One of the most widely used is Healing Touch, a practice rooted in
a variety of belief systems, including Theosophy, spiritism, and Buddhism.
Nurses and others certified as Healing Touch practitioners are expected to read
a wide range of books on occult philosophy and engage in experiential training
that includes information on contacting and channeling “angels” or “spiritual
guides.” Healing Touch and related practices such as Therapeutic Touch and
Reiki are being welcomed into Christian churches uncritically in the guise of
Christian healing practices, based on the belief that the healing associated
with them is the same form of healing practiced by Jesus and the first-century
Christians. These churches appear to be ignoring biblical injunctions that warn
the people of God to have nothing to do with aberrant belief systems, mediums,
and with any practices associated with divination.
Jensen is just one of many nurses who also describe themselves with
such titles as Past Life Regression Therapists, Reiki
Masters, Certified Hypnotists, and Certified Angel Therapy
Practitioners. In addition to holistic healing, private therapy, and activities
noted above, they engage in such practices as angel readings (psychic readings
in thin disguise) and other types of “angel care.”3 Some of the nurses who
are flirting with techniques such as Therapeutic Touch
or Healing Touch are Christians. Many of the nurses with experience in
this arena are available for presentations, training workshops, and healing
seminars in recreation centers, public libraries, workplaces—and even your neighborhood church.
The Level I Healing Touch workshop,
sponsored by the local district of the American Nurses
Association, began with teaching on Therapeutic Touch, an extremely
popular noncontact (despite the name) nursing intervention. The technique was
developed by Dora [van Gelder] Kunz (1904–1999), then president of the
Theosophical Society of America, and Dolores Krieger, R.N., Ph.D., a Buddhist
and a professor of nursing at New York University.4 Books for sale
included titles such as Vibrational Medicine,5 which is described as
“a bridge between the metaphysical and medical communities”;6 The Women’s
Spirituality Book,7 which focuses on the reclamation of goddess religion
for inner development; and The Crystal Stair: A Guide to the Ascension, which
includes the secondary subtitle Channeled Messages
from Sananda (Jesus), Ashtar, Archangel Michael, and St. Germain.8
Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry is
described in a program brochure as “a continuing education program for parish
nurses, ministers in parish ministries, chaplains and nurses in hospitals,
nursing homes and hospices, and the lay community seeking to explore a
spiritual healing ministry involving the laying-on of
hands and other Healing Touch techniques.”9 A 2004 issue of the Healing
Touch Spiritual Ministry Newsletter indicates that the educational
focus in ministry settings includes “prayer, energetic healing and anointing
with essential oils”; all three are considered forms of “vibrational healing”
that “formed a foundational stone and marked the success of the early Christian
community.”10 Continuing education units for workshops throughout the
United States are granted through the Colorado Center for Healing Touch; the
program is an approved provider of continuing education by the Colorado Nurses’
Association and the California Board of Registered Nursing. The Healing Touch
Spiritual Ministry is also approved to grant Continuing Chaplaincy Education
units by the Association of Professional Chaplains.11
According to their official ministry Web site, the program has “an
energy-based therapeutic approach to health and healing that includes the
practice of many modern-day Christian healers.”12 The ministry states that
its “deeper roots…go back to the prayer, the laying-on
of hands and anointing with oil modeled by Jesus as a major part of his
ministry,”13 but its actual contemporary beginnings are rooted in
the Healing Touch program begun in the early 1980s. A suggested reading list
includes a few good books on healing that should be in church libraries.14 The
majority of books recommended, however, contain content more suitable for metaphysical
bookstores, including Doreen Virtue’s Healing with the Angels: How the
Angels Can Assist You in Every Area of Your Life,15 Rosalyn Bruyere’s Wheels
of Light: A Study of the Chakras, volume 1,16 and Barbara Brennan’s Hands
of Light: A Guide to Healing through the Human Energy Field.17 Much of the
core teaching on Healing Touch is based on the writing of Bruyere and Brennan.
