wCHAP.20a

(10/3/98)

CHAPTER XX. A

HEALTH, MEDICINE AND A SCIENCE OF RELIGION

"Modern science can roughly be dated back to about 1500, a period now widely known as the Renaissance. The prevailing viewpoint that propelled the scientific revolution between 1500 and 1850 was remarkable in its simplicity. The world was divided into two spheres: one, the physical world, was a world of things and objects which could be measured scientifically; the second, the spiritual world, a nonmaterial sphere of mind, feelings, and thoughts, was a reflection of the human soul, which could not be measured. Science turned its attention exclusively toward the world of things and objects and left the spiritual world of mind and feelings to religion and philosophy."

"Given this dichotomy between mind and matter, between science and religion, it was inevitable that medicine, as a branch of applied science, would also adopt the same distinctions."[1]

And it is the aim of A NEW FOUNDATION FOR CIVILIZATION to develop a Science of Religion which will fulfill the meta-goals of all religions. It will take the final step to expand empirical, predictive science to include everything which Homo sapiens sapiens can know, or wonder about. This will clarify where science fits into the greater scheme of things. The dichotomy between mind and matter will be bridged and each person will be able to achieve a feeling that their life has meaning. And this will be done in a way that doesn't require doing things to others that prevent them from achieving a similar state.

As I have said elsewhere a Science of Religion brings to religion what science brought to medicine when physicians took over the role of the shaman and the "medicine man." However, in reality the issue is bigger than that because medicine even now suffers from having developed in a culture that separated body and mind. And where all healing meant treating one outside intrusion -- disease, stress, diet, a broken limb, etc. -- with another -- vaccination, drugs, therapy, splints, etc. Only when we see that mind and body -- as well as soul, spirit, consciousness, etc. -- is one and works in ways far beyond our current understanding are we ready to give medicine its appropriate role in society. Western medicine has not been able to have a congruent world view that included a unified body and mind, and dealt with consciousness, emotion, and the thing called "soul." As a result it dealt with just a part of the problem. Only with the development of a Science of Religion which provides the foundation that joins everything together can medicine become unified and bring the full power of science to bear on the problems of human health.

In a Wise Community medicine would work with a deeper level of understanding such that outside intervention would be less traumatic, more personalized to focus and to guide the mind/body to use its full range of defenses in more effective ways or to restore functions temporarily malfunctioning. Medicine would focus more on the individual. As discussed in the FOURTH WAY one should strive to be in as good health as contemporary medicine allows. Regular medical examinations seem to be a definite necessity. If one is to be healthy there must be some way of discovering those types of difficulties which develop so slowly or unnoticeably that individuals do not realize their presence. In addition when medicine is placed on a more individual basis rather than dealing with averages, more subtle difficulties will come into view to aid us in achieving a constant state of good health, and help each person to maintain a healthy, active body till death. Probably all persons would need to have their own expert health diagnostic system (CTRES -- Computer Tutor, Recorder, and Expert System) to use regularly and only go to professionals when their system indicates the need.

To achieve the foregoing a section of a CPASR (Center for The Practical Application of a Science of Religion) would function to gather and maintain complete case histories of as many individuals as possible. (See, Volume I, Chapter Two, " Organizing for a Wise Community".) Whenever persons go to a hospital or physician, the medical portion of their case history would be readily available to the physician (as interpreted by a medical record evaluation expert). The foregoing procedure should make it more likely that proper treatment would be received.

Basic medical care must be available to all members of society to ensure that they are in as good of health as current knowledge makes possible.

People should be able to utilize their body as the occasion requires. They should not have to sit on the side lines and watch while others do the things they desire to, but cannot. Naturally, everything must be done to prevent, cure, or compensate for all types of crippling or deformities.

When persons are not in good physical condition, they are to that extent limited. A SFLIHM (a Sustainable Feeling that one's LIfe Has Meaning) may, therefore, be more difficult for them to achieve. If the foregoing is true, individuals need to keep in good health in order to get the most from life. However, the foregoing is considered more deeply as part of the SIXTH WAY -- Integrate pain into a SFLIHM.

One should know of what they are capable: their physical strength, how fast they can run, how far they can jump, how much pain they can withstand, etc. Sports are one of the best ways to learn one's capabilities. These sports must not be those which permanently damage the body by breaking bones and tearing tendons, but those which allow it to be tested and kept in good working order while enhancing love and respect of other persons.

The only usefulness of sports must not be judged to be their function of showing the better coordination and physical perfection of one person over another. Surely those so gifted should have the chance to demonstrate their abilities and accomplishments just as artists have their chance to utilize and develop their skills and interests. However, sports on a different plane -- a more important one -- must be organized, not to glorify the best individuals, but to allow all individuals to test and gain confidence in themselves.

Here is one place the individual can learn that a SFLIHM does not mean complete satisfaction during each moment of life. Here individuals should learn self reliance as differentiated from group dependence. Wise Persons know that there is always someone to help them when they need it, but here persons learn how to judge when they need it. Individuals must learn that though they are completely exhausted -- when every step is made only with the utmost effort, the lungs seem to be aflame, the muscles ache from the effect of strain -- they can go on by their own effort, and that plain tenacity is often the primary tool of achievement. In this situation no one else can pick up the responsibility. Others may encourage, but only the individual can achieve. If they persevere they have developed and thereby gained in self esteem. If they quit they have missed an opportunity to advance their development and experience the joy that comes from pursuing a difficult task to its conclusion. Of course, this physical trial by ordeal must not surpass people's capabilities and thereby stunt rather than help them.

Exercise is definitely necessary for a healthy body. In addition to the more strenuous sports mentioned above to help persons discover their capabilities, there should be other exercises to aid in maintaining a good physical state. If persons do manual labor they, perhaps, get enough exercise. However, as work becomes more sedentary, workers must look elsewhere for their exercise. One source is games (that is making exercise fun) such as tennis, volleyball, golf, swimming, horse-back riding, hiking, bike riding, etc. Another source that might complement the foregoing at least for some people is more compact exercises: ballet, calisthenics, tap-dancing, etc. Some persons would be able to benefit from one approach, and some another.

Perhaps, in many cases several hours of strenuous work each week could be performed. This might lighten the load of others, and prevent some people from working like beasts of burden the bulk of their lives. All persons may have to shoulder part of the hard work of the world to ensure that no one becomes overly burdened with psychologically unimportant work.

However, psychologically unimportant is a broad concept. It signifies that a person goes through many stages of maturity and is therefore capable of learning and gaining from many diverse occupations. What would appear completely boring, unrewarding, strenuous, etc. cannot be judged psychologically unimportant at face value, but only in relation to the person who is to perform it.

