The phenomenon of hilerstvo, or “psychic surgery“, is widespread not only in the Philippines, quite eminent practice live in Brazil and certain other Latin American countries, but the Philippine masters got the greatest popularity. Interestingly, in all countries in which they live and work, the healers, the dominant religion is Catholicism. I don’t know if it matters or if it’s just a coincidence.

About healers, in the Russian-language media, reported in the Soviet era, in a negative, of course, aspect. They were presented as charlatans, oblaposhivaya gullible tourists with the help of simple tricks. At that time, I could not imagine that there would come a day when I would have to verify the relevance of this information to the truth on personal experience. I must say that at present, in 90 or more percent of cases, the way it is; the growing popularity of healerism in the Philippines has become a tourist attraction and led to the widespread opening of many clinics and salons, which are practiced by pseudo-healers, in fact charlatans and magicians.

But before I tell you about my personal experience with Filipino healers, for a better understanding of the subject of this Chapter, I would like to give the story of the famous writer and journalist Vsevolod Ovchinnikov. Ovchinnikov’s impressions are very interesting, and I will allow myself to cite his article in its entirety.

The miracle of the Filipino healers

The Philippine witchcraft surgery documentary captures the video. Was it real, did I saw it with my own eyes? I would never believe anyone that this is possible. Two steps away, a Filipino physician operated on two dozen patients with his bare hands in an hour, spending two or three minutes on each.

No pain. No disinfection. Finally, even without a single question. The patient whispers a few words to the assistant, and he sends him either to the right – on the couch, or to the left – on the chair. And the surgeon comes and goes, barely managing to wipe his hands with a towel.

Collective hypnosis? But a black journalist from Trinidad, standing next to me, was videotaping what was happening, and everything we saw was recorded.

My friends brought me to Alex Orbito, one of the most famous healers in the Philippines, as the masters of this mysterious direction of traditional medicine call themselves. After an hour’s drive, we reached Cason, a suburb of Manila. As I entered the gate, I was surprised at how many people had gathered in the cramped courtyard.

The visitors were eighty men. Many of them came before dawn. Surgery with bare hands is a truly traditional medicine, in particular because it does not involve any pre-agreed fee. It is believed that thoughts of profit lead to a split will and reduce the supernatural abilities of the healer.

The house was adjoined by a canopy under which several rows of benches were placed. It was like a village cinema. Only instead of the screen in the depths could be seen a large glazed opening. He separated the room area of about thirty square meters. There was a wicker couch and a chair covered with white oilcloth.

The Catholic Church was surprisingly sympathetic to the local healers, calling their inexplicable art”faith”. Therefore, on the wall hung a picture of Christ and a religious poster with the inscription:”If you believe, everything is possible.” Nearby on a small table lay a Bible.

At half past nine there was singing from the courtyard. The sick, some of whom sat on benches, and the rest crowded behind, performed the religious Psalms in chorus.

Suddenly a young man of small stature appeared in the doorway. He smiled pleasantly, but there was something prickly in his eyes. His whole appearance left a feeling of a tight steel spring. It was an Orbital.

While the sick continued to sing the Psalms, he put his hands on the Bible and remained motionless for about half an hour. However, his concentrated face changed. The sight became even more rigid, shrill and at the same time is absent. Nervous hands with long thin fingers paled noticeably.

I have heard that healers do not let the audience closer than five or six steps. But when Orbito began to heal, I was Willy-nilly literally next to him. Because in the room, which is conventionally called the operating room, immediately crammed a lot of people. First, a journalist from Trinidad and I stood between the chair and the couch. Second, there were Three orbito assistants. And finally, more than a dozen patients from the beginning of the queue squeezed through the door.

Singing of Psalms lasted more than half an hour. And the assistants of Orbito skillfully conducted the choir, bringing its participants to the state of self-exaltation. Even I felt a shiver run down my spine.

What was happening before my eyes was like a miracle. But perhaps the most striking of all was the pace. Another patient, who was pointed to the couch, lies down on it, without removing his shoes, raises his shirt. Orbito goes to him, and nothing without asking, begins fingers of both hands to massage the sore spot. Then the doctor’s left arm stops moving. And now I can clearly see how the index and middle fingers of his right hand go somewhere deep.

