Connectivity and Healing: Some HypothesesAbout the Phenomenon and How to Study ItLewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD

Most physicians are willing to admit that extraordi-nary improvements sometimes occur in patients' condi-tions, despite expectations to the contrary. Few will refuseto accept the occasional disappearance of tumors, patientswho are expected to die imminently yet outlive theirphysicians, and other medical miracles. The dominantmedical paradigm classifies these occurrences as "sponta-neous remissions" since our treatments were not expectedto be so successful. A non-dominant minority within aca-demic medicine accepts the hypothesis that these eventsoccur through a process that is called "healing" in ordi-nary language. Surveys of family physicians show thatmore than half believe faith can cure, and that divineintervention is possible in human disease.' These believersare not common in academic medical centers, whereskepticism is the norm. Beyond the usual chaplaincy serv-ice, spirituality has largely been banished from"respectable" healthcare.

As practicing physicians, we have seen events thatcould also be called "spontaneous healing."^ We have metcancer patients whose tumors have mysteriouslyregressed, allowing them to survive against impossibleodds. We have encountered patients in the emergencyroom whom we never expected to survive, only to seethem thrive years later. Those of us who have worked onthe frontlines of medicine know amazing things happenthat lie beyond biomedical explanation.

In this essay, I hope to propose some potentialexplanatory hypotheses for the amazing and the miracu-lous, and to suggest a method for its study This is espe-cially important because these phenomena do not availthemselves to randomized clinical trials, our usual methodof testing treatments. I will suggest that the reason for thisis that we are observing systemic transformations—eventsof self-reorganization that occur at far-from-equilibriumconditions, outside of the range of the ordinary eventsthat clinical trials are designed to study.

The following case will organize our consideration ofunchallenged assumptions within modern medicine thathinder our consideration of healing:

Bethany was a 36-year old woman who had success-

fully completed treatment for thyroid cancer 10 years pre-viously, and had been pronounced cured. I met her onreferral from her internist for help with stress-relatedsymptoms. Those symptoms sounded suspiciously likeseizures. An EEG confirmed this and an MRI showed atemporal lobe tumor. Within one week, she underwentsurgery and a glioblastoma multiforme was removed.Most patients with this diagnosis die within 11 months ofdiagnosis. Bethany is still alive 8 years later. How do weexplain this?

Bethany underwent the standard chemotherapy andradiation therapy The best estimates at the time were thatthese treatments would prolong her life by 4%—not avery dramatic increase. Some of her friends suggested shewould be better off skipping these difficult therapies.Bethany disagreed, believing that they would haveextraordinary benefit for her. To his credit, her neuro-oncologist never disagreed with her optimism. In addi-tion, she joined our weekly healing circle. We performedsome extra visualization and energy healing sessions.Bethany also attended the sweat lodges and healing cere-monies of the local Native American community, alongwith several others of us.

In Bethany's version of her story, she reinvented herhfe as she surrounded herself with people who believedthat she would be well. She left a stressful job that shehated; she left a relationship that was going nowhere; shecreated a new, sustainable life and a reason why sheshould live. Bethany continues to avoid pessimists. Shesurrounds herself with loving friends and family, believingthat she needs that level of positive culture.

How do we explain Bethany's story? How unusual isit? Our "skeptic" friends avoid discussing her case sincethe pathology reports and laboratory findings cannot be

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challenged. Nor, however, can her continued existence bequestioned. She lives and breathes. The medical modellimits itself with its insistence that the cure of all states ofdiscomfort must be linked to the precise identification ofthe pathological mechanism.^ Proper treatment has amechanism of action that directly corresponds to thispathological mechanism. Bethany's "cure" cannot bedirectly linked to any treatment. It defies explanation onthat level, as do most of the stories of miraculous healingthat I have collected.

Biological and genetic hypotheses for Bethany'simprovement fall flat. Bethany's outcome is so far from themean for the population of all patients with glioblastomathat it would be merely an act of faith to claim that it wasgenetic or that the chemotherapy/radiation therapy some-how worked amazingly better upon her than almost allothers, though this explanation is certainly possible. Nor'do 1 hke psychological or even "New Age" explanationsfor healing, for they are also constructed post hoc, as aneffort to explain something that has already happened. Todate, these explanations have not shown predictive power.Eor example, people who measure high on the "fightingspirit" construct do not necessarily hve longer than peoplewho measure "low" on this construct. Bethany's story isunique to her; it is idiosyncratic even. What baffles con-ventional medicine in its attempt to explain healing is thepossibility suggested by this essay that no one thing or com-bination oj things healed her. This new story says thatBethany was part of a transformative effort that involvedher and others in ways that were a priori unpredictable.

Bethany's own explanation is completely differentfrom that of another man I know who still works in theDepartment of the Interior and is a 9-year survivor ofglioblastoma. The stories are so different that an argumentwould ensue if these two individuals were to meet—atleast as long as we keep the conventional paradigm of sta-ble causes with fixed and measurable effects. Loren's storyis about removal of mercury fillings and other toxic met-als, coupled with his passion to share the idea with otherpeople with cancer that they too can live like he did. Howdo we scientifically study such disparate explanations forthe same phenomenon? Do we need a different approachthan ordinary science?

There are some fundamental assumptions withinmodern medicine that hinder the study of healing. Weneed to address and challenge these assumptions:

• Disease has a natural history, independent of theperson and network of social relations in which theperson is embedded. Disease has a mechanism ofaction that is consistent and reliable, and independ-ent of individuality or context.

• Processes must be replicable to be believable. Agiven treatment should dependably work the same

in multiply-different patients and situations, as longas they all have the same diagnosis.

• Explanations for changes in clinical status are to besought among extemal agents.

The alternative ideas I wish to propose read like this:

• Human disease and illness, and its progression or dis-appearance, is context dependent—it depends uponthe network of relationships into which the particularindividual is embedded, and it depends upon cultur-al and social factors yet to be determined. Disease isnot purely biological or genetic. It does not have anatural history, but rather a biopsychosocial, histori-cal, cultural, and geophysical history.

• Systems (Endnote 1) are self-healing (self-correct-ing), demonstrate emergent properties (Endnote 2),and are capable of developing unique, novel out-comes that are not relevant or applicable to anyother system. Even biological treatments, with theirpowerful mechanisms of action, also have informa-tional components in which they stimulate self-healing and system reorganization.

• Dramatic biological change (healing) is associatedwith an internal reorganization of the system of theperson and systems surrounding the person.Information transfer that facilitates this reorganiza-tion may be more important that the provision ofexternal agents.

These ideas or hypotheses set the stage for a radicallydifferent research agenda for the study of healing. Thisagenda looks at coherence and connectivity in asking howare we linked? How do we affect each other? A potentiallyradical shift is our asking these questions not just aboutpsychology or sociology, but about biology. Erom thispoint of view, the separation of disciplines and specialtiescultivated by universities, journals, and medical centers isillusory. Separations are acts of perception and not facts ofnature. We exist in an indivisible whole.

The thrust of these hypotheses is to move us awayfrom medicine as a natural science (certain heresy) andtoward medicine as a systems science—one that integratesmultiple perspectives and levels (explanatory pluralism)and one that draws its inspiration more from quantumphysics than from classical mechanics. This new medicinecan embrace the self-healing and emergent properties ofwhat Prigogine calls "far from equilibrium" systems.'' We.could describe this turn in the road as systems medicine,or even narrative medicine or quantum medicine, or wecould simply say that this is what medicine needs to do,and abandon the quest of finding new and catchy namesto describe what is happening.

The core of our research moves from the search for

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"powerful healers" among the more alternativeresearchers, or for "powerful techniques," to the search foran understanding of how systems make dramatic changesof state, from one attractor basin (Endnote 3) to another.This concept as described by Prigogine strikes me as socrucial for our understanding of healing that it must be apivot point. Prigogine and other systems researchers haveused three-dimensional topological metaphors to describethe behavior of systems. Systems maintain equilibrium.They keep things the same. Systems transform only whenthey are far from equilibrium. Equilibrium states are rep-resented as valleys, while far-from-equilibrium states arerepresented as mountain passes. Considerable effort isneeded to cross the pass into another valley. Once the sys-tem is far from equilibrium (near the top of the pass),even minimal effort can complete the journey This con-cept offers a potential explanation for the success of so-called "wacky therapies," which only work for somepeople sometimes and cannot be replicated.

Conventional medicine prefers to deal in the hnearregions of ordinary life, in the village nestled comfortablyin the valley It's fun to look up at the mountain peaks,but not to climb them or to cross arduous passes. That'sdangerous and tiring. The study of healing, however,must address life on the passes—the transitions betweenstable states.