THE OCCULT CONNECTION
Doreen Virtue, a “spiritual clairvoyant” with a Ph.D. in counseling
psychology, claims that she was able, as a child, to communicate with
“invisible friends” who were really “angels and deceased loved ones.” Now
Virtue lectures on angel therapy, spiritual healing, mediumship, reincarnation,
and channeling. A primary target audience for Virtue’s workshops is the
registered professional nurse.18
The Reverend Rosalyn Bruyere, founder and director of the Healing
Light Center Church in Sierra Madre, California, considers herself a
clairvoyant, healer, and medicine woman.19Bruyere’s Wheels of Light is
a compendium of occult philosophy with a heavy focus on the rising and
awakening of kundalini energy, also known as “serpent energy.”
Bruyere notes that “every culture of antiquity with the exception of
Christians” revered the symbol of the serpent. Her studies of goddess religion
led her to discover the snake as “the power of the undulate” or as a “feminine
power” associated with healing, renewal, physical and spiritual well-being, and
enlightenment, rather than with deceit and corruption as depicted in the
Genesis account.20
Barbara Brennan, founder of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing,
lists among her credentials a Ph.D. in Energy Medicine from Greenwich University,
Norfolk, Australia, and a Th.D. (Doctorate of Theology) in Healing from Holos
University, Springfield, Missouri.21 Holos University Graduate Seminary is
the official postgraduate school of the International Science of Mind Church
for Spiritual Healing.22 Brennan’s school, located in South Florida,
grants a Bachelor of Science in Brennan Healing Science and a diploma in
Brennan Healing Science for studies related to hands-on energy healing and
personal transformation.23
In Light Emerging, Brennan offers pages of channeled
messages from Heyoan, her spiritual guide.24 In Hands of Light,
Brennan tells readers that the name Heyoan means “The Wind Whispering
Truth Through The Centuries.” Included in her book are exercises for the steps
involved in contacting one’s own spirit guides; “understanding that you are one
with God” is first in the process.25 Brennan’s Healing Science Web site
offers weekly channeled messages. She also regularly channels messages from
Heyoan to students enrolled in her school, many of whom are associated with the
health professions.
The foregoing illustrations offer but a glimpse of what has become
a significant movement called Energy Medicine or Energy Healing. The
incorporation of “spirit guides” or “angel guides” and training on how to
channel them has become an increasingly common practice for nurses who attend
advanced Healing Touch workshops, and, more recently, advanced “invitation
only” Therapeutic Touch workshops. Approved by the New York State Nurses
Association Council on Continuing Education, nurses at these latter workshops
are taught to work with “other-than-human intelligences.”26
The Spiritual Dimension of Therapeutic Touch,27 published in
2004, is based largely on Dora Kunz’s workshops that were held at East and West
coast Theosophical retreat centers. Included in the book is reference material
from The Real World of Fairies, one of her early writings.28This new
emphasis in Therapeutic Touch training may well be an effort to capitalize on
the popularity of spirit guide communication that has long been a feature of
Healing Touch. Healing Touch as a movement appears to be vying for the
allegiance of nurses worldwide, eclipsing the popularity of Therapeutic Touch
and, with the proliferation of Healing Touch books and workshops, gaining a
significant market share. Krieger has spoken disparagingly about Healing Touch,29 even
though the two modalities are similar in practice and are both rooted
conceptually in the Western occultism of Theosophy, spiritism,30 and the
Eastern belief system of Buddhism.
Kunz references the writings of early-twentieth-century Theosophist
Charles W. Leadbeater as primary source material for her explanations of the
mechanisms underlying energy healing. Leadbeater (1847–1934), a clairvoyant,
was a curate in the Church of England who converted to Buddhism. His influence
on future generations of Theosophists and on the development of contemporary
energy-based practices was enormous.31 Two of his books, The Chakras,
and Man, Visible and Invisible, provided the conceptual framework for Kunz’s
foundational writings for nursing.32 Energy, generally defined as prana or chi, is
believed to flow through, and can be transformed by, chakras, a
Sanskrit word meaning “circle or wheel.” Some of these chakras are
located in the hands where they are centers of activity for the “reception,
assimilation, and transmission of life energies.”33 Another primary
reference used by both nursing movements isThe Chakras and the Human Energy
Field,34 a more contemporary Theosophical publication.
Therapeutic Touch involves four primary steps:
(1) centering meditatively,
(2) assessing the patient’s supposed energy field,
(3) unruffling or decongesting energy, and
(4) modulating using the mind or intentionality to redistribute
energy through the hand chakras. 35
In contrast, more than 30 techniques for
rebalancing energy are taught in the Healing Touch program in a series
of three workshops, though the initial teaching is very similar to that of
Therapeutic Touch.36 Janet Mentgen, a registered nurse with a bachelor’s
degree, was introduced to Therapeutic Touch in a workshop in 1980, then went on
to practice various forms of “energy-based medicine” in the Denver, Colorado,
area, eventually combining a number of them into the practice of Healing Touch.
