Chico Xavier: Medium of the Century by Guy Lyon Playfair

The book cover shows the 2010 Brazilian stamp commemorating the centenary of the birth of medium Francisco Cândido ('Chico') Xavier (1910-2002).

Guy Lyon Playfair is an author whose books include This House Is Haunted: An Investigation of the Enfield Poltergeist (1980) and Twin Telepathy (2002).  He explained in Chico Xavier: Medium of the Century (2010) that the book is intended to be a brief introduction to the life and work of Chico Xavier for English language readers who may know little about him.  Playfair previously wrote about Xavier in The Flying Cow (1975) and The Indefinite Boundary (1976).

The books brought forth through Xavier are among the diverse evidence documenting the perpetuity of life beyond the Earth plane.  'Automatic writing' is among the forms of channeling/psychic phenomena indicating that each human being's thoughts may encompass sources beyond what one might consider as his or her individual conscious mind.  When Playfair watched some film footage of Xavier, his writing was shown being done at a speed comparable to a modern word processor.

Throughout his life, Xavier reminded others that the books passing through his hands did not belong to him.  In consideration of this understanding, he was willing to sign books for the public with the proceeds from book sales going to provide food, clothing and medical assistance for the poor.  In the 1970s, Playfair met Xavier at one such event and observed him for several hours as he was signing books, shaking people's hands and giving them souvenir roses.

In 2010 Xavier's output totaled 458 books with sales having passed the 50 million mark by his centenary year.  Playfair commented:

This should have made him one of the richest men in Brazil, yet he neither asked for nor received payment for anything he ever wrote, donating all his royalties to charities and living on his modest government pension.
 
 
Chico Xavier was the most public of mediums.  Many of his earlier books were written at public sessions that anybody could attend, though later he preferred to work on his own.  He was regularly besieged by journalists, and every detail of what little private life he had was known to the entire literate public of Brazil.
 
 
Chico himself always did his best to describe his methods.  "When I am writing automatically," he once said, "I can see, hear and feel the discarnate spirit who is working by means of my arm, and I have often registered the presence of the communicator without knowing anything about the subject on which he is writing."
 
While writing one of his historical novels, Chico said he followed the unfolding of the plot with the greatest interest, as if he were reading something written by somebody else, which is of course what he has always claimed to be the case.  He became thoroughly involved in the story, as if he were watching a TV serial, finding himself identifying with the more sympathetic characters and being disappointed when they got into situations that made them suffer, much against his will.

Xavier became aware of his psychic abilities during his childhood in the Belo Horizonte suburbs.  On one occasion he saw the materialized form of his mother shortly after her death.  Playfair reported how Xavier won an honourable mention award for an historical essay contest.

. . . he saw a man beside him who seemed to be dictating to him: "Brazil, discovered by Pedro Alvares Cabral, may be compared to the most precious diamond in the world which was soon to be set in the crown of Portugal . . ."

Upon telling his teacher and classmates that he had received the essay from a spirit, Xavier was challenged to do so again and somebody suggested the topic of 'Sand.'

. . . everybody laughed at such a ridiculous theme except Chico, who went to the blackboard, took the chalk and began writing at once: "My sons, creation is not mocked.  A grain of sand is almost nothing, yet it appears as a tiny star reflecting the sun of God . . ."

Xavier left school in 1923 when he was thirteen years old, having begun working for his living at the age of 11 in a textile plant.  After later jobs as a kitchen hand and counter salesman, Xavier held "a very modest job in a branch office of the Ministry of Agriculture" from 1933 until his retirement in 1961.

In 1927, he began his work as a practicing medium after one of his sisters was cured by a local healing medium and Xavier's family became Spiritists.  The healing medium's wife founded "a small evangelical Spiritist centre" attended by Xavier and his family.  The woman was instructed on two occasions—the first clairaudiently and the second clairvoyantly—to give Xavier a pencil and paper.  His first two instances of automatic writing ensued, resulting with "a seventeen-page message of spiritual guidance on themes from the gospels, signed 'A Friendly Spirit'" and then "instructions for the treatment of his sister lately cured of apparent madness."  Xavier would eventually identify his 'chief guide' as 'Emmanuel.'

