The Mind Possessed: A Physiology of Possession, Mysticism an
Posted: Sat May 25, 2019 10:17 pm
The Mind Possessed: A Physiology of Possession, Mysticism and Faith Healing
by William Sargant
© William Sargant 1973
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
Table of Contents:
• Inside Cover
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Part One
o 1 The mind under stress
o 2 Mesmerism and increased suggestibility
o 3 Hypnosis and possession
o 4 States of possession
o 5 More about possession
o 6 Mystical possession
o 7 Sex and possession
o 8 Drugs, magic and possession
• Part Two
o 9 African experiences
o 10 Tribal Sudan
o 11 Expelling spirits
o 12 Experiences in Zambia
o 13 Zar possession
o 14 Casting out devils
o 15 Nigeria and Dahomey
o 16 Macumba in Brazil
o 17 Experiences in Trinidad
o 18 Experiences in Jamaica and Barbados
o 19 Voodoo in Haiti
o 20 Revivals in the United States of America
o 21 General conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index
List of Illustrations
• Possession by Dionysius 500BC
• Dancing to trance among the nomadic Samburu tribe in Kenya
• The god Ogoun
• The expulsion of a possessing spirit in Zambia
• Casting out possessing spirits in Kenya and Zambia by drumming
• Voodoo possession in Haiti
• Possessed by an Indian spirit during Macumba ceremony in Brazil
• Possessed by Joseph the carpenter in Trinidad Inducing possession by the Holy Ghost, Clay County, Kentucky
• Voodoo possession in Haiti
• Possession by the Holy Ghost; snake handling, North Carolina
• Collapse phase, West Carolina
by William Sargant
© William Sargant 1973
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
Table of Contents:
• Inside Cover
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Part One
o 1 The mind under stress
o 2 Mesmerism and increased suggestibility
o 3 Hypnosis and possession
o 4 States of possession
o 5 More about possession
o 6 Mystical possession
o 7 Sex and possession
o 8 Drugs, magic and possession
• Part Two
o 9 African experiences
o 10 Tribal Sudan
o 11 Expelling spirits
o 12 Experiences in Zambia
o 13 Zar possession
o 14 Casting out devils
o 15 Nigeria and Dahomey
o 16 Macumba in Brazil
o 17 Experiences in Trinidad
o 18 Experiences in Jamaica and Barbados
o 19 Voodoo in Haiti
o 20 Revivals in the United States of America
o 21 General conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index
List of Illustrations
• Possession by Dionysius 500BC
• Dancing to trance among the nomadic Samburu tribe in Kenya
• The god Ogoun
• The expulsion of a possessing spirit in Zambia
• Casting out possessing spirits in Kenya and Zambia by drumming
• Voodoo possession in Haiti
• Possessed by an Indian spirit during Macumba ceremony in Brazil
• Possessed by Joseph the carpenter in Trinidad Inducing possession by the Holy Ghost, Clay County, Kentucky
• Voodoo possession in Haiti
• Possession by the Holy Ghost; snake handling, North Carolina
• Collapse phase, West Carolina
‘And something moved in John’s body, which was not John. He was invaded, set at nought, possessed. This power had struck John ... in a moment, wholly, filling him with an anguish he could never in his life have imagined, that he surely could not endure, that even now he could not believe had ripped him and felled him in a moment, so that John . . . lay here, now, helpless, screaming, at the very bottom of darkness.
Then John saw the Lord - for a moment only; and the darkness, for a moment only, was filled with a light he could not bear. Then, in a moment, he was set free ... his heart, like a fountain of waters, burst.
Yes, the night had passed, the powers of darkness had been beaten back. He moved among the saints ... he scarcely knew how he moved, for his hands were new, and his feet were new, and he moved in a new and Heaven-bright air.’
