One cannot enter fully into the healing ministry until one is so emptied of guile, so shriven of deceit, so cleansed of greed, that the Spirit of God may fill the void left inside one. When people tell me they feel called to this ministry - and I speak especially of those who have not received a direct intimation at an esoteric gathering or a Renewal group - I always ask them why they wish to be involved in healing. I remind them that the work is taxing and brings little reward: indeed, the very thought of reward tends to stultify the healing power. Most of these people believe they are called to relieve suffering and cure ill-health, but in fact there is frequently a strong drive to power or egoistical assertiveness behind the laudable, and usually quite sincere, desire to help others. This applies also to those who enter the healing field through spiritualistic agencies or the Renewal Movement.
In my experience, already described, I had the benefit of a triple introduction by a fairly mainstream Christian, a mystic with universalistic sympathies, and a psychically gifted esotericist. With hindsight I can see how mixed the motives were in all three of my revered mentors; in terms of integrity I could fault none of them. Their whole lives were dedicated, in accordance with their special gift and at great cost, to proclaiming the spiritual nature of human personality in the ears of a largely indifferent, if not hostile, public. But none of them had fully gained charge of the ego with its demands for personal recompense, at least until near the end of their lives, and so their unique work was clouded by persistent longings for personal recognition in a world of aloof professionals. Had they been able to display reputable diplomas and to disport learned academic connexions, it is probable that the course of the work might have been more auspicious, but in the end they would, like Jesus, at God's behest, have been obliged to forgo the support of material recognition and enter the wilderness of pitilessly cold isolation, there to be tempted to renounce their vision by the prince of this world whom we call Satan, or the devil. Indeed, this aspect of the work of the evil one is much more crafty and destructive than his far better publicized activities in the realm of deliverance. This aspect excites fear by virtue of ill-informed publicity as much as the threat of demonic assault.
In the instance of my three friends, there was no fear to stand up for their beliefs. They were not afraid to display their wares to the world, hoping for at least some response, but none of them was fully open to personal criticism or able to face the inadequate sides of their own teachings. How hard it is to tolerate dissension especially when one is a pioneer, the custodian of a new way of thought! I too became involved in a totally unorthodox way of healing - in respect of the medical profession, and therefore to the jeopardy of my professional reputation - as much through inner dereliction and selfish curiosity as a concern for people. I was well aware of the ambivalence in my attitude which allowed me to associate my name with these people, even speaking on their behalf in closed groups, yet not supporting them wholeheartedly in public. Years were to elapse before I could lose myself sufficiently to proclaim my spiritual creed in word and practice without deference to any mundane powers.
We have already considered Jesus' teaching about the need for clear sight before we can help other people. In fact, there are few more satisfying activities than meddling in other people's affairs, for not only does this avert our gaze from the disorder within but it also serves to boost the ego. Many self styled healers have a conspicuously inflated ego, the use of which helps to put out of mind any inner problems that might threaten their self-esteem. When the subterfuge is finally exposed, they may collapse in the shock of self discovery: all that remains is a feeble, palpitating soul that has never been allowed to reveal itself previously, to bear the impress of truth that brings with it the renewing thrust of the Holy Spirit, without whom life is impossible.
It follows that no one should enter the healing ministry until they have the integrity to undertake a sober review of their inner life. Without this awareness they are apt to project their darkness onto other people, both on the level of the flesh and in the depths of the soul. Of course, few of us are likely to attain sanctity in this life. Not many attain great heights of the spirit here on earth, and the most famous saints of the Christian tradition (and no doubt other traditions also) have protested their unworthiness even as they lay dying. This protestation is no mere gesture of false modesty: we have all failed in some way in the vocation of love to which we have been called. It is that end to which Jesus urges his disciples in his counsel of perfection that forms a peak of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:48). To have attained that great perfection is the end of all healing; just as the cells of the body work in close support in a healthy organism, so do the individual units of society function in unself-conscious service to the benefit of the total population when they work from an inner spring of love.
Unworthiness must not be confused with worthlessness. It is questionable whether even the most noxious organism in the realm of biology is totally devoid of some saving feature, at least in the eyes of the Creator, even if we can find nothing good in it. No human being is worthless, even if aeons have to elapse before a person's destiny becomes apparent. I believe that a divine intelligence governs all created forms, and we, the most mentally advanced creatures in our little world, have enormous potentiality lying dormant in the depths of the soul. The essential function of the minister of healing is to work with God in the liberation of his various creatures from the restriction of disease. Then they may enter the joy of a fulfilled life.
