One opinion: exorcism
You have maybe watched that movie The Rite, with Anthony Hopkins. To be honest, no matter what Rotten Tomatoes say, it was a good movie, with good thrills and acting although being based on a semi-made-up story of a born again Catholic. But the topic of exorcism is stated very seriously in it, and it inspired me to have some thoughts. Do demons really exist, and how do we explain them? First of all, Christian dogma says we cannot explain them, just believe in it. I cannot deny the existence of something which we people call “evil”, but I see it as not having any form – it is a driving force of the universe that opposes the creative force which believers call “God”. Evil is the force, the energy which creates chaos, lives in chaos and is more like the dark side in Star Wars. It takes many shapes during history, and in middle ages, in an enchanted world as Max Webber would have said, it took the shape of demons and devils, and later on, with the arrival of Freud and psychotherapy it got name “neurosis”. Freudian neurosis is primarily of sexual nature, but later on, Jung said it to have something with collective unconscious. Now, I think that we should not ignore the advances in science of psychology, although it might not have all the clues, so I’ll stick with Jung on this.
The collective unconscious has a great memory pool, all the experiences from humanity’s past are there. And so are demons. During middle ages, we saw demons as real and our collective unconscious somehow memorized that. That’s why modern methods of psychotherapy cannot exorcise demons, they are so archaic constructs of the mind that only psalms originating in middle ages can do something about it. “Demon” does not recognize Freud, because Freud’ method is way ahead on timeline, instead it recognizes chants on Latin because at some point in human history they were treated that way, or “exorcised”. I am not saying that there is nothing about demons, I just say that they might not be “real” as we perceive reality now, they are not real creatures as they were in medieval times, they are just one version of evil force that is faceless and shapeless and that had a great role in our history. But so did the good side of the force.
The Rite also made me think that a person who has a clear mind, who is at peace with himself is resistant to demons effects on him, but there are just a few people in the world who possess that peace of mind, so nobody is really resistant to “demons”. But, it takes a great psychological damage to get really “possessed” by one – that is also seen in the movie when Anthony Hopkins lets Baal in after depression because of so many deaths of his patients. One way to fight evil is to achieve peace of mind and the other is with faith. Which one do you choose, depends on the level of your implanted fear, education and readiness to know the truth no matter what the consequences are.