Conventional medicine seeks biological agents thatwork the same on everyone. It seeks reliability and repli-cation. If my hypotheses are correct, healing is an indi-vidual phenomenon. Everyone does it differently. Everyperson finds his or her own way across the mountainpass because everyone is situated in psycho-socioculturalspace in a different location. This means that we need tostudy how people transform, instead of seeking whatcured them.

1 think this will help us abandon our quest for "pow-erful healers," and come to understand that this is justanother version of the quest for powerful drugs. Thesource for healing lies within the internal reorganizationof the system (including the larger systems within whichthe person is embedded). The wizardry and power comesfrom changes in organization; from within rather thanfrom without. 1 propose we will discover that this is moreimportant even for conventional pharmacological thera-pies and for surgeries that we have ever imagined. We areaddressing what determines the organism's response tointervention, not the intervention itself.

How are these things possible without biologicalmechanisms to explain them? As a metaphor for ananswer, I wish to address the phenomenon of coherence.Coherence is a non-biological, non-local process. Itinvolves shared infonnation, rather than mechanical causeand effect. The concept offers some glimmers of awarenessinto how systems can reorganize themselves in "interven-

tional fields." It provides the first foundations for anunderstanding of how the intent of a community can pro-duce biological effects, of how embeddedness in a healingenvironment can be associated with sudden, dramaticshifts in physiology. Eirst, we must understand the phe-nomenon as it is emerging in physics and in systems sci-ence, remembering that our explanations are justsimplified stories for something yet beyond our capacityfor understanding.

COHERENCE AND HEALtNGA process like healing is inherently difficult to under-

stand because it lies outside the classical, mechanical,cause-and-effect paradigm. Spiritual healing cannot betraced to a linear series of events. It appears to arisealmost out of nowhere from within the entity (person,family, community) that is being healed. Healing emerges,I suggest, because of coherence, a key concept that repre-sents a correlation between behaviors of apparently unre-lated events, processes, objects, or measurements.Coherence occurs when soldiers march in step across abridge. The resonant frequencies augment each otherbecause of the coherence of their steps, and can producesuch power as to cause the bridge to collapse. This is whysoldiers have, historically, broken formation and runacross a bridge in a random fashion, only to reassembleand resume marching on the other side. Coherenceimplies connections that cannot be seen in three-dimen-sional physical space.

The presence of connections that are not immediately,physically apparent is surprising to the dominant culture'sworld view of independent, unrelated objects (or vari-ables) and measurements. Classical physics and astrono-my (until gravity was discovered) comprised the study ofindependent, discrete objects. Classical psychology com-prises the study of independent, discrete individualswhose behavior can be understood entirely from withinthem. Classical economics poses a kind of market funda-mentalism—that all problems will be solved by the unre-stricted actions of the marketplace and that these actionsare independent of the other forces at work in a societyWhen particles (or people) behave in a correlated fashion(and we don't think they should), we announce the mysteriousexistence of coherence, which implies connectivitythrough non-physical means.

Anthropologist Gregory Bateson and his colleaguesat the Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto championedthe idea of coherence within families—that the actions ofindividuals are correlated. They asserted that the behav-iors, thoughts, and feelings of one member are connectedto the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings of other mem-bers.' Philosopher Michel Foucault* presented the ideathat the behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and actions ofmembers of a society were related to society-wide con-

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versations regarding knowledge and power—that whatwe think and do is correlated or connected to what thosein power think and do. He proposed that these transac-tions are mediated through knowledge—the flow ofinformation and the relations constructed to regulate theflow of information.

Most world views eventually look to physics for cluesabout how to examine our psychological and socialworlds. The physical world is a good place to startbecause so many of us believe in the discrete objecthypothesis within the world of matter. Practically, it worksfor us in everyday life. My truck is different from thewood I haul in it. I can take the wood out and bum it andthe truck remains standing. Demonstrating that our sim-ple interpretations of discrete objects and events fail with-in physics opens our eyes to the possibility of otherdiscourses and explanations. The value of looking outsideone's own discipline (to physics, for example) is that wefind novel ideas and explanations that undoubtedly applyto us in some way, for we are all embedded in the sameworld, whatever level of it we happen to be studying.

What coherence in physics suggests, as we shall seein the following examples, is that objects (people) getconnected. Once connected, what happens to one simul-taneously influences the other, so as to preserve that con-nection. 1 will give examples from the basic particles ofphysics, and 1 suggest that people behave similarly to par-ticles. Relationships that engender healing do so, 1 sug-gest, because coherence has developed among theparticipants in those relationships. The people begin toinfluence each other through non-physical means.

Physicists often explain coherence using the phe-nomenon of interference. Those of us who can rememberhigh-school physics will recall the patterns producedwhen two pebbles are dropped simultaneously into dif-ferent spots in the same pool of water, thereby demon-strating the properties of waves. The waves or ripplesinteract. We see a pattem where the waves cancel eachother. Another pattem emerges where the waves augmenteach other. The cancellation pattem is called interference.The two waves interfere with each other. This is whatBateson called second order interaction. The water mole-cules are simply rising and falling, but in doing so theyproduce a pattem that can only be observed from outsideor above the pool of water. The pattem arises from infor-mation imposed upon the water molecules by the propa-gation of energy—the wave.'

In high-school physics, we performed these experi-ments with pebbles and pools of water in preparation forleaming about light. Once we had grasped the wave con-cept, our teacher introduced us to the original experi-ments of Thomas Young (early 19th century)." Weduplicated his findings, placing slits in cards and shininglight through the two slits. When we place a screen

behind the slits, we see the same interference pattem thatwe saw in the pond. Young used this to convince his con-temporaries that light was a wave phenomenon. He fur-ther showed that even when the light was so weak thatonly one photon could be emitted at a time, the wave-interference pattern remained. This could only occur ifthe particles of light were actually waves passing throughboth slits at the same time. The particle-wave dualitybecame a central organizing principle of physics for yearsto come as people wondered how light could be both.

Physicists came to eventually understand that these"particle-waves" of light interfere with each other, but onlyif they are emitted from the same source and even ij theyarrive to the earth 50,000 years apart! (This happens whenlight from a distant star is bent by a black hole. Some par-ticles of light are delayed by the curvature of space-time,while others proceed directly to us.)' Interference occursbecause of coherence. Connected wave-particles produceinterference patterns. Disconnected ones do not.Eurthermore, physicists learned that any coupling withanother system destroys coherence. Coherence representsan intrinsic correlation among wave-particles that arisefrom the same source.

Why should we care about coherence from the stand-point of the social world? Descartes is credited with theidea that the social interactions of two minds are inde-pendent from their embeddedness in the physical worldof bodies. Merleau-Ponty championed the opposite idea—that all of our perceptions (whether of direct sensation orthe reading of complex physical instruments) are embed-ded in a world constructed through our bodies.'" Whileany level of discourse can be discussed in isolation, to methe gestalt produced by considering all simultaneously ismuch more interesting. Such cohsiderations are relativelyrare in academia. The correlations, for example, betweensomeone's description of their state of mind and thedescription rendered by a positron emission tomography(PET) scan of their brain is fascinating. We inherentlywonder how things are connected, almost as if we werebom with an awareness of coherence.

Systems theory postulates that the operating princi-ples of any level of discourse or explanation (hierarchy insystems terminology) are similar to those at any otherlevel. If coherence exists on the level of photons, could italso exist on the level of social relationships? Are wehumans inextricably interconnected? To borrow quantumphysics terminology, are we hopelessly entangled in eachother? Does the entanglement of people who are embed-ded in a natural (social and geographic) landscape form asociety and a culture? Family coherence suggests that 1instantaneously sense shifts in the thoughts, feelings, orbehavior my brother makes, and then compensate to pre-serve symmetry or relatedness to him (without necessarilybeing conscious of this). Coherence provides an explana-

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tion for the mysterious changes family members makeduring family therapy—for example, Gregory Bateson'sdescription of family members passing around the identi-fied patient role." Family coherence means that I mustchange if my brother changes in order to preserve myrelationship with him. It means that I am not independentfrom my brother. We are correlated or entangled. What hedoes affects me—even at great distances.

