How I discovered the true secrets of Exorcism
I am an exorcist, I have been doing exorcisms for many years for many people in a variety of circumstances, but the paradox is that exorcism is so much a fundamental part of my life, that I had forgotten that is what I do!
Just about the first thing Punditt said to me when I entered his small office on Brighton seafront over twenty years ago was that I had a spirit problem. He would regularly place a hand on the afflicted part of my body (I was feeling no pain, so I had no idea if it was true or not), then he would blow on it, and that would be that.
Childhood experiences of Spirits
I remember as a child being scared of spirits. My father was the caretaker of several schools, and I had the run of the place after school hours. The very long corridors were terrifying - I would run like hell down them, fearful of the spirits I was aware of all around me. Naturally I never told anyone, and it did not prevent me from doing well academically. I had a similar experience years later when i was living at Mentmore Towers doing work study so I could do the TM-Sidhi course. I was doing building work in a long corridor, and the feeling of being surrounded by spirits was overpowering.
However, after many years in the TM Movement, I had all but given up on the notion of spirits, so I had my doubts when Punditt informed me of my problem. Despite my misgivings, I continued to see Punditt, and he undoubtedly helped me.
The proper use of alcohol in developing consciousness
One of the more controversial aspects of my training is the extensive use of alcohol, and for this I have to acknowledge the influence of the TM movement on this. One of the things I learnt was that to be a good student, one has to do what the Master does. Maharishi sits down all day in front of a camera and talks, which is patently not something people in TM could do. So when I got to know Punditt better, and he started to give me alcohol to drink, it was this notion of the student doing what the Master does that persuaded me to drink.
After a while, the sociable drink became an important aspect of parties at my flat, where there was curry cooked by Punditt, lots to drink, music and sometimes dancing. The music was of course Qawali, the Sufi music from Pakistan.
The Chilla
During this time I had done my chilla - forty days visiting a graveyard, and I was regularly visiting the graveyard with Punditt in any case. There is a profound silence at graveyards that is comforting. Most of the time I was not aware of spirits, although Punditt was evidently conversing with them. As a recent post makes clear, it was only recently that I came across the concept of chilla, and its purpose - exorcism.
I decided to look deeper into the literature. The term for exorcism is Zar, or Spirit, a word that sounds like Seir or Prince in Hebrew. Methods of exorcism involve music, dancing… and alcohol. It seems that Punditt was giving himself regular opportunities to exorcise spirits from me and my friends. Since there was curry, music and drink just about every evening, I must have had a lot of spirits to be exorcised from me.
A particularly powerful preparation for being an exorcist is the chilla, but as you know, I was unaware of what the visits every day for forty days was about. At some point, I do not remember exactly when, Spirits would come into my awareness, and it was clear that I had to do something about it. By now, I had read books on ritual magic, so I knew about invoking and evoking spirits, and the use of the magic circle. None of these techniques worked, and I was getting desperate. One particularly persistent spirit was getting on my nerves, and it was while I was waiting for a bus to visit Punditt at Churchill Square, the main shopping area in Brighton, that I got the answer. Nothing else had worked, so in desperation, I decided to incorporate the spirit within me rather than trying to keep it out. Success!
We are Spirit
Philosophically and conceptually, we are the All, we are Everything, so we are all aspects of Spirit. In fact, Punditt never distinguished between Spirit and Spirit, or one’s own spirit or spiritual development, and external entities. The fact that in English ’spirit’ is ambiguous is interesting. So, there is the technique of Zar or exorcism. The exorcist integrates the problematic spirit into himself, which could well mean that the spirit has to be removed from the sufferer, and that is where it goes. There are other, secret techniques, but what I want to get across is that all spirits are aspects of our spiritual path, whether we like it or not.
Jesus famously did chilla in the desert, and as a result the devil met him, a terrifying experience. That Jesus did chilla shows that he was following an ancient practice. However, meeting Satan is doubtful. Either the chronicler was ignorant of the practice of chilla or he wanted to make some religious point, that Jesus was greater than Satan (whose name means Tester in any case); in any case, the original meaning has been lost. I was tested continually (I still am), but that does not make me greater than Satan!
From then on, Jesus became famous as an exorcist, casting out spirits. In one well-known incident, he cast out spirits that went into a flock of pigs nearby. The pigs panicked, and they ran into the sea where they drowned. Pork is of course a forbidden food so why were pigs the tended and reared?
It may well be that casting the spirits into pigs is part of the demonisation process that Christianity maintains to this day.
The tradition of Zar seems to be maintained by women in Islamic countries. There is a party of food, alcohol, music and dancing, and prayer, just like the parties in my flat. Having attended Zhikr or Dhikr regularly in Brighton, that too has a tradition of prayer, singing and dancing - but not the alcohol. Could it be that the purposes of Zar and Dhikr be not so far apart as we might think?