Suzanne Segal
Encyclopedia
Suzanne Segal was a New Age
writer and teacher about spiritual enlightenment, known for her sudden experience of depersonalization
which she wrote about in her book Collision With the Infinite: A Life Beyond the Personal Self.
In addition to gaining note in the spiritual community, Segal became a model case of the dissociative condition known as depersonalization disorder
(DPD). Along her journey some therapists formally diagnosed her with DPD, while others did not have clear explanations. The books Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization Disorder and the Loss of the Self and Stranger to My Self: Inside Depersonalization; the Hidden Epidemic profiled Segal's experience and writing.
Two years after the shift into a sense of unity, Segal relapsed into the uncomfortable state of constant anxiety she had first experienced. At this point she returned to exploring psychological themes from her childhood which included recovered memories of abuse and persistent migraines. Shortly thereafter, in 1997, Segal's health began rapidly deteriorating, and she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. She died two months later that year, leaving many questions about the root cause of her experience unanswered.
and found the experience similarly awakening, but left the organization when she began to dislike the rigidity of the format. Segal moved to California and received a degree in English from the UC Berkeley
. She then moved to Paris, where she had a daughter, and where her marked depersonalization experience began. In the fall of 1986 she enrolled in the John F. Kennedy University
in their clinical psychology masters program transferring to the Wright Institute
's PhD program in the fall of 1987. She completed her dissertation and received her doctorate in Psychology in 1991.
Segal described this first period of her experience as "witnessing", since she was aware of herself but also critically detached from it. This was tremendously unpleasant for her, full of anxiety and fear:
Having a background in meditation
, Segal questioned whether this break could be the first step in a positive journey but dismissed it:
In the years after her break Segal continued to function with seeming normalcy, completing a doctorate in psychology at the Wright Institute
. She continued to feel completely depersonalized, literally as if her own name did not refer to anyone. She described it as if her "...body, mind, speech, thoughts, and emotions were all empty; they had no ownership, no person behind them. I was utterly bereft of all my previous notions of reality".
Segal's state of mind terrified her, and she sought advice from California's Buddhist
community. Buddhism intentionally cultivates loss of ego and a sense of emptiness and oneness, and spiritual teachers tried to help Segal see her condition positively. Several even congratulated her: "This is a wonderful experience. It has to stay eternally with you. This is perfect freedom. You have become (moksha) of the realized sages," read one letter she received.
Twelve years after her initial break, Segal dramatically entered another phase of her experience, centered around a sense of unity of perception between her self and the world:
writers and publications. Collisions was reviewed by Yoga Journal
magazine in 1997, the reviewer writing, "This frank and engaging account is a fascinating view of the unfolding of a realization without a spiritual practice or intention."
The 2004 book The Biology of Transcendence tried to characterize Segal's state of mind during her second phrase of union: "[It was] fusion with 'the vastness' and her discovery that the vastness perceived its universe through her own sensory system, which was at that point the sensory system of the vastness itself...[she] essentially perceived the universe perceiving itself, but without her, that perception did not exist."
A 2008 graduate dissertation by Arvin Paul used Segal's experience as an example of "Shift/s in the Locus of Identity Upon Initial Awakening", "a shift from the conventional sense of self to the uninvolved witness, and/or allpervasive presence, and/or boundless spaciousness, and/or pure awareness, and/or Being, and/or emptiness/void, and/or the Self, and/or the simple recognition of nonseparateness." Paul quotes Segal:
Segal was interviewed for the chapter devoted to her in the 2003 book The Awakening West by Lynn Marie Lumiere and John Lumiere-Wins.
, stating "I don't know what else it could be but symptoms of depersonalization
". Segal went on to read up on depersonalization, derealization
, and dissociation
, finding some related to her experience but none were a perfect fit and they ultimately failed to capture sensation of lacking a self in conjunction with normal, or even improved functioning.
Segal's story was profiled in the 2006 book Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization Disorder and the Loss of the Self by Daphne Simeon and Jeffrey Abugel. It was suggested for a book review in The Journal of the American Psychological Association
that rather than representing depersonalization, Segal's experiences may represent a dissociative disorder.
