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To understand
mediumship it is necessary to know something of man's several bodies. In
addition to the dense, visible instrument he uses here in this world for
material purposes, man has also a vital body, composed of ether, a desire
or emotional body, and a mind. The individualized Spirit or Ego lives in
and uses these interpenetrating vehicles to gather experience in the
school of life.
In the waking state, the dense body and
the vital body (the latter interpenetrating and extending out about 1 1/2
inches beyond the former) are surrounded and interpenetrated by the
egg-shaped cloud comprising the desire body and the mind. These vehicles
are concentric, and it is the interpolation of one into the other, so that
the sense centers in one are in proper alignment with the sense centers of
the other, which enables the Ego to manipulate the complex organism and
perform in an ordered manner the life processes which we call reason,
speech and action.
Restorative Sleep
When the dense body goes to sleep,
there is a separation of the vehicles. The Ego and the mind, clothed in
the desire body, draw out from the vital body and the dense body, the two
later remaining on the bed, while the higher vehicles hover above or near
the sleeping body, connected to it by the silver cord. The process of
restoration begins shortly afterward. In normal cases, the desire body
(having been harmonized in the Desire World) pumps rhythmic energy into
the vital body, and that in turn starts to work upon the dense body,
eliminating the products of decay, principally by means of the sympathetic
nervous system. The result is that the dense body is restored and
overflowing with life when the desire body, mind, and Ego re enter it in
the morning and cause it to awaken.
Earthbound Spirits
At death the same separation between
the bodies takes place as in sleep. The so-called dead have Ego, mind, and
desire body, and are often conscious for some time after death of the
material world they have left. Some cling to the earth life and cannot
bring their minds to learn the new lessons. We call them "earthbound
Spirits." They cannot function in the visible world without a body,
however, and so they make use of the living whose dense and vital bodies
are loosely connected. All Spirits are not confined with equal closeness
to the prison of the dense body. Those who are most closely bound are the
rank materialists; those who are not so tightly bound are the
"impressionists," capable of answering in some measure to spiritual
vibrations. Persons of positive character who are able to respond to these
vibrations, if they develop, do so by their own wills, and become trained
occultists. Those of weak will can develop only by the aid of others, and
in a negative way. They are the prey of earthbound Spirits who constitute
themselves "spirit guides" and develop their victims as "trance mediums,"
or if the connection between the victim's dense and vital bodies be
particularly lax, into materializing mediums.
A medium is a negative or involuntary
clairvoyant, having the dense and vital bodies loosely connected and under
the control of a Spirit from the Desire World. He or she corresponds to
the victim of a hypnotist in the Physical World.
The Trance Medium
In the case of a trance medium all her
experiences take place while the physical body is in a trance. It is the
Ego clothed in the mind and desire body which leaves the physical body
behind, and the same separation takes place then as in dreamless sleep,
with the difference, however, that the physical body is not left
tenantless upon the bed. The spirit control usually enters the physical
body of the medium, taking possession and using it according to his
pleasure often to the great detriment of the medium. For instance, when
such a spirit control has been a drunkard or libertine during earth life,
it will often use the medium's body to gratify its craving for liquor, or
its base sensual instincts. We cannot too strongly impress upon people
that this physical body is our most valuable instrument and that it is
very wrong for anyone to abandon it to the mercy of either a hypnotist or
a Spirit control.
In regard to earthbound Spirits, it
should be remembered that they are in every respect like the hypnotists,
except that they are invisible to the victims and have more power over
them, because they are looked up to as "higher beings," "angels," devoid
of evil, and unselfishly aiming to diffuse happiness or wisdom. As a
matter of fact, there is no transforming power in death. The sinner does
not become a saint nor the ignoramus a Solomon because of death, and it is
a pathetic sight to the trained clairvoyant to see the imposition
practiced by their unprincipled spirit controls upon their unsuspecting
victims, who are so thoroughly unsophisticated that they fail to
distinguish the true character of the imposters and accept their inane,
goody- goody phrases as sublime wisdom. They have done some good in
proving the reality of life after death, but much harm to mediums.
It is to be expected that Spirits of a
high ethical nature or great spiritual attainment do not usually control a
medium. Rather it is the earthbound and low Spirits who obtain a control
over mediumistic persons, and when in possession of the body they may use
it to gratify their low passions for drink and sex. Thus they cause a
disturbance to the system and a deterioration of the instrument.
The Materializing
Medium
In the case of the materializing
medium, the materializing Spirit entrances the victim and then draws the
ether of the vital body out through the spleen, for as has been stated,
the difference between the materializing medium and the ordinary person is
the fact that the connection between the vital body and the dense body is
exceedingly lax, so that it is possible to withdraw this vital body to a
very great extent. The vital body is the vehicle whereby the solar
currents which give us vitality are specialized. Deprived of the
vitalizing principle, the body of the medium at the time of
materialization sometimes shrinks to almost one-half its usual size; the
flesh becomes flabby and the spark of life burns very low. When the seance
is over and the vital body replaced, the medium is awakened to normal
consciousness. He then experiences a feeling of the most terrible
exhaustion and sometimes, unfortunately, resorts to drink to revive the
vital forces. In that case of course, the health will soon suffer and the
medium will become a total wreck.
Unfortunately, the great majority of
mediums do not realize that they are in danger. They are particularly
unaware of the enormous danger which threatens them after death. The
desire body may then be appropriated by the spirit control, as mentioned
previously. If they try to stop the influence of the spirit control while
still here in the body they find that the entity has an exceedingly strong
hold upon them, a control it is very difficult to break, and they should
realize that naturally when death brings them into the same world with
these controls, the danger will be still greater.
Cases have been known where mediums
balked and tried to escape from the toils of the spirit control, but they
failed to break the strong hold of the entity. They were helpless. Mediums
have told how they were almost irresistibly compelled to commit suicide
and murder; how they begged and pleaded with the controls to leave them
alone, but without avail. Cases are also known where spirit controls have
mercilessly dragged their victims out of bed in the middle of the night
against their will and forced them to listen to their importunities. Only
seldom does one hear that they show mercy.
Thus it will be seen that mediumship,
once entered into, is not usually a matter of choice with the mediums;
they lose the power to shut out spirit controls. While they do the bidding
of their task masters and are docile, they may not feel the bit; but let
one of them try to balk, and he or she will soon find that the spirit
control has both bit and spur and is merciless in the use of them.
Obsession
The modus operandi of the invisible
manipulator is simply to push the higher vehicles out of the lower bodies
of the unresisting medium, step in itself and take control. When he leaves
he also takes part of the medium's vital body to use as a key or lever
next time. In some cases he is not satisfied to borrow a body, but steals
one and keeps the owner out permanently. We see the same body, but there
is another Ego within, which shows different habits and tastes altogether.
This is called obsession, and can be detected by the fact that the iris
neither responds to light nor distance by contraction or expansion. Only
the owner can manipulate the eye. Hence the eyes of mediums under control
are always closed or have a glassy stare.
Self-Mastery is the
Goal
Obviously, the lesson to be learned
from a knowledge of these matters is that we must remain our own masters
and never under any pretext allow ourselves to be hypnotized or controlled
by an outside agency. Neither should we take part even as spectators of
seances and hypnotic demonstrations, for the negative attitude there lays
one liable to influence or obsession. Self-mastery is our
goal, and not mastery over others.
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