Life in B Flat
(Science and Spirituality)

I was deep in meditation. I asked, "Is there a plan for my life? What is the plan!?" I heard a voice say "It's in the key of B", and I saw the symbol for a flat in musical notation. The plan for my life is in the key of B flat! I understood this immediately. I have a record of Pete Fountain playing the clarinet. It's a clarinet tuned to the key of B flat. I like to improvise on my guitar along with the record. The plan for my life is: "We're improvising!".

Showing posts with label hallucinations. Show all posts

Saturday, March 16, 2013

What to do about Unwanted Spirit Contact: How to Help Spirits Complete Their Transition to the Spirit World

I've been following the posts on the AskParanormal subreddit on reddit.com where there are many posts by people asking for help with unwanted contacts from spirits. This post is a summary of my advice on how to deal with unwanted spirit contact.

There are two main forms of unwanted spirit phenomena:

Objective phenomena - when the spirit causes phenomena that anyone can observe such as noises, moving furniture, or turning on and off electrical or electronic devices.
Subjective phenomena - when the spirit causes phenomena that only one person can observe, such as telepathic communications, visions of the spirit, or some cases of sleep paralysis.

The way to deal with the two types phenomena are very similar but not exactly alike.

One important difference is that subjective phenomenon may make the experiencer wonder if he is just imagining it or if he might be suffering from a mental illness. This is a serious and valid concern and is best answered by a psychologist who has experience helping people with spiritual problems. It may be possible to locate a such a psychologist by asking a local psychic in your town for a referral. You can often get such a referral through a Spiritualist church or a New Age book shop or gift shop. There is also a list of mental health professionals who specialize in spiritual and psychic issues.

Another difference is that objective phenomena may sometimes be caused by unintended psychokinesis (PK) from a living person. More about this is discussed in the links below What to do about Poltergeist and How to cope with being psychic.

In the most difficult cases it may be necessary to get help from a reputable psychic or medium who has experience dealing with troublesome spirits. However in many cases you can deal with the situation yourself.

If you want to try to stop the spirit activity yourself, tell the spirit:

That they are dead. (The spirit might be lingering on the earth plane because they do not realize they are dead).
You understand they are trying to communicate and you are aware of them. (If you think the spirit is a deceased friend or relative it may be important to them that you recognize their attempts at communication, they may be trying to say "hello" or "good bye" in the only way they can.)
But they must leave you alone.
(If the spirit is there when you move into a new home, tell them) the home is yours now, not theirs, and they have to leave.
They should complete their transition to the spirit world. If they linger, alone, around the earth plane where there is nothing for them to do they will just stagnate. They will be happier if they complete the transition because they will be with like minded spirits and will have things to do.

Be firm but friendly, try to express concern for the spirit's well being. Keep repeating the above when you sense the presence of the spirit if they don't leave right away.

Prayer is also an important component of dealing with these types of situations:

Pray for angels or spirit guides to help the earthbound spirit complete their transition to the spirit world. There are advanced beings around that want to help us but they need a request from us before they can act. (See the link to Spirit Rescue below).
Praying for protection may also be effective, particularly for subjective phenomena. You can pray for protection in this way: "Oh God please watch over me and protect me so that only the highest and best forces can influence me." Some people also visualize a shield of white light surrounding and protecting them.

An example of how to handle a troublesome spirit can be found in this post. A more elaborate method can be found at Spirit Rescue on my web site. You don't have to follow the script in Spirit Rescue exactly. If you are not comfortable with certain parts, you may adapt it to your particular situation.

"Evil Entities"

Most of the "evil entities" that are thought to cause hauntings and possessions and cause other mischief are not demons but the spirits of humans who have not made a full transition to the spirit world. Sometimes spirits do cause problems but much of the problem is our own fear. When a spirit frightens us or has a negative attitude that seems repellent, we may mistake our feelings of fear for a perception of evil. However, you are more likely to die of a heart attack from your own fear than from anything a ghost might actually do. Often the spirit is not really evil, but just grumpy or mischievous and our lack of understanding causes us to overreact. Spirits may try to communicate the only way they can, by flashing the lights, shutting a door, or raping on the walls, which frightens most people who are inexperienced in dealing with spirits. But, try to imagine what it is like for a spirit trying to reassure a grieving loved one they are still near by when the person reacts in horror. This is caused by the prejudice in our society against spirits which is caused by ghost stories and horror movies.

