IUAES 2013 MANCHESTER WMW 13 The Extended Self: Relations Between Material and Immaterial Worlds 8 August 2013

An audio version of this paper delivered at the conference can be found on the Afterlife Research Centre website. Self, Personhood and Possession Fiona Bowie The Western bounded self Birth is an act of physical and psychological separation the first decisive and abrupt, the latter more gradual. We learn to think of ourselves as discrete, separate individuals. We have our bodies, distinct from other bodies, with its boundary of skin, and a separate and unique mind, also separated from other minds, with which we think our own private thoughts and hold internal conversations. Neuroscience is beginning to track the location of some of these thoughts in the brain, and to help those without speech to turn images, ideas and preverbal signals into language. If we are spiritually minded we may also envisage a unique individual soul or spirit. The soul may be conceived of as pre-existent and capable of surviving the death of the physical body. It may retain some aspects of its individuality outside the physical realm, and even carry experiences and characteristics through successive incarnations. This unique, separate experience of embodied human existence constitutes the Self. We may be in relation to other selves, share many of their genes, and be mutually interdependent, but even in the case of identical twins, each Self is bounded and grounded in an individual body, mind and spirit. The sensation of not being so grounded and separate is commonly treated in Western medical terms as a pathology or illness, to be treated medically, often with mind-altering drugs.1 Anthropologists and historians are well aware that this notion of a separate, bounded self is unusual in cultural terms. Virtually all other cultures hold to the notion, based on the experience of individuals and groups, that the Self, if it exists at all, is permeable, and in constant contact and relationship with other selves at a psychic as well as a physical and emotional level. Communications may be unconscious or conscious, mediated by others or unmediated, wanted or unsought, but they exist nonetheless, and come in many different forms, with different results and effects. They involve communication between living humans and those who have died, between human and non-human beings, between visible and invisible entities. These entities may be projections of one or more minds, or have a non-human origin. The forces or entities with which people communicate may be regarded as angelic or demonic, helpful or dangerous, mischievous and playful or sad and lonely, and in need of help and guidance. In this paper I will consider some of the ways in which this extended self is experienced in Western, clinical settings in ways that parallel much of what we know from non-Western cultures. When we listen to the stories of communication with other invisible selves, and the ways in which individual boundaries may be breached, we find numerous parallels and consistencies across time and space, suggesting that the Western experience is not, in fact, so different from those of other peoples, and that the Enlightenment, for all the clarity and rationality that it brought, did not ultimately succeed in banishing ghosts and spirits to the realm of fantasy and pathology.

The porous self spirit attachment and possession I will start with some examples that are representative of foundational aspects of British culture, the Bible and Shakespeare. There are many passages in the New Testament that illustrate a view of the world in which people not only communicate with ancestors, angelic beings and gods or God, but can also be possessed by them. One of the best known of many examples in which Jesus acts as an exorcist is the story of the Gadarene Demoniac in Luke 8:6-39 and Mark 5:1-20. Jesus and his disciples had crossed to the Eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, to the country of the Gerasenses. They were met by naked man from the city, troubled by demons2 who lived among the tombs. He was usually shackled, but as on this occasion would sometimes break free. He was both attracted to Jesus and fearful of him. On seeing Jesus he fell down in front of him and called out What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me (v.29). Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to leave the man, but first needed to know the name of the spirit or spirits he was dealing with. When asked who he, i.e. the tormenting spirit was, the man replied Legion. The redactor helpfully adds that this was because there was not one but many spirits tormenting the man. The spirits recognised Jesus power to expel them, but begged not to be sent into the abyss in Jewish thought a place of torment. Jesus agreed and instead sent them into a herd of swine grazing nearby. The pigs then rushed down the bank into the lake and drowned. What happened to the spirits next is not part of the story, but the man was healed and able to go about his business. There are several elements in this story that we see in later Western accounts. The tradition of casting out spirits with force, rather than guiding them more gently into the Light, reflects a focus on the possessed host or victim rather than the spirit, that remains characteristic of exorcisms within the Christian (but not the Jewish) tradition. The elements of identification and bargaining are commonly found in modern accounts of spirit release, indicating that we are probably dealing with autonomous, intelligent entities separate from the victim or patient, particularly if they involve identifiable (deceased) individuals. In another New Testament passage (Matthew 12:22-45), Jesus heals a man possessed by an unclean spirit, then gets into an argument with some religious leaders (Pharisees) about the source of his power. During the course of the discussion, Jesus tells the story of a man who swept his house (i.e. his body) free of an unclean spirit, but the spirit cannot find anywhere else to go, or to rest as the story puts it, and decides to return to the man from whom he was expelled. Discovering the house unoccupied, swept and put in order (12:44), not only does the spirit re-enter the house but seven other spirits join him, so that the last state of that person is worse than the first (v.45). This story shows an awareness of what is now usually termed spirit attachment, and the possibility of unwanted possession in vulnerable individuals, which also has striking modern parallels.3 Jesus and his contemporaries would have been familiar with accounts in the Hebrew Scriptures in which spirits are attracted to and possess the living. These dybbuk are generally earthbound spirits with unfinished business who are attracted to people who have similar desires.4 In I Samuel 18:8-12, for instance, King Saul becomes jealous of his servant, David, whose deeds are praised above those of his master. Sauls anger opens him to a murderous spirit, under whose influence he tries to kill David by hurling his spear at him. Failing in this Saul tries to rid himself of David by giving him impossibly dangerous tasks as an army commander. In I Kings 22:18-23 a lying spirit enters the mouths of four hundred prophets in order to entice

