Harry Edwards, Henry James Edwards,
Medium Henry James Edwards England UK.
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Harry Edwards Medium
born Henry James Edwards
29 May 1893 - 7 December 1976
Healer
A Harry Edward's Prayer
May I be thankful for all the blessings I already have. Grant me relief from pain and sickness, protect me from all ills and grant me good health in the days to come. Remove all causes of imperfection and bring Thy Healing Ministers close to me that I may be conscious of their presence and so receive guidance and inspiration. Grant me courage and fortitude to overcome all adversity. let me be conscious of Thy strength in all time of need. Grant me confidence to overcome my fears and not to anticipate harm. Teach me, how to live rightly in Thy sight, to do only that which is right and true. I pray that good guidance and right influencing will inspire all Thy peoples to be as brothers, one to the other, and that peace shall endure for all time. Amen
The Healing Minute takes place twice daily – at 10am and 10pm.
Every day people in 95 countries around the world join with the Sanctuary to focus their thoughts on healing for those in need and for world peace.
We invite you to join us all at 10 o'clock your own local time and add your own positive thought in a minute of meditation in sending energy to those in need wherever they are in the world and become part of a world energy peace force.
Harry Edwards Healing a gentleman with a curved spine.
Healing a man with very painful deformed hands, later thanking him, the man shook Harry's hand without any pain.
Harry in his younger days whilst in the army.
As well as relieving countless patients of enormous pain and suffering, Harry
Edwards also did much to promote healing. His demonstrations in places like the
Royal Albert Hall and his books did much to bring this spiritual science to the
attention of the public.
My first contact with this remarkable man was in the late 1960's. I had heard of
him several years before when I had begun to give healing myself. I had a few
patients who visited me twice weekly and had also accumulated a fairly long list
of people to whom I sent absent healing. They included a very sick man whose
condition did not appear to respond to the healing. His illness was causing such
distress to his family that they too had to be sent absent healing. My concern
became so great that I wrote to Harry Edwards and asked if he too could send him
absent healing. I felt like an infant school pupil asking a professor for help
with his homework! I was, however, soon put at ease by his swift, very helpful
reply. He stated that he would be pleased to send this patient healing and that
he hoped our 'combined efforts' would soon ease his suffering. Throughout the
months I sent Mr Edwards regular reports to which he always replied in a very
encouraging and positive fashion. Although the patient did not improve in the
way we hoped, he became more settled and easier for his family to manage and
eventually passed on very peacefully.
It was during this period that I arranged to visit one of the weekly healing
sessions at Harry Edwards' sanctuary as an observer. I arrived at the house in
the beautiful Surrey countryside and was shown into a chapel where about thirty
others were already seated. A few minutes later three white-coated people
entered the room; one of them was Harry Edwards. He spent about a minute in
silent prayer and then looked up and smiled, saying 'Who can I help first?' Over
the next hour or so I witnessed healing feats which were truly wonderful. Every
recipient had immediate benefit in varying degrees. One of the most impressive
cures was performed on a young woman who had injured her spine in a riding
accident. Doctors could do nothing more for her. She had spent months on
crutches and had to use them to approach Harry Edwards from her chair. He laid
his hands on her back and said 'Let's try and free the spine'. Seconds later he
said 'Now try to walk'. She walked back to her chair without assistance. 'Don't
forget your crutches!' said Mr Edwards.
Afterwards he asked me to join him for a chat. It was interrupted by a member of
staff who announced that a patient had just arrived. A woman came in with a
toddler aged about three. Mr Edwards had given healing to the youngster several
months earlier for a severe nervous condition that had made the child constantly
cling to her mother and scream if anyone else came near. 'Now look at her!' said
the mother. Mr Edwards chuckled to see the youngster chatting to just about
everyone in the room. The mother then explained that during a recent hospital
visit it was discovered that the child had a hole in the heart and the doctors
predicted that she only had months to live. 'Let's see what we can do' he
replied and then lifted the infant on his knee.
At that point I started to move away but Mr Edwards said 'Stay here. Now put
your left hand over her heart.' I did so and felt her little heart pounding at
what seemed like twice the rate of a normal heartbeat. He then placed his right
hand over mine and said 'Let's try and restore a normal heartbeat'. Within
seconds the racing heart, which moments earlier seemed destined to burn itself
out within a few months, gradually slowed down to a normal rhythm. The mother
thanked Mr Edwards profusely, and as he put the child down he must have noticed
an awe-struck expression on my face. He responded in his characteristic
no-nonsense but humble manner by saying laughingly 'Come on. Let's have a cup of
tea !'
I cannot claim to have known Harry Edwards well, but I later met a number of
healers and mediums who had known him for years. They all said that, as well as
being a great healer, Harry Edwards was a man of true faith and humility. Dr.
George King during his early lectures on the science of spiritual healing often
referred to him in a very complimentary manner. He stated that two great
scientists, Lord Lister and Louis Pasteur, worked through him and that it was
easy to see. Easy for Dr. King, perhaps, but not so easy for people like me!
Len Jason-Lloyd
Source From http://www.innerpotential.org/pages/article/harryed.html
The Harry Edwards Spiritual Healing
Sanctuary
by Dawn Redwood
The Sanctuary nestles in 30 acres of Surrey woodland at Burrows Lea just outside
the village of Shere, south-east of Guildford. It has, indeed, been home to
spiritual healing for 59 years as Harry Edwards purchased it when his house in
Ewell outgrew the ever increasing numbers of people requesting an appointment
with the healer whose reputation was spreading, and who would go on to fill the
Royal Albert Hall with his demonstrations of healing.
