ABBE FARIA (1746-1819) ARTICLES

ABBE FARIA ARTICLES

1. THE ENIGMATIC ABBE FARIA: LUIS S. R. VAS

2. ABBE FARIA: THE FORGOTTEN GOAN PIONEER: IABEL DE SANTA RITA VAS

3. ABBE FARIA: FRANCISCO MONTERIO

4. ABBE FARIA: DON MARTIN

5. FARIA: INFORMATION ANSWERS.COM

6. THE FATHER OF HYPNOTISM: ABBE FARIA: ALFREDO DE MELLO

7. RECLAIMING FARIA V. M. DE MALAR

8. JOSE CUSTODIO DE FARIA: HYPNOTIST, PRIEST, REVOLUTIONARY: LAURENT CARRER, PHD. BOOK REVIEW

1. THE ENIGMATIC ABBE FARIA: LUIS S. R. VAS http://www.abbefaria.com/

May 31 is the birthday of a mysterious son of Goa, Jose Custodio de Faria (1756-1819), better known as Abbe Faria(in French) and Abade Faria(in Portuguese), 'abbe' and 'abade' standing for abbot. There is a striking statue of him in Panjim, next to the Government Secretariat, sculpted in 1945 by Ramchandra Pandurang Kamat of Madkai. The mental hospital in Altinho, Panjim, was named Hospital Abade Faria and there is a road in Margao called Rua Abade Faria. But who is Abbe Faria and what did he do to deserve three landmarks in his honor during Portuguese times? If you don't know, it's not very surprising since his life is like a detective thriller with many of the clues missing!

A century ago Dr. D. G. Dalgado, his biographer, wrote: "Abbe Faria is known in the medical and scientific world, particularly in France, as having signaled the end of the era of animal magnetism and of magnetized trees and the beginning of the era of the lucid sleep or of hypnotism, which is a very interesting branch of knowledge of physiology and psycho-physiology, with practical applications, specially to therapeutics and pediatrics. His book Of the Cause of Lucid Sleep, published in 1819, and to which he owes his reputation as a scientist, has been out of print for a long time. There are authors -- some of them authorities! -- who know about it only through a few quotations cited in other works. I am of the opinion that the reprinting of this book would generate a lot of interest among those who dedicate themselves to the study of hypnotism and whose number is increasing every day."

Dr. Dalgado himself reprinted the book in 1906, on Faria's 150th birth anniversary, in the original French and published it along with his own biography and assessment of the man, also in French. These, too, again went out of print and have remained so during the next century. And nobody has ever bothered to translate into English either Faria's or Dalgado's work!

Since May 31, 2006, is Faria's 250th birth anniversary, the whole year, from May 31, 2005, should be earmarked for the celebrations, with appropriate events organized during the year. Fortunately for us, Dr. Laurent Carrer, Ph.D., a French hypnotherapist established in the US, is currently completing an annotated English translation of Faria's opus, to be featured in his Jose Custodio de Faria: Hypnotist, Priest and Revolutionary along with the translation of two studies on the Abbe written in 1906 by Dr. D. G. Dalgado, the Goan biographer and scientist of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Lisbon.

Why should they? Here is why. Jose Custodio de Faria was the son of Caetano Vitorino de Faria of Colvale and Rosa Maria de Souza of Candolim, both native Goans. He was born in his mother's house in Candolim and lived there along with his parents and his adopted sister, Catarina, an orphan. Perhaps appropriately, the house is now an orphanage.

Faria's parents could not get on with each other and decided to separate. They obtained the Church's dispensation, the father joining the seminary to complete his studies for the priesthood which he had interrupted to get married. The mother became a nun, joining the St. Monica convent in Old Goa were she rose to the position of prioress. Jose's father had great ambitions for himself and his son. He assembled a vast array of letters of introduction to everybody who was anybody at the Portuguese Court and together they set sail for Lisbon aboard the ship S. Jose when the son reached the age of 15.

Nine months later they were in Lisbon befriending all those who mattered in the Portuguese Court, particularly the Pope's Nuncio or Ambassador to the Court. They managed to convince the Portuguese Sovereign to send them to Rome for Faria Sr. to earn a doctorate in theology and the son to pursue his studies for the priesthood. In 1777, the father returned to Lisbon, now a Doctor in Theology. Eventually, the son too earned his doctorate, dedicating his doctoral thesis to the Portuguese Queen, D. Maria I, and another study, on the Holy Spirit to the Pope. Apparently His Holiness was sufficiently impressed to invite Jose Custodio de Faria to preach a sermon in the Sistine Chapel which he himself attended.

On his return to Lisbon, the Queen was informed by the Nuncio of the Pope's honour to Faria Jr. So, she too invited the young priest to preach to her as well in her chapel. But Faria, climbing the pulpit, and seeing the August assembly felt tongue tied. Whereupon the father, who sat below the pulpit, whispered to him in Konkani: Hi sogli baji; cator re baji. Relieved by the exhortation, the son lost his fear and preached fluently.

Faria Jr., from then on, often wondered how a mere phrase from his father could alter his state of mind so radically as to wipe off his stage fright in a second. The question would have far reaching consequences in his life. Apparently convinced that Portugal had no future for him, Faria Jr. departed for France, and just as well, because his father found himself implicated in the Pinto Conspiracy of 1787 hatched in Goa in which some priests, who believed that they were discriminated against, in favor of the Portuguese clergy, planned a revolt. But the revolt was discovered in the planning state with fatal consequences for the conspirators.

"In Paris, they both [father and son] pursued clerical activities but they did not please the authorities and the son was imprisoned in the Bastille. He spent several months there. One of his guards was fond of playing draughts; however, each game only lasted a short time and had to be started again. Jose Custodio de Faria often played with this guard and to prolong the pleasure, he invented hundred-square droughts. This was his first contribution to history," writes Dr. Mikhail Buyanov, President of the Moscow Psychotherapeutic Academy and author of A Man Ahead of His Times, a study in Russian of Abbe Faria, which he researched at Panaji's Central Library and to whom he presented a copy of his book in gratitude. Unfortunately he couldn't find a sponsor for a translation of his book into English and it, too, has remained untranslated and unread except by Russians!

