DELIBERATELY CAUSED BODILY DAMAGE

NOTES ON THE JOURNEY

DELIBERATELY CAUSED BODILY DAMAGE
Larry Dossey, MD

My feast of joy is but a dish of pain.… —Chidiock Tichborne (note 1)

W

hen my wife Barbara and I moved to northern New Mexico almost 10 years ago, I disc ov e red that the chiles used in the local restaurants were so hot they were actually painful, and I ate many a meal with a tearful grimace. Then, after a few months of masochistic culinary experiences, things began to change. I noticed that my aversion to hot chiles was diminishing and that I was actually beginning to enjoy the piquant tastes. My pain was gradually being transformed into pleasure. Barbara and I boldly began to seek out restaurants with the hottest salsas and seasonings, arrogantly disdaining establishments that served milder concoctions. We became confirmed “chile heads,” as chile aficionados are called in these parts. To this day, when on extended travels, we talk fondly of the fiery food we are missing back home and the chile w i t h d rawal symptoms we imagine we are experiencing. On returning we waste no time seeking out our favorite restaurant for a “chile fix.” PAIN AND MEANING There was a faith-healer of Deal Who said, ‘Although pain isn’t real, If I sit on a pin And it punctures my skin, I dislike what I fancy I feel.’ —Anonymous1

and connected to whether we are experiencing pain or pleasure. But pleasure and pain, like time, also are relative. For example, if Einstein’s subject is freezing, or if he is extremely shy around women, he might find the hot stove to be a more pleasant experience than the girl. Whether we find an experience painful or pleasant depends largely on what it means to us. And meaning is shaped by 3 major factors: (1) the entire previous life experience we bring to a particular moment, (2) our expectations about what lies ahead, and (3) the particular context in which an event takes place. For example, in the lore of hypnosis, it is well known that when a hypnotized subject thinks he is being touched by a burning match, a blister will often erupt, even though he is being touched with an ice cube. The subject is responding to his past experiences with matches and fire as well as to his expectation of being burned, all filtered through the context of the hypnotic state. To see how meaning and pain intersect, let’s look at several different scenarios. MEANINGLESS PAIN: TORTURE The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole through which the pervert climbs into the minds of ordinary men. —Jacob Bronowski2 I confess that I have a perverse fascination with torture. I am simply astonished at how, throughout recorded history, there have always been humans who have devoted their intelligence, energy, and creativity to the single-minded task of how to make others feel pain. I have toured torture chambers in Europe and England and have explored at length the extensive literature on this subject. But I can tolerate exposure to the lore of torture only in small doses. After an hour of reading Sw a i n ’s T h e Pleasures of the Torture Chamber,3 Plaidy’s The Spanish Inquisition,4 Ru t h v e n ’s To r t u re: The Grand Conspira cy, 5 or Mannix’s T h e History of Torture,6 I invariably recoil as I consider how torture has so often been applied in the name of God, with professed love, for the victim’s “own good.” When I reflect on the fact that it is humans who elevated torture to an art form and that torture is rare in the nonhuman world, I begin to feel the stain of shame that torture has left on our collective psyche. However, in spite of the revulsion I feel, I invariably return for another look, because

My experience with the punishing chiles of New Mexico shows not only that “one man’s pain is another man’s pleasure,” but also that the same person can respond to the same experience differently on different occasions. When we try to make pain an absolute—when we say that a particular experience is always painful, or that another is invariably pleasant—we run into problems. In an attempt to explain his ideas to the public, Einstein once said, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity” (note 2). Einstein’s point was that our sense of time is relative

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I sense that in this despicable behavior there are lessons I need to learn about myself and others. Of particular interest to me is how anyone survives such horrendous ordeals. I do not believe survival of torture is primarily due to physical hardiness, but to something more subtle. Some say that hatred or the desire for vengeance toward one’s tormentors carries the victim through—the attitude ascribed to Ben Hur when he was condemned as a Roman galley slave in the novel by General Lew Wallace.7 But the sense of meaning and purpose—the certainty that I must survive for some good reason—seems to explain survival better than any other factor. During the Spanish Inquisition, William Lithgow, a Scot, found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time: Málaga in 1620. He came to do business in Spain but was arrested as a Protestant spy and subjected to torture. He somehow survived his ordeal and gave the following account6(pp64-65): I was stripped to the skin and mounted on the rack (this was a vertical rack upright against the wall) where I was hung with two small cords. Thus being hoisted to the appointed height, my tormentor drew my legs through the two sides of the three-planked rack, tied a cord about each of my ankles and then drew the cords upwards, bending forward my two knees against the two planks until the sinews of my hams burst asunder. So I hung for a large hour. Then the tormentor laying my right arm above the left, wrapped a cord over both arms seven times and then lying down on his back and bracing his feet in my belly, pulled until the seven several cords combined in one place on my arm cutting the sinews and flesh to the bare bones which has lamed me so still and will be forever. Now my eyes began to start, my mouth to foam and froth, and my teeth to chatter like a drummer’s sticks. But notwithstanding my shivering lips, my groaning, the blood springing from my arms, broken sinews, hams and knees, still they struck me in the face with cudgels to stop my screams. This their incessant imploration: ‘Confess, confess, confess in time for thine inevitable torments ensue.’ But all I could say was ‘I am innocent, O Jesus, have mercy on me!’ Then my trembling body was laid upon the face of a flat rack with my head downward, inclosed within a circled hole, my belly upmost, my arms and feet pinioned, for I was to receive my main torments. Now ropes were passed over the calf of my leg, the middle of my thigh, and the great of my arm, and these ropes fastened to pins. I received seven tortures, each torture consisting of three complete windings of the pins. Then the tormentor got a pot full of water in the bottom of which was a small hole through which he poured the water into my mouth. At first I gladly received it, such was the scorching drought of my tormenting pain and likewise I had drunk nothing for three days before. But when I saw he was trying to force the water down me, I closed my lips.

Then my teeth were set asunder with a pair of iron cadges. Soon my belly began waxing like a great drum, a suffocating pain as my head was hanging downwards and the water reingorging itself in my throat, it strangled and swallowed up my breath. I was six hours upon this rack and between each set of tortures I was questioned for half and hour, each half-hour a hell. By ten o’clock that night, they had inflicted sixty several torments but still continued for another half-h o u r although my body was begored with blood, cut through every part, my bones crushed or bruised and I was roaring, howling, foaming, bellowing, and gnashing my teeth. True it is, it passeth the capacity of man to conceive the pain I experienced or my anxiety of mind. When they took me from the rack, the water gushed from my mouth. They put irons on my broken legs and I was carried back to my dungeon. Every day I was threatened with fresh tortures if I did not confess and the Governor ordered that all the vermin in the cell be swept up and piled on my naked body and tormented me almost to death but the turnkey (a converted Moor) used to come secretely, remove the vermin and burn them in heaps with oil or doubtless I had been miserably eaten up and devoured by them. Miraculously, Lithgow did not die. Reading between the lines, I suspect his religious faith and devotion sustained him. It helped him wear his Inquisitors down, and they let him go. The Inquisitors understood that the power of religious faith kept their victims alive, so they tried to shatter it. One way of doing this was to create confusion in the victim’s mind about the distinctions between the divine and the demonic. The Dominicans, who supervised the Inquisition, were called the “Hounds of God”—the hellish in league with the heavenly. A particularly terrifying tactic of the Inquisitors was to dress in dark hoods and drag their victims from their beds in the middle of the night—satanic, nocturnal terrorists calling in the name of God. The strappado was one of their favorite tortures. This technique involved tying the victim’s arms behind the back, then hoisting him to the ceiling with a rope tied to the wrists and then passed through a pulley. If this did not elicit a confession, the victim was dropped from the ceiling and stopped suddenly, which usually dislocated the arms from the shoulder joints. Another method was to strap 30-pound weights to the victim’s legs as he was suspended. The weights were round and often carved to represent the face of an angel 6(p78)—again, the deliberate blurring of boundaries between the demonic and the divine. The Inquisitors concocted lurid descriptions of the eternal, hellish punishment that awaited the victims unless they confessed, of which the earthly tortures were only a mild foretaste. “ S a l vation can come only through pain,” ranted Conrad of Marburg, Germany’s most terrible torturer, whose reign of terror from 1227 until 1233 was unequalled until Hitler’s.6(p47) The Inquisitors were equal- o p p o rtunity tort u rers who did not discriminate based on gender. A woman accused of

