Monday, January 6, 2014

Psychic Attacks and the Issue of Rapport – Part II

by Anthony Forwood


After having written the first part of this article, I decided that I wasn’t satisfied with the very general way I described rapport, since I don’t feel that it captured the full essence of what rapport is and how it relates to psychic influencing. So, allow me to attempt to provide a more thorough description, and enlarge on this subject a little further in the process.

Rapport is a kind of connection people share between themselves that goes much deeper than just knowing and understanding each other’s thoughts and feelings, which is how I generally described it in the first part of this article. It involves a deep emotional connection between the parties involved that reaches beneath the conscious level of awareness and operates at the more fundamental levels of subconscious action and response.

It’s been recognized for a long time that there are various levels of telepathic communication between people, one extreme being at the level of conscious thought transference, while the other extreme is at a subconscious level that we don’t usually recognize but is actually the most commonly experienced and which we call intuition or instinct. At these lower extremes the psychic signals are instinctive and usually relate to survival and procreation, but at higher levels they can relate to social and even environmental harmony, where there’s a wider connectivity and interaction with the outside world that relate to our higher emotions.

We can see rapport arise in almost any situation where two or more minds are cooperating and fall into step, most commonly in close relationships, but we also see it within large crowds, where it’s more commonly described as herd mentality. In these latter situations, we can see that the higher intellect is overwhelmed by baser emotional response mechanisms, guided by a group mindset that each participant is acting through, almost hypnotically. Whether it’s a rioting mob or birds flying in a uniform flock, there is a greater force at work than just the separate minds of individual participants making isolated decisions.

By its very nature, rapport is related to the sympathetic nervous system – to physical sensations, particularly that of pain, which is probably the most fundamental physical sensation of them all, since it’s directly related to the health and survival of the body. How often has just a mother’s soothing words eased the pain of a child? This is such a real psychological effect that a dampening of the painful sensations can be felt, even by those not directly involved but just watching, who were also present and happened to cringe at the pain they witnessed the child receiving from a fall or blow. The pain was in some way transferred to all witnesses who were already sympathetic to the child, and this transference was direct and immediate enough to make them flinch, even if the pain they sensed was not nearly as intense or as physical as for the child. This transferred effect of the sense of pain is an effect of rapport, as is the soothing effect that the mother has on the child to lessen that pain.

These few examples provide evidence that rapport relates to a more primary connectivity between people and groups than higher-order communication and interaction do. They also reveal that by its nature, rapport serves a useful purpose by providing a rudimentary extension of our senses (and perhaps even our sense of self) that encompasses the underlying thoughts and feelings of those we are intimately connected with.

The power of rapport has been known about since very ancient times, and has always been in the repertoire of serious occultists. In other times, it has been variously referred to as ‘animal magnetism’, ‘mental induction’, ‘sympathetic vibrations’, etc. In Anton Mesmer’s time (late 1700s), it was a key component in his study of what later became known as hypnotism. Mesmer (re)discovered that when two or more people became involved in sympathetic states or rapport, they could exchange thoughts and emotions, and this allowed him to achieve the miraculous results of his many experiments.

Modern hypnotism developed out of Mesmer’s work, but Mesmer established the basic underlying principles at work in either case. Hypnotism is actually a mild form of psychic influence, so there is a direct parallel here to psychic phenomena.

The connection people establish with each other through rapport is accomplished at a deeper level of mind than that of conscious thought. It engages the parties at an emotional or even intuitive level, and so it becomes respectively harder to recognize and counter the influences of, since these levels relate to more fundamental aspects of our evolved physical embodiment that operate at a subconscious level, and we aren’t always conscious of their influence.

Before our ancestors developed the function of speech, we were undoubtedly more sensitive to rapport and its related modes of interaction, and both communication and survival forced us to be more reliant on it. Until we developed higher-order brain functions that included speech and language, we were far more sensitive to this deeper connectivity, which has since become drowned out by the ‘noise’ of these other mental functions. Although these deeper psychic signals are less consciously recognized now, they still have a direct subconscious influence on us, and we in turn have a subconscious impulse to respond to them, even when it goes against our higher intellect to do so. It’s only when we become aware of these deeper influences and learn to recognize them when they begin to influence us that we can override them with our higher intellect.