During the French Revolution, Faria Jr., led a battalion against the French Convention. He also met the Marquis of Puysegur, a disciple of Anton Mesmer,the founder of a school or hypnotism known as mesmerism.

Faria Jr., now known as Abbe Faria, proceeded to develop his own ideas about hypnotism and why it worked. He decided that hypnotic trance was caused, not by animal magnetism, but by suggestions from the hypnotist, just as his father's suggestion 'cator re baji' had had a dramatic impact on him.

In 1797 "he was arrested in Marseilles, taken in a barred police carriage and sent to the Chateau d'If by a law court. He was shut up in solitary confinement in the Chateau d'If. While imprisoned in the Chateau, he steadily trained [himself] using techniques of self-suggestion. It appears that this helped him retain a sound mind and memory," writes Dr. Buyanov.

After a long stint in the Chateau "If, Faria was released and returned to Paris. Here he met Alexandre Dumas, the novelist, who was so impressed with the Abbe that he used him as a character in his novel, The Count of Monte Cristo.

In Paris Faria conducted lessons in hypnotism, or somnambulism as he termed it then, for whoever could afford 5 francs for the course and achieved spectacular results, as described by his first pupil, General Noizet in his book Memoire Sur le Somnubulisme et le Magnetisme Animal. But he also became the object of envy and ridicule and the anti-hero of a vaudeville play which ran to full houses in Paris. Although he had been a professor of philosophy at two establishments in Marseilles and Nimes his reputation did not survive the onslaught on his character and abilities. So he retired as chaplain to an obscure religious establishment and set out to write a defence of his theory that hypnosis, or lucid sleep, as he now termed it, was caused by the force of suggestion appropriately applied and which himself had mastered and demonstrated. He published the first volume of his book, De la Cause du Sommeil Lucide, in 1819 but suddenly died of a stroke before he could complete his opus.

Unfortunately, his valuable contribution to the science of hypnosis has been lost in the midst of other hypnotists' claims: "In Europe, mesmerism continued to develop at the hands of a number of major figures such as the Abbe Jose Custodio de Faria, General Francois Joseph Noizet, Etienne Felix, Baron d'Henin de Cuvillers, and Alexandre Bertrand. Faria, in his De la cause du sommeil lucide (1819), developed the modern trance induction ("fixation") technique, emphasized the importance of the will of the subject rather than that of the magnetizer, recognized the existence of individual differences in susceptibility to somnambulistic sleep, and first articulated the principle of suggestion, which he believed to be effective not only in magnetic sleep but in the waking state as well. In 1820, Noizet, in a Memoire sur le somnambulisme presented to the Berlin Royal Academy but only published in 1854, and Henin de Cuvillers, in his Le magnetisme, presented more extended accounts of mesmeric effects in terms of suggestion and belief; while Bertrand's Trait du somnambulisme (1823) was the first systematic scientific study of magnetic phenomena."

Here is a final assessment of Faria by the Moscow Psychotherapeutic Academician Dr. Buyanov: "[Faria was] great, because he had no fear and fought for truth rather than for his place at the vanity fair. The Abbot de Faria's mystery does not lie in the circumstances of his life that are unknown to historians and lost forever (a detail more or a detail less, is unimportant); his mystery lies in his talent, courage, and quest for truth. His mystery was the mystery of someone who was ahead of his time and who blazed a trail for his descendants due to his sacrifice."

Meanwhile interest in Faria worldwide seems to be growing. An avant-garde exhibition-cum-play-cum-novel was recently held in Amsterdam titled The Death of Abbe Faria. Italian litterateur, Luciana Stegagno Picchio, specialising in Portuguese studies and honoured in 2001 by Instituto Camoes is writing on Abade Faria e Goa. Perhaps the occasion of his 250th birth anniversary can be used, at least in Goa, to draw public attention to his life and achievements and build a permanent memorial to him and them.

2. ABBE FARIA --- THE FORGOTTEN GOAN PIONEER: ISABEL DE SANTA RITA VAS

Today is the birthday, the birth anniversary, if you will, of a remarkable Goan, a remarkable man of science, a remarkable man. Jose Custodio de Faria was born in Candolim on 31st May 1756. Abbe Faria, as he was later known, researched the human mind and deepened our understanding of it. Numerous texts on psychology, psychotherapy and hypnotherapy today make mention of the man and his discoveries. A well-known present day Russian psychiatrist, Dr. Mikhail Buyanov, writes of Jose Custodio Faria. "He was great, because he had no fear and fought for truth rather than for his place at the vanity fair. His mystery lies in his talent, courage and quest for truth. His mystery was the mystery of someone who was ahead of his time and who blazed a trail for his descendants due to his sacrifice." Sadly, to us, his fellow Goans, Jose Custodio Faria is a stranger. It is true that a few metres from here in this city we have a statue of Abade Faria. On a picturesque spot by the Mandovi river, next to the historic Adil Shah palace, close to the ancient Mhamai Kamat residence, stands the striking figure of Abade Faria bending over a woman at his feet. Who is he? Why is he there? Few people know, even fewer care to ask. The man who was a pioneer in the science of the mind is all but forgotten in the noise of the traffic.

If we are to reclaim Jose Custodio Faria to living memory, we need to retrace our steps a couple of centuries. Jose Custodio was the son of Caetano Vitorino Faria of Colvale and Rosa Maria de Sousa of Candolim. His early childhood was spent at Candolim. His parents' marriage did not work out, and the two separated. With permission from the Church, Rosa Maria entered the Convent of Santa Monica, Old Goa, and Caetano Vitorino joined the Seminary to complete his training to the priesthood which he had interrupted. The boy was looked after by relatives, and his father continued to be his guardian. Perhaps the father was an ambitious man; perhaps the treatment of native Goans as inferiors by the Portuguese in Goa was the major irritant. Or perhaps a little of both: Caetano Vitorino Faria complained bitterly that native priests of great merit were ignored for promotions in favour of the Portuguese clergy. His rebellious temperament gave him no peace. Taking his fifteen year old son with him, Caetano Vitorino left the shores of Goa for Europe. To cut a long story short, Jose Custodio, the son, became a priest in Rome, took his doctorate in theology at the age of 24. At this young age he preached on Pentecost day at the magnificent Sistine Chapel in Rome with the Pope in attendance. Back in Portugal, we are told, he preached at the Royal Court. Most of us have heard our parents relate that well-known story--- the Kator Re Bhaji story. The young priest, we are told, goes up to speak before his royal audience and finds himself tongue-tied. His father, sitting below, calls out in a loud whisper in the mother-tongue: Kator Re Bhaji! ( It's as easy as cutting vegetables, this is simple stuff!) The phrase energizes the young man, who delivers his address without a flaw.

