MENTAL ILLNESS AND SPIRITUALITY

Mental disorder consists of two types: (1) the normal type; here, the normal person sees his self as a body and ego and defends it, (2) here, in addition to doing what normal folks do the person rejects his body and ego and posits an idealized body and ego and defends  it.  Healing mental disorder is done at two levels: (1) giving up identification with the ideal self and its wishes and not defending those; this brings the person to normal status, and (2) not seeing one’s self as an ego and body and not defending one’s   ego and body.

MENTAL ILLNESS AND SPIRITUALITY

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

The conventional wisdom is that mental illnesses, especially the major ones such as schizophrenia, mania, and delusion disorder etc. are not curable. Folks suffering from these disorders are given loads of psychotropic medications and are not expected to be cured but to come to their medical doctors for the rest of their lives seeking medications. Those with other forms of mental disorders, such as the various anxiety disorders and personality disorders are hardly expected to become healed; they are expected to see their psychotherapists for decades without really being healed.

The mental health field is a mess; it is a field where practitioners do not heal their clients while filling the world with literature on what they do. The field cannot heal any one because it is chasing shadows of people. It has a wrong picture of which human beings are and therefore cannot really heal them.

Human beings are spiritual beings having physical experiences; therefore, you cannot heal them when you ignore their spiritual sides. Hanging out shingles on one’s office door claiming that one is qualified to heal people does not mean that one knows how to heal people. You cannot heal people unless you first have understanding of their spiritual needs as well as their psychological needs.

No one can heal another human being. Only the individual can heal himself. What another person can do is provide other persons a method following which he believes heal their mental disorders and leaves it to them to try healing themselves by following that methodology. Human beings are free agents; they chose to be in this world and chose their mental health issues and will choose when they want to heal them; they will heal their mental illnesses with the help of all of us.

The mistake that psychologists and psychiatrists made was to arrogate unto themselves powers that they do not have: the ability to cure mental disorders; they cannot cure mental disorders for they do not have such powers. The most that they can do is posit a methodology that they believe if followed would heal mental disorders. Only the individual mentally ill person can heal his mental disorder, following his own methodology for doing so or following the methodology posited by other persons.

Mental disorders cannot be healed at a blow; cure lies in ongoing efforts to have good mental health. Cure entails doing something about one’s mental health on a daily basis for the rest of one’s life. To have good mental health one, more or less, have to be receiving on-going spiritual learning, pretty much as folks go to church to receive nourishing spiritual teachings from their ministers.  This is how it is meant to be. There is no such thing as one time healing of the human mind; one must be continually striving to heal one’s mind for the rest of one’s life on planet earth.

This is because to be on planet earth is a mental disorder to be healed! To be on planet earth is to have separated from ones real self and identified with a false ego-body self; to see one’s self as who one is not is to be deluded and to hallucinate. To be on planet earth is to be psychotic, a psychosis that needs to be healed with on-going spiritual practices.

 

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? SEPARATION FROM THE WHOLE

 

Before you can solve a problem you must first define that problem and then come up with an action plan as to how to solve it. So, what exactly is mental illness?  Is mental illness found only in those that go to mental health professionals?

All human beings are mentally ill.  How so?  When we are born on planet earth we have separated from the whole (that folks call God). To be separated from God and from each other is to be mentally ill. To be mentally healthy is to be aware of one’s self as a part of the whole, God; a part joined to all parts of the whole and to the whole.

God created all of us.  We do not like that God created us. We want to create God and create ourselves. However, once created it is impossible for one to create one’s creator or one’s self.

While in spirit, in God, we wished to create God and ourselves but could not do so. Unable to gratify our wishes we sought separation from God.

We went to sleep and in our sleep dream that we are now separated from God (the whole) and from each other (other parts of the whole).

To make our seeming separation real we invented the universe of space, time and matter we live in. We house our souls in matter (body). Body gives each of us a sense of being separated from other people and from God. In body one is over here and other people are over there. One is now separated from the whole and from other parts of the whole (God).

 

INVENTION OF THE SELF CONCEPT TO REPLACE OUR TRUE SELF, UNIFIED SELF

 

Our true self is unified spirit self. When we separate from God we no longer know who we are.  Therefore, the first order of business is to develop an idea of who we think that we are. Thus, every human child’s first order of business is to invent a self-concept (and attendant self-image) for himself. The child enters the world and uses his inherited body (biological constitution) and social experiences to construct a self-concept for himself.

The self-concept says that the individual is in his body and is a separated self. The human self-concept is a sense of separation from God and other people.

The self-concept, also called human personality, is a specific pattern in which the individual feels separated from other people; the self-concept is the manner one protects ones separated self, the ego.

 

SENSE OF COMPLETION AND INCOMPLETION

 

Upon separation from God and other people, that is, upon birth on earth, the individual feels incomplete. He feels incomplete because he came from a place of completion, unified spirit self, aka heaven. To feel complete one must feel a part of the whole, aka God, God and all creation. We came to earth to be separated from God and his creation so we must feel incomplete.

To be a human being, a person separated from God, is to feel incomplete. Upon birth on earth, in body one feels incomplete.

 

We came from a place, unified spirit self, aka God, where we felt part of the whole hence complete. Since we came from a place where we felt complete, magnificent and perfect and whole we cannot accept the sense of incompletion we feel on earth. Therefore, we struggle to feel complete. But this time we do not obtain a sense of completion by feeling a part of the whole, God, but through our seeming independent powers.

 

WESTERN PERSONALITY THEORIES

 

Alfred Adler noted that children, because of biological and sociological reasons, in degrees, feel inferior and inadequate. He said that they do not like that feeling and react with a compensatory sense of superiority. Each human child, Adler says, pursues power hoping that if he is powerful that he would feel adequate and whole.  To Adler, neurosis, that is mild mental disorder, comes from this pursuit of an imaginary superior self.

As Adler sees it, the neurotic (which is all of us in degrees) is a person who feels inferior, inadequate and powerless and compensates with pursuit of false sense of power, adequacy and superiority. The neurotic feels inferior and restitutes with fictional sense of superiority.

The neurotic, that is, the mentally ill person, is a person who feels inferior and obsessive compulsively seeks compensatory self-invented superiority. His entire efforts are motivated by desire to seem better than he is.