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witchcraft was delivered to a hangman in 1631. Her punishments were recorded as follows6(pp78-79): (1) The hangman binds the woman, who was pregnant, and places her on the rack. Then he racks her till her heart would fain break. (2) When she did not confess, he poured oil over her head and burned it. (3) He placed sulphur in her armpits and burned it. (4) Her hands were tied behind her and she was hauled up to the ceiling and suddenly dropped. (5) The hangman and his helpers went to lunch. (6) On returning, the master hangman placed a spiked board on her back, pulled her up to the ceiling again, then dropped her on the floor. (7) Her toes were put in a thumbscrew and the screw tightened until blood squirted out of her toes. (8) She was pinched with red-hot irons. (9) As she would not confess, the hangman proceeded to an advanced grade of torture. She was whipped and then put in a vise which gradually closed on her for the next six hours. (1) She was hung up by her thumbs and flogged. This was all that was done on the first day. PAIN AND POSITIVE MEANING: SURGERY WITHOUT ANESTHESIA Sweet is pleasure after pain. —John Dryden8 Surgery during primitive times resembled torture. In both instances an individual was tied down, flesh was torn and hacked, bones were broken, limbs were severed, and people were bled. Before the discovery of general anesthetics, surgery was “nasty, brutish, and—if you were lucky—short,” says Professor L. R. C. Agnew of the University of California–Los Angeles School of Medicine. He writes: “Patients were held down or strapped to the table; nowadays such grim proceedings seem to be the stuff of nightmares rather than reality. And if our adult forbears suffered grievously under the knife, for children the terrors must have been staggering.”9 Although tort u re and primitive surgery resembled one another, the meaning attributed to them by the victim or patient was radically different. The purpose of torture was to inflict suffering; the purpose of surgery was to relieve it. As a result, the agony associated with primitive surgery was attenuated. On rare occasions it was hardly felt at all, as in the following account of an 18th-century amputation 9(pp1074-1075): I have lately heard of such a pretty anecdote of a sweet little girl of 9 years old that I must give it you as I think it may interest your little ones. Lady S’s second daughter Laura had been for months confined at Clifton with a white swelling in her knee. Mr B aynton [probably the noted Bristol surgeon Thomas Baynton (1761-1820), who wrote Descriptive Account of a New Method of Treating Old Ulcers of the Legs] attended her,

and a surgeon from London, when at length they pronounced it necessary to amputate her leg else she would [lose] her life. Lady [S] would not bear the thought of her child suffering such and preferred to lose her; however after some days she made up her mind to consent to it and two more surgeons from London were sent for. She said the day before they were to arrive Laura was to be told of it. Mr Baynton told Lady S he could not break it to the dear child. Lady S said she would take it upon herself to do that and accordingly went into Laura’s room; and after speaking to her most affectionately for some time, broke it to her. The sweet child showed no agitation nor alarm when her mother said, ‘My love, do you think me cruel to take this resolution?’ ‘No, Mamma, you could not help it.’ ‘Would you prefer dying, my love?’ ‘Yes, Mama, for then I should be happy,’ but pausing added, ‘that would be taking my fate into my own hands and I could not expect that God would support me in dying; God demands my leg, not my life.’ This happy composure was not transitory—it lasted all that day & night. She told her mother, ‘Mamma, do you remember the day you stayed at home from church with me and talked with me about God; from that day I have thought much about Him, and loved Him, & it is [He] that now supports me, and will support me during the operation—pray for me. I will not ask you to stay in the room; it would not be good for you, but perhaps Rose (the housekeeper) will be so good.’ The next day, Thursday in Passion week, the four surgeons arrived. Lady S went into Laura’s room to acquaint her. The child shed some tears upon hearing it was so near, but soon recovering her wonted composure said, ‘Mamma, pray for me that I may glorify God by patience and that it may do good to Mr Baynton to see what God can do.’ Laura was taken out of bed and placed upon a table; when they went to cover her eyes, she said ‘you need not do that. I will keep them shut but if you like it, do.’ They bound on the handkerchief and began the operation which the dear child bore without a word until the end when she gave one cry of Oh! when the great artery was taken up. To show how much she was supported even in body, a few f l owers which she held between her fingers re m a i n e d unmoved during the operation. After it was over, Mr Baynton was expressing his astonishment at her composure and calmness. She said ‘There should not have been one Oh! Good God supported me; two texts comforted me during the operation—‘through much tribulation you must enter into the Kingdom of Heaven’ and ‘if we suffer with Him we shall reign with Him.’ Emily B saw her five days after the operation eating an orange in bed as if nothing had happened. Laura said she would not change her situation or have back her leg. She expressed great delight to think it took place in Passion week, by suffering thus to be made like her Saviour. How did this 9-year-old girl sustain the amputation of a leg on a kitchen table without apparent pain, with only a fresh

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bouquet to hold onto? The absence of postoperative infection is particularly amazing. During this period surgeons operated bare-handed. Sterile technique and antibiotics were unknown. No one had ever seen a bacterium, and a theory of infectious disease did not exist. The religious and spiritual meaning Laura found in her suffering might have been a major factor explaining her clinical course. It’s an old theme, really: the power of faith to help one endure pain and recover from illness. Religious faith throughout the ages has been associated consistently with immunity to disease, as in the case of Blessed Angela of Foligno (c 1248-1309), who, in an attempt to come closer to God, would drink with impunity the putrid water with which she had just washed the s o res of a leper. 10 But from a scientific perspective, these instances are unconvincing. Maybe the individual was just lucky. In any case, we hear mostly about those who survived after placing their faith in a higher power—not those who died. But the power of religious commitment is not mere l y anecdotal. When examined in modern hospitals, religious faith continues to help the sick survive and recover, as it did 9-yearold Laura. Thomas Oxman and his colleagues11 at Dartmouth Medical School followed 232 elective heart surgery patients and analyzed the factors contributing to their survival and recovery. The most consistent indicator of survival was the amount of strength or comfort patients said they derived from their religious faith. The researchers concluded: “Those without any strength or comfort from religion had almost three times the risk of death as those with at least some strength and comfort.” In another study by Pressman and colleagues12 of elderly women recovering from hip fractures, “those who regarded God as a source of strength and comfort and who attended religious services frequently experienced lower amounts of depression from their illness and were thus able to walk a greater distance … upon discharge.” How does it work? For the faithful, the answer is obvious: we are witnessing divine intervention. But science has no way of metering the divine, so scientists search for more concrete expla nations, the most popular of which is the power of belief, selfsuggestion, and expectation: the placebo response. According to this line of thinking, nothing mysterious is happening; we are witnessing the flux of neurotransmitters, immune cells, and neural discharges within the body, all kicked off by positive thinking, which somehow elicit a heightened healing response. Placebo-based explanations no doubt can help us to unravel some of these clinical events. But we should hang on to our hats, because there is a neglected body of clinical phenomena—deliberately caused bodily damage (DCBD), in which individuals actually harm themselves with impunity—that cannot be explained by known placebo mechanisms. These events dramatically illustrate the power of religious and spiritual meaning to influence our bodies. Although DCBD has been stra n g e l y neglected by Western science, no analysis of the relationship between pain, suffering, and healing can be complete without taking these bizarre phenomena into consideration.