King Ahab to attack Ramoth-gilead, a piece of territory he had lost to his rival, the king of Aram. Only the prophet Micaiah, who identifies the lying spirit who had mislead the other prophets, dared tell the king that an attack would be fatal, and suffered imprisonment as a result. According to Micaiah the lying spirit volunteered for this task in order to engineer Ahabs downfall as punishment for following Baal, a pagan god, rather than Yahweh. In both instances it is clearly believed that a spirit, separate from the living actors, is capable of possessing them, sometimes speaking through their body, persuading them to perform actions they would not otherwise have carried out. William Shakespeare, arguably Englands most famous and respected poet and playwright, wrote his Scottish play Macbeth, a tale of murder, treachery and witchcraft, in about 1605. The themes in Macbeth show the influence of King James, a notorious witch hunter, who came to the throne in 1603. In 1597 King James had published a book entitled Daemonologie, in which he set out how to identify and deal with witches. Macbeth is an ambitious lord who, with the help of his scheming wife and three witches, plots to take over the throne. Shakespeares play involves a form of possession, with echoes of King Saul in his violent rage, again with some striking modern parallels. Lady Macbeth summons the spirits of the night, the dark forces, or in modern terminology dark force entities (DFEs), who are attracted by her evil thoughts, emotions and desires. The deed she and her husband may lack the courage to perform by themselves will be accomplished with the aid of evil spirits: Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood; stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shame my fell purpose, nor keep peace between the effect and it! (Act 1 Scene 5, 40-47). Lady Macbeth might be described as a practitioner of the dark arts. Unlike Saul she consciously summoned the malevolent spirits. The idea that spirits tend on mortal thoughts and can enter the aura of someone who resonates to a similar frequency, is an ancient one (while the terminology will differ). It is not, however, an idea confined to past history, ancient scriptures or literature. Contemporary clairvoyants and spirit release therapists, as well as channelled discarnate entities, warn that all emotions and thoughts, but in particular depression, jealousy, anger and fear, attract similar spirits. These strong emotions can damage or tear a persons energy field or aura, which normally acts as a protective boundary, allowing spirits entry. Medical doctor and hypnotherapist, Louise Ireland-Frey, for instance, gives some examples of possession by dark entities of those who either intentionally wish to curse others, or who attract spirits of a similar disposition (1999). She recounts a dialogue with a spirit obsessing a powerful American figure, who had the potential to do considerable harm due to his influential position. Using a colleague, Charlene, as a channel for the spirit, Ireland-Frey asked her guide for permission to contact the mans Higher Mind, and then asked that the strongest possessing entity come forward and identify himself using Charlenes voice. Once again the importance of identifying a spirit by name appears as a key factor in the process of exorcism or spirit release, perhaps because it reawakens in the attached spirit the sense of being a bounded morally autonomous individual who can make free choices. A spirit identifying him/herself only as Pride claimed that s/he5 had been attracted to the man to whom s/he was attached when the latter was fifteen years old,

drawn by his pride. As they were both proud people, the spirit claimed that they had a natural affinity. In this case Pride appeared to be working with a group of evil spirits under a more powerful master, who had taught them to fear the Light. The therapists role was to persuade the spirit to find the spark of Light hidden in the depths of his/her heart, and to rekindle a desire to use his or her talents for good rather than evil. The possessing spirit was not ready to accept the help of the Beings of Light who appeared, having worked so long and hard for the master, but agreed to go to a safe and solitary room where the commanding spirit could not harm him/her, until ready to make a choice as to which way to go. The powerful but dangerous public figure who had been the subject of the therapists attention subsequently lost his position of power, but appeared much more relaxed (Ireland-Frey,1999:263-275). Despite such cultural antecedents, and parallel contemporary accounts, the idea that spirits can be attracted to and influence the living is an anathema to many modern Westerners. Perhaps the popularity of the genre of ghost hunters, possession, exorcism and other paranormal phenomena in film and television should alert us to the fact that such ideas are not far below the surface of our culture, but they do not form a systematic part of the normative Western world view, and are certainly not of professional medical training. Even among contemporary Christians, Jews and Muslims, the Semitic faiths that arose within a cultural context where spirits and spirit possession was ubiquitous, incidents such as those describing Jesuss activities as an exorcist are generally interpreted metaphorically. Wouter Hanegraaff (2012), Professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, refers to the discomfort of post-Enlightenment Europeans and the academy in particular, at any mention of its discarded, shadow, esoteric past.6 We live in a culture in which experiences such as communicating with or sensing the presence of a deceased relative or friend are very common (the interpretation rather than occurrence of such phenomena vary), while talking about them is seen as risky, implying mental instability (LaGrand, 1999). Contemporary Western clinical accounts of possession and spirit attachment Psychiatrists, psychotherapists and other medical practitioners working with patients with mental distress and psychotic disorders, or displaying apparently psychologically-based physical symptoms are generally trained to dismiss metaphysical speculations as to the origins of disease. The default position is to focus on the body and brain, usually understood as synonymous with mind, of the patient or client. In almost all cases where those with a scientific and medical training encounter evidence of spirits, reincarnation, out of body experiences, discarnate communication, and so on, they do so by accident through their patients disclosures. Whatever their subsequent interpretation of what is taking place, they note that real mental and physical healing often occurs as a result of engaging with and releasing possessing or obsessing spirits.7 Scientific proof may be hard to come by, but anecdotal accounts of healing abound. American playwright, Gary Leon Hill (2005), recounted his own experience of possession and depossession. His great grandmother, Emaline Elizabeth, had piggy-backed first on one son, and then another, after her death. The second son, Uncle Harry, had then piggy-backed on (i.e. became attached to the energy field of) Hills mother. When Hills mother died Uncle Harry moved into the Light but Emaline Elizabeth had been hiding (nested) in Harry, possibly attracted by Hills agitation she in turn attached herself to him. Hill recalls that he had a miserable year. Two friends, Ruth, a medium who used a pendulum to contact spirits, and Wally, who

acted as interlocutor, carried out a depossession at a distance. They were in Seattle at the time, and Hill on the other side of the country distance being no object: I was in New York, not thinking about it, when this whoa! just this release happened. In my chest, my upper arms, this light. My crown chakra literally lifted toward the ceiling, and the ceiling lifted, and my spine straightened and the fluid in it cooled, and a profound weight just went. Emaline Elizabeth was gone (2005:156). Distance healing is common, but the person released from possessing spirits may never know that they had been treated and so not attribute any improvement in their condition to release from obsessing spirits or negative energies, unless there is the kind of personal communication that we have in Gary Leon Hills case. Where, as in most of the cases recounted below, the diagnosis and treatment take place in a clinical setting, the links between dispossession and restored health are more apparent. The techniques of mediumship vary, but the use of two individuals working in partnership with complementary roles is common. There is a sensitive or medium to contact the possessing or earthbound spirit or spirits. They will be able to ask permission of a patients Higher Self to do their work, and to summon or channel protective spirits. They are paired with a second person who asks questions and talks to the spirits who express themselves through the entranced medium. The chief role of this second person who acts as interlocutor is to help or persuade the spirits to leave their host and move into the Light in order to free the patient and enable the discarnate entities to continue their own spiritual journey. The light or Light is a recurrent theme in spirit release work, and indeed in all accounts of the transition from this material world to other parallel worlds, apparently acting as a portal to the higher astral planes. Carl Wickland, Thirty Years Among The Dead One of the earliest written accounts of spirit possession or obsession in a modern clinical setting is that of Carl Wickland (1861-1945), a Swedish-American physician and psychologist with an interest in paranormal research, who practiced in Chicago and California. He invented a static electricity machine known as a Wimhurts, which he used to send low voltage electric shocks to the head and spine of patients he believed to be suffering from the effects of an attached or obsessing spirit.8 Wickland spent over thirty years studying the phenomenon of what he termed obsession and recording verbatim conversations with the spirits he was treating. Wickland and his wife, a gifted psychic and medium, were interested in Spiritualism, which provided a context in which his work could be understood. His wonderful, detailed account of his practice was first published in 1924 under the title Thirty Years Among The Dead. Among Wicklands first encounters with spirits bothering the living were cases in which individuals underwent a sudden and often dramatic personality change after dabbling in the occult, using a Ouija Board or inviting a spirit to communicate through automatic writing. One of the first cases he records is that of a Mrs Bl.: whose attempts at automatic writing led to mental derangement and altered personality. Normally she was amiable, pious, quiet and refined but became boisterous and noisy, romped about and danced, used vile language, and, claiming she was an actress, insisted upon dressing for the stage, saying that she had to be at the theatre at a certain time or lose her position. Finally she

