There's an amazing scene in Fergus Tighe's documentary about the Brazilian healer, Joao Teixeira de Faria, to be screened on RTÉ 1 tonight, in which a Harvard researcher is seen clinging onto his scepticism for dear life, writes Kate Holmquist.
Dr Jeffrey Rediger of Harvard University's medical school is walking through the village of Abadiana, Central Brazil, where Joao is based, speaking of his own struggle between his head, which is seeking scientific evidence of the healing that takes place at Abadiana, and his heart which refuses to believe. As he utters the word "heart", a stain appears on his T-shirt. He lifts his shirt, and the camera focuses in on a small wound, dripping copious blood, that has suddenly appeared from nowhere on his chest over his heart. One of the helpers at the healing centre, known as the casa de Dom Inacio (the house of Ignatius Loyola) tells him that he has just had "invisible surgery" without even realising it. Apparently this happens to people in the village surrounding Joao's "casa", whether they request it or not.
"Do you feel invaded?" the helper asks the doctor.
"No . . . I don't feel in control. That's why I'm afraid," he answers.
For those who regard the healing of physical and mental illnesses as a spiritual process, not just a medical issue, the village of Abadiana has become a mecca. Joao is reputed to have miraculously cured cancer, Aids, paraplegia and blindness. So many thousands, including hundreds of Irish people, are travelling there every year, that it's fast growing in reputation as the new Lourdes. Joao is now known as Joao de Deus - John of God.
Dr Michael Corry, of the Institute of Psychosocial Medicine in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, suggests that Abadiana is a "portal", like Lourdes, through which the healing energies of a greater power emerge with exceptional strength. The presence of some sort of spiritual force in the village is evidenced by the fact that Joao conducts physical surgery with unsterilised instruments without causing any infection or pain.
In Tighe's film, we see Joao cut open a woman's breast with a scalpel, while she feels no pain. He operates on a woman's cornea in a similar fashion, while the woman lies calmly in a state of "spiritual anaesthesia".
Dr Rediger, in his struggle to explain these phenomena, has found scientific evidence of healing. For example, we see Maria Tsakona, a girl with spina bifida who would never walk, her parents were told. Since visiting the centre several times, she has become able to walk unaided. Her curvature of the spine, due to scoliosis, has reduced from 35 degrees to 25 degrees, according to her X-rays and MRI scans.
At the age of 11, Joao fell into a trance and, when he awoke, found himself in a healing centre conducting surgery. He claims to be a "medium" through which spiritual entities work. At the centre, hundreds - and sometimes thousands - of people sit in "current" rooms daily, helping to channel and maintain the energy that they believe is providing the healing.
In his film, Tighe follows a number of Irish people who attend the centre on their own spiritual journeys. Pascal Sheridan, a father of four from Co Meath, had 10 malignant brain tumours as a result of pituitary cancer. Seventeen years ago, his Irish doctor told him he had three months to live.
"It's been a long three months," says Sheridan, who refused to accept the doctor's prediction. "If I could create the tumours, I could get rid of them," he reasoned. He told The Irish Times that he refused chemotherapy and radiation therapy and instead sought out many kinds of "complementary" healing. A year ago, he found a surgeon in the US willing to operate on his brain tumours and, in a series of operations, all were removed.
Spending time in Abadiana has been, for Sheridan, part of a lifelong spiritual journey in which - he believes - his illness has been a catalyst for a greater understanding of "soul". "I know from experience that I will never die. This energy that takes form in my body will change shape, that's all. I am the nearest now that I have ever been to heaven. I can't tell you how happy I am," he says.
Michael Morrison (26), diagnosed with cystic fibrosis shortly after birth, credits his visit to Abadiana with radical improvements in his health.
Before being treated by Joao, he had "abdicated" control of his health to his medical team and had spent long periods of time in hospital, he says.
Experiencing the healing in Abadiana inspired him to change his life "professionally, emotionally, spiritually, in every way", he told The Irish Times. "If you give the disease the energy it affects your life expectancy. In the last two years, since I've taken control of my life, I'm the best I've ever been."
He is using far less medication and is cycling and playing rugby and tennis. He has left his job at UCD as a research assistant and is now running a complementary medicine business.
Fergus Tighe visited Abadiana five times over 18 months in the process of making the documentary, which grew out of his own interest in spiritual healing. Tighe made a name for himself with his first film, Clash of the Ash, a loosely autobiographical coming-of-age story set in the world of hurling and GAA in Fermoy, Co Cork. His early success was followed by a "long, fallow period" of a decade, when he suffered a bout of depression and used alcohol and drugs in his attempts to cope. When he eventually sought Reiki healing for his depression, Tighe's life was changed. "It left a strong impression, got me back on my feet and feeling confident enough to work again." He made Three Brothers, a film about actor Aidan Quinn and his brothers, Paul, a film director and Declan, a cinematographer. Tighe also co-wrote 2x4 with Jimmy Smallhorne, a film that won a best cinematography award for Declan Quinn at the Sundance Film Festival.
His interest in spiritual healing continued, meanwhile, and he trained to become a Reiki healer himself. "It's about becoming involved in your own life and making decisions about your own life," he says. "There's no cure for anything beyond death, I realised. If you've had a problem with depression, handling it is an ongoing process. You will get days when you feel low energy and the blues, and other days when you feel better. I believe that we all need some healing modality, whether it be yoga or meditation or whatever, to help us with such challenges. For me, it's all about 'living in awareness', so that you have a perspective on what you've been through and have a modality to use when the triggers for the depression occur."
Tighe says that he cannot explain what he saw in Abadiana and, in his documentary, gives the viewer a journalistically detached glimpse of what goes on there and why people seek it out. "There are things going on there that are slightly extraordinary, although perhaps they are more ordinary than we like to think," he says.
When he first heard of Joao de Deus, from a healer friend, he immediately realised it would make a fascinating documentary. He began to feel a hand at the base of his spine pushing him towards Abadiana. "When I arrived, I had a feeling I had been there before." Tighe was motivated by the desire to know "was it for real?", so he he allowed Joao de Deus to "shove" an eight-inch long scissor up his nose, a procedure that Joao uses to treat many physical conditions. It was painless and "put me into a state I can't rationally explain. I felt my ankle go stone cold, yet it was warm to touch. He also experienced the "current room", where he meditated for hours and felt an energy "like electricity" running from his head to his toes.
Previously, Tighe had fractured his ankle in an accident, had lost the feeling in four toes and could no longer run. Since the "operation", his ankle has healed "100 per cent" and for the past six months he's been running on the beach.
"Joao says that the spirit worldand God are working through him. I find that hard to take. I do believe in there being another energy, an organised intelligent force, but I don't give it saints' names," he says.
Tighe's own struggle with alcohol and drug abuse have led him to want to make a film about young male suicide in particular, and - more generally - about the difficulties that young men have expressing their feelings.
"There are cultural reasons why so many people are lonely and ill at ease in the world in the absence of a language with which to express themselves. I myself never spoke of my depression to my family, because I felt ashamed."
Drug use, he believes, is "a trigger" for a lot of mental ill-health amongst young people. "You are not in your own mind. You are at a remove from yourself and it can put you into a state that's very hard to get out of," he says.
"You have to work at it constantly."
True Lives: John of God - Spirit Doctor of Brazil, RTÉ 1, 10.10pm, tonight
www.friendsofthecasa.org
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SJQTLMCMMRC2PLALXUKEWWS6HU.png)