The Shamanic View of Mental Illness

In the shamanic view, mental illness signals “the birth of a healer,” explains Malidoma Patrice Somé. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born.

What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as “good news from the other world.” The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm. “Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field,” says Dr. Somé. These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm.

One of the things Dr. Somé encountered when he first came to the United States in 1980 for graduate study was how this country deals with mental illness. When a fellow student was sent to a mental institute due to “nervous depression,” Dr. Somé went to visit him.

“I was so shocked. That was the first time I was brought face to face with what is done here to people exhibiting the same symptoms I’ve seen in my village.” What struck Dr. Somé was that the attention given to such symptoms was based on pathology, on the idea that the condition is something that needs to stop. This was in complete opposition to the way his culture views such a situation. As he looked around the stark ward at the patients, some in straitjackets, some zoned out on medications, others screaming, he observed to himself, “So this is how the healers who are attempting to be born are treated in this culture. What a loss! What a loss that a person who is finally being aligned with a power from the other world is just being wasted.”

Another way to say this, which may make more sense to the Western mind, is that we in the West are not trained in how to deal or even taught to acknowledge the existence of psychic phenomena, the spiritual world. In fact, psychic abilities are denigrated. When energies from the spiritual world emerge in a Western psyche, that individual is completely unequipped to integrate them or even recognize what is happening. The result can be terrifying. Without the proper context for and assistance in dealing with the breakthrough from another level of reality, for all practical purposes, the person is insane. Heavy dosing with anti-psychotic drugs compounds the problem and prevents the integration that could lead to soul development and growth in the individual who has received these energies.

On the mental ward, Dr Somé saw a lot of “beings” hanging around the patients, “entities” that are invisible to most people but that shamans and psychics are able to see. “They were causing the crisis in these people,” he says. It appeared to him that these beings were trying to get the medications and their effects out of the bodies of the people the beings were trying to merge with, and were increasing the patients’ pain in the process. “The beings were acting almost like some kind of excavator in the energy field of people. They were really fierce about that. The people they were doing that to were just screaming and yelling,” he said. He couldn’t stay in that environment and had to leave.

In the Dagara tradition, the community helps the person reconcile the energies of both worlds–”the world of the spirit that he or she is merged with, and the village and community.” That person is able then to serve as a bridge between the worlds and help the living with information and healing they need. Thus, the spiritual crisis ends with the birth of another healer. “The other world’s relationship with our world is one of sponsorship,” Dr. Somé explains. “More often than not, the knowledge and skills that arise from this kind of merger are a knowledge or a skill that is provided directly from the other world.”

The beings who were increasing the pain of the inmates on the mental hospital ward were actually attempting to merge with the inmates in order to get messages through to this world. The people they had chosen to merge with were getting no assistance in learning how to be a bridge between the worlds and the beings’ attempts to merge were thwarted. The result was the sustaining of the initial disorder of energy and the aborting of the birth of a healer.

“The Western culture has consistently ignored the birth of the healer,” states Dr. Somé. “Consequently, there will be a tendency from the other world to keep trying as many people as possible in an attempt to get somebody’s attention. They have to try harder.” The spirits are drawn to people whose senses have not been anesthetized. “The sensitivity is pretty much read as an invitation to come in,” he notes.

Those who develop so-called mental disorders are those who are sensitive, which is viewed in Western culture as oversensitivity. Indigenous cultures don’t see it that way and, as a result, sensitive people don’t experience themselves as overly sensitive. In the West, “it is the overload of the culture they’re in that is just wrecking them,” observes Dr. Somé. The frenetic pace, the bombardment of the senses, and the violent energy that characterize Western culture can overwhelm sensitive people.

The rest of the article can be read here.

There is a reason for this, and that reason is there is absolutely no consistent evidence for psychic abilities or paranormal phenomena that the scientific community is aware of. Every single controlled study designed to test and probe phenomena like ESP has given a negative result.

