22nd May 1998

AIDS? It’s all in the mind!

CAN the power of a human mind destroy the AIDS virus?

I believe so – if the medical community is brave enough to put aside its preconceptions.

One leading doctor has done just that. Professor Zvi Bentwich, a brilliant physician whose reputation as an immunologist is second to none, was so astounded when he read my autobiography that I was invited in secret to an Israeli hospital – and put to work helping AIDS patients.

For years I did not speak about this research.

But now, as this monstrous epidemic continues unchecked, I want to urge everyone fighting AIDS use your mind.

Unleash your willpower. Make your prayers work for you.

Your Mindpower could be the best weapon you’ve got.

Professor Bentwich became convinced of this, although it was not a position he adopted easily.

For a doctor with more than 30 years rigorous training and experience in a highly specialised field, he was naturally unwilling to see all his conventional notions blown away.

So when I arrived at the Weizmann Institute, which was closely linked to the professor’s departments at the Hebrew University Medical School and the Kaplan Medical Centre in Rehovot, he wanted me to start small.

I focused on cells and tissues in culture suspended in shallow flasks or smeared on petri dishes.

Could the force of my mind alter their components? I was confident – it was years since the astronaut Edgar Mitchell helped me learn to sprout living shoots from seeds in the palm of my hand.

How tough could cells be? Cells weren’t tough. They were just boring. You don’t get much reaction from a dish of amoebas.

He was eager to do something positive and dramatic. Professor Bentwich, whose open-mindedness never failed to amaze me, took me one quiet weekend to a little used room. What I saw I cannot forget. I tried not to let the horror show in my face, but the three men I met were in the grip of a hideous virus – HIV, precursor to full blown AIDS. I talked to them, energising them, giving them self belief, using the most forceful words and attitudes I could summon up.

My mission was to give them new hope, new belief in their body’s healing power. AIDS is a collapse of the immune system. Restore that system and the disease retreats. We all know how much more prone we are to infections and illness when our reserves are depleted. What clinical immunology probes at Weizmann and Kaplan could have discovered is that the reverse can also be true – we repel disease more easily when our mental fitness is at its peak.

In rare cases the HIV virus has apparently vanished from an infected patient – could this be Mindpower at its incredible best? I made a video for each of the men, totally determined to delay, at the very least, the onset of full AIDS symptoms. Facing the camera, I delivered a personal message to each of the three: “John (not his real name), you are strong. You can beat this thing. You will do it!”

“Come on John! Win! Beat AIDS! You can, I know you will!” I was drained by the end of the filming. But I know the value of those tapes because each Saturday, at 11am, as I sent my prayers and my Mindpower to the three, they tuned in to their video messages, wherever they were. I was not told how the three fared. I still pray for them. But the professor’s reaction left me in no doubt: “Personally I can tell you that I consider what I saw with you as a truly mind blowing experience which cannot be overlooked and should certainly be made common knowledge once we have established it.” Trust your doctors. But most of all, trust yourself. You have the power of health, right there inside your mind.