Magnetic Healing and Other Realities

by Colin Lambert. Moana Press.

Reviewed by David Riddell

Colin Lambert is a magnetic healer from Waihi, and in this book he tells his story. Brought up as a Baptist, and a former painter and paperhanger who left school at 14, his background could not be more ordinary. Today, however, his occupation and philosophy of life are utterly remarkable.

Lambert's book is the fullest presentation I have ever read of the beliefs which have come to be lumped together under the label "New Age".

Under this philosophy, anyone can strive to find his or her own level of enlightenment by any number of paths, be it through astrology, alternative medicine, aura reading, telepathy, reincarnation, palmistry, astral projection, spiritualism or whatever. As yet, it is a rather amorphous grab-bag of ideas, but it seems to be developing into a religion for 20th-Century Westerners who are disillusioned with materialism.

Ironically, Lambert spends a chapter ripping into religion in general, and fundamentalist Christianity in particular, yet many New Age beliefs parallel those of Christian fundamentalism very closely. The Bible is replaced by "New Age Teachings" and other bodies of wisdom "channelled" through mediums from long dead sages, "space people" or something called "I am consciousness."

These say that there is a time coming when the world will be destroyed in a great holocaust, but those who have achieved enlightenment will first be beamed up to the space people's orbiting ships. Afterwards they shall be returned to a cleansed Earth to dwell in the New Golden Age.

New Agers (some at least) believe in possession, too, only the possessing entities are not demons, but the souls of dead materialists. Unable to come to terms with spiritual existence, they try to return to physical life through another person. Curiously, Lambert also believes in reincarnation.

So, do unenlightened souls wander forever in limbo trying to possess a living body, or are they reborn as babies? On different occasions, Lambert says both.

The scientific content of some of the channelled messages reproduced by Lambert is ludicrous. I particularly liked the bit about how, on other planets where beings have trouble as a result of "disassociating the elements" (splitting the atom), they have solved the problem (with help from the "higher realms") by putting the elements back together again!

The implausibility of such things is lost on Lambert, however, as he has not the slightest idea of what science is about, and is proud of the fact. In his view "what we term 'science' is a path towards the total destruction of mankind."

Throughout, he confuses science with the technology that science makes possible, and fails to grasp that science is about ideas, not hardware. It is, in effect, a procedure for developing and refining our understanding of the world around us, and that in itself can be no bad thing. With understanding, however, comes an expansion of our human potential, and that potential is unfortunately increased for evil as well as for good. We must all take responsibility for this, rather than blaming "the scientists" when things go wrong. I think it is Lambert's total rejection of reason-that I find most objectionable about this book, though his condescension towards those of us who are not as enlightened as he can be irritating enough. He says (while attacking religion again) that a few hundred years ago, people with his healing powers would have been burned as witches.

Things are different now, though, precisely because of the rise of science and reason. Yet Lambert would see this world view overthrown and replaced by a "positive", "true" or "holy science" in which new knowledge is gained entirely by intuition or from "channelled" messages. Such is not the path to a New Age, but back to the Dark Ages.

What of his healing powers? His procedure is to run his hand over the patient until it meets "resistance". Then, he scoops up the invisible poison, or badness, at that spot, and drops it off the edge of the couch. Most of the patients he treats this way have nonspecific complaints which orthodox doctors cannot identify, and with these he claims considerable success. He also writes of curing a badly sprained ankle almost immediately, and a pinched sciatic nerve over a few days.

He claims to be able to cure cancer, but most of the "tumours" he removes have never been diagnosed as present in the first place. Of the three diagnosed cancer patients he writes about, two died soon after treatment, and in the third case, all he did was remove the "radiation" from a patient successfully treated by radiotherapy. A terminal leukaemia patient did, however, have a complete recovery after a treatment by Lambert, he claims. Spontaneous remissions are known with this disease, however. Is this such a case? Has he had other successes with leukaemia. How about failures? Many questions remain unanswered.

The same goes for his experiences with AIDS patients. He mentions treating four, but no more is said of the progress of three of them after treatment. The fourth improves considerably. Again, this is a disease which advances in cycles, with periods of remission between bouts of serious illness. What is this patient's condition today? If he is cured of this invariably fatal disease, why have we not heard more about it?

With multiple sclerosis, he admits he can do little, but he does claim to have diagnosed it in a young girl at a stage much earlier than orthodox doctors could detect. Has this girl since developed this disease, or was it never there?

Reading this book left me with so many unanswered questions. It would be very interesting to talk with some of Lambert's patients, particularly if they were treated more than a few months ago for some previously diagnosed condition. Failing that, my feeling now is that magnetic healing, along with so many New Age ideas, is an illusion. This book reminds me a lot of one I saw about 12 years ago about the psychic surgeons of the Philippines. The same miracle cures, the same enthusiastic testimonials from cured patients. Colin Lambert has, in fact, worked alongside one of them and never questions that they're genuine. Yet that particular bubble burst, for most people, long ago. Tests showed that the tumours the surgeons were "removing" were pig fat or other non-human material, and now the psychic surgeons, once the wonder of the age, are just another chapter in the history of human gullibility.

Not that I'm suggesting Lambert is a fraud. I'm sure he genuinely believes in his own "reality" as he describes it, but I think there may be other realities which fit the facts better. No doubt Colin Lambert would feel deeply sorry for me.