It should be pointed out here that there is a direct linear relationship between rapport, hypnosis, and psychic phenomena. Rapport is required between a hypnotist and his subject in order for hypnosis to be induced, and it has been shown in innumerable experiments that hypnosis enhances psychic ability, where there is a particularly strong psychic connection between the hypnotist and his subject, so that very often the subject can clearly sense not just the thoughts and feelings of the hypnotist, but also what he’s sensing through his five ordinary senses. Many other strange and interesting phenomena have also been discovered, and it’s only left to the suspended beliefs of the subject and the level of suggestibility that he has reached that that seems to determine what is possible.

According to Ingo Swann, who was directly involved in the experiments conducted by the US government into remote-viewing (in a civilian capacity – he didn’t have to sell his soul in the process), it was discovered that, apart from the psychic control that a hypnotist has over his subject to follow his commands or suggestions, the subject is also in telepathic rapport with the unexpressed or subconscious motives and agendas of the hypnotist. The subject will respond to the expectations and convictions of the hypnotist, whether they’re explicitly expressed or not. Most importantly, it was realized that telepathic exchanges of information can result in ways that not only include conscious but also subconscious content, both that of the subject and that of the hypnotist, one to the other. This means that there is more than just the consciously intended commands or suggestions being transmitted to the subject, and the hypnotist must essentially expose himself to his subject if he is to psychically influence him at all.

The realization that there is a two-way exchange at a subconscious level between the hypnotist and his subject, where the subject implicitly knows the thoughts and intentions of the hypnotist, is important to take into consideration in all situations where psychic influence is involved. It means that anyone who is under psychic influence will always be at least subconsciously aware of that influence and the underlying intentions, and so they only need to be aware of this fact and direct their subconscious to respond to these influences appropriately.

How might that be? The reader might be confused by that last part, so a brief explanation is in order. The mind has two basic parts, one dealing with conscious activity and the other with subconscious activity. The subconscious part is easily programmable, and it responds to every single conscious thought, intention, expectation, doubt, etc., that a person might have. Your conscious thoughts act as instructions to the subconscious, and they can often be at cross-purposes and confusing to it, leading to equally confusing subconscious programming. However, by understanding this and following a few simple rules, you can reprogram your subconscious to do just about anything you can imagine. The few simple rules are the same as those involved in forming a habit: 1) initial focused concentration on the task or instruction to be learned, and 2) repetition of the task or instruction to the point that it becomes automated. As a simple example, whenever you happen to tell yourself that you can or can’t do something, you reinforce this belief at a subconscious level, and effectively program yourself to succeed or fail. Any thought or impression you bring up in your conscious mind makes an impression on the subconscious mind, which retains it and incorporates it into the deeper processes that take place beneath your awareness. This is real power to those who understand the principles involved and how to take advantage of them.

Let’s consider this in respect to psychic attacks.

In reading some of the older literature on psychic influencing and the issue of rapport, I found the following excerpt from Clairvoyance and Occult Powers, by Swami Panchadasi, where he describes how long-distant rapport is created:


The person may be brought into presence and psychic contact, for all practical purposes, by using the visualizing powers for the purpose of bringing him into the en rapport condition. That is to say, by using the imagination to bring into the mind a strong clear picture of the other person, you may induce an en rapport condition in which he will be practically in the same psychic relation to you as if he were actually before you.

He’s explaining how the psychic attacker uses his conscious mind to impress his subconscious mind with the psychic essence of the target subject, in order to establish a psychic connection with him.

He goes on to explain about the target subject:


Of course, if he is sufficiently well informed regarding occult matters, he may shut you out by drawing a psychic circle around himself which you cannot penetrate, or by surrounding himself with psychic armor or atmosphere […] But as he will not likely know anything of this, the average person may be reached in the manner just mentioned. Here we see that the target subject has the equal ability to use his conscious mind to direct his subconscious mind to protect against unwanted outside influences, provided he understands the principles involved.

So there are certainly measures of protection, as there certainly would be if the psychic senses evolved as a natural extension of our innate human abilities. The above quote suggests that knowledge of this psychic ability and its workings will provide all that is needed to protect oneself from psychic attacks. This same claim is repeated again and again in all of the literature on this subject and not a word to the contrary, so there is likely to be a great deal of truth to it. In fact, it’s only logical that a communication system such as this, which appears to work directly on the subjective mental plane rather than the coarser physical plane, can be so easily affected by subjective influences in this manner. So, while the belief and acceptance of psychic phenomena as a real possibility effectively allows it to occur in a person’s experiences, the added belief and acceptance that a person can block psychic influences that go against his own desires or intentions is just as easily accommodated by the principles involved.

