Posted on 12 December 2011, 14:46

Recent books and articles have discussed the “top 10 places to see before you die,” and “top 100 things to do before you die.”  I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen nine of my top 10 and to have done 99 of my top 100.  I’ve cruised the Nile and the Rhine, the Caribbean, the Mexican Rivera, the Alaska inland passage, and even the Sea of Galilee.  I’ve kissed the Blarney Stone, searched Loch Ness for Nessie, saw the Brooklyn Dodgers play at Ebbets Field, dined below Niagara Falls, gambled at Monte Carlo, prayed in Westminster Abbey, Notre Dame, and the Vatican, walked the Via Delorosa in Jerusalem,  run the New York City Marathon, won the Maui Marathon, taken a mud bath in the Dead Sea, hiked the Grand Canyon, explored the Valley of the Kings, shopped in Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Singapore and peered out from Masada.  But I have not yet experienced number one on my lists. .

That would be a visit to Abadiana, Brazil, described as “a scrap of a town in central Brazil.”  More specifically, though, it is the Casa de Dom Inácio, a short walk from Abadiana, where John of God is the main attraction.    John (Joao in Portuguese) is primarily a healing medium.  He allows benevolent highly-evolved spirits to take over his body and perform healing through him.  I’ve been told by friends who have visited there that it is the experience of a lifetime. 

Last month, my friend, Dr. John L. Turner (above), a Hawaii brain surgeon and the author of Medicine, Miracles, & Manifestations, spent two weeks at the Casa, and was very much impressed with what he saw and experienced.  In fact, he said that the experience was a hundredfold better than what he expected, and not only because of all the ripe mangoes he feasted on.  A foot problem developed five years ago had become so painful that Turner could no longer wear shoes or walk barefooted.  He could wear only “flip-flops.”  Three different neurologists diagnosed the problem with his feet at “idiopathic small-fiber neuropathy,” for which there was no cure.  And this past May, his blood sugar (diabetes) surfaced, requiring oral agents and insulin.

While there, Turner underwent “invisible surgery,” in which spirit doctors are said to heal through John of God. Though he felt nothing during the surgery, he was extremely fatigued after the surgery, “I was told to expect extreme fatigue up to 24 hours,” Turner told me.  “It is mandatory that one takes a cab back the few blocks, or less to the pousada (motel/hotel-like lodging) and keep still and quiet, with meals delivered to the room.  For 36 hours, it was like a recumbent (and pain-free) extended period of ‘current’ interlaced with periods of sleep, and dream snippets which in some strange way, seemed to be ‘instructive’ but impossible to recall upon awakening.”  The “current,” he explained, is the psychic field generated by up to 100 or more people, all dressed in white garments sitting with arms and legs uncrossed, eyes closed, for periods of three or four hours during the time that Medium Joao, as he prefers to be called, is ‘incorporated’ by one of 35 spirit entities, some of whom are deceased doctors. 

Turner said while he still has some foot discomfort, he can now walk barefoot and wear shoes, as he chooses. “Grass and sand were uncomfortable to walk upon,” he continued. “Now, to walk on grass is heavenly!”  Nor has he required any medication for his diabetic or prostate conditions since the surgery.  The only cost for all of that was about $50 for some herb capsules.  John of God does not charge.

Being a physician, Turner was invited to observe and assist at a “physical surgery,” where, he observed Joao scraping the cornea of a man’s eye with a knife, something not thought to be possible in Western medicine.  Moreover, the man was under “spiritual anesthesia” alone.  He also observed Joao’s eyes turn different colors.
 
“If I could go again tomorrow, I would,” Turner added. “I can say for sure, that I returned home a much better person.  All who go, their physical infirmities healed or not, experience the opening of the heart charka.  This alone is worth the trip to a place where the theme is that we are ONE!” 

I also had the opportunity just last week to talk to a woman who visited John of God 10 years ago.  Her cardiologist gave her only three months to live and said that she would not be able to endure surgery.  After visiting John of God, she came back with renewed vigor, underwent the surgery soon thereafter and is still living. 

Emma Bragdon, Ph.D., a Woodstock,Vermont resident, has been observing John of God for the last 10 years and has led tour groups down there. Her latest book, Spiritism and Mental Health:  Practices from Spirit Centers and Spiritist Psychiatric Hospitals in Brazil, provides much information on Spiritistic healing in Brazil, including the Casa.  The book has 26 chapters with 30 psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, and therapists contributing a wealth of information.  Among the contributors well known to American readers are Linda Russek, Ph.D., Melvin Morse, M.D., Dean Radin, Ph.D., William Braud, Ph.D., and Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. 

