In every major world religion they have a schema for a troublesome spirit that

deceives people and when it gets in somebody's life destroys their life the
christians will call them demons the muslims will call them jhin or chaitan the
jews will call them dibik the buddhists will call them animal spirits

The native americans it depends on the tribe but often they'll be seen as some type
of animal spirit also here we go welcome to a special edition of the focusing way
podcast i'm your host david batistella we call these special editions the way is
love find the focusing way on apple podcasts spotify and our website
thefocusingway.com [Music] today on the way is love we welcome back

Adam bly with his new book the exorcism files in this new volume adam draws from
his extensive experience as a layperson assisting with exorcisms around the world
the book is a collection of his experiences presented as short stories which
highlights the seemingly innocent pitfalls and practices which allow a person to
become demonically oppressed or even possessed adam bly presents

Readers with enlightening true stories and traces their causation whether people
provided a gateway through ouija boards tarot cards reiki yoga or martial arts bly
reports from first-hand observation how they were lured into the occult perhaps
author mike aquina says it best i don't envy adam bly's knowledge of the world of
demons his knowledge is hard won but i am grateful to him for telling us what we
need to know for the

Spiritual combat we call the christian life casting out demons goes back to christ
and he gave this power to the apostles on the day of pentecost exorcisms are done
by trained catholic priests and adam has assisted and witnessed many exorcisms and
joining me now on the way is love to share with us is adam bly adam thank you
welcome and thank you for

Being here hi david thank you for having me um i just wanted to begin and i wanted
to give you the opportunity first to invite people who are going to be listening to
our conversation uh to consider how discussions like the one we're about to have
should be approached well i think the purpose of um sharing

Some of what we learned from this kind of intense world of spiritual warfare with
the public is to number one give them some catechesis and correct what society
often teaches them which is which is usually hollywood basically and hollywood has
no interest in in proper teaching they're just trying to sell advertising so number
one the purpose is to provide some catechesis about things that

Many people don't talk about or preach about these days i would say number two is
to take away fear and empower people because with the proper understanding of this
it ceases to be the scary monster that's going to randomly destroy you and become
something that's understood in its proper context that these are creatures of god
that are under god's control not that he wills evil but through his permissive will
he allows them to

Operate ultimately for our good because it's by revealing some of these spiritual
realities that people are inspired to seek out god and then finally it's to give
enough information to people about some of the specific practices in the world that
are potentially dangerous so that they're armed and they can perhaps avoid

Some of the pitfalls that we see through direct experience over many years can lead
to these extraordinary demonic problems can you just talk a little bit how you were
drawn into this work yeah this is um i think it's a common and valid question i'm a
layperson and it's very unusual equally to myself that a lay person is so involved
in the world of exorcism i was drawn into this
By god i have to say that not in any there's nothing special about me or nothing
holy about me but kind of like in the bible god chooses who he chooses and it's not
based on merit or anything special in fact he uses broken instruments so that his
glory is all the more apparent but um i was involved in research and brainwave
advanced signal processing of brainwaves and looking at

Consciousness as part of graduate research in a phd program an adult clinical psych

i have a masters in that discipline and i'm all about dissertation for the
doctorate and i had done my master's on hypnosis and specifically on changes in
brain kind of the way the brain moves information around with shifts in
consciousness

And as a side effect of that i had seen in the lab repeatedly that with hypnosis
and by the way catholics were not supposed to use hypnosis this was before i knew
any of this i had seen that even in a healthy brain no brain disease no lesions no
mental illness you can induce hallucinations through hypnosis if you're
hypnotizable and that was really interesting to see you know that in a perfectly
normal above average intelligence college

Student uh with no history of mental illness or any problems at all um if they were
hypnotizable you could make them start hearing voices you could put a bottle of
water on the table and tell them there's three and they would see three and they'd
swear up and down that there's three bottles of water you could turn off their
sense of smell so that you could put ammonia under

Their nose and they could deeply inhale with no physiological reaction to the
smelling salts at all really striking things that the brain can do in the nervous
system and so since i knew this more from a kind of biology and psychophysiology
standpoint was all very possible um when the paranormal craze was starting when the
paranormal tv shows were just

Beginning they weren't popular yet it wasn't normalized it wasn't uh an acceptable

thing you know for people to go and do as a hobby because i knew all this i was
curious whether these people were perhaps just deluded or their brains were
producing these false experiences because the person either so much wanted that or
was seeking attention or was tricking

Themselves maybe they were sincere but these were just artifacts of the brain so i
wanted to go interview those people for myself i had some training in clinical work
i had you know been trained as a diagnostician in terms of mental illness i had
seen a number of cases so i figured i would go out and talk to these people for
myself and was able to do that

And along the way got called to this diocese where i now work many years later to
kind of look more psychologically at a family that had a long-standing problem in
their house that the church had been working on for for a number of years at that
point and so i was there more to look at them psychologically uh but through that i

Met specialist clergy um providentially met other specialists clergy meaning

exorcists and priests that were heavily involved in deliverance kind of in that
previous generation now um and uh met a very prominent psychiatrist who was
involved in the international association of exorcists over in rome and a priest
member of that association