These links may also be helpful:

What are Ghosts?
What to do about Poltergeist Haunting phenomenon can sometimes be due to spirits and sometimes be due to unintended psychokinesis from a living person. This article explains some ways to tell which you may be experiencing.
Hearing Voices? Talk Back Politely This article explains that whether the phenomenon is a hallucination or a genuine spirit phenomenon, the way to deal with it is the same.
How to cope with being psychic People who develop psychic abilities may start experiencing spiritistic phenomena and this link discusses some of the issues involved in dealing with the phenomena.
Treatment for Spirit Possession Medications for hallucinations are sometimes helpful for stopping genuine subjective spirit phenomena.
Hallucinations
Psychic Self Defense

Some books that may be helpful include:

Books by Echo Bodine such as Relax It's Only a Ghost. Echo Bodine is a medium who clears haunted houses.
The Unquiet Dead by Edith Fiori. Edith Fiori is a psychologist who helps patients experiencing subjective phenomena by talking to the spirit while the patient is hypnotized.
Thirty Years Among the Dead by Dr. Carl Wickland. Dr. Carl Wickland worked with mental patients and found many of them were being influenced by spirits. (If this link doesn't work, try using google to find it elsewhere on the internet.)

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Hearing Voices? Talk Back Politely.

Michael Prescott blogged about an interesting article, Living With Voices By T. M. Luhrmann, in theamericanscholar.org. It's about a treatment for people who hear disturbing voices that no one else can hear. The treatment involves talking back to the voices politely and respectfully. Read the article for full details.

Besides offering help for people with this type of disturbing experience, it is significant also because it offers a case where the skeptical view is wrong and the Spiritualist view is right. The skeptical approach to treating people who heard voices was to deny the reality of the voices and treat them as hallucinations. The Spiritualist approach to this problem was to treat the voices as spirits and help the spirits come to terms with their existence as spirits so they would stop bothering the patient.

There are several doctors that are well known for successfully using the Spiritualist approach even before this new treatment described in Luhrmann's article was developed: Carl Wickland (Thirty Years Among the Dead), Titus Bull, and Edith Fiore (The Unquiet Dead).

People may have different opinions about whether the voices are really spirits or hallucinations, nevertheless, this new research seems to confirm the work of Wickland, Bull, and Fiore, that the Spiritual approach, treating voices as if they are spirits, is better than the skeptical approach which is to consider the voices to be unreal hallucinations. Skeptics like to say they have the best interests of the public in mind, that they want to protect people from being fooled, when they insist on a materialist worldview. However, when it comes to helping people who hear voices, that worldview is not always in the best interest of the public. If a form of alternative medicine is an effective treatment and especially when it is superior to what is available from mainstream medicine, the skeptics are not doing anyone any good by calling those practitioners charlatans and quacks.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Treatment for Spirit Possession

Here is a case described in boingboing.net of an apparent possession where there was evidence that it was caused by a spirit. Treatment with drugs for hallucinations seems to have relieved the symptoms.

NCBI ROFL spotted this 1994 scientific paper extract describing an Indian man in the UK who blamed his crimes on ghostly possession. When exorcisms failed, he was treated for paranoid schizophrenia. That apparently helped.
...
Treatment commenced using trifluoperazine and clopenthixol. RESULTS. The patient underwent remission during neuroleptic treatment, despite previous evidence of genuine possession. CONCLUSIONS. Many cultures give rise to apparently genuine cases of ghost possession. Neuroleptics may relieve symptoms of exorcism-resistant possession.
...
So this might be an otherwise unremarkable psychiatric case if it were not for the fact that the prison chaplain, and several of the patient's cellmates, saw the spirit possess the patient as a ghostly mist. The chaplain was convinced this was a genuine case of possession, as had priests from several other faiths who had previously carried out exorcisms on the patient.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Hallucinations

Sometimes when people are able to communicate with spirits they wonder if they might be having hallucinations. Here are a couple of articles that discuss hallucinations and should help readers to understand them better.

Macular degeneration can cause hallucinations:

When seated at breakfast and looking out of his window into the garden, he had on several occasions seen a kind of illumination within which not just one but a number of figures appeared, walking in a column. They were, seemingly, all male, some wearing hats, others caps. They would silently advance towards the window then turn to the right near the garden shed, but one figure would often break away from the others at this point and come right up to the window as if peering in at Don, before it too moved out of sight to one side.

