Exorcism?

[Leonardo17]

There is a lot of assumptions to make.
We would have to assume that there is a jewish god and that this guy has gone through the process of creating some evil guy.

This comes into conflict with the notion that he loves us, that he sends prophets, that he sent his only son to get killed by the cops.
We can ask a set of questions to deal with this claim:
1. If you love person X, then why do you torture them or put him in harms way?
2. If you love your son (Jesus), then why do you torture them or put him in harms way?

In Islam the devil is described as an angel who has been appointed by God, maybe to unbalance the world a little bit with the full permission and awareness of God.

3. If the jewish god wants an evil guy so that that evil guy goes around bothering people, making them mental, making them sick, then why doesn’t he do it himself?
4. If you create an evil guy, doesn’t that imply that you are evil as well?

You are assuming or that author is assuming that there are invisible guys doing things.
Primitive humans thought that some invisible guy made it rain and another one made it snow and another one made the wind and another one made people sick.
Such mysteries have been solved by physics, chemistry, biology.
For example, the cause of a disease might be a microbial infection.

But I’m still shocked, even somehow scared to see how even a 20th century can describe some Christian Exorcism Rituals as a real process dealing with real demonic forces with the author claiming that “He looked Satan in the Eyes” during those rituals.

Think of him as a new born baby.
He has learned a few words: god, jesus, satan. You can throw in djinn into that list if you want.
He has probably learned those few names since he was 4 y old and he hasn’t progressed to learning the names of the 10^1000000000000 other characters.

I haven’t learned any other “spiritual” names either.

The science realm is different. It gets very complicated with a whole lot of terms.

The only thing similar to that in spiritual literature is our “pain bodies” as described by Eckhart Tolle. These are lifeless / unconscious energies that emanate from humans that can be present in places like ancient prisons or mental institutions that can cause sensitive people to feel depressed, angry, fearful etc. And there are really techniques to dissolve these energy bodies or protect ourselves from their influence.

Maybe they are just good actors and they know it or maybe they are good actors and they don’t know it.
If you tell them “This was a prison and mental institute and people died here horribly”, the psychic knows that he needs to put on a show.

1) I really don’t know. Maybe Souls came to a point where they were simply tired of having it all. “Having it all” means perfect Union and Oneness with the Universe. So the material world appeared at some point to allow us to experience everything (including painful illnesses and atrocities like genocide). Yes, that’s the main argument here
 
2) This world being a dream does not mean that it’s not real. If your friend is asleep and clearly having a nightmare you will nudge him so that he wakes up right? – That’s what all spiritual teachers have tried to do in this world. (Or that’s how I see it).
 
3) Somehow, he is doing it himself. But this is not a permanent condition. And that’s the cyclical nature of creation. And our Inner-Self isn’t even a part of this cyclical chain of events. It’s always whole and complete and calm, simply observing all the temporary drama around it. But if you are asking about “the Cause” of all this, I’m not really that sure or I am not really that spiritually advanced yet

4) That’s why I had this disagreement or confusion about the experience of exorcism described in “People of the Lie” of Scott Peck. He said that “Satan had a precise character and personality”. And I doubt that a little. But I believe in a Jungian Archetypical type of Evil that is present in us humans, whose duty is to mess things up. All civilizations have some account of a Golden Age in the past when there was no hunger, no disease, no wars, no conflict whatsoever with accounts of Utopic cultures in which people would live for millennia. But the same question arises: What do you even do in a world like that?

   Without evil there is no Louis Pasteur, There is no Columbus (since we already know everything about the shape of this world), there is no Greta Thunberg (Who is going to come to Fridays for Futures without greedy polluters filling our planet with micro plastics that will be there for several centuries?
 
    So as you see: I have these approaches, but it goes way beyond the belief in some specific dogmas and accomplishment of a number of rituals with the hope of spending the afterlife (again) in a rather very boring imaginary place
 
5) I totally agree with that.
 
6) No his book is very good. He is trying “to study human evil from a scientific perspective” and he is being quite successful in that too. So if you like these issues, this book is also for you
 
7) Yes, that’s the main issue in spirituality. I like it, people like it. But it is still what it is. No nation becomes great by investing huge sums into spirituality and paranormal research.
 
Still: I believe that these books can be very useful in term of individual philosophical quests. As I said Human Evil is a real phenomenon, so gaining some understanding on that is a rather useful thing in a world were Evil has not been completely banished just yet.