Hostage To The Devil

by Неизвестный

  In the mere five cases reported in this book such difference in activity is borne out dramatically; in each case there is a feel for the subtlety or lack of it, the degree of predatory intelligence being challenged, and the degree of irresistibility of the will that struggles in contention with the exorcist.

  Paul of Tarsus was referring to this kind of differentiation when he used the concepts and terminology of Alexandrine Gnostics and theosophers, and spoke of “powers,” “principalities,” “thrones,” “dominations,” and again when he used such biblical terms as “cherubim” and “seraphim.”

  All of this information, elaborated by painful experience, detailed and extended through years of offering themselves as hostage for the possessed, is of prime interest and value to the exorcists. But the most important fact about evil spirits is that none of their faculties or powers is divine. Evil spirits are forever excluded from God's life and the vision of God's truth.

  Their knowledge and foresight, then, are based only on what they can know by their native intelligence. They are not, in effect, supernatural, but merely preternatural beings.

  In traditional usage, “supernatural” means divine: of God. The supernatural is therefore totally separate from, superior to, and in no way dependent upon what is created—what is “natural” in that sense.

  Only God is supernatural in his very being. He can act with supernatural power upon all “natural” (that is, created) things and beings. He can communicate his supernatural life and power to what is created, thus elevating it. But the distinction always remains between what is created and what is supernatural.

  Supernatural power can affect all that is at the disposal of the preternatural; but one essential difference between the supernatural and the world of evil spirits is that supernatural power can bypass all natural modes of operation. The supernatural can act directly on spirit. It need not pass via the senses, or through the internal powers of imagination, mind, and will in order to reach the soul of a human being.

  Only God and those who share in his supernatural power can do this.

  Preternatural power is superior to human power in its abilities. That is, evil spirits, by virtue of preternatural power, are not bound by laws of physical nature and of matter that govern all our human exercise of power in the physical and psychic orders. But they do appear to be bound by other laws of nature (because they, too, were created) beyond which they cannot exercise any power at all.

  We do not know all that preternatural power can effect, but we do know some of its abilities and some of its limits.

  By virtue of preternatural power, evil spirits can manipulate psychic phenomena and produce psychic states. That is to say, psychic powers are at their disposal. Psychic powers (telekinesis, telepathy, astral travel, bilocation, second sight, etc.) do not themselves become preternatural (any more than that baseball becomes the pitcher), much less supernatural.

  Evil spirits, then, are able to produce fascinating effects in our human fields of perception and behavior. They may not be and probably are not responsible for all psychic phenomena, but they have not only mastery of this sort of behavior but the ability to pique the human imagination with a wondrous gamut of enticements. Carl, who almost lost his sanity and his life in his struggle on this very battlefield, wrote in his letter to his former students that he had never, in fact, mastered astral travel or bilocation, “but only their illusion.” And he was aware they were illusion—but so eager and so fascinated was he that he would not admit that awareness beyond the faintest far focus of his mind.

  The point is that Evil Spirit can titillate and entice us through our senses and imagination with images of psychic wonders as easily as images of sex or gold. Whatever will work. But Evil Spirit can produce nothing in us that was not already there, actually or potentially.

  God, for example, can “give” us grace, which is not ours of ourselves. Evil Spirit can only act upon what it finds and only within the limits of its knowledge.

  For instance, preternatural power does not enable evil spirits to control or interfere directly with the moral behavior of human beings. They may be able to produce a pile of gold dollars at will by any of a number of psychic means, but they could not thereby force a person to accept them. They cannot interfere with our freedom to choose or reject, because that freedom is granted and guaranteed by the divine.

  The inferiority of the preternatural power of evil spirits compared to the supernatural power of Jesus is clear and definite in many of its effects. There is an opaqueness that impedes and even stops Evil Spirit—its ability to act and its ability to know—everywhere that Jesus and his supernatural power extend, where the choice has been for Jesus and where the supernatural reigns, where the supernatural invests objects, places, and people.

  The power of symbols of the supernatural (a crucifix, for example) to protect good and repel or control evil is such an effect. Objects used in and closely associated with worship (holy water), exorcists, any person in a state of supernatural grace (an exorcist's assistant who has been absolved of his sins), even houses, countrysides, whole areas, are protected in their essence from the freewheeling activity of Evil Spirit. This limitation of the preternatural and so of Evil Spirit extends to another important sphere as well, for it means that the reach of knowledge of Evil Spirit is severely limited. An evil spirit cannot, for example, foresee and therefore forestall the intent of an exorcist who is acting in the name and with the authority of Jesus.

  When Father Gerald stepped out from behind the protection of Jesus to confront Girl-Fixer in his own name, he was immediately and horribly attacked, physically and emotionally. But for all the blood and pain and horror, that was no victory for Girl-Fixer. The spirit could not reach Gerald's mind or his soul. Gerald's will held firm. All the efforts of Girl-Fixer had been precisely to affect Gerald's mind, his will, and so ultimately his soul-where the spirit had not the power to reach directly. Girl-Fixer failed; and having failed, he stood at bay. Richard/Rita was ultimately freed to make his choice between good and evil.

