DSM-IV Religious and Spiritual Problems

Case Example: Full Myths in Mental Illness Case

To my amazement the imagery of schizophrenic fantasy Perfectly matches that of the mythological Hero's Journey.
-Joseph Campbell

In the spring of 1982, I co-led a workshop entitled "Psychosis: Mysticism, Shamanism, of Pathology?" with medical anthropologist Joan Halifax, Ph.D. The workshop was held at the Ojai Foundation, a Los Angeles area retreat center, and explored the relationship between creativity and pathology in psychotic states of mind. Publicity about this event drew responses from several people who were interested in the topic but unable to attend. Among them was Howard C. Everest, a former psychiatric patient.

In the fall of 1982, I taught a seminar psychiatric residents, psychology interns and staff at UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Institute where I am currently on the faculty. I invited several ex-patients, including Howard, to visit the seminar and discuss their psychotic episodes, their treatment by the mental health system, and the difficulties they had encountered in readjusting to consensual reality and societal norms. Howard responded eagerly to my invitation to present, since he never before had an opportunity to tell the complete story of his "mental odyssey." Howard's presentation was audio taped and transcribed. During the next tow years, he and I met many times to write this account. We inquired about his medical records, but the hospital had destroyed them after the mandatory nine years of retention required by state law. We were able, however, to obtain a copy of his admission note according to which Howard was diagnosed as having an Acute Schizophrenic Reaction.

As indicated in the above quotation, when Joseph Campbell (1964), the world's leading expert on comparative mythology, attended a conference on psychosis, at Esalen Institute, he recognized the parallels between the imagery of schizophrenia and that of the Hero's Journey (p.208). Many psychiatrists and social scientists have also pointed out the similar themes found in myths and in psychosis, e.g., Grof (1975), Halifax (1979), Jung (1911), Laing (1967), Perry (1976). Campbell's (1949) classic treatise, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, is a systematic study of the patterns constant in mythology across time an cultures. Campbell identified three stages in the Hero's Journey:

Separation-initiation-return: A hero enters forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the Hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow on his fellow man (p.30).

The relevance of myth to psychosis is enhanced by Campbell's thesis that the Hero's Journey-although told in terms of outer events with princes and dragons, battles and ordeals-is actually a metaphor for the venture into the psyche. Since psychosis is also a venture into the psyche, myth should be helpful as a metaphor to be used in understanding the psychotic process. In turn, accounts by psychotic individuals inform us more about the nature of myth on the experimental level, not merely the intellectual level. This paper applies Campbell's insights into the patterns of mythology to an exploration of the psychotic experience.

The word myth comes from the Greek mythos, meaning speech. Lockhart (1983b), a Jungian analyst, has pointed out the implications of this intimate etymological relationship between myth and words:

We need rituals of telling telling is a way to mythmaking in our life-it is telling our myth. One's myth must be told. Not telling is poison and makes us sick (p. 129).

Howard received no acknowledgment from others about the possible value in his experience. He could not find a listener for his story during his hospitalization or afterwards. This seems to be typical of the reactions of others during both the acute phase and the post-psychotic period. The psychotic experience itself isolates the individual from others. Then the subsequent devaluation and condemnation of the experience as "only the product of a diseased mind" results in further isolation just when the person needs to reconnect to the social world. The return from the journey is not complete until the travelers are permitted to put their experiences into words, to tell their stories. Lost opportunities and occasional tragedies encountered in the treatment of psychosis may be due in part to overlooking the importance of this completion aspect of the journey. In the telling of his story, Howard demonstrates the process of completing the many tasks involved in returning from psychosis.

Howard and I have collaborated in writing his odyssey. Its preparation and publication constitute a "ritual of telling". While some forms of psychosis preclude a positive outcome, this paper illustrates a therapeutic approach which can help some individuals to complete their return from psychosis, their Hero's Journey.

What began for me as a scientific exercise to document an unusual type of psychotic episode initiated a transformative process in my own psyche. In truly listening to the voice of psychosis from an initiate, some part of my own unconscious was stirred. Through the process of transcribing Howard's descriptions, asking him questions, and editing the story of his Mental Odyssey, I have acquired a much deeper appreciation for myths and symbols as experiential realities.

Jung (1908/1960), has pointed out that:

In insanity we do not discover anything new and unknown; we are looking at the foundations of out own being, the matrix of those vital problems on which we are all engaged (p. 178).