The 2011 book Stranger to My Self: Inside Depersonalization; the Hidden Epidemic by Jeffrey Abugel contextualized Segal's experience thusly: "Sometimes, however, even a person well-versed in eastern philosophy may find themselves depersonalized in a way that seems to be anything but part of the road to enlightenment." Stranger noted that Segal's reportedly sudden depersonalization experience was part of a longer—possibly compulsive—history of searching for and at times experiencing that phenomenon:
Yet for Segal, as she became older the episodes became much more prominent rather than less. Segal's autobiography was completed in 1996 and she had begun giving presentations and leading and weekly dialogues as well as a "training group" for therapists. By late spring Segal began having even more intense experiences in which, "the vastness became even vaster to itself." The experiences entranced her but became increasingly disruptive. By the end of the summer she was exhausted, and doctors encouraged her to rest. Around the same time, she noticed that the fear from years before had returned.
Suzanne spent that fall at her home in Stinson Beach, California. During this period she recovered memories of childhood abuse. Spiritual teacher Stephan Bodian, who counseled Segal during that time wrote, "They seemed to explain some of the fear she had experienced during the 10 lonely years of being no one before realizing that she was everything. When I suggested that perhaps the fear originated from a part of herself that was split off or dissociated from conscious awareness, she immediately agreed."
Stranger documented this period as a retreat from the earlier spiritual themes that had defined her experience. "As a psychologist, she was well tutored in a possible ramification of childhood abuse--dissociation. Once again, Segal began to perceive things differently, this time from the psychological viewpoint rather than that of transcendent spirituality."
or radiation
.
On March 10 she married her fiancé Steve Kruszynski. After the wedding they traveled to Oklahoma to seek out alternative treatments, but Segal's debilitation returned during the trip and they had to return home, entering a coma several days later.
She died on the morning of Tuesday, April 1. Bodian described her funeral:
Members of the spiritual and psychological community went on to debate the significance of her illness, whether it had been the cause of her experience—and whether that mattered. In the afterword to the 1998 edition of Collisions, Bodian gave his personal opinion, "Those of us who were close to Suzanne never doubted the depth or the authenticity of her realization."
Terms related to meditation and enlightenment
Spiritual teachers
Self and pscyhology
Psychological symptoms and disorders
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
writer and teacher about spiritual enlightenment, known for her sudden experience of depersonalization
Depersonalization
Depersonalization is an anomaly of the mechanism by which an individual has self-awareness. It is a feeling of watching oneself act, while having no control over a situation. Sufferers feel they have changed, and the world has become less real, vague, dreamlike, or lacking in significance...
which she wrote about in her book Collision With the Infinite: A Life Beyond the Personal Self.
In addition to gaining note in the spiritual community, Segal became a model case of the dissociative condition known as depersonalization disorder
Depersonalization disorder
Depersonalization disorder is a dissociative disorder in which the sufferer is affected by persistent or recurrent feelings of depersonalization and/or derealization. Diagnostic criteria include persistent or recurrent experiences of feeling detached from one's mental processes or body...
(DPD). Along her journey some therapists formally diagnosed her with DPD, while others did not have clear explanations. The books Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization Disorder and the Loss of the Self and Stranger to My Self: Inside Depersonalization; the Hidden Epidemic profiled Segal's experience and writing.
Two years after the shift into a sense of unity, Segal relapsed into the uncomfortable state of constant anxiety she had first experienced. At this point she returned to exploring psychological themes from her childhood which included recovered memories of abuse and persistent migraines. Shortly thereafter, in 1997, Segal's health began rapidly deteriorating, and she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. She died two months later that year, leaving many questions about the root cause of her experience unanswered.
Early life
Segal's childhood was filled with attempts to evoke a state of psychological detachment from her identity. She experienced moments which she described as "vastness" after repeating her name as a mantra. She started studying Transcendental MeditationTranscendental Meditation
Transcendental Meditation refers to the Transcendental Meditation technique, a specific form of mantra meditation, and to the Transcendental Meditation movement, a spiritual movement...
and found the experience similarly awakening, but left the organization when she began to dislike the rigidity of the format. Segal moved to California and received a degree in English from the UC Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. She then moved to Paris, where she had a daughter, and where her marked depersonalization experience began. In the fall of 1986 she enrolled in the John F. Kennedy University
John F. Kennedy University
John F. Kennedy University is a nonprofit, private university located in Pleasant Hill, California, with satellite campuses in Campbell, Berkeley, and Costa Mesa. It was founded in 1964 to focus on providing continuing opportunities for non-traditional higher education. Enrollment is approximately...
in their clinical psychology masters program transferring to the Wright Institute
Wright Institute
The Wright Institute is a Clinical Psychology Graduate School located in Berkeley, California.-Founding:The Institute was founded by Nevitt Sanford in 1968 when he left Stanford...
