Impermissible “coding” and turning to “healers”
Every person's will can be influenced (to one degree or another) by the will of other people. This influence is passed on not only through words, but also by the hidden paths of a mystical interconnection.
Everyone knows that concentrated thought about someone nearby, or a fixed gaze, makes him turn his head in the direction from which he is being watched.
The phenomenon of mutual influence is pointed out, in particular, by John of Kronstadt. He writes in his diary: “We can disconcert another person with a fixed gaze. I have often had occasions when I looked fixedly from the windows of my house at passers-by, and they, as if under the influence of some force, would look round at the window I was looking from and search in it for a human face; and some would even show a certain confusion, suddenly quicken their pace, straighten their tie or hat and so on. There must be some mystery hidden here.”
In particular cases one can speak of the subjection of one person's will to another's, which shows itself especially clearly in hypnosis. During hypnosis a person's will is paralysed, and the person himself is under the influence of another — the hypnotist.
At the same time the person's ability to perceive the surrounding world rightly through the senses and to think logically is distorted. He sees, hears, smells and feels not what his senses tell him, but what the hypnotist's will commands. People divide into those who are insusceptible to hypnosis and those who easily fall under it. It is interesting that children under 7 cannot be hypnotised. Simple, uneducated people are less susceptible to hypnosis than people initiated into civilisation. This gives the key to explaining “susceptibility” to hypnosis.
A child's soul is a pure soul, with a clean heart not weighed down by passionate thoughts and sins. This is the reason why a child cannot be hypnotised: his soul is still an unsullied image of God Himself and is protected from subjection to another's will by its own pristine purity.
As a person grows and becomes enslaved to sin, his will weakens and he acquires the capacity to be subjected to hypnosis. Simple, uneducated people are usually less spoiled in heart and closer to God than people initiated into civilisation; it is precisely this that makes them less susceptible to hypnosis.
It is doubtful whether hypnosis really does much good when a doctor uses it to cure smoking. Usually, after a certain break, the craving for tobacco makes itself felt again.
But there is no doubt that hypnosis is a terrible power, and the people who abuse it — “sorcerers,” “wizards” and servants of the dark power — bring much evil into the world and even become the cause of people's deaths.
In essence it is impossible to draw a sharp line between the phenomena of hypnosis — that is, the implanting of ideas and thoughts in a person in a special state of sleep (“trance” and “somnambulism”) — and the ordinary mutual influence and pressure that occur in relations between people of weak will and power-loving people of strong will. The latter usually bring the weak-willed people around them under their influence.
The only exception in this respect is those people who have a living faith in God. Such people will not submit to people of strong will unless the latter are a spiritual authority for them, that is, unless they have the faith that the Spirit of God dwells in these people. That is why living faith gives people “freedom,” as the Lord said (John 8:36).
Of some people it is said: “He's a heavy person.” This is a person of strong character and evil will, marked by love of power — the opposite sign to humility. He wants to subject those around him to his will, and woe to those around him if, besides love of power, inclinations to other vices are strongly developed in him too. He brings much evil into the world.
Worse still if he has in his hands power and the material goods that the dwellers of this world long for so much. And such cases are frequent: Satan spares no effort to strengthen his slaves.
Christians should undoubtedly keep away from those laypeople who have a power-loving character. It should be noted that love of power is a trait of people who do not live in a godly way. A Christian is by nature as meek and humble as Christ. And was there not in Christ an immeasurably strong will! Yet He was humble, and in His dealings with people He did not allow even the slightest psychological pressure.
The moral position of “non-traditional medics” is unanimous and clearly formulated by them: love for people, kindness, goodwill towards all. It is especially stressed that their chief aim is not the physical but the spiritual health of a person. They assure us that with the means at their disposal they will take part in people's spiritual renewal, and they do not leave the Church without attention either.
To sceptics, and to those who try to show them the danger of such activity, they point to the patients who have recovered and say: “After all, what does it matter who heals and how — the main thing is that the person is well.”
The Church would bless her children to make use of the knowledge and skill of such healers with the same great joy with which she has blessed many other medical labours, were it not that she knows what great spiritual and physical danger may follow from such influences.
In the experience of the Orthodox Church, and in the writings of the holy fathers and the apologists of Christianity, the phenomena we are now considering have long been known, and they are studied well enough for us not to make any mistake in assessing them.
