There was a big scandal in the 90s around what turned out to be a bogus psychological technique called facilitated communication where facilitators working with non-verbal mentally handicapped people would 'help' them to type out their 'thoughts' thus giving families the first ever glimpse into the inner lives of their disabled children. It all went to hell when kids started claiming abuse that wasn't substantiated, and as it turned out the facilitators were (likely subconsciously) manipulating what the kids said the whole time. But at the time it just seemed like this wondrous thing that gave the mentally handicapped a voice so of course everyone jumped on it. People are a lot more credulous when believing in something would fulfill their hearts' greatest desires. For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_abuse_allegations_made_through_facilitated_communication
And the Kern County (Bakersfield) sexual abuse fraud flamed into a 'Witchhunt' by an ambitious DA. There is a great documentary of that name narrated by Sean Penn.
Lived though McMartin. My daughter was of the age of the victims but went to a different pre-school. She insists as do many of her friends some 40 years later that very bad things did happen there
I’d be interested to know just what kinds of bad things we are talking about. The allegations in the 1980s preschool cases were far too outrageous to be possible physically. Yet juries believed them and convicted on those beliefs.
I AM perfectly willing to believe that corporal punishment was meted out at the time that many then, and far more today, would consider abusive—hitting and shoving around, most likely, or isolation. My wife has worked in that setting enough to know that some children can be extremely difficult to manage, and that there are occasionally teachers who simply cannot handle the stress after a while. That is likely what was going on, coupled with a 1980s-specific transition era from an older generation’s notions of child discipline to that of the Boomers, which no doubt contributed to the conflicts that eventually found expression in extreme allegations.
I think Rod's piece today is interesting, but the claims of Katie trigger my distrust alarm. You have a person who had everything go wrong for her, and then magically, everything starts going right for her, based on her very particular, intense and idiosyncratic understanding of what "right" is. It feels to me that there might be some wishful thinking involved.
Reading Rod's report, it is also hard for me to see where Katie ends and Houston begins. This is a problem, because relationships between two humans always have a gap between the souls of two people, even if they exist in a healthy partnership. When someone is claiming there is no such gap in a relationship, there's usually some psychological distortion, wishful thinking or other chicanery involved.
Still - I am temperamentally very distrustful, so I'm more than happy to let everyone else make up their own mind based on Rod's (in any case rather intriguing) article.
Well, the abuse Katie suffered as a child and as a wife would make her particularly sensitive to spiritual energies. Anybody who has been subjected to narcissistic abuse can tell you there's nothing "medical" about it. The results of such devaluation and discarding are more like a curse, or a spell, which can take years to break out of. All of these terms, some of them racy and colloquial ("gaslighting", "flying monkeys"), are used with great glibness by the psychiatric profession. In my opinion in reality they're describing is something purely spiritual, dark energy at work, unleashed on those whom the abuser can see is a target (we won't go into why), the effects of which no amount of talk therapy can cure (although it can alleviate it). Katie would be sensitive to the positive end of the spectrum.
Something I respect the old established churches for is that they apply a type of "quality control" to spiritual claims. Otherwise, everyone with a vision would be a prophet.
Clearly none of us is an established authority for applying this "quality control" to the case of Katie (like you, I'm just a guy with an opinion), but I do wonder what their verdict would be.
Having been under the spell of a narcissistic mother for nearly 50 years I get this. But as someone who has more than average knowledge about autism, it’s diagnosis, and the tools used with severe cases, it seems more unlikely than not. I am also afraid that all this is going down a road that leads away from rather than towards God.
Yes exactly. This is what I was getting at with my comment below too. Just because it's "spiritual" doesn't make it right, or from actual God. See: psychedelics.
I worked with a person who had a never ending tale of woe of abuse by her 'evil fundamentalist' parents. As her story went on and on and on and on and on and on, many of the sympathies of her co-workers shifted to her likely innocent long suffering parents.
It just could not ALL be true. So some of it had to be false. Maybe all of it was false?
Not sure how much it applies in the scenario you mentioned, but if someone starts with a religion of "my church and my parents are always right", and has their faith violated, they will often flip it around to a new belief centered on "my church and my parents are always wrong".
My read on her (shared by other co-workers) was that at some point in her teenage years she just decided to make 'yanking her parents strings' a life long center of her personality.
Overtime, I switched 180 degrees and came to feel sad for her slandered parents.
Obviously, I have no way of knowing THE TRUTH, but I knew that it couldn't ALL be true.
Perhaps other have add the same experience with someone?
Yes. Much about this rubs me the wrong way. I get Munchausen by proxy vibes throughout, although I freely admit I have no evidence whatsoever that Katie has harmed Houston in any way. Still, the reliance on crystals and "energy" metaphors gives off a gnostic, New Agey, narcissistic feel. And the attempt to find echoes of this in Orthodoxy (a faith that, as a Catholic, I respect deeply), strikes me as gullible and naive, if not downright appalling.
I would be a bit kinder on Rod here. He's an eclectic and offbeat guy, who finds novel and fascinating things all the time. I've learned so much from him, often things I would never have found anywhere else.
However, as a side-effect, he will sometimes fixate on something a bit strange. That comes with the territory though.
"it is also hard for me to see where Katie ends and Houston begins"
That's likely because Katie is "facilitating" communication with Houston. Same problem has yesterday's article about Jake. The "I went to Heaven and now Jesus talks to me" thing is especially concerning. Private revelation should always be treated skeptically.
That said, if the story helps Rod's faith, I can't criticize it. However I don't plan to buy her book.
I’m a parent of autistic twins and have looked into this subject extensively. I’m sad to say it’s facilitated communication repackaged. Rod, I’m begging you to look into the method of spelling 2 communicate with a more skeptical eye. It’s doubly tragic because the family falsely believes they are speaking with the autistic person, and meanwhile the actual communications (ie nonverbal cues) can be ignored and dismissed as apraxia. I’m a devout Catholic and don’t doubt that autistic people are close to God but these messages are almost certainly generated by the “communication partner” subconsciously.
“Academic articles have argued that the scientific research into FC is ableist and outdated and should be redone in collaboration with FC-users – who of course, would have to make their views known using FC.”
—Here we have an example of the recently emerging breakdown in critical reason among people we trust NOT to exhibit such illogic. A sharp form of this is that anything an “enemy of the Volk” says is wrong simply because they’re an enemy of the Volk, and named as such an enemy by the leaders of the Volk.
It’s all “heads I win, tails you lose” with such people.
Oh, good, we will listen to you. I guess perhaps said generalizations that were one of the concerns for you. I know of your faith as a Lutheran and your helping us to know Protestantism varies. I thought of you again and again. It has been close to two years. You were really missed.
Seems a powerful and fascinating testimony. Many such testimonies have red flags waving, but this one is more compelling. Much would come down to that process, the letter board, and knowing that Houston can communicate similarly with it when Katie is not present.
He cannot. None of the autistic people featured in the podcast can perform their feats of communication (or mind-reading, etc.) unless a parent (sometimes only one parent in particular) or other "facilitator" is holding the spelling board or otherwise in touch with or visible to the individual. It's very coy about that fact, which comes out in dribs and drabs over the episodes I listened to. There's no rigorous testing and there doesn't seem to be anything going on that wasn't debunked during the "facilitated communication" fad 30 years ago. I'd actually like for some woo like this to be true, I really would -- but not at the price of checking my reasoning mind at the door.
I listened to several episodes of Season 1 of the Telepathy Tapes. 2 possible red flags for me as an Orthodox Christian.
First, one of the moms asks her non-verbal autistic telepath child, who reports downloading info from "God" or "gods", something like: given there are multiple religions, are there multiple gods, or just one God with many names? The kid answers the latter. But it got me wondering if that's another way of saying that all religions point to the same truth, which is of course heresy to the Orthodox.