became so irresponsible that she was placed in an asylum (Wickland, 1974:28). The dangers of dabbling in the occult are often stressed in Spiritualist, Theosophical and other literature. There are parallels with shamanic traditions in which the initial presentation of spirits possessing a person is often regarded as a form of sickness. For shamanic (or mediumistic) powers or gifts to evolve, a team of spirit helpers is necessary, whether it be the spirit animals of the shaman or the spirit guides of the medium. These then act as intermediaries and help to form a protective boundary between the open and vulnerable energy and body of the shaman or medium and the spirit world. Without this help, the individual patient or medium, like the man in Jesuss parable in Matthews Gospel, or the curious experimenting with a Ouija board, can be like an empty and welcoming house for any spirits who wish to enter. Mrs Wickland proved to be sensitive to obsessing spirits. They could enter and control her on a temporary basis, speaking through her in such a way that Carl Wickland was able to engage them in conversation. His task was to instruct the spirits as to the true state of affairs and persuade them to go to the Light. There was often a deceased relative or friend trying to reach the earthbound spirit, from whom they may have fled in the past, as not fully understanding that they had died the spirit would think that they had encountered a ghost. Recalcitrant spirits obsessing patients in the sanatorium where Wickland worked, ejected from their hosts by his electric shock treatment, could if necessary be forcibly removed from Mrs Wickland by the evergrowing team of spirit helpers, known as the Mercy Band, and taken to a spirit hospital where the healing and reorientation process could begin. It may seem strange to conceive of not knowing that one has died, especially when viewing ones own corpse, but as a spirit released by Wickland explained: death the freeing of the spirit from the body is so simple and natural that a great majority do not, for a longer or shorter period, realize the change, and owing to a lack of education concerning the spiritual side of their natures, they continue to remain in their earthly habits (1924:29). Such spirits were often, they maintained, attracted to the magnetic aura of mortals, thus possessing or obsessing their victim, although both spirit and mortal might be unaware of what had happened. The consequences of this malicious or unintended intrusion became the cause of untold mischief and misery, often producing invalidism, immorality, crime and seeming insanity (ibid.). Wickland, and others, also attribute many actual and attempted suicides to the actions of obsessing spirits who strive through their victim to re-enact or bring about their own death. It was released spirits who both explained and demonstrated the process that the Wicklands subsequently adopted in their work: These intelligences also stated that by a system of transfer, that is, by attracting such obsessing entities from the victim to a psychic intermediary, the correctness of the hypothesis could be demonstrated and conditions could be shown as they actually exist. After this transference of psychoses the victims would be relieved, and the obsessing spirits could then be reached by the advanced spirits, who would care for them and instruct them regarding the higher laws of life (ibid.29).

The victim, or patient, often showed immediate and permanent relief from what had been causing their distress (although they might be obsessed by another spirit in the future), just as the Gadarene Demoniac was immediately restored to his right mind, and could resume a normal life, when Jesus cast out the Legion of unclean spirits. The next step in Wicklands encounter with spirits involved the dissection of a womans cadaver. He was on his own, the medical students having left the building, when he distinctly heard a voice say Dont murder me! Wickland assumed that the voice must have come from the street and didnt think any more of it. The following day he continued his work and was slightly startled to note a rustling coming from a newspaper lying on the floor, but did not pay any particular attention to it or mention it to his wife. A few days later, following a psychic circle held in their home, Wickland noted that his wife remained in a semi-trance condition and stepped forward to ascertain the reason. The controlling spirit went to strike him, saying angrily: I have some bones to pick with you! After a period of struggle with the stranger [in the body of his wife] I asked what the trouble was. Why do you want to kill me? the entity demanded. Im not killing anyone, I answered. Yes you are you are cutting on my arm and neck! I shouted at you not to murder me, and I struck that paper on the floor to frighten you, but you wouldnt pay any attention. Then, laughing boisterously, the spirit added with great hilarity: but I scared the other fellows! [the medical students, who had refused to return]. It was necessary to explain at great length the actual situation of the spirit, who said her name was Minnie Morgan, but finally she understood and left, promising to seek a higher life. (ibid:32). This case is interesting in that there is no actual human victim of possession. The confused spirit needs help if he or she is to progress; failure to do so increases the chances that the earthbound spirit will continue to trouble the living, either as a haunting ghost, a nuisance poltergeist or as a possessing entity. Wicklands practice, as with the Spiritist mediums of the Vale do Amanhecer described by Emily Pierini (2013), therefore has two parts. There is the healing work for those who come to the mediums, and the de-obesssion or spirit release work for those who have died and failed to move on as they should.9 Wickland was a compassionate and intelligent observer and recorder of hundreds of such encounters. As in the Gadarene Demonic account, knowing the name of the person dealt with was an important first step in engaging with the spirit or spirits. Often they would have forgotten their previous identity and had to be led back into their earth memories in order to help them rebuild a narrative to the point at which they had died. Until this happened, many refused to believe that they had in fact left their bodies. Getting the spirit to observe the body of his wife, who they were controlling temporarily, was sometimes a useful device, a way of persuading a spirit that they were no longer in their own body. One of the fascinating aspects of Wicklands accounts is the description of what it feels like to be trapped in, or to occupy, anothers energy field. Entities often describe feeling cramped, of disliking having to share a space with others (the victim and often other spirits) who they dont know or want to be with, of intrusive

