Space, Time and Health

Dr.Larry Dossey, M.D.,

ON

(Consciousness and Medicine)

Our relationships and perceptions of time and reality all seriously affect our health, says Dr.
Larry Dossey. In the following excerpt from Dosseys new book, Space, Time and Medicine,
and in our conversation with him, which follows the excerpt, Dossey outlines his ideas and
makes a convincing case for how consciousness affects our bodies.
OUR SHADOWS DANCED ON the walls of the small room, an examination area just off
the nurses station that we could lock from the inside. On the desktop in a metal ash tray the
small white tablet burned with an eerie blue flame. It was a methenamine tablet, an antibiotic
of low potency used to treat urinary tract infections. I had learned that it was flammable years
ago. Always kept on hand on the hospital ward in the nurses station, it was readily available
for our ceremony
The old man sat stolid and wide-eyed. He had been admitted to the internal medicine service
of the hospital two weeks prior to Jim, my fellow intern and close friend. The man was dying.
He was emaciated and had the look of death which, six months into our internship, we had
learned to recognize. I watched the methenamine burn, not believing what we were doing.
For two weeks the wizened old man submitted to diagnostic studies-the usual barrage of xrays and blood tests. Without exception they proved normal. His admitting diagnosis was
cancer, a reasonable presumption in an elderly male with a fifty pound weight loss in a sixmonth period. Jim patiently pursued the workup in spite of the chain of normal results with
the faith that sooner or later he would find evidence of real disease. And as the diagnostic
workup proceeded, the old man worsened. By now he was profoundly weak, almost bedfast.
Then, two days ago, the evaluation was concluded. Jim had simply run out of tests to do. He
was faced with the embarrassing dilemma of having a dying patient in his care and no
explanation for his illness. As he made morning rounds he told the old man of the
predicament. You are dying and I dont know why. His patient replied, Thats all right,
Doctor, I know Iam dying. And I know why too. Jim stared at him, not believing what he
had heard. The old man went on , Doctor, Ive been hexed,
He then related the astonishing account of how his health had begun to fail. Three months
prior an enemy of his hired a local shaman to perpetrate a hex on him. (The reasons
surrounding this event never came to light.) The shaman was successful in convincing his
wife to clip a lock of the mans gray hair and to deliver it into her possession. Using this

embodiment of the man, she worked a spell. At the proper time she let it be known to the old
man and to his adversary that he had been hexed, and that he would die.
Curiously to us, from the start the old man never resisted this pronouncement. That the hex
might not work never seemed to have occurred to him. It was as if he were already dead,
delivered totally of his will to live. From the day he discovered he was hexed, he stopped
eating. His weight loss was inexorable, and he came to the hospital to die.
Jim called me into an examination room and related the bizarre story. He was excited at this
revelation. My own response to the new information about the hex was despairing- I felt
sympathy for the patients plight, but could not think of anything else to do. I felt he was
right, that he was going to die.
Jims attitude was different. We have to cure him, was his parting comment as we agreed to
meet later to discuss therapy for his patient.
Over the next twenty-four hours Jim developed a therapeutic strategy with little help from
me. He threw himself into the task with an incredible energy. I now realize what I did not
know then: I was witnessing an archetype struggle one shaman battling another shaman-a
struggle over life itself. Although he did not recognize it as such, Jim was pitting his medicine
against his adversarys hex. And the stakes were the life or death of the old gray-haired man.
Jim had decided to wait until Saturday night for the ceremony. Hospital activity was at a
full on the weekend, and there would be less chance of our being discovered. At midnight he
went into the patients room and assisted him into a wheelchair-by then he was too weak to
walk. He then checked the corridor, making sure it was deserted and scurried with his patient
into the examining room across the hall where I was waiting, having lit the methenamine
tablet already. As Jim entered with the old man I nervously locked the door behind him,
feeling foolish and apprehensive about the prospect of being discovered, We were all three
alone in silence and near-darkness.
Jim sat in a chair near the flame, After what seemed an eternity he arose, at perfect ease and
in complete command of the situation. The old man and I followed his every move. He
loomed larger than life in the strange light- I was witnessing a real shaman at work. He
seemed absolutely serious about his task, aware that his patients life depended on the skillful
disposition of his power.
Jim produced from his pocket a pair of stainless steel surgical scissors he had borrowed for
the occasion. In the faint blue light they gleamed as he moved toward the old man, who sat
transfixed in his wheelchair, following every one of Jims slow, deliberate moves. He walked
to the wheelchair, raised the scissors and grasping a lock of gray hair with his other hand
began slowly to cut.
The old man seemed by then to have stopped breathing. With the lock of hair in his left hand
Jim slowly retreated to the desk top, appearing massive as he stood over the dancing flame.
Then he looked squarely at his rigid, wasted patient and said slowly in a calm, deep voice,
As the fire burns your hair, the hex in your body is destroyed. He lowered his hand,