Second, some kids can predict future events. One 10pyr old girl predicts a school shooting, which happens 3 days later. And many of the kids speak multiple languages they never learned.
Aren't these some of the typical signs of demonic oppression or possession? Knowing things you can't know, speaking languages you can't have learned. How do we know these things are coming from actual Jesus, and not fallen angels masquerading? If these things were revealed to a non-neurodivergent like me, I'd run to my spiritual father immediately for counsel.
This goes a bit into the woo territory here, but I do give some credence to those who have glimpses of future things because I myself have had them, as does my father, and 1 of my daughters. Mind you, in our cases these are not out and out visions or prophecies, but I've thought of them as "future echoes", and in our cases they're usually so intermixed with dreams and other chatter that, for us, we can't claim in the moment (or when we awaken) to have any idea if anything we dreamt meandered through had any significance at all. I don't usually remember my dreams anyway, they fade quickly.
But when that moment comes, it's downright eerie knowing for a minute or so everything that's about to happen, and everything anyone around is about to say to me.
I have one key example, though, where I remembered exactly where I was and what I was doing when I had that future echo "vision" (for lack of a better term), and then when it also came to pass.
In the summer between 8th and 9nth grades I was once up in my bedroom on a lazy afternoon. I had been reading, but put my book aside and let my mind wander over things. I was advancing to high school, which meant a new building, new classrooms, new teachers, and some new classmates, and my mind was wandering there. In my wanderings I saw a classroom, and myself sitting at a desk. A teacher was sitting at her desk at the front of the classroom, and the sun was coming in through the windows to my left, hitting the wall and floors in a certain way. There were posters on the wall. I looked around and there were students near me, some of whom did not register. We were discussing a book I had not read. This was July when I "saw" all this as my mind wandered.
In September, several weeks into the school year, I lived that moment in time. Everything I saw in July was there and alive - the teacher (new to me) the new students. Everything, acutely real and present.
I've never tried to force these things or seek them out. They just happen. And it's never anything massively significant - no lottery numbers, no disasters or near misses, just little echoes of humdrum things soon to happen.
It's like an old SNL sketch where Chris Walken spoofed his own Dead Zone role, as a guy who just weirded everyone out by revealing utterly silly things about the near future or recent past.
I still experience deja vu somewhat regularly. It is never anything important, but the sensation is unmistakable. I have also recently experienced a dream premonition about something terrible that was about to befall a family member. I claim no special insight. It may just all be a trick of the mind. Or perhaps time really is a flat circle.
Rudyard Kipling in his memoirs records this experience. A friend tugging his sleeve and saying, "I want a word with you." He renders it as given a preview of coming frames in his life's movie. It's never happened to me, but last week I had a not very strong, not at all visual and not very long sensation of somebody I knew who is dead inhabiting the same room. Not pleasant.
One night when my late husband was critically ill in the hospital, I had an overwhelming sensation that an angel and a demon were in the room contending for his soul, just like those images in medieval ars moriendi. So I called for a priest (after waving off the female chaplain) and had him anointed again. The crisis passed a he lived a while longer.
Women in my family have sometimes manifested psychic sensitivity. For instance, my aunt was cheerfully chatting with her granddaughter when she suddenly stopped and cried: "We need to pray for your mother right now!" Turned out, at that very moment, a robber had a gun pointed at the woman's head. But he took the store's money and ran without harming her.
I used to be unusually good at picking up things people hadn't revealed. ("He's up to something." or "That marriage is breaking up.") But it was a matter of subconsciencely reading subtle body language and tone of voice.
When I was a young boy my mom suddenly said that we needed to pray for my dad right then, and we did. It turned out that at the time he had been driving a steep mountain road in dense fog with trucks coming down the other way.
I've had those experiences all of my life. They're never important things, and it's made me wonder if there isn't something to the idea that time is not linear and every now and again there's overlap.
"Pentecost miracles" reported of some saints involve them being understood by people who speak a different language, not them actually speaking that language. What about Pentecostals/Charismatics? Are their explosions of syllables actual foreign sentences? A friend who was an experienced Charismatic Catholic once described how he came to recite a Russian hymn during a prayer service: he's actually heard that long ago and his memory had dredged it up. That's called "cryptonesia" a phenomenon invoked to explain Bridey Murphy's memory of an old folksong. (Anyone else remember Bridey Murphy, whose experiences were used to "prove" reincarnation.)
Yes, the ability to speak languages never studied is a classic mark of demonic possession.
There are several examples in the Telepathy Tapes podcast showing these autistic non verbal kids typing out sentences in a language that the mother (and presumably the nonverbal kid) do not speak. Like Hebrew for example. That's why I mentioned it. Even if the mom is subconsciously feeding the kid answers, the only explanation for her feeding the kid foreign languages is that it's not her doing the feeding, it's some other entity.
A famous Hollywood celebrity will die soon. Followed in close order by another death. There will be a stunning political upset. The stock market will rise many points (!) unless it suddenly falls (!!!).
Maybe this is true, maybe not. I am slightly more inclined to believe it as not. There are many cases of autistic savants who have amazing abilities in certain fields- math, music, etc. I have lots of thoughts on this one.
1) Energy brings to mind "light". There are many accounts of encounters with God as being bathed in light, light that attaches to the person encountering Him. Also, Satan "fell like lightning from the sky". Light is the condition of Heaven. There is an idea that originally Adam and Eve were beings of light and that God actually covered them with what we know of as human skin, not animal fur/ clothing. Will our new, perfected bodies be made of light?
2) When we are perfected, we are told we will be more like Jesus . Jesus clearly read thoughts and could communicate with anything in creation. We learn more and more about mysterious ways that plant life, for example, has some form of communication. We are told that if humans fail to praise God, the rocks can cry out. I choose to take this literally, not as a metaphor. Further, Eve did not seem shocked to speak with a serpent. What if our minds have capacity built in to have these skills but due to the fall, something is broken? What if certain people whose minds are so different from "normal" still retain some of the original abilities to do the unexplainable?
3) God does not exist in linear time. I suspect that we aren't able to grasp that right now, but thinking of God's omnicience, maybe the whole thing is laid out in front of Him - from Creation to Second Coming, all at once, Alpha to Omega, in eternity?
He is unsearchable and beyond our understanding, but these are concepts to consider. Not doctrine- but wonder. Thoughts?
One set of ideas I tend to ponder on occasion is just how metaphorically we might consider language about “light” and any intersection between actual physics and spiritual phenomena.
We know from modern physics that nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light; conversely, photons—the particles of light—must travel at the speed of light according to whatever medium they’re in. The question arises as to what the universe looks like while riding on a beam of photons. Well, time stops, and distance is entirely foreshortened. One would exist in an eternal presence, everywhere at once. Now…where have we encountered THAT situation before?….
While respecting the scientific constraints of speaking only about what is capable of measurement and repetition in experiment or observation, we are still led by logic to ask about situations deemed impossible by physics, like “what is outside of the universe”, or “what happened before time was created”, and the like. These are not nonsense questions, whatever the physicist might say.
I just wanted to make a comment about "energy." It's not just a scientific concept, it's Scriptural.
English got the word "energy" from the Greek "energeia," simply adopted it. And St. Paul uses the term and cognates over 30 times, always referring to *spiritual* energies. (Usually energies of God, but sometimes energies of the evil one.) Eg, "God is energizing in you, both to will and to energize for his good pleasure," Philippians 2:13.
The reason that sounds strange to Western ears is that Western theology is based on reading the Bible in Latin.
When St Jerome was translating the Bible from Greek to Latin, around AD 400, there was no Latin equivalent for "energy." So he used instead "operatio," operation. It has a different feeling; it's less energized, to be specific.