As soon as Harry Edwards saw the house he knew it would offer the perfect
setting for the work he was to do. He had a vision of the billiard room being
the Sanctuary and this remains so today. The larger house offered office space
for his secretarial staff who would soon be handling 10,000 letters a week from
people requesting distant healing. There was further office space to house the
work of the National Federation of Spiritual Healers which Harry Edwards founded
in 1955 and for whom he wrote the first course for training healers.
Harry Edwards continued to reply to letters and see as many people as he could
up to and including the day he died in December 1976 aged 83.
Although his work continued with his successors it was scaled down, and when a
new administration team took over about two and a half years ago changes were
made and a programme of refurbishment and expansion was embarked upon. This will
be completed by June this year, but throughout the programme the work of the
Sanctuary has continued on a quieter scale.
The Sanctuary’s policy is to take the best of the tradition and practice of
healing here into the future. One of the ways in which this is being realised is
for us to record every patient request on our data base along with the reply.
Requests for Distant Healing now arrive electronically as well as by post, and
the technology used here enables us to deal quickly and efficiently with these
requests which are individually read by a healer. The names of all those who
contact us are kept in a Book of Dedication on the Sanctuary table for a month.
We welcome further correspondence from those who wish to keep in touch.
Those people coming for Contact Healing will have the choice of the Sanctuary’s
more traditional healing session in the Sanctuary or a longer, more private
session, in one of the two new healing rooms. There will a purpose-built
reception and visitors centre. Residential accommodation in five newly
refurbished double bedrooms will be available at tariff rates, and upgraded
conference and seminar facilities will soon be available for hire. The Sanctuary
will be a beautiful venue for weddings and other social occasions.
The renowned woodland has been re-defined once again to be a traditional Surrey
woodland in which wildlife will continue to flourish. There is a Meditation
Glade for those wishing to have some reflective time. Car and coach parks are
being extended.
Our first Retreats are already programmed into our calendar as well as
Continuing Professional Development workshops and Healer Training courses. 1
The latter is especially appropriate in view of the role Harry Edwards played in
the training and regularisation of healers. There is also a Resources room
available which incorporates a library.
The programme of refurbishment and building has, quite naturally, been a little
disruptive to the open-house policy that has been the hall-mark of the Sanctuary
for 59 years. However, throughout all this time the work of the healers and the
administration team has continued apace. Letters have been responded to with as
much attention as before and people have still come for contact healing. The
grounds will soon be free of builders and the Sanctuary will once more be open
at weekends.
The Spiritual Heritage of the Harry Edwards Healing Sanctuary is underpinning
all we do as we move into a new era of healing. The fabric of the building
required attention and the building of the two new couch-healing rooms takes
healing into a era beyond that of Harry Edwards. The emphasis on self-healing
has not changed since his time. He knew of the mind-body connection, but today
we have the research literature to substantiate this. Our healers are trained to
help patients find ways of helping themselves using relaxation techniques,
imagery , reflective and meditative practices.
We could not change, diminish or dilute the ‘healing intent’ if we tried.
Spiritual Healing is steadfast, unchanging and constantly accessible. As healers
we seek to fulfil the expectations of modern accountability and best practice
through sustained dedication to all who seek help. Our approach to healing
combines spirituality with practicality. We encourage those who contact us for
healing to find ways of helping themselves through their difficulties, for I
believe that in reaching out for ‘healing’ we are in fact simply reaching deeper
into our own understanding and inner resources to meet our own needs-however
that may manifest.
To ‘Know Thyself’ is surely the greatest healing we can give ourselves.
We look forward to our celebration to re-dedicate the work of the Harry Edwards
Healing Sanctuary in early June. When we open officially to the public once more
from June 8 we hope that all those who visit the Sanctuary will leave feeling
sustained and renewed.
Biographical Note
Harry Edwards was born on 29 May 1893. There are many stories recounting the
escapades of the boy who, in his own words, just managed to avoid ending up in
Borstal. It was at the age of 12 that he renounced the 'boy's' life of fun and
joined the London Diocese Church Lads Brigade.
Two years later he left school and became apprentice to the print trade. That
did not capture his imagination but a poster in the local headquarters of the
Liberal Party did and he campaigned on their behalf. Both those aspects of his
life ceased abruptly in 1914 and his first role as soldier was to scan the seas
beyond Brighton for marauding visitors. His ingenuity was not sidelined for he
made sure that a fishing rod under the pier was catching his supper at the same
time!
2
By the close of 1915 he was in Bombay en route for Tekrit where he proudly wore
the title of 'Engineer' (after 60 minutes of training) and laid the railway
track between there and Baghdad. His skills as an engineer building an elaborate
circular incinerator are legendary (known as 'The Edwards Mosque').
His piece de resistance as an engineer was his bridge. Building one over a deep
and fast-flowing river after an hour of training was a tall order so he built it
on dry land and simply dynamited the river to flow under it when his bridge was
ready.
The way in which he soothed the wounds and ills of both the troops and the
locals earned him the title Hakim.
After the war he returned to printing and politics but neither flourished. The
problem now was that he had a wife and 4 children to support, apart from any
yearning he may have had to find fulfilment on another level.
That was soon to come for he felt at home in the Spiritualist church in the
company of mediums and his own ability to be a channel of healing manifested
itself.
Not only did his day job weary him, it bored him and printing had to give way to
healing. His house soon became far too small and he moved his family to Shere in
1946, not really knowing how he could afford to.
Mindful of the fact that healing was considered to be unlawful under the terms
of the Witchcraft Act of 1745 until its repeal in 1951, and aware of the wonders
of spiritual healing, Harry Edwards took on the medical profession and the
Church. By the end of the 1950s healers were allowed to work in hospitals, the
National Federation of Spiritual Healers had been formed and he had written
their first healing courses.
