Spiritual Emergency

‘‘‘Spiritual Emergency’’’ is a Nadir Experience that leads to disorientation, confusion, panic, and even terrifying paranoia. The term was coined by Stanislav and Christina Grof and is used within Transpersonal Psychology to refer to negative experiences of emotional trauma and crises associated with Connection Experience.

Syncretic Terms

Connection Pathology > Nadir Experience

Types of Connection Pathology

Spiritual emergency is a type of connection pathology.

Connection Pathology > Communication Error, Connection Psychosis, Constricted Connection, Ego Inflation, Egoic Collapse, Egoic Explosion, Flooding, Gurutitus, Majdhub, Spiritual Emergency

Related Terms

Spiritual Emergency >

Examples

One individual ([see original Reddit post) recounts the symptoms of her husband as he struggles with a pathological connection.

Most of his delusions are religious so we have been to priests, pastors for exorcisms and deliverance to obviously no avail. He has convinced himself that what he is going through is spiritual and that no doctor will be able to help him. He has been to 2 different psych wards, has tried 6 different SSRI’S and 3 different AP’s. He is still hallucinating and lately the hallucinations are purple blobs or when he closes his eyes it becomes a huge evil eye. He has had more delusions and hallucinations then you can think of. He is convinced he has met and spoken to God and that THE SUN talked to him and showed him “signs and wonders”. He has constant negative inserted thoughts that tell him to kill himself and he is afraid that he will lose control and hurt his family. He says that if it ever came to that he would kill himself first. I am at loss with this whole thing and no one has been able to help him (US). I would love to know if anyone has gone through something similar (I know, its a long shot) or if you have any advice that could be of help. He also has olfactory delusions.. BTW, this all started after he vaped marijuana for a year and went on a KETO diet. He claims it was a perfect storm of those two things and also his troubled childhood past (trauma) in combination with the other things. A few other things I would like to note is that he was NOT religious, spiritual or a God seeking person before all of this. Also he has all of his faculties about him, still coherent, intelligent and on the outside looks “normal”..

Notes

Spiritual emergency is defined by Grof and Grof as “a crisis of personal transformation in which the changes within are so rapid and the inner states so demanding that, temporarily, people may find it difficult to operate fully in everyday reality.”

Spiritual emergencies occur when resistance and fear impose themselves between internal experiences and insights "Spiritual Emergencies can be defined as critical and experientially difficult stages of profound psychological transformation that involves one's entire being. They take the form of nonordinary states of consciousness and involve intense emotions, visions and other sensory changes, and unusual thoughts, as well as various physical manifestations. These episodes often revolve around spiritual themes; they include sequences of psychological death and rebirth, experiences that seem to be memories from previous lifetimes, feelings of oneness with the universe, encounters with various mythological beings, and other similar motives."

"When Spiritual Emergence is very rapid and dramatic, however, this natural process can become a crisis, and spiritual emergence becomes spiritual emergency. People who are in such a crisis are bombarded with inner experiences that abruptly challenge their old beliefs and ways of existing, and their relationship with reality shifts very rapidly. Suddenly they feel uncomfortable in the formerly familiar world and may find it difficult to meet the demands of everyday life. They can have great problems distinguishing their inner visionary world from the external world of daily reality. Physically, they may experience forceful energies streaming through their bodies and causing uncontrollable tremors."

"The insensitive use of pathological labels and of various repressive measures, including indiscriminate control of symptoms by medication, can interfere with the positive potential of the process. The ensuing long-term dependence on tranquillizers (with their well-known side effects), loss of vitality, and compromised way of life present a sad contrast to those rare situations where a person's transformative crises is supported, validated, and allowed to reach completion."

As Cortright notes, "Most people think of spiritual growth as safe. The spiritual path may not be easy, but it is usually not considered dangerous. However, the world's spiritual traditions all warn about different dangers along the way, the “perils of the path.” New and expanded states of consciousness can overwhelm the ego. An infusion of powerful spiritual energies can flood the body and mind, fragmenting the structures of the self and temporarily incapacitating the person until they can be assimilated."

Goretzki, Thalbourne, and Storm have developed a short form "Spiritual Emergency Scale" Note that Kane and Harris question the validity of the SES scale, suggesting, based on validating data, that the scale actually measures Spiritual Emergence and that a crises of some kind may be the only thing that distinguishes spiritual emergency from spiritual emergence. This is a significant, underlined by the fact that accessing proper support may be the difference between experiencing and emergency, and experiencing a positive spiritual outcome.

Psychosis as spiritual emergency: Goretzi et. al. suggest psychosis may be a form of spiritual emergency that occurs when individuals lack support structures or resilience factors.

A spiritual emergency may be minor, such as short term confusion or immobilization, or it can be major, such as the dramatic Ego Explosion that sometimes attends the contact experiences of individual's raised in the worst toxic environments.

Spiritual problems are prevalent. Estimates in the field of psychology suggest that between 29% and 60% of practitioners have dealt with some form of spiritual pathology (Lukoff, Lu, and Turner, 1998). How much of these may be considered severe spiritual emergencies is unknown. Despite the prevalence, Lukoff and Robert (1998) note general lack of training as an obstacle to the proper therapeutic approach. For those with the ability to prescribe drugs, treatment often amounts to little more than a prescription for chemical suppressors (Soma pills, really), that clumsily suppress thoughts, emotions, and the ability to connect. and “disconnect” from higher consciousness.

Spiritual emergency may lead to psychosis, in the worst cases. Goretzki, Thalbourne, and Storm suggest that spiritual psychosis is more likely when individuals do not have "specific support factors and resilience structure."

Spiritual emergencies are often diagnosed as psychotic by the mainstream psychiatric and medical profession (Whitney, 1998). As (Whitney, 1998) notes, the medical and psychological establishment is woefully unprepared to properly conceptualize and handle spiritual emergencies.