It is a strange, but important, paradox that earnest human endeavour can, in some circumstances, actually impede the work of God. The spiritual life depends on grace, the unmerited gift of God, and the faith to accept it with the guilelessness of a child. Earnest human works, done with the best intentions, even to scale the ladder of perfection, may in the end cause the ladder to slip and fall with the aspirant caught between the rungs. We can, in other words, so easily get in the way of the very work we are commissioned to do that the power of the Holy Spirit is deflected from its purpose, if not temporarily annulled. And yet we read in Jeremiah 29:13: "If you search with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord." The seeking, the endeavour, that leads to the vision of God and therefore to proper healing, must be a response of the whole person and not merely an aggressive ego. It is a strange observation by Jesus in Matthew 11:12, that since the coming of John the Baptist up to the present, the Kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence and violent men are seizing it. The meaning of this saying is obscure, and so no definitive exegesis can be provided. It seems to me that violence can never be commended - at the most it may be unavoidable for defence when oneself or someone else, especially a defenceless child, is confronted by a violent assailant (wielding physical force, verbal abuse or moral seduction), and the attack should be called off at the earliest moment when law and order have been restored. If this is true in a merely personal context, how much more so is it in the way of spiritual life with its ascent in prayer to God! Those who try to force the portals of heaven open by their piety would tend to exclude all other seekers from its habitation. Their heaven would soon contract to a hell of narrow, self-centred conformity to a prevailing power who would seem to have closer affinities with the devil than with God. The history of dogmatic religion bears too many examples of this trend for our comfort; healing is certainly not a commodity of this sectarian heaven.
The doors of heaven are, in fact, open to all of us - we have simply to knock to be admitted. It is our own spiritual ill-health that impedes the journey, but the courtesy of God and his overflowing love do not change. The way is by contemplative prayer that finds its end in intercession for our fellow-creatures and the daily work of reconciliation that follows from it. In this way the works that heal the world stem from a faith in God and an openness to his love. As St James says, faith that does not lead to action is a lifeless thing (James 2:17), but action not based on faith (as St Paul might well retort), being self-centred, is very liable to end in disaster. The Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9 is a fine illustration of this theme, and it continues to be pursued by activist groups, including those involved in healing work, despite their genuine sincerity to do good. Their error is one of insolent pride (hubris). Nothing excludes the power of the Holy Spirit more surely than arrogance, a fault common even in Renewal groups, to say nothing of the esoteric contingent who pride themselves on their special source of knowledge. Religious triumphalism and esoteric "gnosis" tend to impede God's action; humility is an essential precondition for its fulfilment in and through the practitioner.
And so should we simply be quiet and do nothing at all in order to serve God best? The answer has already been given: pray without ceasing and be attentive to the present moment. If you are aware now, you will be given the directive to future action and the power to perform it. There is in contemplative prayer a perfect coincidence of the divine and the human wills: God strengthens our natural faculties so that at last we can see what must be done, and do it accordingly. The final choice; however, is ours, since free will is the divine gift to us. All this stresses the importance of the reasoning function of the psyche, which we term the mind; on a technical level it is essential. The continued pre-eminence of the medical aspects of healing underlines this, and we should be grateful for them in their own place. But restricted medical knowledge may have such a circumscribed base that the practitioner is forced to confine himself to a narrow speciality, to the exclusion of a wider view of the healing process. In this respect allopathic medical practice (the orthodox medical approach) is an apparently ceaselessly expanding field of high-power technology. The developments in diagnostic techniques and surgical procedures over the past three decades have been so radical that the medical practice of the earlier part of this century seems almost medieval by contrast. This is excellent as far as it goes, but there still remain large areas of disease process as yet intractable to orthodox therapy. It seems almost as if the conquest of one disorder unmasks a new area of disease process; what was at one time rare or of only minor importance progressively unfolds into an urgent problem affecting considerable numbers of people. This is, paradoxically, a tribute to the advances in medical understanding: diseases that would frequently have killed a younger generation are now so well contained that the more unusual remnant has a less impeded opportunity to manifest itself. Furthermore, the increased longevity in the developed countries, a consequence of social improvement no less than medical advances, has led to the increased incidence of diseases found especially in the latter part of life.
The knowledge that brings us to God, the source of all healing, has to transcend the ego. In the action of humility required for this self-transcendence, the ego structure of the personality expands effortlessly until it coincides with a more comprehensive, deeper, internal principle of awareness; which is in fact the soul, or the true self. What does it profit a person if he wins the whole world at the cost of his true self (Mark 8:36)? In the consciousness of the soul, isolated knowledge of facts is encompassed in an awareness of overall presence in whose radiance specialized worldly expertise is seen to constitute the mere foothills of the massive mountain of understanding and not its pinnacle. The overall presence is revealed as a unitive knowledge of the person and God. Such knowledge is all-embracing, and it broadens out to assume the character of wisdom. Wisdom pays due deference to specialized techniques and intellectual understanding, both of which are valid in their own context. But wisdom can integrate all disparate sources of knowledge into a whole that brings with it insights of meaning, purpose and destiny that lie beyond the capacity of the specialist agencies we know so well in our daily lives.
