Shortly after meeting Reverend Pajarillo, he told me that Divine spirits were using psychic surgery and other methods of paranormal healing, to bring broader issues to light. He explained that the revelation of these hidden issues was central to the mission of Christian Spiritism. The Union Espiritista had been established to prepare the world for the Coming of the Holy Spirit. In the Doctrina, Alvear went further, however, announcing that the Holy Spirit had arrived. As my understanding grew, I began to realize that the message the Blessed Spirit wanted to communicate was that the Holy Spirit has indeed come, but our belief systems were based on inaccurate preconceptions and were preventing us from recognizing the dawning of a new epoch of human evolution. When psychic surgery was first discovered, dynamic results, both therapeutically and visually, were widely reported. From 1965 through 1975, the studies I described in the last chapter produced well documented evidence that psychic surgery was 'real.' These results led early researchers of spirit-directed phenomena to assume that psychic surgery would be easy to document and "prove" scientifically.
During the early seventies, psychic surgery continued to produce amazing results. Then something very odd happened. As psychic surgery drew more and more attention, and came under the increasingly focused attacks of powerful opponents, the healing efficacy of psychic surgery began to diminish. Skeptics, of course, insisted that psychic surgery had been a sham all along, and that their scrutiny had merely exposed the obvious. Psychic surgeons complained that the negativity of their opponents, and the increasing danger they faced in practicing psychic surgery, was straining the essential link to the Blessed Spirit that made genuine psychic surgery possible. In the majority of scientific studies after 1980, psychic surgery either failed to produce the desired therapeutic results, involved easily detectable sleight-of-hand, or both. I and many others had the unusual experience of watching a psychic surgeon perform an operation that was genuine in every respect. Then minutes later, the same psychic surgeon would botch a sleight-of-hand operation so badly that a child could detect it. This maddening inconsistency seemed to be a mockery of believers and detractors alike and confused and frustrated everyone who saw it.
I asked Reverend Pajarillo if he could explain the inconsistency. He told me that no one had been able to establish definitive proof that the operations were genuine because psychic surgery was only a pawn in the larger strategy of the Holy Spirit. His emphasized that definitive proof of psychic surgery did not serve the purpose of the spiritual forces that were using spirit-directed phenomena to prepare the human race for a profound new understanding. Through their intradimensional dialogue with the Holy Spirit, the Christian Spiritists learned that a new stage of spiritual evolution had dawned. As early as 1909, Juan Alvear announced the dawning of the age of the Holy Spirit in the Doctrina Espiritista, According to Benjamin, the activities of psychic surgeons, for better or for worse, served a hidden agenda; that is, to bring the attention of the world to the Filipino healers and lead humanity to the realization that the age of the Holy Spirit is in progress.
In the Doctrina, Alvear explains that the Spiritualism movement was the first in a series of three spiritist interventions designed to reform and, ultimately, transform the Christian religion. The second spiritist intervention took place in France where Allan Kardec received the Spiritist Doctrine from elevated spirits through trance mediums, which he published in The Spirit's Book and The Medium's Book. The third spiritist intervention is described by Juan Alvear as "the founding of schools of moral evangelism which arose from the knowledge of the Holy Spirit." From these schools came "the true Spiritism in formal mediums followed by the emergence of conferences and evangelical sessions." Once again, awakening the world to the presence of the Holy Spirit is central to the mission of Filipino Christian Spiritism.
After spending years divining the origins of psychic surgery, I found that the religious practices of Christian Spiritists were, in fact, the source from which they drew their power. It was the intervention of Divine healing spirits that enabled them to function in paranormal capacities. Though it manifests in a much different context, genuine psychic surgery is to Christian Spiritism what stigmata is to Catholics; a paranormal manifestation of intense religious conviction and practice. In direct contradiction of the beliefs of spirit-phobic Western Christians, the religious practices of Christian Spiritists are based exclusively on a positive and beneficial relationship with disembodied spirits who serve humanity under the direct tutelage of the Holy Spirit.
In the poverty of the rural Philippines, I found overwhelming evidence of an unprecedented role of both the Holy Spirit and spirit-directed healing in the lives of Christian Spiritists. Among the provincial Filipinos, I discovered a form of Christianity that has proceeded from the direct revelation of the Holy Spirit. After centuries of religious persecution, and against all odds, a Christian community in which the Holy Spirit plays a defining role has emerged. Having realized that the paranormal healing ability of the Christian Spiritists was derived from their religious practices, I immersed myself in Christian theology and biblical study to gain a clear understanding of their beliefs, and how they differed from those of Western Christians. There are several theological subjects in particular that are common both to Western Christian theology and Christian Spiritism that I feel warrant discussion.
BACK Copyright 2001 - All Rights Reserved - Revelator Martin Harvey