In most cases this faith in the effect of the method of healing satisfies faith in miracles at visionary sites. In fact, the subconscious (or 'automatic conscious') introduces electrochemical functions into the brain. 'When the nerve impulses ... enter the brain, they set off various chemical reactions' (Campbell).

Clinical tests of new drugs have proved time and again that belief in the efficacy of a medicine can effect a cure. People are split into two control groups. One is given the new drug, the other a placebo (a harmless imitation of the new medicine, generally 'scented' sugar-coated pills of the same size and colour). Leslie M. LeCron describes the result: 'It is observed that a large part of the control group given the placebo reacts in exactly the same way as the group which has taken the real drug. This effect is attributable to suggestion.'

That which Yogananda Paramahamsa calls faith, will-power and concentration in connection with the healing effect, the doctor calls exactly what it is: suggestion. Yogi and doctor are far away from the highfalutin Christian talk about miracles but they know how 'miracles' happen.

It is the obstinacy, the partial blindness, I cannot understand. Theologians have still not clearly stated facts about 'miracles' that have been known for over 450 years.

Theophratus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1494-1541), known as Paracelsus, was the founder of a new science of healing. He emphasized the primacy of the 'soul' (today we would use the word 'psyche') in normal life and illness, and was the first to recognize the previously overlooked pathological connections and new types of illness, such as neuroses and psychoses. In the centre he placed man as microcosm. Healing to Paracelsus was the work of the life force and the will to live. Quotations from his treatise on Imaginatio [33] shows how modern his views were: Man is subject to imagination, and the imagination although invisible and inconceivable works corporeally in a substance.

The imagination can cause disease, terrible disease, and it can cause happiness and health.

Hence it follows that the imagination is more than nature and governs it. It removes innate qualities so that it knows neither heaven nor earthly nature.

Hence it follows that a great deal is impossible for the doctor, and the more powerful the imagination, the weaker the effect of the doctor.

Consequently many people get well through the belief of the imagination, but many people get sick also.

By such imagining (arises) belief both in the miracles of the saints and in the medicines... that makes them well and is attributed by them to saints and miracles... although it is all the results of belief in the imagination.

Whether the belief is right or wrong, depends solely on the strength of the imagination.

And even if a false prophet manages to influence people, who consider him blessed or saintly, and credit him with results, because their love and hope is concentrated on their faith, these miracles will happen not through his power, but through the power of those who believe so strongly.

The sum total of the advances of scholars such as Aristotle, John Locke, David Hume and Carl Jung provides the explanation of all that was supposed inexplicable. Even if we are not familiar with these pioneers and their pupils, their insights have become part of our everyday existence.

One 'miracle' was explained to me by the roadside. One spring, while I was driving along the shores of the Bodensee, through the breathtakingly lovely trees in bloom, I remembered my visit to 'Mama Rosa'

in San Damiano in March, and the miracle performed by the 'beautiful lady' of making a pear tree flower in October 1964. I parked by the roadside, explained the facts briefly to a fruit-farmer and asked if he had any experience of such a state of affairs - fruit and blossoms on the tree simultaneously. He nodded and said they called it a 'magic bloom', but did not know how it occurred. Nevertheless I had learnt that the flowering of Mama Rosa's tree in October was not unique, and could not be 'breaking the laws of nature' in the sense of an ecclesiastically acceptable miracle.

I sought information from botanist friends.

Pear trees and indeed plum trees belong to the family of Rosaceae. The pear tree is one of the deepest rooted species: it needs warm soil, into which the roots penetrate up to a depth of nine feet. The subsoil water should not rise above this height, as pear trees are sensitive to subsoil water. Plum tree flourish best on medium damp soil, but need a warm climate, like the related pear tree. An annual rainfall of about 600 mm is enough for both trees. In such conditions the fruit ripens with the steady passage of the seasons. It does especially well in a climate like that south-west of Milan.

This rhythm is sensibly disturbed if an unseasonable cold spell occurs, with unusually high rainfall and subsequent warm spells, like the Italian autumn, say. Owing to the cold shock, and the rain - both happened in the Milan region in September 1964! - the trees behave as if it were spring: owing to the cold and the damp soil the biochemical processes of metabolism begin and flower hormones are formed. If the trees are then subjected to autumn solar warmth again, we have the botanical and physiological 'miracle' of an autumn bloom on the tree simultaneously with fruit. The blossoms

'suddenly' stop and fall equally quickly; they bear no fruit because the bees have long since disappeared.

If the coupling of enzymes and hormones in the growth of plants is still a mystery. Mama Rosa's flowering pear and plum trees are certainly not a divine miracle, but a clearly explicable process, which the Bodensee fanner simply called 'magic bloom'.

Miracles fall to the ground from the tree of knowledge just as quickly as that!

'The sick man is God's gift to us, a direct favour and must be accepted by us as such. He (the sick man!) is an example of God's special favour because he enables us to put into practice that candour of heart called compassion ...' [34]. So says Lad-islaus Boros, a Jesuit instructor in divinity at Innsbruck.

Anyone who is not yet sick is bound to be made ill by such theological tripe. But this kind of dubious

'soul massage' is inflicted on us from childhood. The unreal concept of 'original sin' is on the heels of every Christian, shadowing his every action. It requires tremendous courage for anyone who has been brought up in this doctrine to liberate himself inwardly from all these threats.

One should also mention the theme of the sexual repression of Christians. Obviously getting rid of it also forms part of the act of self-liberation, but it is not the key to the door to personal freedom and selfresponsibility vis-a-vis moral laws. Sigmund Freud's once revolutionary thesis that everyone and everything was intelligible in terms of the instinctual life has long been overtaken by new scientific insights.

2,000 years of Christian tradition with the refinement of its dogmas lie deep in the subconscious. The moving Jesus legend with the suffering Mary, the suffering Apostles, and the suffering saints is also stored in the brain-cells of non-practising Christians.

But for the practising Christian this brain programming implies a lasting readiness to believe in miracles and miraculous cures as proof of God's grace. Before a religious 'Lazarus' has taken part in a pilgrimage to a visionary shrine, he had been brain-washed. His family, friends and priests have made it abundantly clear to him why the pilgrimage is the 'last resort'. Day and night the pain-racked sufferer is preoccupied with the hope of the miracle that has been suggested to him. If the children of Fatima or little Bernadette at Lourdes have helped others, why not me, too? On the sickbed - effective pious therapy - hymns to Mary are sung, the Rosary is recited. The sufferer has no idea that perhaps a selfhealing process has already begun, that he himself has set the healing mechanism (Bio Feedback) in motion.