I have interviewed have served as exemplars for me. This final section is both a personal response, and a further existence proof that at least one person could learn something from these interviews. I speak briefly of my own

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Conclusion experience as a person who encountered these commonalties, visited these trade zones and explored this possibility space.

11.3 Overlaps and General Cases

Grounded Theory studies do not claim to find an essence, as do Phenomenological studies.189 Instead, the product of a Grounded Theory study is a theory a tentative generalization that is "inductively derived from a study of the phenomenon it represents."190 At the conclusion of the study, I discarded some ideas I had at the

beginning of the study and (somewhat to my surprise) found I had some grounded theory to offer.

My initial belief was that there would be no single generality that would be true of all the practitioners I interviewed. I did discover that some assumptions I had unspoken theories did not get supported. But I was also surprised to find that certain generalities did hold. 11.3.1 The theories that didnt work out I went into the research with some unspoken theories. I did not realize fully that I had them until I felt disappointment. When I examined this feeling, I found that it came from expectations that had not been fulfilled. The two unconscious theories that didnt work out were the idea that blessings must be done kinesthetically, and the related theory that persons praying or treating for others would be "in contact" with those others even at a distance.

189

Moustakas, Phenomenological research methods

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Conclusion 11.3.1.1 The prediction that prayers would all be kinesthetic. When I began my research, I had a theory that those who prayed or treated for others would have a fundamentally kinesthetic strategy. That is, they would do something best described by the word feeling191. Implied by that idea was that they would not do their prayer work in other senses such as seeing, hearing, and so forth.

I had this theory because I had such a kinesthetic or feeling prayer strategy when I began the research. When I was praying for others, I would reach out until I could feel them (even at a distance), and then I would put them together with their Best, a good I could not define but which I also recognized by feeling for it. I thought, without saying it, "I do it this way. Doesn't everyone?"

It turned out that that others do not necessarily follow this strategy. Priscilla Stuckey had a rather kinesthetic strategy, but her practice has her avoid contact with the person she was working for, preferring during the treatment to remain out of the way. Julie Hendersons finding, for instance, was very much like my reaching out for another, although she sometimes used the word flavor for the distinctive quality of a person rather than the word feeling. But the Wisdom Presences she experienced sometimes came to her as visual experiences rather than as kinesthetic. Ramirez used vision physical and spiritual to check situations. Both Jean Delaney and Margaret Stortz used words to pray or treat for others, an auditory component that was not part of my strategy.

190 191

Strauss, Basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques, p. 23 Strategies as tied to different preferred sensory systems are described in Knight, NLP at work: the difference that makes a difference in business See also Dilts, Modeling with NLP

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Conclusion

Deborah Klingbeils strategy was the most problematic. She used a great deal of visual language in her report, but she specifically denied that her experience of Spirit was sensory at all. She agreed that her language was visual, and was interested in the fact. But she insisted that (nonetheless) her experience could not be called sensory.

There are two possible responses to Klingbeils assertions. I could dismiss it, saying that Christian Science is fundamentally anti-sensory by doctrine, and that she is compelled by that doctrine to deny that her experience is sensory at all. I would then be asserting that the person who has had the experience is deluded. Or I could dismiss NLPs assertion that the choice of predicates in language reveals how experience is interiorly represented.

In the end, I went with a third explanation but I have to label it only a guess. My conjecture is that in order to be translated into speech, Klingbeils experience has to be mapped onto a worldly dialect, using sensory terms. Her pattern of using visual terms suggests that there is something about vision that makes it analogous to the best source of metaphors for her spiritual experience. This is to say that her experience is indeed not visual, but it is somehow like vision; her perception's relationship to its "object" is similar to vision's relationship with what is seen. 192

So in the end, my NLP-based hypothesis that those who prayed or treated for others would use a kinesthetic strategy was demolished on two grounds. First, I found people

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Conclusion whose reports used metaphors other than kinesthetic ones: Delaneys auditory conversations with God, Hendersons tasting, Ramirez' seeing and singing, and Klingbeils quasi-visual experiences. And Klingbeils denial that her experiences are sensory at all casts doubt on the applicability of the NLP-sensory model. I have recorded what sensory language people used in describing their work, but I found no one preferred sense or strategy.. 11.3.1.2 The prediction that that there would be contact with the one prayed for. This amounted to a prediction that there would be a psychic connection with the person for whom one was praying. The interviews revealed a wide variation in peoples experience of such contact. Julie Henderson finds people and a large part of her healing and blessing practice amounts to keeping company with the person. Although she is meticulous about her boundaries, she is sufficiently confident in her ability to maintain them that she does not keep people at a distance. In fact, over the years she has learned to allow people to remain in touch through the same channel by which she finds them. Antonio Ramirez and Shneor Stern also channel to people and acknowledge the possibility that this connection can lead to being drained. But there are other possibilities. Sr. Colette brings people to God and leaves them with Him. Jean Delaneys interview does not speak of reaching out to people at all. Instead, she calls on God to reach out to them, and to do the work needed. There is no coldness in this way of doing it; it is just that Gods way is best, so she asks God to act and that suffices. Priscilla Stuckey has a full panoply of psychic contact available to her, and she uses it when she is trying to find out what happens; but her healing method, Reiki, involves

192

In the words of W.S. Jevons, "It has been said, indeed, that analogy denotes s resemblance not between things but between the relations of things." This passage was quoted in Melzak, Bypasses: the simple

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Conclusion making contact and then staying out of the way. Her original connection becomes a channel for the healing force, the Reiki, to act. It is not necessary for her to be in psychic contact with the patient, and she finds that to do so is to allow undesirable entanglement. Both Margaret Stortz and Deborah Klingbeil, the two representatives of the Metaphysical movement, are aware of the person for whom they are treating. Klingbeil deliberately turns away from the apparent personality, using it (if at all) only as a connector to allow her to see the spiritual identity of the person. To the degree she perceives that identity, the persons situation will change for the better. Margaret Stortz launches a treatment into Mind, and leaves it with the confidence that Mind will actualize it. She is occasionally aware of indications of "how it is going" a sort of "blank wall" resistance from someone whom she is treating when the treatment is being declined, or a sense of things "falling into place" when they are working but both sorts of indicants tend to be impersonal.

In other words, we cannot say that all those interviewed were in touch with those for whom they were praying or treating. The contact varied from a close keeping company to a much more removed keeping out of the way.

