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.All of this happens in an ideal development, as the student learns to balance states(hal) with station (makam), and as a sense of the nafs (the ‘particle’ self) enlarges tomeet and merge with the ruh (the ‘wave’ self).A Sufi teacher might analyse thetendency towards what Western psychology calls borderline states by pointing to thelack of development of a ‘gathering self ’ (Hokhmah) from earlier life.The sense oflove and compassion that would embrace the opposites within a child was notpresent in sufficiently healthy a form to allow the child’s own ‘I am’ to form.In anative Middle Eastern view, as we gather our inner selves, we create a soul.As theyscatter, we lose our souls.Not only do individuals experience this alienation of a fragmented self, so doessociety as a whole.Those who experience the breakdown of a unified ‘I’ in oursociety, mostly from early traumatic abuse, point to the way in which our entirecultural self has become fragmented and alienated from each other and nature.Insuch a case, both Sufism and Kaballah point to the difficulty of engendering enoughlove to overcome the splits that have occurred.SummaryThis chapter places the discussion of models of psychosis and spiritual states ofconsciousness within the context of the evolution of Western sacred hermeneutics.Both Western religion and science lack the cognitive models and language to describesuch states in a nuanced way, just as Western culture fails to support thoseexperiencing these states with a viable cultural language.The possibility for sucha language was left behind when Western Christianity, in abandoning its MiddleEastern roots, emphasised univalence and consistency in the language of faith andexiled language that expressed multivalence and diversity.The framework formultivalence in language still exists in the form of Jewish and Islamic mysticalhermeneutical styles, methods that can also be applied to the words of Jesus whenusing an Aramaic version of the Gospels.These interpretative methods describe aunity of altered states of awareness in a ‘wave-heaven’ reality that distinguishes itself from a ‘particle-earth’ reality.From a Middle Eastern mystical viewpoint, differencesbetween states (‘healthy’) or (‘unhealthy’) can be framed as more or less completecontact with a healthy ‘I am’ that can integrate both wave and particle views of life.Methods historically used in Middle Eastern mysticism to build a dynamic ‘I am’,capable of fluid changes of consciousness, include story, poetic language, breathingand body awareness.Section 3The Mystical Face of Psychosis:The Psychotic Face of Mysticism.The New ContinuumPersonal experience is the core data for considering this topic, and the normalisationof the continuum between non-ordinary and everyday experience is also key.Thissection tackles these linked themes.Gordon Claridge and his group’s extensiveresearch on Schizotypy supplies the theoretical and research framework for thiscontinuum.Peter Chadwick’s rewritten version of his own experience and Richard House’sconsideration of the mysterious but persistent phenomenon of Kundalini, whichcuts across any supposed divide between spirituality and psychosis and challengesnotions of diagnosis, supplies the data.The postscript to House’s chapter addsa contemporary personal account of the process of Kundalini as it weaves throughthe life of an anonymous member of the Spiritual Crisis Network.The theme of thetransformative potential of such transliminal experience starts to emerge in thissection.Psychosis and Spirituality: Consolidating the New Paradigm, Second Edition Edited by Isabel Clarke© 2010 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.ISBN: 978-0-470-68348-46‘On Not Drinking Soup with a Fork’:From Spiritual Experience to Madnessto Growth – A Personal JourneyPeter K.ChadwickFor me, a spiritual experience is an awareness of being open to forces as if frombeyond oneself.All religions are based on spiritual experiences, even if not allreligious people, in these terms, need necessarily be particularly spiritual.My ownaccess to such realms of experience, as outlined in this chapter, was centrally anopenness to God, to me the positive spiritual presence of the cosmos, but also anopenness to The Infernal, the ever-present downside for all such questers in thisterritory of human endeavour.Since both share the individual’s permeability to ‘the beyond’, spiritual experi-ences are far from rare during psychotic crises and this is how I came across suchdomains.There are some misinformed researchers who would scorn access to thesacred if it is associated with subsequent psychosis.This chapter, by a psychologist,myself, who has himself been psychotic, will I hope show that such experiences, canplant seeds that one can cultivate later in one’s own personal development, growthand search for peace.The Conditions for PsychosisThe access to the psychotic state is, in many ways, a life process and recovery toa fulfilling and meaningful way of being is very much the same
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