For many years Dr. Holden was the medical director of the Primal Institute of Los Angeles. In 1983, H. Lawrence King wrote to Dr. Holden, informing him that he had heard that he was no longer associated with the Primal Institute and that he had had deep spiritual experiences. Larry invited him to attend the Summer convention of the International Primal Association.
Dr. Holden did not attend the IPA's convention in 1983, but he sent Larry an extraordinary tape recording which recounts his primal experiences as well as his born-again religious conversion. The recording was played a number of times at the IPA convention that summer where it was received with mixed reactions.
Since I had always been interested in all aspects of the religious conversion experience, I asked Larry for a copy of the tape recording which I transcribed. The transcription is almost ten thousand words long! It was printed in the Primal Feelings Newsletter after it was revised by Dr. Holden at a later date.
Apart from its spiritual/religious significance, Dr. Holden's message is an important document in the history of primal therapy since it concerns personal aspects of the lives of both Arthur Janov, Ph.D., psychologist, discoverer of primal therapy and E. Michael Holden, M.D., neurologist, who subsequently defined the physiological and neurological correlates of the therapy.
Dr. Holden told me that he finished his primal therapy in only three and one-half years. He said that when he went into primal therapy his core body temperature was 100 degrees and after therapy it is 95 degrees. His pulse rate went from between 90 and 100 to between 50 and 60. His blood pressure also lessened but with a smaller percentage decrease. He said that he presently has the EEG readings of a child.
When I last spoke with him ten years ago, he said he remains an enthusiastic born-again Christian and he continues to believe that primal therapy is a real and effective form of psychotherapy.
I revised these notes in December of 1998. At that time Dr. Holden's whereabouts were unknown. -- John A. Speyrer - Webmeister - The Primal Psychotherapy Page
* * *
Hello Larry. This is Dr. Michael Holden, dictating you a tape,
a tape for anyone who might be interested in these things on Aug 28,
1983. I have a unique opportunity to discuss for you the interface
between
therapy and related issues on the one hand and the
issues of religion on the other, because between 1974 and 1980 I was
deeply emersed in defining the physiological correlates of primal
therapy in considerable detail. And I myself went through primal therapy
between 1974 and 1977. As the story which I'm going to tell you unfolds,
you will realize that primal therapy is a resource available to us,
not different in kind from surgery or some medications, but that it
in no way speaks to the ultimate reality. And fortunately starting
in 1979, I've had numerous opportunities to know a great deal about
the ultimate realities and I will speak to you on this tape about
that.
It's 1983, I'm 42 years old, I was born in 1941. My birth was
an unpleasant affair including a 20 to 25 second cardiac arrest. During
this time I had a small stroke in my left brain stem and right sub-cortical
brain, but as you might imagine, my birth record reads as one might
expect--''normal birth.'' Somewhat earlier than that, in approximately
the sixth month of gestation my mother and I nearly bled to death,
an event I learned about in 1975, on Christmas Day when I had an extraordinary
opportunity to have a detailed and completed intrauterine primal in
which I experienced complete weightlessness, saw a sea of red in front
of me, tasted bloody amniotic fluid, knew that I was dying and knew
that my mother was dying, but that was only the feeling, I did not
die, I was only starting the process (Transcriber's Note: Refer to Arthur Janov's Imprints pages 275-276 which appears to be this pre-birth primal, which Dr. Holden is describing). So I've had unusual primal experiences, but they are all in one set, in one context which is a sub-section of a larger reality, the nature of which I will unfold for you in
the following story.
* * *
Let's start the story when I was four. I started to have a nightmare,
every single morning at 5:00 to 5:02 A.M. which was the time I was
born. This nightmare occurred almost every night. And in it, I am
a five year old boy who is walking along a path in the woods, and
a bony skeletal hand reaches out through the bushes and grabs my collar,
hauls me roughly into the center of a clearing and I am placed up
on a marble altar of sorts, and held down by seven women skeletons
dressed in black. My first assailant, who I can now see, is also a
woman skeleton(The "woman skeletons'' - had long brown hair on their
skulls). dressed in black and the content of the nightmare which is
primary: she raises a sixteen inch black handled cooking knife above
me, and plunges it into my chest, and I feel my ribs break and I feel
my heart start to bleed. I go out like a candle and as far as I can
tell, I am dying. In the dream, there is part of the dream which includes
an out of body experience, because I am simultaneously the little
five or six year old boy on the one hand, but I am also twenty to
twenty five feet away on the outside of this clearing, watching this
little boy being stabbed to death, (which is also an very interesting
phenomena). It indicates that sometime in my experience, I had that
out-of-body experience which was registered as such in the dream.
At age 12, I had a particularly compelling version of this dream
and instead of waking up from this nightmare as I usually did with
a pulse rate of 40, some chest pains and near-paralysis, on this one
occasion, when I was 12 years old, I woke up unable to breathe, unable
to move, my head looped over to the right like a corpse, but I was
unusually wide awake. My pulse rate was exceedingly slow, not faster
than 20 beats per minute. At that time, I went more than three minutes
without breathing, and I was so full of death awareness that I was
certain that I would die, but the Lord of Hosts was not ready to take
me home yet, because after about three minutes without air I saw a light in front of my closet about fifteen feet away which looked
like a flashlight. The light got brighter and brighter, and brighter
until the other side of my room was so brilliantly lit with blue-white
light that I could not see the other side of the room.
