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Title: The bleeding mind: An investigation into the mysterious phenomenon of stigmata by Ian Wilson ISBN: 0-297-79099-4 Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson Pub. Date: 1988 Format: Unknown Binding

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Not just on stigmata--talk about mind over matter!
Comment: Wilson is no captious, talking-to-PleadeiansNew Ager. He's a sober, thoughtful, careful Englishman whom I woulddescribe (judging only from the tenor of his writing) as difficult to excite and almost a little dull. He has written several books on what I broadly categorize as Dead Guys topics, including the excellent *The After Death Experience,* which I read some years back and will review here once I re-read it.

Almost immediately, Wilson disposes of any claim of Divine supernatural intervention in the creation of the wounds. His argument is simple and difficult to counter: If the wounds were in fact accurate replicas of the wounds that Christ suffered, and imposed by God on persons of exceeding faith and devotion to the Passion of Christ, they would at least be consistent in their position, shape, size, and general appearance. Alas, the stigmata vary widely from stigmatist to stigmatist and, most tellingly, many stigmata are found to accurately reflect the image of Christ found on the stigmatists' favorite crucifixes.

This is a major clue, one that leads seamlessly to Wilson's hypothesis: That the stigmata are a manifestation of undiscovered abilities of the mind to influence the very shape and functioning of the human body.

About three fourths of the book is history and case studies of famous and well-documented stigmatists, including St. Francis of Assisi, who is the earliest known stigmatist; Therese Neumann, who in addition to exhibiting the stigmata claimed to have gone without food or drink for 36 years; and Padre Pio, an Italian monastic priest of our century who could heal at a distance and impose a mysterious "odor of sanctity" both about his person and at considerable distance.

The phenomenon, in Wilson's view, is a sychological one, with a pathology related closely to multiple personality disorder. Stress and poverty in early life are a common thread running through the lives of many stigmatists. Nearly all suffered some sort of personal catastrophe before the onset of the stigmata, and nearly all had a predisposition to trance states and other altered modes of consciousness.

Aparently, as best our investigations have been able to show, stigmatists identify so closely with the life of Christ and visualize Him so clearly that some undiscovered physiological mechanism imposes Christ's marks of suffering on the body of the stigmatist.

If that were as far as Wilson took it, I'd say it was interesting, and a good airline read. But what makes the book compelling is Wilson's presentation of related research into the malleability of the human system, research having nothing to do with religion, mysticism, or even psychiatric pathology. Using modern methods of hypnosis, ordinary human beings having no psychiatric disorders have managed to somehow dispose of warts, hideous skin conditions, and even advanced cancerous tumors by simply *imagining* that those conditions were gone. With nothing more than hypnotic suggestion, women in a study conducted by an American physician, Dr. R. D. Willard, managed to enlarge their breasts, substantially and permanently, through this sort of hypnotic visualization. ...I encourage you to chase down and devour *The Bleeding Mind.* Small print and a minor dollop of dullness are its only sins.