conversations, and of being restlessly moved from one place to another. They may have to fight to gain control of their victim, as when a spirit who believes themselves to be sick persuades the victim to become a chronic invalid, or have to share the victims mind and body with other obsessing spirits, awaiting their turn to influence the host. In some cases the spirit is in conscious control of the process and may hop from one victim to another to evade capture.10 Wickland found his electric shock treatment to be very effective in forcibly removing spirits from a victim. They could then be brought by the spirit helpers to his wife in a Spiritualist home circle (a regular sance that took place in the Wicklands home), where they would be given the opportunity to take control of her body. They appeared unconscious of having entered Mrs Wickland, and often reported feeling better than they had for years. The spirits would generally recognise Carl Wickland as the person who had tortured them with fire (i.e. administered the electric shock) ejecting them from their victims energy field. The close link this suggests between the physical body of the host and the discarnate spirit is also indicated by the ways in which possessing spirits seek to satisfy their cravings for drugs, alcohol, and sex (as well as their emotional energies) via the induced indulgence of their hosts. It seems that we are not dealing with immaterial beings, but ones that, like electricity, X-Rays or sound, are invisible to the eye but visible through their effects. Wickland carefully recorded the name and biographical details of the spirits, and wherever possible sought to verify the details through subsequent research. This was both to gain a patient history of the spirit in order to help them move on, and to further psychic research. If, for instance, he could establish who the spirit was, when and how they left their body, and when, why and how they found their victim, they could more easily be persuaded that they had indeed died and were being troublesome and perhaps selfish in remaining with the person they were obsessing. Relatives of the patient or sometimes the patient themselves were often present at these sances, although this was not necessary. It could be useful in identifying the obsessing spirit or spirits and in filling in background information that might help persuade them of the circumstances of their death. The attached or possessing spirits were often known to the victim or to other members of their family, and might be a relative, neighbour or casual acquaintance, but this was not always the case. When an unknown discarnate entity gives biographical details unknown to anyone present, which are later confirmed, the evidential case for taking a Spiritualist rather than purely psychological interpretation of possession is greatly strengthened. Edith Fiore, The Unquiet Dead In his Forward to American psychologist Edith Fiores book, The Unquiet Dead, Ramond Moody, pioneer of Near Death Experiences, wrote: Frankly, I have no idea whether possession is ultimately real or not, but I do know two things. First, that I like many other psychiatrists have encountered in my practice a small number of very troubling cases in which the person involved seems to be suffering from some peculiar alteration in consciousness which did not seem to fit within any category of mental illness known to me, and yet which resembled the description of possession found in medieval literature. Secondly, it is fairly clear that persons who are treated as though they were suffering from a possessing entity sometimes report dramatic resolution of their symptoms after these procedures. Obviously neither of these facts necessarily implies that possession is real in a factual sense, but together they do suggest that we may be dealing here with an

unusual variety of human consciousness which is distinct from mental illness and which is worth investigating in its own right (1988,ix). This attitude is also typical of Fiores therapeutic approach. Whatever may or may not be happening, and she is happy to adopt the language of possession and attachment, what matters ultimately is the clinical outcome for the patient. In the Preface to The Unquiet Dead, Fiore states that she is not attempting to prove that spirits exist nor that my patients were possessed (1988, xi). What she does claim is that her techniques, which embody ancient concepts within the context of twentieth-century hypnotherapy can be effective (ibid.). A clinical psychologist by training, Fiore was one of the first therapists since Carl Wickland to rediscover and incorporate a diagnosis of spirit possession into her practice. The techniques are similar to Wicklands, although she uses hypnosis rather than mediumship to engage with the spirits possessing her clients in what she terms hypnoanalytic therapy. The entranced patient takes the place of the medium in giving voice to the possessing spirits, or speaking out of their own subconscious knowledge of what is taking place within and around them. As well engaging the patients Higher or subconscious Self and any attached spirits in direct conversation, Fiore uses a system of signals in which the patient raises a finger to give a yes or no answer to a direct question. While Fiore invites her patients and readers to be open to the possibility that life continues after death, and that both the so-called dead, and past lives can influence a person in this life, accepting this hypothesis is not essential for a successful therapeutic outcome. If the correct techniques are followed patients can be relieved of a range of seemingly intractable mental and physical conditions. Out of more than five hundred patients Fiore saw in her clinic over a sevenyear period, suffering from a wide range of psychological and psychosomatic symptoms, she estimated that at least seventy percent were possessed, and that this was the cause of their disease. Most were relieved of their symptoms through her spirit release techniques. Some had only one entity, others were hosts to several, and occasionally patients had fifty or more attached entities (1988:3). Treatment in such cases could take time as each entity has to be found, engaged with and encouraged to leave the host. The Unquiet Dead gives details and transcripts of five anonymised case studies involving apparent spirit possession. A typical, if rather complex, case study presented by Fiore is that of Peter, a successful computer analyst in his mid-thirties. I will summarise this case in some detail as it gives a vivid impression of the way spirit obsession and release works, both in Fiores practice and more generally. The case is interesting not only because it involves a number of entities, each having a different, discernable affect on Peters life and personality, but also because of the interplay between obsessing or attached spirits and Peters own choices in his current life and an ostensible past life, choices which left him particularly vulnerable to possession. Peter attended Fiores clinic as his life was in a mess. He suffered from severe anxiety attacks, which were affecting his work and relationships. He couldnt concentrate and his memory was very poor, with periods in which he could not remember what he had just been doing, as if he had been absent from his body. Although generally kind and good-natured, Peter was subject to sudden mood swings and bouts of cruelty, directed towards those close to him such as his family, colleagues and animals. Peter had problems with relationships with women, including his (third) wife, to whom he no longer felt physically attracted. He was also drinking heavily, generally in rough working-mens establishments (he was from an educated upper-middle-class family). Peter claimed that he felt as if he were ruled by two