Xavier's sixtieth book Evolution In Two Worlds (1959) was the first of seventeen books that he wrote in collaboration with another medium, Dr. Waldo Vieira.  "Only upon completion of his half did Chico get instructions from his guide Emmanuel to contact Dr. Vieira and put the book together."

In 2010, more than two million copies had been sold of Xavier's Nosso Lar (1943) in a variety of languages including the original Portuguese.  The title of the English language edition of Nosso Lar is The Astral City — The story of a doctor's odyssey in the Spirit World by André Luiz (spirit) through Francisco Cândido Xavier.  This book is presented by the Spiritist Group of New York and GEAE (Advanced Study Group of Spiritism).  S. J. Haddad’s 1986 Introduction to the First English Edition includes the following.

It has been repeatedly confirmed by reliable messages that the etherical replicas of the physical world are a common event in the next plane of existence.  Indeed, the similarities of the two worlds are at times so confusing to the newly departed that the spirit mistakes them for material life, often ignoring the fact that death has occurred and that he has lost his physical body.  Bearing in mind these and other basic principles of transition expounded by The Astral City we begin to conceive of a hereafter that is within the realm of Nature, a realm equally ruled by just laws of cause and effect.

There are eleven other André Luiz books.  Playfair commented that he had translated hundreds of pages of Portuguese documents, reports and books yet he had never come across passages as difficult as some of those found among the Nosso Lar collection of nine books.

Playfair reported that in Between Earth and Heaven (1954) André's guide explains:

"Our body of rarefied matter is intimately ruled by seven centres of force, which work together in the ramifications of the plexuses.  As they vibrate in tune with each other, upon the influx of directing power from the mind, they establish for our use a vehicle of electric cells, which we may define as an electromagnetic field in which thought vibrates in a closed circuit.  Our mental position determines the specific weight of our spiritual envelope (the perispirit body) and consequently its respective habitat."

In Missionaries of the Light (1945), André discovers aspects of spiritual intervention.  Playfair commented: "André learns that reincarnation is usually an automatic  process, with the spirit simply drawn to a certain parent . . . people can actually help plan their own future bodies, with the help of genetic engineers at the Reincarnation Planning Department."

The metaphysical books resulting from Xavier's mediumship encompass poetry, history and science.  The books were channeled despite Xavier having suffered from poor eyesight throughout most of his life, being practically blind in one eye.  There currently are two dozen English language editions of Xavier's books listed at Amazon.com.

This morning, I took another look at the Roundtable Publishing Limited edition of Chico Xavier, Medium of the Century.  I noticed that the first information offered in the book is a summarizing quotation of Michael Tymn from The Journal of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies: "Although the book runs to only 98 pages, it is filled with interesting and intriguing facts about Chico Xavier and about the 'other world,' as communicated through his hand."  I asked myself what would be my main conclusion, considering how difficult it is to express metaphysical truths in simple words.

Playfair commented that Xavier was capable of "transforming people's lives in a matter of seconds if they happened to be at the right place at the right time."  One witness reported watching him writing with both hands at the same time, "getting simultaneous messages from André Luiz and Humberto de Campos."  About this, Playfair mentioned that he himself had once witnessed trance artist Luiz Antonio Gasparetto "doing two drawings at once, one of them upside down, then signing each of them simultaneously — with two different signatures."

Perhaps another way of expressing that Earth beings have a 'shared subconscious mind' is to state that all individual consciousness/personality units belong to a self-aware 'All That Is' — a highly moral force.  Each of us is currently having a local experience on our planet yet this Intermediary Superconsciousness is unrestricted by space and time as we are accustomed to being in our daily lives, as evidenced by some occurrences chronicled among the annals of 'unexplained phenomena.'  Upon considering writings attributed to André Luiz through Xavier, Playfair used the expressions 'Superior Intelligence,' 'divine source' and 'Intelligent Principle.'  From my own observations of otherwise 'anomalous' circumstances, such a principle/Principal is not 'inconceivably remote' in relation to understanding human nature; there can be no more intimate or essential part of one's self.

 

 

Update: Other articles about Chico Xavier include "Channeled Reincarnation Scenarios" and "A Doctor Describes How He Began His New Life in the Ascended Realm of Existence (As Channeled by Chico Xavier)"