Michael Prescott's Blog

Book review (part two): The Seth Material

Continuing my look at Jane Roberts's 1970 book The Seth Material, today I'll cover chapters 8 through 13. This takes us about two-thirds of the way through the book.

A good part of this section deals with Jane's ESP abilities, which seem to be legitimate (if we can accept her account at face value – and I think we probably can, given the endorsements provided by some parapsychologists). What I find more interesting is the philosophical material purportedly channeled by Jane, speaking with the voice of Seth, a high-level discarnate entity.

Seth's discussion of reincarnation matches up pretty well with my own speculations on the subject. Essentially he tells us that past, present, and future are concepts that don't apply to the higher self. Accordingly, all incarnations are lived simultaneously, even though, as a matter of convenience, they can be described as past or future lives from our current perspective. He explains:

Your idea of time is false. Time as you experience it is an illusion caused by your own physical senses ... The physical senses can only perceive reality a little bit at a time, and so it seems to you that one moment exists and is gone forever, and the next moment comes and like the one before also disappears.

But everything in the universe exists at one time, simultaneously. The first words ever spoken still ring through the universe, and in your terms, the last words ever spoken have already been said, for there is no beginning. It is only your perception that is limited.

There is no past, present, and future. These only appear to those who exist within three-dimensional reality. Since I am no longer in it, I can perceive what you do not. There is also a part of you that is not imprisoned within physical reality, and that part of you knows that there is only an Eternal Now. The part of you who knows this is the whole self …

Pretend that you have several dreams, and you know that you are dreaming. Within each dream, one hundred earthly years may pass, but to you, the dreamer, no time has passed, for you are free of the dimension in which time exists. The time you seem to spend within the dream – or within each life – is only an illusion, and to the inner self no time has passed because there is no time.…

The various reincarnational selves can be superficially regarded as portions of a crossword puzzle, for they are all portions of the whole, and yet they can exist separately.…

What you have instead [of sequential time] is something like the developments narrated in The Three Faces of Eve. You have dominant egos, all a part of an inner identity, dominant in various existences. But the separate existences exist simultaneously. Only the egos involved make the time distinction. 145 BC, A.D. 145, a thousand years in your past, and a thousand years in your future – all exist now.…

It is interesting that the personalities [in Three Faces of Eve] did alternate‚ and all were in existence at once, so to speak, even though only one was dominant at any given time. In the same way, so-called past personalities are present in you now but not dominant … Since all events occur at once in actuality, there is little to be gained by saying that a past event causes a present one. Past experience does not cause present experience. You are forming past, present, and future – simultaneously. Since events appear to you in sequence, this is difficult to explain.

When it is said that certain characteristics form a past life influence or cause present patterns of behavior, such statements – and I have made some of them – are highly simplified to make certain points clear.

The whole self is aware of all of the experiences of all of its egos, and since one identity forms them, there are bound to be similarities between them and shared characteristics. The material I have given you on reincarnation is quite valid, particularly for working purposes, but it is a simplified version of what actually occurs.

Each incarnated personality represents only the tip of the iceberg of the total personality, which is the sum of all its parts. The higher self chooses when and where to be incarnated but cannot control the course of the incarnated personality's life, which is determined, in large part, by the free will choices of the earthly ego. As a result, some incarnations are more successful than others, in the sense that some people will learn the lessons they were intended to learn, while others will not. In the event that a necessary lesson is not learned, a new incarnation is necessary to get the job done.

Souls are often grouped together and reincarnate collectively, playing different roles in different lifetimes. Karma is not a form of punishment. It "presents the opportunity for development. It enables the individual to enlarge understanding through experience, to fill in gaps of ignorance, to do what should be done. Free will is always involved."

When it comes to Seth's discussions of the past lives of particular people who attended the sessions, the material is pretty standard. Happily, no past lives as celebrities are reported, although in one case a person was said to have been a priest in Atlantis. This was, however, the only reference to Atlantis that Seth came up with, which is probably just as well. (For the record, I'm dubious that there was ever a "lost continent" of Atlantis, although it's possible that the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete formed the basis of the legend, and conceivably this is what is meant by Atlantis in such accounts.)

