Abstract:
The most common disturbance that I have observed in psychotic cases is caused by the presence of “dead” people co-inhabiting the body of the patient.  Unless we stop assuming that every consciousness directly experienced is “self”, give the patient confidence to be on his own and help the “dead” people on their way, we cannot really change the situation for the patient. Indications of the presence of “dead” people are: arguing in our consciousness with a critical voice which may appear to be located in any part of the body; intermittent total loss of memory during which time other people observed us acting differently; chronic progressive paralysis or pain with no physical medical explanation.
I have observed that people can be invaded during birth trauma, when feeling abandoned at the age of about four, at funerals, under general anaesthetic, when abusing drugs or alcohol, and during a serious shock situation.  Professional spiritual healers who can deal with extra inhabitants should be called on to assist. The public should be made aware of the consequences of being unnaturally out of body, the conditions that give rise to it,  and how the supporting positive thoughts of the family and friends can protect a person in these situations.
 

I work as a spiritual healer in private practice in Cape Town and Avontuur.
When I was at school I discovered that I could influence people by my thoughts. I would think of a likely answer to a question that a fellow pupil had been asked.  If he did not actually know the answer and looked for something to say, he invariably picked the idea that I mentally offered.  I soon realized that this was not a very positive use of the unseen world and moreover impinged on the freedom of others. For many years I avoided any engagement in the unseen world and tried to find a useful career.
I trained as a scientist at Stellenbosch University and graduated with a B.Sc. in Agriculture with Plant Pathology and Entomology as my majors.  Later I did an honors degree in Plant Pathology and worked as a Plant Pathologist for five years at the Stellenbosch Plant Quarantine Station.

I entered the spiritual traditions of the  West (Goethean), East (yoga) and of Africa(igqira) but most of all I have learned from my clients (by empirical observation of their conditions). The most valuable contribution that the Goethean theory of knowledge made for me came from the studies in plant metamorphosis.  This helped me to integrate my thinking and feeling.  To be able to enliven my thinking with feeling by turning my thoughts into living moving images made it possible to think without words.  The practice of Hatha Yoga taught me to experience my body as a living intelligent storehouse of knowledge.  It showed me how the experience of my own body determines my relationship to the world.

I have spent many years doing computer programming and the exercise in logic makes it easy for me to distinguish between logical conclusions generated in my mind and direct perceptions.  This has helped enormously in perceiving and communicating with the normally unseen worlds.

Studying with the igqirha showed me that ideas of telepathy and guidance and inspiration were in fact commonplace. It was the use of instant knowledge based in the will that was the most impressive. To access the will one has to be involved with the will. That means dancing and drumming till the soul is flying and then answering questions so quickly that there is no time to think about them.

As a spiritual healer I have access to both the conscious present and unconscious past of the client. There are many things to learn from these experiences: effects of curses, traps, possession, twasa, karma, unfinished business, fear, voices, daemons, responsibility. Books are a poor second when you discover in every person an encyclopedia of history that stretches over centuries into the past with intricate bonds of relationships to events, intentions, consequences and other people.

We might at first object to the statement that we could experience what others experience. That is only true if we limit our experience to our bodies. If we allow our feelings to flow beyond our bodies we will be able to feel what others around us feel. Whether we can cope with it is another question.

One might think that this is just all opinion and delusion, but so are the theories of science until one discovers that some of them are usable. They are usable because we recognize the principles involved and have discovered how to apply them. Once one has discovered the principles of a lever one still does not really understand it until one tries to apply it. Likewise it is with the world of spirits.
It is only when trying to move them that you develop a real understanding of their properties. The first principle to grasp is that there are always four distinct ways of looking at things. In Europe they tend to look at matter and the idea, in Africa and Asia they look at the spirit, in the Americas they look at the forces. These are however different aspects and although related they cannot be used to explain each other. One cannot explain or define the essence of a being with the help of forces or ideas or matter. The second principle is that beings try to maintain their existence.

To Africans from Africa both the idea and experience of spirits is not foreign. I will not ignore this fact in describing what have observed even though the western mind usually tries to ignore it.

In this paper I would like to look at a common and disturbing situation that causes endless problems to the living. It is the fact that many people who die do not know what to do or where to go. After death people hang around because they are afraid of going on their way to the light. I understand that their situation is the consequence of our present civilization and its almost total ignorance of what happens after death. Some religions have a story to tell but it is mostly hearsay, misrepresented with the aim of controlling people, generalized, and might have been more accurate in the past. On investigation the facts at present are as follows:

When a person dies he leaves his body. It is really just the body that dies. He can still perceive himself and most other people around him, dead and alive. If he has been a materialist believing that he was going to disappear at death then he is mostly intrigued at the fact that he has not disappeared into oblivion and can still observe his surroundings. If going on means that he really will disappear, then why go anywhere?
If he had been a believer and heard all the stories of heaven and hell and been threatened with going to hell then surely if he goes anywhere he will be judged and cast into hell. After all, everyone has done something “wrong” at some or other time. So we have a situation in which most people educated in the norms of western society are not ready to go anywhere. They have not been taught that all you need to do after death is go to the light.

Hanging around can however be a lonely setup especially when the dead person discovers that the live people around him don’t hear him except during sleep. If he can join them however, there is company and safety to be had. On what basis can the person get into another live person’s body. Either the live person must invite them in, or the live person must have been forced to temporarily leaving his body in an unprotected condition.
Once the “visitor” is inside, the live person usually perceives his presence as another voice in his consciousness. Because we assume that we are what we are conscious of, we do not recognize the “visitor”as foreign. Ask yourself whether you argue with yourself? Do they say you have multiple personalities? Is there another critical voice? Are there gaps in your memory of the recent past? Some people think the critical voice is their conscience!!