We all have something to learn about our own psyches, our psychological roots, from the experiences of psychosis. Psychotic individuals offer us an opportunity to visit with persons who are still experiencing the world in an ancient mythic mode of consciousness. To better connect with the mythtaking part of us it is important to realize myth is not entirely cerebral.

In the primitive world, where the clues to the origin of mythology must be sought, gods and demons are not conceived of in the way of hard and fast positive realities there has been a shift of view from the logic of the normal secular sphere, where things are understood to be distinct from each other, to a theatrical or play sphere, where they are accepted for what they are experienced as being, and the logic is that of "make-believe, as if " (Campbell, 1969, p.33).

Ancient people experienced myth as some traditional people still do today, in the involved manner of the psychotic individual, but with more skill in negotiating between mythic and profane realities. Campbell (1972) believes that the psychotic individual, the mystic, the yogi and the LSD-taker are all plunged into the same deep inward sea. However,

The mystic, endowed with native talents for this sort of thing and following stage by stage, the instruction of a master, enters the waters and finds he can swim: whereas the schizophrenic, unprepared, unguided, and ungifted, as fallen or has intentionally plunged, and is drowning (p. 216).

In interacting with a psychotic individual, we are necessarily affected by their symbolic products which display similarities to those of ancient mythmakers. These individuals are "touched-in the original sense-by the divine. Our society would change its cultural bias toward the mentally ill and reduce the stigma they encounter, if we could see that they are not only "out of contact" with external consensual reality, but also "in touch" with mythic realms.

Our society stands in need of more contact with and appreciation for the non-rational (mythic, mystic, psychotic) states of mind. Foucault (1965) points out, "The Reason-Madness nexus constitutes for Western culture on the dimensions of its originality" (p. xi). From Bosch to Shakespeare to Nietzsche and the great poets and musicians of the 19th and 20th centuries, the threads of madness are woven into our cultural fabric. However, the wellspring of that originality has been progressively drying up. Starting with the turn of the 19th century, the once active dialogue between the rational and the non-rational has almost ceased. In the mental health field, this particularly evident: "the language of psychiatry is a monologue of reason about madness" (Foucault, 1965, p. xi).

Not only mental health professional, but everybody could benefit from empathetic interaction with psychotic individual and their creative productions. Listening to their experiences, their stories and myths can beckon us toward our own journeys into mythic realms.

Below is the case history of Howard's journey into and return from psychosis, which I have entitled, "The Hero with 1000mg (Thorazine)."

THE HERO WITH 1000 MG (THORAZINE)
The early years of my life were quite natural. In retrospect, they were uncolorful at best, even boring. It wasn't until mid-adolescence that I became aware of and increasing discontent within myself. Like all of my friends, I lacked meaningful interaction with other people. Somehow, I sensed there must be more to life than just the same old routines.

During my senior year in high school, I went to Denmark as a foreign exchange student. I began to read literature, both contemporary and classical, including Joyce, Hesse, Eliot, Dante, and Castaneda. Returning home in 1972, having no desire for a formal education, I began traveling in hopes of gaining a first-hand experience of life. The spring of 1973 found me in a small village in Mexico. There I first conceived the idea of taking a Mental Odyssey. The seed of this idea lies, I'm sure, in a novel I had read while in Denmark. A Briefing for a Descent into Hell by Doris Lessing tells the story of a professor of classical literature who goes "mad." In his waking dream, he comes almost to the point of "remembering" the important archetypal elements of his inner life. However, he is electroshocked backed in "sanity" forgetting where he has been and heat he has experienced. Perhaps by allowing my own imagination to take a quantum leap, I also could bring to the surface of my consciousness the building blocks of my dreams. I hoped to discover the elements of my inner nature and maybe something about the universal nature of life.

THE SEPARATION
The "awakening of the self" no matter what the stage or grade of life, the call rings up the curtain, always on a mystery of transfiguration- a rite or moment, of spiritual passage, which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth. The familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand (Campbell 1949, p. 51).

While hitchhiking back into the United States from Mexico, I developed a very high fever. At this point I entered the episode which led to my hospitalization. I stopped off at the house of an aunt and uncle for a couple of days until my fever went down. When I started hitchhiking again, various lines of v5erse began to filter into my mind. These words seemed to enter me from an outside source. Upon arriving at my parents' home, I put these one-liners together into a poem, but there seemed to be a single word missing. I showed it to my mother that evening, and she suggested the word "glide." Then the poem was complete:

Deliverance
Cast spinning across time's abyss
Free flight through a wave of nausea
I summon Heaven's madness
(Oh muse Divine
Control on gilded wings)
To bring the dawn

Fly by rampant river
Through rampant river
Through cosmic seas
And the universal jig in time
Wheel and glide
While seagulls spin in raucous tune

The first stanza expressed my current mode of experiencing life, the discontent I felt, the sense that something was not right in this world or in my relationship to the world. However, by summoning "Heaven's madness," I could enter a frame of mind that would give me the new sense of reality described in the second stanza.

