Bulgarian monk rekindles occult debate

SOFIA (Reuters Life!) – A Bulgarian monk is reopening an age-old debate in the Balkan country between Orthodox authorities and psychics.

In a new book, Monk Visarion denounced internationally respected healer Vanga and spiritual leader Petar Danov and attributed Bulgarians' interest in fortune-tellers and mysticism to decades of atheist communist rule.

Although the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has never explicitly condemned Vanga and Danov, the announcement on its official website says the monk will present his book in two lectures on the "pseudo-icons Vanga and Danov."

Visarion, who serves in a monastery in the all-male Orthodox monastic community of the Mount Athos peninsula in Greece, told the local 24 Chasa daily the book -- "Petar Danov and Vanga - prophets and precursors of the antichrist" -- aims to show the difference between occultism and authentic Christianity.

I think that religions need to differentiate between psychic experiences themselves and *philosophies* of psychic experience. They need to also guard against the assumption of evil, just because they don’t have a doctrine for it.

For example, a legitimate psychic experience might be that a woman might suddenly be concerned for her mother’s welfare, out of the blue, so calls her on the phone. Her mother is fine, but halfway through their chat her mother experiences chest pains and has to call 911 because she is having a heart attack.

Nothing truly offensive about that, unless you assume that any such experience is inherently evil, even if not apparently so.

However, if the daughter is suddenly concerned for her mother’s welfare, *and* attributes it to an ancient Egyptian cat god, there is a reasonable complaint that could be made by a religion that her interpretation is heretical to their beliefs.

There is a common, but ill studied phenomena where the wiring of the brain is crossed, so that sensations detected by one sense are interpreted by another sense. It is called “synesthesia”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

There are 60 known kinds of synesthesia, probably more, and they give those people who have them different perspectives on reality in some way.

For example, some people “see” music as color. Importantly, this might even make them more capable than ordinary people, with their perceptions. While an ordinary orchestral conductor is hard pressed to hear where an error is taking place in a single instrument in a symphony, a synesthete who sees music as color can “see” the “wrong” color of an out of tune instrument, much more easily.

The reason for this is that our hearing is roughly logarithmic, but our color perception is acute, with some people able to distinguish almost one million different colors.

So, the bottom line for religion is that it should accept psychic abilities at face value, unless it is being faked for criminal fraud, unless whoever is claiming it also claims unique religious insights. That is the line psychics should not cross.

Your post is very interesting.

“Religion ... should accept psychic abilities at face value.”

I think in their own way they do.

The problem lies in from WHERE the “input” for the ability or the occasional “coincidence” comes from.

There is the idea within Judeo-Christian tradition that it can be from God OR it can come from Satan. It seems in ways our science is unable to define, that a doorway is opened, that once YOU have opened it, you become vulnerable to forces we don’t understand.

This understanding does make it hard for the faithful to “accept at face value” without a context for WHERE it came from.

That’s a problem, however, because such things are not dichotomies, not either/or situations.

For example, epileptic seizures, while they can be a curse, are not especially regarded anymore as a demonic curse. The same with pernicious anemia (inability to absorb vitamin B12). It used to be that such people were widely seen as demon possessed, frothing lunatics in strait jackets, restrained to their beds. But with just a single injection of B12, you could see as the vitamin passed through their body, their muscles relax, and within a minute what had been a raving beast was turned into a calm and sane human.

Likewise, artists of all varieties have long been seen as having dealings with demonic forces, but only because nobody saw the 12 hours a day of practice for decades, that say, a maestro violinist had to do to get and keep his mastery.

And such assumptions are deceptive as well. That selfsame violinist might be a righteous man or a corrupt sinner, for his morality is not part and parcel with his talent.

So this is the approach religious people should take to such phenomena. Observe, but do not judge too quickly. Just because you do not understand something neither makes it evil or good, just unknown to you. Give it time, and you will be better equipped to make your judgment.

Well, your examples aren’t either/or, they show the struggle of man to help their fellow man as the science of the day was inadequate. And artists still are not that understood by those who aren’t creative. That will be with us for the ages. There are many things we still do not know, and it seems endemic to being human to judge others who do not fit. That, too, will remain until Jesus returns.

“That’s a problem, however, because such things are not dichotomies, not either/or situations.”

Your examples do fit this thesis, but as it applies to spiritual matters, it does not.

Daniel had dreams that were and remain prophetic. But King Saul contacted a “witch” who did raise the prophet Samuel, which is forbidden. What King Saul did cost him his life, yet Daniel found honor for obeying God.

Spiritually, these dichotomies will exist forever. Sometimes there will be a lack of information. That is regrettable. I don’t think it pleases God. But we do see in a mirror darkly, and that is all that this world is able to grasp.

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