DCBD: Deliberately Caused Bodily Damage Phenomenon

Jamal N. Hussein, Ph.D., Director
Paramann Programme Laboratories
P.O.Box 310087, Al-Mahatta, Amman 11131, Jordan

The Deliberately Caused Bodily Damage (DCBD) phenomena refer to extraordinary feats that are practiced by individuals from various parts of the world in which these talented persons insert sharp instruments in various parts of their bodies yet with impunity. Despite the important unusual abilities that these phenomena reveal there has been very little research to explore them. Believing in the crucial role that DCBD phenomena can take in advancing the current knowledge in several fields we, in Paramann Programme Labs, have been conducting extensive study of these phenomena. The subjects of our experiments are dervishes of a Sufi School known as Tariqa Casnazaniyyah. These dervishes are reputed for their remarkable DCBD feats. They can demonstrate a variety of these anomalous phenomena. For instance, they insert sharp instruments, such as knives, spikes, and daggers, into various parts of their bodies, including vital organs. They also swallow sharp razor blades and pieces of glass. Despite the serious injuries that DCBD activities cause to the body the dervishes do not suffer any subsequent detrimental effects.

Close observation of DCBD phenomena reveals extraordinary responses of the dervishes bodies to the applied noxious stimuli. These unusual responses include immunity to pain and bleeding, as well as immunity to infection as the used instruments are not sterilized. The exceptional healing of the wounds after removing the sharp instruments from the body is another unusual aspect of these feats.

Needles to say, such abilities are well beyond the capacities of the human body in its normal condition. The implications for medicine of such impressive control of pain, bleeding, and infection, and exceptional healing of major wounds are invaluable. That's why these abilities are worth studying given their importance for advancing medical knowledge. It is worth noting here that there are many unanswered questions in wound healing medicine!

DCBD phenomena also bear on the ongoing and continuously growing debate on human consciousness and the nature of the mind-body interaction. An important experimental fact that should be pointed out here is that the person who performs DCBD feats need not be in a special state of mind. The dervishes that we experimented upon do not enter any altered state of consciousness before, during, or after their performances. This was confirmed by the normality of their EEG recordings. DCBD phenomena seem to suggest that mind-body interaction can take place on a much subtler level than sharp alteration in consciousness.

A very interesting aspect of DCBD abilities is that the dervishes' bodies exhibit them only when injured deliberately. If the dervish injures himself accidentally he suffers the pain, bleeding, and infection that the involved wound would normally cause. The wound would also take the normal time to heal. The fact that these abilities could be invoked only by deliberate injuring of the body, has great implications for the issue of mind-body interaction as the will's activity seems to play a great role in determining whether any transcendental abilities will be exhibited by the body. The will of the dervish is a major parameter in the success of these phenomena. This is, however a unique feature of DCBD feats because contrary to other healing phenomena, where any possible occurrence of healing effects is conditioned by the healer's intention to heal, the activation of healing effects in these phenomena seem to be conditioned by the dervish's intention to cause injury, not to heal.

Some of the questions that DCBD feats of the dervishes raise are: Why does the body invoke its extraordinary reactions only when deliberately injured? Why does it react extraordinarily only when the dervish intends to demonstrate his DCBD feats for a specific religious purpose? Why does the body seem to encourage the dervish to practice DCBD feats by responding on call with unusual immunities?

Another interesting aspect of DCBD feats is that they seem to be transferable by some talented individuals. Some of the dervishes can practice DCBD feats using other peoples' bodies. That is to say, they drive the sharp objects into others' bodies and force them to respond with the typical extraordinary immunity to pain, bleeding, and infection, as well as exceptional healing. The persons who participate in these demonstrations need not be dervishes themselves or have any unusual abilities. In these cases the dervish seem to be in total control of the body of the other person.

These are some of the extraordinary features of DCBD phenomena. They reveal the extent to which the investigation of these phenomena can help in deepening current knowledge in several fields.

DCBD phenomena do challenge the central dogmas of medical science. Standard medicine finds DCBD phenomena quite incomprehensible. They are completely incomprehensible from a conventional biochemical view, though they are beautifully testable by standard scientific methods. The dominant paradigm in orthodox science, the metaphysics of which is far from being the outcome of its very scientism, should be encouraged to face the challenge posed by DCBD phenomena by applying its rigorous means of experimentation to them. DCBD phenomena do face the conventional biomolecular view of the human being with such challenges that mainstream medicine would not easily overcome. DCBD phenomena do not fit the existing paradigm of physiology. We believe that all those who might explain these phenomena as a placebo effect, which works through suggestion or distraction, should first account for the success we have met in research on experimental animals or the field-found cases of children, far too young to be suggestible, and yet can perform the same DCBD practiced by their parent or other people.

We are very interested in pursuing the investigation of DCBD phenomena as we believe that these phenomena are potentially able to provide answers to questions that have long lived in man's mind, questions of a universal nature the domain of which surpasses by far those that DCBD phenomena seem directly to touch on.

We would be grateful for any comments or suggestions you might have as to the lines of research that are worth pursuing in studying these phenomena.