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And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you. Mark Stavish with us. Mark's website as Hermiticinstitute dot org linked up at Coast tocoastam dot com. He's got a number of books out there, including, of course Between the Gates, Lucid Dreaming, Astral projection, and the Body of Light in Western esoterism. He's got these studies in poltergeis, obsession and possession,
which we're talking about right now. Is it conceivable that people can protect themselves Mark from these negative psychic attacks, well.
Of course, and it truly a matter of getting to understand the importance of understanding your own mind, being very careful about what you put into that mind, what you consume in terms of media, in terms of information all the time, and taking some time out to have a good spiritual practice. People who have a fairly healthy and robust spiritual practice tend in general not to have a lot of these problems. When you look at folks who are often come up as the case studies of paranormal,
unwanted and unpleasant paranormal phenomena. We often find that they don't really have a spiritual practice, they're not really committed to anything in that domain. So taking control of your own mind, taking control of your own life, is really the best protection there is.
Mark, have you ever witnessed a person who was under some kind of demonic possession?
I don't believe I've seen it directly in that way. I did work in social services, and I thought a lot of obsessive personality traits that were bordering on possession. I saw that quite a bit because of the environment. Remember, the environment is is really very hostile one, very aggressive one. I have been a part of the cleaning up of
environments that things had occurred in. And this goes into one of the ways to protect ourselves is you know, what are the friends we keep, what are the environments we're in, and even to some degree, what are the things we collect. You know, we talked about individuals being possessed, but you know, what we'll call energies or qualities or beings can also be attached to objects in places, and then they become attached to us because we happen to
be there. So like in terms of things, even religious items, I mean you're you may have a rosary from someone who you thought was a saint, you know, because you knew them and they prayed all the time, but we don't know what the real state of mind was, you know,
when they were doing that. We're hoping it was good, but you never know, you know, so especially if some of the some prayers aren't always you know, I want to talk about being centered and unworthy when things are more robust and more positive, a little more positive self image there. But I know people who were big collectors
of militaria. And I remember visiting my sister in law once at the antique store she worked at huge, huge vendor military and she asked me to get something out of the drawer for and I reached into that drawer and I got said it was like sticking my hand in the cobwebs, and what I was pulling out was a Naziss ceremonial dagger.
It was for a.
Customer, you know, And I felt like I had to go wash and I did. And that's it. You can feel, just as you can feel the positive energies, we'll call it that feelings of goodness, you kind of know when something's not right and you got to pay attention. This is really important when you're around people, places are things, and it doesn't feel right, you know, just excuse yourself because it starts slowly. The thread starts.
Slowly about would like, would you ever like to witness in exorcism?
Well, I I have witnessed exorcisms and I participated in them, but not what you're thinking in terms of that kind of full blown you know, levitating crazy movie stuff. You know, these were these were kind of like extended blessings if you will, okay, where someone was demonstrating uh, some unusual but not clarified the problems, and of course the people wanted to have extended blessings on it. I have found that that can be very difficult too for folks, because
a lot of people want help in this area. But the churches aren't always the mainstream churches, I should say, aren't always willing to provide it. You can often find it from evangelicals, they may be a little too eager. I think you can sometimes find it from some well intended therapists or new age folks who might be a
little too eager. But it's really important that people have a good understanding of psychology and ritual and theology when they engage in these kinds of practices to exercise or help someone remove these unwanted spiritual influences.
Did the exorcism seem to be successful, mark when you witnessed.
It, only in the sense that it's a temporary reprieve. The process goes on and on and on for a lengthy period of time, and usually the final success, if you will, took about a year and a half later. That yeah, And it was a lot of back and forth. And I'm thinking in particular of one young fellow who, in order to work with him, he was having very
intrusive visionary experiences and they were quite stunning. There was a little bit of history of that in the family, but there were other factors involved in terms of suicides and things of that nature. But what we had him do, along with his regular therapist, is engaged in different metap and meditation practices to get a better understanding control over his own mind and solely ease up on a lot
of the medication that he was taking. And the medication was prescribed by the way, so it took a process of getting into better understand and be comfortable what was going on in his mind and at the same time having that therapeutic process. But the counselor who I spoke with at the time at length in the family, they were quite convinced that there was something other that was kind of attached to the family at that time and trying to influence it. And that's typically what I've encountered.
That's my typical experience, is something trying to something to work its way in. It's mostly on that obsession level.
What is it mark about somebody putting their guard down that allows a demonic force or some entity to be able to do what it does.
