Over the years I have had several spiritual experiences. One was with the healer Olga Worrall. I had injured my leg training for a marathon. It was very painful and not responding to rest or therapy. At an American Holistic Medical Association conference Olga was a guest speaker. My wife told me to ask her to heal me. I was embarrassed to ask and very frankly a non-believer. Nevertheless, my wife pushed me forward, and Olga sat me down in a chair and placed her two hands on my leg. The heat from her hands was incredible. I remember putting my hands on the opposite leg to compare the heat sensation. There was no sense of warmth from my hands coming through the dungarees. When Olga was done, I stood up and was completely healed. The pain was gone, and I could walk normally.
Another time Olga and I spoke at the funeral of a mutual friend. After the ceremony we were standing in a deserted hallway when she asked, “Are you Jewish?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Because,” she explained, “there are two rabbis standing next to you.” She went on to tell me their names and describe their garments, which included their prayer shawls and caps. Her description of them was exactly what I saw in one of my meditation and imagery sessions when I had met these figures while walking on my path.
Another evening after I gave a lecture, which felt like someone else was giving it and I was simply verbalizing it for them, a woman came up to me and said, “Standing in front of you for the entire lecture was a man, and I drew his picture for you.” Her description matched exactly the face and features of my inner guide whom I see when I meditate or am in a trace state. I still have the picture hanging in our home.
A few years ago I was telling a friend about how busy I was, and she asked, “Why are you living this life?” Her intention was to get me to slow down and travel less, but her question sent me into a trance, and I immediately saw myself with a sword in my hand killing people. My first thought was that I had become a surgeon in this life to use a knife to heal and not kill.
I spontaneously went into a trance again a few days later and saw myself living the life of a knight who killed because he feared his lord and what he would do to him if he didn’t carry out his commands. I watched myself kill my wife, in this life, and her dog and was devastated by the experience. But at the same time it revealed to me why my wife’s face has always had a hypnotic effect upon me and why I am so involved in rescuing animals.
Most recently one of our cats disappeared when a door was left open. After several weeks with no sign of her, I was sure she was killed by a predator. I sought the help of my friend Amelia Kinkade, an animal intuitive who lives in Los Angeles. We live in Connecticut, and Amelia has never been to our home or near it. I pestered her to tell me where the cat was, and one day I received an e-mail without even having sent Amelia a picture of the cat. It detailed the house, yard, other animals, and people who were involved in the cat’s life. The next day I went out and found the cat exactly where Amelia said it was hiding.
She told me in the e-mail, “The cat is alive because I can see through its eyes.”
If that doesn’t make me a believer, nothing will. I totally believe that consciousness is nonlocal and not limited to the body. I also have experienced this through the drawings and dreams of patients I have cared for which allows them to know their diagnosis and what the future holds for them. As Jung said, “The future is unconsciously prepared long in advance and therefore can be guessed by clairvoyants.”
I believe it is this unconscious awareness which we each bring with us when we are born. So I do not believe we literally live many lives but that we bring with us the experience of previous lives which are impregnated into us. Thus the wiser we get, the better the future will be for those who follow us.
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About Dr. Bernie S. Siegel
Dr. Siegel, who prefers to be called Bernie, retired from practice as an assistant clinical professor of general and pediatric surgery at Yale in 1989. In 1978 he originated Exceptional Cancer Patients, a specific form of individual and group therapy utilizing patients’ drawings, dreams, images, and feelings. ECaP is based on “carefrontation,” a safe, loving therapeutic confrontation, which facilitates personal lifestyle changes, personal empowerment, and healing of the individual’s life. The physical, spiritual, and psychological benefits which followed led to his desire to make everyone aware of his or her healing potential.
He is the author of several bestselling books including Love, Medicine & Miracles; How to Live between Office Visits, Prescriptions for Living, 365 Prescriptions for the Soul, and his latest is Faith, Hope & Healing. His prediction is that in the next decade the role of consciousness, spirituality, nonlocal healing, body memory, and heart energy will all be explored as scientific subjects.
In 1978 he began talking about patient empowerment and the choice to live fully and to die in peace. As a physician who has cared for and counseled innumerable people whose mortality has been threatened by an illness, Bernie embraces a philosophy of living and dying that stands at the forefront of the medical ethics and spiritual issues our society grapples with today. He continues to assist in the breaking of new ground in the field of healing and personally struggling to live the message of kindness and love. For more information, please visit www.BernieSiegelMD.com.
Down the River
Diane Goble
Oregon
That summer in 1971 I was with my husband and children in the mountains of northern Georgia while he was working with the camera crew of the movie “Deliverance.” On weekends some of the cast and crew and their families would take the rafts out on the river for a little rest and relaxation.
They filmed on the same part of the Chattooga River we rafted on, and of the eight of us on this particular Sunday afternoon, four of us, including my husband and me, had rafted down this stretch before.
But the river was different this time—low from several days of no rain. Different paths had to be taken through the many rapids.
On the last set of rapids at Woodall Shoals, we made an almost fatal mistake. The raft I was in got turned around, went over a four-foot drop backwards, and became stuck there by the churning action of the water.
The raft was trapped in a hydraulic, a churning white-water phenomena, which held the raft against the rocks. The raft would fill with water and then buck, throwing everything inside out. Sue was thrown clear and washed downstream. I was thrown out and got caught between the raft and the rocks with the force of the river pouring down on my head and the suction of the hydraulic motion pulling me under. Skip and Wally were still inside the raft grasping my arm and trying to pull me back into the raft, but the most they could do was enable me to catch an occasional quick breath before the water sucked me back down. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place!
Very consciously and calmly, I knew I was going to die; it was just a matter of how. Since being smashed into the rocks was painful, I decided drowning was the better choice. The next time my head popped out of the water, with my last breath I yelled to whoever was holding my arm to let go, and he did. I felt the water pull me under, and I relaxed into it. I knew there was no point in struggling as I breathed in the water, and everything went black. For a moment . . .
The next thing I knew I was a hundred feet above the river, looking down at the raft stuck against