Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Update 11B
Trauma & Therapy
Trauma & Therapy
The Trauma of Therapy:
Clinical Death & Rebirth
Clinical Death & Rebirth
Compiled & Narrated
by Anthony Servante
Stairway to Heaven or Synaptic Misfiring?
Introduction:
Before we get started here, let's review a few terms that will be important for the development of ideas in this article. The first is "organic death". Simply, this is a cessation of all bodily functions to a point where the body can no longer be resuscitated or brought back to life. "Clinical death" means, according to the medical dictionary of the term, "death as judged by the medical observation of cessation of vital functions. It is typically identified with the cessation of heartbeat and respiration, though modern resuscitation methods and life-support systems have required the introduction of the alternative concept of brain death". Note that the "brain" activity defines the final step which qualifies the body as living or dead. Technically the body can be dead, but as long as there's brain activity, the body can be clinically dead but the vital organ functions are being performed by machines. In some instances, the machines can be disconnected by order of the family, but it is possible the body will continue to function at the basic level of "activity" and therefore still be alive, even though the body will never gain a full or normal life. The line between clinical death and minimal functional life activity is very thin, nearly transparent.
Our concern here is trauma and how a person who actually gains a full and normal life after clinical death readjusts to his new life or, as many would say, "rebirth". For some, there is therapy to help those who died on the operating table and experienced the lowest levels of brain activity. For them, they must learn to readjust to living again after experiencing a perceived death. Though it is very rare for people to recover from organic death, recovering from clinical death is common, but for the patient on the operating table, in the auto accident, or choking on a bone in a restaurant, their near-death experience can be as real as organic death, and therefore a traumatic event requiring therapy. And as we have seen, sometimes such patients turn to religion more readily than therapy.
But not all of them.
Trauma or Inspiration?
When I was thirteen years old, I had surgery on a muscle tear from a bicycle accident. I overheard the doctor who examined me tell my dad that my scrapes and cuts were superficial but that there was a tear to the leg muscle. I remember my dad asking the doctor if I could wear a strap around the leg to hold the muscle together. The doctor said, No, he needs surgery. The muscle will continue to tear as the boy plays and runs till even walking will affect the use of the leg. My dad agreed, and surgery was scheduled.
I was in the waiting room outside the doctor's office; the door was open. My dad walked out and told me that it's time to go home. When I got to my feet, my knees buckled. My dad noticed but kept walking toward the parking lot. The nurse got me a wheelchair and pushed me out to the parking lot. Needless to say, I was scared shitless by the news. The word "surgery" around my aunts and uncles on my mom's side of the family was always bad news. I didn't think scared thoughts, but my knees buckled anyway. I was scared at a subconscious level. Not from the prospect of going under the knife, as they say, but from the unknown factor that awaited me after the surgery. Some of my aunts and uncles didn't survive being cut open.
I spent the night in the hospital; surgery was scheduled for four in the morning. I was drowsy as I was prepped. The anesthesiologist covered my nose and mouth with a plastic mask and told me to count back from 100 to zero. I don't remember reaching a count less than 90. What I do remember has stayed with me for the rest of my life and shaped the person I would grow to become.
I left my body and floated above the surgeon, who leaned over my small form, covering my view of my open leg tissue, attending nurses, who handed shiny instruments to the surgeon and checked beeping panels and colored lights on consoles, and the anesthesiologist, who kept an eye on the panel that seemed to be measuring my breath and brain activity, judging by the green spikes and straight lines. They moved to and fro, and I finally got a look at myself. I could barely make out my face beneath the mask. I floated forward a bit but still couldn't see my leg. There was a white sheet with a square hole where the doctor's hands were busy with the shiny instruments. Strange, I thought, but where was all the blood, like in the movies; where was the nurse dabbing the sweat from the doctor's brow? Then I decided to fly somewhere more interesting.
