Читать книгу Spiritual Energies in Daily Life - Rufus M. Jones - Страница 11

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A very fresh and unusual type of book has recently appeared under the title, “By An Unknown Disciple.” It tells in a simple, direct, impressive way, after the manner of the Gospels, the story of Christ’s life and works and message. It professes to be written by one who was an intimate disciple, and who was therefore an eye-witness of everything told in the book. It is a vivid narrative and leaves the reader deeply moved, because it brings him closer than most interpretations do into actual presence of and companionship with the great Galilean. The first chapter is a re-interpretation of the scene on the eastern shore of Gennesaret, where Jesus casts the demons out of the maniac of Geresa. A man on the shore of the lake told Jesus, when he landed there with his disciples in the early morning, that it was not safe for any one to go up the rugged hillside, because there were madmen hidden there among the tombs: “people possessed by demons, who tear their flesh, and who can be heard screaming day and night.”

“How do you know they are possessed by demons?” asked Jesus.

“What else could it be?” said the man. “There are none that can master them. They are too fierce to be tamed.”

“Has any man tried to tame them?” asked Jesus.

“Yes, Rabbi, they have been bound with chains and fetters. There was one that I saw. He plucked the fetters from him as a child might break a chain of field flowers. Then he ran foaming into the wilderness, and no man dare pass by that way now....”

“Have men tried only this way to tame him?” Jesus asked.

“What other way is there, Rabbi?” asked the man.

“There is God’s way,” said Jesus. “Come, let us try it.”

As Jesus spoke, “His gaze went from man to man,” the writer continues, “and then his eyes fell upon me. It was as if a power passed from him to me, and immediately something inside me answered, ‘Lead, and I follow.’” The narrative proceeds to describe the encounter with the demoniac man whose name was “Legion.” “He ran toward us, shrieking and bounding in the air. He had two sharp stones in his hand, and as he leaped he cut his flesh with them and the blood ran down his naked limbs. The men behind us scattered and fled down the hillside; but Jesus stood still and waited.” The effect of the calm, undisturbed, unfrightened presence of Jesus was astonishing. It was as though a new force suddenly came into operation. The jagged stones were thrown from his hands, for he recognized at once in Jesus a friendly presence and a helper with an understanding heart. His fear and terror left the demoniac man and he became quiet, composed and like a normal person. Meantime some of the men who ran away in fear, when the madman appeared, frightened a herd of swine feeding near by, and in their uncontrolled terror they rushed wildly toward the headland of the lake and pitched over the top into the water where they were drowned. “Fear is a foul spirit,” said Jesus, and it seemed plain and obvious that the ungoverned fear which played such havoc with the man had taken possession also of the misguided swine. It was the same “demon,” fear. A little later in the day when the companions of Jesus found him they saw the man who had called himself “Legion” sitting at Jesus’ feet, clothed and in his right mind—a quieted and restored person.

We now know that this disease, called “possession,” which appears so often in the New Testament accounts, is a very common present-day trouble. The name and description given to it in the Bible make it often seem remote and unfamiliar to us, but it is, in fact, as prevalent in the world to-day as it was in the first century. It is an extreme form of hysteria, a disorganization of normal functions, often causing delusions, loss of memory, the performance of automatic actions, and sometimes resulting in double, or multiple, personality, a condition in which a foreign self seems to usurp the control of the body and make it do many strange and unwilled things. This disease is known in very many cases to be produced by frights, fear, or terror, sometimes fears long hidden away and more or less suppressed.

The famous cases of Doris Fischer and Miss Beauchamp were both of this type. They were only extreme instances of a fairly common form of mental trouble, generally due to fears, and capable of being cured by wise, skillful understanding and loving care, applied by one who shows confidence and human interest and who knows how to use the powerful influence of suggestion. Dr. Morton Prince, who has reported these two cases, has achieved cures and restorations that read like miracles, and his narratives tell of minds, “jangling, harsh, and out of tune,” broken into dissociated selves, which have been unified, organized, harmonized and restored to normal life. Few restorations are more wonderful than that effected upon a Philadelphia girl under the direction of Dr. Lightner Witmer. The girl was hopelessly incorrigible, stubborn, sullen, suspicious, and stupid. She screamed, kicked, and bit when she was opposed, and she utterly refused to obey anybody. So unnatural and dehumanized was she that she was generally called “Diabolical Mary.” She was examined by Dr. Witmer, underwent some simple surgical operations to remove her obvious physical handicaps, and then was put under the loving, tender care of a wise, attractive, and understanding woman. The girl responded to the treatment at once and soon became profoundly changed, and the process went on until the girl became a wholly transformed and re-made person.

