insanity

137:8.18When he had thus spo­ken, he sat down. All who heard him were as­ton­ished at his words. His dis­ci­ples mar­veled. But the peo­ple were not pre­pared to re­ceive the good news from the lips of this God-man. About one third who heard him be­lieved the mes­sage even though they could not fully com­pre­hend it; about one third pre­pared in their hearts to re­ject such a purely spir­i­tual con­cept of the ex­pected king­dom, while the re­main­ing one third could not grasp his teach­ing, many truly be­liev­ing that he “was be­side him­self.”

151:6.5Je­sus, look­ing down upon the man crouch­ing like an an­i­mal at his feet, reached down and, tak­ing him by the hand, stood him up and said to him: “Amos, you are not pos­sessed of a devil; you have al­ready heard the good news that you are a son of God. I com­mand you to come out of this spell.” And when Amos heard Je­sus speak these words, there oc­curred such a trans­for­ma­tion in his in­tel­lect that he was im­me­di­ately re­stored to his right mind and the nor­mal con­trol of his emo­tions. By this time a con­sid­er­able crowd had as­sem­bled from the near-by vil­lage, and these peo­ple, aug­mented by the swine herders from the high­land above them, were as­ton­ished to see the lu­natic sit­ting with Je­sus and his fol­low­ers, in pos­ses­sion of his right mind and freely con­vers­ing with them.

77:7.6It is no mere fig­ure of speech when the rec­ord states: “And they brought to Him all sorts of sick peo­ple, those who were pos­sessed by dev­ils and those who were lu­natics.” Je­sus knew and rec­og­nized the dif­fer­ence be­tween in­san­ity and de­mo­ni­a­cal pos­ses­sion, al­though these states were greatly con­fused in the minds of those who lived in his day and gen­er­a­tion.

77:7.7Even prior to Pen­te­cost no rebel spirit could dom­i­nate a nor­mal hu­man mind, and since that day even the weak minds of in­fe­rior mor­tals are free from such pos­si­bil­i­ties. The sup­posed cast­ing out of dev­ils since the ar­rival of the Spirit of Truth has been a mat­ter of con­found­ing a be­lief in de­mo­ni­a­cal pos­ses­sion with hys­te­ria, in­san­ity, and fee­ble-mind­ed­ness. But just be­cause Mi­chael’s be­stowal has for­ever lib­er­ated all hu­man minds on Uran­tia from the pos­si­bil­ity of de­mo­ni­a­cal pos­ses­sion, do not imag­ine that such was not a re­al­ity in for­mer ages.

141:4.8Je­sus ex­plained to his apos­tles on sev­eral oc­ca­sions the na­ture, and some­thing con­cern­ing the ori­gin, of these evil spir­its, in that day of­ten also called un­clean spir­its. The Mas­ter well knew the dif­fer­ence be­tween the pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its and in­san­ity, but the apos­tles did not. Nei­ther was it pos­si­ble, in view of their lim­ited knowl­edge of the early his­tory of Uran­tia, for Je­sus to un­der­take to make this mat­ter fully un­der­stand­able. But he many times said to them, al­lud­ing to these evil spir­its: “They shall no more mo­lest men when I shall have as­cended to my Fa­ther in heaven, and af­ter I shall have poured out my spirit upon all flesh in those times when the king­dom will come in great power and spir­i­tual glory.”

148:2.3El­man and his as­so­ciates en­deav­ored to teach the truth to these sick ones con­cern­ing the “pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its,” but they met with lit­tle suc­cess. The be­lief that phys­i­cal sick­ness and men­tal de­range­ment could be caused by the dwell­ing of a so-called un­clean spirit in the mind or body of the af­flicted per­son was well-nigh uni­ver­sal.

72:10.1The meth­ods of this peo­ple in deal­ing with crime, in­san­ity, and de­gen­er­acy, while in some ways pleas­ing, will, no doubt, in oth­ers prove shock­ing to most Uran­tians. Or­di­nary crim­i­nals and the de­fec­tives are placed, by sexes, in dif­fer­ent ag­ri­cul­tural colonies and are more than self-sup­port­ing. The more se­ri­ous ha­bit­ual crim­i­nals and the in­cur­ably in­sane are sen­tenced to death in the lethal gas cham­bers by the courts. Nu­mer­ous crimes aside from mur­der, in­clud­ing be­trayal of gov­ern­men­tal trust, also carry the death penalty, and the vis­i­ta­tion of jus­tice is sure and swift.

72:10.3Ef­forts to pre­vent the breed­ing of crim­i­nals and de­fec­tives were be­gun over one hun­dred years ago and have al­ready yielded grat­i­fy­ing re­sults. There are no pris­ons or hos­pi­tals for the in­sane. For one rea­son, there are only about ten per cent as many of these groups as are found on Uran­tia.

55:5.2The ad­vanced stages of a world set­tled in light and life rep­re­sent the acme of evo­lu­tion­ary ma­te­rial de­vel­op­ment. On these cul­tured worlds, gone are the idle­ness and fric­tion of the ear­lier prim­i­tive ages. Pov­erty and so­cial in­equal­ity have all but van­ished, de­gen­er­acy has dis­ap­peared, and delin­quency is rarely ob­served. In­san­ity has prac­ti­cally ceased to ex­ist, and fee­ble-mind­ed­ness is a rar­ity.

• often worshiped lunatics

85:6.2Early man re­garded all un­usual per­sons as super­hu­man, and he so feared such be­ings as to hold them in rev­er­en­tial awe; to some de­gree he lit­er­ally wor­shiped them. Even hav­ing twins was re­garded as be­ing ei­ther very lucky or very un­lucky. Lu­natics, epilep­tics, and the fee­ble-minded were of­ten wor­shiped by their nor­mal-minded fel­lows, who be­lieved that such ab­nor­mal be­ings were in­dwelt by the gods. Priests, kings, and proph­ets were wor­shiped; the holy men of old were looked upon as in­spired by the de­i­ties.

• believed insane persons moon-struck
• could not distinguish i. from genius

88:1.9Hunch­backed and crip­pled chil­dren were re­garded as fe­tishes; lu­natics were be­lieved to be moon-struck. Prim­i­tive man could not dis­tin­guish be­tween ge­nius and in­san­ity; id­iots were ei­ther beaten to death or revered as fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties. Hys­te­ria in­creas­ingly con­firmed the pop­u­lar be­lief in witch­craft; epilep­tics of­ten were priests and med­i­cine men. Drunk­en­ness was looked upon as a form of spirit pos­ses­sion; when a sav­age went on a spree, he put a leaf in his hair for the pur­pose of dis­avow­ing re­spon­si­bil­ity for his acts. Poi­sons and in­tox­i­cants be­came fe­tishes; they were deemed to be pos­sessed.

133:7.9Nei­ther is the hu­man self merely the sum of the suc­ces­sive states of con­scious­ness. With­out the ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of a con­scious­ness sorter and as­so­ci­a­tor there would not ex­ist suf­fi­cient unity to war­rant the des­ig­na­tion of a self­hood. Such an un­uni­fied mind could hardly at­tain con­scious lev­els of hu­man sta­tus. If the as­so­ci­a­tions of con­scious­ness were just an ac­ci­dent, the minds of all men would then ex­hibit the un­con­trolled and ran­dom as­so­ci­a­tions of cer­tain phases of men­tal mad­ness.