Miracles of the Gods

Chapter Three - When Miracles Do Happen

IF Jesus is not the 'only begotten son of God': if Almighty God had neither sons nor daughters: if Mary cannot belong to the heavenly personnel, and angels or archangels cannot be numbered among the legates of the enlarged Christian family, then all these sacred messengers are excluded as active causers of visions. However, the fact remains that miracles happen and medically inexplicable cures take place at the sites of Christian visions. Does this mean that nevertheless such phenomena are proof of 'heavenly powers' at work and evidence of the 'authenticity' of visions of members of the Christian Hierarchy?

After studying a mass of sophistical theological explanations, one question takes precedence for me. If no genuine apparition has taken place at what is supposedly the scene of a vision - i.e. of the Blessed Virgin, Jesus or the archangels - or if the personified vision is not identical with the figures placed on record by the 'visionaries', how can 'miracles' and 'miraculous' cures happen in the name of those who are supposed to have appeared?

I sought clarification on the spot.

Lourdes, in the French Pyrenees, is the world's best known place of pilgrimage. As many as five million pilgrims travel their annually from the four corners of the world. The town is rather like a vast annual fair at which miracles are offered as attractions. The streets of Lourdes seethe with people even at night, although the night-life offers nothing more than a striptease of tense expectations.

The miracle business is flourishing; it has been booming for 125 years. In the countless shops there are crucifixes of every conceivable kind and the statue of the Madonna is mass-produced in all sizes, for the office and the front garden. Nor are the rosaries the same for all classes: there are expensive models for the rich and cheaper ones for the less well-off. Which are likely to be more effective is beyond me.

The objects on offer are fanciful and endless: pictures of the saints and clogs, purses, bells and plates, sunglasses, watches and lockets, candles of all kinds: thick and thin, long and short, violet and pink, straight and artistically twisted and adorned with gold writing. On every single one of them - made in Lourdes - the Madonna! Her face on the candles will flow away as wax tears; it is more permanent on the clogs and plates.

I know a lot of bars all over the world, including the ones in Acapulco which claim to have every conceivable shape and size of bottle on their shelves. But in my opinion no establishment can compete with Lourdes when it comes to shapes. I have never seen such a collection of differently shaped bottles in my life. Pot-bellied and spherical bottles, rectangular and triangular, pocket-sized, litre and gallon bottles, of all colours and all sizes. In contrast to the bottles with delightful contents at the Miracle Bar in Acapulco, none of the bottles contains anything but 'miracle water from Lourdes.'

The shopkeepers know how deeply they are indebted to the place's reputation, know precisely what ensures and raises their turnover.

They call their shops 'Au Paradis', 'Notre Chere Dame de Noel', 'Au St. Odile', 'Au St. Camille', 'Au St.

Pape Paul X', 'Au la Paix du Monde', 'Au Rosier de Marie' and, unbeatable in its simplicity, 'Au Sante Dame de la Grotte'. Since the girl who saw the Madonna was canonized, everything has been given a name with religious associations. Even the hotels are not given the normal names of earthly hostelries: one, for example, is even called Hotel du Vatican. Rome's masters wear ample robes beneath which such things are easily hidden and not a cardinal in the Holy Office blushes.

Disgusted by all this commercialism, I parked my car in the holy garage of a holy hotel for an unholy price. Secretly hoping that the inner illumination would come to me in spite of everything, I mingled with the crowds in front of the basilica. Here at least, in the holy precinct, there were no stalls or pavement salesmen. You were drugged, enveloped in the smell of candles and incense. Familiar, internationally known hymns, mingled with prayers, sounded from stereophonic loudspeakers. The impression was confusing. What should one look at first?

Sick people, in identical wheel-chairs, pushed or pulled by helpers, went past in mile-long queues. The Lord's Prayer. In the big meadow a procession was forming with flags, cross and a statue of the Madonna at its head; a priest was saying prayers into a hand-megaphone. A vast production, staged several times a day.

In rows of ten, the hopeful miracle-believers and cure-seekers, myself among them, advance at a snail's pace, waiting patiently until they can fill their colourful plastic bottles with holy water from Lourdes at the taps which are set into the wall. Many drink it, catching it in their hands so that they can apply it to head or feet. Although it is all in the open air, there is a solemn atmosphere as if we are in the nave of a cathedral. All round hundreds and thousands of candles are burning in a vast dance of lights. The only sounds are praying, whispering and hymn singing. Signs in several languages warn you that you are on holy ground and that anyone who forgets it will be immediately reprimanded by strict guards: they also see to it that those in a hurry do not jump the queue.

Now I have reached the stream of water: I haven't got a bottle. I let it run into my hands, I watch my next-door neighbours. Their faces are marked with pain and rapture, with devotion and worship, with happiness and pride, simply from being here at last, so close to the miracle. Water is collected here in gallon and ten-litre bottles. For personal needs? Or do people finance the cost of a second trip by selling small quantities once they get home?

The phalanx of the hopeful advances step by step to the great goal, the grotto. It is eight metres long, six metres high and twelve metres wide. At a height of about three metres, to the right of the entrance, stands the white marble statue of the Blessed Virgin, on the very spot and supposedly in exactly the same attitude in which she showed herself to the little Bernadette Soubirous [1] in eighteen visions between 11th February and 16th July, 1858. The walls are damp and glistening; the faithful kiss them, kneel on the ground and stare entranced at the marble statue. They pray and many of them weep aloud.

From time to time envelopes are thrown into a metal basket in the rear part of the grotto - petitions to the Blessed Virgin. No stamps! In the middle of the grotto stands an altar with candles burning in front of it, hundreds of candles which make the damp air stickily hot. The sea of flames which I see shining at this moment has been shining incessantly since 18th February, 1858. If there is such a thing as an everlasting flame, it is here in the grotto at Lourdes.

I was as deeply moved by the devout atmosphere at the pilgrims' goal as I was disgusted by the eastern bazaar atmosphere in the town. No one can be so hard-boiled as to be unmoved by what takes place at the water taps, in the grotto, in the big square and the basilica itself. The countless cares and pains that are dragged here, the communal hope that joins the faithful together! The heavy burden of disappointment that many of them will carry on the journey home! I sat on a wall, 100 yards from the grotto. I crouched there for ten hours, until late at night. With the onset of darkness the stream of pilgrims decreased and the shimmer of the candles burning everywhere increased, became one great flame, dazzling one's eyes, heightening the already expectant atmosphere of Lourdes. The weeping of some unknown fellow-man came steadily from the grotto, even long after midnight when I returned to my holy hotel.

What magnet has the immense power to draw millions of pilgrims to this place year after year?

The Madonna appeared to the fourteen-year-old shepherdess Bernadette Soubirous (1844-1879)

eighteen times in the grotto and gave her orders and messages. Bernadette was canonized by Pope Pius XI on 8th December, 1933. By this act the Church recognized the authenticity of the visions and of certain miraculous cures which had been recorded at Lourdes. More effective 'publicity could not have been set in motion by headquarters at Rome. As far as the arm of the Church reached, pilgrimages and processions (with tickets at reduced rates) were organized in all dioceses.

In 1858 more than 100 cures were recorded, seven of them being recognized as 'miracles' by the Holy Office. (By Catholic definition 'miracle' has always meant the 'breaking of the laws of nature'; as this concept is scientifically dubious today, the Church now interprets a 'miracle' as something 'completely inexplicable'.)

Since 1866 cures have been constantly publicized in the Journal de la Grotte. Out of thousands of ostensible cures the Church gave the, official title of 'miracle' to sixty-three cases. Dr. Aphoriso Olivieri, for many years President of the Bureau des Constatations Medicales, said in 1969 that even then an average of thirty cures a year were recorded [2]. However, the Medical Bureau at Lourdes does not possess all the data of genuine or ostensible cures, because it only has details of patients who were admitted to the Asylum of Notre Dame or the Hospital of Our Dear Lady of the Seven Sorrows.

Between them 49,036 sick and ailing people were housed there in 1970, and 44,731 in 1971.

How does an 'ecclesiastically recognized miracle' evolve?

In May 1952 Mrs. Alice Couteault travelled from Poitiers to Lourdes with an organized pilgrimage.

She was thirty-four years old and had been suffering from multiple sclerosis (*) for three years. The journey in the pilgrims' train with many other very sick people was sheer torture for Mrs. Couteault.

They prayed, lamented and sang hymns to Mary all the way. Relations and attendants looked after the sufferers. The atmosphere of pain and suffering was oppressive, nevertheless the hope they placed in Lourdes was alive and present and consoled them all. Mrs. Couteault felt better as soon as she arrived.

In the early morning of 15th May Mrs. Couteault, who could neither walk nor speak, was taken to the bathing-pool in a wheelchair. When she was immersed she was on the point of fainting: all her limbs twitched. After the bath she felt like a new woman. She was taken back to the Asylum of Notre Dame in the wheelchair. In the afternoon she went for a short walk alone in the hall: no doctor would have thought it possible.

In the late afternoon she took part in the sacramental procession at which all pilgrims were blessed.

Suddenly Mrs. Couteault felt as if she could speak again, but did not risk it, because she was afraid 'she might utter a hotch-potch of separate words and make herself ridiculous'. The attendants took her back.

Outside the front door she got out of her wheelchair and walked into the Asylum unassisted. On 16th May Mrs. Couteault presented herself at the medical bureau. Under the direction of the President - it was Dr. Alphoriso Olivieri - various doctors from various countries diagnosed the patient's condition.

(Any doctor who goes to Lourdes can take part in the examinations.)

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[*] A chronic progressive disease in which patches of thickening appear throughout the central nervous system, resulting in various forms of paralysis. Cause unknown.

---- The certificates and diagnoses of doctors who had treated Mrs. Couteault before the pilgrimage were read. There were opinions by Dr. Chauvenet, a surgeon, Dr. Delams-Marsalat, a neurologist, and Professor Beauchant from her home town, Poitiers. Laboratory analyses were in the file. The unanimous diagnosis: multiple sclerosis, incurable. On this 16th May the doctors put on record: 'Her gait and posture while walking are normal. There are no muscular contractions. The patella reflexes are normal ...'

