The Conundrum of Psychic Surgery in the Philippines Part 3 – Placido Palitayan

A psychic healer and surgeon working in Baguio is Placido Palitayan. He is an extremely confident and skilled psychic surgeon. Once again it was a privilege to meet him, interview him, make videos and work with him. I have a full video interview with Placido, and this is the transcript after a few healing sessions where Placido operated on three people (including me):

Howard: Can you tell me more about the healing and the psychic surgery you just did that we just videotaped?

Placido: I’m not a doctor, so it’s hard to give a medical description or explanation. In the healing process, when I am healthy, healthy with all my being, my mind, my heart and my soul is praying for God to help you.

The mystery here is power, or energy, or what we call god. Our bodies are complex and often have problems caused by emotions. Everyone has that; no one is perfect in health. But our mind in connection (points up) with it, is doing miracles, moment by moment in our life.

Howard: When you start your healing like I just saw, you say your prayers and you meditate, and this external power comes into you, and then you start making the openings in the person’s body. Is that how you see this?

Plácido: Yes, it’s something like that. I’m doing the healing, I’m not thinking about myself or anything. I only serve, for the divine power to work through me, the patient just has to relax and open his mind, without thinking about any problem, for the divine energy to work through the entire body system.

Howard: I understand. This is consistent with what I have heard from other psychic surgeons.

Placido: That’s how healing works.

Howard: I felt very relaxed with you, I felt very open, and now I feel much better, much clearer.

Placido: I know.

Howard: I’d like to ask you a few questions. As we have discussed, I bring groups of Westerners to the Philippines and they would like to know more about the healer, his background, etc. So can you tell me how you started your healing work?

Plácido: I think it’s a divine plan, and beyond my knowledge. I was very young when I broke my fingers. It was after my studies at school, and I was with my friends. I had to leave my friends as it was twilight time as I wouldn’t be able to see my way home in the dark. The place I used to go was downhill, and I ran home when it was getting dark, and I fell and rolled over, and I hit my finger on a big rock. My fingers went all the way back (demonstrates). In my mind, because I was so young, only nine, I had thought that I had smashed my hand. He only had one thing to do, and that was to pray. It wasn’t what I had learned in church, or what others had taught me. I prayed very deeply in my soul, a very short prayer, I can’t remember what I said even now, but it was from my soul. Suddenly, after my prayer, I rubbed my hand, shook it, and it was perfectly restored.

I went home, I couldn’t, I couldn’t speak, and I was so shocked at what had happened. I didn’t think God did it. The next day when I went to school, the teacher asked me: “Plácido, will you answer the question?” He could hear her, but he couldn’t speak. Maybe he was in what they call a trance. A trance from which no one knew where he came from. The teacher walked up to me and slowly waved her hands inches from my face. I knew she was doing this, but she still couldn’t respond. Only when she touched me, I was able to answer “yes ma’am”, only then did I realize.

From that moment on, I couldn’t go to school anymore, as they said I was crazy! So after that I went to the mountains in solitude. In the mountains there is no one, only sugar cane. So all I did was drink sugar cane and think. He knew that he must be crazy; I said to myself “what am I doing here, I’m just eating sugar cane”. He couldn’t even urinate because he had drunk too much sugar from the sugar cane. I knew then that I had to drink, otherwise I would destroy my health. And that was the beginning of what you now call ‘spiritual consciousness’. So after that, whenever I saw people, I could tell if they were sick, ill, or unhappy. I also found that I could talk to them in a way that would calm them down or make them feel happy. They told me “you are not crazy, because you know how to answer our problems.” I said I didn’t know how, but being young and with nothing to lose, I said just what I saw, and they started to believe me.

When the Missionaries arrived and spoke about God, I felt magnetized by their words and I approached them. I asked if I could go with them and when they visited other communities, I would touch the people and they would get better. I realized that what the Bible said about healing was happening to me. Later, the missionaries became jealous of me, since when I talked to the people they liked me and they would gather because of me and not because of the missionaries.

The missionaries did not want me to be with them and I was left alone again, I felt that no one liked me. I had to work anyway, like here in the Philippines you have to work to be able to eat. My job was very hard, digging, breaking rocks, hard work like that. It’s a long story, but then came the great psychic healer Eleuterio Terte (he was the first psychic surgeon), then Tony Agpoa, Ricardo Gonzales, and everyone wanted me to work with them. I said that I could not divide myself in three. Anyway, I decided to work with Gonzales (he made me a better offer!). He was still very young and did not speak English yet. I traveled with Gonzales to Australia in August 1958. After that I was able to complete my education,

Howard: May I ask how old are you?

Placid: 65

Howard: Listening to your story, it’s obvious that your healing has developed over the years and you carry out your work with great confidence. Did you start with ‘magnetic’ and psychic healing?

Placido: At the beginning of my studies with Gonzales, I went to a tribal community of headhunters. One of them had a big tumor, and I started manipulating (magnetic massage) the area, and suddenly the body opened up and blood gushed out and flowed. He didn’t know why or how this had happened, as he was only manipulating the body. Then I looked behind me, and the Chief had raised his arm and holding a large bone, he wanted to kill me. He must have thought that when the blood came out, I had stabbed the patient. The Chief wanted to cut off my head (they’re headhunters!), but the bone snapped in half and his arm couldn’t move. Then he saw that there was no more blood and that the wound had healed. The patient started to get up and laughed too. The Chief smiled and said that he should stay here, be with his family. He said “no thanks, I don’t belong here, I belong to all the people who need my help”.

Howard: Well, at least you made some good friends there. As they say, it’s good to be on friendly terms with headhunters!

Plácido: Yes, he wanted to kill me, and then he became my very close friend. After that I came to Baguio and joined the healers. I did not do any psychic surgery as I thought this had only happened to me once. In Baguio I met with Tony Agpoa who was working with hundreds of people. He said: “Placido, I am very tired, it is already 5 o’clock and I still have a lot of people to heal. I said I will help and in 30 minutes I helped all the people with a psychic surgery. I was very organized, I made sure that everyone was prepared , and I just did it. He was very surprised, “how did you do it?”, he asked, “All those people in such a short time.”

There are many stories to tell, but all I want is peace. I give spiritual advice, I don’t talk about religion, since for me religion is man-made, ‘He’ (pointing up) in his work is the most important thing for me. I need to train my son to do this job and help me.

Howard: Listening to what you’ve been saying, it really seems like the most important thing is this ‘feeling’, when you were a kid you had no thoughts about what was going on, but you did have a feeling. Well, I really want to thank you for your time, and I appreciate you sharing your story and adventures with us, thank you very much for that.