Alfred Tomatis was born (in 1920) to a 16-year-old mother. She was so tightly corseted throughout her pregnancy that her baby, weighing a mere 3 lbs., was expelled at 6 1/2 mos. The midwife took the premature infant for dead and placed it in a basket. Tomatis grandmother, herself having born 24(!) children, retrieved and revived it. She had saved an iconoclast who eventually would clarify numerous mysteries concerning audition: the importance of audition during pre-natal development, the essentiality of feedback for speech and song, the nature of and successful treatment for stuttering, dyslexia and even autism; he demonstrated the profound significance of listening in the lives of humans.

His autobiography, The Conscious Ear is educational. In it, Tomatis recounts how sometimes fortuitous observations or associations led him to challenge numerous fundamental tenets of ear, nose and throat medicine (otolaryngology).

Alfred's father, a contemporary and friend of many famous singers, including Caruso, sang professionally in concert halls all over Europe. Alone among the adults in Alfred's early life, he took Alfred's dreams seriously. This led him to rent for his son a small apartment in Paris, where he could pursue his dream to become a physician; Alfred was only eleven at the time. Quickly, he too became an able student, partly because, as his father had done, he slept very little, arose early and immersed himself in his work.

Tomatis narrowly averted death on more than one occasion during the war. His closest friend, also intending a research career, was killed by an exploding bomb. In the army, he said, one learned about life.

During his early medical/research career he had many singers for patients as his father directed ailing colleagues to him. Often, he succeeded where others had failed to ameliorate the complaint. The twists and turns of his clinical career gradually led to one heretic thought after another. For these he was castigated, vilified, and called a charlatan by his medical peers. Before identifying some of his remarkable discoveries, I shall comment briefly on clinical research and compare it to laboratory, i.e., controlled research.

Clinical research is likely to have an anecdotal, story-like, apparently unexperimental quality to it. This is so because every case differs to a greater or lesser degree from every other one. The clinical researcher cannot easily produce a sample for study, patients arrive with their symptoms. There may be, then, fewer cases upon which to base an inference; laboratory scientists may want more statistics and larger numbers of similar patients before the open-minded among them will consider a revolutionary explanation. Control in a laboratory typically implies limitation of (presumed) extraneous or unwanted stimuli: this can be a two-edged sword, a notion too few laboratory scientists appreciate.

Many discoveries have been made through clinical research. Clinical experience hones one's perception and can elicit a coagulation of subtle observations in the clinical scientist which culminate in realizations or intuitive insights. Such refined discernment cannot be attained through statistics: it transcends them. Furthermore, use of the most appropriate statistical test, even on an exceedingly large sample, can never transmute leaden science into golden science. And the world of science has always been populated with more practitioners of leaden science than of golden science. These scientists never have received new ideas with an open mind, most especially when the very warp and woof of their accepted paradigm, their entrenched belief system is threatened. What did Tomatis discover that challenged accepted opinion and earned him enmity from his peers everywhere, even as his unusual treatments cured patients in countries worldwide?

Tomatis says we speak and sing with our ears. No one can reproduce a note that he or she cannot properly hear. Most singer's problems originate from damage to the bone-conducting hearing mechanism, not from laryngeal or throat problems: the larynx does only what the ear can tell it. While his colleagues treated throats, Tomatis treated listening; he provided feedback to a singer through an apparatus he invented: many ruined voices were reclaimed, including that of his father.

He discovered that different languages emphasize different frequencies of the human audible-frequency band. This produces a learned auditory narrowness, which he showed accounts for dialects and for difficulty in learning new languages. Again, by interjecting auditory feedback through another invented device, he broadened the range of and increased the rate at which anyone could learn foreign languages.

Tomatis theorizes that the entire body participates in one's speech and the different frequency usages and rhythms of each language affect everything one does. From infancy, one's native language exerts a sonic imprint on one's nature. This sonic imprint was discernible to experienced interceptors of Morse code messages during W.W.II: they could tell the country of origin of an intercepted message from the rhythm of dots and dashes; they couldn't decode the messages as they didn't know Morse code!