 

Karen Horney built on Alfred Adler and changed words around but pretty much said the same thing. The neurotic, Horney says, feels that as he is he is not good enough. He does not like feeling not being good enough. Therefore, he rejects the self that he believes is not good enough and uses his mind and imagination to invent an ideal, perfect self that he thinks that if he becomes it he would feel good. The neurotic child thus rejects his actual self (his body and ego) and posits an ideal self and struggles to become the idealized self. In pursuit of the idealized self the neurotic feels anxiety from fear of not attaining the ideal self. If one wants to be an ideal self and fears not attaining it and since one does not want to be ones actual self, one must feel anxious. Thus, the neurotic is filled with free floating anxiety (that Horney called Basic anxiety).

When the neurotic actually fails in attaining the goals of his imaginary ideal self he feels depressed. When the neurotic believes that he is the imaginary ideal self he develops delusion disorder and or mania and schizophrenia.

Delusion disorder, mania and schizophrenia emanate from identification with a self that one is not but a self that one wishes that one is.

 

Both Adler and Horney have useful insights into human nature. I will therefore borrow from them and from other Western psychologists, as I see fit. (I am not a Westerner and do not feel obligated to take everything the West says on anything; I take only what makes sense to me; I reinterpret whatever I take from the West in light of spiritual psychology.)

 

What  Adler and Horney are saying is that to be a human being is to find one’s self-feeling not good enough (in my language, incomplete). Human beings feel not good enough but cannot accept that feeling because they came from a place (what Christians call heaven) where they felt complete, perfect, magnificent and powerful.  There is simply no way that a human being can accept a sense of inadequacy and live with it; he must strive to feel adequate and magnificent; the real choice he has is whether he gives himself that feeling or whether he roots it in God. Generally, we give ourselves that sense of completion. This is the origin of neurosis and psychosis.

 

When a human being builds on his own powers and sees himself as important, powerful, superior and ideal he is neurotic and or psychotic (neurosis and psychosis are differentiated by degrees; the neurotic is still able to test what society calls reality, he knows what is real or not but does not like the real and wants to improve it with ego ideals; the psychotic has lost touch with reality, and is unable to test reality and takes his fantasy of what reality is as reality).

The human being sees his life on earth as not good enough and invents a self-concept and self-image that says that he is good.  In Horney’s categories, the human child rejects his actual self and strives after becoming an ideal self; in Adler’s categories the human child rejects feeling inferior and tries to seem superior.

When the human being wants to become an ideal self he also feels motivated to make other people become ideal selves, for as a person wishes for himself he wishes for other persons.  The neurotic wants to become an ideal self, wants other people to become ideal selves, wants social institutions to become ideal and wants everything in the world to become ideal (including  stars, galaxies,  planets, plants and animals).

The neurotic sees himself, people and the world as not good enough and wants to change them and make them better. He posits ideals and perfection and struggles to become those and make people and everything become them.

Naturally, the neurotic is bound to fail in attaining his ideals for nobody can change himself and become ideal.  Ideal and perfection are mental constructs; they are not real. Reality is not of one’s making. The ideal self is ones invention hence not true.

Reality is created by God, not one. One’s real self is created by God not by one’s self.  One can return to the awareness of the real self that God created but one cannot create it.

 

The feeling of not being good enough is rooted in separation from God, manifestation in body and in the world of space and time.  Every person who is born on earth, that is, is separated from God, must feel incomplete, inadequate and inferior.

The real question is what one does with that feeling. If one recognizes that God created one and embraces God one reduces that feeling of imperfection. But we came here to seem separated from God and to deny that God created us thus we use our imagination to fashion self-concepts that say that we are ideal, perfect and powerful and strive after those; we identify with the ego ideal we invented to replace the real self, unified spirit self, that God created us as.

To be a human being is to invent for one’s self an ego self-housed in body, a separated self; in neurosis and psychosis to pursue the ideal self.  As long as one wants to be a separated self, especially an ideal separated self, one is mentally ill.

It follows that to be mentally healthy is to give up the desire for the separated ego self-housed in body, especially to give up the desire for an idealized, perfect self.

 

What heals mental illness?  To be mentally ill is to seek (1) a separated self-housed in body and (2) to seek an idealized, perfect self.

To be mentally healthy is to desist from seeking separated ego self, especially idealized perfect ego self. To heal mental disorders is to give up the quest for separated self and ideal self.

 

UNIFIED SPIRIT SELF OR EGO SELF

 

One must have a self. The question is what is ones real self? On earth we have forgotten our real self. Our real self is unified spirit self, what Christians call Christ self, Hindus call Atman and Buddhists call Buddha self. We are not aware of this real self. Right now we are only aware of our ego separated selves and if we are neurotic or psychotic our ideal ego selves. No one on earth is aware of his real self, at least, not all the time.

Because we have forgotten the awareness of our real self we must therefore ask God (his Holy Spirit) to tell us who our real self is. We should not presume to know who we are; we have to ask God to tell us who our true identity is.

 

On earth, we do not know what our true identity is. We only know about our false identity, the ego separated self and ego ideal.  The ego and ego ideal are false selves; false selves used to adapt to a false world.

 

IN MEDITATION WE CAN GAIN AWARENESS OF OUR REAL SELF

 

Buddha and Buddhists ask us to sit still and negate the selves that we are aware of and wait in silence until we experience our real self. The real self has no name but if it must be named it is unified spirit self, oneself that is simultaneously all selves.

You are you and simultaneously all selves.  But before we can regain awareness of the real self, the unified self, we must first jettison the separated ego false self, we must empty our minds of all concepts of the self that we made for ourselves and for other persons. We must accept that we do not know who we are and sit still and say: I do not know who I am; I do know that I am not the self that I am currently aware of; the ego separated self is my shadow self, the earthly self, a figment of my imagination, a fiction and not a real self. I have no separated ego self. I want to be told who I am, in fact.

If one says so and does not try to tell one who one is, one would attain inner peace and silence. If one is silent for an hour, without clogging one’s mind with concepts  of the self that one made for one’s self, God (Holy Spirit)would tell one who one is, in fact.

 

All the selves that we currently believe ourselves to be are false. This includes what folks call normal selves, neurotic ideal selves, deluded selves, manic selves, depressed selves, schizophrenic selves, personality disordered selves etc. Every self that one is aware of is a false self. One simply does not know who one is.