The two Farias are made of the same rebellious fibre. Faria Senior supports the so called Conjuracao dos Pintos, a revolt by local priests and other Goans in Goa against the discrimination by the Portuguese authorities. The revolt is discovered and aborted and the rebels are severely punished. Faria Senior is disgraced and imprisoned and dies in obscurity.

Faria Junior moves to France. Amidst his teaching jobs, we discover Abbe Faria leading a neighbourhood battalion against the French Convention. There is a belief that he is temporarily imprisoned in the Bastille. Which brings us closer to our main point of interest. From a co-revolutionary, Abbe Faria learns about the theories of the famous magnetizer Franz Anton Mesmer, who had mesmerized Europe with his idea of what he called animal magnetism. Faria begins to study and research the human mind and behaviour. Over a period of years he researches more than 5000 subjects. His research points in a direction quite different from that of Mesmer. Faria puts forward his new theory of Le Sommeil Lucide or Lucid Sleep or Suggestion or Hypnotism. There is an undocumented story that says Mesmer and Faria were locked in a hypnotic duel-- and Faria won. Perhaps this is just a colourful story. But Faria was certainly at the centre of many such colourful stories. His sessions were hugely attended, he came to be quite famous in Paris; of course fame attracted public ridicule too. His rivals mocked the dark-skinned pioneer mercilessly and disgraced him professionally. But Abbe Faria knew he had discovered something true and valuable. He began to write down his theories for posterity. Of the projected three volumes, he managed to publish one: De La Cause du Sommeil Lucide. Soon after the publication, Faria died of a stroke in 1819 at the age of 63. Except for the publication of his book, Faria's work would probably have vanished without a trace. It was a student of his, a General Noizet who popularized it. It came to the notice of later investigators of the human mind and he came to be recognized as a pioneer of the power of suggestion.

Hypnotism or suggestion came to be extensively used in psychotherapy. In fact, it has been so widely accepted as to be seen almost as a truism that the mind responds powerfully to effective suggestion. Faria can be seen as a forerunner of Freud and Jung; today popular techniques like the use of Positive Thinking, the methods of Creative Visualization, the awareness of the depths of the mind waiting to be explored, may all be thought of as off-shoots of Faria's seminal work. Perhaps some subterranean streams did begin to spring at the exchange in Konkani between father and son: Kator Re Bhaji!

Abbe Faria is our fellow Goan. Circumstances of birth and history led him far from home into a distant continent. He carried with him what he saw and heard of Goa, of India, of the East. He lived and worked amidst revolutionary winds in Paris before the French Revolution that changed the face of the old western world. He survived with courage, a coloured man in a white-skinned society. He was undaunted by ridicule and poverty and an environment of racial prejudice and continued against all odds to believe in himself and his discoveries. He eventually became so much a part of popular imagination in Europe that his life was fictionalized in the classic novel by Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo---more recently turned into an exciting film. The Portuguese Nobel Prize Winner for Medicine, Egas Moniz wrote with admiration the biography of this enigmatic man of science.

On 31st May 2006, two years from now, we count 250 years of the birth of Jose Custodio Faria, a Goan of international stature. In a sense, Faria is an outstanding representative of countless persons of Goan birth who have sought horizons larger than those that tiny Goa could offer; who have learnt to struggle in, and learn from, the larger world ; and have, in turn, contributed to the larger world in myriad ways. Perhaps it is not too soon to reclaim the pioneer from oblivion as a mere statue back to living memory. If we fail to honor such a figure fittingly, we would need to ask ourselves why. A difficult task? Really? Jose Custodio Faria would have told us " Kator Re Bhaji!"

3. ABBE FARIA: FRANCISCO MONTEIRO

AbBe Jose Custódio Faria, a Goan born in Candolim, Portuguese India, was the one who before anybody else, in 1813, gave the clear and true conception of the phenomenas of hypnotism. Abade Faria produced the hypnosis by means of an imperative order: Sleep! and the person would immerse into deep sleep. Awake! and the person would come out of his sleep. Francisco Monteiro tells us in this beautiful passage about the eminent Goan.

Jose Custódio Faria, better known as AbBe Faria, son of Caetano Valeriano Faria and Maria de Sousa, was born on the 30th of May of 1756 in Candolim, in the province of Bardez , district of Goa, former state of Portugal in the Indian sub-continent; his father was involved in 1787, in the well-known "Revolt of the Pintos" also designated as the "Plot of the Pinto’s", that aimed at terminating the Portuguese administration, but was not successful and consequently was strongly restrained by the Portuguese authorities. At the age of 15 he left Goa accompanied by his father with destination Lisbon, where he arrives on the 23rd of November of 1771. Shortly after, he leaves for Rome, in order to study at the College of Propaganda. On 12th of March of 1780, he is ordained minister; achieves his doctorate in Philosophy and Theology from the University of Rome; and after finishing his studies returns to Portugal, where due to his intelligence, knowledge and moral composure, consecrates great fame as a preacher. In 1788 he emigrates to Paris, fixing his residence at the Street of Ponceau; where due to his stubborn character he passes to be the leader of one of the revolutionary battalions in 1795, commanding one of the sections of sadly famous "10 of the Vendimario", which attacked a convention in which he took active part in its fall, which enabled him to maintain relations with high political personalities, frequenting with Chateaubriand, the halls of Madame la Marquee of Coustine, friend of the Marquis of Puységur to whom he dedicated his book on the "Causes of Discerning Sleep". In 1811 he was nominated Professor of Philosophy of the University of France and elected partner of the Societé Medicale de Marseille, meaning member of the Academy of Medicine, without never being a doctor. In the 1813 Abade Faria, who was disciple of Puységur, learnt that the spreading sonambulism had grown in importance; so he returned to Paris, where he begins a new doctrine, that contributes in increasing his notoriety; and gains a favorable aura, making him known to be a rival of Mesmer and giving remarkable lead to his captivating practice. Although connoted to be a quack by some, and to possess Divine powers by others, the religious authorities assumed that he was in pact with the Devil, and thus he arrives to revolutionize academies and to agitate during many years other scientific centers and the theological doctrines.

