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The
Trigger of Mental illness |
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Dr. Kay Jamison's
near-death experience |
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Kevin
Williams' NDE and Mental illness Research
 Mental illness can trigger religious revelations and visions - even out-of-body and near-death experiences. On this web page you
will discover that mental illness is probably not what you think it is and
not how the movies portrays it to be. You will read about one of the most distinguished scientists in the mental health field and her NDE
which was triggered by a manic-depressive
psychosis. I have also decided to share my own major psychotic experience
from a manic depressive episode I had which I call my
near-life experience. But it is neither an out-of-body nor a near-death
experience. I will be publishing this account soon.
The Waking Dream
The term schizophrenia literally means
split
mind and has nothing to do with split personalities. It refers to people who experience a marked disorder of thought such as hallucinations, delusions
(often religious). Schizophrenia has been described as a waking
dream state - a waking, perpetual nightmare.
The Dreaming God
Herman H. Somers has a Ph.D. in psychology and was a Jesuit priest for forty years. He wrote the book entitled
When God Slept, Man Wrote the Bible which explains the Bible from the point of view of a psychologist.
The following are some of his findings:
Psychosis and religious visions have been associated with each other since the earliest recorded history.
Mental illness has traditionally been related to demon possession and prophetic
ability such as in the Bible. Saints such as Joan of Arc and Francis of Assisi
heard multiple voices in their heads and the Church originally attacked them as being demon possessed. The Talmud suggests that the prophet Hosea
in the Bible was
besieged with delusions of being Moses.
The prophet Ezekiel has been diagnosed by psychiatrists an unmistakable
schizophrenic. His life, as recorded in the Book of Ezekiel, shows a typical schizophrenic development: a deep religiosity, hallucinatory visions, increasingly bizarre behavior, isolation, and emotional collapse.
He heard a voice commanding him to lie
on the right side of his body for 390 days then switch to his left side for
40 more days. A voice told him to eat food cooked with human excrement.
Other prophets, such as John in the Book of Revelation, see
horrible monsters and devils.
It is interesting that one particular near-death experiencer discovered that
the Book of Revelation in the Bible is the record of
a dream by John the Revelator. This becomes apparent when the same
archetypal images in Revelation
can
be found in dream of Daniel the prophet in the Bible. We also know from
near-death accounts, the Bible, and dream research that there is evidence that dreams,
near-death experiences, psychedelic, psychotic, and psychic experiences are all a phenomenon of
an altered level of consciousness.
Psychic or Psychotic?
With this in mind, one might ask, "What is the difference between being mentally ill and prophetic?" My own psychiatrist once gave me the answer:
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People who hear voices and see things that aren't there can be classified into two groups. The first group are people who cannot cope with these voices and are called
mentally ill. The second group are people who can cope with the voices and are called
psychic. It is my personal belief that being psychic and being psychotic are the same thing depending upon how you cope with it.
Society in general regards people who talk to God as holy. But
society in general regards people whom God talks to as insane. |
Manic depression has been called a brilliant
madness
because of the expansive ideas that psychosis can create. In days of old, people recognized how mental illness can
even be a gift.
Socrates once declared, "Our greatest blessings come to us by way of
madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift." Plato referred to insanity as: "a
divine gift and the source of the chief blessings granted to men." Native American Indians believed that their
voice hearers revealed messages that had great spiritual significance.
The idea of the mad scientist can probably be traced to the grandiose
thoughts that intelligent mentally ill people can have. John
Nash, a lifetime schizophrenic, received the Nobel Laureate in Economics and his life was portrayed in the movie
A Beautiful
Mind. Other famous mentally ill people are: Beethoven, Tolstoy, Van
Gogh, Keats, Hemingway, Dickens, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Emerson, and Woolf, to name just a few.
The nature of schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis are still under debate and a significant issue is the relationship between psychosis and the mystical, or religious, experience.
A NDE
Triggered By a Manic Psychosis
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 Dr. Kay Jamison is the distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the John Hopkins School of Medicine and co-author of the standard medical text taught there. Dr. Jamison is one of the foremost authorities on
manic depressive illness. She is also a manic depressive herself.
In her highly acclaimed book entitled An Unquiet
Mind, Dr. Jamison describes a psychotic episode she had that transported her consciousness out of her body and into the solar system. Her
near-death experience is similar to that of
Susan Blackmore's when she was under the influence of a
psychedelic. Jamison's consciousness traveled to Jupiter while she was enjoying the manic phase of her mental
illness. The following is an excerpt from her excellent book and the account of her journey. |
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"People go mad in idiosyncratic ways. Perhaps it was not surprising that, as a meteorologist's daughter, I found myself, in that glorious illusion of high summer days, gliding, flying, now and again lurching through cloud banks and ethers, past stars, and across fields of ice crystals. Even now, I can see in my mind's rather peculiar eye an extraordinary shattering and shifting of light; inconstant but ravishing colors laid out across miles of
circling rings; and the almost imperceptible, somehow surprisingly pallid, moons of this Catherine wheel of a planet. I remember singing
Fly Me to the Moon as I swept past those of Saturn, and thinking myself terribly funny. I saw and experienced that which had been only in dreams, or fitful fragments of aspiration. |
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"Was it real? Well, of course not, not in any meaningful sense of the word
real. But did it stay with me? Absolutely. Long after my psychosis cleared, and the medications took hold, it became part of what one remembers forever, surrounded by an almost Proustian melancholy. Long since that extended voyage of my mind and soul, Saturn and its icy rings took on a elegiac beauty, and I don't see Saturn's image now without feeling an acute sadness at its being so far away from me, so unobtainable in so many ways. The intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness of my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe, once I was better, that the illness was one I should willingly give up. Even though I was a clinician and a scientist, and even though I could read the research literature and see the inevitable, bleak consequences of not taking lithium, I for many years after my initial diagnosis was reluctant to take take my medications as prescribed. Why did it take having to go though more episodes of mania, followed by long suicidal depressions, before I would take lithium in a medically sensible way?" |
Dr. Jamison says she still misses Saturn and the
tremendous highs that go with manic depression; but the lithium (a simple
salt/electrolyte) keeps her level and able to function as a normal
person. One might say that this simple mineral found in the Earth keeps
manic depressives well grounded there.
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"Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift." -
Socrates |
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Copyright 2007 Near-Death Experiences & the Afterlife
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