At any rate, the reincarnation material, though impossible to prove and therefore lacking any evidential value, at least dovetails with many other sources and, for what it's worth, with my own speculations on the subject.

When we get into the nature of physical reality, however, difficulties arise. The basic idea of Seth's teaching in this area is that we are constantly forming the physical universe without knowing it. Jane Roberts, speaking for herself rather than as Seth, summarizes:

We form matter in order to operate in three-dimensional reality, develop our abilities and help others. Physical matter is like plastic that we use and mold to our own desire, not like concrete into which our consciousness has been poured. Without realizing it we project our ideas outward to form physical reality. Our bodies are the materialization of what we think we are. We are all creators, then, and this world is our joint creation …

We are not at the mercy of events. We form the events to which we then react.

How does this actually work? According to Seth, everything in the universe has some degree of consciousness, right down to atoms and even subatomic particles. "Even the lowest particle retains its individuality," he claims. He goes on:

Matter is continually created, but no particular object is in itself continuous. There is not, for example, one physical object that deteriorates with age. There are instead continuous creations of psychic energy into a physical pattern that appears to hold a more or less rigid appearance [which deteriorates as the energy behind it weakens, creating the appearance of age].…

Matter of itself … is no more continuous, no more given to growth or age that is, say, the color yellow …

Each individual creates his own space continuum …

As [one of the attendees] sits in his chair, he is constantly creating his own physical image, using his own psychic energy, and using particular atoms and molecules for the construction of his body.

During the session in which these ideas were expressed, several apparitional materialization's were reported that were, according to Seth, his attempt to dramatize the idea that physical reality can be manipulated by the mind.

In a later session, Seth goes into the mechanics of this process. This is where I think we really get into some trouble. He tells us:

Thoughts and images are formed into physical reality and become physical fact. They are propelled chemically. A thought is energy. It begins to produce itself physically at the moment of its conception.

Mental enzymes are connected with the pineal gland. As you know them, body chemicals are physical, but they are the propellants of this thought-energy, containing all the codified data necessary for translating any thought or image into physical actuality …

Chemicals are released through the skin and pore systems, in an invisible but definite pseudophysical formation. The intensity of a thought or image largely determines the immediacy of its physical materialization. There is no object about you that you have not created. There is nothing about your own physical image that you have not made.

The initial thought or image ... is not yet physical. Then it is sparked into physical materialization by the mental enzymes.

If I'm reading this correctly, we're supposed to believe that our particular physical world – which is distinct from every other observer's physical world, albeit with overlapping features – is generated by the release of "chemicals" through the pores of the skin. (And wouldn't you know that the pineal gland, a favorite of mystics and alchemists down through the centuries, would play a role?)

There are at least two problems with this notion, one empirical and one logical.

The empirical problem is that no one has ever detected the release of any such chemicals, though one would think that a release of any chemical substance sufficient to form our entire subjective environment would not go unnoticed. A related empirical problem is that it's hard to see how the human body could contain enough "chemicals" to produce its environment from moment to moment, especially if that environment consists of some massively large object like the Empire State Building.

The logical problem is that the body itself is supposed to be produced from thoughts. But if so, then the chemicals exuded by the body are themselves nothing more than thought-forms. Can thought-forms produce other thought-forms? Why would this even be necessary? If the mind can produce the chemicals of the body directly, why can it not produce all the other physical features of its environment directly, without the need to exude any chemicals – which are, after all, only illusions anyway?

I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea that each individual, as a subjective observer, creates his own bubble of reality, which overlaps with other people's bubbles. This idea has been explored in some detail by Bernardo Kastrup in his paper "Making Sense of the Mental Universe," and though I have some issues with that paper, which I may get into sometime, it's at least an interesting idea and could be true. But this whole business of exuding chemicals through the skin strikes me as silly and even self-contradictory.

The other major subject tackled by Seth in these chapters is health. Here we have the fairly standard New Age idea that we can maintain our health by thinking the right thoughts. Perhaps this was more of a novelty in 1970 than it is today – I'm not sure. In any event, I'm skeptical of such assertions. For one thing, I think they give far too much power to our thoughts, which can lead us to be afraid of our own thinking. Seth says as much at one point, when addressing a particular sitter who was plagued by poor health:

You must watch the pictures that you paint with your imagination, for you allow your imagination too full a reign. If you read our early material, you will see that your environment and the conditions of your life in any given time are the direct result of your own inner expectations. You form physical materializations of these realities within your own mind.

