Philippine Spiritualist Healing

Philippine healing practice, particularly the reported psychic surgery, is extremely controversial. In The Roots of Consciousness (Mishlove 1975), I presented the prima facie case for regarding the Philippine psychic healing as worthy of some systematic investigation. Such research has been slow in coming, although hundreds of documentary films have been made and numerous Americans have received various forms of training in the Philippines.

In The Roots of Consciousness I discuss the case of Doug Voeks, a young American who after several years of study in the Philippines seems to have "received the gift" of psychic surgery. Voeks described his experience as a healer, in an interview with this author, as follows:

"It is simply using the power of the source that you have prayed for and asked for, through your hands being a focal point. When the hands are applied and I begin to knead the skin, I can say that the skin opens because I see it through my own visual process. However, I lose feeling in my hands up to about my elbows. They call this over there about a ten percent trance. The hands do not actually go deeply into the body, but rather the afflicted area comes to the hand, as though the hand were a magnet. Individual cells are separated and not severed, so you have no cell damage. The healer's hand then acts as a maintaining force to hold the skin apart and bring it together. In my first operation I was as startled as the people who were watching. I cannot control this. It is something that happens."

Adding further superficial credibility to Voeks' claims, is the testimony of Voeks' grandmother who was actually operated on by Voeks; and believes in the genuineness and effectiveness of his claims.

The Christian Spiritualist Church in San Francisco, partially inspired by the experience of Doug Voeks, is a religious organization based on the practices of the spiritualist healers of the Philippines. One of the members of the Christian Spiritualist Church, who had also received training in psychic surgery it, the Philippines (although he had not attained the skill) described the training as follows:

"The training for psychic surgery is an advanced form of mediumship. The spirit takes over your hands during the surgery. One person in the group I was with learned psychic surgery immediately, but I didn't attain this. It is mote mediumistic than other kinds of healing. The surgeon himself is simply an instrument. He doesn't require any knowledge. He may or may not know what is going on. Some can lecture in technical terms while they are doing it. Most of them are very uneducated, simple people."

Further background on the training is provided by the testimony of other church members, given in interview to this author, who studied other forms of healing with the Philippine spiritualist healers. The basic training involved attending religious missions in the jungles of the Philippines in order to earn spiritual graces. Training also included careful study of the biblical verses in John XVII which was said to provide protection for the healers and for the sick.

The missions involved traveling for long hours under very harsh conditions to various spiritualist chapels where religious services were then conducted. Sleep patterns were broken as religious services were held every day at 6:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m., midnight, and 4:00 a.m. The services lasted from 45 minutes to an hour and a half. On each of these missions, the Westerners were accompanied by a host of Filipinos who performed various religious functions. At first there was no actual training in healing. One interviewee stated, "At first, we'd just go through the motions with them. They'd hold up their hands, so we would hold up our hands." In the following interview, one student describes how he was trained in the gift of opening the body for psychic surgery:

"Brother David Oligani was able to hold his finger about a foot above somebody's body. He would make a line in the air and a physical incision would appear on the body. Needless to say, this was very impressive. One time he took my hand and had me point, and he did the same thing through my hand, channeling energy through my hand. The incision appeared. I didn't feel anything earth shattering. There were a lot of feelings happening all at one time. I was very much awestruck by it all."
 
After attending various missions, ceremonies were conducted during which the Westerners believed themselves to have received various spiritual gifts of healing. During the training period, all of the Americans received various forms of healing, including psychic surgery from which they felt they had received benefits.

Throughout their training, the Americans were extremely impressed by the selflessness of the Filipinos who were helping them, and who asked for nothing in return. "They asked for nothing, but simply to be there so that they could heal us, serve us and fulfill our needs. We had never encountered this before. Everyone in this country puts a price tag on their services or passes the plate in church. There they don't do these things. They'll give you their beds. They'll give you their food. If you need help every three hours around the clock for two weeks, they don't give you a bill when you get ready to leave. They just cry that you are leaving. The parting is such a dramatic situation, it is hard to duplicate in this country. The love and devotion that is shared is awesome." Other reports would indicate that this degree of selflessness does not exist among all of the Filipino healers, but only certain ones.

