To fathom the depths of the human being, one must be
engaged, one must desire to love man, to explore him, to be inquisitive and to
witness what he truly is, in all his splendor, fashioned by God, beyond what is
visible to the naked eye, beyond mere matter, beyond the horizon. The horizon
may be conceived as the line that divides earth from sky, yet it might also be
envisaged as the line that unites heaven with earth. The choice is ours.
There is something divine within us. There resides that
small God which we often repudiate, out of fear, futility, a complete lack of
understanding, or perhaps ignorance. God is a delicate subject, hard to digest;
faith in Him, in something subtle, intangible, unseen, compels us to be
skeptical, to believe that only when we see, only when we hear, or perhaps when
all our senses are simultaneously awakened, can we affirm with conviction, YES,
He truly exists.
We crave palpable evidence, we require certainty, authentic
confirmations. To prove it, to prove what exactly, that God exists, or to prove
that we are far more than what meets the eye?
God exists regardless of our belief or the absence of these so-called concrete proofs, or perhaps it is not God who exists, but a supernatural force over us, far exceeding our powers of comprehension.
Perhaps
there is an Allah, perhaps a Yahweh, an Adonai, a Buddha, or by whatever other
invented names we might christen this Universe, this mystery that permeates all
that is LIFE, this ceaseless motion of dust, particles, and stars, a reality
that exists and cannot be denied. Otherwise, what purpose would all this serve,
what would be the point of our insatiable thirst for knowledge, our unending
rush toward immortality, our earnest spiritual ascent upon the steps of a
native faith, bestowed enigmatically by that spark of divinity within us?
The documentary film "0.1%?" opens thus, subtly
suggesting that regardless of religion, faith remains the same throughout the
world, be it lived in Tibet, Saudi Arabia, Israel, or Romania.
Man is a conglomeration of experiences, a collection of
powers of which he is scarcely aware. He does not know the extent of the force
inherent in his very being; he is oblivious to his own capacities. Why? Simply
because we were never taught to believe in ourselves, because we were always
told, you cannot, you have limits, you are incapable. Yet some individuals have
refused to conform to this notion and have discovered an astonishing capacity
to be reborn, to renew themselves down to the deepest particle of their
essence, much like the mythical Phoenix, unveiling the sole luminous point
within their darkened lives. “Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become
like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3).
It is a matter of the power of healing, of transformation,
of faith, love, and forgiveness, unwritten laws within a mathematical, harsh,
incisive thought, demonstrated in terms of performance yet also confessed and
felt irrationally, in a misty and sentiment-laden manner, sufficiently enough
to afford us a taste and savor of the divine within us. When we understand that
the sole link between us and divinity, between us and the Creator, is love,
then we shall have grasped the essence of life, the lesson for which we have
come here and with which we shall depart, basking in sunlight, unburdened by
moments of penumbra.
The faith in healing springs from despair, from pain, a
panic that sets in almost instantaneously, so profound that we must shut the
door in the face of the mundane, the sordid that vexes us, and the wholly
erroneous life we have led until diagnosis, days of illusions in the crevices
of nothingness, casting our obsessions into the trash and quieting our
thoughts. In that moment, we desperately long for the God within us, pleading
for His help in that measured, almost mendicant moment, to become eternal if possible,
and not to perish like birds, without a sigh, but rather to continue existing
on this earth, even if it is, to some, considered Hell, thus becoming eternally
immortal, clinging with talons to life, a sweet torment so ephemeral, yet so
well known and thoroughly experienced.
I believe despair also arises from our timidity in the face
of the unknown; we are fearful, we favor only that which we already know,
disliking uncharted realms, even though an innate curiosity still leads us
toward mystery, toward occult phenomena, most likely stemming from an
enigmatic, unusual facet rooted in our placental self.
We harbor the hope of being awaited in heaven, we miss the
form of our own shadows and those of our loved ones, and we elongate the
seconds in the hope that by living a little longer, we postpone an unseemly end
marked by too many defeats, despairs, and mysteries, deluding and delighting
ourselves in the notion that we have somehow outwitted death, that most
deceiving of perceptions par excellence.
The protagonists of this documentary have traversed the
five stages of the human psyche in its relationship with death and pain:
denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and resignation, as articulated by the
celebrated Swiss-born psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her book On Death
and Dying, they have wept over the ruins within them and reinvented themselves
at the brink of prayer, each in their own way, never losing their capacity for
self-consolation, clinging to the root of a will that transcends religious
expression and speaks instead to essence, drawing forth a sigh from the
paralyzing terror of death and quieting the cry of despair.
The word "cancer" brings with it an end, it
signifies the absence of vitality, a dark decoration bestowed by fate,
fragmenting our mind into miserly synapses, extracting bits of life from us and
amplifying the sudden, deafening void, sealing hope as if in a cell,
imprisoning it in a mélange of malaise and catastrophe, facing only an
unfathomable chasm.
To seek and find those austere and surreal resources within
one’s contradictory being is akin to mastering a mute keyboard upon which we
may rehearse a future joy, a liberation from the stifling cocoon of despair,
generously parading toward miraculous healings, toward mysteries that evoke
shivers and veiled manifestations of the sacred, toward wonders and
inexplicable oddities, yet imbued with a hallowed conviction that tomorrow will
arrive with a salvific light.
The day that transforms today into tomorrow will remain the
same day before that same tomorrow, after which, in our understanding, the time
within the hourglass of life will have been expended, with us failing to grasp
or accept the notion that time is relative, that it, in truth, does not exist.
And yet, we cannot systematically hurl ourselves before our own ruins and find
sudden solace solely in our personal Apocalypse. Somehow, we must endeavor to
remain whole in hope, a privilege that cannot be so hermetically stripped away
from our very lives.