If you imagine dire circumstances, ill health, or desperate loneliness, these will be automatically materialized, for these thoughts themselves bring about the conditions that will give them reality in physical terms. If you would have good health, then you must imagine this as vividly as in fear you imagine the opposite.

You create your own difficulties. This is true for each individual. The inner psychological state is projected outward, gaining physical reality – and this regardless of the nature of the psychological state …

You cannot escape your own attitudes, for they will form the nature of what you see.

There is probably some truth in this. It's hard to deny that our expectations condition, to a certain extent, what we pay attention to in our environment. If we expect bad news, we focus on it. But to draw the larger conclusion that we will materialize anything that we vividly imagine seems unrealistic and unhelpful. Its practical result is to make people feel that they themselves are responsible for their own illness, not necessarily a healthy attitude.

Overall, I continue to find the Seth teachings a very mixed bag. I do think that Jane Roberts had legitimate psychic abilities and was a sincere spiritual seeker. I don't think she was just in it for the money, though undoubtedly she did quite well with her series of books on Seth. But it's one thing to say that she was channeling some kind of information that came, at least in part, from a discarnate source, and another thing to say that the claims made by this source are entirely trustworthy. There may have been errors in transmission, or maybe Seth wasn't all that he was made out to be. Who knows?

Anyway, I'll continue to the end – though I have to admit that I'm starting to find the book to be a bit of a long slog.

Book review (part one): The Seth Material

I've read bits and pieces of the writings attributed to Seth, an entity purportedly channeled by Jane Roberts, whose teachings were reproduced in a series of bestselling books, but I haven't made a sustained study of the subject. Recently, since I've been looking into the subject of possession, and Jane Roberts's trance states seem to qualify, I decided to read at least one complete book in the series.

I chose The Seth Material. Originally published in 1970, The Seth Material is Roberts's first book to go into depth about her channeling experiences. I'm finding it something of a mixed bag, and since there's a lot to parse here, I plan to review it in sections as I go along. This review covers the book through Chapter 7.

Seth's basic message is heartening, if not particularly original:

According to what you have been taught, you are composed of physical matter and cannot escape it, and this is not so. The physical matter will disintegrate, but you will not. Though you cannot find me, know that I am here. Your own parents seem to disappear before your eyes and vanish into nothingness forever. I can assure you that they will continue to live. I can assure you that death is another beginning, and that when you are dead, you are not silenced. For is this voice that you hear now, silence? Is this presence that you sense within this room, death?

I am here to tell you that your joy is not dependent upon your youth, for I am hardly young. I am here to tell you that your joy is not dependent upon your physical body, for in your terms I have none. I have what I have always had, the identity that is mine. It is never diminished. It grows and develops …

I come here as though I appeared through a hole in space and time. There are walks in space and time through which you can travel, and in dreams you have been where I am. I want you to feel your own vitality. Feel it travel through the universe and know that it is not dependent upon your physical image. In reality you project your own energy out to form the physical world. Therefore, to change your world, it is yourself you must change. You must change what you project.

You always were, you always will be. This is the meaning of existence and joy. The God that is, is within you, for you are a part of all that is.

Jane Roberts's previously unsuspected psychic powers first manifested themselves in a spontaneous experience of "cosmic consciousness" (not her term) in which she perceived the universe as

really tissue-paper thin, hiding infinite dimensions of reality, and I was suddenly flung through the tissue paper with a huge ripping sound … I went plummeting through a leaf, to find a whole universe open up; and then out again, drawn into new perspectives…

During that experience I knew that we formed physical matter, not the other way around; that our senses showed us only one three-dimensional reality out of an infinite number that we couldn't ordinarily perceive; that we could trust our senses only so far and only so long as we did not ask questions that were beyond their limited scope of knowledge.

But more: I just didn't know, for example, that everything had its own consciousness. Now I suddenly felt the fantastic vitality present even in things I'd previously considered inanimate. A nail was sticking in the windowsill, and I experienced ever so briefly the consciousness of the atoms and molecules that composed it.

