VisionAndPsychosis.Net©

In Montgomery Alabama

Spirit / Demon Possession

 

 

Copyright 2003 -  Revision Sunday March 16, 2008 20:36 -0600

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This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected  until the 1960's.

In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.

It caused mental breaks for office workers.

 

You will find this material hard to believe.

This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.

 

For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.

The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.

 

The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.

This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.

The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.

If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read  ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.

Long  term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong  Kundalini Yoga

If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.

TOP__

Spirit or Demon Possession

Two YouTube clip links have been added to the page Links section below.

This page is being edited and material added. Sunday March 16, 2008

 

Spirit possession happens around the world. The Catholic Church has a ritual to rid one of demon possession called a exorcism. In primitive places a victim may believe they can speak to, or speak for, ancestors. In such places this may be viewed as an asset and the victim will be held in high esteem rather than labeled as mentally ill. Today children labeled as Indigo Children may believe they can communicate with the dead, speak to them and carry on conversations.

Spirit possession includes the Holy Spirit in certain Christian denominations. Worshipers bark like dogs and act out bizarre behavior as evidence of that divine spirit possession. (Toronto Blessing) Others who growl and bark make claims that they are demon possessed. The behaviors are very similar but diametrically opposed events are claimed to be happening. In addition to the fact that the events happen in different situations the victim is acting out a belief of what is happening to them.

They are both reacting to the onset of a dissociative mental event.

The evidence that this is so is a complicated trip through history, strange events, and strange beliefs. It is the subject of this site.

 

Prior to the publication of this site, VisionAndPsychosis.Net, there has been no tool to allow investigators to connect all cases of spirit possession, demon possession, and communication with the dead.

 

 

All non-hoax cases of speaking to and hearing replies from paranormal or supernatural sources are special cases of hearing voices.

Victims of this phenomenon are not faking. They experience possession as their reality just as those with psychotic paranoia act upon the belief that 'others' are attempting to harm them.

 

The vehicle to cause this altered mental state is exposure to visual Subliminal Distraction beyond a normal level we all experience every day. (Subliminal Distraction definition)

The discovery of this phenomenon happened in the 1960's when designers and engineers encountered a problem, 'conflict of physiology.' Those investigators, psychologists, did not understand what they had found. They only saw one form of exposure and its outcome. To this day designers of Systems Furniture believe this mental event can only happen in a business office and only causes a harmless temporary period of confusion and pseudo-psychotic behavior. Victims in religious circumstances believe that their onset is evidence of divine or demon possession.

Once you read the material this site and realize the problem is one of the physiology of sight, and  peripheral vision reflexes, it becomes obvious that replicating the "special circumstances" of those incorrectly designed offices is all that is necessary to create exposure to visual Subliminal Distraction.

 

Those special circumstances are so simple they can be created almost anywhere by your normal daily activities. (Understanding what happens in the brain to cause a dissociative mental break is more complex and is still developing theory in this site.)1

 

 

The first event is the detection of movement and a startle - a vision reflex happens.

 We all have the ability to ignore movement that is not dangerous to us and when we do the startle will stop. But that will not turn the threat movement detection system off. As you force concentration the stimulus, the detected movement, will habituate to extinction in your conscious mind. Perform the psychology exercise on the Demonstration page to experience this.

As you continue the exposure is subliminally experienced as continued threat. It is easy to see that eventually this constant subliminal appreciation of threat would color thought and reason creating fear and paranoia. In our own family case Connie told doctors she felt that she should be punished. She believed someone was attempting to shoot her and would not sit at the table and eat. She took her plate into the hall where there were no windows. Three years later she still will not change clothes without locking the door or pulling the shower curtain closed.

 

There are few cases that can be used as examples because the phenomenon was only discovered after 1964. No one in mental health services is aware of it.

Although this problem has always existed as a normal feature of human physiology, no one researching and evaluating mental illness through history has been aware of it.

In the early days of psychology and psychiatry hysteria and latent epilepsy were believed to cause adverse events in mental illness.

 

On this site different levels of exposure are proposed to cause different outcomes. One of those outcomes is operant conditioning. The stimulus is subliminal and acts upon contemporaneous beliefs, instruction sets, and activities.

