Walking Through Walls

by Philip Smith

  “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.

  “Over the years, I have been instructed by the spirits on new and advanced healing methods that have never been seen before on this planet. They taught me how to send powerful healing energy in just a matter of minutes to anywhere in the world. It didn’t matter if the patient was in the room next to me or sitting in a cave in Tibet. The psychic energy that I use is not limited by the boundaries of time or space.”

  Pop seemed to gloss over his spirit connection. He didn’t mention Chander Sen or any of his other psychic friends. I think he was concerned that in this university setting, he would seem too kooky if he started talking about his spirit guides. I looked around the room and noticed that people were extremely focused on what he had to say. No one was reading, yawning, or doing the crossword puzzle.

  “I have also been extremely successful in diagnosing patients. Oftentimes people come to me because their doctors cannot find what’s wrong with them. Despite all the tests—X-rays, blood tests, GI series, cardiograms—their doctors still can’t figure out what the problem is. Usually in a matter of minutes, I can give a complete and accurate diagnosis that they can take to their doctor and get confirmed.”

  When he mentioned his diagnostic ability, it reminded me of the time the doctors had misdiagnosed my grandmother and told her that she was about to die. They had found blood in her urine and suspected kidney cancer. She was undergoing tests in a hospital 1,500 miles away in New York City. The doctors had informed my aunt and uncle that most likely my grandmother’s prospects were grim. They claimed that, at best, she had six months to live, and that was after surgery and chemotherapy.

  My aunt Sedell called me from New York to let me know about my grandmother’s dire condition. After I got off the phone, I went into my father’s study. I was extremely upset. I loved my grandmother very much and as a child had spent many summers with her in New York. Originally from Czechoslovakia, she still retained many of her traditional ways, including baking her own bread. “Pop, I just got a call that Grandma has cancer. She’s going to die.”

  My father didn’t answer me immediately. Instead he shifted his eyes away from mine, looking out into space as if his mind had wandered.

  “I don’t think so. They’re wrong. They are making a hasty diagnosis based on nothing. But let me check it out,” he responded.

  Sitting down at his desk, he took out a couple of his diagnostic charts, along with a copy of Gray’s Anatomy. To start the diagnostic process, he simply held a pendulum in his right hand and asked, “Does Ida Rand have cancer?” The pendulum seemed to hang motionless for longer than usual. Slowly it began to swing in a counterclockwise direction, indicating a negative response.

  As if his pendulum had access to the world’s most brilliant oncologist, he looked up at me with a smile and shrugged his shoulders. “See, she doesn’t have cancer. They made a mistake.”

  “So what do we do? They’re going to operate in the next day or so.”

  “Then they’ll definitely kill her. Let’s find out what’s really going on.”

  With his right hand, he held the pendulum over Gray’s Anatomy as he slowly turned the pages. The pendulum remained absolutely still as he passed the muscular, skeletal, endocrine, and cardiac systems. When he came to the female genitourinary system, the pendulum began to swing clockwise, indicating that this was the area to look for the answer. He held the pendulum over the urinary tract and asked, “Is there cancer in the urinary tract?” The pendulum swung counterclockwise, indicating no.

  Refining his question, he now asked, “Is there an infection in the urinary tract?” The pendulum swung clockwise, indicating that this was the location of the problem.

  “Is surgery necessary?” The pendulum swung counterclockwise.

  “Will medication be helpful?” The pendulum swung clockwise. “Should the doctors use antibiotics?” Again, the pendulum indicated a yes answer.

  “Are there any further problems with the patient’s anatomy?” The pendulum swung clockwise, indicating that the diagnosis was not complete.

  Still holding the pendulum in his right hand, he continued through the anatomy book page by page. As he opened the section picturing the kidneys, the pendulum began to indicate a positive response. He asked, “Do the kidneys have cancer?” The pendulum swung counterclockwise. No.

  “Are the kidneys infected?” Yes.

  “Is this infection causing blood in the urine?” The pendulum quickly swung clockwise.

  “I think you should call your aunt back and tell her that Grandma is going to be fine. She has a kidney infection that is causing blood in the urine. They should do some tests and then give her an antibiotic to clear up the infection. She needs to drink more water to flush this infection out of her system. I think it’s better if I leave it at that. If they follow my advice, she’ll be released and home in no time. I don’t want to get too involved in this one.”

  My relatives in New York were not terribly fond of my father since he’d jumped ship from reality and left my mother in an emotional free fall. “I don’t think they’re going to believe you,” I said.

  “Well, you need to make them believe me. Otherwise they’re going to cut your grandmother open for nothing, and she’ll die. She’s too old to survive the operation.” My father closed his eyes and sat quietly for a minute. “Wait, there’s something else: the doctors are going to schedule a large number of tests, and then, without any explanation, at the last moment they will postpone them for one day. Tell your aunt that when they suddenly cancel the tests, she’ll know I’m telling the truth. Once she realizes this, she needs to prevent them from operating on your grandmother.”

