Is Spiritual Psychosis an Initiation into True Sanity?

The term psychosis was introduced in the 1800s as an alternative to the stigmatised labels of madness and insanity, due to its lineage of asylums, lobotomies, straitjackets, and forced medication. Its history is persecution, ridicule, and incarceration, and its enduring legacy is illness, a break from reality, something less than sanity. But is this true? Or is psychosis misunderstood spiritual awakening, from a lineage of shamans, mystics, visionaries, and prophets, something more than sanity?

In the 1970s, American psychiatrist Arthur J. Deikman termed mystical psychosis to highlight similarities between psychosis and unity experiences. “The psychotic drowns in the same waters the mystic swims in delight,” Joseph Campbell said, echoing this sentiment. More recently, Stanislav and Christina Grof’s concept of spiritual emergency expanded the boundaries of awakening and mental illness. In The Politics of Experience, R.D. Laing shares an eloquent connection between madness and divinity:

“Let no one suppose that we meet ‘true’ madness any more than that we are truly sane. The madness that we encounter in ‘patients’ is a gross travesty, a mockery, a grotesque caricature of what the natural healing of that estranged integration we call sanity might be. True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality; the emergence of the ‘inner’ archetypal mediators of divine power, and through this death a rebirth, and the eventual reestablishment of a new kind of ego-functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer.”

The choice of language is rooted in this perspective. The Greek etymology of psychosis is psykhē (mind, life, soul) and –osis (abnormal condition). Psykhosis means “a giving of life; animation; a principle of life.” What if spiritual psychosis is an initiation, as both rite of passage and beginning? The Latin initiare means “instruct in mysteries of sacred knowledge.” I believe spiritual psychosis is an initiation by the animating spirit, into perceiving the divine, accessing sacred knowledge, and elevating consciousness beyond ordinary sanity.

Initiations come from invisible, unseen forces, from a divine light, the mysterious source of spiritual evolution. What follows aren’t hierarchies, stages, or clear-cut concepts. Much of the experience is impossible to categorise. However, my hope is that I will provide some understanding of what is perceived and how to engage to cultivate true sanity, rather than spiral into madness (I will use this term in the context of “getting lost”).

This exploration is inspired by my journey into the depths of spiritual psychosis and what initiation taught me. In addition, it’s motivated by my confusion as to why some seemingly awakened or enlightened people behave in ways that appear deluded or mad. Do these people access esoteric insight that mere mortals can’t comprehend? Or is the truth somewhere in the middle, where genuine awakening is susceptible to delusion, and genuine madness susceptible to truth?

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Is Spiritual Psychosis a ‘Break’ From Reality?

Perception is at the heart of psychosis, particularly what is real or true. The same can be said of awakening. Poet and mystic William Blake wrote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” What exists beyond the cavern? And how does what exists there lead us to truth or deceive us into delusion?

In Jainism’s system of logic, anekāntavāda is the “many-sidedness” of truth. Anekāntavāda is expressed through nayavāda (partial viewpoints) and syādvāda (synthesised statements). We deny the many-sidedness of truth any time we pin down a certain perspective. Partial viewpoints must be analysed and validated, as nayavāda doesn’t include falsehood or ignorance. Together, a synthesis of partial viewpoints gives a closer comprehension of truth, even if ultimate truth isn’t fully knowable.

The prevailing partial viewpoint of psychosis is as a “break from reality” through flawed perception of an objective physical world. This partial truth comes from the materialist worldview, which presumes everything emerges from matter, including consciousness. In this model of reality, the brain is God, and human consciousness floats alone in a mechanical universe, alienated from the underlying pulse of life. But the brain isn’t God; it mediates God. As the late Jungian analyst, Lionel Corbett, writes in The Religious Function of the Psyche:

“In order to allow a degree of order and coherence to our experience, [the brain] processes information in a fragmented manner, privileging some data over others. Hence our experience of reality is piecemeal and not unitary. The movement of the unconscious into consciousness represents a movement from the noumenal Self, whose essence is not knowable, into a discrete personality which feels separate from that larger consciousness.”

Corbett isn’t alone; many viewpoints propose that everything, including the brain, emerges from consciousness. Neuroscience and quantum physics may seem unrelated to psychosis, but they’re integral partial viewpoints. Science is evolving full-circle to meet ancient traditions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. These models view the “break from reality” as mis-identifying as a physical body and discrete personality separate from a larger, unified consciousness. As lines between mind and matter blur, other viewpoints are essential for an accurate synthesis of psychosis.

Ordinary consciousness is significantly constricted, as the ego functions as a mediator of fragmented data. This is mirrored by the brain’s filtering system. Furthermore, beliefs, concepts, and ideas directly influence perception. Spiritual psychosis expands perception. An influx of information outside of the ego’s usual boundaries can induce anything between euphoria and terror. The partial truth of a “break from reality” relates to how this information interferes with, and sometimes dominates, perception of the outer world.

The brain processes 11 million bits of sensory information per second. In contrast, the conscious mind processes 50 bits per second. What may be labelled delusion or hallucination may be the opposite — divine perception of a higher truth. However, rigorous discernment is needed to differentiate this information. The ego must paradoxically strengthen as a gatekeeper and adapt its function, to harmonise and mediate multiple sources of perception, and many partial viewpoints, into coherent experience. All the while, it has to avoid identifying with what is perceived. This is true sanity.

