I have been apart of a few of groups of people studying eastern traditional medicines who believe in spirits and the ability of humans (sometimes) to see and hear them. However, whenever the discussion comes up about the difference between being crazy and having some sort of real experience if the unseen world, it’s been stressed over and over that there is a clear delineation between someone struggling with a mental illness like schizophrenia and someone who can “actually” see spirits.
This insistence that there is a clear distinction has never sat right with me because of an experience I had with a schizophrenic man on a bus several years ago who was most definitely completely crazy and who also most definitely told me things about myself no one could have possibly known. He also predicted a big event several months into the future that ended up happening
I very much agree with you that there is a range of functioning among people who are more porous, and really appreciated you sharing your experiences with this. Perhaps this is why some people can only have these experiences with the help of psychedelics, others can easily slip into them with the use of more mild methods like meditation or drumming, and others can’t filter these experiences out at all.
Thanks for this comment. I definitely agree it's quite hard for many people to address what exactly the "line" is between madness and mysticism, and oftentimes there's an extra effort made by spiritual people to distance themselves from schizophrenia, etc. Often that distancing is more based on fear, I think, than on actual experience.
Excellent piece, thank you so much for this. As someone who grew up both as a Pentecostal Christian and in a non-western country, I have a hard time wrapping my head around people who don't believe in spirits (good, bad or neutral). It just seems so naive.. I love what you said about mental illness making people more porous to spirits, rather than the spirits causing the illness. This makes sense to me and is the first time I've heard it put that way. So thanks for that.
Finally, I was reminded of the story in Acts 16 in the Bible where Paul and his companions are being followed around by a demon-possessed slave girl who keeps prophecying (truthfully) about who they are (servants of God Most High) and what their message is (the way of salvation). Eventually Paul gets fed up with this and commands the demon to come out of her, which it does. Unfortunately the girl's owners are less than impressed as her ability to prophecy had been a tidy source of income for them and so they proceed to drag Paul and his friends before the magistrates, who have them thrown into prison. What I love about this story (and others like it) is how natural this mixture of spirits and profits and compassion and prophecy seems to everyone. It's only western Christians today who struggle to make it fit into their understanding of the world. Back then it was just normal.
Ah yes! In an earlier draft of this essay, I had included mention of her (the "pythia"). And I've always been a bit amused how many of the translations describe Paul as being irritated or annoyed or vexed, rather than angry about her.
I've read it several times now and I'm still processing this!
One thing that strikes me is how we have almost no tools in Western culture to discern what is being made up and what isn't. This is especially true in paganism and witchcraft, where often times people claim to hear gods or spirits or demons tell them things and they don't seem to have any metric for figuring out if it was truly external or just their own desires talking. That seems also to apply in IFS, too. And the problem is the usual response is just to say 'there's nothing external' since that's easier, but I really don't think that's true...
There’s a lot here that I’ve witnessed myself. My partner’s father was severely bi-polar and spent the last two decades of his life institutionalized. He often said delusional or terrible, off-putting things so you would have to tune him out. Then out of nowhere, a visible lucidity would come over him and he would say rather profound things. No one in the family would acknowledged it though.
As for the last part:
“Becoming porous is the goal of the mystic and the shaman alike, but they are only able to survive such experiences because they also learn how to close themselves off again.”
This pretty much nails where I’m at and what I would like to learn. At times I can become so porous and open that I move towards others who are porous and those who seem to be with spirits. I very much agree not all are good. I don’t pretend to have the right language for it. Recently I experienced it for such a prolonged period of time and had so many emotionally charged encounters that it started to become destabilizing so I had to close myself off to it. I had no tools or knowledge of how to do that so I ate the wrong foods(often too much), and in general just became less conscious until it stopped or dramatically slowed. I think I’m still afraid to really go there again without being better equipped with how to turn it off. Weight gain and becoming less conscious takes a heavy toll.
