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Psychosis & the Occult



While we’re on the topic of developing the ability to see monsters, I suppose we ought to delve into apophenia, pareidolia and their alleged connection to psychosis.

The term apophenia was coined by Klaus Conrad in 1958, according to Wikipedia, while studying the “distortions of reality present in psychosis“. They quote Conrad who described apophenia, in part, as a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness”. Ironically, that seems like it would make a great definition for life itself, wouldn’t it? Pareidolia on the other hand refers specifically to the tendency to see shapes and faces where there are none, like in potato chips and inkblot tests.

In any event, this is supposed to refer back to that whole bugaboo about seeing connections where none exist. I’ve talked a lot about that in the past, so I won’t get into that again here. The thing I did want to get into though was that on the Skeptic’s Dictionary, they inadvertently have an excellent passage about what the “psychotic” experience of apophenia is like. The passage comes from 19th century playwright August Strindberg’s From an Occult Diary, which seems like a fascinating read:

He saw “two insignia of witches, the goat’s horn and the besom” in a rock and wondered “what demon it was who had put [them] … just there and in my way on this particular morning.” A building then looked like an oven and he thought of Dante’s Inferno.

He sees sticks on the ground and sees them as forming Greek letters which he interprets to be the abbreviation of a man’s name and feels he now knows that this man is the one who is persecuting him. He sees sticks on the bottom of a chest and is sure they form a pentagram.

He sees tiny hands in prayer when he looks at a walnut under a microscope and it “filled me with horror.”

His crumpled pillow looks “like a marble head in the style of Michaelangelo.” Strindberg comments that “these occurrences could not be regarded as accidental, for on some days the pillow presented the appearance of horrible monsters, of gothic gargoyles, of dragons, and one night … I was greeted by the Evil One himself….”

Espousing scientific skepticism, Skeptic’s Dictionary of course is content to call this a typical description of a “psychotic break” and leave it at that. To me that not only is too simplistic of an explanation, it really doesn’t explain anything at all. Why is psychosis characterized by experiences like this? Why is it necessarily so very connective? Doesn’t this tell us something fascinating about the raw form of thought itself? What is thought if not a series of connections? When and how does normal connective thought turn into abnormal “psychotic” hyper-connectivity? Just because certain people are more connective than others, does that mean they are wrong?

It’s an area of study filled with tremendously interesting questions, but we’re supposed to hear the word “psychosis” and immediately shut down. And how many of us do, like good little robots? How many of us would be willing to admit openly that not only that have we had what might be characterized as psychotic thoughts and experiences, but very regularly do? Shit, I mean, it should be obvious to anyone who reads my site for more than a couple minutes that I’m a prime candidate. And if you’re even reading this, chances are you’ve got at least some experiences with it. Am I right? (And that’s without even walking into the minefield of conspiracy theory & apophenia…)

It makes me wonder if in fact all people don’t experience this, at least to some degree. I mean, how else do we even derive meaning out of things except by making connections? We make connections between words, images and concepts, between sounds and words. Our very alphabet is an apophenic/psychotic orgy of making connections where there are none. Little tiny shapes don’t have sounds by themselves. Stringing together these little shapes doesn’t give them meaning all on their own.

Perhaps consciousness is psychosis. Meaning is madness. Maybe what the pejorative label “psychosis” does is confine us within a narrow frequency band of possible perceptions, experiences and cognitions. It limits us from our natural tremendously rich range. What I’m wondering is, how do we get it back? How can we reclaim what’s been trained or hypnotized out of us by culture and tradition? Is the first step as simple as being able to see the Virgin Mary in a tortilla chip and not worrying about whether she’s really there or not? Isn’t this what Salvador Dali was getting at with his whole paranoiac-critical method? Drugs obviously are another route, but they are not for everybody, and they tend to take us farther and faster than we are really able to integrate into our normal life. We begin to think these states are only accessible with the drugs, thereby reinforcing our blinders. What other methods are available to us to reclaim our natural right of psychosis?

Or is this all just crazy talk?







18 Reader Responses

  1. rev max Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 3:44 pm

    I have a friend who underwent a psychotic break about 5 years ago, she started hearing voices and seeing colored lights, getting disoriented etc.

    SHe was literally on the verge of checking herself in for some sort for psychiatric evaluation and then read this book by Gopi Krishna called “serpent of fire” about the kundalini experience which frequently mimicks psychotic symptoms.

    So she decided to just wait it out instead and sure enough these things all went away again by themselves. And so she now thinks that what had happened was something literally blew her mind and it just took her a while to re-integrate everything.

    I think she’s probably right and thank god she didn’t get diagnosed with some crazy uninsured mental disease and put on a heavy dose of psychiatric drugs she didn’t really need. That would have wrecked, just ruined her I think. I’m happy she trusted herself enough to wait it out instead.