After composing three verses, I realized that the poem itself could be used to catapult me into a state of "madness," into the Mental Odyssey. By concentrating on it to the exclusion of all else, I would push myself into that state. During the next twelve hours, I pecked away at my typewriter, turning out copy after copy of the poem, with my attention riveted on its elements.

THE INITIATION
Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world of literature of miraculous tests and ordeal. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region (Campbell 1949, p.97)

By morning, I was in a state of rapture. I felt I had experienced a rebirth; the poem was my "birth announcement." I was at the crux of transitioning from "the flight through nausea" to "wheeling and gliding" joyously through the cosmos. My thoughts turned to my mother's crucial contribution which completed the poem, and I thought, "How gracious of the universe to allow my own physical mother to be the midwife of my rebirth. For even though I am now a child of the universe, yet she had a hand in her own son's rebirth. Thus, she has been spared the full pain of the loss of her child."

That morning I greeted my parents with the announcement, "I have been reborn. My father is the sun; my mother is the moon; and I am a child of the universe My experiment is a success!"

I viewed my self as a guinea pig in a self-designed experiment which was now taking on cosmic importance. Although my parents did not say anything to me, I sensed their anxiety and concern, but I just wanted to plunge ahead to wherever the experience was taking me.

Except for one occasion when I smoked two hits from a joint of marijuana, I did not use any drugs during my odyssey. The marijuana had absolutely no effect on me, because I was already far beyond where the drug could take me.

For the next four days, I engaged in spontaneous rituals to keep the element of the poem in my mind. For example, two days after writing the poem, a hike with a friend became a journey filled with significant occurrences. Preparing for the trip to a nearby mountain, I packed a few small items in a can. The harmonica, a blue bandana, and other items were "power objects" — symbols of my newborn self. I told my friend, "I'm taking these elements of my rebirth and burying them because I need to incorporate them into the very earth itself. If I don't go through this ritual, if I don't actually marry my rebirth to the earth, it won't be anchored and it will dissipate."

As we drove to the nearby mountains, I did not know exactly where we were going, but I knew that my muse was guiding me. We went to a fresh water slough with a walking plank along its center. At the gate to the slough path, the point where we started walking, I initiated the day's journey by telling my friend, "These are the Gates of Hell and we are going to walk through the bowels of Hell." As we walked along the path, I said, "Pay attention to my hands. When my right hand carries the can, the Muse leads; when my left, Death." After a little hiking we came to the place where the slough entered a larger river. "We have passed through the bowels of Hell," I said. "Now we climb out into the wilderness."

Entering a small meadow, we reached a spot where I felt the need to leave my friend. "Your path leads along the river, but I must go up from here. I will meet you here later." I followed the road for a while and then cut through a thicket, which got me back to the point where I had started. Every detail in the journey was significant. I asked myself, "Why have I gone full circle through the wilderness? I can't stop here; I must continue this quest. I must go to the gates, the portals of Heaven." So I started up the hill toward to prominent trees. At times I felt weary and wanted to stop and rest. I thought the Devil was trying to prevent me from reaching the summit, so I kept pushing myself. Finally, I arrived at the gate formed by the trees. A patch of snow surrounded them. It was springtime, and I had not seen snow before on this hike. Suddenly, at my feet I noticed rabbit tracks in the snow. It felt like and affirmation, a message that the world was with me. I took a few steps through the portals, went to the base of one of the trees and buried the can-not in the bowels of Hell where I had started my journey, not in the wilderness where I had wandered, but in the realms of Heaven. "Now my experience is part of the earth. It is anchored. It is real." The world had affirmed this with the snow and the rabbit tracks. The convergence of these elements felt very profound to me.

Nearby, to my left, I saw a great slab of rock. I walked over and lay down on it to bask in the sun. I had finished a very important task. After a few minutes, I noticed a place carved into the rock. It looked jut like a little chair. "This is my rightful place in the Kingdom of Heaven." As I took my place in the seat, I felt I had "arrived." Glancing to the left I saw an image in a tree stump, a laughing face. "Death laughs," I thought and, knowing that it was the noblest thing I could do, I laughed with him. My task completed, I proceeded down the mountain, met my friend, and we drove back.