“From the Spiritist point of view, after ruling out physical brain damage or disabilities such as retardation, the cause of most mental illness is embedded in the perispirit, also known today as the ‘informational body’ or ‘subtle body,” Bragdon states, mentioning that Brazil has 12,000 Spiritist community centers and 50 Spiritist psychiatric hospitals. . 

Spiritism, the philosophy developed by French educator Allan Kardec more than 150 years ago, is designed to bring together science, parapsychology, and healing, and is especially popular in Brazil,

“Spiritism does not deny the bio-psycho-social causes of mental disorders,” Alexander Moreira-Almeida, M.D., Ph.D., states in one of the two chapters he contributed.  “It fully acknowledges them. Kardec always emphasized that Spiritism does not come to deny well-established scientific knowledge; it comes to complement it, adding something new – the spiritual element – to our understanding of nature.  Several times he compared Spiritism with microbiology; both reveal and investigate dimensions of reality that are invisible to the naked eye but are part of the natural world and can affect our lives.”

Almeida explains that mental disturbance can result when “an obsessing spirit exacerbates negative feelings and thoughts in the patient through a kind of telepathy.” This obsessing spirit, he further states, is motivated most of the time by a vengeful feeling against the victim, but the person can choose to accept or reject the obsessing influence.

A number of case studies are offered, including one about “Ernesto,” a 32-year-old administrative clerk who attempted suicide after experiencing intense mood changes, aggressiveness, recurrent thoughts of murders and destruction, and self-destructive behavior.  After being hospitalized, he became physically aggressive with other patients and was constantly threatening the medical team.  He also threatened his mother.  He resisted psychoactive drugs, psychosocial assistance and other therapy before electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) was prescribed and also failed.  He was then observed by a spiritual guidance team, which consisted of five clairvoyants, two healing mediums, and five who are supportive of the mediums, along with three doctors. The clairvoyants found his energy centers (charkas) to be congested with dark, unruly energies and his brain dominated by a group of “spiritual villains.”  Over the next five weeks, Ernesto received magnetic therapy (charka cleansing and energy transmission) and the negative entities were gradually detached from him.  He was eventually discharged from the Spiritist hospital and ready to go back to work with continued psycho-social therapeutic support prescribed.   

It is stressed by a number of the contributors that Brazilian Spirit hospitals attempt to see the patient from a more holistic view, not only focusing on the physical imbalance but giving full consideration to spiritual considerations.  “Just as abusive verbal exchanges from parent to child can result in a lack of self-confidence in the child, lower disincarnate spirits may deeply affect anyone with their vibrations, helping form negative attitudes contributing to self-destructive tendencies,” Carlos Appel, M.D. and Tania Appel, M.A, offer in their chapter.  “These influences may become manifest as obsession, fascination or subjugation.” 

In a chapter on integrating spirituality into psychotherapy, Mario Sergio Silveira, Ph.D. tells of the inner turmoil he experienced in attempting to reconcile the Spiritist philosophy he had been indoctrinated with during his youth and what he had learned in university.  He attempted to set aside his knowledge of Spiritism so that he could better grasp the major masters of psychology, but, after graduation, found vast holes in his knowledge – holes he was able to fill only by reincorporating his prior knowledge of spiritual influences into his practice.
It is very difficult to hear about and read the experiences and observations of so many professionals and not believe there is really something to this whole area of discarnate influence on human behavior and, concomitantly, on mental disorders. It was, of course, observed much earlier by Kardec, Carl Wickland, M.D., Edith Fiore, Ph.D., Louise Ireland-Frey, M.D., and others who had the courage to make their views known.  It is disturbing to consider the probable reality of it and realize that mainstream medicine and psychology continue to scoff and sneer at it.

Michael Tymn’s latest book The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After we Die is published by White Crow Books and available from Amazon and all good online book stores.

Paperback               Kindle

Next blog post:  Dec. 27

How do I keep communication clear and coartfomble?It works so well when I stop myself from worrying why someone has not called me back. I stop to think that their day or their week may be very full and busy with activities and events I know nothing about. I remind myself to send loving thoughts to them, releasing the unfounded fears I have about them or the relationship. I remember to not take things personally or so seriously. This is only my ego feeling neglected. I can just relax and wait for communication to begin again at the perfect time for both of us. Jeanne

“I do not believe that faith has anything to do with who gets the healing.” Hania, I don’t believe that either. Perhaps when pain and discomfort is caused by obsessing spirits, the physical healing is easier to achieve by faith healing. According to spiritism, discomfort and pain might be expiation for the wrong actions taken in the past life. What we need to achieve with a faith healer is the healing of our soul rather than the healing of our physical body, which is the most important kind of healing because the body is temporary, but our soul is eternal.