    This women today is very heavily into yoga and shamanism, when this stuff happened she was just getting started and I think she was experiences certain changes too quickly. I ownder how many people today are lucked up who simply didn’t have a guide or a way to understand what was happening to them when their kundalini woke up for the first time.

  2. Tim Boucher Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 3:56 pm

    That’s a great thing to bring up actually. Here’s a link to that Serpent of Fire book.

    I remember reading some piece by Jung where he talks about how he could tell when his patients were headed towards a psychotic break. He said that you couldn’t really tell them about it or warn them what was coming. The only thing he could do was to educate them symbolically so that when it occurred, they could have a framework in which to apply it and hopefully navigate their way through it.

    Also, if you look at somebody like Charles Manson, I think what he did with the Beatles music was pretty interesting. Obviously, he had some kind of psychotic break from ordinary reality. And he utilized symbolic elements from the Beatles and the Bible to construct a way for himself to navigate and integrate what happened to him. How many people who experience this stuff are lacking a real viable framework to help them through it and end up having to cobble something together from bits of pop culture and religion.

    On a semi-related note, I also wanted to paste in this excerpt from Wikipedia’s entry on psychosis for future reference:

    During the 1960s and 1970s, psychosis was of particular interest to counterculture critics of mainstream psychiatric practice, who argued that it may simply be another way of constructing reality and is not necessarily a sign of illness. For example, R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is a symbolic way of expressing concerns in situations where such views may be unwelcome or uncomfortable to the recipients. Thomas Szasz focused on the social implications of labelling people as psychotic; a label he argues unjustly medicalises different views of reality so such unorthodox people can be controlled by society. Scientology has repudiated the concept completely.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis

    This entry on the Hearing Voices Movement also has lots of interesting stuff.

  3. alistair Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 5:11 pm

    i have read some articles that lead me to believe that this kundalini or breath of fire is not to be taken lightly and can lead to all manner of bizzare physical and mental effects. i have seen some popular yoga writing that blithely encourages these practices as adventurous and sexy types of yoga that are merely another cool thing to do. this sells books and courses but it is it wise for the uninitiated person do delve into awakening such powerful energies?

  4. alistair Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 5:14 pm

    i found this site that is instructive regarding the dangers of kundalini;
    http://kundalini.se/eng/engkni.html?fallgrop.html

  5. Tim Boucher Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 5:22 pm

    Those are also really good questions Alistair. And I think they feed right back into the conversations we’ve had recently about whether or not a spiritual teacher is necessary, and what the value of closed initiatory systems is. In a very real sense, I think some of them exist to prevent people from going too far too fast. All this stuff is very tantalizing, but isn’t a game, it seems like. It’s interesting to hear you reticent to let people experiment willfully with kundalini, but on the other hand, talk about how everyone has the right to access their own private manifestation of god inside them. The two things may very well be synonymous. Perhaps encouraging people to believe they are god is just as dangerous or haphazard as encouraging people to fool around with kundalini energy before they are ready.

  6. hebrides Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 5:34 pm

    This is interesting stuff. Gurdjieff referred negatively to the kundalini energy as the organ kundabuffer and when I briefly had contact with Willem Nyland’s former students (he was a pupil of Orage and Gurdjieff and co-founder of the Gurdjieff Foundation before going off on his own), they seemed not to think too highly of traditionally practiced eastern meditation techniques. The Ba’hai’s also that I spoke with after college also didn’t seem to think much of meditation, saying it was better for you to pray. Amado Crowley, who purports to be Aleister’s illigitimate son, also warns against meditation. I wonder if its all related to the very dangerous and negative effects of awakening kundalini too quickly as mentioned in the article alistair linked above…

  7. Tim Boucher Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 5:37 pm

    Hm, interesting. I’ve never heard so many people against meditation. Although, it strikes me that in Am. Crowley’s case, that ceremonial magick would be equally or perhaps more dangerous for the uninitiated or unprepared to undertake…

  8. james Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 5:40 pm

    Strindberg and I have the same birthday as Rasputin and Jim Jarmusch: January 22nd…

  9. james Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 5:46 pm

    Seriously, though…

    The Impressionists had it right when they painted objects according to their composition in daylight. Everything we see depends upon how our eyes take in the light. A philosphical way of looking at it is: “What color is a green chair when the lights are out? is it really green?” We assume it’s green because we’ve seen it with the lights on, but in the dark it’s not green at all. If you were to take a photo of a green chair in super-dim lighting and then try to match paint to the photo’s palette, you wouldn’t even use green… either that, or you’d have to mix the green with black or navy blue or whatever in order to approximate the color…

    That, to me, sums up life. And you mention drugs: on LSD, the pupils dilate even inm the daylight. This might account for visual hallucinations. Coupled with the other sensual effects of LSD, it creates a new “reality” in front of us. However, in order for me to not lose it while tripping, I tell myself that it’s all a chemical reaction and that my brain is fluctuating the “intake valves” (for lack of a better term) of my senses. This helps me to keep sane amid psychedelic insanity.

