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Healing - The life of Harry Edwards
June 4, 2007 |
Life of Harry Edwards
Harry Edwards believed that the spirits of Louis Pasteur and Lord Lister direct his healing work.
His first healing occurred in the Middle East during world war one, when he was in charge of a crew of Arabs building a railroad. They were inexperienced laborers, and accidents were frequent. Those who smashed their fingers with hammers found their wounds healed unexpectedly quickly if Harry treated them. He attributed this to the hardness of their race, but they recognized his unusual power and called him the (Hakim) healer. Edwards returned from the war, believing his gift was nothing special, and for the next 15 years concentrated on his family’s printing business. Not until 1935 when he was over 40, did he turn his attention to spiritualism and healing.
At first as an amateur conjurer his interest was at first limited to reproducing spiritual phenomena by trickery. But he soon decided there was more to spiritualism. Mediums at several healing circles he attended told him he was “born to heal” and a succession of events gradually persuaded him, that he did in fact possess the healing gift. In one instance he and two friends were sitting quietly in meditation one day concentrating their thoughts on a man they knew to be in London’s Brampton hospital. He was dying of advanced tuberculosis. Harry became aware that he was gazing down a long hospital ward with his attention fixed on a man in the last bed but one. When he afterward checked what he had “seen” with someone who had visited the patient, he discovered his description was accurate in every detail. It was Harry’s first experience of astral traveling. Within a day of his vision, the friends hemorrhage ceased and his temperature was almost down to normal. He recovered and remained in good health for many years.
Convinced by this and other like experienced, that he could be used as a medium for healing, Harry began to follow the spiritualists healing methods then in use. He soon found however that it was unnecessary for him, to go into trance as most spiritualist healers did. The spirit guides seem to work through him just as well when he was in a state of receptive meditation. Sometimes he would just sit and let the healing force flow through him to a sufferer, perhaps many hundreds of miles away. At other times he might feel moved to manipulate the arthritic joints of a patientTill well into his seventies Harry held large public demonstrations of healing at which sufferers from disabilities such as rheumatism, curvature of the spine and paralysis would come forward to be helped or cured by him and his team of assistants. As his successes became more widely known, so his mail increased, until thousands of letters began to pour in every year with requests for absent healing. Harry came to believe that absent healing often without the patients knowledge, was more effective than direct healing. At one time Harry felt his duties should include convincing the medical and church authorities that spiritual healing worked.
He gathered details of several hundred cases, and provided x-ray data and surgeons reports. He placed special hopes on their finally being convinced by the case of Mr. R B cured of cancer in 1953.
This was the case in which it had been proved by a biopsy, which is the medical term for the removal and examination of a small portion of the tissue thought to be diseased, that Mr. B was suffering from a malignant cancerous condition of the throat. All the usual symptoms were present. He had severe pain and swelling, and he was unable to swallow. His voice had deteriorated into a hoarse whisper. He was due to be operated on in two weeks. When Mr. B learned of this dedsion he telephoned Harry for absent healing. In the immediate days following Harry says “the pain left him and the swelling subsided. His voice returned to normal. Two days before the operation was due to take place, Mr. B requested a further examination by the two specialists who had conducted the previous examinations. After exhaustive tests and a fresh biopsy, they declared that all the symptoms of cancer had disappeared.
This seemed to Harry proof enough that a cure by spirit healing had occurred. However the two specialists disputed this. Their explanation was that by a fortunate coincidence the section of tissue removed for the first examination contained all the disease tissue.
As a result of experiences like this Harry decided against further attempts to prove spiritual healing. The proof that mattered was to be found in the healings themselves, healings incidentally, for which Harry himself takes no credit. “I have never cured anyone.” He says
“My part is simply that of a channel for the healing powers.”