February 15, 2000: Consciousness and Healing - Dr. Larry Dossey

Art Bell welcomes Dr. Larry Dossey, a physician of internal medicine and former chief of staff at Medical City Dallas Hospital, to discuss the non-local nature of consciousness. Dr. Dossey presents evidence from double-blind studies conducted at Duke Medical Center showing that cardiac patients who received intercessory prayer from groups spanning multiple religions experienced 50 to 100 percent fewer side effects than control groups. He notes that 75 of 125 medical schools in the country have now developed coursework examining such data.

The conversation covers Dr. Michael Persinger's temporal lobe stimulation research and its implications. Dr. Dossey argues that while specific brain regions can mediate spiritual experiences, researchers make a logical error by assuming this proves consciousness is confined to the brain. He compares the reasoning to concluding David Letterman lives inside the television set simply because the set produces his image, overlooking the external source entirely.

Dr. Dossey describes experiments published in peer-reviewed journals showing consciousness can influence events displaced backward in time, provided the outcomes have not yet been observed by a human. He shares the case of a patient who dreamed of three white spots on her left ovary, which a subsequent sonogram confirmed exactly. Art recounts his own audience experiments in directed intention, where millions of listeners concentrated on producing rain during droughts in Florida, Texas, and British Columbia with apparent success.