During the following years the patient was examined and re-examined at Lourdes: her cure was medically confirmed. On 10th May 1955, fifteen examining doctors certified that 'all subjective signs of the illness have disappeared'.

Such cases of cures are communicated to an international committee to which some 10,000 doctors, dentists, medical students and chemists etc. belong. Another larger group received detailed reports on the history of the disease and the cure at Lourdes. On 15th August, 1955 Professor Thiebaud of the University of Strasbourg, declared: 'Examination of the patient showed no disturbances of functions. In particular she hears and sees well, and articulates correctly when speaking. ...'

On 23rd June, 1956 the Commission appointed by Monsignore Vion, Bishop of Poitiers, met at Poitiers. Following the doctors' opinion, the Commission pronounced Mrs. Alice Couteault's cure to be

'outside and above the laws of nature'.

On 16th July, 1956 Monsignore Vion ceremonially announced:

'By virtue of the authority conferred on us in this respect by the Pridentine Council [= inspiration by the Holy Scriptures], with out decision being subject to the authority of the Pope, we hereby solemnly declare that the cure of Mrs. Alice Couteault, which took place at Lourdes on 16th May, 1952, is miraculous and must be acknowledged as a special manifestation of the most blessed Virgin and Mother of God, Mary.'

What are we to say about that?

It is well known that the Medical Bureau carries out very strict and accurate examinations and that there are unbelievers and sceptics among the doctors. No case of a cure is recorded unless the clinical picture before the event is given in medical certificates. The trouble with certificates is that they are rarely of recent date; they often go back years - to the origin and development of the disease.

At best they are issued a few weeks before the decision to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes. But the question also arises whether doctors can give an 'infallible' diagnosis, embracing all symptoms. For example, what diagnostic value has the pronouncement that Mrs. Couteault appeared to be cured on

16th May, 1952? The findings of the Lourdes Medical Bureau could be ascribed a higher degree of scientific certainty only if the same doctors who certified the spontaneous healing process had themselves been observing the patient for a long time before, the miracle. But this strictly scientific method is not feasible with the thousands of sick people who converge on Lourdes from all over the world.

Since the theory of psychosomatic effects developed first by F.G. Alexander in America and later by V. von Weizsacker in Germany, was introduced into medicine, it has been proved in many clinical experiments that bodily processes and organic buffering can be directly influenced by psychic stimuli.

Muscular performance, cardial activity and the separation of digestive secretions, etc., can be altered by suggestion (hypnosis).

Accurate observations have shown that organic diseases often develop in critical life situations - indeed, it is beyond doubt that specific diseases or organs are subject to specific psychic situations.

'Psychosomatics concern a subject who forms "his" disease himself and is not passively "attacked" by it; every disease has its characteristic expression in the living organism's outward manifestation of the psyche.'

Diagnoses (Greek: deciding between) establish typical symptoms of a condition; from them doctors infer therapies which are possible and likely to be successful. Diagnoses do not and cannot always show the cause of a disease or ailment, but only such ultimate absolute knowledge can effect a cure with certainty. If doctors could always recognize all the causes of illness, there would soon be no patients left.

When the Medical Committee at Lourdes examines the findings before and after a cure, it is comparing two different conditions: with the best will in the world it cannot communicate the reasons for the change on the basis of this comparison.

Does the hope of a cure at Lourdes already pave the way for a miracle?

Before a sufferer makes up his mind to make the laborious journey, questions, doubts and hopes have been spinning through his brain for a long time. Has he not long since acquiesced in his fate? Has he not already visited every doctor who was recommended to him? Without success? Should he risk one last attempt to change his destiny on a pilgrimage? Could a miracle actually bring him relief from his pains? If the decision to go on the pilgrimage ripens in this struggle between doubt and hope, does not the miraculous cure begin at this moment? Is not a change in his psychological attitude to the disease initiated?

Dr. Alphoriso Olivieri [3] says of this possibility, 'that the hypothesis of autosuggestion or heterosuggestion (is) quite improbable'. He points to Mrs. Couteault, who clearly recognized that she was suffering from an incurable disease, but adds that she had 'boundless confidence in the efficiency of the baths (at Lourdes) from the time of her departure and during her pilgrimage.'

There is a big contradiction in these lines! Why and where-fore can autosuggestion or heterosuggestion be categorically excluded as causes of the cure, if it is simultaneously admitted that the patient had

'boundless confidence in the efficiency of the baths'? 'Boundless confidence' is an academically toneddown circumlocution for 'faith' and 'faith', according to the Church, is personal conviction, an assumption as opposed to knowledge. Hence 'faith' is a matter of influencing oneself, in other words autosuggestion. Then why explain away a crucial explanation of the cause of cures with a cleft tongue?

The miraculous cure of Gabriel Gargam takes a special place in the annals of Lourdes, for Gargam was not a believer and went to Lourdes against his better judgment. So was it a miracle?

Dr. Franz L. Schleyer [5], who investigated 232 cures with the collaboration of medical experts, came to the conclusion that in the case of Gabriel Gargam 'psychogenous mechanisms were obviously set in motion on the basis of a severe trauma, and that these disorders were finally completely eliminated at Lourdes, after the organic consequences of the trauma had been largely cured beforehand'.

Psychogenous troubles are physically controlled. During his long stay in hospital and afterwards Gargam had inwardly resisted a cure: he was depressed and convinced that he would have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He himself had given up the struggle. (This kind of 'flight into sickness'

is a significant symptom of our time!) But Gargam's resistance to being cured was already broken when he agreed to be taken to Lourdes. Gradually the motor nervous system resumed its functions.

The 'shock' of bathing in Lourdes water did the (positive) rest: the will to a healthy life was there again. A miracle? The end of an ailment, effected by a means that no doctor can give a prescription for.

In the course of his investigations Dr. Schleyer stated that 'women between the ages of sixteen and forty-five form the majority of sick people at Lourdes'. Out of 232 cases examined, 185 were female.

Dr. Schleyer explains this as follows: Obviously the sick people at Lourdes consist predominantly of a quite definite type of young woman, characterized by an abnormal facility for the release of involuntary reactions of the nervous system, with a long history of suffering, in the course of which these asthenic women (people of slight build)

have had many serious diseases diagnosed -often with little justification. (It is sometimes astonishing how many different diseases a single female patient is supposed to have had before her pilgrimage to Lourdes.)

At first the Church laid down that the cure of nervous-diseases could not be recognized in the category of miraculous cures. Medical research has thwarted it. Since doctors know that neuroses can unleash organic diseases, whose causes can be clearly explained by the patient's life and conflict situations, that neuroses are motivated by the personality of the patient and are mostly inaccessible medically or surgically, miraculous cures are no longer miraculous. With the progress of medicine genuine miraculous cures will become rarer and rarer. I am reminded of the wise saying of old Seneca that we learnt at school: 'Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas' - Happy the man who has been able to know the causes of things!

Water (especially springs that have appeared suddenly) plays a legendary role at pilgrim shrines. The Hydrological Institute which made a physical and chemical examination of Lourdes' wonder-working water, issued the following analysis on 8th October, 1964: Water with an almost neutral pH-value (measurement of the concentration of free hydrogenions)

Free carbon dioxide content weak Gaseous carbon dioxide nil Water of average hardness (about 14')

Slight mineralization, essentially from calcium carbonate Sulphate and chloride contents very low Soluble iron and organic materials content normal No effects from building materials or sewers In other words: absolutely normal drinking water that cannot have any balneological effect!

Lourdes is world famous for its miraculous cures, but it is not unique. Wherever a 'wonderworking Madonna' is set up at pilgrimage shrines, miracles of all kinds immediately happen and cures are soon reported.

Yet, I do not know of any case of an authentic miracle, for example of a patient getting an amputated leg or arm back again. But at the first-class addresses of the wonder workers who all trace themselves back to almighty God such authentic miracles should be neither impossible nor black magic.

The orthodox Lourdes historians [6,7,8,9] object that even that sort of miracle would not convince the sceptics. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, yet those who were not present did not believe in that unique miracle (John 11:1 et seq.). The fact that scepticism even applied to Jesus himself is quite understandable given the way in which 'God's word' originated.

The apostle Thomas was among the sceptics who refused to admit that Jesus had risen from the dead:

'Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails and put my fingers into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe' (John 20:25, et seq.).

Jesus appeared and challenged the unbelievers to plunge their hands into his wounds. If we follow the gospels, the Son of God was determined to convince a sceptic. Why should not, in the case of a presumptuous claim to be able to work unverifiable miracles, just one Sceptical, scientifically trained doctor, a man without faith, but plenty of knowledge, be convinced by an un-equivocal obvious miracle?

Miraculous cures have taken place at Fatima, about 100 miles north of Lisbon, since October 1917.

Here are only two absurd examples from the records: As Miss Cecilia Augusta Goveia Trestes of Torres Novas had been suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis, peritonitis and dropsy for years, her family, correctly assessing the situation, had already ordered a coffin for her. Although the doctors could do nothing, Miss Trestes was taken to Fatima on

13th July, 1923.

Nothing happened at the miracle shrine. However, on the way home Miss Trestes, who normally had hardly any appetite, became as hungry as a hunter. She greedily gulped down her attendants'

provisions. After half an hour's pause for digestion, the taciturn Cecilia Augusta grew loquacious and even began to laugh and sing. A week later she was better [10].

Whether this surprising change was provoked by a type of euphoria well-known in medicine, the sudden subjective sense of well-being of severely ill patients - and all the signs point to it - is not stated in the records, nor when or where she finally got rid of her ailments.

A thirty-year-old man from Camara de Lobos on the island of Madeira was a chronic alcoholic.

Doctors prophesied that he would certainly get cirrhosis of the liver with a fatal outcome. The young man went on carefully boozing his bottle of spirits a day. Then his religious wife took a hand. She mixed a few drops of Fatima water with his daily ration of spirits. Wonder of wonders, from that moment alcohol repelled the former drunkard. He lived to the age of seventy [11].