11.3.2 Agreements, the common themes that were found While my own expected findings were not found, I discovered that there were a number of ideas that were shared by all of those who spoke to me. As the group was not any kind of valid sample, these commonalties are not proof of generalities. But they are appropriate contributions to a theory of prayer and treatment, subject to further test.

approach to complexity

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Conclusion 11.3.2.1 Discipline and mission I was impressed that for all the practitioners, prayer or treatment for others is a life discipline. They all do it regularly, with great seriousness. This regularity was one criterion for becoming a participant, of course; but what surprised me is what I can only call their good-humored seriousness. Each person I spoke to does this work very frequently. Most do it daily. They find it to be what Antonio Ramirez called "a task in this life that I have to fulfill." 11.3.2.2 Practitioners pray for others in the same way as for themselves I thought that practitioners might have a separate sub-practice in which they prayed for others that was quite different from their own personal practice. Instead I found that people prayed for others in pretty much the same way that they prayed or treated for themselves.

Antonio Ramirez, for instance, daily puts power into himself. Sr. Colette offers herself to God as she does all the other people she prays for. Deborah Klingbeil treats for herself as well as others by seeking identity. Priscilla Stuckey does Reiki on herself daily. They are "doing unto others" in the most direct way possible, by using the same methods. 11.3.2.3 Letting go, and positive surprises Those interviewed all spoke of positive surprise results. Priscilla Stuckey thought nothing was happening when she was working on Mary Alice and discovered a week later that there had been no further pain. Deborah Klingbeil prayed for a woman and her son, and the son received a more independent life but through the medium of of an unexpected illness. Julie Henderson offers space and does not know what will happen. Margaret Stortz includes in her treatment words inviting God to provide an even better - 326 -

Conclusion outcome. Jean Delaney is often surprised to find herself telephoning someone who (unknown to her) is sick or in need of help.

Experience has taught them to work in a context in which they often do not know what is going to happen. They have come to expect that there will be positive surprises. All of the participants have come to welcome these surprises, even when they can be strenuous.

The unexpected and better-than-expected positive results give them comfort and hope when there seem to be no results at all. As Jean Delaney said,

Like Im praying about a situation now, and have been praying for several years. Ill say, Lord, I dont know whats happening, and I dont dont know when the answers coming, BUT I trust You in the situation.

This is more than a passive resignation. It seems that an active part of the prayer life of these people is to leave the matter with the blessing power, and go away. Priscilla Stuckey has learned that a certain kind of boredom means that she has done enough Reiki at a certain spot. Julie Henderson says, "Enough for now." Margaret Stortz follows Religious Science custom; she finishes her treatments by leaving the matter in Mind. Jean Delaney leaves it with the Lord: It's that thing that most people say you need the most, is F-A-I-T-H. And that's leaving, knowing, that He's going to take care of it. 11.3.2.4 All say the blessing power does the work, but still work at praying. I do not understand this juxtaposition, but I found it in each person's work. Antonio Ramirez said that he had to remind himself it was not he that did the healing and he

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Conclusion goes on shamanizing. Jean Delaney said that prayer is necessary because God wants it to be. Julie Henderson talks about "resting down" and works a grueling tri-continental schedule.

Shneor Stern may have the best explanation, that God has created us to be co-creators neither totally the maker nor the made. But whatever the explanation, all the participants seem to be aware of this paradox. And despite it, they go on with their practice. 11.3.2.5 Keeping company with the Holy. The different interviewees seemed all to have a secret pleasure. I approached them as practitioners, analogous in some ways to medical practitioners. The implicit focus was on how they helped people in need, and much of the discussion did turn about those practices. But all of them seemed to have a slightly different focus in their own lives. They do indeed help others. What they get out of it, however, is the pleasure of keeping company with the Holy.

Deborah Klingbeil said: Well again, prayer is just umm looking at God, being with God, loving God just, you know, just being there.

Jean Delaney spoke of the "communing" with God which lay behind all of her intercessory work. When I asked Margaret Stortz what gave exemplary practitioners their air of peace, she said: I think it is the constant going back to Spirit, the frequent going back to the presence of God within, the nature of their practices, their proclivity to - 328 -

Conclusion treat, their proclivity to meditate, their proclivity to go during the day to mind the store and have little conversations with God, if you want to put it that way.

Priscilla Stuckey also spoke of it as a kind of soaking ambience: I was just thinking today about I was preparing, mentally, for this interview, and thinking about Reiki and how, a lot of times we get into, when were doing Reiki together, when I do Reiki with students, we get into this certain mind-state thats very calm and peaceful and gentle, and compassionate.

Julie Henderson said: I, got soaked in something bigger. And more loving, more free. So to the small extent that that influenced me, then I can do this practice. So it seems to come from a different direction. The practice is a side-effect.

Shneor Stern and Antonio Ramirez (one a theist, and one a non-theist) spoke of the overwhelming joy of the high reaches of their journeys. For Sister Colette the adoration of God is overtly primary. To that adoration she brings along those who need help.

We seem to have some commonalties, perhaps not quite a theory but a set of generalizations for further testing. I would say that those who pray for others as a spiritual practice often report: Discipline and mission. Praying for others as for oneself. Letting go, and unexpected (though positive) results.

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Conclusion The pleasure, or reward, for the practitioner is the constant companykeeping with the Holy.

11.4 Overlaps as Places Where Traditions Can Trade

Some agreements are shared by all of the participants. These agreements function as generalizations, as themes that a yet-untested theory suggests will be found in people who pray for others as a practice.

There are also smaller, partial "overlaps" between and among particular traditions. They are common interests, which link traditions even when there are otherwise great gulfs between them. These suggest that those traditions have the possibility of fruitful exchange about those overlaps. I think of them as trade zones, like free ports.

11.4.1 Channeling For instance, Rabbi Stern spoke often of "channeling." He did not necessarily mean channeling in the popular sense of being a medium for a disembodied spirit, but the word did come up 16 times in the conversation with him. Out of curiosity, I asked my software to search for uses of "channel*"193 in all the interviews. I found that Priscilla Stuckey had used the word four times. To that I added my own knowledge that a common expression for giving a Reiki treatment is "channeling Reiki." Antonio Ramirez did not use the word at all, but he talked repeatedly about bringing power into people.

193

The word "channel" by itself; or with any other characters, to find words like "channels" or "channeling"

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Conclusion So there is a possibility for an exchange among Chassidic Judaism, Core Shamanism and the practitioners of Reiki on the topic of channeling. They all believe in, and enact, the passage of energy through themselves to those in need. They therefore share the presuppositions necessary for that act: that such an energy exists, that one can pass it through oneself, that it is in some sense intelligent, that it is "willing" to be channeled, that it is appropriate to do so, and that the energy will be beneficial to the recipient. Behind those assumptions are others: that the universe has "higher/better-ness" that can be contacted, and that that higher/betterness is (or acts like) a fluid. The "fluidity" is implied by the use of the organizing metaphor of a "channel," a word that in concrete parlance originally referred to various kinds of fluid-passages such as the English Channel. 194

Many groups and practitioners share the metaphor of using "energy" 195 for the benefit of others. The fact that they do means that they have a common interest. They can share recipes and experience. Since Rabbi Stern, Antonio Ramirez and Priscilla Stuckey all used both the term "energy" and the idea of channeling it, there is a potential for exchange among them on this topic. There is no need for them to agree on other matters for this exchange to be fruitful.

