Doerr Otto, Velásquez Oscar
Department of Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of Chile, Av. La Paz 841, Santiago, Chile.
Philos Ethics Humanit Med. 2007 Jul 3;2:12. doi: 10.1186/1747-5341-2-12.
It is well known how often psychiatric patients report religious experiences. These are especially frequent in schizophrenic and epileptic patients as the subject of their delusions. The question we pose is: are there differences between this kind of religious experiences and those we find in religious texts or in the mythological tradition?
An overview on famous mythological narratives, such as The Aeneid, allows us to establish that the divinities become recognizable to the human being at the moment of their departure. Thus, Aeneas does not recognise his mother, Venus, when she appears to him in the middle of the forest at the coast of Africa. A dialogue between the two takes place, and only at the end of the encounter, when she is going away and already with her back to Aeneas, she shows her son the signs of her divinity: the rose-flush emanating from her neck, her hair perfume and the majesty of her gait. Something analogous can be observed in the encounter of Moses with Yahweh on Mount Sinai. Moses asks God: "Show me your glory, I beg you". And God replies, among other things: "you shall see the back of me, but my face is not to be seen". In the same sense, the Emmaus disciples do not recognise Jesus till the moment of his disappearance ("but he had vanished from their sight"), and Saul of Tars falls off his horse just in the moment when he feels the divine presence. In short, the direct encounter with the divinity seems not to occur in the realm of myth or in religious tradition. The realm of madness is exactly the opposite. Our research on religious experiences in schizophrenic and epileptic patients leads us to conclude that God appears to them face to face, and the patient describes God the father, Jesus or the Virgin Mary in intimate detail, always in an everyday setting. So, the divinity is seen in the garden, or in the bedroom, or maybe above the wardrobe, without any of its majesty. The nearness to God also tends to be so extreme that even an identification of patient and God can occur. That light emanating from the world of the divine ceases to be perceived by them.
While in mythological narratives God appears to the human being at the moment of His departure or showing His back, psychiatric patients with religious delusions experience the divinity in a direct way, face to face. Given the deformation of the divine occurring on the edge of madness we can better understand the mysterious words from Yahweh to Moses in Exodus: "for man cannot see me and live".
精神科患者报告宗教体验的频率众所周知。这些体验在精神分裂症患者和癫痫患者中尤为常见，是他们妄想的主题。我们提出的问题是：这种宗教体验与我们在宗教文本或神话传统中发现的宗教体验有何不同？
对著名神话叙事（如《埃涅阿斯纪》）的概述使我们能够确定，神灵在离开时才会被人类认出。因此，当埃涅阿斯的母亲维纳斯出现在非洲海岸森林中央时，他并没有认出她。两人进行了对话，直到相遇结束，当她转身离开埃涅阿斯时，她才向儿子展示了她神性的迹象：从她脖子上散发出来的玫瑰色红晕、她头发的香气以及她步态的威严。在摩西在西奈山与耶和华相遇的场景中也可以观察到类似的情况。摩西请求上帝：“求你显出你的荣耀给我看”。上帝回答说：“你只能看见我的背，却看不见我的脸”。同样，以马忤斯的门徒直到耶稣消失的那一刻才认出他（“但他已经从他们眼前消失了”），而塔尔苏斯的扫罗就在他感受到神的临在的那一刻从马上摔了下来。简而言之，在神话或宗教传统领域中，似乎不会发生与神灵的直接相遇。而疯狂的领域则恰恰相反。我们对精神分裂症患者和癫痫患者宗教体验的研究使我们得出结论，上帝面对面地出现在他们面前，患者会详细地描述天父、耶稣或圣母玛利亚，而且总是在日常场景中。所以，神灵是在花园里、卧室里，或者也许在衣柜上方被看到的，没有任何威严可言。与上帝的亲近程度也往往非常极端，甚至可能出现患者与上帝的认同。他们不再能感知到从神圣世界散发出来的光芒。
在神话叙事中，上帝在离开或露出背影时出现在人类面前，而患有宗教妄想的精神科患者则以面对面的直接方式体验神性。鉴于在疯狂边缘发生的神性变形，我们可以更好地理解耶和华在《出埃及记》中对摩西说的神秘话语：“人见我的面不能存活”。