Despite the stutter of early childhood he spoke knowledgably and eloquently to
politicians, churchmen and the medical profession alike and the legacy we have
from him is very special.
He died on December 7 1976 at the age of 83.
Dawn Redwood is the Healing/Training Manager at the Sanctuary.
For further information: Tel: 01483 202054
email:info@burrowslea.org.uk www.harryedwards.org.uk
The Harry Edwards Healing Sanctuary is a registered charity.
© Dawn Redwood 2005
source from http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/RedwoodEdwardsSanctuary1.6.05.pdf
Harry Edwards and the Archbishops'
Commission On Divine Healing
by Steve Hume.
This article is one of a number dealing
with 'Spiritualism and the Establishment', published in the NAS Newsletter.
Healing is one area where Spiritualism has had an enduring effect upon
establishment attitudes, an impact that belies the relatively small size of the
movement today.
All human cultures have had their esoteric healing traditions that have
interpreted a seemingly natural human faculty according to their own
mythologies. Spiritualists, of course, view healing as a type of mediumship and
by the mid-twentieth century Spiritualism had played a central role in
reintroducing healing into western society. Also, one Spiritualist healer in
particular was causing intense embarrassment to both the established Church
(which had largely abandoned its own links with the healing tradition whilst
still claiming to be an authority on the matter) and the medical establishment
which, as a branch of the scientific establishment, saw no room for the
superstitious notion that healing could be brought about by any other means than
surgery or modern drugs.
The healer in question, Mr Harry Edwards, was not an Establishment figure by any
stretch of the imagination; despite this, he probably did more to permanently
affect Establishment attitudes, in the UK at least, towards a particular type of
mediumship (healing) than any other single Spiritualist before or since.
Edwards was, easily, the most well known and best loved healer of his
generation, and over the course of his long career he fought hard to win
recognition for Spiritual Healing by the medical profession. However, as he
frequently pointed out, he did not see healing as being a substitute for
conventional medicine, it was his greatest wish to see doctors and healers
working together in a common cause with the doctor remaining firmly in charge of
each case.(1) In this respect, Edwards began an approach that has been continued
since.
As far as the Church was concerned, Harry Edwards was outraged that mainstream
Christianity had abandoned healing. It was his view that the Church was
disobeying the instructions of its founder by doing this and he often said so in
public which, no doubt, did little to endear him to the leaders of the Anglican
Church. He would answer Christian critics, some of whom accused him of doing the
'Devil's work', by saying that people should be able to have healing in church
every Sunday, and that if this were done then the problem of dwindling
congregations would be solved at a stroke. But, Edwards also warned all
denominations that healing was the property of no one, including Spiritualists,
because:-
'There is not one set of Divine laws for the Church of England and another set
for the Methodists, the Congregationalists, and the Spiritualists. It is our
common heritage. To try and control it by ritual or set performances of any
kind, or to discipline, by set prayers, the healing efforts of healer priests
will likewise fail.'(2)
Ironically, this attitude would also cause Edwards some unpopularity amongst
Spiritualists but to the established Church, which had probably stifled the
healing gift in this very way, it was a double insult, the other half of which
was Edwards' very public success at practising what he preached at venues the
length and breadth of the country. There was also the fact that clergymen were
turning to Edwards instead of the Church authorities to ask how they could
develop the healing gift themselves. Parallel to this, many doctors, ignoring
the threat of disciplinary action, were covertly referring 'incurable' patients
to Edwards.
It was inevitable that matters would come to a head and this happened eventually
in 1953 when the Church organised a commission consisting of assorted Bishops
and other clergymen, doctors and a psychologist to look into the evidence for
'Divine' healing. However, before I relate how the Commission subjected Edwards
to some astonishingly shabby treatment, despite his best efforts to co-operate,
and of how the healer eventually managed to humiliate the Church by guessing the
true purpose of its panel and successfully predicting its 'findings' in public,
a brief account of his career up to this point would be in order.
Henry (Harry) James Edwards was born on May 29, 1893 in Islington, North London,
the eldest son of a print compositor. As a child Edwards was described in the
biography by colleague Raymus Branch, Harry Edwards...The Life Story of the
Great Healer, as being 'a holy terror of the first order' whose most notable
achievements were the derailment of a number of railway trucks from the line at
the back of the Edwards home at Wood Green, and the premature launching of a
hot-air balloon one evening at Alexandra Palace. Edwards' character underwent a
dramatic transformation, however, when he developed a crush on the local
butcher's daughter; in an effort to impress her he even gave up swearing and
joined the local Church Lads Brigade. He also developed an interest in politics
and became a youthful, but avid, supporter of the Liberal party, gaining his
first experience of public speaking at political rallies.
During the First World War Edwards served in India and the Middle East,
eventually attaining the rank of Captain and it was here that he showed the
first signs of the extraordinary healing gift that was to make him famous the
world over. As 'Assistant Director of Labour, Persian Lines of Communication' he
found himself, equipped with little more than bandages and iodine, having to act
as an unofficial doctor to the native workforce. Edwards was surprised to
observe an unusual rate of recovery even amongst those with serious injuries but
he thought nothing more about this until many years later after his introduction
to Spiritualism.
After returning to England Edwards married and set up his own print business in
Balham, South London. By now his early interest in politics had turned into a
burning ambition to right the wrongs of society and he stood unsuccessfully as
the Liberal party candidate for North West Camberwell twice, in 1929 and 1935.
It was after his second election defeat, in 1936, that Edwards received a
message that would change his life at a small Spiritualist Church at Clousdale
Road in Balham.
