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Page 109
where one could not reasonably say that it was due to the placebo effect, or a charming bedside manner, because the blood cells ostensibly had no expectations. Another striking finding in these experiments was the fact that the participants who produced the most statistically significant results were slightly more successful in protecting their own blood cells than they were at preserving the life of cells that came from another person. This result is open to interpretation. It may be that if psychic functioning is viewed as a kind of resonance, it is as though one is more in resonance with a part of himself, than with a part of another person.
A similar experiment was carried out in the 1980s, in which a healer was able to prolong the life of bacteria that were challenged by antibiotics. Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher, a physicist, and Dr. Beverly Rubick, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, both worked with the legendary American healer Olga Worrall, whom we discuss in later chapters. 32 As a healer, Mrs. Worrall refused to consciously harm any living thing. However, she was willing to attempt to heal E. coli bacteria that had been poisoned with tetracycline. In well-controlled side-by-side comparison tests, the two reseachers showed that Mrs. Worrall was able to keep alive the E. coli cells toward which she was directing her healing thoughts for a longer period of time than the controls. After four hours of exposure to the antibiotic, all of the control bacteria were dead, while a significant number of bacteria for whom she had been praying lived on. An important finding from this study was that the healer was not able to increase the reproduction rate of the healthy bacteria colony. Rather, she was able to aid the bacteria that were in need of healing, like the red blood cells in a toxic solution.
Bacteria are much smaller than red blood cells, but they have a nucleus and are able to reproduce, so they are more complex systems than blood cells. Both of these one-celled systems are alive, and we can therefore imagine them having interaction with human consciousness. However, similar experiments have been carried out with ordinary distilled water as the target for healing change. A mental influence over the state of a nonliving system, such as water, implies direct psychic interaction with a part of the physical universe, as the following studies demonstrate.

 
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