Jay Haley and Paul Watzlewick imphcitly describedcoherence when they wrote about the mysterious waysthat family members changed to keep everything the same(maintain homeostasis) within the family.'^" SalvadorMinuchin proposed this idea, especially in his studies offamihes with anorexic or psychotic members."" Batesonexplained this phenomenon using infonnation theory orcybernetics, specifically with the thermostat metaphor."*Families try to regulate the affective climate to keep angerlevels the same, even though the anger passes through dif-ferent family members, appearing first in one, then inanother. Similarly, he wrote about depression being con-stant within a family, even though different membersexpress it at different times. The concept of coherencefrom quantum physics becomes a more elegant metaphorthan a thermostat. It provides more explanatory power,suggesting the power of relatedness across all levels ofnature and the need to preserve symmetry

One of my favorite examples of self-regulation andthe need to preserve symmetry comes from the GaiaHypothesis." This hypothesis arises from evidence suchas the narrow temperature range maintained on the sur-face of the earth since life began, compared with the tem-perature range experienced in the universe. Even thegreat ice ages were small blips in an otherwise even life ofconstant temperature. Lovelock calculates the probabilityof this occurring by chance to be a ridiculously infinitesi-mal number, concluding that the earth is self-regulating,and therefore worthy of the ascription of consciousness.Nadeau discovered a similar phenomenon at the macro-scopic level of the whole universe.'" Currently acceptedtheory holds that the universe originated in a vast explo-sion of pre-space, creating a fireball of staggering heat anddensity In the first few milliseconds, it synthesized all thematter that now populates space-time. Particle-antiparti-cle pairs collided with and annihilated each other, result-ing in the survival of about one billionth of the originallycreated particles, which is the matter content of the uni-verse we now observe.

After about 200,000 years, according to this theory,these particles decoupled themselves and formed thegalaxies, solar systems, and stars we now recognize.Studies of the cosmic background radiation reveal clues tothis process. There are cosmological parameters thatdefine the rate of expansion or contraction of the uni-verse. An infinitesimal increase in one of these parameters

leads to the universe expanding forever, while an equallysmall decrease leads to the universe collapsing back inupon itself. The actual value of this parameter is mysteri-ously maintained at exactly the critical value, renderingthe universe flat—neither expanding limitlessly, nor con-tracting back upon itself. Nadeau calculated that the prob-ability of this parameter remaining where it is by chance,so that the universe neither expands forever nor collapses,is less than 10 to the minus 100th power, another ridicu-lously small number. This gives support to what FrvinLaszlo calls the "God Hypothesis""—that the universe isself-regulating and therefore worthy of the ascription ofconsciousness (Bateson argued that all self-regulating sys-tems were entitled to be called conscious, though the sub-jective experience of consciousness within self-regulatingsystems might vary dramatically^").

Why do we care about all this? Because concepts suchas these shatter our ideas about independence and objec-tivity If everything is so connected, how can anything beindependent? How can there be an objective place fromwhich one can study healing, since healing emergesthrough this relatedness, this coherence? The existence ofcoherence forces the destruction of our conventional con-cepts of the individual—especially the autonomous, freelychoosing, rational man of the Enlightenment; the roman-tic ideal, the rugged individualist of North America. Suchpeople only pretend (to themselves and to others) thatthey are isolated from the rest of us.

The demonstration of coherence in physics and itsslowly evolving demonstration in social life (eg, studies ofdistant healing, the power of prayer, psychic phenomena,telepathy, mediumship, spiritual healing, energy healing,etc) inspires us to deconstruct our concept of the individ-ual and the self. If I'm hopelessly entangled with a wholebunch of other people, then who am 1? I'm certainly notan autonomous being who rationally chooses what 1 do,especially when family-systems studies demonstrate that Iwill change without even realizing it in order to maintainsymmetry within the family, or, as Bateson puts it, to "reg-ulate the affective climate." It means we can never be cer-tain where we stop and others begin, which is exactly thesituation in physics today where matter is seen as a waveof energy with varying densities and structures spreadingoutward in a probability distribution. I'm hopelesslyunable to decide what is self and what is non-self. I'm rel-atively unable to know vidth certainty why 1 do anything,though my creative mind can generate any number of fan-tastic post-hoc explanations (past lives, penis envy, fear ofcastration, sibling rivalry, hormonal imperatives, and onand on). Coherence inspires me to realize that my con-cepts are largely products of my fear of uncertainty, mywish to know, and to recognize that 1 know for sure what'sgoing on, when I don't.

Now let's review some of the physics experiments

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that Laszlo cites to demonstrate coherence (and thereforeconnectivity, which he rightly acknowledges, as wouldany post-structuralist, as a hypothesis rather than a fact.He follows Karl Popper, in recognizing that facts do notexist, in the classical sense of the term^'). There are onlyobservations, all of which are inseparable from the char-acteristics of the measuring device and situation (anotherinsight of quantum physics—that measurements do notexist apart from measuring systems; that there are noabsolute reference points from which to measure any-thing—the basis for Einstein's theory of relativity). Wewill see shortly, that even the human intent to make ameasurement, whether it is made or not, changes the out-come of an experiment in physics. Here are the experi-ments and experimenters:

• John Wheeler: Photons are emitted one at a timeand made to travel from an emitting gun to a detec-tor that clicks when it arrives. A half-silvered mirroris inserted along the path of the photon. The sil-vered half refracts light, while the transparent halfpasses light. This splits the beam, giving rise to thepossibility that half of the photons pass through themirror and half are deflected. A counter, placed atright angles to the beam hitting the mirror, confirmsthis possibility. The two counters now register anequal number of photons. However, when a secondmirror is placed in the path of the undeflected pho-tons, one of the counters ceases to click. One of thetargets gets all the photons now. The other is silent.All photons arrive at the same destination. The pres-ence of the second mirror disrupts coherence, com-pletely changing the outcome of the experiment."

• Mordechai Heiblum, Eyal Buks, and colleagues atthe Weizmann Institute in Israel: A "which-path"detector is attached to the emitting source forYoung's sht-lamp experiment. This detector allowsus to know with certainty which path a specificphoton has taken when it travels to the target.When the detector is turned on for both possiblepaths, interference disappears. When we know bothpaths of two photons, coherence stops and interfer-ence no longer occurs."

• Leonard Mandel: Two beams of laser light are gener-ated and allowed to interfere. The typical interfer-ence pattern results. When detectors are attachedthat allow the path of the light to be determined,interference disappears. Amazingly, interjerence dis-appears whether or not the detectors are turned on!Merely connecting them is sujjicient. The very possibil-ity of "which-path" detection destroys the wavenature (or superposed) state of the photons."

• Durr's experiments at the University of Konstanz:Puzzling interference patterns are produced by the

diffraction of a beam of cold atoms by standing wavesof light. When no attempt is made to detect whichpath the atoms are taking, the interferometer detectshigh-contrast patterns. When information is encodedwithin the atoms as to which path they take, interfer-ence vanishes. The path the atoms take does notactually have to be measured. It is enough that it canbe measured. The instrument does not need to be used; itis enough to label the atoms so that it can be used!"

• Experiments regarding the Einstein-Podolsky-Roseneffect by Alain Aspect"'^': In 1935, Einstein,Podolsky, and Rosen proposed that Heisenberg'suncertainty principle could be beat.^' Heisenbergargued that knowing everything about one aspect ofa particle meant knowing nothing about its otheraspects. Einstein proposed taking two particles thatare connected (electrons with opposite spins, forinstance), separating them at a great distance and bybarriers that no known electromagnetic energy cancross, and then measuring different aspects of bothof them completely. Spin is measured by reversing itand then observing the effect. When the experimentwas done, quite opposite to Einstein's predictions,the "partner" particle whose spin was not reversed,somehow "knew" instantly that the other particle'sspin had been reversed and then reversed its ownspin accordingly to maintain complementarity.Before the experiment, particle A was spinning "up"and particle B was spinning "down." After theexperiment, particle A was spinning "down" andparticle "B" was spinning up. Amazingly, this effectwas found with a distance of 41 kilometers betweenthe two particles and occurring instantly, as in verymuch faster than the speed of light—with no lag atall. The second particle "knew" what was going onwith the first particle. The measurement on the firstparticle actually produced a new state on the secondparticle. Quanta that were once connected can bethousands of years apart in space, and light yearsapart in time, and still behave as though connected!

The human implications of all these studies are thatchanges in any of us affect all of those to whom we arerelated, and vice versa. We cannot escape being affectedby those with whom we are coherent, even if we pretendto be unaffected. The studies, on how even the intent tomeasure changes the results of an experiment, can berelated to the human level by suggesting that we cannotavoid being affected by other people.

The human correlation of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Effect arises when we speculate that people who areconnected to one another (through love, hate, birth, orconception in the case of twins) receive faster-than-light(non-local) information about what is happening to the

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other person, and that we respond to that informationwhether we are conscious about it or not. We may dreamthe other person's dream, choose our. clothing in themorning in relation to what the other person chooses, andmake modifications to our attitudes and beliefs, in accor-dance with what changes our connected other(s) make.Healing may transpire through such connectivity amongpeople who strongly believe in healing and practice heal-ing, and also through membership in a community that iscommitted to its belief in healing and its practice.

Regarding Durr's experiments, the human equivalentcould perhaps be the way that simply declaring an inten-tion may change everything, whether or not any actionever needed to be taken to concretize the intention. Eorexample, merely declaring an intention to be well maystart the healing process. This would be like declaring anintention to take a measurement. Or, the healer's declaringan intention to do his or her best to help someone may besufficient to start the healing process, without the healereven needing to do anything.