The system (CTRES) mentioned above that provides diagnostics for a particular individual would be a key element of an improved health care system. It would run regular tests and analyses of body fluids, etc. to maintain a constant, personalized, developing data base. This information would provide early warning of changing conditions and make recommendations for appropriate action. Minor conditions might be treated with no outside intervention needed. This would reduce the number of major threats to health and well-being. As individualized diagnostic tests become more accurate and more available a vast amount of data will become available. This data can only adequately be dealt with by a super expert system with auxiliary programs, physical tests, etc. and connections to the Knowledge Bank and tied into one's health care provider for monitoring and up-date of central records. And, also for treatment of each individual when necessary.

Health and medicine is certainly a big mouthful. But as with all areas of knowledge and experience, we can only make our best effort and realize that others will expand, perfect, and change it as necessary. However, getting a handle on this gigantic top is not easy. The resource I will use to focus this area is HEALING AND THE MIND by Bill Moyers[2]. This book is based on a PBS Television series of the same name. It involves a number of interviews with individuals working in the area of mind/body medicine. It is the perfect book to examine how medicine relates to a Science of Religion because most of the issues it deals with are central to such a view.

P. xiii: "If...the book implicitly advocates anything, it is that the journey is worth making for what each of us might learn about this remarkable union of mind, body, and spirit that is the human being."

RESPONSE: But more than this, Moyers explores the relationship of community and medicine which is a core concern of a Science of Religion.

P. 2: "During the day more than 350 people may cram the waiting area of the outpatient clinic [of Parkland Memorial Hospital, the public hospital in Dallas, Texas], until the line extends beyond the hospital door to the sidewalk. It is not unusual for some of these people, most of them poor, to wait ten or twelve hours to receive fifteen minutes of basic medical care. Like all public hospitals, Parkland is underfunded, overcrowded, and overwhelmed. Yet unlike most, it has resolved to change the way it practices medicine."

"Modern medicine, with all its extraordinary technology, has accomplished wonders, but [practicing internist, Ron] Anderson believes that caring is also a powerful medicine."

RESPONSE: And this lays out one of the many difficulties of medicine as it is practiced in modern America. The solutions will not come easily or automatically, but if addressed with the proper tools, provided by a Science of Religion, solutions should be increasingly achievable.

Moyers' data provides a deep probe that shows the challenges that a Science of Religion must address. All of our institutions demonstrate the deficiencies in the foundations upon which our society rests. The medical system is no exception. We have taken a golden opportunity provided by modern science and fumbled it through inept social organization and poorly focused goals.

The material presented here provides a resource to relatively clearly see where change is needed and how a Science of Religion would promote those changes.

P. 5: "Thinking about our medical system as a 'health care' system rather than a 'disease treatment' system would mean looking closely at medical education and our pubic funding priorities."

"On this first stage of my journey, I realized that the subject of healing and the mind stretches beyond medicine into issues about what we value in society and who we are as human beings. As patients, we are more than lonely, isolated flecks of matter; we are members of families, communities, and cultures. As this awareness finds its way into hospitals, operating rooms, clinics, and doctor's offices, perhaps it will spread further, as well. Healing begins with caring. So does civilization."

RESPONSE: And these are just the issues that would involve a Religion of Wisdom.

Medical education that was tied into a Science of Religion would differ at every step in the development of a physician. The student would be more highly subsidized and more focused on their full development and achievement of a SFLIHM. Their financial goals like all Wise Persons would be modest and fit into a context of their total life goals.

Their mastery of all the details of human anatomy, drugs, diagnosis, etc. would not squeeze out the training and education necessary to become a Wise Person and to take their place in a Wise Community.

They would be tied in to a Wise Community at every step. Initially this would involve their decisions about how to use their life in the way that would be best for them and for their community. "Best" here would mean how to develop their interests and make their contribution to their community -- humanity in general. When becoming a physician is the best balance of the individual's needs and the community's needs, everything possible would be done to achieve this.

Help would be available in the selection of the educational institution to do their training. Also, their community would support them in their efforts and provide the nurturing love of every kind to help them achieve their goals. Etc.

Moyers interviews various individuals in the process of assembling this book/TV series. A biographical statement is provided at the beginning of each interview. The first person presented is Dr. Thomas Delbanco.

INTERVIEWEE: "Thomas Delbanco, M.D., Director of the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Director of the Picker/Commonwealth Program for Patient-Centered Care. He is a founder and past President of the Society of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Delbanco has brought renewed attention to primary care in academic medicine; he is currently working on projects to strengthen and enrich the doctor-patient relationship." (p. 7)

P. 13: Moyers: "If hospitals were to act on the basis of what you say [attempting to understand the patient as a person], how would they change what they do?"

Delbanco: "We would take a much more organized inventory of each individual as he or she comes to us -- what you want, what you expect, what your fears are, what you're worried about when you leave us."

RESPONSE: And this would be an essential ingredient of medicine in a Wise Community.

INTERVIEWEE: "Ron Anderson, M.D., is Chairperson of the Board of the Texas Department of Health and Chief Executive Office of Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas. Parkland, a public institution that serves both paying and nonpaying patients, is often rated among the twenty-five best hospitals in the United States and is trying to implement principles of mind/body medicine. Dr. Anderson is the coauthor of MEDICAL APARTHEID -- AN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE."

P. 26: M: "When you talk about wholeness, I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean."

Anderson: "I mean by 'wholeness' as whole as you can be, given the assault on your person by a disease. Your body image may have been changed, or you may have experienced grief of loss. How can I get you back to the highest state of function that I can? If I can't cure, I can care. And if I can't care, then something is very desperately wrong."

"You try to bring healing to a person and help them heal themselves. Many times, if they have information, and if they're empowered through a caring milieu, they will be better able to function. The doctors and nurses won't be going home with them, so it's very important that we get them to the highest plane of function that we can. We have a saying in our geriatric ward that we've never met a patient we couldn't care for. We've met many we couldn't cure."

M: "Caring is good medicine."

RESPONSE: Dealing with the whole person might be the best way of defining the goal of medicine in a Wise Community.

P. 27: M: "Why is it important to know the values of a patient who comes in here for treatment?"

A: "Well, for example many people value functionality more than living longer. Sometimes young doctors are very fearful of death. Death itself is a failure. But to an elderly person death may not be failure. It may be a victory if it happens correctly. If it releases them. They don't want to be in a long-term-care facility. They want to have their dignity preserved. They want to be in some control. So their goals may be very different from the doctor who is going to prevent death at all costs. We have to talk to patients to see what their values are and what they would like as an outcome, because otherwise we're simply imposing our value system on the patient."

RESPONSE: Developing clear guidance for individuals and for society concerning the ending of life is an essential goal for a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom. Because of the confused and confusing stands of current philosophy/ religion absurd practices become institutionalized and clamored for by individuals.

The wealth provided by science and industry make it unnecessary to send old people out of the igloo to reach the end alone in the snow. However, it does not allow an increasing number of corpses to be maintained in a coma with round-the-clock maintenance for infinite periods. Cryogenics strikes me as an equally misplaced effort. However, these are issues that require input from persons with a wide spectrum of experiences and views.