194

Concrete metaphors organize thought. They suggest that that which the metaphor is about and has a structure and behavior like the concrete object or process. See Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors we live by 195 For an analysis and unpacking of the idea of "energy" as used in healing movements, see LeShan, Language in the human potential movement

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Conclusion 11.4.2 Contraction & the creation of the Universe Both Julie Henderson and Rabbi Stern spoke of the universe being created by contraction and convolution. This offers another small overlap: a theistic tradition and a non-theistic tradition sharing their understanding of how space and time are created.

That overlap suggests that in their explorations the members of the two traditions may have found analogous methods to deal with contraction and convolution. As I have mentioned above, Chassidic Judaism has a tradition that above all form is Nothing and that healing is accomplished by lifting the formed into that Nothing. 196 Visualizations in the Tantric Buddhism (which is at least part of Henderson's heritage) always begin and end with Emptiness.197 I suspect that Kabbalists and Buddhist Tantrics would have fruitful paths to discussion. 11.4.3 Theological reasoning and treatment For several of the traditions visited here, correct reasoning is a central part of what they do in their practice. For both Christian Science and Religious Science, treatment is a matter of thinking rightly, of reasoning from first principles. I was surprised to see what appeared to be the same process in Sr. Colette's conversation: SC: God is love. And therefore, um, to pray is to be in communion with that love. So to be in communion with love is to learn to love. To learn what love is, to learn what it is to be loved. And all that's involved in prayer, because prayer is primarily adoration. Prayer is primarily praise of him with whom we pray.

196

The word is Hebrew is Ayn, which is also used in the vernacular to mean "There is not(some speicfic thing)" For more on the idea of Ayn, see Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah For its use in early Lubavitch theology, see Elior, The paradoxical ascent to God: the kabbalistic theosophy of Habad Hasidism. 197 By this I mean that to which the Sanskrit word shunyata and its various translations point.

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Conclusion I asked Deborah Klingbeil if this would stand as a Christian Science treatment. She replied: Absolutely! It would pass as a full fledged treatment - there is a good reason that when I say "C.S. treatment "I also say "or the equivalent." I am not sure that Sr. Colette will appreciate your using C.S. as a comparison though, and in all honesty, any prayer tradition, provided the person in it has matured in prayer, would also approve You will read in the Catacomb198 of the little girl who prays, with measurable effects, for her crickets, by petting the box they are in. If I ran my hand over a shoe box, it would not heal like it does for her. For her it is simply an activation device for love. I imagine that in the early days the sign of the cross was much like that, I mean it really activated love and wasn't just done without connection to the heart, and hopefully for some it still is so, to me it is a dear prayer. And here is something I just thought of that maybe I can add to the Catacomb if it is not too late. The reason that many people don't get results from their prayers is that they don't activate the love, they don't feel the adoration. Its like running a hand over a shoe box. I have seen people get prayer results by doing liturgical dance around the test tubes, but when I tried this (in private as you may well believe) I got no measurable results. Does this mean that I am not a good dancer? Not at all. I love to dance and I am good at it. Yet that is what people think - that because the prayer style they use doesn't work, they aren't any good at it. It isn't technique, it's the love. You have to find the key that you have within to activating that adoration. In Christian Science we call God the "Adorable One" (this is part of our interpretation of the Lord's prayer. it is our interpretation of the meaning of "Hallowed be Thy name.") Once you feel God the adoration is automatic, truly to know God is to love God. But we all reach that point in a different way.

This is exactly the sort of conversation I hope might take place in these trade-zones between traditions.

198

The publication of Deborah Klingbeil's Grayhaven School of Christian Science Nursing.

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Conclusion 11.4.4 Openness, and making space; melting into larger, then reforming Henderson and Stortz specifically mentioned opening. Others referred indirectly to the surprise appearance of opportunity, as when Jean Delaney was given the unexpected chance to attend college. Klingbeil mentioned being open as a precondition to things happening: "They're, they're beginning to be receptive, to be open, and then anything can happen." Stuckey referred mostly to her own world-view opening, though she did use "breaking open" as one metaphor for a positive resolution: It was a distinct thing like, that had been blocked, breaking open.

All the participants who mentioned opening valued it positively. Julie Henderson and Deborah Klingbeil mentioned it as a positive permanent condition. Margaret Stortz suggested that it is valuable also to temporarily open, or become larger, to change in that larger state, and then to fall into place.199

11.4.5 Peace as a sign of completion In preparing for this dissertation, I did a great deal of research in the Metaphysical Religions of North America. In many of them, peace often comes as a sign of successfully completed treatment. "Peace" is one of the few themes that seemed present in almost all of the practitioners discourses.

I asked Julie Henderson what indicated a treatment was complete:

199

In metallurgy this expansion, rearrangement and then cooling process is called "annealing". The word has been taken over in Artificial Intelligence research to mean optimization by expansion of possibilities, search for the best of the new, and then re-fixing. For a demonstration that was available in July 1999, see http://www.taygeta.com/annealing/simanneal.html

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Conclusion BW: So what's the quality of being finished in these experiences? JH: So that's, what are the proprioceptive/kinesthetic sign of pleasure. (long pause) Both organisms are at peace? Orwilling to hang out with where it is at the moment, even if it's not completed.

Margaret Stortz said of people who have really invested themselves into their practitionership that "They have peace; they have comfort around them; they're just general nice folks to be around." Priscilla Stuckey said of Reiki: PS: Umm, a situation that had felt cloudy and murky and all wrapped up with lots of emotions, suddenly calms, so that it goes from being a stormy day to a still sunny day. There is no longer a sense of need, or a sense of I have to have something! or a sense of I want something! All those strong emotions just kind of dissolve, and then theres a sense of calm.

Jean Delaney used words much like Julie Henderson: BW: Is there any inner experience, by which you know that you've completed a prayer? JD: Just the peace. Uh, it'll just be a peace, that it's finished.

Three participants did not mention peace: Deborah Klingbeil, Shneor Stern and Antonio Ramirez. I think of them as the warrior-participants. Their primary metaphor for healing and treatment seemed to be a ferocious journey to the source of help and a ferocious return to bring it to the client. I expect that when they read this they will ferociously upbraid me for suggesting that peace is not their primary path.

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Conclusion 11.4.6 "If I rise up into heaven" These same "warrior participants" Deborah Klingbeil, Rabbi Stern and Antonio Ramirez all go "journeying within the holy." Such a journey lies at the base of shamanism. It also present in Christian Science and the Kabbalah, and as I suggested in the chapters on Rabbi Stern and Antonio Ramirez it is strongly reminiscent of the theologies of Hellenistic times. It combines the urge to help with a very old intuition that there is a part of us that can travel outside of physical experience. It requires a strong move along the vertical axis rising up into heaven or seeking in the underworld followed by an equally emphatic return with the fire of heaven or the lost soul. I believe that these three would find interesting experiences to trade, as they seem to me to keep live the oldest shamanic tradition.

