
Lighthouse Trails is pleased to release our latest topical booklet: Haunted Souls – From Meditation Into Hallucinations by Larry DeBruyn. The booklet is 18 pages long and sells for $1.95 for single copies. Quantity discounts are available. Our booklets are designed to give away to others or for your own personal use. Below is the content of this new booklet. To order copies of Haunted Souls – From Meditation Into Hallucinations click here.
Haunted Souls – From Meditation Into Hallucinations
By Larry DeBruyn
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8)
As borrowed from the eastern mystical religions, meditative or contemplative spirituality—the operation which involves retreating into solitude (getting alone with God) and silence (remaining quiet before God) and engaging in ascetic practices—has emerged among evangelical Christians as a popular way to experience God’s love and receive revelations from Him.1 Interestingly, this discovery among evangelicals about how to find “spirituality” now parallels the “mindfulness” revolution taking place in secular society.
By shucking their ever-present cell phones, tabloids, iPods, and other distractions, increasing numbers of people from all walks of life—athletes, educators, corporate execs and workers, politicians, government workers, and members of the military—attempt to “de-stress” their lives by attending “mindfulness” retreats where under the direction of spiritual tutors, they learn to meditate with the hope they will discover “a new consciousness” to help them cope with life.2 To promote “mindfully” working, playing, parenting, test taking, and even going to war, the practice of meditation has risen significantly in America. Based on a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 35 million American adults have practiced meditation.3
But amidst the rising popularity of this mindfulness revolution, a dark secret lurks in the background. One advocate of “Christian” contemplation, the Quaker Richard Foster, recommends meditation as a means for developing a deeper spirituality. But as to its practice, he also issues a disclaimer:
I also want to give a word of precaution. In the silent contemplation of God we are entering deeply into the spiritual realm, and there is such a thing as supernatural guidance that is not divine guidance . . . there are various orders of spiritual beings, and some of them are definitely not in cooperation with God and his way!4
Though a significant majority of non-Christian meditators report benefits derived from the activity, some indicate that the exercise does not invariably promote psychological wellness.5
So it would be well for any would-be meditators, Christian or otherwise, to consider what could happen to their minds if they engage in the practice. Meditators can go mad. Examples where this has happened, both modern and ancient, are known. We begin with reports from a rehab center which focuses on helping people restore the soundness of mind they possessed before they began to meditate.
“The Dark Knight” of the Soul
An article in the The Atlantic reported about a spacious 19th-century house owned by a university professor/researcher. Located in a well-established neighborhood in Providence, Rhode Island, the house’s atmosphere is inviting. All four floors exude a sanctuary-like atmosphere of welcome, peace, and quiet. Organic foods stock the cupboards. A large dining room and table can accommodate a dozen guests. Decorative plants are placed throughout the house. Private living quarters in the basement often host “a rotating cast of yogis and meditation teachers.”6 From the description given by The Atlantic, one might get the impression that the residence, named Cheetah House, provides the ideal environment for seeking souls to congregate and practice the art of meditation. But surprisingly, notes reporter Tomas Rocha, the visiting guests are “not there to restore themselves with meditation—they’re recovering from it.”7 Consider the following two testimonials taken from The Atlantic article:
Testimony 1
Attracted to meditation by attending a retreat, one polite and well-spoken guest named David, 27 years old, relates that though at first he found stress-relief from meditating, his life changed for the worse. “Everything [David] had found pleasurable before the retreat” Rocha says, “‘turned to dirt.’”8 The beautiful and delightful plate of spiritual food that served his soul at first, to repeat his words, “turned to dirt.”
He “started having thoughts like, ‘Let me take over you,’ combined with confusion and tons of terror.”9 David relates having “had a vision of death with a scythe and a hood. The thought ‘Kill yourself’ [ran] over and over again [through his mind].”10 David described the paranormal world he experienced as “Psychological hell.” He tells the reporter that these altered states of consciousness “would come and go in waves. ‘I’d be in the middle of practice . . . and what would come to mind was everything I didn’t want to think about, every feeling I didn’t want to feel.’”11 David’s experience also possessed a physical sensation. “Pebble-sized” spasms would emanate from a “dense knot” inside his abdomen. Other fantasies would captivate and obsess his mind.12 So in 2013, he arrived at the house for treatment.