Distinguishing between "psychosis" and spiritual emergency

An individual experiencing spiritual emergency still has touch with reality, can distinguish between inner experiences and the world of "consensus reality," are aware that things are happening because of their own inner processes, is open to guidance and suggestion. Those experiencing psychosis have lost touch with reality, exhibit paranoia, attribute their inner experiences to external sources (bugging devices, beaming thoughts in, paranoid ideation, etc.)

Treatment

Cortright notes that "Spiritual emergency was once dismissed by the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic establishment as merely a form of mental illness, requiring medication and hospitalization in order to end it as soon as possible. This misdiagnosis and mistreatment aborted an otherwise growthful and life-changing process of psycho-spiritual change."

Cortright "At the time SEN was established, spiritual emergencies were almost always seen as a form of malignant, psychotic process. But since then the mental health picture has changed considerably, at least with regard to theory. The Diagnostic and statistical manual of the American Psychiatric Association (hereafter DSM-IV) now includes spiritual emergency in its diagnostic categories under the classification “Spiritual or Religious Problem,” a non-pathological V Code that may be a focus of treatment. However, despite this inclusion in the DSM-IV, there has been little impact on clinical practice in terms of how the mental health field as a whole views and responds to spiritual emergency. "

When properly handled, a spiritual emergency can lead to significant therapeutic and spiritual advance, even spontaneous healing of emotional, psychosomatic disorders and physical disorders. Improperly handled, a spiritual emergency can lead to "permanent" psychological and emotional damage that could take decades to recover from.

"...supportive helpers, who were able to provide knowledge and/or understanding about the sufferers' more spiritual experiences, provided a buffer to psychosis"

Causes

Grof and Grof note spiritual emergencies may be triggered by a disease, an accident, extreme physical exertion, lack of sleep, life and death events (all of which "lower p, childbirth, sex, emotional experiences, hypnosis, intent, and Connection Practice. In this context, spiritual emergency is a "complication" that occurs as a crack in what Grof feels is an "evolutionary process" that normally leads to a more mature and fulfilling way of life.

In LP terms, a spiritual emergency is experienced when a damaged and improperly prepared Physical Unit makes a strong Connection. Damage may include emotion and psychological trauma caused by Toxic Socialization, or cognitive damage caused by the imposition of Old Energy Archetypes into the egoic consciousness of the physical unit.

It is important to note that crown activation itself is not the direct cause of a spiritual emergency. In a healthy and prepared Physical Unit, contact with the Fabric of Consciousness is always a positive, uplifting, and empowering experience.

Major spiritual emergencies are more likely to occur when:

the individual is currently in a toxic environment

the individual is a victim of Toxic Socialization

the individual's Archetypes are Old Energy Archetypes. That is, the individual has been indoctrinated with Old Energy Archetypes

the individual has had traumatic encounters with authority.

Another way to conceive of this is spiritual emergencies are more likely to occur when an individual's life is characterized by Wrong Action, Wrong Thought, and Wrong Environment

Consequences

From frazzled to total destruction of the Bodily Ego

inability to connect

In the case a physical unit with damaged psychological structures, spiritual emergencies may be precipitated when, as a result of significant psychological trauma, the bodily ego of the physical unit is weak or damaged. In such cases, the weakened ego may be unable to maintain itself against even slight contact with The Fabric. In such cases, egoic boundaries may collapse leading to severe psychological difficulty (i.e., identity problems, ideational difficulties and confusions, etc.)

In the case of an erroneous set, accidental or induced activation of the crown may lead, for example, to dramatic “eye opening” experiences and perceptions of the realities of this earth which may be profoundly disjunctive of the units previous psychological set. This disjuncture may lead to psychological emergency, although this is not a given. Rather, it is the inability of the individual to find a proper reference point that leads to psychological disturbance. Attaining a proper reference point in the face of dramatically expanded perceptions may require sensitive and spiritually sophisticated therapeutic interventions. In all cases of spiritual emergency, proper treatment can mean the difference between a successful and salutatory resolution to the emergency or ongoing trauma, neurosis, and even psychosis.

The ego can (a) blow up like the proverbial pufferfish, (b) deflate like a pin stuck balloon, or even (c) become disordered and schizophrenic

The 2000 issue of DSM-IV has a category, V62.8 Religious or Spiritual Problem which covers “distressing experiences that involve loss or questioning of faith, problems associated with conversion to a new faith, or questioning of spiritual values that may no necessarily be related to an organized church or religious institution. (p. 741). This is a conflation and abstraction of Lukoff and Turner’s (1998) suggestion for two distinct categories—Psychoreligious problem and Psychospiritual problem. The reader is referred to Lukoff, Francis and Robert (1998) for additional explanation.

The literature on spiritual emergencies is sparse and undeveloped. In addition, there is a general lack of theoretical grounding in the literature and no good understanding of transpersonal realities. Some individuals see spiritual emergency as a problem of development, evolution, higher personality integration, or even as the manifestation of some kind of “dark night” of the soul (Assagioli, 1978).

“…when the clear light beats upon them, so the soul, by reason of its impurity, suffers exceedingly when the Divine Light really shines upon it. And when the rays of this pure Light shine upon the soul in order to expel impurities, the soul perceives itself to be so unclean and miserable that it seems as if god had set Himself against it and itself were set against God.” (St. John of the Cross quoted in Assagioli, 1989: 40).

In some cases, spiritual emergency may usefully be conceptualized as a “crises of repression.” A formerly un-receptive physical unit may suddenly become receptive to consciousness if ego repression and blockages are suddenly subverted. In cases where psychological pathology or ideational disjuncture exist, a spiritual emergency may result.

Footnotes

References