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July/August 2006 Spirituality
From Physician to Meta-Physician

by Steven E. Hodes, MD

Dr. Steven E. Hodes

I was trained to be a physician, not a healer. That statement may seem confusing or self-contradictory. After all, aren’t physicians by definition healers?

My 25-year journey from physician to meta-physician has shown me that the terms physician and healer are not interchangeable at all.

As a product of the traditional approach to medicine, I was trained to view the patient as a machine suffering from some mechanical failure. My purpose was to be the best diagnostician possible, to identify the defective organ or organ system, with the goal of prescribing the appropriate tests and subsequent medication to treat and hopefully cure the patient.

Of course, on some level I was aware that the patient had other dimensions to their being, including personal, emotional and spiritual sides. Yet rarely in all my medical training did any of these factors rise to the level of my conscious awareness. It has only been within the last few years of my medical career that I have come to the profound realization that I have not been a healer at all. To heal means to make whole and in the process of becoming aware, I changed. The Greek prefix meta signifies transformation—I became a meta-physician.

That epiphany required a major transformation in my spiritual perspective on life. As a product of the baby boomer generation, I had followed the path that embraced science as the ultimate arbiter of truth. Finding no evidence of God in the heavens, I declared science the winner.

Although I managed the arduous trek through medical school, residency and fellowship, I began my metaphysical quest in my undergraduate years with a degree in religious studies. Perhaps such a choice seemed inconsistent with my basic agnosticism and extreme skepticism. Yet it offered a broad humanities approach to this universal human endeavor. In retrospect, I suspect it was part of a larger plan for me—one that lay hidden for decades.

My career in medicine should have put to rest any consideration of spiritual exploration. Yet when I turned 50, something interrupted my straight line atheism—the study of Kabbalah.

It was not the study of the material that began to chip away at my shell of disbelief—it was the ordinary and sincere Kabbalah students who revealed deeply personal spiritual experiences that led to my transformation.

There was something so compelling in these personal anecdotes that I could not ignore their metaphysical implications. I classified these mystical stories into near-death experiences, after-death communications, reincarnation memories, and medium and psychic experiences.

These stories have become my proof of a higher, more powerful spiritual reality. I soon came to realize that my own encounters with the paranormal were the tip of an iceberg that was available to all.

This diversion from my orthodox practice of gastroenterology seemed at first to offer me some amusing, curious pieces of the unexplained. However, it stimulated me to explore a wide array of metaphysical, mystical and spiritual literature, and to recognize a common thread in the mystical traditions of all religions.

At the same time I began to revisit contemporary science: quantum theory, molecular biology, origin of life, mind and consciousness studies. To my amazement I began to see correspondences between all my studies. Science was not capable of debunking the personal spiritual stories I’d heard. Rather, science was deeply mired in its own metaphysical conundrum—it was unable to put back the pieces of the mechanical universe it had so vigorously defended for the past 400 years. The presence of spirit has always been hovering over the waters of the cosmos.

In hindsight I can hardly believe that I did not foresee the direction of my journey. My metaphysical quest began to turn, as if by its own will, back to my practice of medicine. Healing became the ultimate reason for my own journey, and just perhaps, I have come to think, for our existence on Earth.

I began to truly see myself as a healer and not just as a physician. It became clear that the mind, body and spirit could no longer be separated. Each needed to be addressed. For the first time I understood what (w)holism really meant. Even the distinction between healer and healee became blurred because the giving is equal to the receiving.

What had been my profession alone became much more. When I would attempt to reach out to another being I felt a joy that cannot be put in words. My soul was speaking to me and I finally understood. Healing became more than an occupation. It became an attitude, a perspective, an underlying paradigm for living.

Steven E. Hodes, M.D. is a board certified gastroenterologist with over 25 years in private practice in New Jersey. He also has a degree in religious studies and teaches contemporary metaphysics at Brookdale College as well as lecturing and writing on Kabbalah. Visit his daily blog, Physician to Meta-Physician, at www.meta-md.com.