I didn't get far. I know because I have no memory of a journey. My eyes opened, and I was in bed in the hospital. The overhead TV was on. The local evening, maybe morning, news was on. Channel Five. Where all the monster movies fill in the late night slot before the channel goes off the air. Four am. Maybe Six or seven pm. 13 or 14 hours had gone by. The nurse asked if I was thirsty. I was. She held the paper cup of water as I drank. I asked for more. In a while, she said. After the doctor sees you. The doctor didn't see me until after the news. He asked how I was feeling. I answered with a question: What time is it? 6:00 pm on the dot, he said. I saw you, I told him. Where? During the operation. The doctor and the nurse exchanged an odd glance. Again, How are you feeling? Fine. May I have some more water? Of course, he said, and nodded to the nurse. And the nurse brought me another cup of water and a tray of hospital food. She fed me as well.
After the doctor exited, the nurse asked, Did you see me too? No. You were all wearing white masks. Except for the girl who put me to sleep. She was wearing a green mask and cap. That's right, she said. Did you see a light? No. How about shadows? No. Only the people in the operating room and the machines. I tried to leave but then I woke up here. Where were you going? To look around. Not up? No, to look around. Did you feel like you were falling before you woke up? No, I was still floating when I woke up. I don't remember if I reached outside. How did you plan to go through the wall? I don't know. I just knew I could. Maybe that's what woke you up--when you ran into the wall. No. The knock out medicine wore off, that's all. It's nothing to be afraid of. I wasn't afraid. I was curious; I wanted to explore. Well, you ate all your food. That's good. If you're still thirsty, just press this button and I'll come back with another cup.
Two days later, my mom picked me up and drove me home. My dad was at work. The doctor and the nurse never asked anymore questions about my floating. Just "How are you feeling?" But I asked a lot of questions, but they were ignored. So as I grew older, I sought my own answers. What happened on the operating table? What did the nurse mean by a 'light? Did I die? At which point during the surgery? Of course, the answers I found in my youth led to new questions. The most important being: What was the difference between "clinical death" and "organic death"? I read everything I could find on the subject. There was no internet in those days. All I had was the library and my aunts and uncles. The books led me to ghosts, god, and the afterlife. My family tried to steer me towards Catholicism. Between the two, I found my love of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and religious studies. I knew just one religion wouldn't give me any answers but their own. I needed answers beyond the one scope of the one faith. I needed a leap of faith over faith itself. That's where the answers lay.
Biology v Belief
In the simplest terms, clinical death is the shutting down of my organs (those beeps and green spikes on the machines). It's death beginning, but still under the control of every doctor and nurse in that operating room. As the surgeon wraps up the surgery, each organ that begins to shut down is revived. If every major organ shuts down before I can be revived, that's organic death. After such death, revival of atrophied organs couldn't be fully awakened anymore. Only while the majority of vital organs like the heart, brain, liver, and so on, are still only starting to die, can they be fully revived. Clinical death is more common than organic death, and one of the main symptoms of clinical death is the brain freaking out as his fellow organs stop responding to his neuro-synaptic commands; in this state of panic, the brain projects an image of the body floating above itself on the operating table, sees a bright light, witnesses shadowy figures who one can interpret to be saints, gods, or angels. The brain in a state of desperation elicits common sights and sounds that have been medically known for many year, but people who experience clinical death choose to interpret this commonality as a religious omen. Thoughts of heaven, hell, and immortality help to reorganize the confused brain coming back to its senses after surgery and especially after clinical death. With such thoughts, sufferers of trauma can believe that they saw Jesus or Heaven itself. There is a rebirth, a new life where death no longer holds a grip on our fear. After all, we were floating above death.
But why didn't I turn to religious rebirth for an answer to my floating? Why did I turn to supernatural books instead of Grey's Anatomy? Why wasn't I traumatized? If anything, I feel like I was enlightened by the experience. I chose to read more in order to learn more about the causes behind my experience on the operating table and to find similar cases to mind. One need look no further than our local prisons and jails for cases where prisoners chose religion over reasons and causes for the trauma. Men in prison who are sexually assaulted often turn to religion for a safe mental haven, and find congregation with other born-again inmates to find protection from further harm. Other victims of assault join gangs as a means of safety, for there is safety in numbers. They either become born-again victims of trauma or experts at avoiding future trauma. I turned to knowledge for bigger questions rather than small convenient answers. Little answers were loops that turned back onto themselves. God is always the answer. I wanted to know why. Sure, God is one answer that I found in the bible. But Buddhism led me to reincarnation. Another religion claimed heaven was a state of mind, another claimed that Heaven was on Earth, others that heaven was in the skies and was spelled with a capital "H". I worked through religious study and found safety in academia. Rather than choose one group of born-again believers, I chose the number of students and scholars to direct my search for answers. One book led me to other books, and the best books open doors, not close them.
