One of the most fascinating and mysterious things that sometimes takes place during mediumistic seances or spiritual sessions is the sudden appearance of common objects out of nowhere. These objects are known as “apports,” from the French word apporter, meaning “to bring.”

During the time of the late sculptor and National Artist Guillermo Tolentino, former president of the Union Espiritista Cristiana de Filipinas, many common objects such as stones, twigs, fruits and flowers suddenly appeared in the room out of nowhere during healing sessions and mediumistic seances.

In another part of the world the great Indian spiritual guru Satya Sai Baba is said to be able to materialize rings, ashes and figurines of Indian gods at will. He would simply wave his empty hand gently, and presto! Something appears in his palm like magic. He is known to have given such apports to numerous people in his ashram.

A Filipino faith healer once told me that he met a wise, old hermit in mystical Mount Banahaw in Dolores, Quezon. This hermit offered him a guava fruit that the hermit had materialized out of nothing in front of him. He said the guava tasted good when he ate it, proving it was no mere illusion.

Apports used to be associated with poltergeist ghosts. Stones would be hurled into a room from an open window, although nobody was outside. Later, such poltergeist phenomena were attributed by psychic investigators to the workings of the subconscious mind of an adolescent girl in the house, like in the movie “Carrie.”

Dead cockroach

What exactly apports are, no one can tell for sure. All that is known is that such objects are as real as any material object can be. Where they come from is harder to determine.

During a spiritual healing session, a lot of things can suddenly appear from the bodies of patients, aside from blood and diseased tissues. For example, I have actually seen a dead cockroach retrieved by a healer from inside the stomach of a Chinese patient, long strands of hair from an old woman’s stomach, as well as abaca and plastic twine straw from other patients. A close relative of mine said he even saw a small live frog jump out of the stomach of another patient while a faith healer-psychic surgeon was operating on him.

These patients are believed to be victims of witchcraft and the objects found were supposedly placed there by the witch or sorcerer.

The process of materialization or of producing objects out of nowhere is no less mysterious.

Sometimes, these objects merely appear without any effort or even knowledge on the part of the medium or psychic. For instance, on one occasion, a healer told me that while he was blessing a bottle of water brought to him by a patient, a small pebble or stone suddenly appeared at the bottom of the bottle. He could not explain where it came from, nor what he did to produce such an effect.

We read in the Bible that Jesus Christ fed 4,000 to 5,000 hungry people with a few pieces of bread and fish. And the baskets still had a few left after all had eaten. And He said, “Everything I have done, you can also do, and much more than this.”

Warning

Sometimes, an apport can be symbolic or a warning from the spirit world. I recall that many years ago, two women and I went with faith healer Alex Orbito to a mystical cave in Pangasinan. While inside the cave, the healer was suddenly pushed into the pool of water by a mysterious force. It was pitch dark in the cave.

When the healer surfaced from the water, he said the spirit gave us some gifts. They were pieces of ordinary looking garden stones or pebbles. The healer handed me one and gave the other to one of the women.

The stone that went to this woman contained an outline of a figure that resembled a human fetus. At that time, we paid no attention to that figure clearly etched on the stone. Several months later, that woman had an abortion!

Our knowledge of apports is still very limited. It is possible they are products of the human mind itself, the materialization of thought and mental images.

The idea is staggering and awesome but not entirely incredible. In the ancient mystery schools of both East and West, it is an accepted teaching that “thoughts are things,” that there is no real distinction between what is thought of and what is objective reality. Both are one.

In fact, the monistic doctrine states that duality is an illusion, and that in the ultimate analysis, everything is one as indicated in the Hindu doctrine that “everything is Brahman.”

That apports, which are material, could have been created by the mind (which is spiritual) is not that surprising. For ultimately, everything in the material universe came from the spirit.

The origin or source of everything is God, who is spirit. Spirits become matter when their vibrations are slowed down. What we call matter is, in reality, “condensed spirit.”

As the greatest British physicist James Jeans said, “This world is beginning to look like a big thought, rather than a great machine.”

Tel. 88107245, 0998-9886292; email [email protected]. Watch “Apports: An Interview with Stanley Krippner” on New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove on YouTube.