Mental disorder (which all of us have) lays in the replacement of the self that God created one as (unified spirit self) with a self that one invented, a separated self.

When ones separated self is in agreement with other peoples separated selves we say that the individual is normal but when it deviates from other selves we say that it is neurotic or psychotic.

All mental illnesses have the same root: assumption that one has a separated self, especially an ideal separated self.

 

SOME MENTAL ILLNESSES DEFINED

 

What is the deluded person? The deluded (paranoid) person invents a separated self that he feels is very important and identify with it and defend it as if it is who he is.

What is a manic person? The manic person invents a very important self that he wants to become and now sees himself as that false big self.

What is a depressed person? A depressed person invented an ideal self but now feels that he has failed attaining that self.

What is an anxious person? An anxious person invented an ideal self and wants to become it but fears that he is not becoming it hence feels anxious.

What is a schizophrenic? A Schizophrenic is a person who rejected his real self and invented an ideal self and identifies with that false self.

What is a personality disordered person (all of them: paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal, narcissistic, histrionic, borderline, anti-social, avoidant, dependent, obsessive compulsive, passive aggressive etc.) is a person fleeing from his real self in an attempt to become an idealized self that is fictional.

 

All mental disorders are rooted in rejection of the real self that God created us as (unified spirit self) and desire to become a different self, a separated special self (that we invented for ourselves).  The separated special self is made by one with the aid of other persons.

Mental disorder inheres in rejecting the self that God created us as, the unified spirit self, and trying to replace it with the false separated special self that we made for ourselves.

(The idea of separated special self is elaborated on in Helen Schuman’s book, A course in miracles; I borrow from that book as well as from Hinduism, Buddhism, Christian mysticism, Gnosticism and other books that I have studied; the reader can find his real self by reading books on the various religions of mankind; what I have done is present my own specific understanding and if that understanding helps the reader to find himself I am pleased.)

 

SOME IDEAS ON GOD AND HIS CHILDREN: UNIFIED SPIRIT

 

The following metaphors on God and story of creation represent spiritual reality. However, metaphors are not the reality they try to represent in words. No words can explain God. Nevertheless, consider the following story as representing the truth.

God is spirit.  God is one spirit that is simultaneously infinite spirits.  God’s one spirit self-extended his self into other spirits; one spirit became many spirits; one spirit became infinite spirits. One God extended his oneself into his children.

God is now in his children and they are in him.  Where God ends and each of his children begins is nowhere.

God is the whole spirit and we are parts of that whole spirit; we are inside God, literally, and he is inside us, literally; there is no space or gap between God and us and us and each other.

There is literally one spirit self, God. That one spirit self is simultaneously itself and each of us.  This is the state of heaven. This state is permanent, eternal, immortal and changeless.

God and his creation are always one and have always existed; they have no beginning and no end.

 

The state of eternal oneness remains so now but in that now we, the children of God, wished to separate from God and from each other. We cannot separate from God and from each other.

As Sigmund Freud observed, what we cannot gratify in reality we seek to gratify in dreams (in fantasy). We could not separate from God and from each other (to go gratify our desire for self-creation, hence have independent power, specialness) so we, as it were, went to sleep and in our sleep dream that we are separated from God. Our extant world is a dream world and is not real; in reality we are still unified with God and with each other.

Right now we are in God and in each other. While in God and in each other we dream that we are separated from him and from each other. The self we see ourselves as, separated selves housed in bodies and living in the world of space, time and matter, are dream selves, dream figures; they are not real. The selves we see ourselves as are mere dream selves. Dream selves are fictional selves.

When we awaken from the sleep-dream we are in we recognize that we remain as God created us: one with him and all selves (only spirit can unify, join, so our real self is spirit, not body).

 

Our physical universe is a dream place; it is not real at all. In the unreal universe we find ourselves in we see ourselves in bodies and have ego separated selves.

In the physical universe we made our bodies fragile and vulnerable and they could be hurt and destroyed. Mindful that our bodies can be destroyed, and not wanting to die we defend our bodies with food, medications, clothes, and shelter and ego defenses (repression, suppression, denial, projection, displacement, rationalization, sublimation, reaction-formation, fantasy, avoidance, pride, shame, guilt, fear, anger etc.).

We defend the ego and its body and in defending them keep them alive for the 100 years or so we live on earth. Alas, whatever is in body must die!

Our bodies die; they decay into the elements that composed them. The various elements in our bodies, such as nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium etc. decay into their particles (protons, neutrons and electrons). The particles decay to quarks and quarks decay to photons.

 

During the Big bang that initiated the material universe, something became inordinately hot and exploded and gave rise to radiation (photons) and the photons transformed themselves to quarks and quarks combined to form protons and neutrons (photons transformed directly to electrons).

In time the particles of protons and neutrons formed nuclei of atoms and in further time nuclei captured electrons to form atoms.

Atoms in time formed molecules (combination of atoms…for example, water is a molecule made of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen).

Stars formed, galaxies formed, planets formed and on planets biological life forms formed. In time biological life forms produced animals one of which evolved to what we now call ourselves.

Thus, we now see ourselves living as human animals. In time human animals die and decay and their bodies return to the matter that composed them and ultimately to photons and photons return to what existed before the Big Bang, before separation, before the existence of this dream world.

 

In the present, we find ourselves in the physical universe, a world of dreams and the dream seem real to us. We defend our separated egos housed in bodies and they seem real to us. But dreams are not real.

As physicists now tell us, where we find our universe are other universes (multiverse). Many universes occupy the same space. Where I am right now are other universes. I am not aware of those other universes.  This is kind of like what happens to us at night when we sleep and dream. In our dreams we invent other worlds and live in them while our bodies lying on the beds are in the shared ego universe we live.  In dreams one is in two universes but only thinks that he is in the dream universe he has invented.

 

We are in the unified spirit world that God created and while in it invented our current shared dream world, the material universe.  We are dreamers and take our dream selves and dream universe as real.

Our scientists study the parameters of the dream universe.

As long as we identify with the parameters of the dream universe we are deluded; as long as we see ourselves in bodies and see people in bodies we are hallucinating for those we see are not there. In effect we are psychotic because we believe ourselves to be in a world that does not exist and see people that are not there.