What is Good and Evil to the Sick Soul?
One of the best books I found on the subject was called "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James. William James is known as the Godfather of Psychology for his lectures and books on the workings of the brain and their effect on bodily reactions per his studies in the late 1800s, especially his lectures in "Psychology: The Briefer Course" (the lengthier course was abridged to allow the layman easier accessibility to the work outside the university). James did not think of the "mind" as an independent source of emotion but as part of a duo, along with the senses, that work together to create the psychology of thought and the physicality of emotion. In terms of trauma, this duality of mind and body becomes imbalanced, one side dominating the other.
For James, the "healthy-minded" individual was the person who found balance with his evil and good sides without having to go through trauma. He is not so much healthy as unconflicted. He doesn't so much lean toward good as he avoids evil. He has learned to deal with any conflicts that may arise and maintain a healthy-minded perspective. That is, until he is surprised by trauma. Here there is an unforeseen imbalance between good and evil. For instance, a healthy-minded individual has a wife who is assaulted by a stranger. In a healthy-minded frame of mind, he would turn to the law for justice. However, evil may become the dominant side of his balance now and choose vengeance by taking the law into his own hands. In a state of trauma, he leaves his healthy-minded balance with his other unproductive states of mind (the police may never catch the man), and seek redress by any means available to him. He is in a state of imbalance due to the trauma, and he accepts the imbalance as productive. With this frame of mind, he can injure and even kill the criminal who assaulted his wife. His mindset is okay with that outcome.Trauma often alters one's point of view in this way.
Now with the individual accepting a new mindset to balance his healthy-minded perspective, he can now face the inevitable consequences of his actions spurred by this point of view. He realizes that he is set on killing the person who assaulted his wife. This realization satisfies the present, as revenge will often do, but the law may not see things that way. He, too, is a criminal now. This new balance has given evil the upper hand. James writes, "If we admit that evil is an essential part of our being and the key to our interpretation of our life, we load ourselves down with a difficulty that has always proved burdensome in philosophies of religion." The pious man who would never kill anyone in his healthy-minded state, where good was higher percentagely over evil, now leans toward evil as a healthy outlook.
I don't want to imply here that we were balanced toward good or evil before the trauma. It's just that good and evil were always in contention. Healthy-mindedness meant dealing daily with that struggle with good winning 51 percent (or higher) of the time. William James points out that we are always out of balance. When you find a wallet on the bus bench, your first thought may be to steal the cash, although your hand may shake as you reach for the money; your eyes may wander as if everyone were watching you as you pick up the wallet. Do you keep the money or find the wallet's owner? You are always being placed in positions where the mind and body fight to make the choice between good and evil, as James calls it. However, after trauma, this imbalance becomes wider, more pronounced. It is easier to accuse the wallet's owner of being a fool, a thief who would steal your wallet if he had the chance. James explains, "Now in contrast with such healthy-minded views as these [i.e, killing and theft], if we treat them as a way of deliberately minimizing evil, stands a radically opposite view, a way of maximizing evil, if you please to call it, based on the persuasion that the evil aspects of our life are of its very essence, and that the world's meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to heart." Trauma centralizes the healthy-mindedness of evil when the "heart" needs it most.
