Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus that Plagues Our World
Excerpt from the Foreword
by Larry Dossey, MD
Wouldn’t it be chilling to learn that a “mind virus” was rapidly spreading throughout the world, infecting our own society, and manifesting in people close to us—even in ourselves? It is a madness that has always plagued humanity, but today we are increasingly aware of it and seeing it for what it is. Some call it “evil.” Paul Levy calls it “wetiko.”
How does this “mind virus” spread among us? We are learning the details about how wetiko functions, and what inhibits it. A growing body of evidence from leaders in modern science suggests that our conscious and unconscious thoughts and intentions are not confined to our individual brains and bodies. They can operate in the world “out there,” distant from our individual selves, beyond the limitations and constraints of the here and now. This is the domain of nonlocal mind—mind that is boundless and boundaryless, infinite in space and time, and therefore connected and united with all other minds in the past, present, and future. Levy’s account of how wetiko operates through the nonlocal field outside the constraints of space and time represents a continuation of an articulation of a genuine nonlocal psychology of mind.
Moreover, experiments in distant healing appear to be crucially influenced by love, compassion, and deep caring, just as healers throughout history have maintained. This is one of the greatest lessons of recent experiments: love and compassion, operating through nonlocal mind, can remotely change the state of physical bodies in positive, healthful ways.
But not just love. There is a dark side of consciousness - the domain of Jung’s concept of the Shadow. It is where wetiko lives and operates in our lives, as Paul Levy shows.
Studies in remote influence show also that harm can be extended to living things: microbes can be inhibited, cellular function can be retarded, cells can be killed, and the activity of biochemical reactions can be reduced. Negative, nonlocal intentions resemble the curses, hexes, and spells in which perhaps all premodern cultures (and many modern ones) have believed. In acknowledging this tenebrous side of nonlocal mind, these cultures demonstrate a more complex, sophisticated understanding of consciousness than do we. They accept a dark side of consciousness as simply the way things are, and they gracefully devise methods of protecting themselves. It is cultures such as our own, which deny a negative, nonlocal factor of consciousness, that often get blindsided by it, as Paul Levy reveals. In any case, the capacity of humans to extend harm mentally and nonlocally to living things should not be rejected, because this ability can be used for good, for healing—as when human intentions are used to retard or kill cancer cells or invading pathogens.
Consider: If mind is genuinely nonlocal, this implies that individual minds cannot be completely separated and isolated from one another, and are joined in some sense even as they simultaneously experience themselves individually. In some dimension, minds that are nonlocal come together to form a single, unitary mind. This recognition is ancient. It is also modern, as many outstanding scientists have realized.
Our nonlocal nature makes wetiko possible—but love, caring, and compassion also stem from that same quality of consciousness. This is an example of what the physicist Niels Bohr called complementarity - the coming together of apparent opposites to produce a more accurate picture of the whole. One is reminded of a maxim from the field of transpersonal psychology: In order to transcend the ego, you must first have one. Thus we can say that wetiko is ultimately redeemed by its opposites: love, empathy, caring, and compassion. For these qualities, like wetiko, also have nonlocal, infinite effects in the world.
Why is it important to acknowledge the nonlocal, negative aspects of wetiko? Because ultimately wetiko is a world-destroyer by virtue of its nonlocal, infectious nature. It spreads globally; it is unconfinable to individual minds. It has the capacity to wreck more than a single individual’s life; it can destroy a species—our own.
We are not helpless bystanders against wetiko. The ultimate antidote for wetiko is love, its complementary, nonlocal opposite. But specific antidotes against wetiko have taken many forms in human history. Now read the words of Paul Levy, a true student and scholar in the burgeoning field of wetiko, who has devoted more careful thought toward wetiko than anyone I know. Let us see what his explorations have uncovered about the disease and its cure.