PAIN AND RELIGIOUS MEANING: DELIBERATELY CAUSED BODILY DAMAGE After great pain, a formal feeling comes— The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs— The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, And Yesterday, or Centuries before? —Emily Dickinson13 The belief that there is a connection between bodily damage, pain, and spirituality is ancient. Shamanism, whose roots extend through 50,000 years of human history, placed great importance on suffering for the initiate. This often included horrific dreams, during which, as Eliade14 says, “his own body [is] dismembered by demons; he watches them, for example, cutting off his head and tearing out his tongue.” After the initiate’s body is dismembered and stripped down to the bare bones, it is reconstructed so that he emerges wiser and more powerful than before, able now to heal himself and others. These experiences are exc e e d i n g l y vivid—so real that the initiate does not always survive them. AN HISTORICAL SNAPSHOT If one believes that there is spiritual value in bodily damage, perhaps it is a short step from seeing one’s body mutilated in initiatory dreams to causing deliberate physical damage to one’s self. Indeed, history abounds with practices in which humans have harmed their own bodies to curry favor with gods or spirits or to achieve special states of ecstasy, holiness, or insight. 15 Priests devoted to Cybele, the gre at nat u re goddess of Asia Minor, castrated themselves to demonstrate their identification with Attis, who, having castrated himself, died and was resurrected. In the New Testament (Matthew 19:12, KJV), we read about eunuchs who castrated themselves “for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.” The desert fathers of Christianity punished their bodies to gain redemption, and for centuries the Cat h o l i c Church canonized as saints individuals who repeatedly mortified their flesh. Some Hindus pierce their bodies to render themselves pleasing to the god Murugon. In ancient Mexico, the Olmecs, Aztecs, and Mayans anointed sacred idols with blood from their penises as signs of devotion and penitence.15 THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST In the 13th century, self-flagellation was popular as a means of atonement throughout European religious orders. The custom also was taken up by the Spanish royalty. The emperor Charles V passed his personal flail to his son Philip II, who bequeathed it to his heir. The sound of self-flagellation echoed for centuries not only throughout Spain, but in its colonies as well—including northern New Mexico, where I live. This year is the 400th anniversary of the settlement of northern New Mexico, and celebrations are planned. One piece of history that probably will not be formally remembered is the role played by self-mutilation and self-inflicted pain since the earliest days of colonization.

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In the spring of 15 9 8, when Don Juan de Oñate, New Mexico’s great colonizer, was journeying northward with his small band of settlers through the deserts of northern Mexico in search of the Rio Grande, they paused on Holy Thursday to seek atonement. One of Oñate’s soldiers, Captain Pérez de Villagrá, wrote later: [T]he night was one of prayer and penance for all. The soldiers, with cruel scourges, beat their backs unmercifully until the camp ran crimson with their blood. The humble Franciscan friars, barefoot and clothed in cruel thorny girdles, devoutly chanted their doleful hymns, praying forgiveness for their sins…. Don Juan, unknown to anyone except me, went to a secluded spot where he cruelly scourged himself, mingling bitter tears with the blood which flowed from his many wounds.16(pp376-377) The custom of flagellation endured, even flourished. By 1627, processions of flagellants were commonplace along the river lands of the upper Rio Grande. In the 1690s, a brotherhood, The Third Order of Penitence, was established at Santa Fe and Santa Cruz. Men of the Spanish villages flocked to join the fraternity to do bodily penance for their sins and for Jesus’ death on the cross. They called themselves Penitent Brothers, or penitentes. They would meet in a morada or chapter house, a 1-room, windowless, earthen structure that resembled an Indian kiva. Within the morada there was only “the bare furniture of piety,” says Pulitzer historian Paul Horgan.16(p377) [A]n altar, a wooden cross gre at enough for a man, lengths of chain, blood-spattered whips bearing thongs of leather studded with cactus thorns, locally made images of saints painted flat or carved and colored, and various representations of Christ, and a life-sized figure of death in a cart. Here the chapter met for business, in secrecy, and, as the calendar demanded, in pain spiritual or pain physical. It was important that the cross be man-sized, for men were crucified on it. On Good Friday, the Penitents sought to identify with Christ and his suffering to the greatest extent possible. They elected one of their members for the role of Saviour. The chosen one, “like any man, … knew when his life was in danger, and it was in danger now. Yet he was honored, and to face what was coming he was empowered by a sense of glory in his identity with the Godhead.”16(p380) Late in the morning on Good Friday, a procession was formed, led by a group of flagellants. The Christ followed, bent under the cross he carried from the morada. With village spectators kneeling and watching, the brothers pulled the rough wooden cart carrying the carved image of Death. They walked up a mount, whose rocks and thorns tore their bare feet and flesh. At the summit, the Christ was tied onto the cross with bands of cotton cloth and raised against the horizon. At the moment of crucifixion, everyone fell to their knees, beat their breasts, and cried out in unison, “I have sinned! I have sinned!”

As the Christ’s body hung from the bindings, it became oxygenstarved due to great difficulty in breathing in such a position. He was watched to detect the moment when he could endure no more and must die. When they saw it his brothers lowered the cross and took him from it, bearing him away to the morada to restore him if possible…. If the village Christ died he was buried by his brotherhood in secrecy, and his shoes were put the next day on the doorstep of his house to notify his family that he was dead. Grieved, they yet rejoiced, for they believed that in his ritual sacrifice he had gained for himself and them direct entry into heaven. His cross was left to stand all year on the summit of the hill….16(p382) The first published medical article on self-mutilation has a strong religious tinge. Reported in 1846, it involved a 48-yearold, manic-depressive widow who accused herself of being a great sinner. After she had walked through the streets imploring various men to marry her, including her minister, she was hospitalized. While there she developed the belief that her eyes were sinful. After reading the instruction in Matthew’s gospel to pluck out one’s eye if it is offensive, she did just that, bilaterally enucleating herself. Now totally blind, she asked her doctor to cut off her legs and feet. Christ had shed his blood, and to become saintly she felt she must shed hers too.17 THE MIDDLE EAST AND BEYOND Anecdotal accounts of DCBD have filtered from the East for centuries, often through the reports of religious adventurers and spiritual seekers. An example is George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1870-1949), one of the most remarkable spiritual teachers of the 20th century. Born in the Caucasus near Mt Ararat, where Noah’s ark is said to have come to rest after the Flood, Gurdjieff passed his youth in an atmosphere of fairy tales, legends, and esoteric religious traditions. He spent many years exploring various systems and seeking hidden wisdom about the nature of reality and the meaning of life. He was attracted by the inner lore of shamanism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. He trekked through deserts and mountains to remote monasteries and explored libraries and bazaars. He gathered fragments of wisdom and pieced them together into a philosophy and method of instruction, which had great influence on the lives of his followers and continue to fascinate thousands who read his writings and the accounts of those who knew him (note 3). Much about Gurdjieff ’s life will forever remain murky. P. D. Ouspensky,18 a Russian follower who wrote penetrating descriptions of the man and his methods, states that in all the stories Gurdjieff related about his life, “a great deal was contradictory and hardly credible.” There seems little doubt, however, that in his travels Gurdjieff did encounter events that many would consider mind-boggling. Gurdjieff once lived in Istanbul in the Pera district (now Beyoglu) near the famous Galata bridge, which spans the Golden Horn. In their biogra p h y, Kathleen Riordan Speeth and Ira

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Friedlander19 describe how Gurdjieff spent time with what he called “dervish zealots” and visited the Rufai Order known as the Howling Dervishes, a name given by Westerners upon hearing their “heavy breath” repetitions. The Rufai sect was a deeply reli gious Islamic group founded by Ahmet Rufai, nephew of the g re at Sufi master Abdul Qadir Jilani. Speeth and Friedlander write of Gurdjieff ’s experience: In their dhikr circle he would have witnessed the shaikh perform unbelievable feats of faith, such as licking a whitehot poker, piercing his cheek with sharp skewers, opening his abdomen with a sharp knife, taking out his intestines and resting them on a plate as he chanted and danced around the room while his dervishes cried out the name of God. At the conclusion of the ceremony he would replace his intestines, push the skin of his stomach closed with his hands and show no marks on his body. Years later, one of Gurdjieff ’s most perceptive and scholarly followers, J. G. Bennett,2 0 wrote of viewing a similar event among the Rufai in his autobiography, Witness. Respected scholars have taken these accounts seriously. Annemarie Schimmel,21 professor of Indo-Muslim Culture at Harvard University, reports that dervishes are notorious for performing “strange miracles, like eating live snakes, cutting themselves with swords and lances without being hurt, and taking out their eyes.” She continues: “The pious one becomes so transported in his prayers or meditation that he feels no pain when one of his limbs is amputated, or he is so out of himself that he is oblivious to the bites of scorpions or serpents.”21(p209) These feats are not limited to the Middle East, but occur in other parts of the world where Islam has spread. In Malaysia a rit– – ual known as the dabbu s ceremony is widespread. Dabbu s in Arabic means an iron awl; the ceremony carries this name because an iron awl, in addition to swords, knives, and sometimes fire, is the chief instrument used to inflict wounds upon the body during – the ritual.22 The dabbus performance must be held under the leadership of a true spiritual successor of the Founder of the Order. This leader must have a license from his teacher authorizing him to conduct these otherwise dangerous exercises. By turning their weapons upon themselves, these leaders give witness to the power of Allah and the excellence of the Master of their Order. The conclusion of the ceremony is typically a prayer of thanksgiving to Allah for bringing them safely through the exercise. Then a cloth is often spread on the ground on which the spectators are invited to throw any gifts or alms. Not all Muslims applaud such rituals. Although the participants believe the act of inflicting wounds upon the body demonstrates the power of God and the holiness of the Master of the Order, others consider them aberrations. Yet the public relations aspect of these feats can hardly be denied. “By giving public exhibitions of this mysterious ceremony, the order was able to attract a considerable following, especially among the young.” 22(p272) How do they do it? The common thread running through-