's PhD program in the fall of 1987. She completed her dissertation and received her doctorate in Psychology in 1991.
Dissociative experience
One day in 1982, while boarding a bus in Paris, the 27 year old Segal experienced a sudden shift in her consciousness. She described the experience in her book, Collisions With the Infinite:"I lifted my right foot to step up into the bus and collided head-on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite, blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges, splitting me in two. In the gaping space that appeared, what I had previously called 'me' was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head. 'I' was now behind my body looking out at the world without using the body's eyes."
Segal described this first period of her experience as "witnessing", since she was aware of herself but also critically detached from it. This was tremendously unpleasant for her, full of anxiety and fear:
The moment the eyes opened the next morning, the mind exploded in worry. Is this insanity? Pscyhosis? Schizophrenia? Is this what people call a nervous breakdown? Depression? What happened? And would it ever stop? ...The mind was in agony as it tried valiantly to make sense of something it could never comprehend, and the body responded to the anguish of the mind by locking itself into survival mode, adrenaline pumping, senses fine-tuned, finding and responding to the threat of annihilation in every moment."
Having a background in meditation
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
, Segal questioned whether this break could be the first step in a positive journey but dismissed it:
"The thought did arise that perhaps this experience of witnessing was the state of Cosmic Consciousness Maharishi had described long before as the first stage of awakened awareness. But the mind instantly discarded this possibility because it seemed impossible that the hell realm I was inhabiting could have anything to do with Cosmic Consciousness."
In the years after her break Segal continued to function with seeming normalcy, completing a doctorate in psychology at the Wright Institute
Wright Institute
The Wright Institute is a Clinical Psychology Graduate School located in Berkeley, California.-Founding:The Institute was founded by Nevitt Sanford in 1968 when he left Stanford...
. She continued to feel completely depersonalized, literally as if her own name did not refer to anyone. She described it as if her "...body, mind, speech, thoughts, and emotions were all empty; they had no ownership, no person behind them. I was utterly bereft of all my previous notions of reality".
Segal's state of mind terrified her, and she sought advice from California's Buddhist
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
community. Buddhism intentionally cultivates loss of ego and a sense of emptiness and oneness, and spiritual teachers tried to help Segal see her condition positively. Several even congratulated her: "This is a wonderful experience. It has to stay eternally with you. This is perfect freedom. You have become (moksha) of the realized sages," read one letter she received.
Twelve years after her initial break, Segal dramatically entered another phase of her experience, centered around a sense of unity of perception between her self and the world:
"In the midst of a particularly eventful week, I was driving north to meet some friends when I suddenly became aware that I was driving through myself. For years there had been no self at all, yet here on this road everything was myself, and I was driving through me to arrive where I already was. In essence, I was going nowhere because I was everywhere already. The infinite emptiness I knew myself to be was no apparent as the infinite substance of everything I saw."This sense of cognitive and spiritual oneness remained with Segal for two years, up through the publishing of Collisions in 1996.
Analysis
Segal's story also received attention by many New AgeNew Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
writers and publications. Collisions was reviewed by Yoga Journal
Yoga Journal
Yoga Journal is an American based media company that publishes a magazine, a website, DVDs, and puts on conferences all devoted to yoga, food and nutrition, fitness, wellness, and fashion and beauty.-Beginnings and Growth:...
magazine in 1997, the reviewer writing, "This frank and engaging account is a fascinating view of the unfolding of a realization without a spiritual practice or intention."
The 2004 book The Biology of Transcendence tried to characterize Segal's state of mind during her second phrase of union: "[It was] fusion with 'the vastness' and her discovery that the vastness perceived its universe through her own sensory system, which was at that point the sensory system of the vastness itself...[she] essentially perceived the universe perceiving itself, but without her, that perception did not exist."
