The New Age: An Emerging Worldview in Society – Program 4

By: Brooks Alexander, Dave Hunt, Tal Brooke; ©1988

Are people who trust their health to new age practices putting themselves in danger? Are these techniques scientific, or are they quackery?

Healing through New Age Practices

Ankerberg: Welcome! We’re talking about what has been seen across the country under the title of “New Age thinking.” And tonight we want to go into the area of New Age thinking in the area of medi­cine. How has it affected the medicine that is being practiced in our country today? How is it affecting our psychiatrists who are giving counsel to our people; maybe to you? Let me just show you something to start off with here. In New Age Magazine do you recognize the queen, the royal family? See what the title is? “Britain’s Royal Family Entrusts Its Health to a Controversial Holistic Healing Art Claimed to Boost the Immune System. This 200-year-old alterna­tive could be the medicine of the 21st century.” So here you have the royal family going into holistic healing. It’s called an “art” by the way. In Time magazine they talk about some of the holistic medicine. And maybe you automati­cally start to think, “Well, this is quackery!” They say there’s always a danger of quackery, but then they go to…what do you do with people who are teaching at Yale at the medical school, who are surgeons who have embraced it? For example, Bernie Siegel who is pictured in the magazine. He says, “After years of treating cancer patients he believes all disease is ultimately related to a lack of love.” He wrote a bestseller called Love, Medicine and Miracles. Delores Krieger, an R.N. and a Ph.D. teaching the art of therapeutic touch to nurses at New York University. She says, “The best thing that happens is rapid relaxation, the eradica­tion or lessening of pain and the beginning of healing processes.” Another practition­er, a 63-year-old lady, no nonsense woman, who treats ailments as varied as cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and a one-time bacteriologist she said she had no psychic experiences until after the death of her husband and then she began to hear voices. And she saw visions. She said, “I thought I was losing my mind!” Here are these mystical experiences coming in. She said when she began to study these phenomena, she became convinced of this — this is what she became convinced of…a lady, 63, no nonsense woman. She says, “I was convinced that unseen doctors were working” through her. She said, “I’m not a mystical person but I’ve learned to accept many, many things and I know my doctors are geniuses.” Why? Because what they tell her to do and what she does works with her patients. Dave, what’s going on? Why does the New Age influ­ence the medical profes­sion today?

Hunt: Well, the term “holistic” they won’t use. You see, a triangle generally: mind, body, spirit. You need to ask some simple ques­tions, obvious questions. “Holistic medicine,” “mind, body, spirit.” What kind of medicine do you give to spirits? I mean, why is everybody talking about spirit? What do they mean by “spirit”? Doctor, did you really study “spirit” at medical school? Seriously, now, doctor; “spirit” — hasn’t that always been a religious term? Would you please be honest enough to tell me, doctor, what religion is this that you’re passing off on your patients in the name of the latest medical science? Don’t take it from me, a critic, take it from Michael Harner with the Academy of Science of the State of New York, one of the world’s leading anthropol­ogists who has investigat­ed shamanism — and I think we’re going to talk about a little later — witchcraft — around the world. And on page 136 in his book The Way of the Shaman, Michael Harner — he be­lieves in it now. He’s not a critic like me. He says, “The burgeoning field of holistic medicine shows a remarkable amount of re-experimentation with the basic methods long practiced in shamanism.” In other words he says, “If you want to know what holistic medicine is, it’s witchcraft revived in the West under new terms.” Now, I’m sitting down in the Fort Worth area having dinner in a restaurant with a Christian businessman and he says — when he learns what kind of research I’m doing — he says, “Dave, let me tell you some­thing. My dad has had terrible pains and the doctors have examined him. They can’t find out why. They don’t know how to treat it. So, finally, his doctor arranged for him to come here to Dallas to the pain clinic at the Health Science Center of the University of Texas. I mean, this is the leading edge of advanced medical research. And it was really fortunate that he could be able to come there. He flew in from Iowa. I took him to the hospital. A week later,” in fact he says, “last Friday afternoon I picked him up and I said, `Dad, how did it go?’ He says, `Oh, John, fantastic! Beautiful! Terrific! I love you!'” And John says to me, “That wasn’t my dad talking. I mean, there was some­thing strange about the way he was talking. And he said, `They’re going to let me be on the continuing program. I’m going to fly back in once a month.’ And he begins to tell me about the yoga, the meditation, the visualization, the biofeedback, and so forth.” And John said, “I put my dad on the plane back to Iowa kind of wondering about this. Saturday the phone rings. It’s my dad. He said, `John, I don’t know what’s going on! Somebody’s been playing with my brain. I can’t think! I’m never going back to that place again!'” We’ve got doctors who are moving into the area of the spirit, and they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know the rules of the game; they don’t understand the power, and they think it’s something scientific that you can manipulate and experi­ment with and they’re getting in over their heads. And they’re leading people down the primrose path to destruction.