James refers to this "morbid" shift from good to evil as the "sick soul". We are remorseful for our criminal acts. We killed. We stole. We are no longer connected with goodness or heaven or god. We are as the beast who strikes without thought or conscience. James explains this consequence of evil action, "Such anguish may partake of various characters, having sometimes more the quality of loathing; sometimes that of irritation and exasperation; or again of self-mistrust and self-despair; or of suspicion, anxiety, trepidation, fear." How could heaven hold such a place for such a soul? Yet, in his healthy-minded state, the evil action made sense. It was the right thing to do. Why suffer so after committing the act? Was it not the right thing? While quoting Tolstoy, James clarifies this frame of mind that turns on itself, "My state of mind was as if some wicked and stupid jest was being played on me by some one." Tolstoy refers to this dread as a "thirst for God." Where the healthy-minded individual repositions his view toward evil and acts on it, he finds himself farther from God. Even when in balance with good and evil in contention, still he was not ready for God. His soul was not yet sick.
Just as my soul was not yet sick when I came off the operating table. I floated above the operating table where my body lay cut open, but I did not feel closer to God, nor did I feel farther from God. I felt unsafe because I did not understand what happened to me at this moment of detached experience. If I chose to blame the doctors for bringing me back to life and stealing me of my chance to go to heaven, then I could have claimed sick soul status. But I chose to find answers for this experience. I was still in a healthy-minded perspective where I was struggling to understand if it were a good or evil experience. Did I die and start my journey toward heaven, or did I hallucinate the experience because there was a medical mistake made during my surgery? I still had to realize if this was a question of good and evil.
I realized neither.
It is at this point of realization for the healthy-minded individual who chooses evil when God seems most out of reach that God ironically comes into reach for the sick soul. Clinical death appears to be a doorway to heaven. For now, in this sick and morbid frame of mind, the individual is ready to be forgiven to make himself worthy of acceptance by the greater power over good and evil, the points of contention that have plagued him his whole life. Just as trauma has led him to the dark path of criminal behavior. it is trauma that leads him to the light of his rebirth, a second chance at healthy-minded salvation. Otherwise, that clinical death which initiates that path of light does not lead heavenward but toward an understanding of "clinical death" itself.
To paraphrase William James from his book of lectures, "Varieties of Religious Experience", "There are two types of evil that plague the "sick soul" (a person in psychological contention with external matters): one, a struggle to adapt to natural circumstances whereby the individual can remedy the conflict with a balance between one's own frame of mind with the tangible outside sources that upset the balance; here the individual fits the natural forces outside with the natural network inside of his head. For instance, the loss of a job which leads to the loss of a roof over one's head can be remedied by finding temporary shelter with a friend or family member or at a homeless shelter until unemployment insurance provides income or until one can find a job, even at a lower rate of pay. The balance in essence is a compromise between one's self (setting pride aside to ask for help and accepting a lower wage) and the conditions one must accept when placed in such an embarrassing situation. Two, the struggle with internal turmoil of self whereby only a supernatural circumstance can provide balance; for instance, if one loses his job and becomes homeless, but his pride is too strong to seek a natural solution, comfort, and therefore balance, can be attained by laying the blame and answers to one's misfortunes on higher sources, namely, a god. In such a situation when help is offered by friends and family to the unfortunate jobless person, this individual may say that it is God's will that he is in such a circumstance but that God will show him the way out" (Var. Sick Soul). For one, the evil is remedied by individual action; for two, the evil is remedied by God.
The trauma of clinical death misleads the crashing brain to see things that provide avenues to such a remedy. During the operation, while you are under anesthesia, you see a bright light, you float above the operating table, you see a man wearing sandals, you experience euphoria. When you come out of the surgery, you are reborn. You saw God. Your sick soul was healed. In discussing Tolstoy's thought of suicide, James differentiates between happiness in a healthy-minded state and happiness in a sick soul state: he writes, "One has tasted the fruit of the tree, and the happiness of Eden never comes again.... Natural evil is swallowed up by supernatural good. [The sick soul individual] is saved by what seems to him as a second birth, a deeper kind of conscious being than he could enjoy before." Note here that the "supernatural" now overrides natural evil. In our example of the man who kills the criminal who assaults his wife and the man who steals the lost wallet, these evil acts are natural, earthly acts. They are forgiveable in clinical death, when sick soul individuals believe that they experience the supernatural hand of God.
