Or: “Florida Man sees alien interference in most of his hypnotized clients.” I recently did a deep dive into the work of Willam J. Baldwin, author and innovator of the Spirit Releasement Technique. Why? I received an email from Udemy, an online training website because I’d researched their Past Life Regression course. (Only $9.99!) Udemy and regressionist Mark Beale were offering a followup course in:
Spirit Releasement Therapy- Spiritual Entity Healing: Earthbound Spirits, DFEs and ETs; Learn about and manage spontaneous entity events during spiritual healing sessions.
(Actually it was their “Advanced Demonstrated” program.) I was familiar with Baldwin’s work because it has been incorporated into another, much more sophisticated Past Life Regression certification program offered by EARTH, the Earth Association for Regression Therapy. When starting out, I looked into their program but bailed when discovering it required a prior certification in Hypnosis, and if you’d read any of this blog, you might know my opinions on the necessity of utilizing Hypnosis to access Past lives. Without ruffling feathers, I’ll propose that we open ourselves to the possibility that, in the 3rd decade of the 21st century, we no longer need to be hypnotized to access past lives. So I was surprised when consulting the website of https://www.earth-association.org, their core curriculum now includes:
“Detecting and releasing intrusive energy and spirit release”
This seems like a direct reference to Baldwin’s work, although no mention is made of Baldwin on the website. Among their Advanced Regression Therapy Trainings is an “Advanced Energy Workshop” whose title page is headlined “Spirit Release and Energy Training.” (Notice the emphasis on the spirit release above the energy training.) An earlier, pre-COVID option in their graduate training program was centered on the spirit release technique. Another certifying organization, The Spiritual Regression Therapy Association, has a similar program titled “Soul Evolution - Transforming Past Lives Workshop” featuring “a group intrusive energy clearance.” Because this is what is being taught to incoming regression therapists, I felt the need to know more about this intrusive energy clearance that I have not, except for one client, encountered in my years of practice.
William J.Baldwin (1937-2004) was a dentist who in the early 1980’s became an ordained minister and then, in the 1990s, earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology. But it seems that his entity releasement work was filtered through his role as what his encyclopedia.com page refers to as a pastoral counselor. In 1995, he published “Spirit Releasement Therapy - A Technique Manual” directed at practitioners, and in 2003, “Healing Lost Souls: Releasing Unwanted Spirits from Your Energy Body” where I found this origin story for his joint practice with his wife, Judith:
“In our counseling practice, most of our clients through the years have discovered discarnate interference. Many firmly stated they had never before believed in such a thing, yet the direct experience is hard to deny. I could not pass it off as imaginary, the result of paranoia or delusional thinking. As a scientifically oriented investigator, I recognized and observed this phenomenon, and formed a hypothesis that was not unlike historical descriptions of spirit possession.”
This is followed by a footnote which refers to a book titled “Exorcism” by Olga Hoyt, indicating how his role as a “scientifically oriented investigator” has been filtered through his status as an ordained minister. Baldwin acknowledges this:
The foundation of Spirit Releasement Therapy is the knowledge that all God-created beings contain the monad, the indestructible, eternal spark of God consciousness. All else is illusory and transitory, part of the duality that constitutes this physical reality which encompasses good and evil, light and dark, right and wrong, and other polarities. The Book of Revelations outlines the beginning of the game, the act of choosing sides: Light or darkness.
Again, his religious beliefs are front and center in his work. So how did a dentist who learned hypnosis to treat his dental patients, who then pivoted to past life regressions, make the leap from there into entity releasement, and from there into sending those Dark Force Entities controlling extraterrestrials back to the light?
To my surprise, after only a few months of doing past life regression sessions, I recognized signs and symptoms of what seemed to be discarnate interference in a growing number of my clients. Like many people, I had assumed this condition to be imaginary, contrived, the result of paranoia and delusional thinking...I recognized the connection between human and entity as a parasitic condition, and I began using the term "spirit attachment" instead of “spirit possession.”
