One Jewish analysis of Channelling and Possession

Hi.

I cant recommend the rest of this website, I never read another page of it, but I find this most mystical Jewish interpretation of channelling and possession interesting ; 'Dybbuk' or 'Sod ha'ibbur'.

To me what is interesting is the similarity of the root of the Jewish word, meaning ; "cleaving" or "clinging", to the word "Yoga".

Is the Yoga that the BKs teach not a cleaving or clinging too?

http://www.ghostvillage.com/legends

Dybbuk - Spiritual Possession and Jewish Folklore

By Jeff Belanger

A human being that is possessed by a spirit or some otherworldly creature is a phenomenon found in a myriad of cultures and religions. Jewish folklore calls the spirit that causes this rare but remarkable occurrence a "dybbuk."

A dybbuk (pronounced "dih-buk") is the term for a wandering soul that attaches itself to a living person and controls that person's behavior to accomplish a task. The word "dybbuk" is the Hebrew word for "cleaving" or "clinging," and surprisingly, having a dybbuk is not always a bad thing for the human host. However, sometimes having a dybbuk is a very bad thing.

So how does a dybbuk take hold of a person? Winkler said, "The dybbuk is drawn to someone who is in the state where their soul and their body are not fully connected with each other because of severe melancholy, psychosis, stuff like that -- where you're not integrated. It seeks a particular person who in their current lifetime is going through what the possessing spirit went through, and so the possessing spirit is drawn to compatibility -- to someone who is struggling with the same thing it did.

Let's say in my heart I have a desire to rob all convenience stores, but I don't follow through because I don't have the guts. The spirit of someone who has actually done it will be drawn to my desire to do it and will possess me because we're compatible." ... In some cases, a person may exhibit signs of dybbuk but the problem is purely psychological.

There is also a positive aspect to a dybbuk. Sometimes a spirit will come to a person in a time of need to help. Winkler said, "The second kind of possession is called 'sod ha'ibbur,' which is Hebrew for 'mystery impregnation.' This kind of possession is a good possession -- it's a spirit guide. The spirit of someone who has struggled and overcome what you have struggled with and cannot overcome will be lent to you from the spirit world to possess you, encourage you, and help you overcome what you have not been able to overcome and what it has been able to in its lifetime. Then when it's done and you've managed to achieve what you need to achieve in your life, it leaves you.

Sometimes people reach high pinnacles of achievement and they fall into deep depression, and that's explained as the loss of that spirit. So there's a sense of loss, and it's misinterpreted as depression. If the person realizes that, they can be thankful that they had a spirit guide to help them, and they need to continue to lift up their own spirit."

Most belief systems have some notion of a spirit guide or guardian angel, and they also recognize a malevolent spiritual force that can influence us. The Jewish concept of dybbuk recognizes that our physical world and the spiritual world can intertwine for both positive and negative reasons. If those intersecting reasons are negative, Judaism has a healing process to mend the collision so both the possessor and the possessed can move on.

Also ; http://wsupress.wayne.edu