I proclaimed my accomplishment to my family and friends, saying, "I have been through the bowels of Hell, climbed up and out, and wandered full circle in the wilderness. I have ascended through the Portals of Heaven where I established my rebirth in the earth itself, and now have taken my rightful place in the Kingdom of Heaven." I cannot remember the exact words my parents spoke in response to this proclamation, but I sensed their increasing concern and bewilderment.

Throughout this period, I frequently used symbolic speech containing mythic words: "I am the albatross; you are the dove," I said to one friend, Being an albatross involved flying over large expanses of the waters to distant shores and then returning. This was my process. Thus, the albatross became the symbol which carried me into these new experiences. I hoped my friends would make a similar connection and enter into an odyssey themselves. I urged them to create their own mythic vehicles and use them as guides into an odyssey as I had done. The only verbal response recall to these statements was one friend's remark that I was "going too fast." For the most part my friends became quiet, and I sensed the same fear in them as I had in my relatives. Undaunted, I continued to talk about the success of my experiment.

On the fourth day of the odyssey, my father, a general practitioner, asked me to go to the hospital. "We'd like to run some tests on you," he said. I agreed, thinking about the potential value for science and humanity: "The medical community should look at the experience I'm having and learn something from it. Medical experts could scientifically monitor it, chronicle it, and the world would benefit. I am definitely benefiting and it needs to be shard with everyone."

At the psychiatric unit, I signed a paper thinking it was a consent for tests. Then my father left me with an attendant. I suggested we start the tests since I had to leave to finish my experiment. "Take it easy," he said. "Settle in. You'll be here for a while." I protested, "At 3:30 I'm going to meet Godot. At 4:00 I'm going to leave." He took me to my room and left. I sat down and immediately removed my ID bracelet. I was not the name they had written in plastic. I had been reborn. I was the albatross. At 3:30, and attendant looked in on me. "There's Godot," I thought, "just on time." A 4:00, I left my room and went to the main door which was locked. A woman came down the hall, and as she neared the door I asked, "Would you please let me out?" She gave a questioning look. Pointing to my wrist, I showed her that I was not wearing a wristband. As she looked back at the nursing station, I said, "Go ahead and ask them. I'm just visiting." She turned back toward me wit a look of acknowledgment and opened the door. I walked through it and went to the elevator. Even though no one else was waiting and no one was in the elevator, the doors opened the instant I got there. This was another affirmation that the world was with me. In a state of ecstasy, I entered the elevator. I was on my way home to finish the odyssey. I did not know exactly what it entailed, but I was sure my Muse would guide me.

Arriving home, I could sense the heightening of my parents' distress as I told them I would continue my experiment. I would do whatever I needed to do to fulfill my destiny. Later, when we were playing pool, my brother said to me, "If you felt that in order to fulfill your destiny, how you interpret your destiny, you needed to kill somebody" I replied, "Then I would need to kill somebody." I was not making any literal threats or harboring any weapons. Death as a transforming and guiding force was a theme in my rebirth. My brother took this symbolic statement literally, and said, "I think you'd be wrong and I'd have to try and stop you." Believing that everyone should follow the guidance of their inner self, I grabbed him by the shoulders and commanded, "Stop me. Try to stop me." He grabbed me, and I struggled to get free just as my father entered the hall, thrusting his hand between us. I was released and bolted out the back door. The realization came, "My father has delivered me in all my struggles."

Outside the night was dark and starry. Still retaining the feeling of release, I started across the field behind our house. While I ran, I rode this sensation as I had learned to do with other feelings during the previous four days. My sense of release grew and grew. Reaching a vacant lot near the house, I looked up at the sky and saw the star of my newborn self fixed in the Heavens. "This is it. This is the peak. Now it is complete. I am beyond." I entered a new dimension of the odyssey, one beyond symbols, beyond words. I had reached the state of deliverance which my poem had been designed to achieve. In the beginning the words in the poem had catapulted me into the Odyssey. Now words seemed totally inadequate-dry, flat, lifeless. Yet, I used them anyway: "Now I am married to the Universe. I have become the entire Circle and all within. There are no limitations. I am no longer contained within the frame of my body or my symbols."