P. 31: A: "Traditionally, hospitals have been organized for doctors, for auxiliaries, for insurance companies -- everybody but the patient. They've taken on 'the total-institution format.' The total institution is like a concentration camp or jail or even a place that was created to serve a need, but that is overwhelmed with volume and stress and strain and people not dealing with their own feelings."

RESPONSE: And this issue might be among the first addressed by a Science of Religion. The problem grows out of a fundamental error committed by our society in understanding the relationship between the individual and society. When this issue is resolved through building a Wise Community made up of Wise Persons many problems will be solved. At that time every organization and every activity will be constantly monitored in terms of how it contributes to developing and/or maintaining a Wise Community.

P. 37: A: "We [normally think of hospitals]...as dealing with crises of medicine, but not with a long-range strategy of social and personal and family care."

RESPONSE: And this is a key part of our difficulty. Because we have not been able to focus our energy to create a Wise Community we have produced a hell on earth with unsolvable problems everywhere we look.

P. 38: A: "Mindless technology costs us a fortune in this country."

RESPONSE: And of course the cost is not only in dollars, but in wasted, misdirected, lonely lives. This is likely to continue until we realize that technology like science only has relevance and value based on how it contributes to helping more and more persons achieve a SFLIHM.

P. 42: M: "What do medicine men know that we don't know?"

A: "They know about the spirit of a person....they know about wholeness and try to deal with that."

RESPONSE: In some important way shamans and "medicine men" focus on the whole person, the individual as an integrated part of a community. However, at a higher level they function within the model of the hunter-gatherer society. The individual is seen to have value based on their role within the tribe. They are a social unit in a functioning society. There is no effort to rise above that level to create a society in which the individual is encouraged to become their best self and rise to the level of mastering the universe not just surviving. So in reality they are not focusing on the whole person at all, but only a first order approximation.

The goal of medicine in a Wise community is not to return to the model of the shaman and "medicine man," but to utilize science, knowledge, and wisdom to use medicine as part of a Wise Community.

Medicine men in fact know little of the spirit of human beings. They know a person's need for vision, to be part of something bigger than themselves. They understand the human weakness for mystery and magic and its powerful appeal particulary in times of stress and disability. But they know nothing of the human potential to understand reality in ever increasing detail and using it to achieve a SFLIHM.

P. 44: A: "If I had a kinship with African Americans, Southeast Asians, and Hispanics in this community, I would see that they had the opportunity to do well because it would benefit me."

M: "And it would make our society more whole."

RESPONSE: And of course in a Wise Community all persons are provided the opportunity to do well in every area of their life because they are Wise Persons and thereby have achieved a SFLIHM. All persons feel their connectedness to each other because that is the essence of a Wise Person.

P. 45: A: "..these patients are all equally valuable. They are the building blocks of society. You know, modern medicine, with all its technology, can be a wonderful thing. It can make people more functional, and it can extend life, but it can't stop us from dying. We may have enormous breakthroughs in technology, but we also know a lot already that we aren't applying. These are public health things. These are primary care things. These are things we're having difficulty persuading our young medical students to do."

"It is foolish to talk about the cost of medicine and doctor reimbursement all the time and not be addressing those things that can make individuals and communities whole"

RESPONSE: Exactly! But even more in a Science of Religion human being are the ultimate reference system -- (HBAURS). The quality of their life is the criteria used to evaluate everything else.

INTERVIEWEE: "David Smith, M.D., is Commissioner of the Texas Department of Health. Formerly he was Senior Vice President of Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, and the Chief Executive Officer and Medical Director of the Community Oriented Primary Care (COPC) Program of Parkland Memorial Hospital. In addition, Dr. Smith is a pediatrician and on the teaching faculty of the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center at Dallas." (P. 47)

P. 64: S: "The best place to [practice mind/body medicine]...is out here in the community, because here we can use the strengths of the community."

"Even Native American medicine, which was a very effective form of health care, created a healing environment. And what we have to do now is reestablish a healing environment in our communities."

RESPONSE: And this must be a healing environment consistent with our efforts to develop Wise Persons. It must utilize the resources technology provides us. Also, it needs to employ the human support networks essential to good health and the good life.

P. 67: "'The fear of pain,' Kabat-Zinn tells me, 'is often worse than pain itself.'"

P. 68: "Death can be handled better when it is broken down into a series of problems, [psychiatrist, David Spiegel of Stanford University] says, '....most patients told us they were not so much afraid of death as they were of the process of dying -- the pain, diminishment, and the loss of control.'"

RESPONSE: This is the kind of information that a Center for the Practical Application of a Science of Religion needs to accumulate, and establish procedures so it can be systematically, universally, and properly used.

P. 69: "'[Dying patients] assess what is important in the time that is left, and discard what is trivial.'"

"[Dr. Karen] Olness herself underwent surgery using only self-regulation techniques -- basically her imagination -- as an anesthetic."

"The power of the mind is astonishing, and yet we know so little about how it works."

"Common themes run through these discussions: the importance of social support; the value of expressing feelings; the doctor-patient relationship; the power of metaphor; the importance of grieving; the facing of death. In gaining a sense of control over our medical treatments, in making conscious choices about how we spend our lives, and in allowing others into our sufferings, we are releasing innate healing capacities that make us nature's allies in our own recovery."

RESPONSE: Certainly being able to fully utilize the power of the mind must be one element of the Wise Person. This would be a regular procedure included as part of levels of membership for those involved in a Wisdom Group. As in everything this back and forth interplay between the individual and the community keeps each moving in the direction of growth and excellence.

INTERVIEWEE: "Karen Olness, M.D. is Professor of Pediatrics, Family Medicine, and International Health at Case Western Reserve University. Olness has demonstrated that children with migraine headaches can learn biofeedback techniques that can reduce the number of migraines." (P. 71)

P. 73: M: "When biofeedback first emerged, we had great expectations for it. We thought it might even deal with major illnesses. But the use of it has been rather limited so far. Some people can do biofeedback effectively, and some cannot. What does that say about the mind?"

O: "It says that to become successful takes a lot of practice. It took me two months of daily practice to develop what I would call excellent skills in pain control. Children learn much more quickly."

RESPONSE: How many hours per day? Even if these were full days it would seem like time well spent. Biofeedback training would seem like it should be part of the activities of a Wisdom Group and a challenge dealt with as part of levels of membership.

P. 75: O: "...I think the average person, properly motivated, could certainly learn self-regulation [self-hypnosis, mind control]."

M: "Biofeedback, self-hypnosis, meditation, imagery -- What is the difference between one of these and another?"

O: "I don't think there is any difference in the state, but there is some difference in the purpose. Meditation is for the purpose of going within or quieting. Self-hypnosis or relaxation imagery is often for achieving a specific goal, such as getting rid of a habit or controlling pain. Having practiced all these different techniques, I think I can say that the feeling state is the same. And Herbert Benson, a professor of medicine at Harvard, found that he could not differentiate among these techniques in terms of temperature or heart rate or pulse or brainwave pattern."

M: "Is there scientific evidence to support the thesis that these techniques work?"

