An Interview with Bernard Grad, PhD           

Dr. Bernard Grad has been researching the effects of healing since 1957.  He was one of the first scientists who published controlled studies on healing for plants and animals.  He discovered that healers can bring about measurable alterations in water simply by giving healing to a container of water. He has lectured extensively on this subject in many countries around the world.

      Dr. Grad is a spry, balding man with bright blue twinkly eyes and a ready smile.  At 72 years young he is still very active in writing, consulting and speaking on healing.  He has a disarming way of sharing his failures and disappointments as readily as his successes, all with a wry humour.

DHN Newsletter: When did you first encounter healing phenomena?

BG:  I was an only child and very close with my mother, who raised me as a single parent.  When I was about 20 years old, she was severely ill and I became frightened.  Without knowing exactly what I was doing, I gave her healing by willing her to be well.  In doing this, I drained my own energies.
      A short time later I came down with tuberculosis and ended up spending 32 months in a sanatorium.  They had to give me a pneumothorax to collapse the lung.  Luckily I survived.  I saw a number of other young people who didn't.  I had a lot of time to ponder my situation in life.  I wanted psychotherapy but couldn't afford it.  I ended up essentially undergoing a self-psychoanalysis, learning to analyse my associations and dreams.  In doing so, I was in many ways healing myself.
      These were my earliest healing experiences, but I didn't identify them as such until much later

N:  You went on to university, didn't you?

BG:  Yes.  I earned a B.Sc. with Honors in Biochemistry.  Again this was a fortunate second choice - as I had wanted to study medicine but lacked the funds.  Then I went on to get my Doctorate in Experimental Morphology at McGill University in Montreal.

N:  I understand you had a distinguished career in conventional science.

BG:  I specialised in research on ageing and cancer at the Gerontological Unit of the Department of Psychiatry of McGill University from 1949 to 1985.  I have over 110 publications and abstracts on my work.

N: How was your interest in healing research kindled?

BG: I had an unusual experience which to this day I cannot fully explain.  It was on the day Hiroshima was first A-bombed.  I was lying in bed when suddenly I experienced a sensation like an electrical shock starting near my heart, going down my left leg, crossing over from my left foot to my right foot - as if there was no gap - and returning to my heart.  This circle of moving sensation continued, repeating itself another two times.  I was profoundly perplexed and challenged by this.  I had never had anything like it since then.  I looked in all the books I could think of but could find no explanation for it.
      In this research I came across the writings of Dr. Wilhelm Reich on orgone energy.  This fascinated me.  Later, a friend showed me an orgone accumulator (ORAC) used for healing, which further intrigued me.  When I learned that Reich was in Maine, not that far from Montreal, I was determined to visit him.
      We hit if off from the start, and this was the beginning of my research into healing energies.  I drove down from Montreal to spend many long weekends with him, starting in 1949.  I learned to work with bions and orgone boxes and observed his work with 'cloud-busters'.
      After his unfortunate arrest and trial by the US Federal Government in 1955 for conducting research it claimed was unethical, I quietly continued to study orgone energy effects in my laboratory in addition to my conventional work.  I was especially interested in researching the possible origins of life, the effect of the ORAC on the spontaneous leukaemia of AKR mice, the temperature difference between the ORAC and a non-ORAC, and other orgonotic phenomena.  This experience strengthened my conviction that life energy
existed and that the ORAC is a device for concentrating the energy.  Of course, many questions remain and require study.

N:  How did you shift to studying healers?

BG:  I was introduced by a mutual friend to Oskar Estebany.  He was an experienced healer and very cooperative.  He was extremely patient in working in the lab on mce, plants, and other systems instead of on people.  Again it was a money factor.  Anyway, I had mice around from my conventional work and I couldn't find doctors in those days who would cooperate to get patients with whom to study healing.  Estebany spend hours and hours with me in the lab, holding cages of mice and jars of water for plant and other studies.  He was a powerful healer and we got very significant results in numerous studies.
     We showed that a healer could retard the development of iodine deficient goitres, accelerate wound healing, alter water so that it enhanced plant growth, treat cotton material so that when it was placed in a cage it had the same effect on mice as the hands of the healer, and more.

N:  Was Estebany the only healer you worked with?

BG:  No, there have been others.  One who is especially interesting is George Ille.  He can dessicate meat, fruit and vegetables.  If he treats a banana for a few minutes, then it will rapidly lose its water content over the next few days and become solidly 'mummified'.  Untreated bananas become mushy, lose their water much more slowly, open up and end as dried peels.  This is in distinctly different to when Ille treated living animals, which did not become 'mummified'.
      I also found that emotions influence water.  Water which was held by depressed people seems to inhibit the growth of plants.  I believe that if you gave someone a jar of water and made them laugh while they held it, the water would be as potent as water held by a healer.  It would be nice to find the funds for studies like this

N:  Were the orgone and healing studies funded by the university?