With his work "The Cause of Discerning Sleep in the Study of the Human Nature", published in Paris in 1819, he provokes interminable polemics. But the certainty is that, quickly his fame of being the creator of the hypnotism keeps growing in the city of Paris, where he was the target of all attention. He was to be the first in the scientific world that defended the true doctrine on the interpretation of the somnambulism phenomenas, arriving to hypnotize almost five thousand people. Famous writers of France, Belgium, Portugal and Germany recognized Abade Faria as the "Father of the School of Nancy". For reasons not clarified, he was imprisoned and jailed in the Castle of the Iff, where Alexander Dumas (father) was to search it for immortality, and was he who indicated to the Edmund Dantés the fabulous treasure of Mount Christ. Poor and abandoned, while still printing his first volume of his famous publication, he died of a sudden apoplexy in Paris on day 20 of September of 1819.

AbBe Faria distinguished himself as preacher, theologist, physicist and magnetizer, or rather as the founder of the science of hypnotism, the first one to proclaim the doctrine of suggestion in the hypnotism. AbBe Faria is a glorious name that evokes in all the centers of culture of the world, and can be said that there is no cultured individual that does not know his work. Professor Bernheim, one of the scholars consecrated to the cause of the hypnotism, referring to Abade Faria once said: "Faria has the credit of undisputed merit to have established in the first place the Doctrine and the method of the hypnotism by suggestion and to have completely freed it of the singular and useless doctrines that occulted the truth. It was he in reality, who gave, before any other person, the clear and true conception of the phenomena as of hypnotism. On the other hand, the French general Noget used to say regarding Abade Faria that: "There was a man known in Paris, who made public the somnambulism experience. Every day (this in 1815) there used to be around 60 people who used to meet in his house , and it was rare, not to find within them five or six persons susceptive in entering into somnambulism. He did not forget to declare openly that he did not possess neither any secret, nor extraordinary power, everything what he acheived depended on the will of the people over which the phenomenon was taking place. Abbe Faria is an intellectual figure in science, even so enfolded in mist of mystery; he is considered by some reputed writers, as one of the most notable hypnotists of the World and founder of a great scientific school of hypnotism, or rather a hero who introduced in the Europe the hypnotic science, thus rivaling with Mesmer. Abade Faria was popularized and immortalized by the great French writer Alexander Dumas in his known romance "The Conde of Monte Christ"; there also exists an important study on the life of Abade Faria entitled "Priest Faria in the History of the Hypnotism, 1925" of the authorship of eminent Professor Dr. Egas Moniz. In the city of Pangim, capital of Goa, by the side of the historical Palace of the Hidalc o and involved in the background of our charming river Mandovi, stands the monument in honor of this great countenance of our history. The Municipal Council of Lisbon also honored Abade Faria giving his name to one of the streets of the Portuguese capital.

4. ABBE FARIA: DOM MARTIN

Abbe Faria was born as Jose Custodio de Faria on May 31, 1756, in the former Portuguese colony of Goa [now India]. His childhood, for the most part, was traumatized from overexposure to the querulous temperament of his parents, Caetano Vitorino de Faria and Rosa Maria de Souza. Eventually, the two would seek papal dissolution of their matrimonial brawl, only to later find themselves united again in God's vineyard.

Whether it was human frailty or the hand of the divine that first led Caetano Faria to the seminary and then astray in his marriage to Rosa Maria -- remains a meandering fact. A contrite Caetano Faria was merely concerned with turning himself in, to God, at the nearest seminary, getting ordained a priest, and then globe-trotting as far as Rome to earn a doctorate in theology. Maria Rosa, on her part, joined the Santa Monica convent in Old Goa, became a nun and rose to the rank of prioress.

As for the younger Faria, he was 15 when his father-turned-priest took him to Portugal on an ambitious mission to calibrate him with 'greatness' in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Obviously, the young Faria lost no time orbiting his father's vociferous aspirations. He attended seminaries in Portugal and Italy, was ordained a priest in Rome, and then also went on to earn a doctorate in theology. To just what extent the elder Faria may have exerted or exhausted his influence on the younger Faria -- remains another meandering fact. Yet, quite inauspiciously, their lives would evolve and embark on the same collision-course with religion, politics and the emancipation of the bourgeois.

After his return to Lisbon, the young Faria's effervescing interest in hypnotism gradually weaned him away from his father's shadow. He became widely acclaimed as 'Abbe Faria'. The elder Faria, perhaps dreading that he may eventually get eclipsed by his son's evolving limelight, seized on the opportunity to invest his own stagnant future in the "Pinto conspiracy", which was simmering in Goa in 1787, at the residence of one Fr. Pinto.

The conspiracy emanated from a disgruntled group of Goan priests who felt they were being discriminated against because they were off-color, and therefore, incompatible in the all-white ecclesiastical hierarchy. When their appeal to Portugal to abolish the apartheid-cult within the clergy failed, they congregated with other radicals in a plot to overthrow the Portuguese regime.

The plot backfired, because the dynamics was as botched as a homemade canon, mounted on a swivel, with no one experienced enough to foresee or caution the loading-end from the firing-end! 47 conspirators -- including 17 priests -- were rounded up, and when the crown of damnation and doom was impressed upon them, they squealed, identifying the elder Faria as the Commandant!

