Fantasy, Fact and Logic: Schizophrenia and Mysticism

This book is a synthesis of the mental sickness, known medically as schizophrenia or dementia praecox, but the lay populace knows it as oppression, overshadowing and possession. It traces back to the time when the author got involved with spiritualism, suffered his first mental breakdown, and to his second involvement with the spirits to suffer another mental breakdown. It explains the mental metamorphosis that had taken place in his mind, the emotional upheaval experienced, the fears, hallucinations, and the physical sicknesses suffered, especially those of hysteric origin. It also explains how he battled with such forces to retain his sanity. In the second part of the book the author explains the stages of development of schizophrenia, the types of dreams he had during that period of three over years when he suffered the psychotic episodes, the significances and interpretation of dreams, the origin of fear and how to overcome it, and also how to avoid getting involved with the spirits, the root cause of schizophrenic psychosis. The last part of the book explains what are altered consciousness, autosuggestion, and manual suggestion, with explanations and descriptions on how the various religious establishments make use of such methods to invoke the spirits from the world beyond, the validity of such methods, and the extent religions play in causing mental disorders. It also describes the various methods used by religious organizations to cause that state of altered consciousness, producing phenomena like state of trance, automatic writing, speaking in tongues and other such phenomena like possession, hysteria, and entrancement.