Up until then he had adopted the views of his father who, as a religious
rationalist, had no belief in an afterlife. Edwards was also a keen amateur
conjurer and 14 years previously he had visited a Spiritualist Church for the
first time with every intention of exposing the medium's tricks. Instead he was
given a message that he could not account for and his interest was aroused. So
when, during his second exposure to Spiritualism at Clousdale Road, the medium
told him that he was 'born to heal' and despite the fact he had no idea what a
healer was, he joined a development circle to see what would happen. Edwards
quickly developed trance mediumship and this was followed closely by his first
cautious attempts at absent healing.
One of these came after a distraught woman, a Mrs Newland, whose husband had
been sent home to die of lung cancer, wandered into Edwards' print shop quite by
chance and he offered to try absent healing. Two days later, Mrs Newland
returned to say that her husband's condition had improved radically. Later,
x-rays showed no signs of the malignancy but a doctor at St Thomas' Hospital who
was unfamiliar with the case concluded that Mr Newland had never had cancer in
the first place.
Edwards soon found that his early self-conscious attempts at contact healing
often brought similar results, and soon his reputation had spread to such an
extent that his home was regularly filled by people seeking his help. He
eventually found that many of the elaborate gestures employed by healers, such
as blowing on the patient and flicking away 'diseased' energy from the fingers,
were quite unnecessary and he developed the simple, straightforward approach
that became his trademark. It was not long before his efforts were being
reported in Psychic News and the local papers.
In his autobiography, On The Side Of Angels, Gordon Higginson remarked that some
aspects of Edwards' healing bore the hallmarks of physical mediumship and it was
during this early, pre-war phase of his career that the healer sponsored the
mediumship of Jack Webber. Edwards' photographs of seance-room phenomena are
some of the best ever obtained and his careful documentation of Webber's
mediumship was published as The Mediumship of Jack Webber.(3) Edwards also
ensured that some very sceptical members of the press were able to report on
some of the Welsh ex-miner's remarkable seances. Montague Keen, writing recently
in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, has remarked that the name
of 'Webber' has been remarkable by its absence from the sceptical literature and
that 'The record of his physical mediumship...constitutes a challenge that seems
to have been ignored even by our own society.'(4)
It was after World War Two that Edwards' career really took off, with his public
demonstrations of contact healing at venues ranging from the humblest
Spiritualist Church to the Albert Hall. During these, Edwards would usually ask
for those suffering from conditions that he had found to respond most rapidly to
contact healing, but he was always careful to point out that, in most cases,
patients would require further treatment and that a complete cure was not always
to be expected. Even so, he began to experience foretastes of the treatment he
would receive later at the hands of the medical members of the Archbishops'
Commission. One such case was reported in the Cambridge Daily News in 1948. At a
demonstration at Cambridge Guild Hall Edwards had given healing to four-year-old
Phillip Goodliff who, being crippled by polio, had to be carried onto the
platform by his mother. A minute after receiving healing, the child, after
discarding his leg-iron, was 'romping' around the front of the hall and creating
such a disturbance that his mother had to remove his shoes. However, the
orthopaedic surgeon who had treated the boy, Mr Noel Smith, despite the fact
that the child could now walk, declared that Edwards had merely used 'an age-old
chiropractic stunt' and that the treatment for infantile paralysis should be on
'scientific and proved lines'.(5)
Of course, the case of Phillip Goodliff represented the only the tip of a very
large iceberg of successful healings. By the time that he received a request to
submit evidence to the Archbishops' Commission, Edwards was a national figure
who was answering thousands of requests for absent healing from around the world
each week at his Sanctuary, 'Burrows Lea' in Surrey, which he had acquired in
1946. Edwards was also keeping records of each patient's progress. Ostensibly,
the task of the Commission was to assess the evidence for Divine Healing with a
view to issuing guidelines to the clergy as to how requests for healing should
be handled and how healing should be given.(6) As we shall see, however, the
former aim somehow vanished from the Commission's agenda once it became apparent
that Edwards could actually meet the criteria for evidence specified by the
panel. And, tragically, the 'guidelines' that were eventually issued were little
better than an insult to the sick.
As Raymus Branch has noted, if it had not been for Harry Edwards then the
Archbishops' Commission on Divine Healing would probably never have been
formed.(7) It was, after all, Edwards' public demonstrations of contact healing
that had made the subject a matter of public debate in post-war Britain. So,
although Edwards was not the only healer to be asked to co-operate with the
Commission it was inevitable that, in the public mind, he would be seen as its
chief subject of investigation. As the most famous healer of the day, it was
Harry Edwards, a Spiritualist, who bore the burden of responsibility for proving
the worth of spiritual healing to the bishops and their panel of medical
advisers.
The panel formed to investigate healing was formidable indeed, including five
bishops and an array of senior doctors and academics.(8) The most notable and
hostile of these was Dr. David Stafford-Clark (later to become known as 'the
television psychiatrist'). Ironically, the panel also included the Rev. Maurice
Elliot who had long campaigned for a liaison between Spiritualism and the
Church. Elliot had been one of the prime movers behind an earlier Church
Commission, formed by Archbishop Cosmo Lang, to investigate Spiritualism itself.
It was Elliot who had courageously spoken out after Lang had tried to suppress
the resulting 'majority report' which was favourable to Spiritualism, and the
nature of the Healing Commission may be judged by the fact that the then
Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Fisher, reacted with dismay at Elliot's
participation. Upon finding him present at the first meeting of the Commission,
Fisher had demanded of Elliot 'And what are you doing here today?' closely
followed by 'Who sent you?' upon which Elliot merely pointed upwards and walked
away.(9)
Edwards was later to comment that Elliot was the only friend amongst a panel
that was otherwise 'horse-faced'.(10) However, if the healer's account of his
interview by the Commission is to be believed, there must be some doubt as to
the fitness of at least one panel member to have participated in such an
inquiry.