-- James Baldwin Go Tell It on the Mountain
Michael Joseph 1954
The Samburu
The Samburu are a nomadic tribe. They live in compounds called manyattas in the open pastoral areas of the country. These manyattas have to be moved every four months or so, to provide fresh grazing for the animals. Their boundaries are composed of cut thorn and other brushwood, to keep wild animals out and their own cattle in at night. The huts are mostly made of mud with a hole at the top for the smoke to get out.
These people are very subservient to their tribal and group leaders. Each manyatta had its own leader, and there were other leaders and tribal chiefs controlling groups of manyattas. The chiefs and leaders seemed to combine the functions of the priest and political leader in more sophisticated communities. During their initiation ceremonies, the adolescents are made to believe that their God will kill them at the request of a tribal leader....
Because of the constant need to seek new grazing land, the Samburu tribal system has certain interesting features. There are, as usual, initiation rites at puberty in which both male and female adolescents are broken down as individuals and then reindoctrinated with the special beliefs and social behaviour patterns required of them by the custom of the tribe. We saw some of these recent initiates who had been circumcised and were going through a very strenuous course of initiation training. They were dressed differently from the rest while they were being systematically indoctrinated and disciplined, and they danced incessantly. When they had gone through all this, the girls become marriageable and the men became Morans or warriors, who would be allowed no wives until their main fighting days were over. They had to fight for the new grazing land and the building of new manyattas. When they had earned by their labours a certain number of cattle which could be exchanged for a wife, they were allowed to become husbands. But they were given little chance of obtaining the required number of cattle for a wife until their early years as the advance guard of fighters were over; and in the meantime the elders took unto themselves the pretty young girlfriends of the Moran.1
As there is no actual fighting to be done at the present time, these Moran seem to lead a pretty idle life. Their existence is almost psychopathic and vain; they dress up in elaborate costumes and do very little work. But they generally remain subservient to the tribal leaders. Their initiation rites are undoubtedly very powerful in their effects, and once the young people have been broken down and indoctrinated to accept the tribal values, religious and social, they remain 'sensitized' to what might be called 'agents of disruption'. If deviation occurs, this may be dealt with by the arousal of fear and the use of drumming and dancing to induce trance, when the deviant is often again 'brought to heel'. He must unquestioningly accept the validity and fairness of tribal ideas and tribal group behaviour. All this resembles the English public school system of indoctrination, in which boys are rapidly broken down and re-indoctrinated to accept the school's values. Similar indoctrination techniques are used in armies, especially in crack regiments. The raw recruit is rapidly changed from a critical individual into a numbered soldier, wearing a special type of costume, loyal to the group and uncritically obedient to commands, sensible or otherwise, for years afterwards. Whether in a 'primitive' tribe or at school or in the army, the process is essentially the same. Severe stress is imposed on the new recruit, by subjecting him to arbitrary and frightening authority, by bewildering him, abusing or ill-treating him, by telling him that his old values and sentiments are childish, and so inducing in him a state of unease and suggestibility in which new values can easily be drummed into him, and he recovers his self-confidence by accepting them. The initial conditioning techniques may have to be reinforced from time to time by further conditioning procedures, and follow-up indoctrination is considered most important in all types of religious or other conversion.
What I wanted most to study among the Samburu was their dancing, which is often carried to the point of trance and collapse. Talking to some of the young Moran through an interpreter, I was told that the effects of their dancing were twofold. Firstly, after dancing themselves into a trance, and especially after the collapse phase, the Moran lost all fear of fighting. Trance and greatly increased suggestibility made them immune from normal fears and doubts about going into battle.
A second, and surprising but extremely important effect was that trance and collapse freed them from any dangerous resentment which they might have built up against their leaders. These leaders have several wives, and one of the Moran may suddenly lose his girlfriend, who becomes perhaps the fifth or more wife of the elderly head of a neighbouring manyatta. This might naturally cause intense resentment, but the Moran told me that as a result of dancing into trance and collapse, 'the anger leaves our hearts'. In effect, dancing is used specifically to alleviate the resentment and hostility which naturally builds up against the tribal elders and the customs and conventions imposed by society on the young. This is probably effected by recreating the 'conditioning' of the initiation procedures and maintaining a state of suggestibility controlled by the elders.
