I will only believe in demons if...

by deegee 37 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  David_Jay

  Jewish theology tends to view demons as harmful physiological forces in the human mind over the Christian view that there are evil entities floating about jumping into people and controlling them.

  However, Roland Doe, the boy at the center of the famous 1940s case that inspired the novel and film "The Exorcist" was not religious per se. His family was nominative Lutheran, and as far as I remember about the case were not practicing.

  While it is quite possibly a case involving severe psychological issues, the boy's problems did begin after his aunt, who was a spiritualist, introduced Roland to seances. The boy, fascinated by what looked like play, began imitating rituals practiced by his aunt when alone. The aunt supplied Roland with a talking board for this very purpose.

  Again this may not have been the cause of the alleged possession, but the family was not religious at the time of the so-called events, nor where they Roman Catholics even though the case was passed on to the Catholic Church after the parents sought help from the Lutheran Church.
• 

  deegee

  David/Jay:

  Sometimes it means the priest must turn away the "possessed" subject to doctors, and sometimes the doctor must turn away the patient to a priest. We are talking not hypotheticals but of desperate situations where lives hang in the balance. Sometimes you have to take a step into something you neither believe in or understand to save a life.

  One therapist documented in the following article, the likely reasons why psychological/psychiatric interventions fail when people have the psychiatric/psychological conditions mentioned in the OP:

  http://www.somer.co.il/articles/1997Paranoarmal.dissoc.pdf:

  Paranormal and dissociative experiences in Middle-Eastern Jews in Israel: diagnostic and treatment dilemmas by Eli Somer

  (perhaps a fitting article given that you are also a Jew
  

  )

  According to the author:

  God and spirits are thought to exert various influences on individuals in various cultures.
  Therefore, instead of offering personal, intrapsychic explanations for one's distress - that is, explanations based on the INTERNAL psychological processes of the individual - people often tend to provide religious, social and cultural explanations for their experiences.

  So some persons afflicted with the various conditions in the OP are not construing them as intrapsychic - that is, based on their INTERNAL psychological processes - but rather they perceive their condition as manifestations of external spiritist agents.

  When patients construe their suffering in cultural idioms implicating supernatural experiences, some patients refuse to accept any of their possession-like experiences as possible manifestations of their own dissociated ego-states. It then becomes a struggle for doctors/mental health practitioners to find common ground on which significant help can be offered to such patients who are manifesting dissociative and other symptomatology.

  Spirit possession is a universal phenomenon which is culturally shaped. Some patients perceive their illnesses through a cultural perspective rather than as manifestations of their own internal psychological processes. They believe in the spiritual essence of their condition and so use spiritist folklore-based idioms in their attempts to express and explain their suffering. They therefore may not see their distressing and unrelenting problems as a mental health matter. Some patients may feel that a culture-bound conceptual framework might better explain their pain/affliction/malady than a psychiatric one.

  The idiom of spirits and possession are culturally constituted. This articulation might be used by some patients because of the relief these cultural constructions can offer to their protagonists. Such patients interpret all of their symptoms within this paradigm rendering them completely untreatable within an intrapsychic/clinical conceptual model.

  They reject any information or interpretation of their symptoms as otherwise plausible, irrelevant to their own particular case. Their symptoms are framed in concepts that preclude any meaningful psychotherapeutic interventions. They are not willing to accept medical explanations for their conditions/afflictions. The conceptual framework for understanding their affliction is incompatible with conventional psychotherapeutic principles. This is the dilemma faced by both patient and therapist, the latter may find it difficult to bridge the cultural perspective gap when attempting to treat the patient.
• 

  deegee

  David_Jay:

  ........the boy's problems did begin after his aunt, who was a spiritualist, introduced Roland to seances. The boy, fascinated by what looked like play, began imitating rituals practiced by his aunt when alone. The aunt supplied Roland with a talking board for this very purpose.

  What exactly was done by the boy during those séance rituals? Please give a breakdown of the steps involved and the details of what exactly was done by the boy when he engaged in a séance ritual.
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  David_Jay

  Unfortunately I only know what I wrote. I don't know any more specific details. Sorry.
• 

  Island Man

  Demon possession is the superstitious explanation people came up with centuries ago, for certain kinds of mental illnesses before they understood their real causes and how the brain works.