allowing the hair to fall into the flame. Then he added the whimsical caution, But if you
reveal this ceremony to anyone, the hex will return immediately, stronger than before, I was
grateful that Jim was a shaman who was aware of potential professional humiliation!)
The ceremony was over. I unlocked the door as silently as possible, and Jim wheeled the
mute old man across the deserted corridor to his room, assisting him to bed. He returned , but
said little. For some strange reason an atmosphere of seriousness pervaded this zany weasion.
Exhausted, we parted, after vowing eternal silence about this midnight caper.
The de-hexing was almost immediate in its onset. Jims patient awoke with a voracious
appetite! He ordered triple serving of breakfast, which was notoriously the hospitals most
inedible meal of the day. He continued to order double helpings thereafter for every meal,
seemingly oblivious to what was being served. His weight increased almost unbelievably.
True to the warning, he never mentioned the de-hexing ceremony, not even to jim. His
attitude was cheerful, almost ebullient from that time forward. He never waivered in his
belief that he had been rescued by Jim the Shaman.
Jim kept him in the hospital for several days, wanting to be certain that his de-hexing had
firmly taken. When he was finally sure that his patient was cured, he discharged him. He left
the hospital a well man, leaving behind a fat hospital chart full of normal test results- and an
examination for days reeked of burning hair.
Jim and I ceased to discuss the incident. The issues of surviving a hectic year on internshiphard work, little sleep, and subsistence pay- were pressing and as time passed I forgot about
the event.
In retrospect it was interesting for me to recall how my own conscious processes deal with
the episode of Jims gray-haired, hexed patient. From start to finish the case was bizarre and
unsetting. The mans illness and cure didnt fit with anything I had learned in medical school,
where disease was considered to be the result of deranged cellular processes. Disease, we
were told, was caused by a malfunction of the machine, the body. And the raison detre of the
physician was to localize the malady and exterminate it, where possible.
But what of Jims patient? It seemed clear that the initial breakdown was not in the
machine. Indeed, Jims tests failed to find anything wrong. Accordingly to the laboratory
tests and x-rays the machine was functioning perfectly. But the old man was dying.

Emotionally charged behaviour such as loving and touching has enormous

effects on health.
Now it seems quite clear why I relegated this experience to the status of some quaint aberrant
occurrence that had no real significance. To do otherwise would have been to question my
entire belief system about disease causation. Now, years hence, the repressive efficiency of
my own consciousness is not so great, and that experience and hundreds similar to it that
have occurred since have transformed my understanding of how humans become sick.

