Hungry ghosts

 In his out-of-body journeyings, Robert Monroe tells of encountering a zone next to the Earth plane populated by the “dead” who couldn’t or wouldn’t realize they were no longer physical beings. “It wasn’t nice,” writes Monroe in Far Journeys. The beings he perceived “kept trying to be physical, to do and be what they had been, to continue physical one way or another. Bewildered, some spent all of their activity in attempting to communicate with friends and loved ones still in bodies or with anyone else who might come along.…”

This thickly-peopled “dead zone” just beyond the frontiers of physical existence tallies precisely with the realm of the hungry ghosts described in the teachings of Tibetan Buddhists. The hungry ghosts, characterized by intense greed, are depicted as beings with tiny mouths, thin necks and gigantic bellies. They are tortured by their insatiable hunger even more than the pain of not being able to find and consume what they crave. Their wants and desires are seen as a desperate attempt to feed their poverty of spirit as well as to obliterate their most basic fear, the fear that they may not exist. After death, say the Buddhists, the earthly individual’s powers of resistance will be tried and tested by the hungry ghosts’ siren call. The Tibetan Book of the Dead, an eighth-century guidebook mapping out the psychic territory to be negotiated once the body has perished, advises on the temptation to come:

…together with the wisdom light, the soft yellow light of the hungry ghosts will also shine. Do not take pleasure in it; give up desire and yearning.…If you are attracted to it, you will fall into the realm of the hungry ghosts and experience unbearable misery from hunger and thirst. It is an obstacle, blocking the path of liberation.…

Emanuel Swedenborg, who claimed to be able to pierce clairvoyantly the veil of the spiritual worlds, warned at great length about the brilliant and delusive nature of many communicating entities. Such evil, seducing spirits were said to be deceitful men and women who desired, in death, to hold the living in thrall to their duplicity. In Arcana Caelestia—published a century before the founding of modern Spiritualism—he explained how they cuddle up to their victims.

When spirits begin to speak with man they conjoin themselves with his thoughts and affections.…They put on all things of his memory, thus all things which the man has learned and imbibed from infancy the spirits suppose these things to be their own.

Swedenborg maintained that the worst spirits of all were those “who have been in evils from love of self and at the same time inwardly in themselves have acted from deceit.” In Heaven and Hell he tells how these entities like to flutter about mortals like phantoms, secretly infusing them with evil by penetrating the emotions.

They perceive and smell out the affections as dogs do wild beasts in the forest. Where they perceive good affections, they instantly turn them into evil ones, leading and bending them in a wonderful manner by means of the other’s delights, and this so secretly and with such malignant skill that the other knows nothing of it.…In the world these were the men who deceitfully captivated the minds of others, leading and persuading them by the delights of their affections or lusts.…

Swedenborg’s statements were echoed, in whole or in part, by the behavior of Filipa, Russell, Tuktu, Dr. Pinkerton and others. On 5 March 1987, the guides who spoke through Aviva were asked how we could be assured that they were not inhabitants of the lower astral plane. Tuktu responded by saying that no-one occupying the lower astral realm would be able to communicate directly by voice. Yet Dr. Carl Wickland, Dr. Edith Fiore and other medical specialists in de-possession therapy have spent much time conversing with entities occupying their patients’ bodies in efforts to persuade them to leave. The possessors are always earth-bound spirits.

“I view the possessing entities as the true patients,” wrote Dr. Edith Fiore in The Unquiet Dead. “They are suffering greatly without even realizing it. Virtual prisoners, they are trapped on the earth plane feeling exactly as they did moments before their deaths, which may have occurred decades before.”

Back in 1924, Dr. Carl Wickland told in Thirty Years Among The Dead how discarnate intelligences were attracted to the magnetic light emanating from mortals. Consciously or unconsciously, certain entities attached themselves wherever possible to these auras, finding an avenue of expression through influencing, obsessing or possessing their victims. Such encroachment might be facilitated by a natural and predisposed susceptibility, a depleted nervous system or illness. Less resistance was offered when the vital forces were lowered, allowing obtruding spirits to influence the “host” with their own thoughts and emotions, weakening willpower and contributing to mental confusion and distress.

Dr. Wickland, who discovered that some possessing entities claimed the status of guides or spiritual guardians, worked in a unique way. He would coax the spirits from the bodies of his severely disturbed patients and into the entranced form of his wife, Anna, a medium. He would then engage them in a two-way conversation, convincing them of their earth-bound condition. If his commanding voice failed to dislodge a possessing spirit, Dr. Wickland sometimes applied encouragement in the form of terrifying electric shocks. He declared:

These earthbound spirits are the supposed “devils” of all ages; devils of human origin, by-products of human selfishness, false teachings and ignorance, thrust blindly into a spirit existence and held there in a bondage of ignorance. The influence of these discarnate entities is the cause of many of the inexplicable and obscure events of earth life and of a large part of the world’s misery. Purity of life and motive, or high intellectuality, do not necessarily offer protection.…Many earthbound spirits are conscious of influencing mortals but enjoy their power, seeming to be without scruples.

