- VANCOUVER -- I am sitting
in the dark, on a green leather sofa, my feet firmly planted on polished
hardwood. This spacious but sparely furnished family room is on the main
floor of a detached suburban home just outside Vancouver. A 19-year-old
"energy healer" who calls himself Adam is standing about three
metres in front of me.
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- "Just relax," says Adam, twisting his body
with arms spread out, as if he were warming up to throw a discus. From
the dim light in the kitchen, I see him in the shadows looking down at
his feet. Then his head suddenly jerks up, but he's clearly not in the
same space any more. He looks off into the distance, as though he's fallen
into a trance, and starts manipulating the air in front of his face with
his palms spread flat.
-
- As Adam will later explain, he is visualizing a hologram
of my immune system. He describes these visions as layers of 3-D images
in which he sees organs moving, hearts pumping -- and sometimes, bright
green masses that can indicate tumours.
-
- You may have heard about this boy with the so-called
magic touch. I first met and wrote about him 18 months ago. Since then,
he has been profiled in numerous television documentaries and magazine
articles, including a splashy feature in Rolling Stone magazine.
- At the time, this completely normal-looking teenager
had just self-published a book called Dreamhealer: His Name is Adam. The
book, which has since sold more than 20,000 copies, attempted to explain
what he does, diagnosing and treating illnesses from a distance, and included
a testimonial from Ronnie Hawkins, the rock 'n' roll legend Adam allegedly
cured of terminal pancreatic cancer by staring at a colour photo and connecting
to the Hawk's energy field from 5,000 kilometres away.
-
- Today, the Hawk is still kicking, has remained cancer-free
and is getting ready for his big 70th-birthday bash. "I was brought
up in the South, where you ain't supposed to believe in this stuff,"
He told Rolling Stone. "Jesus healed, but I never read anything where
it was long-distance. There's a lot of shit out there, and I don't believe
none of it. But I'm telling you exactly what happened to me. This wasn't
no coincidence. I don't know how Adam did it. But, my God, if that's what
he can do, in two years he'll be able to buy Jimmy Swaggart."
-
- For now, Adam is just trying to concentrate on his first-year
midterms at university now that his second book, Dreamhealer 2: Guide to
Self-Empowerment, is back from the printers. He still has a website (http://www.dreamhealer.com).
-
- Adam is studying general sciences and plans to become
a naturopathic doctor. Some day, he would like to open a centre where alternative
and Western medicine can be combined.
-
-
- Because of his intense study schedule, and overwhelming
demand for his help, he no longer performs one-on-one sessions. "There
are just too many people out there who want my help," he say. "Sometimes
it's so difficult turning people away, especially when they have little
kids with cancer spread all over their body."
-
- Adam remains anonymous to protect his family's privacy,
while keeping the seekers and skeptics at bay. "I've received thousands
of e-mails from people who want help. I've been asked to quit school, and
give up my friends or sports. One guy even suggested I sleep less. But
even if I were doing this 24/7, there still wouldn't be enough time to
help everyone.
-
-
- "And a lot of people that come to me aren't even
willing to help themselves. That's why I've written this book. Everyone
has the ability to heal themselves. It's just a matter of understanding
that the mind does affect the immune system. And you also have to be willing
to adopt a healthier and positive attitude. Intention counts for a lot."
-
- For a lot of people, Adam says, books aren't motivation
enough. So, as well as his alternative individual therapy, he has begun
offering group-healing sessions, which he says can be far more powerful
anyway. More than 2,000 have already attended his workshops. The next workshop
takes places in Vancouver in January. With 450 participants, it's the largest
yet, and has already sold out.
-
- The workshops function by joining everyone's aura and
allowing the group's combined energy, including Adam's, to flow together
in a master hologram. He describes the energy field as being similar to
two bubbles in a bath that suddenly burst into one large bubble.
-
-
- Adam prefers to do workshops with groups of people who
suffer from the same illness, but says anyone can benefit.
-
- "If you are doing your own visualizations to direct
your energy to a specific problem, the group healings are even more powerful
than the individual healings," he says. Back in the family room, I
feel a slight pressure on my neck as Adam shifts his gaze down and starts
knitting his hands as if he's trying to dig at something or push it out
of the way.
- Then his whole body slams backward and he nearly falls
to the floor. He sits down and cups his hands in front of his eyes to shield
his dilated pupils. "It's like coming out from a cave into a very
bright light," he explains as he catches his breath.