Commandant or not, the elder Faria's thumbprint in the plot brought the 'guilt-by-association' canon ball rumbling down Abbe Faria's path -- knocking down the ladder to 'greatness' that he [Abbe] was midway perched on. There is no account of how much information the two shared or co-conspired, or what corresponding guilt or animus they may have dished out and resolved at a cafeteria, or in the confessional. What is notably known is that the repercussions from the conspiracy caused Abbe Faria to flee Lisbon and reassemble his demoralized ladder in France.

The year was 1787. The cultural affluence of Paris and its pantheon of intellectuals would turn out to be rather propitious to Abbe Faria's own baggage of restless, unresolved ambitions. It also rekindled his smoldering interest in the occult science of hypnotism. The following year, however, he found himself marching with other radicals in the French Revolution. He was arrested, found guilty of commandeering public unrest and sentenced to solitary confinement in the infamous state prison at Chateau d'If.

When he was returned to society, a malnourished Abbe Faria found contempt await him in the old, familiar hub of life. His renewed interest in hypnotism was embraced with increasing skepticism by the scientific community. It had become apparent to him that his lease in the world of rejection had been irreversibly programmed for auto-renewal. Thus, confined to a life of meager means and prospects, Abbe Faria fortified his resolve to find solace in the candle of perseverance, and in its flickering illumination, he toiled on to evaluate, document and compile his scientific observations on the unsettled science and validity of hypnotism.

On September 20, 1819, Abbe Faria stared at reality one last time as death escorted him out of existence unto eternity. He died of apoplexy, shortly after his lifelong thesis, The Lucid Cause of Sleep, was published. Subsequently, the scientific community awoke, acknowledging him as 'The Father of Hypnotism'. A quarter of a century later, Alexander Dumas immortalized Abbe Faria in his epic work, 'The Count of Monte Cristo'.

ENDNOTE: If there is one well-maintained tombstone in obscurity's graveyard, it probably bears the name of Caetano Vitorino de Faria. He was, after all said and undone, the principal character in the narrative where one set of matrimonial vows were displaced for those of celibacy. He was also the author of the mesmeric line, Kator re bhaji, which implanted the gene of hypnotism in Abbe Faria's mind and subconsciousness. And the "Pinto" notoriety notwithstanding, Caetano Vitorino de Faria may also very well have been one of Goa's frontline freedom fighter -- if not the first -- even if vested interest was the absolute, incendiary compound in the gunpowder.

5. INFORMATION FROM ANSWERS.COM ABBA© FARIA

Jos © Cust ³dio de Faria, (Goa, 1746 - Paris, 1819) was a colourful Indo-Portuguese monk who was one of the pioneers of the scientific study of hypnotism, following on from the work of Franz Anton Mesmer. Unlike Mesmer, who claimed that hypnosis was mediated by "animal magnetism",[1] Faria understood that it worked purely by the power of suggestion. In the early 19th century, Abb © Faria introduced oriental hypnosis to Paris.

He was the first to affect a breach in the theory of the "magnetic fluid," to place in relief the importance of suggestion, and to demonstrate the existence of "auto-suggestion"; he also established that nervous sleep belongs to the natural order. From his earliest magnetizing s ©ances, in 1814, he boldly developed his doctrine. Nothing comes from the magnetizer; everything comes from the subject and takes place in his imagination (The Indian concept Sammohan Bhavana shakti); Magnetism is only a form of sleep. Although of the moral order, the magnetic action is often aided by physical, or rather by physiological, means - fixedness of look and cerebral fatigue.

Faria changed the terminology of mesmerism. Previously focus was on the "concentration" of the subject. In Faria's terminology the operator became "the concentrator" and somnambulism was viewed as a lucid sleep. The Indian method of hypnosis used by Faria is command, following expectancy.

After-years Ambroise-Auguste Li ©bault (1864-1904), the founder of the Nancy School, & Emile Cou © (1857-1926) father of applied conditioning, developed the theory of suggestion and autosuggestion and made them therapeutic tool. Afterwards Johannes Schultz developed these theories as Autogenic training Origins

Jos © Cust ³dio de Faria was born in Candolim, District of Bardez in Goa, Portuguese India, on May 31, 1746. He was the son of Caetano Valeriano de Faria, an Indian Brahmin Christian of Colvale village, and Maria de Sousa of Candolim village, and had an adopted sister, Catarina, an orphan.

Since his parents could not get on with each other, they decided to separate and obtained the Church's dispensation. The father joining the seminary to complete his studies for the priesthood which he had interrupted to get married, while his mother became a nun, joining the St. Monica convent in Old Goa, where she rose to the position of prioress.

Lisbon: The father had great ambition for himself and his son. Hence, Faria reached Lisbon on December 23, 1771 with his father at the age of 25. After a year they managed to convince the King of Portugal, Joseph I, to send them to Rome for Faria Sr. to earn a doctorate in theology, and the son to pursue his studies for the priesthood.

Eventually, the son too earned his doctorate, dedicating his doctoral thesis to the Portuguese Queen, Mary I of Portugal, and another study, on the Holy Spirit to the Pope. Apparently His Holiness was sufficiently impressed to invite Jos © Cust ³dio to preach a sermon in the Sistine Chapel, which he himself attended. On his return to Lisbon, the Queen was informed by the Nuncio of the Pope's honour to Faria Jr. So, she too invited the young priest to preach to her as well, in her chapel. But Faria, climbing the pulpit, and seeing the august assembly felt tongue tied. At that moment his father, who sat below the pulpit, whispered to him in Konkani: Hi sogli baji; cator re baji (they are all vegetables, cut the vegetables). Jolted, the son lost his fear and preached fluently.

Faria Jr., from then on, often wondered how a mere phrase from his father could alter his state of mind so radically as to wipe off his stage fright in a second. The question would have far reaching consequences in his life. Participation In Conspiracy

He was implicated in the Conspiracy Of The Pintos during 1787, and left for France in 1788. He stayed in Paris residing at Rue de Ponceau. France

In Paris, he became a leader of one of the revolutionary battalions in 1795, taking command of one of the sections of the infamous 10 of the Vend ©miaire, which attacked the French Convention, taking an active part in its fall. As a result, he established contacts with personalities like Chateaubriand, the Marquise of Coustine, and was also friend of Armand-Marc-Jacques Chastenet, Marquis of Puys ©gur, (a disciple of Mesmer) to whom he dedicated his book Causas do Sono L ºcido ("On the Causes of Deep Sleep").

