Spirituelle Ver-rücktheit – Wahnsinn

• The foundation of all mental illness is an unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering. Carl Gustav Jung

• Insanity is possession by an unconscious content that, as such, is not assimilatable to consciousness, nor can it be assimilated since the very existence of such contents is denied. Carl Gustav Jung, Alchemical Studies, Collected Works 13, par. 53

• Schizophrenia is a condition in which the dream takes the place of reality. Carl Gustav Jung

• When in group narcissism the object is not the individual but the group to which he belongs. […] The assertion that "my country" (or nation, or religion) is the most wonderful, the most cultural, the most powerful, the most peace-loving, etc. does not sound crazy at all; on the contrary, it sounds like an expression of patriotism, faith and loyalty. Erich Fromm

• The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein

• You know one sign that you are woken up? You are asking yourself: Am I crazy or are all of them? Video lecture by Anthony de Mello SJ (1931-1987) Indian Jesuit priest, psychotherapist, spiritual leader, on Wake Up to Life! – Awareness – On psychology, presented by Center for Spiritual Exchange and Tabor Publishing, 1986, YouTube film, minute 4:00 out of 7:34 minutes duration, posted 25. November 2008

• The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him. [...] The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself. [...] All progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw, British playwright

• What's the difference between the ego and the soul? [...] One has the stamina to be invisible, the other one doesn't.
  [One voice fathoms]  [...] channeling that type of grace, of being able to stand next to somebody and hear that voice: 'Find a reason to touch that woman's baby'.  [...] You just know that when you are sitting next to that woman in the plane  [...] 'That infant has spinal cancer.'  [...] You hear [inside] 'Find a reason to touch that child.' You are chattering nonsense with the woman, but then you can grab the child's hand. And she thinks you are playing, but you know grace is flooding in that little infant. You'll never see her again, but you know that child's going to live.  [...] You know it.  [...] [Myss is moved and sobs.]
  That is what you have as a possibility in you. But you have to become irrational. You have to become fully and totally mystically irrational. Not emotionally irrational, because that's self serving. You have to become mystically irrational. Mystically irrational means you have to become mystically fearless. You have to be able to do what your mind would give you logical reasons to not do. You have to be everything your soul beckons you to be and everything your mind tells you to be cautious about.
  You have to become forgiving. You have to become bold in a way that your soul recognizes.
  The mystical experience is about your capacity to perceive fully in a hologram at the speed of light to get the consequences of an action that your mind will say doesn't matter.
  But every part of your soul knows: 'This matters. This matters. Everything matters. Everything matters.' The soul measures everything and everything piece of life matters to the soul.
  The mind in its arrogance says: 'Only the people who matter to me matter.'
  To live through the soul is your highest calling. And to build a soul with stamina you cannot do that on visualisation. It requires prayer. Caroline Myss, Being Fearless, Keynote Address, at Omega Institute conference, New York City, 3 parts, part 3, minutes 8:40-12:24, 8. April 2008

• Everybody's life is ultimately on the path of enlightenment. [...] You cannot not be. minute 29:45
  
  Every now and again I'll meet someone who will openly say, "I am an atheist." But they are always young and healthy. [...] I never take these people seriously [...] So I'll always say to them, 'Call me when you are old, dying, alone, and poor and we'll see what happens.'
  And inevitably their eyes rush to God and rush to heaven. [...] What they always mean by atheism is that they had enough of the church which is – let's just face it – understandable.
  
  I don't care what somebody's religion is. [...] Religion is just a corrupt form of politics.
  
  It was (St.) Paul of Tarsus who recognized immediately that the story of Jesus converted to politics and power right off the bet.
  
  He [Jesus] was not even cold in the grave or high in the Heavens before men realized there was power and money in his story.
  So from the getgo the innocence and beautiful message of this teacher [Jesus] was contaminated. [...] Taking a human being and turning him into a God [...] that people take literally. [...] All of this taken literally has just wreaked havoc on this planet. [...] Because they inherited Roman mythologies (including sacrificing something on an altar). [...]
  
