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After a week, I'd seen many so-called psychic surgeries, most of which my rational mind told me were sleight of hand, and yet which my observations told me were efficacious to varying degrees. I saw things that looked like animal entrails appearing as if they were being pulled out of people, and things that looked like real incisions cut into people, through which globs of who-knows-what appeared. I mostly saw sick people feeling better, speaking a common language of hope and fellowship to each other, in a community of affirmative expectation. |
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I was looking forward to seeing the renowned healer, Alex Orbito, do his famous eye-check procedure. I decided to team up with an American woman who was writing for a Yakima, Washington, newspaper. With two pairs of eyes to scrutinize, I thought we ought to be able to discern what was going on. We walked over to the chapel courtyard where Orbito was doing his procedures. Long lines of Filipino people of all ages were waiting patiently to be treated. |
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The reporter stood on one side of the patient's head and watched Orbito's hands, while I stood on the other side with my face down, eye-to-eye with the patient. It looked as if Alex had his finger behind the man's eyeball, and that the eyeball was popped forward in its socket and pushed off to one side. I thought to myself, it might be easy to palm a fake eyeball, but why can't I see the man's real eye in there? And how does he get the glass eye to just hang there? I asked the patient, "Doesn't that hurt?" and he answered, "No, but it feels strange a bit ticklish. I can feel his finger in the socket." |
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Later I wished I had asked him if he could see with his dangling eye. I'm not sure what the procedure was meant to accomplish, or whether it was helpful or not, but it certainly was impressive to watch. When I compared notes with the other reporter after Orbito's eye show, we were each disappointed that the other didn't have an intelligent explanation for what we saw. |
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At that point, I had seen many surgeries. I didn't know what to believe, and I didn't trust what I thought I saw. Some of the operations I observed had been quite bloody, and others not at all. When I asked Thelma why that was, she told me that "Some people do better with lots of blood." I |
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