The American Holistic Nurses’ Association began offering Healing Touch in 1990,
and officially certified it in 1993. In 1993 Mentgen formed the Colorado Center
for Healing Touch. By then, Healing Touch had grown from a modality into a
movement. Healing Touch International, soon incorporated by the Colorado Center
for Healing Touch, became the certifying authority for Healing Touch and
promoted its growth worldwide, including a five-level educational program
ranging from beginner to advanced levels. A student who attends all levels of
the program can apply to become a Certified Healing Touch Practitioner.37
Celestial Level Healing, related to the sixth layer of the auric
field, is another technique taught at more advanced Healing Touch workshops; it
is considered a type of channeling.
A drawing inHands of Light depicts a healer sitting
at the head of a table, eyes closed, and hands hovering several inches from a
patient’s head; angels surround the healer and patient.43 Brennan
discusses the need for healers to learn to “raise their vibrations” in order to
accept a “greater reality.” This makes it easier, Brennan wrote, for “the
guides to get concepts through to you because you are not so prejudiced about
the nature of the world; i.e., you have removed some of the blocks from your
brain.”44
Jill Dickson, R.N., described her experience of attending one of
Mentgen’s three-day Healing Touch workshops:
The second day was as amazing as the first. We learned many more
energetic techniques with Janet, including the powerful Lymphatic Drainage
sequence—a form of energetic release used to help relieve congestion and pain
in the lymph system. I also spent time learning from my Healing Touch
colleagues….Several people were repeating this course for the third and even
fourth time because of their love of Healing Touch. There were hospital nurses
from all disciplines, massage therapists, ministers, and psychologists, even
someone who had worked as a high executive with a pharmaceutical industry. We
shared stories of how Healing Touch had entered our lives, and how it had
profoundly impacted our lives and our practices. We laughed, we cried, and we
healed. I slept soundly that night. Janet had taught us how to introduce spirit
guides into our work, and as I slept, I felt enveloped by the love of my
colleagues and my spirit guides.45
Workshop Levels IV and V prepare
students to become Certified Healing Touch Practitioners. At these levels, each
student is assigned a mentor. Students also are required to conduct and
document 100 Healing Touch sessions, and to experience at least 10 additional
alternative healing techniques; Reiki is one of the
most popular and it is not unusual to find nurses who are certified in both
Healing Touch and Reiki.46 Many of these nurses will engage in
private practice; these workshop levels therefore include information about
establishing a business and integrating various healing techniques into
health-care programs.
Healing Touch, in particular, has been making significant inroads
into churches of all denominations in the guise of a “Christian
healing modality.” It has been doing so primarily with aggressive
promotion by the Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry. Parish
nursing also may be a vehicle for incorporating Healing Touch and related
therapies into churches, often through the avenue of a church health fair,
although the premises, assumptions, and foundations of basic parish nurse training
are generally sound and based on a biblical understanding of health and healing
(see sidebar for a description of this important movement).
AVENUES OF LEGITIMACY
Alternative healing modalities of all types blossomed in the 1970s
in the wake of the 1960s counterculture. The importing
of Hinduism and Buddhism introduced Americans to meditation techniques such as
Transcendental Meditation (TM) and yoga. TM, yoga, and many other alternative
approaches to spirituality and health rooted in Eastern metaphysical systems
of thought became more firmly established in the culture at large in the 1980s.
They also began appearing regularly in professional journals, described as
techniques that lowered stress and blood pressure. They gained more legitimacy
in medicine through the establishment in 1993 of the Office of Alternative
Medicine by the National Institutes of Health; one purpose of the Office of
Alternative Medicine was to encourage research and exploration of the
effectiveness of these alternative healing techniques.
