Questions

A.     How can we conceptualize obsession?

B.      What is mediumistic possession?

C.      How does Spiritism explain the facts considered miraculous in the Gospel?

Text for reading

975. Thomas, called Didymus, one of the twelve apostles, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, place my finger in the nail holes, and put my hand in the hole in his side, I shall not believe.” Eight days later, the disciples were in the same place and Thomas was with them. Jesus appeared to them while the doors were closed and stood in their midst, and said to them, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Place your finger here and look at my hands; also stretch out your hand and place it in my side and be no longer disbelieving, but faithful.” Thomas responded and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, you believe because you have seen; blessed are they who believe without having seen.” (John 20:24-29) 

976. Jesus also showed himself again to his disciples on the shore of the Sea of Tiberius. He showed himself in this way: Simon Peter and Thomas, called Didymus, Nathanael, who was from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee and two other disciples were all together. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We are going with you.” They got into a boat, but they did not catch any fish that night. When morning came, Jesus appeared on the shore, but his disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. He said to them, “My sons, have you nothing to eat?” They answered, “No.” He said to them, “Cast your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” They cast it right away and could not haul it in because it was so loaded with fish. Then, the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord.” And realizing that it was the Lord, Simon Peter put on his clothes (because he was naked) and jumped into the sea. The other disciples came with the boat; and since they were no more than two hundred cubits from the shore, they dragged the net full of fish. (John 21:1-8)

977. Afterward, he led them to Bethany, and having raised his hands, he blessed them. And having blessed them, he left and was taken up into heaven. As for them, after they had worshipped him, they returned to Jerusalem full of joy. They were constantly in the temple, praising and blessing God. Amen. (Luke 24:50-53).

978. The apparitions of Jesus after his death are narrated by the Evangelists with circumstantial details that allow for no doubt as to their reality. What is more, the apparitions are perfectly explained by the fluidic laws and the properties of the perispirit, and present nothing abnormal with the phenomena of the same genre, of which ancient and contemporary history offer numerous examples, to the point of not even excluding tangibility. If one would observe the circumstances that accompanied his many apparitions, one would recognize in him at such moments all the characteristics of a fluidic being.

979. He appears unexpectedly and disappears in the same way; he is seen by some but not by others, under appearances that make him unrecognizable even to his disciples; he shows himself in closed rooms, where a corporeal body could not enter; even his language lacks the verve of a corporeal being; it has a brief and succinct manner peculiar to spirits who manifest in that way; in other words, all his attitudes denote something that is not of the terrestrial world. Seeing him causes both surprise and fear at the same time; his disciples cannot speak with him with the same freedom as before; they sense that he is no longer a man.

980. Jesus, however, showed himself with his perispiritual body, which explains why he was seen only by those whom he wanted to see him. If he had had his corporeal body, he would have been seen by the first one who came to him, just as when he was alive. His disciples, being unaware of the primary cause of the phenomena of apparitions, did not perceive their particularities, which they probably did not notice. Since they saw Jesus and touched him, to them this must have been his resuscitated body.

981. While disbelief rejects all the phenomena performed by Jesus because they have a supernatural appearance, and, without exception, regards them as legends, Spiritism provides a natural explanation for most of such phenomena. It demonstrates how they are possible, not only by means of the theory of the fluidic laws, but by means of their identity with similar phenomena caused by a large number of individuals under the most ordinary circumstances. Since the phenomena are more or less in the public domain, they prove nothing in principle concerning the exceptional nature of Jesus.

982. The greatest of the miracles that Jesus performed, the one that truly attests to how highly evolved he was, is the revolution that his teachings have caused throughout the world in spite of the limits of his field of action.

983. Actually, Jesus – obscure, poor, born in the most humble circumstances amongst a people with no might, nearly ignored and without any political, artistic or literary clout – preached for only three years. Throughout that short span of time he was unacknowledged, slandered, treated as an imposter and persecuted by his fellow citizens; he had to flee in order not to be stoned to death; he was betrayed by one of his own disciples and denied by another; he was abandoned by all of them at the moment he fell into the hands of his enemies.

