Healing, Reiki, Demons and black vomit

[AndrewBird]

HeyHey everyone!

BACKGROUND TO MY QUESTION:
I have been trying to recover from an extremely fundamentalist Christian ("Xtian" or "Chrispy" for brevity) Culture. I was in music-leadership positions and even toured and worked for 4 churches, all of which were very normal for me but from my perspective now are most definitely leaning towards cult.

I've witnessed demonic manifestations, black vomits, ectoplasm, animal behaviour and such across several countries and i've noted the differences between each country and church; i've lead worship at thousands of services and know exactly how to "prepare" or subdue congregations of hundreds of people to receive the word or, as I now know, put them in a trace-like state in preparation for manifestation of the spirit… blah blah etc etc.

London UK is a wonderful town but there still seems to be a very small amount of people who have come out of xtianity to eventually do solid work in testing the xtian churches I speak of. Of course it's an unfair thing to disprove someone's belief if it's doing them no harm but it's doing a lot of people harm… and I know these people. I would LOVE an hour with Richard Wiseman (or even Derren B) but they are fairly inaccessible.


QUESTION 1
Laying on of hands often produces electrical tingling sensations and "heat" in [the believer]. Emotional responses are a given. I'm positive this is exactly the experience of reiki and anything to do with manipulating chi.

Has this been tested for and how can the effect be reproduced?

QUESTION 2
Each church has an overriding "dialect" when it comes to speaking in tongues. Obviously this is because they are copying from each other in a small community. When someone comes in from another church, you really notice the difference. A translation often comes afterward but I have heard several different translations… comedically the pastor mentioned that only one of the three were the actual translation but the believer in question could at least choose from several fortune cookies!

Has anyone tried to physically translate tongues?


QUESTION 3
When I played a service, starting with loud, fast music then into quieter, more melancholic music, I could see the state change of the congregation and in fact, 98% of the time only this sequence caused the state change. many times tried to change it up but only melancholic music would cause the state change and we could almost guarantee the prophecies and the demons would turn up.

What is the psychological mechanism behind this state change and why is it easily caused by music. Same thing happens at concerts of fairgrounds.

Do louder churches with gigantic lighting rigs such as Hillsongs, produce a better state change?


I have hundreds of tests I would love the chance to document or at least discuss more.

 

[Wolrab]

QUESTION 1
Laying on of hands often produces electrical tingling sensations and "heat" in [the believer]. Emotional responses are a given. I'm positive this is exactly the experience of reiki and anything to do with manipulating chi.

Has this been tested for and how can the effect be reproduced?

Yes, it has been tested. See this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Rosa

 

[Sherman Bay]

QUESTION 1
Laying on of hands often produces electrical tingling sensations and "heat" in [the believer]. Emotional responses are a given. I'm positive this is exactly the experience of reiki and anything to do with manipulating chi.

Has this been tested for and how can the effect be reproduced?

Yes, it has been tested, and found to be totally illusory. No such sensation or heat can be detected if proper observing conditions are followed (to prevent fraud and wishful thinking).

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=187390

Chi has never been shown to exist. It is the figment of an ancient, oriental mind when autopsies were not permitted, x-ray procedures did not exist, imagination ran rampant, and the only way to "see" inside a body was to make up stuff.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

QUESTION 2
Each church has an overriding "dialect" when it comes to speaking in tongues. Obviously this is because they are copying from each other in a small community. When someone comes in from another church, you really notice the difference. A translation often comes afterward but I have heard several different translations… comedically the pastor mentioned that only one of the three were the actual translation but the believer in question could at least choose from several fortune cookies!

Has anyone tried to physically translate tongues?