Feeling ecstatic and clear-headed, I returned home. "It is complete. I am at the center of the Universe." My sister-in-law protested. "We are all at the center of the Universe." "Yes, but I have realized it." No one said anything further to me.

In my room, I turned on some music and lay down to sleep. I awoke a short while later when a policeman walked into my room, my mother with him. Knowing why he had come, I got up immediately and dressed. I was locked in the back of his patrol car for the ride to the hospital. I did not really object to being taken to the hospital this time. The experiment was finished. I was now at the center of the Universe regardless of where I was placed. At the hospital, I went to sleep immediately.

The next day I told the staff I did not want any medications-only vitamins. They instructed my take the medication. If I refused the tablets, they would be forced to give me injections. I agreed to take the tablets of thorazine.

I asked to see a Jungian analyst. Having read a Psychology Today article comparing Jung and Freud, I felt that a Jungian analyst would understand my experience. It was obvious to me that the hospital staff did not understand. From my reading of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I expected that they were planning to give me shock treatment. Feeling totally in tune with the universe, I announced, "Go ahead, give me shock treatment and I'll blow up your machines."

At first I met with psychiatrist every day. I had hopes that he, as a representative of the scientific community, would understand the significance of my experience. He was of Greek ethnicity, so I assumed I could relate to him through mythology. In our first session, I handed him a coy of Ovid's Metamorphosis and said, "Here, this is what's going on-metamorphosis." During another session, I gave him a drawing of birds, scissors, and other "hieroglyphics" which told of my journey. Again I said, "Here, this is what I'm experiencing." He showed no response. He did not ask me to explain the drawing. The most significant moment I had with the psychiatrist occurred while he was sitting behind his desk holding an apple. In a state of rapture, I was explaining some aspects of my beliefs. With calm detachment, he stated, "You are no better than a banana," and then he took a bite of his apple.

Throughout my stay at the hospital, I sensed that the psychiatrist did not want to talk to me at all. Our visits became less frequent and briefer over the duration. During most of the two months, I saw him twice a week for perhaps five minutes at a time. We did have one other notable exchange when I told him that a friend of mine had visited a lawyer on my behalf. The lawyer had stated that they could not hold me against my will. "Yes we can. We can commit you and keep you here," the doctor responded. At the end of my stay, I do not remember talking with him or even exchanging good-byes.

Despite the lack of validation from the psychiatrist and staff, I never questioned the positive value of m experience. In fact, throughout my stay I found many ways to keep my Mental Odyssey alive and flowing. I persisted in processing my experience in terms of symbols. For example, in an occupational therapy session, I drew a watercolor of "Jacob's Ladder" using an upended sign for infinity ("8") to connect heaven and earth. It symbolized for me the flow of energy in the process of becoming and therefore represented the universe and everyone in it. In the hallways, I walked in figure eight's enacting the cosmic drama of time and space. I told others to watch me doing this. Sometimes I kicked an orange around the halls in a figure eight, being careful not to touch the walls. It was my belief that orange was the color of power, so this ritual reinforced my personal power.

During another occupational therapy session, I fashioned a wristband from five strands of cord. Inside the band, I hid various small cored pieces of plastic, knowing they would become "power objects." Eventually, they proved their power. I had been restricted from leaving the unit for trips into the community with other patients, friends or relatives. I could not even go on supervised walks and outings. Because of my "escape" the first day, I was considered an AWOL risk. I sorely missed being outside in the fresh air and open spaces. There was a balcony where I would hang out on the few occasions when its doors were not locked. One day, without any forethought, I placed some of my "power objects" in the lock mechanism. For the next several weeks, the doors to the balcony could not be locked, and I was able to be outside as much as I wanted.

In the privacy of my room, I regularly conducted rituals to invoke the Four Forces of the square. I began by facing north, held my arms straight out to the sides, whistled four times and then yelled "yu." In a dictionary, I had discovered that "yu" is an invocation in ancient Greek. Then I turned to the south, whistled one time, and yelled "yu." To the east, it was three whistles and "yu," and then two whistles and "yu" to the west. Then I waited for the forces to manifest. Through this and other spontaneous rituals, I kept my attention on continuing the Mental Odyssey. I also encountered signs which strengthened my conviction that I was on the right path. While in my room with my eyes closed, I saw three yellow birds flying against a bright yellow sky while another bird crossed their path. In several places around the ward, whirling vortexes suddenly appeared which I knew to be my muse. Occasionally part of the face of someone I was looking at dissolved and was replaced by portions of someone else's face.