I think I found an answer in a book Baldwin wrote in 1999 that is equal parts ahead of its time and extremely strange: “CE-VI - Close Encounters of the Possession Kind.” For those not familiar with the CE-VI, this refers to J. Allen Hynek’s scale of human/alien contact proceeding from Close Encounters I - seeing a UFO from 200 feet away with no contact - to Steven Greer’s extension of the scale in 1993 - CE-6 - intentional contact with UFOs. A famous 1977 movie by Steven Spielberg, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, brought this concept into popular consciousness. But as an ordained minister, Baldwin discovered :
In clinical practice, we find that more than half our clients are apparently carrying the burden of attached ETs and suffering their influence.
Having published his “Spirit Releasement manual” in 1999, Baldwin and wife Judith had already encountered enough “attached ETs” to propose their own categories of interfering energies:
Over the years of clinical experience I discovered what appeared to be three main types of intrusive, attaching entities: the so-called earthbound spirits (EB) of deceased humans which are bound or stuck in the earth plane and unable or unwilling to move on to the higher realms; the dark force entities (DFE), which includes the classic demon; and aliens or extraterrestrials (ET).
If you’re keeping score, that is:
EB - earthbound spirits
DFE - Dark Force Entities, aka demons
ET - aliens or extraterrestrials
That must have been an interesting clinic he ran at his Center for Human Relations in Enterprise, Florida. The red flag for me arose with this:
In an altered state, also understood as a hypnotic trance, they (the clients) relate to us what happened to them.
I have never recovered a positive opinion of hypnosis after watching “Hellier” season 2, where they brought in an incredibly unethical hypnotist to work on a willing subject to induce an alien abduction, causing him obvious distress, which was filmed and included in the series. To me, this puts an asterisk on all of Baldwin’s work. Subjects in trance are highly suggestible; this is why it is so effective at altering unwanted behaviors such as smoking and overeating. My research is continuing into why this is now a part of the core material that past life regressionists are taught to include in their toolkit.
Back to Baldwin: His heart seems to be in the right place. In the preface to “CE-VI,” he acknowledges that “the channeled information can be totally fabricated by the client, consciously or unconsciously….However, it may be exactly what it appears to be: actual communication with an alien race.” His focus shifts to the “perhaps millions of people (who) suffer with the effects of non-physical or other-dimensional beings which interfere or connect with them in some way.” Baldwin credits his wife Judith’s “spiritual gifts of discernment: clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience...She can perceive discarnate entities of all kinds, determine the degree of soul fragmentation, and gather information regarding past-life carryover of unfinished business.” (The mention of “unfinished business” is to me a clue to Baldwin’s knowledge of the Swygards’ work, since it is a phrase included in “Book 1 - The Awareness Techniques.”) But I don’t think those clients the Baldwin’s were treating at their Enterprise, Florida clinic stood a chance against their deeply held religious beliefs. As Baldwin admits:
Most people affected aren’t aware of the interference until they discover it in a therapy session; the majority of my private clients uncover these unwelcome intrusions.
The equally strange and ahead of its time aspect of Baldwin’s work is that after uncovering and working with the attached alien interfering energy, he bypasses it to address the Dark Force Entity that is controlling ET, often without ET’s knowledge. So he not only sees ET interference but his pastoral counseling training gives him insight into the Dark Force Entity controlling ET. (Does this mean Spielberg’s “ET- The Extraterrestrial” could have been a horror film?) But he avoids the blunt force of Exorcism, opting for a kinder, gentler approach of reasoning with the DFEs before sending them to the Light. What’s interesting is that William J. Baldwin imposed a Christian overlay on hypnotherapy to create Spirit Releasement Therapy and entity removal, which has been adopted by past life regressionists but only after removing Baldwin’s name and his Christian overlay. More on his Spirit Releasement methods in Part 2.