Before exploring the expanse, we must begin with the opposite: the contraction of perception through control and confinement. Because beliefs, concepts, and ideas directly influence perception by acting as mental filters, it stands to reason that cultural conditioning shapes the way you view the world. This isn’t accidental. The “estranged integration” of ordinary sanity is a hypnosis, a deliberate attempt at mind control. It’s why Charles Tart, a psychologist who specialised in states of consciousness, referred to ordinary consciousness as a “consensus trance.” 

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The Consensus Trance and Mass Hypnosis

Tart’s experience as a hypnotherapist opened his eyes to how easily mental states are influenced. He saw parallels between hypnosis and how culture induces a trancelike state by infiltrating the inner world. Consequently, the consensus trance reduces humans into actors performing a script, complete with “parroting” associated soundbites, conceptual fragments, and pre-made opinions. Through hypnosis, the person remains unaware; they believe their thoughts and their opinions are their own. In this respect, ordinary consciousness is an induced break from reality, and psychosis is breaking free from the trance.

The world consists of many trances that overlap and interact in all sorts of ways; take politics, which is a fight for who can convince the majority to comply with a particular perspective. Or groupthink, the gravitational force of mental structures that people conform to without realising. “The relationship between the use of language and the induction of trance states might be one of the keys to understanding life in the last years of the technology millennium,” Howard Rheingold notes in reviewing Tart’s work, adding:

“Together, human groups agree on which of their perceptions should be admitted to awareness (hence, consensus), then they train each other to see the world in that way and only in that way (hence trance).”

Historically, institutionalised religions were the authority on what perceptions should be admitted to awareness. More recently, scientism — an ideology that science is the arbiter of all truth — has replaced religion. Rupert Sheldrake’s The Science Delusion highlights how scientists fall into this trance, though all of us are hypnotised to some degree. In the 1920s, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, exploited vulnerabilities in human psychology to engineer public opinion through propaganda. Since then, the proliferation of technology has made mass hypnosis all-pervasive.

Trances are designed to condemn the dehypnotised. The Greek origin of heretic, hairetikós, means “able to choose.” Once dehypnotised, a person is able to choose, though some jump from the frying pan into the fire, from one trance to another. Just because a group or person appears free from the mainstream consensus, doesn’t mean they’re not hypnotised by a counter-consensus. Cults reject consensus reality in favour of a self-proclaimed superior alternative. They use liberated language, such as freedom, love, or enlightenment, and yet hypnotise followers to conform to a spell crafted by a charismatic leader.

Paul Levy’s articulation of wetiko as a mind-virus describes an insidious trance that leads to violence, exploitation, and acts of greed and selfishness. Trances mirror Jungian complexes, autonomous structures made of feelings, memories, beliefs. Complexes narrow perception. For example, when angry, your perspective may be coloured by aggressive thoughts. Once the anger subsides, soberness returns, and you view those thoughts differently. Complexes operate at scale, from individuals, families, groups, organisations, to entire nations or global movements.

Realising the widespread nature of mind control and hypnosis, especially in the “sane” collective, is a necessary stage of awakening. But anarchy isn’t the solution. Cults also demonstrate how the chaos of eroding “norms” enables abuse and exploitation. I’d like to think even the most cynical person can agree that civilisation has many positives, despite its issues. Common humanity — the collective spirit — also imbues consensus. Someone who understands anekāntavāda is immune from hypnosis, as they will see(k) beyond agreed-upon perceptions.

True sanity knows conceptual agreements are essential for cohesion and shared understanding, but doesn’t become hypnotised, and allows them to be scrutinised, tested, and updated. Tart’s solution was simple: be mindful of your thoughts, as mind control only persists in ignorance. Spiritual psychosis is stirred by the animating spirit’s rejection of hypnosis and externally imposed perceptions, to blow away the script, turn within, scrutinise the mind and its functions, to begin to improvise.

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Fantasia and Invisible Dynamics

When turning within, the surface layer of mind reveals itself first — self-talk, cognition, memories or beliefs that are easily accessible. Freud called this the preconscious. Below that layer is the mechanical mind, the perspectives, biased interpretations, assumptions, or impulsive reactions that automate behaviour. Mainstream psychology tends to focus on this level of mind; the idea being, if you can change mental structures, address biases and cognitive distortions, you will engage with the world in a sane (or “rational”) way.

There is value in refining mental structures, but spiritual psychosis goes much deeper. The animating spirit continues beyond cognition, into the vast, mysterious, inner universe. Initiation into the mythological dimension begins. In Inner Work, Robert Johnson notes the “collective prejudice” against the imagination. The Greek fantasia meant “to make visible, to reveal.” Consequently, “the psychological function of our capacity for fantasy is to make visible the otherwise invisible dynamics of the unconscious psyche.”

The inner universe “made visible” is demonstrated by dreams. As you sleep, logic, rationality, certainty, and specifics are left behind. Metaphor, symbols, poetry and abstraction are given freedom to roam. Every night, the Self creates diverse narratives, characters, architecture, environments or worlds, that symbolise invisible dynamics. If the ego doesn’t adapt, it will try to find logical conclusions, specific meaning, or certainty. Jung distinguished symbols and signs for this reason. For example, dreaming of someone’s death may be taken as a literal sign they are going to die, instead of a symbolic death of something that person represents.

The rite of passage into the unconscious psyche reveals the threshold between the personal, the collective, and the transcendent, as well as the false divide of inner and outer world. With careful study, what is made visible reveals something much, much bigger than an individual island of consciousness. Inner perception isn’t exclusively personal but includes a mysterious substrate — the imaginal realm. Christian mystic Cynthia Bourgeault explains how the imaginal:

“… separates the visible world from realms invisible but still perceivable through the eye of the heart. This is what the word ‘imagination’ specifically implies in its original Islamic context: direct perception through this inner eye, not mental reflection or fantasy.”