There was no formal structure to this but he was basically the head exorcist of the
united states he was the guy that knew everybody um and you know was well
established intended to be called when there was really serious things going on so
anyway basically i've drawn into it in a time when there was relatively few
exorcists in this country i think over there in italy
Um my understanding is you know there's been consistently a healthy number of
exorcists particularly in rome but i think in italy in general and you know numbers
who knows around 300 or more in the country well here in the united states which is
a pretty big place as you know we maybe had 20 25 maybe 30 um 15 years ago when i
got involved in this and a number of them were very old

Isolated um they weren't allowed to really talk about what they were doing
sometimes even to their fellow priests it was kept secret and so it was it was a
rough situation where the few that were doing it were often kind of marginalized
alone it was kind of a sad solo enterprise that not solo in the bad sense they
weren't you know lone cowboys or anything like

That but there wasn't a lot of support and there wasn't a lot of community and so
over the last 15 years as i've been drawn into this i seem to have a knack for
teaching and i seem to have a knack for understanding what's going on in the
exorcisms to the point where you know now i i help train priests and um
individually they come here to sit in on sessions and coach them because that's

Really the only way to learn you can learn a little bit academically but honestly
until you're actually in the room you don't really get it and you don't really know
if you're if you want to be doing this until you're actually there and so um so
yeah 15 years later now i'm pretty heavily involved and the purpose of these books
like the one that you just read and i'm not saying this to bring it to

The book to try to sell books at all in the long run we're all going to be gone
shortly you know in the grand span of history um the purpose of these books is to
leave behind uh some of the experience that i've had in a very unusual life that
might benefit other people you know after i'm gone or people that i won't meet you
know while i'm here but that's kind of the purpose is to kind of share with the
community even though some of these

Ideas are going to be unpopular because the modern world celebrates some of them
you know it's not a bible thumping book of like don't do this because the bible
says so yes that's true there's reasons the bible says don't do certain things good
reasons um and i do believe in god and there's some things god just tells us not to
do but the main thrust of the book is experience so that's why instead of just
wagging my finger figuratively and

Saying don't do something i'm trying to say well let me tell you about a situation
where the person did that and a real case of you know what happened and i think we
learned better from those so that's a long-winded uh answer to your question yeah
you had some good advice early on for an access from an exorcist did you not
weren't you asked a series of very interesting questions oh yeah yeah um good
friend of mine um

The first time i was handed a cell phone that he was on i was driving in a car i
had never met him didn't know who he was didn't know his name um didn't even say
hello just said do you have a wife no do you have kids no do you have any pets no
well i guess you can come to the rectory sometime click

Wow so exorcist i can tell you now because i have so many friends that are
exorcists it tends to be a fairly cagey community very slow to trust um wary you
know of new people and um you know we look out for each other again i'm a lay
person i don't do exorcisms only priests can do that with permission of their
bishop but i'm in

The community um so we we definitely look out for each other we rely on each other
but we're also cagey with new people so you know that that rough introduction was
not that unusual i once heard an exorcist describe the holiness of the people
who've been oppressed or possessed and you know it's it maybe comes out of their
willingness to

Fight and it seems early on in the book you you are asking permission often from
the person you ask them if they want to be liberated they have the consciousness
that this is happening to them and they really don't have the tools to free
themselves um but have you had that experience with some of the people who you
describe in this book

The experience of what of of of seeing this experience for them or their holiness
um yes so often people that are that are in trouble with this i'd say it's you know
it's really hard to put these numbers on things but say very roughly about half of
them something was done to them and about half of them they did

Something to bring this on so you know things done to them would often be an early
life in childhood young adulthood or as an adult you know some type of curse or
black magic where the person had some authority over them so a person can't just
sit on the corner and curse you you know while you're sitting in your living room
and you're suddenly going to be demonically afflicted it doesn't work like that
because they don't have any

Authority over you but there's situations where people do give authority to others
um and they you know they they don't expect anything bad they're not looking for
trouble so about about half of them it just befalls them because they made a
mistake and opened the door and gave some authority to the wrong person sometimes
it was done to them when they were children

Which is very sad just like all childhood abuses and then some of them get into
trouble you know they choose to play with the darkness uh they exert their will
that way and i would say that a lot of the people that get into this kind of
trouble receive a lot of grace so it's not holiness in the kind of saccharine

Superficial idea of holiness of like here's this pious person and they say the
rosary every day and you know they're always polite and patient with other people
and isn't that nice because often people that are in a lot of trouble they may not
be able to pray at all you know they they go to pray and their mind goes blank or
where they just freeze up or their voice stops working whatever it might be

They may not be able to participate in the sacraments at all you know they have to
flee when the mass starts or flee the consecration at least you know they usually
can't go to confession if they do they just forget why they're there and wander off
or you know there's all kinds of impairments to the sacramental life so i don't
mean holiness in that typical sense but holiness in a sense of perseverance

A deep intuitive sense that god is there that they want to be free and they want to
be with god in this life i don't mean to pass on and go to heaven there's a
something that drives them that brings them to the church that spurs them to come
and sometimes they'll say you know i don't know why i came to this priest and and
it turns out that's like one of

