Page Title

Book Title: Treading on the Tiger's Tail

(An Autobiography of Psychosis and an Unconventional Healing)

Synopsis

This is the story of a spiritual journey. A journey which takes the reader through some childhood and adolescent memories leading up to a psychotic breakdown, a depression and then healing and reintegration into society. The focus however concerns the topic of psychosis, and of an unconventional healing. A healing effected by my deep involvements in fields such as Jungian psychology, dream interpretation, alchemy and astrology.

It is the story of how I managed to wean myself from the world of mental institutions, medication, psychiatrists and psychologists. To build a functional life complete with a family and a professional career. It is a testament that there are alternative ways of treating acute psychosis, as documented and proven by the Jungian psychiatrist John Weir Perry.

Thus, the chapter titled 'Mystical Peregrination' recounts how one can creatively disengage from the ordinary world, and embark on a journey of healing and renewal and a return to ordinary life. Such a renewal being effected by a form of 'bathing in the numinosity of the transpersonal psyche' or the sublimation of ordinary consciousness to a form of sacred consciousness.

Technically though, the book is comprised of three parts. Part one recounts my childhood and adolescent it memories (including life in a Catholic boarding school, and military service in apartheid South Africa). Part two vividly describes two psychotic breakdowns and its aftermath. Part three deals with healing and reintegration into society.

Introduction

Excerpt 1

On the eve of my twentieth birthday my world began to collapse. A build-up of strange events came to a head. That evening I ritually re-organised everything in my room. Literally turning the place upside down. A plethora of extreme emotions and thoughts hit me, wave after wave. The next morning, on my birthday, my neighbour rushed to call my brother. I was dressed up as 'The Dark Lord' and was testing my new-found magical powers. I had no doubt I could turn invisible, that I could magically 'zap' things with a mere pointing of my finger. Flying through the air like a superhero seemed well within my capabilities. And the realization of all these things sent me into a laughing hysteria. And then my brother rushed up. I was convinced he was the previous Dark Lord and needed to be overthrown. I kicked him. He shook me hard and dragged me into my room. At this point I realised something had gone dramatically wrong. I broke down in tears.

Excerpt 2

The mystic swims, but the psychotic drowns! Not necessarily. It is my belief that there is a hazy and uncertain boundary between the so-called psychotic space, and the creative space. In this sense, the psychotic who learns to modulate and articulate their experience becomes a creative person.

And it is my strong opinion that society requires the necessary perspective shift to accommodate such a possibility. At present, our mental institutions do not hesitate to straight-jacket their patients with a copious cocktail of extremely powerful (and in most cases, highly unpleasant) drugs. We need to ask ourselves if this is really necessary. Is this the best solution our society can offer? Have these drugged people really undergone miracle cures, or are they merely 'socially controllable'? Is their quality of life, their phenomenological reality, any better with this treatment?

Yes, in some cases the delusions disappear, the voices stop, the torment is eased. The miracle of modern science. Perhaps this is the wiser road for some conditions of mental illness. But the fact that there is documented evidence of people recovering from psychosis without any medication is a big issue which needs full attention from the psychiatric establishment.

The Dark Lord (first Psychosis) an excerpt

My emotions took on a distinctive 'mystical' quality. Sleep also became impossible. If I read something mythological, the images would become animated with a strange vivid energy. I found myself 'meditating' on the Garden of Eden. The world of mythic images became potently real and blissfully dispersed the harsh emotional wasteland which had lingered so long. The motif of a Green Gold Cosmic Christ and the tree of life became a stark and reassuring reality. It seemed I was eating the 'fruits from the tree of life'.

Different facets of my life began to converge into a meaningful story. The whole picture began to make sense, and everything became imbued with a 'dream-like' quality. Something out of the ordinary was taking place. I remembered an occult description of the astral realm and the fact that newly deceased people usually could not acknowledge their death. It often took a while to realize they had left the earthly plane and entered the more 'dream-like' astral realm. Suddenly, with conviction. I new what had happened. I had been killed in a car crash on the way back to university and my soul had not come to realize this.

I was in the occultists 'astral realm' where fantasies become reality. This all made extreme good sense, especially since my emotions began to swing into rhythm with Trungpa's commentary to the 'Tibetan Book of the Dead'. The 'orgy of the seducing women' (girl attempting to seduce me) as the first Bardo seemed spot on. A sudden radical swing of emotion from the blissful to an unbearable, painful infiltration of non-existence and the ten-or of dissolution into oblivion was also accurately described in Trungpa's commentary. It seemed my emotions were undergoing 'the bends', akin to a skindiver surfacing too rapidly. I began experiencing all these states; the fiery hell realm, animal realm and the hungry ghost realm. This was the ambuscade of the after death experience, wherein consciousness is loosened from the anchoring constraints of time-space and the body.

And shattering the fetters of the Sangsaric perception, I finally enter the clear light Chonyid Bardo state (a state of highest illumination). I and my fantasy lover are in orgiastic embrace, ecstatically experiencing ourselves and each other in a state of 'participation mystique'; a passionate and intense consummation. We are the Turquoise golden Sagittarian Dragon.

Through divine inspiration, my task becomes all the more obvious. I am to gather everyone together, the girl who tried to seduce me, my brother and his girlfriend and my neighbour (a friend), and to explain what was happening. Like a detective I would prove to these personifications of mine own mind as to their illusoriness. We would all enter into a deep sleep and await the winds of karma to select a womb for a new birth. Vivid emotions of being born, and crying became overwhelming.

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The book consists of an introduction, nine chapters and an epilogue. The chapter titles are as follows

Prima Materia (early memories), Massa Confusa (catholic boarding school, puberty), Wings of the

Beast (military service), The Dark Lord (first psychosis), Discovery of my Philosopher's Stone (second

psychosis), Nigredo (depression), Rewinding the Kundalini (an apprenticeship), Mystical

Peregrination (creative disintegration), Mercurius (renewal and reintegration)