 

What is mental illness? Mental illness is to be in this world, to be on planet earth, to be in the material universe.

We are dreamers and can wake up from the dream of separation and regain the awareness of our true selves, unified spirit self, and at that point become mentally healthy.

 

CHOOSING TO THINK, SPEAK AND ACT FROM THE LOVING SELF

 

In the meantime we are mentally disordered. But while mentally disordered we can be doing something to improve our mental health, what enables us to awaken from the dream of separation.

If the individual is conscious of the fact that the self he currently sees himself as is false, and tries not to speak and do things from it he begins approximating his real self. For example, if you hitherto pursued ego ideals and spoke and did things from the ego ideal self (that is, you were neurotic or psychotic) you can now consciously attempt not to speak from the stand point of the ego ideal or act from the ego ideal. Before you speak or do anything you ask yourself: from whose perspective am I speaking or behaving, ego ideal? If it is ego ideal you tend to be proud, anxious and deluded and prone to anger. But when you refuse to speak from pride, ego ideal you tend to be peaceful and happy.

Peace and joy are indicators of mental health.

Nevertheless, as long as you are in body and live in the world of space, time and matter you cannot always speak and act from the real self; at best you approximate it every now and then. With efforts you can train your mind not to always speak and act from the ego ideal (the so-called neurotic mind).

Ultimately, you can train your mind not to speak from the separated ego self (from the so-called normal mind).  You can do so by always striving to use love for you and for all people to guide what you think and do. Before you speak or do anything pause and ask yourself: from what perspective am I speaking, acting, love or hate, love for all or self-centeredness?

In Adlerian terms, you try to do things that serve social interests. If you do what serves all people’s interests, yourself included, you tend to be peaceful and happy.

In religious terms, you are being guided by the Holy Spirit, the immanent God (God in the temporal universe). The Holy Spirit is love; love serves social interests. (Alfred Adler was a secular mystic; his individual psychology articulated what mystics say about the best way to live on earth but he did so in secular language rather than the religious language of mystics.)

 

This world is a dream world. What we do in the world are activities in a dream. Activities in a dream are not real. Dream actions are nothing and have not taken place. But we want them to seem to have taken place. In fact everything that we do on earth is meant to affirm our bodily selves, to make our bodies and egos seem real to us.

We eat food and food makes our bodies real; we take medications and those make our bodies real; we wear clothes and those make our bodes real; we live in houses and those make our bodies real; we have sex and sex makes our bodies real to us (the pleasurable or painful sensations of sex make our bodies seem real to us and affirm our bodily nature hence separation).  Everything we do on earth says that we are bodies and that we are not spirits.

Body gives us pleasure or pain (both pain and pleasure affirm body hence affirm separation).  But body, ego and their world are not real. Nothing done in body and ego state has been done; they are all dreams.

 

If activities are dream activities therefore they have not taken place and, as such, cannot be good or bad. Nothing done on earth is good or bad; they have not been done, they are nothing, literally.

 

WHY THE WORLD SHOULD BE OVERLOOKED

 

If one recognizes that earthly activities are dream activities hence neither good nor bad one then overlooks them; one does not waste ones time judging them as good or bad, one just overlooks them.

Nevertheless, folks in the dream see themselves as bodies and egos; bodies do get hurt; therefore, even though ultimately body and ego is nothing one must never hurt any one’s body.

 

Only love is appropriate behavior from one child of God to another. Dream or not, real or not one must love one’s self and love all people; one must love one’s body and love other bodies; one must love ones ego and other egos, for where egos and bodies are the children of God is, and God is.

God is not apart from his children; he is in them. Where you see people is God; therefore, love God means love people.

Let me repeat: you must never consciously do bad things to other people. If you hurt other persons, other persons would hurt you. Why?

It is because what we give to other persons we give to ourselves, for all selves share one joined self. If you love other people other people would love you; if you hate other people other people would hate you. What you give to other people is what other people give to you; giving is receiving.  Give only love to other people to receive only love from other people.

What you receive from other persons reflects what you give to them. If other people hate you, it means that you hate them; if other people love you it means that you love them, and if other people ignore you it means that you ignore them.

If other people give you hate forgive them for they do not know what they are doing; they do not know that we are joined and what we do to other persons we do to our shared selves.

If you forgive other people the wrongs they did to you, other people will invariably forgive you the wrongs you did to them.

If you do not forgive other people the wrongs that they did to you other people will not forgive you the wrongs that you did to them. (As you do to other people is done to you; don’t judge lest you be judged.)

In all things that you do, try to make those around you live in peace and happiness. Love is what gives all of us peace and happiness, so love yourself and love other people.

Our true self is love. Therefore, if you love all people you are returning to our true self, love. Love is union. To love is to return to union (unified self).

God is love; therefore, if you love you and all people you return to love, which is return to God.

God, love, union is peace and happiness.

If you feel peaceful and happy you are doing what returns you to love, to God. Conversely, if you feel conflicted, lacking in peace and joy, you are doing what takes you away from God, love.

 

I can see cynical and skeptical persons saying that all these are mere nice sounding talk that adds to nothing. They may ask:  has this approach healed one mentally ill person, say, a schizophrenic?

My response is that you should concentrate on healing your mental disorder since you, even if you are normal, are mentally disordered rather than worry about whether the schizophrenic has been healed.

If the schizophrenic is willing to let go of his desire for a separated self and ego ideal and speak and behave from the real self, love, he would be healed.

If the schizophrenic gives up his desire for separation and returns to union he is healed.

Union (which is love) is what heals all separation (which is hate) and since separation is the mental illness returning to union heals it.

As things stand some human beings came to this life time with the specific intention of escaping from reality; they desire to dream and live in total fantasy. Such people live in the fantasy that they are separated and have special selves. They are free to dream such nightmarish dreams.

My function is to articulate the truth of which people are but not to change them. It is not given to one son of God to change another son of God for each of us has freedom to choose what he wants to experience.

Each of us chose to come to this world, to the dream of separation. The only thing one can do is choose differently for one’s self; one can now choose love, union and God and find peace and happiness, and teach those to other people (teaching is done in what one speaks and does).