P. 76: O: "There are encouraging studies, but most aren't conclusive."

RESPONSE: Obviously, more research is needed on this area since it appears to have so much potential for individual development. However, it seems clear that these things work. The question is how can we make it useful to more and more people?

P. 76 "Jacob Bronowski once said that all civilizations have failed in one area -- they have limited the capacity of imagination of their young. I think we are at some risk of doing that in this society, too."

RESPONSE: Rather, I would say we are almost as guilty of this charge as any other culture. Although, our youth have more options than most cultures, they don't get the guidance and support they need to truly develop their imagination. However, I think there is another difference. We have the potential to develop a new foundation that will create a sustainable culture that in some critical way is similar to what was achieved by the hunter-gatherers.

P. 77: O: "I think that with new technology and new tools for measuring intricate happenings within the brain, we will come to understand how changes in thinking or changes in images translate to changes in body function. And when we have that understanding, then we will be in a position to give specific instructions to people with illness on what they might do to help themselves."

RESPONSE: The achievement of such a level of development should be a prime goal of all who would build a Wise Community.

P. 78: O: "Well, I think it would be wonderful if every child, beginning at age six or seven, could have an opportunity to be hooked up to a biofeedback system, maybe some sort of computer game that was cued to a physiologic response. Then, early on, children would have the experience, 'Aha! I change my thinking, and my body changes.' I think that's a generic concept that we should give our children as early as possible in life."

RESPONSE: Yes! Yes! Such a process could be a critical tool in the development of a Wise Person.

INTERVIEWEE: "Dean Ornish, M.D., is Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine and President and Director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute at the School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, and an attending physician at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. His research has demonstrated for the first time that coronary heart disease can be reversed without the use of drugs or surgery. He is the author of DR. DEAN ORNISH'S PROGRAM FOR REVERSING HEART DISEASE." (P. 87)

P. 92: OR: "...if I had to choose one factor that I thought was most important [as a major determinant in reversing heart disease], I would say it is dealing with the deeper issues of what really motivates us, and what brings us a sense of contentment and peace and well-being. Even when you try to get people to take medications to treat high blood pressure or to lower cholesterol, you find that after a year, a fairly small percentage of patients are even taking a pill, much less changing diet or life-style. In other words, providing people with health information or giving them a prescription is not usually enough to motivate them to make life-style changes or even to take their pills."

RESPONSE: This sounds like another measurement of one's FLIHM (Feeling that their LIfe Has Meaning). Probably just living a healthy life -- eating well, sleeping, being friendly, having friendships, exercising, etc. -- is a general indication of a high level FLIHM state. The effort one would be willing or able to undertake to maintain one's state is probably an additional measure of the level of one's FLIHM state.

One of the key benefits of a Mentor Group would be to help the person stay on track toward becoming their best self, including maintaining good health.

P. 94: OR: "...I think that any time a person is in pain, there's an opportunity for transformation."

RESPONSE: And this is a key realization for a Wisdom Group to understand. People who are content are usually not open to change. When their support system fails them then there is a degree of receptivity to exploring other paths, at least in the areas they associate with their pain.

P. 101: M: "Isn't it curious that we form our communities today around illness?....I saw these tired, frightened victims of heart disease...make connections....And I thought, they're being brought together by disease, and they're finding each other through pain."

OR: "The fundamental problem is not that people have negative emotions but that they experience a sense of emptiness, a void."

RESPONSE: The emptiness/void must be the target of a Wisdom Group. A Wisdom Group must start with those individuals who recognize this truth and then develop structures to successfully cope with feelings of separation. As the individual benefits they must be provided new opportunities to continue their growth and development.

P. 102: OR: "It's not really what we do that leads to chronic stress and to illnesses like heart disease, it's what motivates what we do -- the misbelief that somehow, something external to us is going to bring us health, and peace, and intimacy, and love."

"...to the degree that your behaviors and attitudes are contributing to the problem, you can do something about it -- and that is empowering."

RESPONSE: Empowerment is a key goal for a Wise Person. However, that empowerment comes out of our affiliation with a Wise Community. Together the person achieves not only peace, intimacy, and love, but also the best health allowed by current technology and a Science of Religion.

P. 107: OR: "The root of the word 'heal' is 'to make whole,' to bring together. And that bringing together is what many of us, to one degree or another, are looking for. As an individual rather than as a scientist or educator, what I find most interesting about doing this work is how the pain of having a heart attack, and being depressed, can be a catalyst not only for transforming behaviors like diet and exercise, but also for becoming aware of the more fundamental issues that underlie those behaviors."

RESPONSE: In the initial drafts of this manuscript I used the term "Whole Person" for what I now call the "Wise Person." Therefore, I clearly agree that wholeness is in truth the goal for a person's life. However, this wholeness includes much more than is usually considered. One critical element is being part of Wise Community, having a Science of Religion.

P. 109: OR: "We [physicians] have one of the highest rates of drug addiction and suicide of any professional group."

RESPONSE: Perhaps, medical doctors would be a fertile hunting ground for participants in a Wisdom Group.

P. 113: OR: "The insurance industry is really the major determinant of health care in this country -- not science and not clinical experience, but what this third party will pay for. Now, I think that is going to change, especially in the area of cardiovascular disease, because health care costs have gotten so high that people are looking at alternatives. But most of the alternatives that they are looking at don't really deal with the fundamental questions of why people get heart disease in the first place, or why we get sick. So we just end up with a different kind of health care rationing, no matter what we call it."

"The current health care system, which is really a disease care system, has de facto rationing: if you don't have insurance or a lot of money, you don't get very good access to medical care."

"...if we want the most powerful healing, we will have to begin addressing the deeper issues."

RESPONSE: See Chapter V, " The Medical Consequences of Loneliness." The foregoing material discusses research on how intimacy and related issues affect heart disease and health in general. It may well be that one primary goal of a CPASR would be to set up a medical insurance company perhaps along the lines of the Kaiser medical group. To the degree that it was made up of Wise Persons to that degree could it move medicine in a holistic direction while incorporating the best that technology has to offer. Helping the person move toward becoming a Wise Person would be a core goal of the group.

Although Kaiser started out having a concern about prevention, over the years it has lost most of that concern. I don't know why this has happened. It might be due to the influence of physicians whose training and mindset causes them to focus on treatment and be blind to the concept of prevention. Or, possibly its because so little research and study resources go into prevention that we just don't have the tests and tools to do an adequate job. The approaches explored by Moyers so dramatically re-focus the issues, a traditional physician would barely fit in.

What they've been trained to do is a key part of the process. But the current system for using those talents is grossly mis-focused. There needs to be a whole new layer of resources to ensure that each person is firmly grounded and connected to humanity in a healthy, caring way. Individual support to regularly monitor, diagnose, and recommend preventive steps with all the necessary help would need to be part of this re-structuring.

Also, greater effort to develop tools and procedures to accomplish the foregoing are necessary.

