Metaphor 20 - The Artist's Mistress

There once was an artist who had a mistress living with him. (They are bohemians after all.)

One day, the mistress had a falling out with the artist and he kicked her out. (Happens all the time.)

The artist then began to paint a picture, and the picture ended up becoming that of a beautiful woman, who was not the mistress.

The mistress, keeping tabs on the artist, eventually snuck back into his studio when he was not there, and discovered not only his new painting, but his all too apparent passion for his new painting. She then took a paint brush and proceeded to mark up and mar that painting with all her might and vindictiveness, and then left the artist forever.

The artist, on his return, saw the spite that had been done to his painting, and then picked up a brush, and then with many hours of many deft strokes, turned the painting of a woman into something that was even more beautiful than what it was before.

In the above metaphor, eternal God is the artist, Satan the mistress, and humanity the woman in the painting. It is a metaphor of the theological term redemption. It is a work that God is busy at today with human souls, even as Satan and his underlings are busy at theirs.

Gangster of Hate

Mick Jagger not withstanding, sympathy is quite wasted on the Devil and his kind because they are beings of Fullness and not Fecundity. They do not have the ability to repent. I’ll explain what I mean by that.

C.S. Lewis has pointed out that the moments of unsteadiness we have with regard to religious belief have more to do with our being fleshly creatures than with anything else. [Footnote 3-9] We are creatures of flesh and blood, digestion and disposition, and our mental states are always going to flutter from time to time.

The atheist has his moments from time to time when he briefly thinks there might be something in Theism. And the Christian has his moments from time to time when he briefly thinks of Atheism.

That flutter is the hinge on which repentance turns. As human beings, the incarnation of our spirits into flesh guarantees us that as long as we are flesh and blood, repentance is possible. The Devil and his like are creatures of pure spirit, and great knowledge, who have changed themselves by sinning, and now cannot change themselves back. And that is likely the source of their spite against the human race.

Now, I have briefly alluded to these fallen angels as "enjoying themselves" in the process of bringing human beings to eternal ruin. What do I mean by that? Well, C.S. Lewis has given me a clue about that also.

There is a letter C.S. Lewis wrote once, where he makes an observation that angels, though they have perfect knowledge of everything in the physical universe (Fullness), they do not have tongues that can taste like a human, noses that can smell like a human, eyes that can see like a human, or ears that can hear like a human. They are creatures of knowledge, but not experience. [Footnote 10] Whereas human beings, who have the ability to have experiences with their senses, have an intellect that has to be gradually built up over time (Fecundity).

So basically, what some of the fallen angels are after is the ability to sense as a human being does. That requires a human host, and a breach of the estates. Or as the Records says:

"And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire."

The reference to Sodom and Gomorrah is a reference to perversion. The Record is saying that the angels who left their original estate to enter the human estate for the sake of getting human experiences are spiritual perverts.

Now before I go any further, I want to quickly make clear that we must not let our imaginations run away with us when entering into a discussion of this topic. The tradition Christian phrase "the World, the Flesh, and the Devil" has the right of it. The diabolic realm is the last thing a human should be worried about.

"The Flesh," is the apostle Paul’s word for the fallen Chicagoland v1.1 that’s inside us (also called "the sinful nature," and "the old man"). "The World," (Greek: Kosmos - "the system of things") is every non-personal system of evil that arises out of the collective urges of humankind to sin. Policemen are very well aware of the world as a system. They keep arresting individuals for individual crimes, but the system of evil just seems to keep running on and on as new individuals take the place of the ones they incarcerate.

There is a dynamic among the three. The World tempts the Flesh in us, and the Devil keeps the World moving on and on by his appeals to individuals. And individuals who yield to temptation keeping the World moving on and on, also.

I would say that ninety-nine percent of the time, our problems with temptation to sin are due to the Flesh within and the World without. But ultimately, what matters is not where the temptation comes from, but how we respond to it. That is what is up to us.

Now, I’ve just said that "the Devil keeps the World moving on and on by his appeals to individuals." But I want to make clear that we must again not let our imaginations run wild when speaking that way. People tend to think of the Devil as if he were God’s "evil twin." That, he is not. He is a creation of God, and therefore he is not omnipotent ("all-powerful"), he is not omnipresent ("everywhere present"), and he is not omniscient ("all-knowing"). He is a created being, he has limits.