And balance returns. Good outweighs evil again with God's blessing. Only, what if during clinical death, that wasn't God? What if it wasn't the brain crashing? What if it were evil itself manipulating your state of mind during the surgery and creating your frame of mind after the "supernatural" experience? This is the question that occurred to me when I experienced clinical death. I mean, if there's a God, then there's a Devil. Just who was it in those sandals that you saw as you died during surgery? And what was his plan in playing you during your most vulnerable moment? We must think of our killer who now feels forgiven for killing. Wouldn't an evil entity persuade such a person to kill again? And wouldn't our killer do as "God" wills?
But these are questions for another day. As I said earlier, knowledge is not posing questions for answers, it's answering questions with more questions. And round and round it goes. Because the answer is either God. Or the Devil. Or you keep asking questions while looking over your shoulder.
But not all of them.
Trauma or Inspiration?
When I was thirteen years old, I had surgery on a muscle tear from a bicycle accident. I overheard the doctor who examined me tell my dad that my scrapes and cuts were superficial but that there was a tear to the leg muscle. I remember my dad asking the doctor if I could wear a strap around the leg to hold the muscle together. The doctor said, No, he needs surgery. The muscle will continue to tear as the boy plays and runs till even walking will affect the use of the leg. My dad agreed, and surgery was scheduled.
I was in the waiting room outside the doctor's office; the door was open. My dad walked out and told me that it's time to go home. When I got to my feet, my knees buckled. My dad noticed but kept walking toward the parking lot. The nurse got me a wheelchair and pushed me out to the parking lot. Needless to say, I was scared shitless by the news. The word "surgery" around my aunts and uncles on my mom's side of the family was always bad news. I didn't think scared thoughts, but my knees buckled anyway. I was scared at a subconscious level. Not from the prospect of going under the knife, as they say, but from the unknown factor that awaited me after the surgery. Some of my aunts and uncles didn't survive being cut open.
I spent the night in the hospital; surgery was scheduled for four in the morning. I was drowsy as I was prepped. The anesthesiologist covered my nose and mouth with a plastic mask and told me to count back from 100 to zero. I don't remember reaching a count less than 90. What I do remember has stayed with me for the rest of my life and shaped the person I would grow to become.
I left my body and floated above the surgeon, who leaned over my small form, covering my view of my open leg tissue, attending nurses, who handed shiny instruments to the surgeon and checked beeping panels and colored lights on consoles, and the anesthesiologist, who kept an eye on the panel that seemed to be measuring my breath and brain activity, judging by the green spikes and straight lines. They moved to and fro, and I finally got a look at myself. I could barely make out my face beneath the mask. I floated forward a bit but still couldn't see my leg. There was a white sheet with a square hole where the doctor's hands were busy with the shiny instruments. Strange, I thought, but where was all the blood, like in the movies; where was the nurse dabbing the sweat from the doctor's brow? Then I decided to fly somewhere more interesting.
I didn't get far. I know because I have no memory of a journey. My eyes opened, and I was in bed in the hospital. The overhead TV was on. The local evening, maybe morning, news was on. Channel Five. Where all the monster movies fill in the late night slot before the channel goes off the air. Four am. Maybe Six or seven pm. 13 or 14 hours had gone by. The nurse asked if I was thirsty. I was. She held the paper cup of water as I drank. I asked for more. In a while, she said. After the doctor sees you. The doctor didn't see me until after the news. He asked how I was feeling. I answered with a question: What time is it? 6:00 pm on the dot, he said. I saw you, I told him. Where? During the operation. The doctor and the nurse exchanged an odd glance. Again, How are you feeling? Fine. May I have some more water? Of course, he said, and nodded to the nurse. And the nurse brought me another cup of water and a tray of hospital food. She fed me as well.
