Government Controlled Health Care and Mental Illness

 My biggest concern over government controlled healthcare has less to do with party politics and more to do with giving any govermental body control over our minds. Once the government gets hold of the ever expanding Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR, 2000, Fourth Edition, which now has almost 1000 pages worth of mental illnesses, they hold the equivalent of The Malleus Maleficarum. This ancient text, first published in 1486-7, was the standard medieval text on witchcraft. It remained in print throughout the early modern period. Similar to the DSM it describes what is normal and what is not and the ways to "fix things" that don't fit into "normal" society. Thomas Szasz calls the modern  Western proclivity to resort to accusations of "mental illness" as being the equivalent of the Catholic Inquisition. We no longer accuse people of being possessed in order to ostracize them socio-politically, but resort to labeling them with pathologizing terminology. Szasz argues that the old religious model has been transferred to the modern medical psychiatric model. Same result: One receives an "authoritative" label, stigmatization follows, and then one is handed over to the state run institutions to be removed from normal society, treated and "fixed" or incarcerated by the new priests--therapists and social workers.

Recently, someone I know discovered who I was voting for in the 2012 presidential election and wrote me a concerned email saying, "Some of your friends think you have lost your sanity." I had to smile. The same person would mock Christians for accusing someone of demon possession, but unquestioningly resorted to the modern scientistic parallel of being possessed by "mental illness". I was clearly not in "the right, or left mind". I assured her that I was certainly insane, as the word in-sane can mean "partly there". I also made it clear that we are all somewhat insane, and thanked her for the compliment. Watch out for people who think they are sane--they are the most dangerous kind of people.

Now, back to the government controlling "mental health". Imagine either a democrat or a republican majority, or even both parties conjointly, appointing those who adjudicate what is "normal" and revising the DSM, which is done every few years, to reflect their judgments--adding illnesses like criticizing the president, disagreeing with the majority, being a Tea Party member or Occupy Wall Street member. It is a very short step to adding new mental illnesses to the "Book" and seizing control of the minds of the citizens, just as the Church tried to do in parts of Europe with their "Book" in the 15th century. I think Orwell called Governmentally run mental healthcare the Ministry of Love.

FOR THOSE WHO DON’T "FEEL" GOD’S PRESENCE

The modern Sufi writer, Idries Sha, notes that most modern spiritual programs determine the success and enlightenment of the spiritual student by her/his mystical experiences and feelings of bliss. To put it mildly, this is dispiriting to those who have no such experiences, or to those who have such experiences and can’t seem to find them again. Shah says this about that, “...according to Sufi ideas and practice, it is precisely those who do not feel subjective states, or who have at one time been affected by them and no longer feel them, who may be real candidates for the next stage [of spiritual development].”

In other words “spirituality” is not necessarily measured by “feelings of numinous connection”. This is a profound Sufi teaching, suggesting that advanced Truth and “spirituality” are most often experienced in the times of disconnection and feelings of ordinary daily life, or times of feeling distant from the divine Presence. Junaid of Bhagdad, a Sufi teacher who lived in 900 A.D writes: “Truth comes after ‘states’ and ecstasy, and takes its place”. Some mystics call this the “Presence of Absence,” suggesting that Absence is a living Experience that takes us more deeply into soul-making than any ecstatic sensation of bliss. The Hebrew psalmist wrote:

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

~ Psalm 139:11-13

This Psalm recognizes that the divine knitting or weaving together of one’s soul takes place in the light and the dark, in moments of numinous light and moments of murky absence. Divine activity takes place even in the darkness of the womb--every mundane moment forms a divine womb where we are being fashioned into the image of God.

Remember this next time you wish you had more mystical experiences or numinous feelings of divine Presence. Remember this when a guru or teacher tells you that ultimate spirituality is a feeling of divine bliss. Like romantic love, feelings come and go, but the Presence of the Divine and opportunities for Truth-knowing are in every moment of the day. Make yourself a little sign like the one Carl Jung had carved in Latin above the door of his house in Kusnacht, Switzerland: "VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS DEUS ADERIT," which says in English: "Called or not called, the deity will be there." Jung said he placed it there for his clients to see each time they came for therapy—reminding them that the divine usually does not show up in the way one expects.