When religious people sometimes say something like, "I am being tempted by the Devil," they could be right that the very Devil himself is tempting them, but more likely it is that an agent of the Devil - a devil or devils, is doing the tempting.

For example, we sometimes read in the newspapers that "Senator Smith introduced a bill into the Senate." But what actually happened is that a committee of the Senator’s staffers got together, and then were had at by another committee of lobbyists, and then were had at by yet another committee of anti-lobbyists, and then Senator Smith was cozened into putting his imprimatur on the resulting mess. Senator Smith did introduce a bill into the Senate, but a whole set of lesser persons and processes went into that.

I would say that ninety-nine percent of the time, an equivalent thing is going on when we speak of "the Devil" as "doing something." (And one prays to God that process is as inefficient as the U.S. Senate!)

Unquiet Mind

Now, having gotten some clarity on the nature of the diabolic realm, we are now ready to look at what it is up to.

I’ve already said that it is involved in casting eternal God in a bad light, and in eternally damaging the eternal God’s second creation, Humankind. How does it do that? Very simply, they do it by inserting thoughts into the minds of human beings that the human beings go on to mistake for their own. Like the scientists in my Chicagoland metaphor, the beings of the diabolic realm have access to our inner self, and can speak to it.

In Zen Buddhism, there is an interesting exercise that is done to qualify a neophyte for its higher mysteries. The exercise is called "thought stopping." The neophyte sits quietly all day, and simply tries to stop any thought that comes up in his head before it has a chance to grow and turn into other thoughts and distract the neophyte from achieving what is called "quiet mind."

What the neophyte learns from doing this is that most of the time, for most human beings, the mind is in a riot of all kinds of different thoughts going on all at once. Thoughts about what happened in the past. Thoughts about what is going to happen in the future. Thoughts about what somebody did. Thoughts about what somebody will do. Thoughts about what somebody said. Thoughts about what somebody will say. Thoughts about what somebody meant when they did or said something; etc., etc., ad nausuem.

When the neophyte begins to get really good at "thought stopping," he eventually gets to the point where he is having thoughts only about what his body is currently feeling at the moment, moment by moment. The temperature in the room. The feeling of air on his skin. The movements of his internal digestive processes. And then the neophyte begins to stop those thoughts too. And at some point, "quiet mind" results.

The point of the exercise is to teach the neophyte just how much his perception is affected by the riot of thoughts his mind conjures up from within himself and from his environment without.
And here is where I make my point: in the riot of thoughts that most people have, it is fairly easy for a being that has access to our inner world to slip in a thought or two that we go on to mistake for a thought of our own. If such a being can convince us that having a thought that is not our own is okay, that is so much the better.

Philemon’s little chat with C.G. Jung is worth re-reading in this regard:

"He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added ‘If you see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.’"

And that is one of the places where temptations come from. But as I said, ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s the World and the Flesh, and not the (a?) devil.

Possession States

I have alluded to the fact that devils may take a liking to the sensory experiences of a human host, but have really not gone into that topic in detail. Its time for that topic now. And let’s call it what it is: demonic possession. Scary term, no?

There are two books with that term as a title that I have read: Demon Possession (John Warwick Montgomery, editor, Bethany House Publishers), and Demon Possession (John L. Nevius, Kregel Publications). I have also read Christian Counseling and Occultism (Kurt Koch, Kregel Publications). And what is my take away from having read those works?

Eight observations.

The first is the crucial one: The diabolic realm will pay attention to you, only to the degree that you pay attention to it. The phenomenon is a matter of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And it’s also why I don’t recommend you read the above books if you have no particular need to.

Second, demonic possession is rare in comparison to the total population of the planet. Because of the advance of Western secular culture, there are fewer people today who even believe that there is such a thing as a diabolic realm. And the few people who do, do not like to spend their time thinking about it.

Third. Demonic procession occurs more frequently in cultures that have a belief system which supports the idea.

Some African cultures still support the idea of one or more "gods" taking over an individual temporarily during a ceremony of some sort. In Haiti, the "Voodoo" religion (or "Voudun." Yes it is an actual religion) supports the idea of a supernatural being becoming the "horseman" of a human "horse" temporarily. And in Latin America, there are religions where, during a specific ceremony, a human being becomes possessed by a "saint." (Actually this is said to be a "deity" of an earlier pagan religion which has been renamed as a saint as a matter of syncretism from the Roman Catholic religion).

If the culture you are in supports the idea of possession states (however defined or labeled), it will be easier to succumb to such a state.