For the next thousand years, Western theology was built on the foundation of that Latin translation. Oddly enough, the greatest Western theologians did not read Greek well. St. Augustine disliked Greek as a child and didn't acquire it, St. Gregory the Great gained little Greek despite living 6 years in Constantinople, and St. John Cardinal Newman says of St. Thomas Aquinas: he is “generally supposed [to be] ignorant of Greek,” though “his own words [in the Catena] seem to imply otherwise… he has in several cases quite missed the sense of the Greek.”)
The concept of energy was eliminated. Even today English bibles translated from the Greek will not use "energy" but rather words with the "operatio" sense, like "work." "God is working in you, both to will and to work..." The familiarity with the concept of energy is gone. But it's still there in the Bible.
Orthodoxy is familiar with the Biblical concept of energy, so it doesn't sound New Age to us; it sounds like St. Paul.
OK Ted now I am truly, deeply impressed. I was educated at a Dominican university and yet I had never heard the name William of Moerbeke, or this connection to Aquinas. (Unless I was daydreaming...) How could you know this fascinating bit of, what I would consider to be, Scholastic Philosophy trivia and how could I not know it? (The latter is easier to answer than the former, sadly.)I demand to know where you were educated! I am being serious (and humorous). I had to go to Wikipedia to get the story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Moerbeke), so I am feeling ashamed...This is why I read ALL the comments here. I learn from them.
Any college-level medieval history course would mention William because his translation is the first made directly from Greek to Latin rather than passed through Arabic in Spain as were versions of Aristotle previously available in the West. But sad to say, William had access to original Greek Aristotle because the Crusaders had sacked Constantinople in 1204. (Greek texts of Plato, et al. were shaken loose later by the fall of Constantinople and contributed to Renaissance thought.)
Four semesters of Western Civ. 5 credits meaning every morning at 8 a.m. sharp, team taught by humanists of different disciplines. I am sure I would have remembered this tidbit about William of Moerbeke. Ugh!
My sympathy. My mind is stuffed with all manner of Quaint and Curious Lore but I did learn this in a medieval history course in 1961. The teacher wrote "Greek Scholars in Venice" so perhaps he was particularly attuned to translation/transmission issues.
Two others who had no Greek. Dante Alighieri and James Joyce. Joyce's father, the model of Si Dedalus, wanted him to take Greek as a second language at University College, but he took Italian, in part so he could read Dante. Your correspondent can sound out Greek words, but that's it. Dante of course writes that in Limbo he saw "Omero, poeta sovrano", even though he got his Trojan war from Virgil.
As I understand it, the word "energy" was a late addition to English, occurring in the 17th Century. The result is that the way English speakers hear that word will tend to suggest various fields of physics.
Even in terms of supposedly “materialistic” physics, “energy” is a more fundamental set of ideas than “matter”. The details may shift around, but it’s been clear since Hiroshima that stuff with inertia can be transformed into blinding light.
True. My point is that it the West has difficulty understanding the full meaning of the "energy" as it is used in the East, because it has only been in use in the West for a few hundred years. In the East, it has been in use for several millennia. It has a very narrow range of meaning in the West in comparison with the East.
The word "energy" in the original language does mean something like "In-Working" ("ergon is "work" in Greek-- an actual cognate to our English word since it once had a leading /w/ sound which Greek lost early on), and that definitely points to God's immanence: his energy is his work in our spacetime where we may be able to perceive it-- not just its results (the whole of Creation of course) but in some cases the actual in-work itself.
This is an interesting piece but I'll have to get back to it tomorrow. Just got home from a visit across the state a bit earlier and I'm leaving soon for a presanctified liturgy and Lenten dinner.
Let's go real slow here (don't usually comment on woo, but this is pretty compelling):
"Thoughts are things! They are as real as anything else, as real as a sound wave or a radio wave or a Wi-Fi signal and as real as the smell of a rose."
Obviously Katie is not a philosopher (no disgrace in that). Thoughts are not "things"--they do not exist. Since Heidegger this is less of a special use of the word than it had been previously (though Santayana employed it in the same way at about the same time). Existence pertains to things that inhabit The World, the orbis terrarum. But there is being without existence, or, rather, outside existence. Maybe the easiest example is number. The number three does not "exist". But the number three is real. Three vertical lines chalked on a wall exist, and two half circles perched one above the other printed in a book exist, but the number three is purely mental. It has what Aristotelians call intentional being. It is in the mind. In many ways it is MORE real than the three vertical lines, which can be erased. Aristotle with great care and delicacy delineates the kinds of being, the kinds of reality, if you like, there are. Franz Brentano wrote a book called On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. A priest gave Heidegger the book to read when the boy evinced some interest in philosophy. He didn't understand all of it, but it set him on his way.
What worries me is that Katie is materializing the spiritual, which is a different thing from saying the material has a spiritual dimension, or spiritual qualities.
And, Dreher, I've been wrong before, but there's nothing in this that any Greek Father would gainsay.
Yes, I thought that. Then I second guessed - was it The Magician's Nephew?. Then I asked Google. which said The Last Battle. I am willing to grant Google was wrong. But let's not quibble. I do not care which one it was.
I am a parent of 2 autistic twins, non verbal until age 4, mostly non verbal until age 7, with severe limitations. We used sign language to communicate for several years. My now adult children are very bright and have profound insights, but are also limited.
I do believe there is a spiritual element at play.
As to "telepathy", Christ often read the minds and hearts of those around him, so it is possible and a thing of God.
We are all connected spiritually. Some people seem to be able to read others very well and know things. If anything, I suspect that we don't listen well enough to hear the thoughts and feelings of others, trusting too much in material sensations from eyes and ears and ignoring the heart.
As to places having vibes and feelings, I have been in both good and evil places in my life. Holy places exist.
As to pray, exercise faith. Truly believe in our Lord. Believe in Him and His power and grace.
Our ways and desires don't match the Lord's. His our better for us. He blesses in His own time and manner.
Absolutely true about places. I am clueless about social life, have never been able to form or maintain relationships outside of my husband and children, but I do sense “good” and “evil” places ( and sometimes people) quite palpably.
I am Protestant, and I am understanding to the metaphysical mindset that the Orthodox often claim only belongs to them. I have witnessed the supernatural, seen demons, and beheld miracles. I also happen to have a non-verbal, cognitively disabled child. I know my child well and she does communicate with her family in her own way that we have learned/developed over many years. I have watched people who want to feel special believe that they are receiving a special communication from my child - though I know my child well enough to know what she’s really communicating and mannerisms that are typical for her. I have witnessed this so many times. People see what they want to see.
Demons are very good at performing tricks. They are very good at pretending to be light beings. They are very good at sharing secret knowledge (or passwords). They are very good at miraculous distraction. So much of this reads like New Age-ism. I have witnessed many Christians falling under the spell and trap that it is. And the people who are the most vulnerable to sensationalism, eat it right up. I have seen too many Christians fall into the cult of the New Apostolic Reformation vein of hype and they all can’t get enough of crystals, energies, and mysteries. It’s not the wonders of God that does it for them. It’s esotericism - their real god. I have seen this too many times to unsee it.
One Orthodox priest, Fr. Stephen DeYoung, often critiques these things as (to use his phrasing) "spiritual technology" - with the emphasis on Greek root of both "technology" and "technique". That is to say, what attracts people to New Age, New Apostolic, some types of Pentecostalism (like Word-Faith and Prosperity Gospel) is that they seek these things out as a means of control. "Do this thing in this way and you are guaranteed these results." Which is much the same as in pagan magic, etc. Esotericism is a part of that, of course, with all the pride that comes from being able to say "I know something you don't know" (the appeal of every mystery cult). But thinking one has ultimate control is also a big part. I think Fr. DeYoung is onto something with his "spiritual technology" description.
