A Question about Spiritistic Books

schnell

I have a nearly academic interest in the occult, though I am not a spiritualist and remain a skeptic. I've come to learn that demons are based on everything from dust devils in the desert, to diseases, to actual people. Probably most of all, demons are a tool of good ol' fashioned con artists and fear mongers.

But here's a question. If you found a print copy of "The Secret Teachings of All Ages" by Manly P. Hall, would it haunt your house?

If you don't think so, awesome, but if you do... What about the e-book???

Is your phone or tablet going to be haunted if you download it? Will you have bad luck if you do? Every time an occult e-book gets copied and downloaded, does a new demon get created to follow that copy around? So when you delete the file, are you killing it?

I'm just curious. :)

scratchme1010

...would it haunt your house?
If you don't think so, awesome, but if you do... What about the e-book???
Is your phone or tablet going to be haunted if you download it? Will you have bad luck if you do? Every time an occult e-book gets copied and downloaded, does a new demon get created to follow that copy around? So when you delete the file, are you killing it?
I'm just curious.

Interesting and excellent questions. I don't think it will haunt anything, physically or electronically. How could they explain the extent to which the "demons" will haunt? Will it haunt the device? the server where it resides? the entire network that carries all the bytes? the service provided?

Come to think of it, maybe my data plan is haunted; that may be why I pay too much for it

In a more serious note, I don't have a specific believe or non believe in things related to that subject. I don't feel that I am informed enough nor properly to establish an educated opinion. I use my logic and also completely disregard what the WT says about demons or objects being demon carriers or similar nonsense.

I'm curious now.

schnell

@scratchme1010: I have a little coffee table book called "Spooky Science" that debunks spiritualism thoroughly enough. "The Magic of Reality" by Dawkins makes a good case against it, too: Why believe in supernatural things that would require a rewrite of all the laws of physics to accommodate them? Why take the more complicated route? If you have a proponent who wants you to believe in ghosts or gods or whatever, why believe when you could just question his/her motives?

And I simply ask the question: What is a spirit? No hand wavery, just what is it? My friend suggested that it's "the opposite of flesh", which is... what exactly? I do offer a definition, too, and it's simple: It's a ploy. :)

I have learned that religious and spiritualist ideas evolved right along with mankind, out of Africa, with kings long forgotten being deified into gods that we still know today, like Osiris. That also goes for divination practices, like the Odu Ifa in Yoruba religion and the I Ching, both of which are mathematically based and rather fascinating in that regard. Actually, it is truly fascinating that math, even very advanced math, grew up out of divination. This, to me, says that these were just ancient people using their heads and trying to understand the world around them, not that they were 100% correct about everything.

If you can explain something and where it comes from, it really takes the edge off of it.

Brokeback Watchtower

Hey you might be interested in some stuff from CG Jung he and Freud had a falling out over his involvement with the occult.

Jung was interested in the occult even though his father pastor. His whole house got haunted just before he started to write his seven "sermons to the dead"mainly do to his encounter with the unconscious.

http://www.gnosis.org/library/7Sermons.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sermons_to_the_Dead

In November 1913, Jung commenced an extraordinary exploration of the psyche, or "soul". He called it his "confrontation with the unconscious". During this period Jung willfully entered imaginative or "visionary" states of consciousness. The visions continued intensely from the end of 1913 until about 1917 and then abated by around 1923. Jung carefully recorded this imaginative journey in six black-covered personal journals (referred to as the "Black Books"); these notebooks provide a dated chronological ledger of his visions and dialogues with his soul.[3]

Beginning in late 1914, Jung began transcribing from the Black Book journals the draft manuscript of his Red Book, the folio-sized leather bound illuminated volume he created to contain the formal record of his journey. Jung repeatedly stated that the visions and imaginative experiences recorded in the Red Book contained the nucleus of all his later works.

Jung kept the Red Book private during his lifetime, allowing only a few of his family and associates to read from it. The only part of this visionary material that Jung chose to release in limited circulation was the Septem Sermones, which he had privately printed in 1916. Throughout his life Jung occasionally gave copies of this small book to friends and students, but it was available only as a gift from Jung himself and never offered for public sale or distribution. When Jung's biographical memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, was published in 1962, the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos was included as an appendix.

jjj

schnell

Yep, Jung was influenced by the Corpus Hermeticum, as was Sir Isaac Newton who saw it in relation to Christianity, and there has been at least one book about Jung and Taoism.

Funny thing about the Corpus Hermeticum and Christianity: I've mentioned this before on this forum, but it says, "As above, so below." This turns out to be a common quote or a sort of mantra about microcosms and macrocosms, but once you know about it, you can't really look at the Lord's Prayer the same way... "As in heaven, so on earth."

So much for pure worship.

Half banana

The problem of spirits as I see it is that it is inbuilt into mammalian brains.

It is easy to be spooked--- and with good reason: there are or at least used to be predators about. For our for cave dwelling forebears, to be able to respond quickly to potential signs of danger could save our skin. The careless and carefree were foolhardy and the most likely to become the breakfast of a big hairy carnivore; no offspring for them. Only the 'spookable' would live to breed.

Even without the predation, it is our evolutionary legacy that we can still be spooked by imaginary presences and religions and spiritualists play on this instinct for those people who have not resolved the issue by their reasoning and information level.

Xanthippe

The only thing to worry about is if you still have the JW mindset that you are doing something dangerous, then you can frighten yourself. I found a book about near death experiences in a second hand book shop after I left the cult and it really surprised me. Since then I have read may books on this and also the paranormal. It's a time to catch up on stuff we were told not to look at. Just don't be afraid, books can't hurt you.

Onager

I like to think that I'm comfortably ex-JW with no beliefs in a spirit realm or demons or anything of that nature, but I still got a twinge of worry when a friend did a Tarot reading for me.

Going to the Witchcraft museum in Boscastle also got the twinges going!

I think that although consciously I have concluded all of it is untrue, there are still hidden subconscious sub-routines in my brain's programming. That's the power of conditioning I suppose.

Fernando

The closest I have come is to witness the 180 degree turnaround in someone after they had an encounter in a jail cell.

He refused to speak. Word was that he was pressed to the concrete ceiling whilst in his bed.

At any rate he was a very changed person afterward.

stillin

I think that there's a lot we don't know. We define "life" with familiar parameters, but whether or not sentience is possible without those parameters being met has yet to be proven. It may be one of those things that remain a mystery until something else unforeseen happens and causes us to be aware.

As to books? No harm at all. Welcome another person's thoughts!

A Question about Spiritistic Books

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