  I called Aunt Sedell. “Pop says that Grandma is going to be fine. She does not have cancer, she just has a kidney infection. This is what is causing the bleeding. The doctors will eventually just give her some antibiotics and send her home.”

  “What other good news does your brilliant father have for us?” My aunt was not amused by her psychic—or as she would say, “psychotic”—brother-in-law. They were already expecting the worst and did not want to entertain false hopes for their mother, especially when the messenger was my father.

  “It’s really important that you stop them from operating. Grandma doesn’t need surgery. They’ll kill her if they operate.”

  “They told us it’s our only hope. We have to do it to save her. How can we not listen to them and let her die?”

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nbsp; “Well, here’s how you’ll know that Pop is telling the truth. The doctors are going to order a large number of tests—”

  My aunt interrupted me. “They already have. All doctors order tests; what’s so amazing about that?”

  “Let me finish. Without any explanation, the doctors will suddenly postpone all the tests for one day. When they do that, then you’ll know Pop’s right, and that’s the sign that you must stop them from going any further.”

  Even though I found my father’s psychic abilities highly intrusive in my personal life, I knew from experience that he was overwhelmingly accurate in his diagnoses. I hung up and hoped that I had convinced my aunt to intervene.

  Two days later the phone rang; it was my aunt. Her tone of voice was excited and somewhat humbled. “Philip, you were right. Monday morning they were supposed to do some final tests before the operation. Late in the afternoon, I called the doctor to find out the results.

  He said that they were going to postpone the tests for another day. They would be performed on Tuesday, and they would operate on Wednesday.”

  “I wasn’t right about the tests, Pop was. I’m not the healer around here.” I felt that I had to stick up for my father.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, once the doctor told me about postponing everything I knew that I had to stop them from operating. So I told him that my mother does not have cancer, that it’s just a kidney infection, and that she didn’t need surgery. Instead, what they needed to do was give her antibiotics. The doctor asked me how I knew this. I told him ‘from a psychic in Miami.’ He told me not to waste his time and hung up on me. I immediately left work and went to the hospital. The doctor wouldn’t meet with me. So I went over to the administrator and the social worker and told them they had to stop my mother’s operation. They asked me if I was a doctor.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they say to my father all the time. I keep telling him to print up business cards that say ‘Lew Smith, MD, Internal Medicine’ and just flash them at people whenever they stop him. But he won’t do it.”

  Sedell continued, “Finally they called the doctor in. I warned him that I would call my lawyer, if necessary, to have the operation stopped. I demanded that he examine her kidneys to see what was going on. The idea of the lawyer scared him. So he agreed. The next morning he called me at seven to tell me that they had rechecked some of the initial tests and that your grandmother has a bad kidney and urinary tract infection from not drinking enough water. He’s prescribing strong antibiotics that will hopefully clear up the situation. He said she should be able to go home tomorrow.”

  “So did he say anything about having to reverse his previous diagnosis?”

  “Not a word. He made it sound like this was the diagnosis all along.”

  “Maybe you should give him Pop’s number anytime he wants to check a diagnosis before surgery.”

  “He won’t listen.”

  “They never do.” I was relieved that Grandma was not going to die of cancer or unnecessary surgery. Later, when I relayed the whole story in detail to my father, he simply said, “I know.” His diagnosis had been quicker and more accurate than the doctors’, despite all their machinery and fancy tests. He had saved her life.

  My reveries about my grandmother were interrupted by the sound of laughter. I looked around the room and saw that everyone was laughing at something my father had said in his lecture. I stopped daydreaming and began listening again.

  “My diagnosis doesn’t come from a Ouija board. This is not voodoo or magic. There is a method to what I do, and this can be taught to anyone. Anyone in this room can be a healer. And that is the greatest thing you can do with your life. To be able to help someone when medicine has failed them is one of the most satisfying things you can do. Too bad they don’t teach healing here at the University of Miami. You would all make my job so much easier if you graduated with degrees in healing and went out into the world to help people.”

  When he said this, I overheard the student behind me say to her neighbor, “Wouldn’t that be cool, to walk around healing people and have magic powers?” My father made healing sound like a noble and romantic undertaking. But to me it was just what my father did.

  “Tonight there isn’t enough time to go into much detail about my healing systems, but I will try to give you a brief overview. Basically, we live in a world of energy patterns. Anyone here that studies physics knows this to be a fact of life. All things in our physical environment, including our own bodies, are just different packets and bundles of energy. To really simplify things, what I do is to tap into this energy and direct it to where it is needed. In this way I bring everything in the body up to its full energy potential. Let’s say that someone has a weak heart or his eyes don’t see as well as they used to. It’s as if a battery has run down. I can put energy back into the heart or into the eyes and bring them up to their full functioning potential.