'Cures' of this sort are always unverifiable, yet they obstinately assert themselves in the fairytale literature of miracles. The relevant people whom one could question have long since died - relatives, flattered by having a miraculous cure in the family nod sagely: yes, yes, that's the story told about the dead man ... The round figure of 1,500 supposed cures has been recorded at Fatima since 1940. As at Lourdes, the Medical Commission has only recognized a comparatively small number of 'cures' and here too, the ratio of cures is women 70: 30 men. What is the reason for that? Do women pray more frequently? Or do Eve's daughters contribute more (imaginary) illnesses, confirmed by desperate doctors unable to find anything concrete, to the Madonna?

Let me make it clear that exceptional cures at the scene of visions are not denied. But let me also make it clear that as members of the Holy Family are not the cause of the visions, neither can they be the cause of the miraculous cures which indeed happen by virtue of visions.

Nevertheless miracles are performed in the name of holy figures. The periodical Children of Fatima

[l2] prints regular reports of cures, confirms the addition of votive tablets or quotes from letters by people who certify that they have received help from or been cured by praying to and invoking the Christian hierarchy. And the bulletins in this periodical do not only contain the names of Mary, Jesus, archangels and saints! Frequently letters of thanks are addressed to the dead visionary children, who promptly grant requests of all kinds, although they have not been beatified or canonized by the Church, in other words, are active without religious approval.

The Church not only decides which visions are 'genuine', it also defines what a 'miracle' is. In 1870 the definition of what should count as a miracle was laid down by the Vatican. A miracle is 'in contradiction to the laws of nature'. Full stop. But this definition is over 100 years old, it has acquired a patina, like many church towers. Man is getting to know more and more about nature's tricks, he is even learning to manipulate the laws of nature at will. So I have a well-founded hope that in 100 years'

time there will be nothing left we can call a miracle.

At the time of writing about 1,200 (!) cases for beatification or canonization are under consideration in the Vatican.

There are already some 12,000 saints (!).

Since Pope Benedict XIV published his work 'On the Beatification and Canonization of God's Servants' in 1738, the rule applies that each saint must be shown to have performed at least two miracles after his or her death. All those who are now on the waiting list of 1,200 'near-saints' have a very much harder time of it than their predecessors. Things that were readily accepted as miracles before are performed today by every competent medical practitioner. It is no longer so easy to become a saint as it was before. I remember the Latin tag from my schooldays: Tempora Mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis (Times change and we change with them).

What does the Church do when one of its servants performs miracle after miracle during his lifetime?

If he is venerated ... and prayed to as a saint by the faithful without its supreme blessing? It tolerates the situation.

In initiated circles it is considered quite certain that Francesco Forgione, who became world-famous under the name of Pater Pio, will be summoned into the community of the saints. Pater Pio performed so many miracles during his lifetime that he was turned into a (living) saint long before there was any question of canonization.

Francesco Forgione was born in Pietrelcina on 25th May, 1887. He died as Pater Pio in the monastery of San Giovanni Rotondo on 23rd September, 1968, 'almost fifty years to the day when he received the stigmata of Our Lord' [13].

Deliberately or by chance, little is known about Francesco's youth. He said of himself that he had been a 'maccherone senza sale' (lazy lad). The Capuchins do not speak about the development of their saintly brother, but even during his novitiate rumours reached the outside world that 'strange phenomena' distinguished the young brother, for 'this pale emaciated novice dispenses with food for days on end. ... In Venefro he lived for twenty-one days solely on the Holy Eucharist.' His weak health made him suffer from sudden attacks of fever which 'constantly burst the monastery thermometers': the brother in charge of nursing tried him with a strong bath thermometer and the mercury rose to 48º (!).

Nights in the monastery cell were exciting. 'Horrible monsters appeared from all sides, when he, obeying the holy rule, tried to get some rest.'

Pater Pio was staying on his parents' farm to convalesce. On 20th September, 1915, when his mother called him to lunch, he came out of a hut in the vineyard, 'waving his hands about as if they were burnt'. His mother asked what had happened and Pio answered that all he could feel were slight pricking pains. But according to the book which bears the highest ecclesiastical imprimatur, 'Pater Pio had really received invisible stigmata'. The invisible marks later began to bleed while he was sitting in the last row of the choir with his fellow brothers. When Pio stepped forward, his hands bled, there were stigmata on his feet and a deep cut in his right side.

'Pater Pio e un santo' cried the multitude. Pater Pio is a saint.

Photographs of the stigmata reached the Holy Office. (Today the Office of the Congregation of the Faith, formerly the Holy Inquisition.) Pater Pio was ordered to undergo medical examination and so still the curiosity of the faithful. Doctors examined him and sealed bandages over the wounds. They finally stated that 'this kind of lesion was beyond the comprehension of science'. Pater Pio lost a cup full of blood every day. Every day he wore brown gloves over the visible lesions.

Apparently Pater Pio possessed all the faculties that science now sums up under the heading of 'parapsychological phenomena.' He was visionary and prophet, telekinetist and telepathist, wonder-worker and long-distance healer all in one. Pater Pio could not speak a word of English, but he understood what American children said to him. He knew in advance what the penitent children who were ripe for penance would confess or keep silent from him. He told one man to his face that he harboured thoughts of killing his wife. In the case of a woman who was faced with a major gynaecological operation, the haemorrhages stopped spontaneously, and Pater Pio prophesied that she would give birth to a son. A

year later she brought the boy to him in the monastery.

Alberto de Fante, the official chronicler of San Giovanni Rotondo, relates that a man prayed for help at Pio's confessional box for his nephew who was at death's door and had been given up by the doctors.

Twenty-four hours later the nephew was well again; an 'undeniable' cure had taken place.

A woman wanted to speed up the appointment given her by the booking-office for three days hence - Pio was always booked up for weeks ahead - but when she was pushing her way through the crowd and weeping bitterly, Pater Pio stopped her and told her to go home quickly, for everything would be all right. When the woman got home, her husband, for whom she had been going to intercede, was cured.

The number of 'miraculous' reports is large. Once a man left the monastery in the evening after confession and was faced with a cloudburst. He waited, because he did not want to get soaked. Then Pater Pio approached him and told him not to worry, for he would accompany him. When the stranger reached his inn, people wondered why he had not got drenched through. The innkeeper understood at once: 'Of course, if Pater Pio was with you ...' But Pater Pio was also able to do magic the opposite way round. One winter morning a female penitent arrived at the monastery in a downpour of rain. Pio touched her on the shoulder and to her astonishment the signora's clothes 'were bone dry in a moment'.

Bilocation * was obviously also within Pater Pio's powers. The authoress of the approved account says that the father could 'pass through closed doors' to the great astonishment of the crowd who were waiting for him. In the process he was able 'to mislead insistent inquirers and put off the curious.

"Where were you, father? We were looking for you everywhere!" Pater Pio chuckled: "I was walking to and fro in front of you, but you didn't take any notice."'

The suffering father ('I suffer when I do not suffer' - Pio on Pio), even conjured up sweet smells in frowsty rooms. Dr. Romanelli thought it unseemly of Pater Pio to use scent, as he imagined he did. A

Capuchin explained to him that Pio's blood was impregnated with the 'sweet scent'. When a Dr. Festa took a piece of linen soaked in Pater Pio's blood to Rome to have it examined in a laboratory, his fellow travellers asked him what it was that smelt so nice. In July 1930 a living-room in Bologna suddenly smelt of roses and narcissi. A sick girl had just returned from San Giovanni Rotondo.

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[*] Being bodily present at two different places simultaneously.

---- The heavenly aroma lasted for a quarter of an hour and then the sick girl was able to move her paralysed arm again. There can be no doubt about the phenomena of smell, because the number of witnesses has been very large over four decades. In the words of Michael Faraday (1791-1867), there is obviously 'nothing too miraculous to be true'.

Pope Benedict XV anticipated all requests for canonization by saying: 'Pater Pio is truly a man of God.'

Pater Pio bore the stigmata of Christ before the eyes of contemporaries. His famous predecessor, Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), was the first person to be afflicted with officially attested stigmata. And he was canonized two years after his death. His stigmata are legendary; the saint who talked to the birds has long been singing in the choir of angels. Since St. Francis was marked by the stigmata, about

350 people are supposed to have been similarly afflicted. Not all stigmatics bear genuine signs. For example, Therese Neumann (1898-1962) from Konnersreuth in Oberpfalz, Germany, who hit the headlines.is reputed to have been a fake. The theologian Dr. Joseph Hanauer [14] suspects that Therese scratched the wounds on her own body, because she often sent visitors out of her room and then showed them the bleeding wounds when they returned. Unofficially it is said that Therese received the stigmata during Lent 1926, and had visions of the Passion of Our Lord on every Friday except for Christian holidays.

Reports however of devout people who have borne the marks of the crucifixion on hands, feet and below the heart are announced too often and by too many witnesses to be dismissed as nonsense.

The 'marks of the Lord Jesus' (Galatians 6:17) are reputed to hurt like the wounds of the crowning with thorns and nailing to the cross; they bleed on Fridays for reference and are incurable by normal treatment.

Are we faced with confirmation of an unassailable miracle? I must admit in advance that no proven explanation of the stigmatic phenomena exists as yet, that is why they are still surrounded by a thick, well-protected occult veil.

The reader should know that in the past cult and religious happenings provably arose around people ostensibly possessed by demons. Epilepsy (sudden insensibility accompanied by convulsive seizures)

was called morbus sanctor, the 'holy disease', because those affected by it often had visions of Lucifer, spirits, gods and angels. 'It is well known that Mohammed, too, suffered from epileptic attacks and was considered divine by his people for this reason. He himself recounts his stay in Paradise in the Koran.'[15] Professor O. Prokop says that experiences in epileptic states are mostly of a religious nature and that people subject to them tend to asceticism. (A characteristic of stigmatics!) They are able to induce the demonic attacks by breathing techniques - 'by shifting the balance of the acid bases'.

Catalonia, a form of schizophrenia characterized by restlessness and excitement with periodic states of stupor, develops special powers in religiously fixated persons. 'The fascination is all the more effective

... as the schizophrenic works on his environment without loss of intelligence.'

