lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby vagabond on Wed May 30, 2018 2:55 pm

Hey all. I'm interested recently in delusions and ungealthy behavior that arise from practices employing visualization as a means of embodiment, and I know I've heard some wacky stuff goes on in certain silat lineages. Without trying to dig up any tender subjects, can anybody recommend anthropology type papers or relevant blogs or anything? Or personal experiences that may be relevant? (The reason I ask is cause of that anthro paper on choy lay fut and gangs in Malaysia someone posted a while back)

If it helps I'm thinking to respond to an essay arguing that national geographic type programs that use footage from animal mounted cams physically involve viewers in a way that constitutes a collaborative relationship between humans, other animals and cameras that blurs the line between subjects and objects, and that argument seems kinda shamanistic to me
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby Peacedog on Wed May 30, 2018 3:05 pm

The technical term for this is deity-fusion.

Hermetics writes a lot about this. You can also look into tantric Buddhism. The stuff I've seen on that in Tibetan Buddhism isn't generally available to the general public, but with the internet being what it is you might be able to find something.

John Michael Greer's book Circles of Power has some ritual methods for doing this in detail as he does with animal form merging.

On a practical note, this is how a lot of shaman works. It is very energy intensive and people who routinely do this tend to live shortened lifespans.

Some esoteric schools, I'm familiar with this in a couple of Taoist sects, use this technique as a way of reincarnating previous lineage holders. Essentially, they train an acolyte, usually without telling them, to be a receptacle. Then through a series of progressively more advanced rituals insert the departed consciousness into the body of the acolyte and kick the prior occupant out. This can be referred to as "preparing the vessel." Rumor has it the Tibetans sometimes do this with particularly well suited student monks going through their 4 year qualification training to be lamas. I've never seen this though with the Tibetans.

I can tell you about alot more of this. Just let me know what you are looking for.
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby KEND on Wed May 30, 2018 5:38 pm

I recall there was an article on spirit possession in JAMA some years ago. A friend experienced this while studying Black Tiger system
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby vagabond on Thu May 31, 2018 1:55 pm

Peacedog, that sounds like exactly what I'm curious about. Are there ways that initiates or whatever protect themselves before practicing? Reinforcing, habituating or 'indexing' a sense of self maybe? I'm thinking of the extreme amount of schooling chasids go through before being allowed to study qabalah, the physical disciplines of daoists, etc.

Ty!
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby Peacedog on Thu May 31, 2018 2:51 pm

Generally speaking you need to be able to generate Akashic/Void energy. When you can consciously do this it allows a practitioner to dissolve the construct entities utilize to occupy space. This works for about 90% of entities. For the other remaining 10% you need the planetary meditations to utilize solar energy to do the same thing.

Although Akasha/Void energy is actually colorless, it is frequently represented as a thin purple layer in the emanation around pictures of Tantric deities. If you see a dark purple color seeping into the edges of elemental meditations it is probably Akasha. Learning to manipulate this directly is not an easy or, particularly, enjoyable process.

Few systems teach this openly and frequently only teach it to lineage holders.

I had encountered it, Akasha/Void energy, under my Taoist teacher who, as is traditionally the case, refused to explain it. It was only once I started studying Hermetics from the Bardon school, wherein they explain it clearly, that I began to figure it out.

Without this it is a matter of willpower and that is a battle a practitioner always ends up losing at some point.
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby TrainingDummy on Thu May 31, 2018 3:22 pm

The (mostly) Western lineages that focus on the Ego, sometimes written as I-AM, are also direct counters to psychic influences of all kinds.

Ego (capital "E") in this sense is not the small ego sometimes talked about by Indian masters, but the presence of universal Spirit incarnated into matter.

The writings of Steiner and Heindel are pretty good jump off points for further research.
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby Peacedog on Thu May 31, 2018 6:49 pm

Vagabond check your PMs
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby vagabond on Thu May 31, 2018 9:15 pm

Peacedog, I got you message but I'm getting an error when I try to reply. If you just got my reply three times, my bad ;D

This is mostly a thought excercise for me, I'm more curious about the sort of zeitgeist that causes these practices to arise out of a culture than in pursuing them. The postmodern tendency to analyze power relations, reconceptualize the individual/dividual boundary seems like it might yield a productive comparison, but maybe I'm just seeing things that aren't there. I thought of silat because I've heard they specifically work with animal spirits, but I may be misremembering.
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby everything on Thu May 31, 2018 9:20 pm

vagabond wrote:

If it helps I'm thinking to respond to an essay arguing that national geographic type programs that use footage from animal mounted cams physically involve viewers in a way that constitutes a collaborative relationship between humans, other animals and cameras that blurs the line between subjects and objects, and that argument seems kinda shamanistic to me


would you mind elaborating on this program?
amateur practices til gets right pro til can't get wrong
/ better approx answer to right q than exact answer to wrong q which can be made precise /
“most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. Source of all true art & science
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby Peacedog on Fri Jun 01, 2018 3:49 am

Vagabond,

I'd look at this as more of a form of meditative engineering. People who engage in these practices are mostly looking for information. If you lack technology, a communications network or a functioning educational system this is one way of getting it. Now the ability to leverage that information is frequently limited by the resources and available technology of the civilization a practitioner is living in.