  “How do I do this? Depending on the patient, I use various modalities to heal them. Someone might need a specific dose of color radiation or the Bach Flower Remedies or homeopathy or just an energy transfer. Some people are possessed by negative entities, some have karmic debts that need to be removed, and others have structural problems with the body that need to be resolved. All of these remedies are sent psychically by thought. I never give anyone so much as a sugar tablet, since that would be prescribing medication and practicing medicine. Nor do I ever touch my patients. Each one of these methods would require several hours for me to discuss in detail. I guess we’ll have to plan a series of lectures to cover all this material.” About a dozen people clapped, indicating that they would like my father to return.

  “But I would like to take a moment to talk about a small tool I use in all my healings called a pendulum.” Pop pulled out his pendulum and held it up for everyone to see. I was sitting toward the back, and it was hard to see what the pendulum really looked like from that distance.

  “This little pendulum is merely a tool that reveals the required information my consciousness has tuned in to and collected. In some ways, the pendulum functions as my own hospital. Without any X-ray machines, blood tests, or operating rooms, I can diagnose, run tests, and send medication to patients just with this little bead attached to a string. All of this occurs through the power of thought.”

  I overheard the middle-aged woman next to me whisper to the man sitting next to her, “This guy’s nuts. He thinks that little bead on a string is an X-ray machine. Let’s go.” As they stood up to leave, they made it a point to talk loudly to each other as they walked out right in front of my father. No one paid any attention to them.

  Pop continued with his lecture as if nothing had happened. “Thought is basically an electrical impulse similar to radio or television. You can’t see the signals in the air and you can’t feel the signals, yet when you turn on the television set, you can see or hear your favorite program. Pretty amazing, if you think about it. Yet this is exactly how psychic healing works. The body is like a two-way radio that sends and receives electrical energy. I am able to read and interpret these signals. When necessary, I can adjust them for the patient’s benefit.

  “Because I work with this invisible energy, I can heal anybody anywhere in the world. This energy is not restricted by time or space. Many of the people that I heal never talk to me or even meet me. I am able to locate and tune in to their bodies through my consciousness.

  “The pendulum can analyze these energy patterns that surround us and operate the functions of our body. I can measure deficiencies in these energy patterns and determine what amount of remedy I need to send to correct that deficiency. The pendulum also enables me to look into the body and check the vitality of each and every organ.

  “Let me give you an example.” With that, Pop picked up his pendulum and let it hang perfectly still. He took a deep breath and watched the pendulum. I saw it swing counterclockwise, giving him a negative response. I wondered what he was asking. No one else in the room k
new what he was doing; they sat quietly watching. Pop stopped the pendulum and waited. Again it gave a negative response. At this point, people were beginning to shift in their seats; they wanted something to happen. Once more Pop stopped the pendulum and waited. This time it swung clockwise, giving him a positive response. His brow wrinkled for a minute as if he was trying to understand what the pendulum was telling him. Finally he looked up at the audience and cleared his throat.

  “There is a man here tonight whose wife is very ill. She has breast cancer, which has now spread throughout her lymphatic system. For the past three weeks, she has been undergoing chemotherapy but is getting worse. I have been asked to talk to him.” The room was extremely silent. Pop looked around as if he had just announced the winning numbers for the lottery and was waiting for the lucky ticket holder to come forth and claim his prize. No one said a word. People were looking to see if this mystery man was sitting next to them. No one moved. It seemed as if my father had made a wrong call. I did not want him to fail in front of this audience. I was embarrassed and felt bad for him. This was at the university, and word would get around that he didn’t know what he was doing. I felt like standing up myself and saying that my wife had breast cancer, but I don’t think too many people would have believed that from a seventeen-year-old. When my father saw that no one was coming forward, he picked up his pendulum to double-check his findings.

  While he waited for the pendulum to respond, a middle-aged man sitting toward the back of the room stood up slowly. Everybody turned to look at him. He stood there for a moment or two, knowing that he was getting the full attention of the room. “I am Dr. Michaels. How dare you stand here, in an institution of higher learning, and spin these fairy tales of psychic healing, which we know is an impossibility and does not exist? How can you walk around spouting nonsense that keeps people from receiving the lifesaving medical treatment that they require? You are only hastening their death and spreading ignorance. I don’t know who let you speak here tonight, but I will find out and make sure that this does not happen again. Tomorrow morning I intend to contact the proper authorities to do whatever they can to prevent you from spreading your lies. I shudder to think how many people you have killed by your parlor tricks.”