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B”H
Healing and Prayer
Young Israel of West Hempstead
February 27, 2009
Shmulie Spero
O. Prologue
Let me share with you my story:
In the Fall of the year 2000 I became hoarse. After visiting several doctors, a specialist at the Cleveland Clinic did a biopsy of my thyroid. The test showed that I had papillary thyroid cancer.
I said to myself: What is G-d thinking?
Surgery removed the thyroid and cleaned up a lot of the cancer. I had some radiation which was supposed to kill the rest and my voice started to return.
I said to myself: Thank G-d!
Some time passed and my cancer returned.
I said to myself: What is G-d thinking?
But I started voice lessons and learned to sing even better than before; and I was able to continue davening for the High Holy Days.
I said to myself: Thank G-d!
Two years ago, the cancer broke out in my sternum. It was growing very fast – unusual for my type of cancer
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I said to myself: What is G-d thinking?
I had emergency surgery – a very long operation – and together with radiation we seem to have cleaned up this growth.
I said to myself: Thank G-d!
But the cancer continued to grow and was expanding significantly into lymph nodes in my chest where it was inoperable and not amenable to radiation. My doctor’s said it had metastasized.
I said to myself: What is G-d thinking?
The doctors at Sloan Kettering, started me on a new type of chemotherapy which seemed to be working for me.
I said to myself: Thank G-d!
But now it is not working anymore. I have had more radiation, and I will be starting a new trial shortly.
I said to myself: What is G-d thinking?
And that, pretty much ,brings us up to the present.
Is G-d doing this to me? Why is He doing this to me? But then He keeps fixing me. Have you had this conversation with yourself or with loved ones? Let me try to develop a perspective. It is my perspective, but it is based on sources – religious and secular. I hope I can help. We will have time for questions and discussion. – No guarantee about answers.
I. What is G-d’s role in healing and illness?
When I present my ideas, I am always asked if there is a scientific basis for why prayer works, what is G-d’s role? Let me start with two paragraphs written by Rabbi Yosef Yehuda Bloch which underlie the entire approach I am taking.
Rabbi Yosef Yehuda Bloch was born in February of the year 1860 in Rusein, Lithuania. He became Rosh Yeshiva of Telshe Yeshiva, succeeding his father-in-law, Rabbi Eliezer Gordon, in 1910. He died on November 10, 1929. Rabbi Yosef Yehuda Bloch’s ideas appear in a series of volumes which are essentially transcriptions of lectures (sheurim) he gave in Telshe Yeshiva in Lithuania. The volumes are entitled Sheurie Daas.
The present ideas appear in a series of three essays entitled “Nes V’Tevah,” (Miracle and Nature) in Volume I of the four volume series. In his introduction to the third of the essays, Rabbi Bloch summarizes his approach in two succinct paragraphs. It is important to quote them. They are the religious basis for all of my lectures.
1) G-d has restricted what He can do in the universe based on the laws that He established when He created the world. The restriction that He imposed on Himself, so to speak, was that He would not interfere with all that He had formed in any way except through established rules. When G-d set up the world, He established for everything He created boundaries. To safeguard these boundaries He appointed “officers and counselors”. It was G-d’s desire to interact with these “officers and counselors” in conducting Creation and not violate the limits on anything that He created beyond the limits that were defined at the Creation. [The “officers and counselors” might be regarded as the scientific laws, the laws of physics that quantify and qualify nature. - Spero ]
2) Everything that happens in the world exists and operates by way of natural law. From the minutest to the loftiest, whether it is for good or for bad, whether it is something that brings the world closer to fulfilling its ultimate purpose or takes it further from that purpose, everything exists and operates by way of natural law. The law may be a higher law operating within the realm of the spiritual or a mundane law of nature that operates in the realm of the material. All of these laws were established from the beginning of Creation.
Assuming the above as a given –that everything follows rules – I will begin building my argument step-by-step. Please follow carefully.