The imaginal shares similarities with Jung’s collective unconscious. It is a distinct dimension, though it isn’t easy to decipher. Many traditions refer to various planes of existence, typically causal (pure thought), astral (subtle energy), or physical (solid matter). The imaginal is viewed as a mediator between the causal and astral planes. It’s a “world of subtle bodies linking pure spirit and the material body,” according to Corbett. He likens this to a shamanic journey, or: 

“…excursions into the imaginatio, that realm of the reality of the psyche analogous to Winnicott’s transitional space, an area ‘intermediate’ (it is not amenable to spatial metaphors) between the inner and outer world. This world requires its own faculty, that of imaginative power, which is a perceptual system whose cognitive and noetic function is as real as that of our five senses and intellect.”

The ego must rely upon poetic intuition (pratibhā, “intuitive and creative genius,” in Hinduism) to comprehend what is made visible through the eye of the heart. Poetic intuition interprets and creates symbolically. Analytical thinking, logic, certainty and specifics must dialogue with poetic intuition to grasp the mythological — as represented by left and right brain hemispheres divided by these themes. The ego must speak many languages, mediate, and discern which language to use at what time and place.

In Eye of the Heart, Bourgeault explains how to engage with the imaginal: “The lion’s share of the preparatory work lay in the struggle with the ‘passions’: those turbulent self-referential emotions that will always obscure the viewing platform and drag our sense of selfhood back into the gravitational field of the lower realms.” Time and time again, mystics warn of the need to control passions, or else they interfere. It’s best to always assume personal bias has an influence. The imaginal blends personal, collective, and transcendent, and what is “made visible” contains all of these elements. Every person, circumstance, or relationship has a symbolic dimension, a resonant source deep within. 

True sanity requires diligent inner work and vigilance of passions. The literal and the symbolic are partial truths that must be synthesised for a clearer comprehension. A literal event may trigger symbolic understanding. Equally, a symbolic revelation may change your perspective on the hidden order of a literal event. Interpretation of invisible dynamics is an open dialogue, not a logical conclusion. The unconscious is always communicating. As more partial viewpoints are revealed, literal and symbolic, the synthesis evolves. 

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Opening Doors to Shadow and Light

“If one accepts the symbol,” Jung writes in The Red Book, “it is as if a door opens, leading into a new room whose existence one previously did not know.” The eye of the heart opens the door to the realm of Gods. The duality of light and dark, heaven and hell, life and death, is made visible through imaginative power. Spiritual psychosis initiates descent and ascent, to great heights and great depths. Both directions risk inflation if the ego forgets its role as perceptual mediator and identifies with the profundity of what is found.

The descent of spiritual psychosis encounters the collective shadow — a turbulent lower realm. This is risky territory, especially if the ego is fragmented or lacks adequate boundaries. It’s the hiding place of cultural complexes, autonomous forces of darkness that are the unacknowledged, repressed, stigmatised underbelly of humanity. It’s a wilderness possible to get lost in, often hellish and torturous, full of suffering. Marie-Louise Von Franz warns of the final boss of this realm, “the shadow of the God image”:

“In the Christian tradition, it would be the devil. And that has always been personified and felt as something which has not to do directly with the human being. So you can say the personal shadow is the bridge or the open door to the collective shadow. The collective shadow comes up in those terrible mass psychoses. It’s like if you have your room, and there is one door not shut, there the devil can come in. If you know your personal shadow, you can shut all the doors.”

A dormant part of my shadow was activated by the cultural complex of paranoia and shame during the mass psychosis of the Covid pandemic, opening the door into the collective shadow. The intensity of feelings, sensations, and imagery dwarfed personal shadow material. I was inundated by universal themes that were apocalyptic, destructive, evil. It wasn’t only about me but humanity as a whole, including grief for the impermanence of the Earth, anguish at the acts of violence on a global stage, connecting, if you will, to archetypal suffering and despair.

Spiritual psychosis is a rite of passage into primordial darkness. In Buddhism, fundamental darkness (mumyō) is the ultimate ignorance. The Buddha’s enlightenment followed an encounter with the demon Mara, who attempted to sabotage his awakening. Meditative traditions know of the need to overcome darkness, or ignorance, before coming to truly know the light, or truth. Then, the door opens to the superconscious, explained by Indian yogi and philosopher Sri Aurobindo:

“There are concealed heights, there are hidden gulfs, there are crowded spaces behind the front wall, below the threshold, in the unseen mental environment. There is a vast inconscient below us, an infinite superconscience above us. All these are part of a secret consciousness in the world, but also part of our own hidden being of which we are not aware or only intermittently and ignorantly or only, in our ultimate evolution, eventually aware.”

Similarly, Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli integrated the superconscious into his model of the human psyche, a distinction notably absent in Jungian terminology. The ascent of spiritual psychosis encounters the superconscious, the universal source of the highest spiritual potential, creativity, and altruistic love, that far surpasses ordinary consciousness. If a symbol leads to a new room, the superconscious leads to a new galaxy. It is an expression of the Self, which Assagiloli describes:

“…like the pivot point, or hinge of a door; the door swings, but the hinge remains steady. Yet, the Self is not only the focal point around which the many superconscious processes occur; it is also the cause of those processes, and the source of the energy that makes them possible. So the Self is the unchanging, enduring reality; a stable centre of life on its own level, which has functions but is not a function.”

