by Suma Varughese

The banquet hall of the spiffy Regent Hotel in Mumbai is full of an assorted crowd of people. Some well heeled, others less so, some teenagers and some oldies. A dash of glamour being provided by the ghazal singer duo of Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh. We are here for a two-day seminar with Alex Orbito of the Philippines, the world's best-known psychic surgeon.

I don't know what to expect but the screen in front soon gives me a graphic picture. A slight man, Orbito bows his head before the recumbent forms of the patients and then lays his hands on them. Most of his operations occur in the midriff area, but sometimes on the back of the neck, or on the nose.

As his hands knead the body and blood squirts out, Orbito's hand goes in and pulls out long strands of fibrous flesh or blood from inside. Orbito passes his hand over the wound, it closes up, his assistants wipe the area and the body appears to be restored to its pristine form. The patient sits up, returns Orbito's bow and walks off without the slightest hint of discomfort.

Good gracious! Have I really seen what I have seen? Did this man's fingers really slip into the human body with no more fuss than if it had been an open purse and yank out stuff? What did he pull out? And how does one explain this?

From the perspective of body-mind-spirit continuum, the explanation is comprehensible. The universe, say mystics and cutting edge science, is not really solid, but a mass of vibrations. Then, it is not really impossible that in the presence of a higher vibratory power, the body can separate or come together.

Orbito explains: ''When my spiritual mind is attuned to the higher intelligence which is the Holy Spirit of God, my hands emit an energy which is more powerful than the physical constitution of the human cells so that they merely give way to the more powerful force.''

But the mind still baulks at one of the most basic of violations. If the body cannot be relied on to maintain its integrity, what can? Says Dr K. Newton, allopath-turned past-life therapist who invited Orbito to India: ''I had to put aside all my rotten belief systems about the body being solid. Rev Orbito sees the body as being water and… confronts it.''

On what he pulls out, D.R. Kaarthikeyan, former Central Bureau of Investigations (India) director who has known Rev Orbito, says: ''I understand that these are negative energies that manifest as matter when Orbito's hand enters the body. We have noticed that after three days, they disappear!''

The form they take in most cases, says Dr Newton, is blood. Back at the seminar, Rev Orbito stands before us with folded hands and addresses us in his broken English. His prayerful pose, his sincerity, his references to the love of God, all locate his healing energies within the realm of the sacred.

''We are here to learn how to love ourselves", he tells us and talks of his own love-charged upbringing. His mother always told him that God loved him and that he should forgive his tormentors. The seminar revolves around how to discharge negative energies and to access God's healing powers through a series of exercises.

The first involves a cleaning of the system. Stand up, look down at your upturned palms and visualize the negativities of the body flowing into them as a current. Close your fists and eyes while inhaling deeply, to hold the negativities in. Now lift your hands above your head and exhale. Throw the negativities upward with eyes wide open while shouting 'Ha!'

This is to be done seven times (one for each chakra). Next comes a practice on how to begin the day on a positive note with a jaunty Filipino song. The lines 'Magpaganda Tayo Twing Umaga' assert the belief that we are becoming beautiful. Swaying from side to side, lift your hand to your face.

When you come to the words Twing Umaga, run your hands lovingly over your face and wipe off the negativity from your palms while pointing them downward and to your right. The next line exhorts you to consider yourself sexy!

'Magpasexy Tayo Twing Umaga, Twing Umaga, Twing Umaga'. The third exercise is to balance the body, mind and soul. For the body, stretch hands horizontally on either side or tilt from one side to another. Now put both hands to the heart, the right hand first, and breathe deeply thrice. To balance the mind, stretch the hands above the head and while following the same procedure, stretch the hands in front for the soul.

The first afternoon was devoted to psychic surgeries. After hearing Dr Newton's personal testimony that it was painless, many signed up, including myself! What made me do it? I think it was my conviction that when it comes to psychic surgery, God is the direct healer. Orbito himself was clear that God's healing power moved through him. Most of us were nervous.

The first surgery, of the organiser Shreyans Daga, was flashed on the screen. When he walked into the hall a few minutes later, he was fine, there had been no pain, and he showed us the thin red line on his abdomen-all that remained of his surgery. As each operatee walked back with a smile, our apprehensions eased.

At one stage, Orbito invited us to watch one. He kneaded for quite a long time on the patient's abdomen, until there was a snapping sound and we saw blood oozing out. He then dug into the area and pulled out a fairly big mass. Back went his fingers and fished out something pink. Then he took a long string of cotton and released it gradually into the body and closed it up.

We were horrified, but were told that the cotton would soak the remaining negative energies. He removed it from the body three hours later. Then his hands passed over the area, sealed it, assistants swabbed the body clean and the show was over! Orbito takes no more than a minute or two with each operation.

It was soon my turn. Having been told that he instinctively knows the zone of negativity when he passes his hands over it, I say nothing about my ailments (acidity and arthritis). Orbito wears a solemn concentrated look. I close my eyes firmly. What happened afterwards was disappointingly uneventful.

I felt a light pressure on my abdomen as if a fingernail was running along, then a pause and finally a repetition of the pressure. Expecting this to be the precursor of the real McCoy, I waited until I was gently nudged by the assistant. Orbito said: ''I have removed your negative energies, you are now a new woman.''

I wanted to know what was taken out. His assistant whispered that some negative matter had been pulled out and I had to content myself with that. There was no pain but I did feel some heat arising from that zone and a dull pressure there. Later, I discovered a thin red scar slightly above my navel.

A group of friends were also doing the seminar. Uday Maneck was operated on the heart without him mentioning any problem. Santosh Sachdeva on the abdomen and she recalls the classic symptoms of kneading, a forceful splash and could feel his hand in her abdomen.

Another friend, Mridula Jariwala, had her salwar stained with blood during the operation. Having soaked it overnight, she found the water clear the next morning as if the blood had not existed, lending credence to Kaarthikeyan's claim that the blood is only materialization.

The next morning, some participants reported pain and a few had fever. Orbito explained them as indications of negative energies draining away. Most recovered in the course of the day. There were cases of instant healing such as Harshila Bhandari's longstanding lockjaw being released, and a migraine patient called Niloufer had a large mass removed from the back of her neck. The next day she reported a feeling of lightness.

But Orbito gave out no guarantees. ''My healing is a gift from God but I am not God.'' We are told that healing will depend on the level of our trust and receptivity, whether we are karmically bound to the illness and on how chronic the condition is and the healing, if at all, would manifest over the next 21 days.

Dr Ramesh Mahadev Tambat, surgeon at Bangalore's Victoria Hospital and now a follower of Orbito, says he was cured of various ailments although it took nine surgeries. A person suffering from paralysis said she felt marginally better. One wondered if ultimately the surgery was worth it. Few dramatic healings had been reported and the cost was not inconsiderable: Rs 5,000 for the seminar and Rs 2,500 for the surgery.


Photograph: Martin Louis Perhaps if I had had to do it all over again, I would opt not to. And if the reader wishes to adventure on a similar path, please make sure the surgeon, like Orbito, is transparently pure. The morning of Day II is devoted to learning the Healing Meditation, a mantra of three words: Apo, Mannacabalen, Amen (Dear God, Give me your healing powers, Amen).

Orbito emphasizes the need to feel the prayer with utmost sincerity. On utterance of Apo, fold hands into a namaste, then raise hands and look upwards with Mannacabalen and finally with Amen lay both palms, the right one first, over the heart.

Close the eyes and breathe deeply. Open eyes, exhale and dust the negativity from your palms, while pointing it downward to the right. Repeat placing hands over other organs, crown chakra, Third Eye, eyes and thyroid.