Interview With A Psychic

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.This week’s item is from the Oregonian, August 17, 2006, with a headline:Interview With A Psychic.The following are excerpts:Laura O’ Donald meets a visitor at the door of her split level home in Portland, Oregon.The 34-year old physical therapist settles herself into an overstuffed chair, gives a beatific smile and asks:“Do you have any questions for the spirit world?”Growing numbers of Americans are turning to psychics, or intuitive as a way to achieve spiritual wellness.Even Kaiser Permanente, one of the country’s largest traditional HMO’s promotes the concept.Ms. O’Donald, who has a bachelor’s degree in exercise science, and a masters in exercise physiology, draws upon various disciplines, psychology, physiology, mythology and more in an effort to help her clients achieve harmony and greater consciousness.Ms. O’Donald told the Oregonian that the term “psychic” has become such a loaded word that it has been replaced by intuitive.Everyone is intuitive but not necessarily psychic.The ability to sense energy or information from the greater consciousness can come in different forms for different people.The way it works for me is that I get a sense of a person’s energy, and then I will get pictures in my mind’s eye, either symbolic pictures or pictures of actual places or things that exist now in a person’s life.It is up to me to interpret that, based on what thoughts or feelings come along with it.Often I get verbal information that comes like fox in my head.Only I know the difference between my own thoughts and the information that is coming through loved ones or spirit guides.Medical intuition is the ability to perceive emotions, thought processes or life situations that are contributing to physical issues, illnesses or the inability to express our true self.Because of my experience in health care and teaching I often get specific information about a person’s body along with a deeper process that is driving this.

Tom:

Dave, I found this article really fascinating.As you know, we worked on a book together.Originally it was called, America, the Sorcerers New Apprentice, and now it’s been retitled:New Spirituality.How many years ago was that?Probably 15 years ago, and here’s what I’m fascinated about is these things keep coming around.This back then was new age stuff.Well, the new age is a bit passé.

Dave:

Well, it went all the way back to spiritism for thousands of years.

Tom:

Well, that’s the other point.Let’s go through the terminology.There was divination, okay, in the 80’s the big thing was spiritism.

Dave:

Long before that, in England especially, contact was with spirits of the dead, they have been doing that forever, and they are still doing it, and the CIA even tried to contact spirits of dead agents that the KGB had captured to see if they gave up that information when they were tortured.

Tom:

You know, the biggest thing in this country in the 1800’s was spiritism, who was it, the Fox sisters?

Dave:

Right, the Fox sisters.President Lincoln was into it.

Tom:

Right.

Dave:

His wife Victoria was into it, so was McKinsey, King of Canada.

Tom:

Turn of the century we had theosophy.Helen ----------------

Dave:

Helena.

Tom:

So anyway, so we go from spiritism to the New Age and then we have channeling---well, channeling is another medium, there is mediumship.You’re going to contact spirit guides.I mean, we could take it back to shamanism and so on.But my point is that it keeps coming around again.Now we have the intuitive.Now you know what this all smacks of, it’s not just occultism, it’snot just things the Bible condemns with regard to contacting spirit, these really are demons, but this is all Jungian psychology.That was his term, being intuitive, and he was all into séances, contacting spirits, his techniques were drawn right out of the occult as psychotherapy.

Dave:

So, Tom, the terminology is a bit confusing.This lady is confused, because on the one hand---

Tom:

Not if you understand Jungian analysis.

Dave:

Well, it still is contradictory.

Tom:

Oh, absolutely.

Dave:

Because on the one hand she is talking about energy.Then she talks about the greater consciousness, that’s like science of mind.There’s a religion out there today, science of mind, religious science, they see God as some kind of a universal consciousness.Well, that’s Hinduism.But then she says, loved ones or spirit guides.Now is she really talking to the spirits of the dead or to spirit guides or is this just some kind of energy?

Tom:

Or archetypes in the collective unconscious.

Dave:

She doesn’t say that.

Tom:

But this is what she is saying.

Dave:

But Tom, it doesn’t make sense.What is it?Energy?Energy doesn’t have thoughts.I defy anyone to find any kind of energy that has thoughts.Energy is impersonal, it doesn’t think.That’s why the Star Wars Force was so popular, dark and light side, well, you can use it as you want.So, Tom, the lady is deceived.Now, there are people like this who, yeah, they do rely on their intuition and they’re guessing.Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong, they have explanations, but I’m surprised that this was in the Oregonian, that they would even bother with something like this.

Tom:

But it says, Kaiser Permanente, one of the country’s largest traditional HMO’s, promotes the concept.You know, this goes back to---what was the name of the medical prognosticator back in the 50’s late 40’s?I used to lay down---

Dave:

You’re thinking of Edgar Casey.

Tom:

Edgar Casey, of course, that’s what this is.

Dave:

But Tom, the whole medical establishment is into it now.

Tom:

Right, and that’s the difference.

Dave:

And we have, for example, Murray Segal, a doctor from YaleUniversity, and he developed a spirit guide.He taught people to get spirit guides.We have dealt with this, in fact, tried to contact the entity inside the patient to find out--Tom, it’s the same old thing from way back in Genesis.You’ve got a serpent talking to Eve, now we’ve got all kinds of entities talking to these people, giving the same information exactly.

Tom:

Sure, but now they are psychobabilized.We’re talking archetypes here, we’re talking concepts that the so-called science field can be comfortable with.