(Original headline: Psychic healing or pie in sky? )
Edgar Mitchell touched the face of the man-in-the-moon. Later, it seemed as if he had truly seen the face of God.
The Apollo 14 astronaut was the sixth man to walk on the moon, on Feb. 5, 1971. And his life since has been devoted to that "profound sensation of a sense of universal connectedness" that he experienced on the return flight from space.
The Palm Beach County resident founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences to sponsor research into the nature of consciousness, and detailed his story on his Web site, www.edmitchellapollo14.com.
Four years ago, this openness about his views on psychic and paranormal phenomena led the family of a controversial young man, known as Adam the Healer, to seek Mitchell out as a "science mentor."
Adam, a 20-year-old Vancouver resident, refers to himself as "a gifted distant energy healer" on his Web site, www.dreamhealer.com, and credits Mitchell for helping him see his healing gifts as "being explained within the realm of quantum physics and quantum holograms."
Adam is said to have cured rock 'n' roll legend Ronnie Hawkins of terminal pancreatic cancer and to have healed dozens of other sick people. He conducts group healings that are successful both in the money he receives and the numbers of people he draws.
He told Canada AM, a television show, that he is a millionaire.
All of this exposure has made Adam either a target who is unfairly attacked, or a well-spoken, charismatic charlatan, depending on whom you listen to.
Mitchell has now become so involved with his young charge that he has evolved into one of Adam's most vociferous defenders. He calls ABC-TV's Primetime news magazine "so biased it is criminal" since a profile on Adam aired July 13.
"It was selectively biased toward the negative, that is our current culture, the science of disbelief," he says.
A transcript of the show displays two comments from Mitchell and no reference to his role as Adam's mentor.
"By and large, it's just — channeling energy and resonating with the object — with the person," the transcript of Mitchell's explanation of Adam's healing powers reads.
The transcript also shows interviews, however, with people who believed in Adam and say he helped, including a woman with multiple sclerosis.
Of course, there are many who find Adam's claimed ability to heal over distance and through touch offensive.
"Many of the miraculous 'healings' attributed to Dreamhealer seem to be simply the result of poor logic, errors in critical thinking, and the common uncertainty of medical knowledge," says an e-mail The Palm Beach Post received from Skeptical Inquirer.
That's "the official journal" of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), a nonprofit scientific and educational organization founded in 1976 by Paul Kurtz, Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan, among others.
"Despite the fact that Dreamhealer has never proven his powers under controlled conditions, he claims that what he does can be explained by science. In fact, many such studies that have been done tried to find this effect, and all of them — including prayer — have failed. If Dreamhealer in fact can prove his abilities scientifically, he would be the first to do so," CSICOP wrote.
Mitchell says it is the way tests are done — incorrectly from his view — that fails to get the results required to convince skeptics.
He further claims to personally have been healed of disease twice through psychic healing, and one of those times was with Adam.
"I had an abnormality on a kidney (found through X-ray) but I did not have a biopsy. I asked Adam to take a look at it. That was December, 2002. It looked like cancer. An MRI looked consistent with renal carcinoma.
"And Adam agreed. He went to work on it. I was here and he was in Vancouver."
Mitchell said he set up the healing with Adam through e-mail, agreeing on a time.
"I just relaxed. It was quite late in the evening. I felt warmth... a little vibration or buzz."
Follow-up medical checks showed, he said, that the growth had diminished.
"Whatever Adam was doing was diminishing it. I am clear and have been ever since."
People don't accept that psychic healing can occur, or that it has a basis in science, Mitchell says.
"They think it's woo-woo, medieval folklore. That's not true."
His own doctor attributes his healing to a bad diagnosis.
"In fact, we're only now starting to realize that quantum physics is a major part of the answer," Mitchell says.
He attempts to explain the interaction, but it is laden with technology that is beyond understanding for most people. He refers to a paper on his Web site, Nature's Mind, which he calls "seminal." It, too, is difficult to comprehend.
"There is good science on this, but most people don't know about it yet," he says, adding that Europeans are vastly ahead of American scientists in this field.
"There's not a simple explanation. There are natural capabilities that have been around forever. In the western world, with the rise of science, and Rene Descartes... he came to the conclusion that body physicality and mind belonged to separate worlds of the material (natural) and supernatural. That nature is both natural and supernatural and that mind/matter do not interact. Quantum physics reveals that there is interaction." So injecting science here isn't beyond reason, he claims.
He says many people have the ability to heal, but not everyone can be an Adam.
"We all have a certain amount, but few are 'stellar performers.' And there are a lot of variables, including the mind-set of the individual. The less you believe, the less results you are going to get.
"We say an athletic team is in the zone, operating as a single unit. That same process applies elsewhere, it is a quantum process. It is an energy. Why do a school of fish... all of a sudden turn direction simultaneously? They are all responding to the same information.
"In fact, we're only now starting to realize... quantum physics is a major part of the answer. A major breakthrough is being able to apply quantum physics to it. A quantum biology is emerging out of this."
But proof or no proof, there will always be those who believe. And Mitchell says that is a crucial part of the healing.
"I think what Adam's doing is awesome," says a cancer patient who ABC-TV quoted. "And, you know, I don't think anything but good things coming out of that."
Says Mitchell, "It's becoming an accepted modality, but it goes slowly. My issue has been trying to create the science behind the phenomenon."