out is that the dervish is in “a state of ecstasy”22(p272) or “becomes … transported in his prayers or meditation.” 21(p209) Although these events may seem hopelessly exotic or “oriental” to the Western rationalist, they are not radically different from Laura’s case mentioned above. In both instances the subject is so suffused with religious faith that the event pulsates with spiritual meaning. In this context pain and suffering fade, and the known laws of physiology seem momentarily suspended. Many ethnographers who have ob s e rved DCBD feat s around the world have focused almost exclusively on the absence of pain experienced by the participants. This focus has led to a neglect of other equally remarkable features of DCBD: lack of bleeding, immunity to infection, and rapid healing. Investigators have also been obsessed with the idea that some sort of trance or autohypnotic spell accounts for DCBD. But, as we shall see, there is little evidence that these strange phenomena can be explained by radically altered states of consciousness. MODERN OBSERVATIONS ON DCBD The abilities that are demonstrated in DCBD are far more important and impressive than those known to have been mastered through meditation and other techniques. —L. Fatoohi and J. Hussein23 Dr Louay Fatoohi of the Physics Department of Durham University, England, and Dr Jamal N. Hussein, of Paramann Programme Laboratories, Amman, Jordan, are currently investigating DCBD phenomena (note 4).2 3 Although these rituals are best known among Muslims, they are universal, performed by the Chinese, 24 Indians,25 Malaysians,26 Native North Americans, 27 Sri Lankans,2 8 and members of various other religious and shamanistic communities. Although there is a spectrum of these feats, the most common involve the insertion of sharp objects such as skewers into the subject’s body in a way that would ordinarily cause severe pain, bleeding, tissue damage, and infection. However, pain and bleeding are virtually absent, and when the sharp object is removed, the wound closes almost immediately and extremely rapid healing ensues, without infection and often without scarring. These processes go beyond what we usually consider to be the normal capacities of the human body. Un raveling them would be a great insight and could lead to extraordinary medical advances. It is therefore difficult to understand why these phenomena have been so thoroughly neglected by We s t e r n researchers. The scientific community’s avoidance of DCBD, however, has not been total. Three groups of laborat o ry re s e a rc h e r s looked briefly at these events in the late ’70s and early ’80s. • In 1978 Elmer and Alyce Green and their colleagues at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kan, studied a subject who had the ability to skewer his biceps with a knitting needle, apparently with impunity (unpublished data, 1972).
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NOTES ON THE JOURNEY
Continued from page 16

In an interesting aside to this demonstration, a skeptical physician who witnessed the demonstration tried to drive the same needle into the same region of his arm. He was unable to do so because of the pain and stopped with the knitting needle halfway through. At this point the gifted subject intervened, took hold of the needle, and pushed it the remaining distance through the physician’s arm.29 • Pelletier and Peper 30 investigated 2 subjects: one who was able to insert bicycle spokes through his cheeks and the sides of his body, and one who could do a similar feat through a fold in the skin of his forearm. Pelletier31 also studied the subject who had been investigated at the Menninger Foundation. • Larbig and associat e s 3 2 , 3 3 of Tübingen Un i v e r s i t y, Germany, studied a yogi who was able to insert unsterilized spikes into his tongue, neck, and abdomen. Although these 3 studies laid valuable groundwork, they were limited because they involved only a total of 4 subjects. Research took an immense stride due to the recent laboratory investigation by Fatoohi and Hussein of 28 subjects. Fatoohi and Hussein’s interest in this area escalated when they encountered impressive performances of DCBD by dervishes of a Sufi school known as Tariqa Casnazaniyyah, an Arabic-Kurdish name that means “the way of the secret that is known to no one.”3 4 This sect has followers in Iraq, Jordan, Sudan, India, and a few other countries. The dervishes believe that their DCBD abilities are manifestations of spiritual powers of the Masters of Tariqa Casnazaniyya h — p owers that each master transfers to his successor and that are now possessed by the present master, Shaikh Muhamm ad al- C a s n a z a n i . Fo rt u n ately for researchers, dervishes of this school believe their DCBD feats need not be confined to religious settings. Shaikh Muhammad al-Casnazani therefore granted permission to Fatoohi and Hussein to study 28 dervishes in their laboratory. The researchers report the following23(p16): Under laboratory controlled conditions, the dervishes were able to demonstrate several impressive DCBD feats. The dervishes insert skewers and spikes into various parts of their bodies. They use these instruments without sterilization, and may also contaminate the instruments by rubbing them on the ground before using them. The parts of the body that are involved in these feats include the cheeks, tongue, lower part of the mouth, lobule of the ear, neck, arms, muscles of the chest, and abdomen. The instruments used in these activities are usually metallic and of different diameters. However, with some parts of the body, such as the cheeks and lower part of the mouth, where normal manual pressure is adequate to force sharp-ended wooden sticks into the flesh without being broken, such instruments may replace the metallic skewers. Obviously, the tissue damage and pain that would normally be expected from wooden sticks are greater than those caused by metallic

Photo courtesy of Paramann Programme Labs

instruments because the former are usually hand-made with rather rough surfaces and irregular diameters. Additionally, with the aid of hammers the dervishes drive daggers into various sides of the skull bones as well as the clavicle. The hammer is also used for inserting knives just below the eyes. They also chew and swallow glass and sharp razor blades. Obviously, these feats involve organs and tissues of the digestive tract. The dervishes also handle fire by wrapping cloth around one end of a stick, dipping it in flammable fluid, and lighting it. The flames from this torch are then applied to the face, arms, and legs for 5 to 15 seconds. The dervishes also hold red-hot iron plates with their bare hands and even bite them.35-37 They handle snakes and scorpions and usually receive bites and stings on their hands while doing so. Sometimes they intentionally expose their tongues to the poisonous bites of snakes and the stings of scorpions, demonstrating immunity to the toxins; they may even eat these creatures live.35 They also expose themselves continuously for several minutes to electrical shocks of 220 V, again with impunity.35 IS HYPNOSIS THE KEY? Larbig and associates suggested that their subject was using autohypnosis to control his bodily responses while being pierced by skewers. In contrast, Fatoohi and Hussein, who have studied 7 times more subjects than all other researchers combined, do not believe that any special altered state of consciousness is involved. They measured several physiological parameters of the

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dervishes before, during, and after their DCBD demonstrations. Such parameters include electroencephalographic (EEG) patterns, electrical conductance of the skin, skin temperature, and arterial blood pressure. They found no discernible physiological pattern that could characterize DCBD feats, thus contradicting what other researchers (using far fewer subjects) have claimed. According to Fatoohi and Hussein23(pp17-18 ): The dervishes do not engage in any psychological or psychophysiological practices that can be claimed to have been designed to give them the unusual immunities and instantaneous healing…. [Those] whom we have studied showed no sign of departure from their ordinary state of consciousness either during their DCBD performances or before or after that. Normal physiological measurements, and in particular the normality of the EEG, support this observation.