This effect can be seen by looking at the Culture Bound Syndromes. There is sufficient reporting to identify dissociative and psychotic mental breaks in some of the syndromes. Each ethnic group understands the mental events in terms of their own culture and belief set. In the case of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga users are told what the mental events are. In Qi Gong it is called opening the third eye. In Kundalini Yoga the outcome is planned and is believed to be the Awakening of Kundalini. There are numerous sites across the Internet that warn of negative outcomes while seeking enlightenment.

The method of performing the exercises in groups and the constant movement creates the same situation as that of the 1960's business office. Intense exposure when too many exercise sessions are done in a compact time frame creates a temporary episode. Low levels of exposure for long periods causes a fixed psychotic altered mental state. But the altered mental state is so narrowly focused that victims perform normally in their daily lives. Normal except for the bizarre beliefs that they have superhuman strength and supernatural powers. Hearing voices happens to some of these victims.  (More) (Qi Gong)

 

The point to me made is that this phenomenon can cause a variety of outcomes.

 

In 1898 Belgium sent a scientific team to the Antarctic. They left late and were trapped in polar ice for more that a year. The entire crew began to go insane. Only the ship's doctor was immune. He maintained his normal duties caring for the crew. Notes of that event are on the Astronauts & Insanity page. One man became a deaf mute, another hid in small areas of the ship fearing the others were plotting to kill him. Most of the crew recovered when they all worked outside to chop the ship out of the ice. Only one man was permanently insane.  (More)

 

 

It is not necessary that the work requiring full mental investment be knowledge work performed in a business office. Any activity that requires concentration to the point of dissociation for activities happening around the worker are sufficient. Daydreaming can supply that level of dissociation.

As a problem of human physiology this phenomenon has always been present in any human population. Once humans began to perform work to build tools the phenomenon and those "special circumstances" could be created. The construction of small single-room living quarters keep the inhabitants in close proximity. In such close living situations when someone chose a sitting position with traffic beside it, any work requiring mental investment allowed exposure.

In the early 1800's fur trappers lived alone in tiny cabins to over winter in the Rocky Mountains rather than with another trapper. The fear was that the cabin mate would go berserk and try to kill them. Over the months of confinement when one person performed work repairing equipment movement of the other person was detectable in peripheral vision in part due to the small single-room. There was no private second room where either person could be out of sight of the other. The sudden berserk violent episode was called Cabin Fever.

Around the world today this system of single-room too-small living space still exists. The mental events still happen. The are misunderstood and believed to be Culture Bound Syndromes.

We can look at situations today that allow exposure to Subliminal Distraction to happen. From those cases we can guess what the psychiatric outcome might be. In other case where there have been strange outcomes we can look at the activities of the person to determine if there has been significant exposure to Subliminal Distraction. The Cabin Fever example above is one such situation. The mental break aboard Soyuz-21 is another. The single room living and working space on Salut-5 forced both Cosmonauts close together and allowed the special circumstances for exposure to be created when one of them worked while the other moved in peripheral vision.

 

 

In the case of ICU Psychosis, one in three hospital patients who spend more than five days in the intensive care has the same mental break as those 1960's office workers. For most victims the strange beliefs such as that the nurses are extraterrestrial aliens or that the staff is attempting to kill the patient disappear when they leave the ICU. Hearing voices appears in some of the cases.  (More)

If you follow the links to associated pages you will find that depression, fear, paranoia, hearing voices, and somatic symptoms are all possible outcomes of exposure to Subliminal Distraction.

 

================ page under construction ==== ...to be continued ================

Links__

Links (Related to possession)

YouTube "Pentecostal Bedlam" (The video has been removed from the YouTube site.) Does anyone else have a copy?

With a slightly different behavior would someone who laughs or sighs inappropriately be considered possessed?

There are several video's available shown on this page. I don't know how long this link will be valid. (12-16-2006)

 

This link returns a "removed" message on YouTube. . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjujnAs-6tM

 

Toronto Blessing

These congregants bark like dogs to show holy spirit possession.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCeVZ6e2T0E

Holy Ghost Power Display

Speaking in Tongues  Sir Lanka 2006

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8pWtpOWQ-k&mode=related&search=

Holy Ghost Take Over

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vf8qg80aDk&mode=related&search=

Chinese Christians With The Holy Ghost 2000/07

This video has scenes of small group meetings. You can observe eyes open concentration and small movements of others in the group.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFge6Zo1Xeo&mode=related&search=

 

 

These next  links are to similar behaviors but are at Benny Hinn events.  