different personalities, one benign and one malevolent. He recalled some instances of premonition from childhood, indicating a psychic sensitivity, and from his earliest years had suffered from a recurrent nightmare of a wizened, evil man glaring at him (ibid. 67). Other signs that indicated possible spirit possession included the sensation that sometimes another being was speaking through him and that on occasion hed stepped out of his body and was actually about a foot behind the left side of his head, a sensation Fiore recognised from other client descriptions involving possible spirit possession. During Peters third session of therapy Fiore suggested hypnosis in order to check for possessing spirits. Peter was hesitant but agreed, and a quick finger signal check indicated the presence of several spirits, some of whom had been with Peter since childhood. Over several weeks and months, Fiore and Peter tried to contact, identify and exorcise these entities. While some left easily once it had been explained to them that they were dead, living in someone elses body, and that nothing bad would happen to them if they departed with waiting relatives who had come to take them to the Light. Other entities were much harder to deal with and merely went into hiding, or failed to show themselves. The most long-standing possessing entity identified himself as Joseph Biddle and claimed that he was with Peter intentionally. He hated him and wished to pay him back for what he had done to him. It emerged that Biddle remembered dying alone in a Kansas hospital, his young wife having run away with their baby. He had carried a bitterness towards babies with him, and when he left his body moved through the hospital corridors until he saw a tiny newborn baby. Thinking that maybe it was his baby, and wishing to make it pay for what it did to him, Biddle joined Peter and had been with him ever since (ibid.69). When his position was explained to him, Biddle agreed to leave Peter, accompanied by his (departed) sister and other friendly spirits, who had come to fetch him. Another spirit identified himself on this first occasion but unlike Joseph Biddle had trouble remembering who he was or why he was there. He suggested going to Peters favourite bar, Rockys, to have some fun. It took a further session to persuade this spirit to move on. It emerged that he had been a Caterpillar operator named Lou who had been killed in an accident in which he was crushed by his vehicle. Not knowing what to do when he left his body, Lou saw a small boy playing in a backyard, and feeling lonely and lost went towards him. When Fiore explained to Lou what had happened and asked him to look round, he saw his wife waiting for him, and realising that she had forgiven him for his drinking, agreed to go with her. Coming out of hypnosis, however, Peter reported that some part of him seemed to laugh, as if to say Ive fooled you again, you still havent found out Im here (ibid.71). Following this session Peter reported that with Lous departure his desire to drink had virtually disappeared, and that he felt generally much better. His lack of sexual desire continued to put a strain on his marriage. The following week Fiore determined that there were still some spirits hiding. When she asked to speak to them, Peter replied, under hypnosis, that there was one who was not ready to speak to Fiore directly as she was afraid. He could, however, describe a lonely, pretty, blond young woman. She didnt know why she was unhappy but didnt like Peter having sex with his wife. It transpired that her name was Laurie, and she had met Peter at a party five years previously, shortly before he met his current wife. Laurie had been killed in a car accident on the way home from the party. Out of hypnosis Peter recalled meeting Laurie, and was surprised that such a brief, casual encounter could have led to the young woman becoming attached to him. He recalled that after the meeting with Laurie his feelings for women had undergone a

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gradual and subtle change. Laurie was reluctant to leave as she was lonely and afraid. The mocking voice remained. It was several weeks and sessions of psychotherapy and hypnosis later that the mocking voice returned. He claimed to have been with Peter for four years. He had seen the Light and his mother several times but was afraid to leave because of what he had done. Apparently this entity, David, had lived in San Francisco at the turn of the Nineteenth Century and had died in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Davids last memories were of being crushed by falling masonry, and of seeing his lifeless body on the ground.

Figure 1 The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 Although when he left his body David had seen the Light, and heard the voices of people coming to get him, he had been the leader of a Satanic group that had harmed many people. Not knowing what would happen to him, David had been afraid to go with them. Instead he joined a street cleaner, and when the man died moved on to another person. I made most of these people miserable. I gave them some power, some got very interested in the occult, but they all became depressed, and I didnt like to be around them for long (ibid.74). Peter had been easy to join as had already known Satan (ibid.75). Out of hypnosis Peter admitted that as a teenager he had been interested in the occult and had read several books on satanic rituals. In a subsequent hypnotherapy session Peter revealed a past life in which he had been an active worshipper of Satan, another example in which like appears to attract like at the psychic and spiritual level. David was not trapped in Peters aura and knew how to come and go at will, but was afraid to move on as he believed that he would be punished for his misdeeds. Fiore needed to persuade him that he would have to change, but that he would not be punished All that hate and shame is on your side its all in you (ibid.75). This message that judgment after death involves self-knowledge and taking responsibility for ones actions, not punishment, is a consistent theme in recent afterlife literature.11

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Peter could relate his loss of confidence and self-hatred to the period when David had joined him, and with Davids departure his mood steadily improved and self-confidence returned. This was not, however, quite the end of Peters ordeals. Some months later Peter was on his way to see Fiore when he started to panic and had to overcome a strong urge to return home, forcing himself to enter Fiores consulting room. Fearing that David had returned, Fiore put Peter into a hypnotic trance. It was not David, however, but a lighthearted, fun-loving spirit named Eddie Vineburg (ibid.76) who revealed himself. Eddie was also afraid but wanted help. He had been a small-time singer who had been killed in a car accident in 1978. When the paramedics drove away with his charred body, not knowing what to do or where to go he had returned to the bar he had just left, and saw Peter sitting there looking quiet and withdrawn. Sensing that it would be easy to join him, Eddie did so out of loneliness. Peter was able to attribute a minor personality change, which involved an interest in bands and live singing, as well as success with women that he hadnt had before, to Eddies arrival. After Eddies departure the only remaining problem Peter reported was with his wife. It emerged that Laurie, the car accident victim who had met Peter at a party was still in his aura. She felt trapped and didnt know where to go, but was also lonely as the other spirits had all departed. With a little encouragement Laurie too left, having recognised a friend of her mothers who came to get her. The clinical signs that Peter had initially presented with disappeared and his life improved dramatically. As Fiore remarked in her summary of this complex case, Each succeeding parasitic entity, starting with the bitter Joseph Biddle, simply weakened him more, increasing his vulnerability (ibid.78). Drinking was particularly disruptive as it opened Peters aura to further possessions. With each successive depossession Peter regained more of his strength and his own spirit grew stronger. Many therapies focus on physical, emotional and psychological health, but for Fiore spiritual growth is also an essential component of treatment. Free of possessing spirits Fiore commented that Peter was able to advance on his own spiritual path. In most instances, as with Peter, the living host may be though of as the victim of a parasitic spirit or spirits, who have failed for various reasons to make a successful transition following their death. But this is not always the case. The possessing entity may be invited in by the host, and may be held, albeit unwittingly, against their will, or at least against their best interests. Fiore recounts the example of Brenda, a woman in her twenties, who under hypnosis told how she visited her best friends youngest daughter, Ann, in hospital following a near fatal car crash. She was deeply moved when she saw the little girl, who was being kept alive on a ventilator, and vowed to help her, to somehow keep her alive. Brenda unwittingly invited the little girl to join her, and liked having her there, in her energy field. Fiore explained to Brenda that Ann needed to be released, as her development and happiness depended on going to the spirit world. She was being kept a prisoner in Brendas body. Brenda agreed to release Ann, and the deposession was completed (1988:3). William Baldwin, Healing Lost Souls William Baldwin is another American spirit release therapist. He started his career as a dentist in southern California in 1970. Baldwin learned hypnodontics or dental hypnosis as a way of calming nervous patients and improving outcomes. As he attended more advanced hypnotherapy courses he experienced what seemed to be a previous lifetime, and learned that many physical and mental symptoms could be cured by asking a client under hypnosis to go the root cause of their problem. This might be childhood trauma, or an event in a previous lifetime.12 Baldwins clients also