Despite all my previous ideas and common sense, I knew that time wasn't a series of moments one before the other, each one like a clothespin stuck on a line, but that all experience existed in some kind of eternal now.

This is explained as Seth's first attempt at making contact. Soon afterward, he was able to communicate with the pair via a Ouija board and then eventually by using Jane's body as his instrument.

Unless Jane and her husband Rob were consummate actors and highly inventive confabulators – extremely doubtful, given the tests to which Jane subjected herself – their reports of the channeling episodes must be taken seriously. Some kind of paranormal phenomenon was going on. Jane was able to provide accurate information about distant locations and activities via clairvoyance. She appears to have had genuine out-of-body experiences – sometimes extremely vivid ones. Her personality, mannerisms, and voice changed noticeably when she was "possessed" by Seth. The misgivings and skeptical doubts that she describes are believable, and her gradual conversion to the belief that Seth really was a discarnate personality temporarily occupying her body seems entirely plausible to me.

Of course, just because she became convinced doesn't mean she was right. It also doesn't mean that every word spoken by Seth must be accepted at face value.

In fact, much of what Seth tells us is hard to credit, even for those of us already convinced of postmortem survival. Early in the sessions, he informs Jane and Rob that they once witnessed thought-form doubles of themselves in a dance club. Jane remembers the incident:

I noticed an older couple sitting across the room from us. They really frightened me by their uncanny resemblance to Rob and myself. Did we look like that – aloof, bitter – only younger? I couldn't take my eyes off them, and finally I pointed them out to Rob.

Rob looked over at the couple and groaned with another back spasm [a chronic problem at that time]. Then something happened that neither of us had been able to explain. To my complete amazement Rob stood up, grabbed my arm, and insisted that we dance. A minute earlier, he'd hardly been able to walk.

Rob's back problems markedly improved from that point forward. Seth explains:

Looking back, you can say that the effect was therapeutic, but if you had subconsciously accepted the images, it would have marked the beginning of a severe deterioration for you both, personally and creatively. Again, the images marked the critical culmination of your destructive energies …

Your dancing represented the first move away from what those images meant, and violent action was the best thing under the circumstances … A subtle transformation could have taken place in which you and Jane transferred the bulk of your personalities into the fragments you had yourselves created … and from their eyes watched yourselves across the room. In this case your present dominant personalities would no longer be dominant.

He goes on to explain that the so-called "fragments" or thought-forms simply disappeared into the crowd when they were no longer the focus of Jane and Rob's attention.

Now, this sounds pretty far out. We are meant to believe that it's possible to project our own double into the world as a tangible, physical entity, and moreover, under adverse circumstances, to project our consciousness into this double and inhabit it from then on, leaving our previous physical body as a mere shell.

Subsequent questioning of Seth on this point makes it clear that he's not speaking metaphorically or symbolically. Seth says:

[In this incident] aggressive and destructive energies were unconsciously projected outward, given a pseudo-reality and temporary physical validity. The emotional charge provides the pattern and impetus for such creations. According to the extent of physical reality to be achieved, the physical body of the originator transfers or transposes portions of its own chemical structure. Proteins are used, and there is a high carbohydrate loss.

Well … maybe.

I suppose one could compare it to the ectoplasmic manifestations that, according to spiritualists, are built up out of the physical constituents of sitters at a séance. Then again, according to spiritualists, such materializations can occur only in total darkness, while the materialization of thought-forms described by Seth apparently occurred in a pretty well lit environment.

Overall, I'd call this an extremely dubious claim, at best.

Some of Seth's other statements are simply incomprehensible to me, at least at this stage of reading. Perhaps they will make more sense later.

Here's an example. Seth is trying to explain the nature of time:

Time has no meaning without barriers. To put it another way, time has no meaning without the necessity to counteract against other actions. Basically, this is a gem of a description, if I do say so myself.

It may be a gem of a description, but it means zilch to me. Seth, to his credit, admits that Jane and Rob, at their present level of development, can't possibly understand what he's saying. In a series of statements spread over more than one session he tries to clarify the point:

Consider a network of wires, a maze of interlocking wires endlessly constructed so that looking through them there would seem to be no beginning or end. [Later, Seth says this is only a metaphor; there are no actual wires.] Your plane could be likened to a small position between four very spindly wires, and my plane could be likened to the small position in the neighboring wires on the other side.…

To one side, the other is transparent. You cannot see through, but the two planes move through each other constantly …

This is what I mean by fifth dimension ...