I just searched for the etymology of ‘technology’ and an essay from someone at my local university came up first:
“The word technology comes from two Greek words, transliterated techne and logos. Techne means art, skill, craft, or the way, manner, or means by which a thing is gained. Logos means word, the utterance by which inward thought is expressed, a saying, or an expression. So, literally, technology means words or discourse about the way things are gained.”
‘Spiritual technology’ definitely resonates here. People can be mesmerized and controlled (or at least deeply captivated) by people who are representing themselves as a sort of spiritual portal with answers to all these mysteries. As many other readers have suggested, it would be wise to consider these stories under some spiritual guidance by our church leaders. Definitely before we allow it to change the way we pray. And, I can’t help but have this nagging thought that claims like this pull our attention so strongly to a phenomenon that we take our eyes off of God. God is here before us, yet our eyes keep looking off to the side believing we see Him over there as well. A crafty distraction.
As many Orthodox priests I know like to put it, "If a 'spiritual experience' doesn't lead you to God, and to repentance for your own sins, then it isn't from God in the first place and should be rejected." Which is not the same as saying that the experience was not real, or that it did not happen.
There's an old Orthodox term of art of false spiritual experiences and a false sense of one's own holiness or "insight": Prelest.
This is what it sounded like to me as well. I have been thinking about it all day, because basically Houston uses the same argument as "Word of Faith", which is you need to have enough faith or prayer doesn't work. That is a lie from the devil which alone can be devastating and is a huge red flag. So you got cancer and can't get healed because you don't believe enough? Well, it is your fault. It all rather sounds just close enough to the truth that it is believable. Just remember, the devil can appear as a being of light.
Those who have had Near Death Experiences -- there is a vast literature on this -- report on their return from physical death in the reductive materialism sense the culturre urges upon us that they were most struck by a sense of indescribable love that surrounded them in Heaven. Also the sheer beauty of everything wherever they look. I thank Rod for clueing me in on the Jesus Prayer, of which I was entirely ignorant. I now say it often through the day.
The human brain is storytelling machine. It is telling stories all the time. Listen to that 'voice' in your head.
I had a near death experience. I could have slipped away, but I was pulled back by a medical team.
It didn't make me religious, but it me a lot less fearful of death. At the last seconds, the brain relaxes into a peace because it can not understand the situation in any other way.
The mind is not the brain, it's something more. Eben Alexander was a Harvard neurosurgeon for 20 years, and an atheist like most scientists. "A staunch materialist," is how he put it, "who believed consciousness was purely a product of brain chemistry." He picked up an ancient virus during a visit to Israel and fell into a coma when he returned home. He spent seven days on a ventilater and the team of doctors working on him were on the point of giving up when he returned with a story that spent 90 weeks on the NYT bestseller list. It's called "Proof of Heaven." Another M.D., Bruce Greyson, has spent a good deal of his career interviewing NDE experiencers. His "After" is a collection of what he heard from them. Sebastian Junger, author of a "The Perfect Storm," is the son of a physicist who had the usual dismissive attitude about things spiritual. Yet when Junger, a chip off the old block, suffered a ruptured aneurysm and lost consciousness, he encountered his father. "It's okay,," his dad said, "there's nothing to be scared of. I'll take care of you." The son in writing "In My Time of Dying" felt it necessary to present the case of the Scientism argument against NDE, but it didn't read like his heart was in it.
I am the parent of two non-speaking autistic sons ages 21 and 18. Both are spellers like Houston. The comments in this thread, encouraging you to dismiss Houston’s story because facilitated communication has been debunked Should not stop you from believing in Houston. I struggled with this very question for many months and found answers that reconciled how facilitated communication could test so poorly and be debunked so thoroughly and yet these newer methodologies such as spelling to communicate, the rapid prompting method, the spellers method, etc. should be viewed through a different lens.
I am a firsthand witness to similar types of miracles, as what you are reading about, and listening to in the telepathy tapes.
Rod: I have read most of what you have written in the last 22 years. I’m a big fan of yours. You have stumbled upon something profound and real. Let it strengthen your faith as it has mine. God has chosen the weak and the voiceless in these last days to bring about a great work.
Not everything that my boys spell is faith promoting according to my faith tradition. Some of it is challenging to the doctrines I have always believed to be true. But they cut like a knife through the assumptions of materialism and godlessness. They are so full of light, intelligence, and connection to the other side of the veil. It is as if God is assembling Dumbledore‘s Army in the form of non-speakers that can’t be touched by the wickedness of this world..
Keep pushing through the telepathy tapes until you finish episode nine. I will never forget where I was when I finished that episode.
I don't know if autistic people are drawn to Orthodoxy in general, but my parish is full of autistic people, verbal people. Something interesting here. Lots of left-handed people too, and adoptees.
I too just finished listening to the first two episodes of "The Telepathy Tapes." And, I too, will likely not listen to more. Not because I think telepathy to be impossible or the phenomena described to be fake, but because of the lack of a conceptual framework within which to make sense of things. I was surprised not to hear Rupert Sheldrake mentioned (perhaps he is in further episodes), since he is a pioneer in the area. As a scientist, he has suggested a number of assumptions current science makes that prevent it from engaging reality adequately, one of which is that consciousness is limited to the space inside our skulls. (See The Science Delusion, for example.) Indeed, the so called "hard problem" of consciousness will likely be the thing that forces our current science to develop. See David Bentley Hart on this. I should also mention that Owen Barfield can shed a lot of light here as well, partcularly his work Saving the Appearances, which demonstrates convincingly both that consciousness and phenomena are intimately connected and that they evolve together. One might place the non-verbal neuro divergents within Barfield's schematic as being hangovers from the stage of original participation and/or prototypes of final participation, though I sense that they are also a product of modernity (Barfield's middle stage of idolatry or un-participated phenomena). I say this because of the comments Akhil in Episode 2 of the Telepathy Tapes made about his body, first not recognizing that he had one and later not knowing that it could move. Anyway, I have tried to work out some of the implications of these things in my young adult fantasy series, The Perilous Times Saga, which I have described as a young girl's attempt to make sense of a world that is much weirder than she had imagined. I believe that we are living in such a world.
You should really look into the facilitated communication scandal. This feels very similar.
Into the what, now?
example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
There was a big scandal in the 90s around what turned out to be a bogus psychological technique called facilitated communication where facilitators working with non-verbal mentally handicapped people would 'help' them to type out their 'thoughts' thus giving families the first ever glimpse into the inner lives of their disabled children. It all went to hell when kids started claiming abuse that wasn't substantiated, and as it turned out the facilitators were (likely subconsciously) manipulating what the kids said the whole time. But at the time it just seemed like this wondrous thing that gave the mentally handicapped a voice so of course everyone jumped on it. People are a lot more credulous when believing in something would fulfill their hearts' greatest desires. For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_abuse_allegations_made_through_facilitated_communication
Sounds like the infamous McMartin preschool case.
And the Kern County (Bakersfield) sexual abuse fraud flamed into a 'Witchhunt' by an ambitious DA. There is a great documentary of that name narrated by Sean Penn.
Lived though McMartin. My daughter was of the age of the victims but went to a different pre-school. She insists as do many of her friends some 40 years later that very bad things did happen there
I’d be interested to know just what kinds of bad things we are talking about. The allegations in the 1980s preschool cases were far too outrageous to be possible physically. Yet juries believed them and convicted on those beliefs.
I AM perfectly willing to believe that corporal punishment was meted out at the time that many then, and far more today, would consider abusive—hitting and shoving around, most likely, or isolation. My wife has worked in that setting enough to know that some children can be extremely difficult to manage, and that there are occasionally teachers who simply cannot handle the stress after a while. That is likely what was going on, coupled with a 1980s-specific transition era from an older generation’s notions of child discipline to that of the Boomers, which no doubt contributed to the conflicts that eventually found expression in extreme allegations.