Live love and teach love and become a bringer of love (hence union) to the world. That is all a healer is supposed to do; he is not supposed to heal other people but to heal himself and become an example of a healed self. He is not totally healed, for if he is he would not be in the world of separation and the world of perception; we would not see him.  Because he is still in this world he still has an ego and body and therefore is not totally healed; he is struggling to become healed so as to become a healed healer, a lover of all people and God.

 

IS THERE A BIOLOGICAL ROLE IN THE ETIOLOGY OF MENTAL DISORDERS?

Do biological matters play roles in the etiology of personality and mental disorders? Contemporary neuroscience says that the brain plays a determining role in personality and mental disorders; indeed, some biological psychologists believe that thinking and behavior is strictly a biological phenomenon. This is reductionism at its height.

Schizophrenia is seen as due to excess dopamine; mania is seen as due to excess neuropiniphrine; delusion is seen as due to some as yet unknown excitatory neurotransmitter (over stimulation of the human body leads to developing grandiose self, deluded self.  If the body is less stimulated and calmed via meditation or with medications one shrinks down ones ego self and becomes less grandiose).

Depression is seen as due to low serotonin; anxiety is seen as due to excessive excitatory neurotransmitter and or low inhibitory neurotransmitter (such as GABA).

Those suffering these disorders are these days treated with medications. The medications appear to mask their disorders but do not cure them. If you are anxious and take any of the anxiolytics you tend to be calm for a while but the moment you stop taking the medications the anxiety returns.    The psychotropic medications do not heal any one of his mental disorders.

Whereas there is correlation of mental disorders with brain chemical movements there is no definitive evidence that mental disorders are caused by unbalanced brain chemistry. Merely engaged in negative thinking changes ones brain chemistry.

Nevertheless, if the individual wants to take medications to deal with his issues he is welcome to do so. Medications are not different from food. Eating food and taking medications is rooted in the same mistaken belief that we are bodies and need to defend our bodies. By all means if you find medications useful take them.  But if you want to see yourself as not a body, see yourself as part of unified spirit and want to awaken to the awareness of unified spirit then try some of the methods explicated in this paper.

 

STATES OF MIND

 

The individual can speak or act from one of four parts of the mind. The normal ego mind, the ideal ego mind (neurosis), loving mind (Holy Spirit), and Unified mind (this is the mind we employ in heaven, not on earth, although in meditation when one experiences what the course in miracles calls Holy Instant, Hinduism calls Samadhi, Buddhism calls Nirvana and Zen calls Satori and Christians call Mystical Union with God one momentarily thinks from the unified mind, the mind God and his children share in heaven).

 

THE HOLY SPIRIT

 

When the children of God appeared to sleep and separate from him, that is, manifest in this world, God could no longer commune with them as he did when they were awake. He created another aspect of him, the Holy Spirit. As the Holy Spirit God entered the minds of his sleeping, dreaming children and tries to enable them have happy dreams (when they love and forgive each other). Ultimately, to awaken them to unified spirit.

However he does not force them to wake up; he gently reinterprets their sleep- dream and shows them how it could become loving hence approximate heaven’s love but not be heaven for heaven is a place of formlessness, whereas the earth is a place of forms, a place we live in bodies. The Holy Spirit shows us that attack is a call for love and when we love those who attacked us, by forgiving them, we experience peace and happiness hence have happy dreams and as such are at the gate of heaven.

The creation of the Holy Spirit and his placement into our minds means that in our minds are now three parts: the unified mind we share with God; we do not remember this part of our mind while we are on earth; the Holy Spirit part of our mind, the place God is and Christ is; this is our right mind; we seldom remember this part of our minds; what we are aware of is the mind that we have as dream figures, as human beings, the separated ego minds, or the left mind, the mind that adapts to the world of separation.

When we meditate and silence the ego mind we can actually hear the Holy Spirit speak to us; he is our real mind in the temporal universe. (His voice is our voice made loving; he is not another person; he is you, he is me, as you are, as I am when you choose to love and forgive all people; if you like, the Holy Spirit is our higher self.)

The creation of the Holy Spirit now means that God is in three places and three selves: God as the Father, God as the Son (all human beings) and God as the Holy Spirit.

The same God is God the father, is God the son and is God the Holy Spirit (and is also the ego).  All three Gods, the Holy Trinity, are one self, one God.

(In Hindu categories Brahman (God) is Atman (Son of God, us) and is the sleeping-dreaming self, Ahankara; one self, God, is doing it all, is dancing the dance of this world through his parts.)

God the father is in heaven and transcends this world (transcendent God); God the Son is sleeping and dreaming this world and God the Holy Spirit is in this world as the immanent God trying to awaken God the Son to his spiritual reality.  God is trying to awaken a part of him that sleeps and forgets that he is God.

The Holy Spirit is the voice of God in his sons sleeping minds; he is the bridge connecting heaven and earth; he is the reconciler between ego and Christ; the mediator between God and his sleeping children.

(All these terms are, of course, metaphors, so do not take them literally; moreover, do not try to understand them with your present ego mind, for the separated mind cannot understand the unified mind; language and words is meant to adapt to the world of separation and cannot articulate the world of eternity, the world of union; all you need to know is that God is one; this is called non- duality, what Hinduism calls Advaita philosophy. God is you, is his son and is the Holy Spirit and is the ego.)

 

TO EXPECT OTHER PEOPLE TO LIVE UP TO YOUR IDEALS AND JUDGE THEM IS TO ATTACK THEM

 

If you wish to change you and change other people into ideal selves please do remember that other people did not tell you that they do not like themselves and that they want to be made over into your concept of how they should be, your conception of what constitutes ideal and perfect human beings. The normal person accepts himself (his body and ego) as he is and does not want to become ideal (ideal is always fantasy); people did not ask you to change them and you would a dictator if you insisted on changing them (as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin did).

Your wish to change yourself and other people and make them ideal is actually an attack on you and people (other people experience your insistence that they become ideal as an attack on them).

You must first judge people relative to your idea of what constitutes ideal, how they should become before you find them not good enough. That is to say that expecting people to be ideal is judgmental.

Who gave you the right to become the judge of the world? Jesus said: you should not judge people lest you are judged.

To judge is to be proud and arrogant, to be neurotic. Of course, we all judge ourselves and other people; we had to judge the state of union as not good for us, that is, see heaven as not for us, and wish to be separated from the whole, God, to manifest in the world of separation. It takes judgment to be in this world and judgment to be in this world.