What Ingo Swann had discovered should be taken into account here, since it reveals that there certainly is a means for protecting oneself early on, or at any time after a person becomes aware of possible psychic attack. It’s only the subject’s own sympathetic receptivity to the attacker’s suggestions or commands that can interfere with their own choices in whether to submit to the influences or not, and so it is only the suggestions or commands that the attacker may have already planted in the subject’s mind to pre-empt any attempts to overrule the subject’s own suggestions or commands that the subject must deal with in order to free themselves from unwanted influence. These planted suggestions or commands might be to feel indifference, self-doubt, fear, or whatever other belief or attitude might subvert the subject’s efforts to retain or regain full command of their own mind and defeat further influences.

Panchadasi goes on to explain:


[B]y denying the power of any person over you, you practically neutralize his psychic power—the stronger and more positive your belief in your immunity, and your denial of his power over you, the more do you rob him of any such power. The average person, not knowing this, is more or less passive to psychic influences of other persons, and may be affected by them to a greater or less extent, depending upon the psychic development of the person seeking to influence him. At the extreme of the sensitive pole of psychic influence, we find those persons who believe firmly that the other person has power over them, and who are more or less afraid of him. This belief and fear acts to make them particularly sensitive and impressionable, and easily affected by his psychic induction.

Does this sound familiar to any of my readers who feel they might be under psychic attack? Fear is a very powerful motivator, and the only thing that conquers it is its polar opposite – courage. But courage often requires levels of risk that someone in an already weakened state finds almost impossible to bring within their grasp in order to help themselves. But this doesn’t need to be the case. Small actions can add up to large outcomes, and this is no different a case as any other.

Panchadasi continues:


The secret is that the victims believed in the power of the other person, and feared their power. The greater the belief in, and fear of, the power of the person, the greater the susceptibility to his influence; the greater the sense of power of neutralizing the power, and the disbelief in his power to affect them, the greater the degree of immunity: this is the rule!

So here is the seed of a solution, and one that can be worked on and developed once the victimized subject recognizes the fact that they can neutralize any psychic influences playing against them (whether known about or not), and that it only requires certain mental input that needs to be practiced and made familiar so that it becomes an automated subconscious response. The more this is done, the stronger and more automatic the counter-effect becomes.

As I stated in the first part of this article – and I can’t stress this enough – belief is a key element for successful of psychic influence, and this applies as much in the case of the attacker as in the subject being attacked. Much of the strength of religious (or even scientific) beliefs lies in the fact that so many minds have provided the energetic impetus for marvels of a spiritual (or scientific) nature to occur. The same can be said for the belief in and resulting effects of sorcery, demons, or any other sort of phenomena. The cumulative beliefs of many minds does indeed provide a greater sense of reality to whichever belief system a person adheres to, and it is only the level of acceptance of a belief that determines what effect it can have on the believer and to what degree. A total lack of understanding doesn’t negate the power of a belief, since belief doesn’t require full understanding but only faith, however, a greater understanding will reveal both the power and the limitations of that belief, so it’s always better to learn about and understand something you choose to believe in and incorporate that knowledge into your larger belief system in order to have a better foundation from which to deal with your experiences. By understanding your beliefs and consciously operating through them, you become very grounded and more in rapport with your higher self, which you will find to be incredibly rewarding and empowering.

Panchadasi explains that the belief and confidence of the attacker in his own abilities is just as important as the subject’s belief and confidence in them, and this will play a large part in establishing the sort of rapport that will allow the attacker to dominate his subject so severely. If you cultivate the proper self-image, beliefs, and attitudes, and apply them using the processes that I have described within this article, you will become impervious to psychic attacks while at the same time beginning to develop a healthy connection to your higher self, and therefore your higher power.

Very often, people believe in things that they don’t fully understand, and this applies as much to the workings of a car engine or computer as much as it does psychic phenomena, so this isn’t something relegated only to people who are superstitious. Of course, in the case of car engines and computers, these will still operate whether or not we might believe they will, but this is certainly not the case in regards to psychic phenomena, which, as I’ve said, appear to be determinant on whether those people involved are sympathetic to the idea of its occurrence.

