PSI Annual Journal 2001

On June 25, 2000 I delivered a sermon at the Swampscott Unitarian Universalist Church which seemed to arouse much interest and was of such a practical nature that I decided to make it available to others not present. I have summarized the opening section and expanded the rest, which describes an actual attempt at the holistic or alternative healing of a person diagnosed as having an as yet incurable disease. The information given is not intended for your use, but to encourage your own further investigation.

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Allopathic or tradition medicine has tended to emphasize treatment of the sick physical body and of the ailment itself in the belief that disease is caused by bacteria or virus which attack the individual. The task of the doctor is to kill or drive out the bacteria or virus with injection needles or pills or surgery. Undeniably allopathic medicine has resulted in tremendous good for the human race, even as it can occasionally go awry. Also the medicines it uses occasionally can have unpleasant side effects. This description is too brief and somewhat unfair there, but all are well acquainted with this form of medicine.

Holistic medicine has taken a somewhat different approach. It tends to emphasize treatment of the whole person, regardless of the problem, in the belief that disease is caused by weakened resistance brought about by the individual' s own living habits and physical and mental stresses. It understands the human being to be a unity of body, mind and spirit, often recognizing the importance of religion and religious faith and attitude in this. It recognizes a broad spectrum of therapies and alternative forms of medicine and remedies, both East and West, no one of which is capable of treating the entire human being. It understands that emotional and mental stresses – constant fears, anxieties, worries, tensions, overeating, overindulgence in proteins, fats. Or refined sugars, tobacco and alcohol, the negative effects of environment, lack of exercise, etc., can cause illness. It tends to emphasize prevention and individual responsibility. It offers no magic bullet, and can be slow. Normally it does no harm. It is the natural way.

Today more and more of the younger physicians are open to the benefits of holistic medicine and the approach it takes in addition to their own discipline. I think it is great when we can find a person who has been trained in both allopathic and holistic medicine, the best of both worlds. And this is quite possible, if you are "on line" with your computer. The website www.acam.org gives you the physicians in Massachusetts (and all over the country) who also practice holistic medicine, some of whom are also chiropractors. Or write ACAM, American College of the Advancement of Medicine, Box 3427, Laguna Hills, CA 92654. These physicians have the advantage of a vast array of diagnostic tools at hand, etc. in contrast to therapists who have been trained solely in alternative healing.

And now the description of an attempt at holistic healing, as augmented by conventional healing. The patient is my wife. A few years before 1994 Robin had been showing signs of increasing poor health, both mental and physical. Then on March 14, 1994 when Robin awoke she displayed an almost total loss of memory, not even knowing who I was, and was deeply disturbed and confused in general. The little memory that was left has continued to decline. At Deaconess Hospital she was diagnosed as having Alzheimer' s disease. It was suggested that I put Robin in a nursing home and names were given to me. I considered this for a fraction of a second, even as I know that if Robin had been a man and I, a woman, I might not have had the strength to care for her. I didn' t like the diagnosis given at Deaconess so I took Robin to McLean Hospital for a second opinion. According to them she "has a progressive degenerative condition that is probably due to Alzheimer' s disease and which is super-imposed on her chronic bipolar disorder."

Over the nearly three years that followed Robin' s condition only worsened. She became seriously depressed, often crying for an hour or two at time, with morbid thoughts of dying, much self condemnation and belittling, withdrawn, unfocused, staring off into space, no interest in living, very lethargic and listless and physically weak with no energy, sleeping long hours mostly during the daytime, her immune system at a low point, no appetite, losing over fifty pounds. In spite of her lethargy, Robin began to get very restless and agitated, walking back and forth to the front door, trying to get out, shaking the door over and over and over again. She was even more restless in any public place and in an elevator. During the first year Robin broke both shoulders and came down with the flu and the shingles. It certainly seemed that there was no hope for her and she would just gradually die.

During all that time and since, of course, Robin has been under the care of a primary care physician and a psychiatrist. She was given many drugs (anti-psychotics and anti-depressants) in an effort to ease her condition. As you can well imagine, even with the help of our two wonderful daughters all this was extremely difficult for me. But I learned to cope and adapt. When I felt sorry for myself, I thought of how fortunate it was that I had the good health and strength to see Robin through this. I thanked God many times a day for this. I believe gratitude is essential, whatever our condition; it helps body, mind and soul to be alive. On top of this I learned in a new way the importance of loving myself. In spite of their love for their mother, Tracy and Kelly had their own responsibilities and lives to lead. I was the one. I had no choice. I had to stay healthy, and take the necessary steps to aid in this.

