Huh? If I can determine something myself, then why can't I determine someone else's condition? Are you talking about his self-determination or mine?
His. The exercise of conscience, to be meaningful, has to reflect an individual's own choices.
I couldn't call it disordered or psychosis... I'm not a physician, and even their criteria isn't always right.
Indeed. The last point is particularly important when disorder can only be defined with reference to whatever is the currently accepted social norm. I suspect a large proportion of significant religious figures of the past would be in danger of recieving a psychiatric diagnosis if they lived now; this does not, however, invalidate their positive contributions to their faith, society, and the development of human understanding, which have in many cases been considerable. This is aside from the development of their
own understanding which may have resulted from their experiences.
Some people form psychosis and believe they are, quite literally, God. Am I supposed to believe that they've reached a divine pinnacle? There are people out there who have debilitating mental illnesses, and who's beliefs are far from the consensual reality that everyone else is accustomed to. Are people just supposed to say "Well, they've just developed a higher form of consciousness, or they're just a different kind of consciousness". Something cannot be separate and still equal. I would like to believe that we all have equal interpretations of reality, but obviously the differences reveal themselves in how successful one is in life, even one's own standards.
One hermit who looked upon God, supposedly, found it very difficult to picture the aesthetics. His name was Nicholas of Flüe, and some of his visions only came after several years of asceticism. He left his family behind to service a chantry, but also left a legacy.
Now, this wasn't exactly beneficial for his family, was it? Was this lunacy? Was his experience only stabilized by the dogma which assured him that he was healthy?
Worth pointing out that in his day it would have been considered healthy, at least if the visions and experiences were being communicated and conceptualised in forms that were acceptable to the society and church of his day. Seeing a vision of the divine was a mark of favour and spiritural exaltation, yet struggling to combat visions of the profane may have been also interpeted as a mark of favour, a literal spiritual battle that most experienced at a more symbolic level, undertaken with God's grace and with salvation or enlightenment the result if succesful - mirroring the conflict of the ordinary person between the demands of faith and the sinful temptations of the material world.
What would
not have been acceptable is visions and experiences that reflected willing consortation with the Devil (blasphemy) that significantly challenged the established version of faith (heresy) or suggested that an altogether new understanding was needed (infidelity). It's not like the concept of insanity was not understood in former ages, even in relation to people who claimed to experience visions that others could not see. Then, as now, however, the standard was defined with reference to the current norm, which was primarily defined by the prevailing faith.
A person believing themselves to be God, for instance, would certainly have been categorised as insane, because this is essentially a claim, in a Christian context, that you are Christ's second coming; a monumental claim for which compelling evidence would instantly be sought if it was ever taken seriously in the first place, and the person just as quickly found wanting. It would have been seen as the work of the Devil, and measures either priestly or medical (according to the lights of the day and the options available) would have been taken to cast out the demons presumed responsible. Much mental illness in medieval times would have been similarly recognised and treated to mental illness today, the sufferer shunned, ostracised, and subjected to forced treatment, IF they were seeing things unseen or unfathomable to others that challenged the existing belief system of society.
Those who now claim to experience visions of
any kind, however, are automatically challenging the existing belief system of society, which is founded on the premise that nothing is correct or valuable except what can be empirically established by science. There is no empirical way to establish the validity of visions or supernormal experiences that others do not share due to their intensely subjective nature and the lack of a testing mechanism. Therefore, there is no option but to presume that they stem from pathological causes and must be dealt with accordingly. We are essentially casting out the devils of unbelief, of blasphemy against the scientific method, if we hold to our assumption that EVERYone who has these experiences is in need of treatment.
Is this sort of psychological manifestation only the result of a thinning of the barrier between the pole of his consciousness that categorized the world, and the antipode which was more vague and caught up in the collective unconscious?
With this sort of thing, your guess is as good as mine
I have heard that these experiences can be quite helpful and healthy. Aldous Huxley had similar ones when he took mescaline and perceived reality as a "unified whole", unfettered by normal understanding. Afterwards, he advocated the
Perennial Philosophy. I would call this a mystical experience, though it was different from the more conventional things.
I'm unsure how mescaline functions offhand, though I do know that its effects are strongly psychedelic, therefore perception-altering, and it has a long history of use for spiritual purposes by certain societies. Those who meditate are freqently trying to achieve a state of similarly expanded consciousness without chemical assistance. I would say that regardless of whether his experiences were personally beneficial, meditation and spiritual reflection are probably in general SAFER activities, at least if preserving one's functional sanity in everyday life is a priority, given the unpredictable effects that powerful psychedelics can have on individual psyches.