Life existing only on Earth is a statistical impossibility given the unquantifiable vastness of the universe. The universe could be teeming with life, but such vastness might mean two intelligent planetary civilisations might not ever be able to cross paths, but what if the opposite were true?
If outsiders know about humanity, then they would have far superior technology than we would have, or could possibly even dream about. Therefore, it is not within the realm of impossibility they would use their sophistication to cloak their presence while they monitor our civilisation. In this scenario, they could be interfering with civilization – in stealth – for their own hidden motives.
In fact, this would probably be the most sensible option for any advanced race. The uncertainty of interplanetary discovery is possibly a very dangerous proposition for any intelligent race; therefore, it would be highly prudent to observe newly discovered civilizations and avoid making outright contact. Their arrival would greatly disrupt the mechanisms of our world, sending civilization into panic, and would also put world military leaders on high alert for planetary defense. Sophisticated aliens might be fearful of nuclear warheads or might be concerned for the damage war might have on their overall agenda.
If aliens are observing us, this could be to benefit us or to manipulate our development for some unknown purpose. As an intelligent race, we should consider the possibility of the latter scenario and look to see if there is any evidence to support this premise.
As cosmological science advances, we are finding more planets discovered in “habitable zones” where temperatures are not too hot or cold to sustain life. There is estimated to be about 10 trillion galaxies in the universe, and 7% of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy are G class stars similar to our Sun. The Kepler mission discovered over 1200 exoplanets in a region just 0.0025% of the size of the Milky Way galaxy.
Unfortunately, all the radio signals we read from outer space indicate it is a desolate lonely place. However, it could also be true, our technology is still so primitive, that it has not evolved to a point where we can detect the more advanced nature of alien technologies. The fact we cannot detect any signals of alien life, is not a substantial argument for assuming we are alone. However, this is all we have to go on at the moment, and is enough to convince a large majority of world populations that alien life is a “fantastical notion.” Statistical probability is something we know is relatively accurate across many domains of science in our planet, so, ultimately this reveals we are not going to be alone in this vast universe. Life is out there for sure.
Estimates now suggest all class G stars have at least one planet, and about 25% of them have at least one rocky planet in the habitable zone similar in size to Earth. Such numbers might extrapolate to suggest about 50 quintillion or more potentially habitable planets in the observable universe. The number is so incredibly large that the more unrealistic idea is that we are alone than not. Even before we had the Kepler data, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke argued, “The idea that we are the only intelligent creatures in a cosmos of a hundred billion galaxies is so preposterous that there are very few astronomers today who would take it seriously.” Atheists or agnostics argue there are no imaginary sky people; however, atheists look to science as their “God” so they must acknowledge basic statistical probability. So, where are the aliens?
Named after physicist Enrico Fermi, the Fermi Paradox is the term used to describe the argument surrounding the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. With the probability of Earth-like planets having developed intelligent life, some of these civilizations should conceivably have developed capability for interstellar travel by now. The Milky Way is 105,700 light-years in width, so traversing and colonizing the galaxy in a few million years is plausible, an insignificant period of time compared with the age of our galaxy (estimated by cosmologists as around 13.5 billion years).
The paradox arises because Earth should have been visited by extraterrestrial life since it is part of a relatively a new star system (4.5 billion years old) compared to many others in our galaxy (and many others beyond the Milky Way). The most sensible explanation is that Earth is known to alien life, but aliens intentionally avoid communication with Earth to prevent contaminating our natural evolution and sociocultural development.
Some philosophers addressing the Fermi Paradox believe that highly advanced intelligent life would eventually learn the downside of invading developing systems and would eventually implement a mandate of non-interference because premature contact would reduce the overall diversity across the universe. However, this premise would assume all (or most) colonizing aliens have good intentions. Presumably there could also be rogue civilisations out there who don’t play by the rules. If aliens know we are here, they could be using their advanced technology to remain undetected, much like how military forces use tactical communication jammers frequently in trying to remain undetected by enemy forces in war.
While some alien groups could remain undetected for benevolent reasons, others could be cloaked for nefarious motives. Equally, some world governments could know about contact but suppress the information from the public due to security or economic reasons, especially because of potential misuse of advanced extraterrestrial technology. Another possibility is that aliens could be here (or interfacing with us), but physically exist in another dimension, meaning we cannot perceive them with our five senses. Given the multi-dimensional nature of quantum physics discovered over the past century, our search for radio waves to detect alien life could effectively be constrained to a very narrow band of reality. Human scientists still understand very little about multidimensional physics and consciousness.
Is there any evidence to support the possibility aliens are lurking in the background? Countless people—across all human cultural backgrounds—have reported “spiritual” experiences affecting their normal operating state of awareness. Such experiences are notable for reduced external awareness, whereby someone becomes completely disconnected from our normal reality and experience somewhat of a different reality where other beings exist (and even communicate). The human race has a large history of these experiences occuring. Extrasensory visions, receiving prophetic messages, and varying forms of contact with non-human spirits or entities appear across all human cultures and across the past two-thousand years of recorded history.
The possibility of interdimensional alien beings could give some explanation to the historical reports of visionary experiences including angels, guides, spirits, ghosts, demons and other strange semi-translucent etheric or light-based beings.
A significant amount of this contact appears to involve experiences resembling what would be known more scientifically as telepathy. Alien abduction accounts are almost universal in describing their alien captors as using telepathy to control and communicate with the human body. The presence of nefarious alien entities could be a reasonable explain for supernatural or unexplained phenomena such as spirit and/or body possession, and reveal why ritual embeds itself so deeply in all cultures and religions since the dawn of our civilisation. The history of religious and occult-based (magic) rituals share a common structure of placing people into altered state of mind (consciousness) where they can experience non-terrestrial worlds (or planes of existence) and also be telepathically influenced by some entity or form of consciousness outside of themselves.
Telepathic entity influence could come from afar, possibly other stars or other dimensional planes of existence as a way aliens communicate with human minds here on Earth. The heavy use of astrology in enhancing spiritual ritual by using specific correspondences between entities and other specific stars or constellations is common. Magic rituals ground heavily in astrological use, and so do many religious rituals when you dig a little deeper about their origins.
The Shamanistic religions underpinning many tribal and indigeonous cultures often involve journeying to meet or communicate with entities through the use of hallucinogenic drug-based rituals led by the shaman ritual leaders – many of whom recount histories of this knowledge being taught to their ancestors by non-human entities. Could this be a way aliens maintain communication with human cultures from afar? The multidimensionality of these experiences should be considered. The alleged accounts of “demons” could have some grounding in multidimensionality because they are seemingly invisible but allegedly affect certain people through energetic interference of some sort.
Regarding searching for other life, physical science is hamstrung because it can only look for non-terrestrial life within the framework of our observable reality. The same hindrance applies to the notion of consciousness. Scientists are yet to pin down precisely what consciousness is and where it exists in the human body. If we barely understand anything about our own consciousness, then we probably know even less about other forms of consciousness. It would be foolish to think all consciousnesses in the universe would be similar in nature to our own.
If off-world entities are hiding the reality of their influence, then this conceivably gives them a significant advantage over us. I believe its possible many forms of religion and ritualised practice are “technologies” designed to manipulate and control human beings potentially to impart influence on human consciousness to link with controllers (I explore this notion more in other articles coming soon). Even modern cultures, with the rise of technologies such as computers and mobile phones, have similar potential for interfacing and controlling human populations with various aspects of mind control and consciousness altering technologies.
Humanity’s weakest defence against manipulation would be not even knowing it is happening, but if the interference is energetic-based and requires our willing investment for this control to have any affect, then we also have the ability within ourselves to override this from of energetic control. The problem is so many people in this world, so easily give away their energy to other entities – human or non-human alike.
Human history has a long and arduous love affair of communion with spiritual entities. Myths across many religions describe human prophets acting as psychic scribes to receive Scripture transmission from God or other entities. Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Asian and Mayan myths relate the phenomena of entity-based contact. Prophets and other people report strange and unexpected visitations from godly or angelic beings; similar to modern people describing their hallucinogenic drug experiences. Many of these encounters were only seen by those experiencing them, making them visions beyond normal eyesight.
If some religious stories are true, they appear to reconcile how ancient prophets were communicating with entities. For example, the story of Moses and the burning bush on Mount Horeb/Sinai reports the Lord’s appearance within a “metaphysical fire.” The Book of Exodus 3:2-4 (NKJV) states:
2 And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.”4 So when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!”
If the character known as Moses was some real person—or even was just a symbolic representation of prophetic visionaries of the day—perhaps the vision described in Exodus was a psychic vision because bushes burn in our normal three-dimensional reality.
Psychic ability is seemingly what differentiates a prophet over ordinary individuals, and ancient bloodlines typically favour individuals who have this ability to converse with outside entities. However, in this story, Moses’ power was still limited, which is why during his 40-day stay upon the top of Mt. Sinai, God instructed him to build the Ark of the Covenant device so he could regularly hear the voice of God anywhere through this strange (potentially interdimensional) radio. As described in Exodus, chapter 25 (NKJV):
20 And the cherubim shall stretch out their wings above, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and they shall face one another; the faces of the cherubim shall be toward the mercy seat. 21 You shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the Testimony that I will give you. 22 And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the Testimony, about everything which I will give you in commandment to the children of Israel.
Moses’ visions on Mt Sinai and use of a device in other places gives value to the idea of off-world entities using multiple methods to facilitate non-physical communication with human beings. If alien abduction accounts have any truth, maybe his perplexing 40 days upon the summit of Mt. Sinai gave cover for the missing time as he journeyed with his entity masters. All speculation of course!
Having researched the topic of entity-based spiritual experiences for over a decade, I have uncovered the underlying framework for successful communion with entities. The necessary precursor is participation in some form of ritual practice (often involving substance abuse) to create a displacement (or de-centering) of the natural functioning state of human awareness into a state of trance.