Consider that these wires are mobile, constantly trembling, and also alive in that they not only carry the stuff of the universe but are themselves projections of it …

What you call emotion or feeling is the connective tissue between us, and it is the connective that most clearly represents the life force on any plane, under any circumstances. From it is woven all material of your world and mine …

The study of time will teach you much about the nature of [the] fifth dimension also. Our imaginary wires composed of solidified vitality are fluid, I hope you understand this, even while they are solidified. For solidity is an illusion. I have also said that this feeling of vitality – and I prefer that term, vitality [apparently in reference to emotions/feelings/life force?] – is moving and itself a part of the living stuff of the universe. Now as these wires pass seemingly from plane to plane, they actually form the boundaries of each plane and become subject to the particular laws within each. Therefore, they become subject to time within your particular three-dimensional system …

The motion of the apparently solidified vitality gives the illusion of time. The counteraction involved in this case is counteraction within the core of vitality itself … The action and counteraction is the time trigger. On some other planes motion is simultaneous and time unknown.

A lot of words have been spoken here, but I don't find them very illuminating. The counteraction is within the core of vitality? Say what?

Overall, I really don't know what to make of The Seth Material so far. Jane Roberts comes across as a sincere and intelligent person, neither unbalanced nor credulous, who experienced a sudden awakening of psychic powers. Chief among these powers was the ability to channel an entity calling itself Seth, who claimed to speak words of great wisdom, but whose statements strike me as often extremely implausible or simply unintelligible.

So that's where I am now. I'm curious to see if the further explication of Seth's teachings in the rest of the book will make a difference.

Spooks run wild

As my last couple of posts have suggested, I'm certainly open to the idea that discarnate entities – "spirits" – can harass, obsess, or actually possess living persons. But I think the idea has to be treated with caution. It can easily lead in the direction of paranoia. I found this to be a problem in Dr. Edith Fiore's 1987 book The Unquiet Dead: A Psychologist Treats Spirit Possession.

Fiore, who holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, became interested in addressing her patients' problems via hypnosis, which eventually led to past-life regressions and what she calls "depossessions" – the removal of harassing spirits. She distinguishes depossessions from exorcisms, which involve possession by a nonhuman demonic entity. In the cases she recounts, she believes that the possessing entity is a deceased human being who has become earthbound and attached himself to a living host. She takes pains to say that spirits are only a working hypothesis which she uses because it has proven therapeutically effective, and that she is not sure spirits actually exist. This occasional caveat, though, is undermined by the bulk of the book, especially the later chapters offering advice on personal protection against spirit possession.

Her accounts and partial transcripts of some of her sessions match up well with similar case histories presented in Carl Wickland's famous 1924 study Thirty Years Among the Dead, as well as more recent spirit release narratives. This continuity across many decades was, for me, the most interesting aspect of the book. 

Here are a couple of examples. (In the quoted material, I've converted Fiore's narrative to the style of a transcript for easier reading.)

One of Fiore's patients, Peter, had a serious drinking problem that sometimes got him into barroom brawls. Though of upper-middle-class background, he frequented "the rougher sorts of establishments" favored by workingmen. A hypnosis session apparently summoned up a spirit who'd been a construction worker. Even when asked to leave, this spirit hung on, leading to this dialogue in a subsequent session:

Fiore: You're still here. What's your name?

Patient: Lou, I think.

Fiore: But why are you still here with Peter?

Patient: He lets me drink. He can be fun, and I can get him to go to my kind of places.

Fiore: What kind of places?

Patient: You know, a place that's got real men in it who know how to drink – not a bunch of stuffed shirts.

Further discussion reveals that his last memory of his previous life was an accident in which a Caterpillar tractor rolled over him.

Fiore: You were killed in that accident.

Patient: I was?

Fiore: What happened after that?

Patient: I saw a small boy playing in a backyard. He seemed pleasant enough and friendly. And I felt lonely – and lost. So I went towards him.

Fiore explained to the confused Lou that he had taken possession of Peter at that point. She persuaded him to leave. After this session, Peter no longer had problems with alcohol. For readers of Wickland, the parallels are unmistakable. 