The human correlate of Mandel's experiment might beto argue that too much measurement or analysis or inter-pretation (or even the intent to analyze, measure, andinterpret), especially in a structuralist or positivist fashion,may actually derail a process and prevent the spontaneousemergence of new properties arising from the coherence ofparts with each other. Excess analysis and interpretation(as in measurement in physics) may un-couple coherentelements so that connectivity no longer applies. Thismight make coherence on the human level difficult tostudy in a laboratory.

How Wheeler's and Heiblum's experiments mightrelate on a human level is in the observation that skepticsare usually excluded from ceremonies. Anthropologistsmust become virtual true believers through participantresearch before being invited to attend. The idea would bethat the skeptical measurer decouples the connections,which no longer apply. Again, the implications forresearch upon healing are tremendous. How can we doresearch when the mere attempt at measurement, or eventhe intent to measure, could destroy the phenomena?

What does coherence mean for us? Laszlo argues thatsystems behave similarly at all levels." Demonstrating theexistence of a phenomenon at the smallest possible andthe largest possible levels suggests that it might operate atlevels in-between. Abraham showed startling movies ofMexican jumping beans.'^ Using NASA!s computer and alaser array, he rigged a measuring system to record theheight jumped by each of 10,000 insects within the beans.Distinct heights were given individual colors. The moviesproduced showed amazing patterns with sharp geometri-cal demarcations that could well have been the plan for anAztec city The insects cohered with their neighbors andjumped to the same heights.

What this means for social interaction and socialrelationships is that we are much less autonomous thanever imagined. We cohere. We behave like others whooriginate from the same source as we do (family mem-bers). We sometimes radically change directions to main-tain symmetry when others from the same source as uschange. Coherence is a powerful explanatory concept inhuman behavior.

As a youth, I was thrilled by Hesse." 1 loved theromantic ideal of the solitary hero, self-determined,answering to no one. Life has convinced me otherwise. Ihaven't a clue why I do much that 1 do. I could manufac-ture explanations, as many do. Numerous therapists makea living providing others with explanations (interpreta-tions) of their behavior. But do these have truth value? Asthe Native Hawaiians said, the mind is only useful formaking up a story (after the fact) to explain what hap-pened, even though none of us know what really did hap-pen. "Trust your gut," they said, "not your mind."^"

We participate in the forming of intricate patterns,just like the Mexican jumping beans, without anyone actu-ally directing us or telling us how to do it or what pattern tomake. It just happens. It is a momentous act, akin to"stopping the world" in Yaqui terms, to initiate an act thatleads to pattern shift. This could correspond to Kuhn'sparadigm shifts.-"

Coherence can explain family therapy. The presenceof the "therapist" (or anyone else, for that matter—a newdog, a foreign exchange student, etc.) can initiate achange in pattern. The therapist can observe aspects ofthe pattern and can even comment on the pattern, butunless the family invites him or her into the inner circle,or unless a family member takes up singing the therapist'ssong, failure is inevitable. Change occurs when a newpattern is initiated.

Years ago, I realized that I didn't need to know whathappened during "therapy" It was enough to sit with afamily or a group and hold a positive intent for their high-est good. I learned to trust the family's wisdom to do whatwas best for them, with my role being to provide a smallperturbation—just a little nudge. 1 believe Laszlo wouldagree with this concept of trusting the system, and thecoherence in its members, to be responsible for thechange without our needing to expertly plan what thefamily would do. Eamily therapy has changed from thestrategic, chess-like planning of the 1970s to the moreflexible storytelling approach of the present. We learnedto trust the family to know how they needed to change,instead of our so-called expertise to impose change uponthem for their own good. I read Laszlo as agreeing withthis; that we must trust the wisdom of systems to self-organize. In keeping with the finding that the measure-ment doesn't even have to be made (just hooking up thedevice is sufficient; it doesn't have to be turned on), I

l8 ADVANCES Spring 2005, VOL. 21 , NO. 1 Connectivity and Healing

think some therapy succeeds because of the possibility ofmeasurement (an external observer exists).

EVtDENCE FOR COHERENCE AND CONNECTtVtTYtN THE BIOLOGICAL REALM

The notion of entanglement is central to the scienceof connectivity. Entanglement refers to the interaction ofdistant states that are not capable of interacting vvathin thetenets of classical physics and biology. Their interactioncannot be predicted by knowledge of their individualattributes, but rather arises from relationships and notfrom intrinsic, internal properties. Quantum biologydescribes a state in which individual molecular reactionsoccur at specific space-time points and carry out theirindividual functions, with the coordination of the func-tions ensured by quantum coherence.

Quantum biological systems are post-modern in theirnot allowing a precise determination of all attributes of asystem. We can never know everything at once. Absolutecertainty is impossible. The allowable non-classicalprocesses (tunneling through energy barriers, interferenceamong all possible histories preceding the present state,sensitivity to electromagnetic potentials, and entangle-ment) wreak havoc with our classical and deterministicassumptions about life. R.P. Bajpai writes about theremarkable capabilities that these processes bestow on liv-ing systems, including perfectly secure communication,virtually perfect information transfer, and signal detectionbelow noise thresholds.^'* The emerging picture placescontrol outside of the individual and his or her conscious-ness, and within a broader self-regulating system in whichproperties emerge without individual intent. The self-made man of the Enlightenment or the winner of theDarwinistic competition disappears.

Quantum biology challenges the dominant paradigmof scientific investigation. Evidence is accumulating tooverthrow molecular determinism (the view that all lifeprocesses can be adequately explained by referring tounderlying molecular interactions). Biological psychiatryas it is currently practiced is the sine qua non of moleculardeterminism, operating as if all psychological phenomenahave molecular explanations and can be modified bypharmacological means. Quantum biology is also chal-lenging the beliefs of genetic determinism—the claim thatthe set of genes in the genome contains a complete set ofinstructions for building and operating the organism.Quantum biologists are beginning to suspect that somebasic developmental processes are outside of genetic con-trol or only indirectly affected by genes. Lev Beloussov.suggests that genes themselves may merely be obedientservants fulfilling powerful commands from the rest of theorganism"—an opposite view held by the genetic-controlhypothesis advocates.

Laszlo points out two impressive paradoxes that

weaken the genetic-control hypothesis. First, a simpleamoeba has 200 times more DNA per cell than a humancell. The number of genes of closely related rodents canvary by a factor of two, and the house fly has five timesmore genes than the fruit fly" This is called the C-valueparadox. The genetic-control hypothesis predicts thatmore complex organisms should have more genes, whichis not the case. The complexity of the organism in its phe-nome is not reflected in the complexity of the genome; infact, the opposite is found. The second paradox is thegene-number hypothesis: in the organisms, more genesare always found without functions than genes with func-tions. The set of functional genes is far smaller than theset of all genes, another embarrassing finding for thegenetic determinism hypothesis.

What should we study, if not molecular and geneti-cally determined events? What about the relationsbetween organs in a biological system, or the flow ofinformation from external sources into and outside of theorganism? These studies are proceeding in the biologicalrealm as they are on the human realm (our next section).

EVIDENCE FOR COHERENCE AND CONNECTIVITYIN THE HUMAN REALM

According to Laszlo, the first controlled experimentson connectivity between humans separated in space andin time date back to J.B. Rhine's card-and-dice-guessingwork at Duke University in the 1930s.*" Experiments havebecome progressively more sophisticated, with no evi-dence emerging for a role of hidden sensory cues,machine bias, cheating by subjects, experimenter error, orincompetence in explaining the often positive results.

Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff later conductedexperiments on the possibility of telepathic transmissionbetween individuals; one acting as "sender" and the otheras "receiver."*" The receiver was placed in a sealed,opaque, electrically-shielded chamber, while the senderwas in another room where he or she was subjected tobright flashes of light at regular intervals.Electroencephalographs (EEG) recorded the brain-wavepatterns of both. The sender exhibited the EEG patternthat usually accompanies exposure to bright flashes oflight. After a brief interval, the receiver began to producethe same patterns, though not exposed to the flashes norreceiving sense-perceivable signals from the sender.

Targ and Puthoff conducted further experiments onremote viewing.'' In these tests, sender and receiver wereseparated by distances that precluded any form of sensorycommunication. At a site chosen at random, the senderacted as a "beacon," and the receiver attempted to seewhat the sender saw. To document his or her impressions,the receiver gave verbal descriptions, at times accompa-nied by sketches. Independent judges found that thedescriptions of the sketches matched (roughly 66% of the

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time) the characteristics of the site that was actually seenby the sender. (Remote-viewing experiments reportedfrom other laboratories, involving distances from half amile to several thousand miles, generally reported successrates of around 50%, considerably above random proba-bility. The most successful viewers appeared to be thosewho were relaxed, attentive, and meditative. They report-ed receiving a preliminary impression as a gentle andfleeting form that gradually evolved into an integratedimage. They experienced the image as a surprise, bothbecause it was clear to their perception and because it wasclearly elsewhere, in space and time, than the physicallocation of the experiment.)