What makes understanding or proving the validity of entity-based experiences so difficult is how none of us can experience the exact same state of mind or complete awareness of another person. Spiritual advocates believe in their deity (or deities) because they experience the entity’s influence in their lives and claim this as real evidence, but this is only real for the believer. The easy dismissal is to believe the person is mentally ill or lying. We are then left to determine the credibility of a person’s account by weighing their presumed state of mind, intelligence and other factors against our own knowledge and experiences.
First-person accounts of inner experiences cannot always be true, especially from people who are mentally ill, under the influence of drugs, or motivated to deceive; however, many spiritual people are actually sane, honest, and reliable individuals who are not motivated to deceive. Even if we have never experienced what another person claims, it would be intellectually and ethically unsound to use our individual bias to discredit potential entity-based communication without truly investigating the phenomenon. The universal nature and sheer volume of accounts throughout history suggests a reality we should no longer ignore.
William James, a 19th century American philosopher and psychologist, described four characteristics of religious experience:
1. Transient, a temporary experience outside of normal perception;
2. Ineffable, the experience cannot be put into words;
3. Noetic, whereby new knowledge is revealed that is typically hidden from human understanding;
4. Passive, whereby the experience happens entirely beyond the individual’s control. (James, 1902)
Transient and noetic experiences involve revelatory knowledge revealing such events involve something beyond overactive human imagination. Furthermore, the experiences are typically similar in nature, and we would expect to see a large variety in experiences if they are simply figments of an overactive imagination. American neuroscientist, Patrick McNamara argues, “The fact that these sorts of experiences are ‘regular,’ repeatable, and common across all kinds of individuals who undertake the ‘journey’ suggests that religious experience is not random.” (McNamara, 2009)(p. 17)
Noetic experiences are compelling giving us the best indication of contact with other forms of intelligence. Many ancient cultural myths discuss the receipt of their wisdom and knowledge as having come from the Gods.
Passive experiences place us out of the driving seat of our own body, and experiencers typically report feeling the presence of another consciousness or entity in or nearby their body. Often, the combination or one or many of these factors contribute to a significant change in personality and identity. In other words, the experience is so profound and extraordinary that the person becomes addicted to achieving this state again, and natural living feels mundane in comparison and seems to matter less and less Spiritual experiences then become similar to other types of addictions. Furthermore, people with addictive personalities may latch onto religions and spiritual pursuits with greater enthusiasm.
Rudolf Otto, a German Lutheran theologian and scholar of comparative religion, outlined one factor common to all religious experience independent of cultural background. This factor is called “numinous,” which defines the power, presence or realisation of divinity. The numinous state is highly significant to those people who experience it, and many feel convinced they are connecting with the presence of divinity. The experiences can be powerful enough to draw in previously sceptical or non-religious participants resulting in life-changing changes to values, attitudes and behaviour. Often, the power of experiencing the numinous state invokes fear and trembling, known as mysterium tremendum, or ecstasy, compelling fascination, and attraction, known as mysterium fascinans. Otto wrote, “There is no religion in which it [numinous] does not live as the real innermost core and without it no religion would be worthy of the name.” (Otto, 1958) Fear, trembling and ecstasy are all common features found in both transcendent experiences and addictions.
While many addictions result in escalating dissociative escapist behaviour, religious and spiritual experiencers typically feel they are elevating their sense of identity or consciousness. Spiritual evolution, or enlightenment through shifts of consciousness, is a concept found in almost all religious and spiritual movements and is rarely considered as detrimental unless it leads to social withdrawal or violence against others or oneself. The use of trance mediators – such as drugs, ritualism, prayer, and meditation – are used as necessary tools in the process of identity change.
Despite the motivating desire for self-improvement, escapism is still a central motivating factor for spiritual people who directly aim to transcend, escape or absorb the body into a complete alignment and merger with some other entity, involving dissolution of the self into all-encompassing oneness. Because the spiritual experience is usually synonymous with contact with non-human entities, it is the commonly held belief these entities are here to help us make a shift away from our current self into something else – marketed as presumably better (because religions often disempower their followers), but in reality might actually diminish some aspect of consciousness, or even redirect it elsewhere (somewhere unnatural to normal evolution). I discuss this possibility more in other articles (coming soon).
The trance state is notable for the reduction of self-awareness, which correspondingly involves the reduction of pain and heightened levels of ecstasy. Drug addicts are a compelling example of people who use chemicals to escape from some form of inner pain (emotional, mental, or physical are all included here). These people seek permanence of the unmaintainable state of ecstasy, which becomes harder and harder to achieve as the body reacts to such abuse by shutting down neurotransmitter receptor sites in a process of progressive desensitization brain damage. This is one reason long-term religious extremists can become increasingly mentally unhinged after a while immersed in their religious practices.
In the eastern religions, Yoga provides techniques to attain an ecstasy state called Samādhi. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and yogic schools acknowledge the state of Samādhi, considered the final stage of meditation when the person finally moves beyond physical consciousness. They refer to it as meditative absorption, attained by the practice of dhyāna. In Buddhism, especially in the Pali Canon (the first known and most complete early Buddhist canon), there are eight states of trance called absorption, which are pathways to attaining the reduction of self-identity and facilitating out-of-body experience, called manomaya (mind-made body). These beliefs discuss that when absorption is developed, our identity blurs into the oneness where we should only feel bliss and tranquillity. Tantric sexuality is another practice designed to attain ecstasy in this way. Absorption in this context is equivalent to filling our self with the Holy Spirit in Christian traditions. The process involves unification with the Godhead most notably exemplified in the ritual of communion, where we ingest the Body of Christ to help with the transformative merger of our identity with Christ.
Devotional practices, especially those that are repetitive, are designed to transition our normal consciousness into a trance state, aimed at destabilising our sovereign consciousness and linking our consciousness to an outside group consciousness. Many mainstream religions use prayer and chanting to create a spiritual union between our consciousness and the religion’s figureheads (the consciousness of the religion). A Christian man outlines:
When I first became a Christian, I could easily enter a trance state while praying. The shift in consciousness was automatic; because I had so much practice. In trance, I experienced self-gratifying emotions—such as having a sense of internal ‘puffed-up’ joy that clouded any meaningful reflection of self or God. This type of prayer developed into the belief that God actually spoke to me. (Are you in prayer or in a trance, n.d.)
The mystical union (referred to as unio mystica) experienced by Carmelite nuns during prayer accounts a process where our soul comes into union with the Godhead and ecstasy is the accompanying physical reaction to achieving this communion with God. Religious advocates believe the euphoric trance state is one of the holiest gifts to experience, and this transcendence of consciousness is a miraculous event.
The most famous example of ecstasy prayer is Saint Teresa of Avila, whose experience is immortalised in the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, a white marble sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini at the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. Teresa of Avila was a prominent 16th-century Spanish mystic and Carmelite nun, canonised as a saint in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV. She was a theologian reformer promoting contemplative life, and her writings describe the ascent of the soul through four stages. The first two stages involve increasing levels of devout contemplation and concentration through prayer. The third involves devotional union with god, an ecstatic state or conscious rapture experiencing the “love of god.” The fourth involves the devotion of ecstasy or rapture, where the feeling of being in the body disappears, and complete absorption with God occurs in a state of pure ecstasy, characterised by the intoxication of extreme pleasure and presence of the divine.
Transcendent religious experiences can occur spontaneously but are often infrequent. Sometimes it requires years of disciplined practice to achieve the states required. The Carmelite nuns state they cannot summon God at will despite their constant daily practice, making the neurological study of these experiences difficult for researchers. One study asked the nuns to simply remember and relive such an experience as intensely as possible, revealing marked changes in EEG activity primarily in the theta brainwave state, the same state seen when neuroscientists study other forms of trance. (Neural correlates of a mystical experience in Carmelite nuns, n.d.) Religious experience is notable for slowing brain function below the normal functional level of conscious awareness.
Psychedelic information theorist and researher, James L. Kent, is generally positive towards drug-induced spirituality (like many others who invest their efforts into promoting the study of hallucinogenic compounds), passing off the negative experiences due to instability in a person’s mental state or inappropriate setting for the experience. Kent acknowledges how quickly the line between spiritual experience, madness and psychosis can occur:
In accounts of mysticism and madness, God only speaks to people in states of heightened destabilisation: deprivation, psychosis, schizophrenia, stress, fever, dream, trance, and hallucination. Because of this it is easy to assume that hearing the voice of God is a symptom of insanity. (Kent, 2010 )
An article titled “Hallucination, or Divine Revelation?” by The Atlantic asks, “What’s the difference between a homeless man who talks to God and a saint who does the same?” (Hallucination, or Divine Revelation?, n.d.) The article states it is probably an issue of how times have changed: “the homeless man suffers the distinct disadvantage of talking to God today, rather than 10 centuries ago.” (Hallucination, or Divine Revelation?, n.d.) Many psychologists and sceptics believe entity-based visionary experiences are figments of a person’s psyche. However, in societies dominated by religion, a lower caste/class individual may gain a sizeable audience depending upon how believable the visions are.
In the secular world, spirit possession is considered an old wives’ tale, but religious and spiritual cultures across the Earth seem to have two things in common: the phenomena of trance inspired spiritual contact, and the indwelling nature of spirits through people acting as prophets or mediums. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions repeatedly discuss the notion of possession and overshadowing, exemplified by supportive stories of messianic figures and prophets communicating with their religion’s gods or angels. Equally, demonic possession is feared as the unwelcome interference of entities from a rival religious group. Throughout history, demonic possession and exorcism played significant roles in cultural, political and religious issues of the day.