And out of
the light stepped a man, about six feet tall, with honey brown hair
to his shoulders, with a mustache and a full beard. He was dressed in
white from his shoulders to the floor. He had on sandals, he had a
sash round his waist. He was the source of the light. And a wavefront
of heat and light left his face and neck area, and started across
the room toward me. At that point I had no idea who he was or what
sort of phenomena.
It took about 7 or 8 seconds for this wavefront
of light to come across the room and when it got to me, it seemed
that I ``dissolved.'' My whole body disintegrated. It became like
a mist or a vapor and terrifically strong power entered me.
It was
like the life force itself and the thing which characterized it more
than anything else is that I felt absolutely adored and loved and
in an instant I knew that I would be perfectly alright. I gasped for
air; the death awareness vanished; my pulse rate increased to about
50 or 60.
Suddenly I was able to move again and as I was struggling
to get my air again, this man said to me: "I have something very
important for you to do,'' and then vanished in an instant.
My childhood was so extraordinarily unpleasant, can you imagine
that I forgot that event?. I totally forgot it, and so painful day to day
that can you imagine I forgot the event? I totally forgot it. Jesus
Christ, the King of the universe appeared to me, saved my life, told
me he had something important for me to do, disappeared, and I forgot
it! And time passed, and time passed and time passed.
During my internship, which was exceedingly difficult for me, since as you probably gathered, from my writings in the primal journal, I am a parasympath. I am organized
into low pulse rate, low blood pressure, small pupils, central weakness,
a bias towards sleepiness, and so on. I virtually never experience
anxiety. I virtually never get angry. These are responses which were
burned out of me early on, not psychologically, but physically, since
part of the area of my stroke included the posterior hypothalamus,
where the sympathetic mass reaction is organized. And that was largely
unavailable to me, and so during my internship, I used rather large
amount of caffeine, and ritalin and dexedrine to function because
we had an extremely difficult obligation in front of us, several interns
had dropped out; but I had a magnificent obsession to become a doctor,
so I was practical about it. I used whatever were necessary for me
to accomplish my goal of becoming a physician.
During that time, when
I was using uppers, being pharmacologically a parasympath, getting
my pulse rate up to 80 or 90 most of the day, the recurrent nightmare
of being stabbed to death by a woman skeleton dressed in black just
about disappeared. I almost never had it because I was too ``up''
to have it apparently, but then came two years of neurology residency
and then two years on the Island of Guam with the U. S. Public Health
service, during which time I was underworked and overpaid, and I started
to get plenty of food, and plenty of rest, and not surprisingly after
about 12 to 15 months of this, and after having read The Primal Scream,
at this point my early feelings surfaced again with a vengeance, and
the recurrent nightmare returned.
It seemed that just reading the book, The Primal Scream, opened me up terrifically, because I started
to spontaneously primal on my own, and in February of 1974, I had
a completed birth primal in my bed, coming out of a nightmare about
a baby drowning and it was then that I went through a sequence, wide
awake, my body was writhing in S turns in a fashion you only see in
lizards, chameleons, snakes and fish.
I went through a sequence of
from 20 to 25 seconds without a heartbeat. During that time my lungs
filled up with blood plasma, because I was in acute heart failure
and it was then, in that moment that I had a total vivid scene of
the room in which I was born, and I knew that this was my birth sequence.
I also knew that was where my migraine came from and I had such catastrophic
head pain as part of that experience that I knew that brain tissue
was dying during it, and I was full of death awareness, and I was
sure that I would die, but at the end of that 20 to 25 seconds an
extraordinary thing happened.
There was a violent and powerful contraction of my entire chest and I brought up about a quart of fluid from my
lungs and my heart ``snapped'' right back into normal sinus rhythm,
and I was fine. I had no more migraine and I was back in the present.
It was in February 1974. So unlike sympaths who have difficulty getting
into their primal feelings, I just fell in hook, line and sinker.
I just fell into first line feelings months and months before I was
even at the Institute.
Well, at the end of my third year residency in 1974 I came out
to L A and started as Medical Director and Director of Research at
the Primal Institute and rather quickly integrated what I knew about
neurology and neurophysiology with the physiology of the primal response
and I must admit at the time, it was exceedingly interesting to me
and I was really involved in it. It was very, very easy for me to
primal. I never had a primal that was incomplete; unlike the struggle
and fail sympath. When I started into a feeling there was nothing
to stop it. I would just go on, and on until the feeling was through.
There were some primals that lasted 40 minutes long, some that were
2 hours long and some that were outrageously long, that required food
breaks in the middle, in order to actually have the fuel to complete
them, and those were five, six, six and a half hours long.
Nothing
stopped me, because I did not have that blast of anxiety and tension
which were recruited, when the pain got worse, to stop the feeling,
so for this reason, primal therapy worked for me with a tremendous
speed, including terrific suffering, deeper than most sympaths ever
experience, because sympaths are, by definition, defended. And I got
it over with in a rather short time.
Arthur Janov started primalling in 1967 and he's still not well.
That was 16 years ago. And because the nature of his trauma; the cord
wrapped around his neck, with an extremely high anxiety state as he
fought to get born, coupled with the fact that the harder he struggled
to get born the closer he came to dying, well he's a very defended
guy at his deepest levels and its hard for him to feel first line
feelings, and so his therapy isn't over yet, but mine was over in
36 months. My formal therapy started in April of 1975. My informal
therapy had started in February of 1974 and by September 1977 I reached
a point where I did not need to primal at all. It was marvelous. I
would go 8, 10, 12 weeks before I e ever needed to cry. And then it
would be a quickie, you know, five minutes second line primal with
a connection, in and out and over and then I'd go back to another
several months. I was feeling fine.
