The Holographic Universe (16 page)

After a while, however,
the anesthetic personality relinquished control of the body, and the man's
original personality returned, along with all the pain and swelling of the wasp
sting. The next day he went back to the ophthalmologist to at last be treated.
Neither Howland nor her patient had told the ophthalmologist that the man was a
multiple, and after treating him, the ophthalmologist telephoned Howland. “He
thought time was playing tricks on him.” Howland laughed. “He just wanted to
make sure that I had actually called him the day before and he had not imagined
it.”

Allergies are not the
only thing multiples can switch on and off. If there was any doubt as to the
control the unconscious mind has over drug effects, it is banished by the
pharmacological wizardry of the multiple. By changing personalities, a multiple
who is drunk can instantly become sober. Different personalities also respond
differently to different drugs. Braun records a case in which 5 milligrams of
diazepam, a tranquilizer, sedated one personality, while 100 milligrams had
little or no effect on another. Often one or several of a multiple's
personalities are children, and if an adult personality is given a drug and
then a child's personality takes over, the adult dosage may be too much for the
child and result in an overdose. It is also difficult to anesthetize some
multiples, and there are accounts of multiples waking up on the operating table
after one of their “unanesthetizable” subpersonalities has taken over.

Other conditions that
can vary from personality to personality include scars, burn marks, cysts, and
left- and right-handedness. Visual acuity can differ, and some multiples have
to carry two or three different pairs of eyeglasses to accommodate their
alternating personalities. One personality can be color-blind and another not,
and even eye color can change. There are cases of women who have two
or
three menstrual periods each month because each of their subpersonalities has
its own cycle. Speech pathologist Christy Ludlow has found that the voice
pattern for each of a multiple's personalities is different, a feat that
requires such a deep physiological change that even the most accomplished actor
cannot alter his voice enough to disguise his voice pattern. One multiple,
admitted to a hospital for diabetes, baffled her doctors by showing no symptoms
when one of her nondiabetic personalities was in control. There are accounts of
epilepsy coming and going with changes in personality, and psychologist Robert
A. Phillips, Jr., reports that even tumors can appear and disappear (although
he does not specify what kind of tumors).

Multiples also tend to
heal faster than normal individuals. For example, there are several cases on
record of third-degree burns healing with extraordinary rapidity. Most eerie of
all, at least one researcher—Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, the therapist whose
pioneering treatment of Sybil Dorsett was portrayed in the book
Sybil
—is
convinced that multiples don't age as fast as other people.

How could such things
be? At a recent symposium on the multiple personality syndrome, a multiple
named Cassandra provided a possible answer. Cassandra attributes her own rapid
healing ability both to the visualization techniques she practices and to
something she calls
parallel processing.
As she explained, even when her
alternate personalities are not in control of her body, they are still aware.
This enables her to “think” on a multitude of different channels at once, to do
things like work on several different term papers simultaneously, and even
“sleep” while other personalities prepare her dinner and clean her house.

Hence, whereas normal
people only do healing imagery exercises two or three times a day, Cassandra
does them around the clock. She even has a sub personality named Celese who
possesses a thorough knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and whose sole
function is to spend twenty-four hours a day meditating and imaging the body's
well-being. According to Cassandra, it is this full-time attention to her
health that gives her an edge over normal people. Other multiples have made
similar claims.

We are deeply attached
to the inevitability of things. If we have bad vision, we believe we will have
bad vision for life, and if we suffer from diabetes, we do not for a moment
think our condition might vanish with a change in mood or thought. But the
phenomenon of multiple personality challenges this belief and offers further
evidence of just how much our psychological states can affect the body's
biology. If the psyche of an individual with MPD is a kind of multiple image
hologram, it appears that the body is one as well, and can switch from one
biological state to another as rapidly as the nutter of a deck of cards.

The systems of control
that must be in place to account for such capacities is mind-boggling and makes
our ability to will away a wart look pale. Allergic reaction to a wasp sting is
a complex and multi-faceted process and involves the organized activity of
antibodies, the production of histamine, the dilation and rupture of blood
vessels, the excessive release of immune substances, and so on. What unknown
pathways of influence enable the mind of a multiple to freeze all these
processes in their tracks? Or what allows them to suspend the effects of
alcohol and other drugs in the blood, or turn diabetes on and off? At the
moment we don't know and must console ourselves with one simple fact Once a
multiple has undergone therapy and in some way becomes whole again, he or she
can still make these switches at will. This suggests that somewhere in our psyches
we
all
have the ability to control these things. And still this is not
all we can do.

Pregnancy, Organ
Transplants, and Tapping the Genetic Level

As we have seen, simple
everyday belief can also have a powerful effect on the body. Of course most of
us do not have the mental discipline to completely control our beliefs (which
is why doctors must use placebos to fool us into tapping the healing forces
within us). To regain that control we must first understand the different types
of belief that can affect us, for these too offer their own unique window on
the plasticity of the mind/body relationship.

CULTURAL BELIEFS

One type of belief is
imposed on us by our society. For example, the people of the Trobriand Islands
engage freely in sexual relations before marriage, but premarital pregnancy is
strongly frowned upon. They use no form of contraception, and seldom if ever
resort to abortion. Yet premarital pregnancy is virtually unknown. This
suggests that, because of their cultural beliefs, the unmarried women are
unconsciously preventing themselves from getting pregnant. There is evidence
that something similar may be going on in our own culture. Almost everyone
knows of a couple who have tried unsuccessfully for years to have a child. They
finally adopt, and shortly thereafter the woman gets pregnant. Again this
suggests that finally having a child enabled the woman and/or her husband to
overcome some sort of inhibition that was blocking the effects of her and/or
his fertility.

