Since we seem to have strayed onto the subject of God (and who says we don’t confront the big issues here on Mental Nurse, eh?) I’d just like to draw attention to a post by Seaneen (aka Pole to Polar) on the subject of David Shayler.
David Shayler, for those of you who don’t remember, was a former MI5 officer turned whistleblower on dirty tricks by MI6. He later became a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, and has just taken an unexpected new direction by doing a David Icke and declaring himself to be the Messiah.
Seaneen comments:
I have been thinking about David Shayler and come to three conclusions:
1) He has a mental illness or a severe personality disorder
2) We have no idea what the MI5 and MI6 are capable of and they may have wrecked havoc on his mind
3) He might be, or truly believes he might be, the messiah
Madness is such a fragile concept. Throughout history, the innovators, the pioneers and the geniuses have been labelled mad at one point or another. Madness can come with an explosive, fearsome energy, an almost superhuman drive. And there is the crash into terrible depression that follows
This strikes me as being a new twist on the age-old debate as to where one draws a difference between the mystical visionary and the madman.
If any of you are interested in what David Shayler has been saying, here’s a clip of a news report about his recent pronouncement. It really is a bizarre piece of footage.
Like it or not, there are a lot of overlaps between mystical experience and psychosis. The obvious one is the hearing of voices and seeing visions. Another one – of which you see a lot in the Shayler footage above – is the perceiving of deep significance in the apparently random and meaningless. It’s probably no surprise that Shayler has gone for Kabbalah, the system of Jewish mysticism that uses lots of symbolism, wordplay and numerology to encourage the practitioner to find all kinds of symbolic meaning in just about everything.
Aleister Crowley, who was heavily influenced by Kabbalah, encouraged the budding Kabbalist to take this to extremes.
When you have got everything properly correlated, your central consciousness understands and controls every tiniest detail. But you must begin at the beginning—you go out for a walk, and the first thing you see is a car; that represents the Atu VII, the Chariot, referred to Cancer.
Then you come to a fishmonger, and notice certain crustacea, very mala chostomous. This comes under the same sign of Cancer. The next thing you notice is an amber-coloured dress in Swan and Edgar’s; amber also is the colour of Cancer in the King’s Scale. Now then you have a set of three impressions which is joined together by the fact that they all belong to the Cancer class; experience will soon teach that you can remember all three very much more clearly and accurately than you could any one of the three singly.
So how is this finding of the symbolic in the apparently random different from a person in psychosis who believes that the way in which a passerby walks across the room conceals a coded message that is being used to insult them?
The main difference is that the pronouncements of mystics tend to be more coherent and more culturally appropriate than those people declared to be simply mad. RD Laing put this in rather more poetic language:
Mystics and schizophrenics swim in the same ocean. But the mystics swim whereas the schizophrenics drown.
There are ultimately two interpretations one can make from all this:
1. That people in psychosis sometimes access the same truths as that of the mystic, but are unable to cope with the experience.
or
2. That mystical experience is simply culturally sanctioned psychosis.
Feel free to delete according to your own personal beliefs and prejudices.
Watching that youtube clip made me feel very sorry for David Shayler. He looks like a person going through a delusional experience, with added *laugh* factor because he is on national tv.
How likely is it someone (or anyone) will meet with him to assess the true meaning of his (possible) delusion?
Religiosity is often a feature of my own psychotic epidodes (ordinairily I’m an atheist).
However, I do not interpret these experiences as any kind of spiritual encounter. Rather, I think they can be explained in fascinating, but strictly biological terms. For example, the well known neurologist V. S. Ramachandran has described experiments in which an experience of ‘god’ has been induced in healthy subjects by artificially stimulating certain areas of the cerebral cortex.
But then I am pretty much a biological reductionist, convinced that Bipolar is a physical brain disease alongside Alzheimers or Epilepsy.
I myself am not a religious person…Spiritual in another sense maybe, but not religious. I don’t worship any kind of God or Idol, I struggle to believe that there is any form of God that controls everything, but yet decides to leave us humans to destroy the planet as one big experiment to see whether we have towed the line in his big game or not, if not then we won’t be allowed into his lovely cushy pad called ‘heaven’ instead we are subjected to a life of torment in the other geezers dive called ‘hell’. I took philosophy of religion as an ‘A’ level, i was the only one in my group who didn’t believe, all the others were Christian (which is fine) however, they decided to gang up on me in the debates and tell me that despite being a good citizen and probably leading a better and cleaner life than a lot of ‘christians’ that i would go to hell unless i accepted ‘God’ into my life!
My point in all of this is that religion is good and comforting for some, but in todays climate, it is becoming more and more evident that religion is just another form of brainwashing. Why is it that people feel so frightened of dying and there being nothing afterwards! I guess it’s because it makes our existance feel pointless? A waste of time? What’s it all for? Well my philosophy is, enjoy life, do good and if there is anything after then it’s just a brucy bonus!!
As for the difference between the mystical and the psychotic, i personally don’t see that there is a difference. It only becomes an issue when it starts affecting someones life, or the life of others. Like Z said though, if you are experiencing this ‘paranormal’ activity in the right religious circles then it would be regarded as culturally acceptable, but if you were just some nutjob walking down the street talking to God and blowing yourself up cause God told you to, I imagine you would be subject to psychiatric assessment.
