| Causes of Obsession October 9, 1919
One of the activities ahead of the occult student is the study and the scientific
observation of this matter. We have been told in various occult books that obsession and
insanity are very closely allied. Insanity may exist in all three bodies, the least
harmful being that of the physical body, whilst the most enduring and the hardest to cure
is that of the mental body. Insanity in the mental body is the heavy fate that descends
upon those who for many incarnations have followed the path of selfish cruelty, using the
intelligence as a means to serve selfish ends and using it wilfuly, knowing it to be
wrong. But insanity of this type is a means whereby the Ego sometimes arrests the progress
of a man towards the left-hand path. In this sense it is a disguised blessing. Let us deal
first with the causes of obsession, leaving the subject of [124] insanity for another day.
These causes are four in number and each responds to a different treatment:
- One cause is a definite weakness of the etheric double, in the separating web, which
like a piece of relaxed elastic permits entry of an extraneous entity from the emotional
plane. The door of entrance which is formed by this web is not closed tight, and entrance
can be effected from without. This is a physical plane cause, and is the result of the
maladjustment of physical plane matter. It is the result of karma, and is prenatal,
existing from the earliest moment. Usually the sufferer is physically weak, intellectually
feeble, but possessed of a powerful emotional body which suffers and fights and struggles
to prevent entrance. The attacks are intermittent, and more frequently attack women than
men.
- Another cause is due to emotional reasons. A lack of coordination exists between the
emotional and the physical and when the man functions in the emotional body (as at night)
the moment of re-entry is attended with difficulty, and opportunity exists for other
beings to enter the physical vehicle, and prevent its occupation by the real Ego. This is
the most common form of obsession, and affects those with powerful physical bodies and
strong astral vibrations, but with weak mental bodies. It leads, in the ensuing struggle,
to the violent scenes of screaming lunatics and to the paroxysms of the epileptic. Men are
more subject to this than women, as women are usually more definitely polarized in the
emotional body.
- A rarer kind of obsession is the mental. In coming days as the mental body develops, one
may expect perhaps to see more of it. Mental obsession involves the displacement taking
place on the mental levels - hence its rarity. The physical body and the emotional body
remain as a unit, but the Thinker is left in his mental body, [125] whilst the obsessing
entity (clothed in mental matter) enters the two lower vehicles. In the case of emotional
obsession the Thinker is left with his emotional body and his mental body but with no
physical. In this latter case he is left with neither emotional nor physical. The cause
lies in the fact of the over-development of the mental, and of the relative weakness of
the emotional and physical bodies. The Thinker is too powerful for his other bodies and
disdains their use; he is too interested in work on mental levels, and thus gives
opportunity to obsessing entities to assume control. This, as I said before, is rare and
is the result of lop-sided development. It attacks women and men equally; it principally
shows itself in childhood and is difficult to cure.
- A still rarer cause of obsession is definitely the work of the dark Brothers. It takes
the form of snapping the magnetic link that attaches the Ego to the lower physical body,
leaving him in his emotional and mental bodies. This would normally result in the death of
the physical body, but in cases such as these the dark Brother, who is to use the physical
body, enters it and makes connection with his own cord. These cases are not common. They
involve only two classes of people:
- Those who are highly evolved and on the Path, but who through some wilful shortcoming
fail for some one incarnation and so lay themselves open to the evil force. Sin (as you
call it) in the Personality of a disciple leads to a weakness in some one spot, and this
is taken advantage of. This type of obsession shows itself in the transformation that is
sometimes seen when a great soul suddenly plunges on an apparent downward path, when he
changes the whole trend of his existence and besmirches a fair character with mud. It
carries with it its own punishment, for on the inner planes the disciple looks [126] on,
and in agony of mind sees his lower vehicle dishonoring the fair name of its real owner
and causing evil to be said of a loved cause.
- The little evolved, weakly organized, and so unable to resist.
|
