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RE: A CASE OF OBSESSION

Apr 20, 2005 06:37 AM
by W.Dallas TenBroeck


Wednesday, April 20, 2005


Dear Friends:

The following may be of assistance, as THEOSOPHY teaches:


A CASE OF OBSESSION

[Extracts from an Article by H. P. Blavatsky.]


THE particulars of the case of "obsession," alluded to in the April number
of this magazine, are given in the following letter from a respectable
English medical man who is in attendance upon the victim:-- 

“I take the liberty of addressing you in the cause of humanity, with the
intention of exciting your sympathies and obtaining all the aid in your
power to afford, in a case of "control." You will understand that the
gentleman is being made a medium against his wish, through having attended a
few séances for the purpose of witnessing "materialization." 

Ever since, he has been more or less subject to a series of persecutions by
the "controlling" spirit and, in spite of every effort of his to throw off
the influence, he has been made to suffer most shamefully and painfully in
very many ways and under most trying and aggravating circumstances,
especially by his thoughts being forced into forbidden channels without
external causes being present--the bodily functions overruled, even being
caused to bite his tongue and cheeks severely whilst eating, &c., and
subjected to every species of petty annoyances which will serve as a means
for the "control" (unknown) to sustain and establish the connection. The
details are in their most painful features not such as I can write to you;
but if there be any means known to you whereby the influence can be
diverted, and it is thought necessary to be more particular in my
description of this case, I will send you all the information I possess. “


So little is known in India of the latest and most startling phase of
Western mediumistic phenomena--"materialization,"--that a few words of
explanation are needed to make this case understood. 

Briefly, then, for several years, in the presence of certain mediums in
America and Europe, there have been seen, often under good test conditions,
apparitions of the dead, which in every respect seem like living human
beings. They walk about, write messages to present and absent friends, speak
audibly in the languages familiar to them in life, even though the medium
may be unacquainted with them, and are dressed in the garb they wore when
alive. 

Many cases of fraudulent personation of the dead have been detected,
pretended mediums have sometimes gone on for years deceiving the credulous,
and real ones, whose psychical powers have been apparently proved beyond
doubt, have been caught playing tricks in some evil hour when they have
yielded to either the love of money or notoriety. Still, making every
allowance for all these, there is a residuum of veritable cases of the
materialization, or the making visible, tangible and audible of portrait
figures of dead people. 

These wonderful phenomena have been variously regarded by investigators. 

Most Spiritualists have looked upon them as the most precious proofs of the
soul-survival; while Theosophists, acquainted with the views of the ancient
Theurgists, and the still more ancient Aryan philosophers, have viewed them
as at best misleading deceptions of the senses, fraught with danger to the
physical and moral natures of both medium and spectator--if the latter
chances to be susceptible to certain psychical influences. 

These students of Occultism have noticed that the mediums for
materializations have too often been ruined in health by the drain upon
their systems, and wrecked in morals. They have over and again warned the
Spiritualistic public that mediumship was a most dangerous gift, one only to
be tolerated under great precautions. And for this they have received much
abuse and few thanks. Still one's duty must be done at every cost, and the
case now before us affords a valuable text for one more bit of friendly
counsel. 

We need not stop to discuss the question whether the so-called materialized
forms above described are or are not those of the deceased they look like.
That may be held in reserve until the bottom facts of Oriental psychical
science are better understood. Nor need we argue as to whether there has
ever been an authentic materialization. 

The London experiences of Mr. William Crookes, F.R.S., and the American ones
of Colonel Olcott, both so widely known and of so convincing a character,
give us a sufficient basis of fact to argue upon. We assume the reality of
materializations, and shall take the instance cited by the English physician
as a subject for diagnosis. 

The patient then is described as having been "controlled" since attending
"circles" where there were materializations, and as having become the
bond-slave of some evil powers which force him to say and do painful and
even disgusting things, despite his resistance. 


[ U L T -- H P B Articles II 486; THEOSOPHIST, May 1880 ]

=======================

OBSESSION

Why is this? How can a man be compelled to so act against his will? What is
Obsession? 