Medical people have yet to study the effect of hypnotists, occult healers and psychics on the human organism. As has always happened in history, time will show where there is sheer charlatanism here, where the pitiful ignorance of people who blindly intrude into the spiritual world and soul of their patients, and where conscious service of evil and the use of the dark powers of the spiritual world for purposes very far from “morality” and “love for people.” In any case, quite apart from the purely spiritual consequences, of which more will be said, such cures are always ephemeral and unstable, and the harm they do, which will accompany a person all his life, cannot be compared with the momentary relief they bring.
Psychics claim that their action on a person takes place within the bounds of natural processes, that they only set in motion the hidden capacities of the human organism, although they do this by way of psychic influence. Our ancestors knew from time immemorial the healing effect of the word. Healing by the word is real healing, whoever spoke the word — a doctor, a spiritual father or someone close — and it always has been, is and will be. But this word cannot be the same for everyone; it must be passed on directly from heart to heart, face to face. When such influence on a person is accompanied by the secret implanting of certain thoughts, or is connected with hidden irrational knowledge, then this influence is unambiguously connected with rational beings of the spiritual world, whom Orthodox ascetics and researchers of other Christian confessions alike recognise as demons, and the experiments conducted with their help are called meditative or occult.
It cannot but cause the most serious alarm that millions of our fellow countrymen periodically open themselves to an influence entirely unknown to them, of whose origin and consequences they have not even a vague idea. People make themselves the object of the most sophisticated and far-reaching psychological and occult experiments, subjecting themselves to the influence of the most dangerous forces* of the spiritual and psychic world. For a person drawn into “mystical drug addiction,” the results of these experiments are mental and emotional disorders, the gravest depressions and, finally, suicide and crimes committed under the influence of demonic powers. But the greatest danger is the eternal perdition of the soul, if the person does not break off contact with the evil spirit and repent. That is why Holy Scripture most strictly forbids contacts with the occult world. “There shall not be found among you any one that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord” (Deut. 18:10–12).
In the remarkable study by the American hieromonk Seraphim Rose, “Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future,” devoted to present-day occult phenomena, we can read: a medium is a person with a certain psychic sensitivity that enables him to become an instrument or a means of manifestation of invisible forces or beings… (“Almost all non-Christian religions make wide use of elements of the mediumistic gift — clairvoyance, hypnosis, ‘miraculous’ healings, the appearance and disappearance of objects and their transport from place to place”).
For all the variety of forms, there is something common to all mediumistic séances, namely the passivity of the medium, which consists in giving himself up entirely to the action of the outside force that guides him, whatever it may be called: a natural ability (gift), the influence of a “cosmic factor” or of aliens, the appearance of “souls of the dead,” or even an angel (for Satan takes on the form of an angel of light as well (2 Cor. 11:16)).
The passivity of those present is also desirable; that is why at occult séances there are the usual calls to follow the stream of thoughts and to seize on every sensation that arises. But for an “advanced” medium the passivity of those present is not an essential condition. Through practice and complete submission to the spirit that guides him, a medium can achieve results even if many sceptics are present at the séance.
The system of mass suggestion is not new. We know it well in the form of ideological influence. This influence, seasoned with promises of every possible and impossible earthly good, became the cause of well-known tragedies in the history of our country. The consequences of being possessed by false ideas and a false spirit are before our eyes. Now, however, we are talking about a new system of psychological and occult influence.
What is especially dangerous is that such a system of influence tries to penetrate into a person's holy of holies — the sphere of his soul. How dangerous this is, for the time being only Christians can judge.
By God's providence, a person's soul, his will, cannot be penetrated by another person's will. Only spiritual beings — angels or demons — can stir up thoughts in a person's soul, but it depends on the person's will to accept or reject them. In this lies the great gift given by God — the gift of free, godlike will. But if a person of his own will submits to strong psychic influence from a sensitive experienced in suggestion or in occult knowledge, then that — figuratively speaking — spiritual fence which protects the soul from the direct action of another's will is gradually broken down, and the person becomes open to the psychic and volitional influence of another personality. An influence which the person himself may not even suspect! Even the most “insignificant” hypnosis can break down these protective spheres of a person's spiritual structure, to say nothing of stronger and more mysterious influences.