Happy Holidays Mike!

Only now I got a chance to read your last blog.

So at last Jack went to Dom Inacio’s Casa in Abadiana! I am glad he had such a good healing there.

To me Abadiana was a deeply spiritual, beautiful place, the veil so thin there that one forgets, or does not care, about the constrains of the physical there.

Yet it is still completely unclear to me who received a healing and who does not, and why. As you know I was there twice, each time begged for help with my insomnia, and received zero healing for this problem. Some get healed there, others do not. I do not believe that faith has anything to do with who gets the healing. I had total faith - my disappointment that much greater. It seems to me God chooses whom He heals in Abadiana and whom He does not.

But the immersion in the Divine Love and the sense of presence of the Divine beings was palpable for me there. Probably for most. But who knows. Perhaps it is just like with the healings there.
For me it was being in a Garden of Love, in a Garden of Peace.
I encourage anyone to go there, but without any expectations.

Sometimes I think that we are to grow our own Gardens of Love wherever we find ourselves, that Casa de Dom Inacio is an example what we can create in our own lives.

Aloha!

Hania

Hello:

“Arigo” was another very well-known Spiritist healer in Brazil; his abilities were widely observed and filmed (there are very shot clips on YouTube).  But from various books and other accounts of Arigo’s life, there were lots of photographs and films of Arigo in action.  Does anyone have any idea whether this material still exists? And, if it does, who possesses it?  In these days of digital manipulation a photograph or film does not have the authenticity it had a few years back; still, it would be very interesting to see this material.

Regards,

Thanks Mike and everyone for the great comments. Placebo? Well, of course I have wondered about this before going to the casa. So far, my fasting blood sugars remain 110 mg% or less, no medication at all. So, if this is mind-over-glucose, then I agree. If it works, that is all that is important.

At the casa, a statement on the wall goes something like this:

“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.”

I would only add to this quotation, “QED”

Happy Holidays!

I just came across this in “Man’s Private God” by B. J. F. Laubscher, M.D., a 1979 book.  Dr. Laubscher was a South African psychiatrist. 

“The healing aspect is a natural act and is a cosmic vibrational force.  Spirit workers can direct this power provided there is total cooperation and faith by man in this Macrocosmic power which healing spirits can channelise.  Then we read “to another the working of miracles; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues.”  The word miracle is of course used with reference to the understanding of the recipient.  The theological conception is that of an event in the physical world but out of its established order and hence by means of divine intervention.  The participation of healing spirits when specially called upon is also by divine intervention since they are units of spiritual consciousness probably continuing their earthly calling as medical men, or others who were channels on earth for transmission of this power.  The fact,however, that there is natural healing implies to my mind that spiritual healing, like the psychic element in sense perception, is always present, except that the spiritual healing in response to an appeal operates via the subtle bodies of soul by means of an increased capacity for healing energies.

  “The healing of cancerous growths in some people and arthritic conditions in other cannot exclude the process of dematerialization so common in the production of apports. The world of medicine is only at the physical level of healing and it seems that in view of the evidence of spiritual healing physicians and surgeons should explore the psychic and spiritual worlds of their inner selves to learn how to utilise healing powers from spiritual dimensions.  The discerning of spirits of course refers to the faculty of clairvoyance, where the seeing is not by physical sight, but by the astral sight.”

My word - what an adventurous life you have led, Michael!! I haven’t done half of the things that you have - at least, not in so many different places. The visit to Ayers Rock in Western Australia was probably the highlight of my spiritual travels. But the sights and sounds of India and Ceylon (as it then was) were also moving experiences.

Once again a fascinating and comprehensive account Michael with use of first hand witnesses and research findings.

I remember seeing a documentary on tv a few years ago about John of God. As far as I can remember there was a fairly neutral tone.The people they interviewed didn’t achieve a “cure” but they seemed very positive about the experience. The most interesting bit for me was an interview with a young English doctor . He had developed a degenerative disease and was in a wheel chair . He said “I don’t care if it’s just a placebo effect -if it works.”
I have often wondered what happened to him.

I was with Dr. Turner during his trip to Brazil and I witnessed his healing as you have described in your post.  My changes we much less dramatic but positive nonetheless.  I think we can physically as we see with Dr. Turner or psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually as probably happens to a majority of those visiting Joao.  I do think you are right though, this is one of those places to see before you die.  It could completley change the way you view life after death and spiritual existence.