You know, people just and they get very emotionally upset about things and they lose hope, they lose a sense of meaning, they lose a sense of purpose, and they look for excitement and meaning and things that are a distraction from understanding reality as it is. And it's just that kind of boredom. What's the saying bored him is the devil's playground. It's kind of like that. It's not a lot more complex than that. I mean, you could
see people who start with that. They like to gamble, and it starts that small and next thing, you know, they're putting the house up, or you have like Big Van Dyke said, you know, he was an alcoholic and he said it started by solely just going out with friends. The next thing, well, he was having trouble controlling it. So you never know what the slippery slope is going to be. But if you know yourself and you're comfortable with who you are, you're not going to side that
far down it. You're going to know and to stop. So that's where spiritual practice is important, to have some ethical guidelines for yourself that you're just really comfortable with and that you know, Okay, this is enough, I'm good here, I don't have to go any further.
It seems like these demons, though, seem to be all around us all the time.
Well that's part of the joke. I mean, if you could really sit where we're surrounded by a host of invisible intelligences, and if we could really see how crowd of the room is, we panic. But at the same time we're surrounded by a host of positive influences too. It's what we tune ourselves into, it's what we direct our consciousness to. It's what we direct our awareness to. So when we focus so much on the negative. That's what we slowly become more and more aware of, and
it just it breaks us down over time. So people, places, and things. Who are the people you hang out with? I mean, you're going to be like the folks that you spend the five people you spend the most time with. Where do you like to go? You know, some places they're just contagious. I remember going through a spiritualist camp in upstate New York, and again it was like driving through cobwebs. I'd washed my car down and took a shower after I left. And we've all had that experience
at least once in life. In something, we just need to pay attention to it and then find the other. What are the things that excite us for the good? What are the things that encourage us and expand us. What are the things that bring us happiness and joy and make us valuable to the community and to others.
Of the twenty song books that you've written, at least two dozen, which one is your favorite?
My favorite is Between the Gates because that is just a really nice and user friendly broach for folks to understand this continuity of consciousness and why meditation and reflection is important. How to then move that into what we would call out of body experiences or astral projection, and why that matters in terms of continuity of consciousness or after life survival.
Has it been six years since you were last on the show? Has it been that long?
Yes, it has, But you know, I've been out with you several times in boulders, so we've seen each other recently. Yeah.
Absolutely, you did a great job for us on Beyond Belief.
Well, thank you.
It is truly remarkable. Let's talk about spirituality for a moment. There is a huge difference between being ultra religious and spiritual, don't you think, Oh definitely.
You know, when we think about religious and I think ultra religious will focus on that, it tends to be taking a religious idea entification and making that your identity. You know, I am this, you know, and I am orthodox, this, I am fundamentalist, this, I am that. Spirituality, of course, is maybe taking that identity and trying to experience it more personally, maybe even to the point where that identity doesn't matter anymore. What is my personal experience of my
fundamental nature? And what is my personal experience we'll say of the invisible and the divine.
Do you think most people need spirituality in their life.
Yes, and it's going to be probably a little bit different for everyone, depending upon their constitution, their makeup. You know, if you look at Vivicanana his book you know, the Yogas and other works, he talks about four different types of yoga. You know, there's a devotional practice. Some people are really very good at that. There's a more mental practice, you know, and the meditative practices. Some are better that.
Some are very good at kind of a spiritual study where they really observe spiritual ideas through reading and contemplation. Some are good at that and as very action oriented. They like to do things for the benefit of others, but doing it understanding that this is for their idea of what constitutes the divinity the venue for themselves, and
that's a karmiogre. So there's a variety of different ways to become spiritual and to involve that in our lives, and some people benefit from just one, others have a combination of these and other methods.
How do you think our ancients understood this? Because they did, and they did it in a great way.
Well, there's a term that we occasionally hear called traditionalism, and that's the philosophical view that many people don't really understand. Well, it doesn't mean to go back to the past and try and bring that forward, but it's to look at the past and the things that worked, and within that view, the thing that makes something work is a connection to
the transcendent. So if we as an individual, we as a family, we as a community, we as a society culture are looking at what we do and trying to have it connected to the transcendent on some level, that would be what the classics, that would be what we say the ancient view, particularly things like ancient Egypt that was well known, and even Rome, even though Rome was a bit from our view, very materialistic, they did understand this.
If a person is brought up without spirituality, without it, what do you think happens to them? How does that shape their personal.
Well that's a tough one because you know, we're all familiar with some people who we would say are they're decent people, we might even call them good, who are atheists they don't really have a spiritual view. But generally speaking, that's not tested under extreme circumstances either from what we know so if someone doesn't have a sense of when we say spirituality, we're saying survival after death, which means
being accountable for our actions. That's really what we're saying. I, in some way will be held accountable for my actions, whether it be in we'll take the Christian view heaven and hell or some other view of karma and reincarnation, I will be held accountable for what I do. Without that, it can be very difficult for people to make difficult choices that aren't exclusively self serving.
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