Ankerberg: What are some of these things, Dave? I’m going to name some of these things and you guys can all jump in on this. When I name the kind of technique, if you want, that the new medicine is practicing today, tell me what it is, how does it work and what’s wrong with it as far as what we’re saying? All right? What’s wrong with biofeedback? What is it, first of all?

Alexander: Biofeedback, the technical meaning of the term simply means “getting information back from your body.” You put a thermom­eter in your mouth and take your temperature, that’s an act of biofeedback. The problem with biofeedback is what they do with the information you receive back. They hook you up so that they are hooked to a machine which monitors your brainwaves. When you achieve a certain state of con­sciousness, you receive a signal so that you can learn to control the state of consciousness that you’re in. It’s a device for training your attention. Now, again, train­ing your attention is not necessarily something that’s wrong. Teaching yourself speed reading is a form of training your atten­tion. But what is it you’re training your attention to do, and how is it that that is interpretated for you? In biofeedback as it’s used today what you’re doing is you’re training your attention to enter a trance-like state and that’s interpreted for you in ways which are compatible with the philosophy of Eastern mysticism. Barbara Brown, the founder and chief proponent of the so-called scientific biofeedback today is a disciple of Hinduistic teachings.

Hunt: Well, just the bottom line. The Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas who have been into this with Elmer and Alice Green for almost 30 years — they would be among the foremost experts — they put out a documentary on biofeedback to promote it. They’re not critics like me. They’re not against it. And the title that they give to their documentary on biofeedback is: “Biofeedback: Yoga of the West.” So, it’s an electronic yoga for putting you into this state of consciousness.

Ankerberg: Guys, what in the world do crystals have to do with medicine? Here’s Shirley MacLaine holding a bunch of them. She wears one around her neck. People are buying these in the food store, in the book stores. They’re going home and they’re saying they’re getting healing by using crystals. What do they actually do with them and what is the background of this? Tal?

Alexander: The background relates to the idea that the whole world is vibration — all of reality is composed of vibrations. Now, as science has long known, there are some kinds of crystals that are indeed sensitive to certain types of vibrations. Ever heard of the crystal radio? This is something that picks up radio vibra­tions. So there is a sense of scientific reality behind it. But once you buy into the pantheistic philosophy that everything is simply a sequence of vibrations, then crystals become a logical tool for tuning them so that they will be in tune with certain vibrations in the universe. That’s the rationale that lies behind it.

Hunt: “Purify you spiritually, reach this state of consciousness, develop these powers,” and so forth.

Alexander: Right. The idea is that the crystals, being sensitive to the vibration, can be programmed with the vibrations of your intention. By your intention, concen­trating on the crystal, you’re intending to pour your healing desires into this crys­tal, it will pick up your vibrations, become programmed to be filled with healing energy.

Ankerberg: How about iridology? What is it and how does it work?

Hunt: Well, iridology is the belief — Bernard Jensen would be one of the founders of it — it’s the belief that by looking in your eye, you can tell exactly what’s wrong with any organ of your body.

Ankerberg: Look at the iris.