The rite of passage into shadow and light encounters “archetypal mediators of divine power,” the potency of which can solidify identities, such as a “visionary,” “seer,” “shaman,” “trickster”, or simply “God.” This reflects a culture enamoured by hyper-identification. There’s nothing wrong with owning divine power and conscientiously bringing it into the world. But an ego in service to the divine is humble, it doesn’t claim gifts as a personal achievement, aware they can disappear as quickly as they arrive. Equally, it understands that if you identify with the light, you must also identify with the dark.

Identification shuts down dialogue. It imbalances the psyche as the ego rejects expressions of the Self that don’t meet its narrow identity. True sanity requires the ego to hold itself in the centre of concealed heights and lower realms, to revere the unseen totality, without identification. Even the Buddha remained in dialogue with his shadow post-enlightenment. As he shared his wisdom with the world, he would occasionally acknowledge the presence of his adversary, simply saying, “I see you, Mara.”

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Gnosis and the Unreliability of Revelation

Dialogue with the Self as an inner authority is a radical shift from ceding to external authority. However, willingness to be guided by inner sources confronts a conundrum: if inner sources are accepted in blind faith, you will get lost in a labyrinth of self-deception. You would think the distinction is obvious, but it isn’t, because complexes masquerade as truth. So how do you follow an inner authority, without being misled by personal bias?

Recently, a well-known “spiritual influencer” sparked debate by justifying seemingly unethical behavior by claiming that the Goddess Isis told him to impregnate his wife as well as another significantly younger woman he met on a dating app. He called this “radical monogamy.” How many unethical acts are justified by “God told me to do it?” How many wars in the name of religious “truth”? Corbett warns that highly charged complexes can manifest as revelation, hiding their deception with religious camouflage.  

In the spiritual influencer example, a Messiah complex may have conflated the “voice of God” as unquestionable truth. Excessive rationalisation is an indicator that such self-deception is playing out. Rationality is a valuable tool. Rationalisation, however, is a weapon and shield. It defends an unscrutinised partial viewpoint and attacks opposition, like a lawyer who represents a client they know is guilty. Inner sources must be questioned. Other viewpoints must be entertained; especially before taking action that impacts others. If insight is genuine, it will remain.

There’s a risk of ‘seeing the light’ but becoming ungrounded or manic, where the ego is flooded with sacred knowledge, but unable to metabolise or comprehend it.

Warnings aside, inner truth is revelatory. Personal revelation — what I’ll call epiphany — arrives when the ego perceives knowledge or viewpoints previously outside of its grasp. Epiphany opens to a new stance on suffering, life direction, purpose… It may relate to relationships, creativity, work, identity, or present a way forward after a spell of indecision or feeling lost. However it lands, epiphany illuminates the hidden order behind your life story, and connection to divine love and guidance that has always nourished like oxygen.

Epiphany courses through the body like wildfire, opens the heart, blows the mind open, invigorates every cell. Certain stages of awakening are rich with epiphanical insight, creative breakthroughs, eurekas and “aha” moments, as a transcendent perspective shakes up deeply ingrained patterns. However, true sanity must discern epiphany from passions, and acknowledge personal revelation as a partial viewpoint that has to meet the complexity of the world. This is another reason why symbolic interpretation is vital.

Whereas epiphany delivers personal knowledge, divine revelation delivers sacred knowledge. This is a hallmark of the superconscious, the source of humanity’s genius, great works of art, philosophical insight, scientific discoveries, musical brilliance, or divine wisdom. Humans don’t create this genius, they are vehicles for its emergence. Thirteenth-century theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, suggested, “that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs divine help, that the intellect may be moved by God to its act.“ He adds:

“Unaided human reason cannot have direct knowledge of the positively immaterial; this is because such things outstrip the human intellect’s capacity to know. Nevertheless, direct knowledge of the positively immaterial is possible, but this will not be on the basis of unaided human reason; it will require that the positively immaterial reveal themselves to us in some way, in which case direct knowledge of the positively immaterial will be dependent on some sort of revelation.”

“Unaided human reason” can’t comprehend sacred knowledge. The eye of the heart and poetic intuition must support comprehension, which requires the ego’s surrender. Furthermore, because the energy of divine revelation can be awestrikingly powerful, the body’s central nervous system has to expand bandwidth, and the mind has to stretch its capacity. Otherwise, there’s a risk of “seeing the light” but becoming ungrounded or manic, where the ego is flooded with sacred knowledge, but unable to metabolise or comprehend it.

Epiphanies and divine revelations can be serene, peaceful, relieving, gentle. Either way, it nourishes the soul; it is a “giving of life.” Such experiences radically transform perception of knowledge, and the mind is understood as a receiver. Direct experience of inner truth dissolves boundaries between inner and outer, knower and known. As Nikola Tesla remarked: “My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength, and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.”

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Synchronicity and the Risk of Delusion

“Our psyche is constituted in harmony with the structure of the universe,” Jung wrote. “And what happens in the macrocosm happens equally in the infinitesimal and more subjective recesses of the soul.” This sentiment underpins Jung’s concept of synchronicity. For Jung, meaningful coincidence between inner experience and outer reality proves that the psyche is embedded in the structure of the universe. Inspired by this phenomenon, Jung collaborated with quantum physicists, including Wolfgang Pauli, to integrate synchronicity alongside space-time.

Poetic intuition is needed to comprehend such experiences; a purely rational mind will short-circuit and burn out. Synchronicity can be so on the nose, so uncanny or satirical, that it’s unsettling. If the world at large seems to communicate with you, the ego can easily be overwhelmed. It’s a double-edged sword, potentially amplifying awakening, psychosis, or both. It can induce inflation — including paranoia, mania, narcissism, or solipsism (belief the world revolves around “me” as an individual).

