Healers' reports of what they do and how they do it are absoluetly essential to understanding healing. However closely scientists might scrutinize healers, there is no way they can fully appreciate the subjective experiences of being a healer.

A major difficulty with wanting to understand healers, however, is the altered states of consciousness that appear to be an integral part of heling. While being in a healing state of mind it is difficult if not impossible to describe what is occurring. Describing requires a linear, mental focus on language and analysis, while healing is a holistic, intuitive, synthesizing state.

A personal example might be helpful. I was once invited by a scientist to explore whether my hands emitted energy in the range of ultraviolet light while giving healing. I was placed in the darkest room I had ever been in, and told to give healing to a highly sensitive light-measuring instrument. This was a challenge in and of itself, as I had never given healing to an electronic device. Then they announced, "Okay, we're seeing something on our instrument. Tell us what you're doing." Well, as soon as I started to even think about what I was doing, I could no longer be doing it.

There is a broad, rich literatuer of healer descriptions of their healings and their understandings of how healing works. You will find a selected sample in Healing Research, Volume I.

The difficulty with healer descriptions is that they are highly subjective and often differ from one healer to the next. At times it seems as though they may even be describing totally different experiences. This makes it a challenge to understand healing.