Well visible oblong cavern, opened between the fingers. In this case, clearly heard not the slap, not the splash-about the same sound that you hear when you swipe your finger on the tense lips. In the cavity there appears a reddish liquid. Not blood, but something lighter, perhaps ichor or lymph. Drops of this liquid are sprayed on the oilcloth. Quickly moving the index finger of his right hand and helping him with his thumb, Orbito pulls out of the open wound a piece of brown tissue, similar to the color of a raw liver. His left hand is still motionless, pressed to the sore spot. With his right hand he takes a swab that the assistant has just moistened with water, plunges it into the wound and after a few seconds moves away from the table. The assistant with the same tampon, but already moistened with coconut oil, wipes the patient’s stomach. And I, in disbelief, convinced that it is not even a scar, just a red spot. And Orbital, making two quick steps, already leaning over a patient sitting in the chair. On the neck of the patient is clearly visible zhirovik the size of a pigeon’s egg. Again a few strokes, the fingers of the psychosurgeon go under the skin. And in the bowl flies another bloody piece. The patient feels suspiciously smooth neck where you just had the nodule. And on the couch belly down is a woman. The assistant bares her back, and Orbito, without asking anyone anything, immediately reaches for a small bulge in the patient’s lower back. Again splashes of reddish liquid. This time the Orbit is extracting some particularly large piece of bloodied tissue. And people all go and go. An orbital in the same incredible pace moves from couch to armchair, from armchair to couch. And at once, without asking any questions to the patient and without listening to assistants, finds a sore spot and begins to manipulate with it. According to Orbito, during the healing he seems to be in a trance, his hands move automatically.

“I have to focus deeply,” he says. My body’s getting cold. I feel dead. But then I feel a growing warmth, especially in my hands. And when I touch the body of the patient, I feel that some force is flowing from my fingers.

Only the thumb remained outside. Orbito himself about not looking at your hands. Sometimes he raised his head, and there was an inhuman strain on his face.

I must confess that after witnessing a dozen such operations, I felt bad. Already during the singing of Psalms began to feel dizzy. And after I saw the fingers next to me, sinking into the human body, I heard a strange sound, in which spray flew from the opened cavity, after I saw the bloody pieces of cloth thrown into the enameled basin, it charged in my eyes, and I lost consciousness.

Orbito looked up at me for a split second and said to the assistant:

  • Let him sit in the yard.

Even under the canopy it was hot, about 40 degrees. Staggering, I went out into the yard and sat down in front of the chicken coop. Sweat poured from me. For a while I was as if in oblivion. But suddenly I felt as if I had been showered with a cool shower. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes to see Alex Orbito put his hand on my forehead.

“Well, it’s all right now,” he said, and went back into the house.

I, as if hypnotized, followed him. And just in time, because the wife of Dr. Fava, the doctor from the life insurance company, was lying on the couch, and he brought me to the Orbit. According to her, she told the assistant literally two phrases: “I have a heart. There are interruptions.”

The old woman was laid on her back. She unbuttoned her shirt. Orbito came, put one hand on the forehead and the other on the chest of the patient and remained in this position for a minute. Then the doctor began to massage the base of the woman’s neck. His index finger and thumb went down behind his collarbone. And although he manipulated them for quite a long time, only a thin film of coral color was extracted.

No swab in this case, an Orbital is not used. After the assistant wiped her collarbone with cotton wool soaked in coconut oil, Mrs. Fava got up and came out with me into the yard.

  • I felt the pressure of fingers, as if someone pinched me. But there was no severe pain. And this hour only burning, – she said.

Already on the way back, sitting in the car, I asked Mrs. Fava to expose the collarbone and saw only a small red spot on it.

– How much does it cost to appeal to such a well-known believer?

  • According to custom, everyone gives as much as he can. For example, my assistant advised me to buy a jar of rubbing. But I might not have done it.

Among the Filipino faiths there are charlatans who were convicted of cheating. But in General, their authority among the people is great. Several dissertations are devoted to them at the University of the Philippines. Scientists try to explain the phenomenon of healers by the fact that healing activates some powerful spiritual forces, as if they combine the means of suggestion with surgical intervention. Therefore, by analogy with the concept of “psychotherapy” Filipinos coined the term “psychosurgery”.

The authors of books about Philippine healers argue that they accumulate some unknown energy through meditation and radiating it through the fingers, for a few moments push the tissue at the cellular level to get to the place that you want to remove.

Verbrachten is also credited with the ability to create the aura of the resonance with a magnetic field of the island of Luzon (it really has a strange peculiarities, as evidenced by the behavior of devices on passing ships). According to legend, this island was part of Lemuria-a state that partially sank to the bottom of the ocean, like Atlantis. Legend has it that the ancient inhabitants of Lemuria has been the ability to psychic contacts.