The Christian New Testament repeatedly warns of entity possession. The Book of Matthew 4:24 (KJV) states: “And they brought unto Him all sick people who were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those who were possessed with devils.” Further verses repeat a similar theme such as Matthew 9:32-33, 12:22 and 17:18. Luke 9:39 all mention the phenomenon. Kent Simpson, a prophet and pastor of Prophetic Ministries Today, states:
You will find very few Spirit-filled Christians who disagree that a person can be demon possessed. If Satan has possession of a person's spirit, soul and body, he can use that person to fulfill his evil deeds. (Ministries, n.d.)
Simpson argues because Satan is a fallen angel, his ability to possess people uses methods available to all of God’s angels and the Holy Spirit. He thinks that God does not eradicate possession because possession is a necessary faculty for any person to be in service to the Lord. He writes:
When we witness the power of miracles, we are seeing the work of God's ministering spirits orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. There have been many times that the presence of God was so strong I could see His angels ministering in the midst of the congregation...Anytime you see a minister moving in the gifts to the Holy Spirit, you are witnessing someone who is being possessed (spurred, moved by a strong feeling, under supernatural power) by an angel of the Lord. …The Holy Spirit is searching for yielded vessels that will do whatever He asks of them. I have learned this much. If I do what the Spirit tells me, then He will respond in the same measure when I ask of Him. If the Spirit is not answering your prayers, then you are probably not answering His call. (Ministries, n.d.)
Simpson’s view is carried across Christian belief where people are taught to open their body up to the energy of Jesus Christ and let the energy of God flow through them. Christianity calls against demonic possession but does not see its own contradiction relating to the matter. Religion wants people to surrender and be obedient, and it openly declares this goal. Rick Warren, pastor of American Baptist evangelical Christian Saddleback Church, explains:
If you want to have deep, personal, satisfying peace of mind in heart and soul, you’ve got to surrender control of your life totally to God. How do you know if you’ve done that? Evidence of a surrendered life is always obedience. When God says, “Do it!” I do it. I don’t care if I don’t understand it, if anybody else is doing it, if it’s possible or not, if it’s hard or easy. I just do it. … What is the result of being in control of your life? Worry, guilt, bitterness, resentment, anxiety, fear, fatigue, depression, and despair. What is the result of putting Jesus Christ first in your life and being fully surrendered to whatever he wants? Peace, power, strength, wisdom, purpose, meaning, eternal life, significance, and joy. (Surrender To God’s Loving Control, n.d.)
The subtle manipulation in the above excerpt reveals an overall disempowering message to an individual. Being in control of one’s affairs will somehow lead to terrible outcomes, but surrendering to the religion as an obedient follower will solve all of life’s problems. We simply don’t just surrender to the religion; we are asked to have God flow into and throughout our body.
The requirement of surrender and subservience to holy possession is reinforced in Scriptural texts, such as 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (KJV):
What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you and which ye have from God, and that ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
This biblical statement affirms that the human body belongs to God and will be used by the Holy Ghost/Spirit to inhabit (be controlled) as needed. Releasing control to God is not seen as a bad thing because believers have faith that “God knows best”, as one religious website outlines, “Surrendering your life to Jesus is about choosing HIS way over yours. It's about TRUSTING that He is in control of the outcome.” (412teens.org, n.d.) The religious argument is: “God’s plan for our lives will always benefit us (Jeremiah 29:11), unlike our own plans, which often lead to self-destruction (Proverbs 14:12).” (412teens.org, n.d.) Robert Hach makes a critical point in his book, Possession and Persuasion:
Wherever Christianity has meant equating the experience of faith with the institutional activity of the Church, the rhetoric of surrender, in one form or another, has been heard. Faith cannot, according to the rhetoric of surrender, be merely belief, a persuasion that opens one’s mind, heart and life to God’s influence; it must, rather, be the opening through which God enters and takes possession —absolute control— of one’s mind and heart and life. And the proof that one has, indeed, surrendered one’s very self to God is that one belongs, quite actively, to — is the possession of — the Church, in one of its institutional forms. The notion of possession is suggested by the popular use of the term “surrender” with reference to either conversion or rededication to faith: when one surrenders one’s life to God, then God takes “control” of one’s life. God is perceived as a controlling presence with which one more or less passively complies. One may, indeed, be quite active religiously, even to the extent of being driven, but one is convinced all the while that God sits in the driver’s seat: it is a passive activity in the same sense in which a car is active only as it is ignited by the key and directed by the hands and feet of its driver. Faith in this sense, then, seems to be virtually synonymous with possession. (Hach, 2001)
All religions rely on surrendering one’s self to the higher power. Hach explains that this surrender extends beyond the individual to the group: “The surrendered group, an extension of the surrendered individual, itself exists in mystical union with God…the Church is, to interpret the apostle Paul’s analogy in a mystical rather than a metaphorical sense, ‘the body of Christ.’” (Hach, 2001) Hach adds:
Thus, when observers point out the control that the group—from its leaders down through its hierarchically-organized membership— quite evidently exerts over the lives of its members, their words fall to the ground. Critics simply don’t understand that God is using, is working through, the group in its members’ lives: God is in control. (Hach, 2001)
Many people engage in rituals because they believe their lives are controlled and/or affected by spiritual beings or higher powers. (Cultural Rituals: Their Meanings and Symbolisms, n.d.) Although numerous people go to church frequently, religious ritual participation does not lead to complete possession and displacement, or loss of original personality/identity in the majority of its participants. Because of this, it can be easy to deny whether anything is changing within the average participant due to the influences of religious ritual. However, possession in this context may not be a complete possession but rather an insidious process of identity change through overshadowing mind control, which aims to manipulates one’s thought processes, desires, and actions, and ultimately, one’s identity. I believe religious rituals are encouraged through enduring, frequent and repetitive daily or weekly basis to constantly imprint these changes the same as any other mechanicism of propaganda is used in controlling people’s minds. Over time, the target person begins to think a thought and starts to believe it is their own, when in fact, they have been manipulated to think in such a manner. Over time, the target person changes into complete alignment with the energy of the manipulators. The important premise to consider about the religious ritual is that it is a tangible procedure designed to implant in a person a telepathic and energetic connection to the entities of the religion, who are in reality, extraterrestrial in origin.
The notion of overshadowing exists in many spiritual paradigms. Psychic mediums talk about overshadowing as an aspect of their practice. An article by a practicing medium in “How to Contact Your Spirit Guide,” explains:
When a spirit guide’s thoughts are superimposed on your own it is known as a light ‘overshadowing,’ or ‘influence.’ You will notice that you are fully conscious and in control and have the option to return to normal consciousness whenever you want to. All mediumship is based upon this blending of thought. Even when you are doing a private reading and chatting to the sitter there is a slight overshadowing as the spirit people pass to you the information for the client. (How to Contact Your Spirit Guide, n.d.)
The article claims entities “will not try to take you over or force any information on you,” but it then contradicts itself when saying “your guides to sprinkle their thoughts across the screen of your awareness prepares you for full mediumship.” (How to Contact Your Spirit Guide, n.d.) Although the medium allows the otherworldly thoughts, the allowance does not negate the fact that he or she taken over by the entity or entity group intervening and instilling those thoughts.
A very popular contemporary New Age religious leader Benjamin Crème (and individual highly supportive of entity overshadowing) states:
Overshadowing can be partial and temporary, or more or less total and long term. It can go all the way from the overshadowing of the mental or astral body through the soul to the complete take-over of the physical body. It is a process whereby a more advanced being can manifest some (or all) of his consciousness through a being of lesser degree. (Creme)
In Crème’s example, his mode of overshadowing occurs from a spiritual hierarchy of entities called Ascended Masters. Crème believes transmissions from these entities are beneficial, and his life work has involved setting up worldwide meditation groups to assist bringing this energy into people’s bodies:
In a Transmission group, you simply let yourself be an instrument, while the energy is put through your chakras by the Masters. You act as a positive, poised, mental channel through which the energy is sent in a highly scientific manner. It is directed by Them, by Their thought, to where it is most useful and most needed. They are always looking for those who can consciously act as transmitters of Their energy in this way. To form a Transmission Meditation group, all you need is the intention and desire to serve, and two other people who agree to transmit with you. Of course, the more people the better, but three in itself is a group. (Creme)
Crème’s meditation group is a good example for what frequently occurs in religious movements where there is open willingness to connect with angels, spirits and gods who require us to connect and draw upon their energy and thus begin the overshadowing mind control process. Crème notes about his own overshadowing, emphasising how group ritual allows for his entity overshadowing to transmit across the entire group:
During a Transmission Meditation at which I am present, I am overshadowed by Maitreya, Who is Himself overshadowed by the Spirit of Peace and is transmitting the energy of the Avatar of Synthesis (or the Shamballa Force) and that of the Buddha. Through me, and by the group holding hands, this becomes a group overshadowing (the group is spiritually ‘nourished’ by Maitreya, as I have stated above)…The Christ nourishes the spiritual life of each person taking part in the Transmission, so that from then on your Transmission work will be heightened…. As I go from group to group and He overshadows me, it becomes a group overshadowing, and in this way Maitreya is able to do for them what He could not otherwise do. The energy is ‘stepped down’ to a point where it can safely do the nourishing work. (Creme)
While Crème’s statements may sound absurd to the average reader, his philosophy is built upon the teachings of Theosophy and other similar movements that prescribe to the same mind control premise. If anything, Crème is doing us a favour by reporting what may really be occurring, and his information shows what the mainstream religions are hiding in their less than forthcoming teachings.