You know, I have had to close myself many times as well. And there's no shame in needing to do that. In fact, just as for gym work, sometimes you need to just stop completely for a little while in order to let your body slowly adapt to the next step.
Thank you. In line with your essay, my partner sent me this last night and as a fellow Southern you may appreciate it.
“ A popular legend holds that John Hendrix (1865-1915), a largely unknown local man, predicted the creation of the city of Oak Ridge around 40 years before construction on the project began. Hendrix lacked any formal education and was a simple logger for much of his life. Following the death of his youngest daughter, Ethel, to diphtheria, and the subsequent departure of his wife and three remaining children, Hendrix began hearing voices in his head. These voices urged him to stay in the woods and pray for guidance for 40 days and 40 nights, which Hendrix proceeded to do. As the story is told, following these 40 days spent in rugged isolation, Hendrix began seeing visions of the future, and he sought to spread his prophetic message to any who would listen. According to published accounts, one vision that he described repeatedly was a description of the city and production facilities built 28 years after his death, during World War II.
The version recalled by neighbors and relatives reported:
In the woods, as I lay on the ground and looked up into the sky, there came to me a voice as loud and as sharp as thunder. The voice told me to sleep with my head on the ground for 40 nights and I would be shown visions of what the future holds for this land.... And I tell you, Bear Creek Valley someday will be filled with great buildings and factories, and they will help toward winning the greatest war that ever will be. And there will be a city on Black Oak Ridge and the center of authority will be on a spot middle-way between Sevier Tadlock's farm and Joe Pyatt's Place. A railroad spur will branch off the main L&N line, run down toward Robertsville and then branch off and turn toward Scarborough. Big engines will dig big ditches, and thousands of people will be running to and fro. They will be building things, and there will be great noise and confusion and the earth will shake. I've seen it. It's coming.
Hendrix, in light of his tales of prophetic visions, was considered insane by most and at one point was institutionalized. His grave lies in an area of Oak Ridge now known as the Hendrix Creek Subdivision. There are ongoing concerns over the preservation of his gravestone, as the man who owns the lot adjacent to the grave wishes to build a home there, while members of the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association are fighting to have a monument placed on the site of his grave.
In October 1942, the United States Army Corps of Engineers began acquiring more than 60,000 acres in the Oak Ridge area for the United States' Manhattan Project. Due to the urgency and secrecy of the Manhattan Project, the Corps' "declaration of taking" was swift and final. Many residents came home to find eviction notices tacked to their doors. Others found out when their children came home from school with a message from the principal: Senator McKellar wants me to tell you to go home and tell your parents you are going to have to find another place to live." There was no further explanation as to why. All the students were told was this: "The government is going to take your property for the war effort."
This whole essay is great Rhyd, and the 'whoa' link in the comments is also eye-opening, as someone who has benefitted from IFS via 'No Bad Parts'. Also agree wholeheartedly about Deleuze and Guattari. wrecked more than the left, see also art colleges, relationships, bands...
Thanks! And glad to hear others agree about D&G. The more I've looked into how the left shifted away from practical organization (and community building) towards personal liberation, the more the threads go back to those two...
Wow, what a timely article. I'm currently dealing with the fallout of a friend hearing voices and being angry at them for taking or hiding her stuff. This gives me a completely different perspective on it all. Yes, she is quite likely really porous and being messed with by the karadeamons.
Very good. I have often thought that if I shared my Christian charismatic leaning view of reality and various phenomena I have experienced with an atheistic materialist type they would think I had a mild relatively benign case of schizophrenia. Enjoy your coffee.
I really enjoyed this piece!
I have been apart of a few of groups of people studying eastern traditional medicines who believe in spirits and the ability of humans (sometimes) to see and hear them. However, whenever the discussion comes up about the difference between being crazy and having some sort of real experience if the unseen world, it’s been stressed over and over that there is a clear delineation between someone struggling with a mental illness like schizophrenia and someone who can “actually” see spirits.
