Harding O G
Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy, University of the West Indies, Kingston 7, Jamaica.
West Indian Med J. 2001 Dec;50(4):269-72.
Arising from an emerging world view in philosophy, it is argued that the mind can function beyond the individual and is not constrained by time and distance; it is in fact non-local. Prayer is cited as an example of non-local manifestation of consciousness. Dossey describes three distinct eras of medicine. The hallmark of Era 3 is the non-local mind and unexplained discoveries of distant healing and intercessory prayer. In researching the medical literature, Dossey discovered 130 studies dealing with the efficacy of prayer as a healing treatment. Those studies disclosed that prayer had a remarkable effect not only on human beings, but also on many other things including bacteria, germinating seeds and animals. Some cases of distant manifestation of consciousness on non-humans are discussed en passant, but the focus of this paper is the healing power of intercessory prayer on humans. Two case studies are offered in support of the evidence for non-local healing and the question is asked whether there is no place in medicine for a multiple approach to healing. Further, if these reported studies of prayer therapies are meaningful, are physicians not using these additional treatments withholding something curative from their patients?
从哲学中一种新兴的世界观出发，有人认为心灵可以超越个体发挥作用，不受时间和距离的限制；实际上它是非局部的。祈祷被引为意识非局部表现的一个例子。多西描述了医学的三个不同时代。时代3的标志是非局部心灵以及远距离治疗和代祷的无法解释的发现。在研究医学文献时，多西发现了130项关于祈祷作为一种治疗方法的疗效的研究。那些研究表明，祈祷不仅对人类有显著影响，而且对许多其他事物包括细菌、发芽的种子和动物也有显著影响。文中顺便讨论了一些非人类意识远距离表现的案例，但本文的重点是代祷对人类的治愈力。提供了两个案例研究来支持非局部治疗的证据，并提出了一个问题：在医学中，是否没有多种治疗方法并存的空间。此外，如果这些报道的祈祷疗法研究是有意义的，医生不使用这些额外的治疗方法是否是在对患者隐瞒某种治愈手段呢？