  Evil spirits have the power to know without reasoning, to remember what is available to their knowledge from eternity, and to use that knowledge to influence, cajole, frighten, and otherwise affect the minds and hearts of men and women so that they desert the plan of God and score another victory of rebellion against good. Their knowledge concerns every occasion where a choice is made against the supernatural. When spirits shout the sins of the people present during an exorcism, they are reaching as far as their natural power can take them.

  Finally, those who are selected for possession may accede to possession and then quickly recant; or be deeply enmeshed and be freed only at great pain and risk; or be fully-perfectly-possessed. It remains completely unclear, however, why one person and not another is chosen for such direct and single-minded attack.

  Ponto said to Jamsie as they drove along a highway near San Francisco, “All those homes up there. . . there's no welcome for me up there in spite of their boozing and bitching and despair.”

  But why not? Did that mean that those people too had been “invited,” as Jamsie had and Carl and Marianne and David and Yves and Richard/Rita? And had they, whatever their smaller choices for evil, refused the gross invitation? Is everyone a possible target? Are only some “selected” for “invitation”? There is no way to be sure.

  Human Spirit and Jesus

  Evil Spirit aims at attacking and destroying the humanness of each human being. This humanness is neither a physical nor a psychophysical condition. It is a spiritual capacity possessed by each man and woman and child.

  Only because of this capacity in spirit are we able to believe in God and to attain unending happiness in our after-death condition. Only because of this capacity can we perceive beauty and truth in this human universe. And, perceiving it thus, we may reproduce it in our actions and our products. Diabolic possession negates this capacity.

  The reason we have this capacity of spirit is Jesus of
Nazareth. As a man, he lived for not more than 50 years, as close as we can calculate. But all of his achievements were his as God made man. Hence those achievements are timeless and affect those at the very beginnings of our species as well as all other humans until time ends. Every man and woman in all time, every human ever conceived had, has, and will have this capacity of spirit made possible by Jesus. All, therefore, are capable of humanness.

  We know of this humanness only from the mortal life of Jesus. As our own lives proceed, we know only that by ourselves we become increasingly helpless in every way, that our human love which we desire so much seems to become vain and weak; and that all of us, with all our aspirations and hopes, must end in the silent darkness and the numbing secret of death. Jesus overcame the helplessness. He accepted human love. He died successfully. On this triad of helplessness, love, and death all humanness depends.

  Jesus' experience of each one, and how he responded to the challenges of each—here is the central mystery of Jesus—made it possible for every other human being to respond successfully when faced with the same challenging experiences in the trial and development of individual humanness. Such was the means by which God from the beginning provided that mere creatures, tied to their physical bodies, might overcome their all too obvious limitations of time and physicality, and share, each one, in supernatural life. As with Jesus, it requires not only the desire, but the participation, the life action, the choice—in short, the will—of each.

  Without any doubt Jesus spent his entire life attaining the perfection of his humanness. But in the historical records about him we find the ultimate steps in Jesus' achievement of humanness were crowded into a period of weeks prior to his execution. Because of variations between the different written records, we have to take the crucial period to be about four weeks in length, although it may well have been that all those steps were concluded within the last week of his life.

  Nowhere is Jesus' victory over helplessness more clear or vivid than in the raising of his friend, Lazarus, from the dead.

  Throughout his life as described in the records, Jesus displayed a constant mastery over people, events, and things. There was never any faltering or hesitation in his actions. He acted in his own name with an authority that never reeked of authoritarianism or arrogance, but at the same time brooked no refusal. “Amen! Amen! I say to you.” All was decisive. He gave commands to men and women, to evil spirits, to friends, to enemies, to the elements. In confrontation with private people or public authorities, it was always the same behavior: he acknowledged no one as superior to himself, praised and blamed and condemned as he saw fit, never withdrew before any other man as his master or as greater than himself.

  Whenever he worked miracles or ordered something done, his instructions and dictates were clear, concise, supremely confident, and direct: “Go out from this man.” “Be clean!” “Arise and walk!” “Go show yourself to the priests!” “Be cured!” “Stand up and walk!” “Hear!” It was only at the raising of Lazarus from the dead that Jesus exhibited a dependency, a lingering hesitation, a doubt—and that he acknowledged his helplessness.

  It is evident from the Gospel that at the tomb of Lazarus Jesus experienced a flood of helplessness. In fact, his behavior from the time Lazarus' two sisters, Martha and Mary, sent for him was so uncharacteristic as to be called indecisive. It was as if he were passing through a waiting time, a period of unknowing and apprehension we humans call doubt. First of all, he stated plainly that “the end of Lazarus' sickness is not death.” Then, “Our friend Lazarus is sleeping. But I shall go and wake him up.” Finally: “Lazarus is dead.” He delayed his departure for two days. Then he spent two more days traveling.

  When Jesus arrived at Bethania, where Lazarus, Martha, and Mary had their estates, Lazarus had been buried. From the moment of his arrival Jesus' behavior was peculiar and unwonted. When he met the weeping sisters, he was distressed, sighed, and wept openly. At the tomb itself he publicly stated his personal trust in and dependence on God-apparently a newly felt need of his at that moment.