"Your faith has healed you!" proclaimed Jesus
Christ to the blind man, as well as to the feeble one from Capernaum.
"Your faith has healed you!" is the motto promoted by Romanian
director Călin Terțan in his film "0.1%?", a title that now resonates
in the hitherto unexplored realm of the Romanian human soul, a successor to
another resounding documentary in the actor-free cinematic production, the
well-known film ”Death... a ful stop or just a comma?”, also directed by him in 2021.
In "0.1%?", Prof. Univ. Traian Stănciulescu, together with Prof. Univ. Ovidiu Victor Coșbuc, assert in unison that these healings which we deem "miraculous" are, in fact, our inability to explain them logically, rationally, or scientifically, yet they are underpinned by a foundation not necessarily steeped in religious faith, but rather in an unyielding belief in the healing of both the soul and the body, without resorting to the conventional treatments of classical medicine.
Moreover, Prof.
Univ. Dr. Psychologist Anca Munteanu affirms at one point, "...I do not go
to church merely because it feels good or to socialize, but I go to church
because it is my way of accessing high energies."
Or perhaps not necessarily.
Perhaps it is not imperative to frequent a particular church, perhaps it suffices to transform our ideas, our conceptions, our antiquated beliefs in pessimism, our old convictions of all that is negative, that which signifies incapacity, a psychological infirmity with which we are not born, yet one that is inadvertently instilled in us by those around us, our parents, our friends, our teachers, even the doctors who treat us, for fear of not being as radiant as the spirits, driven by a longing to roam after many vertically connected loves that directly tie to the Divine Source.
Is it a
matter of premeditation, is it that these miraculous healings are destined for
these people, that they would have healed anyway, much to the astonishment of
both themselves and others? Who can know?
Or perhaps we need an unraveling of mysteries that are not afforded to us, perhaps we require empathetic souls who refrain from condemning us with judgments extraneous to time, examining us as if in a void between life and death and sentencing us, unyielding, cold, and utterly unsympathetic, to a venomous end that crushes the sacred keyboard of our triumphant nature.
Let us
leave a margin, let us afford a space for the condemned to cling to hope, even
if it is an untruth clad in an alluring guise, yet liberating, consoling in its
taste for surprise, optimistic and healing in equal measure. "It is only
with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the
eye." said Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Miracles exist, at every turn, at every corner, and surely
each day, for each of us. What we lack, however, is a spiritual education, a
personal mental hygiene, an operation to surf the irrational, this intellect
that is sometimes so subjective and inauthentic, the very architecture of an
admirable paradox bestowed by God in the primordial clumsiness of man.
Father Irineu, a consummate priest for whom faith is alive and authentic, as he so beautifully emphasizes in words imbued with wisdom, is an exemplar for those who seek God and perhaps have not yet found Him. He represents a beacon, a light, a quiet fragility hidden behind a voice and a manner of being that is overwhelmingly edifying, a noble, surprisingly delicate balance capable of illuminating the manic, dark ignorance of any staunch skeptic.
And what if we were to cease our relentless cataloguing of past
transgressions, to proceed methodically and tactfully in search of perfection,
the perfection that does not exist? What if we raised our eyes confidently
toward the soft tranquility of divinity, toward the peace subtly interwoven
among unhealed sorrows in an exquisitely relaxed exuberance, both fascinating
and fairy-tale-like? Perhaps that would lead not only to the healing of the
body, but especially of the soul, mutilated by frustrations and burdened by the
countless tombs of time.
If, for one person, miraculous healing, spontaneous
healing, was possible, then it is possible for anyone. If one person could
transcend his condition, refusing the path to a dismal horizon in favor of
light, then perhaps anyone can. For perhaps the words "I cannot"
exist only when you imbue them with value, when you grant them energy, when you
embrace them in a wholly erroneous conviction that may lead to fatality. And
that is solely our own doing, as actor Dorel Vișan so poignantly stated, "We
do everything wrong. We eat wrong, drink wrong, think wrong, have wrong
relationships, and believe wrong."
This unsettling film represents a beacon of hope, it is the
vital axis in disciplining the mind and setting priorities, a beautifully
strategic unveiling of the divine spirit within us, an encouragement, if you
will, toward the obsessive, anesthetizing, and paradisiacal access to the
heavenly joy hidden in our being. Reinvention, renewal, the fervent desire to
continue living, to heal oneself, have brought the documentary's protagonists
to where they stand today, marvelous people, reborn individuals, recounting
with tears in their eyes the miracle of their lives.
Mr. Călin Terțan, a soul of distinction and an already
evolved spirit, yet one who yearns to evolve further, has grasped this truth,
he has understood that only through faith, the supreme power of prayer, and the
unbridled serenity of a spiritualized meaning can an extraordinary phenomenon
occur, an event defying the laws of nature, if one may so say. It is precisely
for this reason that the idea of creating yet another spectacular film renders
his person, for what number of times now, an initiator in the mysteries of the
occult sciences on Romanian soil.
We thank him for the steadfastness with which he continues
his quest to unveil the hidden light within us all, both to those who are
interested and to those less so, preserving the true banner of both the real
and the unreal, perhaps involuntarily transforming us into endless disciples,
opening new horizons with a unique, providential, and distinguished elegance,
self-defining as a mere "instrument," a "tool" of God, just
as we all are. In the wise words of Albert Camus, "Real generosity toward
the future lies in giving all to the present."
Perhaps it would be beneficial if the small fraction of
0.1% of those healed could be transformed into 1%, 10%, or, who knows, even
more. It depends solely on us. For if a single man can heal through faith, then
any man can. Let us not forget this!
Cristea Aurora – writer, member of L.S.R
November 2024, Galați