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discovered other people were sometimes the source of their problem. They might be alive, or the spirits of the dead. Spirit possession is the term Baldwin uses when a spirit completely takes over the mind and body of a living victim, which he claims happens but rarely. More often, Baldwins clients described other entities attached to them, what Wickland referred to as obsession. Spirit attachment, according to Baldwin, implies connection, clinging, a parasitic invasion of the host by another conscious being (2003:xi). Baldwin coined the term spirit releasement therapy (SRT) to describe the rational, methodical, gentle process of treatment for the affliction of spirit attachment (ibid. xi). As in the cases described above, both living patients and spirit entities are treated in this process. Another aspect of Baldwins healing practice concerns soul loss or fragmentation and soul retrieval, a process that is well recorded in both traditional shamanic societies and in Western shamanic settings (cf. Ingerman, 1991). Although ignored by most mental health and medical practitioners, Baldwin, like Wickland and Fiore, believes that the conditions of discarnate interference and soul fragmentation are common (xii) and that A client in an altered state of consciousness can quickly and easily discover past lives, attached entities, and the voids that indicate soul loss (xii). In Baldwins practice he acts as hypnotherapist and engages the clients in conversation, sometimes addressing their unconscious mind, sometimes a possessing or attached spirit. No psychic ability is necessary on the part of either client or healer. Through his clinical experience Baldwin identified what appeared to be three main types of intrusive entity: (1) the Earthbound soul (EB), which includes deceased humans, terminated pregnancies, and mind fragments of living peoples;13 (2) the dark force entity (DFE), which includes the classic demon; and (3) the extraterrestrial (ET), which includes aliens and otherworldly beings (2003:xxiv). This list is not exhaustive, but represents the commonest types of possessing entity that Baldwin encountered, and the ones he deals with primarily in his therapeutic practice and recounts in his books. One very interesting case described by Baldwin does not involve the attachment of the spirit of a deceased person or entity to a living body, but of a living person attached to a discarnate spirit. It also involves a situation commonly described by therapists engaged in such work, in which there is a nested entity. This occurs, as in the case of Peter recounted by Fiore, when a spirit attachment continues when the victim dies and attaches to someone else, with their parasitic spirit attachment still in place. There may be several nested entities, one inside another like a Russian doll. Some entities may possess or obsess another person across several lifetimes, either seeking them out intentionally in subsequent incarnations, or without ever leaving their energy field. In this case a young woman, Gwen, had willingly invited the spirit of her brother, Richie, to join her after his death in a car accident. When both Richie and Gwen were ready to let go and for Richie to move into the Light, he found it too far away. In Baldwins experience: This indicates there is unfinished business with the host, soul fragmentation, or a nested entity, an entity within an entity (ibid.13). In is treatment session with Gwen, Baldwin shifted his focus from Richie to the nested entity. Baldwin describes how under hypnosis Gwen was able to give voice to this entity. My voice was firm and demanding as I asked the following:

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Dr B.: You, the one inside Richie, inside Gwen, step forward and speak. You, the one interfering with these people, speak up. G. Yes, what do you want? Dr B.: Who are you and what are you doing here? C: Im their mother. I was taken aback by this revelation and immediately softened my voice for the next questions. You shouldnt speak so boldly to someones mother. She then revealed that she had attached when Richie was about two years old. As his mother was still living, this indicated a separated part of her consciousness, a mind fragment. Her possessive and overpowering love, along with her fear of inadequacy for raising a child, had caused her to fragment and attach herself to her tiny son while still alive. Many cases of mind fragment attachment are family related, usually involving a parent in this or a prior life (ibid.13-14).14 This notion of soul fragmentation is, as noted above, found in shamanic traditions. It can also be see in Africa15, and is widely reported in the parapsychological literature. Sue Allen (2007), an English spirit release therapist, also places considerable emphasis on the ways in which our energy can become entangled or attached to others. She refers to these as cords and suggests techniques to clear, cut and protect ones aura from unwanted attachments. The English language and everyday expressions reflect an awareness of such cords or attachments, with phrases such as he got his tentacles into her, shes really attached to him, she never really separated from her mother, he wasnt willing to let go and so on. They are not necessarily seen in the West as a reflecting an actual psychic connection, or a fragmentation of someones energy field, as might be assumed in shamanic cultures or in parts of Africa, but do express the emotional experience of such contacts and psychic entanglements. Conclusion If we take such accounts seriously they suggest that our notion of the bounded Self needs to be reconsidered. If we consist of energy fields, which coalesce into solid matter at certain frequencies,16 it is not unreasonable to suppose that some of these fields are interacting with other entities beyond our conscious awareness. We dream, we imagine and create, not only with our physical bodies, but with our subtle bodies and minds as well. Theosophy and other esoteric traditions regard the person as consisting of a series of energy fields at different levels of density or frequency, each inhabiting a separate but interlocking and co-present plane of existence. The material world and physical body inhabit only one of these planes, and the material body we see does not constitute the whole person or Self. In many models, following the Theosophical tradition, we also have an etheric body, a double that dissolves after the death of the physical body, which transmits the life force or energy to the physical body. At a still higher frequency is the astral or emotional body, the vehicle often used by earthbound entities. Above, or at a higher frequency still, is the mental body, and above that the causal or spiritual.17