This unitive knowledge is the pattern of relationship that should prevail between the one giving, and the other receiving, healing. This applies especially to what is called spiritual healing (the laying-on of hands and prayer with anointing on special occasions), but ideally it should extend to counselling, psychotherapy and even orthodox medical practice. To many medical practitioners this demand would evoke astonishment as well as tolerant amusement; they officiate from a seat of authority, listening cursorily and prescribing summarily. The patient can all too easily assume the character of a mass of organs functioning in a physiological milieu of variable efficiency, and the object of treatment is to get the malfunction repaired as soon as possible, so that the milieu may be restored to a proper equilibrium. And so medical practice can frequently be regarded as high-grade technology. The doctor runs the risk of becoming essentially a technician rather than a person of wisdom and deeper concern for the one he or she treats. On the level of immediate cure this may seem quite acceptable, but unless there is a deeper understanding of the issues of ill-health, it is very likely that one malady will be succeeded by other even more unpleasant ones.
Empathy is at the very heart of healing work; as one's self-awareness enters into the personality of the individual one is treating, so one attains a sensitivity to his condition and can communicate fully with him. It is the crass insensitivity of some fervent religious groups that makes their witness offensive to many people. These groups tend to be judgemental as they sit in self-imposed authority over the rest of the world. The gross insensitivity of some members of the medical profession is notorious. While we can with gratitude hail the great medical advances of our time, we cannot but regret the attrition of the doctor-patient relationship that all too often has accompanied them. The spectacular success of the profession may, paradoxically, become the basis of its future failure as an agency of healing, unless it learns to look inwards. But the Church itself often gives the impression of being more interested in distant political issues than in direct relationships with people.
On the whole, doctors tend to fight shy of metaphysical considerations such as their patients may broach, while many ministers of religion hide their own vulnerability under a convenient veil of platitudes culled from the Bible and various other spiritual writings. To the doctor success is equated with cure, whereas death is the supreme failure. This immature approach is typical of many healing agencies also: to the member of a Renewal group death might seem to deny God's victory over the forces of evil in the world, while the esotericist would have to acknowledge that his special source of power had proved ineffective. Behind this all too human approach to "failure" lies the fear that challenges our self-assertiveness the shrinking from the truth that we all display in times of trial, and the painful acceptance of our own frailty no matter what religious faith, esoteric knowledge, or technical skill we may parade to the world.
To have to descend to the helplessness of the person we are attempting to succour is the beginning of a truly healing relationship. No longer can we glibly pontificate from above; instead we have to learn in humility with the one who suffers. In a truly healing relationship we are, in other words, alongside the sufferer, not distant from him. We can in this respect hardly avert our gaze from the Christ who suffers the psychic hell of Gethsemane and the pain-racked humiliation of Calvary as he hangs crucified, as if in vigil, between two criminals. Before the Passion, Jesus is somewhat remote from others in his magisterial authority, whether over the demonic powers that influence the world or the voices of the religious teachers that promulgate the official spiritual doctrine. He is always in command; his disciples hang on his words while his adversaries retire discomfited. And then comes the final confrontation with evil: for once Jesus is silent, while his impotence under interrogation frightens his disciples into flight. He is now completely alone - as he always was in the depths of his soul - but now even the presence of his Father is blurred and indistinct. Well do the chief priests with the lawyers and elders mock him as he remains nailed to the cross: "He saved others, but he cannot save himself. King of Israel, indeed! Let him come down now from the cross, and then we will believe him" (Matthew 27:42). Had he indeed shown his authority as they had challenged him to do, his complete identification with the human condition would have been frustrated, and his healing work would have retained a certain distance which would have separated him from other people. At that moment he could heal by pure identification without the exercise of visible strength or spiritual authority. A new era of human relationship had begun: the Holy Spirit was now a living force binding people together in mutual recognition. The barriers of identity had been breached by a love that raised all creatures to a new level of potentiality. And yet the individual identity was confirmed and strengthened, not submerged in a sea of amorphous goodwill.
The minister of healing likewise stands alongside his client, and his vulnerability is the price of his healing power. It might be argued that if one were to take on the full burden of suffering of even a single person, let alone a number, in a healing-counselling session, the effect would be emotionally devastating and psychically depleting to the point of a complete physical breakdown. We can understand the medical practitioner standing aloof from the personality of a patient while concentrating with precision on the physical problem that has caused the sufferer to seek help: the emotional impact of so much suffering would become unbearable in even a short session together. In a situation of high technology such an approach becomes increasingly common, but the doctor-patient relationship is frayed almost to the point of severance. It is not surprising that, despite the manifest success of so much allopathic therapy, many patients are moving towards alternative fields of treatment. At least the practitioner has time available to speak to them as intelligent individuals and to enter into some of their personal problems. Dialogue has healing properties.