A funny story...an associate had an over riding interest in becoming a "master of hydrology." I have no idea why they wanted this, but they did and took the esoteric route to achieve this goal. After a long period of study and practice they managed to contact the spirit entity in charge of hydrology. FYI, these kinds of entities exist for virtually any endeavor to include ceramics, leatherworking, etc.

The entity declined to speak directly to the practitioner and used a series of film like images as a response. First, he sees a rolling lawn surrounded by low buildings with young people walking around. Then he sees an immense library. Finally, and this is rare to see letters clearly in this kind of thing, he watches a scroll unroll with three letters on it "P....H....D." Over a year's worth of effort and that is what he got.

The issue is that the process of doing this can easily get out of hand as the entities have motivations of their own that are frequently incompatible with the people communicating with them. Also, entities lie. And you might be trying to place a call to your deceased uncle Melvin in an effort to find out where he placed some highly valuable jewelry for safe keeping and wind up contacting an abusive pedophile instead.

In short, this was a technology reserved for people who had no other way of doing something relative to the timeline they lived in. In many ways it has been superceeded by modern technology. It is also full of risks that are inapproriate for the majority of people living today. And none of this gets into the realm of mental illness, drug induced hallucinations, etc.

I hope this answered the question you were looking for.

For some reason I didn't get an response on the PM side. No worries. Let me know if I can otherwise be of assistance.
Last edited by Peacedog on Fri Jun 01, 2018 3:53 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby Trick on Fri Jun 01, 2018 8:07 am

The human mind is very strong, if rightly focused we can achieve whatever we want to this I absolutely belive in, but the difficulty in this are the many things we experience on a daily basis, we tend to want as much as possible and also we have obligations and are being told by others what to focus on, so our focus strength become portioned up on many daily issues..... "the presence of universal Spirit incarnated into matter" - this i like because it describe exactly what we are...but have difficulty to fully understand.About spirits, entities and such, they are creations by our own minds because we have read or been told by some that we have come to hold as authorities that all kind of entities and spirits are real and therefore believe them. It's we, us, ourselves that are the great spirit that can do magic..."solar energy" yes that's a step to understand what we are
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby vagabond on Fri Jun 01, 2018 10:01 am

Everything, I'm not sure of the program, I don't have the book w me to refer to. The essay I was originally thinking of was "crittercams" by Donna haraway, from the book when species meet. My feelings were kinda reinforced when I read another one from the same book, I forget the name, where she's discussing what position pets and working dogs occupy. Are they capital? If so, labor value or use value? Are they kin? She uses the term "familiar" a couple times. Kinda neat.

Peacedog: lol! Sounds like good advice
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby TrainingDummy on Fri Jun 01, 2018 2:14 pm

To put such practices in a modern academic framework I'd probably look towards Wilber's AQAL model, which combines both developmental psychology with cultural studies.

Shamanistic practices are at Wilber's Magical and Mythic levels of development. Wilber's most recent book The Religion of Tomorrow is a whole essay on what happens when postmodern people attempt to follow religious practices of the past and offers advice on converting them to something more appropriate to the 21st century.

He mostly uses Abrahamic religions as the examples for Mythic development, but he does have a few examples of shamanism and what it means for people at the Rational and Integral levels.
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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby jimmy on Sat Jun 02, 2018 7:40 pm

CHAPTER 37. Sunset. wrote:
The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out. wrote:I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass.

Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun—slow dived from noon—goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. 'Tis iron—that I know—not gold. 'Tis split, too—that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight!

Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er enjoy. Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise! Good night—good night! (waving his hand, he moves from the window.)

'Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must needs be wasting! What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and—Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That's more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies—Take some one of your own size; don't pommel me! No, ye've knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!

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Re: lit or insight on spirit possession and psychosis in silat?

Postby zhenwu on Wed Jun 06, 2018 1:12 am

Man on the Moon ... great movie.
Aaaand the Trailer for the Making of...
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