I almost do not
believe that I am actually reading this.
Scientists are acting like scientists and getting beyond the claims of
the witnesses to the actual practical evidence.
There has been plenty of evidence and carefully observed events as
well. Perhaps this could be deemed
sufficient to attract intellectual consideration?
The resolution
of a multiple personality situation is surely typical and clearly
astonishing. It compares to reports on
ayahuasca therapy as well.
This work also
gives me serious hope that most if not all forms of mental illness will become
treatable. That is wonderful news.
Science
of Spirit Possession
Exorcism has a new
name—spirit release therapy—and a place in psychologists’ offices
Modern science questions
much of the knowledge gained through the collective memory of humanity over the
course of millennia.
“Every culture and religious belief system throughout human
history has its traditional beliefs of spirit possession in some form or
another with corresponding rituals for the release or exorcism of spirit
entities,” wrote Dr. Terence Palmer, a psychologist and the
first person in the U.K. to earn a Ph.D. in spirit release therapy.
Some psychologists are
returning to the methods developed by our ancestors to help patients with
symptoms of possession.
Dr. William Baldwin (1939–2004)
founded the practice of spirit release therapy and he also used past-life
regression treatments. Baldwin was cautious about saying whether he believed in
reincarnation or not, but he did say his treatments helped patients, and that’s
what matters.
Spirit release practitioner Dr. Alan Sanderson wrote in a paper
titled “Spirit Release Therapy: What Is It and What Can It Achieve?”: “I want to stress that the concept of spirit attachment and the
practice of spirit release are not based on faith, as are religious and
mystical beliefs. They are based on the observation of clinical cases and their
response to standard therapeutic techniques. This is a scientific approach, albeit
one that takes account of subjective experience and is not confined by
contemporary scientific theory.”
Dr. Palmer commented in the
introduction to a lecture titled “The Science of Spirit Possession”:
“SRT [spirit release
therapy] sits uncomfortably between the disbelief of a materialist secular
society and the subjective experience of spirit possession: whether that
experience is a symptom of psychosis, symbolic representation, socio-cultural
expectation or a veridical manifestation.”
Parapsychology has been
called a “pseudoscience,” as have other scientific approaches to phenomena
that cannot be entirely explained by conventional science. However one views
the method, it appears a revival of ancient wisdom has been effective in many
cases.
Here’s a look at some of
the thinkers, including those already mentioned, who have approached possession
scientifically.
Frederick W.H. Myers
Frederick W.H. Myers (1843–1901) wrote in his book “Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death,” which was published posthumously in 1906: “The controlling
spirit proves his identity mainly by reproducing, in speech or writing, facts which
belong to his memory and not to the automatist’s memory.”
He noted that the brain is
little-understood; scientists don’t have a solid understanding of many of its
ordinary functions let alone extraordinary functions (and this still holds true
today). He theorized about a sort of radiation or energy that could be behind
the telepathic influence of one person on another. He tried to
consider how the memory centers might be related to the gaps in memory
experienced by people said to be possessed.
Myers has not been shown to
have any formal education in the field of psychology and much of his work
relied on two mediums he worked with. It was his belief in a science that takes
fuller account of human consciousness that has continued to inspire scientists.
Myers also noted that the origin of the
idea is not as important as its effectiveness or veracity.
“Instead of asking in what
age a doctrine originated—with the implied assumption that the more recent it
is, the better—we can now ask how far it is in accord or in discord with a
great mass of actual recent evidence which comes into contact, in one way or
another, with nearly every belief as to an unseen world which has been held
at least by Western men.
“Submitted to this test,
the theory of possession gives a remarkable result. It cannot be said to be
inconsistent with any of our proved facts. We know absolutely nothing which
negatives its possibility.
“Nay, more than this. The
theory of possession actually supplies us with a powerful method of co-ordinating
and explaining many earlier groups of phenomena, if only we will consent to
explain them in a way which at first sight seemed extreme in its assumptions.”