The dervishes have no experience or training in hypnosis, either on themselves or others. In fact, hypnosis is not at all popular in the society wherein the dervishes of Tariqa Casnazaniyyah live. Neither do they require any previous experience in meditation or guided imagery, which might be related to self-hypnosis, to perform these feats. The dervishes appear in total control of their senses before, during, and after engaging in DCBD. They show no evidence of perceptual distortion, remain entirely alert, and are able to respond properly to all external stimuli from their environWITHOUT PRACTICE AND ON CUE ment. Therefore, Fatoohi and Hussein37(p25) strongly dismiss autoThese abilities are not confined to the spiritual elite. Any hypnosis, stating, “To [this possibility] … there is no supporting person who wants to join the dervish order of Ta r i q a evidence whatsoever.” Casnazaniyyah may declare his wish and Even if hypnosis were involved, it then part i c i p ate in a ritual that takes probably could not account for the DCBD about 2 or 3 minutes. Several individuf e ats of the dervishes. Although hypals may be initiated simultaneously. In notherapists believe that approximately this session the initiate is asked to put 80% of individuals can be hypnotized to his right hand, handshake style, in the some degree, perhaps only 4% to 26% of right hand of the califa (a deputy of the the total population can achieve levels master) and recite a pledge of loyalty to sufficient for anesthesia.38,39 And, among Tariqa Casnazaniyyah. The califa makes these, probably only a few would be capaa few comments about the beliefs and ble of the stupendous feats seen in DCBD. practices of Tariqa Casnazaniyyah and As Fatoohi and Hussein37(p26) note: “There e n c o u rages the dervishes to cultivat e remains a very important question of their knowledge by reading relevant litwhether hypnosis can or cannot produce erature, which is meant to educate the DCBD abilities at all.” dervishes about their religious duties. Does the use of hypnosis during Fo l l owing an invo c ation, the new major surgery contradict this view ? dervishes are verbally granted permisAlthough researchers have indeed used sion to perform DCBD feats after recithypnosis on subjects during surgery, it is ing certain oaths of loyalty to the master employed mostly as an adjunct to facilitate of Tariqa Casnazaniyyah. They are not postoperative recovery. 4 0 And although required to be involved in any physical or hypnosis has been used to “reduce” bleedpsychological training before perf o r m i n g ing in minor and major surgeries and tooth DCBD feats. There appears, therefore, to e x t ra c t i o n s ,41 these uses are indeed for be no cultivation of skills for the “reduction” of bleeding and not for its total dervishes. If anything, the skills seem to elimination, as is the case with DCBD. be “transferred” from the califa to the Photo courtesy of Paramann Programme Labs

Some of the most impressive reports on the use of hypnosis during surgery originated in the 19th century. An example is the work by the Scottish surgeon James Esdaile, who mesmerized patients for minor and major surgeries. Esdaile found that “in mesmeric operations hemorrhage was less, and the course of recovery more favorable, than in operations with chloroform or operations with no anesthesia.”42 But even if one generously grants hypnosis power over pain, total control of hemorrhage has not been established, and hypnotic control over infection and extremely rapid healing are practically unheard of in the hypnosis literature. Other forms of mind-body interaction—guided imagery, biofeedback, yoga, meditation—share the same limitations as hypnosis. Using these techniques, people have been able to modify circulation to various regions of the body. But even in the most skillful hands, these approaches yield nothing comparable to the spectrum of accomplishments seen in DCBD. For example, the ability to redirect blood to the extremities and warm one’s hands, which is routinely learned in biofeedback training and quite valuable in Raynaud’s disease, seems a minor accomplishment compared to the dervish’s ability to do the following: skewer his liver, skull, or clavicle; eat glass, razor blades, snakes, and scorpions without ill effects; handle 220 V; or bathe his face in fire—all without tissue damage, pain, bleeding, or infection, and with rapid healing.

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initiates, whose unquestioned loyalty to the sect seems to enable them to carry the spiritual powers of the master to others. The lack of training is remarkable. In other religious traditions, adepts struggle for years to develop skills in meditation and mind-body control to accomplish feats far less impressive. Even biofeedback training—in which sophisticated, solid-state electronic instruments speed up the learning processes involved in controlling autonomic functions such as heart rate, skin conductance, and dermal temperature—cannot compare to the rapidity of learning by the dervishes. Pe rforming DCBD feats is optional and not among the dervishes’ obligations. In fact, the dervishes are urged not to engage in these feats for any purpose other than to provide people living evidence of the spiritual power of Ta r i q a Casnazaniyyah. Most dervishes, however, proceed to make use of DCBD powers for these purposes, though a few restrict themselves to verbal preaching. The initiation appears exceedingly democratic. The dervishes meet no criteria based on ethnic origin, race, social standing, or education, though as far as I can tell the privilege is limited to males, in accordance with Islamic principles. After they have taken their vow of loyalty, all dervishes are considered equal. I have often discussed DCBD phenomena with audiences in the United States. In pointing out that these rituals are “a man thing,” the women in the audience always respond with lighthearted comments such as “Thank God!” or “Of course; we’re too smart!” I have yet to encounter Western women who feel that their religious freedom is being compromised because they aren’t encouraged to skewer themselves like men. The physical differences between the dervishes do not affect their ability to perform DCBD feats. The potential seems to reside in all of them; even dervishes who are in bad health are granted the right to participate and do so successfully. The dervishes of Tariqa Casnazaniyyah assert that they can successfully perform DCBD feats anytime, anywhere. This includes both in the field and in the laboratory, immediately and on cue, as Fatoohi and Hussein have established. These acts are not restricted to temples, religious shrines, or special dates having religious significance. ARE THEY PSYCHOTIC? Some compare DCBD to the self-mutilation sometimes seen in psychosis, suggesting that DCBD is an expression of mental derangement. But this is a misinterpretation. The purpose of DCBD is not to damage the body, but to demonstrate its capacity for self-repair and attest to the spiritual power of the religious order and its leaders. Moreover, self-mutilation injuries inflicted by psychotics and other mentally unstable people show none of the characteristics of DCBD. Damage due to psychotic self-mutilation is not painless, bloodless, or free of infection, and does not heal with extreme rapidity. The charge of mental illness often has been leveled by Western investigators against people who engage in rituals that these investigators consider exotic. This has been particularly

true regarding shamans, who, like the dervishes above, often engage in bizarre practices for spiritual reasons. The observations of Mircea Eliade,43 the great ethnographer and historian of religions, also might apply to the dervishes: No shaman is, in everyday life, an ‘abnormal’ individual, a neurotic, or a paranoiac; if he were, he would be classed as a lunatic, not respected as a priest. Nor finally can shamanism be correlated with incipient or latent abnormality; I recorded no case of a shaman whose professional hysteria deteriorated into serious mental disorders…. [M]edicine men are expected to be, and usually are, perfectly healthy and normal…. [S]hamans … show proof of a more than normal ner vous constitution; they achieve a degree of concentration beyond the capacity of the profane…. THE CHUTZPAH FACTOR Not all those who engage in DCBD belong to religious orders. In May 1971, biofeedback researcher Erik Peper heard about a visiting man from Ecuador who practiced unusual control over pain and bleeding, walked on fire, had himself hoisted by hooks in the back, and punctured his flesh with sharpened bicycle spokes without causing damage.3 0 The young man agreed to spend a day and a half demonstrating these abilities in a l a b o rat o ry at New York University. In an overcrowded EEG laborat o ry in the psyc h o l o g y d e p a rtment, while bystanders gaw k e d and jockeyed for a good view, Pe p e r recorded the subject’s b rain waves, heart rate, and galva n i c skin resistance as the Photo courtesy of Paramann Programme Labs man performed the following: chewed and swallowed pieces of an electric light bulb; pushed unsterilized, sharpened bicycle spokes through 1 cheek, through the center of his mouth, and out the other cheek; and pushed these spokes through the sides of his body. Peper noted that, although the man had performed such punctures many times, he had few scars on his body, a phenomenon that has often been reported by DCBD observers around the world. The subject upon command rapidly entered a meditative state of unfocused relaxation. As he punctured himself, his occipital alpha activity increased. This finding was opposite Peper’s prediction that the subject’s EEG pattern would demonstrate a stress