Between 1977 and 1979, a hungry ghost masquerading as the late yoga master Sri Swami Sivananda (1887-1963) very nearly destroyed the worldwide yoga movement run by his protégé Swami Vishnu Devananda. The trouble started at the organization’s headquarters north of Montreal, Canada when a senior staff member—a woman suffering from chronic abdominal pain—began to channel a spirit claiming to be the Master Sivananda. Swami Vishnu was quickly persuaded of the voice’s veracity and his conviction led, in turn, to conviction among his followers. Soon, a large group was meeting nightly to listen to the “Master” expound wisdom and clairvoyance and occasionally demonstrate remarkable healing powers.

To Swami Vishnu Devananda, the channel’s phrasing, intonation and effortless use of Sanskrit echoed the revered master’s style of speaking and writing that he remembered so well from time spent in Rishikesh, India. Moreover, he was addressed by the pet name—Vishnu Swami— selected by his teacher many years earlier. The spirit offered guidance and inspiration and appeared to invest the very atmosphere with highly-charged positive energy. With protracted deviousness, however, the invisible presence deluded its audience into believing that they were the chosen Children of Light. Dire global predictions were made and, ultimately, the group was urged to stockpile food and weapons in readiness for the advancing breakdown in social order.

Swami Vishnu knew that such elitism contradicted Sri Swami Sivananda’s abiding love and compassion for all beings. And he was already beginning to suspect that the spirit was encouraging laziness among his followers while subtly turning them against him. Consequently, he consulted the Master’s teachings and discovered several passages in his book What Becomes of the Soul After Death affirming that great sages of the past cannot be invoked by a medium and that mediumship merely invites earthbound spirits. For example:

The spirits have no knowledge of the highest truth. They cannot help others in attaining self-realization. Some are foolish, deceitful and ignorant. These earthbound spirits control the mediums and pretend to know everything regarding the planes beyond death. They speak falsehood. They put on the appearance of some other spirit and deceive the audience. The poor innocent mediums are not aware of the tricks played by their dishonest spirit guides.

Realizing that he had been duped by an impersonating spirit, Swami Vishnu called a halt to the channeling sessions. Too late, he saw the malevolence which pervaded the messages, one of which had advised that he undertake oral surgery without anesthesia. Too late, he perceived that the sessions were leaving him “completely drained like a discharged battery.” The Swami’s change of heart provoked anger and confusion among his followers, and some fifty people—many of them senior staff—deserted the organization in the belief that the wishes of the “Master” were being denied. Several Sri Sivananda centers around the world were closed down. As Swami Vishnu declared in an article in Yoga Today: “If anyone has stayed, it is by the grace of the true Sivananda.”

In August, 1989, Swami Vishnu Devananda—a man who has dedicated his life to spiritual development and world peace—recounted the ordeal and told me ruefully: “Yes, I was fooled. But we have all learned from the experience. Earthbound spirits possess great knowledge and insight and, once you give them your hand, they will slowly pull you into their sphere of domination. Our scientists do not yet understand this dangerous phenomenon.”

Edgar Cayce was well aware of the disruptive agitations of earth-bound spirits. Although Cayce lulled himself into trance and spoke frequently of reincarnation while unconscious, he was not a medium in the strict sense of the word because his voice was always his own. No guides or controls came forward to identify themselves and take over his physical body. Instead, Cayce was able to attune his unconscious mind to communicate with the minds of people either living or dead. One day, while the “sleeping prophet” was stretched out in self-hypnotic trance, he warned explicitly about non-material mischief-makers:

There are those influences from without the veil that seek, seek, that they may find an expression, that they may still be a portion of this evolution in the earth, not considering their present estate. And these bring turmoil and strife.

The Ouija board attracts earthbound spirits more readily than any other inanimate device and those who choose to “play” this trans-dimensional distraction run the risk of being influenced by the most devious tricksters imaginable. In Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game, Stoker Hunt presents a succession of cases in which people sacrificed their will and judgement to invisible guides—with disastrous consequences. “Because of the intimate nature of the information revealed,” writes Hunt, “the Ouija board is incredibly seductive. The more suggestible a “player,” the more dangerous the Ouija game.” Seth, whose eloquence gave him ambassadorial status in the New Age movement, was first contacted via an Ouija board.

The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts

 Joe Fisher