Testimony 2
Another guest, Michael, age 25, was a certified Yoga teacher. Michael explains to The Atlantic reporter that physically “during the course of his meditation practice his ‘body stopped digesting food. I had no idea what was happening,’” he relates. For three years Michael thought “he was ‘permanently ruined’ by meditation.”13 The Atlantic notes that descriptions like “recovery” and “permanently ruined” are “not words one typically encounters when discussing a contemplative practice.”14 Nonetheless, this is the “dirty laundry”—as some call it—that can result from doing meditation.
This third testimonial is from my personal encounter with an ex-meditator:
Testimony 3
For a time in his life, Bill Smith, (not his real name) with whom I stayed while ministering in Sydney, Australia, testified that his devotion to eastern meditative practices induced within him psychological disorder, which necessitated he be institutionalized. In combination with engaging in other New Age spiritual practices, Bill related that meditation temporarily drove him insane. But by trusting the Gospel, the Lord delivered Bill; and today, in his right mind, he has a wonderful marriage and family, successfully works for a large corporation, and maintains a stable Christian witness as he pastors a church which regularly meets in his home.
Though admittedly anecdotal, Smith’s admission bears similarity with the previously cited testimonials from the recovery center for former meditators run by Brown University neuroscientist and researcher Dr. Willoughby Britton.15
The Doctor and “The Dark”
Dr. Britton’s “effort to document, analyze, and publicize accounts of the adverse effects of contemplative practices (what elsewhere are called “rockier parts of the mindfulness path,”16) is known as “The Dark Knight Project.”17 Because of what she saw in recovering meditators who visited her research and rehab center, Dr. Britton (herself a trained and experienced meditator) decided that, like her patients, she should attend a retreat to experience firsthand what they had been exposed to. And experience it she did! She described how, like those undergoing treatment at her rehab center, she too fell into “an extreme and distressing mental state” after meditating .18 She testifies:
I thought that I had gone crazy. I thought I was having a nervous breakdown . . . like terror was a big symptom of mine.19
These testimonies fall in line with accounts of other persons who either sought out or were forced to experience solitary. Though perhaps not normal—whatever normal is in a paranormal world—these testimonies indicate the effect which isolation and meditation can have upon a soul’s sanity. Consider, for example, the effect that solitary confinement, employed by many penal systems to handle incorrigible prisoners, can have upon a human soul.
Solitary Confinement
Within the Pennsylvania penal system at Eastern State Prison around the time of the Civil War (circa 1860), solitary confinement arose as a way, it was hoped, to rehabilitate prisoners. Inspired by the Quakers, the theory goes that placing criminals alone would help bring them “closer to God.”20 Interestingly, “solitary” seems to have been used as a method to rehabilitate prisoners rather than, as is true now-a-days, to punish them. It was hoped that being placed in isolation would help them to reflect upon their crimes and restore their “relationship with God.”21
It must be noted that in denial of the biblical teaching of the separation of the human soul from God because of sin (Psalm 51:5; Romans 5:12), Quakerism assumed that “true religion consisted in ‘the divine light of Christ’ in every man.”22 So it can be seen how, given Quakerism’s influence upon this theory of criminal rehabilitation, it was hoped that “solitary confinement” might quicken a prisoner’s awareness of “the divine light of Christ within” and, in a rehabilitative way, to fellowship with it. The method of solitary confinement became popular and crossed over the Atlantic where European prison systems began to employ it. But news drifted back to America that the method did not work.
“Clinicians in Germany, which built multiple prisons modeled on Eastern State,” reported Rolling Stone, “attributed hundreds of cases of psychosis to solitary confinement, concluding that it caused ‘elementary hallucinations’ and ‘suicidal and maniacal’ outbreaks.”23 Danish psychiatric studies revealed how solitary confinement induced the same affect upon that nation’s prison population.24
Worth noting, the experiences of prisoners in solitary confinement resemble those of early Christian monks who in order to draw closer to God and cure their hearts of idolatry, retreated into the desert to escape society’s worldly influence.25 They too, like today’s recovering meditators, experienced altered states of consciousness resulting from having engaged in ascetic practices and the discipline of meditation. Basically, this is how Christian monasticism entered the church.
