Customer Reviews

Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing

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Have you ever suspected that healing requires something more than either an entirely body-based approach... or even a mind-body approach? Would you like to better understand how powerful prayer really is for healing? If so, you'll love Larry Dossey's book, "Reinventing Medicine", in which he describes this new era of non-local medicine. Dossey cites very convincing scientific studies that indicate healing can be achieved at a distance by directing loving thoughts, intentions and prayers to others -- even if they are not aware that these loving thoughts are being extended to them. Dossey's revolutionary book inspires us to consider the healing power of what he calls Eternity Medicine in our everyday lives right now. I get goose-bumps of excitement and joy each time I read this book, and give it my highest recommendation.

Larry Dossey has a target tattooed on his chest - he has made himself vulnerable to a great deal of criticism by clearly stating that the human mind - consciousness - is a nonlocal phenomenon.

By this he means that the brain is not the mind or consciousness. Consciousness - our capacity to think, reflect, perceive - is connected with other minds, even the mind of God as we understand God. We can and do move beyond our bodies to touch and be touched by others. Our consciousness continues after the death of the body.

If this is true, and I believe, as Dossey does, it is, then we have the capacity to experience and connect with immense resources. In fact, Dossey emphasizes that this is already happening and has always been happening. The key is to accept this and move with it, to discipline ourselves and to seek the support and guidance of those who are already working effectively with consciousness.

Although this is not new, it is, nevertheless, very threatening to many, particularly medical and religious professionals who are not prepared to accept this reality. Some go so far as to say that if it were proven true beyond all doubt they would STILL not accept it!

Dossey has made himself a target for those who will not accept the truths about which he writes. He furthermore makes himself vulnerable to criticism by taking seriously those who have been castigated in the past, such as Mesmer (hypnotism) and faith healers. He distinguishes between outright con artists and those who have true gifts, but who use language which is not respectable among some scientist.

This is an exciting book which calls every being to mutual respect and watchful acceptance of the gifts of healing and support which surround us all the time.

Charles V. Day, Board Certified Chaplain

Larry Dossey has once again taken our understanding of the potential of a medicine of mind, body, spirit, and imagination to new levels. He's charted a course for medicine that honors intuition and human capabilities that transcend the old boundaries of biology, mind, and selfhood. He also honors quantitative scientific method as one way to glimpse the possibilities of a transpersonal medicine--what he calls Era III, helping us to recognize that there are rational ways to conceptualize that which seems to transcend the rational, ways to measure the affect of spirit on the body and on other sentient (and even non-sentient) beings, as well, through nonlocal consciousness. A penetrating, humanistic, transpersonal vision for a medicine we can only hope will fully come to pass.

Larry Dossey's new book is a splendid, generous and inspiriting appeal to revive the ancient arts of dream healing. He focusses attention on open secrets that I believe will be central to our medicine - and our way of being in the world - in the twenty-first century: that mind is nonlocal, so we can be anywhere (quite literally) that we can picture; and that the body does not distinguish mental or emotional events (if deeply believed) from physical events, so we can heal ourselves - and others - through imagery. Best of all, he is fully alive to the ways in which dreams teach us what our bodies need to stay well, often us showing us possible problems long before physical symptoms manifest, and how our spontaneous dream imagery offer fresh and vital keys to self-healing and recovery. Larry Dossey is an exemplar of what the best doctors of the coming century will be - healers and teachers who operate with mind, body and spirit. He has given me inspiration on my own path of teaching and practicing dream healing, as reflected in my books CONSCIOUS DREAMING and DREAMGATES (and the forthcoming DREAMING TRUE). He gives all of us courage for the journey on the path of heart and soul. I hope he will find many readers in our medical community, because we urgently need this antidote to approaches that reduce the patient to a collection of body parts to be mended or sustained by pharmaceuticals and invasive surgery. We need to marry the best of our medical science to a way that honors the individual as a whole person and encourages her to ask for help from a deeper Source and bring all her spiritual resources into play. Larry Dossey shows us how.

This thoughtful, well-researched and well-written book focuses on two major ideas. The first is the theory that there is a universal consciousness, infinite in space and time, which the author calls "nonlocal mind." He reviews a wide range of past and current thought on this topic, as well as research studies that appear to illustrate various effects of nonlocal mind, such as action-at-a- distance, mind-to-mind communication, etc. He points out that, while no one knows how nonlocal mind works, the same is true of gravity. (Still, unlike gravity, there are as yet no quantitative "laws" describing the actions of nonlocal mind.) The second major idea is that healing and destruction of harmful cells may be achieved through prayer or healing intent, by oneself or by others. The author describes a number of clinical trials of intercessory prayer/healing intent (i.e. by others), either completed or in progress. However, the reviewer believes that a more systematic examination of such studies is needed, such as a meta-analysis, to avoid unconscious bias in selection of studies as well as the effects of "publication bias."

In conclusion, the author offers a benign vision of the future of medicine in which nonlocal methods (psychic perception of symptoms, healing intent) are seamlessly blended with more traditional approaches. While the possible abuses of these ideas are only minimally addressed, this is an impressive achievement and a useful overview of an increasingly important development in medical practice.

Lampooning a book that steps beyond science and into the realm of spiritual healing would be easy. Many readers won't have much trouble accepting the notion that your mind can heal your body, but it probably will be harder to accept Dr. Larry Dossey's assertion that your mind can heal other bodies just as well. In fact, many readers will scoff at the idea that all minds are linked in a global consciousness that can be harnessed to accomplish tasks like curing AIDS. However, as the good doctor notes, trying to influence reality with the power of thought amounts to... well, prayer. And millions of Americans who would roll their eyes at a New-Agey term like "nonlocal mind" pray for each other every day. So if you're put off by the book's preachy tone or its inevitable omission of factual evidence to back up its conclusions, lighten up, or be ready to take a good hard look at some of your own cherished beliefs. We [...] recommend this book to anyone willing to suspend his or her skepticism for just a few hours.

