The Kober Press

Bô Yin Râ:
The Gift of Healing

Bust of Bô Yin Râ
The following is a translation of a chapter from a book by Bô Yin Râ, titled Wegweiser (Signs Along the Way), published in 1928. The copyright to the German original is held by Kober Verlag AG, Bern, Switzerland. Copyright to this English translation is held by B.A. Reichenbach, 1996. All rights reserved.

"Now when the multitude saw it, they were filled with awe, and they glorified God, who had given such power to mortals."
Matthew 9:8
There were reports concerning a Maori in New Zealand, who was performing quite unheard of acts of healing. The man is said to be a baptized Christian and will demand of those who seek his help that they attribute their recovery to no one but the Holy Trinity-- to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Indeed, he warned a person's cure would not persist if ever that required faith were to diminish in the patient.

The Christian world in turn regarded this Maori's work as solid confirmation of its dogma.

Then there appeared, in Europe, Émile Coué, who required of his patients nothing more than that they simply trust the power of their own imagination. And he achieved results that were no less "miraculous."

And recently, there once again was news of yet another healer, reported to be causing various kinds of illnesses to disappear by merely laying on of hands.

This time it is a Buddhist monk, allegedly from China, arousing awe and pious reverence in India, a land where "miracles" are anything but scarce.

As he alone is no more able to lay his hands on all the sick that come to him, he has "transferred" his healing power to five among his pupils.

Judging by the news accounts, observers are unable to deny that the reported healings are authentic. As a result, the public, as is the rule in all such cases, finds itself confronted by an inexplicable enigma.

Every now and then, of course, one hears about stupendous things occurring in East Asia. Yet on closer inspection, as a rule not much is left to marvel at, even though the first reports invariably derive from "thoroughly trustworthy eyewitnesses."

Still, what is related of that Buddhist monk is not by any means so wondrous strange that one would have to doubt it as a matter of pure caution.

A great deal more surprising is, instead, the fact that time and again one looks upon such healings with incredulous amazement, and seems quite at a loss for explanations. Indeed, some are inclined to doubt even É Coué, a highly personable, completely unpretentious gentleman, who certainly has never draped himself in a magician's cloak and aura.

Admittedly, Coué himself spoke only of "autosuggestion," while in reality one here is dealing with specific energies that merely are set free by means of self-suggestion. Nonetheless, the essence of his own attempts to give an explanation is contained in the idea that the effective agent of such healings are energies that every human being does possess within.

In fact, however, no physician on this earth is able to effect a cure in anything, except by his creating the conditions that will allow those energies to manifest their natural force. Nor does it matter how he brings this state about, or whether he makes use of chemical or surgical procedures.

That view, of course, is nothing new, as one has long since been content with the simplistic explanation that the physician can but stimulate the healing force of nature, yet otherwise is capable of little more, even when he uses the most potent medication, or will remove an ailing limb or organ.

However, there is more involved in this than one suspects. And thus one should not take Monsieur Coué's engagingly self-deprecating gesture of himself not having anything to do at all with what occurs in healing, but that he only taught his patients how they could heal themselves, as a disclosure of unquestionable fact. Even if Coué himself had been convinced of the correctness of this view.

In reality, however, it always and in every instance is the healer's personality which acts as the decisive factor. And this applies not only to the method of "autosuggestion"--now made popular by Coué, though for half a century already practiced in the United States by the proponents of the so-called New Thought movement--but also to faith healing, to laying on of hands, and likewise even to medical and surgical interventions.

There is no doubt that human will, especially in its most potent force, as formative imagination, that is to say, the faculty of giving shape to thought, is able to accomplish veritable "miracles." And that is also true when one is seeking to set free those inner healing powers, which act as automatically directed regulators in every human organism, but which are paralyzed at once by even the most subtle interference by the mind. As a result, it is of critical importance to discover how one may best remove the shackles which such mental interference will impose.

Yet in addition, we here are dealing with realities that manifest themselves wherever life reveals its presence; namely, in the active self-expression of opposite polarities. In the present case, one of these poles is found in the instinctive impulse toward malignant deformation, present in the cells of the afflicted organism, while the other pole is active in the spiritual will--not just the mental "wish"--toward physical recovery.

In the process of self-healing, it thus becomes an indispensable condition that the patient actively objectify his will toward getting well; that is to say, transform its energy into a type of outside force, in order to secure the necessary tension between the organism's impulse toward disease and, on the other hand, the human spirit's will toward health.

To accomplish this, however, is not always very easy; at times it may be actually impossible. By contrast, the demands made on a patient are lowered to a minimum as soon as the effective spiritual will toward health--toward reestablishment of order within the organism's presently disordered elements--is brought to bear upon the person, at least at the beginning, from an outside source, which thus awakens, by virtue of external influence, the patient's own inherent will and causes it to strive toward the intended goal.

This external spiritual energy may sometimes take the form of a collective will, such as one finds it at religious shrines, but it can equally proceed from a particular individual In the latter case, all will depend on the respective person's innate power to transfer this "healing" will to the receptive minds of others.

It is well known that, in the field of medical care, one finds innumerable instances of certain treatments proving remarkably successful in the hands of some physicians, while others, who are no less competent, regard the selfsame methods as of little worth.

Neither the most comprehensive knowledge, nor even years of practical experience can count as a sufficient substitute for the innate endowment that sets apart authentic healers. Only those should, thus, consider the field of caring for the sick as a professional career who clearly have experienced their ability to transfer and impart to other minds that spiritual will toward health, which then restores whatever is defective and diseased.

All purely scientific interest in the internal structure of the human organism and its many pathologically conditioned transmutations justifies no more than a career in technical research, which then may indirectly be of greatest benefit to many patients. Notwithstanding this, however, the medical profession should clearly differentiate between a member's talent to pursue research and his potential gift for healing.

Both capacities are innate gifts and neither one can ever be acquired in its perfect form. Still, there may be not a few physicians who, while clearly born to do research, are obligated to maintain a practice. And so they make a virtue of necessity, because compassion urges them help, and circumstances led them to that calling. But in this way they even may at times achieve remarkable success in healing.

The concurrence of both talents in a single individual is so extremely rare that in the present context it is of no significance.

As for studying diseases observable in patients, which science clearly cannot do without, one surely could find ways to make this study possible, even if researchers were to leave the work of treating patients in the hands of genuine healers.

There is no shortage of born healers in our midst. And if today one can already put to use the most elaborate mechanical devices in order to determine whether someone does possess the needed aptitude to operate a locomotive on a railroad, or shows sufficient promise for some other technical profession, one surely might be able to discover, already in medical school, whether the strength of the future physician lies more in pursuing research or in practical healing.

It then would hardly any longer happen that some mysterious wonder-worker could gain a reputation as a healer of all manner of diseases, which schooled and trained physicians cannot cure, because they are not born with that specific gift.

A real healer, on the other hand, will be successful with whatever method he may use, and his acquired scholarship will always be amended by experienced intuition.

Until one comes to recognize, however, that the true physician must, above all else, be born as an authentic healer, all modern forms of treatment, all medical reforms in therapy will bear but little fruit. And time and again it will occur that all the world looks up in awe when somewhere an authentic healer should appear, while at the same time public confidence in the predominantly scientific orientation of the medical profession continues to erode.

The cause of this distrust, however, lies in the unfailing instinct of the public, which can sense the presence of a healing power in a person born with that endowment. Nor does that instinct care much whether such a healer might possess the scholarly credentials to analyze his operations scientifically.

People who are sick desire one thing only: to be cured. They would not merely find attention as "interesting cases." Although they well may be for the researcher, the healer must not ever see them in that light.