Hunt: In the iris of the eye. It simply has no scientific, medical, biological, physiological basis. To believe that from every organ of my body that there are nerves that go up to my eye that make a pattern, you know, and you can diag­­nose…no. Nerves go from my eye to my brain. It’s not the other way around. So, it just is not true. However, the danger of this is that some of these people can actually diagnose you by looking in your eye. They have developed sort of a sixth sense, an ESP technique, and it’s a form of divination. So that they’re tuning in to this power, to this knowledge, by looking at the iris of the eye and some of them are very good at it. But it’s an occult technique.

Ankerberg: What’s reflexology?

Alexander: Reflexology is the idea that by manipulating certain portions of your feet that there are nerves or channels of subtle energy, spiritual energy, that run from certain areas in your feet to all the different parts of your body. And depend­ing upon which part of the body you want to affect with these healing energies, you will manipulate a certain part of the foot. The idea behind it is that everything is ultimately connected in one way or another.

Hunt: But, John, we have to differentiate here. Because medical doctors are not into iridology and reflexology and vitamin kinesiology and so forth. Mainly those are chiropractics or naturopathics. But not all chiropractics are into that sort of thing either. I have friends who are chiropractics and they repudi­ate all of this sort of thing. But the medical doctors, like I mentioned, the Pain Clinic, Health Science Center, Dallas, Texas, University of Texas. They look down on reflexology. Some of them would. But, they’re still into this other stuff, you see. But there is no more of a scientific basis for what they’re into than there is for reflexology.

Ankerberg: We’ve got about one minute. Can you tell me about hypnosis: what it is, and why it is…we’ve got so many people that know about hypnosis. Why would you object to hypnosis?

Hunt: Well, hypnosis is, again, a form of entering a trance. Auto-suggestion: Self-hypnosis — you do it to yourself. Yoga and these various meditative practices are auto-suggestion, self-hypnosis. In hypnosis, for example maybe a person is smoking, and they say, “Well, I can’t overcome this habit. And I go to some hypnosis center and all they’re doing is they’re re-enforcing my desire.” No, they’re not. They could just as easily give you a post-hypnotic suggestion to become a chain smoker. Or to overeat. So what you’re doing is abdicating your moral responsibility, you’re copping out; you’re turning it over to somebody else. But in that process, you are turning your mind over to them. If their mind can control your mind, then these other minds can also get in and control you as well. So you’ve opened yourself to the demonic delusion.

Ankerberg: All right, we’re going to take a break and then we’re going to come back and talk about yoga, and the new psycholo­gy. Please stick with us.

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Ankerberg: All right we’re back, and we’re talking about some of the New Age effects on our culture. Going back to this, here you’ve got the royal family in Britain embracing some of the holistic techniques. We’ve got in our own country many ads appealing to you to come in and try these new techniques to heal your body in differ­ent ways. And we got down to using the technique of hypnosis and yoga. What is wrong with yoga, even when you have these medical centers in Texas, etc., some of these world famous places, and they’re advising their patients to try yoga. What does yoga do for them if you’ve got cancer?

Brooke: Yoga is something that is obvious­ly not Western, it’s Eastern, it’s Indian, and it’s based on Eastern thought, which we’ve really been talking about and the whole view of reality. I remember being in Delhi not too long ago — seven years ago — and in the newspapers — I know you’ve heard about this sort of thing — a man was buried where he couldn’t breathe and they tried to monitor his metabolic rate and unbury him. The whole idea is “the mind over the universe and matter.” And there are yogis who do all kinds of incredible things. You all have seen films perhaps of people getting in unbelievable positions. But this is based on something. Yoga is really the idea of slowly getting ready to die. You’re dying. It’s the idea of separating spirit, mind and body. It’s the idea of really gaining power over your heartrate, your thoughts, other things. What’s happening, too, is you’re getting into a crossroads where you can get into a trance.

Ankerberg: Okay, but guys, the fact is, as we’ve said, we’re against it. But Time magazine is saying “It works.” And these doctors — not quacks. We’re talking top people in our country — they’re offering it to people because it works. What’s wrong with it if it works?