Flowergilr, personal beliefs aside, the “culture” you refer to, with regards to David Shayler, would say he is unwell, no?
I also disagree when you said “todays climate, it is becoming more and more evident that religion is just another form of brainwashing”
It is a personal choice.
Like i said bloo, (and I don’t think you can put personal beliefs aside, as after all this discussion is about opinions, no?) I believe that, mystical or psychotic, what’s the difference. Of course, In response to your second point about “todays climate” I would have to disagree with you to some degree. After all some people don’t feel that they have a choice, they may be born into their religion, some are forced to live a certain way and if they stray from this, you sometimes encounter what has been heard of in the news recently ‘honour killings’. Our wars are as a result of religious extremism and the fight for power. Religion breeds greed and hatred. Of course I wouldn’t be so ignorant nor arrogant as to say that this was the case for everyone who believed in a higher power, because of course i dont, i realise that people have personal choice and that is great…however, some people dont.
I think the mainstream culture we live in would say Shayler is unwell.
Arguably the sub-culture of Kabbalism would say he isn’t, and is having a divine revelation. That said, I know a few Kabbalists (of the Aleister Crowley/Thelema variety rather than the Jewish variety) and they might argue that the point of Kabbalah is that any symbolic revelations you discover are only relevant to you personally rather than to the wider world in general, and Shayler may be making the error of assuming his insights/delusions have a wider significance.
Interestingly, the comments box on that YouTube video seems to be full of 9/11 conspiracy theorists who seem now to believe that Shayler has shown himself to be an MI5 psyops agent acting to discredit the 9/11 conspiracy movement.
Talk about a clash of worldviews.
What a pity the cameras weren’t around to capture the various utterances of Jesus Christ…….is it possible that he was a middle aged carpenter suffering some sort of breakdown, or breakthrough as Laing and others might have suggested ?
When one person suffers from a delusion its called insanity but when many people suffer from a delusion it’s called religion [to paraphrase Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance].
I have no idea what David Shayler was trying to say, or why he is saying them at this point in his life but I can’t help feeling that general themes inherent in delusional beliefs, such as paranoia, grandiosity, etc are linked in some way to early life experiences [without excluding bio-genetics].
In other words I do not think it is entirely accidental that some people develop a messiah complex, for example, which to my mind seeks to recreate the same type of omnipotence that exists for a very young child in relation to his/her parents.
How reassuring for the isolated and ridiculed Shayler to return to such a state when everything in the world seemed so certain [because parents appear to have all the answers when you are young enough].
It is probably impossible to say this without giving offence but ALL religious scriptures [in my opinion] are just as untenable as Shaylers David Icke moment, but it doesn’t stop millions believing in them.
I agree that mysticism (psychosis?) can be in the eye of the beholder. During my very first episode – some 14 years before I was actually diagnosed – I never came into contact with the health service. Instead I took it into my head to go and convert to Catholicism (as a child I attended a very Catholic primary school). I was, of course, in direct communion with God and the nun who supervised my preparation classes was quite convinced she had found the next Saint Joan!
Perhaps I should start my own cult.
Just watching Richard Dawkins programme ‘The Enemies of Reason’.
Are these psychic mediums, astrologists, spiritualists and so on deluding themselves as well as their followers ?
Ah, I missed that programme, because I was working. Was it any good?
Was it any good ?
Well, to a certain extent that might depend on which side of the fence you sit.
For example, a group of ‘diviners’ all failed to detect water in objective test conditions.
Amazingly, instead of acknowledging that they had been exposed – the diviners came out with elaborate rationalisations about how the test wasn’t really valid and so on.
Presumably they all prefered to persisit with their ‘water divining delusions’ rather than accept the ‘objective proof’ provided by a scientific experiment ?
Just as a side topic, I’d like to pick up on something Ariel mentioned:
“For example, the well known neurologist V. S. Ramachandran has described experiments in which an experience of ‘god’ has been induced in healthy subjects by artificially stimulating certain areas of the cerebral cortex.”
I presume this is similar to the “God Helmet” experiments by Michael Persinger which uses magnetic coils in a helmet to stimulate certain parts of the brain and produce mystical experiences.
It seems you can now buy god helmets online at this place:
http://www.shaktitechnology.co...../index.htm
Bloody hell. I want one.
Ariel in comment 2 mentions experiences of God being stimulated in the brains of ‘healthy’ people. All human experience is mediated via the brain somehow.
The fact intense religious experience can be induced artificially can not be used to argue against a genuine contact with the divinity of your choice. Sadly there seems to be a lack of objective external evidence that would support contacts with a divine entity as well.
Only one hundred dollars for a four coil religious experience. Tempting …
Personally I think religion V delusion is a very complex issue. Some may be ill, while others may be misguided. Some may be experiencing psychosis, while others may have connections with a supernatural source of some kind. And of course some may experience all of the above, which then really complicates things.
Going back to the point of seeing importance in ordinary things, this post by Philippa King is very enlightening in terms of symptoms of psychosis.
I fluffed my link – only “this post” and “Philippa King” are meant to be links, not the whole bloomin’ sentence! *rolls her eyes*