Psychological factors and emotionally charged behaviour such as loving, touching, caring,
sharing and associating exert enormous effects on health. These patterns suggest an intrinsic
mind body unity that simply cannot be accounted for by the present biomedical framework,
wherein all matters of health order or disorder originating at the level of the molecules in the
body.
For a half century we have accepted almost without question the assumption that the
primary threats to our health were out there. The success of antibiotics in eradicating
specific pathogenic bacteria and the effectiveness of immunizations in preventing disease are
perhaps the major factors that historically led us to conceptualize disease as originating
outside our bodies. Following this notion we have for generations formulated health
strategies that are geared toward protecting us front malevolent external events.
In the main we have looked for disease causation in areas where we knew how to look: the
physiological, the realm of the flesh. Our techniques of investigating physiological
functioning far exceed our facility in describing physiological phenomena, which in medicine
we have tended to ignore. Our strategy is reflected in a famous Sufi story of Mulla nasrudin,
an enlightended teacher. While on his hands and knees, peering on the street for a lost key, he
was approached by a friend. You lost the key here, Mulla? his friend inquired. No,said
nasrudin, I lost it in my house. Then why are you looking here? asked the friend.
Because, said nasrudin, the light is better here.
In our efforts to explore human illness we have looked where the light is good. In some
cases we have been fortunate enough to find valuable lost keys. But the problem in most
diseases is that the key seems to be lost in many places at once, and the search leads us
deeper into the dark where the chains of causation weaken and break.
Of all the frustrations in the search for disease causation, none has been keener than what
we can call the human factor. Why did medical students who had cold parental relations
and who were able to externalize emotions poorly develop fatal cancer at an increases
incidence? Why do assertive, truculent, and irascible patients with metastatic breast cancer
live longer than their passive peers? Why does job satisfaction rate as a major factor in the
development of coronary heart disease? Why do psychological coping styles in the face of a
heart attack influence survival in the coronary care unit?
This type of information has been a veritable irritant in biomedical research, where the
premium has never been on answering these kinds of questions. The light has always been
better elsewhere: in the world of molecular biology, where we had all hoped that therapies
would emerge whose effectiveness would be so great that the perplexing question of the
human factor would simply not need answering.
This has not proved to be case. While we maintain the hope of a pharmacologic cure for
cancer and heart disease, it is clear that human factors can no longer be regarded as peripheral
to the causation. And in any consideration of prevention of these diseases, the human factor
emerges with central importance.

What exactly do we mean by human factors in disease causation? In general we simply

mean emotions and feelings, whether positive or negative. Joy and sorrow, as well as elation
and depression, are human factors. So are grief, fear, anxiety, frustration, happiness,
helplessness, hope and satisfaction.
How do these diverse psychological traits influence disease processes? We shall examine
several examples, beginning with a striking result round in an experiment at Ohio State
University.
A group of investigators were studying the effects of a diet high in fat and cholesterol in
rabbits. At the end of a certain period the rabbits were killed, and certain arteries in their
bodies were examined for evidence of atherosclerosis. This process of cholesterol deposition
forms obstructions and ulcerations in arteries and in human results in vascular disease of
various types, such as heart attacks and stroke.
The results of the study should have been rather predictable, since it was known at the
time from previous studies that a diet high in fat and cholesterol would regularly cause
flagrant atherosclerotic changes in the arterial systems of rabbits. But when a certain group of
the test rabbits demonstrated atherosclerotic changes which were 60 percent less than that of
the overall group, the investigators were astonished.
There was no obvious explanation for the unexpected result. Finally an unplanned and
unexpected variable in the experiment was discovered : the rabbits who were affected less
severely were those who were fed and cared for by one of the investigators who during the
course of the experiment, regularly tool them from their cages and petted, stroked and talked
to them.
Was this mere coincidence? Many bioscientists would have considered laughable the
possibility that such rabbit-human interchanges could play a role in antherosclerotic vascular
disease and would have passed over this possibility. After all, atherosclerotic vascular disease
is an objective affair rooted in molecular processes, and the battle against it should be fought
on the battle ground of the cell not the psyche so the theory of molecular medicine goes.
In order to test this coincidence, systematic controlled studies were designed in which
two groups of rabbits were again fed the same diet and were treated identically except that
one group was removed from their cages several times a day for petting, and were talked to
each time by the same person. The results? The petted and talked to group once again
demonstrated a 60 percent lower incidence of atherosclerosis.
Not content with the possibility of two coincidences the Ohio State investigators repeated the
study. The results were the same. In an unexplained way the human factor emerges.
Touching, petting, handling and gentle talking emerged as a crucial determinant in the disease
process from which most of us will die: antherosclerosis.
There are sometimes marked differences between species of mammals as to how disease
occur. Some of these species differences are known while some are unknown; therefore, to
generalize the above study to humans may be reckless. Atherosclerosis in rabbits may not be