Glossolalia (speaking in tongues) does not even resemble real languages in structure. There are too many repeated syllables etc:

Samarin found that glossolalic speech does resemble human language in some respects. The speaker uses accent, rhythm, intonation and pauses to break up the speech into distinct units. Each unit is itself made up of syllables, the syllables being formed from consonants and vowels taken from a language known to the speaker:

It is verbal behaviour that consists of using a certain number of consonants and vowels[...]in a limited number of syllables that in turn are organized into larger units that are taken apart and rearranged pseudogrammatically[...]with variations in pitch, volume, speed and intensity.[7]
[Glossolalia] consists of strings of syllables, made up of sounds taken from all those that the speaker knows, put together more or less haphazardly but emerging nevertheless as word-like and sentence-like units because of realistic, language-like rhythm and melody.[8]

That the sounds are taken from the set of sounds already known to the speaker is confirmed by others. Felicitas Goodman, a psychological anthropologist and linguist, also found that the speech of glossolalists reflected the patterns of speech of the speaker's native language.[9]

Samarin found that the resemblance to human language was merely on the surface and so concluded that glossolalia is "only a facade of language".[10] He reached this conclusion because the syllable string did not form words, the stream of speech was not internally organized, and – most importantly of all – there was no systematic relationship between units of speech and concepts. Humans use language to communicate but glossolalia does not. Therefore he concluded that glossolalia is not "a specimen of human language because it is neither internally organized nor systematically related to the world man perceives".[10] On the basis of his linguistic analysis, Samarin defined Pentecostal glossolalia as "meaningless but phonologically structured human utterance, believed by the speaker to be a real language but bearing no systematic resemblance to any natural language, living or dead".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia#Linguistics

There is nothing to translate, its just nonsense speech.


ETA: I also find it fascinating that in the original episode of speaking in tongues in the bible, the effect was that the disciples could speak normally, but all the foreigners could understand what was being said. Subsequently it becomes used so that people speak nonsense and nobody can understand what is being said and it needs "translation".

From Acts 2:

5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+2&version=NIV

 

[Tiktaalik]

Well, black vomit's not unusual if you just drank a bunch of coffee.

 

[ExMinister]

AndrewBird, interesting post. Professor Yaffle's post describes well what I understand about speaking in tongues too.

I am curious: I have never heard of black vomit in this context. Is it common for people to vomit like this? Is it always black or is sometimes more ordinary looking?

 

[hgc]

Hello Andrew Bird!

Surely you know of your famous namesake?


Black vomit? That doesn't sound like any church I'd like to rock.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Fixed your video:

 

[steve s]

I've had black vomit when I had a bad case of the dry heaves. I always thought it was just bile.

Steve S

 

[ExMinister]

I thought bile was green. I thought black vomit was old blood.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

I thought bile was green. I thought black vomit was old blood.

Bile can be a very dark green colour. Old blood in vomit (eg if you have a bleeding stomach ulcer) is black and looks like coffee grounds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_ground_vomiting

 

[ExMinister]

Yes, that's exactly what I thought, down to the coffee-ground emesis.

So what I'm wondering is: Do demon possessed people frequently vomit up black stuff? Do they just as often vomit up normal looking stuff?

Or maybe demonic possession, black vomits and ectoplasm are all different things.

 

[ExMinister]

Regarding the tingling or electrical sensations, I have experienced this as part of a temporal lobe epilepsy syndrome. I have read that some percentage of the population naturally experiences temporal lobe phenomena, which can include out of body sensations, deja vu, and other spiritual experiences, presumably (my presumption) including the tingling/electrical sensations. Kevin Nelson, author of The Spiritual Doorway to the Brain has more research on this. http://www.amazon.com/The-Spiritual-Doorway-Brain-Neurologists/dp/B00AZ8AWI2

Regarding the music aspect, I wonder if Oliver Sacks's book Musicophilia might shed some light on it. http://www.amazon.com/Musicophilia-Tales-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/1400033535 It might, at any rate, be a place to start. And an email to him might give you some ideas for where to find further or more pertinent research, if such exists.

 

[hgc]

Fixed your video:

Thanks! Gotta remember to test those things when I paste them in.

 

[Peterson]

Well, black vomit's not unusual if you just drank a bunch of coffee.

Considering what comes out the other end when you drink too much of it, I'd imaging Guiness will have a similar effect.

 

[AndrewBird]

I LOVE you lot. Specially the link on speaking in Tongues.