II. Where in the Chumash is prayer used for healing?
In Tanach, we find cases of prayer being used to heal. For example, Miriam, the sister of Moshe, was afflicted with Tzora’as; and Rivka I’Meinu was barren. Healing in both cases came as a result of prayer. So we know that one of the tools that can be used for healing includes prayer. If there are rules for healing, and since healing is a physical thing, we should be somehow able to show how this works – at least some of the mechanisms that operate at the material level. What special thing did Moshe who healed Miriram and Yitzchok who healed Rivka do?
REFERENCES: story of Moshe and Miriam – Baaloscho. Story of Rivka and Yitzcah -- Toldos
A starting point for determining the properties of the prayers that might be effective in healing would be to look at the properties of formal prayer.
III. What is the role of kavanah in prayer?
Most significant is the statement of the Shulchan Aruch about praying the Amidah. In the laws of tefilla (Shemona Esrei) we read: (Orach Chaim 101-1):
When one prays (the eighteen-blessing prayer) he is required to say all the blessings with kavanah If he is unable to say all the blessings with kavanah, he should at least say the blessing Avos with kavanah.
Women are also required to pray the Amidah (Orach Chaim 106-1)
There is also a statement regarding kavanah in praying the first sentence of the kriyat shema: (Orach Chaim 61- 1):
He should read Kriyat Shema with kavanah, with awe, fear, and …. It is the custom to read the first sentence loudly in order to arouse kavanah.
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IV. What is kavanah?
Kavanah literally means "directed intention". It is used by Chazal to denote a state of mental concentration during prayer and the performance of mitzvot. Although kavanah is not explicitly mentioned in the Chumash, it is clearly referred to by Isaiah, for instance, who condemns those who "with their mouth and with their lips do honor Me, but have removed their heart far from Me" (Isa. 29:13).
The Talmud attaches considerable importance to kavanah in prayer. The Mishnah quotes R. Simeon': "Do not regard your prayer as a fixed mechanical device, but as an appeal for mercy and grace before the All-Present" (Avot 2:13). In (Ber. Mishnah 5.1) we read that the early hasidim used to wait an hour before and after prayer to achieve a state of kavanah and emerge from it. However, from the discussion in the Mishnah and the Gemara (Ber. 32b), it is clear that Chazal were not unanimous in their interpretation of kavanah . Later medieval authors distinguished between kavanah which precedes prayer and the achievement of kavvanah during prayer (e.g., Kuzari, 3:5 and 17), while repeatedly stressing the importance of both. Maimonides ruled as a matter of halakhah (which was not, however, agreed with by later codifiers) that "since prayer without kavanah is no prayer at all, if one has prayed without kavanah he has to pray again with kavanah. Should one feel preoccupied or overburdened, or should one have just returned from a voyage, one must delay one's prayer until one can once again pray with kavanah... True kavvanah implies freedom from all strange thoughts, and complete awareness of the fact that one stands before the Divine Presence" (Yad, Tefillah, 4:15, 16). The Shulhan Arukh states "better a little supplication with kavanah, than a lot without it" (OH 1:4).
Many talmudic decisions relating to kavanah were modified in the course of time. Thus, although the Mishnah (Ber. 2:5) states that a bridegroom is not required to read the Shema on his wedding night (because he would not be able to achieve a proper degree of concentration), it was later ruled that "since nowadays we do not pray with proper attention in any case" he must do so (Sh. Ar., OH 60:3). Similarly, "even if one did not recite the Amidah with kavanah, it is not necessary to repeat it," since it is assumed that the kavanah of the repetition would be no better (ibid., 101:1, and see Isserles, ad loc.).
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan in his book Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide suggests that kavanah is a form of meditation. The word kavanah comes from the Hebrew root “kaven,” which means “to aim.” The implication is that kavanah denotes the “aiming” of consciousness toward a certain goal. A better translation of kavanah might then be “directed consciousness” which is what we call “meditation,” but that term also is somewhat ambivalent and has various connotations.