No one on the staff asked me about my drawings, power objects, unusual experiences or rituals. While the staff did not seem as troubled as their patients, they appeared not to have any understanding of deep inner experiences. It was obvious that they expected me to fit into their mundane world. I told myself, "It's not my place to listen to them. I know what's real and must proclaim it to them-even if they don't understand or accept it." However, associations were always cordial and our exchanges pleasant. Late one evening, a staff member asked what was going on with me, but before we started talking, another staff person said I had to go to bed. I never saw the first one again.

It became apparent to me that no one on the staff was interested in understanding or recording my experiment. If this were to have any value to others, I would have to create a definite "key" for understanding the universe based on the elements from my odyssey. My parents had brought my copy of Finnegan's Wake; it's inside cover seemed like the right location it inscribe this symbol key (Figure 1).

My father had medical patients in other wings o the hospital, and he occasionally stopped by to see me after his rounds. I remember in particular two exchanges. One time I yelled at him, "How come you're not letting me out?" He answered, "The doctors think you need to be here," and then he tried to calm me down. The next week when he visited, he was in a very agitated state and demanded to know, "Have you ever taken LSD?" I told him that I had in the past, but not during this experience. Reversing the roles from the previous week, I found myself trying to calm him down as he stormed off the unit.

One positive memory of my hospitalization occurred at Easter. Despite my parents' and my request for a home visit, I was not allowed off the unit. I remained the only patient of the ward. So my aunt, uncle, cousins, and immediate family decided to come to the hospital for dinner and we celebrated Easter on the ward. I remember my grandmother saying, "If Mohammad can't come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammad," I particularly enjoyed hearing that at the time.

I had cordial associates with the other patients, but I never developed a close relationship with any of them. I felt they did not understand my experience any better than the staff did. In fact, it was obvious that most of the other patients ere seriously troubled. At times, I tried to help them, but I did not actively intervene in their situations. There was a shirt I would wear sometimes thinking, "In this shirt, I will heal them."

At one point a male Mexican patient arrived whom I thought had been placed on the ward to test my will. At times he projected a ray inside me and I would feel a pain in my gut. I could ward off the "ray of death" by grabbing my stomach and stomping my foot on the ground. Once during his stay, I was standing in the hall trying to "summon" the service elevator as I had on the day when I walked out of the hospital. "You know a way out?" he asked. I tried to open the elevator by crossing my arms and touching a certain place on the control panel, but nothing happened. We looked at each other and laughed. Such incidents never disrupted by faith in "special powers," because to me it was simply a matter of finding the correct ritual.

After six weeks, on the advice of my psychiatrist, my parents proposed a transfer to a hospital in San Francisco for an additional 3-6 months of treatment. For an instant, I turned this possibility in my mind. Perhaps a different group of doctors would truly monitor and document this Mental Odyssey, thereby preserving it. I still wanted help to chronicle and understand the many incredible experiences in my journey. Then I realized there was no guarantee that another hospital would be different from the barren environment of my present surroundings. "I don't need another hospital. I want to leave. I'll do just fine outside."

THE RETURN
When the hero-quest has been accomplished, through penetration to the source, or through the grace of some male or female, human or animal, personification, the adventurer still must return with his life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the mono-myth, requires that the Hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the ten thousand words (Campbell, 1949, p.193).

After two months, I left the hospital and immediately returned to the same state of consciousness I had been in before the odyssey. To attain the heights of the experience again I would have to walk the path step-by-step. First, I needed to regain the ability to concentrate and function. I was totally exhausted-physically, emotionally and mentally. I stopped taking the thorazine they had been giving me at the hospital and have never taken any similar medication since.

A few days after leaving the hospital, I took a job at a boysenberry farm owned by the father of a friend. They let me work to the limit of my endurance-about three hours-and then leave to rest. After three weeks, I felt strong enough to tackle a job as an on-call forest firefighter. This work was ideal for strengthening myself, because it was physically and emotionally demanding. Yet, there would be a week or so between fires to recuperate.

About this time, I began to explore the meaning of my experience. While browsing in the philosophy, religion and anthropology sections of a bookstore, I found Joseph Campbell's Creative Mythology. Immediately I realized that was exactly what I had been doing-creating mythology. Opening the book I randomly I came to the section where he discusses Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. Since I had drawn my key in a copy of Finnegan's Wake, this coincidence struck me as a sign. I bought the book, but it was very difficult for me to read, because my concentration was so poor. It was a tremendou s struggle to comprehend even two sentences at a time, but I knew I had to stay with this task in order to regain my mental abilities. During the four months it took me to finish reading Creative Mythology, its concepts were training me to seethe relationship between experience and mythic symbols in a new way. It also provided me with references for further exploration.

