Theoretical essay of instant healings Of all the Spiritist phenomena, one of the most extraordinary is, without a doubt, that of instantaneous healings. We understand the cures produced by the sustained action of a good fluid; but one wonders how this fluid can operate a sudden transformation in the organism, and especially why the individual who possesses this faculty does not have access to all those who are affected by the same disease, assuming that there are specialties. The sympathy of fluids is a reason, no doubt, but that does not completely satisfy, because it has nothing of positive or scientific. However, instant healings are a fact that cannot be doubted. If we only had the support of examples from remote times, we could, with some appearance of foundation, consider them as legendary, or at least as amplified by credulity; but when the same phenomena are reproduced before our eyes, in the most skeptical century about supernatural things, the denial is no longer possible, and we are forced to see in them, not a miraculous effect, but a phenomenon that must have its cause in still unknown laws of nature.
The following explanation, deduced from the indications given by a medium in a state of spontaneous somnambulism, is based on physiological considerations that seem to us to throw a new light on the issue. It was given on the occasion when a person, suffering from very serious illnesses, that asked if a fluidic treatment could be beneficial to him.
However rational this explanation may seem to us, we do not give it as absolute, but as a hypothesis and as a subject of study, until it has received the double sanction of logic and that of the general opinion of the Spirits, the only valid control of the Spiritist doctrines, and that can ensure their eternity.
In therapeutic medication, appropriate remedies are needed. Since the same remedy cannot have opposite properties: being at the same time stimulating and calming, warming, and refreshing, it cannot be appropriate to all cases; that is why there is no universal remedy.
The same is true with the healing fluid, a true therapeutic agent, whose qualities vary according to the physical and moral temperament of the individuals that transmits it. There are fluids that excite and others that calm down, strong and soft fluids, and many other nuances. Depending on its qualities, the same fluid, like the same remedy, may be beneficial in certain cases, ineffective and even harmful in others; it follows that the cure depends, in principle, on the adequacy of the qualities of the fluid to the nature and to the cause of the illness. This is what many people do not understand, and why they are amazed that a healer does not cure every disease. Regarding the circumstances that influence the intrinsic qualities of the fluids, they have been sufficiently developed in chapter XIV of Genesis, for it is superfluous to recall them here.
To this entirely physical cause of non-healings, we must add a completely moral one that Spiritism reveals to us; this is because most illnesses, like all human miseries, are atonements of the present or the past, or trials for the future; these are acquired debts that one must suffer the consequences until they have been redeemed. Therefore, the one that must endure the ordeal to the end cannot be healed. This principle is a reason of resignation for the patient but should not be an excuse for the doctor to seek, in the necessity of the test, a convenient means of sheltering their ignorance.
Considered from the physiological point of view alone, diseases have two causes that have not been distinguished to date, and that could not be appreciated before the new knowledge brought about by Spiritism; it is from the difference between these two causes that the possibility of instantaneous cures arises in special cases, and not in all cases.
Certain diseases have their original cause in the very deterioration of the organic tissues; it is the only one that science has admitted to this day; and since science only knows tangible medicinal substances to remedy them, it does not understand the action of an intangible fluid having the will as its driver. However, the magnetic healers are there to prove that this is not an illusion.
In the cure of diseases of this nature by the fluidic influx, there is replacement of the morbid organic molecules by healthy molecules; it is the story of an old house whose worm-eaten stones are replaced by good stones; we still have the same house, but restored and consolidated. The Saint-Jacques tower and Notre-Dame in Paris have just undergone a treatment of this kind.
The fluidic substance produces an effect analogous to that of the medicinal substance, with the difference that its infiltration being greater, due to the thinness of its constituent principles, it acts more directly on the primary molecules of the organism than the coarser molecules of material substances can do. In the second place, its effectiveness is more general, without being universal, because its qualities are modifiable by thoughts, while the material ones are fixed and invariable, and can only be applied to specific cases.
Such is, in a general thesis, the principle on which the magnetic treatments are based. Let us add summarily and for the record, for not being able to go into the subject in depth here, that the action of homeopathic remedies in infinitesimal doses is founded on the same principle; the medicinal substance being carried, by division, in the atomic state, acquires to a certain point the properties of fluids, less however, the soulful principle that exists in animalized fluids, and gives them special qualities.
In short, it is a question of repairing an organic disorder by the introduction, into the organism, of healthy materials in substitution of deteriorated materials. These healthy materials can be provided by ordinary raw medicines; by these same remedies in the state of homeopathic division; finally, by the magnetic fluid, that is no other than spiritualized matter. These are three modes of repair, or even better, of introduction and assimilation of the elements of repair; all three are also in nature, and have their utility according to special cases, explaining why one succeeds or another fails, for there would be partiality in denying the services rendered by ordinary medicine. These are, in our opinion, three branches of the art of healing intended to supplement and complement each other, according to the circumstances, but none has the right to believe to be the universal panacea of mankind.
Each of these means can, therefore, be effective if it is used appropriately to the kind of illness; but, whatever it is, we understand that the molecular substitution, necessary for the reestablishment of equilibrium, can only take place gradually, and not as if by magic and by a wave of the wand; the cure, if it is possible, can only be the result of a sustained and continuous action, more or less lengthy, according to the gravity of the cases.
However, instant healings are a fact, and as they cannot be more miraculous than the others, they must be accomplished under special circumstances; what proves it is that they do not take place indiscriminately in all diseases, nor on all individuals. It is, therefore, a natural phenomenon whose law must be sought; now, here is the explanation given; to understand it, it was necessary to have the point of comparison that we have just established.