11.5 Disagreements: Non-Overlaps as Opportunities & Possibilities

If I were seeking theory, the project might be done at this point. Because my goal is to provide models for others to follow, I am equally interested in finding elements that are not shared. These are the techniques, approaches and novel understandings that the practitioners might borrow from each other. They are not overlaps but opportunities. 11.5.1 Axes of divergence There were many ways in which the prayer and treatment practices of my various informants did not seem to converge. Did not seem is an important disclaimer here, because I have to argue from silence. All I can say is that some of the informants mentioned things that others did not. At least in these interviews with me, they chose to speak of different elements of experience.

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Conclusion But while we do not know what was unmentioned, we can say that different people foregrounded and focused on different kinds of experience. We could return again to the cooking metaphor that ran through the introduction to this dissertation. Chinese and European cooking each have both bread and rice. Mihn Bao, the steamed buns of dim sum, are Chinese raised bread. Risotto and many other recipes are European rice dishes. But despite those overlaps, we can say that Europe emphasizes bread, while China has concentrated on rice. When the two culture meet, it is no surprise that China brings more rice dishes to the encounter, and Europe offers the work of the baker.

I call these strong differences Axes of Divergence, because like spatial axes they help to define a larger space of diversity within which different prayer and treatment styles can cohabit. The idea of differing prayer styles has been explored by others, notably by users of the Myers-Briggs type Inventory.200 But those are different types of prayer predicted from a typology. In this research we have differences that have been discovered in the reports of people who are praying, treating and shamanizing.

The differences establish that there are different ways that people pray and treat. This is one of the existence proofs I mentioned in the methodology section. We know there are many possible ways to do it, because we found those many ways. As was said in the method section, this demonstrates that this is a universe in which such experiences are possible.

200

Michael, Prayer and temperament: different prayer forms for different personality types

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Conclusion The differences help to define a "possibility space" for those who would pray. The possibility space is like the idea of a phase space in physics it is an abstract representation of all the possible states of a system. 201 A two-dimensional phase space for the dynamics of a pendulum, for instance, might have "momentum" on one axis, and "potential energy" on another. In that abstract space one could draw a curve to show how gaining momentum means giving up potential energy. A three-dimensional phase space in thermodynamics might have axes for volume, temperature and pressure; with it one could chart how changes in any of the variables effect the others. Phase spaces are an abstract way for people who think in geometric terms to examine relationships and possibilities.

Some of these divergences in the reports of the participants can be conceived of as axes. Then one can make a phase or possibility space multidimensional, and therefore hard to visualize of the practices of the participants. Among these axes are:

11.5.1.1 Some styles of prayer are cosmological and some are not. A cosmology, says the OED, is a "science or theory of the universe as an ordered whole, and of the general laws which govern it."202 Klingbeil, Henderson, Stern and Rodriguez each spoke of pervasive metaphysical realities as the basis for their healing work. For Klingbeil, the reality is the unreality of matter and sensory experience and the reality of Spirit. One is healed by recognizing that reality. A practitioner can make that recognition for another because of the fundamental connection and Unity of Mind. That

201

Roger Penrose discusses the idea of phase spaces as possibility spaces in Penrose, The emperor's new mind 202 Murray, The compact edition of the Oxford English dictionary

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Conclusion Spirit has various perfections, and the true (Spiritual) identity of each person seems to share those perfections.

For Henderson, the fundamental reality seems to be made up of uncontracted openness in which is found both awareness and compassion. By soaking herself in that reality, she is able to extend some of it to those for and with whom she works. Her personal definition of the fundamental reality is not closed: part of openness seems to be the impossibility of making that definition. She is clear that her experience has changed her definition of what is real over time, and she expects it to continue to do so. Nevertheless she is able to transmit what she has found so far to her students and to those at a distance with whom she works; and it is that awareness (offered in good company and uncontracted openness) that makes it possible for others also to open themselves. Stern and Ramirez work in a strongly vertical universe, with upper and lower parts. For both of them, good and ill may be found both above and below, though at the summit of their universes is great joy.

All four of these participants speak a great deal about the nature of things, the background realities of which their work is an application. We could, I believe, fairly call their work cosmological. Delaneys approach is somewhat different. She speaks of a concrete and definite relationship with God through Jesus. The background nature of the universe is not discussed a great deal in her descriptions of her work. It is probably fair to say her description of her work is non-cosmological.

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Conclusion Priscilla Stuckey and Sr. Colette also did not speak a great deal about cosmology, although they did to a slightly greater degree than did Delaney. Stuckey's work could perhaps be described as cosmologically agnostic, while Sr. Colette focused on love rather than knowledge. Perhaps a better description for both would be cosmologically mysterious. There was some description of cosmology in their discourse, but it typically ended in saying that the greater cosmology was unknown.

Margaret Stortz is an ambiguous case. She comes from the New Thought tradition. New Thought, like Christian Science, is often described as an application of a Cosmic Reality to concrete experience. Her denomination's founder, Ernest Holmes, defined his work in those terms.203 Holmes' source Thomas Troward wrote in such abstract and cosmological terms that it was only his disciples who revealed specific steps to follow. 204

Margaret Stortzs own discourse is much more local and if such a term makes sense idealistically concrete. She treats specific thoughts and specific treatments as effective. One could easily take those as applications of a cosmology, but she does not speak of them that way herself. To this degree she is as non-cosmological as Jean Delaney in her discourse.

So these persons who pray for others position themselves along a spectrum of "cosmologicality," and that spectrum makes one axis in the possibility space.

203

The tradition often describes its work as a "science." See Holmes, How to use the Science of Mind, Holmes, The Science of Mind, Holmes, Questions and answers on the Science of Mind

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Conclusion 11.5.1.2 Theistic/non-theistic The practitioners range along another axis or spectrum from completely theistic to largely non-theistic. Rabbi Stern, Sr. Colette and Jean Delaney are strong believers in a personal God, although they might disagree on the Divine Nature. Margaret Stortz and Deborah Klingbeil believe in an impersonal God, though that God is neither cold nor unintelligent. Priscilla Stuckey's theology is not given to us, except that God has many aspects. Neither Julie Henderson nor Antonio Ramirez can be called theists, though neither is hostile to theism nor to theists; but both do their work without talking much about God. 11.5.1.3 Gnostic/incarnational or ascender/descender G.M. Nagao made this distinction in a 1983 address to the Sixth Conference of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. Ascent can be understood as an activity or movement from this world to the world yonder, or from this human personal existence to the impersonal dharmadhatu, the world of the dharma. Descent is the reverse; it is revival and affirmation of humanity, or personality in human existence. 205

In some sense all the practitioners go up and down between heaven and earth. The distinction between "ascender" and "descender" refers to something else. The preference for ascent or descent is the praying person's answer to the question, "Is it better to be incarnate or transcendent?" The response to this question shows, to some extent, what the person wishes for others and for her- or himself.

