Walking Through Walls (28 page)

“No, don't bother. I'll just call her. But we had a date. I'll bet she's going out with Scott instead.”

“I'm happy to find out.”

“No, I'll handle this myself.” I did not really want to know if she was seeing someone else.

“Okay. Why don't you work with the pendulum for now? Just keep asking it questions until you feel comfortable that it is responding. It should feel natural, as if you're talking to someone. I suggest you keep track of your questions and the answers you receive in a small notebook, so we can measure your accuracy. This way you will—oh, wait a minute.” At that moment, the phone rang. My father answered. “Hello? Just a minute, please. He's right here.” As my father handed me the phone, he covered the mouthpiece and said, “It's Mark.”

“Hi. Yeah, my father was on the phone. Huh? Your father was in an accident? What happened?”

My father looked at me with a huge smile on his face and whispered, “To be continued.” With that, he got up and left the room.

It was now clear that the next phone call would be Maya telling me we weren't going to the movies, just as my father had predicted.

I didn't want to tell my father, but since that first lesson, I had been practicing the pendulum a lot. If he knew what I was doing, he'd make me start to study with him even more. I would have to learn how to diagnose and determine remedies—really boring stuff. Instead I used the pendulum to obtain very important information such as “What is the release date for the next Beatles album?” “Is Marcia's mother sleeping with Mr. Stickney?” “Is Julie selling pot?”

For me the pendulum was a great spy tool that made me feel I had an edge over the other kids in school. Unfortunately, my success rate in getting correct answers was not very high; maybe only about 15 percent. Even though I got more things wrong than right, I suddenly felt that I had invincible supernatural powers that protected me against poor grades and teasing by the rest of the student body. Now nothing at school bothered me. If one of the kids harassed me, I figured I could use the pendulum to find something out about him that would embarrass him, and he would leave me alone.

My SATs were approaching. Not only was I a terrible student but also a disastrous test taker. However, I had hatched an ingenious plan based on my extensive pendulum practice. Since I wasn't planning on studying for the test, I thought it would be a good idea to bring the pendulum with me. I would hold it between my legs so that the proctor wouldn't see me using it. As I read each test question to myself, I glanced down at the pendulum and waited until it swung in a positive direction, indicating the correct answer. So for those questions like “If a train is going sixty miles an hour…” I would rely on the pendulum to tell me if the answer was A, B, C, or D.

The phone rang. It was my father calling from next door.

“How's it going?”

“Okay, just hanging out.”

“Tonight I'm giving a lecture on healing over at the University of Miami. I'd love for you to come.”

“Naw, that's okay, I'm just going to stay home. I think Mom wants me to help her with some things.”

“This is going to be really good. Some time ago I healed this woman's mother, and now she wants me to speak to the students to expose them to ideas about psychic healing. It will be fun.”

Fun? I couldn't imagine one of my father's lectures being fun. Besides, I had been to enough of them and had heard it all. All this stuff about healing, about spirits, blah, blah, blah. I knew it all by heart.

“No, I don't really feel like it. I'm kinda tired.”

“By the way, I think it's great that you're doing all the work with the pendulum. Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, it's not going to work for your SAT tests.”

“It's not?” I couldn't understand why it wouldn't; it seemed to be a perfect use of the pendulum to gain information from unknown sources. After all, that was the purpose of the pendulum, wasn't it?

“No. And do you know why? Because it's not for the highest good. You need to get the test answers from your own mind.”

“But you told me that I could tune in to anything in the universe.”

“Yes, but I didn't tell you that you could use the pendulum to cheat on a test.”

“It's not cheating.”

“Yes it is. Come over to my house at six-thirty and we'll drive over to the university.”

At six-thirty we both climbed into his big gold Toronado and headed off to the lecture. I had put my pendulum in my pocket in case I had some sort of emergency and needed information immediately. Lecturing at the University of Miami meant a lot to my father; it was a sign of legitimacy. This was a far cry from his earlier talks given in nearly abandoned churches, in people's living rooms, and at psychic fairs. He was still struggling to have his work accepted so that he could pass on the unique information that his spirits had taught him.

