In the face of heroic efforts needed to save our own lives, what chance do we have to save the world? Confronted with current global crises, we understandably shrink back, overwhelmed with a feeling of insignificance and paralysis-unable to influence the affairs of the world. It is far easier to be entertained by reality TV than to actually participate in our own reality.
But consider the following:
Fire walking: For thousands of years, people of many different cultures and religions from all parts of the world have practiced fire walking. A recent Guinness World Record for longest fire walk was set by 23-year-old Canadian Amanda Dennison in June 2005. Amanda walked 220 feet over coals that measured 1,600 to1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Amanda didn’t jump or fly, which means her feet were in direct contact with the glowing coals for the full 30 seconds it took her to complete the walk.
Moltes persones atribueixen la capacitat de mantenir-se lliure de cremades durant una caminada així als fenòmens paranormals. En canvi, els físics suggereixen que el presumpte perill és una il·lusió, al·legant que les brases no són grans conductors de la calor i que els peus del caminant tenen un contacte limitat amb les brases. No obstant això, molt pocs burladors s'han tret les sabates i els mitjons i han travessat les brases brillants, i cap ha igualat la gesta dels peus d'Amanda. A més, si els carbons són realment tan benignes com suggereixen els físics, com expliquen les cremades greus experimentades per un gran nombre de "turistes accidentals" als seus passeigs?
Our friend, author and psychologist Dr. Lee Pulos, has invested considerable time studying the fire walking phenomenon. One day, he bravely faced the fire himself. With his pants rolled up and his mind clear, Lee walked the gauntlet of burning embers. Upon reaching the other side, he was delighted and empowered to realize that his feet showed no sign of trauma. He was also totally surprised to discover upon unrolling his pants, his cuffs detached along a scorch mark that encircled each leg.
Whether or not the mechanisms that allow fire walking are physical or metaphysical, one outcome is consistent: those who expect the coals to burn them, get burned, and those who don’t, don’t. The belief of the walker is the most important determinant. Those who successfully complete the firewalk experience, firsthand, a key principle of quantum physics: the observer, in this case, the walker, creates the reality.
Meanwhile, on the extreme opposite of the climate spectrum, the Bakhtiari tribe of Persia walk barefoot for days in snow and ice over a 15,000-foot mountain pass. In the 1920s, explorers Ernest Schoedsack and Merian Cooper created the first feature length documentary, a brilliant award-winning movie titled Herba: la batalla d'una nació per la vida. Aquesta històrica pel·lícula va captar la migració anual dels Bakhtiari, una raça de nòmades que no tenien contacte previ amb el món modern. Dos cops l'any, com han fet durant un mil·lenni, més de 50,000 persones i un ramat de mig milió d'ovelles, vaques i cabres creuen rius i muntanyes cobertes de glaceres per arribar a pastures verdes.
To get their traveling city over the mountain pass, these hardy, barefooted people dig a roadway, through the towering ice and snow that blankets the 14,000 foot high peak of Zard-Kuh (Yellow Mountain). Good thing these people didn’t know they could catch a death of cold by being shoeless in the snow for days!
La qüestió és que tant si el repte són els peus freds com els "peus arrugats", els humans realment no som tan fràgils com ens pensem.
Aixecament pesat: Tots estem familiaritzats amb l'aixecament de peses, en què homes i dones musculosos bombegen ferro. Aquests esforços requereixen culturisme intens i, potser, alguns esteroides al costat. En una forma de l'esport anomenada aixecament de peses total, els homes corpulents posseïdors del rècord mundial aixequen entre 700 i 800 lliures i les campistes femenines de mitjana entre 450 i 500 lliures.
While these accomplishments are phenomenal, many other reports exist of untrained, unathletic people showing even more amazing feats of strength. To save her trapped son, Angela Cavallo lifted a 1964 Chevrolet and held it up for five minutes while neighbors arrived, reset a jack, and rescued her unconscious boy.5 Similarly, a construction worker lifted a 3,000-pound helicopter that had crashed into a drainage ditch, trapping his buddy under water. In this feat captured on video, the man held the aircraft aloft while others pulled his friend from beneath the wreckage.
To dismiss these feats as the consequence of an adrenaline rush misses the point. Adrenaline or not, how can an untrained average man or woman lift and hold a half ton or more for an extended duration?
Aquestes històries són notables perquè ni la senyora Cavallo ni el treballador de la construcció podrien haver realitzat aquests actes de força sobrehumana en circumstàncies normals. La idea d'aixecar un cotxe o un helicòpter és inimaginable. Però amb la vida del seu fill o amic penjada en la balança, aquestes persones van suspendre inconscientment les seves creences limitants i van centrar la seva intenció en la creença principal en aquell moment: He de salvar aquesta vida!