Synchronistic perception is so at odds with prevailing beliefs of individuality and separation between mind and matter, that adjusting to it as a lived experience is a hazardous journey. The consensus trance induces defence mechanisms to reject such experiences, writing them off as “just coincidence” or quickly forgetting about them. Spiritual psychosis initiates synchronistic perception to a degree it can no longer be denied — though this requires further discernment, as it’s a rite of passage where many get lost.

A delusional perspective sees the world as a stage for personal myth, rather than a collaborator. Fragments of inner experience “bleed” into outer reality all the time because of nature’s structure. This can seemingly validate a delusion. For example, in my spiritual psychosis, external events often coincided with paranoid beliefs. In perfect synchrony, a thought would immediately be followed by an external event seemingly affirming my insecurity; someone laughing, overhearing comments that “matched” the belief. This was distinct from auditory hallucinations, where things are heard that aren’t objectively spoken.

You never experience “the world,” you perceive what is within your perceptual boundaries. The common denominator of perception is you as the perceiver. The continuous flow of perception — dreams, memories, thoughts, sights, sounds, smells, other people, landscapes, distant stars, the words you’re reading now — all appear to you as a partial viewpoint. Yet, eight billion other people also have partial viewpoints. If distinctions aren’t made between shared and unshared, someone may “act out” and expect others to comply or share that viewpoint. 

True sanity updates the boundaries of “mine” and “not mine” to integrate synchronistic perception. Vital to this restructuring is understanding that the organising principle of synchronicity is the Self, as its “focal point,” “cause,” and “source of energy.” Rather than inflate an ego identity, this is an opportunity to be receptive to how the Self communicates in the world. The Self, as larger consciousness, is all-seeing and all-knowing. Nothing is lost for the Self, even if “forgotten” or unprocessed by the conscious mind.

True sanity holds synchronicity lightly, whilst perceiving it as a constant source of communication.

Synchronicity is a divine messenger to support the evolution of personality, address imbalances, highlight blind spots, and provide insight. It isn’t consciously chosen. That’s like someone coming up to you as you gaze at a sublime sunset, only to say — “that’s not beautiful, you’re trying to find beauty in it.” The beauty of the sunset is inherent, just as meaning is inherent in synchronistic events. Its meaning is perceived, not created or fabricated. Meaningful coincidence is distinct from meaning-making, though the two are close siblings. 

Meaning-making is like going to an art gallery and forcing yourself to find beauty in what you see, because of the artist’s stellar reputation. The conscious interpretation of synchronicity is the difference between madness and true sanity. It’s common to spiral from a synchronistic event, particularly if encoded with potent energies. The ego can hijack the meaning-making, dot-joining process. Once you get a taste, synchronicity can be intoxicating. It’s tempting to overlook logical or literal meaning in favour of symbolic interpretation, or see what you want to see.

Discernment is needed to avoid obsessively reading into events, or trying to work out what things “really” mean, like a detective trying to solve a case. The mind can easily reverse engineer meaning to justify a pre-existing belief. Urgency to uncover meaning right now usually indicates the need to slow down. True sanity holds synchronicity lightly, whilst perceiving it as a constant source of communication. Poetic intuition signals when to pay attention; it is not something to be forced. The path will light up as it’s meant to. Revelation has a schedule — trust it.

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Transrationality and Higher Reasoning

Sharpening the mind’s discernment is central to true sanity. Integrating poetic intuition to interpret symbolically is one practice. Applying rationality is another, though not in the conventional sense, but honouring French philosopher Blaise Pascal’s wisdom: “The end point of rationality is to demonstrate the limits of rationality.” Modern culture distorts rationality’s efficacy, viewing it not as a tool, but the highest form of intelligence. In Civilisation in Transition, Jung warns of this misplaced emphasis:

“Our mania for rational explanations obviously has its roots in our fear of metaphysics, for the two were always hostile brothers. Hence, anything unexpected that approaches us from the dark realm is regarded either as coming from outside and, therefore, as real, or else as a hallucination and, therefore, not true. The idea that anything could be real or true which does not come from outside has hardly begun to dawn on contemporary man.”

The solution isn’t to abandon rationality; mania for rational explanations is the issue. Rationality must be self-sacrificial to transcend its limits, as illustrated by “unaided reason.” When the ego identifies with rationality, self-sacrifice isn’t possible. This crosses a threshold into madness by rationalising far beyond its function. Ken Wilber’s integral theory clarifies further by identifying pre-rational, rational, and transrational stages of development. Transrationality transcends and includes rationality. Wilber’s pre/trans fallacy explains how rationality warps truth and delusion. 

The pre/trans fallacy moves in two directions. Transrationality may be reduced to pre-rationality or pre-rationality may be elevated to transrationality. Many of us will be familiar with how a purely rational perspective looks down upon mystical or spiritual experience. Anything that the intellect is unable to grasp, or doesn’t contort into a rational explanation, must be false or reductive. All synchronicity becomes magical thinking, all mystical experiences childish longing for the womb, all intuition an immature, irrational way of knowing.

Equally, many spiritual circles devalue rationality rather than value transrationality. This could be a rebellion against the status quo. There’s a tendency to mistake maladaptive aspects of spiritual psychosis, including delusional thinking, as advanced insight. One non-dual teacher recently claimed that another non-dual teacher was sending them coded messages on social media, and that their inner knowing (epiphany) confirmed that they were twin flames destined to marry — despite the other teacher rejecting any communication or interest in a relationship.