It was most illuminating to see how the Samburu had found, and for centuries maintained, this method of keeping control in the hands of the few. It seemed to me that civilized men may have to go back and study 'primitive' methods of keeping the majority of people in a state of comparatively cheerful subjection to unequal and often grossly unjust political and social systems. I was now beginning to understand better how Hitler, for instance, had been so successful in using mass rallies, marching and martial music, chanting of slogans and highly emotional oratory and ceremony, to bring even intelligent Germans into a condition of intellectual and emotional subjection. Or how the new ‘youth culture’ of the West, based on frenzied dancing to the pounding repetitious beat of very simple music played at almost intolerable volume, has helped to create the ‘permissive society’ and to bring down in ruins a whole structure of beliefs and conventions cherished by the elders of our society. We see in Western countries today, in fact, the same dancing and whirling to a powerful beat, carried sometimes to states of exhaustion and semi-trance, which is little different from what I saw in Africa, though in our society it is not under the control of the elders but ranged on the opposite side....
They looked very much like fans of the Beatles or other ‘pop groups’ after a long session of dancing....
Tribal Sudan
In 1963 I was fortunate to be able to visit, by a Nile riverboat, some of the tribal areas of the Sudan. Dr Basher, chief psychiatrist of the Sudan, who later became Minister of Health, took me on this journey....
On this trip to Bentui I realized what is perhaps the main function of the dance in primitive society. Along the lush banks of the lower Nile living is very easy; great Nile perch can be caught easily, and food is readily grown in the fertile soil near the river. The tribesmen have very little to do all day and it is obvious that boredom and tension can build up. And so, once or twice a week, groups of tribesmen and women meet and dance together to the point of exhaustion, and thus disperse their built-up tensions and dissatisfactions. All over the world, among ‘primitive’ peoples, who have learned over thousands of years how to maintain tribal solidarity and social peace in a system whose benefits go mainly to the chiefs and elders at the expense of the younger and more virile members of society, dancing seems to have played an essential part in their stabilization. I would like to point out again that whenever human beings, even in the most advanced societies, are forced to dance to strong and repetitive rhythms, an atmosphere of increased suggestibility is induced which loosens the hold of tensions, hatreds and other emotions on the participants. Belief in religious or political or social leaders or gospels can then be fortified, or can equally be swept away and replaced by some different belief, depending on the attitudes and motives of those who are in control of the proceedings....
The power of these methods to produce new attitudes and new happiness in living is very great indeed, far greater than most of our modern methods of psychotherapy, or the use of intellectual arguments and persuasion alone. I could not help being again forcibly impressed by the deep and certain faith which this age-old pattern of brainwashing creates....
There cannot be the slightest doubt that among these poverty-stricken people religious services of this sort are of real help, in giving them a sense of dignity and faith in living, despite the appalling circumstances of their lives. We saw the same effects in Africa, where the same techniques are used to smoothe away resentments and tensions. I am sure that as the Black Power movement becomes stronger, this type of service will be bitterly attacked, so great is its power to keep people contented with their lot when they possess little or nothing: and indeed they cheerfully praise God for what little they have.
-- The Mind Possessed: A Physiology of Possession, Mysticism and Faith Healing, by William Sargant
Dr. Sargant was a prominent British Tavistock Institute psychiatrist, who spent two decades, beginning in the mid-1950s, working in the Congress for Cultural Freedom-linked Cybernetics Group/MK-Ultra project on the use of psychedelic drugs and other forms of brainwashing for mass coercion.
-- The CCF and the God of Thunder Cult: British Promotion of Irrational Belief Systems in America, by Stanley Ezrol & Jeffrey Steinberg