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Figure 2 The Planes of Nature (Leadbeater, Man Visible and Invisible, 1980) The exact scheme varies, but a general pattern is consistent many different traditions. They commonly assert that we are more than just our physical bodies, and that the subtle levels that form part of our experience of the Self have different powers of extension and connection. Geoffrey Samuel, while being careful not to generalise across traditions and aware of problems of translation, argues that the notion of a subtle body incorporates aspects of both the physical body and the mind, the individual unconscious and its intrinsically social and extensive character. Rather than look to a Theosophical model, which he describes as a form of nave physicalism with a series of subtle layers added on (2013:258), Samuel draws on the notion of emergence in the work of cognitive scientist and neurophysiologist Francisco Varela and his colleague Natalie Depraz, which sees mental imagery as a system of largescale synchronization of neural processes, a transient coherency-generating process of the organism (2003: 212, quoted in Samuel ibid.). Like Varela, and Gregory Bateson, Samuel argues for an extended view of the Self that draws on the centrality of biology, in particular the neuroendocrine system, social and environmental factors in interaction with one another. To put it another way, there is a complex system of feedback between individual biology, conscious awareness of the external world, emotions and structures such as language and visual media that go part of the way towards an explanation of the Self as bounded, emergent and relational. In relation to 15

the subtle-body, Samuel makes a plea (presumably aimed at the academy) not to dismiss concepts that dont fit current scientific paradigms, but to allow ourselves the freedom to ask what they may amount to in reality, and what they may contain that could be of genuine value within the contemporary world (ibid.263). The ideas and experiences discussed in this paper of discarnate spirits possessing or attaching themselves to others go beyond notions of a subtle-body. They rest on assumptions of the survival of individual consciousness and personality beyond the life of the body and brain that sustained them while alive. They assume the potential for interactions between the energies of the living and dead that can have a significant physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual effect. In fact it seems to make little difference whether we are in our material bodies or in a post-mortem state in terms of the ways in which some of our emotions, desires and subtle energies can attach themselves to or affect others. Whatever explanations are sought for these phenomena, they are based on observation rather than imagination. As Western therapists note, spirit release therapies often produce results.18 Acting as if there is an ontological validity to notions of possessing or obsessing entities, fragmented souls, cords of attachment to people, objects and places, can be therapeutically effective. To ignore a cost-effective treatment for many forms of physical and mental distress on the a priori grounds that spirits and spirit possession or attachment dont exist does not make clinical sense. For anthropologists and other scientists or social scientists trained in the Western empirical tradition, the study of spirit possession and release in non-Western cultures is acceptable, but becomes problematic when closer to home. Jeffrey Kripal (2010) talks of the broken lineage of Euro-American culture. Ways of seeing the world that were once commonplace have not disappeared but are often driven to the margins of society through fear, ridicule and ignorance. Spirit release data from Western clinical settings can provide useful comparative material alongside the many ethnographic accounts of possession and depossession in other periods and cultures, in our efforts to understand what appears to be a universal experience of a relational, dynamic, moral and extended Self.

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References Allen, Sue (2007), Spirit Release: A Practical Handbook. Winchester, UK; Washington, USA: 0 Books. Baldwin, William J. (2003), Healing Lost Souls: Releasing Unwanted Spirits From Your Energy Body. Charlottesville: Hampton Roads Publishing. Belager, Jeff (2003), Dybbuk Spiritual Possession and Jewish Follklore. Interview with Rabbi Gershon Winkler, 29.11.2003. http://www.ghostvillage.com/legends/2003/legends32_11292003.shtml. Accessed 10.9.2013. Bessant, Annie ((1977[1897]) The Ancient Wisdom. Adyar, India: The Theosophical Publishing House. Bohm, David (2002), Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London and New York: Routledge. Bowie, Fiona (2013) Building Bridges, Dissolving Boundaries: Toward a Methodology for the Ethnographic Study of the Afterlife, Mediumship, and Spiritual Beings. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 81 (3): 698-733 first published online August 2, 2013 doi:10.1093/jaarel/lft023. Davies, Paul (1990), God and the New Physics. London: Penguin. Fiore, Edith (1988), The Unquiet Dead: A Psychologist Treats Spirit Possession. New York: Ballantine Books. Greaves, Helen (2005), Testimony of Light: An Extraordinary Message of Life After Death. London: Rider. Hanegraaff, Wouter (2012), Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hill, Gary Leon (2005) People Who Dont Know Theyre Dead. Boston, MA/York Beach, ME: Weiser Books. Ingerman, Sandra (1991), Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self. New York: Harper Collins. Ireland-Frey, Louise (1999), Freeing the Captives: The Emerging Therapy of Treating Spirit Attachment. Charlottesville: Hampton Roads Publishing. Kripal, Jeffrey J. (2010), Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Leadbeater, C.W. ((1980 [1925]), Man Visible and Invisible. Adyar, India: The Theosophical Publishing House.

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LaGrand, Louis E. (1999), Messages and Miracles: Extraordinary Experiences of the Bereaved. St Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications. Maurey, Eugene (1988), Exorcism: How to Clear at a Distance a Spirit Possessed Person. Anglen, PA: Whitford Press. Mason-John, Valerie (2008), The Banana Kid. London: BAAF. Moen, Bruce (1999), Voyages into the Afterlife: Charting Unknown Territory. Exploring the Afterlife Series, Volume 3. Charlottesville, VA.: Hampton Roads. Moody, Raymond (1988), Forward in Edith Fiore, The Unquiet Dead: A Psychologist Treats Spirit Possession. New York: Ballantine Books. Moskowitz, Marc L. (2001), The Haunting Fetus: Abortion, Sexuality and the Spirit World in Taiwan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Newton, Michael (1994), Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications. OSullivan, Natalia and Graydon, Nicola (2013), The Ancestral Continuum: Unlock the Secrets of Who You Really Are. London: Simon and Schuster. Pierini, Emily (2013), Mediumistic Experience and Notions of Selfhood in the Spiritualist Christian Order 'Vale do Amanhecer'. Audio recording of the IUAES Panel, The Extended Self: Relations Between Material and Immaterial Worlds. Recorded at Manchester University, 8.8.2013. Accessed on 17.9.2013: http://www.afterliferesearch.co.uk. Planck, Max (1944), Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], speech at Florence, Italy. (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797). Accessed on 17.9.2013. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck Samuel, Geoffrey (2013), Subtle-body processes: towards a non-reductionist understanding in Geoffrey Samuel and Jay Johnston (eds), Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia and the West. Between Mind and Body. London and New York: Routledge (pp.249-266). Turner, Edith, with William Blodgett, Singleton Kahona and Fideli Benwa (1992), Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African Healing. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Varela, Francisco J. and Depras, Natalie. (2003), Imagining: embodiment, phenomenology, and transformation, in B. A. Wallace (ed.) Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground. New York: Columbia University Press. Weiss, Brian (1988), Many Lives, Many Masters: The true story of a prominent psychiatrist, his young patient and the past-life therapy that changed both their lives. New York: Simon and Schuster.