204

Typical of Troward's work is Troward, The Edinburgh lectures on mental science. He attempted to make it more concrete in Troward, The creative process in the individual One of his disciples was much more successful; see Behrend, Your invisible Power: the mental science of Thomas Troward 205 Nagao, Ascent and Descent: Two-Directional Activity in Buddhist Thought

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Conclusion The person who prefers ascension is attempting to leave the world-as-it-seems. Deborah Klingbeil is clear that the world as it seems is an illusion, and a painful one. Successful treatment involves looking at the true self, which stands outside of this world of misunderstanding, and eventually escaping from this mistake entirely. Rabbi Stern is looking and praying for the ascension of the whole world.

Julie Henderson seems also to have this view. The world as it seems is a world of stories and contractions. Expansion and de-contraction means letting go of those stories, those localizations, without grasping at their absence either. It involves a detachment from just those issues that embed us in our stories. So, despite her somatic background, Julie Henderson seems to be an ascender.

Antonio Ramirez and Priscilla Stuckey speak constantly of this world and of embodiment. They seem to be persons who lay on hands in this world, and so to be descenders.

Jean Delaney also seems to be focused in this world. Though she refers to death as the ultimate healing, she prays for people to be better in this life, to know God in this life, to have help in this life. I would call her a descender. Margaret Stortzs focus seems similar. The Religious Science pattern of treatment overtly involves an ascent followed by a descent back into the world, but what Dr. Stortz talked about was the concrete and external results.

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Conclusion Sr. Colette feels that she is already doing what she will be doing in Heaven loving God and bringing His creatures to that love. One has the feeling that she is not attached to either position; she'll stay or go as long as she has her Friend.

So both ascending and descending preferences, and different degrees of both, exist among those who pray and treat for others. "Ascending/descending" becomes a second axis of the possibility space. 11.5.1.4 Personality/impersonality Is the spiritual experience primarily an experience of the personal or of the impersonal? Clearly, all the participants experience both personal and impersonal realities; but I found that when they turn their attention to the Blessing Power, the participants find very different degrees of personality and of impersonality.

Rabbi Stern does not specify the personality of God; my impression is that his reticence is part of the Jewish custom of not trying to limit the Holy One. Deborah Klingbeil emphasizes that for her God is not a person. The identities that she seeks are also not personalities in the ordinary sense, although they are the most important part of the reality of each individual. Jean Delaney experiences God to be a Person in fact, three Persons and deals with Him in personal terms at all times.

Priscilla Stuckey removes personality from her treatment to the best of her ability. She is fully capable of perceiving the personality of those she treats, but usually prefers to stand away from that awareness. She allows the healing energy of Reiki to flow through her

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Conclusion quite impersonally. Margaret Stortz speaks of God as a Force, and usually with the impersonal but capitalized pronoun "It," as is the custom of her Religious Science denomination. Antonio Ramirez (in a section I did not reproduce from his interview in the chapter about him) speaks of "the Universal Power" he has experienced as being made up of all of us, not God in the traditional sense.

Julie Hendersons fundamental reality is very difficult to describe in terms of personality or impersonality. The fundamental reality seems deeply impersonal, a quality of multidimensional openness. But Julie has, and welcomes, very deep and enduring contact with the personal experience of those she contacts by finding. She speaks of a quality she calls Wisdom Presence that pervades her religious life. The words she uses for it are consistently partitive (that is, non-individual like the nouns that are used for water, air or electricity). She finds that Wisdom Presence may have definite flavors that mark it as related to individuals she knows such as her teachers or to traditional Boddhisattvas. Even the degree of personal flavor varies from individual to individual. 11.5.1.5 Sensory styles One of the a priori theories that did not hold up was that all healing would be described with what in NeuroLinguistic Programming is called "kinesthetic" metaphors, and that it would use variants of the word "feeling." Instead I found that people had a variety of favored senses in their intercessory work. It is also not appropriate to call sensory styles one axis. Instead it is a family of axes, the presence or absence of different senses in the strategy of the person who prays or treats. There could be a visual axis, a kinesthetic axis, an olfactory axis, a gustatory axis, an auditory axis, and perhaps others.

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Conclusion

There were some people whose work was almost entirely kinesthetic. Julie Henderson has a few visual and taste/smell experiences when she is working for others, but almost all of her work is in feeling terms. She detects what is going on with feeling; and the action she takes is also largely kinesthetic, a sense of the opening of space. Much of Stuckey's work is in feeling terms as well.

Stortz and Delaney both act with words: Stortz' treatments and Delaney's prayers are verbal and out-loud. Their prayers are closer to what most people think of as "prayer," just because they are in words. Much of what Delaney receives is also verbal, words or short phrases. Stortz sometimes gets a sense, kinesthetically, that there is a wall (when there is a problem) or that things enlarge and then fall into place.

Klingbeil describes her strategy for treatment in visual terms. She "looks for" and "sees" the identity of the person she treats. At the same time she denies that her strategy is sensory at all. Ramirez' style is highly visual; he sees in all three spiritual worlds. But much of his action is auditory, the singing of power into someone, or kinesthetic when he channels through his hands. Rabbi Stern speaks of light, and like Ramirez he channels energy and joy from above.

Sr. Colette sees those who need prayer in her mind's eye, and then brings them into the feeling-world of her adoration for God. Something she did not dwell on, but we can

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Conclusion assume, is that much of her prayer is sung as she chants the seven hours of the Divine Office.

It is clear that the within the possibility space of prayer and treatment are kinesthetic, auditory and visual strategies. 11.5.1.6 Contact/distance The degree of experienced contact with the person prayed or treated for varies widely. The idea of contact does have a kinesthetic presupposition, and I would like to generalize it to a larger sense: a psychic closeness to the client.

Henderson seems to find the person in psychic space, and to have an intimate awareness of even a distant client. Stuckey can do so, but more often removes herself and "gets out of the way" when doing Reiki. Ramirez does much of his work in person, touching a person both physically and psychically. Rabbi Stern engages those with whom he works both verbally and by channeling energy.

While Delaney is personally very warm, her method of prayer as she describes it does not involve a close psychic contact with the person prayed for. Instead, she takes the whole matter to God and asks Him to handle it. Then she lets go of it. Sr. Colette does the same thing.

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Conclusion Stortz has a variable experience. She sometimes does have impressions of contact with the person she is working for. But she does not always do so. She can treat whether or not she has this contact.