  When someone says 'I can't deal with religion' I fully understand that. But [...] beyond religion and all the nonsense of religion [...] there are deeper Divine impulses that even our founding fathers recognized. And our nation is founded on these impulses by the way.
  In the age of Enlightenment people like Hobbes and John Knox, Descartes and Rousseau, they, too, were shedding the constraints of traditional religion and looking further for the deeper impulses [...] that simply were inherent in human nature and the human spirit. [...]
  They were looking for the universality of the archetypal journey of the human being. [...]
  The human being searches by nature for meaning and purpose, that by nature searches for truth.
  That the human being thrives better when his or her life is devoted to meaning and service than the absence of that.
  That the human being thrives better within a climate of hope than hopelessness.
  That there must be profound force – shall we call it grace – that comes through hope that is absent in hopelessness. [...]
  
  Beyond the politics of God is the experience of God. And that's where the soul comes in. But it takes a very courageous person to make the leap and say 'I need more than my encounter with God to be through rules and regulations, and traditions that say my God is according to these myths and that is how I know the nature of God, but rather it is time to release those myths and go into my interior soul and invoke the experience of God.'
  My history of this is that people only come near the experience of God and only in very small doses only in a bargaining position when they are in crisis. [...] When they are in the hospital or someone who is very sick. [...] They wait to the last minute and then they pull out prayer. Minute 33:12
  Caroline Myss, Conference Call Conversations with the Masters, host Mary Allen, lifecoach, minutes 29:45-38:00, 8. November 2007

• You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen – the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives – I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, "Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves."
  Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.
  And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, "He is a madman." I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."
  Thus I became a madman.
  And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.
  But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief. Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) The Madman, How I became a Madman, Dover Publications, December 2001

• Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. Apple MacIntosh Inc., TV spot on Change; Motto: "Think different!", Here's to the crazy ones, YouTube movie, 1:00 minute duration, posted 17. March 2006

• I distinguish between the two opposite forms of insanity, insanity as a way of life and insanity as a protest against forms of social life and interpersonal relations felt to be unbearable. In our civilization the former is considered to be "realism” and only the latter an illness. Arno Gruen, The Insanity of Normality. Realism As Sickness. Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness, Preface, Grove/Atlantic, Inc; 1st English edition, July 1992

• Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift. Plato, Phaedrus

• In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations and epochs it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche

• We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worse. William S. Burroughs

• We have hunted for big simple neurological explanations for psychiatric disorders and have not found them. Dr. Kenneth Kendler, psychiatrist, Co-editor-in-chief, Psychological Medine, 2005

• Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Harriman House, Hampshire, UK, 26. September 2003 [1841]

• Every age has its peculiar folly: Some scheme, project, or fantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the force of imitation. Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Harriman House, Hampshire, UK, 26. September 2003 [1841]

• Whereas people who can no longer bear the absence of human values in the real world are considered "crazy,” those who have severed themselves from their human roots are certified "normal.” And it is members of the latter group to whom we entrust power and whom we allow to determine our lives and our future. We believe they have the correct key to reality and know how best to deal with it. But a person’s "relatedness to reality” is not the only criterion for establishing mental illness or health; we also have to ask to what degree feelings such as despair, perceptions such as empathy, and experiences such as enthusiasm are still possible. Arno Gruen, Swiss-German psychologist and psychoanalyst, The Insanity of Normality. Realism As Sickness. Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness, Preface, translated by Hildegarde Hannum, Hunter Hannum, Grove/Atlantic, Inc; 1st English edition, July 1992

• Kundalini is at the basis of genius, insanity, neurosis, prodigies, and other extraordinary states of mind. Gopi Krishna

• Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. Albert Einstein

• The world is run by insane people for insane objectives. John Lennon
  • Once they've got you violent, then they know how to handle you. John Lennon
  • I still think All You Need is Love, but I don't think that just saying it is gonna do it. John Lennon

Schizophrenia – the unconscious overwhelms the ego-consciousness, the field of awareness

• How does a schizophrenic episode manifest itself? Because of an activation of the unconscious [...] and a collapse of the ego. John Weir Perry (1914-1998) Jungian psychiatrist, USA

• If you can make people believe absurdities, you can make them commit atrocities. When you talk to God, they call it prayer. When God talks to you, they call it schizophrenia.Voltaire|Voltaire]]

• If the human race survives, future men will, I suspect, look back on our enlightened epoch as a veritable Age of Darkness. [...] They will see that what was considered 'schizophrenic' was one of the forms in which, often through quite ordinary people, the light began to break into our all-too-closed minds. Ronald D. Laing (1927-1989) British psychiatrist

• When you talk to God, they call it prayer. When God talks to you, they call it schizophrenia. Fox Mulder, fictional character in The X-Files

• He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. Friedrich Nietzsche