"madness" and the visionary experience.
Topic: by Lenny
from Sanity: Friend or Foe.

Laing was revolutionary in valuing the content of psychotic behaviour and speech as a valid expression of distress, albeit wrapped in an unusual personal symbolism. According to Laing, if a therapist can better understand the person they can begin to make sense of the symbolism of their madness, and therefore start addressing the concerns which are the root cause of their distress.

Maybe if “the content of psychotic behaviour and speech” is “a valid expression of distress” then the content and behavior of madness are a valid expression of the visionary experience?

…for Laing, madness could be a transformative episode whereby the process of undergoing mental distress was compared to a shamanic journey. The traveller could return from the journey with importan insights, and may even have become a wiser and more grounded person as a result. – Wikipedia entry on RD Laing.

My own reality-smashing experience has told me that the danger of “madness” is not in that you may go “mad,” it is the danger that you may go mad worrying about whether or not you are going mad!

The subjective nature of much of magic seems to me to be wholly at odds with the order the ego is trying to impose on this chaotic existence. And the ego is strong enough that when you think you are cracking it open you may actually be feeding it!

Regardie’s the Middle Pillar, Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger... all lend some important perspective on how to avoid this.

One thing I try to remember is that the spectrum of “sane” is very wide, that the poles of “cold, hard, rationality” and “stark raving mad” are very far apart indeed.

Comment by j. lenny flatley — 1/22/2005 @ 4:48 pm