PHOTO-CHROMOTHERAPY

Perhaps no subject is receiving more attention in tile New Age movement than healing. In the last few decades an explosion of newly recognized methods has burst upon the public. Some as ancient as man's written history, these include such forms as acupunoture, rolfing, reflexology, iridology, herbology, Scientology, and charismatic faith healing. One of the most unusual has been developed by Arizona psychic researchers Elizabeth and W.J. "Bill" Finch.

Photo-Chromotherapy is a highly specialized use of several practices still officially classified as paranormal by formal science. Basically it is a study in the use of colored light to influence the health or life balance of a person. It contends that each frequency of visible light appears to have a definite effect upon some specific function of the human body, mind, or spirit, and that the application of colored light to the person can be done on a systematized basis to reduce predetermined effects.

The theories on which this light therapy investigation is based come from several widely separated areas of study. To begin with, the use of color as a therapeutic agent is referred to in the ancient lore of Egypt, Babylon, China, the Zuni, and the Polynesian Islands. In fact, it was a study of the Huna religion of the Polynesians by the late Max Freedom Long which prompted Bill and Elizabeth Finch to begin their research into the field. In the middle ages, they discovered, the great cathedrals used stained glass windows as an aid to spiritual healing. During the late nineteenth century in the United States and Europe, solariums with colored panels were constructed in which a person could be irradiated with properly filtered sunlight. The AMA, when established, discredited this practice (as they seem to discredit most things not being sold by their members), and they refused to sanction color therapy as anything other than mere experimentation in fantasy.

v However, some interesting practices which use color have been developed by formal medicine. The visible spectrum is only an extremely narrow section of the whole range of measurable light frequencies. Infra-red, ultraviolet, microwave, and X-rays all have been given official recognition by the AMA and are in daily use by licensed medical doctors throughout the world. Each of these is neither more nor less than another "color" or frequency of the light spectrum. The distinction is that these all lie outside the narrow range of the humann eye.

Practitioners of psychology, an officially recognized even if highly speculative pseudoscience, have acknowledged the profound effects of room color on the feelings and behavior of people, and both government and industry have made use of their findings in selecting room colors for their offices, living quarters, and other facilities. Research in Japan on the effects of colored light on the growth rates and health of both plants and animals have produced consistent results. Doctors in Europe have been successfully using the Luscher color test to measure stress factors in their patients, and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada has used selected frequencies of blue light to treat babies born with certain blood disorders. These practices are still for the most part accorded experimental status, but the evidence is mounting.

The second factor involved in the formulation of the theories behind Photo-Chromotherapy is even less acknowledged by formal science, but also has a long background record. Finding it not always practical to apply colored light directly to the subject himself, Elizabeth and Bill Finch sought some kind of link through which a person could enjoy the benefits of color therapy without needing to be removed from his daily activities.

v In the lore of many primitive peoples is the belief that a connection of some kind exists between a person and an image of that person. Many Indians, tribal Africans, Australian aborigines, peasant orientals, and other nature-orientdd people often simply refuse in horror to have their pictures taken, and when questicned about their reluctance reply, "Don't you know that traps a little bit of a person's spirit?"

This action is acknowledged by practitioners of sympathetic magic throughout the world. In the adventure movies the Haitian heavies use "Voodoo dolls" on their victins; witches collect locks of hair and bits of fingernail clippings for casting spells, and ghost hunters use a ring, locket or such to identify the angry dead relative tormenting the pretty girl in her great-grandfather's dusty old mansion. Each of these depends on the acknowledgement of some psychically perceivable and physically usable link between the object and the person with whom it is associated.

The Huna religion states that an etherial substance called "aka" is associated with every person which "sticks" to objects and forms a permanent link along which various kinds of energy can be transmitted. On the hypothesis that such a link may exist between a person and his photograph, and that the effects of color exposure may oe transmitted along that aka link, the Finch team began to experiment with the use of colored light applied to a photo to produce an effect on the subject similar to that of light applied to the subject himself.

The third factor involves one of the most exciting and fastest developing fields in parapsyohological research today, the use of the dowsing pendulum. Though there are charts and tables available which correlate symptoms wiith their respective balancing colors, the Finch team sought a more direct way of determining which colors the subject needed and how long the exposure time should be. The answer was provided by Bill's experimentation with the use of the dowsing pendulum for parametric analysis.

Dowsing has been known for centuries, though its use was so limited that its potentials have only very recently begun to become manifest. Using a forked stick to locate underground water has so long been the only widespread use of this versitile phenomenon that in dictionaries even today dowsing is defined as that alone. As a result, attempts to explain dowsing were almost exclusively related to some kind of "cosmic energy", "wave influence", or "force ray" acting between the forked stick and subsurface water. These can generally be grouped as the "radiesthesia" theories. However, the development of map dowsing, whereby a dowser can locate water or any other substance by using a pendulum over a map, and the discovery of information dowsing, whereby the dowser can obtain abstract data by querying the pendulum and receiving answers from a letter chart like a Ouija board, positively demonstrated that the phenomenon does not depend on any physical force acting between the dowsing device and some substance being sought.