After the doctor exited, the nurse asked, Did you see me too? No. You were all wearing white masks. Except for the girl who put me to sleep. She was wearing a green mask and cap. That's right, she said. Did you see a light? No. How about shadows? No. Only the people in the operating room and the machines. I tried to leave but then I woke up here. Where were you going? To look around. Not up? No, to look around. Did you feel like you were falling before you woke up? No, I was still floating when I woke up. I don't remember if I reached outside. How did you plan to go through the wall? I don't know. I just knew I could. Maybe that's what woke you up--when you ran into the wall. No. The knock out medicine wore off, that's all. It's nothing to be afraid of. I wasn't afraid. I was curious; I wanted to explore. Well, you ate all your food. That's good. If you're still thirsty, just press this button and I'll come back with another cup.
Two days later, my mom picked me up and drove me home. My dad was at work. The doctor and the nurse never asked anymore questions about my floating. Just "How are you feeling?" But I asked a lot of questions, but they were ignored. So as I grew older, I sought my own answers. What happened on the operating table? What did the nurse mean by a 'light? Did I die? At which point during the surgery? Of course, the answers I found in my youth led to new questions. The most important being: What was the difference between "clinical death" and "organic death"? I read everything I could find on the subject. There was no internet in those days. All I had was the library and my aunts and uncles. The books led me to ghosts, god, and the afterlife. My family tried to steer me towards Catholicism. Between the two, I found my love of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and religious studies. I knew just one religion wouldn't give me any answers but their own. I needed answers beyond the one scope of the one faith. I needed a leap of faith over faith itself. That's where the answers lay.
Biology v Belief
In the simplest terms, clinical death is the shutting down of my organs (those beeps and green spikes on the machines). It's death beginning, but still under the control of every doctor and nurse in that operating room. As the surgeon wraps up the surgery, each organ that begins to shut down is revived. If every major organ shuts down before I can be revived, that's organic death. After such death, revival of atrophied organs couldn't be fully awakened anymore. Only while the majority of vital organs like the heart, brain, liver, and so on, are still only starting to die, can they be fully revived. Clinical death is more common than organic death, and one of the main symptoms of clinical death is the brain freaking out as his fellow organs stop responding to his neuro-synaptic commands; in this state of panic, the brain projects an image of the body floating above itself on the operating table, sees a bright light, witnesses shadowy figures who one can interpret to be saints, gods, or angels. The brain in a state of desperation elicits common sights and sounds that have been medically known for many year, but people who experience clinical death choose to interpret this commonality as a religious omen. Thoughts of heaven, hell, and immortality help to reorganize the confused brain coming back to its senses after surgery and especially after clinical death. With such thoughts, sufferers of trauma can believe that they saw Jesus or Heaven itself. There is a rebirth, a new life where death no longer holds a grip on our fear. After all, we were floating above death.
But why didn't I turn to religious rebirth for an answer to my floating? Why did I turn to supernatural books instead of Grey's Anatomy? Why wasn't I traumatized? If anything, I feel like I was enlightened by the experience. I chose to read more in order to learn more about the causes behind my experience on the operating table and to find similar cases to mind. One need look no further than our local prisons and jails for cases where prisoners chose religion over reasons and causes for the trauma. Men in prison who are sexually assaulted often turn to religion for a safe mental haven, and find congregation with other born-again inmates to find protection from further harm. Other victims of assault join gangs as a means of safety, for there is safety in numbers. They either become born-again victims of trauma or experts at avoiding future trauma. I turned to knowledge for bigger questions rather than small convenient answers. Little answers were loops that turned back onto themselves. God is always the answer. I wanted to know why. Sure, God is one answer that I found in the bible. But Buddhism led me to reincarnation. Another religion claimed heaven was a state of mind, another claimed that Heaven was on Earth, others that heaven was in the skies and was spelled with a capital "H". I worked through religious study and found safety in academia. Rather than choose one group of born-again believers, I chose the number of students and scholars to direct my search for answers. One book led me to other books, and the best books open doors, not close them.
What is Good and Evil to the Sick Soul?