Again, its the same principal as above: if you pay attention to the diabolic realm, it will pay attention to you. And this is even more true when talking about a whole society and its culture.

Fourth. Demonic possession should not be thought of (if at all) as being an either/or situation (i.e., you are, or you are not). Rather, the influence of the diabolic realm on an individual should be thought of as being on a continuum, and being a matter of degree.

There is simple temptation, in which one receives thoughts in ones noisy little mind, which are then taken for ones own thoughts. If simple temptations are yielded to, these thoughts can become stronger and stronger as they fail to be resisted. Then over time (possibly a lifetime) the acts suggested become so frequently indulged in that they can become involuntary and the difference between a possession state and a non-possession state can almost become a moot point. In this regard, personalities like Hitler and Stalin and Osama bin Laden come to mind. But do realize that this can also happen to every day people who have a lot less political power at their disposal (for which we thank Almighty God!). [Footnote 11]

Fifth. There are specific activities that human beings can engage in that increase the likelihood of coming under demonic influence or possession. Some of these are: using an Ouija board, [Footnote 12] Flipping Tarot cards, [Footnote 13] participating in a seance, [Footnote 14], casting horoscopes[Footnote 14-2], performing ceremonial magick [Footnate 15], automatic writing (i.e. hand writing something that is not under one’s conscious control), participation in possession states as part of an occult ceremony, divination by whatever means, casting spells, necromancy (communication with the shells or shades of the dead) [Footnote 16], using consciousness-altering drugs like LSD, praying to any other being than the true, eternal, almighty God.

The common thread to all these activities is that a human being, on his or her own strength, is trying to obtain some benefit from the spiritual world (even if only a cheap thrill) without any reference to, or protection from, the true, eternal, almighty God. Here, human will is primary, and a breach in the two estates is committed, this time with human beings intruding into the realm of the angelic hosts. When a human does this, it attracts the attention of the diabolic realm.

Will a person always become demonically possessed by doing any of the above activities? No, it is not a automatic thing. Not every hare that darts across a field from one burrow to another will be caught by the hawk flying overhead. The demons have skills they have to exercise too. And one of their skills is convincing their prey that they are operating in safety. But more on that a little later.

Sixth. When a person who engages in the activities described above manages to breach the spiritual barrier between the two estates, they can sometimes a acquire what have been called "psychic powers," I.e. clairvoyance (perception of objective facts occurring in the past, the present, or the future, through other than one’s normal five senses. The person knows things by "seeing them."), clairsentience (knowledge of objective facts in the present through other than the normal five senses. The person just "knows it." For example, being able to diagnose an illness by merely touching a person), remote suggestion (a person is able to "think at" another person who may be miles away, and that person acts on the suggestion), automatic writing (it can be both a cause and a result), necromancy (the ability to see and communicate with the shells of the dead).

Now, how does all that work? Well, my Chicagoland metaphor gives a good indication.

Imagine, if you will, that instead of one individual being in the tank in Chicago, with a connected robot body in Paris, there is a second individual in the same tank with the first one, only this second individual has a connected robot body that is in Rome. They both think that they are located some distance away from each other because their robot bodies are located some distance apart. But in reality, they are very close to each other in the tank in Chicago.

Now imagine that the pseudo-Frenchman in the tank is aware of what the true state of affairs is, and begins to start nudging the pseudo-Italian in the tank with his elbow. Let’s even suppose they both know Morris Code, and the Frenchman is able to nudge the Italian in Morris Code. In our metaphor here, the nudging would be considered "extra-sensory communication." The two robot bodies with their five senses are too far apart for their normal five senses to communicate with each other. But their common residence in Chicagoland ("the spiritual world") allows the communication to take place. In the above example of clairvoyance, it’s just a matter of someone, somewhere else seeing or sensing something for the clairvoyant to pick up on it. Likewise for the other powers mentioned above.

The only part of the model that’s not covered is perception of the future. That part is accounted for by my earlier metaphor of "the Novel as a Metaphor of Time." The Record seem to indicate that angelic beings have some ability to read "the novel" a little ahead of our "living it," and that the fallen angels then make that information available to people who have acquired clairvoyant powers.

It may even be possible that when we dream at night, some of the future parts of that Novel bleed into our unconscious mind and can be read from there through the spiritual realm.

I believe our common existence in the spiritual realm is the basis for all "occult phenomena."