In a group trance environment, we expose ourselves to manipulation from the energy forces flowing through the entire group and local setting. In the above excerpt, ritual serves the purpose of creating a persistent connection between the participants, Crème, and the entities overshadowing him. It is highlighted by the statement, “Maitreya is able to do for them what He could not otherwise do”. (Creme) Crème argues this type of overshadowing is beneficial because Christ demonstrated the way with his own overshadowing when filled with the Holy Spirit. He writes:
A clear example is the overshadowing of the disciple Jesus by the Christ….This is the classical method for the manifestation of Avatars or Teachers. In no sense was this demonic possession. When the Christ took over the body of Jesus at the Baptism, He did so with the full knowledge, co-operation and assent of the Master Jesus Himself (who was then the disciple Jesus)….free will was never infringed….Spiritual overshadowing takes place either at the Monadic or at the soul level. Maitreya, the Christ, is overshadowed at the Monadic level by a Cosmic Avatar called the Spirit of Peace or Equilibrium. (Creme)
Crème claims overshadowing is not a possession, because the overshadowing occurs with the consent of the individual. I would argue this consent is not complete because we cannot be aware of the bigger picture when we barely know anything about these so-called ascended masters, and if you research further, a long-history of false promises arise from these entities.
Crème’s teachings build upon the esoteric beliefs from Theosophy, a movement which heralded the second coming of the great world teacher called Maitreya in the early 20th century. One of the co-founders of Theosophy, Charles W. Leadbeater, explained in a 1917 lecture:
The members of the Brotherhood, through Their agents, are constantly trying to work with the important people of the world, putting advice and suggestions into their minds, endeavouring to move them onwards towards the great future of Universal Brotherhood when war shall have disappeared. (The Inner Life Lecture, n.d.)
The Universal Brotherhood of Ascended Masters is a Theosophical belief in a group of altruistic, off-planet entities who guide and direct humanity with the goal of having us ascend from Earth to their level of spiritual enlightenment. This belief is a westernised version of Buddhist beliefs integrating Christianity and other religions with esoteric thought.
The interesting crossover between esoteric Christianity and New Age spirituality shows itself through the embrace of the four main archangels, held to be the highest of the ascended beings. The New Age religions ask people to draw on the energy and guidance of the archangelic beings, often for protection and energy assistance. A visit to any New Age bookstore will find shelves dedicated to angel material, books, cards, and crystals to use for this purpose.
One popular New Age text, The Urantia Book (TUB), is a controversial 2,000-page religious tome that mysteriously appeared in stages from 1924 to 1955. The authorship remains a matter of speculation because the book and its publishers name no human author. Instead, the book presents itself as channelled by various angelic entities working within the scope of an all-encompassing spiritual hierarchy. They outline a greater structure of the cosmos expanding the Bible to integrate a contemporary understanding of the universe. In this paradigm, the Earth is called Urantia. I believe the book is a disingenuous account of actual reality, serving to recruit human consciousness into a stifling spiritual hierarchy and consciousness group; however, I found it interesting for how open it is to acknowledging the concept of angelic control and direction over human beings. There are no claims to hide it, deliberately exposing the reality of drawing in entity-based energies as a form of spiritual mind-control.
The book explains the requirement for people to infuse the “holy spirit” into their body as their personal “thoughtadjuster,” an entity who will assist the advancement of a person’s spiritual evolution and ascension to heaven. Thought-adjusting is another term for overshadowing—or partial possession—involving telepathy. Furthermore, the book explains how the ruling Trinity endows every evolving being with this internal spiritual guidance:
This is effected through assigning an indwelling ‘Higher Self’ or ‘Thought Adjuster’, a fully trained Spiritual Being to overshadow the Ascendant Being with internal guidance expressing the Trinity Father's inherent nature and will. (The Urantia Book, n.d.)
TUB cites Jesus’ example as the precedent to follow explaining how the Earth’s planetary personalised adjuster is Michael of Nebadon, otherwise known as the Archangel Michael. His second in command is Archangel Gabriel, the entity who came to Mary to tell her she had been chosen by God to bare his son in a virgin birth. The book explains how Michael was the thoughtadjuster who overshadowed the body of Jesus to facilitate angelic teachings to humankind. There are mainstream biblical precedents in support of angelic overshadowing. The Book of Luke 1:35 (KJV) explains how the Holy Spirit overshadows:
35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
The Book of 2 Corinthians 12:9 (KJV) also states, “the power of Christ may rest upon me”. In another translation of this Scripture, in the Weymouth New Testament, the term “overshadow” is used instead of “rest upon”.
A mysteriously named author John of the Gentiles explains in his book how overshadowing is a type of thought transference whereby a human is not completely conscious of the source of the thoughts coming into their own mind or the energies running through their body. He explains:
The idea (implanted by the angel) dominates his thought, and becomes to him apparently his own (thought). Many a one (a human) is overshadowed by a Higher Being (an angel) who is not conscious of the source of the thoughts that come into his mind…The ‘thought’ on which the person acts is conveyed to the human [via ELF wave information/data transfer] by the angel—the individual thereby serving as an avatar of sorts….It is possible for the angels to know one’s thoughts, the angels also being capable of thought-transference. And when the angels read the mind of a man which is to these angels an open book and transfer these thoughts to the mind of another, such a man styles himself a psychic and puffs his self up proudly, thinking himself a mind-reader. Such is the absurdity of psychical research and the nature of the games these fallen angels play. (Gentiles, 2010)
Christianity and its various offshoots reveal many examples that exemplify religious possession, but they are not alone. Dr. Erika Bourguignon, an American anthropologist and leading authority on trance, possession, and altered states of consciousness, outlines how “Belief in spirit possession is both ancient and very widespread as seen in the historical and ethnographic record.” (Bourguignon)
Possession is documented in at least 74% of sample societies. She argues there is a near universality of institutionalised trance and a widespread existence of non-sacred forms of trance, but a lower incidence of possession beliefs (belief in possession as a positive spiritual experience) which are highly variable. (Bourguignon) Many of these beliefs support the notion of partial possession or overshadowing as Bourguignon outlines:
Possession beliefs are rooted in conceptions of the human being as consisting of several elements (such as body, mind, personhood, self, name, identity, soul or souls, even part souls), where one or more of these may be replaced, temporarily or permanently, by another entity….Understanding the human being as consisting of several potentially separable parts may be used to account not only for ‘spirit possession,’ but also for dreams, hallucinations, seizures, and death. (Bourguignon)
There is often confusion between the concepts of trance and possession in literature with generally little consensus on the definition of either. There are many different forms of trance and different forms of possession. Bourguignon classifies possession into two forms:
1. Possession manifesting as behavioural changes (either negative or claims of enhanced powers),
2. Possession trance suggested by alterations in state of consciousness and behaviour. Full or partial amnesia is frequently associated with possession trance, but not with trance where possession is absent. (Bourguignon)
The type of possession often relates to the specific cultural or religious background, environmental influences, or the sex of the person. Even one’s geographical location may be significant. For example, visionary trance is more common in North America but not in Africa where possession trance is common. Equally, visionary trance is more likely to occur in men and possession trance in women. Bourguignon explains:
It has been observed consistently that in most instances of possession illness and Possession Trance, the majority of spirit hosts are women. This was true of 19th-century European spirit mediums as well as contemporary leaders of Spiritualist churches in the United States, of Balinese and Zulu healers and diviners, of possession trancers in Haitian vodou, and Brazilian Afro-Catholic religions. (Bourguignon)
Possession trance rituals are significant in the religions of Caribbean people such as the Haitians, Cubans, and Jamaicans where initiation and ritual participation are familial obligations. They are also common in Bali, India, Brazil, and many countries throughout Northern and Eastern Africa. Possession is integral to African voodoo practices.
To be ‘possessed’ by a god or spirit is the ultimate objective of the voodoo ceremony. It is a mark of great favour, indicating that the god or spirit deems an individual a worthy receptacle or vessel for divine immanence. (Baigent & Leigh, 1997)
In addition, the Tuareg people of West Africa believe higher powers control and affect the lives of the living. (Cultural Rituals: Their Meanings and Symbolisms, n.d.)
Bourguignon clarifies how secular understanding of possession arises largely from classical antiquity, where beliefs on possession held prominent cultural significance. In ancient Greece, an oracle (called a Sibyl) was a priestess who received prophetic predictions, a form of divination, acting as a portal and directly receiving her prophecies at certain holy sites under the divine influence of a specific deity. The most famous oracle of Greek antiquity was Pythia, priestess to Apollo at Delphi whose prophecies were highly sought after and heralded to be infallible. Failed prophecies were often dismissed as failure by man to correctly interpret, not an error of the oracle. Pythia only gave prophecies the seventh day of each month, seven being the number most associated with Apollo. The ability of female prophets to carry divine messages carried over through the centuries and is readily symbolised in Renaissance art where female sibyllae are portrayed alongside male prophets. Michelangelo depicted five sibyls in the frescos of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Four sibyls were painted by Raphael within the Church of Santa Maria della Pace in Rome, and the Vatican’s Library of Pope Julius II also depicts the sibyls.
Religious artwork and symbolism is filled with glorification of prophets, reinforcing both belief and importance of entity contact. Abrahamic religions believe God calling a prophet is not to elevate the individual, but to highlight the glory of God so more people will turn to Him. In most cases, famous biblical figures in both the Old and New Testaments were only important because they were prophets or seers with the ability to spread the teachings channelled through them, forming the basis of most holy texts.
Islam bases its religion on the same notion of religious prophecy inherited from Abraham and then ultimately through the prophet Muhammad, the final prophet sent by God in this belief system. Born around 570 CE in Mecca, at age 40, Muhammad was “visited” by the Angel Gabriel where he received his first revelation. Three years later, Muhammad began preaching the revelations publicly and forming the basis of the new religion. Other faiths such as Bahá'í, Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints and Seventh-day Adventist base themselves on similar forms of prophetic transmission.
Prophetic communication is usually dominated by trance-like behaviour, including obsessive levels of devotional prayer and ritual. After the era of Jesus Christ, late antiquity became a strange mix of Roman Catholicism and esoteric ritualistic religious movements aimed at advancing channelled or partially possession influenced prophecies.