What is it that sets these different types of belief apart? How can a car engine or a computer work in spite of whether we know and believe they will, while psychic phenomena won’t? To understand this you have to realize that car engines and computers and all other things that operate so predictably in the material world that we’re familiar with are deeply entwined in physical processes, while psychic phenomena, by their very nature, are derived from mental processes, or at least processes related to consciousness rather than matter. That they can affect material substance and how they might do so is another matter, but it is obvious that all forms of psychic phenomena (and particularly the more common forms, such as telepathy) originate from the minds of those involved in a mutual understanding of sorts, and there are certain attributes that define the underlying conditions required for these phenomena to arise, some of which I’ve already discussed. All of these conditions are essentially subjective in nature, meaning that they reflect the mental states of those parties involved.

The primary motive of any attacker is to dominate the will of his adversary. Therefore, retaining (or regaining) one’s sense of individual free will should be the primary defensive attitude towards a psychic attack. Attitude is a mental state, and as such it has a psychological effect that operates at a subconscious level to automatically filter out anything coming in from the senses (including more than just the five recognized ones) that doesn’t fit the associated beliefs and expectations related to that attitude. Attitude is built on a certain subset of beliefs and expectations and it reflects your experiences through them, so learning and understanding how psychic phenomena have their effect will certainly help in developing an attitude that will serve to protect you and aid you in developing your own natural psychic strength. At the same time, by examining your current attitude towards psychic phenomena – particularly if you suspect you’re under psychic attack – you’ll soon begin to recognize those beliefs and expectations that support the possibility of psychic interference occurring. You’ll also recognize those uncertainties you have that might only require further knowledge to better understand what’s going on and how to deal with it.

When you’re conscious of any negative attitude you might have towards something, whether it’s fear, discouragement, uncertainty, self-doubt, indifference, or whatever else, you’re always in a position to change that attitude to something more positive by reprogramming yourself with a new one that better suits your interests. Fear can be turned into courage, discouragement into empowerment, uncertainty into knowledge, self-doubt into determination, indifference into motivation. (Having a large vocabulary of words that describe the many subjective states we might hold in our minds at any given time can only help to increase a person’s recognition and understanding of the subtler aspects of their own attitudes, and will provide a virtual treasure of possibilities in how to better approach a given situation or problem. I suggest to readers who are interested to explore this with the aid of a thesaurus and dictionary, and create a list of each of your mental strengths and mental weaknesses, dispositions towards different things, etc., in order to become more aware of all of the subtler aspects of your conscious thought processes and how they come into play in any given situation, for better or worse.)

The most important thing for a targeted individual is to retain or regain your ability to exercise your free will, and this begins with the recognition of those subjective traits you possess that interfere with that free will, and to identify whether they’re due to your current beliefs or your current uncertainties. Once these are identified, you can begin to correct what needs to be corrected in your mental makeup in order to prevent against psychic attacks, since these will be the aspects that an attacker will take advantage of.

I will quote Panchadasi one more time:


In the first place, you must, of course, refuse to admit to your mind any feeling of fear regarding the influence of other persons—for that is the open door to their influence, as I have pointed out to you. If you have been, or are fearful of any person’s psychic influence, you must get to work and drive out that feeling by positive and vigorous denials. The denial, you remember, is the positive neutralizer of the psychic influence of another person, providing you make it in full belief of its truth. You must take the position (which is a true one) that you are immune to the psychic attack or influence. You should say, mentally, "I deny to any person the power to influence me psychically without my consent; I am positive to all such influences, and they are negative to me; I neutralize them by this denial!" If you feel sudden impulses to act in some way which you have not thought of doing, or toward which you have had an aversion, pause a moment and say, mentally, "If this is an outside influence, I deny its power over me; I deny it, and send it back to its sender, to his defeat and confusion." You will then experience a feeling of relief and freedom.

You will see within this last quote that the matter of psychic influence is rooted entirely within the mental realm, and relies on your own beliefs and attitudes, which essentially determine whether or not you’re susceptible to psychic attacks. It matters not whether you fully understand the mechanisms that allow such phenomena to occur – trust in your own higher power as a spiritual being, and know that deeper subconscious forces within your full makeup can and will protect you at that level as long as you deny them the ability.

* * *

References:

Swami Panchadasi: Clairvoyance and Occult Powers

Bhakta Vishita: Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers

Ingo Swann: Telepathic Overlay



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