This insistence that there is a clear distinction has never sat right with me because of an experience I had with a schizophrenic man on a bus several years ago who was most definitely completely crazy and who also most definitely told me things about myself no one could have possibly known. He also predicted a big event several months into the future that ended up happening
I very much agree with you that there is a range of functioning among people who are more porous, and really appreciated you sharing your experiences with this. Perhaps this is why some people can only have these experiences with the help of psychedelics, others can easily slip into them with the use of more mild methods like meditation or drumming, and others can’t filter these experiences out at all.
Thanks for this comment. I definitely agree it's quite hard for many people to address what exactly the "line" is between madness and mysticism, and oftentimes there's an extra effort made by spiritual people to distance themselves from schizophrenia, etc. Often that distancing is more based on fear, I think, than on actual experience.
Excellent piece, thank you so much for this. As someone who grew up both as a Pentecostal Christian and in a non-western country, I have a hard time wrapping my head around people who don't believe in spirits (good, bad or neutral). It just seems so naive.. I love what you said about mental illness making people more porous to spirits, rather than the spirits causing the illness. This makes sense to me and is the first time I've heard it put that way. So thanks for that.
Finally, I was reminded of the story in Acts 16 in the Bible where Paul and his companions are being followed around by a demon-possessed slave girl who keeps prophecying (truthfully) about who they are (servants of God Most High) and what their message is (the way of salvation). Eventually Paul gets fed up with this and commands the demon to come out of her, which it does. Unfortunately the girl's owners are less than impressed as her ability to prophecy had been a tidy source of income for them and so they proceed to drag Paul and his friends before the magistrates, who have them thrown into prison. What I love about this story (and others like it) is how natural this mixture of spirits and profits and compassion and prophecy seems to everyone. It's only western Christians today who struggle to make it fit into their understanding of the world. Back then it was just normal.
Ah yes! In an earlier draft of this essay, I had included mention of her (the "pythia"). And I've always been a bit amused how many of the translations describe Paul as being irritated or annoyed or vexed, rather than angry about her.
This is an interesting companion piece to this article I read yesterday (linked to by Ross Douthat of all people): https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/book-review-the-others-within-us?r=rksu&utm_medium=ios. It’s about Internal Family Systems therapy and demons.
WHOA this is wild. Need to read it again and then will reply more.
Yeah, I feel like I need to read it again, too. But it's powerful stuff.
Bil, Hi, I just read this article you linked. Great read, so thanks for posting it.
I've read it several times now and I'm still processing this!
One thing that strikes me is how we have almost no tools in Western culture to discern what is being made up and what isn't. This is especially true in paganism and witchcraft, where often times people claim to hear gods or spirits or demons tell them things and they don't seem to have any metric for figuring out if it was truly external or just their own desires talking. That seems also to apply in IFS, too. And the problem is the usual response is just to say 'there's nothing external' since that's easier, but I really don't think that's true...
The author of the review just now linked to a discussion thread about the article, begun by an IFS therapist who doesn't buy into the external demon idea. It's interesting how resistant many are to this idea. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1cx3mp6/comment/l51byi0/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
There’s a lot here that I’ve witnessed myself. My partner’s father was severely bi-polar and spent the last two decades of his life institutionalized. He often said delusional or terrible, off-putting things so you would have to tune him out. Then out of nowhere, a visible lucidity would come over him and he would say rather profound things. No one in the family would acknowledged it though.
As for the last part:
“Becoming porous is the goal of the mystic and the shaman alike, but they are only able to survive such experiences because they also learn how to close themselves off again.”
This pretty much nails where I’m at and what I would like to learn. At times I can become so porous and open that I move towards others who are porous and those who seem to be with spirits. I very much agree not all are good. I don’t pretend to have the right language for it. Recently I experienced it for such a prolonged period of time and had so many emotionally charged encounters that it started to become destabilizing so I had to close myself off to it. I had no tools or knowledge of how to do that so I ate the wrong foods(often too much), and in general just became less conscious until it stopped or dramatically slowed. I think I’m still afraid to really go there again without being better equipped with how to turn it off. Weight gain and becoming less conscious takes a heavy toll.
