A person receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia loses hope and enters a state of anguish caused by an experience of meaninglessness, hopelessness and helplessness. Much of this hopelessness is not due to the disease but to the mental health systems designed to treat it. Mental health systems are set up for maintenance and usually communicate that life is without hope of significant accomplishment once serious mental illness has set in. Yet, experience shows that recovery from mental illness is possible.
-- Dr. Edward Knight
Source: Recovery
My psychotic crisis occurred 18 years ago. After coming to the conclusion that, at 23 years of age, I was spending all of my time learning about other people, and did not know my own self, I dropped out of the doctoral program in social anthropology at Harvard University. I gave away all of my possessions, from bed to books, that would not fit into my backpack. I started travelling — hitchhiking across the country, up into Canada and down into Mexico, even to Hawaii. In Palo Alto, six months later, I awoke just after midnight. Although I had slept for only two hours, I felt rested — in fact, I was full of energy and eager to get back to writing in my journal. But first a quick trip to the bathroom.
While there, I stopped in front of the mirror and gazed at my reflection. Suddenly I noticed that my right hand was glowing, giving off a white light. My thumb was touching my forefinger in the ancient mudra position of the meditating Buddha. Immediately the meaning of this sign was clear to me: I had been Buddha in a previous life. Then another thought came: Buddha had been reincarnated as Jesus Christ. Therefore, I had also been Jesus Christ. Now, in this moment, the luminous image in the mirror was awakening me to my true purpose: to once again bring the human race out of its decline. My journal writing was actually the creation of a "new Bible", a Holy Book which would unite all people around the common tenants of a single belief system. Instead of unifying just one social group, as Buddha and Christ had, my mission was to write a book that would create a new worldwide society free of conflict and full of loving relationships...
© David Lukoff
Source: My Spiritual Crisis [PDF File]
See also: From Spiritual Emergency to Spiritual Problem: The Transpersonal Roots of the New DSM-IV Category