Although the Commission had been announced in 1953 it was not until July 7 1954
that Edwards (accompanied by his assistant, Olive Burton), arrived at Lambeth
Palace to present his evidence for healing. The Commission had requested details
of six cases for investigation by the medical panel. Edwards, who by this time
was dealing with thousands of requests for absent healing every week, had little
trouble in forwarding seventy such cases from the previous three months, the
details of which could all be checked by the panel with the doctors concerned
via the patients themselves.(11)
After a talk, during which he invited the panel to witness a contact healing
session at Burrows Lea, Edwards faced a barrage of hostile, critical
questions.(12) He related later how one doctor had stood up and contemptuously
cast the papers relating to the healings to one side declaring 'There is no
evidence of spiritual healing here for they could all have been spontaneous
(natural) healings'. When Edwards pointed out the absurdity of this suggestion
(that seventy patients who had been declared by their doctors to be 'incurable'
just happened to recover 'spontaneously' after being given healing), the doctor
retorted that 'Too many doctors are declaring people to be incurable when they
are not'.(13) When, at another stage in the proceedings, Edwards attempted to
give details concerning the healing of a 'blue baby', this brought a shout of
'impossible' from Dr. Stafford-Clark. When the healer persisted in trying to
give an account of this case, Stafford-Clark swung his chair round and Edwards
found himself addressing the doctor's back!(14)
After their in-depth, minutes-long 'investigation' of the seventy cases
presented by Edwards the panel then asked him to provide a further six 'case
histories' for scrutiny, perhaps knowing that, owing to the confidentiality of
such information, the healer would be denied access to official medical
histories. In 1950, Edwards had helped a doctor from St. Bartholomew's Hospital
who was conducting a private study of healing by supplying ninety-five cases for
examination. Even the doctor himself had not been able to get access to the
medical records for fifty-eight of these cases but when Edwards pointed this out
to the panel he was told, incredibly, that 'he only had to ask' for the
details.(15)
Nevertheless, Edwards managed to meet the new criteria for eight cases which
were duly supplied to the Commission with a request that he be allowed to see
the medical panel's comments in advance of publication. In view of the evasion
tactics already employed by the medical panel this was an understandable request
from Edwards who, by now, was beginning to suspect that even these cases would
not be investigated properly and that the Commission was likely to be misled.
Edwards simply wanted to be able to correct any likely mis-statements or
evasions concerning the cases to prevent this from happening. As we shall see,
however, Edwards had to wait two years, despite repeated requests, before he
received an assurance that his plea to see the findings in advance would be met
and, even then, this proved to be a waste of paper and ink.
In the meantime Edwards continued with his healing work. Shortly after the
fiasco of his interview at Lambeth Palace he gave a healing demonstration at the
Albert Hall, on September 25 1954, in front of an audience of 6,000 which
included 17 members of the Archbishops' Commission, representatives of the BMA
and members of the Church's Council of Healing. Accordingly, Edwards made a
point of asking for people with 'incurable' conditions: a girl of eight who was
spastic from birth raised her arms above her head for the first time; a man
crippled by arthritis for 30 years walked away from the platform as did a woman
who had not walked for five years. During the demonstration, Edwards made
numerous asides that were obviously intended for the ears of the Commission,
such as 'Would it not be a fine thing if this healing was taking place in
Canterbury Cathedral and in all our Parish Churches? It should be happening
there, for that is its rightful place!'(16)
During the coming months, Edwards voiced his increasing frustration with the
Commission more directly with a series of letters to Lambeth Palace repeatedly
asking, to no avail, that he be allowed to comment on the medical panel's
findings. Gradually, he became so disillusioned with the Commission that he
started to complain publicly about his treatment in his own magazine The
Spiritual Healer, and this culminated in an open accusation of 'conspiracy and
negligence' when he found out that the patient from one of the cases, a Mr
William Olsen, had been asked by the Commission to provide his own medical
corroboration and that five of the other patients and their doctors had not even
been contacted!(17)
By May 1956 Edwards had just completed a book, The Truth About Spiritual
Healing, in which he gave an account of the Commission's behaviour. On May 8,
after the book had gone to press he received a letter from Lambeth palace signed
by the Bishop of Lincoln and the Secretary to the Commission, the Rev. Eric Jay,
saying that a Dr. Claxton of the BMA had no objections to granting his request
and would write to him shortly with the medical panel's findings. Edwards was so
pleased with this that he suspended his book's publication immediately, only to
find that the conclusions of the medical panel (on which the Commission's report
was eventually to be based), were published in the British Medical Journal on
May 12 anyway.(18) And, to rub salt into the wound, Edwards received Claxton's
letter containing the findings two days afterwards.(19)
As Edwards was to write later in an updated version of his book...'the offer of
co-operation was a sham - a case of "thank you for nothing"', but what made
matters much worse was the fact that the BMA report amply confirmed his worst
fears as it contained evasions and downright errors concerning the eight cases
that were scarcely believable. This suggested that the panel had either not
bothered to conduct its investigation with anything like the scientific
detachment and thoroughness that one would expect, or had actually chosen to lie
rather than admit that the cases presented evidence in favour of Spiritual
Healing.
Edwards wrote back to Rev. Eric Jay, to whom he had already predicted this very
outcome many times over the previous months:-
'As I anticipated, and as I have told you several times, the BMA findings are
purposefully evasive, misleading and a distortion of the truth...It is obvious
that the doctors are hostile. To ask them for an impartial judgement is asking
them to agree that spiritual healing can succeed when they have failed, and this
they do not want to do, whatever the evidence...If the commission is willing to
accept the BMA report at its face value, that is its responsibility, but if, on
the other hand, it cares to question this report, I shall be prepared to
co-operate.'(20)
Edwards included details of the BMA's errors but, apparently, the Commission was
prepared to accept the report at face value as he received no reply to his
letter.