While reading The Portable Jung, also edited by Joseph Campbell, I began to understand several aspects of my odyssey. I saw a direct parallel between Jung's four personality types and my seagull, dove, owl and eagle. I developed the procedure followed in all my subsequent reading of alchemy, philosophy and religious works. I look for the meaning o the elements of my key (the triangle, the circle, the eye, etc.) within these other systems. This procedure has deepened by understanding of the Mental Odyssey and also enriched other readings.

Perhaps my biggest breakthrough came when I read Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces. Immediately, I realized that I had been on the Hero's Journey. I, too, had come into an experiential relationship with archetypes, had returned, and now had knowledge to share with others.

Another affirmation of my odyssey occurred while helping a friend through a bad trip after she took LSD at a Grateful Dead rock music concert. My brother, who was with her at the concert, phoned for my help after taking her to a local drug treatment center. Upon arrival, I immediately sensed the stifling atmosphere which reminded me of the hospital. I sat in front of her and held her hands. "Howard, it's just going," she said. I told her, "Yeah, I know. I can see it. Just go with it." She talked so fast I did not understand much of what she was saying, but I knew the energy, the state of mind. Attempting to put a cork on her flow of experience, to "calm her down," as the staff was trying to do, was counterproductive. She needed to be able to move with the flow of thoughts in order to get through them. We sat facing each other for perhaps an hour, and when I sensed she was in control again, I suggested we leave. This event raised my curiosity. How many other people have these experiences? What happens to them as a result?

Periodically I tried to share my new-found knowledge with friends and family, but it was not well-received. I could see I was still considered "crazy." I have learned not to talk about these matters with others. When we discuss other subjects, my relationships with those who witnessed my experiences have been fine; I have not felt like an outcast.

Two years after my discharge from the hospital, I married a woman I had known before my hospitalization. Due to a difficult and troubled life, she was often angry and unhappy. However, she seemed to value my experience; in fact, she identified herself as my "Beatrice" (Beatrice was Dante's guide through paradise in the Divine Comedy). However, after a few weeks she asked me to renounce my Mental Odyssey and follow Christ with her. I realized that trying to hold onto my experience would kill it. If I let it go, I thought that with me she could enter a life of happiness she had never known.

For the next two years I gave over dominion of my consciousness to my wife and became very Christian. Without explanation, we broke off contact with our friends, moved to another city, and had a baby. I went back to college and took pre-med courses. I quit drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes and using drugs. I became a vegetarian. I carried a Bible everywhere.

For two years I limited my focus to my wife and child, my studies, and the Bible. Then one day I went to the University bookstore between classes. Certain titles in the philosophy and religion sections attracted my attention. Two days later, I returned to examine these books and found they were all from the same publisher, a religious organization. I began going to the bookstore every day, reading while sitting on the floor. At first I justified this excursion outside Biblical readings because these books were extensively cross-referenced to the Bible. Yet, they made connections to many other traditions as well. I felt a stirring to be free in my consciousness, to be able to explore and grow.

Although my wife did not seem to react negatively to my ventures into other realms of thought, she and I grew apart and soon separated. I was very disappointed that my sacrificed had failed to heal and transform her. Yet, the new readings were reinstating my Mental Odyssey as the focus of my life, and I needed once again to take up the quest of inner exploration.

At the same time, my desire to become a physician began to dwindle. I had maintained a 3.9 grade point average, so I withdrew from school in order to prevent a plummeting of my GPA due to lack of interest. I found a job and continued my new reading adventure.

I wanted to make contact with the source of these books. I went to the international headquarters of the church and was invited to the Sunday service. When I entered the church the next day, the large eye painted in the rear of the chapel caught my attention. It reminded me of the eye in the center of my key. The service itself did not move me. Nevertheless, I took some brochures and signed up for the newsletter.

The literature they subsequently sent seemed promising enough to lead me to attend a conference on the Second Coming of Christ. This proved to be a positive experience since the discussion of symbols and geometric relationships corresponded to my own conclusions. However, I worried that I might be creating all these positive experiences out of a desire to find fellow travelers. The live "dictations" from various "Ascended Masters" also left me feeling uneasy.