Three brief questions these are, but most difficult to explain to an
uninitiated public. The laws of Obsession can only be well understood by him
who has sounded the depths of Indian philosophy. 

The only clue to the secret, which the West possesses, is contained in that
most beneficent science, Magnetism or Mesmerism. That does teach the
existence of a vital fluid within and about the human being; the fact of
different human polarities; and the possibility of one person projecting
this fluid or force at will, to and upon another person differently
polarized. 

Baron Reichenbach's theory of Odyle or Odic force shows us the existence of
this same fluid in the mineral and vegetable as well as the animal kingdoms.
To complete the chain of evidence, Buchanan's discovery of the
psychometrical faculty in man enables us to prove, by the help of this
faculty, that a subtle influence is exerted by people upon the houses and
even the localities they live in, the paper they write upon, the clothing
they wear, the portion of the Universal Ether (the Aryan Akasa) they exist
in--and that this is a permanent influence, perceptible even at the most
distant epochs from the time when the individual lived and exerted this
influence. In one word, we may say that the discoveries of Western science
corroborate most fully the hints thrown out by Greek sages and the more
defined theories of certain Indian philosophers. 

Indians and Buddhists believe alike that thought and deed are both material,
that they survive, that the evil desires and the good ones of a man environ
him in a world of his own making, that these desires and thoughts take on
shapes that become real to him after death, and that Moksha [Liberation] in
the one case, and Nirvana, in the other, cannot be attained until the
disembodied soul has passed quite through this shadow-world of the haunting
thoughts, and become divested of the last spot of its earthly taint. 

The progress of Western discovery in this direction has been and must ever
be very gradual. From the phenomena of gross to those of more sublimated
matter, and thence on towards the mysteries of spirit is the hard road made
necessary by the precepts of Aristotle. Western Science first ascertained
that [ 1. ] our outcoming breath is charged with carbonic acid and, in
excess, becomes fatal to human life; then, [ 2. ] that certain dangerous
diseases are passed from person to person in the sporules thrown off into
the air from the sick body; then, [ 3. ] that man projects upon every body
and every thing he encounters a magnetic aura, peculiar to himself; and,
finally, [ 4. ] the physical disturbance set up in the Ether in the process
of thought-evolution is now postulated. 

Another step in advance will be [ 5. ] to realize the magical creative power
of the human mind, and the fact that [ 6. ] moral taint is just as
transmissible as physical. The "influence" of bad companions will then be
understood to imply a degrading personal magnetism, more subtle than the
impressions conveyed to the eye or the ear by the sights and sounds of a
vicious company. The latter may be repelled by resolutely avoiding to see or
hear what is bad; but the former enwraps the sensitive and penetrates his
very being if he but stop where the moral poison is floating in the air. 

Gregory's "Animal Magnetism," Reichenbach's "Researches," and Denton's "Soul
of Things" will make much of this plain to the Western inquirer, though
neither of those authors traces the connection of his favourite branch of
science with the parent-stock--Indian Psychology.


MAGNETIC IMPRESSION

 
Keeping the present case in view, we see a man highly susceptible to
magnetic impressions, ignorant of the nature of the "materializations" and,
therefore, unable to protect himself against bad influences, brought in
contact with promiscuous circles where the impressionable medium has long
been the unwitting nucleus of evil magnetisms, his system, saturated with
the emanations of the surviving thoughts and desires of those who are living
and those who are dead. 

The reader is referred to an interesting paper by Judge Gadgil of Baroda
(see our December number), on "Hindu Ideas about Communion with the Dead,"
for a plain exposition of this question of earth-tied souls, or Pisachas.
"It is considered," says that writer, "that in this state, the soul, being
deprived of the means of enjoyment of sensual pleasures through its own
physical body, is perpetually tormented by hunger, appetite and other bodily
desires, and can have only vicarious enjoyment by entering into the living
physical bodies of others, or by absorbing the subtlest essences of
libations and oblations offered for their own sake." [Shraddha and Pinda --
see Thst, Vol. III, p. 119-20]

What is there to surprise us in the fact that a negatively polarized man, a
man of a susceptible temperament, being suddenly brought into a current of
foul emanations from some vicious person, perhaps still living or perhaps
dead, absorbs the insidious poison as rapidly as quicklime does moisture,
until he is saturated with it? Thus, a susceptible body will absorb the
virus of small-pox, or cholera, or typhus, and we need only recall this to
draw the analogy which Occult Science affirms to be warranted. 