One of the best books I found on the subject was called "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James. William James is known as the Godfather of Psychology for his lectures and books on the workings of the brain and their effect on bodily reactions per his studies in the late 1800s, especially his lectures in "Psychology: The Briefer Course" (the lengthier course was abridged to allow the layman easier accessibility to the work outside the university). James did not think of the "mind" as an independent source of emotion but as part of a duo, along with the senses, that work together to create the psychology of thought and the physicality of emotion. In terms of trauma, this duality of mind and body becomes imbalanced, one side dominating the other.
For James, the "healthy-minded" individual was the person who found balance with his evil and good sides without having to go through trauma. He is not so much healthy as unconflicted. He doesn't so much lean toward good as he avoids evil. He has learned to deal with any conflicts that may arise and maintain a healthy-minded perspective. That is, until he is surprised by trauma. Here there is an unforeseen imbalance between good and evil. For instance, a healthy-minded individual has a wife who is assaulted by a stranger. In a healthy-minded frame of mind, he would turn to the law for justice. However, evil may become the dominant side of his balance now and choose vengeance by taking the law into his own hands. In a state of trauma, he leaves his healthy-minded balance with his other unproductive states of mind (the police may never catch the man), and seek redress by any means available to him. He is in a state of imbalance due to the trauma, and he accepts the imbalance as productive. With this frame of mind, he can injure and even kill the criminal who assaulted his wife. His mindset is okay with that outcome.Trauma often alters one's point of view in this way.
Now with the individual accepting a new mindset to balance his healthy-minded perspective, he can now face the inevitable consequences of his actions spurred by this point of view. He realizes that he is set on killing the person who assaulted his wife. This realization satisfies the present, as revenge will often do, but the law may not see things that way. He, too, is a criminal now. This new balance has given evil the upper hand. James writes, "If we admit that evil is an essential part of our being and the key to our interpretation of our life, we load ourselves down with a difficulty that has always proved burdensome in philosophies of religion." The pious man who would never kill anyone in his healthy-minded state, where good was higher percentagely over evil, now leans toward evil as a healthy outlook.
I don't want to imply here that we were balanced toward good or evil before the trauma. It's just that good and evil were always in contention. Healthy-mindedness meant dealing daily with that struggle with good winning 51 percent (or higher) of the time. William James points out that we are always out of balance. When you find a wallet on the bus bench, your first thought may be to steal the cash, although your hand may shake as you reach for the money; your eyes may wander as if everyone were watching you as you pick up the wallet. Do you keep the money or find the wallet's owner? You are always being placed in positions where the mind and body fight to make the choice between good and evil, as James calls it. However, after trauma, this imbalance becomes wider, more pronounced. It is easier to accuse the wallet's owner of being a fool, a thief who would steal your wallet if he had the chance. James explains, "Now in contrast with such healthy-minded views as these [i.e, killing and theft], if we treat them as a way of deliberately minimizing evil, stands a radically opposite view, a way of maximizing evil, if you please to call it, based on the persuasion that the evil aspects of our life are of its very essence, and that the world's meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to heart." Trauma centralizes the healthy-mindedness of evil when the "heart" needs it most.
James refers to this "morbid" shift from good to evil as the "sick soul". We are remorseful for our criminal acts. We killed. We stole. We are no longer connected with goodness or heaven or god. We are as the beast who strikes without thought or conscience. James explains this consequence of evil action, "Such anguish may partake of various characters, having sometimes more the quality of loathing; sometimes that of irritation and exasperation; or again of self-mistrust and self-despair; or of suspicion, anxiety, trepidation, fear." How could heaven hold such a place for such a soul? Yet, in his healthy-minded state, the evil action made sense. It was the right thing to do. Why suffer so after committing the act? Was it not the right thing? While quoting Tolstoy, James clarifies this frame of mind that turns on itself, "My state of mind was as if some wicked and stupid jest was being played on me by some one." Tolstoy refers to this dread as a "thirst for God." Where the healthy-minded individual repositions his view toward evil and acts on it, he finds himself farther from God. Even when in balance with good and evil in contention, still he was not ready for God. His soul was not yet sick.