My father truly wanted to help people and believed that his work could eliminate a lot of physical and mental suffering. Everything he did was based on the simple notion that we are all spiritual beings with tremendous powers. Until we recognized this, nothing would change—there would continue to be wars, disease, and anger. My father wanted to be able to teach everybody—nurses, doctors, policemen, and the man in the street—how to heal. He felt this power was innate to all humans, and he dreamed of the day when there would no longer be a need for hospitals, doctors, or pharmaceuticals with dangerous side effects. Instead there would be legions of healers who could eliminate disease through concentrated thought and prayer.

Whenever he met a doctor in a social situation, Pop would begin an almost Talmudic argument with the doctor as to why the medical profession was doing more harm than good and how physicians could truly heal people if they understood the wisdom of the body and the spirit. Despite the constant accusations of quackery by the medical profession, there were those rare doctors who supported my father's work and quietly believed. While they would never publicly come to his defense, they readily agreed to be taught his methods as long as he never identified them publicly. They acted as if they were living in the seventeenth century and afraid of being turned in by their neighbors for practicing witchcraft. Nurses would secretly practice his laying-on-of-hands method with their patients, or doctors might use the pendulum in private to diagnose difficult cases. My father worked with several doctors who would call him from time to time for consultations about patients who, no matter what they did, just never got better. Within minutes, my father would give the doctor a complete diagnosis and a list of either alternative treatments or standard pharmaceuticals to use.

Of course, some of this has finally changed with the arrival of the twenty-first century. There are now healers working alongside medical doctors in the operating room. These doctors are seen as the vanguard of the new frontiers of medicine. It was in the context of imagining such a future that my father welcomed the opportunity to lecture at the University of Miami. If he couldn't immediately change the medical establishment, at least he could begin to plant the seeds of change with a new generation.

We parked on campus near the Lowe Art Gallery. As we walked through the breezeway to the student union, I noticed that photocopied announcements of my father's lecture had been taped up on the columns and the walls: “Come Hear Famous Psychic Lew Smith.” Upstairs, a room had been set aside with about fifty chairs. When we arrived, the room was empty. I figured that about ten people would show up. A woman in her mid-thirties walked in and greeted my father.

“Reverend Smith! We are honored that you came to speak to us this evening. I know a lot of people are interested in what you have to say. We should have a nice crowd. I think the students will be very curious about what you do. There may be one or two doctors from the teaching hospital dropping in. Is this your son?”

“Yes, this is Philip. Philip, this is Miss Orson, who asked me to come and speak.”

“Hi. Nice to meet you.”

“It must be wonderful having a father that can do such great things.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Getting only a bored response out of me, Miss Orson turned to my father and said, “Reverend, why don't you make yourself comfortable, and we'll get started in about fifteen minutes.”

“But there's no one here,” I said with a trace of annoyance.

“Oh, don't worry, they'll come.”

By the time my father was ready to start his lecture, every seat was taken, and about twenty students stood in the back of the room.

Miss Orson introduced my father. “Welcome. Thank you all so much for coming for this very special evening. Tonight I have the pleasure and the honor of introducing Reverend Lew Smith, a spiritual healer. Is that the right terminology for what you do, Reverend?”

“Yes. Spiritual healing, psychic healing, absent healing, vibrational healing—they all entail the transference of healing energy from the cosmic source to the patient.”

This “Reverend” thing always embarrassed me. I hated when people called him Reverend. All of this Reverend business was actually Arthur Ford's idea. My father was constantly getting thrown out of hospitals for healing people. The doctor would walk in while Pop was waving his hands over a patient, and security would immediately be called to evict him. I guess they were afraid that he was pulling out their IV tubes or unhooking them from the life-support machines. Sometimes the police were summoned and threatened to arrest him for “practicing medicine without a license.”