BG:  Most of my research, both on orgone and on healing, was funded out of my own pocket.  Very little support has been available for these kinds of studies.  The Parapsychology Foundation in New York, under Eileen Garrett, provided limited funding for a few years, out of which I was able to get Estebany a salary for his work.  For three years prior to this he worked without pay in my lab.

N:  How did the university react to your publishing on healing?

BG:  On the one hand, they didn't react as strongly as I feared.  On the other hand, some people there made life pretty unpleasant for me a lot of times.  In subtle and not so subtle ways they encouraged me to leave.  I simply refused.  For many years they didn't give me proper raises in salary.  But my conventional work continued to be of a high level, I published lots of good studies, and I had some allies, so I managed to stay on till I retired in 1985.

N:  Are there studies you hesitated to publish?

BG:  There are lots of studies I still haven't published for a variety of reasons.  At first I didn't publish because I was very upset at the treatment of Reich.  I felt he was a very creative and original man who met a terrible end, dying in a U.S. Federal prison.  Might I not receive the same treatment?  Second, I really had two jobs and I was kept terribly busy just doing the lab work.  I was very interested in the life energy work and I was determined to continue that at every opportunity, even if it meant not publishing the results.  Now that I am retired I hope to publish at least some of this work and I have published some articles of a general nature.  I am still occupied a lot in responding to enquiries about aspects of healing.

N:  What is your theory of how healing works?

BG:  There seems to be a healing energy, or maybe there are several types of healing energies.  I feel it when I do healings.  Other healers feel it.  Patients feel it.  It can change the surface tension and spectrophotometric measurements of water.  It can be transmitted through water to animals and plants,and through cotton wool to animals, to bring about changes in growth and healings.

N:  There are those who find that spirits guide them in healing.  What do you think of this?

BG:  I had a couple of experiences which lead me to listen to these reports with an open mind, though I don't feel healing is necessarily guided by spirits.
      The first was when my mother was on her death bed in 1971, after a prolonged and painful illness.  She suddenly looked above my head and her face broke into a surprised yet radiant, peaceful smile.  A minute later I saw a cloudy form, which I assume was her spirit, lift from her body.  Seconds later, her breathing slowed and stopped.
      The second was when our first child, a little girl, died at age three in May, 1957.  My wife and I were devastated.  We had booked a trip to Europe in July and debated whether to cancel it.  We finally went ahead and came to London.
      A friend had recommended we visit a medium.  I had never done this and was quite sceptical.  The medium was an ordinary housewife, a down-to-earth type, who explained what we should expect and then went into trance.  The information that came through was remarkable.  She described our daughter and her best briend.  She told me that my grandmother had also suddenly lost a child in the same way and her first initial was 'P'.
       I had never heard of a child of my grandmother's dying.  When we got back to Canada I checked with my mother and found out that indeed she had had a sister named Pearl who died in early childhood.
      I've also had precognitive dreams.  There are elements in the dreams that tell me that they are precognitive, but I usually am still surprised when the events actually occur.

N:  Are you a healer, too?

BG:  (Smiling)  After many years of studying healing I did not believe that I could also do some healing. However, I discovered a few years ago, when members of my family were unwell, that I could help them by the laying-on of my feet.  My feet become warm and tingly when I do this.  I realised that I was feeling the same things healers report and have since discovered that I can do healings - with my feet.  I have no idea how far this goes for me, nor do I have any motivation to find out at this time.

N:  If you were doing everything over again, what would you do differently?

BG:  I sometimes think that it would have been nice if things had been easier:  If I hadn't had to defend myself against people who were afraid of healing; if I had had more research funds and a proper laboratory in which to sutyd healing; and so on.  But then I think that I learned many valuable lessons from how it was.  I learned to improvise from what I had.  I learned to be a trapeze artist, swinging from vine to vine.  Many unexpected things came my way and if I hadn't been ready to pursue them I would have missed a lot.  So maybe it's better things were as they were.

N:  How did you, and how do you now respond when people confront you with their disbeliefs about healing?

BG:  I'll speak with anyone who is honestly interested in healing, but I'm not out to convert or to fight anyone.  If they want to drink from the cup they are welcome.  If not, not.

N:  What would you predict is going to be the future for healing and for healing research?

BG:  Despite all the difficulties and the opposition, we see as we look back centuries and even longer that this ancient method of healing by touch has persisted and survived.  That there should  be a revival of interest in our own time of high technology is especially intriguing.  Painfully, we are learning more and more how this works and I believe this learning process will continue until it will find its place in science as it has for so long been at home in many religions.  In the meantime, healers will continue to arise no matter what efforts are made to suppress them.  For healers arise like poets, painters, writers, composers, dancers and others because they are all part of a vast creative surge that is part of our universe.

Bernard Grad, PhD, lives in Montreal, Qebec, Canada.  He continues to lecture and write about healing and will participate in the Healing Energy Medicine Conference in London on 2-4 October 1992.
 

You may quote from or reproduce these editorial clips if you include the following credits and email contact:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1992 Reprinted with permission of the author P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099
www.WholisticHealingResearch.com   DB@WholisticHealingResearch.com 

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