The Enchanted Healings of Jesus
Part Two — The Magic and Mystery of Spiritual Healing
Jesus and Gebser
Our guide for this series on mystical healing, cultural historian Jean Gebser, clearly admired Jesus. He refers to Jesus’ transfiguration as “this singular diaphaneity of the world on earth, this unique manifestation of spiritual power.” And “In those days, only Christ’s followers could see his transfiguration, but one day it will be the larger community. It is not accidental that the sense for transparency is irrupting everywhere.” He claims that with Jesus’ declaration of “I am the light of the world,” “the first wholly self-assured resplendence of mankind breaks forth, a resplendence venturing to state for the first time that it will assume the burden of the world’s darkness and suffering.” So what did this amazing Jesus do with sickness?
Jesus pushed back sickness and death as far as it would go
In Jesus’ day, people commonly believed that sickness and affliction could be caused by forces or spirits opposed to God, framed in such beliefs as Satan, demons, and “unclean” spirits. Jesus worked within these common beliefs of his day without necessarily agreeing with them and “cast out” demons and such. Another belief was that trials, including sickness, are caused by God as punishment for sin or as an impetus for spiritual growth. In this case, Jesus rejected any idea that God caused illness. He pushed back sickness and death as far as it would go with no inquiry or reference as to why it had happened. That’s what we are called to do also. The incredible blessings of modern medicine are a spiritual gift from God that pushes back sickness and death as far as they will go today. But what about prayer, integral prayer, operating in the same way as a gift of God for healing today? That’s the topic of this series.
The energy field of Jesus
The healing activities of Jesus highlight the enchanted mysticism of the integral Christian life most dramatically. I am fascinated with the astonishing detail found in the event in which Jesus said, “Someone touched me; for I noticed that power had gone out from me” (Luke 8:46). Jesus, who was tuned in to his body, felt something happen energetically in his body. He sensed “power” going out of him. This was not “power over,” but rather “power for.” According to the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Vol II), in this passage, Luke was conceiving of power as a “substance.” In today’s understanding, we call that substance an energy field.
There was a felt transmission of healing substance or energy from Jesus to this woman, which resulted in her immediate healing. In today’s world, without some framework of awakened spirituality, Jesus’ healing people looks like a magician saying, “Abracadabra, you’re healed.” In Jesus’ day, there were others who performed healings using what were seen as “magical” powers. Jesus had nothing to do with such magic, incantations, or magic formulas. Instead, his healings were accomplished—albeit in an enchanted mystical way—in a personal, relational energy field of love, even one so seemingly fragile as with a woman he did not know, touching him.
An energy field by any other name
The idea of a “field” of energy has come into visibility in the last hundred years. This field has had many descriptions over the centuries. The Gospel of Thomas sees Jesus, saying, “I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me, all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there” (Saying 77). This can best be understood today as referring to his own subtle energy field as the Cosmic Christ.
Then there is the Apostle Paul’s God “in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28), followed thirteen centuries later by Nicholas of Cusa’s God is “a circle whose circumference is nowhere and whose center is everywhere.” We have ancient Chinese medicine’s “chi” and Zen’s “ocean of consciousness.” In the modern era there is theologian Paul Tillich’s “ground of being,” and Rupert Sheldrake’s “morphic fields.” Star Wars gave us the unforgettable “May the Force be with you,” while neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor finds a “Life Force Power of the Universe.” Scientists perceive fields, from the standard “electromagnetic” field to the “quantum field theory” of Wolfgang Pauli. Eckhart Tolle writes about the “vast sea of awareness” and Integral Christianity gives us the holy spirit as the “divine-human field of consciousness.”
This underlying, ever-present field can be brought into more active present manifestation and “power for” healing, just as Jesus did. Especially in a relational vessel with shared intention toward this intensified consciousness, such as a WeSpace group.
The ever-present Origin
Scott Preston, in The Chrysalis, writes that, in addition to some of the above, Jean Gebser’s “ever-present origin” is also a “field.” He says that the field is not a “point” of origin (and therefore a “beginning”) but the field of origination, which provides the basis for the emergent into spatio-temporal existence. Origin for Gebser is not to be thought of in terms of beginnings or endings in time, but as equivalent to what is often described in terms of ‘Eternal Now’ or ‘Eternal Present,’ the source of all things.
Jean Gebser (1905 – 1973), who I introduced last week, was a cultural historian and evolutionary philosopher. His central premise was that human consciousness is in transition and that these transitions are “mutations” rather than an evolving process. There have been three new awareness structures that have emerged from our archaic, primordial consciousness over the last many thousands of years, which Gebser calls magic, mythic, and mental. The next structure, integral, is just now beginning to emerge.