  10. james Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 5:47 pm

    One last comment:

    “What other methods are available to us to reclaim our natural right of psychosis?”

    Trepanning.

  11. Tim Boucher Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 5:50 pm

    Yeah I’ve been meaning to do a piece on that. Maybe I’ll try later… I don’t personally want to puncture my skull though, regardless of the benefits.

  12. rev max Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 5:58 pm

    interesting:

    What is the Kundalini Support Network?

    The KSN specializes in providing safe and experienced methods of Kundalini arousal for people in process or crisis.

    We offer expert seminars and materials by experienced councilors. Our people are trained in appropriate alternative medical techniques, humanistic and transpersonal psychology, and have all undergone the processes we teach. From our personal experience and knowledge, we are in a position to offer understanding and guidance to those in process or crisis. We have over a couple of hundred years of teaching experiences combined with thousands of years of classical knowledge and lineages.

    KSN offers long-term support for seminar participants and interested people by providing internet chats, meditation gatherings, instructional seminars, coaching, and mentoring services as well as referrals to skilled practitioners of valuable and complimentary healing modalities.

    http://www.kundalinisupportnetwork.com/

    I got interested in this topic years ago and was for a while corresponding w. someone who ran a list for people suffering from “spontaneous kundalini arousal”:

    Spontaneous Kundalini Awakening

    Some people may unexpectedly experience a spontaneous kundalini awakening. They feel suddenly strong energy waves in their body, sensations of heat and cold, clairvoyant visions, intense dreams, literally feeling the energy making its way through their energy body and so on. These sensations may be pleasant but also alarming or frightening. Aura readings of persons with a spontaneous kundalini awakening often reveal a past life where the kundalini had been forced to over activity usually with the help of a special teacher or other person.

    A short and / or pleasant awakening may be not a great problem. But a long during intense one does usually. A special page is provided with tips for calming the kundalini.

    link w. psychosis: http://kundalini-info.org/natverk.html

    — It happened 22 years ago (article written 1996), she tells. I had been practising yoga and breathing exercises for one year. Then something peculiar happened. I felt sexually excited directly after the exercises, and got the feeling of being “high”, like when you have smoked hash. Some weeks later I felt an electric current through the spine and up in my brain after the yoga exercises, where it felt so good that I only can describe it as “brain-orgasm”.
    — During this time I got an acute psychosis, that is I lost control. This, however, only lasted for three weeks, and never came back. The current kept on flowing upwards, and when its power increased — and from time to time felt like burning fire and was very painful — it affected my health. It was like I was devoured from inside by this terrible energy, which roared through my body and caused a most unpleasant over-pressure in the brain. When this had lasted for a whole year, I happened to see a book by Narayananda, “Primal Power in Man: The Kundalini Shakti”, and there I found the answer to the strange thing that had happened to me.
    — Later I found other books, most of them written by Indian yogis. Kundalini arousal and its effects are familiar things in the East, but it is not until recent years that people have noticed this force in the West, a force which can bring people to heavenly states, or down into a hell of sufferings.

    Else Johansen continues:
    — Kundalini arousal especially occurs as an unintentional side effect of yoga, meditation, healing or body-and psychotherapy. Other releasing factors, among others, can be: Births, unrequited love, celibacy, intense studies, physical traumas, deep sorrow, high fever and drug intake. But Kundalini arousal can also occur suddenly without apparent course.
    — When the process of Kundalini had lasted in me for about ten years, I was too tired out to be able to earn a living on my own. I went to a doctor and said: “It is all crazy, my Kundalini has aroused. What shall I do?” And then I told him about my state.
    — “You are deeply psychotic”, he said. “I will send you to a good psychiatrist. The energy you are talking about does not exist. You have serious misconceptions”.
    — I got sick pay and later disability pension, with the diagnose paranoid schizophrenia, without first having been taken in for a mental examination. No doctor that I spoke to concerning my pension believed my talk about Kundalini.
    — But in the yoga literature I got a reasonable explanation to what had happened to me. Yes, I understood that the secret purpose with yoga and meditation actually is to release the Kundaliniforce. When Kundalini reaches the brain, it is said to be stimulating the brain cells that are normally not used, so that a higher state of consciousness is reached.
    Else Johansen continues and says that the doctors’ ignorance of Kundalini has led to diagnoses like hypochondria, escapism, inflammation of the brain, and calcification of the brain.