The fears we share with
the other members of our culture can also affect us greatly. In the nineteenth
century, tuberculosis killed tens of thousands of people, but starting in the
1880s, death rates began to plummet. Why? Previous to that decade no one knew
what caused TB, which gave it an aura of terrifying mystery. But in 1882 Dr.
Robert Koch made the momentous discovery that TB was caused by a bacterium.
Once this knowledge reached the general public, death rates fell from 600 per
100,000 to 200 per 100,000, despite the fact that it would be nearly half a
century before an effective drug treatment could be found.

Fear apparently has been
an important factor in the success rates of organ transplants as well. In the
1950s kidney transplants were only a tantalizing possibility. Then a doctor in
Chicago made what seemed to be a successful transplant He published his
findings, and soon after other successful transplants took place around the
world. Then the first transplant failed. In fact, the doctor discovered that
the kidney had actually been rejected from the start. But it did not matter.
Once transplant recipients believed they could survive, they did, and success
rates soared beyond all expectations.

THE BELIEFS WE
EMBODY IN OUR ATTITUDES

Another way belief
manifests in our lives is through our attitudes. Studies have shown that the
attitude an expectant mother has toward her baby, and pregnancy in general, has
a direct correlation with the complications she will experience during
childbirth, as well as with the medical problems her newborn infant will have
after it is born. Indeed, in the past decade an avalanche of studies has poured
in demonstrating the effect our attitudes have on a host of medical conditions.
People who score high on tests designed to measure hostility and aggression are
seven times more likely to die from heart problems than people who receive low
scores. Married women have stronger immune systems than separated or divorced
women, and
happily
married women have even stronger immune systems.
People with AIDS who display a fighting spirit live longer than AIDS-infected
individuals who have a passive attitude. People with cancer also live longer if
they maintain a fighting spirit. Pessimists get more colds than optimists.
Stress lowers the immune response; people who have just lost their spouse have
an increased incidence of illness and disease, and on and on.

THE BELIEFS WE
EXPRESS THROUGH THE POWER OF OUR WILL

The types of belief we
have examined so far can be viewed largely as passive beliefs, beliefs we allow
our culture or the normal state of our thoughts to impose upon us. Conscious
belief in the form of a steely and unswerving will can also be used to sculpt
and control the body holographic. In the 1970s, Jack Schwarz, a Dutch-born
author and lecturer, astounded researchers in laboratories across the United
States with his ability to willfully control his body's internal biological
processes.

In studies conducted at
the Menninger Foundation, the University of California's Langley Porter
Neuropsychiatric Institute, and others, Schwarz astonished doctors by sticking
mammoth six-inch sailmaker's needles completely through his arms without
bleeding, without flinching, and without producing beta brain waves (the type
of brain waves normally produced when a person is in pain). Even when the
needles were removed, Schwarz still did not bleed, and the puncture holes
closed tightly. In addition, Schwarz altered his brain-wave rhythms at will,
held burning cigarettes against his flesh without harming himself, and even
carried live coals around in his hands. He claims he acquired these abilities
when he was in a Nazi concentration camp and had to learn how to control pain
in order to withstand the terrible beatings he endured. He believes anyone can
learn voluntary control of their body and thus gain responsibility for his or
her own health.

Oddly enough, in 1947
another Dutchman demonstrated similar abilities. The man's name was Mirin Dajo,
and in public performances at the Corso Theater in Zurich, he left audiences
stunned. In plain view Dajo would have an assistant stick a fencing foil
completely through his body, clearly piercing vital organs but causing Dajo no
harm or pain. Like Schwarz, when the foil was removed, Dajo did not bleed and
only a faint red line marked the spot where the foil had entered and exited.

Dajo's performance
proved so nerve-racking to his audiences that eventually one spectator suffered
a heart attack, and Dajo was legally banned from performing in public. However,
a Swiss doctor named Hans Naegeli-Osjord learned of Dajo's alleged abilities
and asked him if he would submit to scientific scrutiny. Dajo agreed, and on
May 31, 1947, he entered the Zurich cantonal hospital. In addition to Dr.
Naegeli-Osjord, Dr. Werner Brunner, the chief of surgery at the hospital, was
also present, as were numerous other doctors, students, and journalists. Dajo
bared his chest and concentrated, and then, in full view of the assemblage, he
had his assistant plunge the foil through his body.

As always, no blood
flowed and Dajo remained completely at ease. But he was the only one smiling.
The rest of the crowd had turned to stone. By all rights, Dajo's vital organs
should have been severely damaged, and his seeming good health was almost too
much for the doctors to bear. Filled with disbelief, they asked Dajo if he
would submit to an X ray. He agreed and without apparent effort accompanied
them up the stairs to the X-ray room, the foil still through his abdomen. The X
ray was taken and the result was undeniable. Dajo was indeed impaled. Finally,
a full twenty minutes after he had been pierced, the foil was removed, leaving
only two faint scars. Later, Dajo was tested by scientists in Basel, and even
let the doctors themselves run him through with the foil. Dr. Naegeli-Osjord
later related the entire case to the German physicist Alfred Stelter, and
Stelter reports it in his book
Psi-Healing.

Such supernormal feats
of control are not limited to the Dutch. In the 1960s Gilbert Grosvenor, the
president of the National Geographic Society, his wife, Donna, and a team of
Geographic
photographers visited a village in Ceylon to witness the alleged miracles of a
local wonderworker named Mohotty. It seems that as a young boy Mohotty prayed
to a Ceylonese divinity named Kataragama and told the god that if he cleared
Mohotty's father of a murder charge, he, Mohotty, would do yearly penance in
Kataragama's honor. Mohotty's father was cleared, and true to his word, every
year Mohotty did his penance.