A 2008 graduate dissertation by Arvin Paul used Segal's experience as an example of "Shift/s in the Locus of Identity Upon Initial Awakening", "a shift from the conventional sense of self to the uninvolved witness, and/or allpervasive presence, and/or boundless spaciousness, and/or pure awareness, and/or Being, and/or emptiness/void, and/or the Self, and/or the simple recognition of nonseparateness." Paul quotes Segal:
"That recognition doesn’t change who you really are, ever. You have always been That. And yes, there is a way that the Vastness Itself can perceive Itself so directly, without any fogging or shadowing or taking anything else to be who you are. I guess you could call it a waking up, but what seems most important to convey is that this is who everyone is all the time whether the direct awareness of it is there or not."
Segal was interviewed for the chapter devoted to her in the 2003 book The Awakening West by Lynn Marie Lumiere and John Lumiere-Wins.
Segal's own teaching
After Segal's second shift she began sharing her insights with the public and with a group of psychologists in a "training group". She says, " I started training groups for therapists because I want this to be conveyed to those who are in the business of trying to help end suffering". She wants people to see "things to be what they are" instead of pathologizing "a broad range of human experience".Experience with depersonalization disorder
After her initial break, Segal sought to determine what had happened to her and consulted various psychologists and psychiatrists. Though some had no clear explanation for the experience, one labelled it depersonalization disorderDepersonalization disorder
Depersonalization disorder is a dissociative disorder in which the sufferer is affected by persistent or recurrent feelings of depersonalization and/or derealization. Diagnostic criteria include persistent or recurrent experiences of feeling detached from one's mental processes or body...
, stating "I don't know what else it could be but symptoms of depersonalization
Depersonalization
Depersonalization is an anomaly of the mechanism by which an individual has self-awareness. It is a feeling of watching oneself act, while having no control over a situation. Sufferers feel they have changed, and the world has become less real, vague, dreamlike, or lacking in significance...
". Segal went on to read up on depersonalization, derealization
Derealization
Derealization is an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems unreal. Other symptoms include feeling as though one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional coloring and depth. It is a dissociative symptom of many conditions, such as psychiatric and...
, and dissociation
Dissociation
Dissociation is an altered state of consciousness characterized by partial or complete disruption of the normal integration of a person’s normal conscious or psychological functioning. Dissociation is most commonly experienced as a subjective perception of one's consciousness being detached from...
, finding some related to her experience but none were a perfect fit and they ultimately failed to capture sensation of lacking a self in conjunction with normal, or even improved functioning.
Segal's story was profiled in the 2006 book Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization Disorder and the Loss of the Self by Daphne Simeon and Jeffrey Abugel. It was suggested for a book review in The Journal of the American Psychological Association
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
that rather than representing depersonalization, Segal's experiences may represent a dissociative disorder.
The 2011 book Stranger to My Self: Inside Depersonalization; the Hidden Epidemic by Jeffrey Abugel contextualized Segal's experience thusly: "Sometimes, however, even a person well-versed in eastern philosophy may find themselves depersonalized in a way that seems to be anything but part of the road to enlightenment." Stranger noted that Segal's reportedly sudden depersonalization experience was part of a longer—possibly compulsive—history of searching for and at times experiencing that phenomenon:
As a young girl, Segal would sometimes repeat her own name in her head over and over. Eventually, "a threshold was crossed and the identity, as that name, broke like a ship released suddenly from its mooring to float untethered on the ocean waves...Vastness appeared...There was no person to whom that name referred, no identity as that name. No one." Then came fear, eventually followed by a return to normalcy. But the compulsion to do the same thing once again always returned. Many people with DPD have cited similar early life incidents. They may involve repeating words until they lose their meaning, or looking intently in the mirror until an overwhelming sense of strangeness emerges. Usually these episodes pass, are forgotten, and remain in the realm of youthful mind games.
Yet for Segal, as she became older the episodes became much more prominent rather than less. Segal's autobiography was completed in 1996 and she had begun giving presentations and leading and weekly dialogues as well as a "training group" for therapists. By late spring Segal began having even more intense experiences in which, "the vastness became even vaster to itself." The experiences entranced her but became increasingly disruptive. By the end of the summer she was exhausted, and doctors encouraged her to rest. Around the same time, she noticed that the fear from years before had returned.
Suzanne spent that fall at her home in Stinson Beach, California. During this period she recovered memories of childhood abuse. Spiritual teacher Stephan Bodian, who counseled Segal during that time wrote, "They seemed to explain some of the fear she had experienced during the 10 lonely years of being no one before realizing that she was everything. When I suggested that perhaps the fear originated from a part of herself that was split off or dissociated from conscious awareness, she immediately agreed."