The relationship didn’t materialise, and the teacher later deleted all the material. You can see traits of spiritual psychosis; unscrutinised “inner knowing,” a view distorted by passions, and external events that seemed to affirm their delusion (the “coded messages” did correlate to a personal myth). Sadly, this isn’t uncommon. Many teachers justify pre-rational ideas with lofty spiritual rhetoric. While rational stage followers may view those ideas as profound, transrationality will see through the facade. If pointed out, the transrational perspective may be viewed as regressive by rational stage followers — or the teacher.

We’ve explored how rationalisation can justify a delusional belief. It depends on how the tool of rationality is used. For example, studies show people with schizophrenia demonstrate better logic than “sane” counterparts, and “sane” counterparts are more prone to impaired logic than assumed. The issue isn’t a lack of rationality; “sane” counterparts have “common sense” for when purely rational thinking becomes poor judgment. Most people do this without realising, and “sanity” is much less rational than assumed. 

Spiritual psychosis is an initiation into the limits of rationality. Abandoning rationality risks falling further into madness. Doubling down on the mania for rationality leaves the gift of divine perception unintegrated or suppressed. Transrationality is in harmony with intuition, emotion, spiritual perception, the eye of the heart, common sense, and, let’s not overlook, a sense of humour. Unlike the island of rationality, transrationality is guided by the divine.

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Transmorality and the Law of Divine Will 

As with rationality, morality evolves through stages of development. Pre-morality exists in young children, before understanding right or wrong. Immorality knows right or wrong, yet is self-serving, harmful and doesn’t care for repercussions. Pseudomorality is a hallmark of modern culture. It judges behaviour as if it’s a performance or an exam to pass, and attempts to categorise heroes and villains, or reduce complexity into moral dualism, alongside virtue signalling and moral posturing.

Part of the insanity of the consensus trance is its approach towards right and wrong, where stubborn and unscrutinised viewpoints are defended and opposing views are attacked. It appears to be moral, but mostly it’s regurgitated tribalism. Ask a majority of people to explain why they believe their perspective is righteous, and more often than not, you’ll find rationalisation rather than clear (or even attempted) reason. This usually occurs alongside soundbites and pre-made opinions, because pseudomorality stays “on script.”

Reasonable morality is the result of deliberate scrutiny. Effort is made to apply critical thinking to analyse a viewpoint. It has value; the majority of people don’t get to this stage of contemplation and remain stuck in hypnosis and moral dualism. The world would be a better place if reasonable morality were conscientiously practised. But like rationality, reasonable morality has limits and must eventually be transcended. Because this morality is intellectual, if unaided, it risks becoming calculated or cold.

As the doors of shadow and light open, reflection on morality is no longer avoidable, and scrutiny has to be applied. This is a good sign, because it means you are no longer relying upon arbitrary, rigid models of right or wrong, but expanding your perception to consider the bigger picture. Because the shadow is a depository of undesirable qualities the ego deems “bad” and pushes away to maintain the status quo, spiritual psychosis initiates a moral crisis. According to Assagioli, during awakening: 

“…[The person’s] conscience awakens or becomes more sensitive; a new sense of responsibility appears and the individual is oppressed by a heavy sense of guilt and remorse. They judge themselves with severity and become a prey to profound discouragement. At this point it is not unusual for them to entertain ideas of suicide. To the person themselves it seems as if physical annihilation were the only logical conclusion to inner breakdown and disintegration.”

Pseudomorality is saturated with guilt and shame, a cultural hangover from religiously imposed perceptions of sin and condemnation. Self-perceived immoral behaviour, to whatever degree, may be met with harsh self-judgment rather than an opportunity to evaluate and grow. This is the burden of awakening. You have to, for whatever period of time, carry the weight the majority deny. Encountering the shadow, it’s normal to question your darkness. Encountering the light, it’s normal to question your use or ab-use of power. 

Anekāntavāda also applies to morality. The many-sidedness of truth expands the understanding of complexity and synthesised views. Realising the futility of moral dualism and exposing the performative hypnosis of pseudomorality is an opportunity for the ego to serve the divine. In apparently calling out pseudomorality in the early 1900s, almost a century before modern-day hysteria, Sri Aurobindo encouraged people to “no longer be laboriously virtuous, artificially moral, but naturally divine,” adding:

“Ethics is not in its essence a calculation of good and evil in the action or a laboured effort to be blameless according to the standards of the world — those are only crude appearances — it is an attempt to grow into the divine nature. Its parts of purity are an aspiration towards the inalienable purity of God’s being; its parts of truth and right are a seeking after conscious unity with the law of the divine knowledge and will; its parts of sympathy and charity are a movement towards the infinity and universality of the divine love; its parts of strength and manhood are an edification of the divine strength and power.”

The superconscious is the source of divine morality; not in the sense of a wrathful God, which is a projection of pseudomorality, but the innate, natural goodness that emanates when in harmony with the purity of God’s being. Transmorality operates by divine will, and transcends and includes reasonable morality. Referencing Krishna’s encouragement of Prince Arjuna to go to battle in the Bhagavad Gita, Aurobindo urges us to act in alignment with divine will. Even if mistakes happen, even if full repercussions are hidden from view, the intention alone will ensure you stay on the correct path.

But how do you know you’re acting in service to divine will and enacting transmorality? As with inner truth, this process is susceptible to being hijacked by the passions. Assagioli explains that at later stages of awakening, “the personal ego re-awakens and asserts itself with renewed force” and “lower propensities and drives, hitherto lying dormant in the unconscious, are vitalised by the inrush of higher energy.” This could explain why so many spiritual teachers fail basic morality and abuse the rhetoric of divine will to justify, deny, or enable harmful behaviour. 

