In Spirit obsession, the aura has sustained enough damage to become infected with one or more invading spirits. This is a sort of “surface infection” of the soul, a bit like a sore or a skin rash. Infecting a living person’s aura has some advantages for the invading spirit. Once the spirit has infected the aura, it gains the use of the host’s physical senses and can see the earth environment through the host’s eyes without hindrance. It finds that it can influence the host’s behavior by injecting alien thoughts into his or her mind. It may even be capable of gaining full possession of the host’s body for limited periods of time. The host generally cannot distinguish his or her own thoughts from those of the infecting spirit, and this can lead the host into aberrant, self-destructive or even criminal behavior.
The human aura acts like a magnet, and once the spirit makes intimate contact with it, the spirit then becomes trapped and unable to leave. It becomes bound to the aura with serious consequences for both the spirit and the host. Once confined within the host’s aura, the infecting spirit becomes disoriented, and in most cases, it fails to understand where it is. It just realizes that it is suddenly confined in a small space and can’t escape. It does not have the freedom to leave the host, and often confuses the host’s body for its own. Furthermore, the human host will usually confuse the spirit’s thoughts for his or her own causing spiritual insanity and erratic behavior. This is the definition of spiritual obsession.
An ignorant, but otherwise benign spirit trapped in a person’s aura becomes isolated from the larger spiritual environment where it might otherwise be liberated by friends and relatives who have returned to the transitional plane to rescue it. Furthermore, an infected aura is susceptible to infection by multiple alien spirits, none of whom has any control over the others. For any given infecting spirit, it would be like being trapped in a jail cell with a bunch of reprobates.
Psychic sensitives are a large class of living people who are more psychic than other people. Unfortunately, they are also much more susceptible to spiritual infections than other people, especially if they are mentally ill or have any of several personality disorders. These people produce extra psychic energy which may overflow from their intact auras like light from an incandescent bulb on a circuit with too much voltage.
If the extra energy is put to good use, it does no harm, in the same way that an incandescent light bulb maintains a constant operating temperature if its environment allows it to dissipate excess heat. But if the psychic energy is not dissipated in a constructive way, it attracts and energizes earthbound spirits and may damage the aura itself. This damage to the aura allows for an auric surface infection. (The term “auric” is the adjective form of aura. An auric infection is simply an infection of a person’s aura.)
The excess energy may even “burn through”, or make holes in the aura. This allows for a much more serious form of spiritual infection than mere spiritual obsession. If the damage is severe enough, the holes may allow one or more lower entities to enter inside the aura to make direct contact with the host’s own soul. In some cases, the invading spirit (or spirits) can temporarily displace the host’s soul within its human body, which is the definition of spiritual possession.
Leakage of excess psychic energy from a damaged aura into the external spiritual environment may become the source of the energy used by poltergeists, a subject discussed in chapter 15. Childhood abuse can damage a child’s auric defenses enough to create holes that may allow large amounts of his or her natural psychic energy to spill out into the spiritual environment. When this happens, the energy becomes available to malignant earthbound spirits who can pick it up and “run” with it like a kid who finds a football in a vacant lot. This is often the origin of poltergeist activity.
Temporary auric leakage may not present a long term problem to the child agent him/herself if the aura remains largely intact. Auras, after all, are not made of glass, and like any part of the body, surface infections generally heal themselves, especially in young, vital people. Indeed, very few poltergeist “hauntings” last more than a few weeks, or a few months at most. But during the period of leakage, lower spirits can use this spilled energy to manifest in various ways. Spirits so energized use this excess energy to create physical disturbances such as levitation of small objects and loud noises, but unless the aura is very severely damaged, they cannot otherwise enter and infect the living soul.
On the other hand, severe child abuse warps a child’s outlook and mind. This, in turn, will damage the child’s auric defenses. Abuse, combined with a naturally psychic personality might invite a permanent, lifelong spiritual infection with one or more criminal entities. One suspects that this may be what has happened in some cases of serial killers, and in other habitual criminals since most of the worst ones have had histories of horrific childhood abuse, and childhood spiritual infection in these people is almost a certainty.
Damage to the aura may be caused in adulthood by other factors as well. Negative lifestyle choices like alcoholism and drug abuse or a preference for criminal behavior may damage a person’s defenses against spiritual infection. Traumatic life events as well as congenital or developmental brain defects can also be at fault. This subject is covered in more detail in chapters 16 and 17. In any event, a damaged aura plus an excess of psychic energy is a bad combination for anyone, adult or child!
Note: For those looking for some suggestions on how to treat a poltergeist infestation, see this section in the chapter on Demon Possession, Poltergeists and Parapsychology.