Remember that hyper-suggestibility and startle-matching behaviors happen when Subliminal Distraction was present in bunkhouses used in logging camps  in the 1880's. See Jumping Frenchmen of Maine page, (off page link.)

"Benny Hinn - Crazy Televangelist"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR63GTxTwiI&mode=related&search=

"Benny Hinn: Let the Bodies Hit the Floor!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVRkyxVEyAA&mode=related&search=

"Benny Hinn examined"  Time 41:30 This is a full length documentary.

This video included hidden camera video of crusades in Toronto and Calgary. Look at the 15:22 time mark there is a reaction to Hill's movement by those previously healed participants walking onto the stage. They expect to have a reaction shown by their apprehension and slight movement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4t9APdSG30&mode=related&search=

 

"G12 Shaker Babylonic Pentecostal Charismatic Crazy G-12 NWO"

Acting out bizarre behaviors seems to be part of the belief that you are in contact with the holy spirit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFcN8HniQoM&NR

Speaking in Tongues

Speaking in tongues is believed to be evidence of possession by the holy spirit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkf7DpnnNck&NR

 "Rochelle D'Elia gives John a healing"  Clip from TV program.

There is no text with this clip but it appears that speaking in tongues is believed to give healing powers to the speaker, "possession by the holy spirit."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feUlt26vlCM

"Benny Hinn Is Hell"

Hill appears to knock down people without touching them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2tsDLzOaVM&NR

The Clinical Characteristics of Possession Disorder Among 20 Chinese Patients in the Hebei Province of China
Albert C. Gaw, M.D., Qin-zhang Ding, M.D., Ruth E. Levine, M.D. and Hsiao-feng Gaw, L.I.C.S.W. Psychiatr Serv 49:360-365, March 1998
© 1998 American Psychiatric Association
 

"This paper describes the clinical characteristics of 20 hospitalized psychiatric patients in the Hebei province of China who believed they were possessed....The initial experience of possession typically came on acutely and often became a chronic relapsing illness. Almost all subjects manifested the two symptoms of loss of control over their actions and acting differently. They frequently showed loss of awareness of surroundings, loss of personal identity, inability to distinguish reality from fantasy, change in tone of voice, and loss of perceived sensitivity to pain."

The article is an attempt to rationalize the data in terms of the DSM_IV and to fit these people's experience to that standard rather than look for a cause. Similar outcomes and experiences can be found in Culture Bound Syndromes. The subjects describe hallucinations, panic attacks, dissociation, hearing voices and speaking in tongues. The episodes are of short duration and may repeat after the first instance.

 

Holy Laughter
Rodney Howard-Browne and the Toronto Blessing by Biblical Discernment Ministries - 3/96
 

http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/holylaugh.htm

Enspire Press

Although located on a hypnotherapy page this is a good history of possession.

http://www.enspirepress.com/writings_on_consciousness/spirit_possession_exorcism/spirit_possession_exorcism.html

Catholic Encyclopedia

This site takes the position that possession by evil forces is a reality.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12315a.htm

Skeptic's Dictionary

"Michael Cuneo, a sociologist at Fordham University, claims "By conservative estimates, there are at least five or six hundred evangelical exorcism ministries in operation today, and quite possibly two or three times this many."

http://www.skepdic.com/exorcism.html

Reprint from 'Encyclopedia of the Paranormal'

http://www.sfu.ca/~beyerste/research/articles/17DissociationPossessionChapter.pdf

The Mystica

http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/s/spirit_possession.html

 

 

Links (Related to peripheral vision)

 

I recommend this site.  But you will have to browse several pages.