The only exorcists or the only exorcist in the diocese something just told me i
needed to talk to this priest about this problem so sometimes i receive kind of a
direct grace that way um that's a little more clear but boy the um they really go
through it in terms of the fight of coming to these prayer sessions and the
retaliation that they often take for

Having come um each week you know the week is rough in between prayer sessions um
or the time you know if it's not a week if it's a day if it's hours it's rough and
so there's a perseverance through that struggle because because getting out of the
grip of these things when it's gotten to the point of full possession it is not
usually a simple and quick task it's it's really rough

And there's there's usually reasons that hell has really wanted to derail this
souls ministry this person is possessed and so they often will fight very hard and
deploy a lot of their resources to try to keep that person from living out their
vocation whatever that might be it's it's incredible and uh there was this whole
thing about permission where i found you you would ask the person do

You is it okay if i pray for you about this how important is that part of it where
you have to ask and they have to give permission yeah so of course we don't need
permission to pray for people but my my purpose in pointing that out is is that
when it comes to to this kind of intervention

Kind of where the person has come
you know step into this situation
thing and this problem help me to
about the exercise of the will so
say well i'm suffering make it
to the church and they've said intervene for me
for me and be that wedge between me and this
be disentangled from this a big part of that is
it's not enough at the very beginning to simply

Go away you know that that's the very superficial beginning thing and you know we
hear that and of course that's natural that's human you know i've got a headache i
take aspirin because i want it to go away you know that's the magic wand these the
aspirin and then the headache goes away so that's natural enough but what i've come
to understand over the years is that god is looking for

Conversion he's not just looking for oh this soul is suffering so i want them to be
to be free of this the purpose of the possession is a corrective experience so the
person realizes what's going on what they were playing with that led to this
problem or that the problem is there at all if they weren't aware of it fully so
that they can get fully out of that

Situation and that conversion is deeper than just take the problem away so i can
live the life god wanted me to live the conversion is about you know i don't just
want to be free but i want to be free because that's pleasing to me it's pleasing
to god it's going to allow me to do what god intended me to do which is wonderful
and we god and myself

Can share in the joy of living out what i was created to do um there's a deeper
mean kind of drive behind wanting to be free than just stop the suffering and so
that's part of it and the other part of it is when it comes to spiritual warfare
authority and permission is really important so if the person doesn't want to be
free and they don't want to be prayed for or exercised you can still pray for them
oh

God please help that person we can all do that and there's no danger in that for
anybody but we can't go in their home against their will and hold them down on the
floor and do an exorcism over them because their mom told us she doesn't like what
her son's getting into when he's an adult you know or or a spouse or something the
church you know god doesn't force himself on

Anybody and so it's a powerful thing for somebody to exert their free will and say
yes please pray for me yes i want to be free of this and and the third part is i
emphasize that so the person has a sense of agency and a sense of empowerment in
themselves that their will matters that they can assert themselves

Because they're often beat down and passive having kind of gotten to the point
where they're so worn down and given up on yelling and screaming and figuratively
kicking and punching that they kind of feel defeated and so i'm trying to reignite
that human spark of assertiveness of the will in the face of something that's
that's ego dystonic to use a psych term um you

Know something that that isn't good that's that's a spiritual evil and and isn't a
good experience but and we need to assert ourselves against that not just passively
say somebody else come and take this off me you mentioned just how uh people dabble
in things and they really don't have a clue of what they're involving themselves
with for example many people listening to this could think that yoga is a fairly
safe

Kind of activity but there are many entry points um can you just talk about some of
the uh occult practices where people would they're mainstream there's even catholic
parishes that have you know quote catholic yoga or something but could you just
talk about what the origins of those things are and how they do end up affecting
people or give those people gateways to

Allow for something like this to happen in their lives yeah so you know the whole
yoga thing you could easily spend an hour or two trying to unpack it all but the
core issues are number one um these are worship postures that have been
appropriated out of a wider spiritual

System designed to worship hindu gods it would so to take that simple piece of it
if you were to say like well you know for physical therapy for for the joints in
your hands we're going to we're going to use these prayer beads these rosary things
they call them we're going to push them with their thumbs and that's really good
for the ligaments in our thumbs it's good for our dexterity

But you know we don't really care what a rosary is about or what they pray with it
we just want to do the physical motion it would be kind of like that to us as
catholics it might be a little bit odd to see somebody doing that kind of
appropriation so at the very basic level you're taking a worship posture for a
pagan god and you're assuming that worship posture and you're appropriating out of
a wider hindu spiritual system that involves

Moral teachings behavioral practices various types of prayer just a whole bunch of
things that specifically control diet et cetera et cetera et cetera depending on
what of the thousand flavors of hinduism you're dealing with because there's so
many kind of manifestations of it you know in its original form you assume the
posture of the quote-unquote god that you're gonna

Worship and then you say that deity's name over and over in order to invite it to
interact with you so you're kind of calling for an interaction with that god
secondly when you look at um you know footage of different hindu basically masters
gurus priests when people are doing it in its original setting

Uh there is a spiritual initiation that comes with the laying on of hands a

touching usually of the forehead that goes along with being initiated into these
practices so you have to be initiated through a transfer of spirit you know of
course this this is a mirror of what we see with baptism what we see with
confirmation the touching of the forehead you know receive the holy spirit so you
know there's parallels to this in