Professor Prokop and others also mention hysteria as a genuine ailment of a psychic nature. They attribute to hysterics 'a marked desire to be honoured, loved, praised and recognized, and also their joy in the ability to attract people to them by their own charms ... and in this way explain why the religious martyrs not only bore their martyrdom but also went to meet it gladly'. In addition there is the frequently proved fact that hysterics are virtually insensible to pain.

In my opinion the brief description of the clinical pictures gives essential hints about the predisposed state of people who are sought out by stigmata. All three symptoms of illness point to damage or disturbance of the nervous system. Simple reference books describe a 'stigmatic' as a man with a hypersensitive nervous system who tends to react to psychic and other stimuli with disorders

(stigmata.) The parasympatheticus, a part of the vegetative nervous system, acting on stimuli or orders from the brain, makes the eyelids close, tears flow and spittle run, but it also controls the sexual organs, etc.

In a state of heightened tension (vagotonia) the organs looked after by the para-sympathetic nervous system require very small stimuli; organic disorders can arise. Abnormal states of tension (dystonia) of muscles and vessels are typical of weakened vegetative nervous systems; they are expressed by organic troubles ... and in the skin by excess or congestion of the blood (hyperaemia). To round off the brief medical discussion, I should mention hyperaesthesia with its morbidly increased sensitivity to touch as a result of the most varied diseases of the nervous system.

To sum up. In all the cases of stigmatics known to me spontaneous excitability was as marked as the development of special powers. There can be no doubt that without exception they exercised a - deliberate or involuntary - fascination on their fellow humans. Did they not also feel a humble joy in

'being honoured, loved, praised and recognized'? Could they deny their ability to draw men to them by their own 'attractions' (= stigmata)? How could they bear pain except as a result of a specific medical condition? Were not their bodily functions also subject to the orders and stimuli of the nervous system?

The sum total of these clinical pictures, in my opinion, put stigmatics in a stress situation which influences their whole bodies. Professor Dr. Hans Selye, Director of the Institute for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in the University of Montreal, the 'father of stress research' describes such states: 'Stress is always expressed by a syndrome, i.e. a sum total of alteration, not by a single alteration. An isolated effect on a single part of the body either causes damage or stimulates higher achievement.' [16] In the present-day state of knowledge it need only be mentioned in passing that every conceivable ramification is bound to the end effect by autosuggestion.

On 14th October, 1973, I talked to Professor Josef Brudny, rehabilitation expert at New York University, in the Plaza Hotel in New York.

'You cured a young man who had been tied to a wheelchair for years with a broken spine, without an operation. Are you a miracle doctor?'

'There was no question of a miracle. If one can speak of miracles in this connection, it is the power of mind over the body. I literally mean that the power of the brain is the last untamed beast on this planet.'

'How were you able to cure the patient of his paralysis?'

The ruins give some idea of the enormous size of the sacred precinct, in which the god Asclepios cured

the sick in a healing sleep Miraculous cures 2,350 years before Lourdes!

The layout of the temples at Epidaurus even though in rums still give an idea of the gigantic polyclinic

which the friendly gods of healing successfully ran with the wonderful therapy of healing sleep The

gods of healing were first class doctors.

Statue of Asclepios god of healing and head of the divine polyclinic.

Votive tablets from pre-Christian times The desire to offer thanks for miracles is as old as the hills.

Votive tablets La Madonna della Guardia Genoa Santuario della Rivelazione Rome Madonna del

Divino Amore near Rome That is how people offer thanks in the Christian era.

During his experiments Dr von Schrenck-Notzing took flashlight photographs which show

materialisations by the medium Eva C. The Society for Psychic Research, London, under the

leadership of Sir William Crooks, took such exposures with four cameras simultaneously.

In 1938 Mr Colin Evans, a medium, floated several feet above the ground before 300 spectators in

Rochester Square Temple, London.

Hellenistic mystery cults already had the last Supper', when bread with the sign of the cross (later the

host) was served. The meal was eating and drinking the body and blood of their god. And that was at a

time when no one had ever heard of Jesus. — The Madonna and child were worshipped in several

religions long before the invention of this Christian cult. Two Asian statues of Madonna and child —

models for the Catholic cult of Mary?

'I coupled him to an electromyographic Feedback and trained him to respond with great patience'.

'What is this machine exactly?'

'It's an electronic apparatus which can be compared to an encephalograph. It registers certain biological processes, e.g. heart beats or blood-pressure, but also gives the patient signals as soon as a change in the current is registered. For example, if the heart beats more slowly than it should, the patient hears a rhythmic peep-peep through his headphones showing what his heartbeat should actually be. The brain reacts at once and orders the heart to beat in the rhythm recommended.'

'In other words the brain tells the heart how quickly it must beat?'

The human organism is like a cybernetic system with its control and regulatory mechanisms, a permanently self-contained cycle of functions. The brain orders the muscles to react in such and such a way. It itself obtains its information from sensors of all kinds, through taste, touch, sight, smell, hearing, feeling of pain etc. For example, if the heart starts to beat irregularly, the brain immediately records a panic situation. There are intensive orders to the heart muscle and it obeys, providing there are no special circumstances to prevent it, such as a blockage of an artery.

'My colleague, Dr. B. Engle of the San Francisco Medical Centre in the University of California, has succeeded in deliberately, i.e. suggestively, slowing down or speeding up the heart beats of several patients. The "guinea-pig" sits in front of red, green and yellow signals. "Yellow" corresponds to the patient's normal heart rhythm. If the doctor orders a quicker heart beat, the red lamp lights up and a simulated quicker heart beat plays through the patient's headphones. The patients experimented on are affected audio visually. They try to follow the order of the red lights and the beats in their headphones.

In a few seconds the recorded heart curve shows a diagram with a quicker heart rhythm than the person should normally have. In this way it is possible to slow down the pulse, alter blood-pressure, order heat or cold on the surface of the skin ... or even, as in the case of the young paralytic, successively overcome the paralysis. These are proven medical experiments, not miracles. This method is known as

"Bio-Feedback".'

Of course we cannot attach the slightest blame to stigmatics for having no idea of the reasons and origins of the signs, or for their knowing nothing about Bio Feedback, a method which permits direct conclusions.

In the case of persons living in a state of religious ecstasy we do not know how gradual pathological changes in their body cells and tissues are caused by their psychic fixation on the revered figures they are so keen to resemble. It is quite possible medically that heterosuggestion which is active for years and becomes so natural that it is an unconscious part of existence can finally produce stigmata.

Women predominate when it comes to stigmata, as they did in the case of miraculous cures. Possible motivations have already been mentioned. If religious fanatics, whether men or women, desire the mark of the Lord with a devouring ardour -stimulated by visual signs which constantly provide them with images of our wounded Lord on the cross stimulated by acoustic signals, which represent the crucified one in prayer and song - at some time the 'beast brain' will obey and give orders to supply the arteries and veins so richly with blood that they swell up and finally allow small drops to appear on the epidermis. Above all the will to suffer and the inner wish to feel the pains of the Redeemer dominates.

The prominent English surgeon Richard Sergeant [17] asks 'Is it really necessary to suffer to achieve salvation? ... Does salvation justify pain? In the lay hierarchy of the Christian heaven the host of the martyrs takes third place after the apostles and the prophets. In other words martyrdom is the only way for the ordinary man to enter the kingdom.'

The will to join the community of the blessed through suffering, pain and asceticism, in brief through martyrdom, is clearly the essence of stigmatics. Those who bear the stigmata have iron wills.

Let us leave the religious enclave to demonstrate by a profane example what an iron will can achieve.

... During the twenties August Dieber, a miner, was buried alive when a gallery collapsed owing to bad weather. He waited two days and two nights to be rescued. His right thigh and part of his foot were jammed by blocks of stone. The miner first willed himself not to feel the pain, but he sensed that his limbs had grown cold and lost sensation. Then he concentrated the whole of his will on sending blood to the 'numb' thigh. At first he felt severe pains which he rejected, then he noticed the return of heat and sensation. When he was medically examined, both thigh and foot were found to be well supplied with blood, to the general astonishment of the doctors. Amputation was unnecessary.

The miner had discovered a new faculty during the accident. By will power and suggestion he could make parts of his body insensitive to pain (fakirs!), and even send blood to parts of the body chosen by him. He trained these faculties and became an international variety attraction.

It was no novelty for artists to have their bodies pierced with needles and swords on the stage. But by dint of intense concentration this man produced the classical stigmata on his skin while the public watched in breathless excitement. He did this at every performance, and twice on Wednesdays and Sundays.

The variety 'miracle' ended in a nervous breakdown. Smart managers wanted to make the performance hyper-perfect. The artist was to weep tears of blood, too. As he could not force any blood through the cornea, even with the greatest effort of will, the mercenary manager had an obscure opthalmalogist come to his dressing-room before every performance and make tiny perforations in the eyeballs.

August Dieber did weep tears of blood on a few occasions, but then his nerve gave way. The tears have nothing to do with my subject but the story shows that a man possessed of an iron will can force stigmata to appear on his body.

Professor H.J. Campbell, a physiologist at London University, has convincingly demonstrated that the brain in men and animals is devoted to procuring pleasure. The embryo begins its intrauterine growth with a head that is comparatively out of proportion. In it the grey matter of the brain makes the body grow according to programmed patterns. The nerve paths which strive to procure pleasure are already formed at birth. From the baby's first cries the process of experience with its reactions to feeling pleasure or pain begins.

The environment - parents, uncles, aunts, teachers and parsons - continually and rather thoughtlessly nourishes the 'beast brain' computer with rules for human behaviour and moral laws. In addition discoveries which the sensory organs report to it must be stored in the tiniest cells of the brain. Fixed reactions for future behaviour are programmed from all 'reports' to the brain. You may not do that, you must do that, you may say this but not that, you must and shall believe this, it is forbidden to believe that etc. Or experiences such as these: that is hot, you are getting burnt, this is cold, you are freezing, sing for it cheers you up, smell a rose for its scent is pleasant, etc.