Seventh. Christian Counseling and Occultism brings out something that many people may not be aware of: if a person who has breached the two estates has children, sometimes their children or grandchildren or other descendent may spontaneously develop some of those "psychic powers," without ever having taken part in any of the practices their ancestor in engaged in.

Why would that be? Because Chicagoland - one’s spirit - is part of a spiritual tree, even as one’s own body is part of a genetic tree. This passing down of "psychic powers" is, in the spiritual realm, what having a genetically transmitted disease would be like in the body.

This is interesting because there are some modern writers, scientists, and even science fiction authors who have mistakenly called these powers "Extra Sensory Perception" (ESP), and believe that they represent the next stage of human evolution, and are therefore new powers that human beings are just coming into.

There is a particular author I am thinking of who is an example of the breed. He’s written a series of books on "spiritual development" and the occult, and had, early in his career, taken the view that the various kinds of psychic phenomena are emergent powers of a new humanity. But in one of his later books on the occult, he finally admitted that he had encountered a psychic phenomenon that didn’t fit his emergence model, and he went on to admit that, yes, there might be such things as demons. Good on him.

Another item of interest in this regard is the case of our friend, C.G. Jung. Many people are not aware of this, but C.G. Jung’s father, the Swiss Reformed minister, played around with something like an Ouija board. One consequence of that was that his father’s sermons tended to contain heresies. The other consequence, apparently, was Jung’s ability to receive visits from "Philemon."

A counter example of this is the Chinese Christian evangelist, Watchman Nee. In a book, The Latent Powers of the Soul, Nee said that psychic phenomena and psychic powers were a part of Chinese culture in his day. He said that he himself had the ability to understand what people were saying, even when they were speaking a completely different dialect of Chinese (in Chinese, that’s almost like speaking a completely different language). But he made it a habit not to use this power because he found that it actually interfered with his evangelistic work. He had deuced that the power came not from God, but was an inheritance from an ancestor who had dealings with the diabolic realm. Through neglect, this power eventually left him.

Eighth. The physical manifestations of an actual demonic possession are not those found in the movie, The Exorcist. As I said before, there’s no heads spinning, no young females shouting obscenities in a deep masculine voice, and most certainly no flying vomit. Or at least not in any of the cases I’ve read of.

The global impression I did get from reading those books is that a demonic possession should be thought of as a person acquiring a spiritual virus in the same manner that a computer acquires a computer virus.

a.) There can be more than one possessor, as a computer can acquire more than one computer virus. The Record says that Christ encountered a man whose possessor told him his name was "Legion." That meant this man had somewhere between 4,800 to 6,000 possessors in him, that being the number of men in a typical Roman legion.

I would hazard a guess that the reason for this is that demonic possession is so rare that when they do get someone, they like to "pile in."

b.) The possessor(s) drain off resources the way a computer virus drains off resources from its host. The possessed tend to be given to prolonged bouts of depression and exhaustion. And this can sometimes lead to suicide.

c.) The energy drained off is put into spasmodic activities the possessed has no control over, just as a computer virus will cause a computer to start doing a lot of extra things its operating system never requested. Possessed persons will often have spastic tics or impulsive falling spells, and sometimes exhibit seemingly superhuman strength while performing destructive activities.

Sometimes possessed persons are given to violent, uncontrollable fits of emotion, which can include anger. This sometimes expresses as extended bouts of shouted profanities (but in their own voice!). C.G. Jung was famous for telling his house keepers to completely ignore his tendency for extended outbursts of Swiss swearing.

Sometimes this impulsive behavior will manifest as addictions of one kind or another. I.e., food addictions (eating too much), alcoholism (drinking too much), sexual addictions (with the possibility of perversions showing up), and even drug addiction (intense pleasure through drug use). These are all manifestations of the parasitical possessors wanting more and more physical experience out of their host human.

One last item I should mention here is that it is possible for the descendants of a person who has breached the estates to inherit not only the "psychic powers" I’ve described above, but also some of the "spiritual viruses" and their attendant afflictions. Once demons become familiar with a human being, they take great interest in that human being’s offspring.

Honesty Is Not Their Policy

Now that I have brought some clarity to the topic of demons and demonic possession, how can I best describe the diabolic realm’s policy toward the human race? Well it is said that Cardinal Richeleu once summed up his policy towards his enemies as "All means to placate. Failing that, all means to crush!" In a similar vein, the policy of demons towards humans can be summed up as "All means to possess. Failing that, all means to deceive." We have talked about possession at length, so now we can go on to talk about deception.