The so-called shell-shock cases which have bulked so large in the story of the wastage of men in all armies during the World War, turn out to be cases of mental disorganization, occasioned for the most part by immense emotional upheaval, especially through suppressed fear. The man affected with the trouble has seemed to master his emotion. He has not winced or shown the slightest fear in the face of danger; but the pent-up emotion, the suppressed fear and terror, insidiously throw the entire nervous mechanism out of gear. The successful treatment of such cases is, again, like that for hysteria, one that brings confidence, calm, liberation of all strain and anxiety. The poor victim needs a patient, wise, skillful, psychologically trained physician, who has an understanding mind, a friendly, interested, intimate way, a spirit of love, and who can arouse expectation of recovery and can suggest thoughts of health and the right emotional reactions. This method of cure has often been tried with striking effect upon the so-called criminal classes. Prisoners almost always respond constructively to the personal manifestation of confidence, sympathy, and love. Elizabeth Fry proved this principle in an astonishing way with the almost brutalized prisoners in Newgate. Thomas Shillitoe’s visit to the German prisoners at Spandau, who were believed to be beyond all human appeals, though not so well known and famous, is no less impressive and no less convincing.

There was perhaps never a time in the history of the world when an application of this principle and method—God’s way—was so needed in the social sphere of life. Whole countries have the symptoms which appear in these nervous diseases. It is not merely an individual case here and there; it takes on a corporate, a mass, form. The nerves are overstrained, the emotional stress has been more than could be borne, suppressed fears have produced disorganization. There are signs of social “dissociation.” The remedy in such cases is not an application of compelling force, not a resort to chains and fetters, not a screwing on of the “lid,” not a method of starving out the victims. It is rather an application of the principle which has always worked in individual cases of “dissociation” or “possession” or “suppressed fear”—the principle of sympathy, love and suggestion—what Jesus, in the book mentioned above, calls “God’s way.” The “dissociation” of labor and employers in the social group, with its hysterical signs of strikes and lockouts, upheaval and threats, needs just now a very wise physician. Force, restraint, compulsion, fastening down the “lid,” imprisonment of leaders, drastic laws against propaganda, will not cure the disease, any more than chains cured the poor sufferer on the shores of Gennesaret. The situation must first of all be understood. The inner attitude behind the acts and deeds must be taken into account. The social mental state must be diagnosed. The remedy, to be a remedy, must remove the causes which produce the dissociation. It can be accomplished only by one who has an understanding heart, a good will, an unselfish purpose, and a comprehending, i.e., a unifying, suggestion of coöperation.

This way is no less urgent for the solution of the most acute international situations. It has been assumed too long and too often that these situations can be best handled by unlimited methods of restraint, coercion, and reduction to helplessness. Some of the countries of Europe have been plainly suffering from neurasthenia, dissociation, and the kindred forms of emotional, fear-caused diseases. Starvation always makes for types of hysteria. It will not do now to apply, with cold, precise logic, the old vindictive principle that when the sinner has been made to suffer enough to “cover” the enormity of his sin he can then be restored to respectable society. It is not vindication of justice which most concerns the world now; it is a return of health, a restoration of normal functions, a reconstruction of the social body. That task calls for the application of the deeper, truer principles of life. It calls for a knowing heart, an understanding method, a healing plan, a sympathetic guide who can obliterate the fear-attitude and suggest confidence and unity and trustful human relationships. Those great words, used in the Epistle of London Yearly Meeting of Friends in 1917, need to be revived and put to an experimental venture: “Love knows no frontiers.” There is no limit to its healing force, there are no conditions it does not meet, there is no terminus to its constructive operations.