Time passed, time passed, time passed. Until the middle of
1979, more than 18 months after I stopped needing to primal, one Saturday
morning I woke up about 9 with a severe left hemi-cranial migraine.
pulse rate of about 40, and had deep suffering and thought that it
was my birth feeling and that I had to have a primal.
Well, I had spent 500 hours of agonized baby crying in my birth primals and they
had gone on in an inexorable sequence, 18 months, virtually non-stop
ending in March of 1976 after which I never again needed to have a
birth primal, so this was rather curious that now three and one-half
years later, up comes this apparent feeling and ``needing to have
a birth primal again'' and so it sort of generated a ``here we go
again'' attitude on me, on my part, but I knew that for me to feel
a feeling I would have to get my pulse rate up to about 60. I had
six cups of coffee and several no-doz tablets and my pulse rate was
still 40. Very unusual, I still couldn't get my pulse rate up and
my headache wasn't getting any better, and I was sort of ``locked
into'' this parasympathetic state of suffering with migraine. And
I wanted to get it over with, so I took two and a half milligrams
of ritalin to work up to the primal zone. Unlike the sympaths I never
needed to ``go down'' to feel; I always needed to ``go up'' to feel.
And I started in to what seemed like my birth primal sequence. But
the Lord of hosts had another plan as to how this was to end.
I started crying like a baby and a few seconds later had a complete and total
respiratory arrest. I was wide awake and alert; I was lying down on
the floor of my closet. I could not breathe at all. And this went
on and on and on and on and I had a thought, ``Hey maybe I'm going
to be the first person in primal therapy to die in this therapy.''
And it went on and on and it went way beyond the time I can voluntarily
hold my breath. I went to three to three and one-half minutes without air and
all of a sudden I had a vision.
The vision was in color. It was a rectangle made of two smaller rectangles, like split-screen television,
and it was present with my eyes open, or my eyes closed and I could
see my closet around the edges of the vision, neurologically then,
unique. Whatever it was, was inscribed on my brain. And the vision
content was as follows: On the left, coming out of the interior of
a filthy, dirty, Victorian house, was a male skeleton dressed in black
from head to foot, with his finger pointed out coming to touch me.
I recognized him right away. A guy from one of my nightmares, ``Mr.
Death.'' In the original nightmare which had occurred two years earlier,
three years earlier, something like that, Mr. Death had come to touch
me on my nose, and had gotten within six or eight inches of me and
I had looked at him right in the face which was a skull, and I had
said ``It's not my time yet'' and he had given a sick evil grin as
if to say ``I'll get you later,'' and so during the vision on the
left, here he comes again. On the right, against a iridescent royal
blue background of extravagant beauty, was a blazing, shimmering self-luminescent,
platinum colored Christian cross. And Michael Holden who never went
to church, who never read the Bible,reached this conclusion in an
instant,''Hey, you know what? I'm being offered a choice. I can choose
between ugly death or life with Jesus Christ.''
The vision stayed and it stayed and it stayed and it stayed. And all this time I'm in
respiratory arrest and I'm running out of air. When the vision started
to swim like water, I knew what this meant, that was the beginning
of brain death. And I said to myself,''This is it.'' And when I said
the word "it,'' the vision was torn apart from the center as if by
a blowtorch coming through a kleenex, with a mighty rushing noise
like wind or thunder. And I was face to face with a light, brighter
than the sun, with fire along its edges and it didn't hurt my eyes
at all and it was in the event that followed that I had sudden and
total recall of the event which had occurred at age 12 to me because
heat and light and life and strength and joy and love and P-O-W-E-R
came into my body once again, just like it had 26 years earlier, and
I ``dissolved.'' I became as a mist, I lost my weight, I lost my form,
I lost my shape, I didn't know where my fingers and toes were and
I had this compelling, total sense of being adored and the death awareness
vanished in an instant and I knew. I knew that God, Almighty had interceded
to save my life. That's quite an extraordinary event. Those two events,
the one at age 12 and the one at age 38, I think would suffice to
make anyone a born-again Christian.
But the Lord didn't stop there. Three and a half weeks, later
at 3:30 in the morning I was awaken from a sound sleep, by the compelling
sense that there was someone in the room with me, and I sat right
up in bed and looked .I didn't see anyone . I was dark adapted.
I could see my whole bedroom. My wife slept soundly at my right side.
I was phenomenally alert. I was not scared at all, but I was very
alert and I didn't see anyone in that room. But from the roof tree
of my house, which is 18 feet above the floor, I heard a loud, kind,
authoritative man's voice speak to me and say this: "I am the truth
and the truth will set you free." "I am the truth and the truth will
set you free." And do you know what? I knew who was talking to
me. The Bible says he rose from the dead. Jesus Christ was talking
to me, Praise God, what a marvelous thing. I didn't earn it and I
didn't deserve it. I didn't go looking for it, but the King of the
universe reached down to save me. Really, quite extraordinary.
Well thereafter, one thing led to another, I started praying a great deal
started reading the Bible. I had such a hunger to read the Bible.
I was like a man, who was dying of thirst for an entire lifetime.
I couldn't get enough of the Bible I was reading 80, 90, 100 pages
of the Bible a day. I was devouring scripture, like a person whose
life depended upon it. Shortly thereafter, I asked Jesus Christ to
come into my heart to be my Savior. I confessed that I was a sinner,
that there was nothing I could do to save myself. I thanked God for
sending his Son to die for me. Realizing that I of all people, was
on death row. The Bible says, ``All have sinned and fallen short of
the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death,'' which means eternal
separation from god, ``but the gift of God is eternal life through
Jesus Christ,'' so you and I are like people who are on death row.