Between 1964 and 1969, Stanley Krippner and asso-ciates carried out "dream ESP experiments" at MaimondesHospital in New York City." A volunteer spent the night atthe laboratory. He or she would meet the sender and theexperimenters on arrival, when the laboratory procedurewas explained. Electrodes were attached to the volunteer'shead to monitor EEG and eye movements. No further sen-sory contact occurred with the sender until the nextmorning. One of the experimenters threw dice that, incombination with a random number table, gave a numberthat corresponded to a sealed envelope containing an artprint. The envelope was opened when the sender reachedhis or her private room in a distant part of the hospital.The sender then spent the night concentrating on theprint. The experimenters woke the volunteers by intercomwhen the monitor showed the end of a period of rapideye-movement (REM) sleep. The subject was then askedto describe any dream he or she might have had beforeawakening. The comments were recorded, together withthe contents of an interview the next morning when thesubject was asked to associate with the remembereddreams. The interview was conducted in a double-blindfashion—neither the subject nor the experimenters knewwhich art print had been selected the night before.

Using data taken from the first night that each volun-teer spent at the dream laboratory, the series of experi-ments produced 62 nights of data for analysis. The datashowed a significant correlation between the art printselected for a given night and the recipient's dreams onthat night. The score was considerably higher on nightswhen there were few or no electrical storms in the areaand sunspot activity was at a low ebb—that is, when theEarth's geomagnetic field was relatively undisturbed.

Jacobo Grinberg-Zylverbaum, at the NationalUniversity of Mexico, studied transpersonal contact andcommunication in more than 50 experiments performedover 5 years.'*'' Subjects were inside sound-proof and elec-tromagnetic radiation-proof Earaday cages. He asked themto meditate together for 20 minutes. Then he placed thesubjects in separate Earaday cages where one of them wasstimulated and the other not. The stimuli appeared at ran-

dom intervals. The non-stimulated subject remainedrelaxed with eyes closed, while instructed to feel the pres-ence of the partner without knowing anything about hisor her stimulation. A series of 100 stimuli were applied—flashes of light, sounds, or short, intense (but not painful)electric shocks to the index and ring fingers of the righthand. The EEGs of both subjects were then synchronizedand examined for "normal" potentials evoked in the stim-ulated subject and "transferred" potentials in the non-stimulated subject. Transferred potentials were not foundin control situations where there was either no stimulatedsubject; or when a screen prevented the stimulated subjectfrom perceiving the stimuli (such as light flashes); orwhen the paired subjects did not previously interact.However, in experimental situations with stimulated sub-jects and with interaction, the transferred potentials con-sistently appeared in some 25% of the cases. Aparticularly poignant example was furnished by a youngcouple who were deeply in love. Their EEG patternsremained closely synchronized throughout the experi-ment, testifying to their report of feeling a deep oneness.In a limited way, Grinberg-Zylberbaum could replicate hisresults. When a subject exhibited the transferred poten-tials in one experiment, he or she usually exhibited themin subsequent experiments as well.

A related experiment investigated the degree of har-monization of the left and right hemispheres of the sub-ject's cortex.•'•'•"' In ordinary waking consciousness, the twohemispheres exhibited uncoordinated, randomly diverg-ing wave patterns in the EEG. When the subject entered ameditative state of consciousness, these patterns becamesynchronized. In deep meditation, the two hemispheresfell into a nearly identical pattern. Not only did the leftand right brains of the same subject manifest identicalpatterns, this was also the case with the left and rightbrains of different subjects. Experiments with up to 12subjects simultaneously showed an astonishing synchro-nization of the brain waves of the entire group.

These and other experiments provide significant evi-dence that identifiable and consistent electrical signalsoccur in the brain of one person when a second person,especially if he or she is closely related or emotionallylinked, is either meditating, or provided with sensorystimulation, or attempts to communicate with the sub-ject intentionally.'"""'

Laszlo notes reports of psychotherapists that, during asession, experience memories, feelings, attitudes, andassociations that are outside the usual scope of their expe-rience and personality.™ At the time these strange itemsare experienced, they are indistinguishable from the mem-ories, feelings, and related sentiments of the therapiststhemselves. It is only later, upon reflection, that theycome to realize that the anomalous items stem not fromtheir own life and experience, but from those of their

20- ADVANCES Spring 2005, VOL. 21 , NO. 1 Connectivity and Healing

patients. In the course of the therapeutic relationship,some aspect of the patient's psyche is projected into themind of the therapist. In that location, at least for a limit-ed time, it integrates with the therapist's own psyche andproduces an awareness of some of the patient's memories,feelings, and associations.

William Braud and Marilyn Schlitz carried out trialsregarding the impact of the mental imagery of senders onthe physiology of receivers (the latter were distant, andunaware that such imagery was being directed to them).''They reported that the mental images of the sendercaused changes in the physiology of the distant receiver—effects comparable to those that one's own mental process-es produced in one's own body. People who attempted toinfluence their own bodily functions were only slightlymore effective than those who attempted to influence thephysiology of others from a distance. The differencebetween remote influence and self-influence was almostinsignificant: "telesomatic" influence by a distant personproved to be nearly as effective as "psychosomatic" influ-ence by the same person.

HEALING—WHICH SELVES, WHICH WORLDS?People of antiquity saw, and today's indigenous people

see, human health and disease within the context of theworld in which the person is embedded, including theircosmic context." The indigenous view is like the systemsview which reacts to the classical scientific method by put-ting people back into the world in which they live, andseeing them as embedded and emerging in this world. (By"emerging," I mean new properties appearing that couldnot be predicted prior to their appearance.) Regarding theclassical scientific method, Laszlo v/rote that it "led to thefragmentation of our understanding of human beings. Inthe midst of all the complex special theories, we havegained little real insight into human nature itself.""

We are interested in expanding the world in whichhealing is viewed beyond the views created by classicalmethods. In this larger view, we are concerned with themultiple, interacting and interrelated worlds within whichpeople live. Classical medicine stops at the biologicalworld, ignoring the social world and role of humans ininterfacing and coordinating multiple worlds, includingthe natural world. "Interrelated worlds" means that all lev-els affect all other levels, which renders meaningless theconcept of independent variables and the separation of dis-ciplines from which conventional medicine views healing.

Having looked at the world in which healing occurs,we must also consider who is being healed. Laszlo arguesthat all systems show evidence of reactivity to elementsfrom the external world, and respond in an effort toincrease or decrease exposure to those elements." He usesthis assertion as a definition of subjectivity, arguing thathumans are not unique in having this property. Lazlo

writes, "We must end by acknowledging that subjectivityis possessed by all natural systems, although the grade ofsubjectivity differs from level to level and species tospecies ... There is no unique correlation between thenervous system and the capacity for subjective sensation."In this view, the subjects (including humans) are intercon-nected with each other and the world. We have aban-doned the notion of discrete human beings entirelyenclosed by their skin.

Laszlo maintains that studies of "non-ordinary realitymust also inform our understanding of the self."" Hedescribes the work of Stanislav Grof with "altered" statesof consciousness (ASC) induced by psychoactive drugsor breathing techniques ." Grof noted that ASCsembraced a large part of the human psyche; the states ofnormal waking consciousness being but the tip of theiceberg. Therefore, studies of non-ordinary reahty areimportant in understanding the person who heals andthe healing process. Over 100 years ago, William Jamesnoted, "Our normal waking consciousness ... is but onespecial type of consciousness, whilst all about it, partedfrom it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potentialforms of consciousness that were entirely different. Wemay go through life without suspecting their existence;but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they areall there in all their completeness."''^

People in ancient cultures (especially those of theOrient) were, and current indigenous cultures are, moreadept than contemporary modern people at enteringaltered states of consciousness. Today, we can find tribalpeople who are expert at altered states of consciousness. Itis, perhaps, no accident that healing seems to be morecommon in remote areas with less contact with moderncivilization, since people in those areas have retainedskills in attaining "altered states." Additionally, they aremore isolated from modern cultural views that healing isimpossible without drugs or surgery. Examples of suchpeoples include the !Kung Bushmen of the Kalaharidesert, aboriginal people of Australia, and Woodland Creepeople from northern Saskatchewan. Throughout theworld, indigenous peoples combine chanting, breathing,

'^drumming, rhythmic dancing, fasting, social and sensoryisolation, and even specific forms of physical pain toinduce altered states. The native cultures of Africa andpre-Colombian America use them in shamanic proce-dures, healing ceremonies, and rites of passage. The cul-tures of Asia use them in various systems of yoga,Vipassana, Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Vajrayana, Taoism, andSufism. The Semitic cultures used them in Kabbalah. OnlyWestern industrial civilization fails to hold these alteredstates of mind in high esteem. Western cultures tend todiscount these remarkable experiences.