so analogous to the human form of the disease as we might think. What reasons are there to
assert that similar psychological factors operation on the human level?
One way of approaching the questions is to simply note that the current physiological
explanations of antherosclerosis in human seem inadequate. With regard to heart disease,
certain well-known risk factors are recognized : high blood cholesterol levels, diabetes
mellitus, high blood pressure, and cigarette smoking. All tend to increase ones chances of
contracting the disease. Yet in over half of the new cases of antheroselerotic heart disease,
none of these risk factors are present. Something else is going on. Could human factors be
involved?
In 1973, a special task force in Massachusetts reported to the Secretary of H.E.W. their
findings on the likelihood of survival from atherosclerotic heart disease. They found the most
reliable factor in determining survival was not smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes
mellitus or high blood cholesterol levels, but job satisfaction. And the second overall best
predictor was what the task force termed overall happiness.
In 1980, subjects with elevated blood cholesterol levels were taught the technique of
Transcendental Meditation. Serial determinations of the blood cholesterol level were made. It
was found that in subjects who practiced this technique the cholesterol level fell on the
average of 20 percent. While this fall may seem modest, it should be noted that there are no
drugs that are consistently more effective safe and inexpensive as this method of involuntary
relaxation and mental quieting.
These findings pose enormously complex questions. How do such human experiences as job
satisfaction, happiness and meditation get into the cell? How are the effects of the psyche
translated into real physiological change, emerging as an increase in survival from
atherosclerotic heart disease or a lowering of the blood cholesterol level?
Patches of light now exist and we are no longer forced to search in complete darkness in
trying to understand these mind-body interactions. For instance, we know that anxiety, stress
and tension stimulate a rise in the level of catecholamines in the blood. When we are
subjected to stress, cholesterol levels predictably rise due in part, it is felt, from the increase
in catecholamine levels in the bloods.
Yet we know that one way to reduce the level of catecholamines in the blood is to teach the
subjects to meditate. Not only are adrenaline levels affected, but profound changes occur in
the blood concentrations of other hormones such as cortisol (hydrocortisone). As the
concentrations of these substances are altered the physiological processes that they regulate
are secondarily modified including heart rate, blood pressure, regional blood flow and
blood levels of various other substances such as glucose, insulin and glucagon.
Brown and his colleagues have conducted a series of studies in the United Kingdom
investigating the incidence and prevalence of psychiatric disorder. In a variety of settings
(urban and rural) and among different social classes (working and middle class) the most
potent protective factor against psychiatric illness was the presence or absence of an intimate