We were just waiting for execution, and in the last minute in the
fullness of time, Jesus Christ steps into the cell and says, to Michael
Holden and to Larry King and to any one else who will receive him,
``Hey,-- you go free; I am going to take the rap for you.''
This is what the word atonement means. Jesus Christ, the son
of God, a spiritual individual, he who knew no sin, became sin for
us so that we might obtain the righteousness of God. So in your letter
to me of 8-13-83 you talk of spirit, you talk about transcendental,
you talk about mystical, but I tell you it ain't none of those, it's
Jesus Christ. Supernatural power, yes, you bet, plenty of it. God
almighty, there really is a God almighty, sent his son in the fullness
of time that you and I and anyone else who might receive him might
go free and do you know I have this fantasy that people who sought
primal therapy, especially need Jesus Christ, because they are the
wounded, they're the beaten, they're the downtrodden, they're the
battered, they're the bruised, they're the broken people, but what
was it Jesus Christ said: ``This is my body which is broken for you.''
The gospel of John records this tragic and powerful fact. ``He
came to His own people'', he was a Jew remember, ``and His own people
did not receive him, but to those who did receive Him, to those he
gave the right to become the children of God, even to those who believe
in His Name.''And God commended his love to us, it is written, that
while we were still sinners, Jesus Christ died for us. This is an
extraordinary thing I'm telling you.
You've got to know, from all the articles I wrote, from the book
I co-authored with Arthur Janov (Transcriber's Note: Primal Man: The New Consciousness), how deeply involved I was with primal
therapy, how interested I was in primal therapy, but I'll tell you
the truth, primal therapy can make your body feel a little better,
but it cannot save your soul!
There were several remarkable interfaces between primal therapy
and the Lord in the months that followed my conversion. As I mentioned
in my letter to you: On October 29, 1979, on a beautiful fall day
in Virginia Beach, at a Christian Broadcasting Network seminar, aided
and assisted by a charismatic preacher named Harold Bradesen, a marvelous
man, I asked Jesus Christ to baptize me in the fullness of the Holy
Spirit like the disciples were baptized at Pentecost. It was a beautiful
Fall day, crisp, clear and cloudless. The sun at noon was brilliantly
bright above my left shoulder. At the end of the prayer when I said
``Thank you Jesus, I accept'', there appeared a light in Heaven to
my right, above my right shoulder which was so bright it made the
sun look like the moon. And it seemed a laser about a foot and a half
across, came out of heaven and it came into my body, and I was filled
to overflowing with the Holy Spirit of God. I was wide awake and alert.
This was no dream. And at the moment it happened (this is not the
only time this has happened to me), I spoke in tongues, I spoke a
language I never learned, and it was beautiful and I recognized it
because I have heard other people speak in tongues, Aramaic.
It was a language which Jesus himself spoke. I spoke in tongues
fluently then. And at the moment of infilling of this tremendous rush
of heat and life and joy and strength and love and power, I saw a
filthy disgusting black, ugly thing come out of my feet. And I felt
it come out of my body like someone was pulling off a pair of socks
from me. And Harold Bradesen who was right next to me, was given at
that moment a gift of the holy spirit which is called discernment
of spirits and he saw it too, and said, ``Michael what happened to
you is described in the Book of Romans 8:2. Go read it.'' I said,
``OK, I will.'' It says this: ``For the law of the spirit of life
in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.'' And
suddenly, in a flash with a lifetime of insights I knew that for 38
years I had the spirit of death in me.
Suddenly it made sense, why I told psychotherapists and psychoanalysts without number in my childhood,
``You don't understand, I already know death. Death is a companion
to me. I know death.'' It didn't compute. There is nothing in Freud,
that makes sense out of that. And they would say things like, ``Yea,
sure kid, yea sure, yea, go play with your toys, and don't bother
me any more.''
But suddenly I knew. That's why for 38 years I had been pre-occupied
with death. Suddenly that nightmare made perfect sense. Satan had
been trying to get me, but good, but Jesus Christ had other plans.
And since he has all the power, He won. He got me. He paid for me
with his own blood. So here I am, Michael Holden, former director
of the Primal Institute, who almost single handedly, defined the physiology
of the primal response, who probably knows more about the biology
and the physiology of primal therapy than any man living, understanding
and realizing that it all counts for nothing and is as the apostle
Paul says, to be counted as dung because of the glory of knowing Jesus
Christ!
Now, wonder upon wonder, glory upon glory, I've had some extravagant
and marvelous things happen to me over the past year. One of the things
I learned about a year and a half ago is that Father God considers
it extremely important that when we pray, we pray to the Father in
the name of Jesus, just like Jesus told us to do in the Gospel of
John. The prayers make no sense at all and don't reach the throne
room unless you've asked Jesus Christ to be your savior and confess
to Him that you are a sinner, and that you need Him to save you. At
that point you become born again. I learned, about 18 months ago,
that Father God, considers it very important that when we pray, after
we pray, we wait. Well how long can we wait, 30 minutes? 60 minutes?
90 minutes? Jesus said to Peter, outside the Garden of Gethsemene, when Peter, his trusted friend, fell asleep. (The King of the universe
was sweating blood, contemplating the upcoming crucifixion and his
trusted friend, Peter, fell asleep.) He said to him, ``What!, could
you not wait for me one hour?''