984. He practiced only the good, but that did not protect him from the malevolence that turned the very services he rendered against him. Condemned to a death reserved for criminals, he died ignored by the world – contemporary history is silent on this account. He wrote nothing; nonetheless, aided by a few individuals who were as obscure as he was, his word was sufficient to regenerate the world; his doctrine slew all-powerful paganism and became the flame of civilization.

985. Against him was everything that makes human beings fail, which is why we have said that the triumph of his doctrine was the greatest of his miracles, while at the same time it proved his mission to have been divine.

986. If instead of social and regenerative principles founded upon humankind’s spiritual future he had offered posterity only a few extraordinary phenomena, perhaps today hardly anyone would recognize his name.

987. The disappearance of Jesus’ body - The disappearance of Jesus’ body after his death has been the object of numerous commentaries. It is attested to by the four Evangelists based on the report of the women who went to his tomb on the third day, only to find that he was not there. Some have seen a miraculous event in this disappearance; others attribute it to a clandestine removal.

988. According to another opinion, Jesus did not have a corporeal body at all, but only a fluidic one. Throughout his entire life, he was only a tangible apparition; in other words, a kind of agenerate. His birth, death and all the physical acts of his life were only an appearance. Thus it has been said that his body, having returned to the fluidic state, could disappear from the tomb and it was with this same body that he showed himself after his death.

989. Without a doubt, such a fact is not radically impossible, according to what is known today about the properties of the fluids. However, it would at the least be completely exceptional and in formal opposition to the character of agenerates. The issue is therefore to determine if such a hypothesis is acceptable, and whether it is confirmed or contradicted by the facts.

990. Jesus’ stay on the earth entails two periods: that which precedes his death and that which follows it. In the former, from the moment of conception to birth, everything regarding his mother happens as it does in the normal conditions of life. From his birth until his death, everything about his acts, his language and the various circumstances of his life reveals the unequivocal characteristics of corporeality. The psychic phenomena that occur in him are unexpected but there is nothing abnormal about them, since they can be explained by the properties of the perispirit, and may be found in differing degrees among other individuals.

991. After his death, on the other hand, everything about him reveals a fluidic being. The difference between these two states is so noticeable that they cannot be compared. The corporeal body has the properties inherent to matter per se, properties that differ essentially from those of the ethereal fluids. In matter, breakdown occurs because of the rupture of molecular cohesion. A cutting instrument can penetrate the physical body and divide its tissues. If the organs essential to life are attacked, the body stops functioning and death follows, that is, the death of the body.

992. Since this cohesion does not exist in fluidic bodies, life does not lie in the functioning of special organs; disorders analogous to those of the physical body cannot be produced. A cutting instrument or any other can penetrate a fluidic body like a cloud of vapor without causing any sort of lesion. That is why bodies of this kind cannot die and why fluidic beings called agenerates cannot be killed.

993. After the death of Jesus, his inert and lifeless body was entombed like any other body and anyone could see and touch it. After his resurrection, when he was ready to leave earth behind, he did not die again; instead, his body rose, dissipated and vanished without leaving a trace – obvious proof that that body was of a different nature than the one that perished on the cross. Hence, one must conclude that if Jesus could die it was because he had a body of flesh.

994. Due to its material properties, the corporeal body is the seat of sensation and physical pain, which reverberate within the sensitive center or spirit. It is not the body that suffers; it is the spirit, which receives the counterblow from the lesions or alterations in the organic tissues. In a body deprived of the spirit, sensation is lacking entirely. For the same reason, the spirit that has no physical body cannot experience suffering, which is the result of the alteration of matter. Hence, one must also conclude that if Jesus suffered physically – which cannot be doubted – it was because he had a physical body of a nature similar to everybody else’s.

995. The strongest moral considerations must be added to the physical events. If during his life Jesus existed in the state of fluidic beings, he would have felt neither pain nor bodily needs. To suppose such to have been the case is to take from him all the merit of the life of privation and suffering that he chose as an example of resignation.

996. If everything in his life was only an appearance, all the events of his life, his repeated statements regarding his death, the dolorous scene in the Garden of Olives, his prayer to God to remove the cup from his lips, his passion and death – everything up to the last cry when he delivered up his spirit – would have been only a vain sham of deception regarding his true nature and meant to create a belief in the illusory sacrifice of his life, a farce unworthy of a simple and honest man, and, for even more reason, of such a highly evolved being. In other words, he would have abused the good faith of his contemporaries and all posterity. Such are the logical consequences of that theory, consequences that are unacceptable because they morally degrade rather than elevate him.