As the striving to procure pleasure still dominates, even after education, learning and religious teaching, Campbell says that a single order was given to the brain computer of our first ancestors:

'Activate pleasure procurement!' Campbell uses the concept 'pleasure' in a strictly scientific sense. By it he means the feeling arising from increased stimulation of the pleasure areas which occur in the higher brain layers. In such a sense, thought 'can lead to the setting up and transformation of preferred paths in the brain and thus give the individual the power to shape his mind with forethought'. What the individual registers and selects as procurement of pleasure for him-self, he himself determines according to inclination and taste. The work of Campbell, who worked as guest professor at the Max Planck Institute of Brain Research at Frankfurt, and the College de France, Paris, provides important hints for our theme.

From his first vague thoughts the Christian's presumptuous 'faith' forces him to believe that he is the Lord of Creation, 'chosen' before men of other faiths because the Redeemer died for him; that special mercies are reserved for him, because the heaven of the blessed is assured him in return for behaviour pleasing to God (and the Church); and on top of all this, that there is an infallible judicial tribunal over good and bad, namely the Pope, governing his earthly (Catholic) existence.

This doctrinaire 'upbringing' goes hand in glove with the suggestive visual infiltration of religious doctrine, e.g. by illustrations of the text of the rosary learnt by children, by Christ's stations of the cross, by gifts of sentimental coloured prints of Mary on the occasion of one's first Communion

(children of eight or nine take part in the Eucharist for the first time). Church interiors present the whole pomp of a kingdom of heaven 'on earth' with images of Christ on the cross artistically carved in wood or sculptured in marble, the stigmata generally dripping with blood in a most realistic way. They display statues and pictures of Mary, with and without the infant Jesus, Mary kneeling at the cross in Gethsemane or sheltering the head of the sufferer in her lap. They offer statues and paintings of the saints. Martyrs and patron saints lie in state under countless glass cases. And everywhere we see the brilliant graphic emblems of the cross. Visual signals of the 'only true faith' follow the faithful everywhere, for it is a pleasure to partake of the holy life.

The vast size of the churches, in which man appears so minute, and the reverent atmosphere in small intimate chapels induce complete repose, relaxation, meditation. Prayers lull those kneeling in the pews. During the mass or high mass fascinating stage management forcibly attracts the attention of the congregation to the mystery of the transubstantiation, the changing of the wine into the blood of our Lord. The liturgy is the form of divine service, the 'religious realization of Christ's work of redemption through the Church'. Acoustic signals, with the antiphonal singing of priests and congregation, magnified and intensified by the peal of the organ (whose almost exclusive adoption is one of the church's cleverest 'effects'), sensitize the congregation, which is already receptive to the great spectacle. The texts of the hymns literally teem with painful suffering: indeed, they immerse the faithful in a feeling of perceiving pain as a pleasure to be sought for, so that thereby they can come closer to the Redeemer. Naturally they end, mostly in a chorus, with a promise of heavenly happiness!

It is a pleasure to suffer and participate in pain.

The visual and acoustic signals, as introduced by modern medicine in Bio Feedback, and the wish to procure pleasure programmed in the human brain demonstrated by Campbell provide illuminating explanations, in my view, of the detailed accounts which visionary children (and the few adult visionaries, too) put on official record. They are 'visions' of pictures and images that have followed them around since they were tiny. Their messages contain texts and vocables which are really childish simplifications of the theological double-dutch pumped into them from pulpit and schoolmaster's desk

... because they have frequently misunderstood what they heard and learnt, they bowdlerize sermons and catechist texts. The result is mysterious incomprehensible communication in which supernatural ideas, soothsayings and prophecies are hopelessly confused.

It is not surprising to anyone familiar with the infantile psyche that it is mostly the youngest of all who are able to enjoy visions. They live in fear of purgatory, 'the place of purification', 'the fire ... for punishing those who have not done penance for their sins' (1 Corinthians 3:15, German version.)

Children fear the threatened punishment, so they do everything in their power to avoid the torments of hell. With naive passion and unbridled childish imagination they become inflated and involved in fantastic ideas and undertakings. There is nothing they long for more than to meet the wondrous figures of the religious world face to face. Every day they learn from beautiful legends about favoured people who have met members of the Holy Family. Parsons and Sunday school teachers have told them these legends, and the Church does not lie. (Stories with ghastly contents, as every psychologist knows, can cause anxiety neuroses in children.) Out of the fantasy grows the enjoyment of forcing miraculous experiences to occur. Then the children 'suddenly' experience, but with full sensory perception, true dreams, which have a surprising content of truth (namely the figures, symbols and words of their religion) 'which appear to lie outside the normal apparition. The objects of the true dreams have long before been recorded by the dreaming psyche. Now, in a flash, they become the

"revelation of the reality of the conscious".' (Herder.) The striving for pleasure, in the case of the children their joy in the vision, is fulfilled.

It is unfair to dispute the subjective 'truth' of their visions. If the Church does not want visions to exist on a large scale, it must change or exclude the training in readiness to receive experiences, the wish to be confronted with the Holy Family. That is something it will certainly not do, as it can make very good use of the so-called 'genuine' visions in its proselytizing work. Walter Nigg, the hagiographer already mentioned, who wanted to see the return of the saints, expresses a pious hope that is equally applicable to the 'necessity' of visions: 'Admittedly they are virtually forgotten nowadays; they are spoken of infrequently or not at all. Yet the silence will not endure, for suddenly they will speak to men again.' The Church, too, has its specific wish for pleasure, for pleasure in miracles.

In order to increase the procurement of pleasure in the faith, some tricks have been integrated into the Mass. The American Leslie M. LeCron[19] says that a burning candle is best suited for the stimulation of heterosuggestion (and what else is devotion?). It should be set up in such a way that it is pleasant to watch. 'The nickering flame of a candle has a hypnotic effect.' Campbell proved by experiments that white, with its many frequencies, provoked intense feeling, of pleasure. 'Brightness contrasts with the boring monotony of the surroundings and hence produces pleasure.'

Naturally the smart ecclesiastical bigwigs had no academic justification when they installed the Lucerna, or eternal lamp, before the altar as a 'sign of the presence of Christ as light of the world' (John

8, 12). But during its 2,000 years of history the Church has shown an infallible instinct, a sixth and seventh sense for 'effect'. For a long time now, the eternal lamp has not been confined to the interior of the Church. Candle stands offer the effective illumination for sale right at the entrance. There is not a single church without countless candles burning away before altar and high altar, before pictures of the Madonna and saints. They excite the desired raptures.

At places of pilgrimage candle orgies create Orphic mysteries which stimulate a state of preparedness for miracles with their sea of light. Torch- and candle-bearing processions are common on high holidays. In the light of present-day psychological knowledge, they effectively stimulate that state of

'being outside one's self in which even miracles still have a chance of being believed.

I have no intention of entering the boundless territory of psychology, but I should like to illuminate one sector which can answer some questions - I refer to the psychotherapeutic method of psychodrama.

A group of patients act out their conflicts to liberate themselves from their frustrations and neuroses.

The therapy effects a healing process.

Actually this highly modern concept can be found as early as the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384

B.C.-322 B.C.). Aristotle realized that ideas do not work outside, but in, the body as an effective force.

His idea of entelechy (= forming power) which he took over from physics was introduced into his moral philosophy which survived for centuries. According to it, the mind is matterless energy (= the first forming power). Tragedy, say Aristotle, achieves through catharsis (= purification), the decision between good and bad, a miraculous healing effect? (Psychodrama!).

Dr. Ploeger, a university lecturer [20] explains the process as follows: 'An implicit condition for it among the spectators is their identification with the hero, whose actions they accept and find in agreement with their own ideals and motives.' (Such identifications exist at all places of pilgrimage — with members of the Holy Family!) Dramatic representation of the conflicts effecting a cure in the Aristotelean sense produces effects much like those obtained by psychodrama as practised in western and eastern countries today.

In Chinese philosophy of the fourth and third centuries B.C. there existed the concept of the Tao, which means something like path or way. Tao was the world's primal cause, which was at the root of all phenomena, but was beyond rational perception. In this philosophy the Yin and Yang (dark and light) stand for positive and negative values. As Professor Ilza Veith [21] says in his essay 'Psychiatric Thought in Chinese Medicine', the Chinese have never, like other cultures, imagined their creator as a figure who demanded obedience and devotion. Undisturbed by a punitive vengeful god at the beginning of things, the Chinese sought edification and healing in the additive power of likeminded

'souls', in the grouping of family and friends. Here, too, the mind of a community which was fixated on an idea did its work and the cure was accepted as a miracle.

Those are examples of the stages of the development on the way to psychodrama with its 'mechanisms of inter-human reference.' [22]

Autogene training, which is relevant in this connection, also has a solid tradition. The Gottingen neurologist Johannes Heinrich Schultz (1884-1970) introduced this kind of self-hypnosis, which leads to relaxation through a certain inner attitude, into general use. It has an approximate counterpart in the incubation or temple sleep of antiquity. Incubation effected divine revelations and the cure of diseases in dreams, (incubare: to lie down in a consecrated place).

In classical times incubation leading to relaxation was preceded by bathing. (Lourdes and elsewhere!)

'The actual incubation was carried out peacefully in the abaton, the holy of holies of the temple."

(What other effect do churches and altars have?) Dr. Von Schumann[23] says that muscle relaxation and falling asleep during incubation (as in autogene training) must be in close correlation, for then the suggestible and credulous patients, uncritically wide open for a religio-magical cure, can be healed and liberated of their disorders. The person seeking a cure behaves passively during incubation and 'awaits

... a magical cure from the God Asclepios'. If for example we substitute the name 'Bernadette Soubirous' for the god Asclepios, we think we are reading an account of what goes on at Lourdes.

The god Asclepios (Aesculapius) was active in the sanctuary dedicated to him at Epidaurus, a city on the Saronic gulf famous in antiquity. But he also 'worked' in the temples of Cnidos, Cos, Pergamon, Sikyon, Naupaktos and Athens. He ran many branch sanctuaries in which cures were effected for every kind of thing that cropped up. They were visited by blind, crippled and dumb people, by dropsical patients, by those with organic diseases, patients who had tape-worms and those plagued with falling hair. The busy god had to keep on performing miracles - just like the statues of saints at modern pilgrimage shrines. Rabbi Ben Akiba used to say: It has all been done before. ...