and confinding relationship with a husband or boy-friend ; that is one in which feelings could
be shared whether or not sexual intimacy occurred.
The health-sustaining role of social support systems or human factors, is strongly suggested
from evidence from Alameda County, California. 4,700 men and women over a nine-year
period were followed and mortality rates from all causes were examined. Mortality rates in
men were significantly higher among the unmarried. Those men who chose fewer social
contacts with friends and relatives and those who were not church members, demonstrated a
higher death rate. For women, marital status made no difference; but close friendship
patterns, church membership, and membership in groups in general were associated with a
lower mortality.
As every schoolboy knows there is a physiology of loving and caring, ranging from the
embarrassing facial blush to palpitations, sweating and stammering. Feelings of love generate
physical events. It may seem a distant transition from being in love in ones teens to being a
confidant or a supportive spouse later in life, but physiologic changes are involved on both
ends of the spectrum. These changes are not trivial. They can make the difference between
life and death.
We affect the health of those about us Human events such as touching and confiding exert
profound consequences on health.
But if the health of one individual affects that of another, how does it do so? One of the
mechanisms has been clarified by Steven J. Schleifer and his colleagues at the Mt. Sinai
School of medicine. It has long been felt that certain stressful events such as bereavement
could contribute to the development and course of a variety of illness. One of the most
stressful events in life is the death of a husband or wife and in 1967, Holmes and Rahe in
assessing the relative stress imposed by various events rated the death of a spouse as the
single most stressful occurrence in life. Schleifer studied the function of the bodys immune
system in men before and after the death of their wives all of whom suffered from advanced
breast cancer.
The cells in the body that function to maintain our immunity are called lymphocytes.
They are of two types, B and T lymphocytes, designations that refer to their origin in the
body. B lymphocytes are concerned with antibody production which occurs for example,
when bacteria or viruses invade the body. The T cells, on the other hand, function primarily in
affording us tissue immunity, a type of immunity which it is felt is particularly important in
retarding the development and growth of cancer cells in the body.
Schleifer found that the total number of T and B cells did not change after bereavement. But
the cells behaved differently. They could not be stimulated to perform their usual function.
Both the T and B lymphocytes failed to respond appropriately when challenged by certain
chemical agents which ordinarily, in healthy persons, cause them to appear turned on to
their task of providing immunity. It was if the cells themselves were sick.

What happened? How did bereavement, a profoundly stressful event, produce changes in
the body,s immune system, compromising the defense against infection and cancer? The
answer is not known, but causes are multiple, involving atleast the complex chemistry
function.
Schleifer,s work shows us that illness is a shared phenomenon, generating changes in the
health of those about us. Even our own death which the poets have long lamented as a lonely
affair is of repercussions in those who love us those who bereave our passing.
These views are dissonant with our traditional idea of health and disease as personal
matters. And ironically it is science that is fueling this dissonance validating the vision of
John Donne, who knew of the rich connections which bind us together: No man is an
island.

A Conversation with DR. LARRY DOSSEY by TOM MONTE

Were late, which is not particularly uncommon; neither is the attendant anxiety that
rushes through my veins like a low electric current. Lenny Jacobs, publisher of East
West Journal and I are already thirty minutes delayed for our interview with Larry
Dossey, a medical doctor and author of the new book Space, Time and Medicine.
Lennys behind the wheel of the Journal doing about 45 now 50 in a 25 mph zone. I
dont know what to be more nervous about: Dossey or the cops. I look around for squad
cars but on types and in repetition or paradigmatic gestures is that in this way time is
abolished.
Dossey quotes Eliade: A sacrifice, for example, not only exactly reproduces the initial
sacrifice revealed by a god ab origine, at the beginning of time, it also takes place at the same
primordial mythical moment; in other words every sacrifice repeats the original sacrifice and
coincides with it. All sacrifice are performed at the same mythical instant of the beginning;
through the paradox of rite, profane time and duration are suspended.
Dossey seems to agree with Eliade when he maintains that the act of stopping time and
living in the eternal present is not only the accomplishment of primitive society but also the
hallmark of religious and mystical people. Spiritually aware people who reach a certain level
of consciousness achieve the same feat that primitives and children have managed, namely
they live in the continual present.
In stark contrast we moderns race around in automobiles, watching our watches,
instruments Dossey refers to as symbols of death. We watch time we are fixated on it. It
can even be said that most of us are dominated by it.
Dossey maintains that modern physics, the most advanced science, has effectively
shown that the primitives view of time is essentially correct: quantum theory shows that time
is not linear; it does not consist of past, present and future as modern cultures maintain
but is actually cyclical and regenerative like the course of the day or the repeating seasons.