The Normalcy and Necessity of self-Annihilation

“All things in creation suffer annihilation (fanā) and there remains

the face of the Lord in its majesty and bounty.” ~ Qur'an, Sura 55:26–27

The Arabic word fanā means “to pass away” or “to annihilate," referring to the often painful obliteration of the individual human ego that keeps one from experiencing the majesty of the infinite God. Fanā is one of the necessary steps taken by the Islamic Ṣūfī adept in pursuit of union with the pure love of God, often through unceasing contemplation on the attributes of God. Most Ṣūfīs view fanā as a negative state or a first step in preparation for the positive state of experiencing the revelation of the divine attributes and union (tawḥīd) with God. This is not an easy step. It requires the dissolution of the ego-self while remaining physically alive.
I am struck by this Ṣūfī notion of fanā as it relates to James Hillman's archetypal psychology, specifically his idea of pathologizing. Hillman describes pathologizing as "the psyche's autonomous ability to create illness, morbidity, disorder, abnormality, and suffering in any aspect of its behavior and to experience...life through this deformed and afflicted perspective... necessarily...central to the soul" (Re-Visioning Psychology 55-57). Elsewhere Hillman discusses the therapeutic process and the troublesome pathologizings which sometimes lead analysands to suicidal thoughts and urges: “Where the death experience insists on a suicidal image, then it is the patients ‘I’ and everything he holds to be his ‘I’ is coming to its end” (Suicide and the Soul 75). In other words, there is something native to the human psyche that requires the fanā or obliteration of the current "I" before new life may emerge. This suggests that all of life's experiences, especially the so called "negative" and painful, contribute to the making of a soul. The Ṣūfī poet Rumi states it beautifully:

This human soul is like a hotel.

Every morning there is a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a nastiness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain all of them!

Even if a mob of mourners arrives

who violently sweep the rooms

and destroy all of the furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He or she may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The depressed thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them all at the door warmly,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

--Rumi

If you feel like you are dying, or that an old quality or relationship is eroding, remember that such experiences are normal and necessary. Take a lesson from the Sufis--cooperate, assist and let the death take place without a struggle.

Preparing for the End, and the Beginning

 The Book of Revelation, also known as The Apocalypse of John completes the biblical story of spiritual development. Let's remember that the author named John was not a literalist, but a symbolist. A symbolist is one who expects the reader to see through the surface of a story to the inner personal significance. In The Gospel of John, Jesus speaks to a religious professional named Nicodemus who interprets Jesus' comment literally: "You must be born again." The perplexed Nicodemus then asks, "How can a man enter into his mother's womb and be born again?" Jesus replies, "How can you possibly teach others about spiritual things when you cannot understand spiritual symbolism?" (my paraphrase). This little exchange is a key to reading John's writings. They are to be read symbolically.

The Book of Revelation is for those spiritually advanced souls who have sufficiently experienced enough of life to see that there must be more to it than pleasure and pain, success and failure, marriage and divorce, education and ignorance, etc. All of these experiences are normal and necessary for spiritual development, but they are meant to lead us to deeper and deeper experiences leading to a more complete personality--a personality that blends the human and the divine into a new being.

The Book of Revelation portrays shocking images of the advanced soul in a state of personality annihilation, the peeling away of worn out goals and lost dreams. Physical aging forces one to look in the mirror, viewing bodies and past lives as they evaporate like a morning mist. The horrific and beatific images in the Revelation are meant to cause us to reflect as we prepare for the end of this phase of existence. That preparation requires us to obliterate the old and anticipate the new--the "new heavens and new earth". But both must be done together. Most people would rather dismiss the book or turn it into something literal rather than do the hard work of reflection that brings renewal. The Sufi poet, Rumi, put it like this:

This human soul is like a hotel.

Every morning there is a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a nastiness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain all of them!

Even if a mob of mourners arrives

who violently sweep the rooms

and destroy all of the furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He or she may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The depressed thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them all at the door warmly,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

--Rumi