INTERVIEWEE: "Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., is founder and Director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Preventative and Behavioral Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Internationally known for his work using mindfulness meditation to help medical patients suffering from chronic pain and stress-related medical disorders, Dr. Kabat-Zinn is the author of FULL CATASTROPHE LIVING: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness." (P. 115)

RESPONSE: This is a powerful model worth considering. Other aspects of pain are examined in Chapter XII.

P. 120: K-Z: "Laboratory studies of induced pain suggest that distraction is a very good strategy for tolerating pain up to a certain level, but beyond that level it's not as effective as mindfulness, as actually attending to the sensations themselves and then noticing that you can uncouple the sensations from your thoughts about them."

M: "And physiologically, does that reduce stress?""

P. 121: K-Z: "It certainly does....But you're not trying to make the pain go away....we actually move into the stress or pain and begin to look at it, and to notice the mind's reactions, and to let go of that reactivity. And then you find that there is inner stillness and peace within some of the most difficult life situations."

P. 122: K-Z: "A lot of the people you saw today have learned how to step back from their own thought processes to the point where they're no longer making strong, unconscious identification with 'I, me, and mine.'"

M: "Is that what you meant when you said to them, 'I want each of you to become the scientist of your own mind and body?'"

K-Z: "Exactly. To know about it from the inside. To become so familiar with its workings that when something comes up, you actually observe it, and you can say, 'Wow, I haven't seen this one before.'"

RESPONSE: This is certainly a worthy goal. However, I don't believe it is truly possible in the absence of a Science of Religion within which one is working to become a Wise Person. The experiencing and the interpreting are intimately related to one's beliefs. Only in a Science of Religion is there sufficient congruency between one's beliefs and the real world to support this kind of statement.

P. 123: M: "Is there a scientific basis for the work you're doing with meditation?"

K-Z: "We're trying as best we can to deliver this intervention based on intensive training and mindfulness, without, of course, the Buddhist framework or terminology. At the same time, we're attempting, as best we can, to study it scientifically."

RESPONSE: Which obviously needs to be done. Hopefully, a society that has adopted a Science of Religion will do a better job in supporting research to clarify all the tools that are useful in helping each individual to become a Wise Persons.

P. 123: "At the beginning of the program we give people a list of 140 symptoms such as headaches and high blood pressure, and ask them to check off the symptoms they've experienced in the past month. Then we give them the same list at the end of the stress reduction program, and we find a sharp reduction in the reported symptoms. Now that's descriptive, of course. We don't have randomized controls that would tell us whether symptom reduction would be happening in some other group. First we need to establish scientifically that something is changing before we try to see what it is that is changing and carefully control for it."

"At this point we do know that people report reduction in psychological and physical symptoms, including pain. What's even more interesting is that when we give them questionnaires having to do with personality variables such as coherence and stress hardiness, and with variables having to do with their relationship with the world and how they see the world, we find that these also change over the course of the program. The interesting thing is that these measure are not really supposed to change in people. They're supposed to be relatively stable traits."

P. 124: "M: "What does that suggest?"

K-Z: "It suggests to me that people may be changing on a much more profound level over the course of these eight weeks than simply having the headaches disappear, or living with their back pain better, or watching their blood pressure go down. They may be undergoing some kind of a rotation in consciousness that allows them to have a different relationship with their body and with their mental activities, as well as with the outside world, in terms of the pressures and stresses that they're under."

RESPONSE: I would describe this as achieving a better integration of body such that the mind is more in tune with what is going on in other parts of the body. Also, there is a development of how to interpret and handle outside events so that they are dealt with more congruently.

P. 129: K-Z: "The science of meditation and its physiological and psychological effects is in its infancy. When I set up this program back in 1979, the idea was to explore the possibility of creating a clinical service in a major medical center that would catch people who were falling through the cracks of the health care system and to challenge them to do something for themselves as a complement to whatever their medical treatments were. The idea would be not to cure them, but to help them to access their deep inner resources for healing, calming the mind, and operating more effectively in the world and to help them develop strategies and resources for making sensible, adaptive choices under pressure, coping with stress, feeling better about their bodies, and feeling more engaged in life. We wanted to see whether these inner resources would have any effect on their chronic medical conditions -- and it turned out that they did, and that people improved in many ways.

RESPONSE: This procedure might be helpful for a Wisdom Group to adopt. Presumably it would produce changes far beyond anything ever before achieved.

P. 130: K-Z: "We're moving in the direction of mind/body medicine today."

M: "How would you define mind/body medicine to me?"

K-Z: "Over the past several hundred years we've tended to look at disease as being more or less a function of the physical body, and to look at thoughts, feelings, emotions, and social interactions as being in the domain of the mind. For the most part, we've thought that the disease process is independent of mind. If, for example, you get a bacterial infection, how you feel about that infection is not going to make a difference -- but penicillin will make a big difference. In this model you diagnose what's the matter with the body, treat it, and then get on with your life. You set the broken bone, and then it heals. You diagnose the infection, treat it, and then it heals."

"But as we begin looking at chronic illnesses like cancer and heart disease, which aren't infectious, we see more and more evidence that how we live our lives and, in fact, how we think and feel over a lifetime can influence the kinds of illness that we have. So the mind/body connection really has to do with understanding that the mind and the body are only artificially separate, that they've always been together, and that they have an interactive influence on each other."

RESPONSE: And since this is a basic assumption of a Science of Religion it would focus on a different approach to medicine and medical care. This approach should be able to benefit from the ideas now being explored in the part of modern medicine that Moyers examines.

P. 134: K-Z: "Medicine is reaching the point of increasing expenses with diminishing returns. Part of the problem is that a very profound element is missing in medicine: the active participation of the patient."

"Actually, I think its a misnomer to call what we have a 'health care system.' It's really a 'disease care system.' But we need to create a health care system. Many of the clinics that are developing along these lines are challenging patients to see what they can do for themselves as a complement to their medical treatments. These clinics are at the forefront of a new area of medicine called 'behavioral medicine,' which emphasizes moving towards greater levels of health rather than more and more disintegration."

RESPONSE: The above sounds like something a CPASR should establish or support where available.

P. 134: M: "And by behavioral medicine you mean medicine that enable me to take charge of my own behavior and conduct myself so as to live more healthily."

K-Z: "Right, and your doctor can never do this for you, Bill. If you smoke, your doctor can't make you stop smoking. If your doctor gives you medication for high blood pressure, you still have to take it. If you don't understand what's in your own best interest, you may not comply with what the doctors tell you to do. I think one of the reasons clinics like this one, which focus on the mind/body connection, have such high levels of patient satisfaction and compliance is that we make this stuff fun. Meditation becomes so compelling that you don't want to stop. You wouldn't want to go through this eight weeks and then give it up."

RESPONSE: And the primary tool of Kabat-Zinn's approach is group support. A Wisdom Group would be well positioned to incorporate such a procedure, and extend it in numerous directions.

P. 138: K-Z: "You can experience this [relation of body position and mood] just by curling up the corners of your mouth into a half-smile the next time you feel low."