Many different religions around the world but the yoga postures were part of a
system that you'd be initiated into by a spiritual master within the hindu religion
you'd receive that spirit and yoga would be part of your practice of interacting
with these pagan gods but also of um [Music]

Kind of activating and energizing the spirit that you've received at your
initiation and that part is what's um called kundalini yoga with a k yeah it's a
long word but it's pretty easy to figure out if you google it or youtube it and
that more explicitly shows the the more spiritual and esoteric goals of yoga and

You can you know do a search on kundalini dangers or things like that and see
documentaries on this but the idea is and this is what they say i'm not saying this
is true the idea is they believe that there's a spirit of a serpent that resides at
the base of the spine of every human being and this is a kundalini spirit and that

Through this initiation it can be woken up this touching usually um by by a hindu

priest or guru of some type and then it's through the breathing exercises in these
yoga postures that you then get the kundalini spirit to move up your spine slowly
over hours or days or weeks or months sometimes years people work at it until it
reaches your what they call a crown chakra on the top of your head and

The evidence that you've achieved this in their their eyes you know good spiritual
goal uh the evidence is kriyas which are involuntary body jerks and motions and
animal-like vocalizations you can't control um and then a kind of a whole host of
other psychological often problems that people talk about that last for for months
or years afterwards

Um you know senses of the body flushing with with heat or cold disorientation sleep
problems too much energy and can't sleep for days all kinds of all kinds of odd
things and so on on the more esoteric and spiritual side of it there's a very
specific goal of awakening an alien spirit in the sense of not normally part of
your human experience

Awakening that within your body and then having it manifest outside of your control
through your body right and so you know just if we step back try to step back from
the well it makes me feel good and i like the kind of eastern trappings of it that
makes it seem kind of mysterious and interesting to me um

And i you know i find it very relaxing if we just step back from all that and just
reasonably just look at that that whole picture it's probably not something you
would want to pursue but of course in the west they don't talk about the deeper
spiritual and esoteric sides of it at least in the beginning usually as you get
deeper into yoga over time you start get initiating initiated into chanting and
breath control

Meditation and other things like this and it will drift towards that more
explicitly spiritual practice you know sure you may never get to that point maybe
it's always just a physical thing that you do at the yoga center at the shopping
center and it never goes beyond that but i would caution that even even starting
the process

And only staying at the very base uh physical level is still i think still
potentially problematic because you may not have opened the door but you've
unlocked the door and the other thing and this is the same problem i think with
books like harry potter for children is that you're not necessarily going to have a
crushing problem if you if you read that book or do just physical yoga

Once or twice but what you've done is you've normalized the ideas that go along
with that so that as you move through life you're perhaps more likely to dabble
with them more deeply when they come up and so you do regular yoga for a long time
and then one time you're visiting your friends in california and their buddy is a
guru and he's doing this weird esoteric thing and uh with advanced yoga you know
with

This more spiritual and because you've already been doing the physical you think oh
well that's really fascinating and he seems nice and maybe i'll try that too you've
kind of normalized it yeah so there's a there's a lot of patience involved and it
seems like uh the these spears will uh they've just got a lot of patience that

They will wait for the right moment to enter and when they've got a grip on you
then you you have obviously seen people uh fully possessed or oppressed um but i
guess the other thing i'm wondering as you say that is do demons possess non-
catholics or can they be delivered or have you had to have they come yeah so yeah
yeah because i don't want it it's not just a catholic thing then

Maybe you could just talk about that experience sure um and yeah i you know i go to
exorcisms every week um we usually do three or four a week all year round every
year and sometimes more so yeah i i mean i've never sat down to calculate it but
somewhere around a thousand exorcisms i

Suppose given that it's been about 15 years and some of those years were really
intense and active sure but we need to i think it's important to understand that
that demons by any name are a universal human problem and what i mean by that is in
every major world religion they have a schema for a troublesome spirit that
deceives people and when it

Gets in somebody's life destroys their life the christians will call them demons
the muslims will call them jinn or chaitan the jews will call them dibik the
buddhists will call them animal spirits the native americans it depends on the
tribe but often they'll be seen as some type of animal spirit also the hindus it
depends on which version

Of hinduism you're talking about but they they clearly are very understanding of
this um and there is a version of exorcists in all those systems right so there's
uh catholic exorcists of course which are priests operating with the formal right
with permission from their bishop there are deliverance ministers and protestant
churches they can't use

By church law they can't use i mean they can pick the book up and read from it but
the demons not going to recognize their authority uh to do so and it's not going to
obey them but they use their own methods of deliverance prayer of whatever type and
we can get into what's difference between deliverance and exorcism if you want yeah
yeah we can but to answer your question it's not about this is not just a

Catholic problem we've had of course catholics we've had a number of protestants
we've had satanists we've had witches we've had just people that aren't baptized at
all and don't know really next to anything about christianity but they come for
help sometimes they know the association just from something as silly as the movies
and being kind of in the

In the zeitgeist it's kind of connected with catholicism because of films and tv um
sometimes they feel guided by god to go to a priest sometimes the protestants refer
cases to the catholic church when they come across a severe case because in a
severe case often deliverance prayers just make it angry and doesn't resolve it
there are parts of the world where islam and christianity lives