The Pentecostal Church prominently features prophetic communication involving a type of language known as glossolalia (speaking in tongues). Glossolalia is a form of nonlinear speech containing speech-like syllables often lacking any comprehensible meaning. It is equivalent to the shamanic Icaros, observed in the Voodoo religion of Haiti, the Hindu Gurus, and the Fakirs of India. Shamans believe the Icaros is a spiritual dialect originating from the spirits themselves. The Shamans chant, sing, whistle and produce offerings before the spirits make their presence felt. (Kent, 2010 )
Glossolalia is a commonly cited outcome of psilocybin consumption (psychedelic mushrooms), and it also features in states of non-drug induced ecstasy trance “like music or glossolalia than like words and grammar”. (Kent, 2010 ) Pentecostals believe glossolalia is a heavenly language—the language of angels, the same belief held by the Shamans and their Icaros with the stated goal to facilitate temporary transference of an entity into a person. Shamans use elements of nature and hallucinogenic ritual ceremonies to seek supernatural access and spiritual insights.
In 2012, roughly a quarter of American religious congregations reported instances of members speaking in tongues. Pentecostals believe the indwelling possession of the Holy Spirit is a miraculous gift for all people who are willing to receive it, so they can then act as communicative vessels. They cite the New Testament to support their belief such as the Books of Mark 16:17 and Acts 2:4. The Book of 1 Corinthians 12-14 also outlines Apostle Paul’s wider discussion on the gifts of the Holy Spirit including his own ability to speak in tongues.
In New Age religions, channeling is a common form of spirit contact operating through people as “mediums”. This is a deeper form of possession where an entity effectively takes over full-control of the person temporarily to communicate a message. Channeling was popularised several centuries ago by Emanuel Swedenborg, an influential Swedish mystic, who ushered in New Age Christianity through his churches of New Jerusalem. Swedenborg fathered modern spiritualism, and his teachings became the backbone of transcendentalist movements spurning the occult revival in the late eighteenth century. Traditional forms of Christianity were rejected for more mystical approaches deriving from ancient esoteric practices linked back to Plato (a revered figure in esoteric lore and acknowledged by Swedenborg as his key inspiration). He reported constant communication with angels, conversing with them on a near-daily basis for the last thirty years of his life, claiming he was not born with the ability but it was something he prayed to God for and eventually received. (Swedenborg and Spiritualism, n.d.) He wrote how the angels heard his calling and used him to help reform Christianity, culminating in The Heavenly Doctrine. In the book, he accounts how the Lord opened his spiritual eyes, so he could freely visit heaven and talk with angels. Swedenborg would probably be considered a crazed personality were it not for his prolific and distinguished career as an inventor and scientist. Many people took him seriously, and his teachings became popular and widespread.
While Swedenborg popularised channeling in the modern age, it was certainly not a new act as the historical record reveals. After the occult revival, channeling and comparable forms of spiritualism grew over the next hundred years, peaking during the 1970s and 1980s at the height of the contemporary New Age movement. It again peaked during the decade leading up to 2012. Many channelers brought forth cataclysmic prophecies similar to those outlined in the biblical Book of Revelation, another channeled piece of literature. The author of Revelation identifies himself several times as “John,” accounting that he was on Patmos, a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea, when he received his first vision. Revelation 1:10-11 states:
I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book.
Interestingly, the rise in doomsday predictions also correlates to the rise in the number of people claiming to channel entities. Almost all the dire predictions from channelers throughout the centuries have inevitably gone unfulfilled. This cycle of unending—incorrect prophecy throughout the centuries—supports the belief that the long historical record of channelers is actually based on fraud.
owever, such deception may not entirely be intentional but rather a psychological phenomenon or cry for attention. Psychological research on channeling speculates alternate personalities emerge from the medium’s subconscious mind, but the alternate personality may not be known to the conscious mind. Equally, there have also been deliberate fraudsters who preyed on vulnerable people to capitalise monetarily through faked séances, cold-reading, and other psychological techniques used to skillfully profit on the trend. Such tactics still go on today. Sceptics almost always cite fraudulent examples as proof of how spiritualism is a fraud and then throw a blanket over the entire issue. While fraud has demonstrably occurred, it is not to say the historical record of spirit/entity contact can be discounted entirely. Since many prophecies fail to come true, then we need to look deeper at what game entities might be playing.
Many scientists argue the phenomenon of possession is just psychosis because the cross-over between hyper-religiosity and eventual psychosis is commonplace. Another plausible argument is that because trance is an unnatural process with real damaging effects, the emerging psychosis could be symptomatic of the neurological breakdown from the entity interference. Bourguignon highlights how the biblical New Testament outlines the link between psychosis and possession:
The popular view of the day, as expressed in the New Testament, was that evil spirits caused illness, physical and mental, by possessing people (Guinebert, 1959)…the New Testament (Mark 5:1–17) describes Jesus exorcising a mad man, whose possessing spirits then went into a herd of swine who drowned themselves. This account has been related to its political context: the Roman occupation of Palestine (Crossan, 1994, p. 89). Luke (11:14–15) tells of a mute man who was able to speak once the spirit that possessed him was driven out. Numerous exorcists were active in Galilee at the time, where there was probably a mass of manuals and other literature available to them. (Bourguignon)
Bourguignon’s research in anthropology outlines how possession trance, especially over an extended period, verifiably leads to the development of secondary or alternative personalities (multiple personality disorder). (Bourguignon) Multiple personality disorder has been renamed dissociative identity disorder in recent times.
Dr Patrick McNamara, a neuroscientist who studies religious experience, believes understanding spirit possession is a critical concept in the puzzle of understanding religion, but he warns it still remains a topic as complex as religion itself. He believes spirit possession might unlock the key to the puzzle of both the self and religion. (McNamara, 2009) He considers possession to be a fundamentally dissociative process involving the decentering of identity, derealisation, depersonalisation, and amnesia among other problems. He writes:
The possessed individual exhibits signs of unusual and persistent illness, immoral behaviors, motor tics, and nonsensical speech patterns. In all cases there is depersonalization and loss of Will and volition during the possession with a new identity emerging and controlling behavior. The loss of volition, the ontological uncertainty regarding the Self, and the emergence of a new Self, of course, are all signs that a decentering process is involved in possession. (McNamara, 2009)
McNamara suggests as a person’s consciousness becomes decentered, neurocognitive systems fight for control over a person’s behavioural responses. However, he admits to harbouring doubts about where these alter-ego identities originate, but he refrains from deliberately acknowledging their reality as it would likely be academic suicide.
So, what conclusions can we draw from this information? Science writer George Johnson ponders:
In the neurological search for the spiritual, there is no shortage of data. But pile it as high as you like, and you're left staring across the same divide. Depending on your predisposition, you can interpret all these experiments in two different ways. The believers take them as scientific evidence for the reality of their visions, while the atheists claim more proof that God is all in your head. …So it goes, round and round. Either the brain naturally or through a malfunction manufactures religious delusions, or some otherworldly presence speaks to homo sapiens through the language of neurological pulses. (Johnson, n.d.)
Perhaps a different insight on this issue comes from evaluating the shaman perspective about mental illness, which is viewed as a spiritual emergency due to a disconnect between a person and their awakening spiritual calling to become a healer. Dr Malidoma Patrice Somé, an elder of the Dagara people of West Africa, explains, “Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field.” (The Shamanic View of Mental Illness, n.d.) He believes a person in this type of crisis has been chosen as a medium by spiritual beings, and these “disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm.” (The Shamanic View of Mental Illness, n.d.) An article on Somé explains:
On the mental ward, Dr. Somé saw a lot of “beings” hanging around the patients, “entities” that are invisible to most people but that shamans and psychics are able to see. “They were causing the crisis in these people,” he says. It appeared to him that these beings were trying to get the medications and their effects out of the bodies of the people the beings were trying to merge with, and were increasing the patients’ pain in the process. “The beings were acting almost like some kind of excavator in the energy field of people. They were really fierce about that. The people they were doing that to were just screaming and yelling,” he said. He couldn’t stay in that environment and had to leave. (The Shamanic View of Mental Illness, n.d.)
In the Dagara tradition, the community helps the person reconcile the energies of the spirit world trying to merge with that person, so they become a bridge between the worlds. Somé calls this sponsorship, the newfound knowledge and skills arising in a person after merger are provided directly from the other world. Spirits, he says, are drawn to sensitive people, “The sensitivity is pretty much read as an invitation to come in.” (The Shamanic View of Mental Illness, n.d.) Therefore, permission to invade a person may not be granted, but the entities target individuals who are more responsive to becoming a receptive vessel. Somé continues, “Those who develop so-called mental disorders are those who are sensitive, which is viewed in Western culture as oversensitivity.” (The Shamanic View of Mental Illness, n.d.) In the shamanic culture, people do not experience oversensitivity because their culture nurtures the development of this entity integration process. Somé and his culture believe it to be positive when an entity tries to invade someone’s body, so they do everything they can to allow this “merger” to occur because the consequences of fighting against the entity can be heavy.
While science has proven a genetic cause of schizophrenia, Somé believes it is an illness caused when incoming spiritual energies are blocked, like a short-circuit. The shamans help a person to bring energies through by clearing away the blockages, aligning a person’s energy with the energy of the spirit, “The blockage of that emergence is what creates problems. ‘The energy of the healer is a high-voltage energy.’” (The Shamanic View of Mental Illness, n.d.) Somé believes spirit beings are as predominant in Western cultures as in his community in Africa. His solution is to come up with proper rituals to supposedly impart healing:
In the case of mountains, as an example to explain the phenomenon, ‘it’s a spirit of the mountain that is walking side by side with the person and, as a result, creating a time-space distortion that is affecting the person caught in it.’ What is needed is a merger or alignment of the two energies, ‘so the person and the mountain spirit become one.’ Again, the shaman conducts a specific ritual to bring about this alignment. (The Shamanic View of Mental Illness, n.d.)