Having recently read and strongly recommended Larry Dossey's latest book, I have been re-reading some his earlier books. This one is similarly excellent.

Medical models are strongly determined by the way in which people see the world: traditional Chinese medicine is a fruit of a Taoist world view, and classical Greek and Roman medicine was informed by the philosophical models of the day. Beginning roughly in the middle of the 19th century, Western medicine began to adopt an approach based on concepts drawn from the classical, mechanical, Newtonian concept of the Universe. Therefore medicine developed a mechanical view that is still the predominant model today. Dossey calls this Era I or mechanical or physical medicine. In the middle of the 20th century, it began to be realized that thoughts, emotions, attitudes and beliefs can impact the body, which led to a radically new perspective: what we now refer to as mind-body medicine. Dossey calls this Era II. We are now living in an extraordinarily interesting and exciting time, when empirical evidence, like the research on distant healing that we just mentioned, is forcing us to recognize the emergence of Era III or nonlocal medicine. Unlike the first two Eras, the nonlocal perspective acknowledges that thoughts and intentions may affect the functioning of other individuals, at any distance, and with or without the awareness of the recipient.

The concept of non-locality is exceedingly important, and it is certainly true that it is not universally accepted. But with the passage of time, more and more evidence seems to be supporting its existence in the day-to-day physical world. If, as I suspect, it is accurate, the practical implications are stunning.

One of the reviewers raised some good points about the importance of evidence, and Dossey has always been very careful about the data that he cites. As an example, I do not think that he was one of the people taken in by the Hundredth Monkey Hoax. It is interesting that over the last five years, 75% of the studies published in peer-reviewed parapsychology journals have passed the most stringent design and analysis criteria for experimental studies, which is around twice as high as the figure in the top ten medical journals.

A highly recommended book by one of the most important authors in the field.

Larry Dossey's book presents its readers with a new and unique theory of how prayer will be able to influence the health of our body. He begins his book with a brief overview of the three different Eras of medicine. Era I deals with mechanical, material, or physical medicine and Era II deals with mind-body medicine, which may include any form of therapy where the body treats itself and only itself through psychosomatic methods. In this book, Dossey adds to this list by suggesting the possibility of an Era III, called eternity medicine. He suggests that individuals can affect patients from a distance, called "intercessory prayer." The mind, separate from the brain, has the ability to transverse space and time. He backs up his argument with ample evidence from Harvard, Duke, and other prestigious institutions. Each experiment builds upon the next, reinforcing the principles and theories of Dossey.

The case for the possibility of an Era III is further developed through other examples of individuals who have experienced "non locality" or phenomenon that they can't explain. For instance, we can often experience non locality through our dreams and déjà vu's. Dossey also presents his readers with a feel of futuristic medicine. He believes in traditional medicine that is supplemented by prayer and other acts of non local medicine.

For me, it has reshaped my thinking and has helped me to explain the world from a different perspective. It has also played a large part in my faith, strongly reinforcing the principles that I have learned through my religion. I would recommend this book very highly for the interested individual in mind-body relationships.

If you are a believer in prayer or any paranormal phenomena, or if you want to believe, then this book is for you. It represents a well written scholarly survey of the field of non-local consciousness citing many published research activities, all referenced through an impressive bibliography.

If, however, you are open minded on the subject, or bear a healthy skepticism, this work will leave you wanting more. So, take the books great set of references as fodder for the Google search engine, and for every assertion made in the book, you'll find an overwhelming amount of Internet readings supporting both pro and con positions. You could literally spend a lifetime attempting to make sense out of the questionable research that goes on in this field.

The premise of the book is that a non-local conciousness is based on credible scientific findings. But it is quite apparent that, for whatever reasons, this field of science lacks credible peer review systems typically found in other fields. In contrast, several years ago, the physics community reacted agressively to some who claimed they had demonstrated cold fusion in their laboratory and they forced a retraction in short order. No comparable scenerios seem to be occurring here.

For example, the book asserts that new-born baby chicks can dramatically influence the behavior of an otherwise random walk of a robot. This seemingly ridiculous claim is based on research started in France some 25 years ago. After diligent searches, I could find no independent confirmation of this experiment. I am sure that, over the years, numerous research groups have attempted to demonstrate the mental prowess of baby chicks. But, to their disappointment, the robots likely showed that they do just fine all by themselves, thank you very much -- hardly a publishable finding. And so, the phenomenon remains widely referenced in the field, and in this book.

What the author asserts to be true is at best merely possible with a vague hint at being probable -- the jury is still out on most of the science. Basing non-local consciousness on faith is a credible foundation that escapes scientific scrutiny. Basing it on science is premature and currently misleading. Nevertheless, the prospect of better understanding what so many believe to be true offers enormous possibilities.

This is a wonderful book for anyone- lay person or professional- who is interested in cutting edge research on the power of the mind and heart in healing. "Non-local" mind encompasses prayer, good wishes, healing practices like Therapeutic Touch, the laying on of hands, intuition, premonition,Love,and all benevolent practices used to facilitate the healing of others. Larry Dossey talks about how we communicate with one another over distance, like the Aboriginal and many other cultures, and how we can cultivate this human potential. It is a book that takes the 'woo-woo' out of near death experience, deja vu, telepathy, etc while not taking away from the extra-ordinariness of those experiences. READ IT!