Timely expose of dangers of channeling and mediumship

books:


	• Hungry Ghosts Joe Fisher McClelland & Stewart, 1991 - 296 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews
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An Interesting yet culure-based flawed book

Joe Fisher is a respected writer on the paranormal and takes us through a fascinating personal case study in `spirit deception'. The book is essentially flawed however, as Fisher (in the later chapters) appears to take a biased Christian-based view of the phenomena. The `experts' quoted on spirit deception are the hard-line Christian evangelicals who spend their time attacking the so-called `New Age' as well as all Eastern religions. The Christian bible is quoted as an authority on the issue. There are also the Christian-based comments; `Jesus Christ had nothing good to say about spirit contact'. What did Buddha have to say on spirits? Mohammed? Does it matter in psychical research what historical religious figures said? There is no reason that Christianity cannot have a say on the phenomena but why is it assumed that its authority is final?

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Timely expose of dangers of channeling and mediumship

As one who has lived in societies where contact with the dead and experience of the paranormal is quite common, the different approaches to these phenomena between those societies and the West is remarkable. The 'materialistic' West is rediscovering and experimenting with a whole range of areas which used to be regarded as 'esoterica' but is now loosely subsumed under the term 'New Age'. But by contrast, the approach in the West to communications from the other side via mediumship or channeling is to be from "Masters", or the benevolently disposed disceased who have suddenly become enamoured with qualities of wisdom and understanding never approached during their lives on earth. Joe Fisher was already a well known journalist and writer on the occult and new age when he had the opportunity to meet his 'spiritual guide' on the other side. His eager interest aroused from these encounters soon led to entranced fascination, and a subjugation of his own responsibility for life descisions to the advice of the loving guide. After losing an important relationship and then discovering gaps and inconsistencies in historical information, he began to be more meticulous in his communication with the guides. Supported by copious transcripts of sessions, and historical research, he innocently challenged them over some clear inaccuracies, still naively thinking his own 'darkened' state made him incapeable of perceiving their wisdom in these matters. The transcripts of these questioning sessions show that these benevolent guides, from being initially cajoling and dismissive, soon move to emotional blackmail and finally to threats. The benevolent love disappears and we see behaviour as manipulative, deceitful and malevolent as from the lowest of earthly miscreants. Fisher's methodology of taping sessions (originally to preserve the wisdom) allows him to return to the material and pursue intelligently and determindly the irregularities and deceits. What gives this book some of its dramatic power is how the sessions show Fisher still trying to overcome his perceived inadequacies of comprehension in the face of the self incriminating lies of the guides, long after a sceptical reader can see through them. Fisher's experience, not merely recounted but supported by copious transcrpts, leads him to question who these beings are, and what purpose they fulfill in their contacts with the still living. He suggests that these are the so called "hungry ghosts" (as described in Tibetan lore), still earthbound, who use mediums receptivity for their own ends. The West's new plunge into the esoteric should not be undertaken "When spirits begin to speak with man...things are fabricated by them and they lie". Swami Bhakta Vishita warned of "a mischevious class of entities who impersonate other spirits". Iamblichus, the leading neo-Platonist of his time, unmasked an alleged Apollo speaking through a medium who was only the ghost of a gladiator. Is it any wonder that John, the forth Evangelist urged "Test the spirits"? - an injunction that anyone reading "Hungry Ghosts" will not forget.

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