These are each a radical transformation of how we perceive the world. Gebser held that previous consciousness structures continue to operate parallel to the newly emerging structure. Each consciousness structure eventually becomes deficient and is replaced by the following structure. The mental structure is today in the deficient phrase and is being replaced by the never-before-seen integral stage. Integral consciousness encompasses all time and embraces both humankind’s distant past and our approaching future as a living present. This new spiritual attitude can take root only through an insightful process of intensive awareness or what we call “awakened consciousness.”
Integral awakening is the only way we can hold together what seems to be the opposites of magical mysticism, truth framed in mythic stories, and the structure of the mental logic. The magic or mystical is not a rational or logical structure. This means an integral structure will have pre-rational and irrational elements equal to the rational! To those who are over-bound to the mental structure, the magical one won’t “make sense” at all, and their minds will have trouble accepting its reality. Though as the deficiency of the mental structure becomes ever more apparent, plenty are finding themselves seeking reenchantment—in spite of often a great deal of mental conflict. Awakened to the integral structure, the conflict fades away.
Enchanted mysticism is becoming a “maker” along with Jesus
Jesus’ response to the woman who touched him was not, “Stop bothering me.” Instead, his reaction was a glorious affirmation of the woman’s impulse to trust in him. Jesus said to her, “Your faith has healed you!” Not “I, the great one, have healed you!” But, “It was your trust that did this!” Her healing was a creative act between her and Jesus. It was both of them acting in harmony. He knew that she was a partner in her recovery, instead of claiming it was all him. And he pointed that out to her so she could own her part.
Faith in the New Testament was not adherence to a set of beliefs. Instead, it was to rely on, to trust, to partake. The woman had no theology or Christian beliefs about Jesus except that she knew he was loving and kind, healing many other people. She trusted him enough to think she could be one of those people. So, she took the initiative to reach out and touch him. And she was right. She became a “maker,” a cocreator in her healing, and was healed.
The Misuse of Faith in Healing
In a recent book, prominent Christian writer Philip Yancey discourages praying for bodily illness because he has seen so many sick patients devastated by Christians who tried to heal them through prayer. They were misled by the false hope that they could be healed if only they prayed with faith. I understand his dismay, but I disagree with his solution.
Francis MacNutt (1925 – 2020), a long-time friend, was one of the first Roman Catholic priests to be involved in the charismatic renewal and became a leader in the Christian healing ministry. He said that for years he struggled to do two things. First was to restore what he regarded as Jesus’ clear teaching to pray for the sick with faith. And second was to avoid the legalistic understanding that everyone we pray for will be unfailingly healed. He says that difficulties are created by Christians who have embraced false teachings: “If you have faith, then you are going to be healed when we pray.” That’s a dishonest and cruel statement and invites shaming on those who are not healed by blaming them for not having enough faith.
How can we get in touch with our field of spiritual healing?
Gebser gives us some clues when he says, “The magic element plays a decisive part in interpreting such phenomena as healing.” Furthermore, he states, “All magic, even today, occurs in the natural-vital, egoless, spaceless and timeless sphere. This requires—as far as present-day man is concerned—a sacrifice of consciousness; it occurs in the state of trance”(italics mine).
Gebser considers the primary constituent of the magic structure to be the instinctual and vital sphere, which comes primarily from the gut, or what we call our spiritual womb. This means it is not mental wishing or even holding mental pictures of healing. But, primarily, healing energy comes from the flow of living water from our innermost being or spiritual womb as described and modeled by Jesus.
In Integral Christian Network terminology, mystical healing flows from our spiritual womb in non-ordinary consciousness.
Here is a healing practice that I do
1. I begin by tensing and relaxing each set of muscles in my body, starting with my feet and ending with my head. This serves several purposes. It brings my attention from out there to in here. It helps me become conscious of my body, especially where I store tension and to release it. It quickly starts me on the practice of moving into areas of my body, such as head, heart, gut, and feet. This is an embodied path of relaxing and sinking into an altered state.
2. I move to my feet and begin grounding. I am a tree hugger, and the easiest way for me to ground is to think of hugging my favorite tree in the park (or go there when I can). I place my whole body against it, wrap my arms as far as they would go around it, and imagine myself a part of the tree with roots going deep into the ground. I can now feel the tree up against me and the roots anchoring me to the earth.
3. Next, I draw that earth energy up through my legs into my gut or spiritual womb. I sense a fullness of circulating energy there. I avoid words or images to describe this but rather sink into the sensations.
4. When I am ready, I direct that energy, like a river of living water, to the person or body part that is open to healing. If it is my body part, it is usually to my heart, recovering from a sudden cardiac arrest and heart attack some years ago. If it is another person or situation, I see them inwardly and direct the energy there.
Try it. You may like it!