Also calls into question everything you know about Helen Keller. We really do live or die by trust.
I have some skeptism about the official narrative about Helen Keller. Faith in the Keller-Sullivan story is mandatory among Nice People.
Her article in Wikipedia is strongly defended against any skeptism, but some timid voices have squeaked.
As many Wikipedia articles, the Talk page is revealing.
The claim that Helen Keller flew an airplane is positively Stalinist.
I think Rod's piece today is interesting, but the claims of Katie trigger my distrust alarm. You have a person who had everything go wrong for her, and then magically, everything starts going right for her, based on her very particular, intense and idiosyncratic understanding of what "right" is. It feels to me that there might be some wishful thinking involved.
Reading Rod's report, it is also hard for me to see where Katie ends and Houston begins. This is a problem, because relationships between two humans always have a gap between the souls of two people, even if they exist in a healthy partnership. When someone is claiming there is no such gap in a relationship, there's usually some psychological distortion, wishful thinking or other chicanery involved.
Still - I am temperamentally very distrustful, so I'm more than happy to let everyone else make up their own mind based on Rod's (in any case rather intriguing) article.
There is a whiff of "too good to be true", or to use an older joke Rod himself has used at his own expense, it's a case study in classic "Dreherbait".
I know a lot of families with autistic kids running the entire gamut from mild to totally non-verbal. One wonders.
Well, the abuse Katie suffered as a child and as a wife would make her particularly sensitive to spiritual energies. Anybody who has been subjected to narcissistic abuse can tell you there's nothing "medical" about it. The results of such devaluation and discarding are more like a curse, or a spell, which can take years to break out of. All of these terms, some of them racy and colloquial ("gaslighting", "flying monkeys"), are used with great glibness by the psychiatric profession. In my opinion in reality they're describing is something purely spiritual, dark energy at work, unleashed on those whom the abuser can see is a target (we won't go into why), the effects of which no amount of talk therapy can cure (although it can alleviate it). Katie would be sensitive to the positive end of the spectrum.
Something I respect the old established churches for is that they apply a type of "quality control" to spiritual claims. Otherwise, everyone with a vision would be a prophet.
Clearly none of us is an established authority for applying this "quality control" to the case of Katie (like you, I'm just a guy with an opinion), but I do wonder what their verdict would be.
Having been under the spell of a narcissistic mother for nearly 50 years I get this. But as someone who has more than average knowledge about autism, it’s diagnosis, and the tools used with severe cases, it seems more unlikely than not. I am also afraid that all this is going down a road that leads away from rather than towards God.
Yes, see what I wrote below. Katie is at the crossroads and if she turns left she's headed for pantheism.
Yes exactly. This is what I was getting at with my comment below too. Just because it's "spiritual" doesn't make it right, or from actual God. See: psychedelics.
Maybe the abuse happened exactly as claimed or maybe it didnt.
Having said I can't write it off. what you say could also be true.
I worked with a person who had a never ending tale of woe of abuse by her 'evil fundamentalist' parents. As her story went on and on and on and on and on and on, many of the sympathies of her co-workers shifted to her likely innocent long suffering parents.
It just could not ALL be true. So some of it had to be false. Maybe all of it was false?
Not sure how much it applies in the scenario you mentioned, but if someone starts with a religion of "my church and my parents are always right", and has their faith violated, they will often flip it around to a new belief centered on "my church and my parents are always wrong".
My read on her (shared by other co-workers) was that at some point in her teenage years she just decided to make 'yanking her parents strings' a life long center of her personality.
Overtime, I switched 180 degrees and came to feel sad for her slandered parents.
Obviously, I have no way of knowing THE TRUTH, but I knew that it couldn't ALL be true.
Perhaps other have add the same experience with someone?
Yes. Much about this rubs me the wrong way. I get Munchausen by proxy vibes throughout, although I freely admit I have no evidence whatsoever that Katie has harmed Houston in any way. Still, the reliance on crystals and "energy" metaphors gives off a gnostic, New Agey, narcissistic feel. And the attempt to find echoes of this in Orthodoxy (a faith that, as a Catholic, I respect deeply), strikes me as gullible and naive, if not downright appalling.
I would be a bit kinder on Rod here. He's an eclectic and offbeat guy, who finds novel and fascinating things all the time. I've learned so much from him, often things I would never have found anywhere else.
However, as a side-effect, he will sometimes fixate on something a bit strange. That comes with the territory though.
Sorry, but over time, I've come to find it tiresome.
You say you respect Orthodoxy, but do you actually know what Orthodoxy teaches?
"it is also hard for me to see where Katie ends and Houston begins"
That's likely because Katie is "facilitating" communication with Houston. Same problem has yesterday's article about Jake. The "I went to Heaven and now Jesus talks to me" thing is especially concerning. Private revelation should always be treated skeptically.
That said, if the story helps Rod's faith, I can't criticize it. However I don't plan to buy her book.
I’m a parent of autistic twins and have looked into this subject extensively. I’m sad to say it’s facilitated communication repackaged. Rod, I’m begging you to look into the method of spelling 2 communicate with a more skeptical eye. It’s doubly tragic because the family falsely believes they are speaking with the autistic person, and meanwhile the actual communications (ie nonverbal cues) can be ignored and dismissed as apraxia. I’m a devout Catholic and don’t doubt that autistic people are close to God but these messages are almost certainly generated by the “communication partner” subconsciously.
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/just-believe-strange-story-facilitated-communication
Sadly, this.
True and tragic. May God bless you and your family.
“Academic articles have argued that the scientific research into FC is ableist and outdated and should be redone in collaboration with FC-users – who of course, would have to make their views known using FC.”
—Here we have an example of the recently emerging breakdown in critical reason among people we trust NOT to exhibit such illogic. A sharp form of this is that anything an “enemy of the Volk” says is wrong simply because they’re an enemy of the Volk, and named as such an enemy by the leaders of the Volk.
It’s all “heads I win, tails you lose” with such people.
I wish I could see an in-depth review of this book by an adherent of the Lutheran Confessions such as John Kleinig.
You came back. Oh, I am so happy! So happy to see a comment here from you. Anytime!
Yup! Thanks. It looked like dubious generalizations about "the" Protestant Reformation had tapered way off while I was a non-paying reader.
Oh, good, we will listen to you. I guess perhaps said generalizations that were one of the concerns for you. I know of your faith as a Lutheran and your helping us to know Protestantism varies. I thought of you again and again. It has been close to two years. You were really missed.
Maybe Robert Bennett or Harold Ristau would be good candidates.
Seems a powerful and fascinating testimony. Many such testimonies have red flags waving, but this one is more compelling. Much would come down to that process, the letter board, and knowing that Houston can communicate similarly with it when Katie is not present.
This is a question I had as well.
He cannot. None of the autistic people featured in the podcast can perform their feats of communication (or mind-reading, etc.) unless a parent (sometimes only one parent in particular) or other "facilitator" is holding the spelling board or otherwise in touch with or visible to the individual. It's very coy about that fact, which comes out in dribs and drabs over the episodes I listened to. There's no rigorous testing and there doesn't seem to be anything going on that wasn't debunked during the "facilitated communication" fad 30 years ago. I'd actually like for some woo like this to be true, I really would -- but not at the price of checking my reasoning mind at the door.
If that's true, it's a blaring, 5-alarm, warning that this is poppycock.
I'm not suggesting the parents are lying. Even Clever Hans' owner thought his horse could do math.
I listened to several episodes of Season 1 of the Telepathy Tapes. 2 possible red flags for me as an Orthodox Christian.
First, one of the moms asks her non-verbal autistic telepath child, who reports downloading info from "God" or "gods", something like: given there are multiple religions, are there multiple gods, or just one God with many names? The kid answers the latter. But it got me wondering if that's another way of saying that all religions point to the same truth, which is of course heresy to the Orthodox.