Just as my soul was not yet sick when I came off the operating table. I floated above the operating table where my body lay cut open, but I did not feel closer to God, nor did I feel farther from God. I felt unsafe because I did not understand what happened to me at this moment of detached experience. If I chose to blame the doctors for bringing me back to life and stealing me of my chance to go to heaven, then I could have claimed sick soul status. But I chose to find answers for this experience. I was still in a healthy-minded perspective where I was struggling to understand if it were a good or evil experience. Did I die and start my journey toward heaven, or did I hallucinate the experience because there was a medical mistake made during my surgery? I still had to realize if this was a question of good and evil.
I realized neither.
It is at this point of realization for the healthy-minded individual who chooses evil when God seems most out of reach that God ironically comes into reach for the sick soul. Clinical death appears to be a doorway to heaven. For now, in this sick and morbid frame of mind, the individual is ready to be forgiven to make himself worthy of acceptance by the greater power over good and evil, the points of contention that have plagued him his whole life. Just as trauma has led him to the dark path of criminal behavior. it is trauma that leads him to the light of his rebirth, a second chance at healthy-minded salvation. Otherwise, that clinical death which initiates that path of light does not lead heavenward but toward an understanding of "clinical death" itself.
To paraphrase William James from his book of lectures, "Varieties of Religious Experience", "There are two types of evil that plague the "sick soul" (a person in psychological contention with external matters): one, a struggle to adapt to natural circumstances whereby the individual can remedy the conflict with a balance between one's own frame of mind with the tangible outside sources that upset the balance; here the individual fits the natural forces outside with the natural network inside of his head. For instance, the loss of a job which leads to the loss of a roof over one's head can be remedied by finding temporary shelter with a friend or family member or at a homeless shelter until unemployment insurance provides income or until one can find a job, even at a lower rate of pay. The balance in essence is a compromise between one's self (setting pride aside to ask for help and accepting a lower wage) and the conditions one must accept when placed in such an embarrassing situation. Two, the struggle with internal turmoil of self whereby only a supernatural circumstance can provide balance; for instance, if one loses his job and becomes homeless, but his pride is too strong to seek a natural solution, comfort, and therefore balance, can be attained by laying the blame and answers to one's misfortunes on higher sources, namely, a god. In such a situation when help is offered by friends and family to the unfortunate jobless person, this individual may say that it is God's will that he is in such a circumstance but that God will show him the way out" (Var. Sick Soul). For one, the evil is remedied by individual action; for two, the evil is remedied by God.
The trauma of clinical death misleads the crashing brain to see things that provide avenues to such a remedy. During the operation, while you are under anesthesia, you see a bright light, you float above the operating table, you see a man wearing sandals, you experience euphoria. When you come out of the surgery, you are reborn. You saw God. Your sick soul was healed. In discussing Tolstoy's thought of suicide, James differentiates between happiness in a healthy-minded state and happiness in a sick soul state: he writes, "One has tasted the fruit of the tree, and the happiness of Eden never comes again.... Natural evil is swallowed up by supernatural good. [The sick soul individual] is saved by what seems to him as a second birth, a deeper kind of conscious being than he could enjoy before." Note here that the "supernatural" now overrides natural evil. In our example of the man who kills the criminal who assaults his wife and the man who steals the lost wallet, these evil acts are natural, earthly acts. They are forgiveable in clinical death, when sick soul individuals believe that they experience the supernatural hand of God.
And balance returns. Good outweighs evil again with God's blessing. Only, what if during clinical death, that wasn't God? What if it wasn't the brain crashing? What if it were evil itself manipulating your state of mind during the surgery and creating your frame of mind after the "supernatural" experience? This is the question that occurred to me when I experienced clinical death. I mean, if there's a God, then there's a Devil. Just who was it in those sandals that you saw as you died during surgery? And what was his plan in playing you during your most vulnerable moment? We must think of our killer who now feels forgiven for killing. Wouldn't an evil entity persuade such a person to kill again? And wouldn't our killer do as "God" wills?
But these are questions for another day. As I said earlier, knowledge is not posing questions for answers, it's answering questions with more questions. And round and round it goes. Because the answer is either God. Or the Devil. Or you keep asking questions while looking over your shoulder.