So, it is believed that it is the ability to accumulate some unknown energy and radiate it through the fingertips allows healers to penetrate deep into the body of the patient. And it is this biofield that ensures the sterility of the space above the wound, which remains open only a few seconds.

“I believe that psychosurgery, like acupuncture and herbal medicine, can complement modern medicine,” Dr. Fava tells me. – Acupuncture, for example, has been recognized, despite the fact that the mechanism of its action still has no scientific explanation. So psychosurgery, apparently, deserves to be studied seriously. By the way, specialists in military surgery from the Pentagon, the Bundeswehr and the Japanese “self-defense forces”show an increased interest in the Philippine healers. After all, the “Philippine miracle” is not only the ability to penetrate the body with bare hands, but also the ability to instantly close the wound.

Choosing a specialist, you should be very careful and scrupulous, even widely advertised practices in practice may not be the most effective. In my opinion, it is better not to be guided by the volume of names, it makes more sense to make inquiries in people who have undergone procedures in this or that healer, it is desirable to get acquainted with medical reports and analyzes before and after sessions of mental surgery. I did exactly that.

In Baku, where I live now, the case of a high-ranking official working in the state railway administration has become more famous. He was diagnosed with some special form of urolithiasis, one of the kidneys was literally stoned, and, in addition to the fact that the disease caused him excruciating pain, the diseased organ practically did not function, being on the verge of failure. Eminent experts in Baku and Moscow offered the only solution – amputation. I don’t know how he knew about Romeo, but for him, Romy was the straw a drowning man grasps.

Romeo lives and practices in Manila, but he comes from Baguio, a province in the Philippines, where, for reasons not fully obvious, most of the famous healers occur in this country. On one of versions of, about which mentions and Ovchinnikov, in this district there is any anomaly magnetic field Earth, which and leads to birth relative a large number of people with paranormal abilities.

In any case, the man I’m talking about had nothing to lose, he contacted Romeo and went to Manila, where he went through several procedures. As far as I know, after the first trip he went to the same one or two more times, but I’m not sure that the reason for the subsequent trips was the same disease, perhaps there were some others; perhaps this is not so important. It is important that after the first course of procedures ultrasound examination showed no trace of stones in the patient’s kidney. It is possible that subsequently the stones were formed again and therefore the patient had to undergo repeated courses of treatment in Romeo, if we accept this assumption, it turns out that the healers treat the consequences of the disease, and not its causes, which, however, is typical for any surgical intervention. But isn’t the fact that a large number of kidney stones have been removed or made to disappear by some other means with bare hands, without the use of any cutting tools, sterilization or anesthesia, surprising?

I do not know this person personally, but I know his name, place of work, as I said above, the case became widely known, and several other Bakuvians, among whom was one of my friend, visited Romeo after him. My friend had a problem with a herniated disc. The case was extremely started to walk without canes he was not, the only solution offered by local experts, was the date of surgery and prosthesis of the damaged disc. The same recommendation was given to him at the famous Mayo clinic in the United States, where he was able to undergo examination during a business trip.

Romeo did not restore the integrity of the disk and did not remove the problem completely, apparently, the case was too started or such cases in principle can not be completely corrected, I can not say competently. But the fact is the subjective improvement of the patient’s condition, he still walks with a cane, but, according to him, he experiences much less pain, who had problems with the lower back, will understand how important it is. I give this example to illustrate that in no case is hilarity a panacea for all diseases and, as I will show below, in some cases it is completely ineffective. I am not aware of any other case of complete healing other than the one mentioned above about a patient with kidney stone disease. Nevertheless, the present hilerstvo is not a charlatan, as he is often trying to represent skeptics, and deserves more careful study.

But let’s move on to my personal experience.

The four of us went to the Philippines, each with his own problems. One of us was suffering from low back pain, the second was diagnosed with some kind of education in the gallbladder, called “polyp”, I expected to get at least some relief from depression, tormented me by the time the second year, well, the fourth our friend joined the group out of curiosity.

In Manila, we arrived in December 2003 and immediately realized that, in addition to undergo procedures at the healer, there is nothing to do in this city. Manila is one of the most criminal capitals in the world, in the hands of the population is a mass of firearms, at the entrances to restaurants and large shops is a detector frame for metals and an armed policeman. Add to this the impossibly polluted air, traffic jams, worse than Moscow, the appalling poverty on the outskirts of the city, and you get a fairly accurate idea of the point on the globe, where they live and work the world’s best healers.

Romeo is not fluent in English, and communication with him was maintained through his wife and assistant Bess, with whom the terms and time of our visit were agreed. We stayed in a hotel in a relatively safe area of Manila, and every morning we were picked up by a minibus, which took us to the house where Romy practiced. The round trip took us about four hours every day.