But the problem remains. How can one enter into the depths of a client's personality and yet remain unscathed? We remember in this respect Jesus feeling power being drained from himself by a woman with an embarrassing bleeding condition (probably from the womb) who touched him deliberately but without prior permission (Mark 5:25-34). Many lesser practitioners could relate similar incidents in the course of their work. Indeed, a very psychically aware person can be drained by the atmosphere of a crowd in a public place; even the congregation of a church has been known to have a similar effect - but perhaps they picked up something already present in the building. Churches are, in my experience, seldom the best places for deep private prayer, which is an indication of the poor quality of worship attained in so many of them. The Reserved Sacrament can help to lighten the atmosphere. T. S. Eliot, in Little Gidding, writes:
You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.
Where prayer has been valid! This is the answer. The person of prayer can enter the depths of another's woe with impunity because he is close to God. In the divine presence all that is morbid and unclean, disturbed and unhappy, is taken up, healed and transfigured. One can then enter into the darkest recesses of another person's psyche and act as a focus of light in an atmosphere of dark tragedy, even despair. It seems that Christ had this ability throughout his ministry. He formed so close a psychic link with those who would receive his presence that a healing power, the flow of the Holy Spirit, reached out to them and healed them of their infirmities. If we could attain the transparency of character in which the Holy Spirit can flow without interference, we too would be effective ministers of healing. But what is first required is a radical cleansing of the psyche, so that the light of God can illuminate even its darkest recesses and fill the person with a healing radiance. How can one recognize a true healing agent? By the radiance that flows from him. There is a transparency that shows itself even to the naked eye, in the finest ministers of healing.
Somehow the native coarseness of the flesh is subtly transfigured, and the purity of the heart shines through the outer vehicle, the physical body. We are reminded by St Paul that our body is a shrine of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is God's gift to us (1 Corinthians 6:19). He goes on to remind us that we do not belong to ourselves, but that we were bought for a price, and so we should honour God in our body. When we reflect on the abuse of the body of mankind by alcohol, smoking, drugs and sexual promiscuity that goes on day after day, we can see how far we have departed from the law that St Paul expounds. An effective minister of healing should be able to control the desires of the flesh by the indwelling Spirit. Admittedly there are some psychic healers, such as Rasputin, who seem to combine profligacy with a gift of contact healing, but their work is devoid of a spiritual base and their clients do not grow as people. It is this type of healing that brings the practice into disrepute among earnest seekers after truth. It is for this reason that any native psychic ability should be charged with the glory of God, so that it shows itself as a spiritual power. By this I mean a power that can transform the personality of the client into a sober, caring presence.
The purgation of the personality is time-consuming; it is a painful, humiliating process. Nothing can remain concealed under the searing scrutiny of the Holy Spirit, but as the revelation of the total personality proceeds, so there is a remarkable sense of freedom. The eye of the soul is truly relieved of the occluding plank, so that the Spirit of God can shine through it to anyone outside who is in need. At the same time it radiates inwards to heal the minister's own bodily and mental problems. Indeed, one of the unseen, yet very evident rewards of a truly spiritual healing ministry is a progressive healing of the minister: as he gives, so does he receive. The reward is not earthly riches but a spiritual blessing.
It should finally be said that healing gifts are not equally disposed among everybody. On the contrary, some people, like the woman suffering from a bleeding condition mentioned in the Gospel, are psychic depleters. I have met a number of these who have been told by mediums that they have a healing gift. Perhaps the medium's "guide" is speaking about the ultimate state of the person, but in the present dispensation such an individual is a liability, not an asset. In some Renewal groups each member of the meeting is instructed to lay hands on the one next to him, for the Holy Spirit is at work among them all. In one way this must be true, since he is the Life-giver, but it is open to doubt whether he operates in a special way among all the attenders of a Charismatic group. In my experience of such matters, some of those present do indeed seem to radiate a healing warmth in their touch, while others act to "drain" their brethren. I do not favour the practice of group laying-on of hands even if the "word of knowledge" comes from an apparently impeccable source. The same reservation applies even more strongly to psychic groups under instruction from the medium's guide (this is a personality that claims familiarity with the after-life situation; it is almost certainly a sub-personality of the medium, but may conceivably have a connexion with other realms of consciousness including the life beyond death). Our own common sense and power of discernment should never be allowed to be overridden by instructions coming from another person, however impressive the source may claim to be or what power it may seem to represent.