#97 Entities or Schizophrenia?

Jerry Marzinsky, BA and M.Ed.

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On December 3, 2019 Fahrusha was pleased to welcome Jerry Marzinsky to “Shattered Reality Podcast”. Jerry has been a licensed psychotherapist with over 35 years of experience working with schizophrenic and other psychiatric patients in state hospitals, state prisons, and hospital emergency rooms. His formal academic training comprises a B.A. in Psychology from Temple University, a Master’s Degree in Counseling from the University of Georgia, and two years of study in a Ph.D. Psychology program.

We discussed the history of the treatment of patients classified as mentally ill and specifically those currently classified as paranoid schizophrenics. It seems they have mostly not been cured by psychiatry and they have been given the most incredibly barbaric treatments over the course of time. Currently they are treated with electro-shock therapy and anti-psychotic drugs. The electro-shock therapy burns out brain cells and can cause bone breakage, especially in older patients. Anti-psychotic drugs can be very useful to stop a violent outburst and may reverse schizophrenia if used at the earliest sign of the condition, but it is very dulling and has many side effects with continuing usage. Psychiatry claims that paranoid schizophrenia is caused by a chemical imbalance, yet Jerry says that in all his years of work with these patients, none of them were ever tested for this imbalance.

After years of asking these patients why they would go off their medication, he discovered that the voices that the patients heard had much in common with each other. Then he began speaking not only with the patients but with the voices, which he believes are separate entities. He is joined in this belief by Emmanuel Swedenborg. Robert Monroe of the Monroe Institute spoke often about discarnate entities that live off the emotions of others. Don Miguel Ruiz, the world renowned Mexican shaman also speaks of this possession by entities. Jerry Marzinsky’s research partner is Sherry Swiney.

Errata: Jerry mentioned someone receiving a Pulitzer Prize; it was actually a Nobel Prize.

#79 The Spirit Room of Jonathan Koons with Sharon Hatfield

Sharon Hatfield, author of Enchanted Ground: The Spirit Room of Jonathan Koons.

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Fahrusha was pleased to welcome Sharon Hatfield, author of Enchanted Ground: The Spirit Room of Jonathan Koons to “Shattered Reality Podcast”. We covered the history of Jonathan Koons as regards his career as a famous American Spiritualist during the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Fahrusha was pleased to note that the author did not decide on the veracity of Mr. Koons’ claims of physical mediumship. It is difficult enough to vet the claims of those with whom one is contemporaneous, no less the claims of those who are long gone. No one is currently alive who ever met Jonathan Koons so there are no witnesses. There does exist ample critique of this man’s seances in publications of the day, and they are both positive and negative. In addition Mr. Koons, himself, was a prolific, if opaque, writer on matters spiritual.

Jonathan Koons did not charge money to attend the seances, but did sometimes charge board to those who lodged with his family, so his motives were not influenced by personal enrichment. His entire family participated in this endeavor and he had eleven natural children and one adopted daughter, although not all lived to adulthood. One son, Nahum, was often the centerpiece of these gatherings and was considered quite gifted. Magnetic anomalies in the ground on the ridge where the seances took place just outside Athens, Ohio are believed by some to be the cause of the unusual effects produced in the Spirit Room. Others point to poltergeist activity due to the raging hormones of so many pubescent children.

We also discussed other notables of the day, including D. D. Home, the Fox Sisters, and somewhat surprisingly, John Chapman colloquially known as “Johnny Appleseed”. He was a staple character in American history texts in public schools across the US, famed for planting apple trees where ever he wandered, but few know him as the Swedenborgian spiritualist he actually was. Currently physical mediumship is looked down upon in many but not all spiritualist circles in the US, though it receives better treatment in the UK.

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Enchanted Ground: The Spirit Room of Jonathan Koons by Sharon Hatfield published by Swallow Press.