Frequently, “crazy wisdom” is weaponised to serve selfish desires, where gurus are said to have transcended “the third dimension” and act in ways that go beyond eccentricity into causing harm, under the guise of advanced insight. See the long list of gurus who convince their followers that sex (with them) is a pathway to enlightenment. Anyone who claims to see from a higher perspective or the “fourth-dimensional plane” to justify three-dimensional harm should be avoided at all costs. Mixing “dimensions” is a cocktail of spiritual abuse.

Like all effective forms of deceit, this higher perspective contains a partial truth. Morality and time are in relationship; actions and consequences play out in time. Morality is relative. It adjusts depending on the context or timeframe you choose. A “higher perspective” may use eternity, or vast measures of time, such as Biblical aions or Hindu yugas, that stretch millions of years. If everything unfolds to a divine plan on a macroscopic scale far, far beyond conscious control, from the Big Bang to the fine-tuning of the universe that enabled life to form, to the birth and death of stars and solar systems, human actions and consequences seem inconsequential. 

Yet each of us has a choice in how we utilise power — to alleviate suffering, or cause more suffering. Surrendering to divine will allows the spontaneity of what Aurobindo calls the “suprarational good” to emanate from our being. Human action isn’t only consequential, it manifests God’s design from a blueprint etched in the human heart. True sanity doesn’t play God by claiming knowledge of cause and effect beyond human understanding. It holds the paradox: whilst on a cosmic level it’s impossible to know if something is truly good or bad, we must always choose the most ethical, life-preserving, heart-centred response.

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Equanimity and Pure Awareness

As divine perception expands, it’s natural to get caught up, to thrill in the revelation and get drunk on God, or consumed by the shadow. The influx of new information can be dizzying or overwhelming. The ego’s attempt to harmonise and create coherence from multiple sources is a bumpy road, and identification will happen in moments. Sharp discernment is necessary, but the relationship to what is perceived also has to change. Equanimity changes this relationship. Every aspect of true sanity benefits from equanimity, which isn’t pulled into partial viewpoints, and is able to entertain anekāntavāda, the many-sidedness of truth. 

I was introduced to equanimity via the Buddhist teaching of the Four Noble Truths, which state that dukkha (suffering) is unavoidable. Everything is impermanent and fleeting. We experience pain, life doesn’t go to plan, we don’t get things we want and we get things we don’t want, we age, we die. The true source of suffering (samudāya) is attachment or craving for reality to be a certain way. The cessation, or letting go of this attachment (nirodha), is the path to liberation and inner freedom.

The Buddhist system presents the Noble Eight-Fold Path to liberation, though equanimity (upekkhā) is of particular relevance to spiritual psychosis. Equanimity cessates the tension of craving or aversion through acceptance and non-judgment. It is cultivated through meditation. The theory is simple: concentrate on an object, such as the breath, notice when you get lost, and gently return your attention. In practice this reveals the pervasive, deceptive, and subtle ways the mind attaches to form, and how little control you have over your thoughts.

When endlessly caught in cycles of attachment, through craving and aversion, it’s impossible for the mind to settle. Spiritual psychosis is dizzying because of this cycle. Equanimity is the eye of the storm. Gradually, equanimity reveals a clear distinction between you as the perceiver and the objects of perception that swirl around you. Typically, that distinction is hidden, because we are so caught up in what we perceive. As distinction builds, so does the field of awareness within which objects of perception appear.

If you aren’t the objects of perception, who are you?

The Hindu philosophy Sankhya defines two fundamental principles of reality — puruṣa (pure awareness) and prakṛti (creative manifestation or nature). In Jung and Patanjali, Leanne Whitney precisely analyses how Jung focused on prakṛti, but neglected puruṣa. As a partial viewpoint, the Jungian framework emphasises creative manifestations of the Self through dreams, images, symbols, and mythology. But this is only part of the full picture; objects of perception from all sources — subtle, mental, physical — appear within the field of pure awareness.

Equanimity is a delicate balance. Its “near enemies” are indifference and apathy, qualities that may appear to be “it,” but are actually hindrances to the practice. When practising equanimity, all objects of perception have to be given equal value. You don’t pick and choose when to engage. During meditation, concentration is the practice, no ifs, no buts, even if vivid memories, creative ideas, or compelling emotions entice you. Patanjali describes yoga as the cessation of the mind’s incessant movement (vrittis). In sacred stillness, the discrete personality realises its nature as pure awareness, inseparable from larger consciousness.

Spiritual psychosis initiates a rite of passage into the nature of who you are. If you aren’t the objects of perception, who are you? The nature of being, free from attachment, is revealed as sat-chit-ananda (truth, awareness, bliss). When the veil of ignorance is removed, even momentarily, fundamental goodness, truth, and beauty radiate from within, and the illusion of separation between perceiver and perceived dissolves.

The mind’s nature is to exert control through its tendency to make constant judgments and fight with what is. Equanimity, through acceptance and non-judgment, allows perception to flourish. The ego, as perceptual centre, becomes supple, accommodating, and transparent. It doesn’t identify as pure awareness. Instead, true sanity finds refuge in what Zen calls the groundless ground, from which creative manifestations can be engaged with, with greater freedom.

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Re-Enchanting the Ordinary World

“But I won’t cry for yesterday, there’s an ordinary world, somehow I have to find. And as I try to make my way, to the ordinary world, I will learn to survive.”

