Be Careful What You Pray For, You Might Just Get It

September 29, 1997
"We can blast away with prayer and good intentions in our attempts to clean up the world, but we shall invariably fail because there is no clear separation between good and bad. How would we know what to demolish and what to preserve?" Although the jury is still out on the results of prayer, especially of "negative prayer" ("I pray that he doesn't get that promotion!") or the unforeseen consequences of wishes that come true, many respected individuals in medicine and in religion already take its seeming effects quite seriously in their personal and professional lives. Dossey's (Healing Words) latest exploration clearly links prayer with physical and spiritual healing and well-being, discussing everything from positive prayer having unforeseeable negative results to medical hexing, voodoo, the biology of curses, exorcism and "cellular suicide." Drawing on personal experiences, true stories and selected medical studies, Dossey challenges us to break out of current paradigms that separate medical and religious thought, and to move to a holistic approach that acknowledges a "nonlocal mind," free from a particular time or physical space, that underlies all prayer. While such theories remain outside the mainstream of medical thought and practice, Dossey's intelligent and passionate work will bring readers closer to the conviction that their personal interventions into the divine order are effective--sometimes too much so.