Deborah Klingbeil's form of treatment requires that she not only perceive but also love the identity of the person with whom she is in contact. Curiously, she reported more details of her perception of problem situations, of "mental atmosphere." Her contact seems as likely to be with the whole situation as with an individual, but this may be only a result of her descriptions. 11.5.1.7 Directive/non-directive The interviewees varied widely in the degrees to which they felt it was appropriate to specify the desired results. This "axis" ranges from extremely detailed requests for the desired results, to very open and general good wishes.

Jean Delaney asks for what she wants all the way down to discounts on a phone bill for the interviewer. Sister Colette says God is as concerned with a child's math test as with the flows within the Trinity, but her treatment is to bring all these matters to God, because He knows better than we what they need. Margaret Stortz comes from a tradition, Religious Science, which suggests great detail in the specification of desired results. Although she specifies the feeling quality of the results desired, she is perhaps less specific about the objective qualities than is customary in her tradition.

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Conclusion Deborah Klingbeil works on a case until healing is achieved. Her specification, though, is that the patient return to their identity state, their true image, which she may not know. She is confident that that image pre-exists, however; her treatment is to see and love it. Rabbi Stern works to bring a person to self-sufficiency, standing on their own feet and praying.

Priscilla Stuckey trusts the healing energy to know what to do, so when she is doing Reiki she does not try to tell it how to act or what to do. Ramirez also trust the power to work, but he "looks" psychically to see if the work is successfully completed. Julie Henderson's opening is even less specific: her goal is a relaxation away from the contractions of mind that make forms at all.

11.5.1.8 "Lineaged" or not Traditions that I call "lineaged" believe that their teachings are directly transmitted from teacher to disciple. The teachers transmitted not only knowledge, but also the consciousness that confers the power being used. Typically, lineaged traditions are full of stories of the immediate teachers. Non-lineaged traditions may also have traditional stories, but they may be of a distant founder or of almost anyone.

Julie Henderson's work I would call lineaged. She talks constantly of her teachers. She continues to receive transmissions from those teachers, which reshape her consciousness and her behavior. Her sense, and the sense she gives her students, is that the consciousness we are developing is (in significant part) passed on to us from recent

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Conclusion persons. Rabbi Stern also comes from the strongly lineaged tradition of the Lubavitcher Chassidim, with a known line of Rebbes that stretches back to the Baal Shem Tov.

Antonio Ramirez has learned from a variety of teachers, and manages to keep their multiple traditions in balance. Reiki has initiations, a common mark of a lineaged tradition, but Priscilla Stuckey does not talk at great length of her teachers. It appears that the Reiki itself is as much a teacher as they were. That is also true of Margaret Stortz and of Sr. Colette; their experience with Spirit has been their primary teacher. Both Jean Delaney and Deborah Klingbeil are in the middle. They both learned prayer as children, and both acknowledge with affection and respect the persons who taught them. Nevertheless it seems that for both of them the primary teacher has been the doing of the practice.

11.5.2 The "possibility space" defined by these divergences By putting the differences so baldly, we see that the styles of intercessory prayer or treatment are extremely divergent. A phase-space, "the possibility space of prayer or treatment for others," can include all these axes. Cosmological/non-cosmological Theistic/non-theistic Gnostic (ascender)/incarnational(descender) Personality/impersonality of Blessing Source Preferred sensory style Contact with/distance from recipient

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Conclusion Directive/non-directive about desired results Lineaged/non-lineaged

The practice can be Cosmological, sited within an understanding of the universe and closely linked with that understanding, or it can be practiced within agnosticism about how the universe is structured. Practitioners may believe it is better to be in this universe as descenders, or they may wish to escape the chains of incarnation as ascenders. They may find the Blessing Power to be highly Personal, the best and closest love one can have; or they may find it to be completely impersonal. We have seen that the practitioners may have visual, kinesthetic, auditory, and even olfactory or gustatory sensory preferences; they may also describe the practice as non-sensual. The connection with the person being worked for may be intimate and revealing, distant, or indirect through the blessing power. The practitioner may specify exactly the results desired, or may refrain from doing so and trust the blessing power to prescribe. Practitioners may experience themselves as working with, within, and from a lineage, carrying power from their teachers; or they may experience themselves as being taught primarily by the practice itself.

None of these axes of divergence is binary. In each case there are people in the middle of the axis as well as at the poles. Together they constitute a space of possibility with at least eight dimensions, or more if the sensory-style axis is considered to be a family of axes. These dimensions are not postulated from theory: instead they are found them in the testimonies of working practitioners.

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Conclusion

The discoveries of these axes of divergence are more of the "existence proofs" spoken of in the methodology section. If the testimony of these practitioners is to be believed and we have at a minimum a prima facie case for believing them one might move along any of these axes in the practice of intercessory prayer and treatment. The implication is that any practitioner can look at the others and say, "I could do that!"

11.6 Learning from Other Practitioners

It is obvious that some of these styles of prayer s seem to contradict each other. If one is standing aside, how can one stay connected? If one has asked the Holy Spirit to pray, how can one determine to solve the problem by seeing the identity of the one prayed for? If one engages in shaman's battle is one not taking back what one has laid before spirit?

My only response is that these learnings do not fit neatly into a simple system of practice. They have enlarged what I find it possible to do. Instead of dealing with every situation with the same style of treatment, now I find that I have a variety of methods, and at different times one or the other seems appropriate. The price, of course, is that there is no longer a single best practice.

The different cosmologies implied by the practices also do not fit neatly into a grand unifying theory. The price of increased freedom, for me, has been an increase in

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Conclusion confusion, a forced agnosticism. 206 My friend Frederick Douglass Perry resituated this agnosticism for me, though. I was telling him about the divergences among the responses BW: It's hard to find a universe in which they're all possible. FDP: How about the one we live in? In so far is there is confusion, it is simply because the universe is turning out to be richer than I expected.

11.6.1 For practice, what's not in common may be what is valuable. To find alternatives to customary methods, one first has to find something different. In other words, those parts of the interview reports that do not overlap create theoretical indeterminacy, but practical freedom.

Someone else's perception and way of doing something may have one kind of value because it agrees with yours. But it may be even more valuable if it reveals something that seems impossible to you. By doing so, it opens the world up. It is my hope that the various methods of prayer recorded here will serve as such existence proofs. To each denomination they say, "There is more."