Deserts, Demons, and Deceptions
In early Christian history, devout men renounced the world and fled to the desert to focus their attention on God and interact with the supernatural realm, with powers that included angels and demons. According to Rowan Williams, a liberal Welsh Anglican bishop and the former Archbishop of Canterbury,
The desert was seen as a place teeming with hostile spirits, and a major part of the monk’s vocation was repeated confrontation with the destructive and deceptive power of demons. Sometimes this might mean spending time in the ruins of a pagan shrine, exposing oneself to the wiles of the evil spirits who had served there. More often, though, it was a matter of learning to discern between authentic and inauthentic “religious experiences”—acquiring a degree of suspicion of vivid or consoling visions and revelations, easily manufactured in the extreme conditions of hunger and isolation, learning to endure faithfully, in boredom, depression, frustration, without taking refuge in the devilish lure of dazzling spiritual dramas (angelic voices and visitations, etc.).26
St. Anthony of Egypt
St. Anthony (c. 251-356) was born into a wealthy and respectable Coptic Christian family. From his youth and because he was illiterate, Anthony had “little interest in matters of worldly learning” but was possessed of “deep religious feeling, and a craving after the intuition of divine things.”27 While attending church one day, he heard a sermon on “The Rich Young Ruler” (Luke 18:18-27). Jesus’ words convicted his soul, and he proceeded to liquidate his inherited wealth, give the money to the poor, and move to the desert to cultivate his devotion and love for God. Though he did not found the monastic movement (the separatist and isolationist spirit of it was imported into Christianity from the animists, Eastern religions and Egyptian Therapeutae i.e., Jewish holy men who isolated themselves from society to pursue “the contemplative way”), St. Antonius (as he’s also known) became known as the father of monasticism within the Christian tradition.
By isolating himself in the desert and engaging in ascetic and meditative disciplines, Anthony sought to purge his heart from worldly distractions in order to bask in God’s love. As a teacher, Anthony instructed monks to keep diaries of their secret thoughts (i.e., “journaling”) because self-improvement was the cost of eternal life.28 He also taught that ecstasy characterizes perfect prayer.
Awful (not Awesome) Asceticism
He, as others who followed him, retreated into the desert to experience the supernatural, and that they did. The record of Anthony’s life contains “strange stories of his visions, in which he describes himself as engaged continually in deadly conflict with evil spirits manifesting themselves not infrequently in forms more ludicrous than terrible.”29 On one occasion, after having separated himself in a cave away from the village to seek God, the German theologian and church historian Augustus Neander (1789-1850) states:
Here, as it is probable, by excessive fasting, and by exhaustion from his inward conflicts in the unnatural place of abode, he brought himself into states of an over excited imagination and nervous derangement, in which he fancied he had received bodily harm from the spirits of darkness. He fell at last into a swoon and was conveyed back to the village in a state of unconsciousness.30
Like other modern examples of meditation gone mad, Neander assessed that, “the extravagances of asceticism . . . [gave] birth to many wild sallies of the fanatical spirit, and many mental disorders.”31 This was in contrast to that one fruit of true spirituality—”temperance” (i.e., self-control) (Galatians 5:23), quite the opposite of desert spirituality where there is the common occurrence of men going “out-of-control”!
These many examples, modern and ancient, call into question the optimism that, “Meditation causes nothing but good for those who practice it. It is one of the healthiest things a human being can do for mind and body.”32
Dark Night of the Soul
Interestingly, of seeing visions, hearing voices or having visitations, the contemplator reaches a point where experience exhausts itself.33 A day comes when the music dies. As such, the contemplator feels abandoned and alone, and “No matter what the mystic does—praying, contemplating, meditating—the sense of God’s presence cannot be regained.”34 A “dark night” or a “cloud of unknowing” engulfs their psyche. Buddhists refer to this as “falling into the Pit of the Void.”35
To comprehend the meaning of darkness in the meditative experience, one must understand the context of “the mystic way”; that is the stages of “knowing” which meditators go through to experience the presence of God with the goal of realizing union with Him (i.e., unio mystica or theosis). Some view the phases to be as many as seven while others as few as three (the three being contemplation of the supernatural, illumination by the supernatural, and personal unification with the supernatural).
