Now this is going to sound like the biggest load of hippy crap that has ever come out of my mouth to date, but I must relate to you my weird experience in full. I stared at his image and clearly felt his love radiate out of that picture, almost like ripples from a stone that has plopped into a pond. It was that real I could almost see it. I stared at the photograph, transfixed. His posture, his smile, his silly double chin all just seemed to me to be the image of absolute love, and kindness. It seemed to me the perfect symbol of all that is right with the world. I felt so devoted to this man that if I had been actually in the room with him I would have wanted to throw myself at his feet. I seemed to be looking at goodness and truth itself. I felt almost like I was in a room with him, and he was speaking to me, not in words but in emotions: he was moving me, comforting me, healing me.
And I was moved. For the rest of the evening I walked on a cloud.
Man, this religion stuff is some powerful shit.
In the cold light of day, my rational side comes into play and I woke up this morning and thought to myself, yeah, nice projection there Jen. You want to be real careful messing with that. That’s fertile Bootham territory, right there. One minute you’re crying at a picture of a benevolent monk, the next you’re hearing spiders talking to you and you’re back on the ward.
So this train of thought naturally got me thinking about religion and madness. Historically, the two have been intertwined, with many religious people having the accusatory finger of madness pointed at them. Jesus and Mohammed were repeatedly accused of madness as well as their many followers from Joan of Arc to, more recently, footballer Glen Campbell. There is certainly a large grey area where the two overlap and in Britain, in our increasingly secular society those with strongly held religious views, especially of an exotic nature (i.e. not your cucumber sandwich eating C of E garden party variety) are often treated with suspicion. Certainly, to talk of visions or voices, of ecstasy and higher plains of experience has people either running for the door, reaching for the phone to the hospital or at least raising their eyebrows with contempt. In hospital I have met many messiahs and prophets. I even met a guy who had given away all his possessions including his house because he had read a secret code in Revelation that told him the world was going to end tomorrow. Myself, I have had an admission to a psyche ward that revolved around delusions I had that God was communicating with me through animals and insects.
So to me this raises some interesting questions:
* How can anyone with a mental health diagnosis be sure that any spiritual experience isn’t just a symptom of their illness?
* How can we distinguish psychosis from genuine visions/ enlightenment etc?
* For that matter, whether you officially have a diagnosis or not, how can anybody be sure that their religious experiences fall within the realm of sanity?
* With my history, that I have blogged about here, How can I, of all people be messing with this stuff again? What is the appeal of it all for someone whom in the past the spiritual has had such a negative impact on their life?
I know I can’t really answer this for anyone else, as I can’t get inside their head. For sure, I have seen the conviction on the face of a fundamentalist Christian arguing that the world was created in six days, and thought to myself; ‘are they absolutely bonkers?’ It is true, their eyes glaze over with a passion and in the heat of the debate I find them claiming the strangest things: that carbon dating machines are the work of the devil, as are the planted dinosaur bones that might as well be the skeletons of red herrings rather than huge prehistoric reptiles. It's bizarre really, what a religious faith can make you believe, in my lifetime I have heard the strangest arguments come from the mouths of impassioned believers, desperate to defend their faith.
However, I think our understanding of mental health has developed enough to realise that beliefs that we consider to be wrong, even passionately, ignorantly, flying in the face of common sense and science and laws of reason wrong do not in themselves equal insanity. I didn’t agree with the principles of Tony Blair’s government, but calling the man insane? That’s a laughable concept to me. I have spent many years in the company of seriously mentally ill people and many of them struggle to get their groceries together on a weekly basis. If you are mentally ill enough to be termed insane, you can hardly remember your name let alone run a country. Yes I know world leaders have dealt with bouts of depression and mania, (Churchill for example) and I’m not saying that mentally ill people can’t achieve great things in their life, but here I am drawing a distinct difference between being depressed and being psychotic or insane. Insanity doesn’t just mean holding an irrational belief- however wacky, it is a total breakdown of reality within your life.
Wrong or irrational doesn’t equal insane, then. But then that of course brings us onto: what does?
Yes I know: the DSM-IV diagnostic system, yada yada. These days we all know the twelve signs of depression, we all know our schitzos from our elbows. Yet if I write down on paper two brief case studies who I have personally come into contact with over the years I think the point I am trying to make will become obvious:
Linda (Met in hospital)
Believes that Tony Blair is the devil incarnate. Believes that Tony Blair speaks to her on a daily basis and tells her that she is going to hell. He tells her to do things, from what to wear everyday, to what to eat for tea. She has intricate visions of the future and hallucinations of things she believes will pass. Is hospitalised indefinitely on a section because of her relationship with “Tony” and for fears that she might one day, attempt to harm either him, or more likely, herself.
Steven (Met at a Church in Sheffield)
Believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Believes that Jesus talks to him, personally on a daily basis and gives him intricate instructions on many details of his life. He has sold his house and possessions to work as a youth worker in the church and lives only on the donations of the congregation. He sees actions of ‘the devil’ everywhere, from the new civil partnerships for gay people, to abortion laws to the promiscuous behaviour of today’s youth. He spends his time pleading with young people to ‘repent’ or else they will go to hell. He speaks in a divine language, has prophecies and visions and believes that the end of the world is imminent.