I must say that these healers, among which, of course, was Romy, do not take money from the local population for their services. True healers lead a modest life and are themselves very humble people. All of them believe that their hands are operated by the Holy Spirit, and they themselves are only conductors of the divine will. For the vast majority of Filipinos, the services of modern medical clinics and hospitals are not available because of their high cost, and visiting a local healer is often the only possible medical procedure for them. Every morning to the house of the authoritative healer a huge queue of sufferers is built, none of which the healer does not refuse gratuitous help. Voluntary offerings are not forbidden, someone can donate a dozen eggs, someone a chicken, but the source of income of healers working with the local poor is not. They live at the expense of tourists, such as was our four. Romy has set us a price for his services, quite reasonable, in my opinion, although by local standards, perhaps, and high. I see nothing wrong with this practice. We could afford to pay this money, why not give healer the opportunity to provide for his family for some time and thus make his modest contribution to the treatment of people who can not afford such costs?

So, the day after arriving in Manila, we went to meet Romy and our first procedure. In total, we went through seven such procedures, one daily, on an empty stomach. Romeo’s residence was a small detached house with a small courtyard, where several chickens were walking, probably offerings from grateful patients, who, despite the early hour, had already gathered a sufficient number at the gate of the house. I must say that the number of patients at healer local residents can serve as a good sign, a distinctive feature of the wizard. Given that he’s not taking money from them and that local spend is much more complicated than a naive tourist such interest in healing, he was encouraged. In addition to Romy himself, there was Bess, a wife and an assistant interpreter, a masseur who prepared patients for the procedure, and an old woman of the most mysterious kind, whose appointment remained a mystery to us for a certain time and which we immediately dubbed “the witch”. Unlike Ovchinnikov’s story, I did not see any religious attributes in the house, except for a poster with a very nice image of Jesus in jeans and with a mobile phone, Romeo did not meditate on the Bible either. But more on that later.

The first candidate for the procedure, as the organizer of the trip and the leader of the group, friends unanimously identified me. I suspect that this, from their point of view, was some sense, stories stories, and before you go not even under the knife, and under the bare hands of an illiterate witch doctor, it does not hurt to watch the process personally, from the side.

Well, I, I. No fear I experienced, on the contrary, wanted to complete the session quickly, in the event of a positive result to feel the effects as early as possible.

Procedural itself was a small room in the center of which was a couch, beside her was a chair with enamelled bowl and bowl with a small amount of wool. There was nothing else in the room. There was no way to hide anything under the couch: the edges of the sheet did not hang down from it and the space under the couch was perfectly visible.

The procedure began with a massage with coconut oil, conducted by an assistant. The massage was short, maybe five minutes, probably, and then entered the room himself Romeo.

Heather was a short, hard-built man of forty. Before and during the procedures, he was completely focused and even seemed somewhat sullen, but this impression was completely dispelled during communication with him after the session. Romeo is a very modest, humble and sincere person, like other true healers, he considers himself as a tool that operates the Holy Spirit. He himself can not explain exactly how he manages to push the hands of soft tissue and extract pathological formations, apparently, at the time of intervention, he is in a kind of trance, the nature of which can not explain. Romeo meditated before the operation, did not pray to the Bible or anything, just very focused, concentrated attention.

The procedure was carried out quite openly, my friends were present nearby, surrounded the couch from all sides, filmed the process. Romy was operating in a short-sleeved shirt, so there was no physical way to hide anything up his sleeve.

Immediately before the intervention, healer made a diagnosis, which looked like this – he held his hands over all the organs and dictated to his wife the names of the affected organs: liver, kidneys, spleen. No concretization was not carried out, just called the sick organ, however, expect from the healer of deep medical knowledge would probably not be quite right.

Romeo began by kneading his stomach with his fingers, created such a small hole on the surface of the abdominal cavity, which in a few seconds began to fill with blood. Suddenly Romeo lifted one palm, rested his index finger on my stomach and with a thud abruptly entered the abdominal cavity. The sight was impressive, but I must say that the open cavity and internal organs were not visible, blood interfered. A little digging in the stomach with his index finger, he introduced there is also a large and began to pull something from the stomach with a noticeable effort. It looked like a strip of adipose tissue covered with blood. Just Romeo pulled about four inches of fabric, which is thrown into a basin near the couch. There went and a cotton swab, which he with a quick movement rubbed the surgical site and cleanse it from the blood. At the site of intervention there was only a slight redness, no wounds or bruises. I will say again that neither I nor my comrades saw an open abdominal cavity, only blood and pieces of stretched tissue.