When we enter an altered state, our connections toeach other and to our environment become more obvious.

Connectivily and Healing ADVANCES Spring 2005, VOL, 2]^ NO. 1

At these times, we tend to describe a loosening and melt-ing of the typical body boundaries. We may experiencemerging with another person in a state of unity and one-ness. We may report virtually complete identificationinvolving body image, physical sensations, emotionalreactions, attitudes, thought processes, memories, facialexpression, typical gestures and mannerisms, postures,movements, and even voice inflections.

Group identification and group consciousness is afurther extension of altered states. People become awareof being part of an entire group that shares some racial,cultural, national, ideological, political, or professionalcharacteristics. The depth, scope, and intensity of thisexperience can reach extraordinary proportions. Peoplemay experience the suffering of soldiers who have died onthe battlefield, the anguish of mothers who have lost chil-dren, or the love, tenderness, and dedication of saintswho tend to the sick and the suffering.

Identification with animals (including body image,specific physiological sensations, instinctual drives, uniqueperceptions of the environment, and corresponding, emo-tional reactions) can be authentic and convincing.

Identification with plants and botanical processesinclude complex experiences of becoming a tree, a wild •prairie rose, seaweed, an orchid, bacteria living within thehuman gut, or a palm tree on the shore. People even reportbecoming conscious of the totality of life on this planet.

In the "experience of inanimate matter and inorganicprocesses," people can identify with the Pacific Ocean, aforest fire in the Catalina Mountains, or the mountainitself. They can also identify with the forces of nature, aspresented in volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes,and other forces. People can identify with the micro-world, experiencing the dynamic structure of moleculesand atoms, inter-atomic bonds, electromagnetic forces,and subatomic particles.

In "planetary consciousness" the subject's conscious-ness expands to the Earth's geological substance andbiosphere, with all its life forms. The Earth as a wholeappears to be one complex organism, oriented toward itsown evolution, integration, and self-actualization."

In "extraterrestrial experiences," people experience'other celestial bodies and astronomical processes, travel-ing to the moon, sun, planets, stars, and galaxies. Theyexperience explosions of supernovas, contraction of stars,quasars and pulsars, and even passage through blackholes. At the widest (and comparatively rare) form of thisexperience—"identification with the entire physical uni-verse"—the person has the feeling that his or her con-sciousness encompasses the entire cosmos. All itsprocesses are experienced as part of the organism and psy-che of the all-encompassing universe-system.

"Out of body" experiences are also important to ourunderstanding of the worlds and subjectivities of healing.

Similar phenomena of clairvoyance, clairaudience (hear-ing the future), and telepathy are important;

Time-displacement experiences range jrom "embryon-al andjetal experiences," where the subject recalls hisor her intrauterine experiences as a jetus, through"ancestral experiences" (involving identi/ication withone's biological ancestors), "racial and collective expe-riences" (where those involved are not one's directancestors but members oj the same race), or some-times the entire human species..., all the way to "pastincarnation experiences." The essential characteristicoj the latter is a convinced sense oj rememberingsomething that had already happened to oneselj.Subjects maintain their sense oj individuality and per-sonal identity, but experience themselves in anotherjorm, at another place and time, and in another con-text. In these reincarnation-type experiences, the birthoj the individual appears as a point oj transjormation,where the enduring record oj multiple lijetimes entersthe bio-psychological lije oj the individuaU^'^'-"

The perceptions, and their cognitive interpretationsthat emerge during altered states of consciousness, canprovide instant and direct extrasensory access to other-wise unavailable information about our surroundings—local, global, or cosmic. The reports of these emergingperceptions introduce the possibility that divisions andboundaries in the universe are illusory and arbitrary. Insome philosophies, only a cosmic consciousness is postu-lated as what actually exists. In the Gaia Hypothesis, forexample, God is considered to be the largest possibleconsciousness; what emerges when everything is consid-ered as the largest possible entity, and we imagine thisentity to be conscious. Native Americans sometimes talkabout each of us being a small speck in the body of theCreator. Buddhists sometimes refer to a universal con-sciousness, or the Universe (everything, largest possiblesystem) being conscious itself.

tn reflecting on this concept, it strikes me that wecould conceive of ourselves as elements of the body ofGod or Creator in the same way that a red blood cellmight comprehend itself as a member of our body. Ofcourse, the elements of scale are, even still, so much moremassive for us (in relation to everything) than our redblood cell in relation to one of us, but the concept is stillsuitable for meditating on the theme of being a part of alarger whole—being embedded, or contained. Jung alsoprovides a psychology permissive of non-locality and theexpansion of awareness outside of the physical realms ofthe human body.'* He provided support for the idea thatthe "world and brain—cosmos and consciousness—areinterconnected by a continuous information-conservingand transmitting/ield"''.

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EMBEDDEDNESS OE CONSCIOUSNESSAND EXPERIENCE

The quantum concept of embeddedness resemblesGoffman's concept of the frame. Goffman wrote:

Activity jramed in a particular way—especially col-lectively organized social activity—is ojten markedojj jrom the ongoing jlow oj surrounding events by aspecial set oj boundary markers or brackets oj a con-ventionalized kind. These occur bejore and after theactivity in time and may be circumscriptive in space;in brie/, there are temporal and spatial brackets.These markers, like the wooden jrame oj a picture,are presumably neither part oj the content oj activityproper nor part oj the world outside the activity butrather both inside and outside....One may speak,then, oj opening and closing temporal brackets andbounding spatial brackets. The standard example isthe set oj devices that has come to be employed inWestem dramaturgy: at the beginning, the lights dim,the bell rings, and the curtain rises; at the other end,the curtain jails and the lights go on.*''' ^ '

Goffman's frame represents a kind of fluidic boundarybetween the system contained and the containing system.One "frame" for an individual is the family A "frame" for afamily is the extended kinship system in traditional soci-eties, or a looser network of friendship circles in modern.Western societies. But unhke earlier versions of systemstheory applied to the human condition, quantum physicshas destroyed the neat metaphor of boxes within boxes,each larger box nicely containing the smaller box.Quantum physics reveals an absence of clear boundariesbetween "boxes" or frames, with multiple intersections anda breakdown of the classical notion of hierarchy. We are allcontaminating each others' frames. We are embeddedwithin each others' systems in ways we cannot even guess.The human drama exists within the biogeographical frame,referring to nature and the specific geographical region inwhich our particular human drama of interest unfolds.

Laszlo, for example, could not see individuals asmeaning-makers apart from the social milieus or systemsin which they "construct" meaning. Goffman wrote thatwe bring our interpretations to any social circumstance,and, with them, our sense of what our part should be inthat circumstance. Goffman said, "A teammate is some-one whose dramaturgical co-operation one is dependentupon in fostering a given definition of thesituation...."'*"p'"' Laszlo, likewise, would say that ourinterpretation of a social circumstance is forged by ourparticipation or embeddedness in that social system. Thesystem itself emerges through the coherence of individu-als who belong to that systein. The system maintainsitself through the connectivities of individuals who are

embedded within it and who forge it. Embeddedness ismore complete than being "framed."

Heahng is difficult to understand because of thisembeddedness. If we are all interlaced with each otherand have something to say about each others' conditions(including health and disease), then we are all responsiblefor sudden shifts in health and disease, though in whatway is often a guess. The nice linear cause-and-effect rela-tionships so desired by modern medicine and biology rap-idly break down in the bog of healing. We have toabandon our quest for simple explanations and certaintywhen we embrace embeddedness.

The term "framing" arises from the theatre and fromart, while "embeddedness" arises from physics. Hence, wecan create an equivalency between the metaphor of thetheatre and the metaphor of physics—the essence of sys-temic understanding that common processes underlieoperations within systems. Goffman saw framing as a con-stitutive act that people accomplish through their interac-tion. He saw attunement in understanding and purpose ascoordinating social interaction. Laszlo complements thisby grounding this attunement in the concept of coherenceand embeddedness, and showing how this is a character-istic of all systems, not just human systems. Goffman sawattunement as coming from participants meeting "systemrequirements" (demonstrating that they were capable ofparticipating within the frame). Laszlo makes the individ-ual less primary in that process. The system imposes itsrequirements or constraints upon its members who natu-rally adjust to comply. Attunement and coherence bothresult from and create shared membership.