"You can experience for yourself how body positions influence your feelings. For example, make a fist, and feel the energy that's associated with that. When you have a really strong fist, notice how your arms feel. Then unclench your fist and put you hands together in the traditional position of prayer. Can you feel the difference? The next time you're really angry, just try putting your hands together like this, and see how long you can hold onto your anger."

RESPONSE: This kind of training would also be a fundamental part of a CPASR's procedures including the full range of these activities as developed by Tony Robbins. (See, UNLIMITED POWER, Anthony Robbins, Fawcett Columbine, New York, 1986.)

P. 139: K-Z: "When you're practicing...[hatha yoga -- a form of body yoga], you're releasing tension, and the tension isn't always in the body, it can also be in the heart, in the mind, or in feeling states. Release of that tension can put you back in touch with yourself on a very deep level."

RESPONSE: Of course from the viewpoint of a Science of Religion, all tension is in the body since the body is all there is. But beyond that, as indicated above processes such as these should be a regular part of the training a Wisdom Group would provide.

P. 140: K-Z: "...hostility and anger seem to be statistically associated with a higher probability of heart disease....On the other hand, suppressing anger or emotions seems to be associated with a higher statistical probability of cancer. Emotions have a great deal to do with our state of well-being in terms of health or illness. Suppressing anger, for example, is not a particularly healthy thing to do, but neither is acting out anger....Finding a middle path allows you to use your emotions in such a way that you create a good interaction with a useful outcome."

RESPONSE: Always the goal of a Wise Person!

INTERVIEWEE: "John Zawacki, M.D., is Director of Clinical Services in the Division of Digestive Disease and Nutrition at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. In addition he is an award-winning Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School."

P. 146: Z: "One of the amazing, devastating statistics in the United States right now is the number of people with chronic pain, especially abdominal pain, who have been physically and sexually abused. It's an epidemic that's rampant in this country but that people don't talk about. It devastates people for a lifetime -- they never totally recover. But I've seen Jon [Kabat-Zinn] enable that group of people to adapt to daily life...."

RESPONSE: And a Wisdom Group would work to change these patterns by working at every level. First to assist individuals whose beliefs, life style, and experiences cause them to batter and sexually and physically abuse before they seriously effect anyone else. Secondly, to help establish procedures to effectively work with all persons affected (such as mentioned in Chapter XXIII) after injury has happened. Third, by helping to change society so that such behavior wouldn't even be considered. Fourth, general programs such as Kabat-Zinn provides to help persons work through their pain and barriers who may not even know why they think/believe as they do.

INTERVIEWEE: "David Spiegel, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Director of the Psychosocial Treatment Laboratory at Stanford University School of Medicine. In 1989 Dr. Spiegel published a landmark study on the effect of psychosocial treatment on patients with metastatic breast cancer. Also known for his work in hypnosis as treatment for pain, he is coauthor, with his father, Dr. Herbert Spiegel, of TRANCE AND TREATMENT: Clinical Uses of Hypnosis." (P. 157)

P. 158: S: "Self-hypnosis is very important as one highly structured way of regulating your inner states. As part of the treatment, we end each group with a self-hypnosis exercises. Hypnosis is really just a state of focused concentration."

M: "Is it like meditation?"

S: "There's some overlap with meditation. The meditator would say that in meditation you concentrate on nothing, and in hypnosis you focus on something."

"...hypnosis is really a means of heightening the way you control and regulate your inner states."

RESPONSE: And this would be another part of a Wisdom Group's activities.

P. 159: S: "You have to pay attention to pain for it to hurt. You can lessen the pain either by turning down the pain input or by turning up the attention that you pay to other signals in you body or other thoughts or images."

P. 170: M: "If the findings of your study are replicated, what do you think it means for medicine?

S: "It will be very exciting, because if they're replicated, what it means is that we have to change the definition of what health care is. We have to add to the surgical and medical intervention -- which we're doing with increasing skill -- a standard component of treatment that involves helping the person who has the disease deal with it and feel supported through it. It means that health care is more than just physical intervention. It's support from a caring physician and health care team and some kind of group intervention to help people who are seriously ill learn how to cope with it as fully as possible. That would be a wonderful change in the direction of health care and a cost-effective addition to helping people live better and perhaps live longer."

RESPONSE: But this support is essential even if it turned out not to effect the course of the disease at all. It would certainly effect quality of life. And quality of life is more important than length of life.

P. 174: "Neuroscientist David Felten has traced the nerve threads that run like wires between the human nervous system and the immune system. The mind and the immune system 'talk to one another,' as he puts it. What he has found leads him to say that 'we can no longer pretend that the patient's perceptions don't matter. And we can't pretend that healing is something doctors do to a patient. His colleague Dr. Robert Ader, an experimental psychologist, provided a practical demonstration of the link between the nervous system and the immune system in his work with laboratory animals. In an experiment based on classic conditioning techniques, Ader found that rats could learn to suppress their own immune system."

RESPONSE: This is a giant step forward in understanding how the body actually works. However, my guess is that it is just the tip of the iceberg and numerous mind boggling discoveries lie ahead.

P. 175: Margaret Kemeny, a psychologist and researcher at UCLA finds that, "Her own research seems to suggest that the most harmful state of mind is chronic depression -- as distinguished from sadness or grief."

RESPONSE: Another compelling reason to get rid of chronic depression. And as I've indicated many other places my working hypothesis is that chronic depression like all depression is ultimately traceable to a lack of nurturing touch, love, physical affection, and worthwhile goals.

INTERVIEWEE: "Candace Pert, Ph.D., is Visiting Professor at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University, and a consultant in Peptide Research in Rockville, Maryland. She was formerly Chief of the Section on Brain Biochemistry of the Clinical Neuroscience Branch at The National Institute of Mental Health. She discovered the opiate receptor and many other peptide receptors in the brain and in the body, which led to an understanding of the chemicals that travel between the mind and the body." (P. 177)

RESPONSE: Peptides and peptide receptors are an area needing additional study. Issues are raised that I am not familiar with that seem to be very important and need a broader perspective to assess.

P. 174: Candace Pert, says, "'the more we know about neuropeptides, the harder it is to think in the traditional terms of a mind and a body. It makes more and more sense to speak of a single integrated entity, a mind-body."

RESPONSE: And all understanding of the human body and the universe in general must lead us further in this direction.

P. 178: P: "In the beginning, like many other neuroscientists I was secretly interested in consciousness, and thought that by studying the brain I would learn about the mind and consciousness. And so for most of my early research I concentrated from the neck up. But the astounding revelation is that these endorphins [short for endogenous morphines] and other chemicals like them are found not just in the brain, but in the immune system, the endocrine system, and throughout the body. These molecules are involved in a psychosomatic communication network"

M: "Psychosomatic communication network"?

P: "Information is flowing. These molecules are being released from one place, they're diffusing all over the body, and they're tickling the receptors that are on the surface of every cell in your body."

M: "Are the receptors like satellite dishes?"