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response. Peper, with his colleague Kenneth R. Pelletier, who is c u r rently at Stanford University and an editorial adviser to Alternative Therapies, studied 2 additional subjects who could perform similar feats. They were struck with how these adepts used DCBD to demonstrate not just self-initiated healing, but personal growth as well. Later in 1972, Peper studied a 31-year-old karate expert who placed a sharpened spoke through a fold in the skin of his forearm and suspended a 25-pound bucket of water from it. Rather than detaching himself mentally from the experience of pain, as the Ecuadoran did, this man focused totally on the sensation. As he put it, “The concentrated mind can be applied to anything it does, and when it is applied, it no longer feels. The concentrated mind is the activity itself; it does not exist in the world.”30(p66) Pelletier tested another middle-aged man in a week-long sojourn in the laboratory.30 Under the observation of an attending physician, this subject was able to push an unsterilized, sharpened knitting needle through his left bicep on 3 occasions while being monitored physiologically. He was able to control bleeding completely and his wounds healed within 24 hours without infection. His psychological strategy seemed to be one of detachment and dissociation. As he explained: “It’s very simple. I do it by changing a single word. I don’t stick a needle in my arm, I stick a needle through an arm. I move outside my body and look at the arm from a distance; with that detachment, it becomes an object. It is as though I am sticking the needle into the arm of a chair.”30(p67) These 3 subjects did not belong to religious organizations as did the Sufi dervishes. They developed these capacities alone, on their own, without formal instruction. Often during childhood and early adolescence, these adepts would create challenging situations before an audience in which they would demonstrate their “foolish deeds.” They gradually learned to master their fear of pain and failure and pushed their internal limits further and further. This resulted in an increasing level of self-confidence and daring—what Pelletier and Peper call the “chutzpah factor.” In interviews, Pelletier and Peper found common personality characteristics among their 3 subjects. The subjects were rewarded in childhood for performing unusual feats, such as the Ecuadoran’s hypnosis of his friends followed by the painless sewing of buttons on their arms, and another subject’s learning to lie on a bed of nails with someone standing on his stomach. Pelletier and Peper interpret these events as evidence of a unique state of self-awareness, rather than mere antisocial acts or rituals of self-mutilation. An additional attribute of these 3 subjects was a willingness to accept what appears to be an impossible task or challenge. They deliberately placed themselves in situations in which they faced a demanding task they had never performed. Most of us strive to avoid such situations; these men courted and actually created them. For example, the Ecuadoran claimed he could walk through a wall of fire with flames 6 feet wide and 7 feet high, and did so before a live audience of 100 people, which was shown on Montreal TV on February 10, 1969.30

“These individuals do not adhere to the socially accepted values and have a capacity to inspire and kindle enthusiasm for innovative views of social reality,” note Pelletier and Peper.30(p71) Jungians might call such individuals extroverted intuitives: people who respond well to innovative and challenging situations. Again Pelletier and Peper30(pp71-72): Essentially, they are visionaries, and tend to express their vision in a convincing and charismatic manner. Since they have little patience for social convention or restraint, they may be unjustly condemned as insensitive or sensationalistic, but this is mainly due to the fact that they value their conviction and unique view of reality above all else…. [T]hey do not convince themselves that something is impossible before they have tried the task themselves. It’s easy to see why these capacities are rare in Western cultures. Pelletier and Peper30(p72) continue: The educational system and childhood upbringing inhibit and punish us for daring and chutzpah-inducing behavi o r. Thus, when a child has become an adult he or she usually has become afraid to try or afraid to ‘buck the system.’ Yet is is precisely these qualities if maintained which allow these adepts to achieve their self-mastery…. By daring to dream, imagine, and challenge these self-imposed limitations, we can learn to fulfill our human potential. DELIBERATENESS One factor that stands out in DCBD is deliberateness—ie, the dervish must want to wound himself. The impunity to pain, bleeding, and infection, and the ability to heal rapidly, do not occur unless the dervish wounds himself voluntarily and purposefully. If he is wounded accidentally, as in a traffic accident, his body does not demonstrate these abilities and he feels pain, bleeds, gets infected, and heals at the same rate as do ordinary people.23 All healing traditions urge individuals to cultivate the desire for healing. But in DCBD, the dervish turns this injunction upside down and develops a desire not for healing but for injury, which paradoxically leads to accelerated healing. This is one of the strangest facets of DCBD and is extremely worthy of investigation. THE TRANSFERENCE OF ABILITY An equally puzzling facet of DCBD is the dervishes’ assertion that they can perform these feats not only on their own bodies, but also on the bodies of other people—who are not dervishes—with similar results.4 4 Onlookers of these events appear to become convinced that they, too, can have their bodies pierced with impunity. The dervish may even use the bodies of children in his performance. These abilities do not become permanent features of the bodies of these people, however, and they are not able to perform DCBD feats later without the intervention of a gifted dervish.23

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Is this “transferability” due to the power of belief, suggestion, and positive thinking on the part of the onlookers? According to Fatoohi and Hussein23(pp18-19): To invoke the role of belief when attempting to explain the derv i s h e s’ success in demonstrating the unusual immunities to pain, bleeding, and infection, as well as instant healing in others’ bodies, is hard to justify. First, there is the problem of proving that belief can indeed be responsible for DCBD unusual abilities. Second, for whatever definition is given of belief and whatever criteria are adopted for differentiating the believers from the nonbelievers, it would be highly speculative to suppose that all those whose bodies were successfully pierced were real believers. In the case of children at least this assumption does not apply. OTHERS-HEALING AND SELF-HEALING The transference of the DCBD ability from one individual to another challenges the traditional assumption that all healing is intrapersonal, controlled by the events taking place solely in our individual minds and bodies. Fatoohi and Hussein23(p19) use the term “others-healing” to designate “phenomena in which someone’s mind exerts healing effects on another biological system, which can be the body of another human….” When a dervish transfers to another person (sometimes a young child) the ability to speed up and suppress pain, bleeding, and infection, this begins to resemble what has been called distant intentionality, or psychic, spiritual, nonlocal healing.45-53 REPRODUCIBILITY One of the advantages of studying DCBD is that it offers re s e a rchers a re p e atable type of experiment. Fatoohi and Hussein23(pp20-21) state that DCBD feats could offer what has long been sought for, i.e. reproducible healing effects…. [They] are repeatable phenomena which beautifully lend themselves to controlled experimentation…. In fact, DCBD phenomena cannot but be repeatable. If they were not a hundred per cent reproducible then one would not find them in the first place, because, unlike the failure in ESP [extrasensory perception] and PK [psychokinesis or mind over matter] experiments, a failure in any DCBD feat would mean a serious injury which can sometimes be fatal. In our experiments on the dervishes none of the subjects had an instance of failure, and we do not know of any case of failure that has happened in the dervishes community. ENLARGING THE PICTURE There are variations in how the dervishes practice DCBD. In Malaysia, for example, Hindu devotees who intend to engage in piercing feats in the Thaipusam religious festival usually spend a week or so practicing self-discipline exercises, and may spend up

to a month in special programs of dietary restriction and sleep deprivation, as well as abstention from many normal personal and social activities. In Sri Lanka, some DCBD practitioners restrict their activities to special dates. 44 In fact, most DCBD practitioners around the world, such as Indian mediums who perform only during possession sessions, appear not to perform on cue like the Casnazaniyyah dervishes. And some DCBD practitioners limit their body piercing to certain areas. This includes the Sun Dancers of the Plains tribes of North America, who insert skewers into the skin of the chest above the nipples, and the Sri Lankans, who skewer their cheeks and arms only and who practice hanging from hooks that pierce the skin. From field reports around the world, it appears that piercing the abdomen is extremely rare. The Casnazaniyyah dervish community also differs from other DCBD-oriented communities worldwide in terms of the percentage of devotees who practice these feats. All the dervishes of Tariqa Casnazaniyyah are granted permission to practice DCBD, and those who opt to engage in these feats outnumber those who don’t. This contrasts with the South Asian religious and shamanic communities where, out of millions of adherents, there are only a few hundred practitioners of DCBD.36 DCBD VARIANTS There are several practices in contemporary society that may be related to DCBD—rituals whose original purpose has largely been forgotten, the impulse for which still courses in the recesses of the unconscious mind. Body Piercing Body piercing emerged as a social phenomenon in the late 1980s, stimulated by the success of the pictorially graphic book Modern Primitives by Vale and Juno.54 A particular genre called “performance art” has emerged in which artists pierce, brand, or cut themselves or other willing performers before an audience.55 When today’s teenagers (and adults) pierce their lips, tongues, noses, ears, nipples, abdomens, brows, and genitals with metallic objects, are they merely being stylish, or are they hearkening to an ancestral urge that erupts full-blown in the dervishes? The practice of body piercing is ancient. It has been used in cultures worldwide to indicate a permanent change in status, such as emerging into sexual maturity, or to signal one’s membership in a clan or tribe. 56 Among the psychiatric community, however, there is a tendency to pathologize these activities. One of the foremost authorities on self-mutilation, psychiatrist Armando R. Favazza55(p261) of the University of Missouri–Columbia, states: The overwhelming majority of persons who engage in [tattoos, branding, and piercing of various body parts] do so to appear attractive, to gain attention, and to be provocative. Although I have not made a formal study it is my impression that, as a group, persons who have elaborate tattoos and piercings (other than single earlobe) exhibit more psychopathology than would a suitable control group. The determination of