There are basically two kinds of demonic deception. The first is deception with a view towards enticing a human being to lower his or her guard and allow a possession to take place. The second form of deception is that directed at preventing human beings from a getting a grasp of the happiness this book will soon reveal. Casting the one, true, eternal God in a bad light is common to both these forms of deception.

But before I go into this further, I want to suggest a movie for you to watch that gives a very good picture of what demonic deception is like. The movie is The Usual Suspects with actor Kevin Spacey. You may want to put this book down and watch it, because my next few paragraphs contain some spoilers. [Footnote 17]

Did you see it? And what did you see? You saw a very dangerous and evil criminal pretend to be a harmless source of information about a dangerous and evil criminal, who was able to talk a seasoned and hardened police detective into releasing him from police custody. And how did he do that? By making up a convincing story using the names of people, places, and things that were on objects in the room the detective’s interrogation took place in (which the detective was unaware of). The use of the names of people, places, and things gave the criminal’s story a veneer of believability so that the detective believed the criminals story and released him from custody. The detective had been presented with a landscape of belief.

That is a terrific picture of how demonic deception works. The demons use whatever is already in our own minds that we already believe (facts, memories, opinions, cultural beliefs, etc.) to spin out a convincing story about something that will then prompt us to do something that promotes their agenda.

So what is a good example of demonic deception with a view towards possession? Well, believe it or not, the practice of ceremonial magick. In ceremonial magick, the practitioner does two things.

First, he trains his imagination so that he gets to the point where he can actually see in front of him some object that exists only in his imagination. I.e., he trains himself to have something like an eidetic memory, where things that are recalled in the mind actually seem to be really in front of the person recalling the memory of the thing.

The second thing a magician does is study the "cookbooks" of previous generations of magicians. These "cookbooks" are called grimoires (from which we get our word "grammar"), and they basically direct the practitioner of magick in what kinds of ceremonies and rituals have worked in the past in causing various kinds of non-physical beings to appear in the magician’s imagination (which being trained as it is, causes the creature to seem to "appear" in reality.)

If the magician is especially good at what he is doing, a creature may put in an appearance that seems to have an existence outside of the control of the magician’s own mind. (The similarity of these creatures to "Philemon" is not purely coincidental.)

Historically, there are a goodly number of grimoires out there, left behind by their practitioners, and some of which go back to the middle ages, if not further on into the classical era of Greece and Rome. I have heard that if you strip away all the cultural accretions in these grimoires, you will find that there is a distinct similarity in the descriptions of these beings from one age to the next, from one century to the next. They have different names in each era, but the same basic description. This leads to the conclusion that they are not solely products the magick practitioner’s mind. They would seem to have an independent existence. When they put an appearance in a particular magicians imagination, they then take on the cultural trapping that are already in the magician’s mind.

A basic outline of a grimoire is that it lays out a program for how to "keep away" creatures that are not wanted, while "attracting" the one or more creatures who are wanted. Then in the climatic moment in the ceremony or ritual laid down by a grimoire, the magician throws his heart, mind, and imagination into the "reception" of the creature or creatures that he wants to have "appear."

The purposes of this transaction with non-physical beings could range from just knowledge itself, to wanting something in the physical world to take place, or just simply to have a cheap (if costly) thrill.

But where is the demonic deception in all this? Well, first of all, in the whole spiritual landscape that is presented to the magician. Instead the of the one, true, eternal God, and his messengers, a whole host of "elementals," "imps," "demi-urges," "demi-gods," "gods," and yes, even angels and demons, are presented to the magician, for his belief in them. Along with that is a whole landscape of different "levels" of "reality," that are controlled by the beings supposedly responsible for them. (I am thinking here of the occult use of the Kabalistic "Tree of Life," as well as the Gnostic "demi-urges").

This whole deceptive landscape, much like the background scenery in a theater play, has been maintained by the demons, over the centuries, because it has one purpose: to convince a human magician that he can control what the final outcome is of the magical ceremony or ritual. The magician thinks he controls the beings he is dealing with. The reality is that these beings eventually end up controlling him. All his "banishing" and "summoning" are to no affect in the end (being things the magician was lead to believe in the first place), because the creatures he has called are intellects of longer experience than any one human being.