The temple of Epidaurus with its inscription 'Enter as a good man, depart as a better one', was a place of pilgrimage by cure-seekers from 500 B.C. onwards, the Lourdes of the 'Golden Age' of Greek civilization. In addition to the head 'doctor' - Asclepios - 'friendly gods of healing' also worked miracles during the healing sleep.

Kurt Pollack [24] writes: 'The miraculous cures mainly took place in the case of the blind, deaf, crippled, sleepless and other sufferers, who would be classified today in the great army of neurotics and vegetatively stigmatized. The divine doctor cured many people whom earthly practitioners had not been able to help.... The able members of the Asclepian priesthood became experienced observers of human nature who knew exactly how to exercise psychic influence on the sick. In a certain sense, whether they knew it or not, they were predecessors of present-day psychotherapists.' Need one comment on this kind of miracle? The Church knows its history.

The psychotherapeutic effect of music too was well known to the Pythagoreans of the sixth century B.C. (I can hear the laments at Lourdes!) The Syrian philosopher lamblichus tells us: The Pythagoreans used music as a cure; and there were special melodies against psychic suffering, namely those against depression and anxiety, which were considered the most helpful - others against violent emotions and passions and against every kind of psychic confusion. In certain kinds of tones and rhythms, by which the disposition and mood of men is improved and their psychic state restored to its original state, Pythagoras found the means for pacifying and healing illnesses of body and soul.

How similar the two pictures are!

The miracles that saints and their adjurants perform today were performed by Asclepios and his disciples at Epidaurus with identical or similar methods, and without any Christian help!

Fortunately because it is demonstrable, those cured in classical temples also felt themselves obliged to express their thanks in a similar way to those cured at the shrines of visions and miracles. They, too, put up votive tablets. In A.D. 165 the Greek writer Pausanias from Magnesia in Asia Minor stood before the ruins of Epidaurus. In the second volume of his descriptions of Greece (Periegeses tes Hellados), he observed: In olden times there were even more inscribed plaques within the enclosure of the sanctuary than there are today. Now there are only six left. On them are recorded the names of men and women who were cured by Asclepios, and also the diseases which each of them suffered from, and how they; were cured.

The tablets are written in the Doric language.

During excavations at Epidaurus in 1928 these six stone: tablets were found, with the following messages of thanks: Ambrosia of Athens, one-eyed. Came to intercede with the god. When she walked about the sanctuary, she laughed at some of the cares and thought it impossible that lame and blind people could become healthy when they had only a dream. After she had slept in the cure room, she came out cured.

Euhippos has had a lance point in his jaw for six years and slept in the cure room. ... When day broke, he came out cured, with the lance point in his hands.

Hermodikos of Lampsakos, crippled in body. Asclepios healed him when he slept in the cure room and ordered him when he came out to bring the biggest stone he could find to the sanctuary. Then he brought the stone that now lies in front of the sanctuary.

Alketas of Halieis.He was blind and slept in the sanctuary. When day broke, he came out cured.

Arate of Laconia, dropsical. Her mother slept for her, while she herself was in Lacedaemon, and had a dream. ... When she returned to Lacedaemon, she found her daughter cured; she had had the same dream.

Aristokritos to Halieis. He had swum out to sea and while diving reached a place from which there was no way out. So his father, as he could not find his son anywhere, slept in the cure room of Asclepios....

When he came out of the room ... he found the boy on the seventh day.

The people who were miraculously cured 500 years B.C. behaved just the same as their counterparts today, and even the miracles were of the same quality as today, although the Christian guardians of

'genuine' miracles are not at all keen to hear that. The god Asclepios does not stand alone as the chief witness for pre-Christian miraculous cures; he is in illustrious company.

It is occasionally forgotten that Apollo was not only the god of radiant youth, poetry and music, but also the god of medicine and soothsaying ... and the son of Asclepios. So he had been well trained.

Apollo was a venerated god of healing, to whom a temple was erected in the sanctuary of Delphi in the eighth century B.C. Naturally miracles happened in it. The dumb learnt to speak. Kidney-stones disappeared through the ureter in a mysteriously natural way. Shiny-headed Greeks prayed and hair grew luxuriantly on their pates[25]. (A clever speculator told me that after the invention of knitting needles and the zip fastener, there was only one invention left that could make anyone a millionaire - a genuine hair-restorer. Prayers to Asclepios and Apollo cannot be sold as cosmetic miracle workers by the most talkative Figaros in the world.)

In the great sanctuaries of Thebes, the Egyptian city of the Dead, the god of healing, Amphiraos, was worshipped - in the temple of Ptah at Memphis votive stones were found on which cured patients extolled their gods. Frequently feet, legs and hands were perpetuated in stone to make their gratitude permanent. 376 stone ears were carved next to the image of the Ptah at Memphis [26]. A polycliaic for otology (ear therapy) must have been working overtime on miracles there.

Group experience is common to all these classical places of healing. I see in them predecessors of the psychodrama practised today in the sense in which Dr. Samuel Wamer [27] describes group therapy: Group therapy is often especially helpful, for it is easier to recognize something mutually, and during the reciprocal relationship one hand washes the other so to speak. ... This therapy is not only an intellectual experience; it also embraces the emotional life, for personality is formed by emotional experiences which are caused by the reaction of the glands and other subsidiary corporeal symptoms.

In order to achieve a basic change of personality the therapy must make contact with these intensive, repeated and continuing emotional experiences, so that the emotional spheres of the personality are affected again and undergo a tran-formation.

This kind of group experience with a deliberate goal could be sensed at all the places of pilgrimage I visited. The longing for a miracle - as a common emotional experience - released among complete strangers reciprocal relationships which extinguished any inhibitions, even against crying and lamenting aloud. People who were normally rather introverted underwent a change of personality.

They surrendered themselves completely to the general feeling. Here, at the goal of their hopes, among the mass of anonymous sufferers a change in their attitude to their illness took place. It was now or never! At places of pilgrimage ecstatic emotions are the humus on which the apparently incredible can materialize.

In this connection I should mention briefly 'animal magnetism' which was practised by the doctor Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815). Mesmer looked his patients fixedly in the eyes and then by laying on of hands used the powers radiating from people for suggestive cures. The Catholic Church has canonized thirty-five chirotetes (layers on of hands). The English surgeon James Braid (1795-1860)

realized that there was no occult hocus-pocus about successful healing by this method. He christened it hypnosis (Greek, sleep). Mesmerism became a European scourge, because people who did not possess healing magnetic powers also did a roaring trade in it.

We can read in a report [28] published in 1784 the extent to which mass suggestion and mass hypnosis could effect 'miraculous cures': The Marquis of PuisSgur had turned his chateau near Sois-sons into a 'magnetic sanatorium'. A fanatic follower of Mesmer's methods, he used it to house people in search of a cure. The afflux of patients was enormous: people were bursting out of the castle rooms. What could be done? The Marquis had a bright idea. He magnetized a stately elm tree in the village! 'suffering humanity from both sides of the Rhine flocked to this magnetic tree as if to a wonder-working sacred image'.

No comment. But reliquaries, mummified saints and miracle-working statues of saints are not always necessary to effect miraculous cures. Old elm trees can do it too so long as the cure seekers 'believe' in them.

Suggestion and hypnosis (as a form of suggestion) are always present when miraculous cures take place at pilgrimage shrines, whether the Church admits it or not (and this applies equally to the

'genuine' miracles attested). Suggestion, to define it more accurately, is an influencing of the processes of thought, feeling and will, which 'leads to the uncritical acceptance of convictions, the suggestion of values and patterns of behaviour'. In the case of affective sympathy 'man involuntarily opens himself to

... phenomenal forms and ideas .... Mass situations, as well as states of heightened excitement of the aftects, have a strengthening effect. ... Autosuggestion is self influencing by emotional hope and wishful thinking.' What can hypnosis do? It can 'easily summon up illusions and hallucinations.

Memory is released. Most people can be hypnotized if they are inwardly prepared.'

These definitions are diagnoses of pilgrims at pilgrimage shrines.

What does the Church say about this?

It claims that 'the fact of the major miracle in the Catholic Church (must) be established beyond doubt to the unprejudiced investigator' [29]. I find this assessment by the Church to be inept, to say the least.

If in our age that is so overloaded with neurotic organic diseases and physically harmful states of depression, only 100 cures (even if they are not 'miracles') effected by suggestion, autosuggestion and mass hypnosis are reported annually from all the places of pilgrimage, the church's media - Madonnas, relics, springs, etc. - fulfil a useful miraculous purpose.

Miraculous cures have been known since time immemorial. Professor D. Langen [30] writes: Hypnosis as a psychic treatment of disease is extremely ancient and can be found both in the medicine of the ethnic cultures (shamans) and in the lofty civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Rome .... The trial was lost in the Middle Ages. ... Franz Anton Mesmer marked the beginning of a new period that led to the still valid suggestion theory of hypnosis by way of the theory of fluidum and magnetismus animalis.

... Thought is concentrated on a narrowly defined point so that a relation between a hyper-awake core of consciousness and the remaining lowered states of consciousness arises. While this state is maintained, thought is ordered to direct itself to a point or a complex of ideas and remain there. ...

Consequently meditation is thought concentrated on a point in a sub-waking state of consciousness.

By all the 12,000 saints! Cannot you see that all the masses at places of pilgrimage concentrate their gaze on a 'point' say a statue of the Madonna? How they fall into a hypnotic trance by autosuggestion?

Do you not feel in your bones how the general layer of consciousness sinks and simultaneously dwells on the miracle in a hyperactive state? Nearly every pilgrim has fallen into the power of mass suggestion from the start; should one of them remain outside it, he would be caught in the undertow of the state of consciousness of the others. 'Human individuals have an immediate effect on the Sensorium commune (common emotions).' [31]

These are not Mr. von Daniken's suppositions, but a logical chain of evidence forged by doctors as a result of research .... It is true that the Church also admits 'natural' explanations, but it reserves to itself the recognition of 'genuine' miraculous cures performed by visions, with the co-operation of the Holy Family and the halleluya singing choir.