One morning Arthur Ford came through with a message suggesting that my father become an ordained minister. With these credentials he could practice healing without being harassed. After all, he was doing God's work, and there's nothing illegal in that. The next day, Pop sent off a check to some mail-order ministry, and in return he received a certificate stating that he was now Reverend Smith. He then incorporated Temple of the LOGO (Light of God's Order) and was now a man of the cloth. As a Reverend, he would flash his official minister ID card to the hospital staff or the police, and they would leave him alone. If they inquired any further about his activities, he described what he was doing as a “prayer service.” That fifteen-dollar check not only saved him a lot of future attorney's fees, it probably saved a lot of people's lives as well.

Miss Orson continued, “I first met Reverend Smith last year when my mother was diagnosed with kidney problems. The doctor told us that she would have to be on dialysis for the rest of her life. Fortunately a friend of hers told us about the miracles that Reverend Smith was performing, and my mother thought she had nothing to lose by going to see him. Reverend Smith quickly diagnosed her problem and performed a healing on her. He suggested that she wait a week and then call her doctor and request that he rerun her tests. Initially the doctor refused, as he was certain of his diagnosis. When my mother threatened to change doctors, he finally agreed. Her new tests came back negative, which meant that her kidney problem had completely disappeared. It is now a year later, with no signs of any kidney problems, nor has she had dialysis. The doctor can't explain it. In fact, he doesn't even try. His attitude is, ‘Look what a great job I did. Your mother is fine, that's all you need to know.' However, none of this would have been possible without Reverend Lew. I truly believe that my mother would have been dead by now if it weren't for his help. It has been nothing short of a miracle. I'm sure you will find this lecture fascinating. And now, please welcome my dear friend Reverend Lew Smith.”

Applause rippled lightly through the audience. It was made up mostly of college kids and about ten middle-aged people. There was also one hippie couple with matching Indian dhotis; I hadn't seen that in a couple of years. I couldn't figure out why all these college students came to hear a lecture by my father. Weren't college students supposed to be out getting drunk and having sex with their girlfriends on a Saturday night? Most of the time, my father's audience was composed of elderly people looking for cures that they could not obtain from the medical profession. Maybe these college kids thought that he was going to read minds or do card tricks; probably they had no idea what a psychic healer was. But then again, here
I
was listening to my father, just as they were.

I was hoping that Pop didn't introduce me to the audience, which he did from time to time. I didn't want people looking at me like I was some sort of freak for being the son of a psychic. My father approached the lectern and began his speech.

“I'm very pleased to be here tonight. Thank you so much for coming. I am glad to hear that Miss Orson's mother is doing well. I should tell you that she is the norm and not the exception of people that can be successfully healed through psychic means. Most of the people who come to see me are the people that the doctors say are terminal, hopeless, and incurable. I don't believe in such words as
terminal, hopeless,
or
incurable
. Every patient who comes to me, I see in perfect health. That is my starting point.

“I believe that all illness begins in the mind. Stop for a moment and really think about what our mind does: it makes sure our heart keeps beating; it makes sure that we keep breathing when we are asleep; it calibrates our eyes to see in both bright light and low light; it turns that hamburger you ate for dinner into blood and nutrients to feed your body. It does all of this without any interference from our conscious mind. It knows perfectly well how to run the body at optimum performance. However, the mind also knows how to make us sick—and it can do a great job if we let it. We don't get a headache or a stomachache or cancer simply by accident. It comes from somewhere. We make a decision to become sick for any number of reasons. Maybe we feel guilty, or we want someone to take care of us, or we have a karmic debt to pay off. We can also correct our thinking and make a decision to get well and to heal ourselves.

“Unlike doctors, who look only at symptoms, I look for the cause of the disease. If you just treat the symptoms, they'll come right back, and the person will never get better. This is why so many doctors have patients with chronic conditions. They don't know how to treat the true cause of the disease, only the symptoms. You always need to get to the root cause of things to create a real healing.

“Initially, I began healing by simply laying on of hands. I would say a prayer, ask for guidance, open my hands, and spirit would direct my hands to where they needed to go. While my hands were open, energy would pour out into the person. I never felt that it was me actually healing the person; I simply channeled the energy from God or whatever you want to call it.