Kavanah is thus a technique of prayer that should be used on a daily basis in our fixed prayers and can be used for personal prayers. In all likelihood it is what Moshe used to heal Miriam and what Yitzchak used to heal Rivka.
What are the characteristics of kavanah/meditation/directed intention? What effect does it have on the body? What changes take place in the body when one meditates?
V. What evidence do we have that kavanah has an effect on the body?
Kavanah is measurable. Robert K. Benson of Harvard University began studying meditation in the sixties. His studies led to the development of the relaxation response, a very important therapy in reducing stress and its related conditions. He made his measurements on practitioners of Transcendental Meditation. The technique of "transcendental meditation" was developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and is taught by an organization of instructors whom he personally qualifies. The technique does not require intense concentration or any form of rigorous mental or physical control, and it is easily learned, so that all subjects who have been through a relatively short period of training are "experts." The training does not involve devotion to any specific beliefs or life-style and consists simply of two daily sessions of practice, each for 15 to 20 minutes. The practitioner sits in a comfortable position with eyes closed. By a systematic method that he has been taught, he perceives a "suitable" sound or thought. Without attempting to concentrate specifically on this cue, he allows his mind to experience it freely, and his thinking, as the practitioners themselves report, rises to a "finer and more creative level in an easy and natural manner." This form of meditation is probably no more than what we have defined as directed intention, the definition of kavanah.
The many physical changes that take place during meditation include the body’s metabolism rate which is reduced; the heart rate which slows by about three beats per minute; and EEG readings which disclose a marked change in the brain waves.
We would therefore expect that if a person praying the Amidah with kavanah was attached in a manner similar to that described by Dr. Benson in his experiments to the various technologies, the same types of results might be observed. Kavanah has an effect on the body.
REFERENCES: http://www.relaxationresponse.org/
VI. What evidence do we have that kavanah has an effect on the mind?
The research of Andrew Newburg and Eugene D’Aquili of the University of Pennsylvania using the SPECT diagnostic tool has shown that profound changes in brain chemistry also take place when someone meditates. The deeper the meditation, the more profound are the changes. The effect of these changes is to give rise to many of the images, feelings, and emotions of the great mystics in all religions.
According to Dr. Newberg, many studies of meditation had shown that the prefrontal cortex was involved. What was unique in their studies was involving more of the brain. This could only be accomplished using neuro-imaging techniques provided by the SPECT diagnostic tool. The scan of the brains of eight Tibetan monks and three Franciscan nuns at prayer pointed to unusual activity in a small knob of gray matter known as the posterior superior parietal lobe. The known purpose of this knob is to orient the individual in physical space, a job it performs by drawing, in the words of the authors, “a sharp distinction between the individual and everything else, to sort out ‘you’ from the ‘not-you’ that makes up the rest of the universe.”
Newberg and d’Aquili concluded that during meditation the incoming flow of sensory information which normally flows into this area appeared to be blocked. “What would happen if [ this area] had no information upon which to work?” They write. “In that case, the brain would have no choice but to perceive that the self is endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything the mind senses. And this perception would feel utterly and unquestionably real.”
This is exactly how the subjects of Newberg and d’Aquili’s research, and generations of people of prayer before them, have described their peak mystical moments: the dissolving of boundaries between the self and everything else. A 13th-century Franciscan, Angela of Foligno, expressed it this way: “I possessed God so fully that I was no longer in my previous customary state but was led to find a peace in which I was united with God and was content with everything.” Manuals of Zen meditation, texts from Hindus, Sufis or Christian fathers on prayer include the same generic description, couched in the language of that particular culture and tradition. The authors did not have access to similar Jewish texts which also support this notion. Such findings reinforce the validity of the study.
REFERENCES: http://www.andrewnewberg.com/
This is of interest to us with regards to the use of the Amidah as a mantra through which we can enter a meditative state. While the kavanah of most people might not be as deep as the meditative state of the individuals involved in Dr. Newburg’s research, his research did not preclude a lesser state. Kavanah does have an effect on the mind.