"Early in evolution, human ancestors had only peripheral vision. The role of this early vision system (still preserved in our eyes) was to detect motion and set off protective reflexes."

http://www.wayfinding.net/vsionsys.htm

 

Peripheral vision Lego tester

Adobe file with tester construction and data results sample

http://www.edex.com.au/lego/support/activities/032_peripheral_vision.pdf

 

Nightwalking

 

"In The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary swordsman of 16th century Japan, implies that he fought his greatest duels with his eyes crossed, and goes into considerable detail about developing and using this strange ability."

The method suggested to engage peripheral vision is to suspend an object from the bill of a baseball cap and practice staring at it rather than looking straight ahead as we all normally do.

The site has a page on the physiology of the eye and sight. It describes the normal field of vision.

http://www.navaching.com/hawkeen/nwalk.html#Anchor-The-59125

Institute for Innovative Blind Navigation

Don't let the site name put you off. This site has several pages which explain sight and how the brain deals with two vision systems.

http://www.wayfinding.net/index.htm

This page has the vision material.    http://www.wayfinding.net/vsionsys.htm#four

 

 

Speed Reading (peripheral vision)

http://www.ababasoft.com/wider_eye_span/

 

 

 

Vision, is a set of brain level subsystems

This page explains the M & P pathways and vision processing.

http://www.wayfinding.net/visanal.htm

 

 

The Red Myth

Color in Vision

http://stlplaces.com/night_vision.html

University of Missouri

The first paragraph on this page refers to psychological factors effecting pupil dilation.

"Interestingly, the pupil/iris combination also changes in response to psychological factors. One sign of activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is a system important in arousal, fight, and flight, is dilated pupils. For example, sexual interest results in pupil dilation. (This piece of information may come in handy some time.)"

http://web.umr.edu/~psyworld/eye.htm

 University of Utah

John Moran Eye Center --  Anatomy

http://webvision.med.utah.edu/

 

Kimball's Biology Pages 

A simple explanation of the eye and sight.

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/V/Vision.html

 

Understanding Human Vision

This site deals with color.

http://www.pitir.com/pentile/Human_Vision.html

 

Vision and the Brain

Block diagrams of vision paths through the brain explain the M and P channels.

 http://www.thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_02/i_02_cr/i_02_cr_vis/i_02_cr_vis.html#2

Study Notes Vision

http://www.utmed.com/studynotes/neuro/VisualProcessing.pdf

 

++  Use your [Home] key to return to the top of the page and site navigation.
 

Prevention:  This  section is now repeated at the bottom of most pages.

The rare occurrence of the injury establishes that is difficult to create enough exposure to cause an injury. But when it does happen the consequences are serious, possibly fatal.

 Our personal experience was intermittent human traffic during eight-hour workdays for thirty calendar days.

If you have a tower CPU mount it under your desk. That's the way they position it in a cubicle. The hard drive busy light is about the height of your low peripheral vision if you put the tower on the desk. Desktop reading of text or writing notes beside the keyboard on the side of the monitor away from the tower makes the blinking hard drive busy light appear to approach from behind when you turn to view the screen again.

If you have a computer work station/desk in which you turn ninety degrees to write or do other non computer work, turn off the monitor when you turn aside. Remove screen savers in this instance. The movement, animation for example, in your screensaver, two-dimensional movement, might well be detected by your peripheral vision at close range. Alternately cover the monitor screen.

All home, apartment, or dorm computer workstations are in unprotected workspace. To change that put the computer in a quiet room with no possible movement. If that is not possible in a dorm or apartment position the computer so that your peripheral vision can see only stationary walls as you use the computer in a busy room. In Cubicles and 'Systems Furniture' these protective features are achieved with peripheral vision blocking panels and corner seating positions. It is called 'Cubicle Level Protection.'

If you use computer or CD-ROM games for many hours day after day, the game playing position should follow the same rules as the computer workstation. Battery operated games will not run long enough on a single rechargeable battery to cause a risk for SPVP.

Although a laptop does not have a visible blinking light in peripheral vision the same rules apply to your work position.  There should not be human traffic moving to you from behind. There should be nothing behind you, which could enter your subliminal peripheral vision field as you turn your head while working at the laptop and be mistaken for threat movement.

Only movement coming from behind you into your Subliminal Peripheral Vision can cause a peripheral vision reflex. If the movement source approaches you from ahead then enters your Subliminal Peripheral Vision from conscious sight there can be no peripheral vision reflex.