The same procedure Romeo repeated in other parts of the body, sometimes instead of tissue he took out some clots of coagulated blood, when exposed to the heart and lungs through the chest he had not penetrated, manipulated only on its surface, only slightly pressing with the fingers the skin and muscle.

I did not feel pain, but there was a very strange feeling, which was later confirmed by my friends, as if the skin is drilled with steel tools, very hard, but painless. I am convinced that simply pressing your fingers to create such a feeling will not work. Sometimes there was an impression of penetration into the body of some cold energy, dulling sensitivity and possible pain.

After completing the procedure, Romeo handed each of us a large thermos with some warm light red liquid and told us to drink at least six glasses of it every day. The thermoses we passed the next morning back and got a new one instead. Someone from passing at one time treatment of foreigners told us that it was infusion of bark of a tea tree, but I am not sure, I cannot confirm.

So lasted seven days. Of course, it was a shock, a miracle happened not just before our eyes, it happened to us. To explain this phenomenon by natural causes would be a completely meaningless occupation, at least so it seemed to us during our stay in the Philippines. After returning home, the first impressions subsided a little, and it became possible to conduct a relatively objective analysis of what happened and to sum up the results of treatment.

One of us underwent a second ultrasound examination, which showed that there was no trace of the polyp in the gallbladder. This could be attributed to an error in one of the surveys conducted or to the presence of a polyp or the reverse. If not for one fact. Another our friend assistant Romeo, the same “witch”, removed the large papilloma from the chest and keloid scar under the jaw. Without any pain with his bare hands. Scar, however, is not completely gone, 80 percent, but from papilloma was only a small, barely noticeable cleavage. It’s just a fact, no medical error to write it off will not work.

Our third friend, who suffered from lower back pain, felt fine after the procedures in the Philippines, literally flew, rejoiced like a child. But after some time the pain, unfortunately, returned. I suspect that the psychological factor played an important role in improving his health, and in the subsequent deterioration. No wonder all the same foreigner that told us about the infusion of the tea tree, advised us – do not tell anyone anything. It was not the first time he had been treated and he was well aware of the skeptical reaction we might encounter from others. So it happened. People can rarely go beyond the usual worldview, all the unusual, does not fit into an acceptable framework for them, it is easier to declare fraud, to laugh, otherwise you have to admit that your own way of life is not the only true and correct. Skepticism of others was called to my companion of doubt, doubt led to the decline in mental attitude that plays a very important role in the recovery process, it does not deny us the usual modern medicine.

As for me personally – alas, I did not feel any result, neither during treatment in the Philippines, nor on my return home. Hilerstvo not a panacea, there is disease, under which it is powerless to operate the soul harder than the body.

So what it really is, hilerstvo?

In my opinion, this is a kind of bioenergetic therapy, a kind of extrasensory effect on the human body. Healers, apparently, have a special susceptibility, the ability to accumulate energy from the outside world and direct, transfer it to the diseased organs, experiencing for various reasons, a shortage of such vital energy. This is more akin to Reiki procedures or therapy in the qigong system, but in a much more concentrated form. After each session, Romeo sweated, looked completely exhausted, he needed to go out into the fresh air in order to regain strength. We even asked him to somehow not leave the premises to dispel the final suspicions, and Romeo spent the whole day in the room, by the end of which looked like a squeezed lemon.

At the physical level, this energy can contribute to the restoration or improvement of blood circulation in the affected areas of the body, thereby reducing inflammation, swelling, improve the work of organs. As for surgery, the penetration of fingers through the skin and muscle of the body, the extraction of tissues and foreign bodies – here I am powerless to explain anything. I’d be happy to suggest a coherent theory that would put everything in its place, but I don’t have it, I just don’t know. It can be assumed that this part of the manipulation is indeed a clever trick designed to strengthen the patient’s faith in the effectiveness of treatment, a kind of lie in salvation, but after going through this procedure personally and remembering our Romi, it is extremely difficult for me to accept this assumption. Too much he was naive and unsophisticated for such complex combinations, and how it is possible to hold such a focus under the close supervision of the audience surrounded on all sides, shooting the same process on several cameras, I can not imagine.

In any case, so it or not, the true Heather fraud is not, a certain effect in some diseases from it is. Once again – this is not a panacea, in any case should not abandon the services of modern medicine in favor of healing, both methods can perfectly complement each other, about any contraindications for treatment in healers I do not know.