Judgment brought this world into being and maintains it. If one completely stops judging one leaves this world and returns to eternity, to unified state, to love.

What one can do is strive to reduce ones judging of one’s self and other people and accept people as they are, regardless of their being good or bad, as the world defines good or bad to be.

People behave in accordance with their personalities and are not to be blamed for doing so until you change their personalities, which is not going to happen until you have changed their bodies (in different life times).

Normal persons are happy with their bodies and egos and do not want to change them. They do not want your ego ideal (fantasy, delusion) of who they should be.

One must remember that the ideal cannot be attained in reality (one is always coming up with what constitutes ideals; when one goal post of what is ideal is attained the goal post is changed so that the neurotic is always pursing unattainable ideals, a pursuit that makes him anxious and disturbs his peace of mind and body).

Pursuit of ideals (done out of arrogance and pride, the belief that one can create one’s self, determine how one should be)  gives one and people anxiety, depression, paranoia etc.; that is, gives one mental illness.

Pursuit of that (ideal self) which gives one mental illness is obviously foolish. Therefore, one must give up all wish to change one’s self, change other people and the world and transform them into ideal states.

 

THE MENTALLY ILL NEED MEDICATIONS AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

 

The mentally ill have something the matter with their bodies and therefore need medications (just as they need food) to help alter their bodies biochemically (food alters body chemistry pretty much as medications do).  Thus, we need to give the mentally ill medications as well as talk psychotherapy. It is not an either or approach to therapy but one that combines both.

If a person is anxious, for example, his body is over stimulated and needs to be calmed down. Medication and meditation can help calm down his over excited body. The point is that there is nothing wrong with medications.

When the body is taken care of with food and medications psychotherapy helps correct the wrong thinking pattern the anxious and other mentally ill persons have established for themselves.

 

BODY, PERSONALITY AND BEHAVIOR ARE ONE

 

The individual’s behavior is due to his body and personality, a body and personality he did not remember choosing (even if you told him that he chose it he does not remember doing so). The individual merely found himself behaving as a particular type of person. Strictly speaking, the individual cannot be blamed for having his personality and for doing what he does.

In this world his activities are dream activities and therefore nothing.  The individual did what he had to do in light of his actual or ideal self, his personality and body; what he did is inevitable and had to happen considering his personality.

In this world what people do they had to do; what happens in the world had to happen and could not not happen.

The world is as it should be (and will be as it should be tomorrow). You cannot magically change the world into a better world just because you like to do so.

Personality and ego is one thing.  On earth, body determines the personality, ego.  When the choice for separation was made it produced body (personality/ego). Both personality and ego is one thing.

When a person is born into a body he is born into a personality. You cannot change his personality until you can change his body. Therefore, it is actually necessary for psychiatrists to treat the mentally ill with medications for their personalities and bodies are the same.  Personality can only be changed when body is changed.

In these light spiritual paths, such as A course in miracles, ask people to overlook people’s bodies and egos, to forgive what people do on earth for they are merely dreaming and doing nothing. Even if a person kills another person he is to be forgiven, overlooked.

Of course, the people unto whom bad things are done do not feel that nothing was done to them for they see their egos and bodies as real. Thus, on earth egos want to punish evil doers. On earth the law system must punish evil persons but in spirit they are not evil and are to be forgiven.

The laws of God are forgiveness and love but the laws of man are bearing grievances and punishing those who wronged us. The two sets of laws are different and should not be mixed.

 

TO SEEK IDEALS IS TO FLEE FROM REALITY INTO FANTASY

 

If you seek ideals you are fleeing from the realities of this world into fantasy; you cannot achieve your ideals and might as well let them go.

And while at it you might as well remember one thing: nothing in this world by its self has value or meaning. Everything in this world is totally valueless, worthless, meaningless and purposeless (they do not even exist except as in a dream). You give everything that you value the value and meaning it has for you. It is you who gave anything, your body and ego-self included, the only meaning they have for you.

If it is you who give things value then you can choose to withdraw the value you give to things. Consider sex. You could value sex and seek the opposite gender. But you may decide that you do not value sex and the opposite gender would have no sexual attraction for you. It is only your wishes that make anything desirable for you. If you remove your desire for anything it is simply nothing and has no value for you.

Of course, to live in this world you must value the world and the things of the world. Nevertheless, to the extent that you recognize that you are the one who gave the things of the world value and remove some value from them you tend to live in peace and happiness. Ultimately, you can remove total value from the world and return to the world of unified spirit self.

 

WHY REALISTIC POLITICIANS SUCCEED AND IDEALISTIC ONES FAIL

 

Changing this world of ego and body into ideal state is not going to happen, as idealists wish. This is because the world is organized along ego-body lines. Politicians who address the world as it is, ego and body, succeed in the world whereas those who wish for ideals fail.

When revolutions are carried out to make the world an ideal place society sooner or later returns to being ego real for people cannot be made ideal. This is why revolutions are always hijacked by normal politicians operating from ego perspective.

Idealistic politicians, such as fascists like Hitler and socialists like Stalin, are very dangerous for they kill millions to get to their imagined ideal states, ideal states that eventually are not ideal.

One must accept people and society as they are, imperfect, and give up the desire to make them ideal for they are never going to be ideal. Give up any and all wish to make you, the people and the world an ideal state for that is delusion. Like all delusions it is compulsive and gives you unhappiness.

 

REAL POLITICS, IDEAL POLITICS AND SPIRITUALITY

 

Politics is for normal egos; they figure out ways to raise money and use it to do what serves the good of their society. Politics is not good for those who are motivated by pursuit of ego ideals. Idealists are interested in using politics to bring about a new man and new society, ideal forms of them which are impossible of attainment. If they come to political office, as some of them sometimes do (such as when Hitler and Stalin came to office) they kill people in the process of making the rest of the people ideal. These driven people should leave politics alone. People cannot be made ideal.

Men who hitherto pursued attainment of the ideal self and ideal society should concentrate on giving up their drive towards ideals and replacing it with true spirituality. True spirituality is not seeking ideals in God and heaven but keeping quiet and allowing the Holy Spirit to show one the ideal world he had already remade from our crummy world. Our world had already been reinvented by the Holy Spirit for us.