Of course these are just two hastily constructed case studies. You can believe them or not. But I am sure you will have met or read about people who resemble these two in your own experience. The overlap in psychology is clear, the main difference being to me that whilst Steve’s views and beliefs are equally as unsubstantiated (if not more so!) as Linda’s with the weight of the church behind him he is a prominent figure in the community whilst she languishes her 2nd year away on a locked ward.
So what am I saying here? That the billions of people worldwide who all follow a religion worldwide are in actuality insane?
Well, no: it is clearly more complex than that.
I can only speak for myself but having experienced both intense religious experiences and psychotic episodes, all I can say is that there are similarities, for sure, but there are also vast, vast, differences between the two.
For example the first one that springs to mind is that a psychotic experience at least for me is usually accompanied by a whole host of unpleasant things; a complete breakdown in day to day functioning, a lack of self care, an all consuming sense of paranoia, a total detachment from reality and a serious mood problem as well, at either end of the spectrum. I am quite obviously ill, sick, loopy loo, round the twist, whatever you want to call it.
Spiritual experiences are not like that at all. (I’m not going to get into the authenticity of spiritual experience full stop, I think that is too big to tackle right here and now, lets accept for now that spiritual experiences do exist, whether they be caused by altered states or mass hysteria or the goddess divine channelling through you, lets leave that for another time.) But as for them differentiating from madness, I would say that although they might involve beliefs and behaviours that seem hard to believe or odd to the casual onlooker they are usually contained within a system, a framework. Within religious traditions there are people who have trod the path before you and these spiritual phenomena not only have strict guidelines but are not seen as particularly unusual. Followers of mainstream religions will often be well versed in what to expect from a religious experience before it happens to them, and in this sense they are ready for it when it happens, and can cope with it when it occurs.
Most religious people, even after undergoing a pretty significant spiritual experience within their chosen framework, whether that’s receiving a prophecy from Allah or reaching a Jana within Buddhist meditation or collapsing through the power of the holy spirit at a Christian rally, will dust themselves down, talk to the minister for a few minutes or go for a walk in the rain to clear their head. Then they will fairly quickly get back to their day to day lives, albeit from a renewed perspective. They go back to their kids and their jobs and talking about football on the bus with their friends. I’m not saying these experiences don’t change you, indeed they can have a profound effect, but if it’s a spiritual experience, it shouldn’t leave you in a corner banging your head against the wall for weeks on end or swinging at the end of a rope. Your life may be transformed absolutely but these changes should not leave you sick and poorly. On the contrary, most people who undergo these experiences often appear to be in great health, approaching life with a new strength and vigour. In my experience some of the most spiritual people I have met, whether I agree with their beliefs or not, seem to be some of the happiest of all of my friends.
So, in a nutshell I think mental illness is when your mind works abnormally causing you great distress. Spiritual experience also involves stepping outside of everyday emotions and perception but in a much more controlled, less random, and consequently much less disturbing way.
Are they two sides of the same coin, well, who can say?
All I know is this: my psychotic experiences make me crippled and broken. They leave me hospitalised and in need of strong medication even to get dressed properly in the morning. My buddhism and spiritual practice on the other hand gives me great strength, energy, clarity and hope. It leaves me feeling healthy, happy and focused. Sometimes I feel challenged, sometimes confused. But never suicidal, never bedridden, never hopeless.
If you don’t think there’s a difference between a religious vision and a psychotic one, then all I can say is go visit a Pentecostal church then a psyche ward. Both places will shake you out of your comfort zone, but any great ideas you have about them being one and the same will be dispelled in an instant.
So maybe that’s the reason I feel able to continue down this spiritual path. I trust that I know my own mind enough to know what is healthy and what is not, to explore my mind’s potential without breaking it. Sometimes, it feels like a gamble. Sometimes, I think ‘girl what the hell are you playing at?’ But mostly this sense of inner peace that grows daily as I go through the daily rituals of chanting, zazen and kinhin, the strength that is blossoming within me calms my doubts and leaves me thinking this can only be a good thing. So to go back to the whole weird experience thing, maybe it does seem a bit odd that I would cry at a photograph of a man who I never met. But before you write me off as a religious nutter, or even worse just a nutter full stop please bear in mind that I have tried every drug under the sun and every therapy on the market to get rid of this black hole in my life. None of them have ever had any lasting effect. Ajahn brahms teachings on the other hand are turning my life around at a rate of knots and giving me a chance of genuine happiness and stability that I thought I’d never have. So is it any wonder then, that staring at his peaceful smile (and silly double chin) can make me shed a few tears? I may not be able to give a definitive answer to the ‘what is madness’ question that has puzzled academics, doctors and patients alike for centuries, but I can tell you certainly what it is not. Madness is not rising from your zazen stool after half an hour’s silent meditation, making a cup of green tea with jasmine and sitting quietly all evening feeling content, like you are glad and so, so happy to be alive.