Duran duran, “ordinary world”

The animating spirit has taken us into the depths of inner perception, into the realm of Gods, sources of truth and revelation, through the porous boundary between inner and outer, to reveal new distinctions of “mine” and “not mine,” into higher realms of reason and morality, incomprehensible by the intellect alone, and finally, into the realisation of pure awareness, as the groundless ground of being. These rites of passage expand divine perception. But what of the ordinary world we left behind?

Prior to initiation, the ordinary world can be discoloured by disenchantment, its intrigue, its magic, dulled. Re-enchantment can occur in relation to the mystery of the psyche, the intrigue of dreams, the order of inner life. It may carry over to synchronistic experiences that peek through the facade of the day-to-day. Yet craving the mythological can devalue “ordinary” life until the next insight comes, as if the world is a placeholder for revealing the hidden. The animating spirit must continue, to leave no gaps for its divine proliferation.

In Tibetan Buddhism, dag nang is “pure perception” free from judgments, conceptual overlays, and projections of the mind. When perception isn’t muddied or distorted by mental structures or attachments, a sacred outlook is revealed. The equal value of equanimity leads to the Buddhist notion of “one taste,” where pure awareness is realised in its essence, everywhere. The ordinary world becomes hyper-real, re-animated, as prison-like beliefs melt into liquid metal, flowing away with time, into rivers of empty space.

This isn’t meaning in form, but meaning in formlessness. It is immediate, eternal, and ever-present. It isn’t an archetype; it transcends archetypes. It is inherently whole, inherently perfect. Bliss(ananda) translates to “zero lack” or “fullness,” it’s contentment not dependent on conditions. It doesn’t devalue symbolic meaning; both modes amplify each other. Spiritual psychosis is an initiation into the unity of pure awareness and its ineffable beauty. In the words of Ken Wilber:

“Beauty is not an exercise in creative imagination. It is the actual structure of the universe. That all-pervading Beauty is in truth the very nature of the Kosmos right now. It is not something you have to imagine, because it is the actual structure of perception in all domains. If you remain in the eye of Spirit, every object is an object of radiant Beauty. If the doors of perception are cleansed, the entire Kosmos is your lost and found Beloved, the Original Face of primordial Beauty, forever, and forever, and endlessly forever.”

A re-enchanted world is a commune between the hidden, the revealed, and the ever-present divine, the most intimate and most holy, the furthest away and incomprehensibly near. Everything synchronous, every micro-movement, every breeze, every speck of dust — imbued with all-pervading beauty to you, the eye of the beholder. Reperceiving in this way is not naivety; it’s the fullness of divine sensitivity, the exquisite sensuality usually buried beneath overstimulation, conceptual sediment, and physical, mental, and emotional pollution.

Spiritual psychosis transforms the structure of perception; equal value is an enhancement, as consciousness elevates to undifferentiated beauty. In Buddhism, mahasukha is Great Bliss, a joy that transcends the duality of pain and pleasure, a sacred sensuality that Tantra aims to cultivate. Craving and aversion is transcended through desire for awakening, for elevating consciousness, for union with God, every 11 million bits, every second, a stream of sensory information in service of the divine, no longer its betrayer.

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Healing the True Break from Reality

Psykosis, the spirit of transformation, shakes up, uproots, re-orders the sense of self, “to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature,” as Campbell inspired. In the introduction, I suggested that spiritual psychosis is an “initiation by the principle of life, into perceiving the divine, accessing sacred knowledge, and elevating consciousness beyond ordinary sanity,” along with questioning whether “genuine awakening is susceptible to delusion, and genuine madness susceptible to truth.” 

My hope is that this exploration has provided an adequate response and, rather than add more confusion, has provided some clarity. Through exploration of divine perception, the lines between truth and delusion are hopefully more clearly established. They do not fall arbitrarily along the “awakened” or “unawakened” spectrum, and instead relate to the degree of inner scrutiny, willingness to entertain partial viewpoints, sharp discernment of what is perceived, and vigilance towards a myriad of identities that can distort perception itself. 

I have identified certain aspects of true sanity, though many more are unexpressed. True sanity is, of course, an ongoing, life-long process. None of us are ever “complete.” If we convince ourselves we are, we are susceptible to delusion. Taking ourselves too seriously is a trap, which is why a sense of humour is necessary. As more people conscientiously work to cultivate true sanity, the fallacy of true madness will transform. Many are lost, many will become lost. Those unable to save themselves can only benefit from the truly sane coming to their aid, supporting them to swim.

Spiritual psychosis is an intense initiation. It demands mastery, otherwise, its repercussions are too grave. However, such an initiation isn’t necessary to be on the path to true sanity. All the perceptions that spiritual psychosis initiates, and the forms of discernment that are required to engage, apply to us all. Divine perception is a direct contrast to the spiritual blindness of modern culture and the “sane” who cast their spell of deception; it is the medicine our hearts yearn for.

The time has come for a lineage re-membered, the shamans, the prophets, the visionaries, and those scorned, those forgotten and cast away, the mad who perceived a truth rejected by consensus. We must heal together, reveal together, and hold ourselves and others accountable, to the degree that matches our divine power, while knowing that power is not ours to own. We must surrender to divine will, to allow the suprarational good to guide us.

May we each perceive the sacred, enact the heartfelt, feel freedom and feel deeply. In Buddhism, the Bodhisattva postpones liberation and stays in the karmic cycle of suffering, samsara, to support others to awaken. If even one atomic fractal in the vast cosmic web remains stuck in ignorance, the work is incomplete.

There is much work to do.

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