The view supported by modern physics and reported by Dossey is that space and time
exist together and at once as if they were a block. There is no separation in the block; it is a
single entity a single whole experience, an event that indeed existed before we as individuals
actually experience it. We experience life and arbitrarily divide it into slices or units: the
size of those units whether they are seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years or
something else depends entirely upon the subjective view of the person or culture.
Dossey quotes Eliade: Each observer, as his time passes, discovers, so to speak, new slices
of space time, which appears to him as successive aspects of the material world, though in
reality the ensemble of events constituting space-time exists prior to his knowledge of them.
Quantum physics is showing that everything is one. Children, primitives, mystics, and the
highly conscious all abolish time.
Perhaps it is not surprising writes Dossey, that most great religions have always
prescribed methods of prayer and meditation through which one can become as a child; for in
practicing these disciplines one quickly discovers that the experience of time changes. It
ceases to flow; and experientially one feels enveloped by the stillness of which all the great
mystics have spoken.
I dont know of any illness that is not affected by our sense of time passage.
The van winds its way through Cambridge heading toward its destination, We cruise
down Memorial Drive along the Charles River; the early spring sun glistens off the Charles
and sprinkles a thousand little lights on its surface. Suddenly, Im feeling somewhat relieved;
not only has Dossey eloquently outlined the problem of time sickness but also he seems to
have offered at least one workable solution.
Still, Im feeling pulled by two definitions of reality: the one inside the van, that doing
45 in a 25 mph zone, and the one outlined by Dossey in space-time. Of course, if a cop
suddenly pops out of somewhere and flashes us over to the curb, I know which reality hell
be talking about. I wonder if quantum physics would come to my rescue in court.
It is a common, almost uniform, mistake to assume that science can resolve for us what
is meant by real, writes Dossey. It is unsettling to discover that modern physical scientists
no longer make any claim to reality, seeking instead to give only the best description of the
world they can devise, and one that rests entirely on sense impressions.
Dossey quotes Einstein, who puts the problem of reality succinctly: All knowledge
about reality begins with experience and terminates with it.
In other words, reality is that which is real for you. Certainly, this universal law is one
reason why consciousness has such a fundamental impact on health and our ability to enjoy
life. On some level, life is what we say it is. And therein lies some hint to freedom, a small
but significant crack in the door.

Lenny continues to tool down Memorial Drive. As we get closer to Dosseys hotel, spacetime seems to get more compressed. I feel squeezed into a smaller box. I cant wait to get out
of the van. Lenny guns it.
Dossey writes that pain and time are intrinsically related: when we feel pain, we also
experience a contracted sense of time. Minutes seem to drag, and one is acutely sensitive to
every passing moment. Dossey maintains that when a patient is given a drug by a physician
to control pain, the drug also effectively expands the patients sense of time. The patient
becomes drowsy, forgets where he or she is, and floats in time for a while. The hours fly,
Dossey points out that this opens the door to using other means to reduce pain.
Other techniques as well do much to alter the time sense and have become valuable
adjuncts to controlling pain. Hypnosis is one such example..... Biofeedback, which relies
heavily on imagery and visualization in achieving physiologic self control, has marked effect
on modifying time perception. Meditation, autogenic therapy, and progressive relaxation have
similar effects. In fact, any device or technique that expands ones sense of time can be used
as an analgesic.
We arrive at the hotel. Up the elevator down the hall we knock on the door: Dossey. He is
about six feet three inches tall. His straight black hair, which nearly covers his ears entirely, is
perfectly groomed, not a hair out of place. His face is chiseled and angular. He smiles often
and warmly, yet his eyes are those of an eagles the kind that pick up details, like field mice a
mile away. This does not create an unfriendly persona; but one that takes time to feel
comfortable with. He is forty two years old, born on a central Texas cotton farm. After
graduating from medical school in 1968, he served in Vietnam as a battlefield surgeon and
was decorated for valor: His speciality is internal medicine, and hes got a curriculum vitae a
mile long, dotted with posts and credits. Today, he is chief of staff at Dallas Hospital and
director of the Biofeedback Laboratory at the Dallas Diagnostic Center.
At first were all a bit tense, and we apologize for being late. Actually, what we
were doing was checking to see if you have any lingering time-sickness, Lenny says,
laughing. Dossey laughs too and in such a way that communicates that he didnt realize we
were in fact late. I make a mental note that once again a recurring lesson resurfaces: namely,
that all the hurry and even unhealthy. Its a lesson Ive seen many times before and will no
doubt confront again.
EWJ: You begin your book with the metaphor of a hex to show how consciousness has a
strong impact on health. Can you elaborate on this?
LD: We now have studies that show that consciousness is alterably important factor in what
evolves in healing and illness. This is the battleground of the classical mind-body problem. It
is the old body- mind relationship in reverse we have always struggled with trying to
understand how consciousness evolve out of chemistry and now we are trying to go
backwards and answer how the bodys immune system absorbs the impact of consciousness.
The phenomenon is the same the direction is in reverse thats all.