  Looking up at the skies, he said in a loud voice: “Father! I thank you for listening to my request. I myself know that you always listen to me. But I am speaking for the sake of the people standing around here, so that they may come to believe you sent me.”

  We, can only imagine, and by comparison with our own lot, the trouble Jesus suffered. He who never hesitated, hesitated. He who personally commanded in his own name had to wait for approval before commanding. In the previous years of Jesus' life there may have been other such moments. But this experience at the tomb of Lazarus is the only one recorded in which Jesus' exercise of divine power within the human order was accomplished only after a short but intense experience of helplessness.

  Without diminution of his divinity, and only so that his humanness would be achieved, Jesus was offered in this raising of Lazarus the human ridge of fears and probabilities. He had the same alternatives in that moment that all of us have at certain crucial moments throughout our lives. One alternative says: “Stay with your fears. With the probabilities. With your impotencies. Accept them. That's the way it is. That's life.” Another alternative says: “Declare yourself helpless and incapable, and ask for help to transcend all your helplessness and impotencies. Say: 'I am helpless. Help me! Unsure as I am, help me to be sure!'”

  The second key element in the fullness of humanness achieved by Jesus, and so guaranteed as a capacity in each of us if we choose, is human love: its acceptance, its felt sweetness, its celebration, the giving of it.

  At first glance it would seem that there is no one who cannot love humanly, that it is “second nature” to do so. Yet experience has always told men and women that it is as hard to love as to be loved. For human love is never a matter of logical concepts or data matching. It implies no use of purposiveness. It is never a managed process of quid pro quo. Those who love each other, in the exercise of their love are enveloped in a transcendental atmosphere where they remain distinct, but no emphasis is laid upon one individual over another.

  Richard/Rita's exorcist, Father Gerald, had learned one shining truth about human love through his ordeal with the evil spirit whose method of dehumanization was debasement of love itself. In the long conversation with him as we strolled in his garden some months before he died, Gerald sketched for me his realization that our need for sexuality in love is a result of our not possessing God—love itself; and that sexuality is valid humanly and ennobling only as a striving for and expression of the love we can achieve.

  Our difficulty is that we cannot imagine a close and personal love between man and woman that is not sexually based and ultimately sexually expressed. But this is a limitation of our outlook, not a deficiency in Jesus.

  Jesus, being God, did not need the vehicle of sexuality, nor did those who loved him. Yet who can doubt the tactile and warm love of that Mary who poured a “pound of pure spikenard perfume” over his feet and then dried them with her long hair? Her very gesture implied a tender affection for Jesus, together with a trusting presumption that what she did he understood, accepted, and, in his own way, reciprocated. Full of the power that love confers, she held captive the guests gathered around with the solemnity of love expressed, as surely as the breath of that perfume filled “the whole house,” as the Gospel tells us.

  This is the only recorded occasion when Jesus was proffered the beauty and intimate sweetness of human love by a woman, and Jesus insisted it be his. “Leave her alone!” he said to the grumbling Judas Iscariot. Jesus knew that human beauty and love was its own sanctification, because they were tangible blessings given only by God.

  And he therefore insisted that they be received-uncovered except with their own inherent grace.

  The Gospels make it clear that during the last days, when Jesus was waiting for the Passover feast, he was frequently near the Bethania family of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. It is left to our imagination to portray his hours of companionship with thi
s family, the happiness of being with friends and the object of their love, the gentle, probing conversations they carried on between them, the nearness, the warmth, the celebration of their unity in heart, and the sweetness of total acceptance.

  In tasting such love, so Christianity teaches, Jesus made that love possible for each of us. Humanly. If we choose.

  It is central to Christian understanding of the fullness of humanness achieved by Jesus that when, earlier, he overcame his human helplessness, and when he accepted human love, he was preparing his soul for his victory, not over mere dying, but over death.

  For the victory over helplessness was only possible by trust, by relying on the power of God, by resting his hopes on something outside his human ambit. And the consent to love and be loved was made possible only because he recognized and accepted God's guarantee that all human love-despite its pathos and weakness-could be made eternal and divine.

  In other words, to be humanly victorious in all three of these circumstances, Jesus relied on the more than human, and on what no human agency could tell him or effect for him.

  For Jesus, as for us, dying was the ultimate and only surety. He himself did not escape dying. Nor has he made it possible for any other human being, even his own mother, to escape dying.

  Jesus' experience of dying was colored by two opposites. On the one hand, his natural shrinking from dying and death as the summary evil, as that which ended his human integrity. On the other hand, his devotion to the purpose of his whole life, which could be accomplished only by dying.

  In some mysterious way, Jesus was made to undergo the same agonizing natural fear of death that all humans have. Still at a distance from the hour of his death, the thought of dying made Jesus sad, almost querulous. “One of you is going to betray me,” he revealed to his followers at their intimate supper. “Could you not stay awake this one hour with me?” he complained to his three companions who had dozed off. “Let this trial pass me by,” he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane as he writhed and sweated on the ground in sheer apprehension and loathing for his dying.