VII. What evidence do we have that kavanah can effect physical devices?
We have established that the objective of the Amidah is to help us focus on the words we are saying and in that way we encounter the glory of the Diety. Is there more, however, to the intentionality of kavanah? Can we “do” something while we are praying with kavanah? In other words does prayer “work”? Can we induce healing?
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program was established at Princeton University in 1979 by Robert G. Jahn, then Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Its purpose was “to pursue rigorous scientific study of the interaction of human consciousness with sensitive physical devices, systems, and processes common to contemporary engineering practice.”
The most substantial of the P.E.A.R. Projects examines unusual effects arising in human/machine interactions. In these experiments human operators attempt to influence the behavior of a variety of devices without using any known physical processes. In unattended calibrations these machines all produce strictly random outputs, yet the experimental results display results that can only be attributed to the influence of the consciousness of the human operator. Over the laboratory's 30-year history, thousands of such experiments, involving many millions of trials, have been performed by several hundred operators. The observed effects are usually quite small but they are statistically repeatable and add up to highly significant deviations from chance expectations.
What are particularly relevant from our point of view are the strategies used by the human operator to “influence” these devices. The experimenters report on the basis of informal discussions with their operators, casual observations of their styles, and occasional remarks recorded in the experimental logbooks that operators used meditation exercises, visualization techniques, and other strategies to help them focus their attention on the devices. These are all techniques for kavanah.
The random devices also respond to group activities of larger numbers of people, even when they are unaware of the machine's presence. "FieldREG" data produced in environments where the people are thinking together about the same thing show larger deviations than those generated in assemblies which are more objective in nature. Elaborate analytical methods have been developed to extract as much understanding as possible from all of these results, and to guarantee their integrity. Details of the experiments themselves can be obtained from the many articles available for download on the P.E.A.R. website.
In trying to understand the experiments of P.E.A.R., we offer the following interpretation based on the model developed by the staff at P.E.A.R. This model relates very well to the notion of kavanah we have been developing.
Kavanah extends beyond the individual in that it can affect the probabilities of events. This is a most important idea because our image of man is that he is totally isolated from every other man. So how can prayer help? Intentionality transforms man. Kavanah injects order into systems in proportion to the "strength" of kavanah present. Prayer with kavanah is capable of transforming the world around us by injecting order into the randomness and chaos of what is normal. Physical and biological systems of all kinds respond to kavanah by becoming more ordered, that is why prayer can help with illness. With particular reference to healing, many biological systems operate in a random fashion at the microscopic level. Even a small effect such as is generated by kavanah, if it affects the randomness of these biological systems, can mean the difference between health and sickness. Certainly cancers are very much a matter of random processes which could make proper prayer with kavanah effective. These effects appear to be independent of time and space.
The state of mind in an individual can fluctuate from moment to moment. It is regulated by their focus of attention. Ordinary awareness, for example, has a fairly low focus of attention compared to peak states, mystical states, and other non-ordinary states. That is why there is special attention to kavanah in prayer. However, a group of individuals can be said to have a "group kavanah." Group kavanah strengthens when the group's attention is focused on a common object or event, and this creates coherence among the group. That is the reason why a prayer circle is so important. There is a multiplier effect when we pray together. Even if one member’s focus of attention varies, his colleagues will pick up the slack. The other side of the coin is when individuals in a group are all attending to different things, then the group kavanah and group mental coherence is effectively zero, producing what amounts to background noise.
VIII. What evidence do we have that kavanah can effect healing?
Having suggested, as a working hypothesis, that kavanah can have a substantive effect on healing, the next step would be to design and implement research studies demonstrating this in a scientifically appropriate manner. Such experiments have been reported in the literature.
