The Psychoanalysis of Spirit Guides

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The Psychoanalysis of Spirit Guides

Some thirty years after the Cayce-Garrett readings, Eileen Garret asked Ira Progoff, and expert in Jung’s psychoanalysis, to interview her spirit guides. She wanted to learn more about their true nature. Were they actually, as they claimed, people who had lived before; or were they, as many psychologists believed, a part of her own personality? She had serious doubts about either of these standard interpretations and wanted a deeper understanding of the meaning of her mediumship.

Progoff presents his interview with Mrs. Garrett’s spirit guides in his unusual book Image of an Oracle. He asked them probing questions about the nature of their being, stimulating them to clarify their own self-concepts. In return, they probed Progoff’s own understanding and evoked developments in his self-awareness. He was deeply touched by this work.

He interviewed four different entities. The first, Ouvani, identified himself as a young Arab soldier in the 1200’s who had died in battle. Ouvani was the entity who interacted with Cayce during the Cayce-Garrett readings. The second, Abduhl Latif, said he was a Persian physician who lived in the 1600’s. The third, Tahoteh, named ‘The Giver of the Word’, described himself as a god who was with Moses when he received the Law. The fourth, Ramah, also a god, referred to himself as ‘The Giver of Life’.

Progoff learns that questioning them about their identity is inappropriate. They cannot give a meaningful answer to an inappropriate question without falsifying the whole topic. Asked if he had lived before, for example, Abduhl Latif answers yes, but tties to get Progoff to understand that he is talking more about the continuity of human experience rather than the continuity of individual human beings. Furthermore, he learns that these spirits are intimately connected to Mrs Garrett herself, and to get rid of them would be to get rid of her, and vice versa. He learns that rather than asking who is speaking, Ourvani or Mrs. Garrett, it would be better to ask what quality of consciousness or level of reality is being expressed at that moment. This conception is similar to that suggested by the source of Cayce’s readings, describing it as accessing a particular state of consciousness.

On the other hand, Cayce himself, when describing what it was like to enter that state of consciousness, said he often experienced receiving his information from a person, an old man figure. Progoff concludes, however, that it’s not correct to interpret such figures as s sub-personalities of the channel. We’re contacting a level of the mind that is transpersonal, that is impersonal, that goes far beyond the channel’s own personality.

Edinger, another Jungian psychiatrist, once commented that our desire to expand our consciousness comes from ‘the innate urge of life to realize itself consciously. The transpersonal life energy, in the process of self-unfolding, uses human consciousness, a product of itself, as an instrument for its own self-realization’.

Rather than thinking of these spirits as persons, or sub-personalities, therefore, Progoff concludes that it’s more accurate to think of them as personifications. We may refer to Mother , for example, as the personification of love and charity, or Rambo as wild courage personified. Progoff reminds us of Jung’s observations on the universal symbol of the Old Wise Man. This higher self symbol personifies the mind’s capacity to bring knowledge and insight from its depths. The Old Wise Man is a role the mind plays when it creates pearls of wisdom and brings them to the surface.

Ouvani, for example, is the doorkeeper, a role that served to protect the open channel from the very many voices that would come through. As Ouvani points out, anyone â€" enthusiasts, foolish ones, anguished ones â€" can come through when the channel is open so that he needs to guard that opening for the protection of the instrument. Ouvani is therefore a personification of the protective function of the mind.

This approach to understanding of Ouvani’s nature is reminiscent of Cayce’s remark about Garret’s sprit guides: ‘Their names are rather in her experience, in her seeking’. Progoff notes that we all know much more than we’re able to put into words. Mrs. Garrett is particularly intuitive and senses a large body of information or knowledge or wisdom coming from within her. But it’s so much that it disturbs and confuses her. It’s larger than she can express. Ouvani is a personification of that level of consciousness within her that focuses the connection with the deeper level of the psyche to allow the transmission of information to flow through the channel’s verbal abilities.

While in trance, for example, Cayce described his gift as the ability of his subconscious mind to interpret the impressions coming from the super conscious mind so that the objective mind could express it in words. The subconscious mind of Mrs. Garrett experiences or translates this self regulatory aspect of the mind as the personification of a role, in the form of an Ouvani.

Progoff discovers that while Ouvani and Abduhl can answer questions about Progoff’s private life, and can comment on his patients, Tahoteh and Ramah weren’t able to exhibit such psychic talents. Progoff concludes psychic function (accessing information), and the function of being an oracle (delivering wisdom), exist at different levels of consciousness. Operating as psychics, Ouvani and Abduhl answer questions of a personal concern to those who are asking. Functioning as oracles, Tahoteh and Ramah, however, answer questions of universal concern. Cayce would refer to the difference between the subconscious and the superconscious levels of the mind to explain this distinction.

In order for the oracle level of the mind to function, the channel, and those seeking, has to be concerned for more than their own needs. Progoff learns that when human beings struggle and wrestle with the ultimate questions about nature, about life, the principle of The Word, or what he calls the inner principle of meaning, will be present there in the struggle. If the human being can persevere in this struggle, the principle of The Word will bring inspirations or insights to that person. Tahoteh is Mrs. Garret’s personification of that aspect of humanity’s mind that functions to bring new meaning.

Echoing Cayce’s interpretation of the Word, Progoff learns from Tahoteh that it’s a creative principle. Yet it can both build and destroy simultaneously. It comes at any point in a person’s own life during a time of crisis. Echoing Cayce’s Law, ‘in the application comes the awareness’, the wisdom Tahoteh brings comes through the person’s living through the crisis. Tahoteh, or the level of the human psyche that he personifies, isn’t a shortcut through problems. It’s not an instantaneous insight. Instead, it’s something that evolves as we struggle at the conscious level to grapple with the issues and try to understand them.

When Progoff asks ‘Why have you come, is there a purpose in yoru coming and speaking through Eileen?’ Progoff learns about changes on earth and the role of prophecy throughout history in helping us deal with such changes. Some twenty years later, on the Merv show, Lazaris explained that the purpose of is coming was to instruct us of the true nature of our reality and to remind us of our talents, so that we might take a more constructive role in shaping the future of the planet. Cayce expressed similar themes in his readings. The oracular level of the mind speaksan unchanging message.