Relevant to this Foreword is the challenge in Bragdon's book. How can we not start a center to study and disseminate widely what is learned about these Spiritist Centers. It may help our health care system, but even more importantly it may help our whole culture of disbelief.
Rustum Roy, PhD.
January, 2004
Chairman: Friends of Health
Introduction
In the Spring of 2001 I visited a Kardecist Spiritist Center, called the Casa de Dom Inacio, in Abadiania, Brazil. It was my first experience of "Kardecismo"a spiritual community center patterned after life principles compiled by Allan Kardec (1804 -1869), from channeled teachings. His books are written to help us live by principles that accelerate personal spiritual evolution and healing.
David Hess, an anthropologist, professor, and author, wrote two booksl about Kardec's Spiritism. He sums it up this way: Kardec's doctrine includes beliefs that we associate with esoteric traditions (the astral body, vital fluids, and spirit communication through mediums), East Indian philosophy (reincarnation and karma), reformed Protestant theology (the interpretation of heaven and hell as psychological states), Catholicism (emphasizing spiritual hierarchies who gain position through their stage of spiritual purity), social reformism (emphasizing equality, progress, freedom of thought and education); as well as modern science (parapsychology, metaphysics, the new physics, and the study of subtle energy applied to healing).
A wonderful outline of the philosophy, but Hess did not fully acknowledge the way it has been translated into action. In the following pages you will read about the effectiveness of Kardec's centers. The healing being done, charity being given, and education for life being shared, all of which suggests ways we can improve our own system for health management.
Some Centers have kept general records summarizing how many people have been helped with each service provided and what the success rate is in helping people recover from drug or alcohol addiction. A hospital administrator who teaches classes at the Brazilian Spiritist Federation in San Paulo claims they have a 95% success rate in helping addicts recover from dependency on drugs or alcohol2. When you read about Centro in Chapter Seven, you will read that 87% of people attending that Center claim to receive measurable healing of physical conditions ranging from minor pain to cancer. 70% report great improvement, or a cure. This information was published in a nationally circulated Brazilian magazine, Planeta, in April, 20023. Of course, these statistics are very meaningful and encourage anyone interested in health and healing to take a closer look at what makes Kardecismo so effective.
Approaching my first visit to a rural Kardecist Center in Brazil, the Casa de Dom Inacio in Abadiania, I expected to encounter some archaic rituals. Things that, while they may be interesting, could also be difficult for a Westerner to identify with. Since I don't speak fluent Portuguese, I also expected I would have some difficulty in understanding what I was seeing.
What I saw was clear and simple. It also amazed me-this center is not only addressing the universal needs of today, it is more successful, in many ways, than the resources for health management we have in the "first world." People were healing from cancer and AIDS as well as from psychological diseases, like schizophrenia and manic-depressive disorder-illnesses that modern mainstream medicine is not always capable of curing4. In addition, the consultations and surgeries that resulted in this healing at the Casa are free. The treatments are, for the most part, non-invasive, pain-free and generate no infection. While not every individual experiences a full remission of symptoms (perhaps because their degenerative disease is too far progressed), most visitors have profound spiritual experiences. That means, they have what can only be described as an experience of communion with Powers, such as God or angels, that brings comfort and peace of mind.
After publishing "Spiritual Alliances: Discovering the Roots of Health at the Casa de Dom Inacio" to document the work of John of God, I continued to visit Brazil, exploring other centers, and meeting more people who have been healed.
In October, 2003, I met Beth, a lawyer from Brasilia. She had been fully healed of two medical problems at a Spiritist center in Palmelo. I was especially impressed by her story of cure from ovarian cancer. The healing took one week of rest and seclusion in an inn, where she was from time to time given spiritual healing by visiting mediums. Her brother, unable to function in normal life, diagnosed in his twenties as schizophrenic, also came for treatment to the same center. Now, more than twenty years have gone by. Since being treated this man has no psychotic symptoms, maintains a healthy, stable, intimate relationship with his wife, enjoys sharing parenting their children, and works fulltime. These kinds of healings rarely occur in the USA.
The US Health Care System
Don't we have the best in health care? That assumption is often made. Here are the facts:
•The US, compared to other nations, ranks #37 in effectiveness of health care according to a United Nation's World Health Organization (WHO) study conducted in June, 2000.
•After more than three decades and a trillion research dollars, an American succumbs to cancer every single second of the day. J.C. Bailar, MD, PhD, from Harvard University addressed the Vice President's Cancer Panel Meeting this way: "I conclude that our decades of war against cancer have been a qualified failure."
•According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), April 14, 1998, more than 290 people die each day from adverse reactions to FDA approved drugs-more than three times the number of deaths caused by automobile accidents. In 2000, JAMA reported there are almost a quarter million deaths per year caused by medical errors and adverse reactions to FDA approved drugs. This makes our own medical system the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. 5
•In 1997 it was estimated that side effects from prescription drugs cost our nation 78 billion dollars.6
We have the most expensive health care system in the world (about one trillion dollars per year, one fifth of our gross national product-but only our emergency medical care ranks first in quality. In June, 2000, the WHO found Japan leading the world in "healthy life expectancy," with the USA at #20, falling behind every country in Europe as well as Canada, Australia, and Israel. The infant mortality rate in the USA is higher than that in many struggling countries, for example, the number of infants who died before their first birthday is 13.3 per thousand in New York City, but 10.9 in Shanghai.7
Although our needs in the United States are of less magnitude than those in the poorest third world countries, e.g. some countries in Africa where over 30% of the population has AIDS, we all are caught in a similar dilemma of needing to find economical, effective health care. The poor and uneducated, everywhere, are not getting sufficient support. People with chronic illnesses and degenerative disease, such as AIDS, are marginalized, unless they can afford to pay for special support services. They do not have the resources for medicine