In a recent journal article Dr. Larry Dossey reviews the research on healing prayer. He cites 20 controlled clinical trials of “remote, intercessory prayer and healing intentions.” Eleven of these studies have demonstrated statistically positive results. This body of work is only a beginning but it does present research designs that can be further refined
The “classical” study, and one most often cited, is that by Randolph Byrd. The experimental design that he used, a randomized double-blind protocol, is the one most often replicated. His experiment studied a population of coronary care unit (CCU) patients. Over ten months, 393 patients admitted to the CCU were randomized, after signing informed consent, to a healing prayer group (192 patients) or to a control group (201 patients). While hospitalized, the first group was prayed for by participating Christians praying outside the hospital; the control group was not prayed for. At the outset there was no statistical difference between the two groups. After entry, all patients had follow-up for the remainder of the admission. The group that was prayed for subsequently had a significantly lower severity score based on the hospital course after entry. Multivariate analysis separated the groups on the basis of the outcome variables. The control patients required the assistance of a ventilator, antibiotics, and diuretics more frequently than patients who were prayed for. The data and analysis did suggest that healing prayer has a beneficial therapeutic effect in patients admitted to a CCU.
Dr. Byrd’s research was replicated a decade later by a group led by Dr. William Harris. Nine hundred ninety patients were included in this study which followed the same statistical protocol as the Byrd study. The results were essentially the same that healing prayer was associated with lower CCU course scores. The conclusion of the Harris group was that prayer may be an effective adjunct to standard medical care.
Other studies reported in the Dossey article include studies of the effectiveness of prayer in kidney dialysis, bloodstream infection, AIDS, and skin warts. These studies chose the people praying on an anecdotal basis as being “serious” in their prayers. No attempt was made to study the manner of their prayer.Repeating these studies focusing on people praying with kavanah, i.e. in a meditative state, would be an interesting test of the hypotheses of this paper.
REFERENCES : http://www.iwriteiam.nl/D960916-prayer.html
IX. Epilogue
In this presentationwe have introduced a several important talking points. From the Chumash we learn that prayer can help healing. Rabbi Yosef Caro, a practicing mystic, mandated kavanah in the recitation of the amidah, a prayer. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s defines kavanah as a meditation and shows in his writings that historically the amidah was developed as a meditation. Dr. Herbert Benson’s measurement of the physiological effects of meditation on the body and Dr. Andrew Newburg’s research on the effects of meditation on the brain are part of a very extensive scientific literature describing the effects of meditation on the body and the mind. The results of the research at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Project indicate that meditation can also have an effect outside of the body. Finally, research studies like those designed by Randolph Byrd demonstrate that group prayer using meditation does have a positive effect on healing.
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While these points do seem to indicate that something is going on when people pray with kavanah, I still need an action program in which I can actively engage. What can I do to help heal?
Perhaps I should improve my own praying? While that seems reasonable, a quote from the Talmud comes to mind.
R. Hiyya b. Abba fell ill and R. Johanan went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward.[ The implication is that if one lovingly acquiesces in his sufferings, his reward in the world to come is very great.] He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him. [R. Johanan. He cured him by the touch of his hand]
R. Johanan once fell ill and R. Hanina went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him. Why could not R. Johanan raise himself? [Rabbi Johanan had cured by Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba, so why could he not cure himself] They replied: The prisoner cannot free himself from jail. [ So a patient cannot cure himself] (Berachot 5b)
It seems that when I pray for myself, even with whatever kavanah I can muster, the effect is not the same, as it says in the above quote. My strategy has to be to get others to pray for me, but with kavanah.
I believe the answer is to do chesed, as we say every morning
These are the things for which there is no sheur. And these are those things … gemillut chasadim.(Mishneh, Peah 1:1)
When we do a chesed for someone, the recipient of the chesed responds spontaneously with a heartfelt “thank you.” I believe that “thank you,” has elements of a tefila with kavanah, and the one who does the chesed is the recipient of that tefila. That has become my strategy. I do chesed whenever I can, both formally and informally. I also give these lectures.
And now we understand the parallel mishneh to the above:
These are the things whose fruits we eat in this world but whose true principal is in the world to come: And these are they…. Gemillut chasadim. (T.B. Shabbos, 121a)
May all the cholim of Israel, and me among them, receive a refuah shelaimah.
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