Why would a live person invite a dead person to join him?
When the person is desperate such as during birth trauma, or feeling abandoned often at the age of about four years, he is likely to invite help, any help. At funerals a person may be very sad and wish sincerely that the person who has died would not leave.

What would drive a person out of his body and leave it in an unprotected condition?
In hospitals while under general anaesthetic the person is driven out of his body.  On returning he often finds someone else already inside or busy getting in.  This is often associated with extreme nausea.  Throwing up is an easy way to get the visitors out and is still used in some societies.  Using so-called recreational drugs which are in fact mind suppressive, such as people do at parties nowadays can have dire consequences.  Mostly these are called having a bad  trip and sometimes they never fully recover.  Alcohol can be a big problem especially for those easily affected. Having a big fright can easily dissociate a person from his body.  We commonly refers to being frightened out of our skins or being beside ourselves.

Can one set up protection?
Most definitely.  Get your family or friends to keep up a vigil during an operation etc..  They need to hold positive thoughts that all will go well.

What are the consequences of having another person in your body with you?
There are various kinds of consequences in progressively disrupting order:
     1.   Physical:
             a. immediate: nausea.
             b. long term:

i.  Experiencing the desires that the visitor has. Quite often the patient will suddenly develop a new set of likes that don’t make any sense until you see who the visitor is!  One genteel lady suddenly wanted beer and sausages every evening.  Six months earlier she had had an operation in a German hospital.
ii.  Exhibiting the symptoms of disease that the dead person had. In the case of a twin sister that had died of a stroke the live sister developed progressive lateral paralysis over a period of two years.  Two seconds after she was freed she could speak and walk again and has remained healthy some 4 years now.

i.   Back seat driver.  You know that never ending stream of comments from the other  voice.?
ii.  Guilty. When you participate in some breakaway part-time to totally distract your  consciousness from the other voice, you find on returning that you have to face the criticism!
iii.  Confusion of identity.  Every case of gender confusion I have seen has been one where the visitor is of the opposite gender, and objects violently when the patient  shows an interest in some “other” person.  It seems that people who have recently died do not give up their identity with the gender they had when they were alive.

i.  Struggling. When there is violent inner conflict for control. I had one case where two male visitors got highly perturbed when a girl they were inhabiting,  fell in love the first time.  They had been with her since birth and regarded her as belonging to them.  That is worse than a jealous father.!
ii.  Absent.  When after the first drink you lost all memory of what happened the evening before. That was when the visitor took over and lived in your body.

What can you do about getting cleaned?
Find a healer that will do this kind of work.  Many of them will avoid this work as they are not prepared to get “contaminated”.
There are many ways that it can be done but I prefer

firstly:       laying my hands on the affected organs and separating the hold of the visitor.
secondly:  lifting the consciousness of the “visitor” up and calling on their relatives or friends to come and fetch them.  Sometimes they will resist all efforts at raising their consciousness. Then I raise the consciousness of the patient and the “visitor” drops out. Whatever he tries to do, separate him I will, then raise his consciousness and call for help.

Perspectives:
 Not all “visitors” are bad.  When a woman is pregnant she takes another person on board. It can temporarily make her very nauseous, give her totally new food likes and dislikes, and  land her with disease conditions like eczema or fever. All these are an expression of the child just like the effects of a “visitor”.

If one invites another personality to temporarily come in with the purpose of teaching or treating someone it can be good.  It is commonly done by Sangomas when calling on their ancestral spirits. It is usually called channeling in the West or being overshadowed but the person should remain in full control and be able to assert himself at any time. It can be the most wonderful experience ever  when a great being works though you when dealing with a very sick person.

What can we do for the dying and dead.
It is important to teach everyone to go to the light when they die, and not to be afraid. We also need to teach those who stay behind to wish the dead well and send them off with our love.  Having burial ceremonies is a good thing if they are done in the right way. We have to be careful to keep children under the age of seven near us and in our protection. In the African tradition it is good to wash with Mphapha bark after a burial ceremony to let everything go.

Dangers of the work.
It is not difficult to open yourself to others through sympathy.  The problem is what to do with the pains that you pick up from other persons.  If through sympathy you feel what another feels it is also possible for beings and curses that live in them to move over into you. If you can deal with them that is fine but otherwise you will have “burn out”, total exhaustion, pains, etc..  There is a reason why many Nurses seem so hard and militaristic in their caring.  They have to protect themselves unless they have become healers.

It is essential that work undertaken in this way must be done carefully.  It can be a physical danger as much as a mental one to both the patient and the healer if he releases a daemon. They are relatively rare but do occur.  If on laying on hands a tremendous pain starts creeping up your arm then stop the process immediately unless you know how to deal with it.

To be able to do this work effectively you need to know who you really are after everything has been taken from you including your possessions, desires, friends, social standing, family, gender, senses, importance, control over anything around you or in your body. You also have to know how to raise your consciousness. You have to be harmless otherwise you will not be trusted with power and you will be open to attack. You have to be fearless otherwise you cannot do anything.  You have to have no secrets to hide otherwise you will not be able to open your mind.  You have to give up your pride or you will be demolished in the spiritual world so as to make you ineffective. Finally you need to develop sympathy for that is bridge of consciousness.