In various ways I attempted this including my daily times of meditation and prayer. I did not have to ask myself, "Why did this have to happen to Robin?", "Why to me?" because I believe that there is a reason, maybe several reasons for everything that comes to us in life, such as my belief that Robin and I have been together in previous lifetimes, and that this present difficulty is an opportunity for Robin, or me, or the two of us together to work out unresolved issues from the past or to grow spiritually in various ways, and I was glad that I was the one to see Robin through this difficult time, whatever the reason. Then there was the thought of God. I believe we are all like cells in the greater body of God. In God we do live and move and have our being, even though we are often unaware of this. God is the greater context of our individual lives. Insofar as we are open to this greater reality, God, and live in harmony with it, we have the strength of the whole. And then there is the thought of Jesus, to my liberal Christian persuasion, the one most aware of God here on earth and the one in whom God shone most brightly, an earthly example of self-forgetting service, and our cosmic friend.

Furthermore, everything that comes to us in life is an opportunity for soul growth. No where was this clearer to me in my new relationship with Robin than in regard to patience. At first I was often impatient with her, expecting her to do what I knew was good for her and to do it now. This attitude proved to be totally counterproductive. Impatience on my part only resulted in negative responses on her part. I had to learn to be patient. My best approach proved to be the old adage, "Let go, let God", to do my best and attempt to work with Robin and her moods. To put it mildly, I still have much to learn in this regard.

Humor proved to be an invaluable aid to me, especially during the first discouraging months. Somehow I came across a book, the Catnappers by P. G. Wodehouse. It make me laugh out loud in spite of my heavy burden of care and lifted my spirits, as did such videos of movies as What About Bob?, What' s Up Doc?, Some Like It Hot and Back to School. My favorite sport, basketball, also helped watching the postseason games on TV during the spring of 1994. But what could I do to help Robin get well? Until very recently science has concluded that brain cell degeneration cannot be reversed. It is incurable. But I am not one to give up easily. Fortunately there is a source of possible help with which I have been familiar, an alternative source for healing. For fifty years I have been attempting to follow the advice of the man called "the father of holistic medicine," Edgar Cayce.

Long ago Cayce said that dementia could be reversed, that brain cells can be regenerated. This man, a psychic in a billion, who died in Virginia Beach in 1945, came to believe that he was able to provide information of a reliable nature about almost anything, from the meaning of life to what happens at death, etc., limited only by the questions he was asked. Many of his "readings", as they came to be called, dealt with illness, physical and mental, including various supposedly incurable diseases. It seems generally agreed by those who studied his work seriously that his anatomical descriptions and diagnosis were accurate, as much for people who met with him in his office as for those thousands of miles away whom he never met.

The only two serious criticisms leveled against his work are his supposed predictions of the future (Cayce had dreams apparently indicating certain upheavals of the earth) and his prescriptions for treatment of health problems. But Cayce himself believed that the future is not fixed, but subject to change, such as by human free will, which he believed in spite of the ways in which we each have limited our own freedom. His prescriptions for healing were naturally suspect because he seemed to draw upon almost every form of treatment known to man, including but by no means limited to those of allopathic medicine. These included surgery, osteopathy, chiropractic, physical therapy, exercise (especially walking and swimming), stretching, diet, and many more, plus what might be termed folk remedies. His prescriptions rarely treated just the symptom, but aimed for the total health of body, mind and spirit and usually involved various forms of treatment for one problem. Thousands of people came to believe they were helped by following the Cayce readings, many who turned to them as a last resort.

I am convinced that much of what we now take for granted in our modern world is due to the Cayce psychic readings, even though millions of people who have become aware of this work and take it seriously, dare not admit this, since to give due credit to a psychic is still frowned upon in the academic and scientific worlds and can ruin a career. But his readings of from 56 to 86 years ago either influenced or anticipated our greater acceptance of the other religions of the world, the acceptance of meditation and yoga even among orthodox Christians, the scientific belief that humans should be able to live beyond one hundred years, the development of transpersonal psychology, the popularity of massage therapy and many other alternatives – forms of therapy, various techniques for the reduction of stress, the value of sunlight, the importance of sex education well before puberty, the pineal gland as functional and important, not a functionless leftover, that oils can be absorbed by the skin and act as food for the underlying structures, etc. The list goes on. A book a few years ago by a medical doctor points out that the "essentials of the Cayce diet agree completely with those now suggested by the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association."

I haven' t counted, but approximately three hundred books have been written by now about Cayce and the Cayce readings. So why isn' t he a household name? Because this information did not come through scientific research but through an individual directly in contact in some amazing way with what we might call Universal Consciousness.