Dyslexia, an inability to read, Tomatis found, arose from wrong-ear control of the feedback mechanism for speech. He discovered that the neural circuits are not precisely identical, left and right, and that effective utterance and reading require right-ear dominance. Thousands of dyslexics the world over have been cured through his unorthodox treatment. He frequently observed that other adverse manifestations disappeared along with the dyslexia.

Listening is inordinately fundamental to good psychological health, he says. Stutterers, he found, were arrested at a 2-4 yr. speech level and also were unconsciously aggressive. Again, through unique electronic feedback, he cured most stutterers who came to him for treatment. Here too, he observed personality changes as they became free of their impediment.

The greatest personality changes occurred in autistic children. Many of these, incurable by nearly any procedure, have been (literally) released by his sonic birth treatment and subsequently cured by the use of sound electronically arranged to reproduce in utero sound. An embryo-fetus, he says, hears various sounds, including the mother's voice, from a much earlier age than had been previously thought. Autism arises from a lack of communication between mother and fetus during gestation; the fetus is aware of its mother early in its ontogenetic development and needs the communication; a premature baby placed in an incubator devours his mother's voice...: her voice, is just as vital as the food being brought to nourish (it).

Autism is non-listening carried to extremes. Hearing is a passive, automatic process; autistic children hear as well as others. But listening is active and involves the will of a person. Tomatis states, the desire to listen precedes a whole collection of neuro-physiological adjustments.... The entire body is affected and, It is impossible to listen without involving oneself. Listening is the most important perceptual capability to be cultivated.

The breadth of Tomatis assertions is striking. There is something disturbing for everyone from Tomatis observant, unfettered and fertile mind. He tells us that the ear is a sort of generator that charges the cortex with electric power; that the brain requires three billion stimuli/min. for upwards of 4 1/2 hrs./day; that one should read aloud for at least 1/2 hr./day and, at least then, speak to one's right hand. These ideas derive from his perceptive examination and pondering of thousands of cases in audio-psycho-phonology, his self-described area of study. Already, time and experience have substantiated numerous other of Tomatis equally outlandish statements.

Provide music (especially Mozart) very early in life. Teach children to read aloud to themselves as it benefits their comprehension, memory and cognition. The auditory mechanism contains surprises, mysteries and some answers. Music benefits the entire nervous system. These simple ideas are the fruits of one man's life-long dedication, harvested under protest and with hounds nipping at his heels. His story is rich, his book edifying.
By now, many thousands have had near-death experiences and several dozen books have been written about them. None of these, however, conveys as much about the NDE as does Saved by the Light by Dannion Brinkley. It is authentic, straightforward reading: Brinkley's descriptions of his two (!) NDEs are detailed, thorough and compelling. They contain vignettes that both clarify and verify the teachings of sages from all the religious traditions.

Brinkley experienced his first NDE when struck by lightning while speaking on the telephone during an electric storm. His description of the NDE is not unlike others but it contains numerous details many people omit. Additionally, Brinkley was treated to some interesting previews from the Boxes of Knowledge pertaining to the world at large. Many of these already have come to pass: we need to strive to keep the others from happening. One of the previews vividly depicted humanity's subjugation by a powerful feeling, fear.

During the life-review phase of the NDE, Brinkley felt the feelings of those others who had been his victims. Additionally, he felt the feelings of every individual subsequently affected by his aggressive act toward the victim. Was it painful? More than he could tell. Several incidents come to mind, here's just one.

In Vietnam, with an associate, Brinkley had been assigned to kill a respected North Vietnamese colonel. Eventually they see him, several hundred yards away standing before his troops. Brinkley shoots him, sees his head burst open and is satisfied, his mission accomplished. But in the NDE replay, he felt the great sadness of his victim who knew he'd not see his family again; and then he felt the family members anguish on learning their father/husband had been killed. This experience was repeated for each of his many kills, and vanquished opponents.

Truly, Brinkley had been an instrument of emotional and physical pain for nearly everyone in his life until, through that NDE, his attention and energies were re-directed. Having been cooked from the inside, suddenly, he had plenty of physical pain of his own. During his long physical and psychological convalescence, he met Dr. Raymond Moody, an early student of NDEs and author of several books on the subject. Their association proved propitious and beneficial.

Ten years later, Brinkley's heart failed. But he had to return to accomplish a purpose, even though he much preferred the disembodied state. Bypass surgery made that possible.

