Cures of ObsessionsLetter received from Cazères, and sent on January 7th, 1866:
“This is a second case of obsession that we dealt with in July last. The obsessed was a twenty-two years old woman; she enjoyed perfect health; yet, she suddenly had an episode of madness. Her parents took her to medical doctors but that was useless since the illness, instead of disappearing, became more acute, so much so that during the crisis it was impossible to contain her. Following the doctors advices, her parents took her in to a psychiatric institution, where her condition showed no improvement. Neither her nor her parents considered Spiritism that was unknown to them; however, they heard about the cure of Jeanne R…, that I mentioned to you, and came to us to know if we could do something for their unfortunate daughter. We said we could not give any guarantee before knowing the true nature of the disease. Our guides, consulted in our first session, told us that the young woman was oppressed by a very rebellious Spirit, but that we would end up bringing him back to the good path and the consequent cure would be a confirmation of that. I then wrote to the parents that lived 35 kilometers away from our town, saying that the young lady would be cured and that the cure would not take long, without specifying the period. We evoked the obsessing Spirit in eight consecutive days and were very fortunate to change his bad inclinations and renounce to his intent of tormenting the victim. The patient was in fact cured, as it was anticipated by our guides. The enemies of Spiritism repeat continuously that the practice of this doctrine leads to mental health hospitals. Well, we say that it brings out those that were in.”
Among thousands of other examples, this fact is a demonstration of the obsessional madness, whose cause is totally different from the pathological madness, before which science will fail while it obstinately denies the spiritual element and its influence upon the physiological organization. This case is very iconic. It shows a young woman that shows such strong signs of madness that it deceives the doctors, and that is cured miles away by persons that had never seen her, without any medication or medical treatment, and just by the moralization of the obsessing Spirit.
There are, therefore, obsessing Spirits whose action can be harmful to reason and health. Isn’t that true that if the mental illness had been provoked by any organic lesion, such a means would have been powerless? If it was objected that this spontaneous cure could have been due to a fortuitous cause, we would respond that if we had only one case to report it would be undoubtedly venturous to deduce such an important principle from that, but the number of cases of cure is very large. They are not the privilege of an individual and repeat daily in several places, undoubtful signs that they rest upon a law of nature.
We have cited many cures of similar kind, notably in February 1964 and January 1865 that contain two eminently instructive reports. Here is another not less characteristic fact, obtained by the group in Marmande:
In a village a few miles from that town, there was a peasant that was taken by such a furious madness that he chased people around, trying to kill them with a pitchfork, and in the absence of people he would attack animals in the area. He used to run incessantly through the fields and would not return home. He became a dangerous presence; it was then easy to obtain an authorization to have him taken into the psychiatric hospital in Cadilac. His family was forced to take such a painful attitude. Before he was taken in, one of the relatives had heard about the cures obtained in Marmande in similar cases and sought Mr. Dombre, then saying:
-Sir, I heard you cure insane people and that is why I came for you.
He then explained the situation and added:
-As you see, we are so sorry to separate the young J… that I would like to see if there isn’t other means of avoiding it.
-My brave friend, said Mr. Dombre, I do not know who gives me such a reputation; it is true that sometimes I was successful in bringing some poor insane ones to their senses, but that depends on the cause of the madness. Although I do not know you, I will nonetheless see if I can be of service.
He then immediately took the relative to the house of his habitual medium, obtaining from the guide the assurance that it was a serious obsession, but that it could stop with perseverance. He then said to the peasant: - Wait a few days before you take your relative to Cadilac; we will deal with the case; come back every other day to tell us how he is doing.
He began working the same day. In the beginning the Spirit, like in similar cases, was not very friendly; step by step he ended up humanizing and finally renounced to the objective of tormenting the poor man. A very particular note is that he declared to not have any hatred against that man; that he was tormented by the need of doing harm, and that he had grabbed him as he would do with any other; that he now acknowledged being wrong, for what he sought God’s forgiveness.
The man came back two days later and said that his relative was calmer but had not returned home yet and still hid in the hedges. In the next visit he said that the man had returned home but was still somber and kept away; he no longer tried to hit anybody. A few days later and he was going to the market and going about his things as usual. It took eight days to have him back to normal and without any physical treatment. It is more than likely that had him been taken in with the insane ones and he would have lost his mind himself.
Cases of obsession are so frequent that it is not exaggeration to say that in the psychiatric institutions more than half of patients only have the appearance of madness, and for that very reason common medication has no effect. Spiritism shows us one of the disturbing causes of physical health, and at the same time it gives us the means of treating it; it is one of its benefits. But how have such causes been recognized, if not by evocations? Evocations, therefore, serve to something, whatever their detractors may say.
It is evident that those that do not admit both the soul and its survival, or if the do admit it they are not aware of the status of the soul after death, they must see the intervention of the invisible beings in such circumstances as a pure fantasy; but the brutal fact of illnesses and their cures is here.
The remote cures without to use of any material agent, in persons that were never seen, could not be credited to imagination. The disease cannot be attributed to Spiritism, since it also reaches the non-believers, as well as children that have no idea about it.
Nonetheless, there is nothing of marvelous here, but natural effects that have always occurred, that were not understood then, and that are explained in simpler ways now that the laws that allow them are known. Don’t we see, among the living ones, bad people tormenting others, weaker ones, to the point of making them sick or killing them, and that without any apparent motive other than the desire of doing harm?
There are two ways of giving peace to the victim: removing the authority of their brutality or developing a good feeling in them. The knowledge that we now have of the invisible world shows us that it is inhabited by the same beings that lived on Earth, some good, some bad. Among the latter there are some that remain bad as a consequence of their moral inferiority, and have not yet eliminated their perverse instincts; they are around us, as when alive, with the only difference that instead of having a material, visible body, they now have a fluidic, invisible one; but they are still the same persons, with a poorly developed moral sense, always seeking opportunities to do harm, subduing those that are their preys and are submitted to their influence. Incarnate obsessing persons became discarnate obsessing Spirits, the more dangerous the more they act in hiding. It is not easy to push them away by force, since they cannot be physically imprisoned. The only means of dominating them is through the moral ascendant, supporting reason and wise advices, by which they improve and are more reachable in the spiritual than in the corporeal state. When convinced to voluntarily stop tormenting, the illness disappears, when caused by obsession. Showers and medications given to patients cannot act upon an obsessing Spirit. That is the whole secret of such cures, for which there is no sacramental words or cabalistic formulas: we talk to the discarnate Spirit, moralizing and educating him as it would have been done when alive. The trick is to take him by his character, carefully driving the instructions given to him as it would be done by an experienced instructor. The whole matter is reduced to this: Are there or are there not obsessing Spirits? We respond to this as we did above: the material facts are here.
People sometimes ask why God would allow the bad Spirits to torment the living ones. We could equally ask why God would allow the living ones to torment each other. We lose the perspective of the analogy, the relationships and connection that do exist between the corporeal world and the spiritual world, composed of the same beings in two different states. That is the key to all phenomena considered supernatural. Obsession should not impress us more than other diseases and events that affect humanity. They are part of the trials and miseries characteristic of the regions in which we are condemned to live in by our inferiority, until we are sufficiently better to deserve to leave it. Men suffer here the consequences of their imperfections, because if they were more perfect, they would not be here.