EWJ: Can you give us some practical examples of how this phenomenon is being used today
therapeutically?
LD: The work youre probably most familiar with is that of Carl and Stephanie Simonton
(authors of Getting Well Again). (The simontons have pioneered the use of positive
imaging and the importance of the mind in combating cancer- Through a variety of
techniques, the Simontons help the patient marshall the immune systems healing forces
against the cancer. They have experienced a remarkable amount of success in using these
methods.) The Simontons do clinical research, but their work getting patients to visualize an
end to their illness seems to be extraordinarily effective. We know that their patients treated
for the same stage of cancer live twice as long as those treated in traditional ways. The critics
from orthodox medicine say the patients are selected in a special way: they are self-referred,
they come there because they think its going to work therefore it does. As a result the critics
maintain that they are taking advantage of a kind of placebo effect and the data are
meaningless. There are no double blind trials that doctors want to see. However, I think we
should be terribly open and encourage this kind of work: because what the Simontons are
doing is trying to bring into play those mechanisms that we know in the laboratory affect
immune function.
EWJ: Would you discuss your ideas on how our perception of time affects health?
LD: The classical example is with coronary heart disease; people who suffer from this illness
are possessed by time; they have what is called hurry sickness. Time for these people is
constantly running out this is their felt sense of time. This has all sorts of concomitant effects.
It is much easier for these people- because of the effect this attitude has upon the heart- for
them to fibrillate has upon the heart attack and die. WE know that anxiety affects our ability
to handle stress. Infact, time sense can create stress and stress has been shown to affect our
bodys immune system. People who are breaving the loss of a spouse- an extremely stressful
state- suffer a weakening of the immune system and two to three times more death in their
respective age groups. The immune system is affected by our lives and thus cannot withstand
or fight off insults from without. I dont know of any illness that is not affected by our sense
of time passage.
EWJ: What about childhood illness?
LD: Im not sure that they differ physiologically: it depends on what age because the time
changes with age.
EWJ: Could the childs sense of time have something to do with its development of
language? This would seem to be the case, since the development of language is associated
with the left hemisphere of the brain, the logical and analytical side. The right hemisphere.
Which is associated with the inmature holistic view of life, would seem to give rise to the
more cyclical cosmic view of the time. Have you looked at this possibility?
LD: Those are interesting speculations but its more complex than that. There are cultural and
historical factors that may or may not be related to language. Western society was not

possessed by a sense of liner time until a reliable pendulum clock was developed in the
seventeenth century. Before that time, we have a rather primitive notion of time in the West as
a sense of an eternally returning phenomenon, and this domination that Western society
experiences now from the clock depended upon the emergence of the clock. Moreover, adults
from other culture such as the Hopis, are able to think a very precise left brain fashion and
maintain a complex ordering of their lives, yet live in the sense of the now. Hopis language
has no tenses. Australian aboriginal children learn time with great difficulty. They have
difficulty adapting to a watch yet even with conventional ways of assessing intelligence they
are equally intelligent as children in the surrounding Australian society. It would mean that
our ability to assess time therefore is an extraordinarily complexes and goes beyond our
ability with language.
EWJ: What idea do you change our perception of time?
LD: I track there are ways to acquire a sense of the abolishment of time flow. I feel strongly
that this is necessary that with my own patients I enlist their efforts in that regard. I used such
techniques as biofeedback or meditation. We know that as one becomes expert in biofeedback
techniques, the sense of time flow is radically altered. If you ask a person who is beginning to
learn biofeedback techniques when a minute is up, he or she may tell you a minute has passed
after fifteen seconds. The record holder in my office is five seconds. As these people become
more adept at biofeedback techniques, at relaxing, and acquire objectively measurable
biofeedback skills, their perception of time flow is radically altered. Instead of telling you a
minute is up when only fifteen seconds has passed, now they, re waiting two minutes before
they believe a minute is up. Their ability to relax and extend time has been radically
improved. Now, its interesting that as they gain those skills, the incidence of certain diseases
begins to diminish. Peptic ulcers, the incidence of angioa (insafficiency of coronary arteries, a
painful disease associated with heart attacks), and high blood pressure are all lowered. So I
think in a very direct way, time sense is crucial to the unfolding and healing of a great variety
of symptoms and illness.

People with heart disease are typically possessed by hurry sickness, a sense
that time is running out.
EWJ: Would you explain what biofeedback is?
LD: Biofeedback is a way we can know something about our body, when we ordinarily have
no knowledge of, we might measure your brain waves and show you on an oscilloscope, why
you are doing, we might measure hand temperature, tension, the amount of acid your stomach
is making, we might measure what your substances are doing in terms of intensity of
contraction. There are endless things we could measure, so that you suddenly have access to
information about yourself that you would not ordinarily have access to. Feedback is just
information in the purest sense. The person first learns to control these factors, these
phenomena in the body, by first learning to manipulate them with the help of the instruments;
for example, to lower the meter by lowering muscle tension (with the use of the mind), and
then with the help of the instrument, develop an intuitive awareness of what that feels like,

and then graduate from the instrument and perform the same functions naturally, which is the
goal of biofeedback. Its like learning to ride a bicycle; you may learn with training wheels
and then graduate and take the training wheels off.
EWJ: Would you say its a scientific form of meditation?
LD: When Swami Rama was introduced to biofeedback at the Menninger foundation, he took
an enormous amount of biofeedback equipment back to his ashram in India, and said that
inasmuch as it took him thirty years to acquire these skills, perhaps with the aid of solid state
sophisticated electronic equipment, his students would take not thirty years but three months.
Were dealing with learned capacities of human beings that are enormously speeded up and
rendered more efficient with the aid of these instruments and there is no doubt in my
judgement that the states of consciousness that expert biofeed back subjects enter into carry
strong similarities to the states of consciousness that mystics enter into. There have been
studies done in the early 1970 in which Zen meditators were compared to experts in
biofeedback and the measurable physiological changes that were demonstrated were identical
to those that were measured from experts in biofeedback.
After couple of hours in the ethereal atmosphere of the space-time model. Lenny and I
were back in the van, ruminating about our discussion with Larry Dossey. Lenny was driving
like any Sunday drive, slow and easy, as if the world were standing still Somehow, time had
stopped, or atleast slowed down,. Dosseys ideas have a certain healing effects; there is
ample time in the world he describes, plenty of time for one to get where one has to go. After
all, Dossey is a scientist in search of the spirit, a journey that takes a lifetime. Still, it is the
quality of that journey that Dossey is most concerned with. And he intends, with the help of
modern physics, to change our world view from one that is based upon individualism, a dogeat-dog existence at its worst, to a sense of community based upon the idea that we are all
part of a greater whole.