Spiritual Infections, Physical Cures

I am increasingly taking the message of James Randi quite seriously, well beyond and above average, because of the decadent state of belief and irrationality that certain people adopt and adhere to in their quest to explain the unacceptable conditions of life they encounter. Beliefs are the software that keep society together but only when they are the stuff of “useful or rational” contents necessary for its proper coordination.

One exceptional case that makes me more pro-Randi than usual but not an atheist occurred when an acquaintance confided to me he could not drink alcohol on a certain night because he was on antibiotics; he had unfortunately contracted gonorrhoea. The guy went on to make a very strange claim i.e. he had acquired the disease in his dream. Put another way, his claim was that he did not contract the disease by engaging in unprotected sex with a lady in this physical world of ours but by way of a “spiritual infection” inflicted by a female witch (a hidden enemy) in the astral world while he was deep asleep alone in his flat.

I laughed a lot later but I was too puzzled to do so in the first half hour of hearing his story. Spiritual cause, physical cure. And that was that.

Grimot Nane