This book is a compendium of direct experiences, illustrative cases, and understandings. It is a complex book, not black-and-white, looking for truth between the extremes of "Satanic panic" and dismissal of the phenomenon. The author is an expert at discerning between mental illness and spiritual attack. (And I think they both can be happening at the same time, too, in complex ways.) The author considers the mysteries of the universe, and he maintains the motive of wanting to help alleviate suffering and torment, and assist in spiritual healing and maturation.
I learned a lot from this book, about my own direct experiences. I understood with more clarity behaviors, motives, and machinations of the demonic world.
I feel a kinship with the author of this book, that our spiritual work intersects, in a world (at least my own personal world) where relatively few have heard of or experienced such things. I appreciate his careful and thoughtful project, to bring his large amount of experience together in one book, to advance the field, so that those who are attacked can be better helped.
I am not a Christian fundamentalist, which I suspect this author may be. Reading this book was like the author reaching across the aisle to me -- someone of different spiritual experience and understanding -- to help clarify and expand my own thinking. I, in kind, with this review, am reaching back across the aisle, to the author, to add my own direct experience and understanding, and hopefully broaden his perspective, too.
The 2 main things that I have to add, to the material in this book are:
1) Psychic senses are neutral – they can sense both Dark and Light – they are not demonic (as the book maintains).
2) If you can psychically experience demons, you can psychically experience angels and beings of Light, too (the book only mentions the demonic, not the angelic).
To expand on that: Unlike many presented in the book, I myself was never drawn to, nor did I participate in, "the occult," in any way. I also do not identify with the term "New Age." 13 years ago, I had a kundalini awakening and became psychic. My kundalini awakening was instigated in a secular meditation class. I had no intention of having a kundalini awakening, and the teacher had no intention for anyone he taught to have a kundalini awakening -- he knew nothing about that. Over time, the kundalini awakening opened my psychic senses (clairaudience -- psychic hearing, clairsentience -- psychic feeling and psychic energies, and a tiny bit of clairvoyance -- psychic seeing). What that means, is that I am able to sense things beyond the visible world (the "3rd dimension"). There are several different things that I have sensed, but for the purposes of responding to this particular book, the main things I have sensed are demons and angels, and the main energies I have sensed are energies of Darkness and energies of Light. People who "sense" "God" in their prayer life and meditation -- that is a psychic sense, too -- intuition. Some people have more developed psychic senses, some less. I know people who have much greater psychic senses than me.
There is a body of research about "kundalini awakening" -- see Lee Sannella, M.D. – that says that the purpose and result of kundalini awakening is to restructure and mature the nervous and energy systems of the human body so that it can better commune with the Divine.
The 5 people I know personally, who are psychic but much moreso than me, they each draw a clear distinction between Light and Dark. Four of them are professional psychic healers. They taught me to not interact with demons at all. They are not fortune-tellers, and they are not trying to make money by telling you hidden knowledge. They are healers, trying to assist people to heal, spiritually. Including people like me, who are tormented and seeking relief. That is the only kind of psychic I have ever encountered, in my own search. They were each of great integrity and morality, and they each eschewed Darkness in any and all forms. (There are a lot of psychics out there, and being psychic is neutral, so I am sure that not all psychics are of such utmost integrity.)
I am not a professional psychic. I am just a person with a personal relationship with the "God" of my experience.
It is true, in my experience, like the book says, that demons, as one of their ploys of seduction, provide "the power of hidden knowledge." They know other people's private business, and they lack boundaries and can make that business known to you, to seduce and manipulate you. My own personal psychic senses do not go into other people's private business. Demons are exponentially more intelligent, psychic, and powerful than humans, in my experience and understanding, and their behavior lacks boundaries, morality, and integrity. I have no interest in their hidden knowledge or anything that comes from the Dark.
In the book, it is shown that the power of God is necessary, to heal possession and oppression. But the book tells of the behaviors of the Dark in detail, but does not include corresponding information about the Light. In my psychic experience, and as the book shows, demons can be belligerent, loud, cruel, interested in causing terror and despair, interested in power and control. In contrast, I have psychically experienced beings of Light as gentle, kind, nurturing, concerned, patient, and loving -- a love more pure and beautiful than anything I have experienced, beyond my understanding and comprehension. They protect, encourage, empower, guide, heal. They are unintrusive (you must invite their presence), infrequent in their guidance (no micro-management, unlike demons), and soft, like a whisper. They always honor free will. Light beings are not included in this book. Perhaps because the Dark aggressively seizes center stage, and makes itself known to “science”, but the Light lovingly watches from backstage, and intercedes without being scientifically observable. The Dark obstructs Love, the Light is Love. To be able to love like the Light is the highest aspiration.
One last piece that is not included in the scope of this book: An experienced, knowledgeable psychic told me that demons should not be punished, and that they are redeemable, but that is beyond human ability, that is between them and God.
The battle between Goodness and Evil in the universe is beyond my intelligence and comprehension. I tried to stick to my direct experience here. There are others who comprehend a lot more -- I wish these various fields could intermingle their experience and knowledge. I will make one stab in the dark, which may be entirely untrue -- since demons try to obstruct God (Love), maybe they have something to do with the Christian fundamentalist belief that psychics are demonic, which would deny Christian fundamentalists an important source of information about God/Light.
James
J Matthews