However, I strongly counter his viewpoint about how much healing any entity can provide to an individual’s singular consciousness and spiritual development they could not achieve on their own accord.
Somé believes western countries have disconnected from ancient traditions, and this causes the mental illness epidemic because entity transference is disrupted. He believes western society needs ritual because he thinks it is impossible to live a sane life without it. He warns we cannot prevent the spirits of the natural world from coming to visit despite our modern amenities because, “It’s not so much what the spirit wants as it is what the person wants,” he says. “The spirit sees in us a call for something grand, something that will make life meaningful, and so the spirit is responding to that.” (The Shamanic View of Mental Illness, n.d.) I am in complete disagreement with this view because it implies we are at the whim of entities desiring to use and control us as they see fit. While I don’t discount this happening, I do believe if we each have sufficient self-integration then we can protect ourselves from interference. Somé believes we should give in to the merger with spiritual beings, but it is undoubtedly a form of abuse and control.
Many rituals all over the world share the same overarching outline: to create a certain interface of energy between the leader and the followers with the goal to contact supernatural entities and obtain benefits from them. The manipulative language in almost all spiritual texts is a major red flag to me. Christian mystic writer Furze Morrish discussed extensively about how rituals change us by linking us to entities in the unseen worlds:
Ritual, the applications of these normally invisible nature-forces, has been, and is being, used to bring about the evolution of humanity, by the linking-up of the more highly evolved Beings of the invisible worlds with human beings and by directly stimulating the centres of consciousness in mankind by the rhythms of sound and colour. (Morrish, The Ritual of Higher Magic , 1947)
Morrish is supportive of this process as he tries to convince his readers to embrace these entities.
Throughout the history of spiritual belief systems, spiritual evolution is the common propaganda mantra to convince people to willingly hand over control of their bodies to strange and often mysterious, calculated ritualised processes. Throughout esoteric literature, human evolution involves a stated goal of merger or unification with what is typically called “the Godhead.”
Esotericists reject the Darwinian evolutionary idea that man evolved from apes. Instead, they believe humans are evolving spiritually through a series of esoteric initiations to eventually ascend and become immortal as the soul gradually rises up the spiritual hierarchy over continuous reincarnations. In Catholicism, communion is the process of spiritual evolution by merging with the Godhead of the religion. The process involves bringing in the energies of spiritual hierarchy (i.e. the Trinity or Jesus) into our bodies and transmuting our matter into alignment with these “higher” energies to prepare our body to enter the heavenly realms. However, it needs to be pointed out that each belief typically only discusses its heavenly realm in favourable terms, either ignoring the possibility of other options for our evolution or preying on our fear with the creation of a singular alternative as some type of purgatory or hell we must desperately avoid.
Henry Cornelius Agrippa, one the most influential esoteric writers during the Renaissance, outlined the Empyrean Heaven as the seat of God and abode of angels and blessed spirits, which is the centre of the Divinity called the Anima Mundi. Agrippa explains that Hermes Trismegistus defined heaven as an intellectual sphere, whose centre is everywhere, and the inner circumference of this centre is surrounded by arrangements of the three hierarchies of angels that form the “entrance or inner gate of the empyrean heaven”. (Agrippa) The fixed stars, planets, and comets all exist in the “ethereal heaven, or firmament”, which sits inside the Anima Mundi, “Round the whole, as an atmosphere round a planet, the Anima Mundi, or universal Spirit of Nature, is placed.” (Agrippa) Occultist Israel Regardie explains his belief:
The definition perennially insisted upon by the Theurgists concerning this etheric plane is that it is a grade of refined plastic substance, less dense and gross than that which we normally see around us, magnetic and electric in nature, serving as the real ground upon which the forms and congeries of atoms in the physical universe arrange themselves. (Regardie, 2000)
Agrippa believed the energy of the Anima Mundi diffuse through the spheres of the planets and heavenly bodies, communicating through the centre of the Earth, “by means of natural law, or the Spirit of the World, that rules the terrestrial world.” (Agrippa) He states that when ancient authors spoke of their worship of Nature, they were speaking of the Anima Mundi as the “Soul of the Universe” or “Universal Spirit of Nature.” Thus, they consider the Anima Mundi as the intrinsic connection or single living intelligence in all living things on the planet.
Agrippa explains that the Godhead communicates to the angels and spirits and instantaneously conducts to the Anima Mundi so that all living things receive the impressions or ideas of the Divine Mind of the Godhead and the legions of angels in an angelic hierarchy:
Theologists have divided angels into different ranks or classes, which they term Hierarchies, a word signifying to rule in holy things. Ancient authors give nine orders of these celestial spirits—Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Angels, and Archangels—and these they class into Three Hierarchies, appointing them their respective offices in the performance of the word and will of God.” (Agrippa)
Agrippa believed the first of these divine essences is Jehovah (attributed to God the Father), being the pure and simple essence of the Supreme Divinity. He writes:
The three first of these ten names—Jehovah, Jah, and Ehjeh—express the essence of God, and are proper names; but the other seven are only expressive of his attributes. The only true name of God, according to the cabala, is the name of four letters—the Tetragrammaton—Yod-he-vau-he [YHWH]. (Agrippa)
The phrase “as above, so below” is commonly discussed in esoteric-based literature toward the process of ritual. The ritual space is said to represent the union of the whole of man with the whole of the Universe, a merging with the oneness of the universal god, where humans can access the Amina Mundi, the “energy of the world.” Through ritual, the worshipper becomes the Axis Mundi, a term used to define the central world pillar or world centre, the connection between Heaven and Earth. The axis mundi symbol is found in all major religions, in shamanic or animist cultures, and even in secular society. It seems that every inhabited region has a centre that is held sacred above and beyond other locales or places.
The Axis Mundi is a point is where communication from the lower realms on Earth can ascend and correspond with the higher realms of the anima mundi. Energy from higher realms may also descend to lower ones and be disseminated to all through the central pillar of the axis mundi. The axis mundi does not just have to be a person, it can be of the form of a natural object (like a place, a tree, or even fire), or a product of human manufacture (a tower, cross, totem pole, spire or pillar). Its proximity to heaven is where various axis mundi features adorn temples, pagodas or churches, and in secular culture (skyscrapers, pillars). He states that by travelling deeper through their own consciousness, they then pass through into the anima mundi, where they can then interface with the Godhead and angelic beings. The concept of ritual is for the individual to reach the astral space by passing through anastral interface, which is not naturally connected to us, but the ritual instructs us to seek it. The astral realm is an external area beyond our consciousness that separates a portion of our spiritual “anatomy” from the body and leaves people vulnerable to otherworldly entities and energies.According to Morrish, the spirits exist in the higher realms, and ritual is how we open our bodies up to communication with them. As the bridge between man and the spirit world is built, ritual effects the nerve-centres in the body, drawing consciousness from the physical body into the astral realm and attracting the attention of “very lofty Angels” who intensify the auras of human beings taking part. Morrish states that occult science investigates three submineral, or elemental, kingdoms, which are non-conscious substances of the supra-physical (heavenly) worlds. He claims intelligent entities from those higher kingdoms “use the substance of the elemental kingdoms as ‘bodies.’” (Morrish, Outline of Metaphysics, 1945) Speaking of these entities, Morrish writes, “Religion venerates them under various names, such as ‘Angels’, ‘Principalities’, ‘Virtues’, ‘powers’ ‘Seraphs’, ‘Gods’, etc. The Indian term is ‘Deva’, or ‘Shining’, from which we get ‘Divine’.” (Morrish, Outline of Metaphysics, 1945)
These entities have “radio-active” characteristics, and their dynamic bodies are not inert like physical beings here on Earth; rather, they are in “constant motion-the particles and motion being governed by the internal consciousness. They are imperceptible to physical senses, but observable by certain grades of E.S.P.” (Morrish, Outline of Metaphysics, 1945) He concludes:
Man being a miniature universe, the same principles govern his aura as affect the currents in the magnetic aura of Earth. Winds, electrical storms and other climatic movements in the Earth's...this is what happens in principle in the human aura of emotion. (Morrish, The Ritual of Higher Magic , 1947)
Morrish claims that when we create archetypal forms on the mental plane, we are ensouled by entities of a higher order. (Morrish, Outline of Metaphysics, 1945) He also writes how the bodies of man are a battlefield between competing off-world entities fighting for control over human bodies:
Man is thus the battlefield of the solar and lunar angels, even though he knows nothing of their existence, and probably ridicules the very possibility. Man has the power, all the same, to give victory to one side or other by lending either side the use of his mind. Man's Mind contains the secret of victory or defeat. (Morrish, The Ritual of Higher Magic , 1947)
Morrish is right here about the power of humanity to prevail over competing entity groups, but he is still leading people astray because he believes we must choose a particular side (or group) to align ourselves with.
