Baal Shem Tov and Pulses

This is a story that has come up in my life in three different unrelated contexts recently. When that happens, I realize it must be important. This version is from The Wings of the Sun by R. Avraham Greenbaum.

Another English version of the story, which is slightly longer, can be found in The Light and Fire of the Baal Shem Tov By Yitzhak Buxbaum.

"...Another story tells of a prominent doctor who had come to visit the wife of the local lord.

The countess lavishly praised the Baal Shem Tov as a great man and an expert healer. The doctor asked the countess to send for him. When he came, the doctor asked him if it was true that he was an expert healer. `True,' replied the Baal Shem Tov. `Where did you learn? Who was your professor?' asked the doctor. `God taught me,' replied the Baal Shem Tov. The doctor laughed heartily and asked him if he knew how to take someone's pulse. The Baal Shem Tov said, `I myself suffer from a certain problem. You take my pulse and see if you can find what it is, and I'll take your pulse and see what it reveals.

The doctor took the Baal Shem Tov's pulse and could tell that he had some kind of problem but he did not know what it was, because the truth was that the Baal Shem Tov was sick - he was love-sick for God (cf. Song of Songs 2:5), but this was beyond the doctor's level of understanding. After this the Baal Shem Tov took the doctor's hand and examined his pulse. The Baal Shem Tov turned to the countess and asked, `Have you had a burglary here?' The Baal Shem Tov listed a number of precious items. `Yes!' replied the countess, `It's some years since they were stolen and I have no idea where they are.' `Send to the doctor's lodgings,' said the Baal Shem Tov, `and open his chest. You'll find everything there, because I can feel this theft in the doctor's pulse.' The countess sent to search the doctor's lodgings and found the stolen goods, as the holy Baal Shem Tov had said, and the doctor left in disgrace" (Shevachey HaBaal Shem Tov #206.)

Wisdom from the Baal Shem Tov

For years, when someone would ask me what was shamanic healing, my stock answer was that there are two worlds, the physical and the spiritual. Shamanic healing is making a direct change in the spiritual world that is then reflected in the physical world. One type of shaman is a person who has power in the spiritual world and is able to actually make changes there. There are others who are able to perceive the spiritual world or travel there. But for me, the important part was always the ability to be able to make the change.

I was at service a few weeks ago, and the man leading the minyan quoted this text about the ba'al shem Tov (the founder of Hasidism):

רפואת הבעל שם טוב נשמתי בגנזי מרומים היה רק על ידי יחודים, שהיה מייחד ומעלה השכינה אל מדת אין. וממילא נתתקן למטה גם כן
-מאור עינים פרשת נשא

Roughly translated it means: The essence of the healing of the Baal Shem Tov was only by means of yichudim (unifications), in which he unified and raised the shechina to the level of Ain (God), and in truth, that would repair down below (in this world) as well.

That sounds remarkably like my conception of what I try to do. The challenge now is to learn the yichudim so I can really understand what he did.