4. Should inner healing and inner guides be practiced in the church?
 

    Inner healing is a form of counseling which seeks to correct the harmful memories of the past by receiving them in the present through visualization and other techniques, often using Jesus as an "inner counselor" or "inner guide. "It is a method based largely upon the theories of Freud and Jung, and often the practices of religious mysticism. It has come into the Church through Jungian therapists and laymen such as Agnes Sanford, Episcopal priest Morton Kelsey (her pastor), John Stanford (her son), and John and Paula Sanford, Dennis and Rite Bennett, Paul Yonggi Cho, Father Francis MacNutt, and Ruth Carter Stapleton. It has also entered the church through other Roman Catholic and Protestant charismatics and by some Christian psychologists and parapsychologists.
    The problem with most inner healing is that it is based upon an unproven assumption of an unconscious mind operating in a particular manner, in an alleged natural connection with, or as part of, God. The unconscious mind has become the means to meet Jesus and be sanctified. Besides opening Christians to the occultic theories of Jung, inner healing may open them to the occult itself via inner guides who are really demons. Even the September 1986 Charisma magazine published an article on inner healing which warned, "According to some, Eastern mysticism and even necromancy are infiltrating the movement in some quarters. 'I know this is going to offend some people, 'says Martin Lynch cautiously, 'but it has to be said. We're starting to see a deification of the unconscious. It's a major problem.' Lynch, who is Roman Catholic, says that certain people 'tend to be susceptible to the teachings of Carl Jung. But Jung is a nemesis. He's anti-Christian. He was a gnostic and a purveyor of Gnosticism.'
    The problem of "inner advisors" so often found in Jungian psychology, inner healing, and in some Christian psychotherapy is that it is often indistinguishable from the contacting of spirit guides in occultism.
    Inner "guides" may be either genuinely imaginative (as in dreams) or they may be spiritistic. Cultivating them may also progress from the purely imaginary to genuine spiritism. Thus, there is growing interest in what may be termed "imagination spiritism" where the imagination becomes the vehicle for spirit contact, whether deliberately sought or not (although often under another name).
    Mary Watkins is a psychotherapist who uses Jungian "active imagination" and inner dialogue with "guides" in her patients' therapy. In her book, Invisible Guests: the Development of Imaginal Dialogues, she sets forth her belief that psychotherapy should encourage the emergence of "imaginal presence" and that the patient can benefit by deepening his relationship with them. She believes these psychic counselors are not spirits but, along with Jung, they are merely "indicative of the process of personification that occurs spontaneously in the unconscious." In other words, these are seen as Jungian archetypes; yet both Jung and she directly experienced that these are autonomous "entities." Dr. Watkins admits, "The imaginal other may have as much autonomy as the so-called real others I meet in consentual space." In his autobiography Jung describes one of his archetypes, "Philemon," as being "quite real, as if he were a living personality" and compares his experience with Philemon to the ancient practice of contacting a god. In fact, he admits both Philemon and another archetypal figure, "Ka," perfectly fit the category of spirit guides.
    In our opinion, when the church accepts Jungian and other dubious methods, it is treading on potentially dangerous ground. What objects standards exist to discern imaginary inner guides from spirits who initially assume such a pose as a means of later contact or influence? (Such methods are, in fact, encouraged by the very spirit world which utilizes them because they help mask spirit contact under the guise of psychotherapy.) The question must be asked, "Are some portions of the church by innocence or naiveté, at least in some cases, helping its own members to contact spirits?"
 

John Ankerberg & John Weldon