entered Lhasa and returned bearing stories of monks sitting in the
　　　　  snow, drying water-soaked sheets on their naked bodies (a feat she
　　　　  puckishly filed under "psychic sports"). More than a decade ago,
　　　　  Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson, M.D., best known for his
　　　　  best-seller, The Relaxation Response, on the medical effects of
　　　　  meditation, decided to investigate.
　　　　  With the Dalai Lama's blessing, he wired up monks in India's
　　　　  northern foothills with electronic measuring devices while they
　　　　  performed their sheet-drying stunt. To his amazement, their skin
　　　　  temperature rose as much as 17 degrees above normal, even though in
　　　　  such near-freezing weather the body invariably routes blood from the
　　　　  periphery to keep core organs warm. "If an ordinary person were to
　　　　  try this," Benson says, "they would shiver uncontrollably and
　　　　  perhaps even die. But here, within three to five minutes, the sheets
　　　　  started to steam and within 45 minutes were completely dry."
　　　　  How is such a feat possible? Benson offers that the yogis may have
　　　　  somehow learned to induce "nonshivering thermogenesis," a metabolic
　　　　  state in which the body burns so-called brown fat--a substance
　　　　  thought to be metabolized only in hibernating animals. But he adds,
　　　　  "It's difficult to understand from what source such energy is
　　　　  emanating. By our calculations of the amount of heat generated,
　　　　  there must be an energy source in the body other than the ones we're
　　　　  currently aware of."
　　　　  Similarly, Candace Pert asked Moyers, "Can we account for all human
　　　　  phenomena in terms of chemicals? I personally think we're going to
　　　　  have to bring in that extra-energy realm, the realm of spirit and
　　　　  soul that Descartes kicked out of Western scientific thought."
　　　　  And therein lies the rub. Today's mind-body theorists seem peering
　　　　  over the precipice of the worldview espoused in the droll
　　　　  cat-and-cockroach classic, the lives and times of archie and
　　　　  mehitabel:
　　　　  "i can show you love and hate and the future dreaming side by side
　　　　  in a cell in the little cells where matter is so fine it merges into
　　　　  spirit."
　　　　  The love-and-hate-and-cells stuff, which would have been difficult
　　　　  to swallow even a few years ago, is now fair game for any PNI
　　　　  investigator clever enough to design a credible experiment. It's the
　　　　  matter-merging-into-spirit part that's become an Olympic triple-axel
　　　　  skating routine on very thin ice.
　　　　  "There's a great mystery of how thought is translated into material