Today, Brinkley pursues his goals with sincerity and a surprising vigor, considering the damage to his body. He tries to tell people the importance of being true to oneself and that the price for living an emotionally insensitive life (which is nothing more than egocentricity and selfishness) is the psychological pain you have brought to bear on everyone else: you get to experience it all. That could be a price greater than any of us might voluntarily choose to pay. Making a sincere and diligent effort during life to be aware of one's own true motives, and the pain one causes others, will enable one to die more satisfactorily, so to speak. The question may be how to get our attention. From that perspective and looking at his previous life, a lightning strike doesn't seem so bad: I rather think Brinkley considers himself fortunate indeed.

In 1981, in Nature, the international British science journal, a book review entitled, A book for burning? appeared. Did the book advocate the preposterous, ridiculous or dreadful, perhaps the neutering of all scientists? Doesn't book-burning exemplify ignorance, intolerance, narrow-mindedness and all the attributes that contradict the empirical attitude scientists supposedly espouse? Upon learning that this book had just been reprinted (1995) I wanted to tell you about it.

A New Science of Life, by Rupert Sheldrake, represents creative, original, integrative, perceptive, sensible, reasonable and, above all, impartial thinking. Narrow-minded biologists were enraged because it is these things. Sheldrake understands his subject; he is logical; virtually no argument can be mounted on his misuse of available data or, as is particularly common, on his exclusion of relevant but damaging research. Isn't that what the scientific community wants from its members? you wonder.

A New Science of Life presents the hypothesis of formative causation. This hypothesis takes as its starting point significant unresolved problems in biology and attempts to understand these from a new, unique and possibly fruitful perspective. How does form, even in physics and chemistry (atoms and crystals), come into being? What underlies epigenesis, in which a developing system (e.g., a fetus) increases in complexity of form and in organization? How is this developmental process regulated? By what means does the implied morphological goal (correct body shape, size and structure) exert its influence? How does a part become a whole in sexual reproduction?

Dr. Sheldrake suggests that popular reliance on DNA is inappropriate: for many reasons it cannot regulate and guide morphological development. But a morphogenetic field could. Neither time nor distance weaken a morphogenetic field which, he hypothesizes, could regulate the developmental process through morphic resonance. When an organism's development is complete, the influence of the morphogenetic field ceases. He calls the whole process formative causation. It's a new class of causation, one that does not require energy. A morphogenetic field is immaterial yet exerts its influence on developing material systems that assume shapes.

This hypothesis is intriguing because it applies to behavior as well as to organismic form. A well-established set of morphogenetic fields yields, for example, mice of typical proportion, shape and size. It yields also an array of commonly-used-in-the-past mice habits. We could call these reflexes or instincts. Even Carl Jung's collective unconscious could be the result of morphogenetic fields.

Dr. Sheldrake considers interesting experiments that may have yielded their particular results because of his hypothetical morphogenetic fields. You don't have to be a scientist to understand them, either. But you do have to be open-minded. Here is one example.

Years ago, a psychologist attempted to breed rats that were adept at solving a specific problem and others that were poor at it. Many generations later, the adept ones were highly capable. The other group, selected for poor performance, were much worse than the adept group. But they were much better than earlier generations of poor performers. How could that be? Well, over the generations, the morphogenetic field for this behavior had become established. Consequently, even through one strain of rats was much better than the other, all of them were affected by this now-existing morphogenetic field.

The first gymnast to do a trick has no morphogenetic field as an (unconscious) guide. But, according to the hypothesis, every gymnast who learns the trick makes it easier for the next one to learn it, even though none of them are in contact with one another or coach each other. I saw and experienced this myself. That phenomenon is real and occurs in various sports involving advanced skills.

Morphogenetic fields may not exist, however. Dr. Sheldrake suggests experiments that would shed light on the subject. In the appendix, which I would suggest to read first, several experiments are discussed. Results are not yet conclusive. Nevertheless, data from them strongly support the hypothesis of formative causation.

So why such enmity toward Sheldrake? Like Tomatis, he has questioned the status quo, the accepted paradigm in their discipline. Is that so bad? Hooray for the free-spirited, far-ranging, empirically oriented, persistent and courageous! Where would humanity be without them?