A full commentary on the BMA report was included in the final version of The
Truth About Spiritual Healing.(21) Fairly typical is the treatment the panel
gave to the case of a patient, Mr. 'B', whose son had sought absent healing from
Edwards on his father's behalf for bladder cancer which was diagnosed after a
biopsy. An operation was planned but, according to the son, shortly after
healing commenced his father's 'appearance was transformed, pain ceased, and he
appeared to regain his perfect health'. No cancer was found during a preliminary
examination prior to the operation at the Royal Masonic Hospital and so the
actual surgery was not performed and the patient was found to be cancer free on
several occasions up to December 1954. In 1955, the same patient became very
seriously ill with bronchitis but again, after healing, recovered. Three months
later, however, Mr. 'B' died suddenly of a heart attack.
Doubtless, Edwards would not have objected if the BMA report had told the truth
concerning this patient's demise (after all he was not claiming that, through
healing, one could achieve immortality) but it claimed that Mr 'B' had succumbed
to the original 'carcinoma of the bladder', completely ignoring the actual
medical evidence.
Another case concerned a Miss E. Wilson who had been suffering from back pain
for more than forty years and was diagnosed in 1950 at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary
as having 'gross Kyphosis deformity'. After one contact healing session with
Edwards in 1951 her spine was straightened considerably, she became completely
pain-free and was able to discard her back-brace and walking
sticks...improvements that were acknowledged by her consultant, a Mr. Ross.
However, the BMA report stated wrongly, without even calling Miss Wilson as a
witness, that she had 'improved whilst receiving physiotherapy in addition to
Mr. Edwards's administrations' when she had, in fact, received no further
treatment because, as Edwards pointed out, she did not need it.
There were similar inconsistencies with all of the other cases and it would be
no exaggeration to say that the report was scientifically worthless. Yet, the
panel still managed to conclude from its non-investigation that... 'We can find
no evidence that organic diseases are cured by such means [spiritual healing]'.
Edwards' immediate response was to issue a statement to the press in which he
gave the true details of the eight cases and challenged the BMA to have them
independently assessed.(22) Of course, this challenge was not taken up and, in
the eyes of many, the BMA must have appeared rather foolish. The authors of the
report also seemed to have been blissfully unaware that Edwards had many friends
in the medical profession and he was particularly annoyed that they had reminded
doctors that they were liable to disciplinary action if they co-operated with
healers. In a speech made in Bloomsbury the following year, Edwards was able to
produce a fistful of the 200 letters he had received from doctors requesting his
assistance in the short time since the report's publication. He warned the BMA
that if they should be 'ill-advised' enough to discipline even one of them
that... 'we are in a position to provide a great amount of support to that
doctor through the medical profession itself'.(23)
It is, perhaps, hardly surprising that, in 1958, Edwards received a letter from
the Chaplain of the Commission telling him that none of the evidence he had
supplied would be used in the final report.(24) After all, the Commission had
been totally out-manoeuvred by the healer who had managed to publicly discredit
the 'findings' of their eminent medical panel; any reference to this in the
final report would have amounted to a public admission of everything that
Edwards had accused the Commission of unless they had taken up his challenge to
have the evidence independently assessed.
The Commission had clearly decided to fudge the issue by not mentioning Edwards'
evidence at all. But, Edwards had pre-empted the Church even here. Anticipating
the likely outcome years before, he had devoted a whole chapter in The Truth
About Spiritual Healing to predicting what the Commission's recommendations to
the clergy regarding healing would be. He would now see just how accurate his
predictions had been. Today, nearly forty years after the Commission's findings
were published, we can see that the Healing Movement has continued to flourish
in the manner envisioned by Edwards, albeit without the co-operation of the
Church.
It must have seemed obvious to Edwards that the Commission, rather than take
advice from a Spiritualist who was providing powerful evidence that genuine
healing of organic and mental disease was possible without placing any religious
preconditions on the act, would uselessly try to cram the healing gift into its
own dogmas to avoid losing face. This belief that one can magically confer the
gift of healing on someone by dressing them in priest's robes and asking them to
perform set rituals and prayers was, as Edwards had maintained all along, how
the Church had managed to mislay its healing ministry in the first place.
Edwards' predictions of the Commission's recommendations may be summarised
thus:(25) (i) It would admit that healers from outside the Church may be able to
bring about healing but there would be references to evil spirits and the Devil;
(ii) It would 'suggest that applicants for spiritual healing should receive
devotional education', and it would also expect patients to become members of
the Church, placing its own preconditions on 'Divine' healing; (iii) It would
accept that healing may be possible with 'nervous diseases' but not with organic
conditions; (iv) It would disparage public demonstrations of healing such as
those given by Edwards.
This forecast was remarkable in its accuracy.(26) After the report's publication
in June 1958 Edwards gave his reaction to it in his own magazine, The Spiritual
Healer. There was, indeed, an acknowledgement that Spiritualist healers 'may
be...gifted men' but, despite Edwards' efforts to give an understanding of this
they were 'gifted in ways which as yet we do not understand'. There were
references to 'demons' and how churchmen should 'exorcise' patients.
There was the recommendation that 'Sickness...often presents a unique
opportunity for instruction' and that the patient be 'prepared', 'instructed'
and encouraged to 'confess' to 'bring the patient to a real sorrow for his sins'
before healing. The clergy were also advised that if they were asked to give
healing to a stranger they would 'need to discover whether the patient is a
Christian,...a churchman, whether he has been baptised...confirmed and is a
communicant'. In other words, the report inferred that non-Anglicans should be
left to suffer, something which Edwards described as 'downright cruel'. There
was also the disingenuous comment that 'If the investigation was sufficiently
complete, there might arise scientific evidence for unparalleled physical cures'
followed by a 15 paragraph dismissal of apparent healing successes as being due
to wrong diagnoses, 'spontaneous' remission etc. Edwards remarked 'So illogical
is the report that after ruling that any investigation of Spiritualist healings
were outside its business, it devotes pages to explain them away'.
