{An Epileptic Fit [continued]}[14th September 1981]

[Redbook2:203-204][19810914:1900b]{An Epileptic Fit [continued]}[14^th September 1981]

19810914.1900

[continued]

The rest is standard procedure, but I was left extremely perturbed by the epileptic fit. It may, of course, have saved him from collapsing into a printing machine [later] – it seems that he is unlikely to be allowed on the course. It also may have helped me to get on the course, since I was let through, when I refused to give my employer's name and telephone number ('we may have to contact them'), by the very [same] Administrative Officer who had arrived first to help me with the boy.

The first thing that I remember reading on the train back was the religious article in The Times today, whose first paragraph described a Charismatic leader inducing what appeared to be an epileptic type fit.

Before reading this, I had wondered – on the basis of possibilities of connection only – whether I might not have somewhere taken the wrong path, and be creating myself a monster. Later it occurred to me that there are good precedents for the setting off of epileptic-type fits[,] by men of singular goodness, notably in the Gospels; although they tend to cure them, whereas I felt completely impotent in that respect. There may well be a perfectly scientific explanations for the presence of one person setting off fits in another, even though unknown to our science; or this may have been just a co-incidence. W later pointed out that no one knows what goes on inside an epileptic fit: it is not necessarily 'evil' or (my word) 'dark'; and this is possible.

But my first and lasting feeling is that great care is needed. I am not uncorrupt, despite myself – perhaps because of myself.

[continues]

[PostedBlogger21022015]