Stranger documented this period as a retreat from the earlier spiritual themes that had defined her experience. "As a psychologist, she was well tutored in a possible ramification of childhood abuse--dissociation. Once again, Segal began to perceive things differently, this time from the psychological viewpoint rather than that of transcendent spirituality."
Death
Segal did not have time to discover what the source of her dramatic shifts in perception had been. By February 1997, at the age of 42, her physical and mental capabilities began to quickly decline. She entered the hospital on February 27, and doctors discovered a malignant brain tumor, having surgery but refusing chemotherapyChemotherapy
Chemotherapy is the treatment of cancer with an antineoplastic drug or with a combination of such drugs into a standardized treatment regimen....
or radiation
Radiation therapy
Radiation therapy , radiation oncology, or radiotherapy , sometimes abbreviated to XRT or DXT, is the medical use of ionizing radiation, generally as part of cancer treatment to control malignant cells.Radiation therapy is commonly applied to the cancerous tumor because of its ability to control...
.
On March 10 she married her fiancé Steve Kruszynski. After the wedding they traveled to Oklahoma to seek out alternative treatments, but Segal's debilitation returned during the trip and they had to return home, entering a coma several days later.
She died on the morning of Tuesday, April 1. Bodian described her funeral:
Following a Tibetan custom, the body was wrapped in a cloth, surrounded by flowers, and left untouched for three days. On the third day we sat with her body as a local rabbi performed a traditional Jewish ceremony at her mother's request.
The following Saturday, nearly 100 people gathered to celebrate her life, appreciate her gifts to us, and share our grief. At sunset, her husband, Steve, her fourteen-year-old daughter, Arielle, and her brother Bob waded out into the cold spring surf and scattered her ashes into the sky.
Members of the spiritual and psychological community went on to debate the significance of her illness, whether it had been the cause of her experience—and whether that mattered. In the afterword to the 1998 edition of Collisions, Bodian gave his personal opinion, "Those of us who were close to Suzanne never doubted the depth or the authenticity of her realization."
See also
Spiritual paths- BuddhismBuddhismBuddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
- HinduismHinduismHinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
- Transcendental MeditationTranscendental MeditationTranscendental Meditation refers to the Transcendental Meditation technique, a specific form of mantra meditation, and to the Transcendental Meditation movement, a spiritual movement...
- MeditationMeditationMeditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
- Advaita VedantaAdvaita VedantaAdvaita Vedanta is considered to be the most influential and most dominant sub-school of the Vedānta school of Hindu philosophy. Other major sub-schools of Vedānta are Dvaita and ; while the minor ones include Suddhadvaita, Dvaitadvaita and Achintya Bhedabheda...
(Hindu philosophy) - Enlightenment (Buddhism)
Terms related to meditation and enlightenment
- Non-dualism
- Dhyāna in BuddhismDhyāna in BuddhismDhyāna in Sanskrit or jhāna in Pāli can refer to either meditation or meditative states. Equivalent terms are "Chán" in modern Chinese, "Zen" in Japanese, "Seon" in Korean, "Thien" in Vietnamese, and "Samten" in Tibetan....
(meditation) - Dhyana in HinduismDhyana in HinduismAccording to the Hindu Yoga Sutra, written by Patanjali, dhyana is one of the eight limbs of Yoga, ....
(meditation) - AnattaAnattaIn Buddhism, anattā or anātman refers to the notion of "not-self." In the early texts, the Buddha commonly uses the word in the context of teaching that all things perceived by the senses are not really "I" or "mine," and for this reason one should not cling to them.In the same vein, the Pali...
(no-self) - ShunyataShunyataŚūnyatā, शून्यता , Suññatā , stong-pa nyid , Kòng/Kū, 空 , Gong-seong, 공성 , qoγusun is frequently translated into English as emptiness...
(emptiness) - Skandhas (personality which remain after the loss of ego)
- GnosisGnosisGnosis is the common Greek noun for knowledge . In the context of the English language gnosis generally refers to the word's meaning within the spheres of Christian mysticism, Mystery religions and Gnosticism where it signifies 'spiritual knowledge' in the sense of mystical enlightenment.-Related...