Well, in June of 1982, on a Friday night, I decided to apply
the principle. I was going to wait upon the Lord. Jeremiah, had prophesied
in the first person, in the words of God, ``If you will seek Me with
your whole heart, you will find Me.'' That's a promise from God. God
does not lie. So I was applying the principle, believing His word,
I was seeking God with my whole heart. I stopped praying at about
midnight, and I waited and I waited, and I waited and I waited and
I waited. I was sitting cross-legged, in front of my Bible in my den,
in the middle of the night in Malibu, a beautiful night, quiet, just
waiting, wide awake, not asleep. At about 1:30 in the morning the
following sequence occurred. I saw a blast of blue-white light behind
my eyes, suddenly it went from my eyes to my whole body and my whole
body filled up with blue-white light, brighter than a flashbulb and
once again just as I had described to you before on this tape, I ``dissolved,''
I became a mist, I became a vapor, I lost my shape, my form, my weight,
my gravity. I didn't know where my hands and feet were. I had a slight
migraine on the left side of my head. It was gone. I had a little
back-ache, because I had been sitting cross-legged for an hour and
a half. It was gone. And suddenly, I had this strong feeling that
I was being moved suddenly, somewhere. Sure enough, in front of my
closed eyes two or three seconds later, I beheld a huge, snow-white
rectangle, three dimensional, ten feet wide, ten feet deep and maybe
twenty feet high. And as it clarified for me, I realized that I was
looking at a throne. And I could see through it. The throne was made
of light, and my eyes drifted up and praise God! I saw He who sat
upon the throne, and for over a minute I looked right into the face
of Jesus Christ, the King, the Savior. I've been there. I saw it with
my own eyes, It's true. He lives.
Hear people, hear the words of Michael Holden, a witness of the
Lord. I was there. He's alive, and he's coming back in ``about ten
years.''(My present understanding is that Christ will return sometime
around 1996. (Note made March, 1987)) So the time is short. The time
to ask Him in your life is immediately. Praise God, what an experience!
When I first saw him, I recognized him, because his facial features
are identical to the facial features on the Shroud of Turin. Of course
I then believe that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus
Christ and no one could convince me otherwise, because I've seen him.
I know what he looks like. I was there. He by the way, appears to
be made of light, which by the way, is what the Bible says.''A God
of Light, in whom there is no darkness at all.'' Praise God, that
is not the only time I've been to the throne room. I didn't earn it.
I don't deserve it.
About three years ago when I was still at the Primal Institute,
one afternoon I had a sudden onset of sleepiness and I took a short
nap in the staff room, and I had a dream and Jesus Christ appeared
to me in the dream and he stood about four feet away and said to me,
``You're a witness.'' And that is exactly what I'm doing right now,
to Larry King, Larry King's friends, and anyone who ever hears this
tape know for certainty that the Son of God came to earth, put on
flesh like you and I wear, and in flesh, He who knew no sin, became
sin for us so that we might go free, that we might obtain the righteousness
of God. He paid the price.
It ain't Buddha folks, it ain't Khrisna, it ain't Mormon, it ain't Jim Smith, it ain't Ragjnessh Bhaghwan,
up in Oregon. It ain't Rev. Moon, it ain't Mohammed. Jesus Christ
is the way. He said, ``I am the way, the truth and the light and no
one comes to the Father but through me.'' Amen. It's true. No man
on earth ever said these words, except Jesus Christ. ``I am the Resurrection
and the Life. Whosoever believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall
he live. And if a man lives, and believes in me, he will never die.''
Incredible, incredible words and do you know what? They're true. While
I was there. While I was in the throne room, gazing at the face of
my Redeemer, the face of perfection, the face of perfect honesty,
a face without guile, a face full of love. I felt absolutely adored
and loved and taken care of. I felt completely forgiven. And I was
very aware of the ways in which I fall short of the mark. And suddenly
I saw with my eyes, and suddenly I understood how dirty and contaminated
and polluted we are. The Psalmist King David, had mused philosophically
and questioningly in one of his psalms: ``Oh Lord, what is man, that
thou are mindful of him?.'' And do you know what, I wonder about the
same thing. God, why did you care? I mean you're so perfect and we're
so wretched. Why did you care? Well, the answer is to be found in
John 3:16. A scripture many people have heard, but it's absolutely
true. ``God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son,
and that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but should
have eternal life.'' And I've told you before, and I'll tell you again.
He commended his love towards us and while we were still sinners,
Jesus Christ died for us. It's an extraordinary event in human history.
God in human form, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, came
to earth, and paid the price, so that we could go free.
Well, therefore, it is my earnest hope that you will not dabble
in spiritism, that you will not dabble in cults, that you will not
expect more from primal therapy than what it can actually give you,
that you will not take reincarnation seriously, but that you will
turn your whole focus and attention to He who is the truth, because
Jesus Christ is the truth. One point I want to make is that there
is absolutely nothing which is vague or nonspecific about what I'm
telling you. God is not a force. The Holy Spirit is not simply power.
In heavenly math, there is a mystery that we cannot comprehend, but
I can speak about for you and that is the mystery of the Trinity. Each
one of the members of the triune Godhead have personality. They all
share the same spirit. And one day when I was earnestly considering
the nature of the Trinity, God spoke to me plain as day and he said:
``We have one purpose'' That seemed to answer all of my questions
for the time being. But suffice it to say, there is God the Father,
there is God the Son, Jesus Christ, and there is God the Holy Spirit.