You know, I have had to close myself many times as well. And there's no shame in needing to do that. In fact, just as for gym work, sometimes you need to just stop completely for a little while in order to let your body slowly adapt to the next step.
Thank you. In line with your essay, my partner sent me this last night and as a fellow Southern you may appreciate it.
“ A popular legend holds that John Hendrix (1865-1915), a largely unknown local man, predicted the creation of the city of Oak Ridge around 40 years before construction on the project began. Hendrix lacked any formal education and was a simple logger for much of his life. Following the death of his youngest daughter, Ethel, to diphtheria, and the subsequent departure of his wife and three remaining children, Hendrix began hearing voices in his head. These voices urged him to stay in the woods and pray for guidance for 40 days and 40 nights, which Hendrix proceeded to do. As the story is told, following these 40 days spent in rugged isolation, Hendrix began seeing visions of the future, and he sought to spread his prophetic message to any who would listen. According to published accounts, one vision that he described repeatedly was a description of the city and production facilities built 28 years after his death, during World War II.
The version recalled by neighbors and relatives reported:
In the woods, as I lay on the ground and looked up into the sky, there came to me a voice as loud and as sharp as thunder. The voice told me to sleep with my head on the ground for 40 nights and I would be shown visions of what the future holds for this land.... And I tell you, Bear Creek Valley someday will be filled with great buildings and factories, and they will help toward winning the greatest war that ever will be. And there will be a city on Black Oak Ridge and the center of authority will be on a spot middle-way between Sevier Tadlock's farm and Joe Pyatt's Place. A railroad spur will branch off the main L&N line, run down toward Robertsville and then branch off and turn toward Scarborough. Big engines will dig big ditches, and thousands of people will be running to and fro. They will be building things, and there will be great noise and confusion and the earth will shake. I've seen it. It's coming.
Hendrix, in light of his tales of prophetic visions, was considered insane by most and at one point was institutionalized. His grave lies in an area of Oak Ridge now known as the Hendrix Creek Subdivision. There are ongoing concerns over the preservation of his gravestone, as the man who owns the lot adjacent to the grave wishes to build a home there, while members of the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association are fighting to have a monument placed on the site of his grave.
In October 1942, the United States Army Corps of Engineers began acquiring more than 60,000 acres in the Oak Ridge area for the United States' Manhattan Project. Due to the urgency and secrecy of the Manhattan Project, the Corps' "declaration of taking" was swift and final. Many residents came home to find eviction notices tacked to their doors. Others found out when their children came home from school with a message from the principal: Senator McKellar wants me to tell you to go home and tell your parents you are going to have to find another place to live." There was no further explanation as to why. All the students were told was this: "The government is going to take your property for the war effort."
This whole essay is great Rhyd, and the 'whoa' link in the comments is also eye-opening, as someone who has benefitted from IFS via 'No Bad Parts'. Also agree wholeheartedly about Deleuze and Guattari. wrecked more than the left, see also art colleges, relationships, bands...
Thanks! And glad to hear others agree about D&G. The more I've looked into how the left shifted away from practical organization (and community building) towards personal liberation, the more the threads go back to those two...
Wow, what a timely article. I'm currently dealing with the fallout of a friend hearing voices and being angry at them for taking or hiding her stuff. This gives me a completely different perspective on it all. Yes, she is quite likely really porous and being messed with by the karadeamons.
Oof, that's difficult. Good courage and peace to you.
Very good. I have often thought that if I shared my Christian charismatic leaning view of reality and various phenomena I have experienced with an atheistic materialist type they would think I had a mild relatively benign case of schizophrenia. Enjoy your coffee.
Thanks so much!