Hearing voices:

What H.V.N. does dispute is that the psychological anguish caused by hearing voices is indicative of an overarching mental illness. This argument, disseminated through a quarterly newsletter, numerous pamphlets and speeches and alternative mental-health journals, are as voluminous and diverse as its membership. But H.V.N.’s brief against psychiatry can be boiled down to two core positions. The first is that many more people hear voices, and hear many more kinds of voices, than is usually assumed. The second is that auditory hallucination — or “voice-hearing,” H.V.N.’s more neutral preference — should be thought of not as a pathological phenomenon in need of eradication but as a meaningful, interpretable experience, intimately linked to a hearer’s life story and, more commonly than not, to unresolved personal traumas. In 2005, Louise Pembroke, a prominent member of H.V.N., proposed a World Hearing Voices Day (held the next year) that would “challenge negative attitudes toward people who hear voices on the incorrect assumption that this is in itself a sign of illness, an assumption made about them that is not based on their own experiences, is stigmatizing, isolating and makes people ill.”

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Turning off Psychic Abilities

(Update: More information on how to control psychic abilities can be found in my newer article: What to do if You Start Developing Psychic Abilities.)

Some people have unwanted psychic experiences and are unable turn their off their psychic perceptiveness. These types of experiences may involve contacts with spirits or unconscious psychokinesis (PK, poltergeist like phenomena).

The best advice on what to do in this situation comes from a medical doctor who is also a medium. The advice is to start a meditation practice and also to see a psychological councilor to deal with the emotional issues that are often released by meditation. Unwanted PK is often a sign of some type of psychological conflict so it makes sense that dealing with emotions will be involved in resolving the phenomena. However, it is important to find a councilor who understands that psychic phenomena are real and who will know the difference between hallucinations and psychic perceptions.

One type of meditation that has worked in this situation is Vipassana, or insight meditation. There are some on-line audio files by Dr. Charles Tart that explain how to do this type of meditation: Mindfulness 101

During insight meditation, you observe the sensations in the body. By developing a greater awareness of bodily sensations, you may notice what it feels like to decrease your level of psychic perceptiveness. Once you notice this feeling, you may be able to do it intentionally.

Meditation also helps to calm and relax a person and helps one to develop equanimity. This can help you cope better with unwanted psychic perceptions.

More information on meditation is available on my web site.

Eminent Researchers

Charles Darwin: ... I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.

Kurt Gödel: Materialism is false. ... The world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived. ... The brain is a computing machine connected with a spirit. ... I don’t think the brain came in the Darwinian manner. In fact, it is disprovable. ... Mind is separate from matter. ... There are other worlds and rational beings of a different and higher kind.

Alan Turing: I assume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extrasensory perception, and the meaning of the four items of it, viz., telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. These disturbing phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming. It is very difficult to rearrange one's ideas so as to fit these new facts in. Once one has accepted them it does not seem a very big step to believe in ghosts and bogies. The idea that our bodies move simply according to the known laws of physics, together with some others not yet discovered but somewhat similar, would be one of the first to go.

Max Planck (Nobel Prize for Physics): I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

Erwin Schrödinger (Nobel Prize for Physics): Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.

Albert Einstein (Nobel Prize for Physics): On the other hand, however, every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble

...

I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.

Brian D. Josephson (Nobel Prize for Physics): What are the implications for science of the fact that psychic functioning appears to be a real effect? These phenomena seem mysterious, but no more mysterious perhaps than strange phenomena of the past which science has now happily incorporated within its scope.

Charles Robert Richet (Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine): 1. There is in us a faculty of cognition that differs radically from the usual sensorial faculties (Cryptesthesia). 2. There are, even in full light, movements of objects without contact (Telekinesis). 3. Hands, bodies, and objects seem to take shape in their entirety from a cloud and take all the semblance of life (Ectoplasms). 4. There occur premonitions that can be explained neither by chance nor perspicacity, and are sometimes verified in minute detail. Such are my firm and explicit conclusions.

Pierre Curie (Nobel Prize for Physics): It was very interesting, and really the phenomena that we saw appeared inexplicable as trickery—tables raised from all four legs, movement of objects from a distance, hands that pinch or caress you, luminous apparitions. All in a [setting] prepared by us with a small number of spectators all known to us and without a possible accomplice. The only trick possible is that which could result from an extraordinary facility of the medium as a magician. But how do you explain the phenomena when one is holding her hands and feet and when the light is sufficient so that one can see everything that happens?

Sir John Eccles (Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine): I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition ... we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.

More Eminent Researchers

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Life in B Flat
(Science and Spirituality)

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Saturday, March 16, 2013