Beure verí: Every day we bathe our bodies with antibacterial soaps and scrub our homes with potent antibiotic cleansers. Thus, we protect ourselves from ever-present deadly germs in our environment. To remind us how susceptible we are to invasive organisms, television ads exhort that we cleanse our world with Lysol and rinse our mouths with Listerine . . . or is it the other way around? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention along with the media continuously inform us of the impending dangers of the latest flu, HIV, and plagues transported by mosquitoes, birds, and swine.
Why do these prognostications worry us? Because we have been programmed to believe our body’s defenses are weak, ripe for invasion by foreign substances.
If Nature’s threats weren’t bad enough, we must also protect ourselves from byproducts of human civilization. Manufactured poisons and massive amounts of excreted pharmaceuticals are toxifying the environment. Of course poisons, toxins and germs can kill us-we all know that. But then there are those who don’t believe in this reality-and live to tell about it.
In an article integrating genetics and epidemiology in ciència magazine, microbiologist V.J. DiRita wrote, “Modern epidemiology is rooted in the work of John Snow, an English physician whose careful study of cholera victims led him to discover the waterborne nature of this disease. Cholera also played a part in the foundation of modern bacteriology-40 years after Snow’s seminal discovery, Robert Koch developed the germ theory of disease following his identification of the comma-shaped bacterium Vibrio cholerae com a agent causant del còlera. La teoria de Koch no va estar exempta de detractors, un dels quals n'estava tan convençut V. cholerae No va ser la causa del còlera que se'n va beure un got per demostrar que era inofensiu. Per raons inexplicables, es va mantenir sense símptomes, però tanmateix incorrecte".
Here’s a man who, in 1884, so challenged the accepted medical opinion, that to prove his point, he drank a glass of cholera, yet remained symptom-free. Not to be outdone, the professionals claimed he was the one who was wrong!
Ens encanta aquesta història perquè la part més reveladora és que la ciència va rebutjar l'atrevit experiment d'aquest home sense preocupar-se d'investigar el motiu de la seva aparent immunitat, que molt probablement era la seva inquebrantable creença que tenia raó. Va ser molt més fàcil per als científics tractar-lo com una excepció molesta que no pas canviar les regles que van crear. En ciència, però, una excepció simplement representa una cosa que encara no es coneix ni s'entén. De fet, alguns dels avenços més importants de la història de la ciència van derivar directament dels estudis sobre excepcions anòmales.
Ara, agafeu la visió de la història del còlera i integreu-lo amb aquest informe sorprenent: l'est rural de Kentucky, Tennessee i parts de Virgínia i Carolina del Nord són la llar de devots fonamentalistes coneguts com l'Església de Santedat Pentecostal Lliure. En un estat d'èxtasi religiós, els congregats demostren la protecció de Déu a través de la seva capacitat per manejar amb seguretat les serps de cascavell i els caps de coure verinosos. Tot i que molts d'aquests individus són mossegats, no mostren els símptomes esperats d'intoxicació tòxica. La rutina de la serp és només l'acte d'obertura. Els congregants realment devots porten la noció de protecció divina un pas de gegant més enllà. En testificar que Déu els protegeix, beuen dosis tòxiques d'estricnina sense mostrar efectes nocius. Ara, hi ha un misteri difícil per a la ciència!
Spontaneous remission: Every day, thousands of patients are told, “All the tests are back and the scans concur . . . I am sorry; there is nothing else we can do. It is time for you to go home and get your affairs in order because the end is near.” For most patients with terminal diseases, such as cancer, this is how their final act plays out. However, there are those with terminal illnesses who express a more unusual and happier option-spontaneous remission. One day they are terminally ill, the next day they are not. Unable to explain this puzzling yet recurrent reality, conventional doctors in such cases prefer to conclude that their diagnoses were simply incorrect-in spite of what the tests and scans revealed.
Segons el doctor Lewis Mehl-Madrona, autor de Medicina del coiot, spontaneous remission is often accompanied by a “change of story.” Many empower themselves with the intention that they-against all odds-are able to choose a different fate. Others simply let go of their old way of life with its inherent stresses, figuring they may as well relax and enjoy what time they have left. Somewhere in the act of fully living out their lives, their unattended diseases vanish. This is the ultimate example of the power of the placebo effect, where taking a sugar pill is not even needed!
Now here’s an utterly crazy idea. Instead of investing all of our money into the search for elusive cancer-prevention genes and what are perceived to be magic bullets that cure without the downside of harmful side effects, wouldn’t it make sense to also dedicate serious energy to research the phenomenon of spontaneous remission and other dramatic, non-invasive medical reversals associated with the placebo effect? But because pharmaceutical companies haven’t come up with a way to package or affix a price tag to placebo-mediated healing, they have no motivation to study this innate healing mechanism.