  Even visions of spirits and the supernatural is linked to the mind. The koine greek word for spiritism is the same root word from which we get pharmacy. "Spiritists" used mind altering drugs which cause them to hallucinate. They wrongly believed that their hallucinations were real encounters with the spirit world. Belief in demon possession and spiritism thus originated with superstition and ignorance of the brain's ability to formulate life-like hallucinations due to mental illness and mind-altering drugs. Instead of realizing that the hallucinations are caused by the intoxicated brain, the ancients wrongly thought that the mind-altering drugs opened doorway to the spirit world.
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  smiddy

  I`m sorry if i have missed something David -Jay but did you cover what the Jews in the Old Testament view of demon possesion was ? Did they even believe such a thing in the Old testament ?

  I guess it all comes down to do or did the jews believe in a personal Devil and Demons as his followers ,fallen Angels who rebelled against the Most High God.?
• 

  pale.emperor

  I used to believe in demons etc, my father in particular had many stories about before he was a JW and his family were into mediumship, tarot cards etc. He told us stories about some freaky goings on his one of the houses he grew up in such as him mum bought a picture frame from a 2nd hand shop. The next day the frame was on the floor with the photo next to it but the back of the frame was still tapes shut (oooo! spooky!).

  He also said there's been one happening that he'll never tell anyone because it's so scary.

  My older brother is not a witness (yet) and he used to dabble with Buddhism and had a dreamcatcher in his room. He claimed paranormal things would happen to him all the time.

  My sister claimed she saw a demon with her own eyes.

  I was also told by my father that the demons have different ranks and powers. Some like to move things and play cruel tricks, some like to invade dreams, some are more powerful and show themselves. Where he got this information i never did learn because i tried to research all this on WT Library CD Rom in the early 2000s.
  

  Now... i dont believe any of that crap. Know why? Well for one thing my brother has since been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, my sister is known for telling tall tales and my father never actually researched the other possibilities to strange goings on (practical joker in the house maybe?).

  But the final thing that made me stop believing in the supernatural was this: If YOU were an evil spirit, alive for millennia, with all that power and knowledge, would you spend your time opening and closing doors or making photo's disappear from frames? No. I wouldn't either. If i were evil and powerful I'd be doing some really messed up s^it.
  
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  Diogenesister

  I knew a guy, the child of Polish Roman Catholics , who was excorcized. It was a horrific experience for him. It was the culmination of years of childhood suffering at the hands of abusive, NARCISSISTIC parents. The Church didn't balk at putting a child through an horrific ordeal when the problem was the adults around him. I don't think this case is atypical.

  A lovely man with a wonderful family of his own , he suffered from severe depression his whole life. It goes without saying he became a life-long atheist.
• 

  Vidiot

  pale.emperor - "I was also told by my father that the demons have different ranks and powers. Some like to move things and play cruel tricks, some like to invade dreams, some are more powerful and show themselves. Where he got this information i never did learn because i tried to research all this on WT Library CD Rom in the early 2000s."

  All that stuff's from the Bible's fanfiction and Expanded Universe. :smirk:
• 

  deegee

  David_Jay,

  About séances:

  So based on what I have read, a séance is a meeting at which people attempt to make contact with the dead, especially through the agency of a medium.

  The medium and/or others enter into a trance, an altered state of consciousness, using methods such as:
  - meditation
  - self-hypnosis

  to induce an altered state of consciousness similar to persons having a mystical experience.

  The seance is characterized by trances, the medium channelling information from the "spirits of the dead" whom he/she has contacted who speak through him/her, or through automatic writing in a native or different language, slate writing, artwork, glossolalia (speaking in tongues) etc - all of which are a means of communicating with "spirits".

  There may also be physical changes in the appearances of the medium and/or other participants while they are in the trance/altered state of consciousness state.

  Researchers/neuroscientists, have examined brain activity during trances/altered state of consciousness (ASC) experiences.

  When a person enters an ASC part of their brain is shut down and another part of the brain takes over:

  "Channeling Spirits Shuts Down Parts Of Brain"
  http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/spirituality-brain-function-mediums-121116.htm:

  See also:
  http://www.andrewnewberg.com

  This neuroscientist has also researched and written much about the neurological basis for altered state of consciousness experiences, religious and spiritual experiences and indicates that these experiences are dramatically influenced by changes in brain activity.