MY SAN ANTONIO Military AGENT

The world's foremost advocate of the role of prayer in healing, physician and author Dr. Larry Dossey, traces his own spiritual awakening back to the time he served in Vietnam. As a battalion surgeon, Dossey spent 200 hours in helicopters, much of it volunteering for combat assault missions, service that earned him the Army's Bronze Star and the Soldier's Medal for Valor. "Vietnam filled me with humility and brought me face-to-face with my own vulnerability and mortality," Dossey says. "A maturational process for me on many levels, including the spiritual, it shook me up and opened windows for exploring my own spirituality and gave me a profound understanding of what warriorship is about." It prompted him to look more deeply at himself, human nature, and the world around him, he says.

The first high school graduate in his family, Dossey earned high honors at the University of Texas at Austin, received his M.D. from Southwestern Medical School, and, following his tour of duty in Vietnam, completed his residency in internal medicine at the Veterans Administration Hospital and Parkland Hospital in Dallas. The author of numerous books, including the New York Times best-sellers Healing Words and Prayer Is Good Medicine, he most recently published Reinventing Medicine, an exploration of the role of "nonlocal" mind in health and medicine.

"'Nonlocal' is simply a fancy word for 'infinite'," he says. "Studies about prayer's healing power reveal that we possess a quality capable of reaching out infinitely despite space or time. This suggests that we're going to have to think about consciousness in a new way, as a process not restricted to brain, body, or the present moment."

Self-described as "as conventional a doctor as you could find," Dossey found himself deeply affected by unexplained "miracle cures" he witnessed as a physician. One of the most powerful involved a patient with lung cancer who refused treatment and returned a year later with a normal chest x-ray after his church congregation had prayed for him.

"Such miracles suggest that no matter how serious an illness may be, healing is always possible and that such healing can happen for anyone, saint or sinner," Dossey says. "They remind us that there will always be phenomena we cannot explain."

As he champions the healing effects of prayer and its potential to make partners of science and spirituality, Dossey has shared his observations with many audiences, including those at the Pentagon and in Britain's Parliament. Always a man of science, the former chief of staff of Medical City Dallas Hospital aims to "anchor the so-called holistic health movement in a model that is scientifically respectable and which, at the same time, answers to our inner spiritual needs."

Although witnessing miraculous cures affected him, it was documented studies that helped make Dossey a believer. When he discovered the existence of scientific studies showing the effects of prayer and researched the evidence, he grew convinced that this was one of medicine's best-kept secrets.

These studies included a 1998 double-blind study by Dr. Elisabeth Targ and colleagues at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco on the effects of "distant healing," or prayer, on patients with advanced AIDS. Patients who received prayer survived in greater numbers, got sick less often, and recovered faster than those who didn't. This study made prayer look like a medical breakthrough, Dossey says.

Dr. Randolph Byrd conducted a similar study at San Francisco General Hospital involving patients with heart attack or severe chest pain, and found that patients receiving prayer did much better clinically than those who did not.

What makes these findings impressive, says Dossey, is that they were double-blind studies, which means no one knew who was receiving prayer and who wasn't -- including the patients. "This eliminates or reduces the placebo effect, which is the power of suggestion or positive thinking. Faith and confidence in the process certainly help promote a positive outcome, but aren't crucial for prayer's healing effectiveness."

Still, he feels that studies supporting prayer's role in healing ought to draw religion and science closer together. "Love and compassion are central to studies on prayer, another point of contact between science, religion, and spirituality. The science behind prayer and healing shows that there's huge room for accommodation on both sides, although such dialogue should allow each to remain separate, as the two deal with different spheres."

Because Dossey's work demands that any claims about prayer be scientifically substantiated, medical schools and hospitals throughout the country trust his research and welcome his message. Before his book, Healing Words, was published in 1993, only three U.S. medical schools had courses devoted to exploring the role of religious practice and prayer in health, Now, nearly 80 medical schools have instituted such courses, many of which use Dossey's works as textbooks.

Although studies demonstrate prayer's healing effects, the precise reason why remains unknown, Dossey says, adding that current theories lean toward new perceptions about the infinite nature of human consciousness. "Let's be pragmatic and simply use what works," he urges. "Prayer can be integrated with any other medical therapy -- surgery, drugs, or alternative techniques. We should not feel compelled to make either/or choices between spiritually and physically based techniques."

Attitude and intent play significant roles in prayer's healing success, he believes. "We need to remember that prayer ultimately is not about getting something but about connecting with the Absolute. If we can do so, prayer won't disappoint."

He cites the effectiveness of both directed and non-directed prayer. "Directed prayer asks for a specific outcome. Nondirected prayer takes the 'may the best thing happen' approach. Studies show that both work and there is no 'one right way,' no formula for prayer in healing," he says.

"The key question -- unanswerable by science, in my opinion -- is whether or not healing is a direct result of healers' intentions or whether a transcendent entity is involved in the loop," he says. "Healers differ on this matter, although most suggest they are a mere channel for a higher power."

For Dossey, such root causes and questions "will occupy me for the rest of my days. Prayer and healing will exhaust me before I exhaust them. I'm having fun, the time of my life."

PHYLLIS EDGERLY RING writes from her New Hampshire home. Her articles have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Delicious Living, and Today's Parent. Her current book project addresses gender equality in families. For more information visit www.phyllisring.com.