The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel

The psychiatrist reiterates here what anthropologists know from fieldwork. In the worldview of peoples around the globe, ordinary reality is accompanied by its twin reality. Carlos Castaneda coined the term "separate reality" for it. regardless of whether or not we accept the opinion of the psychiatrists about the ephemeral quality of any kind of reality, we must certainly realize that the separate reality has social validity. In the universe of societies uncounted millions of people act in such a way as to demonstrate that in their experience the separate reality exists "out there." However, it looks different to different societies.

In other words, while the ability to enter into religious altered state of consciousness is a physical ability all humans share, the cultural perception of the reality encountered in the state is culturally patterned. To use a simile, the separate reality might be thought of as a vast space. Each kind of religious system can encompass only a small section of it. In the same manner, as various countries are inhabited by people specking different languages, having different heroes, and living under different systems of government, the separate reality is also very distinct in its many parts.

For instance, although Hindus of India, traditional Chinese, the Yoruba of Nigeria, and Roman Catholics all profess agriculturalist religions characterized by a godhead surrounded by an aura of specialists, the obviously also differ in many significant ways. In large, modern, stratified states a further distinction is introduced by the Western, so-called scientific, tradition. For at least two centuries this tradition has emphasized the preeminence of knowledge, to the exclusion of all other states, for which training was no longer offered. This produced a situation where, as Walsh says, "it is very difficult, of not impossible, to recognize the limitations of the usual state of consciousness if that is all that one has ever known".

Pointing out that women experience possession more frequently than men, Erika Bourguignon notes that "the possession trancer achieves power by abdicating her own self ... making room for a more powerful self who takes over her body and who performs powerful acts while residing in that body".

Possession trance tends to occur most often in complex societies dependent on agriculture or agriculture and animal husbandry. In such societies women are brought up to be obedient and nurturing rather than independent. In stressful situations they would not turn to spirits for help in making them personally more powerful. Rather, they seek out authoritative beings of the separate reality to act in their place.

In Anneliese's case these two traditions--on the one side that of the agriculturalist winegrowers; on the other that of the scientific establishment--clashed head on. The strategy of the latter was to declare that while the religious faction might hold any belief is pleased, to say that it experienced anything the likes of demons was definitely sick. What this demonstrated was an abnegation of the validity of experience if this experience had not taken place in the ordinary state of consciousness. Dr Lüthy [her psychiatrist] dismissed Anneliese's report about seeing devilish countenances as something that she never experienced. This is incomprehensible to someone who has, in his terms, been there. For the experiences in the religious altered state of consciousness carry a tremendous sense of reality. Its objects are three-dimensional; you can walk around them and examine them from all sides.

According to Lame Deer, a Sioux holy man, "The real vision has to come out of your own juices. It is not a dream; it is very real. It hits you sharp and clear like an electric shock. You are wide awake and, suddenly, there is a person standing next to you who you know can't be there at all. Or somebody is sitting close by, and all of a sudden you see him also up on a hill half a mile away. Yet you are not dreaming; your eyes are open."