P: "Very much so. That's a good image of it if you can imagine millions of satellite dishes all over one cell. The cells are being told whether they should divide or not divide, whether they should make more of this protein or that protein, whether they should turn on this gene or that gene. Everything in your body is being run by these messenger molecules, many of which are peptides. A peptide is made up of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. There are about twenty-three different amino acids. Peptides are amino acids strung together, very much like pearls, strung along in a necklace. If you can imagine twenty-three different-colored pearls, you can see how you could have information capable of making infinite numbers of peptides. Some peptide strings are quite short. For example, the peptide enkephalin, which is the brain's own morphine, is only five amino acids long. Others, like insulin, are a couple of hundred amino acids long."

M: "Where are they?"

P: "they're everywhere and that's what really shook everybody up. After the brain's own morphine turned out to be a peptide, many scientists began searching to see which peptides they had known in other contexts could be found in the brain. The answer was, just about all of them. And then in the eighties we began to find peptides in the immune system and everywhere else."

M: "Why are they important?"

P: "They seem to be extremely important because they appear to mediate intercellular communication throughout the brain and body."

M: "How are they related to emotions?"

P: "We have come to theorize that these neuropeptides and their receptors are the biochemical correlates of emotions."

P. 179: M: "But we think of emotions as psychological."

P: "Yes, psychological -- in the realm of 'psyche,' or 'soul.' But I'm saying that we've actually found the material manifestation of emotions in these peptides and their receptors. These receptors floating around on the surface of the cells put out their little antennae and receive what's coming in. There's actually a physical attachment process between the peptide and the receptor. And once that binding process occurs, the receptor, which is a big, complicated molecule, wiggles and changes in such a way that things start to happen. Ions start pouring in, and other changes happen, and eventually the brain receptors perceive what's happening as emotions."

M: "Is...a neuropeptide saying 'Feel angry, buddy?'"

P: "Well, ...pain is conducted along a nerve and all the way up into the brain. Those pain pathways through neurons are extremely well worked out in scientific studies. The anger response is not so well worked out, but we think it involves the release of a neuropeptide somewhere. We don't know which neuropeptide. You notice the anger is a little slower because the neuropeptide has to be released, and there has to be a diffusion to the receptors."

M: "But is the anger mental or is it physical?"

P: "It's both. That's what's so interesting about emotions. They're the bridge between the mental and the physical, or the physical and the mental. It's either way."

RESPONSE: It will be interesting to see how this research fits together with Plutchik's work presented in Chapter XIII.

P. 179: "So, to carry the metaphor forward, the peptides are sort of like radar coming from the brain, and these receptors are taking them in."

P: "I like the image of the radar because it starts getting out of the mechanistic model of lock and key that most people use, and it reflects the energy aspect of all of this. We're not locks and keys, and we're not clocks; we're living matter. And living matter is not the same as nonliving matter. Right within the brain itself there are about sixty of these neuropeptides. The endorphins are one."

M: "Are you saying that the mind talks to the body, so to speak, through these neuropeptides?"

P: "Why are you taking the mind outside of the body?"

M: "It's been knocking around the West a long time -- the notion that the mind is somehow distinct from the body."

P: "Well, that just goes back to a turf deal that Descartes made with the Roman Catholic Church. He got to study science, as we know it, and left the soul, the mind, the emotions, and consciousness to the realm of the church. It's incredible how far Western science has come with that reductionist paradigm. But, unfortunately, more and more things don't quite fit into that paradigm. What's happening now may have to do with the integration of mind and matter."

(P. 180) M: "We journalists are often guilty of missing the answer by posing the wrong question. I asked, 'Is the mind talking to the body?' and you caught me on that. So if you were posing the question appropriately from your research, how would you phrase it?"

P: "I would ask, 'How are mind and matter related to each other?' But remember, I'm a scientist, not a philosopher, and I get a little frightened if I'm pushed too far out of my realm. I think, though, that we have sufficient scientific evidence to hypothesize that these information molecules, these peptides and receptors, are the biochemicals of emotions. They are found in the parts of the brain that mediate emotion. They control the opening and closing of the blood vessels in your face, for example. They allow the systems of the body to talk to each other."

M: "They're agents of information?"

P: "Exactly. They carry messages within the brain, and from the brain to the body, or from the body to the body, or from the body to the brain."

P. 181: M: "Why do you call these neuropeptides 'biochemical units of emotion'?"

P: "Well, it took us fifteen years of research before we dared to call them that. But we know that during different emotional states, these neuropeptides are released. It looks like emotion in the broadest senses."

M: "...but what makes me say 'I'm sad' or 'I'm happy'?"

P: "It may just be some peptides in your intestine. In other word, it goes both ways. If you accept the premise that the mind is not just in the brain but that the mind is part of a communication network throughout the brain and body, then you can start to see how physiology can affect mental functioning on a moment-to-moment, hour-by-hour, day-to-day basis, much more than we give it credit for."

M: "So instead of saying the mind is talking to the body, you would say 'I'm talking to myself,' because these neuropeptides are regulating the emotions that I 'feel.'"

P: "Yes, through receptors in the parts of the brain that we've long known are associated with the experience of emotions. Years ago it was shown that when surgeons electrically stimulated the brains of people undergoing epilepsy surgery, they would laugh or cry or be in ecstasy -- in other words, the patients would emote just from electrical stimulation of certain parts of the brain. We now know that those parts of the brain are loaded with virtually all of these peptide-information substances and their receptors."

(P. 182) M: "And so they send these messages like little canoes down into the body where they find waiting ports of call."

P: "Well, it gets weirder than that. The message doesn't literally have to go from the brain into the body. It can happen almost spontaneously."

M: "But what's happening?"

P: "We don't know, but I feel that the person who will figure this out is going to be a physicist, because clearly there's another form of energy that we have not yet understood. For example, there's a form of energy that appears to leave the body when the body dies. If we call that another energy that just hasn't been discovered yet, it sounds much less frightening to me than 'spirit.' Remember, I'm a scientist, and in the Western tradition I don't use the word 'spirit.' 'Soul' is a four-letter word in our tradition. The deal was struck with Descartes. We don't involve that stuff. And yet too many phenomena can't be explained by thinking of the body in a totally reductionistic fashion."

M: "And by 'reductionistic,' you mean --"

P: "That it's just chemical and electrical gradients, and that one day everything will be explained without invoking some other energy."

M: "But what you're describing with neuropeptides seems to me essentially a chemical reaction. You call these neuropeptides chemical messengers. As they go from one place in the body to another, the body creates a physical response."

RESPONSE: Pert raises some serious questions above which she then does not address. Moyers provides a materialist explanation which she doesn't actually challenge. But her statement, "It can happen almost spontaneously," and "there's a form of energy that appears to leave the body when the body dies," and "If we call that another energy that just hasn't been discovered yet...." needs further discussion to dispel or to expand our thinking and understanding.