A great deal of the Philippine training is dependent on the instructions coming from "spirit" during the missions, through the agency of trance mediums. The instructions from the spirit must be followed to the letter. In order to determine that these spirit messages were pure and correct, clairvoyants were employed to watch the medium while in trance. One of the American students described his training as a medium as follows:

"Mediumship practice was every night at midnight. They sat us down with pieces of paper in front of us and pencils in our hands. We just closed our eyes and they prayed over us. They prayed and prayed and prayed. After a while, my hands started to move. There were scratches all over the paper. They said this was spirit writing. The next level of development was to channel a message, the essence of which had already been written down in this spirit language. It wasn't until we were in Manila, ready to leave the Philippines altogether, that a message came through, very short and sweet. Basically it was a message commending the people of that center for how they had taken care of the Americans. It came through me in English. They made a big thing about it. They were very, very happy. I was kind of awestruck. That was the finale of our trip there. We were told that when we came back to this country we could not even practice mediumship until we had three clairvoyants, and our banner."
 
The banner, or the insignia of the individual church, was only attained through attending certain missions in the Philippine jungles. These missions are described as follows:

"We were given seven missions much more structured than before. We had to do everything to the letter. There had to be eleven people with us on each mission. Seven Filipinos plus the Americans. Each person had a function. There had to be two singers, one clairvoyant, one medium, one secretary to write down the spirit messages, etc. We had to continue all the prayers during all hours. If we were driving on the road during the time for prayer, we just stopped the car wherever we were. If we had missed, it would have erased all the work we had done up to that point."

Interestingly enough, when they began their healing practice in San Francisco-which did not include psychic surgery-the Americans found themselves getting into situations they were unable to handle. For example, "in one case, we had exorcised a spirit from a woman, but then, ten minutes later, the same spirit suddenly jumped back into her body and she nearly had a heart attack." Following such experiences, under the direction of the spirit speaking through the trance medium, church members were instructed to take the training in healing which was offered in Berkeley through the Church of Divine Man (described in a following section). After a six-month training program, the spirit speaking through the medium advised church members how this new information was to be used. In comparing the two forms of training, church members stated that the Philippine training was more powerful, but of a "lower spiritual level." The training of the Church of Divine Man provided greater conceptual refinement:

"The healers in the Philippines do not acknowledge chakras. They don't know anything about them. They understand the spirit and the soul, but they don't understand the different levels of the spirit body."

Following further instructions from the spirit, speaking through the trance medium, the members of the Christian Spiritualist Church have been on a diet, for several years, which consists only of raw fruits and vegetables.

Allegations of fraud in Philippine psychic surgery cases are common enough, particularly among hardcore skeptics of all psi Phenomena - but even among sympathetic observers as well. The pattern of fraud appears quite similar to that discussed in relationship to shamanism (Chapter II).

Such allegations are made articulately in W. A. Nolen's (1974) popular account titled, Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle. While many individuals are predisposed to accept a skeptical account of the Philippine healing, rather than an account involving purported psi, there is no a priori reason to believe that the literature of skepticism is less contaminated with error and fraud than the literature supporting parapsychological claims. The Nolen book has been criticized in The Roots of Consciousness. At least one of Nolen's case histories seems clearly to have been doctored by Nolen to support his own preconceptions. Even discounting overeager skeptics such as Nolen, the reports of fraud are too common to be dismissed by researchers and must be taken into account in any investigation.

Mishlove, J. The roots of consciousness: psychic liberation through history, science and experience. New York: Random House, 1975.

Nolen, W.A. Healing: a doctor in search of a miracle. New York, 1974.