Question: Guru, do things happen in the West such as evil spirits entering people and then everybody thinks it is some medical defect? For instance, could some psychiatric cases really be cases of evil forces that have entered?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes. In the West, there are many like this whom I have seen under psychiatric treatment. X, who was one of my first disciples, had actually been attacked by an evil force, but her mother thought that it was a mental breakdown and put her in a hospital in the Bronx for a year or two. She became practically insane there. One day Y told me about her and I felt very sorry. I was in Manhattan at the time and I went to see her. She had been there for some time, suffering and not making any progress, and was in very bad condition. They thought that she had lost her sanity and needed psychiatric treatment, but I saw clearly that she had been attacked by an undivine force. She didn’t know me well at that time; she had only heard about me casually. But I did help her and a few days later she was released. Twice after that we held meditations and I gave talks at her house. One time when I was about to start my meditation there, her cat came and fell at my feet, and told me inwardly that it wanted to have a human incarnation. Everybody was so surprised because all of a sudden the cat came and fell flat at my feet and looked at me so fixedly.