A TOUCH OF WARMTH
By Stephan A. Schwartz

We were studying healing. Bob was 25, sallow, and very sick. Diagnosed as being HIV-positive 18 months earlier, he was now in the final stages of full-blown AIDS, his once handsome features now disfigured by the beginnings of a cancerous lesion of Karposi Syndrome. I don’t know how he had found out about our study, but he had and on that Tuesday morning he presented himself at the clinic. Our research was simple in concept. We were asking 14 men and women, seven of them experienced healers using everything from evangelical Christian laying-on-of-hands, to channeling space people, and seven of them volunteers who had never tried energy healing, to treat 14 men and women suffering from everything from migraines to cancer, while small sealed vials of water were strapped to their hands.

Our focus was to see if the water changed, if something in its structure was altered by being exposed to healing energy, whatever that was, in a way that could be measured. For each of the three little sealed vials of triple distilled water used in a session there was a control; a vial of water exactly the same but one which was unexposed to the healing energy. The difference we were measuring was the difference between the treated vial and its control. Although real healing was going to take place, we hoped, our focus was on the water.

The 14 people who were to receive the healing were randomly matched by a computer to one of the 14 healers, and the luck of the draw had matched Bob with Ben, a 40 year old film producer, with a fundamentalist Christian background, and an almost aggressive masculinity. Ben had never tried to do healing before, and was profoundly homophobic.

When we saw the pairing we realized we faced a dilemma. The healers were not being told the medical conditions of the person they were to heal; but AIDS was different. Yet we knew that Ben was not only homophobic, but terrified of AIDS. He had made a point of telling us that during a pre-clinical interview. Could we be ethical and not tell Ben? Was it fair to Bob to be assigned to a healer who found his lifestyle personally repugnant, and who was afraid of his disease? While Bob and Ben both filled out a long series of questionnaires we wrestled with these issues, and finally decided that Ben had to be told.

When he heard the news he blanched and asked to be left alone. He walked into one of the small room where the healing sessions were taking place and closed the door, apparently forgetting that everything in the rooms was being videotaped. The tape would later show Ben pacing up and down as he struggled with his inner fears and demons. After about five minutes he came out saying, "We came here to do healing, let’s go." He smiled at Bob, and did not waver, even when he saw that Bob, who had been sitting to answer the questionnaire could hardly rise from his chair.

"It’s just my arthritis," he said to Ben. "Whenever I sit for more than 10 minutes my body locks up." Ben helped Bob into the room and Bob leaned heavily on Ben as he struggled to get onto the massage table we were using. "I’m sorry," was all he said. For a moment both of them were silent, then Ben began to slowly run his hands over Bob, about five inches above his body. "How long have you had this?" Ben asked.

"I probably became HIV-positive a few weeks after I came out," Bob replied. "It was like some kind of punishment, I thought at first." The two men locked eyes, then glanced away. What are the major problems?" Ben asked, struggling to keep his voice professional.

"Oh, God, I don’t know. There are so many things. Right now though I guess it’s the arthritis, I used to be a dancer before... before all this. And I’m cold. God, I’m cold all the time."

"Cold?" Ben asked in surprise considering the upper 70 degree temperature of Los Angeles.

"Yeah. I can’t get warm. Its the AIDS, it screws up your circulation. I haven’t been warm in oh, maybe four months. Even when I take hot baths, it only lasts for a few minutes. I’m just cold, deep down inside all the time."

For the next 30 minutes Ben worked on Bob with an intensity that made conversation superfluous. Even though he was lying down, and the video camera was 10 feet away, it was easy to see that the experience was an intense one for Bob. His eyes closed, and his body gradually relaxed, his breathing coming through his mouth which was open as in sleep. Yet he was awake, and spoke words so softly only Ben could hear them. Ben worked carefully, slowly going over Bob’s body, sometimes moving his hands as if he were pulling something invisible yet thick and clinging out of Bob’s body; pulling it out and throwing it away with a flick of his hand. Finally, it came to an end and he stood away from the body on the table, looking down on Bob.. Tears ran silently down Ben’s cheeks.

After a minute or two, Bob opened his eyes. He still looked like a man who was slightly stunned. It took a moment more for him to collect himself then without a care, with easy grace, he rose from the table and was half way across the room when he suddenly stopped. He looked at Ben and, then, looked down at his feet. With a broad smile he did a little dance step. Both men began to laugh, and Ben went across and hugged Bob.

"Thank you, Ben. Thank you so much."

"I don't think God punishes people by giving them AIDS," Ben said. "I might have thought that once, but now I think maybe His punishment is reserved for people whose hearts are closed to a brother’s suffering."

As Bob came out of the room, he turned to the researcher who was monitoring the experiment and said, "I’m warm. For the first time in four months, I feel warm inside."

Was it all just subjective, a kind of placebo effect? An hour later, when we examined them, we found that each of three vials from the healing session, was changed. The way the oxygen and hydrogen atoms linked together to form the molecules of water was different than the control samples.

Bob stayed in touch with us over the next weeks. He reported that his arthritis had returned, although it was not quite as bad. To him though the most important effect of his healing session with Ben was that he continued to be warm. What he had called "the chill of the grave" did not return to torment him. Three months later Bob contracted pneumonia. A week later he was dead. Bob’s death forced me to reconsider what I thought about healing. We all expect the big finish, the lame child who throws away his crutches and walks again. Sometimes I realized healing is just warmth, and a change of attitude.

Publication History: Slightly different versions appeared in New Age Journal May/June 1997, and Hot Chocolate for the Mystical Soul (Plume/Penguin: New York, 1998).

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