I was a 23-year-old, first-year medical student at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963. A couple of my classmates and I had driven to a nearby eatery for lunch, and on returning to the medical school heard on the car radio that...

We hear a lot about the importance of compassion -- and the lack of it -- in medicine these days. Compassion comes from Latin words meaning to "suffer with." If taken literally, compassion in healing seems irrational. Why would a medical professional want to suffer alongside his or her patient?...

What is spirituality? I consider it a felt sense of connectedness with something higher, a presence that transcends the individual sense of self. I distinguish spirituality from religion, which is a codified system of beliefs, practices, and behaviors that usually take place in a community of like-minded believers. Religion may...

Unfortunately, proponents of an empathic science must endure the perennial charge from critics that they seek to denature science, destroy its objectivity, and hold it hostage to the emotional whims of sloppy investigators. What do philosophers such as Goethe, or psychologists such as Kohut and Maslow, know about doing science?...

From the very beginning of the scientific tradition in the sixteenth century, not everyone agreed with the notion that the secrets of nature had to be pried loose from a reluctant source. A notable example is the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). Goethe, the author of Faust and...

Where scientists such as Weinberg, Monod and Dennett see pointlessness and despair in science, as we have seen, other scientists see pattern, direction and meaning. For example, the eminent physicist John Archibald Wheeler said:

"Science ... at first sight seems to have no special platform for man, mind or...

You may think there is enough disease in the world already, and that no one would want to add to the diseases that we humans must deal with. But there is a powerful industry in our society that is working overtime to invent illnesses and to convince us we are...

Science educators often skim off the top, as it were. They regale young minds with the marvels of science while remaining silent about the problems to which it has contributed.

When I was in grade school as a member of a different younger generation, we had routine drills in which...

The experience of a larger mind that transcends individual minds is nothing new. People have stumbled onto it with regularity throughout history, including in our era. As writer Craig Hamilton says, "Indeed, rescue crews, sports teams, dance troupes and music ensembles have for years been reporting remarkable experiences of team...

What's driving kids toward their fanatical electronic networking? There is increasing evidence that more is involved than smart phones, PCs, and other technological marvels. Hidden factors rooted in our genetic heritage may be at work. "Humans form social networks because th e benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs,"...

When educators try to inculcate children with the scientific method, the main legacy of traditional science, the outcome is often an educational train wreck. As Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Empathic Civilization, puts it:

[T]he scientific method [is] an approach to learning that has been nearly deified in the centuries...

Jeremy Rifkin, the author of the just-published book The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, suggests that The Age of Reason is being eclipsed by the Age of Empathy. The Age of Reason refers to the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment, in which reason, analysis and...

"The old gods are dead or dying and people everywhere are searching, asking: What is the new mythology to be, the mythology of this unified earth as one harmonious being?" (1)

-- Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space

"A radical new view of human nature has been...

Note: A recent blog post co-authored by Larry Dossey, Deepak Chopra and Rustum Roy, entitled "The Mythology of Science-Based Medicine" caused quite a stir in the HuffPost community. The authors would like to respond to specific criticisms raised against them, as well as clarify the issue further.

You can find...

The current healthcare debate has brought up basic questions about how medicine should work. On one hand we have the medical establishment with its enormous cadre of M.D.s, medical schools, big pharma, and incredibly expensive hospital care. On the other we have the semi-condoned field of alternative medicine that attracts...

I learned the most important lesson of my career while sitting on a toilet seat.

I was fresh out of medical school, just beginning a year of internship, that infamous rite of passage that involves grueling work, sleep deprivation, and an endless stream of sick and dying patients. One...

There's an old saying: "If you want to hide the treasure, put it in plain sight. Then nobody will see it."

We see what we can see, and what we can see is determined largely by our beliefs. If we believe that treasures are always hidden away in secret...

"Cleanliness is almost as bad as godliness."

Imagine: You're feeling so depressed that you visit your doctor and request a prescription for a mood elevator. Instead of writing you a prescription for Prozac or a similar antidepressant, she advises you to get dirty. While...

During my meanderings around the country on tour for my book, The Power of Premonitions, I have been flooded with people's experiences. Some of them make one's hair stand on end. If you're bored with how your world works, try these on for size:

A String of Numbers

I am currently peddling my wares around the nation. My peddling takes the form of an author's book tour, and my wares are my book The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives (Dutton, 2009).

My dictionary tells me that one of the definitions of...