Joseph Burkes MD 2019, edited 2023
By joining the CE-5 Initiative in 1992, I experienced a radical ideological transformation. I was raised in a secular Jewish home and both of my parents were agnostic. Religion was deemed to be hopelessly superstitious. Science was considered to be the principal arbiter of truth.
On some level, I was never completely comfortable with this anti-religious, scientific materialist perspective. As a teenager during the 1960s, I was active in both the civil rights and peace movements. There ministers, nuns and priests played important leadership roles. Heroically working in social movements that defended the rights of the poor in Latin America, priests and nuns were assassinated by right wing death squads. As an idealistic youth such courage impressed me greatly. On the other hand, I knew from studying history that Christianity had carried out atrocities against not only Jews, but other faiths as well. Nevertheless, I experienced, at some barely conscious level, a yearning for spirituality.
In August of 1992 as a newly designated “CE-5 Working Group Coordinator”, I took a Transcendental Meditation course and carried out a twice daily meditation practice. My wife and son took the TM course with me and strangely I lost all desire to eat meat. My wife felt the same way and she started preparing vegetarian meals at home for the family.
In addition, I read Larry Dossey MD’s book “Recovering the Soul.” He reviewed the parapsychological literature with the aim of proving that consciousness is “non-local.” In the spiritual context this means that consciousness and all mental phenomena are not limited by time and space. If true, then this aspect of our reality could explain how extrasensory perception works. Past and future events should therefore be perceived directly via mind, without having to rely on the five senses. In terms of my growing interest in spirituality, one section of the “Recovering the Soul” was of particular interest. Dr. Dossey described experiments strongly suggesting that prayer actually can work. From the perspective of parapsychology research, successful prayer could be viewed as a form of “remote influencing.”
I had never prayed before as an adult. When I five or six years old, after watching Christmas movies, I imitated what I had seen on TV. My agnostic parents didn’t reinforce the behavior and sure enough, after a few nights, I stopped “saying my prayers.” After volunteering to be a CE-5 Working Group Coordinator, for the first time in my adult life I found myself open to the possibility of exploring prayer. Dr. Dossey’s literature review suggested that non-directive prayer might be more effective than praying for a specific outcome and that surrender to “a higher power” could be an important part of the process. With this dictum in my heart and mind, I chose to pray using the following ritual. After mediating for 20 minutes, I mentally recited, “Do the right thing. Do what is natural”, for the object of my prayer. I ended with an expression of surrender, “Thy will be done.”
The individual for whom I decided to pray was my wife’s friend Stephanie. She was also married to a physician and was going through extremely stressful marriage difficulties that eventually led to divorce. Yael had long conversations with her friend on the phone every day. So, I prayed for Stephanie, and I did so with all the focus and devotion I could muster as a novice. After every meditation session, two and sometimes three times a day, I recited for several minutes, “Do the right thing. Do what is natural, for Stephanie. Thy will be done!”
My poor wife didn’t know quite to make of the changes I was going through. We had known each other for 24 years when I joined the CE-5 Initiative and I sensed that she was somewhat alarmed. I imagined that she might have been concerned that I would fall off the deep end completely. Perhaps I might find a guru and escape to some mountain top on a “spiritual quest”, leaving my medical practice and abandoning her and the children. She swore that she told no one about any of this, especially her friend Stephanie.
After a week of my intensive exercise in non-directed prayer, Yael told me that she got a very surprising call from her girlfriend. She reported to Yael that she was feeling much better. Stephanie stated that she felt surprising calm and peaceful for the previous few days. The words she said were, “It’s as if someone is quietly praying for me.” I repeat, Yael insisted that at no point did she tell Stephanie about my newly found interest in prayer.
Does prayer really work? I suppose from a purely parapsychological scientific perspective, what Stephanie reported might be nothing more than telepathy with some remote influencing on her anxious and depressed mood. I chose not to accept this limited interpretation. I found myself embracing prayer as an important part of my growing spiritual life. This transformative perspective has stayed with me ever since.
I experienced my spirituality by wanting to help other people in this realm. As part of my work in the Emergency Room, on a regular basis I admitted patients with incurable illnesses. For the most part, these were not hospice patients. Such cases were cared for by a special team of doctors and nurses that were able to address almost all medical problems in the home. For non-hospice patients with chronic conditions that were lethal, I started taking a spiritual/religious history when I admitted them to the hospital. I shared the perspective that when faced with incurable illnesses, some people find comfort in exploring their faith more fully. I listened to their responses carefully.
