Maria Janis, wife of Byron Janis (concert pianist), takes the discussion of prayer/meditation a step further when she relates how her husband conquered chronic illness:
"The demands of a creative life can be shattering. I realized that Byron's secret was draining his energy, that if he gave up self- doubt and forgot himself, he could do anything. When he began to move himself to a nonstressful state of mind, everything improved."

      Byron Janis himself states: "What helped me the most I can't explain. I developed a very personal relationship with God. I think prayer is important. I think the belief in God is healing. No one knows what it's like for other people, but I know that, unless I found a belief in God, I would never have been able to say what I have to say. God works with man and man with God. Not one alone."

      Researchers at San Francisco General Hospital are in close agreement with the Janis' theories. Cardiologist Randy Byrd found that 192 patients in a group of victims of heart attack, heart failure and other cardiac problems that was prayed for had significantly fewer complications than the 201 patients in the non-prayer group. And fewer members of the prayed-for group died.
            During the 10-month study, a computer assigned patients in a coronary intensive care unit either to a group that was the focus of prayers by home prayer groups or an unremembered group. Patients, doctors and nurses did not know which group patients were in. None of the prayed-for had to be place on breathing devices, but 12 of those not prayed for needed respirators.
            The prayed-for group was five times less likely to develop infections requiring antibiotics, and three times less likely to develop a lung condition that normally leads to heart failure (proceedings of the American Heart Association).

     Dr. William Nolan, a Litchfield, Minn. surgeon and author of a book debunking faith healing, said:
      "It sounds like this study will stand up to scrutiny."

      SINCERE, deliberate prayer, simply put, may be proven to be positive consciousness projected at a distance.
      Just as the body is 'hard-wired' for projection of consciousness within itself, so it may also be receptive to certain projections of consciousness from without.

      A 1988 San Francisco study involved a 10-month-long computer-assisted review of 393 heart care patients dived into two groups: one that was prayed for by home prayer groups, and one that was not being prayed for. The prayed-for group was 5x less likely than the control group to require antibiotics, and 3x less likely to develop pulmonary edema.
      Dr. Larry Dossey, an internist in Dallas, reviewed the data (a randomized, double-blind experiment in which neither patients, nurses or doctors knew which patients were in which group) and was impressed enough to begin a 5-year examination of the literature to "see if this study stood alone, or if there were other things out there".
      After searching more than 130 scientific studies (culminating in the HarperCollins book, 'Healing Words'), Dr. Dossey proclaimed:
      "The evidence is simply overwhelming that prayer functions at a distance to change physical processes in a variety of organisms, from bacteria to humans."

      Dr. Bernie Siegal: "(Dossey) tends to be more intellectual about it, which we need. If you tell stories, (others) can walk out of the meeting saying, 'That was just an anecdote', but if you present statistics, they're mad as hell, because you're confronting them...  In a decade, consciousness will be a scientific subject, and prayer will be, too."

     Deciding that human studies involved too many variables, Dossey turned to ones involving simpler forms of life. In one, 10 subjects focused their attention on inhibiting the growth of lab fungus, and 151 of 194 cultures displayed retarded growth.
      In a similiar work, where the subjects were 1 to 15 miles from the fungi, the same results showed up 16 times out of 16.
      Dr. Dossey: "While I got into 'this prayer business' reluctantly, I think the job of medical scientists has always been to honor the data. ... (the bottom line is) when people enter a prayerful state of mind, good things happen (to those they pray for). The evidence that prayer works is overwhelming, but it has been marginalized and shoved aside."

      But as the Rev. Lee Joesten, head of in-patient care at Lutheran Gen. Hospital in Park Ridge, Ill. warns:
      "Prayer may not be a cause-and-effect sort of thing. There is a bigger picture we may not know anything about."

      Rabbi David J. Wolpe:
"The prayer that helps you is the prayer that comes out of relationship, not the prayer that comes out of calculation. God is not there so you can get stuff from God. You pray because it's good, and it realizes the spark of God in you."

      Margaret Poloma, a U. of Akron (Ohio) sociology professor:
  "Listening is one of the most important parts of prayer.
        Be still and know that He is God."

       [Poloma's research has identified four basic types of prayer:
        1) Petitionary - asking God for very specific material things (incl. healing for you or others).

        2) Ritualistic - reading a prayer from a book, reciting the Lord's prayer, or reciting a rosary.

        3) Colloquial - Talking to God in your own words, about worries, or things you feel thankful for, etc.

        4) Meditative - moving beyond words, being aware of God's Presence. Studies reveal that almost all forms of religious commitment are beneficial, but meditative prayer "seems to have a real impact on life satisfaction and happiness, and having a sense of meaning and purpose. If people engage only in the other forms of prayer, it doesn't seem to have the same effect."

      Dr. Dossey:
"(we) need to expand our thoughts of what prayer might be, and not confine it just to the idea of talking out loud to a male cosmic parent figure who prefers to be addressed in English...people are all over the ballpark on this, and they ought to be...I go sit and try to enter a space of emptiness and silence, and try not to use words...Prayer research suggests something about us is eternal, and has no intention of dying with the death of the body. I can't imagine a bigger payoff to anything in science than that."

      Marie Louise von Franz, close associate of Carl Jung, noted that:
    "Events involving mind and matter...that seem coincidental are paranormal...the implications of this type of event are that when a person clearly holds an image in mind, the energy of his/her visualization can influence the external world."

      A far-fetched assumption? Hardly. William Tiller's statement sums it up well:
      "Today we know four types of forces --- electromagnetic, gravitational, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. But the existence of the latter two was not even suspected before this century. I don't believe that we have found all the forces in nature yet. There is probably at least one more type of energy operating at the physical level which serves to support the projection of consciousness into body."

      If a scientist with poetic leanings, after having performed exhaustive studies on the links between foods, mood, creativity, immunity, projections of consciousness into body, etc., was asked to sum up his findings in three words, what would he say?
      Perhaps, "Love one another."