 

Repeated for Emphasis:

A single session or rare sessions will not cause this problem.

It is the same day after day long hours of play or computer use with detectable movement in ‘Subliminal Peripheral Vision,’ which would form the basis of a risk for SPVP injury.

Exposure can be cumulative 

The brain’s detection system only evaluates movement. There is little recognition of the nature of the object in peripheral vision. If you have several hours exposure from human traffic at the library, while reading at an open table or seated in a reading room chair, followed by long hours watching TV with a critically misplaced ceiling fan sweeping detectable shadows around the room, the combination of those two behaviors might cause the problem. The suggestion is that either activity alone would not consume enough exposure time even if the critical movement is present.

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1__

 

What causes the mental break when there is exposure to Subliminal Distraction?

This is a simple explanation. If you are a student of neurology  you may be able to write a more detailed authoritative explanation.

 

 

The theory being advanced on this site is based on  a simple definition of what brain function is. Your brain, in addition to the operation necessary to maintain life, takes input, neural impulses from sensor cells, and evaluates them to construct your stream of consciousness. Your brain must grow new connections, synapses, and modify others to create memory. When the startle of a peripheral vision reflex happens your brain does not recognize a single startle as input stimulus.

Think of the last time you were startled. It happened so fast that you startle before you recognize what caused the startle. That's because it's a reflex and happens in a primitive part of the brain said to be below thought, reason, or consciousness.

When too many repeating incidents of threat movement detection, and the efforts to create a startle, happen the brain eventually attempts to perform that normal function of determining what the input stimulus is. As those attempts repeat, incorrect connections are created. When enough of them exist your brain can no longer function and you experience a dissociative mental break.

If the input stops, the incorrect connections dissolve from disuse. You will recover with little treatment but may have amnesia of the events close to the episode.

In both Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga the exercise replicates those "special circumstances" for exposure to visual Subliminal Distraction so that exposure is low level but persistent. With that model of exposure the new paths between neurons are reinforced and it creates a psychotic altered mental state.

Some users of these exercises begin to believe impossible feats are possible. Qi Gong users claim to have superhuman strength and supernatural powers.

Users of Kundalini Yoga seek a mental event called the Awakening of Kundalini, believed to be a higher plain of existence, enlightenment. They think they can levitate, walk through solid objects, become invisible, dematerialize, and when they begin to hear voices they think they can hear your thoughts, control your actions, through mental telepathy. Most writers refer to these beliefs as "psychotic like."

This exposure model produces a condition similar to schizophrenia but without the uncontrolled life altering problems.

 

SD__

Definition Subliminal Distraction

Subliminal Distraction is a term in psychology that refers to the fact that sensor cells of you eyes and ears do not stop sending neural impulses to your brain when you ignore that input stimulus.

During parts of sleep you can still hear sounds happening around you and possibly be awakened. While daydreaming you attention can be captured by a sound. In social situations you may be able to detect your name being spoken even though the volume of the speaker is within the range of other discussions in the room and buried in that noise.

In the United States only audio subliminal distraction is recognized. It sometimes refers to distracting sounds subliminally perceived while concentrating to read, perform knowledge work, or daydream. It is evaluated as a stressor in the business office. Sensory adaptability prevents repeating sounds gaining attention.

Outside the United States, Australia, it also refers to visual subliminal distraction. A narrow slice of your vision field that surrounds conscious sight and is just past normal peripheral vision functions subliminally to detect movement and  trigger a peripheral vision reflex.

To be able to continue working in a busy location humans have the ability to ignore that subliminally detected movement. But the system that functions to trigger the vision reflex cannot be controlled or turned off.

It continues to detect threat movement and attempts to force the startle and reflex.

In the Design field, Systems Furniture, Cubicles, this process is also known as Subliminal Distraction.

Sensory Adaptability

Sensor cells in your ears will chemically deplete reducing the intensity of the neural impulses as the sounds repeat. Micro-movements of your eyes refresh sensor cells on rods and cones so that vision is NOT sensory adaptable. This means that repeating neural impulses from your eyes do not decrease in strength with frequent repetitions of electromagnetic energy striking the retina.

The detection of threat movement is always maintained at the same strength of stimulus presented.