TM, yoga, and Therapeutic Touch gained legitimacy in nursing
schools in the 1970s and 1980s, largely promoted by national nursing
organizations such as the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses
Association. Many nurses have researched Therapeutic Touch as an intervention
through heavily funded research projects. Healing Touch has become a more
recent topic for nursing research and use in clinical settings such as
hospitals, hospices, and nursing homes.47
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986), born in India into a moderately
wealthy Brahmin (highest caste or class) family, was originally groomed by
Theosophists Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater as the fifth Buddha and
incarnation of Lord Bodhisattva Maitreya, the coming World Teacher who was
proclaimed as “the vehicle for the reincarnation of Christ in the west and of
Buddha in the East.”52 Krishnamurti later resigned from Besant’s religious
organization, the Order of the Star in the East, and renounced his claim to
messianic fame, but Buddhist monistic (“all is One”) concepts continued to
permeate both his individual writings and a coauthored book with Bohm.53 Concepts
from Buddhism, housed in various schools of Theosophy, are foundational to both
Therapeutic and Healing Touch.
The writings of Alice Bailey (1880–1949) also play a major role in
the Healing Touch movement. Bailey founded the Arcane School (which was rooted
in Theosophy, but then branched out into many teachings that differed from it).
Her supposedly channeled book, Esoteric Healing,54 is a primary source
textbook for the Healing Touch practitioner. Bailey claimed that she was the
amanuensis, or scribe, of Djwhal Khul, a Tibetan adept and ascended Master of
the White Brotherhood.55 In Initiation, Human and Solar, Bailey
described her “teacher” (one assumes she was referring to Djwhal Khul) as an
adept who “works largely, too, with certain groups of the devas of the ethers,
who are the healing devas, and who thus collaborate with Him in the work of
healing some of the physical ills of humanity.”56
HEALING TOUCH AND THE CHURCH
The standard teaching of the Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry is
that the contemporary Christian church has lost its original focus on healing
and needs to reclaim it. There is, it could be argued, some validity to this
assessment, though there has been a renewed focus on
healing in many Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches since the early
1970s in particular, sparked by books reflecting various denominational
perspectives.57 Healing has long been a
focus in churches reflecting Pentecostal or charismatic traditions.
There is also a rich historic tradition of books on healing by missionaries and
ministers such as Andrew Murray (1828–1917),
author of Divine Healing, and Christian and Missionary Alliance founder A. B.
Simpson (1843–1919), author of The Gospel of Healing. The parish
nurse movement is one of the most visible and recent expressions of a holistic
healing focus influencing churches of all denominations.
If this rich historic and contemporary tradition is the case, why, then,
does a practice such as Healing
Touch appeal to so many within the church? How
is it possible that a practice so clearly rooted in Western occultism and
esotericism, Eastern metaphysical beliefs, and even spiritism, can be
considered compatible with a Christian worldview or even be allowed in a church
in the first place?
Some answers to the foregoing questions are found in what Healing
Touch claims to offer and what it may deliver to the practitioner; this
includes an emotionally satisfying experience couched in the context of an
appealing ritual. Healing Touch is highly aesthetic and highly ritualistic,
from the initial step of meditative centering, to the patterned series of hand
movements believed to assess, unruffle, and modulate or even flick away
“negative” energy. The practice seems designed to meet a human need for a sense
of order, beauty, and balance. In nursing literature, practices such as
Therapeutic and Healing Touch are, in fact, frequently referred to as healing
rituals evoking “art, beauty and soul care.”58
Rituals are powerful tools, engendering strong emotional
responses as well as experiences that may or may not be accurately interpreted
as spiritual. The Old and New Testament Scriptures are replete with examples of
rituals God commanded His people to engage in, including rituals of healing
(see, e.g., 2 Kings 5:13–14 and John 9:7). The primary purpose of these healing
rituals, however, invariably led to restoration of physical, emotional, social,
mental, and spiritual health. A radical repentance was also foundational to the
practice of much healing in Scripture, accompanied by recognition of one’s
humanness and total dependence on God as opposed to a belief in one’s innate
divinity (see 2 Kings 20; Num. 21; James 5:13–16). The most powerful healing
ritual of all for Christians was, in reality, the Roman ritual of crucifixion. Isaiah53:5 tells us, “With His stripes we are healed” (ESV),
we are not merely rebalanced.