(Greek term for spiritual knowing) - KenosisKenosisIn Christian theology, Kenosis In Christian theology, Kenosis In Christian theology, Kenosis (from the Greek word for emptiness (kénōsis) is the 'self-emptying' of one's own will and becoming entirely receptive to God's divine will....
(Greek term for emptiness) - NirvanaNirvanaNirvāṇa ; ) is a central concept in Indian religions. In sramanic thought, it is the state of being free from suffering. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the Supreme being through moksha...
(Buddhist term for enlightenment) - MokshaMokshaWithin Indian religions, moksha or mukti , literally "release" , is the liberation from samsara and the concomitant suffering involved in being subject to the cycle of repeated death and reincarnation or rebirth.-Origins:It is highly probable that the concept of moksha was first developed in...
(Hindu term for enlightenment)
Spiritual teachers
- Ramana Maharishi
- Papaji
- GangajiGangajiGangaji is an American born spiritual teacher and author. She currently lives in Ashland, Oregon with her husband, fellow spiritual teacher Eli Jaxon-Bear.-Early life:...
- Jean KleinJean Klein (spiritual teacher)Jean Klein was a French author, spiritual teacher and philosopher of Advaita . Several of his disciples went on to become spiritual teachers themselves, including Eric Baret, Francis Lucille, Jean-Marc Mantel, Joan Ruvinsky, Richard Miller and David Ciussi...
- Andrew Cohen
- Christopher TitmussChristopher TitmussChristopher Titmuss, is a former Theravada Buddhist monk, an Insight Meditation meditation instructor and an author of books on Dharma who resides in Totnes, Devon, United Kingdom. He was a journalist before becoming a monk, spending six years in Thailand and India from 1970 to 1976...
- Reb AndersonReb AndersonTenshin Zenki Reb Anderson , is a Zen teacher and lineage holder in the Sōtō Zen tradition of Shunryu Suzuki. He is a Senior Dharma teacher at the San Francisco Zen Center and at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin County, California, where he lives...
Self and pscyhology
- Ego (Freudian psychology)
- Self (philosophy)Self (philosophy)The philosophy of self defines the essential qualities that make one person distinct from all others. There have been numerous approaches to defining these qualities. The self is the idea of a unified being which is the source of consciousness. Moreover, this self is the agent responsible for the...
- Self (spirituality)Self (spirituality)Religious views on the self vary widely. The self is a complex and core subject in many forms of spirituality. Two types of self are commonly considered - the self that is the ego, also called the learned, superficial self of mind and body, "false self", an egoic creation, and the Self which is...
- Ego (spirituality)Ego (spirituality)In spirituality, and especially nondual, mystical and eastern meditative traditions, individual existence is often described as a kind of illusion. This "sense of doership" or sense of individual existence is that part which believes it is the human being, and believes it must fight for itself in...
- Ego deathEgo DeathEgo death is an experience that reveals the illusory aspect of the ego, sometimes undergone by mystics, shamans, monks, psychologists, and others interested in exploring the depths of the mind....
- Out of body experience
- Mystical psychosisMystical psychosisMystical psychosis is a term coined by Arthur J. Deikman in the early 1970’s to characterize first-person accounts of psychotic experiences that are strikingly similar to reports of mystical experiences...
- Altered state of consciousnessAltered state of consciousnessAn altered state of consciousness , also named altered state of mind, is any condition which is significantly different from a normal waking beta wave state. The expression was used as early as 1966 by Arnold M. Ludwig and brought into common usage from 1969 by Charles Tart: it describes induced...
Psychological symptoms and disorders
- DepersonalizationDepersonalizationDepersonalization is an anomaly of the mechanism by which an individual has self-awareness. It is a feeling of watching oneself act, while having no control over a situation. Sufferers feel they have changed, and the world has become less real, vague, dreamlike, or lacking in significance...
- DerealizationDerealizationDerealization is an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems unreal. Other symptoms include feeling as though one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional coloring and depth. It is a dissociative symptom of many conditions, such as psychiatric and...
- Depersonalization disorderDepersonalization disorderDepersonalization disorder is a dissociative disorder in which the sufferer is affected by persistent or recurrent feelings of depersonalization and/or derealization. Diagnostic criteria include persistent or recurrent experiences of feeling detached from one's mental processes or body...
- Dissociation (psychology)
- Dissociative disorder
External links
- Interview at spiritualteachers.org