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psychopathology in individuals, however, cannot be inferred simply because they engage in these practices. Some contemporary practitioners regard body piercing as a spiritually transcendent and healing experience. In a case reported in 1996, a woman who had been raped said, “I’m getting pierced to reclaim my body. I’ve been used and abused. My body was taken by another without my consent. Now, by this ritual of piercing, I claim my body back as my own. I heal my wounds.” 5 7 Tattooing Tattooing, like body piercing, is another type of DCBD that is making a comeback (note 5). Sociologist Clinton R. Sanders,58 of the University of Connecticut, has extensively examined this practice in his book Customizing the Body: The Art and Culture of Tattooing. Tattoos may seem merely to reflect the whims of fashion, but they often are acquired ritually to express membership in a group. Consider the famous yakuza, the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia. They frequently cover their bodies with tattoos that are often outrageously artistic. The tattoos bind the yakuza to the larger group and mark them as members of an inner circle to which they swear total allegiance, not unlike the purpose served by DCBD among the dervishes. DCBD in the form of tattooing is believed by some historians to have had a place in early Christianity. Harvard theologian and professor of history Morton Smith 5 9 s t ates that “Pa u l claimed to be tattooed or branded with ‘the marks of Jesus,’ Gal. 6:17—most likely, the same marks that Jesus had carried.” In support of this interpretation, Smith59(p150) cites “the rabbinic report that in Egypt Jesus was tattooed with magic spells….” When the Romans invaded Britain they encountered the Picts, who were named for the iron implements they used to create tattoos; indeed, the term “Briton” is derived from a term meaning “painted in various colors.” 60 Tattooing was adopted by the occupying Roman soldiers and spread in the military until banned by the Christian emperor Constantine, who claimed that the practice violated God’s handiwork.5 8 In spite of the ban, members of the Anglo-Saxon nobility continued to use tattoos that had both religious and personal significance. Tattoos had practical value for soldiers. Following the Battle of Hastings in 10 6 6, King Haro l d ’s mutilated body was identifiable only because he had “Edith” tattooed over his heart.58 From the 8th through the 10th centuries, how e v e r, the Church again banned tattooing as demonic and because it disfigured the body, which they believed was created in God’s image. The prohibition was only partially successful. When the Crusaders tried to reclaim the Holy land from the Muslims, tattooing again became a frequent practice. The soldiers often had themselves marked with a crucifix or other religious symbol to e n s u re a Christian burial should they die in a foreign land. Tattooists in Jerusalem enjoyed a booming business among pilgrims who wanted to commemorate their journey and indicate their devotion to God, a practice that continues to this day.58

Mingling of Blood Cutting or puncturing the flesh and then mixing blood with another has always been a common way of becoming a “blood brother,” at least in the pre-AIDS era. Stigmata and Flagellation S t i g m ata are bodily marks resembling the cru c i f i x i o n wounds of Jesus. They are said to appear spontaneously on devout persons who, in a state of intense religious fervor, are so completely identified with Jesus’ suffering that their bodies begin to resemble his. Like the dervishes who deliberately injure themselves for a spiritual purpose, stigmatics often consider it a blessing to be marked by wounds resembling those of Jesus, such as bleeding holes in the hands, feet, or side. But here the resemblance to the DCBD phenomena we’ve examined ends. Stigmata bleed and often become raw, permanent lesions. In addition, the states of awareness associated with stigmata appear to differ drastically from those of DCBD participants. According to writer Ian Wilson61 in his book Stigmata, stigmatics often experience “trances, hysterical catalepsies, loss of sensation in parts of the body, blindness, loss of hearing, paralysis … seeing visions, hearing voices and receiving other hallucinatory impressions…. It cannot be emphasized enough that these visions are not incidental to the stigmatic phenomena, they are integral to it….” An example is Padre Pio, the famous Italian priest born in 1887, who first manifested stigmata while in deep, contemplative prayer before a statue of the crucifixion. He suddenly screamed and fell unconscious while blood poured from wounds in his hands, feet, and the left side of his chest. Padre Pio’s wounds never healed for the remaining 50 years of his life. They would scab over and bleed repeatedly, in spite of every attempt to cure them.61 Another religious practice related to DCBD is flagellation, in which religious devotees deliberately whip, scourge, or beat themselves, sometimes producing grievous, bleeding wounds. Again, although the motivation of the flagellant may be religious, as it is for the dervishes, flagellation wounds do not behave like those of the DCBD practitioners we’ve examined. Body Sculpting Body sculpting is the attempt to reshape the body to achieve the criteria of beauty that predominate in a society.58 These practices enjoy a long history. For centuries, the feet of Chinese girls were bound to create the “lotus foot,” the ideal of which was 3 inches long, just the size to fit in a man’s palm. The feet were considered an erogenous zone and were fondled and licked by the ardent lover. As Sanders58(p7) notes: “Connoisseurs were even sexually stimulated by the odor of putrefaction caused by restricted circulation in the properly bound foot.” Unbound, normal-sized feet meant ostracism and significantly reduced the chance for marriage. Body sculpting was popularized in the West in the mid- to late 1800s in the form of corsets and the practice of tight-lacing, the goal of which was to create the famous “wasp waist.” In his

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book Fashion and Fetishism, David Kunzle 62 asserts that this custom was a symbolic protest against the constraints and expectations inherent in the conventional female role. Tight-lacers were v i ewed as deviant and were ridiculed in the popular media because their altered physique was “unwomanly” and made them unfit for childbearing. Today, people are still willing to endure considerable discomfort, risk, and expense to set themselves apart aesthetically from others. Plastic surgery is the dominant form of permanent body sculpting currently practiced in Western societies for aesthetic purposes. Approximately 5% of the American population (some 200,000 individuals each year) have submitted to “cosmetic reconstructions of the body to erase signs of aging, remove unwanted fatty tissue, increase or decrease breast size, or otherwise move the recipient into the currently approved range of physical beauty.”58(p7) Plastic surgery can be seen as a form of DCBD, whose purpose is to set one’s self apart as one of the “beautiful people,” just as the dervishes engage in DCBD to cultivate a kind of inner spiritual beauty and denote their membership in an elite group. Scarification The deliberate production of dermal scars is practiced in cultures worldwide as bodily decoration or as an indicator of one’s position in a social structure. This custom has been particularly common among African tribal groups, perhaps because on dark-skinned peoples tattooing would be less evident. Among these people, the basic technique of scarification involves lifting and cutting the skin, followed by the application of an irritant that inhibits healing and promotes the formation of a raised keloid scar. Because this procedure is painful, it is commonly used in rituals associated with rites of passage, in which the display of courage and endurance is important. 58 In 19th-century Germany, this form of DCBD—the acquisition of a scar that would indicate special status—erupted among university students in the practice of dueling. This custom offers some insight into the value placed on bodily scars and the risks people will take to acquire them. “The chief purpose of these [dueling] encounters was, and still is, to receive cuts on the face, these being left open to form duelling scars which were regarded as marks of courage and honor,” writes Robert Baldick63 in his fascinating work, The Duel: A History. Because the combatants were so heavily swathed, “it might reasonably be argued that these student combats were not really duels at all, but elaborate ritualistic facial operations,” Baldick63(p149) reports. Sometimes, however, a student would be killed, whereupon his adversary would be advised to leave the university. If he killed a second time, he would be barred from all German universities. A special weapon was developed “for the aesthetic purposes” of German students’ dueling: the Schläger, a sword with a blade 31⁄2 feet long and triangular like a bayonet. The students never thrust with this weapon, but raised it above waist level, well in