The occurrence of paranormal phenomena (i.e., altered states of consciousness) most often happens during the illumination phase.36 Upon entering this zone, the meditator hears voices, sees visions, and experiences visitations. This stage anticipates that ecstasies, raptures, and dark nights will occur. From the meditative perspective, these paranormal experiences might be called normally abnormal. Nathan Fisher, manager of Dr. Britton’s “Dark Knight Project” understands this when, in line with other scholars and students of the mystic way, he explains that negative experiences from meditation may be accounted of for two reasons. First, the director’s instructions on how to meditate may have been misguided. Or second, the meditator may have incorrectly pursued the discipline. Yet whatever the explanation, intimidating psychological/spiritual experiences are considered “necessary and expected stages” of meditation and as such, “useful signs of progress in contemplative development.”37 Negative experiences are an expected part of the mystic way.
The Light That’s Not Dark
But do descriptions of experiencing darkness by meditators indicate they have moved nearer to or farther away from the heart of God? Scripture tells us “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5); that God is“ dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto” (1 Timothy 6:16); that God is “the Father of lights” (James 1:17); and that the Lord “appeared unto [Moses] in a flame of fire” (Exodus 3:2). Christian believers are declared to be “children of light, and the children of the day” (1 Thessalonians 5:5). And furthermore, Jesus “transfigured” Himself before three disciples—“His face did shine as the sun . . . his raiment was white as the light” (Matthew 17:2). The experience of spiritual darkness belongs to those who are running away from, not to, Jesus the Light (John 3:19-21). Also, in the present reality, Satan and his cohorts are known as “rulers of the darkness” (Ephesians 6:12). Scripture also describes with regard to salvation how He has “delivered us from the power of darkness” (Colossians 1:13). So when set against the backdrop of Scripture, the soul’s enduring of darkness becomes difficult to understand. What if in reality the expressions “the dark night of the soul” or “cloud of unknowing” are descriptions of a state experienced by meditators which indicate they have moved away from, not nearer to, the heart of God?
The Promise of the Spirit’s Presence
Jesus promised that He would not desert His disciples but would send “another” Comforter (i.e., the Holy Spirit) to be with them (John 14:16-18). So all these feelings of being forsaken by God must find comfort in the Divine promise where the Lord has said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5). Amidst all this Scripture, it becomes difficult to understand how the “darkness” or “cloud” metaphors can provide comfort to persons who, on their mystic journeys, encounter a dead end of darkness or a depressing cloud of unknowing. The Bible describes the Christian journey as that of walking in and drawing closer to the Light! Experiences of forsakenness are not from the Comforter. In fact, if Jesus’ promises mean anything at all, such experiences are quite the contrary. (“I am with you always,” Matthew 28:20).
Several hundred years after the desert monks, the contemplative life proved to be a breeding ground for the religion of Islam. Interestingly, the story of Mohammed bears similarity to that of St. Anthony (i.e., their youthful inclination toward the contemplative life, their relative illiteracy, their pursuit of the isolated life to experience God, and respectively, their seeing, hearing, and experiencing supernatural visions, voices, and visitations).
Mohammed the Prophet
The historian Robert Payne (1911-1983) noted that by the age of eight, Mohammed’s pattern of life “was being determined—long days of contemplation, swift journeys, the sense of being abandoned, visitation of spirits, and always the dream of Paradise.”38
When he was about 25 years old, Mohammed attracted the attention of a wealthy and beautiful twice-widowed woman who was fifteen years his elder. They married, and together Mohammed and Khadija had six children. Because of Khadija’s wealth, for ten years Mohammed’s life was secure and comfortable. During this time, he lived in contact with and exchanged religious ideas with other spiritual men, whether they were animists, Jews, or Christians. One such man was his wife’s cousin, a man named Waraqa, with whom Mohammed experienced deep spiritual kinship. But Waraqa was a spiritually restless man who, though he translated both the Old and New Testaments into Arabic, returned later in life to the primitive faith he held in earlier years. Despite his illiteracy, Mohammed remembered everything others taught him, and perhaps because of Waraqa’s counsel, also refined the practice of meditation, the disposition toward which he had possessed since he was a young boy. But as Payne points out, the early years of his comfortable life with Khadija and his four daughters (their two sons died prematurely) “was the quiet before the storm.” Allow the historian to describe what Mohammed experienced:
The storm came suddenly one night, at the hottest time of the year, after a long period of meditating alone in a cave outside of Mecca. No one knows what brought him to the cave. It may have been the memory of ascetic monks in the Syrian desert who also worshipped their God in caves, alone with the Alone. Or perhaps he was influenced by the wandering hermits called Hanifs, meaning “those who have turned away from idol worship,” who emerged . . . to proclaim the virtues of solitude and the worship of the One God. It may have been the seed of restlessness communicated to him by the visionary Waraqa which sent him out into the desert to live for weeks on end in silent contemplation. What is certain is that the storm broke over his head, and the world was never to be the same again.39
Wrapped in his coat, lying alone in a cave in the dark, whether asleep or in a trance is not known, the illiterate prophet heard a voice that told him to write the first great visionary revelation of what would become a part of the Qur’an. The point is: Communications can be received, in fact are to be anticipated, when practicing meditation. Voices will speak. Visitations will occur. Visions will be seen.