Near the Earth's surface there hangs over us--to use a convenient simile--a
steamy moral fog, composed of the undispersed exhalations of human vice and
passion. This fog penetrates the sensitive to the very soul's core; his
psychic self absorbs it as the sponge does water, or as fresh milk effluvia.
It benumbs his moral sense, spurs his baser instincts into activity,
overpowers his good resolutions. As the fumes of a wine-vault make the
brain reel, or as the choke-damp stifles one’s breath in a mine, so this
heavy cloud of immoral influences carries away the sensitive beyond the
limits of self-control, and he becomes “obsessed,” like our English patient.

What remedy is there to suggest? Does not our very diagnosis indicate that?
The sensitive must have his sensitiveness destroyed; the negative polarity
must be changed to a positive; he must become active instead of passive.
He can be helped by a magnetizer who understands the nature of the
obsession, and who is morally pure and physically healthy; it must be a
powerful magnetizer, a man of commanding will-force.
But the fight for freedom will, after all, have to be fought by the patient
himself. His will-power must be aroused. He must expel the poison from his
system. Inch by inch he must win back the lost ground. He must realise
that it is a question of life or death, salvation or ruin, and strive for
victory, like one who makes a last and heroic effort to save his life. His
diet must be of the simplest, he must neither eat animal food, nor touch any
stimulant, nor put himself in any company where there is the smallest chance
for unclean thoughts to be provoked. He should be alone as little as
possible, but his companions should be carefully chosen. He should take
exercise and be much in the open air; use wood-fire, instead of coals.
Every indication that the bad influence was still working within him should
be taken as a challenge to control his thoughts and compel them to dwell
upon pure, elevating, spiritual things, at every hazard and with a
determination to suffer anything rather than give way. If this man can have
such a spirit infused into him, and his physician can secure the benevolent
help of a strong healthy magnetizer of pure character, he may be saved. A
case almost exactly like this one, except that the patient was a lady, came
under our notice in America; the same advice as the above was given and
followed, and the obsessing “devil” was driven out and has been kept out
ever since.	-- H. P. Blavatsky

THEOSOPHIST, May 1880



================================



See also:	THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY p. 378-9 – 
“Anganta Yene”; 364;
ISIS UNVEILED I 487-8, 355,
I U	I 276, 351-6, 363-5, 374, 459-60, 490; II 16,
589
INSANITY	I U II 7, 589 
LUCIFER, III, p. 131-3
THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT Vol. 15, p. 55; 24 p. 94;
MODERN PANARION p. 60, 79-80, 150 (top)
MADAN I U I p. 495-6
Succubi / Incubi	H. P. Blavatsky Articles, Vol. II,
p. 167
INCUBI THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY p. 154; 336; 
PISACHAS THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY p. 254, 364,
MAHATMA LETTERS p. 103, 109 (suicides), 110;
THEOSOPHY, Vol. I 425-6; II 425;  
RAJA-YOGA	pp 78-9, 82
VIDHYADHARA T GLOSSARY . p. 364;
H P B Art, II p., 486, 242 [THEOSOPHIST May 1880]

---------------------------------------

I hope this may help serious students,

Dallas

==============================
 
-----Original Message-----
From: thalprin
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 2:48 PM
To: 
Subject: Re: It's not like I forget,



> No, you're not obsessed AND THAT"S WHY THAT"S ALL YOU AND NIKI 
WANNA TALK ABOUT EXCEPT -what- 


Can you see the flux-point here?

PEOPLE THINK FOR THEMSELVES,





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