Timeline for How to differentiate between a spiritual experience and a mental disorder or delusion?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
21 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 25, 2023 at 17:19 | answer | added | user29449 | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 21, 2021 at 17:50 | comment | added | Turk Hill | There is no way of knowing. | |
| Jan 10, 2021 at 12:06 | answer | added | Pradip Gangopadhyay | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jan 8, 2021 at 21:56 | answer | added | user22667 | timeline score: 0 | |
| Nov 18, 2017 at 16:16 | comment | added | Ikshvaku | @KeshavSrinivasan I've heard atheists give that argument before, and it doesn't work. First his premise is wrong because saints can sometimes prove to others they have realized God. Second, hallucinations don't exist because you can't prove what you are seeing is unreal. And whether multiple people see it or don't see it doesn't affect whether something is a "hallucination" or not. If I see something you don't, that doesn't mean what I'm seeing is a hallucination. Also, they are engaging in double standards because how come they don't consider their own observations "hallucinations"? | |
| Nov 17, 2017 at 22:07 | comment | added | Ikshvaku | How are mental illnesses invented? A group of doctors vote them into existence in the DSM. For example, ADHD is another invented illness. If your attention span drops below an arbitrarily defined line, you are "ill". The symptoms are used to diagnose the illness, and then diagnosis is used to explain the symptoms. A real diagnosis actually finds the root cause of the symptoms. For example, "He has chest pain because of cholesterol, etc". | |
| Nov 17, 2017 at 21:57 | comment | added | Ikshvaku | Walk into your nearest psychiatrist's clinic, tell the Doc you are "detached from reality", and he'll prescribe you a pill to "bring you back to reality" like in the Matrix movies. It's a corporate hoax. First the doctor needs to actually prove you have a mental disorder and not give circular arguments (which actually shows he has no proof, but is simply a label to already known symptoms). | |
| Nov 17, 2017 at 21:51 | comment | added | Ikshvaku | How do we know they are just labels? Because the diagnosis of mental illnesses are circular: 'He has depression because he's sad, and he is sad because he has depression". Also, the "schizophrenia" disease doesn't exist. It's a mental condition characterized by a "detachment from reality", but what does that actually mean? I can call anyone "delusional", but that doesn't mean they are truly insane. "Hallucinations" are also a symptom, but you can't prove that something is a hallucination, all you know is that someone is seeing something that you can't see. | |
| Nov 17, 2017 at 21:48 | comment | added | Ikshvaku | Most mental illnesses don't exist. It's important to understand that 99% of mental illnesses are invented, they are nothing more than labels given to certain states of the mind by doctors. Most "mental illnesses" nowadays are invented by atheistic doctors, and they are defined in such a way as to be indistinguishable from spiritual experiences. | |
| Dec 6, 2015 at 5:18 | vote | accept | gaj | ||
| Dec 2, 2015 at 19:42 | answer | added | b.sahu | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 1, 2015 at 16:31 | comment | added | Keshav Srinivasan♦ | @Sai By the way, I highly recommend reading Scott Alexander's blog. He makes really insightful posts on a variety of subjects, e.g. slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/… | |
| Dec 1, 2015 at 16:19 | comment | added | Keshav Srinivasan♦ | @Sai Well, the author is an atheist/agnostic, but he said the basic message of his story is, why doesn't God give evidence to his devotees that would allow them to show others that their experience is real and not just a hallucination? By the way, DMT is a real drug, and there really are proposals to try to find out whether the DMT visions are real by asking test subjects to factorize numbers that are so large that the human brain couldn't factorize it. | |
| Dec 1, 2015 at 16:11 | comment | added | Sai | @KeshavSrinivasan Thanks for sharing, that was a good story, although I am not sure what exactly his conclusion was! | |
| Dec 1, 2015 at 6:59 | comment | added | Keshav Srinivasan♦ | @Sai Concerning spiritual experiences being indistinguishable from psychological delusions, you may be interested in this short story by Scott Alexander: slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/… | |
| Nov 30, 2015 at 15:17 | comment | added | Sai | Indeed this is a good question. There is no real way to differentiate. From the outside they may both be appear to be same. I have heard the story of several saints, who, when they were attaining God Consciousness, behaved in ways that in today's world could well be thought of as mental conditions, and were even treated as so. However in case of saints, they have a MISSION and so no matter what the others try the Experience will PERSIST and will LEAD to their realization of the TRANSCENDENTAL SELF. All the best. | |
| Nov 30, 2015 at 11:08 | comment | added | user1195 | Also remember that such loss of ego and sudden loss of a sense of surroundings, sense of spiritual upliftment etc. are experienced by people who do acid etc. and are temporary and destructive in the long run. Incorrect practices can also lead to mental disorders. Did this neighbor of yours get tested for brain disorders (physiological and not merely psychological) and for drug abuse? | |
| Nov 30, 2015 at 11:05 | comment | added | user1195 | i. Write down your experiences in a note book. After more months/a couple of years of practice, review your experiences. Your own spiritual advancement will tell you whether the previous experiences were indeed spiritual progress or mere tricks our mind is playing on us. ii. Compare said experiences with those of advanced masters in your spiritual line. If they are somewhat similar or at least along similar strata, then believe them as +ve. All this is assuming that the person is a practitioner and has elders to guide them. 2/3 | |
| Nov 30, 2015 at 11:02 | comment | added | user1195 | If these experiences are not a result of regular practice and the guidance of a guru, it is likely that they are, in the best case, a single +ve result of practices done in previous lives and in the worst case, mental aberrations. All thought, memory, feeling etc. are quantum (physics) phenomena and spiritual experiences are but one end of the spectrum and delusions the other. According to my elders, a few ways to distinguish our experiences are the following:- 1/3 | |
| Nov 30, 2015 at 10:41 | answer | added | Swami Vishwananda | timeline score: 4 | |
| Nov 30, 2015 at 8:49 | history | asked | gaj | CC BY-SA 3.0 |