The magician has, by his own will, placed himself in a spiritual realm where God cannot protect him from the consequences of his acts. One of the consequences may be eventual insanity. If you think about it, magicians are deliberately doing with their minds what insane people are trying to cure their minds of.

The foregoing was an example of deception with a view towards possession. Now we come to deception with a view towards preventing a human being finding the happiness which is the subject of this book. Or rather, deception for deception’s sake.

The smallest part of this, as the Greek word "diabolos" suggests, is putting slanderous thoughts about eternal God, and his servants, in people’s minds. [Footnote 18] But the really ambitious part of this program is about putting out false information, or rather, creating false religions and philosophies, for human beings to occupy themselves with instead of getting a grasp on the happiness that can grasp them back.

The Matrix

Gnosticism is a historical example of something which is both a false religion and a false philosophy. It is coming back into style of late. It figures heavily in the recent movie The Matrix and its sequel.

In a nutshell, the Gnostic (believer in Gnosticism) tries to answer the problem of evil (why is there evil?) by proposing that it is because we live in a false reality which was created by a false (or rather, less intelligent) "god." That is also the basic premise of The Matrix. But in a really full blown Gnostic system, it’s a little more complicated than that.

In a really good Gnostic system, you start out with a "god," who creates his own reality, who then spins off a slightly less intelligent and less powerful version of him (or her!) self. And then that less powerful, less intelligent being creates a reality of its own which is slightly less perfect than the one "above." And then that less intelligent, less powerful "god" spins off a slightly less intelligent and less powerful version of itself. And so on and so forth, in infinite regress, down a chain of lesser and lesser realties.

I suppose different Gnostic systems will differ in how many levels there are, and what the names of the different "gods" are, and in which level of reality human beings are "stuck in." But the basic goal of a Gnostic system is to, by intellect alone, get the better of the "god" who controls the "reality" one is in, and thereby attain to a higher and better "reality." Eventually one supposedly gets to the top of the heap, where one finally knows all things and is above all "realities."

I’m going to give you a spoiler for the next Matrix movie. I’m willing to bet that in the coming series of Matrix movies, Neo is going to find out that the Matrix is inside of another Matrix, where he will encounter two more "deities" like The Oracle and The Architect who control this outer Matrix. That would be the beginning of a fully blown Gnostic system. And it’s only the beginning, mind you! As you can well imagine now, there is a great deal of movie mileage to be had out of a Gnostic system. It just goes on and on and on.

And that is the point. That is why the diabolic realm first put these ideas in some human being’s head in the first place. It is all a intellectual game, which has nothing to do with a person getting a grasp on the happiness that can grasp them back.

Yes, there is a spiritual world, and along with it, a physical world, but they are both part of the same reality, and they are both creations of the one, true, holy, eternal God. The defect of evil is not in the reality, or the creator of that reality, but rather in the hazard that free will, and thereby true worship, entail.

But Gnosticism is only one of many false systems of belief that have been engendered by the diabolic realm. Gnosticism happens to be a cross between a religious system and a philosophical system. I have no doubt whatsoever that Communism, a philosophical system, had its origin in the thoughts of some demon before it was ever put into a human mind. And it took very many people a long time to realize that. And I have no doubt that Mormonism is a false religious system that has its root in the diabolic realm. [Footnote 19]

In your lifetime, you will meet with many a demon-inspired system of belief. There is one test for deciding if a belief is of the diabolic realm or not: if the belief brings you closer to the one, true, eternal God, it is likely not of the diabolic realm. But if it moves you further away from eternal God, then it is likely that it has its origins with some demon or another.

The apostle Paul is not kidding when he writes: "(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal [of human flesh], but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;"

And that’s the basic truth about deception. Where it is not directed towards possession, it is meant to obscure the truth of God.

Sheldrake

Now we come to Rupert Sheldrake and the problem that modern science has when it tries to investigate the spiritual world.

Sheldrake is a physicist who has written a book called The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature. One of the things he supplies in that book is an interesting experiment. The experiment was this: two groups of people were selected and isolated. They were both given a crossword puzzle from a widely distributed newspaper that millions of people every day attempt to solve.

The first group of people completed it at about the same time that millions of other people attempted to solve it. The second group of people completed it at a much later time than the first group did. After the accuracy of the two groups was graded, and all other factors were accounted for, the second group of people turned out to have a higher score than the first group that was statistically significant.