Using the three-level-self concept found in the doctrines of Huna, Finch postulated that dowsing was more closely related to clairvoyance than to physics, and that the superconscious, or higher self, is the sentient agent which perceives the information sought, and that it acts through the body-controlling subconscious to manipulate the dowsing device from a point below the operator's level of consciousness. The Finch team discovered that detailed information was available through the use of the peniulum concering the health and chemical balance of every tissue in the human body. This capability makes possible the practiceof parametric analysis, by which the dowser can discover mental and spiritual discord, and physical imbalances in the body. Using parametric analysis, they discovered that many of these imbalances were a result of deficiencies of certain frequencies - colors - of radiated light, and that light applied to the person or his talisman - picture, signature, or personal item - could remedy the imbalance. The superconscious and subconscious working together have complete access to data concerning the body and mind of the subject, and so are able through the dowsing channel to correctly inform the Photo-Chromotherapist not only what conditions are out of balance, what colors to use, and for how long, but also exactly how the results of the therapy are progressing.

Bill Finch designed a simple code key for use in Photo-Chromotherapy called the Chromochart. By asking questions systematically and reading the answers from the Chromochart with the pendulum, a complete analysis of the color deficiencies and their balancing remedies may be easily obtained. This is not properly called "diagnosis", which, as the Greek roots of the word (through knowing) suggest, is a function of the reasoning power of the conscious mind only. The doctor obtains some data and on the basis of his knowleged of symptoms and cures, he diagnoses what is wrong and how to cure it. All too often, such diagnosis is no more than rote application of information learned from authorities without real understanding on the part of the practitioner. In parametric analysis, however, the conscious mind does not have to reason upon the data nor rely upon the therapist's limited knowledge. All the analysis of the person's need for therapy is done by the higher self, and the pendulum's instructions are for specific actions, and require no interpretation or decision-making after receipt of the information.

The Chromochart enables the dowser to determine therapy requirements by color and time in increments of half-hours. The success of the experiments led Bill and Elizabeth Finch to make available a device called a Chromolight, in which a photograph may be mounted in a chamber with a sheet of color gel and a light source.

To the skeptic, this system has all the earmarks of a medicine show hoax. A disease of questionable nature is discovered by the motions of a dangling bead; the prescribed therapy is a light shined on the patient's photograph; the degree of cure is also determined by the same random appearing pendulum measurement which produced the evidence of the disease in the first place. This kind of self-justifying evidence is totally unacceptable to the logical requirements of adherents to the scientific system, who will poimt out that any means of identifying the disease and observing its cure could be used, and that any form of "therapy" could be declared to have been effective. It is true that a person who can convince another that he has a disease only the practitioner can identify and cure can sell that person medicine as long as he can keep that person's confidence. This could be said for many of the popular medicines now in use by the medical establishment, a fact they acknowledge by openly selling all kinds of placebo remedies to hypochondriacs. Likewise, some religions declare that people are born with certain basic "illnesses" which can only be cured by their sacraments, such as Adam d'Eden's Disease, sometimes called "original sin".

The ultimate test in each of these cases: the patient says he feels better. The results obtained by an Arizona organization called Para-Dimensional Researchers indicates that Photo-Chromotherapy subjects feel better when they follow the instructions of the pendulum. Until a great deal more is known about the way in which a person and his not yet scientifically measurable energies relate to the physical and psychical world, this fact alone is sufficient justification to continue experimentation. As long as subjects report they feel they are receiving a benefit from the color therapy, such experimentation should be carried out. Even if it should turn out that something believed to be helpful is in fact of no effect at all, nonetheless something is taking place which satisfies the subject. Isolated and understood, this something could be of lasting benefit to mankind, whatever it may turn out to be.

To suggest that practices should be discredited merely because they seem unlikely to people trained to believe in other forms hardly seems valid. After all, packing mold in wounds seemed pretty far-fetched until the isolation of penicillin. Even the need for common cleanliness in surgery was regarded as unlikely for decades until Von Leeuwenhoek's odd practice of looking at swamp water through glass beads led to the invention of the microscope and the discovery of the whole field of microbiology.

Research does not have to "make sense" within the framework of existing knowledge. In fact, it is where evidence can be found which does not fit into the old frameworks that research is most needed, and it is through such research that "strange experimenters" like Thomas Edison, Patrick Flanigan, and Bill and Elizabeth Finch become tomorrow's authorities.

Through the facilities of Para-Dimensional Researchers, a sizeable body of evidence is being assembled that people are obtaining positive results by using this strange and remarkable new process of therapy. The implications are profound, not only with respect to the relationships between the body and its physical environment - matter and light - but also the hitherto unsuspected capabilities of the higher levels of the human consciousness.

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For further reading:

Photo-Chromotherapy, by Elizabeth and Bill Finch

The Pendulum and Your Health, by Elizabeth and Bill Finch

Dowsing For Higher Consciousness, by James Nathan Post

Introduction to Huna, by Max Freedom Long