Ritual-based belief systems offer their solution to interference from troublesome entities by asking for even greater devotion to their own spiritual hierarchy or group. Morrish falls into the same trap of endorsing the opening of the astral layer (through the heart chakra centre) to link with his (supposedly benevolent) spiritual hierarchy of angels. He writes:
Thus the angels use these psychic centres as a means of contacting the consciousness of man. In fact man is conscious only to the extent that these centres are developed. When all his centres are awakened and glowing, in conjunction with a fully developed Heart Centre, Man becomes Super-man, the Master of Life, the Teacher of Angels and Men, and the higher Angels recognise his victory and co-operate with him...It is through the development right usage of these psychic nerve-centres that man achieves that victory. Which is why the Angels willingly co-operate with man in his spiritual rituals, because ceremonial causes the psychic centres to rotate more rapidly and so awaken. This is one of the great values of Spiritual Ritual. (Morrish, The Ritual of Higher Magic , 1947)
Esoteric advocates believe the vice that has prevented man from elevating to higher states of consciousness is working out of the lower chakra centres in the body; something that “entities of darkness” have long strived to manipulate in us. Stimulating our lower centres through lower states of mind attracts lower forms of entities, but by opening the heart centre, higher entities are attracted, “Different rituals accomplish this…” he reiterates. (Morrish, The Ritual of Higher Magic , 1947)
Morrish and his fellow esoteric peers do not view linking with entities as a bad thing. They are pro-ritual because they believe ritual helps loosen the grip of lower-level “desire” and to awaken higher mental and emotional feeling in a person. The goal they seek is perfection, which they see in the “masters” or “gods” of the spiritual hierarchy promoting such belief. It is explained how these entities aim to stimulate and elevate the consciousness of mankind, but the idea is we must link with the more evolved vibratory co-resonance of angelic beings in order to elevate our own consciousness first. Therefore, esoteric groups embrace ritual because it allows for more rapid activation of psychic ability which they use as evidence for being on the correct spiritual mastery path. Any awakening psychic faculties allow a person to seek direct communication with off-world entities. Which is why esoteric and occult literature is filled with instructional information on practices to facilitate altered consciousness states—aimed at loosening our connection to one’s inner self—and initiate contact to outside consciousness groups.
Morrish discusses how we can perform rituals which attract “entities of light” to restore the higher centres and to “purify” ourselves. He explains:
Beautiful, spiritual rituals...unify on mental and higher mental levels...sublimating emotion and awakening it in the upper part of the aura...to raise consciousness from the emotional to the spiritual, by the process of purification. (Morrish, The Ritual of Higher Magic , 1947)
Here we see the reoccurrence of the theme of developing consciousness through purification rituals which reject our present human value. When these beliefs subject our thought process to thinking we are unevolved, impure in some form, then we need rescuing to secure our salvation enforces subservience to higher order beings. These entities supposedly have the energies or knowledge to elevate us, something we cannot seemingly do without their assistance. However, this is an obvious lie, because we always have the ability to gain more of ourselves indivudally, something we can do without entity assistance.
Ritual purification is a feature of many religions. Baptism in water, of course, is one form of ritual purification that occurs in several denominations. Fasting and prayer feature heavily in the religion of Islam for purifying the body. Hindus bathe the entire body in their ritual purification ceremonies. Indigenous Americans purify through sweat lodges. Purification ritual stems from cleansing oneself of prior affiliation with other gods or spirits. This also applies to beliefs. One must be cleansed first to become a blank canvas and ultimately become transfigured in the image of the Godhead. In reality, this is an insidious form of mind control designed to disempower an individual, program their mind to think they are “unclean” and ask for guidance on how to purify themselves. The solution given is to lose individual sovereingty and link one’s consciousness to an entity group. This is actually nothing more than “Stockholm syndrome”, a psychological response when abuse victims start to bond with their abusers.
One of the most famous esoteric teachers was Rudolf Steiner, who pumped out an unimaginable volume of books (around 400) and about 6000 lectures during his lifetime and regularly wrote about our need to “intercourse with beings of higher worlds.” (Steiner, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and It's Attainment, 1944) His influential teachings remain popular and Steiner based schools are common in many countries. He was a Theosophist for a period before he split from the order in 1907 forming his own movement called Anthroposophy. Steiner believed in the existence of spiritual worlds and we could access them through inner spiritual development. He wrote extensively about the human body being comprised of physical, etheric and astral components. He spoke of hierarchies of spiritual beings who created these sheaths and are constantly working within them.
Steiner explained how spiritual development permits “intercourse with beings of higher worlds”, but “only if their existence is manifested in the astral or soul-world.” (Steiner, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and It's Attainment, 1944) This hierarchy—he claims—is fronted by the Archangel Michael, an entity Steiner mentioned as being the true founder of his Anthroposophy movement, and the entity who helped overshadow him to deliver his huge volume of work. Steiner’s staggeringly impressive volume of books and lectures, seems more conceivable in scope, given it was wholly or partly channelled through him.
The Urantia Book discusses Michael as being the appointed leader of our local universe called Nebadon and ruling angel of our planet. Steiner agrees, writing:
In the last third of the nineteenth century, the Spiritual Being we call Michael became the Ruler, as it were, of everything of a spiritual character in human events on the earth…Michael's rulership is always characterized by the growth of cosmopolitanism, by the spread of a spiritual impulse among peoples who are ready to receive it, no matter what language they speak. (Steiner, The Archangel Michael: His Mission and Ours : Selected Lectures and Writings, 1994)
In his 1918 lecture titled, “The Work of the Angels In Man's Astral Body,” Steiner explains how we are typically unconscious of entity involvement:
If we genuinely study these sheaths of man, we realise that spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies are working together with wisdom and set purpose in everything that takes place, without our being conscious of it, in our bodily sheaths. (Steiner, The Work of the Angels In Man's Astral Body, 1918)
Steiner embraces the subservience brought upon by overshadowing as beneficial for the spiritual advancement of humankind. He reports how these angelic hierarchies are constantly working within our bodies and the underlying goal of the entities is to steer humankind into performing the objectives of the entity (alien) hierarchy:
A time will come — and it must not pass unnoticed — when out of the spiritual world men will receive through their Angel an impulse….This is impending in the evolution of humanity, for the Angel is working to this end through the pictures woven in man's astral body. ...Spiritual Science for the spirit, freedom of religious life for the soul, brotherhood for the bodily life — this resounds like cosmic music through the work wrought by the Angels in the astral bodies of men… this is the impulse laid by the Angels into the pictures…. All that is necessary is to raise our consciousness to a different level and we shall feel ourselves transported to this wonderful site of the work done by the Angels in the human astral body. (Steiner, The Work of the Angels In Man's Astral Body, 1918)
Steiner refers to the angels as weaving pictures in the “astral body”, and he gives techniques on how we can notice these pictures by training our psychic abilities:
The Angels form pictures in man's astral body and these pictures are accessible to thinking that has become clairvoyant. If we are able to scrutinise these pictures, it becomes evident that they are woven in accordance with quite definite impulses and principles. Forces for the future evolution of mankind are contained in them. …it is clear that they have a very definite plan for the future configuration of social life on earth; their aim is to engender in the astral bodies of men such pictures as will bring about definite conditions in the social life of the future. (Steiner, The Work of the Angels In Man's Astral Body, 1918)
What exactly does Steiner mean, when he refers to pictures? The pictures may refer to geometric constructs of energy, as symbols are geometric constructs of energy. UFO abductees report how entities communicate to them through a symbolic form of telepathy, confirmed by Steiner who claims angelic messages are composed of symbolic substance. Symbolic frequencies can affect our DNA, our cells, our nervous system and the brain because they all operate on electromagnetic energy. A common religious belief in eastern and new age religions is opening the third eye to attain spiritual vision.
According to the The All That is, The Pure Essence, entities try to achieve telepathic control through multiple implants into human anatomy. Commonly, human thoughts and behaviors—with willed responses by choices of their own—can be controlled or altered by otherworldly entity telepathy if an astral layer to the human body energetic essence is implanted. Entity telepathic control is then directed through the implanted layer. Furthermore, images and visions that people receive are not occuring through the implanted astral field, but by a separate implanted shield covering the ‘third eye’ pineal gland of the human body essence. This enables untoward entity reception of images, access and manipulation of human thought and behavior. (You can learn more about the All That is, The Pure Essence through the research of Theresa Talea at www.rediscoverypress.com).
Ultimately, telepathic implants dismantle executive control and impulse lower brain activity. The executive system in our frontal lobes cannot discern the origin of these thoughts, so a less aware person mistakes them for their own.
For an entity to access our personal body, our defences must be lowered through willingness to open ourselves to these influences. I believe that many facets of culture are systematically designed to lower our natural protection from entity interference. In another lecture, Steiner proclaims:
The angel is at work in that person’s astral body as part of the whole community of angels that is working on the future of humanity. The angel makes use of that individual’s astral body regardless. And we can observe the work being done in that astral body. Yet, knowing what the angel is doing in our astral body is only the first step. (Steiner, The Work of the Angels In Man's Astral Body, 1918)
Steiner believes we are powerless to prevent entities using the astral layer, so we should just go along with their plan and even assist them. And here is the most important relevation: this manipulation is not limited to people active in religious or spiritual pursuits. Ordinary people who just go about their every day life are also used by these entities:
Great world-events often pass men by just as something that is taking place in the city passes a sleeper by ... although people are apparently awake. At such times, while men, in spite of being awake, are sleeping through some momentous event, it can be seen how in their astral bodies — quite independently of what they want or do not want to know — this important work of the Angels continues. (Steiner, The Work of the Angels In Man's Astral Body, 1918)
Steiner acknowledges how angels use the bodies of people without their awareness, even while they are sleeping:
If men do not allow this to be achieved in the astral body while they are awake, the Angels would, in this case, endeavour to fulfill their aims through their sleeping bodies. Therefore what the Angels could not achieve, because in their waking life men slept through it, would be achieved with the help of the physical and etheric bodies of men during actual sleep. …It would be achieved by means of the etheric and physical bodies in the sleeping state, when human beings who ought to be awake to what is going on were outside these bodies with their Ego and astral body…A man may be considered entirely unworthy of having any connections at all with the spiritual world. But the truth about such a man may well be that in this incarnation he is just a terrible dormouse who sleeps through everything that goes on around him. Yet one of the choir of the Angels is working in his astral body at the future of mankind. Observation of his astral body shows that it is being made use of, in spite of these conditions. (Steiner, The Work of the Angels In Man's Astral Body, 1918)
Steiner’s work essentially recruits people for these entities because he further outlines how a time will come when, through our angel, an inspiring impulse will arrive. He argues such an impulse leads to religious freedom, whereby our consciousness soul forms a relationship with the angel as we await “an event that will come at some point in our development because it is what the angel is preparing us for with its images in our astral body.” (Steiner, Death as Metamorphosis of Life)
The implications of these statements reveal how entities not only intrude the bodies of people active in these spiritual practices, but also of normal everyday people going about life oblivious to subtle manipulation that might be taking place in their fields. The comments from Steiner reveal how non-terrestrial entities have an end-game, something they are preparing us all for.