And God has not only entered human history as a man and paid the price
that we might go free, but He left us His book to tell us quite a
lot about Himself. His book, the Holy Bible, I earnestly recommend
that you dig, that you seek, that you find the truth. The place to
start as far as I'm concerned is with the Gospel of John. It's a synopsis
of the three year ministry of Jesus Christ. That's where you find
out who Jesus Christ is, what he did for you.
What does the phrase ``born again'' mean? Born again means that
the spirit of the living God comes into you and that you are born
of the spirit. In John:3 is recorded a conversation between Jesus
and a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemous. Nicodemous came to him
by night and said: ``Master you must be from God for no one could
do the things you do unless he comes from God.'' Jesus used the opportunity
to change the subject and He said: ``I tell you truly, unless a man
is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemous, a reasonable
man, well educated said: ``How can a man, fully grown, enter again
into his mother's womb a second time, and be born a second time?''
Jesus said, ``Unless a man is born of woman and of the spirit he cannot
see the kingdom of God, for that which is born of flesh, is flesh,
and that which is born of spirit is spirit. I tell you truly, you
must be born again. Do not marvel at what I have said, you must be
born again.''
So a person who might read that might say Ok, Doc, that's
fine, how do I get born again? Well, Romans 10:9 says ``if you will
confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your
heart that God has raised him from the dead you will be saved.'' And
I've enclosed in this letter a tract which has in it the Sinner's
Prayer. And if you or any of your friends are certain that you would
like to become born again people and know of a certainty that if you
died tomorrow you'd go to paradise to be with Christ, you can say
that prayer out loud with your mouth and if it comes from your heart,
it'll happen and you'll become born again, and you'll become an adopted
son or an adopted daughter of God and you'll enter the family of God
and you'll become a regenerate person, a human being made whole.
You see, the truth is we're not just monkeys just wandering around
in bodies doing the best we can. We're created beings, we have a spirit
inside of us and by some mystery in ages past that we dimly understand
the entire human race became separated from God through sin. But we
do know, however, that the soul will live forever. In the book of
Genesis, you can read the words that God breathed on Adam and he became
a living soul. That means that he will live, forever and ever and
ever.
Now the question is, after your sojourn in the flesh, in your
earth suit for your three score and ten, where is that eternal soul
going to spend eternity? Well, my understanding of the possible options
are as follows: If you're not born again, you spend eternity in the
lake of fire. That is called the second death. The first death is
the separation of your spirit from your body. The second is the separation
of your spirit from God. That's a bad, bad option. Another option
is that you can get born again, and become an overcomer. You want
to know what an overcomer is? Read the first three chapters of the
book of Revelation and everywhere Jesus says ``To he who overcomes''
you highlight it. An overcomer is one who receives the very best of
what God has to offer, who lives forever in the holy city, new Jerusalem,
on the new earth surrounded by the new Heaven. Now if you happen to
be a born again person but you're not an overcomer then you'll live
in the nations outside of the holy city. Many Christians don't know
that but if you read Revelations:20 and 21 and 22 and highlight the
word `nations' wherever you find it, you'll see. There are some Christians
in the holy city but most are outside the holy city in the nations.
I for one, want to spend eternity in the holy city with Jesus Christ
and Father God.
How do you become an overcomer, Doc? Well, in 1:John you can read, you can overcome the lust of the eyes, that's the love
of things, the lust of the flesh, that's all the things which make
the body feel good, the pride of life which is wanting to live in
the flesh more than to die sacrificially for Jesus Christ, if it's
required of you. And fourth, in the name of Jesus Christ, you overcome
the evil one.
On an occasion, a few month's ago, during prayer, I saw him.
He's not a fellow with horns. He's not red. He doesn't have a tail.
He looks like a man. He's got a very dark, dark face. There's no light
in him at all. He's got a close cut beard, he kind out looks like a Greek.
Just a well trimmed, short mustache. In this vision of the king of
evil which I had one night during prayer, he spat at me, and I had
such a compelling sense of his spitting at me that I turned my head,
thinking that I was going to get hit with his spit, but the moment
that the spit left his lips, the Holy Spirit spoke to me in the spirit,
in my mind, like a well formed thought, and he said ``We are not ignorant
of his devices,'' which is scripture, that Paul said in one of his
letters. And the spit bounced off of a barrier which was about four
feet outside of my body like an invisible shield. Well, it is an invisible
shield. It's the blood of Christ which surrounds me wherever I go.
And in the name of Jesus Christ I am more than a conqueror through
him who loves me. Now I've seen Satan, he's real. There is a devil
and he's out to destroy the world, and you don't have to read the
newspapers too closely to see how well he's succeeding.
Getting back to being an overcomer. You overcome the lust of
the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life and in name of
Jesus you overcome the evil one. In the book of Revelation it speaks
of the overcomer and says: ``They overcame by the blood of the lamb,
and the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives
even unto death.'' Now, one thing I need to briefly run by you, because
God has not only anointed me to speak of the fact that this is still
the acceptable year of the Lord, but he has anointed me to tell you
of the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn. Your
reference to that is Isaias:61 and the beginning of the Gospel of
Mark.
It is implied throughout scripture in the New Testament, that
Jesus Christ is coming back again. And a reading of the Book of Revelation
indicates that prior to his coming there is going to be a time of
trouble such as never was, since there was a nation. That's the way
Daniel put it. And Jesus himself said in Matthew:24, ``There will
be a time of trouble such as never was since the foundation of the
earth, and unless those days had been shortened, all flesh would perish,
but for the sake of the elect, the special people of God, those days
will be shortened. So where are we on God's timetable? Where are we
on God's clock?
