Walking Through Walls

by Philip Smith

  “Saint Paul gives you an account of what happens after you die. Go as far back as you like, and you will find that in the earliest written accounts, four thousand years before Jesus, people were aware of an invisible world. All religions grew out of the effort on the part of man to contact that world in some way. Jesus said, ‘The things I do, you can do.’ Paul knew there was a guiding force in the universe. Heal the sick. Raise the dead. Preach the gospel.

  “Freud once said to me, ‘If I had my life to live over again, I would be a psychical researcher.’ The whole system of psychiatry and analysis as we know it today grew out of the work of a trance medium.”

  While Ford spoke, my father looked around for an empty seat. A woman sitting off to the side suddenly turned around and motioned my father to come over to her. He thought she was going to point him toward a seat. Instead she whispered, “I see in your aura that you are a healer. Please help me; I can’t stop this terrible cough. Place your hands on my shoulders and send me your energy.”

  Puzzled by her request, my father reluctantly complied. While Arthur continued to speak, he touched her shoulders and began to feel a warm heat emanating from his hands. After about two minutes, he felt the heat subside and, without thinking, lifted his hands from the woman’s shoulders.

  “Thank you. You have healed me. I am better now.” She turned back to listening to Ford at the podium as if nothing had happened.

  Arthur continued: “We know that there is a cosmic force, and if you identify with that, you get results. We need to make healing legal again in the church. The medical profession is a fool’s corporation. I don’t think any spiritual healer who works honestly will get in trouble. They can do nothing to you if you work in a religious manner, especially if you don’t prescribe. A spiritual healer doesn’t need to diagnose or prescribe. The same power that heals a heart condition can heal a lung condition or a brain condition. There is no law against it unless you begin to practice medicine. You have all the power you need if you only learn to use it.” With these few sentences, it was as if Ford was speaking directly to my father. Over the next several years, my father would be hounded continually by the authorities for “practicing medicine without a license.”

  Pop noticed that there was an empty seat a few rows up. He sat down and listened to the rest of the lecture. Arthur concluded with, “The only way for me to see God is to see Him in action through a person who does things through love. This is how God takes form.”

  When Arthur finished, people gathered to ask questions. Pop wanted to meet this man who spoke of healings and love. As he tried to make his way to Ford, he was stopped by a woman who delivered the same exact message he had heard earlier: “You are a healer, and I need your help. I have a heart condition.” Without thinking or questioning, he walked to an empty seat, and after she sat down, he put one hand on top of her head and another on her shoulder. Once again he experienced a tremendous surge of heat in his hands, as if someone had suddenly plugged him into an electrical outlet. When the healing was complete, he felt the heat subside from his hands as if they were controlled thermostatically.

  As he attempted one more time to make his way toward Arthur, he was stopped by a third woman who requested that he share his healing powers with her. “I was recently hospitalized with cancer,” she said. “The doctor told me that I only have another month to live.”

  Worried that he would give this woman false hope, he said, “I’m so sorry, but there is nothing I can do for you.”

  “Yes, there is. You can heal me. I know you can. You have the energy that I need. Please give it to me. It will take only a minute, and it will make a huge difference in whether I live or die.”

  For the third time, my father performed a healing. When he lifted his hands, he looked around, and the church was now quiet and empty. He said good-bye to the woman and walked out to his car. There were only two cars remaining in the parking lot. As he put the key in the door, a man came up and introduced himself. “I am Arthur Ford, and I am supposed to meet you,” he said.

  “I enjoyed your lecture. Lately I’ve become very interested in healing.”

  “Yes, I know. You have a lot of work to do. You will be creating new methods of healing.” My father didn’t bother to ask how he knew. If anyone had access to psychic information about my father, it would have been Arthur. The two men instantly became best friends. While Ford was alive, they met constantly to discuss metaphysical matters. Arthur often introduced my father at his lectures as an “extraordinary healer.”

  While he was alive, Ford began contacting my father on a daily basis via psychic means with invaluable information on healing as well as answers to many of his problems. Even after Ford died, in 1971, he continued to “talk” to my father on a daily basis. One could think of this spirit communication as a regular “phone call” from a distant relative. Usually around four in the morning, my father would wake up and begin writing down the spirit dictation that Ford and others would implant in his brain. Over the years these messages grew to over five thousand pages of written communication from the unseen spirit world.

  This ability to receive psychic dictation took some time for Pop to perfect. At first my father thought that he was imagining the words that came to him, and that they were his own creation rather than a direct link to the spirit world. Arthur reassured my father that the thoughts he was receiving were not his own. “You can’t seem to let go of the thought that perhaps these words are yours and not mine. This questioning is good up to a point. The point is reached when your thought prevents my words from coming through. A telephone conversation would be interminably long if each few words are interrupted with the question ‘Is this still you?’ After you have confirmed that it is I, blank out your mind and let me come through.”