Dr. Terence Palmer
Dr. Palmer’s Ph.D. thesis
revived Myers’s work. He said that Myers and others have tried to bring the
mental, emotional, and spiritual elements of human experience into natural
science.
“To permit the
accommodation of all human experience into a broader scientific framework is a
scary prospect for several reasons. But fear is the cause of all human
suffering, and only when medical science puts aside its own fears of being
proven wrong can it treat sickness effectively by showing how fear is to be
remedied,” Dr. Palmer wrote.
In a recorded lecture on his thesis, he
looked at ways in which we come to know things. Some of the ways include
learning from others, using logic and deduction, and through personal
experience. He noted that in these ways, a good deal of evidence exists for the
possibility of real spirit possession.
Funding, he said, has been
one of the obstacles to conducting more rigorous scientific research of spirit
possession. He said further studies must be done with remote telepathic intervention.
This would bypass any placebo effect or any psychological impact a patient’s
belief system may have.
Dr. Alan Sanderson
Dr. Sanderson asked in his
paper “So where is the research to back these heretical claims [about spirit
possession]?”
He gave three reasons for
minimal research in this field of study. First, spirit release is a new
study, which has only been systematically taught and practiced for about a
decade. Second, much mistrust and many misconceptions still present
obstacles. Third, research funds are hard to come by.
He is hopeful the field
will progress and funds with come forth. In the meantime, he said, “individual
cases have much to say.” Dr. Sanderson uses the method developed by Dr. Baldwin
to treat spirit possession. Following is an outline of Dr. Baldwin’s work and
an example of how Dr. Sanderson used it to help a woman allegedly possessed by
the ghost of her father.
Dr. William Baldwin
Dr. Baldwin developed a
method of helping people exorcise their demons so to speak. It is thought
that traumatic experiences can especially cause a person’s consciousness to
withdraw and give the body over to other forms of consciousness.
[ this is a rather good
idea. It disposes of the necessity of
spirit possession and replaces it with a newly generated personality. I do not think that it actually is good enough to completely end spirit possession
but must be considered – arclein ]
In spirit release therapy, the patient is hypnotized so it is
easier to access the other consciousnesses in the person’s mind. The therapist
asks the possessing entity to look inside. Dr. Baldwin has said that about
half of his hypnotized patients could see silver threads, like those described
in Ecclesiastes in the Bible as connecting the human spirit to the body, according to author Kerry Pobanz.
The therapist is said to
help the spirits resolve issues so they will no longer have a negative impact
on the patient and the therapist may even ask for divine intervention.
Dr. Sanderson’s Case Study of a Woman With Multiple Personalities
Pru, 46, had long-term
psychological problems found to stem from sexual abuse by her father when she
was a child. Under hypnosis in a session with Dr. Sanderson, she identified
herself as her father, Jason. Jason would become angry and threaten Dr.
Sanderson.
“In deep trance, Jason
agreed to look within himself, where he saw blackness,” Dr. Sanderson
wrote. “I called for angelic help. With the use of Baldwin’s protocol for
dealing with demonic spirits, the blackness left. Thereafter, Jason was
amenable. He agreed to leave. Other destructive entities responded similarly.”
Not all spirits found
inside a person are malevolent, say spirit release practitioners.
Pru wrote a paragraph to
describe her experience: “‘The spiritual approach left me freer from the
remaining daily distress than anything tried before. Whilst under hypnosis I
found myself talking about some experiences that I had definitely not had and
places I certainly had not been to. So, was this spirits, split off parts of my
personality, ancestral memory or even false memory/imagination? I very much
doubt the latter. There was reluctance, yet at the same time relief, to be
spoken to, accepted and contacted. The release from the darkness, into the
light and to the beyond had to be experienced to be believed. It was amazing
and I still marvel at the sight of these ‘entities’ disappearing and freeing
me.”
No comments:
Post a Comment