997. Thus, like any other man, Jesus had both a corporeal body and a fluidic one, a fact attested to by the physical and psychic phenomena that highlighted his life.

998. This idea about the nature of Jesus’ body is nothing new. In the fourth century, Apollinarius of Laodicea, head of the Apollinarian sect, claimed that Jesus had not taken a body like ours, but rather an impassible body that descended out of heaven into the lap of the Holy Virgin, but which was not born from her. Thus, Jesus had not been born and had not suffered or died except in appearance.

999. The Apollinarians were anathematized by the Council of Alexandria in 360, the Council of Rome in 374 and the Council of Constantinople in 381. The Docetists (from the Greek dokein, to appear), a prolific sect of Gnostics that survived for the first three centuries, held the same belief. 

Answer Key 

A. How can we conceptualize obsession? 

Obsession is the persistent action that an evil spirit exerts upon a particular individual. It presents highly diverse characteristics, from a simple mental influence without perceivable outward signs to the complete disruption of the organism and the mental faculties. It obliterates all mediumistic faculties. In auditory and psychographic mediumship, it results from the obstinacy of a spirit manifesting itself to the exclusion of all others. Obsession is nearly always an expression of vengeance taken by a spirit; it most frequently has its source in the relationships between the obsessed and obsessor in a previous life. (Genesis, Chap. XIV, items 45 and 46)

B. What is mediumistic possession?

In obsession, the spirit acts outwardly with the help of its perispirit, which becomes identified with that of the incarnate. The latter then finds him or herself entwined in a mesh and constrained to act against his or her will.

In possession, instead of acting outwardly, the possessor spirit replaces – so to speak – the incarnate one. It chooses to make his or her body its home, but without the possessed person abandoning it for good, since such can happen only at death. Consequently, possession is always temporary and intermittent, because a discarnate spirit cannot permanently take the place of an incarnate one, since the molecular union of the perispirit and the body can occur only at the time of conception. Temporarily possessing the incarnate’s body, the spirit uses it as though it were its own: it speaks through its mouth, sees through its eyes and acts with its arms just as it would when alive. This is not the same as in the case of speaking mediumship, where the incarnate spirit speaks by transmitting the thought of a discarnate spirit. In this case, it is the discarnate spirit who speaks and acts, and if one knew it when it was alive, one would recognize it by its language, its voice, its gestures and even its facial expressions.

Obsession is always the act of a malevolent spirit. Possession can be the act of a good spirit who comes to speak, and in order to make a greater impression on its listeners, borrows the body of an incarnate who loans it voluntarily to it just as if he or she were lending his or her garments. This occurs without any disturbance or discomfort, and during this time the incarnate spirit finds itself at liberty, as during the state of emancipation; but more often it stands beside its replacement in order to listen to it. When the possessor spirit is evil, things are otherwise. It does not borrow the body; it seizes it if its owner does not have the moral power to resist. It does so through a nasty action toward the incarnate, whom it tortures and torments in all sorts of ways, even so far as to murder him or her either by strangulation or by throwing him or her into the fire or other dangerous places. It makes use of the organs and limbs of the unfortunate patient; it blasphemes, insults and mistreats those who are nearby; it hands its victim over to eccentricities and acts that display all the characteristics of raging insanity. (Genesis, chap. XIV, items 47 and 48)

C. How does Spiritism explain the facts considered miraculous in the Gospel?

The phenomena reported in the Gospel, and which until now have been considered miraculous, belong in their majority to the order of psychic phenomena; that is, those that have the faculties and attributes of the soul as their primary cause. The principle of psychic phenomena rests upon the properties of the perispiritual fluid, which constitutes the magnetic agent; upon the manifestations of the spirit life during incarnation and after death; and, finally, upon the compositional state of spirits and their role as an active force of nature. Once these elements are known and their effects proven, one must consequently accept the possibility of certain phenomena that were rejected as long as they were attributed to a supernatural origin. (Genesis, Ch. XV, item 1)