Preparing for the Miraculous

160 eleven talksbe transformed, all that is to be converted is here.” At thetime she said this, this sort of view was still squarely contradictedby the Copernican Principle 8 , stressing the factthat the Earth was but one planet among possibly billionsin the universe, and man no more than an animal amonganimals. Now, however, when indeed many “exoplanets”are discovered, this certainty is called into question in scientificallyargued books like Rare Earth by Peter Ward andDonald Brownlee, The Eerie Silence and The Goldilocks Enigmaby Paul Davies, and The Privileged Planet by GuillermoGonzalez and Jay Richards.The direct and continuous influence of the mind on thebody has time and again been highlighted by Sri Auro bindoand the Mother, especially in matters of health and the doctor-patientrelationship. At the centre of this topic are thepower of a doctor’s suggestions and the placebo effect. Ina special file about the intriguing placebo effect and titled“When the spirit cures the body” the French science magazineSciences et Avenir writes: “This powerful effect has beenused since the night of time in the doctor-patient relationship,but without knowing its intimate secrets. Having remainedobscure for a long time, it begins to be decrypted bya new discipline called neuro-endocrino-immunology, thestudy of the interactions between three principal systems ofour organism. ... The placebo effect does exist!” 9The Mother has explained several times that the brainhas the capacity to continue developing during its wholelifetime. Science, on the contrary, held that the enormousmass of neurons of this most complicated of objects in theuniverse, was fixed once and for all, and that it could onlydiminish and degenerate. Recently this physiological tenet8 See talk 6: “Being Human and the Copernican Principle”.9 Sciences et Avenir, November 2005, p. 62.