In 1797 he was arrested in Marseille for unknown reasons, and taken in a barred police carriage to the infamous Chateau d'If by a law court. He was shut up in solitary confinement in the Chateau. While imprisoned he steadily trained himself using techniques of self-suggestion.

After a long stint in the Chateau, Faria was released and returned to Paris. Here he met Alexandre Dumas, the novelist, who was so impressed with the Abbe that he used him as a character - the mad monk - in his novel, The Count of Monte Cristo.

In 1811, he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the University of France at N ®mes, and was elected member of the Soci ©t © Medicale de Marseille at Marseille. In 1813 Abb © Faria realising that hypnotism was gaining importance in Paris returned to Paris, and started lecturing a new doctrine, which contributed further to his fame.

He provoked unending controversies with his work Da Causa do Sono L ºcido no Estudo da Natureza do Homem (On the cause of Deep Sleep in the Study of Nature of Man), published in Paris in 1819 and was soon accused of being a charlatan. He retired as chaplain to an obscure religious establishment, and died of a stroke in Paris on September 30, 1819. He left behind no addresses and his grave remains unmarked and unknown, somewhere in Montmartre.

* There is a striking bronze statue of the Abb © Faria trying to hypnotize a woman in central Panjim, in the state of Goa, India, next to the Government Secretariat that was sculpted in 1945 by famous sculptor Ramchandra Pandurang Kamat of Madkai.

* Portugal commemorated the 250th anniversary of the Abb ©'s birth in May, 2006 by releasing a postcard containing a photograph of his statue in Panjim, Goa.

* A prominent throroughfare in the southern Goan city of Madgaon is named Rua do Abade Faria (Street of Abb © Faria) in his honour.

* Alexandre Dumas used a fictionalized version of the Abb © in his famous novel "The Count of Monte Cristo". Faria was a prisoner of the Ch ¢teau d'If who taught the main character, Edmond Dant ¨s, mathematics, science and foreign languages, and helped him to escape from the island prison. He told Dant ©s about a hidden hoard of jewels on Monte Cristo, a small island near the Italian coast.

* The Institute of Clinical Hypnosis & Counseling established in Kerala state of India is a memorial to Abbot Faria. http://www.hypnotradition.com

Quotes:

* "[Faria was] great, because he had no fear and fought for truth rather than for his place at the vanity fair. The Abbot de Faria's mystery does not lie in the circumstances of his life that are unknown to historians and lost forever; his mystery lies in his talent, courage, and quest for truth. His mystery was the mystery of someone who was ahead of his time and who blazed a trail for his descendants due to his sacrifice." - Dr. Mikhail Buyanov, President of the Moscow Psychotherapeutic Academy, and author of A Man Ahead of His Times, a study in Russian of Abbe Faria.

* "There was a man in Paris who made the experience of hypnotism public. Every day, some 60 people used to gather at his residence and it was rare among these, that there were not at least five or six people who were susceptible to fall into a hypnotic trance. He would openly declare that he did not possess any secrets nor any extraordinary powers, and that everything he achieved was dependent on the will of the persons he was performing upon." - French General Francois Joseph Noizet.

* The use of the (conventional) English term animal magnetism to translate Mesmer's magn ©tism animal is extremely misleading for three reasons: Mesmer chose his term to clearly distinguish his variant of magnetic force from those which were referred to, at that time, as mineral magnetism, cosmic magnetism and planetary magnetism. Mesmer felt that this particular force/power only resided in the bodies of humans and animals. Mesmer chose the word "animal", for its root meaning (from latin animus = "breath") specifically to identify his force/power as a quality that belonged to all creatures with breath; viz., the animate beings: humans and animals.

6. THE FATHER OF HYPNOTISM: ABBA FARIA: ALFREDO DE MELLO

(Abridged from his book, FROM GOA TO PATAGONIA) Those who have read the novel "Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas will remember a name - Abbe Faria. Abbe Faria was a real-life person, immortalized by Dumas in his fiction. Jose Custodio Faria was born on the 30th May 1756, the son of Caetano Victorino de Faria and Rosa de Souza, of Colvale, Bardez. The parents, however, had irreconcilable differences, and in common accord, decided to separate. The father went on to become a priest, whilst the mother joined the convent of Santa Monica of Goa, where she became a nun.

In 1771, father and son went to Lisbon and thence to Rome. Jose Custodio to entered the College of Propaganda Fide, under the sponsorship of Portugal's King Jose I. Upon his return to Lisbon, Jose Custodio Faria was invited to preach in the royal chapel. After climbing the pulpit and facing the Queen, the King, and the distinguished Court, young Faria started stammering timidly, but his father, hidden underneath the pulpit, uttered the Konkani injunction "KATOR RE BHAJI", ("cut the veggies") which nobody else understood except young Faria, meaning, "Go ahead, you know more than all of them". With this adrenalinic vocal shot from his father, Jose Custodio delivered an eloquent sermon which was much appreciated and applauded. After the failed "Conjurac  dos Pintos" or the revolt of 1787, in which both the Farias - father and son - were implicated, they fled Lisbon to seek refuge in France, early in 1788.

Then the French Revolution broke out on 14 July 1789., and Abbe Faria, as Jose Custodio became known in France, was a pro-Royalist, and headed a battalion against the National Convention (as the antiRoyalists were known), and on the 10th Vendimaire (2 October 1795) his battalion tried to seize power from the Republican Government, but was crushed by the young general Napoleon Bonaparte.

When order was established after this, he was appointed professor of Philosophy in the Academy of Marseilles. Then he was transferred to the Academy of Nimes, as an assistant professor, where he started working earnestly on hypnotic practices, but left for Paris soon after.