Conclusion: there was something about millions of people having solved it first that made the puzzle easier for the second group of people to solve it later. Sheldrake calls this "something," the "human morphic resonance field." The word "field" is used to signify that it is something like a magnetic field that magnetic objects have. I.e. something that affects matter which is not matter itself. Gravity is another example. Sheldrake’s contention is that millions of people doing something causes other people to get better at doing it.

It’s an interesting thing to think about from a moral perspective. This means that millions of people doing a moral act makes it easier for any one human being to get better at performing that moral act. But on the other hand, it also means that millions of people performing an immoral act makes it easier for any one human being to commit an immoral act, and get "better" at doing it. Frightening stuff, no?

But it seems to support the apostle Paul’s concept of a collective soul (or unconscious perhaps) which has its mind set on evil ("the carnal mind," or "old man"). So that is why I mentioned Sheldrake as another modern thinker who gives some support to the idea of a collective soul.

But I have recently learned that Sheldrake is now researching how dogs sometimes seem to know when their owner has died even when the owner is miles away. Which is to say, Sheldrake is starting to go down the path to researching Extra Sensory Perception, and like topics. Because of this, some of his fellow scientists no longer consider him to be a scientist at all.

This has happened before. And you will not believe who it happened to.

Remember Charles Darwin, of The Origin of Species fame? Well, many people do not know this, but Darwin published The Origin before he really wanted to. The reason he jumped ahead is that he realized that another scientist was getting ready to publish a work similar to his own and pre-empt him of the credit for his theory of human descent. That other scientist was Alfred Russel Wallace. But Darwin published first, and Wallace went on into obscurity as an "also ran" in the evolution game.

But there was another reason why Wallace fell into obscurity. It was because he later went a few steps further than Darwin. Where Darwin looked at the similarities between apes and men and remained focused on that, Wallace began to look at the abysmal gulf between apes and men. This line of thinking eventually brought him around to thinking about what would now be called Extra Sensory Perception. And he eventually ended up with the necromancers. Which is to say, he became a Spiritualist.

C.G. Jung, Rupert Sheldrake, and Alfred Russel Wallace. Three scientists. All probing into the spiritual aspect of human beings, as opposed to the physical. And all turned aside into things that go bump in the night. It all comes down to a simple observation: any attempt by human beings, however gifted, to probe into the spiritual world under their own strength apart from eternal God, will come under the influence of the diabolic realm.

A Difference in Spiritual Atmosphere

Now, what does all this interesting information have to do with the consequential homework assignment I will be giving you? Simply this: I want to bring to your notice a difference in spiritual atmosphere that exists between the Hebrew scriptures (in what is called "The Old Testament"), and the Christian scriptures (in what is called "The New Testament").

In the New Testament, and especially in what are called "the Gospels," one reads frequently about demonic possession, and exorcism. It seems to be in the very air of the culture of the time. But when one reads the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament, there is hardly any instance of demonic possession. Yes, there is a good deal of demonic influence to be sure, with very many devils having convinced human beings that they are "gods" of one sort or another who must have children sacrificed to them on abominably bloody altars. But you hardly read of any instance of demonic possession. Why is that?

The reason is very simple. The law that God gave Moses at the beginning of the life of the Hebrew nation contained very harsh provisions for people who engaged in occult practices. "There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee." [Footnote 20]

Now if you consider the deception element in demonic activity, with its tendency toward engendering false religious systems, it quickly becomes apparent why Almighty God gave Moses this law: it was designed to keep the revelation He gave Moses from being corrupted from within by Hebrews who came under demonic influence or possession. [Footnote 21]

So that is why we find little in the way of demonic possession in the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament. But why do we find it in the New Testament? Because, very simply, during the inter-testamental period (the 400 years between the last book of the Hebrew scriptures and the first book of the Christian scriptures) the Jewish nation began to become overly interested in angels.

Where in the Old Testament, there is "Michael" and "Gabriel" revealed as arch-angels, in the inter-testamental period we start reading of "Raphael", "Asmodeus," "Semyaza," "Azazel," "Mastema," "Beliar," "Sammael," and a whole host of other names, who are not sanctioned by the scriptures.

And here my earlier principal is seen in action: some Jewish people began to pay more attention to angelic beings than to eternal God, and the result was that some of these "angelic" beings began to pay attention to them. Possession states then began to become the order of the day. [Footnote 22]

Consult Your Physician

Now before we go on, I want to make one thing very clear. If you happened to have any (or even, heaven forbid, all) of the physical problems associated with demonic possession that I have outlined above, that does not mean that you are definitely demon possessed. All those problems could simply have physical causes for which you should see a qualified physician. And before any considerations of a diabolic nature are entertained, you should definitely see a psychologist or psychiatrist.