Well side by side in certain countries and parts of the world where they they in
some cases bring a lot of the possession cases to the christians um i'm not bashing
islam and saying that they they have their own version of things they have kind of
two versions of exorcism but i can tell you that amongst in my experience and i'm
not just saying this because i'm catholic but there is a little bit of a trend of

Different faiths when they come across a severe case of bringing it to the
catholics in whatever part of the world you're looking at and again that could be
as something as simple as if they come across a severe case they know the
association that those are the guys that wrote a big book that they go by that
formalize this and are really you know into it in a sense um because the church you
know focused on

Figuring this out and then keeping notes for a thousand you know a couple thousand
years yeah um so for various reasons uh different people come to the church and the
church doesn't refuse anybody of course and and we don't require somebody to become
catholic we're not proselytizing them or not you know asking them now i have seen
spontaneously just through the experience of progressive

Liberation and freedom i have seen people drawn to jesus in the eucharist and
wanting to become catholic because they have such an experience of god's love and
mercy through those prayers and you know in in this church but we don't we don't
proselytize or require that at all yeah it's about really about liberating people
from the pain and suffering that these demons inflict on them which you've seen
firsthand and i just i guess

You know that's another question you mentioned authority and uh you know for anyone
listening thinking they can just sort of take this on or that you know it's just a
series of words or i guess i want to in the terms of authority why is it important
for people listening to understand when it comes to catholic exorcisms it's only
priests with their bishops permission who can perform this solemn right i mean

You don't even do it you're you've witnessed it you're there you participate you
can pray alongside but the actual physical right is done by a catholic priest so
can you just talk about that authority and the authority they have like that christ
is the ultimate authority in this and sure so um this kind of gets at

The you know the question that protestants have which is you know can't they
through their baptismal priesthood do exorcisms and and a lot of protestants based
on certain scriptures will argue that any christian can do it um but and i don't
have my notes on this in front of me but

Specifically jesus gave the authority the full authority to the 12 apostles he
didn't give it to the 72 when it references him giving them authority over the
demons it's in the sentence talking about the apostles now the 72 do return and say
lord lord the demons are even subject to us in your name and you know even there's
that reference to hey there's that guy over there casting demons out in your name
but he's not

With us jesus says well leave him alone you know if he's using my name uh and he's
not opposing us leave us leave him alone so there's some arguments in scripture of
like well any any christian can do this however it seems that the reality is two
things one the full authorities resides with the apostles and the

Apostles through direct lineage person to person through ordination descend down to
the bishops today so the bishops today can person by person trace themselves back
to one of the twelve apostles and therefore to jesus and jesus is authority and
jesus is the one doing the exorcism really because i mean what are humans like we
don't we don't have any powers so

Jesus is doing the exorcism and it's through that chain of authority back to the
apostles and therefore him that you can think of an analogy for that as you know we
kind of have his ear and can make make a statement authoritatively in his name
because you're working for him and you have direct lineage so that's part of it and
then the second part is it's just the law of the church

So you know what you bound bind on earth is bound in heaven what you loose on earth
is loosed in heaven that reference to peter getting the keys to the kingdom and the
church is able to set rules that heaven will acknowledge and not that heaven will
change based on what the church says but that the rules down here the church has
authority to kind of say what are the spiritual rules and the church figured out
way long ago

Um by about the fourth by about the fifth century in the 400s or so the church
figured out that this is a ministry that's kind of shouldn't just be done by any
priest who wants to do it at will and it should be well supervised and they should
decide who who's really cut out to do this maybe maybe somebody who's just ordained
six months probably shouldn't be doing this and

Maybe somebody who's an egomaniac probably shouldn't be doing this and so the
church figured out within a few centuries that it should be priests that are well-
formed they've had some education as priests and they're solid and they're mature
and the bishop basically needs to have the reigns on that and so when the law the
law of the church said you can't do this unless

Your bishop gives you permission well the demons hold you to that so one of the
universal things that we see when a new priest comes for training to sit in and
observe an actual session and pray along with us basically without fail they they
get up in his face right away and this is a possessed person you know a demon in a
body physically get up in his face and say who are you i know these guys but who
are you and

We'll challenge them and challenge their authority even just to be in the room well
um they haven't prayed they haven't given an order to the demon they haven't done
anything yet but they'll try to rattle them and they'll challenge their authority
to be there and you've had that experience as well have you not um sure in in
various ways um yeah in many different situations because i'm kind of in an odd i'm
in an

Odd position yeah not in a normal i'm not in a normal position with with all them
um i mean i don't do exorcisms i just pray but they really don't like me so you
know i get a lot of trash talking but anyway because it's the law of the church um
even even if it's the exorcist of the diocese

And we haven't yet gotten permission from the bishop because we haven't diagnosed
the case and proven that there's possession because there's a whole process the
church doesn't just say oh you think you're possessed so we'll do an exorcism you
have to go to a doctor and get checked out medically psychiatrically and beyond
that we then have to prove that you're possessed through finding certain signs of
possession

So let's say we haven't we haven't gotten there yet the demon's talking it's taking
over the body but it's being cagey and it's not giving away any of the signs that
we know would prove that it's actually a possession and not mental illness or
somebody just scamming us um and the priests were to say something like well sit
back in the chair in the name of