The Mind Possessed
As we can see from this brief survey of the last 2,000 years, retreating into solitude and silence to meditate can become a breeding place for experiencing psychological derangement and/or altered states of consciousnesses, which meditators interpret to be encounters with God or other divine beings, perhaps angels or worse, demons. So the question becomes, what relation does contemplative spirituality have to the Christian life? Is it a benefit or a detriment? Can the contemplative life become a dangerous pursuit that might pave the way to encounter unfriendly powers or entities? To deal with these questions, the Scriptures need to be consulted.
The Bible and Meditation
Aided by their profiteering publicists and publishers, Christian celebrity-gurus (i.e., Richard Foster, Beth Moore, Sarah Young, et. al.) advocate meditation as a “spiritual discipline” by which to “draw near to God,” “experience His Presence,” and “hear Him speak” because intimacy breeds revelation.40 They do so based upon their interpretive abuse of Psalm 46:10 (the “poster verse” for advocating contemplative prayer), “Be still, and know that I am God” as well as other Scriptures in which they grope to find biblical precedent and support for recommending mystical meditation (Psalm 46:10; 1 Kings 19:12; Habakkuk 2:20; Psalm 62:1;41). But as we have seen, meditation in isolation does not invariably benefit the human soul.
Solitude’s Slippery Slope
Gargoyles in Gadara
Madness is what characterized the man from Gadara possessed by demons named “Legion.” He lived in isolation from society on the cliffs and in caves overlooking the Sea of Galilee on the lake’s east shore (Mark 5:1-20). The application to be taken from the man’s example is not that demons possessed him because he was an ascetic and a mediator, a Therapeutae—he might have been—but that he lived in a sort of “solitary confinement” like a hermit-monk, and in his isolation, Legion attacked, tormented, and possessed him. Though in comparison his experience appears to have been far more extreme—“on steroids” as it were—his recorded behavior (“And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones,” Mark 5:5) indicates severe psychological derangement, not unlike what some of today’s recovering meditators say they have gone through.
But Jesus healed the man from the presence of demons who had possessed, afflicted, and terrorized his soul and body. Knowing him only as “a crazy caveman,” his neighbors were astounded when, after Jesus healed him, they observed him “sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind” (Mark 5:15).42 This man represents the spiritual danger of what might happen to the human soul when a person retreats into solitude. In such a state, he/she becomes prey to the influence of, even possession by, evil entities.
Sound Minds and Sober Souls
It is most likely that both the apostle Peter and the apostle Paul were aware of the contemplative life (i.e., De vita contemplativa) practiced by Jewish mystics who were called Therapeutae throughout the Hellenistic world of the dispersion. In their epistles, the two apostles advised believers on how to care for their minds; and their recommendations did not include soliciting solitude and silence in order to meditate. Rather, Peter told believers that because “the end of all things is at hand” they were to “be . . . sober, and watch unto prayer” (1 Peter 4:7) and “gird up the loins of your mind, be sober” (1 Peter 1:13). Peter calls upon believers to be sober, not silent! Paul too taught Christians to ponder whatever is “honest . . . just . . . pure . . . lovely . . . of good report” (Philippians 4:8). On this basis, meditation, which has a possibility of inducing insanity, runs counter to the counsel of the apostles and one fruit the Spirit works—namely self-control! (Galatians 5:23)
Resist the Devil
Furthermore, James advises believers to “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Paul tells the Ephesians, “Neither give place [i.e., an opportunity] to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27). Apparently, Richard Foster is aware of the danger of meditation because he warns about it in his book, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home where he says:
In the silent contemplation of God we are entering deeply into the spiritual realm, and there is such a thing as supernatural guidance that is not divine guidance . . . there are various orders of spiritual beings, and some of them are definitely not in cooperation with God and his way! . . . [P]ractice prayers of protection.43
We must wonder, which spirits are involved with Foster’s “all-embracing silence,” and where in Scripture are we told to pray “prayers of protection” before we approach our Heavenly Father with prayer.44 From the examples of eastern gurus, the desert fathers, and monastery monks, Foster is aware of the trauma and disorientation, even insanity, that deprivation and meditation can work in the souls and minds of contemplators. He knows that the practice can lead to encounters with not-so-benevolent-spiritual beings who “want to take a person over.”45 Incidents of such “takeovers” litter the history of contemplative spirituality.