P. 184: P: "We're really in the very early stages of being able to figure out which peptide mediates which emotion or whether combinations of peptides are involved. We have a few that we know pretty well because we have psychoactive drugs that give a certain effect. For example, we know that cocaine is a euphoriant, and we know what receptor system it interacts with in the brain."

M: "When you snort cocaine, you immediately get a rush, or a 'high,' as it's called."

P: "Right. And the reason you get this high is that the receptors for taking up and inactivating one of the messenger molecules gets blocked by cocaine. It binds to that receptor and interferes with the normal destruction of the chemical that causes euphoria."

M: "But euphoria is a physical response to a drug. Grief is something else, is it not?"

P: "You bet, but I'm sure there are chemicals that mediate grief."

P. 185: M: "But you haven't identified the grief peptide, have you?"

P: "I haven't....There's a lot of work to be done, and the killer experiment that will link mind to matter, and peptides and receptors to emotion, has not yet been done. But we do know that not all the emotions are up in your head. The chemicals that mediate emotions and the receptors for those chemicals are found in almost every cell in the body. In fact, even one-celled animals have these peptides."

RESPONSE: This is an exciting area of research and could provide a firm foundation for understanding human behavior.

P: "I personally think there are many phenomena that we can't explain without going into energy. As a scientist, I believe that we're going to understand everything one day, but that this understanding will require bringing in a realm we don't understand at all yet. We're going to have to bring in that extra-energy realm, the realm of spirit and soul that Descartes kicked out of Western scientific thought."

RESPONSE: Time will tell. But surely we will have some surprises as our knowledge of the human body grows.

P. 187: P: "Emotions might actually be the link between mind and body...."

P. 188: M: "So the mind is more than the brain?"

P: "Definitely."

P. 189: M: "Then what is the mind?"

P: "What is the mind? Gosh, how frightening! I'm a basic scientist, and I'm having to answer, 'What is the mind?' The mind is some kind of enlivening energy in the information realm throughout the brain and body that enables the cells to talk to each other, and the outside to talk to the whole organism."

RESPONSE: That's not what I would have said. Based on everything else I've read about mind/body, to postulate undiscovered, enlivening energy seems overly speculative. At this point it seems possible that consciousness (which is the real dilemma) comes out of complexity of neural connections and related mechanisms. If this is true we should at some point start producing conscious computers. But since we don't yet have a fool proof way to test for consciousness, its not clear we would know if we produced some. However, as I've said elsewhere my current speculation is that consciousness is a body's way to make choices. When stimuli, information, etc. needs to be integrated in order to make a choice -- when the response/action is not automatic -- that is what consciousness allows.

P. 191: M: "So if medicine begins to incorporate mind and emotion, the field might be retrieved from the hucksters, and the charlatans, and the pop psychologists."

P: "Yes, but just because the hucksters are out there doesn't mean that we should ignore the possibility that there are some very real and valid aspects of what they're doing. We're too presold on the high-tech, highly unemotional approach. Dean Ornish's work has shown that a combination of stress-reduction exercises, meditation, group therapy, and a vegetarian diet can actually reverse damage to the heart muscle. That's very surprising to doctors."

RESPONSE: Yes. Figuring out who the charlatans are is always the problem. I think its not quite as straight forward as Moyers would like for it to be.

P. 193: M: "But where does this trail lead us in regard to emotions and health?"

P: "It leads us to think that the chemicals that are running our body and our brain are the same chemicals that are involved in emotion. And that says to me that we'd better seriously entertain theories about the role of emotions and emotional suppression in disease, and that we'd better pay more attention to emotions with respect to health."

RESPONSE: But beyond health is quality of life and in that area emotions need to be considered in ways Western society hasn't done up to this point.

INTERVIEWEE: "Margaret Kemeny, Ph.D., is a psychologist with postgraduate training in immunology and psychoneuroimmunology. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her current research explores the relationship between psychology and the HIV virus." (P. 195)

RESPONSE: See Chapter V. B., " The Medical Consequence of Loneliness," for more depth on this issue.

P. 207: K: "If we can figure out ways to talk that allow us to think about the mind and body as one and the same, we'd be better off."

RESPONSE: If A NEW FOUNDATION FOR CIVILIZATION works it should be a help on this issue.

P. 210: K: "I think...[an] implication of this research is in education. It's no longer sufficient to train individuals in single disciplines....The very, very important questions in science, the ones that will be the cutting edge of the future, and that will lead to very important discoveries, cross the disciplines."

RESPONSE: And teaching individuals to see their area of specialization within the bigger context and to constantly work to cross boundaries seems essential to achieve and maintain a Wise Community.

INTERVIEWEE: "David Felten, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. He and his wife, Suzanne Felten, Ph.D., have discovered nerve fibers that physically link the nervous system and the immune system. Dr. Felten was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship in 1983 and is Associate Editor of the journal BRAIN, BEHAVIOR AND IMMUNITY." (P. 213)

RESPONSE: Another reason to rid the world of loneliness beyond its role as a brief signal that intimacy is now lacking and is needed. See Chapter V. A.

P. 223: F: "We have unequivocal evidence that these two systems communicate. What we don't yet understand is how much difference that makes in certain illnesses."

P. 226: F: "I would...caution individuals not to abandon appropriate medical therapy in order to go chasing after something someone promises them. Anyone can find testimonials for anything. Let's see the controlled scientific studies first."

RESPONSE: And this is the challenge in utilizing all the elements necessary in order to become a Wise Person. There are so many distractions, so much confusion, such widespread ignorance everyone must get off the path from time-to-time. But if we can help each other in a nurturing way perhaps a CPASR can reduce the negative effects of getting lost.

P. 230: F: "...touching makes a difference. Studies have shown that even in rodents, physical touching during early development, before weaning, greatly increases the number of small neurons in certain parts of the brain. Now that's a very powerful impact. Once again we rediscover that Grandmother knew what she was talking about, that you need to touch and love and nurture a baby. I'm sure that Grandmother didn't know that involved postnatal proliferation and migration of small neurons into the brain, but nonetheless, she knew the effects were real."

RESPONSE: Nurturing touch is a defining characteristic of a Wise Person and a Wise Community. See Chapter IV for more details.

P: 234: M: "What does science really tell us about healing?"

F: "We understand how an immune system will respond to a foreign invader, and we understand a little bit about how the brain responds under certain adverse circumstances. But beyond that to the elusive aspect of the mind that contributes to healing, we know very little. And we know very little about what gives some people the determination and perhaps the will to recover from a disease."

RESPONSE: And these areas should be prime areas of research in a Wise Community.

INTERVIEWEE: ROBERT ADER: "Robert Ader, Ph.D., is Director of the Division of Behavioral and Psychosocial Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. He conducted a landmark experiment showing that mice could be given a drug to suppress their immune system and then be conditioned to continue suppressing their immune system after the drug was taken away. The experiment expanded understanding of what humans might be able to control in their own bodies." (p. 239)

2. HEALING AND THE MIND, Bill Moyers, Doubleday, New York, 1950.