I will reiterate what I wrote before: ninety-nine percent of the time your problems will be with The World, or The Flesh. But if there are some persons who should be reading this who think they may have a problem like this (and I hope they don’t), they should continue on reading. The kind of happiness which is the subject of this book is proof even against demonic forces.

No Exit

So in the light of the foregoing interlude, we now turn back again and reconsider Metaphor 19 - The Second Copy of The Ten Commandants. The law stands before us. It makes what is unconscious, conscious and what is latent, explicit. And we see in it the eternal wrath of God aimed right at us, who are beings made for eternity. How then can we escape?

If having my own day dream about God, and turning over a new leaf, and insisting on the law as a rule of life, cannot help me escape from the wrath of God eternal then how may I escape? And if some of my thoughts may not even be original with me, and some of the things I think I believe may be based on falsehood, and it is even possible that I may not even own my own soul, then how can I escape the eternal wrath of God?

The answer is that I can’t. In the Chain of Being, man is the only creature who can "get at" any and other creature in the chain. Think about this and realize that you cannot escape a confrontation with your Creator. The only question is when and what kind of confrontation that will be.

And if you think about it enough, you will have to conclude that the only way the Godhead can have us in our current state of being subject to His eternal wrath is if something occurs within the Godhead that allows the Godhead to remain righteous and holy while treating us as if we had not lost those qualities ourselves. It would have to be something that reconciles us to the Godhead.

Godhead? It’s time for another metaphor.
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(3-9) C.S. Lewis, from "Religion: Reality or Substitute", in Christian Reflections.

(10) I have not been able to remember where I saw this. It was an extract of a letter in a book of pictures concerning Lewis.

(11) As the gangster Dutch Schultz lay dying of his bullet wounds, he began to babble in a Joycean streams of consciousness manner, and a police stenographer took down his nonsense sentences as his said them, hoping that some evidence would turn up. One of the sentence fragments Schultz uttered was: "don’t let Satan draw you in too fast."

(12) If you think I am kidding, read Ouija: the Most Dangerous Game (Stoker Hunt, Harper Collins). The use of an Ouija board has been likened to having an apartment on the first floor on an urban street that is in a high crime area. If you leave the door open at night, you’ll never know who is going to come through.

(13) The present author knows an everyday average person who used to flip Tarot cards as a way of entertaining friends. One time this person was alone in a room, flipping the cards, and then had an unmistakable feeling that an evil presence had entered the room. That person does not flip Tarot cards anymore.

(14) Stephen King is on record as saying he would never attend a seance.

(14-2) See Shirley Ann Miller, Tempera Mysticism, Starburst Publishers, PA, 1991. If I recall correctly, Ms. Miller had been an astrologer and left the occupation when evil manifested itself.

(15) Aleister Crowley, a deceased occultist, revived the ancient ritual and practice of summoning up actual demons. He gave his efforts the name ‘magick’ to distinguish them from stage conjuring, which involves optical illusions, sleight of hand, and misdirection.

(16) Shades or shells of the dead. I will explain this in an appendix.

(17) If you have moral objections to profanity, try to get a version edited for television. Since I live in New Jersey, I pretty much already know all the bad words. But I do remember the first time I was subjected to extended profanity as a child and recall how defiling it can be.

(18) The present author was once introduced to a new co-worker for the first time. We became friends. And much later, after we got to know each other well, she told me that the first impression I gave her, without my saying anything at all or her knowing anything about me, was that I was some kind of ignorant, bigoted, Fundamentalist Christian. The only reason we became friends is that I later turned out not to be ignorant, or especially bigoted.

(19) Some of its doctrine is taken from science-fictional ideas that were in circulation at the time of its founding. And communication with the shells of the dead is looked upon favorably among them. And the "angel" of their particular "revelation" is named "Moroni." That is what is called Clue One.

(20) Before you say "My, how very Puritanical!" you should be aware that Native American Indians used to put some of their witches to death. Do you really think that someone who has that kind of power is going to remain in the camp of sweetness and light for very long?

(21) But even as harsh as this law was, bad King Saul still managed to find a witch who would do necromancy for him.

(22) And when I muse on the recent fad we’ve had for "angels," I shudder to think what we might be in for next!