Goffman also describes what Laszlo calls systemicevolution—when systems find themselves far from equi-librium conditions, and transform. This is what we com-monly call healing. Goffman says, "There are otherarrangements to draw on.... In these circumstances, thewhole framework of conversational constraints—both sys-tem and ritual—can become something to honor, toinvert, or to disregard, depending on the mood thatstrikes. On these occasions, it's not merely that the lidcan't be closed; but that there is no box.""'p""* In Laszlo'sterms, the system reaches such a far-from-equilibriumcondition that it reorganizes itself. It transforms, re-invents itself, heals. It basically reconstitutes itself.

New properties emerge from this transformation.Laszlo's perspective on evolution, similar to what 1 amproposing about healing, is that leaps happen suddenly—not through Darwin's progressive process of natural selec-tion," but abruptly, dramatically, in a hurry. This isconsistent with current findings of evolutionary biology.To some of us, it seems parsimonious and aesthetic whenevolutionary biology meshes with Goffman's sociology.When disparate roads converge, we feel that we are reallyheading somewhere. Others believe that it is appropriate

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and desirable to keep levels of explanation separate.Explanations (stories) can work on one level without ref-erence to any other level. Be that as it may, there are thoseof us who are integrators. We want to find stories thatwork on several levels. We seek stories that explain thecorrelations among levels of explanation. Explanatory plu-ralism does not mean that we must eschew multi-levelexplanations, but rather that no one level of discourse isinherently superior to another.

HEALtNG AND CULTUREWe are stuck with being part of a culture and must

work within it. Stepping outside of any culture is not pos-sible. Laszlo writes:

It seems that the self-monitoring capacities oj the humannervous system, coupled with its sensitivity to the envi-ronment, emancipated us jrom the conjines oj sensoryreality and placed us within a world we ourselves creat-ed. There is no evidence to support the claim that anevolved culture has biological survival value, norjor thedijjerent claim, that once biological survival is assured,the inevitable next step is culture. To hold that humanculture is a goal inscribed on the banners oj bioloffcalevolution is without joundation.'^

While having a culture cannot be escaped, the formsand structures that the many cultures of the world take isnot given. It does not arise from essential forms or arche-types that drive us to create from our psyches. It is ourarbitrary creation. Laszlo continues:

Once we started to use reason in some things, webecame stuck with our rationality. And when we evolvedthe capacity to substitute ima^native satisjactions jorreal ones, we also became saddled with the capacity tojeel, envisage, and to believe. It became as impossible toretum to the state oj nature as it was jor Adam and Eveto return to Paradise—a myth which expresses thisinsight in metaphorical terms....The means became theends: the selj-maintaining biological species was trans-jormed into a cultural species sensitive to knowledge,beauty, jaith, and morality...Our evolutionary historydetermined that we become a cultural creature, but didnot determine what kind oj culture we would have.Hence, our problem today is not whether to have a cul-ture; it is what kind oj culture to have.

There is one set ojjactors which exercises determininginjluence, jor it is (fiis set which injluences the growth,persistence, or decay oj any particular kind oj technolo-gy, law, and communication. This is the set oj valuesprevalent in a society. Cultures are, in thejinal analysis,value-guided systems....Cultures satisjy not bodily

needs, but value needs. Values dejine cultural man'sneed jor rationality, meanin^lness in emotional expe-rience, richness oj ima^nation, and depth oj jaith. Allcultures respond to such suprabiolo^cal values. But inwhat jorm they happen to do so depends upon the spe-cijic kinds oj values people happen to have.''^

Laszlo uses the concept of values to tie the behavior ofcultural systems to other systems. All systems pursue val-ues. Even Bateson's thermostat pursues the value of keep-ing the temperature constant. The universe pursues thevalue of maintaining the cosmological parameters in a nar-row, constant range. The earth pursues the value of tem-perature regulation and chmate control. Human systemspursue self-created values. In You Can Change the World,Laszlo writes about the nearly lethal values that our cur-rent cultural systems are pursuing: the value of unlimitedindustrial and economic growth as necessary; the value ofunlimited consumption, the fundamentalist worship ofmarket forces without constraint or regulation; the value ofpursuing wealth and its increase at all cost; the value ofpursuing "peace" through military means, etc." Laszlo'sunderstanding of the way that individuals get caught intothe pursuit of these values mirrors Foucault's description ofhow people become constituents of power-knowledge sys-tems or Goffman's description of the experience of mem-bership in a frame. We do what we're supposed to. Howelse can we explain ordinary people committing the atroci-ties of the Native American genocide in North America, themassive and tortuous executions of the SpanishInquisition, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, and thecurrent suicide bombings. Goffman would say that we ful-fill our roles with some measure of individual variation.

Becoming aware of our roles, and the values that weassist the larger systems to pursue, can facilitate the heal-ing process. In becoming aware of those roles, we canrebel and change our participation. This change can leadto an internal reorganization and even transformation, inour relational self and, therefore, our physiology. This isthe path to healing.

HEALING AND TRUTH

Alfred North Whitehead wrote:

The universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than theselj-satisjied dogmatism with which mankind at eachperiod ojits history cherishes the delusion ojthejinal-ity oj its existing modes oj knowledge. Skeptics andbelievers are all alike. At this moment, scientists andskeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in detailis admitted: jundamental novelty is barred. This dog-matic common sense is the death oj philosophicaladventure. The Universe is vast.*'

24 ADVANCES Spring 2005, VOL. 21, NO. 1 Conneclivity and Healing

William James (quoted in Roy**) wrote:

// there is anything that human history demonstrates, itis the extreme slowness with which the academic andcritical mind acknowledges jacts to exist [that] presentthemselves as wild jacts, with no stajf or pigeon-hole, oras jacts [that] threaten to break up the accepted system.

Lao-tze wrote, "A good scientist had freed himself ofconcepts and keeps his mind open to what is,"*"' whileAristotle wrote, "Nor again must we in all matters demandan explanation of the reason why things are what they are;in some cases, it is enough if the fact that they are so issatisfactorily established."™

We cannot know the ultimate truth about healing, orperhaps there is no ultimate truth to know. Healing isdiverse and context-dependent. We are limited to obser-vations from particular measurement systems that gener-ate explanatory hypotheses (stories) to refute or confirmwith further observations or tests of hypotheses. BothPopper and Godel argued persuasively that nothing canever be proven.^' Foucault wrote about how constructedideas come to achieve "truth" status, with these "truths"then acting to set standards of "normalization" and toinfluence how people shape their lives.**

tS HEALtNG POST-STRUCTURAL?Post-structuralism is marked by the rejection of total-

izing, essentiaiist, foundationalist concepts. A totalizingconcept puts all phenomena under one explanatory con-cept (for example, genetic determinism or moleculardeterminism). An essentiaiist concept posits a reality thatexists independent of, beneath or beyond, our culture,biology, and other constraints. Essentialists, for instance,believe that there is such a thing as human nature andthat a single truth exists that can be discovered. Ajounda-tionalist concept suggests that there are stable systems ofmeaning that describe a world of fact that is isomorphicwith human thought.

Medicine, of course, is currently modern and struc-tural in its belief in totalizing concepts, essentialism, andfoundationalism. These beliefs prevent an adequate studyof healing. The totalizing concept of medicine is that all ofhealth and disease is ultimately explained by genetics. Itsessentialism is biological—that a basic biology exists inde-pendent or beneath culture, our lives, and all of our otherconstraints. Its foundationalism is expressed in its beliefthat there is one way to heal, and that multiple, differentpathways vitiate the phenomenon.

As I have previously said, healing is not reducible togenetics. It is not based upon a biology that is independ-ent from spirituality, culture, family, and other effects.There appear to be multiple ways to heal, most of themidiosyncratic to the entity being healed. The multiple

ways are better presented by telling stories than by listingfacts, as our indigenous healers always knew.

1 suggest we challenge medicine's assumption thatthe biological reality is independent of the human experi-ence. Natural systems share certain goals—that the sys-tem should continue, even re-create itself or make copiesof itself; that the system needs to maintain its anti-entropic, far-from-equilibrium position; that the systeminteracts with its milieu to change the milieu to improveits energy distribution functions. Human systems per-form these operations. How they perform them—the par-ticulars—or what we call "culture" is an arbitrarycreation, a construction arising from existing conditionsof which there could be infinite variations. These variousconstructions all have biological consequences and impli-cations, which is what requires an individualizing of bio-logical science to really consider healing.

While the quantum-wave equation and the unified-field theory (string theory) could be contained within thatequation, our life experiences take place within particular-ized decompositions of the wave equation into individualrealities, which are not determinate. Only the whole isdeterminate and at a level beyond our comprehension(quantum-wave equations can be solved for only the sim-plest cases). Quantum physics describes a reality so vastas to contain everything and to be beyond description,except mathematically Quantum physics is anti-founda-tionalist. Stability is a joke. Heisenberg (with his uncer-tainty principle) taught us that the only certainty isuncertainty. Einstein's relativity theory taught us theimpossibility of finding an absolute reference point fromwhich to make measurements. These are the considera-tions relevant to the study of healing.