For patients that had no interest in such matters, I went no further. Under circumstances indicating that there might be some benefit from talking to our hospital’s non-denominational chaplain, I made a referral and he visited them in the hospital. I was the only ER physician that chose to do such counselling during the next few years. Towards the end of my career at Kaiser Panorama City Hospital, a handful of other physicians who were aware of my efforts, adopted these practices as well. So, this is the story about how I learned to pray.
One Mind, one creation, one planet, one people!
Additional Comment by the Author:
In Dr. Larry Dossey’s “Recovering the Soul” he describes the Spindrift Research of two Christian investigators who applied scientific methods to studying the effect of prayer. If I recall correctly, they discovered that non-directive prayer was more effective than telling universal consciousness “what to do.” In one response to this blog a commenter described directive prayer as “arguing with God.” I have incorporated this non-directive approach in my prayer by saying the following, “Do the right thing, do what is natural, and most importantly “thy will be done.” This final phrase means to me surrendering to the higher power. If I request a beneficial outcome, I always try to incorporate the phrase, if it is thy will O Lord”, again another indication of surrender.
In terms of the big picture, I am convinced that there is only one way humanity can develop an open sustainable relationship with the array of non-human intelligences associated with what are now being called UAPs. To open our civilization to full contact, we will be required to establish world peace based on environmental and social justice. This monumental transformation of terrestrial civilization can only happen if there is a concomitant expansion of human consciousness that will recognize the oneness of all life in the universe. This realization will require a profound spiritual transformation on our planet. I suspect that the kind of changes reported in the FREE Experiencer Survey documenting UAP experiencers becoming more spiritual, more altruistic, and less materialistic as the result of their encounters, is an example of this necessary spiritual awakening.
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Past Comments on other social media platforms:
CC: Hi, it may be an irrelevant tangent, but after reading this, I’m wondering if you would you give your take on the prayer method/intention/tool that advises to pray as if the prayer has already been answered. Many group, factions, religions seem to have gone there.
I get it. It’s about consciously joining with the enlightened or God nature we possess and also not identifying with the fear, anxiety, powerlessness of the asking, plea-ful prayer.
But I am just reflecting on how it fits in with what you wrote.
J. Burkes MD: “CC” I am not familiar with what you describe. It sounds like a practice of visualizing a potential future in which desired outcome has been accomplished. This in my mind is not consistent with the surrender aspect of non-directed prayer. From the teachings of Eckert Tollee, I imagine that such a technique might reflect an ego based approach that in a sense is an identification with a specific thought form (the desired outcome). It might be interpreted as “telling God what to do.” This what the ego loves to do, identify with form rather than formlessness that is called “consciousness.” Just a thought.
LGB: At the beginning of my daily meditation, I give gratitude for my existence, for this planet, the Sun, the Solar System and the Universe. This giving of gratitude allows for a Universal response in existence which is always open to beneficial outcome, to healing and knowledge. If I want to help someone or something directly, I use the term ‘creator’s norm’ in thinking of them during meditation, in line with Grigori Grabavoi research, never specifying a result but always leaving it to the Universe to provide the best outcome from all perspectives for that entity or condition. I then merge my existence and consciousness with Source for the rest of the meditation, wishing at first the best outcome for all existences of everything around me as far as my perspective can grant at the time – this is continually expanding. In the past, a number of healings have resulted of both beings and situations through this directed and then non directed meditation in exactly the manner of non-directive prayer as sited here. At the same time, my consciousness and both physical and nonphysical perception is continually expanding through the meditations – in a manner beyond the outward focus of prayer. Allow the Universe to respond, and it will benefit in all ways both the recipient and the originator simultaneously.
JS: Thank You Joseph for sharing this, I have also found out that this actually works, on every level, which keeps me happy, and sometimes amazed, and filled with Joy !
BAW: That is the message exactly of Yeshua. The Fatherhood of God, The Brotherhood of every soul on this planet. We. Are One. This is The Living Truth.
LL: The unleashed power of empathy for the good of others is astonishing, however, it triggers a necessary reimagining of our collective purpose and identity that can be difficult for some to accept.
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