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Wickland, Carl A. (1974 [1924]), Thirty Years Among The Dead. North Holywood, Ca.: Newcastle Publishing. Williamson, Linda (2006), Ghosts and Earth Bound Spirits: Recognise and Release the Spirits Trapped in This World. London: Piatkus. Winkler, Gershon (1982), Dybbuk: A glimpse of the supernatural in Jewish Tradition. Revised edition. New York: Judaica Press. Wright, Sylvia Hart (2002), When Spirits Come Calling: The Open-Minded Skeptics Guide to After-Death Contacts. Nevada City, Ca.: Blue Dolphin Publishing.

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Notes

See the contrast between psychic remote viewer Joseph McMoneagles experience and that of his equally psychic twin sister, Margaret. She suffered at the hands of psychiatrists who took her gifts as an illness and treated her accordingly. According to Joe: My sister was as sensitive as I was and the problem was, when she started having visions or seeing things, she went to a classic psychiatrist who immediately started giving her chemicals and drugs. From that point on, it was downhill. I have a lot of personal anger over that. If she had been lucky enough to have gotten a Jungian counselor, she mightve been okay but she went to a psychiatrist who immediately said, Youre delusional, here take these drugs, and any time she got carried away, she was like hospitalized and she was slammed with classical aversion therapy. The help she sought turned out to be very destructive for her (Personal communication to Silvia Hart Wright; 2002:63-4). Joe, on the other hand, found that his gift was valued during active army service and he was able to make a career out of it as remote viewer for the CIA/USA Army Intelligence Security Command Stargate programme. 2 The Hebrew word often translated as demon, sheydim, does not refer to an earthbound spirit but to a class of creation that is normally invisible to humans, more akin to fairies or other elementals. An earthbound spirit is a term often used in contemporary Spiritualism and parapsychology for a deceased being who remains attached to a place or person in the physical realm, rather than moving on to higher planes of existence to continue their spiritual development. A ghost, by contrast, often refers to a psychic imprint of people who died in a particular place. A ghost, unlike an earthbound spirit, does not have independent volition. Both notions depend on a view of the Self as composed of separable components, often conceived as energy vibrating at different frequencies (cf. Williamson, 2011). There is a Jewish Midrash that tells recounts the dealings of King Solomon with Ashmedai, the King of Demons (http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/mhl/mhl10.htm). Winkler (1982) recognizes the difference between a possessing spirit or dybbuk and a more advanced spirit helper or muse, who may help someone complete a specific task, or provide inspiration (cf. Bruce Moens out of body account of the Hall of Bright Ideas where new inventions in the astral planes are linked to people on earth who are receptive to them (Moen1999:114ff.). 3 Contemporary Western spirit release practitioners talk of the necessity of closing or repairing a persons energy field following a depossession. Exorcists will use formulaic prayers and holy water to strengthen the victim against further attack (see Maurey, 1988 for example on contemporary spirit clearance). 4 See Belanger (2003) and Winkler (1982). 5 The spirit claimed to be both male and female. Ireland-Frey does not comment on this, but one might hypothesize that either gender was no longer relevant to a sense of identity, or that the spirit had followed a similar path in previous lives as both a man and as a woman. 6 A Gallup poll conducted in 2005 in the USA indicated that around three quarters of respondents believed in at least one paranormal phenomenon, from a check list of ten, and 41% believed in the possibility of possession by the devil (reflecting the strength of certain Evangelical Christian teachings). http://www.gallup.com/poll/16915/Three-Four-AmericansBelieve-Paranormal.aspx Accessed 17.9.1013. 7 I am using possession and obsession as synonymous terms, although each has its own history and provenance. Some practitioners distinguish possession/obsession from spirit attachment, the former indicating a more complete take-over of the host than the latter. Others make little distinction between these terms. 8 Martha Jette, Possessed by Spirits of the Dead? Part 4. http://www.boomerswrite.com/possessed-by-spirits-of-the-dead-part-4.html Accessed 10.9.13. 9 This work with earthbound spirits doesnt necessarily require a medium. Bruce Moen (1999) describes many such instances conducted through a controlled out of body technique, as taught by The Monroe Institute.

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There are parallels in the anthropological literature to the process of exorcising and capturing a possessing spirit who is making a patient sick. See, for instance, Edith Turners description of the Ihamba spirit healing ritual in Zambia (1992). 11 See, for example, Greaves (2005:50) with an account of a former Nazi leader who had committed suicide. He had been imprisoned by his own evil deeds, wandering for many years in the shadowy lower astral planes, before being brought to a place of healing where he could begin to face himself and his past deeds. 12 See, for instance, the descriptions by Brian Weiss (1988) and Michael Newton (1994), who use hypnotherapy to explore past lives and the between life states. Both stumbled upon these concepts through the disclosures of clients who were ostensibly exploring past traumas in their current life. 13 The phenomenon of hauntings by the spirits of terminated foetuses, and ceremonial recognition of their presence, is recorded from Taiwan by Fabian Graham as a relatively recent phenomenon. See also Moskeowitz (2001), The Haunting Fetus, which also deals with Taiwan. 14 See OSullivan and Graydon (2013) for a description of ancestral connections and therapies for healing them. 15 Valerie Mason Johns fascinating autobiographical novel The Banana Kid (2008), originally published under the more apposite title, Borrowed Body (2005), tells the story of a child of African parentage, growing up in the UK. The protagonist is both supported and haunted by the spirits of her deceased friend, of ancestors with karmic ties and attachments, the energies, mainly negative, of her mother (still living) and other human and non-human forces. The African world of psychic battles, and the influence of immaterial beings, is vividly reconstructed in the English Home Counties and on the streets of London in the 1970s and 1980s. 16 Physicist Paul Davies (1990:144-163), in his book God and the New Physics gives an elegant account of the relationship between electromagnetic fields and matter in his chapter on The fundamental structure of matter, as does David Bohm (2002) at greater length in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order. See, particularly, his description of matter and its place in the implicate order (pp.235-6). Nobel Prize winning physicist, Max Planck (18581947) was of the opinion that: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter (1944). 17 This scheme is worked out in some detail in the Theosophical writings of Annie Besant in her book The Ancient Wisdom (1977), with illustrations of the different planes of existence in Leadbeater (1980). 18 Spirit release therapy is hardly mainstream in the UK, but at the same time it is not uncommon, nor is it difficult to find a therapist, books on the subject or websites devoted to spirit release. There are a number of organizations and individual practitioners who advertise spirit release therapists and their services, such as the Spirit Release Foundation and Forum: http://www.spiritrelease.org/therapists.php, http://www.spiritrelease.com/index.htm and SoulCentred Theraphy: http://www.soulcentredtherapy.com/index.htm, among others.

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