After the conference, I landed a job that I'd wanted for some time-working at a mental hospital as a psychiatric aide. I hoped to find some answers. Is the experience of madness the same for everyone? Do most people arrive at a place of enhanced understanding of themselves and others as I had? Could I help people undergoing such experiences? I hoped to meet others journeying on their Mental Odysseys.

Unfortunately, the psychiatric facility which I had selected housed long-term patients whose complicated medical problems were the reasons for their extended hospitalization. They did not seem concerned with religious or inner experiences. Instead of the high energy I had felt in my experience, these people seemed to have no energy. I wanted to join them in their journey and help them move through it, as I had my friend during her bad LSD trip. But these patients seemed frozen and locked in; there was no movement.

I brought food trays, lit cigarettes, gave medication and strapped patients down if they became too agitated. Although I felt little was being done for them, I realized how difficult it was to do anything. I stayed in that job for only seven months, but my compassion for nurses and aides increased.

From this stint at the psychiatric hospital, I learned that madness is not a singular experience. If it were, I would have found some people who were on a similar journey. Most of the experiences of these patients seemed to be destructive dead-ends, whereas mine had been transforming. I think the primary distinguishing feature was the fluid nature of my odyssey in contrast to the sluggish quality of these patients' experiences. During my odyssey, events in the outer world held extreme significance for me and often changed my inner thinking process. However, these patients seemed basically unresponsive to events in the outer world.

The Christmas conference sponsored by the church proved to be a turning point. Two events convinced me of the validity of the church's work. While listening to a "dictation" from an "Ascended Master," suddenly I felt a wind of energy from the direction of the speaker who was out of my field of vision. This occurred seconds before he announced that he was releasing light. A couple of days later during a different dictation, I felt a flood of energy come over the top of my head. Just afterwards, the speaker sated, "I am pouring the oil of illumination over your crown chakra." These two experiences provided tangible evidence which persuaded me to deepen my connections to the church and its community. I took a seminar on "The Path of Initiation." Soon I moved onto the grounds of the church to attend their school for serious students.

For the first one-and-a-half years of my involvement with the church, all my time was spent in its various programs and support activities. Working as a "runner" for the art director led to my being trained in video technology. For the past two years, I have supported myself as a cameraman, editor, and field engineer. I now have a managerial level position at a video post-production studio. Thus my work at the church as provided me with a vocational as well as spiritual direction.

Since my divorce I have not found myself drawn into deep relationships with women. Perhaps the most important person in my life is my daughter, now eleven years old. She lives with me half of the year, and we have established a close relationship.

Most of my social life still revolves around the church, particularly the video department where I have some good friends. We go to movies together and sometimes play racquetball. I spend most holidays at the church, usually at a conference or seminar. I plan to stay actively involved since the church continues to stimulate my development as well as provide a focus for community involvement. It has deepened my understanding of the Mental Odyssey by helping reestablish the connecting links to everyday living experience. Yet, as I've come to truly integrate the odyssey, I have not found I necessary to dwell on my experience. Even within the church, one's personal history is de-emphasized, and there is caution against getting caught up in the special "phenomena" associated with spiritual experiences. Thus my attention is on the ongoing flow of life and my own motion within its stream.

I have gained much from my experience. I am sorry for the worry and hurt that it may have caused my family and friends. These wounds have been slow to heal. I am deeply grateful for the great victory of my odyssey. I successfully crossed the abyss to find the archetypes of my Being energized and intact. They revealed to me at least a facet of their nature which is also my own nature. With the dawning of a new vision of life has come a new sense of purpose. From a state of existential nausea, my soul now knows itself as part of the cosmos. Each year brings an ever-increasing sense of contentment. I view my odyssey and my connecting with the church as the two landmarks of healing for my soul.

I harbor no resentment toward the psychiatric institution for not taking my "insights" seriously. I know they were only trying to return me to "normalcy" the best way they could. I do feel that a great opportunity was lost for them. If they could have seen beyond the "ravings of a madman," they might have found something of real value.

From my perspective, the odyssey was a success and I do not regret the experience in any way. However, I would not recommend a trip into controlled madness to anyone. The best that one can hope to achieve is a fleeting glimpse through the mists, no matter how transforming. The risks are too great considering that tried and true paths, leading one safely, step-by-step, to a lasting enlightenment and joy are already available. No, this trip is only for the poor unknowing fool who drives himself headlong into it with an unwavering confidence that Life would never harm him because he loves it beyond allelse.

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