I had never heard of psychic surgery until about fourteen years ago when a middle aged man showed up at our newly built apartment building, selling inexpensive paintings from an artists’ cooperative.  We bought a few paintings from him to cover our bare walls.  This man, I’ll call him “John” had an incredible story to tell about how his cancer had been cut away from him in the Philippines by a healer using nothing but his bare hands. The healer literally pulled the diseased bits of John’s organs out of his body, leaving no scars and only a slight reddening of the skin. John told me he had also seen the healer pluck a man’s eyeball out to work on it, then pop it right back into its socket. All of this involved no surgical tools and no anesthetic.

John showed up again at our apartment last night after a hiatus of several years. My walls have all the artwork they need, but it was a chance for John and I to renew our acquaintance, and, instead of buying, I promised to spread the word to anybody I knew who might need a painting. We talked some more about the experiences he had undergone in the Philippines, since he had been back several times since for more treatment. After he left, I got curious and decided to check out this phenomenon on the web. Here’s some background information on it and a graphic Youtube presentation featuring Placido Palitayan


Chris Cole has been practicing psychic surgery since the 1970s. “My belief is that I don’t heal anybody,” says Cole. “All I do is act as a channel for the energy and that energy then helps to initiate the healing response. Your own innate healing wisdom does the healing and all I do is act as a medium for the energy. I believe that universal energy is the God essence and it’s a connection with the source of that energy that I’m tapping into.”

As with the rest of my holistic journey, I learned to suspend disbelief a long time ago. Psychic surgery seems to be the ultimate energy power of the Holy Spirit chanelled as a physical intervention.