Another patient, Paolo, came to Fiore already believing in the spirit world and intrigued with the idea that he might be possessed. During the first hypnosis session, he started speaking in a different voice. "The voice," Fiore writes, "was booming and thick-tongued, as though he were drunk."

Patient: I'm not going anywhere!

Fiore: Who are you?

Patient: George. But don't tell Paolo, that asshole!

Fiore asked if he saw anyone around him whom he knew. George saw someone named Pete, whom he knew to be dead. Even so, he resisted the idea that he himself was deceased. He continued to speak in bombastic and crude terms, saying of Paolo's wife, "I can't stand that broad! All she does is nag poor Paolo, that jerk!" He said his efforts to keep Paolo from going home were often successful (Paolo had taken to spending some nights in a motel for reasons he couldn't explain). "If I never see her again, I'd be happy. But that shit goes home when he feels bad enough. I can't stop him all the time."

Once Paolo was out of his hypnotic trance, he said, "I know that guy! That's me when I've been drinking. But it's not me!" After sharing the tape recording of the session with his wife, he told Fiore: "Kathy says she's talked to that spirit a lot. When I've been drinking, she says she sees him coming out in me. Not really seeing, but the way I act. It's George!"

After much discussion, George was apparently persuaded to leave Paolo and go into the Light.

Fiore: All right. Here's somebody to help you leave.

Patient: I don't know him. (Frantic and crying.)

Fiore: Yes, you do.

Patient: Uncle Jim.

Fiore: What does he say to you?

Patient: He asked me to go. But I don't wanna go! (Crying.) They're all dead. How can I go with dead people? (Crying hard.)

Fiore: Listen to me! Listen to me!, Yourself!

Patient: Awwww ... fuck it!

Fiore: Just calm yourself. Would you like me to explain to you everything that's happened?

Patient: Uh-huh.

At that point Fiore believed she was able to persuade the very reluctant George to go with his Uncle Jim, his mother, and his friend Pete – the "dead people" who'd come to escort him. Paolo reported happily that, "The drive to drink is nonexistent. Lots more positive feelings toward Kathy. I even like going home at night."

But the persistent George had not actually gone into the Light, after all! He was discovered to still be hanging around. It took another session to convince him to go.

Patient: A lot of people are holding their hands out to me.

Fiore: Take someone's hand.

Patient: I want to, but I just can't. Can't. (Desperately.)

Once George finally did leave, Paolo blurted out, "He's gone!" Asked how he felt, he first said (rather surprisingly), "Upset!" Then, crying, he added, "I feel free! Oh, God!… that voice I always hear is gone!… Oh, God! Oh, I wasted so much time! So much of my life, God! I've got so much to do!" (The possession had lasted from age fifteen to age fifty.) 

After more sessions, Paolo reported that his desire to drink was gone, he was going home every night, and his marital relationship was back on track. He'd dropped eight pounds without dieting and finally felt he was in charge of his own life.

All this is all interesting enough. And I'm willing to believe that the patients in the case histories Fiore highlights may well have had some problem with an overshadowing or obsessing spirit.

For me, the trouble arises in Fiore's claim (or working hypothesis?) that spirit possession is remarkably common, even ubiquitous. To help the reader determine if he is harboring an unwanted spirit (or spirits), she provides a list of signs and symptoms indicative of possession. Unfortunately, most of these feelings and behaviors are experienced by all of us at one time or another. The danger signs include:

• a persistent low energy level
• mood swings
• inner dialogues
• use of drugs and alcohol
• impulsiveness (e.g., occasional shopping sprees)
• forgetfulness (e.g. walking into a room and not remembering why you are there)
• problems with concentration ("Do you feel like you're in a fog at times? Perhaps you have a drugged entity or an elderly spirit with you.")
• anxiety or depression that comes out of the blue or stays in the background most of the time
• difficulty recuperating from illness
• difficulty reading and processing Fiore's book ("If you found it hard to read, could not finish certain cases or sections because of anxiety or any other emotional response, then you probably are resonating to possessing spirits.")

She does note that it's the overall picture, not just one or two symptoms, that really counts. Nevertheless, these are all pretty common symptoms, issues, and behaviors. It's hard to imagine anyone who wouldn't say yes to many of the things on this list.