To see that alternative world (variously called purgatory, real world, happy dream, gate of heaven etc.) one must give up ones effort to be the one to remake the world by one’s self.

I say all these because some people study political science in an effort to understand how to use it to change people into better people and study leadership to figure out how to use it to make people ideal. They are wasting their time for people cannot be made ideal, not as long as they live in bodies and have self-concepts that say that they are apart from other people. We need to accept people as they are and make the most of their animal existence.

Those who are going to attain spiritual living will do so. Those who are going to attain spiritual existence, at some point in their lives realize that they were pursuing mere animal matters or that they were obsessive-compulsively driven to work for ego ideals and decide to stop doing so. Nothing else they do in the egos world would work for them until they embark on seeking spiritual matters and living from spirit, which is the same thing as living from a loving self. Their higher self (metaphorically called Holy Spirit) literally prevent them from seeking the things of this world and close all doors to the attainment of the things of this world for them and redirect them to seeking the things of spirit.

 

THE GOAL OF SECULAR AND SPIRITUAL PSYCHOLOGY

 

The purpose of psychotherapy is to know ones psychological self and understand the obstacles to one living fully. After one, with the help of a therapist, has identified the specific obstacles preventing one from living fully one must then live fully.  The question is what constitutes living fully?

Living fully means identifying what one enjoys doing, training for it and doing it twenty four- seven; devoting one’s life to doing it all the time.  There is no excuse for not being one’s authentic self.

One’s real self is loving self so love yourself and do what you love; be loyal to your true self. Drs. Ron and Mary Hulnick, the founders of University of Santa Monika, California, a school dedicated to spiritual psychology, wrote a book called” Loyalty to your soul”.

 

The goal of spiritual psychology is to help transform human beings; to give birth to spiritual men as opposed to the current animal men we are.  When we let go of mere animal level of being we attain true humanity.

First, we are born as animals; then we are reborn into the Christ self (loving self); to be born as the Christ self we must voluntarily permit our ego self to die and become replaced with the loving self. This transformation is variously called death and resurrection, at-one-ment with the oneself that we all share (atonement), New Jerusalem; New Israel etc. It is the meaning of Immaculate Conception (born of the spirit), virgin birth  as opposed to birth in sin (when we choose to separate from the whole, God we are born in sin and when we choose to return to unified state we are reborn in innocence). We must all be reborn in spirit not in animal state, as we currently are.

Nietzsche said: be careful lest in the process of casting out the evil you also cast out the good. Secular psychotherapy runs the risk of doing this when it insists that people be a certain way. People are supposed to be their current personalities, doing whatever their personalities dispose them to do, good or bad; all they need to do is turn to a spiritual manner of living.

Human beings are spiritual beings who separated from unified spirit and now live as animal beings and must find a way to return to once again living as spiritual beings. Religion (reconnecting back to their source) helps them to return to the awareness of their spiritual being. They must do what religionists do: engage in daily religious practices and go to somewhere weekly to obtain spiritual training and nourishment (go to church).

 

NOT KNOWING WHAT TO DO WITH ONES LIFE IS SIGN OF SELF CENTEREDNESS

 

A person who finds it difficult to make up his mind what vocation to enter and dillydallies, vacillates, is wishy-washy, and fence sitting is a person who does not want to rise above his ego self and channel his energy to one course, a course that he believes is more than his life.

Some persons see science as a course above their individual lives and go for science with total gusto; some go for other things, such as politics.

A person who says that life is pointless and does not want to do anything is simply a narcissistic, self-centered person unable to realize that he could do something to help suffering humanity.  One, for example, can enter politics to help improve society or go seek knowledge that improves the human condition. Doing nothing is not an acceptable option. The world may be nothing and pointless but those in it are suffering and we can reduce their suffering through our actions.

Yes, ultimately people will die and their bodies return to ashes but that should not be ones present concern; ones present concern is to make those living in the world happy. What happens when people die should not be ones primary concern; the here and now should concern one. (When people die and their bodies decay they return to the awareness of spirit self…you cannot understand this reality unless you have had mystical union with God experience, so do not bother with it.)

 

EVERYTHING WE SAY ABOUT GOD IS NOT TRUE, IS METAPHORIC

 

The word God, Son of God, Christ and Holy Spirit, ego and heaven are metaphors. God is metaphor for the whole; son of God is metaphor for the part of the whole; Christ is metaphor for the son of God who knows that he is in the whole and the whole is in him and loves all; Holy Spirit is metaphor for the immanent God, God in the temporal universe, God in his sons’ minds.  The word heaven is metaphor for a state of mind that loves all people. The word ego is metaphor for a part of the whole that does not work for the whole but for the separated part. The whole is in the part and the part is in the whole.

 

DISCUSSION

 

None of us remembers constructing his personality during his childhood years. All that one knows is that during one’s teenage years one finds one’s self behaving in a certain manner; that is, demonstrating a certain personality type.

Contemporary personality theorists say that children take their inherited biological constitutions and mix them with their social experiences to construct their personalities (that is what George Kelly said, anyway).  Whether this claim that we form our personalities in childhood is true or not is not proved.

Oriental thinkers say that we come to the world with already existing personalities; they believe in reincarnation. They say that our personalities are products of our past life time experiences (and what they call karma).

Regardless of its genesis what is self-evident is that each of us has a personality, a particular manner of responding to the exigencies of the environment.

Some persons are said to have normal personalities, others abnormal personalities (and a few are said to have psychosis).

 

The normal person defends his body and ego (an ego he likes and does not see as bad and reject). The normal person is defensive but realistically so for he defends his body and earthly self.

The neurotic, on the other hand, in addition to doing what normal persons do, defend his body and ego, also defends his imaginary ideal ego; thus, he is more defensive than the normal person; he is full of anxiety (depression, paranoia and the other mental disorders). I employ the term neurosis as early psychoanalysts, such as Freud, Adler, Jung, Horney, Otto Rank etc. did: an omnibus term for all mental disorders. This was how psychoanalysts saw mental disorders before psychiatrists began splitting them to the various mental disorders found in today’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders (of the American Psychiatric Association).

The individual’s personality is set in his childhood; therefore, he cannot change it by his present efforts.  He can bring that personality with him to God and let him use it to serve the purpose of love. Every personality has its strengths and weaknesses.

