Are energy healing modalities affected by the personality of the founder?

A few years ago I took a workshop in a method called BodySpin. The method, which involved the use of small, specially designed magnets illustrated with intricate and colourful geometric patterns, was quite elegant and architectural. Its creator, Jeff Levin, also happened to be an architect.

Richard Bartlett, the creator of Matrix Energetics, who likes to play air guitar at the beginning and end of his workshops, comes across as a would-be rock star and media personality. He is spontaneous, fun, and irreverent, and he created a system that is likewise spontaneous, fun, and irreverent.

Bill Bengston is a professor and a self-described skeptic and rationalist. So when almost 40 years ago he encountered a strange man who was able to bust clouds, read real-time diagnoses from signatures hidden in envelopes, and eventually developed the ability to cure cancer, he immediately asked himself, what is this strange phenomenon? can I prove that it exists? can I tease it apart to see what makes it work?

Out of these questions came a series of seminal experiments that proved that what we call "energy healing" indeed exists and can work on cancer. At the same time Dr. Bengston also devised a teaching method which he has since used in a dozen or so workshops, but his preference as a skeptic and as a rationalist continues to be the probing of these healing energies in the lab to see if they will yield up their secrets.

By way of contrast to Dr. Bengston's approach, I would like to present the case of Richard Gordon, the founder of Quantum Touch. Like Dr. Bengston, Richard Gordon 30-odd years ago met a man who could dissolve grapefruit-sized tumours and move vertebrae with the touch of a finger. Richard Gordon learned to heal from him and developed Quantum Touch, which has since then become a world-wide phenomenon with reputedly over 500 instructors. He says Quantum Touch is easy to learn and his motto is "your love has impact". Along the way there seems to have been some dilution, but practitioners out there are arguably doing quantities of "good" -- as are practitioners of other modalities all over the world.

Both Dr. Bengston and Mr. Gordon serve the public weal through their own particular means and it is difficult to judge which means will ultimately prove to be of greater benefit to society. Dr. Bengston would like to figure out the underlying mechanism of healing and find alternate means of delivery for it. Richard Gordon wants to teach his method to as many people as possible so they can go out there and help others.

Judging by the unprecented results of Dr. Bengston's mouse experiments, the closest we have come to date to finding a cure for cancer is the healing energy that came through Bennett Mayrick, Dr. Bengston's mentor, almost 40 years ago. It was then that Dr. Bengston also learned to cure cancer, and a short while later a method was devised to also teach others. Yes, it is a worthwhile exercise to study this healing energy in a lab to see what makes it tick and whether it can be reproduced by other means; but it also belongs in the hands of people helping real cancer patients in real time, out in the real world. That is why I keep carping on the need for an institute to do teaching as well as research, so not only the energy itself could be studied, but also the most effective means of passing it on.