Second, some kids can predict future events. One 10pyr old girl predicts a school shooting, which happens 3 days later. And many of the kids speak multiple languages they never learned.
Aren't these some of the typical signs of demonic oppression or possession? Knowing things you can't know, speaking languages you can't have learned. How do we know these things are coming from actual Jesus, and not fallen angels masquerading? If these things were revealed to a non-neurodivergent like me, I'd run to my spiritual father immediately for counsel.
A more cynical take might be, are the demons using these loving, traumatized mothers and their kids as a human Ouija board?
Yes!
This goes a bit into the woo territory here, but I do give some credence to those who have glimpses of future things because I myself have had them, as does my father, and 1 of my daughters. Mind you, in our cases these are not out and out visions or prophecies, but I've thought of them as "future echoes", and in our cases they're usually so intermixed with dreams and other chatter that, for us, we can't claim in the moment (or when we awaken) to have any idea if anything we dreamt meandered through had any significance at all. I don't usually remember my dreams anyway, they fade quickly.
But when that moment comes, it's downright eerie knowing for a minute or so everything that's about to happen, and everything anyone around is about to say to me.
I have one key example, though, where I remembered exactly where I was and what I was doing when I had that future echo "vision" (for lack of a better term), and then when it also came to pass.
In the summer between 8th and 9nth grades I was once up in my bedroom on a lazy afternoon. I had been reading, but put my book aside and let my mind wander over things. I was advancing to high school, which meant a new building, new classrooms, new teachers, and some new classmates, and my mind was wandering there. In my wanderings I saw a classroom, and myself sitting at a desk. A teacher was sitting at her desk at the front of the classroom, and the sun was coming in through the windows to my left, hitting the wall and floors in a certain way. There were posters on the wall. I looked around and there were students near me, some of whom did not register. We were discussing a book I had not read. This was July when I "saw" all this as my mind wandered.
In September, several weeks into the school year, I lived that moment in time. Everything I saw in July was there and alive - the teacher (new to me) the new students. Everything, acutely real and present.
I've never tried to force these things or seek them out. They just happen. And it's never anything massively significant - no lottery numbers, no disasters or near misses, just little echoes of humdrum things soon to happen.
It's like an old SNL sketch where Chris Walken spoofed his own Dead Zone role, as a guy who just weirded everyone out by revealing utterly silly things about the near future or recent past.
Yes, that happened to me a few times as a child, but gradually it went away. It was never about anything important, just deja vu.
I still experience deja vu somewhat regularly. It is never anything important, but the sensation is unmistakable. I have also recently experienced a dream premonition about something terrible that was about to befall a family member. I claim no special insight. It may just all be a trick of the mind. Or perhaps time really is a flat circle.
Rudyard Kipling in his memoirs records this experience. A friend tugging his sleeve and saying, "I want a word with you." He renders it as given a preview of coming frames in his life's movie. It's never happened to me, but last week I had a not very strong, not at all visual and not very long sensation of somebody I knew who is dead inhabiting the same room. Not pleasant.
One night when my late husband was critically ill in the hospital, I had an overwhelming sensation that an angel and a demon were in the room contending for his soul, just like those images in medieval ars moriendi. So I called for a priest (after waving off the female chaplain) and had him anointed again. The crisis passed a he lived a while longer.
Women in my family have sometimes manifested psychic sensitivity. For instance, my aunt was cheerfully chatting with her granddaughter when she suddenly stopped and cried: "We need to pray for your mother right now!" Turned out, at that very moment, a robber had a gun pointed at the woman's head. But he took the store's money and ran without harming her.
I used to be unusually good at picking up things people hadn't revealed. ("He's up to something." or "That marriage is breaking up.") But it was a matter of subconsciencely reading subtle body language and tone of voice.
When I was a young boy my mom suddenly said that we needed to pray for my dad right then, and we did. It turned out that at the time he had been driving a steep mountain road in dense fog with trucks coming down the other way.
I've had those experiences all of my life. They're never important things, and it's made me wonder if there isn't something to the idea that time is not linear and every now and again there's overlap.
I can relate to what you experienced, and it’s different from déjà vu.
Speaking a language one never learned, how true is that. Any confirmed cases?
"Pentecost miracles" reported of some saints involve them being understood by people who speak a different language, not them actually speaking that language. What about Pentecostals/Charismatics? Are their explosions of syllables actual foreign sentences? A friend who was an experienced Charismatic Catholic once described how he came to recite a Russian hymn during a prayer service: he's actually heard that long ago and his memory had dredged it up. That's called "cryptonesia" a phenomenon invoked to explain Bridey Murphy's memory of an old folksong. (Anyone else remember Bridey Murphy, whose experiences were used to "prove" reincarnation.)
Yes, the ability to speak languages never studied is a classic mark of demonic possession.
I actually was thinking of Bridey Murphy while I read this. I best say no more.
There are several examples in the Telepathy Tapes podcast showing these autistic non verbal kids typing out sentences in a language that the mother (and presumably the nonverbal kid) do not speak. Like Hebrew for example. That's why I mentioned it. Even if the mom is subconsciously feeding the kid answers, the only explanation for her feeding the kid foreign languages is that it's not her doing the feeding, it's some other entity.
A famous Hollywood celebrity will die soon. Followed in close order by another death. There will be a stunning political upset. The stock market will rise many points (!) unless it suddenly falls (!!!).
Maybe this is true, maybe not. I am slightly more inclined to believe it as not. There are many cases of autistic savants who have amazing abilities in certain fields- math, music, etc. I have lots of thoughts on this one.
1) Energy brings to mind "light". There are many accounts of encounters with God as being bathed in light, light that attaches to the person encountering Him. Also, Satan "fell like lightning from the sky". Light is the condition of Heaven. There is an idea that originally Adam and Eve were beings of light and that God actually covered them with what we know of as human skin, not animal fur/ clothing. Will our new, perfected bodies be made of light?
2) When we are perfected, we are told we will be more like Jesus . Jesus clearly read thoughts and could communicate with anything in creation. We learn more and more about mysterious ways that plant life, for example, has some form of communication. We are told that if humans fail to praise God, the rocks can cry out. I choose to take this literally, not as a metaphor. Further, Eve did not seem shocked to speak with a serpent. What if our minds have capacity built in to have these skills but due to the fall, something is broken? What if certain people whose minds are so different from "normal" still retain some of the original abilities to do the unexplainable?
3) God does not exist in linear time. I suspect that we aren't able to grasp that right now, but thinking of God's omnicience, maybe the whole thing is laid out in front of Him - from Creation to Second Coming, all at once, Alpha to Omega, in eternity?
He is unsearchable and beyond our understanding, but these are concepts to consider. Not doctrine- but wonder. Thoughts?
One set of ideas I tend to ponder on occasion is just how metaphorically we might consider language about “light” and any intersection between actual physics and spiritual phenomena.
We know from modern physics that nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light; conversely, photons—the particles of light—must travel at the speed of light according to whatever medium they’re in. The question arises as to what the universe looks like while riding on a beam of photons. Well, time stops, and distance is entirely foreshortened. One would exist in an eternal presence, everywhere at once. Now…where have we encountered THAT situation before?….
While respecting the scientific constraints of speaking only about what is capable of measurement and repetition in experiment or observation, we are still led by logic to ask about situations deemed impossible by physics, like “what is outside of the universe”, or “what happened before time was created”, and the like. These are not nonsense questions, whatever the physicist might say.
I just wanted to make a comment about "energy." It's not just a scientific concept, it's Scriptural.
English got the word "energy" from the Greek "energeia," simply adopted it. And St. Paul uses the term and cognates over 30 times, always referring to *spiritual* energies. (Usually energies of God, but sometimes energies of the evil one.) Eg, "God is energizing in you, both to will and to energize for his good pleasure," Philippians 2:13.
