help me understand something

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if someone were to claim that god or the devil or angels spoke to them to do something, that person would be committed. Why? I mean, if people have faith in such things like god, the devil and angels and pray to them regularly, wouldn't them speaking to selected individuals be accepted among religious circles?

Ignoring converse with demons, which is something else: In actual serious Christian circles, historically there have been three prime responses - assuming the reporter and the report are not clearly fake or probably mad, and assuming the content is not theologically suspect:

take notes on what may be a genuine revelation

investigate probable sources

have the person with the vision keep quiet and don't make a big deal.

Actually that is not grounds for commitment. Behaving in a way that is either self-harming or harming to others could result in commitment or arrest. But claiming that one heard from God in and of itself is not in breach of any law nor does it constitute danger to the public. Most likely folks would think such a claim is crazy and it would be dismissed as being crazy.

ruveyn

alright, maybe commitment is too severe. If someone told you god, angels or the devil was speaking to them, wouldn't you think they were a little nuts?

I communicate with angels and demons, or I believe I do. I used to think that it was all just me, but after coming to believe that they are entities outside myself, I've become more adjusted to internal strife. Now when I am overcome with emotion or I have a bad thought, I ascribe it to demonic forces and pray and then it vanishes. Jesus was very open about his experiences with angels and demons and God. He is not considered crazy by most, but people like myself have to keep quiet about this or else we are told we are crazy.

I was nearly officially diagnosed with schizophrenia a few years ago. It was devastating to hear this from the psychiatrist, and I was on antipsychotics for a while. He later had me scheduled for an evalution to rule out temporal lobe epilepsy. I never finished with the tests so that is all inconclusive. I do have touch synaestesia which means I am highly empathetic and that makes the autism confusing. Heck...who knows. Maybe I am just f****d up in the head. Nobody agrees with what is wrong with me.

Some say I am normal, one said he suspected schizophrenia or TLE, one said depression psychosis. 4 of the doctors I saw said I was normal. I didn't completely agree. Hearing tones and seeing lights, feeling demons and having fantasies of other realms, talking to angels and chanelling spirits...It's not normal. Synchronicities, dreams, visions that seem to induce psychic experiences or delusional beliefs...all of that happened and nobody can explain it.

In the olden day at my undergraduate institute of higher socialization, you had to do a psycvh questionnaire on signing on.

I have no idea if they still do it - obviously it never kept the crazies out.

But I remember one question vividly:

Answer True or False : I am controlled by a secret radio from God

All these many years, I have wondered - would anybody be so nuts as to answer True and not be joking?

God did not let me answer True, and anyway it was not a radio, it was a telepathic louse hidden on my scalp.

It's not being crazy that's bad; it's being the wrong kind of crazy.

I would say they are self deluded, but it is not clear that they are an immediate danger to themselves or to me.

ruveyn

The discussion here seems quite odd to me. The general consensus is that there is something mentally not quite right with somebody claiming contact with God or spirits but when I voice my opinion that people who believe in God and spirits need mental help there is a general feeling I am being insulting.

Evangelist ministers claim that all the time and don't get committed. It's just a normal part of the sermon.

In any case, you have to be a danger to yourself or others to get committed.

Depends on the context, and whether this was an ongoing thing.

If they had an ongoing situation with this, then yes, I would find myself a bit nervous with them. I wouldn't necessarily think they are nuts, as auditory hallucinations are experienced by 15% of the population, but... these things are hard to deal with.

Also, if the context of hearing voices is one of stress, fatigue, being under the influence, or something else, I wouldn't think as much about it.

So when you say your prayers at dinnertime or bedtime, you don't think you might be talking to yourself?

There is really nothing funny there, yet I still had to chuckle.

I once had a daily-for-a-week series of those "telepathic louse hidden on my scalp" experiences, but making mention of that here or anywhere else is certainly not the same as making any "claim that god or the devil or angels spoke to them to do something" (OP).

Bottom line? As has already been mentioned: People do not get locked up for merely *being* crazy (if they even truly are) -- people only get locked up for *acting* in ways that at times might even only potentially seem to threaten the life, liberty or property ownership of others.

Nevertheless, and as evidenced in the "controlled by a secret radio" question, there certainly is an ever-present bias or presumption "stacking the deck" against any rational consideration of reports of supernatural communication ... and there is where some wisdom and discernment are truly needed by people who even merely just think they are "hearing from 'God'" or whatever. Interestingly though, few people ever have much trouble believing "hearing from demons" is actually more possible and even real.

It may possibly be a positive thing - as a curb on random flights of craziness - that humanity in general and science in particular is so inclined to discard as impossible any data that do not fit the current paradigm.

Makes it very difficult for those who investigate seriously the fringe areas. You get the loonies and the serious students of what is NOW not understood, and the main assimilate them one to the other,

Research on the telepathic and similar phenomena - however careful and replicated - is a long way from getting in.

The best answer I could come up with is that it is disintegration. Here is a book that describes the fragmenting of the ego. http://books.google.com/books?id=C4sf_X ... ski&f=true

The gist of it is that some people have an overexcitable and sensitive nature. This describes me so I identify with it. The sensory bombardment is probably why I got pinned with autism years ago. I think it our sensory system is complex and while they try hard to label disorders, it lacks an accurate measure.

Are there any other sensitive empaths here? I know empathy is not considered to be autistic, but because I over analyze feelings I was told that this kind of obsessive thinking about feelings is not normal. However, after reading about Dobrowski's theory it makes sense. It's too bad no psychologist that I've spoken to had any knowledge of this.

As a rule if you claim that you speak to God (prayer) you're considered sane, but if you claim that God speaks to YOU you're considered a nutjob, but it all depends on context and how you say it etc. People can claim that god spoke to them without causing shock even today.

Five hundred years ago the Pope would ex-communicate the birds of a locale to punish them for causing famine.

Sanity is having the same delusions as your neighbors.