Prudence is essential in dealing with mediumship

Spiritists scholars warn: It is great prudence in dealing with the invisible world. Good and evil, truth and error are mixed in it, and discern them you have to analyze all the revelations, all the teachings by a severe trial.

Another point that is vital for those who are dedicated to mediumship is to prevent abuses that occur in practice, because the exercise of any faculty, when prolonged, leads to fatigue and the same may be true of mediumship, which applies mainly to the physical effects, which necessarily leads to an expenditure of fluids that must be repaired by rest.

The exercise of mediumship, even when abuses do not occur, it may have drawbacks for itself. It can be seen it from the teaching of reading we have collected in The Mediums' Book: "In some cases it is prudent and even necessary to abstain or at least make a moderate use. This depends on the physical and moral state of the medium. In fact, in general the medium feels and when feeling fatigue, he should abstain." (The Mediums' Book, item 221, issue 3.)

This information does not imply that the mediumistic faculty constitutes an indication of any medical condition. Mediumship, as it known, has nothing to do with disease. Many mediums boast robust health, and those who are ill, owe it to other causes, not to mediumship.

The same remark must be made with respect to the idea that the exercise of mediumship can cause madness to a person. "Mediumship does not produce madness when it does not exist in principle. But if the principle is there - which is easy to recognize through moral state - common sense says that you must take care in every way, because any cause of shock can be harmful." (The Mediums' Book, item 221, issue 5.)

With respect to the subject, Kardec teaches, "All the major concerns of the Spirit may lead to madness: the sciences, arts and even religion provides contingent. The madness is caused by a primary organic predisposition in the brain, which makes it more or less accessible to certain impressions. Given the predisposition to insanity, that will take the character of primary concern, which it changes into fixed idea, and it can either be that of Spirits, with whom they served, such as God, angels, devil, fortune, power, an art, a science, motherhood, political or social system. Probably the religious madman would have become a crazy spirit if Spiritism was his dominant concern." "Now I say that Spiritism does not have any privilege in this regard. I go further: I say that, properly understood, it is maintenance against the madness." (The Spirits' Book, Introduction, Item XV.)

When we say that madness is caused by a primary organic predisposition in the brain, it is important to clarify that this means that the brain has embodied this deficiency due to karmic causes, ie, the madness has, in such cases, its source in acts perpetrated by Spirit in past existences. The term "karmic causes" refers to causes that usually precede the current existence and these have been printed in the spiritual body or perispirit of the patient.

There is therefore no reason to think that mediumship can cause madness, far from it. As noted by Kardec, mediumship enlightened by the lights of Spiritism is maintenance against madness, because the spirit sees things from this world a higher point of view and his convictions give in the face of vicissitudes and suffering, a resignation that preserves him of despair that could lead others to the imbalance and even suicide.