The reason that sounds strange to Western ears is that Western theology is based on reading the Bible in Latin.
When St Jerome was translating the Bible from Greek to Latin, around AD 400, there was no Latin equivalent for "energy." So he used instead "operatio," operation. It has a different feeling; it's less energized, to be specific.
For the next thousand years, Western theology was built on the foundation of that Latin translation. Oddly enough, the greatest Western theologians did not read Greek well. St. Augustine disliked Greek as a child and didn't acquire it, St. Gregory the Great gained little Greek despite living 6 years in Constantinople, and St. John Cardinal Newman says of St. Thomas Aquinas: he is “generally supposed [to be] ignorant of Greek,” though “his own words [in the Catena] seem to imply otherwise… he has in several cases quite missed the sense of the Greek.”)
The concept of energy was eliminated. Even today English bibles translated from the Greek will not use "energy" but rather words with the "operatio" sense, like "work." "God is working in you, both to will and to work..." The familiarity with the concept of energy is gone. But it's still there in the Bible.
Orthodoxy is familiar with the Biblical concept of energy, so it doesn't sound New Age to us; it sounds like St. Paul.
St. Thomas got a fellow Dominican, William of Moerbeke, to translate Aristotle.
OK Ted now I am truly, deeply impressed. I was educated at a Dominican university and yet I had never heard the name William of Moerbeke, or this connection to Aquinas. (Unless I was daydreaming...) How could you know this fascinating bit of, what I would consider to be, Scholastic Philosophy trivia and how could I not know it? (The latter is easier to answer than the former, sadly.)I demand to know where you were educated! I am being serious (and humorous). I had to go to Wikipedia to get the story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Moerbeke), so I am feeling ashamed...This is why I read ALL the comments here. I learn from them.
Oh, old Willism of Moerbeke is in Gilson and Father Copleston.
Now, you are twisting the knife Iacobuzio!
I essentially keep subscribing for the comments section, I admit
Somewhat, but Rod facilitates us all being here with something to talk about.
Any college-level medieval history course would mention William because his translation is the first made directly from Greek to Latin rather than passed through Arabic in Spain as were versions of Aristotle previously available in the West. But sad to say, William had access to original Greek Aristotle because the Crusaders had sacked Constantinople in 1204. (Greek texts of Plato, et al. were shaken loose later by the fall of Constantinople and contributed to Renaissance thought.)
Four semesters of Western Civ. 5 credits meaning every morning at 8 a.m. sharp, team taught by humanists of different disciplines. I am sure I would have remembered this tidbit about William of Moerbeke. Ugh!
My sympathy. My mind is stuffed with all manner of Quaint and Curious Lore but I did learn this in a medieval history course in 1961. The teacher wrote "Greek Scholars in Venice" so perhaps he was particularly attuned to translation/transmission issues.
You have a splendid memory!
Two others who had no Greek. Dante Alighieri and James Joyce. Joyce's father, the model of Si Dedalus, wanted him to take Greek as a second language at University College, but he took Italian, in part so he could read Dante. Your correspondent can sound out Greek words, but that's it. Dante of course writes that in Limbo he saw "Omero, poeta sovrano", even though he got his Trojan war from Virgil.
As I understand it, the word "energy" was a late addition to English, occurring in the 17th Century. The result is that the way English speakers hear that word will tend to suggest various fields of physics.
Even in terms of supposedly “materialistic” physics, “energy” is a more fundamental set of ideas than “matter”. The details may shift around, but it’s been clear since Hiroshima that stuff with inertia can be transformed into blinding light.
True. My point is that it the West has difficulty understanding the full meaning of the "energy" as it is used in the East, because it has only been in use in the West for a few hundred years. In the East, it has been in use for several millennia. It has a very narrow range of meaning in the West in comparison with the East.
Elder Thaddeus in Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives
The word "energy" in the original language does mean something like "In-Working" ("ergon is "work" in Greek-- an actual cognate to our English word since it once had a leading /w/ sound which Greek lost early on), and that definitely points to God's immanence: his energy is his work in our spacetime where we may be able to perceive it-- not just its results (the whole of Creation of course) but in some cases the actual in-work itself.
This is an interesting piece but I'll have to get back to it tomorrow. Just got home from a visit across the state a bit earlier and I'm leaving soon for a presanctified liturgy and Lenten dinner.
Infranco (a Christian) was also on the Lila Rose Podcast recently—episode 285. It was incredibly fascinating!
Let's go real slow here (don't usually comment on woo, but this is pretty compelling):
"Thoughts are things! They are as real as anything else, as real as a sound wave or a radio wave or a Wi-Fi signal and as real as the smell of a rose."
Obviously Katie is not a philosopher (no disgrace in that). Thoughts are not "things"--they do not exist. Since Heidegger this is less of a special use of the word than it had been previously (though Santayana employed it in the same way at about the same time). Existence pertains to things that inhabit The World, the orbis terrarum. But there is being without existence, or, rather, outside existence. Maybe the easiest example is number. The number three does not "exist". But the number three is real. Three vertical lines chalked on a wall exist, and two half circles perched one above the other printed in a book exist, but the number three is purely mental. It has what Aristotelians call intentional being. It is in the mind. In many ways it is MORE real than the three vertical lines, which can be erased. Aristotle with great care and delicacy delineates the kinds of being, the kinds of reality, if you like, there are. Franz Brentano wrote a book called On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. A priest gave Heidegger the book to read when the boy evinced some interest in philosophy. He didn't understand all of it, but it set him on his way.
What worries me is that Katie is materializing the spiritual, which is a different thing from saying the material has a spiritual dimension, or spiritual qualities.
And, Dreher, I've been wrong before, but there's nothing in this that any Greek Father would gainsay.
<<< The number three does not "exist". But the number three is real. >>
It's all in Plato, all in Plato. Bless me, what do they teach them in these schools? (C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle)
I think it was The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
Yes, I thought that. Then I second guessed - was it The Magician's Nephew?. Then I asked Google. which said The Last Battle. I am willing to grant Google was wrong. But let's not quibble. I do not care which one it was.
I quickly read that as "The Lion, The Witch, and The Overdose'.
I am pretty sure the phrase is said in both LWW and TLB.
I am a parent of 2 autistic twins, non verbal until age 4, mostly non verbal until age 7, with severe limitations. We used sign language to communicate for several years. My now adult children are very bright and have profound insights, but are also limited.
I do believe there is a spiritual element at play.
As to "telepathy", Christ often read the minds and hearts of those around him, so it is possible and a thing of God.
We are all connected spiritually. Some people seem to be able to read others very well and know things. If anything, I suspect that we don't listen well enough to hear the thoughts and feelings of others, trusting too much in material sensations from eyes and ears and ignoring the heart.
As to places having vibes and feelings, I have been in both good and evil places in my life. Holy places exist.
As to pray, exercise faith. Truly believe in our Lord. Believe in Him and His power and grace.
Our ways and desires don't match the Lord's. His our better for us. He blesses in His own time and manner.
Absolutely true about places. I am clueless about social life, have never been able to form or maintain relationships outside of my husband and children, but I do sense “good” and “evil” places ( and sometimes people) quite palpably.
I am Protestant, and I am understanding to the metaphysical mindset that the Orthodox often claim only belongs to them. I have witnessed the supernatural, seen demons, and beheld miracles. I also happen to have a non-verbal, cognitively disabled child. I know my child well and she does communicate with her family in her own way that we have learned/developed over many years. I have watched people who want to feel special believe that they are receiving a special communication from my child - though I know my child well enough to know what she’s really communicating and mannerisms that are typical for her. I have witnessed this so many times. People see what they want to see.