Yogananda Paramahamsa [32] was one of the most famous Yogis of our day. The world-wide Self Realization Fellowship he founded in 1917 championed thoroughly sensible views which centre round one of the great Yogi's basic utterances: God helps those who help themselves. He has endowed you with will power and concentration, faith, reason and healthy commonsense so that you can help yourselves in all corporeal and mental suffering.

You must apply all your faculties at the same time as you call on him for help. When you pray or practise healing meditation, always say to yourselves that he needs your own, but God-given, powers in order to heal you or others. Yogananda knows psychology's laws of effect inside out.

We can never know in advance when we shall be cured and so should not set any time limits to the process. Faith and not time will determine when the cure is to take place. The end result depends on the correct awakening of the vital force and the conscious and unconscious disposition of the person concerned.

These insights of the Yogi's, to whom consecrated water (considered sacramental; it has a little salt mixed with it) is as alien as the joy of marriage still is to a Catholic priest, get to the very essence of miraculous cures, even though they stem from a totally unchristian faith, which is if anything a knowledge of the vital processes of auto suggestive cures. Yogananda gives his fellowmen a hint about how it is exercised at all the sites of visions and miracles: Do not forget that you must say the healing words with the right emphasis, loudly at first and then more and more softly until you are only whispering, that close attention and concentration are especially necessary. In this way you lead your thoughts, the truth of which you are deeply convinced of, from the aural sense into consciousness ... from there into the sub-conscious or automaticconscious.

He who has the necessary faith will be healed by this method.

I have never heard of Yogananda being at Lourdes or Fatima or any other visionary shrine, and I do not imagine he was. Yet his method is the one which is practised there. The crowds of people assemble in big squares, singing chorales in loud voices, saying the rosary or other devout prayers. The closer they get to the miraculous spot, the lower the volume of the droning chorus. Their attention and concentration is directed at the goal. What they wish for is forced 'from the aural sense into consciousness'. From then on they only speak in whispers and hymns are merely hummed. 'Faith' is wide-awake and concentrated.

In most cases this faith in the effect of the method of healing satisfies faith in miracles at visionary sites. In fact, the subconscious (or 'automatic conscious') introduces electrochemical functions into the brain. 'When the nerve impulses ... enter the brain, they set off various chemical reactions' (Campbell).

Clinical tests of new drugs have proved time and again that belief in the efficacy of a medicine can effect a cure. People are split into two control groups. One is given the new drug, the other a placebo (a harmless imitation of the new medicine, generally 'scented' sugar-coated pills of the same size and colour). Leslie M. LeCron describes the result: 'It is observed that a large part of the control group given the placebo reacts in exactly the same way as the group which has taken the real drug. This effect is attributable to suggestion.'

That which Yogananda Paramahamsa calls faith, will-power and concentration in connection with the healing effect, the doctor calls exactly what it is: suggestion. Yogi and doctor are far away from the highfalutin Christian talk about miracles but they know how 'miracles' happen.

It is the obstinacy, the partial blindness, I cannot understand. Theologians have still not clearly stated facts about 'miracles' that have been known for over 450 years.

Theophratus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1494-1541), known as Paracelsus, was the founder of a new science of healing. He emphasized the primacy of the 'soul' (today we would use the word 'psyche') in normal life and illness, and was the first to recognize the previously overlooked pathological connections and new types of illness, such as neuroses and psychoses. In the centre he placed man as microcosm. Healing to Paracelsus was the work of the life force and the will to live. Quotations from his treatise on Imaginatio [33] shows how modern his views were: Man is subject to imagination, and the imagination although invisible and inconceivable works corporeally in a substance.

The imagination can cause disease, terrible disease, and it can cause happiness and health.

Hence it follows that the imagination is more than nature and governs it. It removes innate qualities so that it knows neither heaven nor earthly nature.

Hence it follows that a great deal is impossible for the doctor, and the more powerful the imagination, the weaker the effect of the doctor.

Consequently many people get well through the belief of the imagination, but many people get sick also.

By such imagining (arises) belief both in the miracles of the saints and in the medicines... that makes them well and is attributed by them to saints and miracles... although it is all the results of belief in the imagination.

Whether the belief is right or wrong, depends solely on the strength of the imagination.

And even if a false prophet manages to influence people, who consider him blessed or saintly, and credit him with results, because their love and hope is concentrated on their faith, these miracles will happen not through his power, but through the power of those who believe so strongly.

The sum total of the advances of scholars such as Aristotle, John Locke, David Hume and Carl Jung provides the explanation of all that was supposed inexplicable. Even if we are not familiar with these pioneers and their pupils, their insights have become part of our everyday existence.

One 'miracle' was explained to me by the roadside. One spring, while I was driving along the shores of the Bodensee, through the breathtakingly lovely trees in bloom, I remembered my visit to 'Mama Rosa'

in San Damiano in March, and the miracle performed by the 'beautiful lady' of making a pear tree flower in October 1964. I parked by the roadside, explained the facts briefly to a fruit-farmer and asked if he had any experience of such a state of affairs - fruit and blossoms on the tree simultaneously. He nodded and said they called it a 'magic bloom', but did not know how it occurred. Nevertheless I had learnt that the flowering of Mama Rosa's tree in October was not unique, and could not be 'breaking the laws of nature' in the sense of an ecclesiastically acceptable miracle.

I sought information from botanist friends.

Pear trees and indeed plum trees belong to the family of Rosaceae. The pear tree is one of the deepest rooted species: it needs warm soil, into which the roots penetrate up to a depth of nine feet. The subsoil water should not rise above this height, as pear trees are sensitive to subsoil water. Plum tree flourish best on medium damp soil, but need a warm climate, like the related pear tree. An annual rainfall of about 600 mm is enough for both trees. In such conditions the fruit ripens with the steady passage of the seasons. It does especially well in a climate like that south-west of Milan.

This rhythm is sensibly disturbed if an unseasonable cold spell occurs, with unusually high rainfall and subsequent warm spells, like the Italian autumn, say. Owing to the cold shock, and the rain - both happened in the Milan region in September 1964! - the trees behave as if it were spring: owing to the cold and the damp soil the biochemical processes of metabolism begin and flower hormones are formed. If the trees are then subjected to autumn solar warmth again, we have the botanical and physiological 'miracle' of an autumn bloom on the tree simultaneously with fruit. The blossoms

'suddenly' stop and fall equally quickly; they bear no fruit because the bees have long since disappeared.

If the coupling of enzymes and hormones in the growth of plants is still a mystery. Mama Rosa's flowering pear and plum trees are certainly not a divine miracle, but a clearly explicable process, which the Bodensee fanner simply called 'magic bloom'.

Miracles fall to the ground from the tree of knowledge just as quickly as that!

'The sick man is God's gift to us, a direct favour and must be accepted by us as such. He (the sick man!) is an example of God's special favour because he enables us to put into practice that candour of heart called compassion ...' [34]. So says Lad-islaus Boros, a Jesuit instructor in divinity at Innsbruck.

Anyone who is not yet sick is bound to be made ill by such theological tripe. But this kind of dubious

'soul massage' is inflicted on us from childhood. The unreal concept of 'original sin' is on the heels of every Christian, shadowing his every action. It requires tremendous courage for anyone who has been brought up in this doctrine to liberate himself inwardly from all these threats.

One should also mention the theme of the sexual repression of Christians. Obviously getting rid of it also forms part of the act of self-liberation, but it is not the key to the door to personal freedom and selfresponsibility vis-a-vis moral laws. Sigmund Freud's once revolutionary thesis that everyone and everything was intelligible in terms of the instinctual life has long been overtaken by new scientific insights.

2,000 years of Christian tradition with the refinement of its dogmas lie deep in the subconscious. The moving Jesus legend with the suffering Mary, the suffering Apostles, and the suffering saints is also stored in the brain-cells of non-practising Christians.

But for the practising Christian this brain programming implies a lasting readiness to believe in miracles and miraculous cures as proof of God's grace. Before a religious 'Lazarus' has taken part in a pilgrimage to a visionary shrine, he had been brain-washed. His family, friends and priests have made it abundantly clear to him why the pilgrimage is the 'last resort'. Day and night the pain-racked sufferer is preoccupied with the hope of the miracle that has been suggested to him. If the children of Fatima or little Bernadette at Lourdes have helped others, why not me, too? On the sickbed - effective pious therapy - hymns to Mary are sung, the Rosary is recited. The sufferer has no idea that perhaps a selfhealing process has already begun, that he himself has set the healing mechanism (Bio Feedback) in motion.

The skilful preparatory work done in the sickroom is enhanced at the visionary shrine by the feelings shared by the anonymous masses who also believe in miracles. One is much more likely to 'perceive'

Jesus, Mary and the saints at the goals of the journey than in Christian everyday life or in one's home church. From time to time, cures take place for motivations that we know, just as they do in other countries with quite different conditions and religions.

There are several thousand 'faith healers' in America, Europe and Asia. Among the dozens of such people I met, I found helpful, often shy, always modest people who followed their calling without religious rites or pretentious ceremonials. Naturally they accept a fee for their work: they are not saints and cannot live on air and love. I was Sceptical about the undefined physical and medicinal powers employed by them. So I arranged to meet the dynamic young faith-healer Marcus Brogler, who is wellknown in Switzerland, my home country, at a restaurant in Aarau. I teased him and asked if he really believed in his magic. Marcus got up and stood behind me. 'Sit still I am not going to touch you.' I drank my beer. In less than a minute I felt as if someone was ironing my spine with a red-hot iron. I turned round. Marcus returned to his seat, ordered another round and asked sarcastically: 'Did you feel the magic?'

Alas, we live in a maze of magic and miracles. Like bread fresh from the oven, some of it baked and some of it half- baked, books pour off the presses, books dealing with the mysteriously working powers of telekinesis and telepathy and trying to explain how the miracles are done, books that tell us about the work of faith-surgeons on the Philippines and till the vast field of parapsychology. It would be carrying coals to Newcastle if I were to make a further contribution to these fields. So I am going to stick to the territory I have prescribed for myself - visions.