Yet despite offering a “tongue-in-cheek” caution against it, Foster, perhaps disingenuously, recommends the practice anyway! That’s like a state trooper parked alongside an Interstate highway, with flashing lights and screeching siren, warning drivers of an obstacle on the road ahead but telling them to continue to drive full speed ahead anyway. So it must be asked, in light of Scripture’s admonition to “resist the devil” and “submit” to God (James 4:7), why should Christians flirt with any spiritual practice that might expose them to see, hear, or experience an evil entity46 or to hear the unsubmissive voice of Satan or a demon speak to them?
Discerning Deception
Because of the negative consequences that can potentially happen when someone pursues meditation, in the Christian DVD Be Still, there is a segment rightfully called “Fear of Silence” because as stated in the presentation, “intimacy automatically breeds revelation.”47 So who might give the revelation? What might be the origin of the speaking voice, appearing vision, or materializing visitation? Richard Foster offers advice about how to discern who might communicate in the stillness. He states:
Learning to distinguish the voice of God . . . from just human voices within us . . . comes in much the same way that we learn any other voice. Satan pushes and condemns. God draws and encourages. And we can know the difference.48
Though there could be others, Richard Foster admits to a cacophony of voices that might speak: first, human voices within and without (that would involve listening to oneself or others speak); second, Satan’s or a demon’s voice; or third, God’s voice. Regarding Foster’s characterizing Satan’s voice as one which invariably “pushes and condemns,” what if the tempter—given his wily nature (“the wiles of the devil” Ephesians 6:11) and telling Eve, “Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4) and telling Jesus, “All these things will I give thee” (Matthew 4:9)—“draws and encourages”? Foster’s categories for discerning Satan’s as opposed to God’s voice do not always fit the truth of the Bible: At times, the evil one can be quite positive!
Doctrines of Devils
The apostle Paul warned of the devil’s deceptions. He wrote that “the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils” (1 Timothy 4:1). John the apostle warned, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try [test] the spirits whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1).
The Light That Is Dark
The Bible describes human reality to be one that involves warfare with unseen “powers . . . rulers of the darkness of this world [and] . . . spiritual wickedness in high places (Ephesians 6:12). Recovering meditators and those who, laudably, are trying to help them may dismiss the idea that psychological insanity is a result (whether in part or the whole, who knows?) of the soul’s ongoing warfare with unseen powers, as this would be too unworldly an explanation; rather, they choose to attribute the derangement suffered to a more this-worldly “scientific,” “researched,” and “diagnosed” complex, which involves physical deprivation, disease, sexual, alcohol, or drug abuse, and more, all of which affect the wellness of the human soul. But what cannot be denied is the resemblance between the symptoms of the devil’s work recorded in Holy Scripture and the derangements of soul reported by recovering meditators.
A word of caution: I am not of the persuasion (like many TV evangelists, exorcist priests, or witch doctors), “When in doubt, cast it out!” But I am persuaded that Satan is real, and his reality must be acknowledged. What may be at work in the souls of recovering meditators is a complex of various factors, but to get to the root of the matter, we must recognize too the reality of Satan and demonic hosts because the Scriptures tell us so.
From Scripture’s perspective, what if what recovering meditators are recovering from involves psychological derangement instigated by and affected upon the soul by a demon or the devil? In His controversy with the Jews, Jesus declared that not only is Satan a destroyer, but he is also a master deceiver. Jesus said, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” As well as being a murderer (a destroyer of the body), he is a manipulator (a destroyer of the truth). Jesus continued, “Whenever he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44). Sure, for most people, meditating may seem to produce psychological wellbeing in their mind/souls. This is why meditation can be so wrong when it feels so right. It is a light that is actually dark.
Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. (Luke 11:35)
Cure
In the spiritual reality of His soul during His own wilderness experience, Jesus neither sought nor received “personal” or “internal” revelations from His Father. The voice, which assaulted the Lord was Satan’s! To confront and counteract that voice, that visitation and those visions, Jesus quoted the Law which was “propositional” and “external” to Him! (See Jesus quoting Deuteronomy 8:3 in Matthew 4:4, quoting Deuteronomy 6:16 in Matthew 4:7, and Deuteronomy 6:13 in Matthew 4:10.) Though in the wilderness He was in solitude, He was not practicing silence.
The Psalmist tells of the “blessedness” (the inner sense of wellbeing), which can belong to the soul of a person who does not live in rebellion against God, choosing rather to “delight” and “meditate” in “the law of the Lord” (Psalm 1:1-2). As has been reviewed and shown, psychological maladjustment and affliction can result from the dark void that meditators can expect to experience on their mystical journey, and when the dark void is entered, one never knows what or who might be around to fill it. In the darkness of deception, Satan can transform into “an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).
God’s Law, as it did for Jesus, exposes the fraudulent voices, visions or visitations experienced in the onslaught of the soul to be what they really are, viral attacks of Satan; and as our Example, the Lord Jesus indicates meditation on and recitation of God’s Word is the only antidote for these attacks. Only God’s Word can promote wellness in the human soul.
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. (Psalm 1:1-2)
Author Bio: Larry DeBruyn (1944-2017) was a graduate of Taylor University (B.S., 1968) and Dallas Theological Seminary (Th.M., 1974) where he received the Charles A. Nash Award in Church History. He spent some time as a public-school teacher before becoming a pastor.
In the course of forty-three years, he ministered to three churches in Michigan, Missouri, and Indiana. He also taught on the adjunct faculties of Taylor University, Upland, Indiana (1979); Crossroads Bible College, Indianapolis, Indiana (1990-1999); and Word of Life Bible Institute, Tóalmás, Hungary (2006). His website is https://www.guardinghisflock.org.
To order copies of Haunted Souls – From Meditation Into Hallucinations click here.
Endnotes:
- Larry DeBruyn, “Be Still” (https://guardinghisflock.org/be-still).
- Kate Pickert, “The Mindful Revolution: Finding Peace in a Stressed-out, Digitally Dependent Culture May Just Be a Matter of Thinking Differently” (Time, January 23, 2014; http://time.com/1556/the-mindful-revolution).
- Karen Kaplan, “A Lot More Americans Are Meditating Now Thank Just Five Years Ago” (Los Angeles Times, November 8, 20218, https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-americans-meditating-more-20181108-story.html).
- Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1992), p. 157.
- For example, it has been reported that Aaron Alexis, the middle-aged man accused of shooting-killing twelve people at the Washington Navy Yard regularly practiced meditation. See Maia Szalavitz, “Aaron Alexis and the Dark Side of Meditation” (Time, September 27, 2013, http://healthland.time.com/2013/09/17/aaron-alexis-and-the-dark-side-of-meditation). Reporter Maia Szalavitz, a health reporter, was roundly accused of journalistic malpractice for associating murder with meditation. By itself it should not be construed that Alexis’ meditation instigated the murders. He was an alcoholic and possessed of other mental problems. Yet from a biblical perspective, it should be asked, “Did his meditating put his mind in contact with “dark forces” that lowered any inhibitions he might have possessed against committing murder?” Jesus after all warned that “the devil . . . was a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44). He also warned that the thought of murder begins in the emotions (Matthew 5:21-22). If there is a connection between meditation and violence, it is esoteric and, other than Scripture, lies beyond objective proof.
- Tomas Rocha, “Dark Knight of the Soul” (The Atlantic, June 25, 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-knight-of-the-souls/372766).
- Ibid.
- Ibid. All the quotes in this section have been extracted from this article from The Atlantic.
- Ibid. Of course, the question becomes, “Who or what wanted to take over David?” Was this a request for “possession” by an outside entity of some kind? I only pose the question about possession, but something transcendental is going on here.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Dr. Britton’s academic credentials can be found on the Internet at Researchers@Brown (https://vivo.brown.edu/display/wbritton). Interestingly, it is stated of Dr. Britton that, “She spent several years in Asia studying meditative techniques and received her mindfulness instructor certification training at the Center for Mindfulness at the UMASS Medical School.”