But what help did the Cayce readings offer for Robin? They give detailed and specific directions for treating several supposedly incurable diseases, including various forms of dementia, such as what appears to be what we of today call Alzheimer' s disease, although he often used the term in use in his day: senility. Until very recently, however, these readings presented major difficulties to the person attempting to apply them. Of the 14,000 carefully recorded readings he gave, close to 1,000 were given for people with some form of dementia, mental illness or depression. Each was given for a particular individual. Locating the various readings that might apply to your problem and deciding which among those should be tried was most difficult. Furthermore, the readings are difficult for the lay person to understand.

This was pretty much the situation when I began looking for help in 1994. We turned to the people who seemed to know the most about the health readings, at the A.R.E. Clinic in Phoenix, which we visited for two weeks in the early fall of 1994. They got us started, although from the vantage point of today it appears that their knowledge of the readings pertaining to dementia was very limited. But a year later I was delighted to learn that a team of people in Virginia Beach, the Meridian Institute they called themselves, made up a of a medical doctor, a chiropractor, a mental health specialist and others, was organizing the health readings and interpreting them so as to make them generally available for use. Alzheimer' s disease was among those they were dealing with.

I arranged for an appointment with the mental health specialist, who was prepared to offer advice on the basis of his knowledge of the readings and arrive at a program of treatment for us to follow. We have consulted with him at various times since then. Listed below in summary are the major forms of treatment we arrived at. These are not intended for your use, but to suggest directions you might wish to explore.

THE WET CELL. Key to treatment of dementia (and mental illness, depression, etc.) is the wet cell; which is a container with a top that has two rods which hang down into the container. A mixture of distilled water, copper sulfate, sulfuric acid and zinc grains is added, which generates a very mild current of electricity. This passes through a solution of gold chloride one night and silver nitrate the next into the patient' s body. At fist we did this for twenty minutes and are now doing it for forty minutes a night. Occasionally Cayce recommended a very mild solution of gold chloride to be taken internally, instead.

SPINAL MASSAGE. Each wet cell treatment is to be followed by a spinal massage by the caregiver, using a mixture of lanolin, peanut oil and olive oil.

SUGGESTIVE THERAPEUTICS. This was Cayce' s term for spoken suggestion of a spiritual and encouraging nature which should used at various time, such as during the wet cell treatment, and especially as the patient is falling asleep, since this is a time of great receptivity by the unconscious. I used these suggestions, speaking them directly to Robin, before she awoke in the morning, during the wet cell treatment, and played a tape I had made when she was falling asleep at night. Some of these were specific suggestions such as, "All up and down your spine your nerves are being helped and healed. Your two nervous systems are working together to make you well. Some were general in nature, such as God loves you, the light of God surrounds you." "You are a wonderful and good person," and "You are going to live and get much better and be happy to be alive."

During our first year of using the wet cell I used the direction of the people in Phoenix who wanted me to read from the Gospel According to John with its many assurances of the healing power of Jesus for ten minutes, followed by ten minutes of silent meditation on my part. Robin called this time "the Jesus exercise."

I supplemented this by assuring Robin at all hours of the day that I loved her, that she was a good person, that she was getting better every day. I even sang love songs to her when we were out walking…when nobody else was near. I placed three by five cards all over our apartment for her to see with encouraging statements on them. Tracy, Kelly and I tried to make our home bright and cheerful with colorful pillows and balloons all over the place (even in our motel room when we were in Virginia Beach). I burned out three halogen lamps keeping our living room as bright as an electric showroom.

MASSAGE THERAPY. It took awhile to locate a massage therapist in whom I had confidence, but finally I did. We have treatments from her a couple of times a week. Massage therapy is Cayce' s most frequently recommended form of treatment. Good for everyone, regardless.

CHIROPRACTIC. Actually Cayce recommended osteopathy more often than chiropractic, but there are very few osteopaths today who practice osteopathy strangely enough. Again I had trouble locating a chiropractor in whom I have confidence. At first we visited Virginia Beach three times a year for treatments by a Meridian Institute chiropractor, who follows Cayce' s suggestions for spinal adjustment. But now we visit one here in Massachusetts two days a week. I like the sign he has in his office, "The power that made the body, heals the body."

EXERCISE. Cayce recommended walks outdoors in the daylight every day, regardless of weather conditions. Robin and I began walking every day, missing perhaps a day or two a year, in spite of rain, snow, sleet and summer heat. First, a mile, then working up to 4 or even 5 miles a day upon occasion. Most of those miles outdoors. Exercise is good for body, mind and spirit.

Unfortunately Robin has had two pelvic fractures during the year 2000. Following the first she could not walk at all. The physical therapist indicated that Robin would never walk again. We persisted, and the second physical therapist simply did what she should, trying to help Robin and giving me exercises to do with Robin at home. After three months she was walking almost as well as ever. The second fracture was not as bad as the first. We are now up to two miles outdoors most days.