Black Vomit! Most people who have been through exorcism tend to be in "Stress Positions" which is a position known to be in use in ol GetMo bay (my ex-flattie was a lawyer at Guantanamo). In this position, I know it's possible to burst blood vessels and so vomit gets stained very dark red. I haven't been amongst that stuff in years.

I'm half watching the BBC Doco on the "Three Teenage Exorcists" which is the main type of church I was involved in. Demons demons demons… it's interesting that most people choose the famous Demons (Legion, Jezebel… etc) to manifest although there should be hundreds of thousands if the backstory is true. DISCUSS.

 

[AndrewBird]

I must have come far… I am literally laughing my ass off.

Besides the glamour demons, wish ya'll could have seen manifestations of "demon of bad farts", "Piano" and "Rock 'n Roll" … I AM SERIOUS. I've even seen groups of people pretending to be Dinosaurs and God making them eat their rubbish. Sure it's probably really cathartic but it's interesting how demons, like UFO's have trends associated with them.

 

[Kopji]

...Of course it's an unfair thing to disprove someone's belief if it's doing them no harm but it's doing a lot of people harm… and I know these people...

Growth of knowledge is a process where we state a hypothesis, test it and try and disprove what we can. We create a new and better hypothesis with new facts, wisdom and insights. Rinse and repeat, sometimes an 'Ouch'. There's pain in challenging our cherished beliefs and assumptions - it is uncomfortable and often involves sacrifice.

What is harmful is for us to become complacent and obedient to authority rather than reason. It is not harmless to spend our lives without ever challenging - because it feels right, does good, is pretty, or easy. I reject the notion that most people are happiest acting like sheep or cattle, needing useful lies to lead them to peaceful pastures.

Religion or 'spirituality' as I see it, can have its place in the world as being like art - a subjective source of beauty or inspiration.

Revelation though, aka "Truth" - the claimed origin of almost all religion - is not a source of knowledge and deserves to be shattered with all the hammers we can bring to bear.

 

[AndrewBird]

Prof Yaffle! Thankyou! You are a force.
I never knew that "tongues" had an official term. The actors centre use it during warm up exercises

I wasn't expecting ya'll to be so responsive, so thankyou. I've gone through identitiy suicide since leaving the churches and it's taken me since around 1997 so test, test and test and study and have been alone in this until this year so this is amazing.

In response to to Kopji, I heartily agree with your statement that it's harmful to become complacent; in fact I strive to learn constantly and tend to exist in my head a bit which is the the reason I never was "slain in the spirit" or spoke in "tongues"… but I can put you directly in touch with hundreds of people who are truly "happy" (quickly defined: flourishing, contented, secure) inside their church and NEVER question what's preached to them; They and thousands more that I had conversations with (in my >28 years in ministry in 5 countries) are more than content acting like sheep. Absolutely. I'm aware that i'm probably re-defining what you mean by "happy" but it's still an interesting point.

It's not NLP, it's just really easy to control large groups of people who are not self aware: for good or bad.
No conspiracy here; the government isn't poisoning the water it's surely just self-awareness and lifestyle choice.

Riding the top deck of a bus through London town for 30mins I always see a few incidents of groups of pedestrians mindlessly following one stupid person on a cellphone into busy traffic or just observe the packed corridors of people form down one side of Oxford Circus and the few single people who choose to use the less-crowded side of the street. It's amazing. People NATURALLY follow the status quo.

I can't believe this swarm mentality is only just beginning to be tested (See BBC Science Club S01E5 I think) but Derren Brown tested it entertainingly in one of the "trick of the mind" episodes.



Sounds like we both WISH that Religion should have it's place in the world with art and folklore, music, history, myth… because I REALLY want to see a good Jesus Superhero Movie but the chrispy culture I am familiar with is far far away from being that and from first hand experience represents the destruction of curiosity, creativity, originality, sensuality, freedom of expression, freedom of women, respect for the earth and represents a very dubious morality based on human sacrifice.


haha! FUN!