- Maia Szalavitz, “Dark Side of Meditation,” op. cit. (see endnote #5).
- Tomas Rocha, “Dark Knight,” op. cit.
- Maia Szalavitz, “Dark Side of Meditation,” op. cit.
- Ibid.
- Jeff Tietz, “Slow-Motion Torture” (Rolling Stone, December 6, 2012: 63, http://fight2forgive.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/slow-motion-torture-jeff-tietz.pdf).
- “Solitary Confinement” (Wikipedia; quoting the separate research of Bruce Arrigo and Jennifer Leslie Bullock then Stephanie Elizondo Griest, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_confinement).
- Eamon Duff, Gordon S. Wakefield, Editor, The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1983), p. 327.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- “There is a sutta,” a canonical discourse attributed to the Buddha or one of his close disciples, “where monks go crazy and commit suicide after doing contemplation on death,” says Chris Kaplan, a visiting scholar at the Mind & Life Institute who works with Britton on the Dark Night Project. See Tomas Rocha, “Dark Knight.”
- Gordon S. Wakefield, The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, op. cit., p. 110, from the section titled “Desert, Desert Fathers” by Rowan Williams.
- Augustus Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, Volume II, Joseph Torrey, Translator (Boston, MA: Crocker & Brewster, 1849), pp. 229-230.
- Isaac Gregory Smith, “ANTONIUS, St.,” A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrine, Volume I A-D, (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1877), p. 126.
- Ibid.
- Augustus Neander, General History of the Christian Religion, op. cit., pp. 231-232.
- Ibid., p. 238. Milman also notes that, “The indolence and prostration of the body produce a kind of activity in the mind, if that may properly be called activity, which is merely giving loose to the imagination and the emotions, as they follow out a wild train of incoherent thought, or are agitated by impulses of spontaneous and ungoverned feeling.
- A comment by Therapist60, September 21, 2013, in response to Szalavitz, “Dark Side of Meditation.”
- Saint John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul and Other Great Works (Orlando, FL: Bridge-Logos, 2007). Through meditation “the soul becomes detached . . . as the soul experiences the Crucifixion of Christ” (p. 24). During this spiritual journey “the soul leaves its bodily home in order to find union with God. This happens during the darkness of night, and the soul encounters numerous challenges, conflicts, hardships, and difficulties that must be faced and overcome in order to become detached from the world and gain union with God” (p. 21).
- Leonard George, Ph. D., Alternative Realities: The Paranormal, the Mystic and the Transcendent in Human Experience (New York, NY: Facts On File, Inc., 1995), p. 63.
- Tomas Rocha, “Dark Knight,” op. cit.
- Ray C. Petry, Editor, Late Medieval Mysticism (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Know Press, 1957), p. 21.
- Tomas Rocha, “Dark Knight,” op. cit.
- Robert Payne, The History of Islam (New York, NY: Dorset Press, 1959), p. 11.
- Ibid. p. 15.
- Larry DeBruyn, “On Meditating: Adjusted Living in a Maladjusted World” (https://guardinghisflock.org/on-meditating-adjusted-living-in-a-maladjusted-world).
- There are numerous articles at https://guardinghisflock.org discussing contemplative spirituality and such verses.
- Right mind translates the singular Greek verb sophrone in its present active participle form (sophronounta). Though previously characterized by insanity, the man came to be of “sound mind.” By Jesus’ healing, he experienced psychological wellness. But meditation, as has been testified to by those rehabbing from it, can induce within seeking souls a “wrong mind” or “sick mind.” As to the question of the relationship of demons to insanity, only God knows. I am not of the persuasion, “When in doubt, cast it out.” However, the influence upon a person’s consciousness on the part of malignant spirits cannot be summarily dismissed. The desert fathers believed in those spirits, even sought them out, and experienced warfare with them, even to the point of, if only a short time, going insane.
- Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (Harper: San Francisco, 1992, First Edition), p. 157.
- Ibid. pp. 156-157.
- (See footnote #9.)
- Larry DeBruyn, “Who Goes There?—Encountering Voices in the Quiet of Contemplative Prayer” (https://guardinghisflock.org/who-goes-there).
- Be Still (DVD © 2006 Twentieth Fox Home Entertainment LLC).
- Ibid.