Divine madness

depicts the crazy-wise Hanshan 寒山. Color on silk. Tokyo National Museum According to June McDaniel and other scholars, divine madness is found in the history and practices of many cultures and may reflect religious ecstasy or expression of divine love. Plato in his Phaedrus and his ideas on theia mania, Eastern Orthodoxy, Western Christianity, Sufism along with Indian religions all bear witness to the phenomenon of divine madness. It is not the ordinary form of madness, but a behavior that is consistent with the premises of a spiritual path or a form of complete absorption in God. DiValerio notes that comparable "mad saint" traditions exist in Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic and Christian cultures, but warns against "flights of fancy" that too easily draw comparisons between these various phenomena. Georg Feuerstein lists Zen poet Hanshan (fl. 9th century) as having divine madness, explaining that when people would ask him about Zen, he would only laugh hysterically. The Zen master Ikkyu (15th century) used to run around his town with a human skeleton spreading the message of the impermanence of life and the grim certainty of death. According to Feuerstein, similar forms of abnormal social behavior and holy madness is found in the history of the Christian saint Isadora and the Sufi Islam storyteller Mulla Nasruddin. Divine madness has parallels in other religions, such as Hinduism. ==Ancient Greece and Rome: theia mania==

Theia mania () is a term used by Plato in his dialogue Phaedrus to describe a condition of divine madness (unusual behavior attributed to the intervention of a God). In this work, dating from around 370 BC, Socrates argues that madness is not necessarily an evil, claiming that "the greatest of blessings come to us through madness, when it is sent as a gift of the gods". Socrates describes four types of divine madness: The Roman poet Virgil, in Book VI of his Aeneid, describes the Cumaean Sibyl as prophesying in a frenzied state: While at the door they paused, the virgin cried: "Ask now thy doom!—the god! the god is nigh!" So saying, from her face its color flew, Her twisted locks flowed free, the heaving breast Swelled with her heart's wild blood; her stature seemed Vaster, her accent more than mortal man, As all th' oncoming god around her breathed... ==Abrahamic religions==

Christianity The 6th-century Saint Simeon, states Feuerstein, simulated insanity with skill. Simeon found a dead dog, tied a cord to the corpse's leg and dragged it through the town, outraging the people. To Simeon the dead dog represented a form of baggage people carry in their spiritual life. He would enter the local church and throw nuts at the congregation during the liturgy, which he later explained to his friend that he was denouncing the hypocrisy in worldly acts and prayers. Michael Andrew Screech states that the interpretation of madness in Christianity is adopted from the Platonic belief that madness comes in two forms: bad and good, depending on the assumptions about "the normal" by the majority. Early Christians cherished madness, and being called "mad" by non-Christians. Christ's behavior and teachings were blasphemous madness in his times, and according to Simon Podmore, "Christ's madness served to sanctify blasphemous madness". Religious ecstasy-type madness was interpreted as good by early Christians, in the Platonic sense. Yet, as Greek philosophy went out of favor in Christian theology, so did these ideas. In the age of Renaissance, charismatic madness regained interest and popular imagination, as did the Platonic proposal of four types of "good madness". The wisdom and healing power in the possessed, in these movements, is believed to be from the Holy Spirit, a phenomenon called charism ("spiritual gifts"). According to Tanya Luhrmann, the associated "hearing of spiritual voices" may seem to be "mental illness" to many people, but to the followers who shout and dance together as a crowd it isn't. The followers believe that there is a long tradition in Christian spirituality, where saints such as Augustine are stated to have had similar experiences of deliberate hallucinations and madness. Islam Divine madness is a theme in some forms of Islamic mysticism. People that have attained "mad" mental states, according to Feuerstein, include the masts and the intoxicated Sufis associated with shath. In parts of Gilgit (Pakistan), the behavior of eccentric faqirs dedicated to mystical devotionalism is considered as "crazy holiness". In Somalia, according to Sheik Abdi, Moḥammed ʻAbdulle Hassan eccentric behavior and methods led some colonial era writers to call him "mad mullah", "crazy priest of Allah" and others. According to Sadeq Rahimi, the Sufi description of divine madness in mystical union mirrors those associated with mental illness. ==Indian religions==

Hinduism The theme of divine madness appears in all major traditions of Hinduism (Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism), both in its mythologies as well as its saints, accomplished mendicants and teachers. They are portrayed as if they are acting mad or crazy, challenging social assumptions and norms as a part of their spiritual pursuits or resulting thereof. Although immediatism has its roots in European culture and history as far back as Platonism, and also includes Perennialism, Versluis points to Ralph Waldo Emerson as its key ancestor, who "emphasized the possibility of immediate, direct spiritual knowledge and power." Versluis notes that traditional Tibetan Buddhism is not immediatist, since Mahamudra and Dzogchen "are part of a fairly stricted controlled ritual and meditative practice and tradition." yet, he also refers to R.C. Zaehner, "who came to regard Asian-religion-derived nondualism as more or less inexorably to antinomianism, immorality, and social dissolution." Versluis further notes that in traditional Mahamudra and Dzogchen, access to teachings is restricted and needs preparation. Versluis further notes that immediatist teachers may be attractive due to their sense of certainty, which contrasts with the post-modernist questioning of truth-claims. He further notes the lack of compassion which is often noted in regard to those immediatist teachers. ==Shamanism==

According to Mircea Eliade, divine madness is a part of Shamanism, a state that a pathologist or psychologist is likely to diagnose as a mental disease or aberrant psychological condition. However, state Eliade and Harry Eiss, this would be a misdiagnosis because the Shaman is "in control of the mystic state, rather than the psychotic state being in control of him". According to neuroendocrinology researcher Robert Sapolsky, shamans exhibit metamagical thought, psychiatric instability, hallucinations, schizotypal disorders and behaviors ("half-crazy"). However, they do not exhibit the full spectrum of typical symptoms of mental illness. They are respected in their communities, rewarded materially and reproductively. Sapolsky notes that schizotypal shamanism is not uncontrolled, as in schizophrenics. ==See also==