  13. alistair Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 7:18 pm

    i have to say that i`m not against meditation. i was putting forth a warning not to take on breathing and sitting and visualisation practices that are designed to crank up energy systems before learning basic breathing and meditation and doing your own practice for a reasonable period. the need for a culture of yoga is great in our society. yoga is consumed almost as a sport here with physical aesthetic benifits being most important. yoga as an integral part of a devotional lifestyle is vastly different to taking classes at the ymca. a person who has been practicing yoga for months or years has developed an awareness that will allow some experimenting with more esoteric areas of breathing for specific effects. thier system will recognise the shift in energy within and be able to tolerate surges and maintain control.
    having experienced teachers is vital to this, i believe.

  14. Tim Boucher Says:
    September 13th, 2005 at 7:33 pm

    Speaking of drugs promoting psychosis, I thought this excerpt from Wikipedia was very telling:

    Drugs that have general depressant effects on the central nervous system (especially alcohol and barbiturates) do not induce psychosis during use, and can actually decrease psychotic symptoms,

    Might be a good reason why alcohol is the socially accepted drug of choice

  15. adam Says:
    September 14th, 2005 at 9:55 am

    Phil Hine has a good article on his site on Kundalini

    I’ve also written one here as sort of a introduction to the subject.

    On the meditation trip I practice regularly and reckon, for me, it’s one of the most powerful tools for self development.

    In response to your comments on concept of psychosis I’d recommend checking out (if you haven’t already) David Horrobin’s The Madness of Adam and Eve which investigates the links between Schizophrenia and intellegence.

  16. hebrides Says:
    September 14th, 2005 at 2:04 pm

    One of the links above lists possible detrimental health effects of prematurely awakening the kundalini and how one needs to be prepared physically and morally before it happens or it leads to big trouble. This makes me think of Acharya Rajneesh (aka Bhagwan Rajneesh aka Osho); there’s a good essay here:
    home.att.net/~meditation/Osho.html

    that talks about how he was both genuinely enlightened and also was, or became, a megalomaniac and con-man. It also talks extensively about his very poor health and his deteriorating mental condition, partially brought on by inhaling too much laughing gas. But perhaps the ill health and crazy actions were a result of not having dealt with certain things before his kundalini was awakened? I’m wondering if this might also explain Bubba Free John (aka Adi Da aka Franklin Jones). Was Rajneesh self-medicating to deal with the intense pain caused by all that kundalini energy surging through an unprepared body and mind? How many melomaniacal cult leaders are victims of foolishly or accidentally awakening the kundalini before they were ready? (It reminds me of the kid in the animé movie Akira who literally goes on a murderous rampage after he gains super mental powers.)

    The mention about alcohol helping to suppress psychosis is also interesting insofar as it relates to kundalini energy. Might alcohol help to dampen the fire of serpent energy as well? Both Rasputin and Gurdjieff were said to be heavy drinkers and both seemed to have some kundalini-ish powers. Were they both also self-medicating to an extent to keep the energy in check. (And Rasputin had an insatiable sex-drive…Gurdjieff on ocassion slept with students, but was his sex-drive jacked up due to kundalini awakening as well?) Maybe we can just reduce it to them being Russian. That’s a joke.
    Anyway, that’s just some stuff that occurred to me.

  17. hf Says:
    September 14th, 2005 at 5:31 pm

    Fascinating! Defining psychosis as ’seeing too much meaning’ seems either wrongheaded or vague to me. Assigning a truth value of 1 (100% certainty) to these unscientific meanings might count as psychosis. Consistently and permanently giving them a value of 1 because you have no choice would surely qualify. But just having these experiences?

    Incidentally, the early Dr. Leary tried to describe “mental illness” (so-called) using game theory. He refused to use noises like “sick”, and instead asked questions like: what rules do they accept for their game? Who gets to change the rules? What strategies do they use? What (presumably objective) movements in space-time can we observe? This all seems philosopically impeccable, though you may wish to see it as a cautionary tale. ^_^

  18. rev max Says:
    September 16th, 2005 at 1:35 pm

    that talks about how he was both genuinely enlightened and also was, or became, a megalomaniac and con-man. It also talks extensively about his very poor health and his deteriorating mental condition, partially brought on by inhaling too much laughing gas. But perhaps the ill health and crazy actions were a result of not having dealt with certain things before his kundalini was awakened? I’m wondering if this might also explain Bubba Free John (aka Adi Da aka Franklin Jones). Was Rajneesh self-medicating to deal with the intense pain caused by all that kundalini energy surging through an unprepared body and mind? How many melomaniacal cult leaders are victims of foolishly or accidentally awakening the kundalini before they were ready?

    SOme people say that a prematurely awakened kundalini goes down instead of up and brings the person into contact with lower orders of spirits, they become unrestrained satyrs (or nymphomanaics) and it takes many lifetimes to burn off the resulting bad karma.



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