DIET. The diet for Robin is the same one that Cayce recommended for almost everyone. Following it for almost all Americans involves a drastic change from the typical diet. No (or very little) red meat, white flour and the multitude of products made with white flour, white refined sugar, fried food, carbonated drinks, white potatoes (except for the skin and next to the skin), etc. No more than one starchy food at a meal. A heavy emphasis on fruits and vegetables. Fish a few times a week. Whole grain products. A fresh garden salad every day (for us this consists of head and romaine lettuce, celery, radishes, onion, green peppers beats, and canned tomatoes, since it is almost impossible to get vine-ripened tomatoes otherwise). Two ounces of carrot juice a day. Olive oil. Lots of water.

IN ADDITION. I consulted an experienced, well qualified nutritionist. She recommended a wide array of vitamins and supplements. For a year, amazingly enough, Robin was willing to take nearly thirty separate capsules, caplets, etc. a day. From then on she began to refuse more and more of them, to the point that now we are down to only a few.

PRAYER. Of course I prayed for Robin during my disciplined time of meditation and prayer each morning and spontaneously throughout the day. Others prayed for her as well, including the prayer group of the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach that prays during the week and at its weekly Wednesday morning meetings. What is prayer? Is it asking God for a special favor? Or is it in some way entering into the thought of the presence of God and drawing the person for whom we are praying into our thoughts at the time? I prefer the latter.

THE RESULTS, SO FAR.
When we started, Robin was desperately ill with no motivation to get well and no desire to live. She was diagnosed as having an incurable and fatal disease that would progressively get worse. Obviously such an illness is extremely difficult (if not impossible?) to cure and even to ease. It has not been all progress for us by any means, but I believe we have made definite progress. Maybe it is a case of two steps forward and one back, but a definite gain, nevertheless.

When we started this regimen I was told that if I didn' t plan to stick with it for seven years, not to start. When will the seven years be up? The autumn of 2001 possibly. But while I have been trying to do it all right, it is not easy to work with a person with Alzheimer' s disease and a bipolar disorder. I have not done it all right all the time, not even close sometimes. And there was a gap in treatments when we shifted some of our techniques. And when Cayce was alive he gave what he called "check reading" to indicate whether his prescribed treatments were being carried out correctly or not. I have only myself to judge. One comforting thought has been that a few times over these years at critical points I have had dreams which seemed to indicate one change or another. And in general my intuitive feelings about Robin and her future have remained naively optimistic.

And looking back to those early days and weeks and months and comparing them with today it is obvious that the nightmare of those times is over. No longer does Robin get out of bed at all hours of the day and night and get dressed in bizarre ways, and so on and so on. No longer do I have to drag her out of bed, struggle to get her dressed, push her out of the door and walk her downstairs and push her out of the front door of our condo minimum building in order to give her the outdoor exercise I believe she needed. (Once outside where she could not get inside, I would say to myself, "It' s a miracle!" And it was, at least a minor one.)

Robin now sleeps on a regular, night schedule. She has completely and totally overcome her severe depression; no crying, no morbid thoughts, no self criticism of a negative nature, no talk of dying or wanting to die. She is happy to be alive, smiling, laughing often, fun to be with. Her appetite is good. She has halted her weight decline and even gained a little. She is strong, active, vigorous and tireless. Except for her basic illness, she never gets sick, and is more physically fit today than during the fifty years I have known and loved her. She talks more sensibly. She is friendly, loving and affectionate. Her favorite expression is "I love you." While Robin has times of great restlessness even at home and is very restless almost always in any public place, especially a confined area such as a doctor' s office, she is better in general in this respect and even can sit at home for an hour or two or three. She can now watch TV, something she showed no interest in before. She now seems focused and aware and seems to take an interest in things. None of her former staring off into space for great lengths of time.

But the most obvious and undeniable fact is simply that Robin is alive. Very much so, with no signs of weakening and wasting away to nothing. Her older brother came down with Alzheimer' s disease well after Robin did and died in February.

Of course I am still hoping for improvement in other ways, especially the great big one: regaining her memory. But whatever the future holds, I am grateful that I have had these extra years with her and have had the opportunity to let her know how much I care for her.

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TO LEARN MORE ABOUT EDGAR CAYCE:
Consult the website www.edgarcayce.org

TO VIEW INFORMATION FROM BOTH THE ALLOPATHIC AND HOLISTIC VIEWPOINTS on approximately eighty diseases, consult the website www.edgarcayce.org; Click on (to the left) Health & Rejuvenation Research Center, and then click on (near top middle) Cayce Health Database; and then click on Diseases. Select the disease you wish.

WARNING: Don' t believe anything you read about Cayce in the tabloids.

PSI Symposium Annual Journal 2001