CAUSES OF OBSESSION.
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 willfully, knowing it to be wrong. But the 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. The causes of insanity are four and each response 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. 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 weak, intellectually feeble, but possessed of a powerful emotional body that suffers and fights 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. 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. It 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 polarized in the emotional body.
A rarer kind of obsession is mental. In the 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, whilst the obsessing entity (clothed in the 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 Tinker is too powerful for his other bodies and disdains their use. He is so interested in work on mental levels and thus gives the opportunity to obsessing entities to assume control. This is rare and is the result of lop-sided development. It 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 a 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 willful shortcoming fail for someone 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 someone's 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 on and in an 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.
THE KINDS OF OBSESSING ENTITIES
These are too numerous to mention in detail, but I might enumerate a few:
1. Discarnate entities of a low order awaiting incarnation and who see, in cases one and two, their wanted opportunity.
2. Suicides, anxious to undo the deed and to again get into contact with the earth.
3. Earthbound spirits, good and bad, who from anxiety over loved ones, over their business affairs or eager to do some wrong or to undo some evil act, rush in and take possession of cases one and two.
4. Dark Brothers as aforesaid, who avail themselves principally of the third and 4th cases already cited. They require highly developed bodies, having no use for weak or unrefined bodies. In case three the weakness is entirely relative, due to the over-accentuation of the mental vehicle.
5. Elementals and subhuman entities of a malicious nature who rush in on the slightest opportunity and where kindred vibration may be felt.
6. Some of the lower devas, harmless but mischievous who, from sheer freakishness and fun enter another body in much the same way that a child loves to dress up.
7. Occasional visitors from other planets who enter certain highly evolved bodies for purposes of their own. This is very, very rare. .. . .
Let me give you some of the methods that eventually will be the first attempts at cure.
In the first type of cases, those due to physical plane weakness, the stress of the cure will be laid first on building up a strong physical body in both its departments though especially the etheric body. This will be done with the direct aid of the violet devas of the ethers. The strengthening of the etheric web will be aided by means of the violet light, with its corresponding sound, administered in quiet sanitariums. Coincident with this treatment will be the attempt to strengthen the mental body.
When the cause is a lack of coordination between the physical and the emotional vehicles the first methods of cure will be definite exorcism by the aid of mantrams and ceremonial, such as religious ritual. Qualified persons will use these mantrams at night when the obsessing entity may be supposed to be absent during the hours of sleep. These mantrams will call the real owner back, will build a protective wall after his re-entry, and will seek to force the obsessing one to stay absent. More about this can be given later.
Where mental obsession is involved the matter is more difficult. Mental obsession must await greater knowledge, though experimentation from the very first should be taken. The work will have to be done mostly from the mental plane by those who can function there freely and so contact the Thinker in his mental body. The cooperation of the Thinker must then be procured and a definite attack conjointly made on the obsessed physical and emotional bodies. During the night much of the work in the first two cases of cures will be done, but in the latter case, the Thinker has to win back his physical and his emotional bodies as well, hence the exceeding difficulty. Death often eventuates in these cases. In the severing of the magnetic cord, naught can be done as yet.
Adapted from Alice Bailey: OCCULT MEDITATION 9
Pages 123-138
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