Читать книгу Kardec's Spiritism: A Home for Healing and Spiritual Evolution - Emma Inc. Bragdon - Страница 4

In his 2003 Presidential Address to the MAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Floyd Bloom, Professor of Neuroscience at U.C. San Diego and former Editor of "Science," minces no words. Nor can anyone else who calls himself or herself a scientist mince words any longer. Bloom introduces the paper thus: "This problem is the imminent collapse of the American health care system." He refers to "the Delusions of Success" of the incredibly expensive research system for medicine. ($25 billion of public funds for NIH alone ... $1 billion of private money to bring one new major drug to market.)

Emma Bragdon's book offers a practical, down to earth, thoroughly researched (i.e. studied, with ample reproducible data), possible partial solution to the U.S.' problems. Unbelievable you say!? ... well, read it first. As a physical scientist holding five professorships in three Universities, elected to the National Academies of the U.S. and four major countries, and one who has intensively studied the field of Whole Person Healing (much superior in accuracy, as a title, to CAM-complementary and alternative medicine) for some years, I must say that some aspects of Bragdon's suggestion are much more likely to stay the collapse of the U.S. system than ANY research, ANY breakthrough, ANY gadget that our dominant high-tech paradigm can produce. More gas in the tank, or a new battery, or repaired tires, have nothing to contribute to helping your car find its way in a strange city. This is a long way to say: This book is extremely relevant and important to the future of American health care.

When I read about and watched various videos, and talked to friends whom we sent down to visit the Brazilian Abadiania Spiritist center, and studied the incontrovertible scientific data, I came to the same puzzled states that Bragdon describes. How is it possible that the American public, the American medical establishment, and U.S. policy makers are totally (100%) ignorant of these completely inexorable facts.

As a physical scientist, working by science's rules, not those of medical research, to me the facts were absolutely clear. In literally millions of cases, the experiences of "psychic surgery" consistently broke the Western paradigm: surgery was performed routinely in the open air in crowded rooms with no anesthesia, no pain, no bleeding, no sepsis; day in and day out. Obviously our Western paradigm is simply wrong or perhaps inadequate. I then recalled the wisdom of a very politically savvy and practical scientist, Benjamin Franklin. He wrote: "You will observe, with concern, how long a useful truth may be known and exist, before it is generally received and practiced on." That is where the United States stands today, being forced by economic realities perhaps, to now receive the truth of Bragdon's observations, and begin to shape their own practices in accord with it.

The reader gets several excellent, concise introductions in Emma's book. First the history via which Allan Kardec, the French intellectual, influenced a whole Portuguese colony by the practices of his disciples. Second, both the agreed upon general principles and the differences among the different Spiritist centers and practitioners. Third, Dr. Bragdon's very insightful treatment of the commonalities of "theory" among the diversities of "practice" among different brands of centers. I believe that Bragdon's treatment here is both subtle and nuanced. First and foremost as she states "Spiritual healing may ultimately be more important than bodily healing." All of the energized world community now emerging under the banner of "Whole Person Healing" recognize that the key error of allopathic medicine was the single-minded focus on a person as a 'Body' alone. Kardecists, Spiritists, (and all whole person healers) simply state the obvious when they assert that Spirit matters, and profoundly so in health. While Bragdon struggles with the distinction between spirituality and religion (as many theologians are doing today), she ultimately comes down on the correct etymological definition of religion. Religion is indeed to bind again, to re-connect, via practice. All true religions affirm both theory (belief) and experience (practice). 'Faith' and 'works' are hardly a novel idea in all traditions. The Spiritist tradition links belief and practice at the point of the most universally experienced need-for health. The vast majority in the Christian world today simply have forgotten (or never knew) that Jesus was basically a well-known healer. Moreover, his spiritual insights were passed on in profoundly situational ways, for each individual to learn from their own responses. The vagabond son returns and the father rejoices and kills the fatted calf. The stranger in the ditch needs help. No dogma-only practice-but deeply connected to the spirit of caring and its translation into action.

Bragdon carefully dissects the non-sectarian, yet profoundly spiritual nature of the culture of Brazil in which all this occurs. I myself have puzzled over the question: Can the Spiritist experience be duplicated in the U.S.? I believe it works in Brazil (and say the Philippines) because these Catholic cultures are deeply steeped in belief in the reality of the spiritual realm or dimension, not the details of Catholic dogma. Bragdon points out how universally ecumenical (with respect to "dogma") all these centers are. In that respect, they presage the future of all other cultures. But there the relations diverge. Our "advanced"(?) Western culture has (only) in the last fifty years become for the first time in human history a culture of disbelief. There is no coherent mythos, no belief structure, which unifies this culture. If a culture lacks a unifying re-binding together (a religion) can it be a culture at all?? Is "Western culture 2004" an oxymoron? But Bragdon's book is aiming deeper: to provide the "blueprint" as she calls it-for starting a center for the study and practice of Spiritist healing. I heartily endorse the concept, albeit only to provide a channel for accepting reality for our dogmatist, reductionist, body-only practitioners.

Relevant to this Foreword is the challenge in Bragdon's book. How can we not start a center to study and disseminate widely what is learned about these Spiritist Centers. It may help our health care system, but even more importantly it may help our whole culture of disbelief.

Rustum Roy, PhD.

January, 2004

Chairman: Friends of Health

www.rustumroy.com