True biblical healing on any level really is a “power
encounter.” The power encountered is God. In many cases, however, there is a lack of discernment or
recognition of other powers or of spiritual realms of existence that are
considered “off-limits” to Christians. There is power in these realms too,
though power of a different nature. Angels, including fallen ones, really do
exist, but are not ours to invoke, conjure, or channel. The consequences for
accessing angels, and for attempting to access deceased humans as well, can be
quite severe, as Saul found out when he attempted to channel Samuel’s spirit
through a medium (see 1 Sam. 28:3–19). God forbids it (see also Lev. 19:31 and
Deut. 18:9–14).
Healing practices that appeal to extrabiblical sources of authority
appear to have a particularly strong appeal to the senses. A pastor from
Sackville, Nova Scotia, Canada, who wrote about introducing Therapeutic Touch
in his church immediately after the communion service, noted that some of the
congregants who remained at the altar to receive the laying-on of hands
experienced “tingling, heat,” and “seeing light.”59 Physical sensations such as these may be legitimate responses
to the traditional Christian experience of the laying-on of hands and prayer,
but the focus of true Christian healing is not on feelings and experiences but
on God, who bids us to come to Him in our brokenness.
There is another side to many energy-based healing techniques, including dangers accompanying the raising of one’s own or
another’s “kundalini energy.” Explanations of these dangers vary
greatly. Training on handling “psychospiritual crises” is now included in more
advanced Therapeutic Touch workshops.60 Christians would be wise not to
subject themselves to experiences or practices that specifically are designed
to awaken or manipulate energy in any form.61
Healing Touch proponents have attempted to legitimize
this practice to the church by promoting the idea that the type of healing
Jesus engaged in was energy-based healing, consistent with new discoveries in
quantum theory. To support this belief, they use, for example, the healing by
Jesus of the woman with the issue of blood. Mark 5:27 describes her touching
the garment of Jesus from behind. In response to her touch, power immediately
came out of Jesus and the woman was healed, instantly and completely. The
source of the power to heal seems clear in this passage; it was from God, given
to the Son by the Father, residing in Jesus. To equate this dynamic healing
power of a personal God with the subtle and impersonal energies of prana or
chi, capable of being manipulated and channeled independently by human
intentionality or with the assistance of spirit guides or other-than-human
intelligences, implies an equivalence that simply does not exist.
“I don’t believe we can be content with natural abilities and
gifts—we have to continuously review and update our studies and methods until
Energy and Angel Medicine becomes so dramatically effective and widely accepted
that it becomes a natural thing to just have these treatments and readings as
required,”62 wrote Elisabeth Jensen, the nurse mentioned at the beginning
of this article who practiced a wide variety of occult and energy-based
therapies, including Healing Touch. Her statement
should be a wake-up call to Christians to get back to legitimate Christian
prayer for healing. True Christian healing
should never be considered “natural,” but a supernatural act of grace. Those who are promoting energy-based healing in the church
have made healing an autonomous act, relying on human manipulation.
Francis Schaeffer wrote about an autonomous notion of nature
“eating up grace.”63 When this happened historically, Schaeffer noted,
philosophy “became increasingly free” and “was separated from revelation.” It
“began to take wings, as it were, and fly off wherever it wished, without
relationship to the Scriptures.”64 The greatest need of the church in
relation to a renewed and restored focus on healing is to let our philosophies
of healing and our practices of healing be fully informed by the Scriptures and
by the God of history who desires to teach us to heal and to be healed only
through His power. That is both our heritage and our hope.
Notes
1. Angel Miracles, “Combining the Gifts of Healing and Clairvoyance
with Professional Skills in Health Care and Healing,” About Elizabeth Jensen,
Angel Miracles, http://www.angelmiracles.com.au/elizabeth.html.
2. Angel Miracles, Isis Mystery School, Angel Miracles,
http://www.angelmiracles.com.au/course/egyptian.html.
3. See, e.g., Judy Meinen, Angel Care Healing Touch, http://
www.angelcarehealingtouch.com/about.
4. For a critical analysis of Therapeutic Touch, see Sharon Fish,
“Therapeutic Touch: Healing Science or Psychic Midwife?” Christian
Research Journal 18, 1 (1995), 28–38
(http://www.equip.org/free/DN105.pdf).
5. Richard Gerber, Vibrational Medicine: New Choices for
Healing Ourselves (Santa Fe, NM: Bear and Company, 1996).
6. “Interview by the Intuitive Times with Dr. Richard Gerber, M.D.,
Author of Vibrational Medicine—New Choices for Healing Ourselves, Part
One,” The Intuitive Times 1, 3, Natural Choice Associates,
http://www. intuitivetimes.ca/Articles/artpartone.htm.