God knows what your strength is and will use it and ignore your weakness.  For example, if you have a schizoid personality you are probably very strong in the sciences and that strength would be used accordingly. If you have paranoid personality you probably have an argumentative nature and want to win arguments to make your ego seem powerful. Now, the Holy Spirit takes your desire to win to make you persist in doing God’s work.

God is love; bringing your personality to God means bringing your personality to love; letting the Holy Spirit to guide you means letting love guide all you are thinking and doing.

Love will modify your personality even if its former outlines remains.

 

What is called personality disorders is defense of the ego ideal. What the makers of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual did was use Adler, Horney and other psychoanalysts’ categories for neurosis and reworked them into the various personality disorders.

Briefly, the avoidant personality posits an idealized ego and defends it with avoidance. He fears social rejection of his idealized self and to prevent its rejection avoids people; in social isolation he retains the illusion that he is his imaginary ideal self.

The obsessive-compulsive personality posits an idealized self and defends it with obsessive thinking and behaviors; his obsessions and compulsions are motivated by futile efforts to attain his idealized self.

The dependent personality posits a false ideal self and defends it by not challenging people in social situations lest other people reject him; he fears that people would see him as not the ideal nice person who should be helped by people; he fears social abandonment of him.

The passive aggressive personality posits an ideal self and does not want to assert his self-lest other people do not accept his idealized nice person.

The narcissistic personality is chasing his ideal self; he wants to be seen as an admirable person and does not mind exploiting people to attain his fictional ideal self-concept and self-image.

The histrionic personality is chasing her ideal self; she wants to be seen as the most beautiful body (woman) around and showered with social attention. She is incapable of real love for other persons or for herself for that matter.

The antisocial personality is chasing his ideal self, an ideal self that he believes other people ought to serve its interests or else he takes from them. He has no social conscience and does not feel remorseful and guilty for doing what most people would call bad things.

The borderline personality is chasing her ideal self, a self that other people serves. If other people do not serve her needs and pay attention to her she threatens to harm herself.

The paranoid personality is chasing his imaginary ideal self. The paranoid person identifies with his desired ideal self, a self he is not and is ashamed of his actual self, a self he rejected; he is constantly asking people to see him as the ideal self and if they do he feels good and if not he feels demeaned and quarrels with them.

The schizoid personality is defending his ideal self, a self he withdraws from society; he does not care about what other people say about that self.

The schizotypal personality is chasing her imaginary ideal self; a self she thinks can predict the future hence is godlike in powers. The eccentricities, oddness and belief that they have extrasensory, psychic powers found in schizotypal persons is rooted in desire to replace their imperfect actual selves with perfect and all-knowing ideal selves.

 

There is no such thing as a separated self in reality; the separated self, the ego housed in body, is an illusion, it does not exist. But we want it to exist and it seems to exist for us. We make it vulnerable and prone to pain and sick and those make it seem real and we defend it and defense makes it seem real to us.

And for all our efforts to defend the ego it gives us anxiety, depression, paranoia and other mental disorders.

The separated self is a mental construct; it does not exist in reality. As a mental construct one can deconstruct it and reconstruct it, and make it a better self-concept. In the long run one must let it go and accept the reality that one has no separated self, no ego, no personality, no self-concept; one does not exist as a separated self-housed in body; body and ego do not exist., they are chimera.

The world the ego seems to exist in is a chimera, an illusion and does not exist.  Ultimately, one must give up all ideas of self and accept that one has no separated self, no ego, no self-concept, and no personality; that where one thought that one’s ego self-existed is nothing, no self (but there is another self, the unified spirit self, our real self).

 

It was not an accident that one trained for a specific profession. It suits ones ego-body nature. Therefore, even when one finds God one still have to be in one’s old profession but now reinterpret it, and redirect it and use it to serve love’s purpose. If you had trained in psychology and were a secular psychologist you would still remain a secular psychologist but now additionally become a spiritual psychologist, that is, you allow the Holy Spirit to play a role in your work of healing people.

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

This paper pointed out that to be separated from God and manifest in the world of space, time and matter is mental illness itself (Christians call it been born in sin, fall from grace in the Garden of oneness, Garden of Eden, descent into darkness).

However, because most people agree to see themselves as separated and relate to each other as separated selves they are considered normal persons.

A few persons, for some reasons (usually inherited biological issues…my inherited cytochrome c oxidase deficiency gave me inordinate pain and sense of weakness), come to the conclusion that their bodies and selves are not good enough and reject them. They then use their minds and imaginations to construct alternative ideal selves for themselves and seek to become the ideal selves. (I rejected my pained body and sought a body that is not pained and in the process developed pursuit of ideal self and ideal everything else.)

The ideal selves are mental constructs and do not exist in reality; they are fantasy. The pursuit of the ideal self leads to the development of the various mental disorders, from mild mental disorders called neurosis to severe mental disorders called psychoses. (Because I pursued ideal self and yet did not develop mental illness I have an extraordinary capacity to understand mental illness; an hour of interaction with a person and I will identify his mental illness, if any, and give him the accurate DSM IV diagnosis.)

To heal mental disorders the individual must give up his pursuit of ideal selves. When he has stopped seeking to become an ideal self and accepted his actual self he becomes like normal persons.

Normal persons are not mentally healthy so if the individual wants to become mentally healthy he has to give up his sense of separation, having ego housed in body and seek to find out who his real self is.

It is in the real self, who the papers says is unified spirit self, the union of God and his creations, that we find mental health.

When we give up pursuit of separation and accept union, in practical terms, when we stop hating people and love all people we attain an approximation of mental health.

However, as long as we live in forms, in bodies and in the world of space and time we cannot attain complete mental health, for to be in the world of separation we must have separated selves, egos hence not completely aware of union and as such not completely mentally healthy.

To be completely mentally healthy we cannot be in forms, bodies; we must be aware of where we always are, in unified spirit self.

When give up all desire for separated self we literally awaken to unified spirit self and experience ourselves as not in bodies but as spirit (A course in miracles calls this experience Holy Instant, others call it Samadhi, Nirvana, Satori, Mystical Union with God etc.); call it whatever you want, it is an instance when one knows that one is one with all being and its creator and one loves all being and its creator; it is a state of indescribable peace and joy; a state of total knowledge, especially the knowledge that our real selves are unified,  eternal and timeless.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji