No issue in metaphysics is more fraught—and demanding of greater discretion—than mind-body healing in matters of grave or terminal illness. This article, which I make available free, reviews some of the finest and most widely accepted—if little known—documented medical episodes. Full sources appear. Credulity and cynicism are twin delusions. We must understand, within context, extraordinary, but not wholly anomalous, episodes. -M-

I honor the perspective of journalist Norman Cousins (1915-1990) who wrote in Anatomy of an Illness in 1979:

Not every illness can be overcome. But many people allow illness to disfigure their lives more than it should. They cave in needlessly. They ignore and weaken whatever powers they have for standing erect.

As a critical but “believing historian” of alternative spirituality, I urge exquisite care and caution in approaching questions of anomalous healing. There is no room for shorthand, generalities, or false hope.

That said, I do not discount the possibility of extraordinary—even miraculous—episodes of recovery pertaining to the psyche, which I define as a compact of thought and emotion. Such episodes are very rare but no less authentic as documented in mainstream medical literature.

My definition of a miracle is: a fortuitous event or circumstance exceeding all conventional expectation. Cynics call this accident. Pattern abrogates accident. I write of pattern . . .