front of the head, and brought the blade down diagonally in front of the body by a movement of the wrist. In this way the student stood the best chance of acquiring a pleasing scar on his face. However, at the university in Jena, Germany, a different practice was employed. Jena was where theology students came to study in great numbers; and, because any theologian with a sword-cut on his face was not admitted to the ministry, the student code at Jena was modified to permit students to settle their disputes by running one another through the body. 63 All these practices—tattooing, body piercing, body sculpting, and scarification—proclaim publicly one’s attachment to a minority group and to an unconventional set of beliefs and behaviors. People engaging in these rituals want to stand out from the prevailing norms. They want to proclaim their own uniqueness or uniqueness of the group to which they belong, like the DCBD practitioners above. RESPONSES FROM ‘SKEPTICS’ AND THE SPIRITUAL PH Not surprisingly, so-called skeptics have drawn a bead on claims of DCBD (note 6). One such gro u p, the Tampa Bay Skeptics (TBS), received a letter from Dr Jamal N. Hussein, who, as described above, is conducting re s e a rch on DCBD at England’s Durham University.6 4 In his letter, which was sent to many scientific groups throughout the United States, Hussein states, “We hope that our Programme will be of interest to you so that we can conduct joint research in fields of mutual interest.” Gary P. Posner, a physician and avowed foe of parapsychology and spiritual healing, writes: [A]fter sharing Dr. Hussein’s letter with the TBS members attending our meeting, I replied on behalf of TBS. Noting our standing ‘$1,000 Challenge’ for ‘verifiable proof of any paranormal phenomenon,’ I informed Hussein that if he could demonstrate to us that the claims in his letter were true, ‘that would suffice.’ I continued: ‘If you would like to visit the United States, specifically sunny Florida, we would love to test your claim, and would be agreeable to increase our award to $10,000 if you were to exhibit no signs of pain or injury as we passed a knife through your body. Of course, we would have the police present to verify that we were doing this at your request. And, despite your claimed ‘100% success’ rate, as a physician I would be able to properly dress your wounds. Dr Louay J. Fatoohi, Dr Hussein’s collaborator in the investigation of DCBD, responded for Dr Hussein, asking TBS how they could arrange the meeting. TBS responded, “[I]t is hard to believe that your colleague is pre p a red to be stabbed with knives…. Nevertheless, TBS is prepared to put him to the test….” Hussein and Fatoohi then sent TBS copies of papers detailing their research, along with photographs of subjects undergoing DCBD. However, the proposed test did not take place because Hussein’s visit to the United States was canceled due to “personal circumstances.”

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In another letter, TBS implied that Dr Hussein canceled the meeting because he was afraid of being exposed as a fraud, concluding: “Un f o rt u n at e l y, despite our best efforts, and our $10,000 offer, the Tampa Bay Skeptics [were] denied a unique opportunity to test these techniques on Dr Hussein himself.” This is a typical response from such groups. “Skeptics” sanctimoniously lament that they have doggedly looked for data supporting the anomalous claims, bending over backward to give claimants the opportunity to prove their bizarre assertions and even to pay them—but simply come up empty-handed every time. This assertion conceals the fact that skeptics are often poorly informed about the actual data in the field, are often not scientists at all, and—even when they are—almost never dirty their hands doing original research in the field they condemn.65 Dr Hussein displayed excellent judgment in declining to “play ball” with TBS for several reasons. “Skeptical” groups are fond of issuing blustery “challenges” propped up with bucks to people they consider frauds. When the individual declines to accept, this is interpreted as evidence that he or she is bogus. This is a peculiar way to do science. The staged demonstrations and challenges promoted by skeptical groups embody a circus atmosphere that most researchers find inimical or fatal to their work. Careful scientific investigations are best done without ballyhoo, outside the public eye. There is not the slightest hint that the TBSers are familiar with prior research in this field. They appear completely ignorant of the above experiments of Pelletier, Peper, the Larbig group, and the Menninger researchers. Ignorant of earlier studies, they cloak themselves as trailblazers who are trying to lure data into the open by waving their cash flag. Like many people obsessed with exposing frauds and quacks, the TBSers are appallingly insensitive to the role of context in certain types of re s e a rc h . Context may not be important for machines, but it must always be taken into account in humans. The failure to do so can distort experimental outcomes. Consider research dealing with the human sexual response. Most people prefer to make love in privacy; when this is invaded by spectators and bright lights (or if they are forced to make love in front of cynics who believe that all lovemaking is fraudulent), their performance will likely be inhibited. There are surely laboratory situations that are equally hostile for practitioners of DCBD—for example, labs that are so dedicated to debunking these feats that the investigators don’t realize that DCBD is an exercise in sacredness, reverence, and respect for the ideals of a religious order. This is not a subtle point. Even in “hard” science, context is critical. Biochemists who work with enzymes realize that the acidity or pH of the medium must be correct, otherwise the enzymes won’t catalyze the organic reactions for which they are intended. In the same way, the “spiritual pH” must be correct if religious devotees are to give the best demonstrations of their practice. Unfortunately, many skeptics are oblivious to “spiritual pH” as a crucial factor affecting the outcome of a religiously based experiment. They seem bent on creating

a context that is as irre v e rent and hostile as possible—for example, demanding that the DCBD practitioner perform in front of the police. Until these approaches change, the hamfisted “skeptics” will forever interf e re with the outcome of their “experiments.” The silliest demand of the TBSers is that Dr Hussein submit personally to being stabbed by them. Requiring Hussein, an investigative scientist, to prove these phenomena on himself is like requiring the legendary heart surgeon Michael DeBakey to submit personally to coronary artery bypass surgery by a clumsy, doubting surgeon to prove that the procedure really works. Would any sane individual allow himself to be stabbed by people who believe he is a fraud, and who therefore probably have a hidden agenda of making him bleed and hurt? In DCBD rituals the subjects are never stabbed by anyone hostile to them. Consider also the demand by TBS that the subject “exhibit no signs of pain or injury as we pass a knife through your body” [emphasis added]. Even if no injury resulted from the TBS stabbers, they could always claim that they saw signs of pain (it’s their call)—a bead of sweat, a wrinkling of the b row, a disturbed look—that, according to their criteria, would indicate failure. Such flamboyant challenges are irrational and a mockery of the accepted standards of scientific investigation. SUMMARY Meaning has the power to drastically modify our experience of pain. It also can dramatically affect our health, both positively and negatively—a phenomenon I explored previously in this column.66 Spiritual meanings may be the most powerful forms of meaning, because they can provoke healing responses that appear miraculous, such as in DCBD. DCBD bridges medicine, neuroscience, religion, and anthropology. Consequently, it is regarded as too sprawling by scientists who prefer to work in a confined, limited area. DCBD also carries the stigma of being “weird” and “foreign.” So it isn’t surprising that researchers have given it a wide berth over the years. At long last, however, this attitude is changing, and a few brave investigators are coming forward. In my imagination I see DCBD as a territory marked by bold signs: ATTENTION PROSPECTIVE NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS: LOOK HERE! Is anybody out there up to the challenge?

Larry Dossey, MD Executive Editor

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Notes
1. Chidiock Tichborne was a young English Roman Catholic conspirator. The quotation is from his “Elegy,” written in the Tower of London prior to his execution in 1586 while in his late 20s. Cited in: Angela Partington, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 1996:698). 2. This seems to be the most common version. See also Jamie Sayen’s Einstein in America (New York, NY: Crown; 1985:130), in which this version appears: “An hour sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench passes like a minute, but a minute sitting on a hot stove seems like an hour.” This was Einstein’s explanation of relativity given to his secretary, Helen Dukas, to relay to reporters and other laypersons. 3. For a fascinating look at Gurdjieff ’s “science of idiotism,” his unconventional teaching methods, and the interesting individuals who gathered around him, see J. G. Bennett and Elizabeth Bennett, Idiots in Paris: Diaries of J. G. Bennett and Elizabeth Bennett 1949 (Glos, England: Coombe Springs Press; 1980). 4. Dr Louay Fatoohi may be contacted at Durham University, Physics Department, Durham, England DHI 3IE, UK. Dr Jamal N. Hussein may be reached at Paramann Programme Laboratories, POB 310087, Al-Mahatta, Amman 11131, Jordan. 5. The term “tattoo,” from the Tahitian ta-tu or tatau, meaning to strike or to mark, was introduced by Captain James Cook, who encountered the practice in the South Pacific in July 1769. See Sanders, Customizing the Body: The Art and Culture of Tattooing (Philadelphia, Pa: Temple University Press; 1989:14). 6. True skepticism requires keeping an open mind until the facts are in. Many socalled skeptics do not do so; their minds appear to be made up in advance of the facts. See my comments in “The Right Man Syndrome” (Altern Ther Health Med. 1998;4[3]:12-19, 108-115).

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