Jesus christ sit down the demon will literally say you don't have authority over me
yeah i don't have to listen to you and we'll proceed to not listen to it will not
answer his questions truthfully we'll be very obstinate and keep legally citing you
don't have authority over me and he can step in the hall and call the bishop on the
cell phone and say hey bishop you know we've got this situation it looks real we
saw these signs can i

Have permission and he says yeah sure comes back in the room and he can say sit
down and shut up till i tell you to talk in the name of jesus and it goes over and
sits down and looks at him and waits wow so as soon as and and it's not like the
demon heard him have that conversation that's out of earshot but spiritually now
the authority's there and they know it and they know it wow sure

So you know and we've seen that exact scenario play out so authority is a big deal
because demons are very legalistic they're they're you know they do a lot of
theatrics and scary stuff just to rattle everybody and scare them and distract them
but when it comes down to it um one of the valid questions is you know

What what are you holding on to here what by what right are you still here what is
it is it unconfessed sin is there unforgiveness is there a cursed object here
what's going on and when it comes down to brass tacks they'll say yeah because
she's not forgiving this and allowed to stay right and and it becomes very much a
kind of a legal proposition and as soon as the person is able to

Forgive or repent or you know the priest may pray over some cursed object or
whatever it is um that's when the demons cast out so anyway that's again a long-
winded and i'm sorry for that no it's not it's so fascinating because what you're
pointing to is that it's very structured it's very ordered it's based on the
natural law the hierarchy that our lord set up

Through genesis through creation through angels through the fall that this is all
in a very ordered situation it's and when and when there is disorder which is what
i guess we would say that the disorder of sin for example or unconfessed sin or um
you know the not taking seriously frankly the fact that these structures and laws
exist

Then it gives sort of permission for these events to unfold but as you explained
early on it's an opportunity for us to very clearly see how and and you've laid it
out in the book in a way that we can sort of clearly see there's a structure and
order to this um can you talk a little bit more about that i mean we talked about
in terms of authority but

Sure so you know the overall structure of what we're dealing with is of course at
the beginning holy angels were created with free will and a third of them chose not
to serve god not to obey and they were cast out of heaven down to earth to roam
here they are given permission by god through his permissive

Will the ability to roam around intent and accuse people and you can see this
spelled out most clearly in the book of job in the old testament where satan has to
literally go to god the father and say god basically says to satan hey what have
you been doing and he said i'm roaming around earth seeing who i can take out right

And god basically says well did you see joe you know he's one of my one of my good
guys he's really developed about guy down there did you notice him while you're
going around he says yeah yeah he only likes you because he's rich and you know and
and happy and you know has all these wonderful kids and you know all these
livestock and everything else if he wasn't so you know in such a cushy

Position he wouldn't he wouldn't like you and god says okay well you can go and
take away his wealth and his livestock but don't touch him or his family let's see
what happens and so satan goes and does so but he goes right up to the line he
can't do anything more than what god gave him permission to do and of course we
know the story right so job continues to be patient and thankful to god in good

Times and bad and so satan goes back and says you know and god says well there you
go see still still being good and this goes on and on and of course develops
further um so the the structure what you're dealing with is these aren't random
creatures that are just running amok down here on earth tearing stuff up and
destroying things at will

He allowed them to continue to operate down here why is he just mean does he want
us to suffer is he just a cruel capricious god no he allows them to operate so that
our free will can actually be exercised if it's only good and only god you wouldn't
even conceive of saying no you would kind of be a robot adam and eve in a sense
would be robots

In the garden until they were aware of the option of saying no nothing was going to
happen they were just going to live forever in the garden with god eat food name
the animals hang out until the serpent came in and i'm not saying the serpent's a
good guy but god's allowing it because certainly god was aware of the serpent was

Entering the garden right it's not like anything is outside of his awareness
everywhere so god's allowing these demons to operate not because he's mean and
wants us to suffer but number one he wants us to exercise our free will and without
temptation you can't really do that so there has to be the option of being bad and
saying no to god

But more importantly i think i think more importantly because free will is a very
important idea um they give us the challenges and bumps and bruises of the struggle
by which we spiritually mature so they serve in spite of themselves it's by the
very temptations and even these ugly things that we deal with in

The exorcism world that human beings become wiser and spiritually mature think of a
muscle in your body if you literally never used it it would atrophy and be useless
you wouldn't be able to move that part of your body but through the adversarial
struggle the muscle gets stronger yeah and the same thing with the spiritual kind
of self

It's through the trials that the saint if you read any saints story it's through
the trials and tribulations and struggles intense struggles and the closer they get
to god usually the more intensive struggles become you know uh the the in the
ancient world and this is partly why jesus goes into the desert and why everybody
understood that he should go into the desert is that in the ancient world the idea

Was you defeat the flesh meaning you defeat your own lust and your own appetites
which is kind of like the animal self right so the self that just says i want
pleasure you know i want to have sexual activity i want to have wealth i want to
just consume that kind of very kind of infantile approach to life it's just about
me i'm a narcissist and i just want