Dear people, know for certainty that you and I are
living in the last generation of man. The Lord has given me dreams,
and prophesies and words of knowledge, and visions and has shown me
what's coming. Nuclear war is coming to America. There will be troops
in our land. There will be tidal waves. There will be famine. There
will be earthquakes. And my question for anyone is this. Who's ready
for that? Well, I think the only answer to that is, those people who
know that they know that they know that they know, that they belong
to God. Now God has promised throughout the Old and New Testament
to take care of His people in the time of trouble.
The God who delivered Shadrach, Mishach and Abdenago from the
fire is fully prepared, fully able and utterly committed to deliver
his people from the fire this time. Now know for a certainty that
the message of the Gospel is not a message of fear. God does not want
people to come to Him through fear,(but I suspect a lot of people
will come to Him through fear), but that was not intention. God loves
you, He adores you. He loves you with an everlasting love that never
fails. He loves you so much that he sent His own son to die for you.
But, God is holy, God is righteous.
What I saw of Jesus Christ on his throne, a God of light, with no darkness at all, I reflected on
the words of Job. Job had said when he saw God in the whirlwind: ``I
had heard about you by the hearing of my ears, but now my eyes see
you in the seeing of my eyes and, therefore (interesting word!), therefore
I abhor myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.'' You see most human
beings have no concept of what the word ``holy'' means. But, dear
people, I was there with my own eyes, and I gazed upon the Holy One
of Israel. I saw the king Jesus Christ, King of Kings, Lord of Lords,
and my testimony to you as God is my witness is that He is perfect.
And because God is perfect all sin, all wrong, all injustice, all
robbery, all false witness, all cruelty, all corruption, must of necessity
be paid back. And it is God's intention to pay it back, altogether,
in a very short time.
Have you heard the parable of the wheat and weeds? A man came to his master and said, ``Master, didn't you plant
good seed?'' There's weeds and wheat coming up in the fields. And
the master said. ``An enemy has done this. He's planted weeds in with
my wheat.'' And the servant said, ``Master do you want me to go pull
out the weeds?'' And the master said, ``Let them both grow together.
At the time of the harvest, I'll gather the weeds and burn them, and
I'll gather the wheat into my barn.'' And in Romans:12 we read ``Vengeance
is mine said the Lord of Hosts.'' And that is said that we might heed
his instruction to us, ``Do not repay evil for evil, but overcome
evil with good,'' (because there is a day of wrath of the Lord.) And
dear people, it is not very far away. Long before you and I will die
a natural death in the flesh as old men and as old women, Jesus Christ
is coming back again, and before he does, we're going to see the day
of the Lord.
Now if you would like to have a broad brush of God's timetable,
I'll share it with you, that you might grow in the fear of the Lord.
Proverbs 9:10 says that, ``The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.'' Ecclesiastes
ends his chapter by saying, ``Let us state the conclusion of the whole
matter, fear God and keep his commandants, for this is the whole duty
of man, for God will bring in judgment every secret thing, whether
it be for good or for evil.'' The Lord told a woman named Pat Brooks,
a Christian author, who wrote a book called Christian, Wake Up that
in 1980 with the eruption of Mt. St Helens, the time of sorrows, the
time of birth pangs began, so it gives us a good indication of where
we are in God's timetable. What is coming next is nation warring against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And if this was not extraordinary
enough, there's a very godly lady from Montgomery, Alabama, who was
told by the Lord one night to make a vertical bar chart and label
it 1983 to 1990, and call it countdown to the Great Tribulation.
The Great Tribulation is described in Matthew:24, Luke:21, Mark:13,
as a time of troubles such as never was since there was a nation.
It's going to start about in 1992. That's when the age of Anti-Christ
begins. Now I was given to know in a dream and a word of knowledge
which followed it on 5-2-82 that the Anti-Christ, the coming world
dictator is already alive.(He was born in February, 1960.) That he
is a man and that he has made his commitment already to Satan. He
is just waiting to be revealed. Folks it's going to be in about nine
years. Are you ready? He is given power to wage war with the saints
and to overcome them, for forty-two months.
A very important thing I need to tell you, is that the universal product code which you see inscribed on everything you buy in the stores, the computer bar code,
those stripes that are on everything. Look very carefully at them.
On the left, on the dead center, and on the right are two lines. And
if you look at the right kind of code which happens to have the number
6 to the right of center, you'll see that those two lines are identical
to the form of a (right sided) number 6. In other words, built into
the universal product code, used in every country of the world is
the number 6 6 6. Most people don't know the details of what that
means. They know it is Satan's number. But let's make is more specific.
Turn to Revelation:13 where you can read these words, speaking of
the coming world dictator, the anti-Christ, John wrote ``He causes
all, small and great, rich and poor, free and bond to receive a mark
on their right hand or in their forehead, that no man could buy or
sell unless he had the mark or the name of the beast or the number
of his name. Here is the mind which has wisdom, let he who has understanding
calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man and
his number is 666.'' So, what is now being used for a thing-control
soon, about nine years from now, will be used for people-control.
But dear people, I urge you by the mercies of God, to never, ever,
ever, ever take that mark. Because, Revelations:14 makes it abundantly
clear with the message of the third angel, that if any man or woman
takes that mark into the skin of their right hand or forehead that
they will spend eternity in the lake of fire, ``guaranteed damnation,''
and conversely if any man will die; refusing to take that mark, they
save their soul. Boy, that's a tough way to get into the kingdom but
that's one way to do it.