“We are steadily approaching the time when a wide field will open for numerous false miracles, to draw into perdition those unhappy offspring of carnal wisdom who will be seduced and deceived by these miracles,” wrote our great hierarch Ignatius (Brianchaninov). And the aim of these false miracles is one: to lead a person away from Christ, the one and true Saviour, and bring him to anything you like: to “spirituality,” to aliens, to himself, to a guru, to a demon…
The true healings that take place in the Orthodox Church through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ are first of all connected with repentance and the healing of the soul. The grace-filled changes that accompany such healing extend not only over a person's temporal life, but — and this is the main thing — over eternal life too.
The first sign of a true ascetic, to whom God has appointed the heavy cross of healing and wonderworking, is the greatest humility, lowliness of mind; and conversely, the workers of false miracles are proud, haughty, vainglorious, mocking and heartless towards people, although they can talk endlessly about love for mankind.
Apostasy from God is ripening in the world, sometimes hidden, sometimes open. Little by little the adepts of secret teachings have come to life and are becoming active, because they see that it is ever easier for them to catch in their nets people who have lost faith in Christ. But at the same time they cannot but understand that their man-hating power will be overcome and destroyed by the power of God. It was no accident that one very well-known TV magician, asked whether he wished to be baptised, answered no, and explained that after baptism he might lose his power of “healing.”
Children who set fire to everything that can burn, houses where objects fly about, people who suddenly acquire the ability to “heal,” aliens who have all but flooded the earth itself by now and who have stirred up the press and people's minds — all these are manifestations of one and the same spirit, which vanishes at baptism and faith in Christ, as smoke vanishes…
Western Christians put people to death for witchcraft and black magic. There were sorcerers in Russia too. Orthodox Christians who turned to them were barred from Communion for a long time.
How far our consciousness stands from that of our ancestors, who, understanding the very great danger of such experiments for a person, equated them with murder and the gravest crimes! Ignorance, backwardness! — many are indignant today at such an approach. We, of course, are not calling on anyone to deal with psychics and TV magicians as was done in the Middle Ages; but do we really find in these facts of history only confirmation of our ancestors' “backwardness,” and does nothing make us think about the danger that threatens?
It is very sad to see how thoughtlessly people outside the Church hand over their souls and bodies to the disposal of TV magicians and the spirits that guide them; but it is far harder and more unbearable to hear that Orthodox Christians are being led astray by such “healings”…
In any case, whoever may suggest that we use the services of occult “healers,” the only attitude of an Orthodox Christian to such “healers” and experiments can be an unambiguously and firmly negative one. And should an Orthodox Christian look for help anywhere else? Have we no longer the Lord, Who is the same yesterday and today (Heb. 13:8)? Who healed and heals all who turn to Him with faith? Or have we no Intercessor, the Mother of God, Quick to Hear? Have we no longer wonderworkers and the choir of saints who are able to help us? Or is there no longer Orthodox faith in us, since we prefer to believe TV magicians and the first comer who offers us a means of lightening our cross?
Everything must be paid for. For our salvation, for the countless Christian miracles, the Lord paid with His own Blood. For demonic “miracles,” for this short-lived lie, both the magicians themselves and their victims will have to pay, and the price will be the greater the further they have gone away from Christ and led others away from Him.
It is hard to say now how this new craze will end for the Orthodox countries: in our extremely impoverished spiritual state, the course of events must be left to the judgement of God, which will reveal to us the hidden time known to Him alone. We need only remember the exhortation of the apostle Paul: have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness (Eph. 5:11).
Father Ambrose (Yurasov) on the attitude to “healers”
On no account turn to psychics; they take their energy from the cosmos, and in the cosmos the devil reigns. That is what he is called — “the prince of this world,” and “world” in Greek is “cosmos,” that is, “the prince of the cosmos.” He can give a person relief only for a short time, but afterwards the person will be worse and will ruin his soul.
Everyone who wants to be treated by folk healers should know: if now you are ill only in that a demon crows like a rooster in you, after such a healer-crone you will begin to grunt like a pig. One demon lived in you, and after the “treatment” a legion will settle in. For healing you should go to church. What is needed is repentance and amendment — rooting out all vices and passions, forcing oneself to do good works. But when we go to an old crone for help, we are bypassing Christ: “We don't need help from God, the old woman will help us.” Yet that old woman is unhappy herself, for after death she is doomed to Gehenna. Such crones do not go to church, or if they do, it is for show, once a year. They may even have icons at home, so that people trust them more. These crones are themselves spiritually sick — possessed. The evil spirit acts through them.
