believes that some people literally seem to have truly encountered extra-terrestrials. He believes their UFO abductions cannot be described by any of the psychiatric literature which means they are not an hallucination, a delusion or a projection (Harvard Magazine, March-April, 1992). These people are challenged to find a new conceptual framework to relieve the profound shock of their unexpected experiences. Often people feel they have been initiated into transpersonal states of consciousness through their abduction because the ET's seem to live at higher stages of consciousness than our own. Other dimensions and other space-time continua become real to abductees. The telepathic communication with ET's opened up channels within them that had been closed before. People who have an encounter with ET's in a vivid dream or spontaneous waking vision may also feel psychically opened by the experience and be compelled to re-examine their beliefs about extra-terrestrials and the other dimensions of reality these beings represent.
8. The Inter-life and other Mystical Experiences: As mentioned above, the mystical experience is defined by a state of complete peace and at-one-ness with all that is. Individuals reach this state through a variety of ways. It may happen by being in communion with nature, through a Near Death Experience, through a powerful experience of love, direct neurological stimulation, or as a result of spiritual practice. The profound peace it brings has a healing effect since it allows one to feel whole within oneself as well as connected in a meaningful way to the world around. This mystical state can be stimulated through regression therapies which gently take people into the state of "being in the light" between lives, the Inter-life (Lucas, 1993).
The phenomena associated with these forms of spiritual emergency can be bizarre and terrifying for someone who experiences them without understanding. In one case, a woman in childbirth was seized by a spontaneous kundalini experience that created strong, uncontrollable vibrations throughout her body. She was frightened for her and her child's life. Her nurses and doctors offered no explanation and only attempted to do what they could to make the vibrations stop through medication. No one had the knowledge to suggest that she may have been blessed with an experience of the Divine or had attained a level of selfrealization which was not only valid, but which gave her extraordinary resources as a human and as a mother. For 10 years after the experience she was afraid to talk or think about the experience until finally she read about kundalini and understood she had had a spiritual awakening during childbirth.
Sympathetic and knowledgeable support at the birth could have helped her enjoy the extraordinary joy that comes with the rise of kundalini.
Confusion with Pathology
Some of the phenomena of spiritual emergence have been misconstrued as indicators of pathology. For instance, some criteria for the diagnosis of psychosis (DSM-III,
1980) are observable in spiritual emergency:
1.A disorientation which makes a person less interested in work, in social contacts and in self-care.
2.A difficulty in communicating about one's experience to others (in spiritual emergency this is the result of the noetic quality of the experience, not symptomatic of confused thinking).
3.Dissociation (in spiritual emergency this dissociation is a transitory part of the process of integrating one's experience.)
These phenomena subside after a spiritual emergency whereas in a chronic psychosis they do not.
The DSM-1V (1994) categorizes possession states as an example of "Dissociative Disorders Not Otherwise Specified." Examples include "Dissociative trance disorder: single or episodic alterations in the state of consciousness that are indigenous to particular locations and cultures. Dissociative trance involves narrowing of awareness of immediate surroundings or stereotyped behaviors or movements that are experienced as being beyond one's control. Possession trance involves replacement of the customary sense of personal identity by a new identity, attributed to the influence of a spirit, power, deity, or other person, and associated with stereotyped "involuntary" movements or amnesia" (American Psychiatric Association, 1993).
This clearly raises a question about differentiating between Dissociative Disorders which are mental disorder and possession states which are indicative of spiritual problems. Perhaps the longevity of the dissociative state will determine if mental disorder is the appropriate diagnosis? Or, perhaps it is not the symptom itself which determines the diagnosis but the individual's attachment to the mechanism of dissociating. Refer to Chapter 3, Diagnosis, for a more complete discussion on determining whether a person is in spiritual emergency or is sufferring from a mental disorder.
Many types of experiences involving a spiritual awakening have resulted in a person being humiliated and invalidated rather than celebrated. Hundreds of stories from people who have had spiritual emergencies, and have been misdiagnosed as having mental disease were collected by Ring (1984) and the Grofs (1989, 1990). Because our Western culture generally has not accepted spiritual emergence phenomena as the product of a sane mind, most of the people who have had Near Death Experiences (NDE) are inhibited from talking about their experiences from fear of being considered, and treated, as crazy.
According to Ring, people who have NDE are usually counseled by their doctors, nurses, and clergymen to forget the memories of the experience ...as if it was only a hallucination or a bad dream attributable to stress. Many NDEr's who have not had people to validate their experience wonder if they were crazy. Some, however, spend their lives affirming the truth of their experience in spite of their community's lack of support.
Ring (1984) wrote about one woman who met a divine being during a NDE. Later, during the birth of her child she experienced a "surge of great joy" when she realized that her child would be able to go with the divine being she met when she was in her NDE. After her baby died a few days after birth, she did not experience the grief her doctor and minister expected her to go through. She wrote:
Well, I soon realized that my acceptance back into this world depended upon 'pretending' to forget, and 'pretending' to grieve the loss of my baby. So, I did this for everybody else's sake - except my husband, who believed me, and gained some comfort from it, second-hand. It was a dropped 'subject,' but never forgotten.
Clearly a change in the attitudes of the public in general and health-care professionals in particular toward the validity of NDE phenomena might produce dramatic benefits. We might not fear death, might believe in the existence of divine beings, and might feel we could talk about the transpersonal phenomena that have a profound impact on our lives.
Summary
Spiritual emergence is a personal realization of a reality beyond ego reality, and, ultimately, one's unity with all things. The outcome of a spiritual experience may be gradual spiritual emergence or problems related to spiritual emergency. When the individual with spiritual problems is given an appropriate conceptual framework and community support, spiritual emergence is made more likely.
When a person with spiritual problems is perceived as out of touch with reality, he or she may be subjected to an inappropriate diagnosis and course of treatment which intensifies the problems. The new DSM-IV (1994) category allows us to differentiate spiritual experiences as a "condition that may be a focus of clinical attention" but is not necessarily indicative of mental disorder. Thus, spiritual experiences are not necessarily symptomatic of mental disorder. However, there is still a considerable lack of clarity about distinguishing "spiritual problems" from Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Possession states, out-of-body experiences and other spiritual experiences could be diagnosed as indicators of spiritual problems or a dissociative disorder. Further study is needed to clarify these distinctions.
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