| This
Internet Guided tour includes web sites I have found
in searches to further explore the meaning of my episode.
I have organized them into 4 categories:
Resources
on Spiritual Crises and Psychosis
Below are some interviews with experts on spiritual
emergencies, as transpersonal psychology has been calling
them for 20 years, that provide clinical perspectives
on the growthful potential of such crises.
Visionary
Experience or Psychosis?
Mental
breakdown as a Healing Process
John Perry, MD worked extensively with individuals in the midst
of acute psychotic episodes at Diabysis, the residential treatment
center he founded. These two links are to interviews where he presents
a Jungian growth model for acute psychotic episodes.
Spiritual
Crisis
Christina
Grof, author of books on spiritual emergency and co-founder of
the Spiritual Emergency Network, describes her own transformative spiritual
crisis.
Spiritual
Emergency Resource Center
A guide for clinicians and a self-help resource for people integrating a spiritual
crisis. Several personal experiences are online, and people can post theirs
in an online discussion forum.
Sacred
Transformations
Personal stories of spiritual emergencies, visions, awakenings, and their effects.
The
Spiritual Emergence Network (SEN@CIIS)
The SEN@CIIS Information and Referral Service offers
support and resources for individuals experiencing
difficulties with their spiritual growth (415-648-2610).
Spiritual
Emergence Service
A non-profit Canadian society staffed by volunteers
that offers information and referrals for people in
psychospiritual crisis.
Religious
and Spiritual Issues
Since I found myself identifying with
Buddha and Christ, I searched for sites to learn more
about who these figures were, their life stories, their
messages. During my Jungian analysis, I learned to
view Buddha and Christ as ideal models of my own inner
self.
Tricycle.com:
Buddhism 101
The basics of Buddhism, including the life of the Buddha.
Frequently
asked questions about the life and death of Jesus
Christ
The answers are given from a traditional Christian perspective: Who was Jesus?
What did he say about himself? What evidence is there to support what he said?
How and why did Jesus actually die? Did he really rise from the dead?
C.G.
Jung, Analytical Psychology, and Culture
Jung observed that patients in a psychotic state experience mythological and
religious symbols. In my Jungian analysis, I learned to see the symbolic value
of my own "hallucinations" and "delusions." This is the
most fully developed web site on Jungian Analytical Psychology, including full
text articles by Jungian analysts, a glossary of Jungian terms, dissertation
abstracts, links to other Jungian web sites, listings of programs in Jungian
training, and Jungian publishers.
Shamanism
Both reading about shamanism, particularly shamanic
initiatory crises, and participating in neoshamanic
groups played a key role in integrating my episode.
Below are some of the resources that I found relevant
to my own experiences.
The
Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities
This interview with Daniel C. Noel, PhD, Professor of Religious Studies, explores
the meaning and value of neoshamanic experiences, such as I encountered in
my work with shamans. Shamanic practices provide a controlled way to access
the ecstatic states of consciousness that I had first encountered in my spiritual
emergency.
The
Way of the Shaman
Interview with Michael Harner, PhD, author of several
books, including The Jivaro, Hallucinogens and Shamanism,
and The Way of the Shaman. Dr. Harner is a former professor
of anthropology and is currently the director of the
Center for Shamanic Studies, which teaches Westerners
how to live and practice as shamanic healers.
WWW Library
on Shamanism
LSD and Religious
Experiences
Fundamentally I view my episode as an intense and
disorienting mystical experience that served as my
spiritual awakening. It was triggered by taking LSD
for the first time. Huston Smith, PhD, Professor Emertus
of Philosophy at MIT and author of numerous books on
comparative religion, maintains that LSD-related religious
experiences occur and are valid.
. . . given the right set and setting, the drugs
can induce religious experiences indistinguishable
from ones that occur spontaneously. Nor need set
and setting be exceptional. The way the statistics
are currently running, it looks as if from one-fourth
to one-third of the general population will have
religious experiences if they take the drugs under
naturalistic conditions, meaning by this conditions
in which the researcher supports the subject but
doesn't try to influence the direction his experience
will take. Among subjects who have strong religious
inclinations to begin with, the proportion of those
having religious experiences jumps to three-quarters.
If they take them in settings which are religious,
too, the ratio soars to nine out of ten.
Do
Drugs Have Religious Import? by Huston Smith, PhD, The Journal
of Philosophy, Vol. LXI, No. 18, September 17, 1964
The
Psychedelic Library
This site has several articles on psychedelic drugs and religious experience
by Alan Watts, Walter Houston Clark, and others.
Yet adverse reactions to psychedelic drugs do occur.
A literature review concluded that broadly speaking,
there are two types of adverse outcome:
Acute, short-lived reactions are often fairly benign,
whereas chronic, unremitting courses carry a poor
prognosis. Delayed, intermittent phenomena ("flashbacks")
and LSD-precipitated functional disorders that usually
respond to treatment appropriate for the non-psychedelic-precipitated
illnesses they resemble, round out this temporal
means of classification.
— Strassman RJ. Adverse
reactions to psychedelic drugs. A review of the literature. J Nerv Ment Dis
1984 Oct;172(10):577-95.
A
Critical Review of Theories and Research Concerning
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) and Mental Health,
Chapter 2: Psychosis
By David Abrahart. LSD has also been linked to triggering psychotic episodes
which don't always have a positive outcome, as this MA thesis shows in summaries
of studies on this issue.
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