Demons are very good at performing tricks. They are very good at pretending to be light beings. They are very good at sharing secret knowledge (or passwords). They are very good at miraculous distraction. So much of this reads like New Age-ism. I have witnessed many Christians falling under the spell and trap that it is. And the people who are the most vulnerable to sensationalism, eat it right up. I have seen too many Christians fall into the cult of the New Apostolic Reformation vein of hype and they all can’t get enough of crystals, energies, and mysteries. It’s not the wonders of God that does it for them. It’s esotericism - their real god. I have seen this too many times to unsee it.
One Orthodox priest, Fr. Stephen DeYoung, often critiques these things as (to use his phrasing) "spiritual technology" - with the emphasis on Greek root of both "technology" and "technique". That is to say, what attracts people to New Age, New Apostolic, some types of Pentecostalism (like Word-Faith and Prosperity Gospel) is that they seek these things out as a means of control. "Do this thing in this way and you are guaranteed these results." Which is much the same as in pagan magic, etc. Esotericism is a part of that, of course, with all the pride that comes from being able to say "I know something you don't know" (the appeal of every mystery cult). But thinking one has ultimate control is also a big part. I think Fr. DeYoung is onto something with his "spiritual technology" description.
I just searched for the etymology of ‘technology’ and an essay from someone at my local university came up first:
“The word technology comes from two Greek words, transliterated techne and logos. Techne means art, skill, craft, or the way, manner, or means by which a thing is gained. Logos means word, the utterance by which inward thought is expressed, a saying, or an expression. So, literally, technology means words or discourse about the way things are gained.”
‘Spiritual technology’ definitely resonates here. People can be mesmerized and controlled (or at least deeply captivated) by people who are representing themselves as a sort of spiritual portal with answers to all these mysteries. As many other readers have suggested, it would be wise to consider these stories under some spiritual guidance by our church leaders. Definitely before we allow it to change the way we pray. And, I can’t help but have this nagging thought that claims like this pull our attention so strongly to a phenomenon that we take our eyes off of God. God is here before us, yet our eyes keep looking off to the side believing we see Him over there as well. A crafty distraction.
As many Orthodox priests I know like to put it, "If a 'spiritual experience' doesn't lead you to God, and to repentance for your own sins, then it isn't from God in the first place and should be rejected." Which is not the same as saying that the experience was not real, or that it did not happen.
There's an old Orthodox term of art of false spiritual experiences and a false sense of one's own holiness or "insight": Prelest.
This is what it sounded like to me as well. I have been thinking about it all day, because basically Houston uses the same argument as "Word of Faith", which is you need to have enough faith or prayer doesn't work. That is a lie from the devil which alone can be devastating and is a huge red flag. So you got cancer and can't get healed because you don't believe enough? Well, it is your fault. It all rather sounds just close enough to the truth that it is believable. Just remember, the devil can appear as a being of light.
“Loneliness is love that can’t move.”
Loneliness is not just physical.
The single best piece of spiritual advice I ever received was: “stop thinking.”
The Tao te Ching says a similar thing. I can't remember exactly how it goes though.
Those who have had Near Death Experiences -- there is a vast literature on this -- report on their return from physical death in the reductive materialism sense the culturre urges upon us that they were most struck by a sense of indescribable love that surrounded them in Heaven. Also the sheer beauty of everything wherever they look. I thank Rod for clueing me in on the Jesus Prayer, of which I was entirely ignorant. I now say it often through the day.
There's a lady in our parish who has experienced a Near Death Experience. She always says she'd rather be 'there' than 'here'.
The human brain is storytelling machine. It is telling stories all the time. Listen to that 'voice' in your head.
I had a near death experience. I could have slipped away, but I was pulled back by a medical team.
It didn't make me religious, but it me a lot less fearful of death. At the last seconds, the brain relaxes into a peace because it can not understand the situation in any other way.
(At least, my brain could not.)
The mind is not the brain, it's something more. Eben Alexander was a Harvard neurosurgeon for 20 years, and an atheist like most scientists. "A staunch materialist," is how he put it, "who believed consciousness was purely a product of brain chemistry." He picked up an ancient virus during a visit to Israel and fell into a coma when he returned home. He spent seven days on a ventilater and the team of doctors working on him were on the point of giving up when he returned with a story that spent 90 weeks on the NYT bestseller list. It's called "Proof of Heaven." Another M.D., Bruce Greyson, has spent a good deal of his career interviewing NDE experiencers. His "After" is a collection of what he heard from them. Sebastian Junger, author of a "The Perfect Storm," is the son of a physicist who had the usual dismissive attitude about things spiritual. Yet when Junger, a chip off the old block, suffered a ruptured aneurysm and lost consciousness, he encountered his father. "It's okay,," his dad said, "there's nothing to be scared of. I'll take care of you." The son in writing "In My Time of Dying" felt it necessary to present the case of the Scientism argument against NDE, but it didn't read like his heart was in it.
I am the parent of two non-speaking autistic sons ages 21 and 18. Both are spellers like Houston. The comments in this thread, encouraging you to dismiss Houston’s story because facilitated communication has been debunked Should not stop you from believing in Houston. I struggled with this very question for many months and found answers that reconciled how facilitated communication could test so poorly and be debunked so thoroughly and yet these newer methodologies such as spelling to communicate, the rapid prompting method, the spellers method, etc. should be viewed through a different lens.
I am a firsthand witness to similar types of miracles, as what you are reading about, and listening to in the telepathy tapes.
Rod: I have read most of what you have written in the last 22 years. I’m a big fan of yours. You have stumbled upon something profound and real. Let it strengthen your faith as it has mine. God has chosen the weak and the voiceless in these last days to bring about a great work.
Not everything that my boys spell is faith promoting according to my faith tradition. Some of it is challenging to the doctrines I have always believed to be true. But they cut like a knife through the assumptions of materialism and godlessness. They are so full of light, intelligence, and connection to the other side of the veil. It is as if God is assembling Dumbledore‘s Army in the form of non-speakers that can’t be touched by the wickedness of this world..
Keep pushing through the telepathy tapes until you finish episode nine. I will never forget where I was when I finished that episode.
I don't know if autistic people are drawn to Orthodoxy in general, but my parish is full of autistic people, verbal people. Something interesting here. Lots of left-handed people too, and adoptees.
I too just finished listening to the first two episodes of "The Telepathy Tapes." And, I too, will likely not listen to more. Not because I think telepathy to be impossible or the phenomena described to be fake, but because of the lack of a conceptual framework within which to make sense of things. I was surprised not to hear Rupert Sheldrake mentioned (perhaps he is in further episodes), since he is a pioneer in the area. As a scientist, he has suggested a number of assumptions current science makes that prevent it from engaging reality adequately, one of which is that consciousness is limited to the space inside our skulls. (See The Science Delusion, for example.) Indeed, the so called "hard problem" of consciousness will likely be the thing that forces our current science to develop. See David Bentley Hart on this. I should also mention that Owen Barfield can shed a lot of light here as well, partcularly his work Saving the Appearances, which demonstrates convincingly both that consciousness and phenomena are intimately connected and that they evolve together. One might place the non-verbal neuro divergents within Barfield's schematic as being hangovers from the stage of original participation and/or prototypes of final participation, though I sense that they are also a product of modernity (Barfield's middle stage of idolatry or un-participated phenomena). I say this because of the comments Akhil in Episode 2 of the Telepathy Tapes made about his body, first not recognizing that he had one and later not knowing that it could move. Anyway, I have tried to work out some of the implications of these things in my young adult fantasy series, The Perilous Times Saga, which I have described as a young girl's attempt to make sense of a world that is much weirder than she had imagined. I believe that we are living in such a world.
I should add that this is the Perilous Times Saga, not Series. The first book is Suzy and the Magic Turnip.