Brooke: Let me just mention one thing. I was under Sai Baba who is a miracle worker in India. One of his areas of miracles is heal­ing. Let me say that right off. Let me tell you that he healed the head of the dermatology department of Stanford Univer­sity. His name is Dr. Tatachari. The man went to India with an incurable cancer. Sai Baba knew his name when he saw him and he says, “I know your problem. It’s this carcinoma.” Here’s what happened. My old ex-guru materialized some ash, said “Eat it,” then he rubbed it on the man’s back. He went back and got an X-ray and it was gone. I don’t know whether this has happened with him. I know other people that Baba touched. They may have been cured of one thing; they got something else.

Hunt: Well, yoga means “to yoke.” To yoke with Brahman and to realize the state of consciousness. The goal of yoga is self realization. To realize that I’m God. We’re back to “The Lie” once again. What I’m concerned with is it’s being passed off as a science. How come yoga has suddenly become a science? Yoga comes out of the Hindu Vedas. You could trace it back to Patanjali. He wasn’t some kind of an Einstein, he was a religious leader. Shiva, the destroyer in Hinduism, one of the three most powerful gods known as “The Destroyer,” he’s called Yogi Swara. He is the “lord of yoga.” And that’s Hatha Yoga — the physical yoga. So if some­one’s interested in physical exercise, you ought to take some physical exercises that are designed to help your body. But don’t take yoga, which is designed for death, and to reach this state of consciousness where you get a better reincarnation, even the physical positions. And what I am con­cerned with again is that 20 years ago it was unknown in our country. Today, I don’t think you could find a YMCA or a YWCA that doesn’t teach it. They’ve all got…read their charter. “Young Men’s Christian Association to forward Christian princi­ples” and now they’re into yoga, which comes out of the Hindu scriptures which puts you into this state of consciousness where you imagine that you’re God. So we’ve got a heavy delusion going on here. They think they’re getting health; they’re getting Hinduism. They think they’re getting science; they’re getting religion. It’s mislabeled.

Ankerberg: Okay…

Hunt: A form of yoga was transcendental meditation. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He brought it here as the spiritual regenera­tion movement and it didn’t go over. He couldn’t get government funding and so forth. So he deliberately changed the labels without chang­ing anything about it, and he calls it the “Science of Creative Intelligence.” He links it up with sci­ence, but originally Maharishi said, “Hey, you know what you’re doing when you prac­tice TM? You are creating a mystical substance in your body called the Soma. And the Soma is the food of the gods. And with the Soma we can manipu­late the gods.” And he said that the TM instructors are the spiri­tual authority on this earth and they’re running the universe. Okay? But they tell you that it’s not religious; that it’s scien­tific. It’s mislabeled. It’s a lie!

Ankerberg: All right. We didn’t get to the area of psychology. We’ll have to save that ’til next week. But the fact is, guys, give me one brief summation here for people. We’re not saying, “Don’t go to your doctor if you’re sick.” Let’s not scare everybody off. What is the balance that we’ve got to keep in mind here?

Alexander: Well, I think the question that you asked before: “If it works, why shouldn’t someone go for it” really illus­trates the point of vulnerability that we’ve come into in this culture with the emphasis and the influence of pragmatism. That is the only question that people look at anymore. And if that’s the only ques­tion you ask, there is no answer [to] “Why not?”

Ankerberg: Okay. In terms of going to your doctor, are you saying “Don’t go to any of them”?

Hunt: If you’ve got a physiological medical explanation for it, fine. But if you’ve got something that “works” and there’s no expla­nation for it, then you’ve got another power. You’ve got a spiritu­al power, and you better be certain who that spiritual power is — that this is the true God; that it’s not the false misrepre­sentation of God who is out to damn your soul.

Ankerberg: All right. Psychology is the study of the human psyche or soul. We’re going to take a look at that. What goes on in people’s minds and what kind of counsel­ing is being given in our country today. They say there are six million people in psychother­apy today. What kind of informa­tion are they getting and how is the New Age influencing that? We’re going to talk about it next week. Please join us.

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