As far as public healing was concerned, the report, although not ruling it out,
recommended that it should only be held for the 'instructed', otherwise
'attendance at a healing service could have disastrous results'. This prompted
Edwards to retort that 'The only disastrous result will be that the patients may
die while they are waiting for all this "preparation" before they are allowed to
enter the Church to be healed'.
The popular press reacted with bewilderment and a certain amount of outrage to
the report. The Daily Express commented that its 'jungle of theological jargon'
reached back to 'the dark superstitious beginnings of man himself' and was a
'tremendous attack' on other denominations including Spiritualists. The Star, a
leading evening newspaper of the time, obviously unaware of the irony of the
situation, asked in a leading article 'Why, for instance, didn't the Commission
probe and test the evidence of a man like Harry Edwards...Because, they say, it
was outside their terms of reference.' Needless to say, Maurice Barbanell,
editor of Psychic News was also outraged, he wrote that the report was a 'waste
of the paper on which it was printed'. Perhaps the most ridiculous of the
report's recommendations had been its suggestion that to induce healing the
priest should bless a bottle of olive oil, soak a piece of wool in this, draw a
cross on the patient's forehead and, after reciting a prayer, burn the wool.
Edwards commented that 'If Spiritualist healers did this, they would be rightly
laughed at'. He also predicted that, until the Church came to its senses the
sick would continue to seek healing from Spiritualists. Which, indeed, they did.
Barely a month after the report's publication Edwards held another healing
demonstration at the Albert Hall. He shared the platform with 300 healers from
the non-denominational National Federation of Spiritual Healers (of which
Edwards was President) which had been formed in 1955 by John Britnell with
Edwards' help.(27) Also there to speak in support of healing was the MP for
Kensington, George Roger, but it was Edwards himself who delivered the coupe de
grace to the Archbishops' report. After accusing the medical panel from the
Commission of 'shameful negligence' for not examining the evidence he had
provided, he declared... 'We present the evidence for the judgement of public
opinion'. Then two of the eight patients whose cases had been misrepresented in
the earlier BMA report, before being ignored completely by the Commission,
stepped up to the microphone. William Olsen who had recovered from spinal
collapse and Elizabeth Wilson, a former hunchback, stepped up to the microphone
to testify to their recovery at Edwards' hands. A Mrs Blowes whose eight month
old daughter had been sent home to die of a malignant growth told the audience
that the girl was now nine years old thanks to healing. The audience were also
told that the patient from one of the other cases, a boy who had been crippled
by a strange condition that had bent his body 'like a question mark', would have
been present were it not for the fact that he was taking his school exams.
The Archbishops' report was then finally laid to rest by none other than the
Rev. Maurice Elliot who, as a member of the Commission, had been present when
Edwards first presented his evidence at Lambeth Palace. Elliot told the audience
that he was so disgusted by the report and the way it had been compiled that he
had refused to sign it.(28)
Many years before, during his army career in the Middle East, Edwards had been
entrusted with the task of building a bridge over a wide, fast flowing river. As
he only knew how to build bridges over roads Edwards simply ordered the bridge
to be built to one side of the river which was then diverted underneath it with
dynamite.(29) In retrospect it can be seen that Harry Edwards used a similar
approach to paving the way for the increasing acceptance of healing by the
medical establishment that we see today. Edwards already had considerable covert
grass-roots support amongst doctors, indeed he recalled that after a lecture
given to a division of the BMA several doctors had taken him to one side and
told him how they were his 'best friend here', 'your strongest supporter'
etc.(30)
In 1959 healers from the NFSH, of which Edwards was the first president, were
given permission to give healing in 1,500 NHS hospitals,(31) but Edwards
continued to fight for recognition of healing by the BMA and the General Medical
Council. During his long presidency of the NFSH, whose early headquarters was
Edwards' own healing sanctuary at Burrows Lea, he was responsible for the
organisation's early training courses,(32) and he continued to demonstrate
healing internationally, even touring Zimbabwe at the age of 82, shortly before
his passing in 1976.(33)
It has been estimated that, over the course of his 40 year career, Edwards gave
healing to around 14 million people, from the most humble to members of the
royal family, without ever charging a penny for his services.(34) One year after
his passing, in 1977, the GMC issued a policy statement in which permission was
given for doctors to refer patients to accredited healers if they saw fit.(35)
1981 saw the formation of the Confederation of Healing Organisations, an
umbrella organisation for healing associations from all denominations who are
prepared to accept a common code of conduct prepared in consultation with the
GMC, BMA and Royal Colleges of Medicine.(36) In 1988, the Doctor Healer Network
was formed by psychiatrist Dr Daniel Benor for Doctors who wished to employ
healers at their surgeries and an increasing number of Doctors, such as Dr
Barbara King of Birmingham have become healers themselves.(37)
Today Britain is the only European country to have a strongly established
healing movement and an attempt to make complementary therapies such as healing
available on the National Health Service was defeated in the House of Lords by
only 4 votes in 1990.(38) It would seem that the realisation of this central aim
of the CHO is only a matter of time, especially since an attempt by the Lannoye
Committee of the European Parliament to severely restrict complementary medicine
in the UK was met with a threat by the last government to use the Maastricht
treaty to veto any such move.(39)
It is difficult to imagine that any of the above would have been possible
without Harry Edwards although, of course, a great deal of the credit belongs to
many others also. Despite his own Spiritualist interpretation of how healing is
achieved by attunement with 'God's Healing Ministers in Spirit', he wisely
recognised that this must take second place to the healing act itself. His
insistence that healing should be non-denominational was an act of humility that
ensured its wider acceptance by an increasingly secular society and an
Establishment that is still largely hostile to the concept of mediumship as
such. Of course, such an approach would be vastly more difficult with mediumship
as a form of evidential communication.