Abbe Faria was friendly with the Marquis Puysegur, one of the disciples of Mesmer, who initiated him in magnetic practices. Abbe Faria commenced lecturing on hypnotism in August 1813 in the rue Clichy, Paris. The theoretical presentation of his ideas was heard with annoyance, but the scenes of hypnotism that he performed with the audience, especially with women were astounding. The curiosity increased especially because of the strange figure of Abbe Faria, a tall, lean, bronze-skinned man, expounding new doctrines and the practical demonstrations of hypnotism that he carried out with amazing precision.

However, the Church condemned magnetism, and a French theologian wrote that "somnambulism and magnetism were supernatural and diabolic, anti-Christian, anti-Catholic, and anti-moral". Abbe Faria, as a priest and believer, had no doubts about confronting the ires of the theologians of his time, by affirming that there was nothing supernatural in such phenomena and that hypnotic sleep was in the end, a form of suggestion; it all depended upon the predisposition of the hypnotized. He became famous as a magnetizer, so much so that he performed his hypnotism in the vaudeville show "Magnetismemanie".

Beaten by adversity, abandoned by those who at first applauded him, a butt of ridicule, Abbe Faria lived miserably and had to accept a modest job of chaplain of a nunnery, in order to survive. It is then that he wrote his book, expounding the doctrines which immortalized him. In the year 1819 when he died, the first volume of his work was printed "De la cause du sommeil lucide, ou etude de la nature de l'homme". The second and third volumes remained unpublished. A just recognition of Abbe Faria (Abade Faria in Portuguese) as the founder and inventor of hypnotism is one of the glories of Goa, and his memory is perpetuated by the statue erected in Panjim in 1945 in the small plaza next to the Palace of Adil Khan (see photo).

7. ABBE FARIA

'''Abbé Faria''' (1766-1814) was an Indo- Portuguese monk who was one of the pioneers of the scientific study of hypnotism, following on from the work of Franz Anton Mesmer. Unlike Mesmer, who claimed that hypnosis was mediated by "animal magnetism", Faria understood that it worked purely by the power of suggestion. Abbé Faria was the first to affect a breach in the theory of the "magnetic fluid", to place in relief the importance of suggestion, and to demonstrate the existence of "auto-suggestion"; he also established that nervous sleep belongs to the natural order. From his earliest magnetizing séances, in 1814, he boldly developed his doctrine. Nothing comes from the magnetizer; everything comes from the subject and takes place in his imagination (The Indian concept Sammohan Bhavana shakti) Magnetism is only a form of sleep. Although of the moral order, the magnetic action is often aided by physical, or rather by physiological, means -- fixedness of look and cerebral fatigue. Faria changed the terminology of mesmerism. Previously focus was on the "concentration" of the subject. In Faria's terminology the operator became "the concentrator" and somnambulism was viewed as a lucid sleep. The Indian method of hypnosis used by Faria is command, following expectancy. Jose Custodiou de Faria later known as Abbe Faria was born in Candolin at Goa, India on 31st May 1756. His Father was Caetano Victorino de Faria, an Indian Brahmin. He reached in Lisbon in1771. He participated in "Pintos conspiracy"in1787, and gone to France in 1788.

He joined with revolutionaries of French revolution on 1789 and jailed by Imperial government. He died in France on 30th september1819. His book "On the causing lucid sleep" was published in 1820. There is a striking bronze statue of him in Panjim India, next to the Government Secretariat Goa, sculpted in 1945 by Ramchandra Pandurang Kamat of Madkai.

Alexandre Dumas used a fictionalized version of the Abbé in his novel "''The Count of Monte Cristo". Faria was a prisoner of the Château d 'If (as was the real Abbé) who taught the main character, Edmond Dant s, mathematics, science and foreign languages, and helped him to escape from the island prison. He told Dantés about a hidden hoard of jewels on Monte Cristo, a small island near the Italian coast.

8. RECLAIMING FARIA: V. M. DE MALAR http://www.abbefaria.com/

Today is a big day for Goa, it heralds the public return of a great son of the soil back into our collective consciousness. It's his death anniversary, and exactly 60 years since an enthusiastic crowd inaugurated his statue, and now Abbe Faria is back in the limelight with an evening's celebration planned at the foot of his iconic monument in Panjim. It's the mysterious pioneer's moment; we should all show up at 6 PM to demonstrate appreciation and learn more about his amazing life.

Faria's achievements defy belief, considering he was an Indian born in the middle of an oppressive colonial period, in an era where skin colour defined rights and standing. It was frustration over this apartheid that compelled his father, Caetano Vitorino, to take his precociously bright son to Europe, where higher education was occasionally available without malicious interference of colonial racists. The future Abbe was thus forerunner for entire generations of ambitious Goans, who were similarly stifled at home and forced to troop out of the slumbering Estado da India to seek education and opportunity.

Jose Custodio Faria was exceptional, however, and his father particularly ambitious. As a young priest at the elite Propaganda Fide college in Rome, he dedicated his doctorate thesis to the Queen of Portugal, and gained further notoriety by writing a study in honor of the Pope, who invited him to deliver a Pentecost sermon under the magnificent ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. At just 24, this charismatic young Indian was already being referred to with the honorific "Abbe," and drawing interest in the corridors of great power that stretched between the Vatican and the Catholic powers that dominated Europe.

He was invited to the Queluz Palace, with the Queen and her court in attendance. Young Faria climbed up to the pulpit, and froze; his poise lost at the sight of the dazzling luminaries. Abbe Faria's father whispered to the panicked priest in our robust mother tongue, "hi sogli bhaji, kathor re bhaji."And get on with it our Abbe did; the relieved young man never forgot how powerful a few words of suggestion can be in impacting human behavior.

Don't get the wrong idea based on encounters with European aristocracy. Abbe Faria and his father were true Indian patriots before such concepts were coherently articulated. The older man bore lasting anger about corrosive Portuguese racism and was key plotter in the Pinto Rebellion of 1787, the second anti-colonial resistance movement in history. The main conspirators were priests, disaffected, like their leader, by crushing colour prejudice in the church hierarchy. The son was also a stalwart in the anti-colonial cause, and fled to Paris when his father's subversive role was discovered. There, he reportedly approached the visiting "Tiger of Mysore", Tipu Sultan, to make common cause with the Goan resistance, to expel the Portuguese.