Pleasure so you have to defeat that first and then you have to defeat the world
meaning you have to defeat the temptation to just get lost in becoming powerful and
rich and influent influence over other people and uh all of that which can become
an end unto itself that can become your god is i want to be as rich as possible i
want to be a millionaire i want to

Have political power whatever it is and once you've defeated the flesh in the world
you then go to the desert why do you go to the desert because the desert in the
ancient world was understood as the place where the demons reside so you go to the
desert to meet the devil unveiled he's no longer veiled behind the flesh or behind
the world you've defeated those first two levels

Of the spiritual life and now you confront him unveiled which is what jesus did
with the temptations and so um this whole process you know we don't we go through
it in our own way certainly most of us that are say in our 50s now probably don't
have the same the same struggles the same
Issues as we did when we were in our teens or our 20s part of that's age part of
that's experience but as we go along hopefully we get wiser and and hopefully we
get morally better and spiritually better but it's through their activity that we
have these struggles and we can mature and so ultimately it's all for our good even
though it seems like it stinks at

The moment like you can think back on your life to really difficult things that
were terrible at the time that you learned a lot from and helped define who you are
as a person today um you know if you if you look at videos of the guys that go
through seal training in the united states they all say it was the worst possible
week of their life that last week of training the most horrifically difficult

Physical not sleeping for five days just unbelievable suffering and yet they look
back on that as like the greatest achievement the high point in terms of you know
the triumph of the will over sure the body so anyway this is um when we when we can
see them in that sense they're not good it's not that we

Should say oh great you know i want to be tempted or great i want to be possessed
not at all you don't it's horrible and jesus never came across the possessed person
of the gospels and said oh you you're supposed to be possessed he never did yeah he
freed everybody that any time it's brought up in the gospel he freed them yeah so
it's not something we should want we shouldn't seek it out

I'm just saying that ultimately god can use anything for good and bring good out of
anything and temptation is an important part of the spiritual journey you've
encountered and seen things that most people just never see in this lifetime and
will only probably have a healthy fear of and so i guess what i would ask you is i
mean why now is this a particular moment

That the planet really needs to understand this stuff what makes you want to share
these stories now i mean i i'd say maybe a third of it is just that i think after
you spend 10 or 15 years doing something if you if you've had some success with it
you probably have a good feel for it

And so given that this is an unusual life i feel it's reasonable to the human
community to share some of that for the group record but the two-thirds of it is i
think god wants these stories written down yeah and i think god wants people
catechized on this because the world at least in the west

I think is like a missionary country in reverse right now i think the wave of
christianity and the wave of religion in general is starting to roll back and so
the demons you know and they were they were complaining just just a few weeks ago
to me about this and screaming about it you know yelling at me why do you believe
in us what happened to you when you were young that you know that we're real

Why do you have to know that we're real they hate the fact that i try to educate
the public about them because they want to operate hidden you know they don't want
these things to be exposed but i think god wants it put out there because not many
people teach on it or catechize on it and the more your conscience is informed you
know there's a burden to that the more your conscience is informed the

More you can stay out of trouble and god
extraordinary problems but the burden of
now more accountable for your choices so
that once you've been clearly and and if
what they're talking about once you once
because god doesn't want you in these
your conscience being informed is you're
it's good but there's a burden with it in
you feel that the person you know knows
like

For instance um the parent who explains that smoking is bad to their kids and you
know in detail and all the health problems and etc etc etc and then the kid picks
up you know to catch them smoking they're going to have a different reaction to
that than the kid who just found a cigarette and ignorantly is experimenting
because he saw adults smoking you're going to have a different reaction to the
person

That's been well informed and chose to do it anyway than the person who didn't know
any better and did yoga just because it's what their friend was going to and you
know and what i've seen is god often holds the demon back and puts the brakes on
things when the people don't know what they're choosing not completely

But the culpability the responsibility for the choice is less because they don't
know what they're doing and you can see that like what's the definition of sin sin
is about intent it's not really about the action yeah right so if i accidentally
kill somebody through no fault of my own purely accident while driving there's
there's a car wreck that i have no control over and that person dies the law would
say

It's it's accidental death in some form right there was no intent to kill but if i
plan ahead and then kill somebody willfully that's first degree murder it's a very
different thing the action is the same somebody died but the intent is different
and the spiritual world's the same way so once your conscience is informed you're
held more to account for that choice there's a great quote that i want to read from
the book and uh

It's i i think just to set it up for people you you had to physically restrain
people at times and you describe sometimes there's a super human strength that goes
on for hours and hours and hours and you are holding back arms there or just
needing to physically restrain people and this this was a quote that really struck

Me out of the book quote with the help of god i had the physical strength to keep
going even when i was the only person restraining him for hours the temptations on
the other hand were easy to refuse since god is god and that's that close quote can
you that was so insightful for me

Just to how matter-of-factly that stated but how much of a raw truth that is yeah
so it's important for your listeners to to understand that when we restrain people
first off we we talk to the person before we pray with them you know and explain if
you're struggling or if you're going to hurt yourself or you're hitting yourself or
you're trying to hit us

We ask is it okay if we gently restrain you only as much as it's necessary to keep
everybody safe and of course they say yes so we're not just grabbing people and
holding them down sure and and in the united states at least it's against civil law
to physically like tie somebody down you can't do that yeah so we certainly don't
do that in the states either um