7. Diane Stein, The Women’s Spirituality Book (St. Paul:
Llewellyn Publications, 1992).
8. Eric Klein, The Crystal Stair: A Guide to the Ascension: Channeled
Messages from Sananda (Jesus), Ashtar, Archangel Michael, and St. Germain, 3rd
ed. (Livermore, CA: Oughten House Publications, 1994).
9. Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry, February, 2003. A conference
brochure.
10. Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry, “HTSM Births a New
Curriculum,” Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry Newsletter 3, 1 (Spring
2004): 1, http://www.htspiritualministry.com/ Vol.III.No1.pdf.
11. See Association of Professional Chaplains, http://www.
professionalchaplains.org/education-list.asp.
12. Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry, “About Us: Our Beginning
Roots,” Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry,
http://www.htspiritualministry.com/about.html.
13. Ibid. Author’s Note: There is no Scriptural evidence that Jesus
Himself anointed anyone with oil, though it was clearly a practice of the early
church with respect to healing.
14. Suggested Reading, Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry
http://www.htspiritualministry.com/reading.html.
15. Doreen Virtue, Healing with the Angels: How the Angels Can
Assist You in Every Area of Your Life (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 1999).
16. Rosalyn Bruyere, Wheels of Light: A Study of the Chakras,
vol. 1 (Sierra Madre, CA: Bon Productions, 1991).
17. Barbara Brennan, Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing
through the Human Energy Field(New York: Bantam Books, 1987).
18. Angel Therapy, “Doreen Virtue, Ph.D. Biography,” Angel Therapy,
http://www.angeltherapy.com/about.html.
19. Healing Light Center Church, “Rosalyn L. Bruyere: Healer,
Clairvoyant and Medicine Woman,” Think Holistic,
http://www.thinkholistic.com/comdir/ cditem.cfm?NID=601. See also Healing Light
Center Church, http://www.rosalynlbruyere.org.
20. See Bruyere, Wheels of Light, 124–26.
21. Barbara Brennan, “Credentials,” Barbara Brennan School of
Healing, http://www.barbarabrennan.com/bbsh/about_barbara/credentials1.html.
22. See Holos University Graduate Seminary,
http://www.hugs-edu.org/.
23. Barbara Brennan, “New Degree Program,” Barbara Brennan School
of Healing, http://www.barbarabrennan.com/bbsh/BACHELOR/BSdegreeInfo.html.
24. Barbara Brennan, Light Emerging: A Journey of Personal
Healing (New York: Bantam Books, 1993).
25. See Brennan, Hands of Light, 170–71.
26. See, e.g., Northeast Theosophical Retreat Center, “Workshops on
Therapeutic Touch,” under “31st Annual Advanced Therapeutic Touch Workshop,”
Pumpkin Hollow Farm, http://www.pumpkinhollow.org/ tt_ws.html#advanced_ws.
27. Dora Kunz with commentary by Dolores Krieger, The
Spiritual Dimension of Therapeutic Touch (Rochester, VT: Bear and Company,
2004).
28. Dora van Gelder, The Real World of Fairies (London:
Quest Books/The Theosophical Publishing House, 1977).
29. Dolores Krieger, interview with “Interconnect,” WVXU 91.7 FM (Cincinnati,
Ohio), Spring, 1997; available at http://www.phact.org/e/tt/cin.txt.
30. Spiritism is “the practice of attempting communication with
departed human or extra-human intelligences… through the agency of a human
medium.” Elliot Miller, A Crash Course on the New Age Movement: Describing
and Evaluating a Growing Social Force (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House,
1989), 141.
31. Bruce F. Campbell, Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of
the Theosophical Movement(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980).
32. C.W.Leadbeater, The Chakras (Wheaton, IL:
Theosophical Publishing House, 1981. Originally published 1927);
C.W.Leadbeater, Man, Visible and Invisible (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical
Publishing House, 1981. Originally published in 1902). Also Dora Kunz, comp.,Spiritual
Aspects of the Healing Arts. (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House,
1985); Dora Kunz, The Personal Aura (Wheaton, IL: Quest
Books/Theosophical Publishing House, 1991).