Certain diseases, even very serious ones that have moved to a chronic state, do not have the deterioration of the organic molecules as their first cause, but the presence of a bad fluid that disaggregate them, so to speak, and disturbs the organization.
Here it is like a watch in which all parts are in good condition, but their movement is stopped or disturbed by dust; no part needs to be replaced, and yet it does not work; to restore the regularity of the movement, it suffices to purge the watch of the obstacle that prevented it from functioning.
Such is the case with many diseases whose origin is due to the pernicious fluids with which the organism is infiltrated. To obtain healing, it is not deteriorated molecules that must be replaced, but a foreign body that must be expelled; when the cause of the illness has disappeared, the equilibrium is restored, and the functions resume their course.
It is understood that in such a case the therapeutic drugs, intended by their nature to act on the matter, are ineffective on a fluidic agent; so, ordinary medicine is powerless in all diseases caused by contaminated fluids, and there are many of them. One can oppose matter with matter, but a bad fluid must be opposed by a better and more powerful fluid. Therapeutic medicine naturally fails against fluidic agents; for the same reason fluidic medicine fails where it is necessary to oppose matter to matter; homeopathic medicine seems to us to be the intermediary, the link between these two extremes, and must particularly succeed in diseases that one could call mixed.
Whatever the claim of each of these systems to supremacy, what is positive is that each one has achieved undeniable success, but so far none has justified to possess the exclusive truth; one must, therefore, conclude that all have their utility, and that the main thing is to apply them appropriately.
Here we must not be concerned with the cases in which the fluidic treatment is applicable, but with the cause for which this treatment may sometimes be instantaneous, while in other cases it requires continual action.
The difference is due to the very nature and root cause of the illness. Two conditions that apparently have identical symptoms may have different causes; one can be determined by the alteration of organic molecules, and in this case, it is necessary to repair, replace, as I have been told, the damaged molecules by healthy molecules, an operation that can only be done gradually; the other, by the infiltration of a bad fluid into healthy organs, disturbing their functions. In this case, it is not a question of repairing, but of expelling. These two cases require different qualities of the healing fluid; in the first, it is necessary a fluid softer than violent, particularly rich in restorative principles; in the second, an energetic fluid, more suitable to expel than repair; depending on the quality of this fluid, the expulsion can be rapid and as in the effect of an electric discharge. The patient suddenly released from the foreign cause that made him suffer, immediately feels relieved, like in the extraction of a bad tooth. The organ, no longer being obliterated, returns to its normal state, and resumes its functions.
This can explain the instantaneous cures, that are only a variety of the magnetic action. They are based, as one sees, on an essentially physiological principle and have nothing more miraculous than the other Spiritist phenomena. It is understandable, therefore, why these kinds of cures are not applicable to all diseases. Their success is due at the same time to the first cause of the illness, that is not the same in all individuals, and to the special qualities of the fluid that one opposes to it. As a result, a person that produces quick effects is not always fit for a regular magnetic treatment, and excellent magnetizers are unsuitable for instantaneous cures.
This theory can be summed up as follows: “When the disease requires the repair of damaged organs, healing is necessarily slow, and requires sustained action and a fluid of a special quality; when it comes to expelling a bad fluid, it can be quick and even instantaneous."
To simplify the question, we have only considered the two extreme points; but between the two there are infinite nuances; that is to say, a multitude of cases where the two causes exist simultaneously in different degrees, and with one or the other more preponderant; therefore, both expel and repair are necessary. Depending on which of the two causes prevails, the cure is faster or slower; if it is that of the bad fluid, after the expulsion it is necessary to repair it; if it is the organic disorder, after repair, it is necessary to expel it. Healing is only complete after the destruction of both causes. This is the most ordinary case; that is why therapeutic treatments often need to be supplemented by fluidic treatment and vice versa; that is also why the instantaneous cures, that take place in cases where the fluid predominance is exclusive, so to speak, can never become a universal curative means; hence, they are not called upon to supplant medicine, homeopathy, or ordinary magnetism.
Radical and definitive instantaneous healing can be considered as an exceptional case, given that it is rare: (1) for the expulsion of the bad fluid to be complete at the first attempt; (2) that the fluidic cause is not accompanied by some organic alteration, that obliges, in both cases, to return to it several times.
Finally, since bad fluids can only come from bad Spirits, their insertion into the organism is often linked to obsession. As a result, to be healed, both the sick person and the obsessing Spirit must be treated.
These considerations show how much must be taken into account in the treatment of diseases, and how much more remains to be learned in this regard. They also come to confirm a capital fact that emerges from the book Genesis, it is the alliance between Spiritism and science. Spiritism walks on the same ground as science to the limits of tangible matter; but while science stops at this point, Spiritism continues its path, and pursues its investigations in the phenomena of nature, with the aid of the elements that it draws from the extra-material world; there alone is the solution of the difficulties against which science crashes.
Observation: The person whose request has motivated this explanation is in the case of diseases with complex cause. Her organism is profoundly altered, at the same time saturated with the most pernicious fluids that lend her incurable by ordinary therapy alone. A violent and too energetic magnetization would only produce a momentary overexcitation, soon followed by a greater prostration, activating the work of decomposition. She would need a gentle, long-lasting magnetization, a penetrating repairing fluid, and not a fluid that stirs but does not repair anything. She is, therefore, inaccessible to instant healing.
