Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
13. Opposition of the Hostile Forces
I may observe that X does not seem to me to be mad –
there is no sign of a dislocation of the thinking mind due to lesion or accident
or illness. What there is is a fixed idea and what is called folie de
persécution, but that is not due to insanity – people have it who have
otherwise an acute and perfectly well-ordered intelligence. X from his
photograph appears to have had a mediumistic element in him and to have by some
ill-chance entered into contact with powers of the vital plane which were able
to put their suggestions in him – in that part of the consciousness which we
call the vital mind so that he is unable to ascertain things in their 
proper light and is tormented by the suggestions that have driven their furrows
there in the form of habitual ideas that tyrannise over him and which he is
unable to embrace or refuse. Unfortunately this is a malady of the
consciousness, which it is very difficult to cure because the patient himself
gives no assistance, as he clings to his fixed idea and even when the influence
is taken away, calls it back upon him. Certainly he could be told from here that
he is not mad and is not cursed of God – but that of itself might not be
sufficient to cure him.