-
- "I saw a blob," Adam says. "It's actually
a little deeper than it looks from your aura. It's just below your ribs,
on the right side."
- A blob?
-
- "It sort of looks like the lymph nodes, but the
source is deeper than that. It's kind of thick and pasty. It's actually
quite concentrated. And it's constantly pulsing, almost the same as your
heartbeat. It's not something I see very often."
- Is it cancer?
-
- "I don't see anything hard there. I wouldn't be
too, too concerned, but I think it's something to check relatively soon.
I'm more concerned about your lungs. There's a general haze over the whole
area, and it looks kind of scarred. It's not a huge problem, but they look
pretty weak."
-
- My mind reels. Unidentifiable blobs? Hazy lungs? How
soon can I get an MRI scan?
- "Don't worry about it too much or it will manifest
into a physical problem," Adam says. "You know, the pulsating
is not something I see very often, but it can sometimes be an emotional
block. Maybe that's where you store your emotions."
-
- Emotional block? Whew. How about writer's block? I suffer
from that quite often. Either way, at least we're finally talking about
concepts I can almost understand.
- No one can explain what exactly Adam does. Edgar Mitchell,
however, says this sort of healing is firmly rooted in science -- or at
least its fringes.
-
- Mr. Mitchell, a former NASA astronaut and the sixth man
to walk on the moon in 1971 as part of the Apollo 14 mission, has been
a mentor to Adam for several years. He is also a former patient who credits
this young man with making a tumour on his kidney disappear.
- "Understand, I have been studying these things for
30 years or more," Mr. Mitchell, now 74, says over the phone from
his home in Florida.
-
- On his return journey to Earth, he says, he experienced
a life-changing epiphany, one he describes as a spiritual awakening that
made him instantly aware that we are all one with the universe. Soon after,
he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, now based in Northern California,
and has since spent his entire life trying to understand how mind reading,
telekinesis and seemingly unexplained paranormal phenomena might be integrated
with science theory.
-
- Mr. Mitchell and his peers argue that the world cannot
be explained through cause-and-effect Newtonian physics. They believe that
quantum mechanics, a much less understood science, will one day show that
energy is not restricted to time or location, but is connected to a parallel
or universal field of energy that we can affect through our minds or conscious
intent.
-
- Adam, so the theory goes, is one of the rare individuals
who can apparently jump into this alternate field much more easily than
most and manipulate the energy.
-
- "The problem of how intentionality can be modelled
within science is a very difficult one," Mr. Mitchell says. "I
won't say it's intractable. We have clues, but no solid answers. Watching
folk like this operate will help get us closer."
-
- Last December, during a routine physical exam, Mr. Mitchell's
doctor found a mass on his kidney that was consistent with renal carcinoma.
He asked for a second opinion from Adam, who thought it might be "hot,"
and they went to work.
-
- Adam says that once a week he would connect with Mr.
Mitchell's energy field and visualize the tumour being wrung dry until
it crumbled like sand. A month later, Mr. Mitchell went to a radiologist,
who told him the mass was getting smaller and to keep doing whatever he
was doing. By June, it had disappeared.
-
- "I've worked with some good healers," Mr. Mitchell
says. "I think Adam will be up there among the best. He just needs
experience. It wouldn't hurt if he had more education in anatomy. "
-
- At home in Vancouver, with his first-term finals looming,
Adam doesn't disagree.
- "I'm learning a lot in my classes that are helping
me make sense of what I've experienced. In chemistry, we're learning about
the quantum mechanics of atoms and the zero-point field. In biology, well,
we're learning about all the things we don't know. Basically, half the
textbook is made up of things we don't know. I find that very interesting.
I think a lot of the things I'm working with might be the missing link."
-
- We return to the family room and turn off the lights.
As Adam does his twitching thing, my head starts getting very heavy and
falls back on the couch. Before my eyes close, I feel my chest puffing
up like a balloon. When he finishes, I'm totally pumped and feel like I've
just run 10 miles.
-
- "Uh, I think you should stop smoking now, while
your body can still recover from it," Adam advises. "It's okay
now, but it won't be in 10 or 15 years. Why don't you try chewing gum?"
-
- Alexandra Gill is a member of The Globe and Mail's B.C.
bureau.
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- © Copyright 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.
All
- Rights Reserved.
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- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041127.
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