  As my father increased his ability to receive spirit communication, Arthur sent him a message instructing him to be more receptive. “We enter through a doorway which must be unobstructed, or our way is barred. This holds true with the mind and its thoughts. A cluttered mind cannot send forth clear thoughts. Unburden your mind and open the passage so that thoughts can flow and transform into words that your pen will solidify into permanence. Stand aside so that the channel is open and the flow is maintained, else you bar the way. The bounty is endless only if the way is clear. Receive without obstruction.”

  Pop had finally found the focus that he was looking for. The experiences that he had at Ford’s lecture and at the meeting in South Miami were, for him, unmistakable signs that he was now a healer. Someone or something had suddenly flicked the switch and turned on his magic powers. Now, like a kid with a new toy, my father was eager to try his recently acquired abilities on anyone who was sick. It didn’t matter if they had a cold or colitis, he loved to touch them, feel his hands heat up, and watch their symptoms disappear. It was as if he had waited his whole life to feel this surge of supernatural energy flowing through him doing good deeds for humankind.

  Once again our house underwent a tangible transition due to my father’s psychic interests. Seemingly overnight our isolated house became Lourdes central. People arrived in wheelchairs and on crutches, which they usually left behind. Bottles of medicine taken over the course of a lifetime were thrown in the garbage on their way out the door. Word quickly spread that my father could cure whatever ailed you. Pop was a bit like a teenager who had just received his driver’s license but wasn’t a really experienced driver. All he knew was that when he placed his hands near people, they felt better and they got better. Beyond this simple fact, he had no idea what was going on, how it was happening, or why. People arrived in beat-up old Fords and Rolls-Royces to see the miracle man. Often I would wait out in the backyard while Pop dissolved their tumors or healed their sore throat, so that I didn’t have to interact with them.

  Generally, Pop would have the patient sit in one of our white wicker chairs. Without saying a word, he would begin running his hands over the top of the person’s head and then slowly o
ver the front and back of his or her body as he intuitively searched for hot spots of disease that needed his healing energy. He looked like one of today’s airport screeners “wanding” a passenger for metal items. Like a Geiger counter, his hands would suddenly react to a weak spot or a diseased area. It was at this particular spot that he would let his hands pause to pour forth the healing energy.

  Eventually my father was able to instantly locate the specific areas needing his attention. One of his spirit guides—named Chander Sen, who had been a Tibetan monk in the fourteenth century—would shine a small pinpoint of white light that only my father could see, on the specific area where he needed to direct his energy.

  Pop would stand stock-still, letting his healing energy pour into the person’s body until this white light turned pink. This was the visible signal that the patient had received sufficient healing energy. During these healings, the house became very quiet. You could hear the dogs barking over on the next block. It was if the world had stopped while the mad scientist was at work. While all this transfer of healing energy was occurring, Mom would close herself off in the bedroom to read and smoke, waiting and hoping our lives would suddenly return to normal.

  Oftentimes the patients would be spontaneously invited to join us for dinner, much to the surprise and dismay of my mother. These dinners served to celebrate a successful healing both for my father and for the patient. Though she never said a word, I could tell that my mother did not welcome these total strangers who captured my father’s attention and intruded upon our family time. Her legendary social skills abruptly disappeared whenever a patient took center stage and left us off to the side of his attention. What was she supposed to do? Turn to a total stranger and say, “Tell me, Mrs. Wright, how did it feel when you discovered that you had a terminal diagnosis? Oh my, you must tell me all about it.”

  For me it was odd to witness this constant parade of outsiders who disappeared behind closed doors with my father and then an hour later emerged with a smile and an air of tranquillity to break bread as if we were all old friends. I sensed that these people were somehow not clean, but, rather, diseased and dirty; I didn’t want them too close to me. My father, on the other hand, beamed when talking to his newfound friends/patients.

  As his caseload increased, our lanai became an ad hoc waiting room. I would pretend not to look at the crowd of miracle-seeking, disease-ridden humanity as I passed them on my way to the living room.

  Possibly in response to my father’s miraculous helping of strangers, Mom became involved in Daytop Village, an early rehab center for addicts. She read everything she could on drug addiction, including medical studies, autobiographies, and hipster literature. Mom flew up to New York for a meeting with the Daytop Village brass. Most likely her subconscious goal was to open a local chapter in Miami, in case I needed to be treated. Mom would now talk excitedly about methadone and new protocols for getting people off of heroin and speed. LSD remained more problematic. Just as my father was curing physical disease, Mom was interested in curing the disease of addiction. Eventually the support promised her never materialized and the project collapsed.

  One weekday morning in October, I slept through my alarm. When I finally opened my eyes, it seemed that it was still the middle of the night. The sky was an oppressive greenish charcoal black, the color of a still pond. This type of sky appeared only during major end-of-the-world storms—the torrential, awe-inspiring storms that shut Miami down for days. You knew the storm was bad when you heard the birds screeching frantically at one another to get the hell out of town. The typical aftermath of these storms left houses flooded, water wells backed up and undrinkable, cars unable to start, electricity out—and forget the phones; that would take another month. Downed power lines wove themselves across the road. Huge felled trees made many roads impassable. I felt as if I were in a surround-sound jungle movie as the birds continued to talk about the storm. The air had that heaviness to it that seemed to connote a lethal subelectrical charge surging through the atmosphere. You could feel the pressure throughout your entire body. The only light came from enormous cracks of lightning that appeared to rip open the sky.