Realistically, I do not think that many traditions will accept something from another tradition with its "made elsewhere" label still on it. Instead, I expect that the receiving tradition will examine its own past and find something similar to the admired feature in

206

Lila Gatlin would have predicted that these two would happen together. The price of acquiring choice is uncertainty, she suggested, in Gatlin, Information theory and the living system

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Conclusion the other tradition. As Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan said candidly in the introduction to his book Jewish Meditation, Today, many American Jews have become involved in Eastern religions. It is estimated that as many as 75 percent of the devotees in some ashrams are Jewish, and large percentages follow disciplines such as Transcendental Meditation. When I speak to these Jews and ask them why they are exploring other religions instead of their own, they answer that they know of nothing deep or spiritually satisfying in Judaism. When I tell them there is a strong tradition of meditation and mysticism, not only in Judaism, but in mainstream Judaism, they look at me askance. Until Jews become aware of the spiritual richness of their own tradition, it is understandable that they will search in other pastures.207

When a different religion shows that something is possible by doing it, people are moved to seek similar possibilities in their own tradition. As Kaplan looked within his own tradition to find meditation, so the very orthodox Presbyterian Glenn Clark was moved by the heterodox New Thought movement to look in mainstream Protestantism for a tradition of effective prayer. One who read his books about prayer might never know that he had learned a great deal from the "Mental Cure" movement, and even invited many of its leaders to a conference to share experiences and discoveries. 208 In other words, I believe that divergences become an opportunity to find overlaps, by re-valuing lost and quiescent parts of one's own tradition.

207 208

Kaplan, Jewish meditation : a practical guide, p. vi Among Clark's many books are Clark, The man who talks with flowers: the intimate life story of Dr. George Washington Carver, Clark, The man who tapped the secrets of the universe, Clark, The soul's sincere desire The story of his involvement with the New Thought movement is found in Braden, Spirits in rebellion: the rise and development of New Thought. The account of Clark's 1945 Healing Advance conference is in Beard, Everyman's Search, p. 5

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Conclusion It is my hope that these accounts of various ways of intercessory prayer can serve as such "there is more" existence proofs for people in various denominations. These proofs that there is more serve as trade zones, or even as back roads, through which ideas can cross between denominations, like the innumerable small unguarded smugglers' roads between the United States and Canada.

11.6.2 Requisite variety revisited If all you have is one method even of prayer you may attempt to use it in every situation. When people learn a practice within a community, they tend to learn what that community does. This is obvious enough and is not a problem until for some reason the traditions do not work for that person.

The traditions may "fail" because of individual incompatibility with the traditional method. If a person is offered a highly kinesthetic method, but their own internal strategies are almost all visual, the chances are the person will either decide the method does not work or will experience personal failure. 209

Methods may also not work because situations require a different approach. If a person practices a method in which healings are supposed to be rapid if they come at all, and the situation being prayed for is the kind that must heal slowly, the method and the situation itself are not matched.

209

For a Myers-Briggs interpretation of the relationship between personal style and prayer, see again Michael, Prayer and temperament: different prayer forms for different personality types and also Richardson, Four spiritualities: expressions of self, expressions of spirit, a psychology of contemporary

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Conclusion

Sometimes it is not a matter of failure so much as it is of a missed opportunity for enrichment and expression. A person with a natural flair for ritual may belong quite happily to a Quaker Meeting, but never have an outlet for this talent.

Deborah Klingbeil said in her email response to Sr. Colette's prayer: it is so important that prayer not be interpreted as only one thing, it is even worse than allowing only one interpretation of Scripture. Because it cuts to the heart of our ability to pray and heal and love. Just think if prayer were considered to be only dancing - and how many people would feel awkward. Or if prayer was considered to be petting shoe boxes - what a dull world if that is all we could do at church. It is just as foolish to believe that prayer is only talking. Love must be activated individually in the way God leads us. Once it is activated the technique will fall away and there will just be this adoration, that part happens by itself. It doesn't matter if you get to Niagara by car or train or bus, when you get there your response of awe will be just the same. 11.6.3 Impressive people I remain impressed by the personal qualities of the people who agreed to be interviewed. So were those who have read the drafts. Brendan Collins said: In his essay "On Courage," on martyr-heros in Nazi Germany (where he discusses Hans and Sophie Scholl, and Franz Jaegerstaetter, who was recently beatified by Rome), Kohut210 describes three psychological qualities of the "nuclear self" that distinguish heroic courage from psychosis: "the presence of a fine sense of humor; the ability to respond to others with subtle empathy; and, generally at the time when the ultimate heroic decision has been reached and the agonizing consequences have to be faced, the suffusion of the personality with a profound sense of inner peace and serenity--a mental state akin to wisdom. This is something which never fails to impress the observer, including even persecutors, torturers and executioners." (p. 16) Even though you are not interviewing "martyr-heros," you were interviewing people who lived their faith and
spiritual choice In NLP classes I learned, as an example of methods that work in one situation and not in another, that in English a phonetic strategy works well for reading and very badly for spelling. 210 Kohut, Self Psychology and the Humanities

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Conclusion who certainly manifested the first two of Kohut's qualities (and you may have noticed a quality of wisdom evident evening their bodies, Kohut's third sign.) We need more studies of the psychology of highly developed consciousness, not just mental illness, and I see your work supporting a psychological insight Kohut developed (briefly but movingly). 11.6.4 Just for example I hope that others will profit from this research, but I undertook it quite selfishly. I wanted to learn more about the practice of prayer and treatment for others, to explore this possibility space, for my own sake.

I am not a member of any particular denomination. Nevertheless, I had habits of prayer. There were some things that I did in praying and treating for others, and there were some things I had never thought of doing. Perhaps my own response can serve as an example of the sort of change that is possible when one is confronted with "alternate recipes" for prayer. 11.6.4.1 "Holy Spirit, Pray." For many years I have been somewhere on the border between the American Metaphysical movement and Buddhism. Both of these tend to be a bit impersonal; one generally does not see them as "chummy" with the holy.

Jean Delaney, on the other hand, has a very close and familiar relationship with God. She talks with God all the time, expecting a response and frequently getting one. One part of her close relationship with God strongly spoke to me her willingness to let God, as Spirit, do the praying. Because if I really don't know how to pray I will say, "Holy Spirit, pray. I don't know how. I don't know what the prayer is, right here." - 356 -

Conclusion

This answered a need in me, because I frequently do not have any idea what to pray for. I just have the feeling that something needs to be done. When I mentioned this sort of feeling on a mailing list, a friend from Finland pointed out the New Testament passage on which this practice is based: Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.211

As Kaplan found that much of meditation was already within his own tradition, I also find that this valuable custom of letting the Spirit pray to the Spirit is found in my own (metaphysical) tradition. Religious Science practitioner Craig Carter wrote: Not long ago I was trying to treat and not getting very far. ideas were stale, affirmations were platitudes with no real feeling of power in them. Then I remembered. And in the still ness that followed, I began to be at peace. I stopped even thinking about my patients, or treatment, or anything at all. Then my awareness just turned towards God. (It is hard to explain this, except to say that when you are ready to forget yourself and look, God's Presence will draw your awareness.) And then, clear as a bell, came the words: DIVINE SUBSTANCE IS NOT SUBJECT TO DISEASE. You will have to experience for yourself the kind of thrill which comes with this type of realization. I practically shouted these words aloud! I knew healing was now established. And it was.212

211 212

Rom 8:26 KJV Carter, Your handbook for healing, p. 4

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Conclusion The idea of "Holy Spirit, pray!" in Ms. Delaney's story drew me to do it, to ask the Spirit to pray though me. But as a collateral effect it drew up and drew to my attention those parts of my own tradition that practiced the same way. Then I was able to take on the practice without leaving my own tradition.