So much for the medical establishment. The Church, for its part, seems to have
learned nothing from its encounter with Harry Edwards. The Churches Council for
Health and Healing, unlike the NFSH, is not a member of the CHO, and therefore
is not bound by a code of conduct which forbids forcing the belief system of the
healer upon the patient. Consequently, the vacuum left by the mainstream
church's rejection of Harry Edwards' advice has been filled, in part, to the
dismay of many clergymen, by the rise of the so-called 'Toronto Blessing': in
this, people cavort around like chickens in a disco, baying like animals while
they exorcise various imaginary demons. This practice has even been encouraged
in church by some of the more evangelically minded clergy and some 'patients'
who have been exposed to it have claimed that they suffered long-term
psychological damage as a result. Some may remember a TV documentary about this
phenomenon a few years ago during which one man alleged that his 'healing' had
involved being forcibly held down whilst blackcurrant cordial was poured into
his underwear to purify him. One wonders whether the Archbishops' Commission
would have regarded this as a 'disastrous' result.
Naturally, one also wonders what Harry Edwards would have thought of such
antics. A number of years ago I was present at a contact healing session at
Burrows Lea, during which Ray and Joan Branch gave healing to a lady whose neck,
hips, and wrists were chronically affected by arthritis. As she walked away from
Edwards' old healing chair (carrying her support collar) she turned and asked
Ray whether he ever heard anything from his former mentor. He replied, with a
smile, 'Oh, we never do anything without him!'.
References
(1)Harry Edwards (a), A Guide to the Understanding and Practice of Spiritual
Healing (Guildford: Healer Publishing, 1982), pp.111-112.
(2)And all other general biographical details, Raymus Branch, Harry Edwards: The
Life Story of the Great Healer (Guildford: Healer Publishing, 1991), p.174.
(3)For an excellent account of Jack Webber's career see 'The Mediumship of Jack
Webber', The NAS Newsletter, December 1995.
(4)Montague Keen, 'A Sceptical View of Parapsychology', JSPR, Vol. 61, No. 846,
Jan. 1997, p.298.
(5)Raymus Branch, Ibid., pp.139-140.
(6)Raymus Branch, Ibid., p.167.
(7)Raymus Branch, Ibid., p.166.
(8)For full details see 6.
(9)Raymus Branch, Ibid., p.168.
(10)Raymus Branch, Ibid., p.170.
(11)Raymus Branch, Ibid., p.169.
(12)Harry Edwards (b), The Truth About Spiritual Healing (London: Spiritualist
Press, 1956), pp.146-151.
(13)Harry Edwards (b), Ibid., pp.31-32.
(14)Raymus Branch, Ibid., p.175.
(15)See 7.
(16)Raymus Branch, Ibid., p.176.
(17)Raymus Branch, Ibid., p.181.
(18)British Medical Journal Supplement, May 12 1956, pp.269-273.
(19)Harry Edwards (b), Ibid., pp.33-39.
(20)See 12.
(21)Harry Edwards (b), Ibid., pp.40-84.
(22)Harry Edwards (b), Ibid., pp.152-153.
(23)Raymus Branch, Ibid., p.188.
(24)Raymus Branch, Ibid., p.190.
(25)Harry Edwards (b), Ibid., pp.124-126.
(26)Ramus Branch, Ibid., pp.190-196.
(27)Don Copeland, 'Harry Edwards and Healing Training', NFSH Region 14
Newsletter, Summer 1997, p.4.
(28)Ramus Branch, Ibid., p.198.
(29)Ramus Branch, Ibid., pp.41-40.
(30)Ramus Branch, Ibid., p.145.
(31)Anthea Courtenay, Healing Now (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1991), p.112.
(32)Don Copeland, Ibid.
(33)Ramus Branch, Ibid., illustration facing p.227.
(34)Estimate given by Ramus Branch at seminar, Burrows Lea 1996.
(35)Ramus Branch, Ibid., p.147.
(36)Anthea Courtenay, Ibid., p.13.
(37)Jo Ind, writing in the Birmingham Post, July 6 1993.
(38)News and Views, Journal of the Surrey Spiritual Healers Association, Autumn
1997, pp.30-31.
(39)See 14.
(40)Anthea Courtenay, Ibid., p.13.
Source from http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/seance/78/hedwards.htm
LINKS of the Harry Edwards sanctuary.
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OTHER HEALING ORGANISATIONS |
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UK Healers | Spiritual Healing regulatory body |
Co-founded by Harry Edwards, the NFSH provides training for Spiritual Healers in the UK | |
Alliance of Healing Associations | AHA is an umbrella group of some 20 Healing associations |
World Federation of Healing | A federation for all healing therapies |
Surrey Healers | The Surrey Spiritual Healers' Association |
The Doctor Healer Network | Encouraging the acceptance and use of integrated medicine, incorporating healing as a major component. |
NFSH Healing In America | NFSH affiliate organisation in the U.S.A |
HEALERS |
|
SpiritualVoice | Celia Marchisio LRAM. Voice Healer, Spiritual Healer, Singing Teacher, Reiki Master Teacher. |
Margrit Coates, Animal Healer | Margrit Coates. Animal healer ~ explains how healing for animals works |
Spiritual healing, weekly drop-in group, notice board, articles & many links to healing, meditation, yoga training, holistic self-help & support sites. |
There are other sites on a similar vein but slightly different pages click on links.
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