The case you're referencing it was it was that was a very very high profile case
where satan was and it was the actual satan and everybody always wants to arm share
quarterback that and say well i don't think that's true tell me why i don't know
why we as humans our gut reaction is always to criticize and second guess

But there was very good reasons that that indicated that it was satan um it was
unlike other demons in a number of ways um but the strength there was was really
off the charts um and he was alternating between attacking me quite brutally you
know in the person's body

Um trying to kill me in various ways you know choked me that kind of thing um to
grabbing me and whispering temptations in my ear and it was very biblical stuff you
know all the classic temptations but bargaining and offering various things in
exchange for let this one go let me keep this one essentially and then when i would
refuse he'd go back to trying to to

Beat me to death so um this went on for i believe it was four days uh four
different sessions that were multi-hour sessions um and then mary came and kicked
him out and that's when the case ended but um so that the temptation there that's
not normal the other the other demons they don't bargain and offer things in
exchange for

For letting them keep the person uh but he did i other demons might do that
sometimes with other people in all these years i've not seen it um but he was he
was directly bargaining you know if you let me keep this one i'll do this for you
what else do you want you know that kind of thing and offering various things but
yeah it's kind of ridiculous like

If you're if you're there rolling around on the carpet with satan and you're in a
catholic church and there's a bunch of priests and um you're doing exorcisms and
you know he he hated me it seems probably because i trained priests a lot and maybe
because i write these books and talk to the public but he really really hated me um

And so i'm having this personal confrontation with them and then he thinks i'm
gonna like be like oh well you know what you're right maybe i'll just give all this
up and give up on god because you said that and sure like what's he thinking but he
doesn't have anything else to work with right i mean what can he really offer

Like once you've seen the curtain pulled back and you've seen that god's real jesus
is real mary is real the saints are real it's all real why on earth would you then
think well now i'm gonna go obey this little creature over here who's you know yeah
he's got a lot of influence in the world but only because god's allowing it i'm
gonna go follow him like it's

Ridiculous and probably because people haven't heard enough about this and the
spiritual tools that we do have through the catholic church that prepare you or can
have somebody at least have a deeper understanding or at least as you said i think
the key words you just said of the veil being

Pulled back where two things you said that were striking to me were like they want
to operate in secret because once the sort of curtain is pulled back on the wizard
of oz like the whole game is over and um you know i guess that's why i just so
appreciate this book and that you take the time this much time to speak with me and
whoever is going to listen to this conversation we've done

In such the way you did the book in such a respectful way of not sensationalizing
the events understanding them as painful horrible experiences for the people that
have to go through with them but i mean i guess i guess i'll use a surgery analogy
where you know not everyone could cut into somebody and do surgery but they know
that that's going to make the person better some people have a skill to be able to

Do that and in the work you're doing not everybody wants to step into that role but
what you get to bring back and give to us so generously is these concepts to a give
us a sense of what to really be careful of and what real dangers are spiritually
lurking it's not an accident that the saint michael prayer includes the line the
demons prowl about the world

Seeking the ruin of souls like that is literally going on and has gone on and the
less we believe that the less we believe that the more empowered they can be do you
have any thoughts uh just before i mean we've given me a lot of your time today and
i'm greatly appreciate that but is there anything that we've left out or that you
want to share at this point i guess the only thing is is
To remember that all this information none of it's um particular to me there's
nothing special about um my experience this is all information god's provided
either through experience or through the church or the saints but mostly through
experience you know learning from the old exorcists

In rome that kind of thing it's all god's information and he passes this stuff down
from generation to generation in a lineage it's not new uh it's just that in the
west to some extent we're kind of our memories getting foggy and um so i'm just
trying to to hold up this information that

We usually used to be common sense it used to be baked into our culture but there's
nothing special about me it's it's all god and he's providing the venue to do this
he's providing these interviews he's providing you know these books um and we're
all just gonna be gone and it's gonna be other people's journey so the most
important thing i would say is

That for people listening to this or reading these books is seek god from that you
know in a sense these are fingers pointing to the cross these are fingers pointing
to jesus it's not about me or the books ultimately it's going to be about your
journey with god and these are designed to maybe not

Be the whole spiritual journey of course but these are for the person wandering in
the world that is surrounded by a few pitfalls and troubles and maybe you can avoid
those and maybe you can realize through the darkness that the lights actually reel
to and so the ultimate goal is to finish that journey back to god so don't stop
with an interest in these things these

Things are only here because they're to be avoided but they're not to be the center
of your spiritual life yeah by any stretch of the imagination you'd be a very
deformed you'd have a very deformed spirituality if you made this topic the center
of your spiritual life this is just to know enough to avoid it and then focus on
your journey with god and then hopefully this is just

Something that's in the background that you know you remember a few of these facts
but the important stuff is going to be your own journey to god the book is the
exorcism files i've been speaking with its author adam bligh who very generously
gave us his time today adam thank you very much for this time thank you david it's
been wonderful to talk with you and i appreciate how

Attentive and thoughtful your your questions in the interview was [Music] check us
out on apple podcasts or spotify our website thefocusingway.com

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