OBSESSION AND INSANITY
We must distinguish carefully between obsession and insanity. The latter is a break in the connection between the ego and his vehicles, while the former is the ousting of the ego by some other entity. Only a weak ego would permit obsession — an ego, I mean, who had not much hold upon his vehicles. It is not as a rule true that children are more easily obsessed than adults, because though it is true that the hold of the ego upon its bodies is less strong in childhood, it is also true that the adult is far more likely to have in him qualities which attract undesirable entities and make obsession easy. In the case of a little child, any entity trying to obsess the body would have first to face the elemental who is in charge of the building of it, and he is not at all likely to succeed in ousting that. After the age of seven, when the elemental has been withdrawn, obsession might take place if the ego was very weak; but it is fortunately rare.
Obsession may be permanent or temporary, and it is undertaken for various reasons. Often some dead person is filled with burning anxiety to come again into touch with the physical plane, generally for the satisfaction of the lowest and grossest desires, and in his desperate yearning he seizes upon any vehicle which he can steal. Sometimes, on the other hand, obsession is a definite and calculated act of revenge — not always upon the person obsessed. I knew a case in which man who hated another deliberately went to work to obtain control of and obsess his enemy's favorite daughter; I know also of another instance even worse than that. Sometimes the obsessing entity is not human at all, but only a nature-spirit who desires experience of human life. In any and all cases obsession should be determinedly resisted by the victim.
Insanity is an entirely different matter. Let us try to look at it from the occult point of view. Every cell in the physical brain and every particle of its matter has its corresponding and interpenetrating astral matter; and behind (or rather within) that, it has also the still finer mental matter. Of course the brain is a cubical mass, but for the purposes of our examination let us suppose that it could be spread out upon a surface so that it should be only one particle thick. Then further suppose that the astral and mental matter belonging to it could also be laid out in layers in a similar manner, the astral layer a little above the physical, and the mental a little above the astral.
Then we should have three layers of matter of different degrees of density, all corresponding one to the other. Now suppose that each physical particle is joined to the corresponding astral particle by a little tube, and each astral particle is joined to its corresponding mental particle in the same way, and even (higher up still) each mental particle to something which corresponds to it in the causal body. So long as these tubes were perfectly in alignment there would be clear communication between the ego and his brain; but if any one of the sets of tubes were bent, closed, or knocked partially aside, it is obvious that the communication might be wholly or partially interrupted.
From the occult standpoint, therefore, we divide the insane into four great classes, each of course having many sub-divisions.
1. Those who are insane merely from a defect of the dense physical brain — from its insufficient size, perhaps, or from some accident like a heavy blow, or some growth which causes pressure upon it or from gradual softening of the tissue.
2. Those whose defect is in the etheric part of the brain, so that its particles no longer correspond perfectly with the denser physical particles, and so cannot properly bring through the vibrations from the higher vehicles.
3. Those in whom the astral body is defective instead of the etheric — in whom its tubes are bent, as it were, so that there is a want of accurate adjustment between its particles and those of the vehicles either above or below it.
4. Those in whom the mind-body itself is in some way out of order, and consequently is unable to bring through the instructions or wishes of the ego.