If in principle you will choose God's way instead of Satan's
way, God will bring you into the kingdom, His kingdom, but it doesn't
have to be so rough. It could be much better than that. Psalm:91 records
this. Starting out with these beautiful poetic words, ``He who dwells
in the secret place of the most high, shall abide in the shadow of
the almighty.'' And then further down, it records, ``A thousand shall
fall at your left hand, ten thousand at your right side, but it will
not come nigh unto you. Only with your eyes will you look and behold
the reward of the wicked, for he shall give his angels charge over
you to keep you in all your ways. They will bear you up in their arms,
less you dash your foot against a stone.'' I think there is a way
for Christians to get through the great tribulation, the protection
of the most high. If you trust in God, he will deliver you. But you
can't give glory to God, you can't work for him, you can't witness
for him, unless you're born again. Jesus Christ is the way.
What an extraordinary thing! An utter heathen, who knew not God,
was spoken to by Jesus Christ at age 12, forgot about it, and came
to the Lord, utterly at age 38. And now at age 42, Michael Holden
is a servant of the Lord. I'm telling you the truth, people, hear
my words, get it together while there's still time. Seek the Lord
your God, while yet he still may be found, for it is still the acceptable
year of the Lord. It is still possible for you to get into the kingdom,
but sometimes around 1996 when Jesus Christ comes back for the Church,
and the Rapture occurs, and the dead in Christ and the alive in Christ
rise to meet him in the air. After that moment, the door is shut,
and there is no more salvation, and there is no more getting in the
kingdom, and everyone else roasts. Grim, grim prospect. You don't
have to be lost. God has provided a way for you. For nearly two thousand
years, with loving kindness and patience he has held out his arms
to you. And he says, won't you accept the free gift I send you? Won't
you accept the truth? Do you remember what Moses said to the Israelites
on behalf of God? He said, ``This day, in your hearing, I hold before
you life and death, now therefore, choose life.'' Now that's my same
message to you guys. Choose life. Jesus Christ is the way. It's not
too late. There's still time.
Primal therapy is interesting. Primal therapy is a resource for
man. Primal therapy is a way to lower your vital signs. Primal therapy
is a way to get Pain out of your body, but primal therapy cannot save
your soul. Now you might be interested to know that I had levels of
pain, and let's call it primal Pain cause that's what it was, so deep
that primal therapy couldn't touch it. When I got to a certain depth
of pain, my body knew that if I went after those Pains, I'd die and
because I'm a parasympath, it almost happened one night, but, as you've
gathered it wasn't my time yet. I forget the exact time, I think it
was in 1980.
I had had surgery on my forehead, to take off some basal
cell carcinomas because of exposure to the sun, and six weeks later
I started to cry real hard, because of something I'd seen on television.
And in my crying I cried out to God, for Him to forgive me and then
an extraordinary thing happened.
Á la the primal mode, to experience
the way it was, instead of the way it came through all that defense
and repression, I started to re-experience the incision on my forehead,
over again, without anesthetic. Well folks you know that scalpel went
down from the surface of my skin down to the bone and that was an
unbearable stimulus.
For a guy who had nearly died with migraine and stroke, and near
heart attack at birth, that was just too much. And as I felt the scalpel
coming across my forehead from left to right, in my mind's eye I entered
a black trumpet, and I started to sink down, down, down, down, and
I knew that if I got to the bottom the trumpet I would certainly have
died because I had accelerating death awareness as I was going. I
was screaming at the top of my lungs, a scream that would break glass,
and about seven-eights of the way down, I heard a man's voice, right
between my ears, it was not a thought, it was a voice. The voice said,
``God is with you,'' and in an instant I was cold sober and I was
sitting on the edge of my sofa and I didn't need to cry anymore, because
God knew that if I'd finished that feeling, I'd have died and it was
not my time yet. So interesting. Interesting.
I've been at the interface of primal therapy healing where it ends,
where the body can't go any further, because it will die if it does
and where God's healing begins. It's amazing. God is able to do in
the twinkling of an eye what years of primalling cannot accomplish.
So do you know what? Primal therapy is not the cure for neurosis.
It helps. But it is not the cure for neurosis. God is the cure for
neurosis, because God can take all pain out of you. God has graciously
done that for me. I consider myself absolutely pain free. I've asked
the Lord to come into the cellar of my life and clean me out. And
folks, I'm clean. No more primal Pain, no more reservoir, no more
nightmares, no more death awareness, no more primal Pain nightmares,
no sick behaviors. Praise God. It's a lot better than primal therapy
to be a Christian.
It would be a great service to the Lord of Hosts, a marvelous
bit of evangelism if you have the guts to play this tape over a PA
system at the IPA, that they might hear the words of Michael Holden,
one of the original thinkers and profound workers in the research
of primal therapy telling you that primal therapy doesn't hold a candle
to the truth, that Jesus Christ is the truth. I don't know if you
have the inclination to do that, but I surely hope so. Great would
be your reward in Heaven if you could get this message out to hundreds
or even thousands of people who are really interested in primal therapy,
because they'll hear it straight like it really is. Primal therapy is not the cure for neurosis. What I'm proposing is holy primal therapy.
It's a whole lot better.
Well, God bless you all. I really hope that each of you comes to know the truth, comes to know the goodness, the
love, the marvelous peace of knowing the King. The Lord of Hosts is
His name, Jesus is His name. In the name of Jesus Christ, I hold before
you life and death. Choose life. May God richly bless you all.
End of tape.
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