Independence is an illusion in a post-structuralworld. Only inter-dependence exists. Essentialism positsindependent or transcendent concepts. Even the equa-tions of quantum physics are just descriptions or stories ofa universe (mulriverse in Max Tegmark's terminology") inwhich we are hopelessly embedded. Mathematics qualifiesas a language in that regard—it has grammar and syntax.It tells a story to those who can speak the language.Quantum biologists consider these phenomena responsi-ble for our capacity to even think. We cannot escape.Goffman emphasized the impossibility of consideringhuman behavior and actions apart from the stage or frameupon which, or in which, they occur. Healing cannot bestudied in isolation from the frame or stage in which itoccurs. (I suspect this is true for all biological treatments,but we don't tend to study pharmaceuticals and theirresponses from this perspective).

The ultimate constraints are the cosmological param-eters that determine the shape of the universe. Thephilosopher, Ashok Gangadean wrote that the experienceof independence is an illusion of predicating thought, the

Connectivity and Healing ADVANCES Spring 2005, VOL. 21 , NO. 1 25

artificial division of perceiver and perceived." If we areinextricably embedded and entangled in nature, anythought of separating us from nature is absurd. Our verylives and consciousnesses may have arisen as an emergentproperty (Endnote 2) of nature's internal dialogue.

Post-structuralism contests the view of "man" pre-sented by enlightenment thought and idealist philosophy.The enlightenment view holds that "individuals" aresacred, separate, and intact; their minds the only truerealm of meaning and value; their rights individual andinalienable; their value and nature rooted in a universaland trans-historical essence—a metaphysical being. Thepost-structural view holds that people are culturally anddiscursively structured, created in interaction as situated,symbolic beings. The common term for a person so con-ceived is a "subject." Each subject is embedded, meaningthat we are inseparable from our context—biological, geo-logical, sociological, and spiritual.

The explanations people give about healing are sus-pect. The sociologist, Goffman said:

What is presented by the individual conceming himselfand his world is so much an abstraction, a selj-dejen-sive argument, a carejul selection jrom a multitude ojacts, that the best that can be done with this sort ojthing is to say that it is a lay dramatists's scenarioemploying himself as a character and a somewhat sup-portable reading oj the past.''''

People's descriptions or explanations of their ownhealings are similar. Eundamentally, healing or internalreorganization and transformation operates throughmeans that are invisible to us and whose understanding ispoorly attainable at best.

The pathway to healing for the individual is contin-gent upon the larger systems to which he or she belongs.Individuals are completely interconnected and non-local.Subjects are created through interactions of relationships,and occupy various culturally-based sites of meaning (asfamily members, as occupationally and economically andregionally defined, as gendered and of sexual orientation,as members of clubs or clients of psychotherapy or presi-dents of their Parent Teacher Organization—every siteevoking a different configuration of the self, different lan-guage uses, different foci of value and energy, differentsocial practices, and so forth). Each subject will have adifferent pathway to healing, depending upon these facts.

Subjects are embodied and present in the physicalworld, entrenched in the material practices and structuresof their society—working, playing, procreating, living asparts of the material systems of society. Subjects are socialin origin, taking meaning, value, and self-image from theiridentity groups, their activities in society, their intimaterelations, and from the multiple pools of common mean-

ings, symbols, and practices they share variously with theirsubcultural groups and with their society as a larger unit.

Post-structuralism sees "reality" as being much morefragmented, diverse, tenuous, and culture-specific than doesstructuralism, with some of the following consequences:

• post-structuralism's greater attention tospecific histories

• a greater emphasis on the body; the actual insertionof the human into the texture of time and history

• a greater attention to the specifics of culture, and tothe arenas of discourse and cultural practice

• a greater attention to the role of language andcontext in our construction of reality and identity

My argument is that these different emphases areessential for the study of healing. We must attend to eachspecific story of healing as if there were no other. We mustconsider how biological change is contextual and depend-ent upon the actual multi-dimensional placement (time,location, culture) of a human body into a particular timeand history. We must pay greater attention to the role ofculture and its practices as relevant to our discourse abouthealing, and we must look at the constitution of identi-ties—those who are well and those who are sick. We mustask the question, how do these differences (sickness andwellness) come about?

SOME CONCLUDtNG HYPOTHESESI proposed the following hypotheses in the beginning

of this essay:

• Human disease and illness and its progression ordisappearance, is context dependent—it dependsupon the network of relationships into which theparticular individual is embedded, and it dependsupon cultural and social factors yet to be deter-mined. Disease is not purely biological or genetic.

• Systems are self-healing (self-correcting), demon-strate emergent properties, and are capable of develop-ing unique, novel outcomes that are not relevant orapplicable to any other system.

• Healing can result from the internal reorganizationof a system. Information transfer that facilitates thisreorganization may be more important than the pro-vision of external agents.

Now we can develop those hypotheses further.

Since people are connected, embedded, and entan-gled, their physiological processes are influenced by sys-tems outside of the conventional limits posed by modernbiology. Healing is actually internal-systems reorganizationoccurring at far-from-equilibrium conditions, and is

26 ADVANCES Spring 2005, VOL. 21, NO. 1 Conneclivity and Healing

dependent upon the historical, socio-cultural, and geolog-ical matrix into which the person is embedded. Thematrix provides the conditions for intemal reorganizationto occur. The common observation that healing requires acommunity recognizes that the thoughts and beliefs ofthose to whom we are connected cohere with ours to pro-duce a sustained output that influences everyone's physi-ology. Our cells are "in-formed," as Laszlo describes in hisConnectivity Hypothesis, by fields of information createdby our mutual entanglement. Biological responsivenesscannot be understood separately from this context intowhich we are planted.

Systems, including human systems, undergo remark-able intemal reorganizations when they are far from equi-librium and as their contexts shift. Healing is ourordinary-language way of talking about these dramaticshifts. Because of the idiosyncrasy of these internal shifts,related to pre-existing organization (also called history)and to the new contexts that are being formed, formulasto predict healing are doomed to fail. Each system mustbe considered by its own merits. We can develop a differ-ent kind of science—a descriptive, hermeneutic method-ology in which we learn how to study the process oftransformation, how to recognize when conditions areripe for transformation, and how to predict when trans-formation will occur, even if we cannot know what theresult of that transformation will look like. We leam howto ask the right questions to discover how specific systemstransform. Perhaps a science of necessary and sufficientconditions can emerge. Perhaps we can leam to recognizesystems that are too close to equilibrium for sudden, dra-matic reorganization to form. Perhaps we can leam howto assist systems to question prevailing assumptions andallegiances so that transformation becomes more likely.

When we shift our focus from the action of externalagents to the flow and organization of all kinds of infor-mation, we arrive at a radical new science that is morequantal than mechanical. We can come to understandhow small interventions for far-from-equilibrium systemsprovoke reorganization, while large interventions for sys-tems close to equilibrium have no effect. We can only gainthat understanding through hearing the stories of systemsthat change and systems that don't change, perhaps bring-ing them together to consider similarities and differences,to compai"e each other's contexts. I propose that this workwill further the conventional natural systems by bringinga context to biology, and allowing us to better understandwhy some people respond to treatment and others do not.

Instead of ignoring the natural sciences, we contex-tualize them. In doing this, we find a basis for the scien-tific study of healing. Through our progressivebroadening of context or frame, we may encounter otherprovocative hypotheses, including the idea that the geo-logical region in which we are embedded conditions and

influences the shapes and forms that our thoughts (art,writing, science) take, helping to explain differences inthe music, shapes, and rituals of the earth's geographicregions. How far embeddedness will go as a hypothesisremains to be determined.

Once we have come to appreciate this, we can under-stand why healing is not rational, why we need new sci-ence to study healing, and why one-size-does-not-fit-all toexplain healing. We can look at systems of healing andhow they provide infonnation for component parts of sys-tems to reorganize themselves, and can understand thepivotal role of dialogue (in all of its definitions) in thisprocess. Then, I think, we will stop arguing about the effi-cacy of individual techniques and will abandon our obses-sion with the randomized, controlled trial (or even theidea that we can control anything at all). We will thenadopt methods of current physics and systems engineer-ing to study systems that are moving toward transforma-tion so that we can leam how to influence those processesto move in the directions we prefer (health and wellness),rather than toward the directions we do not prefer (illnessand disease).

Endnotest. Systems, in this conlexi, refers lo wholes that are greater than the sum of

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explanation that cannot be anticipated or predicted from interacting systems,except to point to the role of intemal reo!;ganization of elements of the systemin producing novel hehavior or properties that could not have heen anticipated.

3. An attractor basin is a "valley of energy" in which stability lies, and fromwhich energy is required to move over the pass into another "energetic valley."

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