Yogananda Paramahamsa, who made such intelligent remarks about suggestive healing, died in Los Angeles on 7th March, 1952. It is said that after three weeks his body showed no signs of decomposition - as is often supposed to be the case after the death of a saintly man. Harry T. Rowe, Director of Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Los Angeles, said in an official report [35]: 'The absence of any signs of decomposition on Paramahamsa's body is the most extraordinary case in all our experience. ... Even twenty days after his death no trace of corporeal decay could be observed .... No smell of decomposition could be noticed throughout this period ....'

The stuff of which saints are made!

Inge Santner writes in Die Weltwoche [36], Zurich, about a lecture given to the Viennese Catholic Academy by the Viennese psychiatrist and neurologist, Dr. Gerhard Kaiser, Lecturer in Forensic Medicine at Salzburg University.

Dr. Kaiser tackled the question of why the bodies of saints retain their shape decades or centuries after their death. Kurt Tucholsky[37] gives a wonderful account of Lourdes in his Book of the Pyrenees: They have recently exhumed her (Bernadette Soubirous) for her canonization next year. Her body was well preserved, her left eye, which was directed at the vision, is reputed to have remained open and her tomb to have smelt so strongly of flowers that letters which lay there smelt, too, so it was said at Lourdes ....

(Bernadette was not a saint at the time; she did not become one till 1933.)

In the opinion of the Viennese scientist it does not need a miracle to preserve the fleshly envelope so that it survives the decades or centuries without visible signs of decomposition. Dr. Kaiser examined such cases as these: Francis of Sales, who died in 1622, was found 'as if he was alive' when exhumed in 1632. His body did not turn to dust until 1665 when it emitted an 'extraordinarily sweet smell'.

Francis Caracciola died in 1608. His flesh and sinews were unchanged when he was exhumed in 1628.

When an incision was made, blood flowed from it.

Carlos Borromaus, died 1584, proved 'unnaturally supple' after medical examination in 1608. His corpse still looked exactly the same 250 years later, in 1880.

St. John of the Cross, who died in 1591, was found covered with pinkish skin when he was dug up in

1859 (!), sweet smelling fluid kept his body moist.

Maria Magdelena de Pazzi, died 1607, did exhibit a blackened face when she was exhumed in 1663, but she still had an 'exceptionally mild expression'.

Bernadette Soubirous, who died in 1879, seemed to be merely sleeping when she was exhumed; her face was only slightly browned and even her clothing had survived the ravages of time undamaged.

Astounding, uncanny, miraculous facts? Dr. Gerhard Kaiser says: 'Wherever the course of events can be reconstructed, signs of miraculous activity must be almost certainly excluded.'

These are the scientific facts: Bodily reactions are not uncommon after death. Cessation of heart beat does not influence all cells simultaneously. Whole groups of cells survive it for several hours. Spermatozoa continue mobile for at least twenty-eight hours after the death of the organism. A well-known phenomenon are the (uncanny)

sighs given by dead people when they are dressed for their last journey and moved in the process.

Survivors are often horrified when they observe changes in position caused by heat. Suspended animation? When a pregnant woman dies, the foetus can be expelled from the body by putrefying gases in the coffin. Suspended animation? No, a chemical and physical process.

Normally the process of decomposition begins very soon after the definite signs of death (coldness of the corpse, rigor mortis, cessation of heart beat and breathing, reddish blue spots on the skin, a negative curve on the instruments). A bubble-like raising of the skin and formation of gas - often with considerable pressure in the corporeal orifices — soon ensues.

The process of putrefaction is mainly caused by air. It carries bacteria, and oxygen sets the chemical conversion process in motion. Moisture and warmth accelerate the decomposition and finally, under ground, worms and insects complete the work of destruction. Ants can lay a skeleton bare in three days! Generally the abdomen dissolves in three or four years, fat in the bones much later. Brain cells and skin on the head last for decades. The protein in the bones lasts for a hundred years or more.

Ultimately all that survives of a dead person buried in a normal grave is the skeleton.

Saintly men who have already demonstrated their singularity in their lifetime by spectacular deeds, are obviously not buried in normal graves or tombs. That is the vital premise from which Dr. Kaiser comes to his convincing conclusions.

The most important prerequisite for the preservation of a corpse is keeping bacteria away. If their presence can be stopped or lessened, the process of putrefaction is slowed down considerably. But how can the environment be influenced to decrease or prevent the access of destructive bacteria?

Dry air and constant strong draughts produce a natural mummification which preserves parts of the body with little flesh on them (ears, nose, fingers, toes).

Cold water flowing in the vicinity of the corpse keeps the temperature down and drives flies and insects away.

This preservative bacteria-reducing cold can be increased by ice. (Bodies have been recovered from glaciers completely undamaged after many years.)

Forensic medicine has histories of corpses found in pitch lakes that were discoloured, but perfectly preserved.

Also well known are bog corpses which are preserved by humus acids resistant to putrefaction. Carbon dioxide prevents the coagulation of the blood. In cases of carbon dioxide poisoning blood can flow from cuts long after death.

Metal coffins cause the formation of metallic salts, which slow down decomposition for as much as ten years. Salts in the earth (arsenic from the iron sources), or sea salts in combination with the dry climate accounted for the hundreds of skulls buried during the Inca period which were found with undamaged flesh and all their hair during excavations in the Lima region. The preservation of bodies by treating them with natron, asphalt and cedar products was known in Egypt from the third century B.C. (Today it is simpler. We mummify with formalin, a germ-killing medium. In many American Memorial Parks relatives can pull their beautifully made-up dead out of compartments and contemplate them in all their living beauty. ... Death in Hollywood!)

Dr. Kaiser has no doubt that the majority of incorruptible saints were buried in such conditions.

The survival of Rose of Lima's flesh was unquestionably due to salts. (The nun, who remained undamaged for eighteen months, lay in the same salt-bearing earth in which the Inca skulls were found.)

St. Clara of Monte Falco was mummified by dry air and found with an 'exceptionally beautiful face'.

Her shorn hair hung above her as a relic 'apparently dried out and showing the face of the crucified Christ'.

The 'smoked Parson of St. Thomas' in lower Austria was rendered incorruptible by chemicals - tar products.

Was it pure chance that saintly people found their burial place in surroundings so favourable to their preservation? There is evidence that suitable methods were used to help preserve the bodies of saints

'in the flesh'. Capuchins in Italy and Moravians laid out the burial chambers of their monasteries in such a way that a constant draught of dry air swept through them. Dr. Kaiser's supposition that the bodies of many saints were not only embalmed with essences, sweet-smelling oils, salves and aromas to drive away the smell of death, but also because the preservative effect of 'cosmetics' was known, can be accepted as a certainty.

When the bodies of illustrious ecclesiastics turned to dust after being exposed to profane human eyes, it was definitely not a 'sign from God', according to Dr. Kaiser. Once the grave was opened, the conditions restraining decomposition created at the time of interment were interrupted and ended. For example, St. Vincent de Paul crumbled to bits as the result of a sudden influx of air when his coffin was opened twenty-five years after his burial. 'Rediscovered tombs of ordinary Etruscans, to whom no one attributed particular saintliness, showed the same phenomenon. The corpses which rested undamaged on their stone beds, turned into dust during the exploration of the catacombs. A sweetsmelling golden haze is supposed to have filled the room.'

If the wealthy Catholic Church, which is so worried about the inviolability and divine exaltation of its saints, were to set up a research foundation to examine the post-mortem remains of holy bodies on a broader basis, I should think it an excellent idea and a brave gesture.

Then perhaps we should have an answer some day to the Viennese scholar's tricky question: 'Why should God preserve the bodies of precisely those men whose souls he took to himself by the shortest way?'

Even Jesus, the Master, did not believe in miracles ... but he knew the effect of suggestion!

Mark (5:23 et seq.) tells us that a woman who lay at the point of death came to him. Jesus' fame as a miraculous healer, preceded him and prepared the ground for his direct suggestions. He was asked to lay his hands on her so that she could be cured, for she had suffered from an 'issue of blood' for twelve years. She had spent a lot of money on doctors who had been unable to help her. As usual the crowd surrounded the master expectantly. They wanted to see a miracle I And the sick woman wanted to experience a miraculous cure!

'For she said, If I may but touch his clothes, I shall be whole' (28).

The prerequisite of her readiness to be healed miraculously existed.

'And straight away the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.'

Jesus knew exactly whence the effect attributed to him came, for he asked who had touched his clothes.

'And he looked around to see her that had done this thing' (32).

The miraculous healer explained the mystery of the cure in a very modern and relevant way!

'Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace and be whole of the plague.'

The Nazarene knew nothing about the mechanism of auto, or heterosuggestion, but he had a good idea of their miraculous effects. If present-day faith-healers take the Bible as a textbook, they can find many good hints in it. 'No one really likes suffering. If he does, he is not really suffering but submissively enjoying his pain. Enjoying the blows as absolutely necessary for his psychic expansion. The martyred look of suffering appears to be calm and even shows a sneaking feeling of gratitude,' says Ernest Bloch

[38] and his assertions tally with my observations.

When I am urged to show more respect for religions, I can assure people with conviction and from the heart that I respect every religion which also respects its followers.

But where the ignorance of church members is despised and shamelessly exploited, where hocus-pocus goes on with miracles that are not miracles, where jingling coins are struck from manipulated faith, where religions coerce adherents in this world by threats of punishment in the world to come, in all such cases I cannot respect religions, whatever their nature. I strive to be sincere and would like to help those who, like me, were caught from childhood in the power of a religious doctrine from which there was apparently no escape - except at the cost of eternal damnation.

Liberation from the confessional shackles by no means implies abandonment of faith in a god as the moving principle behind all being.

No! 'Miraculous cures' are no proof of the authenticity of a vision. In order to throw light on the darkness surrounding the mystery of supposed miracles, we must try to get on the trail of the visionary phenomena that are supposed to cause them.