33. Llewellyn Encyclopedia, s.v. “Chakras,” Llewellyn
Worldwide, http://www.llewellynencyclopedia.com/term.php?id=55.
34. Shafica Karagulla and Dora van Gelder Kunz, The Chakras
and the Human Energy Fields(Wheaton, IL: Quest Books/ Theosophical Publishing
House, 1989).
35. Dolores Krieger, Therapeutic Touch: How to Use Your Hands
to Help or to Heal (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Press, 1979).
36. For a seven-step sequence, see Steve Anderson, “Basic Healing
Touch Sequence,” Basic Sequence, Steve’s Healing Touch Practice,
http://www.stevehtouch.bizland.com/ Sequence.htm.
37. Healing Touch International, “Program Information,” Colorado
Center for Healing Touch, http://www. healingtouch.net/program/index.shtml.
38. See Brennan, Hands of Light, 52.
39. Kunz, The Personal Aura.
40. Brennan, Hands of Light, 219–20.
41. Ibid., 153.
42. See Brennan, Light Emerging, 54.
43. See Brennan, Hands of Light, 227.
44. Ibid., 226.
45. Jill Dickson, “Three Days with Janet,” Biosphere 6 (2002),
California Hematology Oncology Medical Group and B’Shert Integrative Oncology
Services, CHMOG and BIOS, http://www.chomg.com/three_days_with_janet.htm.
46. Reiki usually involves three levels of attunements or
initiations by Reiki Masters in often secret ceremonies to raise the vibrations
of initiates so as to enable them to channel increasing amounts of energy, then
to become Reiki Masters themselves. See, for example, William Lee Rand, Reiki:
The Healing Touch. First and Second Degree Manual (Southfield, MI: Vision
Publications, 1991).
47. Research Department, “Healing Touch Research,” Healing Touch
International, http://www.healingtouch.net/research/summary2003.pdf.
48. Patrick Grim, ed., Philosophy of Science and the Occult,
2nd ed. (Albany, NY: State of University of New York Press, 1990).
49. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the
Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (Boulder, CO:
Shambhala Publications, 1975).
50. Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the
New Physics. (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1979).
51. Deepak Chopra, The New Physics of Healing (Boulder,
CO: Sounds True, 2002).
52. Krishnamurti Foundation, “J. Krishnamurti,” Krishnamurti
Foundation of America, http://www.kfa.org/biography.php.
53. For a comprehensive and easy to understand overview of Bohmian
physics, see Sheldon Goldstein, “Bohmian Mechanics,” The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Winter 2002 edition),
http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2002/entries/qm-bohm/; see also
Martin Gardner, “David Bohm and Jiddo Krishnamurti,” Skeptical Inquirer 24,
4 (July 2000) (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_4_24/ai_63693002).
54. Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Healing: A Treatise on the
Seven Rays, vol. 4 (New York: Lucis Publishing Companies, 1953).
55. Lucis Trust, “About Alice A. Bailey” Lucis Publishing
Companies, Lucis Trust, http://www.lucistrust.org/ lucispub/aab.shtml.
56. Alice A. Bailey, Initiation, Human and Solar (New
York: Lucis Publishing Companies, 1926), 57–58.
57. See, e.g., Francis MacNutt, Healing, rev. ed. (Notre Dame,
IN: Ave Maria Press, 1999); Ken Blue, Authority to Heal (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987); and Paul Meyendorff,Sacrament of Healing
in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
2004).
58. Jean Watson, Postmodern Nursing and Beyond (New York:
Churchill Livingstone, 1999), 257–58.
59. David Maginley, “The Gift of Healing: Re-examining the Clergy
Vows of Laying Hands on the Sick,” In Touch, The Therapeutic Touch Network
of Ontario, http://www. therapeutictouchnetwk.com/Article9.htm.
60. See, e.g., Northeast Theosophical Retreat Center.
61. See, e.g., SilverDrake Fey, “Serpent Fire: Kundalini and
Spiritual Crisis,” Reiki Articles, Sacred Path Reiki,
http//www.sacredpath.org/html/reiki/general/article001.htm. See Elliot Miller,
“The Christian, Energetic Medicine, ‘New Age Paranoia,’” Christian
Research Journal 14, 3 (1992): 24–27.
62. Jensen.
63. Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape from Reason (Westchester,
IL: Crossway Books, 1982; originally published in 1968), 21.
64. Ibid., 211.
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