Not surprisingly, Fiore believes that possession is not hard to come by. In fact, it can come about as a result of almost any moment of weakness. At various points we are told that

The vibrations of your aura vary constantly.... Being upset, depressed, fearful, jealous, or envious are all poisons that change the color of your aura to murky, unpleasant ones – and slow it down. The stronger the negative emotions, the weaker your protection! ... Spirits can enter a weakened aura as easily as someone can walk through an open door.

An excellent way to protect yourself is to avoid using "recreational" drugs and alcohol. The amount that weakens the aura varies from person to person and also depends on the energy level. Some of my patients have lowered their resistance with only two glasses of wine. Even getting "stoned" or drunk once can result in a possession that can last a lifetime!…

Possessions can occur after surgery or during hospitalizations.…

At funerals, and at all the events associated with them, you need extra protection around yourself.[Pages 138 – 140]

Substance abuse is often a big element in possession. If you abuse drugs and/or alcohol, you can be sure you are possessed. [Page 121]

I believe that most of my patients who were possessed by many spirits, and who frequently picked up new ones in between therapy sessions, were "uncontrolled" mediums or "sensitives." This was especially the case when they had not abused drugs and alcohol. The slightest things weakened their auras: eating a meal with MSG or taking one tablet of pain medication. Even driving by a cemetery or visiting a friend in the hospital resulted in a new possession. [Page 116]

As you can see, in Fiore's view, possession is an ever-present threat. It can happen for almost any reason – because you had a second glass of wine, or a single aspirin, or ate the wrong food, or drove past a graveyard, or underwent surgery, or even visited someone in the hospital. Elsewhere she says that using a Ouija board, attending a séance, visiting a psychic or medium, practicing automatic writing, or trying to get in touch with deceased loved ones or spirit guides can also invite possession. Moreover, children are frequently prone to possession even when they have no obvious risk factors. Apparently a child's aura is often weak enough to allow spirits to get in whenever they wish. She also believes that so-called imaginary friends in childhood are actual spirits, whose close proximity to the child naturally increases the chance of possession.

The only protection against this chronic danger is constantly invoking White Light as a shield around yourself, and also using it to cleanse your home, which can become a repository for wandering spirits. Fiore says she cleanses every room of her home on a daily basis and practices the White Light exercise whenever she feels under stress. 

Frankly, it all sounds pretty paranoid. I'm not sure that anyone really can or should live this way. If spirit possession is this easy, then most people must be possessed, at least at certain times in their lives. This is, in fact, Fiore's opinion. Not surprisingly, in her practice, she has found countless cases of possession, including cases where a given patient was possessed by dozens of spirits. She writes:

Since I became aware of this phenomenon, I found that at least seventy percent of my patients were possessed and it was this condition that caused their dis-ease [sic]. Most of these people were relieved – through depossession techniques – of more than one entity. Occasional patients were unwitting hosts to as many as fifty or more! [Page 3]

Seventy percent! Either spirit harassment is a much bigger problem than almost anyone thinks ... or Fiore's own assumptions are being imposed on her patients through the mechanism of hypnosis, which allows direct communication with the highly suggestible subconscious mind. In 1987, when her book was published, the problem of confabulation under hypnosis may not have been as well understood as it is today. Back then, it was still common for hypnotherapists to assist their patients in recovering suppressed memories of childhood abuse – memories that later turned out, in many cases, to be completely false. Families were torn apart by the complicated feelings and painful accusations resulting from these therapeutic techniques.

From what we know today, the subconscious mind is extremely eager to please, and it will follow the lead of the hypnotist in imagining a scenario consistent with the hypnotist's suggestions. This is provably true in many instances of recovered memory syndrome, and very likely true in many cases of past-life regression and spirit possession, as well.

The bottom line, as I see it, is that Fiore may well have hit upon a valid technique for dealing with certain patients who actually do suffer from spirit harassment, but she has probably taken it too far, seeing examples of the problem everywhere she looks and inculcating a hypervigilant attitude that doesn't seem conducive to inner peace or mental health.

Her book points up the possible danger of spirit contact — but also the dangers of surrendering to a worldview that may do us more harm than good.