I also feel like this article only gives a one-sided story. The way we handle mental illness in the United States isn't great, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's also not as bad as the author would have you believe. Many people (too many people, maybe) are dx'd with a mental illness and still manage to live happy, productive lives with the help of family, therapists and, yes, sometimes medication.

My mother's entire family is a great collection of examples.

"Every single controlled study designed to test and probe phenomena like ESP has given a negative result."

That's a bold claim that is not exactly true...
Sheldrake and others have designed studies that found unexplainable results, that when repeated by skeptics yielded the same results. Whatever the explaination, it is something that western rationalists at large seem to ignore because currently there is no accepted explanation.

My point here is not to point out proof of evidence, but to show the falsity present in the claim that all studies have given negative results.

I haven't read the OP yet, but I take issue with this line of thinking. It seems to crop up a lot.

You've read every single study...? Or are you just parroting the often repeated uninformed conclusion of those who haven't bothered research it that no evidence exists, and if any does it must be bollocks because it's impossible? This is a position I encounter fairly often and on further questioning it's been revealed that almost no one making such claims have ever bothered to even look at the much if any of the research before coming to these conclusions.

Below is part of my post in another thread which just scratches the surface at some of the research that's been done. It's really no surprise that it is often ignored or dismissed outright by some. Even the scientific community can put up incredible resistance when tenets of whatever the current paradigm happens to be are challenged. But more than you would think are quite interested in this research, however, many don't speak out in public about it because it would put their careers and public image in jeopardy...which is a shame really, because it inhibits growth and further, unbiased investigation.



Of course, I'm not saying it is an established fact, or that all studies have shown positive results. Just that these sort of blanket claims of there being 'no evidence' (or that one has somehow examined every single study ever conducted) are false and misleading.

There is also the issue of the inherent difficulty behind studying such phenomena. Many here have had experiences that they would describe as telepathy, precognitive dreaming, and sychronicity of all kinds, etc. And one thing that seems fairly consistent is how they emerge often without any effort, when your just going with the flow and don't expect it, and that it is difficult or impossible for the ego to attempt to do it again by force after the initial experience. It could be very tricky to attempt to reproduce these sorts of things, if they exist, in a controlled lab environment. But nevertheless, so far the results or certain studies are fascinating, and I think a lot will be revealed in the future as our understanding of consciousness grows.

I don't have time to read the OP at the moment, so I can't speak about that, but I'll try to later

To indoctrinate a human for expression of one's current self/state, than you interfere with the core dynamics of development and growth.

Our view of what we call 'normal' is highly intolerant to expression of one-self. I concur with the main idea of what you are pointing to. I see it too. For example, if 6 westerners took a trip to the amazon rainforest and stayed with a local tribe of 3 women and 3 men, than the parameters of the western mindset begins to rapidly dissolve due to changes in environment and expression. Said people must then adapt, work, learn and co-exist equally amongst the new group and locality to regain responsibility and co-existence. The conditions of the westerner and the tribe both must learn how to co-exist with natural means of survival.

This kind of a state is similar to how a Shaman views mental stability. For if one were to remain truly capable and developed, must go through each life stepping stone with their own innate flaws and mastery. To be conditioned to think otherwise is foolish. If it ain't you, than who and what is it worth doing for? These people shouldn't be medicated to the point of vegetable town, but rather given the opportunity to express themselves in a safe, open and secure environment. Our culture doesn't allow this. It degrades those who are unable to fully express themselves due to consequence of how culture operates. If you are 'loony' or 'nuts' you fall into a category that representatives have created.

Everyone must be seen as equal with the freedom to explore and co-exist within their life. Once that barrier or 'boundary' is lifted, new light sheds the possibility of potential and acceptance. Simply put, we must accept each other on what naturally is. The wholeness of a human, animal, plant or universal symbiosis. The Shamans are the real storytellers here.

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Whenever these sorts of threads crop up, I post Dr. Tanya Luhrman's "Hallucinations and Sensory Overrides" as strongly suggested reading. I'll just throw the following quote up here and those interested can read the full paper.




It is worth noting that Dr. Luhrman was a reviewer of the paper in the OP and was also cited throughout.