The Urantia Book explains the purpose is to create an ongoing link with entities so they can be our “thoughtadjusters.” This is why spiritual rituals that call upon entities may be the greatest tool of mass mind control there is, but even if we are non-participants, the entities still can manipulate us in many other ways. Spiritual practices are designed to escalate the control entities desire over us. but all addictions, dissociative behaviours and immoral behaviours also weaken aspects of self-identity. which then weakens our personal sovereignty and opens the door to these entities.
The way to protect yourself from entity manipulation is to actively protect your body through willful choice to reject linking your consciousness with outside entities and their belief systems. Furthermore, it requires thoughts and actions to be alignment with more pure energies that act as a barrier to entity interference. Many ignorant people leave their “fields” open to entity interference due to engaging in behaviours that compromise their wholesome self.
Health and natural healing coach Jason Christoff warns, “The biggest secret is that how you think opens your body to operating as a gateway for other non-physical entities to travel through you.” (Christoff, n.d.) We have the power to prevent any entity manipulation, which is why entities are going to great lengths to have us make the decision, actively or passively, to open up our bodies to them without our full awareness of their presence and what they really are. Christoff adds, “We’re slaves living on an elaborate control grid.....based on indoctrination, propaganda, chemical sedation, toxic medication and we’re even used as food energy for dark spirits who live outside the frequency of visible sight.” (Christoff, n.d.)
Therefore, in my mind, the evidence throughout our history is enormous and compelling in support of some forms of consciousness interfacing with humanity and manipulating it—through many spiritual and cultural movements that lead us away from finding a more pure energy within ourselves.
When the human race collectively weakens itself, we expose ourselves to greater control and manipulation, and maybe eventual destruction. In order to combat this hidden-in-plain-sight agenda, I see believe we must regain and reclaim the power of our own consciousness and physical essence. Even if people do not consider the probable reality of otherworldly entities and consciousness, reclaiming personal responsibility is still a wise and effective action for personal empowerment.
I don’t believe religions and other spiritual practices are designed with the best of intentions for us, even if they say they are. They want to change you and your identity away from your naturally capable being into something else. Becoming more educated is a good pathway forward. Avoid any “hive mind” collectives based on a strict ideology that imposes onto you anything which conforms you to be something you are not already. Be wary of drawing foreign energies into yourself, and turn away from places where you feel heightened or negative energy affecting you. If entities require us to fall into a trance to facilitate their form of controlling possession, then step back and think twice about giving away your power and self.
Bibliography
412teens.org. (n.d.). What does it mean to surrender my life to God? Retrieved from http://412teens.org/qna/what-does-it-mean-to-surrender-to-God.php
Agrippa, H. C. (n.d.). The Philosophy of Natural Magic.
Are you in prayer or in a trance. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/jesnikousfiles/home/are-you-in-prayer-or-in-trance
Baigent, M., & Leigh, R. (1997). The Elixir and the Stone. Viking.
Bourguignon, E. (n.d.). Possession and Trance . Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/53360295/Bourguignon-Erika-Possession-and-Trance
Changes in aminoacidergic and monoaminergic neurotransmission in the hippocampus and amygdala of rats after ayahuasca ingestion. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24340137
Christoff, J. (n.d.). Not So Hidden Black Magic and Your Children. Retrieved from http://www.jchristoff.com/not-so-hidden-black-magic-and-your-children-2/
Creme, B. (n.d.). A Meditation for the New Age.
Cultural Rituals: Their Meanings and Symbolisms. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://sc2218.wikifoundry.com/page/Cultural+Rituals%3A+Their+Meanings+and+Symbolisms
Cultures of chemically induced hallucinations. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-27/edition-9/cultures-chemically-induced-hallucinations
DeKorne, J. (2011). Psychedelic Shamanism: The Cultivation, Preparation, and Shamanic Use of Psychotropic Plants. North Atlantic Books.
Dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) is associated with Novelty Seeking (NS) and substance abuse: the saga continues... (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v6/n5/full/4000918a.html
Evidence for 5-HT2 involvement in the mechanism of action of hallucinogenic agents. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6513725
Freeland, G. (1995). Canberra Cosmos. Primavera Press.
Functional anatomy of 5-HT2A receptors in the amygdala and hippocampal complex: relevance to memory functions. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23591691
Gentiles, J. o. (2010). The False Prophet Azazel. JMB Productions.
Geographic, N. (2013, January). Restless Genes. Retrieved from http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/125-restless-genes/dobbs-text
Hach, R. (2001). Possession and Persuasion: The Rhetoric of Christian Faith. Xlibiris.
Hagerty, B. (n.d.). Prayer May Reshape Your Brain ... And Your Reality. Retrieved from NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104310443
Hallucination, or Divine Revelation? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/cultural-history-of-madness/394964/
Harvey, D. J. (n.d.). Role of the Serotonin 5-HT2A Receptor in Learning. Retrieved from http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/10/5/355.full
Higher Expression of Serotonin 5-HT2A Receptors in the Postmortem Brains of Teenage Suicide Victims. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/data/Journals/AJP/3734/419.pdf?resultClick=1
How to Contact Your Spirit Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://psychics.co.uk/blog/how-to-contact-your-spirit-guide/
Hypotheses regarding the mechanisms of ayahuasca in the treatment of addictions. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Hypotheses+regarding+the+mechanisms+of+ayahuasca+in+the+treatment+of...-a0320424460
Igan, M. (n.d.). Earths Forbidden History - Searching for the Past.
Ignoring 500 Billion Galaxies: Mathematics vs Common Sense in the Debate About the Probability of Extraterrestrial Life. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/02/ignoring-500-billion-galaxies-mathematics-vs-common-sense-in-the-debate-about-the-probability-of-ext.html
James, W. (1902). The Varieties of Religious Experience.
Johnson, G. (n.d.). God Is in the Dendrites. Retrieved from Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/brains/2007/04/god_is_in_the_dendrites.html
Julie L. Fudge, M., & Ana B. Emiliano, M. (n.d.). The Extended Amygdala and the Dopamine System: Another Piece of the Dopamine Puzzle. Retrieved from http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/pdfAccess.ashx?url=%2Fdata%2FJournals%2FNP%2F3925%2F306.pdf
Jung, C. G. (1970). The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Princeton University Press.
Kent, J. L. (2010 ). Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason. PIT Press / Supermassive.
Library, O. (n.d.). A Gentle Introduction to Trance Theory. Retrieved from https://occultlibrary.info/introduction-trance-theory/
Lyvers, M. (n.d.). The Neurochemistry of Psychedelic Experiences. Retrieved from http://epublications.bond.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=hss_pubs
McNamara, P. (2009). The Neuroscience of Religious Experience. Cambridge University Press.
Metzner, R. (1994). Addiction And Transcendence As Altered States Of Consciousness. 26(1). Retrieved from http://www.atpweb.org/jtparchive/trps-26-94-01-001.pdf
Ministries, P. (n.d.). Angelic Possession. Retrieved from http://www.propheticministries.org/teachings/prophetic_messages/angels/angelic_possession.htm
Misinformation about open access journals. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.scientificjournals.org/misinformation_campaigns.htm
Morrish, F. (1945). Outline of Metaphysics. Rider & Co.
Morrish, F. (1947). The Ritual of Higher Magic . Oak Tree Books.
Neural correlates of a mystical experience in Carmelite nuns. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.pucrs.br/feecultura/2010/neural-mysticism.pdf
Neuropharmacology of beta-carboline alkaloids. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://poisonousplants.ansci.cornell.edu/toxicagents/betacarbolines/bcarbneuropharm.html
Otto, R. (1958). The Idea of the Holy. Oxford University Press.
PhD, L. N., & PhD, J. D. (2010). Happiness Genes. New Page Books.
Pinkham, L. R. (n.d.). Abnormal modulation of amygdala activity in schizophrenia in response to direct- and averted-gaze threat-related facial expressions. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21159729
R. R. Griffiths, W. A. (n.d.). Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Retrieved from http://csp.org/psilocybin/Hopkins-CSP-Psilocybin2006.pdf
RB., M. (n.d.). Neurophysiological effects of hallucinogens on serotonergic neuronal systems. . Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7177511
Regardie, I. (2000). The Tree of Life - A Study In Magic. Samuel Weiser Inc.
Rick Strassman, M. (2001). DMT The Spirit Molecule. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press.
Steiner, R. (1918, October). The Work of the Angels In Man's Astral Body. Retrieved from http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19181009p01.html
Steiner, R. (1944). Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and It's Attainment.
Steiner, R. (1994). The Archangel Michael: His Mission and Ours : Selected Lectures and Writings. SteinerBooks.
Steiner, R. (n.d.). Death as Metamorphosis of Life. SteinerBooks.
Surrender To God’s Loving Control. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://rickwarren.org/devotional/english/surrender-to-god-s-loving-control
Swedenborg and Spiritualism. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.swedenborgstudy.com/articles/history-religion/spiritualism.htm
Temple, R. (1987). The Sirius Mystery . Destiny Books.
The Inner Life Lecture. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.anandgholap.net/Inner_Life_Vol_I-CWL.htm
The Shamanic View of Mental Illness. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://earthweareone.com/what-a-shaman-sees-in-a-mental-hospital/
The Urantia Book. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.urantia.org
Xygalatas, D. (n.d.). Firewalking and the Brain: The Physiology of High-Arousal Rituals. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/577136/Fire-walking_and_the_Brain_The_Physiology_of_High-Arousal_Rituals