  I started to raise myself to turn around and look at the clock but found that I couldn’t move my body. I was paralyzed—my arms, my legs, and my neck all felt completely numb, accompanied by a strange electrical tingling.

  I heard my father getting ready for work. I tried to call his name. The best I could do was make a quiet whine: “ehhhhhhhhh, ehhhhhhh, ehhhh, ehhh.” I was trying to push out the sound with my breath. “Ehhhh, ehhhh, ehhh, ehhh, ehhh.” I lay there with my eyes open, listening to the thunder. “Ehhhh, ehhh, ehh.”

  My father walked past my bedroom but didn’t come in. He headed for the kitchen. I could hear him turn on the blender. I tried sending him telepathic thoughts that I needed help. “Pop, please come help me! I can’t move!” The only signal I got back was the whirrrrrr of the blender as he mixed up his usual morning breakfast. Then I heard the front door slam and the car start. He must have been leaving early for work. I couldn’t believe he was going to drive in this storm. My only hope was that my mother would eventually get up and find me.

  Moments later the front door opened. Pop must have realized that he had to wait out the storm. I was going to try to catch his attention by making some noise, but I didn’t have to. He came into my room, looked at me, and asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Uuhh, uhhh, uhhh, uhhhh,” was my response.

  He leaned over and put his hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up. Let’s see what’s going on.” Pop sat down next to me and started running his hands over my body. At first they felt hot, and then suddenly they turned wonderfully cool. Like a slow-motion windshield wiper, he kept moving his hands back and forth, back and forth over my entire body.

  After he pulled his hands away, my head seemed unbelievably heavy and fell to the side from its own weight. That was the first sign that I could move again. I wiggled the ends of my fingers. Whatever this paralysis was, it was slowly lifting. Pop looked at me and said, “You have nerve-gas poisoning. A lot of people are mysteriously getting sick, and no one knows what it is.”

  “Nerve gas!” I thought to myself. “What the hell is he talking about? How did I get that? I haven’t been sniffing any nerve gas.”

  “I’ve got to remove this poisonous gas before it destroys your nervous system.” He closed his eyes and said, “I remove all the toxic nerve gas from this body and send it to the sun for purification.” With great regularity, my father used the blast furnace of the sun as a dumping ground for anything toxic. This included viruses, bad pharmaceuticals, and any kind of negative energy. Mentally, Pop would beam the offending items to the sun, where the intense heat would instantly obliterate the noxious substance, rendering it harmless. He always used this technique when he psychically removed cancerous cells and tumors from patients. Off the cancer went at the speed of light to be autoclaved by solar flares. I liked this idea and wondered if I couldn’t use it to beam a couple kids from school to the sun for instantaneous incineration.

  I vaguely remember watching a talk show at the time with Dick Cavett or David Susskind interviewing some genius think-tank type guy like Herman Kahn about how to dispose of nuclear waste. His solution was to put it on a rocket ship and send it to the sun for incineration. I told my father about the program, and he smiled and said, “Oh yes, we’ve been doing that for years with anything negative. It’s a good idea.”

  As he placed his hands on my forearm, Pop began to explain how I had contracted this nerve gas. “Over the past few years, the government has been secretly dumping concrete containers filled with unused nerve gas off the coast of Florida. This was their way of burying this toxic waste that was left over from the government’s chemical warfare program. Because of the movement of the ocean and, of course, this storm, some of those containers are cracking open, and the nerve gas is escaping. Somehow you were exposed.”

  “Ohhhhh
kay,” I thought to myself. “Last time I got sick it had something to do with my aura being out of alignment, which drained my energy from my etheric body, which resulted in my coming down with pneumonia. So now it’s nerve gas coming up from the ocean floor. That sounds about right. I’ll go with the nerve-gas explanation. Why not?” In situations like this, I felt that I had to humor my father a little bit, so I accepted each wacky new explanation with a straight face.

  As cynical as I could be at times, I was also completely certain that my father knew things that no one else in the world knew. No matter how crazy they sounded, no matter how much I didn’t want to believe him, no matter how everyone in the world would laugh at him, in the end, he was always right. The truth was that Pop could do things that no one else could do. Plus, after he ran his hands over my body, I could suddenly walk and talk again. Hard to argue with that.

  Craaaaaack! Boooooom! Nature’s soundtrack was deafening. The Miami End-of-the-World Thunder and Lightning Show had picked up again. The rain was coming down in hard, solid sheets, as if the monsoons had arrived. Visibility was two to three inches, if that. These intense tropical rains washed the air, and I hoped that they would wash away all the nerve gas that was making me sick.

  Forgetting that I had been completely paralyzed just a few minutes earlier, I propped myself up in bed to talk to my father. Clearly, whatever he did was working; otherwise I couldn’t have moved on my own. It was a quick journey from near-total paralysis to a casual father-son chat, which was cut short when he said, “I’m going to be late for a new client that’s coming in from Switzerland to see me. I’ve got to go.”