Abbe Faria threw himself passionately into the tumult in France, led a battalion against the national Convention, languished in the Bastille (from where he is credited with inventing the modern version of a popular board game), and emerged to wage an acrimonious public battle with Anton Mesmer, about the nature of hypnosis. History has comprehensively proved Abbe Faria the victor, his was the first genuinely scientific approach to the question; his research and findings provide many crucial underpinnings for modern psychotherapy, for essential analysts like Freud and Jung.

All this, plus immortalization by Alexandre Dumas in 'The Count of Monte Cristo' and yet we Goans have lost contact with Abbe Faria's important story, forgotten to keep his legacy alive, neglected to appreciate his significance. We Goans were fully globalized, seamlessly both Eastern and Western, centuries before the rest of India and the world and Abbe Faria must be acknowledged as the first exemplar in a distinguished line of what we now call NRI's.

His story is very typically Goan in context, quite emblematic of the best elements of our character. There is fierce independence and uncompromising quest for opportunity wherever it may lie, there is spectacular cultural and linguistic fluidity. There is remarkable adaptability to circumstance, and the authentic Goan soul that thrills to the sound of our precious mother tongue. It's such a wonderful tale, it is a great Goan narrative, and today we will honour the life and legacy of Abbe Faria on the Panjim waterfront, and welcome him back into our prideful pantheon of true Konkani heroes.

VM has been on Goanet for ages, since its early days, and has been inspired enough to return to Goa early and begin writing on local issues. He is working on plans to contribute his bit back to the state he spent his childhood days in.

September 20 marks the day of the death and commencement of the celebration of Abbe Faria's 250th Birthday in 2006. "In Search of Abbe Faria: The hypnotic vision of a Goan pioneer", a documentary by Dhempe College long-time educationist Isabel Santa Rita Vas and Panjim-based writer Cecil Pinto will be screened publicly for the first time at the Prace Abade Faria, near the Old Secretariat, at 6 p.m. on 20.9.2005

9. JOSE CUSTODIO DE FARIA: HYPNOTIST, PRIEST AND REVOLUTIONARY: LAURENT CARRER, PHD: BOOK REVIEW

A quirky fictional individual named Abbé Faria became popular when the movie The Count of Monte Cristo, an adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas 1844 novel, was released in 2002. Few know, however, that the character of the old man imprisoned with Edmond Dantes in the sinister Castle of If was loosely based on Father José Custodio de Faria (known as Abbé Faria), a famous pioneer of hypnosis whose life was as exciting, adventurous and eventful as any swashbuckler.

About the Book: This is the first English translation of the 1906 edition of Abbé Faria's 1819 De la cause du sommeil lucide. Several modern researchers have looked at the original French text in an attempt to extract its essential matter, only to find themselves recoiling in terror: tackling 18th Century language and concepts expressed awkwardly by a non French native is indeed not for the faint of heart. But Carrer took up the gauntlet. A veteran translator and practicing hypnotherapist, he has delivered yet another masterful annotated translation more legible than its original.

This book also contains Laurent's translation of Memoir on the Life of Abbé Faria, a 1906 study by Dr. Daniel Gelasio Dalgado, of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Lisbon. Dalgado presents copious biographical data unavailable almost anywhere else today, retracing in detail the famous priest's life from his native Goa to Paris, by way of Lisbon and Rome. His research is thorough, and sources are copiously cited.

Laurent has strewn his text with informative historical, literary and linguistic notes explaining certain terms, untangling complex historical events and at times correcting erroneous names, facts or statements. While hypnosis enthusiasts may already be familiar with Faria's role in the history of psychology, the following synopsis may help summarize the scope of his influential work.

FARIA'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FIELD OF HYPNOSIS:

* Experimented with hypnosis, a state he called "lucid sleep," on more than five thousand individuals.

* Questioned Mesmer's theory of magnetic fluid and believed that "magnetic fits" were not only unnecessary to healing, but potentially harmful. His own approach was to keep his subjects in a state of calm, and he believed the magnetic fit to be "a state contrary to the normal development of nature." · Held the original view, though uncomfortably caught between Mesmerists, skeptics and religious opponents, that hypnotic phenomena were not due to magnetism, trickery or the Devil but to the expectancy and cooperation of the patient.

* Discovered the suggestive method of inducing and interrupting trance verbally.

* Observed and described numerous hypnotic phenomena, now well known, and gave them psychological explanations.

* Postulated that ordinary sleep and the hypnotic state are of similar nature (a theory that was later adopted by the School of Nancy, but has now been proven wrong).

ADVANCE PRAISE: "The ever deepening insights into the history of therapeutic hypnosis that are made possible by Laurent Carrer's new translation of the humanitarian work of Faria will give present-day students and professionals fresh inspiration from this fountain of human creativity." Ernest Lawrence Rossi, Ph.D., FAPA, author of 24 books on hypnosis, including A Discourse with Our Genes: The Psychosocial and Cultural Genomics of Therapeutic Hypnosis and Psychotherapy. "The importance of Dr. Carrer's role in making de Faria's work available in translation is invaluable in providing insight to the basis of not only hypnosis but psychotherapy more generally. In 2002, he performed a similar service by making available for the first time in English Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault's important 1866 classic Le sommeil provoqué. He has produced a significant contribution to the hypnosis and psychological literature, and scholars now have available a first-rate version of the original treatise." Melvin A. Gravitz, Ph.D., ABPP, ABPH. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, D. C.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Laurent Carrer, Ph.D. is a French native who has lived in the U.S. since 1978. He is certified by the American Translators Association and has begun translating important works of the French pioneers of hypnosis, making them pertinent to our times by providing relevant commentary and biographical background. He is the author of Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault: The Hypnological Legacy of a Secular Saint, which features a translation of Liébeault's main opus Le sommeil provoqué et les états analogues. He is also the creator of the "Pioneers" column in the bulletin of the APA's Division of Psychological Hypnosis. He lives in Encinitas, California with his wife Rebecca and cat Rimsky.