In a certain way my discovery could be called a move along the Personal/Impersonal axis described above. I moved from a view of Spirit as impersonal to a view of it as a warm and trustworthy ally. It was not easy, but by Jean Delaney's example I was able to do it.

11.6.4.2 Seeing identities Deborah Klingbeil says that what she calls "seeing identity" is not visual at all. The best approximation I could make of it was to try to do it visually. A number of times I got an image of the person I was praying for being, not the embedded (and often somewhat entrapped) person we would encounter daily, but as connected somehow to a free being that I would see as symbol.

I had never tried to pray by seeing before. We cannot be sure I was doing what Klingbeil does, of course. I found this an odd experience, but also a liberating one. I began to understand what writers have meant when they talk about a higher self that is above the disturbances and turbulence of daily life and sensation. This awareness came and went for me; but did indeed expand my possibility space, in part by moving along the axis from little vision to high vision. 213

213

Varying the mix and importance of the various senses in a strategy is a specialty of NLP. See Andreas and Andreas, Change your mind -- and keep the change

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Conclusion 11.6.4.3 Anatta "Anatta" is the Pali word for "no-self." Just what it means in Buddhism is a subject of wide debate. It does not mean, for instance, that there is no phenomenological experience of self-hood; it means, rather, that the "self" does not have ultimate status. I found that my experience with Julie Henderson over the years has given me some other meanings for this enigmatic expression.

One of them is the repeated experience that the private and bounded self is (as she puts it) "not where the action is." When one repeatedly reaches out to other persons, right across the boundaries of time and space, the sense of isolation begins to drop. I got the feeling that connection with others is possible, no matter where (and ultimately, when) they may be. We usually think of selfhood as a somewhat private house. In working with Julie I have experienced enough comings and goings in my own and other's "houses" to think of them as connected, if not rooms of a common mansion.

Beyond just connection, it has been possible for me, once or twice, to identify with space itself. The experience would be just a liberating oddity except that when Julie points her students to the teachers in her lineages, we experience them as being primarily space. This means that there are people who have left their houses of self, and that one can live outside of such houses.

Julie said that she learned from one of her teachers that she did not have to disconnect from those with whom she worked. While the connection might not be foregrounded, it

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Conclusion could remain. As a member of a leave-me-alone culture that values autonomy, I found this terrifying.

But I tried deliberately leaving a connection, however thin, with those I worked on. I discovered that permitting the link to remain did indeed solve the upset that disconnection created. It was in accord with the background belief that we are fundamentally connected anyway. And it alleviated a sense of loneliness I have felt all my life. 11.6.4.4 Dissolve and reform Margaret Stortz talked about things growing larger and then falling into place. I found that this was the most concrete metaphor I have encountered for the way things seem to shift when an undesirable situation is recast into a good one. The definition of "larger," though, I learned from Julie: the situation enlarges not by acquiring more space in this set of dimensions, but by opening into a larger set of dimensions that includes our familiar four and others as well. The context changes. Given that enlargement, the situation can move and fall into place. 11.6.4.5 Standing Aside, leaving it with God Sometimes I find that I am just too personally and emotionally involved in a situation to pray with any kind of equanimity. I may find the person I am trying to pray for too attractive or unattractive. I may have a very fixed sense of how things should come out.

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Conclusion In that situation I find myself borrowing Priscilla Stuckey's method of "standing aside" and letting the energy flow and do its work without my meddling. The Reiki metaphor is particularly appropriate for this method. One directs the energy to the situation and then all you have to do is set your intention, and you really can think about whatever you want, or talk about whatever you want.

In many ways this is like the Catholic notion that the sacraments function ex opera operato, from the very fact that the priest did the act and without regard to the priest's state. This view is particularly comforting when one's own state is chaotic. One can achieve the detached view by moving along the contact axis from high-contact to lowcontact.

Another way of seeing this same letting-go was shown to me by Sr. Colette. One turns toward the Blessing Power as Love, and brings those who need help to "the One who loves them best." It is like standing in the sun with your cat in your arms you are both warmed. This is a move along the directivity axis, with faith.

11.7 Looking Back

This dissertation began as a search for models of prayer. I wanted to examine the lives of those who pray and treat for others, to find how they did it and how it affected them.

I employed the framework of Grounded Theory and looked for complete and partial overlaps among the accounts that were given to me. The complete overlaps became a tentative theory about what such practitioners have in common. - 361 -

Conclusion

At the same time, I looked for non-overlaps, not so much in doctrines as in experience. These non-overlapping anecdotes became proofs of the existence of a very large, very various "possibility space" for the practice of treating for others. Within that possibility space one could discover many new, very specific ways of praying and treating. My own model was extremely specific: Jacques Pepin's method of draining fried food on a cakerack. He did not create a new theory of cooking. Instead he borrowed a particular technique from outside his own culture and then disseminated it widely. I wanted to find similarly useful particular methods and present them to others. I hope these new possibilities will intrigue those who pray and treat for others. May their kind service flourish! 11.7.1.1 The most important finding I think the central finding is that this practice of prayer for others of treatment and shamanizing for others, of interceding with God for others, of bringing them to God, of drawing down Divine revelation for them, of keeping company and of showing them Great Space, of praising God and remembering them, of seeking their Identity beside the Great Sea of God this practice does exist in America at the end of the second millennium.

This has been in no sense a statistical study, so it is not possible to generalize from this small group to the population at large. It is not possible from this study to say how many people in the population follow any of these practices.

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Conclusion It may seem tautological to notice that the participants pray or treat for others: these persons were interviewed because they had these disciplines. As in so many cases in this research, however, the findings are a proof of existence. The sound-bite wisdom might say that America would not have these practices in it, that it is a country obsessed only with private success and material accomplishment. But that was not the case. It was not only possible to find these people, it was relatively easy. A few inquiries, the kindness of other persons I know, and I was able to speak with people who have made this the spiritual regimen of their lives. In every case, I could have continued through their introductions to speak with others who follow similar practices.

Does it matter that some people follow this intercessory practice for others? It will be significant if such people are a necessary trace element in the ecology of life in the universe. Such is my suspicion; I believe it is not necessary for many people to adopt this practice for it to contribute to the wellness and happiness of all beings. My contact with these people was good for me. I left my interview with each one feeling better than I felt when the interview began. Whatever they offer, it has to do with bringing life and peace. The thought of them enlivens me still.

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