83 QUESTION: In modern psychology, we frequently hear the word “schizophrenia” applied to people who are psychotic. According to your talk, tonight and previously, we are all fragmented and split. Is this duality only a matter of degree?

ANSWER: Yes, it is a matter of degree, of intensity, and of how many areas of the personality it includes. For the clinical psychotic, the areas where the self is not accepted are overwhelming. For a more normal person who can function in life, the idealized self may pervade the whole personality, but there is still a certain sense of reality.

QA172 QUESTION: Can you comment upon the relationship of neurosis and psychosis and schizophrenia in relation to the energy centers – and then, if possible, to indicate criteria for helping people in these afflictions?

ANSWER: Yes. As to the first part of the question, there is a very direct connection, for the centers are the gate through which the life force flows. If the centers are blocked, the life force is blocked too. So therefore, not only a mental illness is connected to the centers, but every physical illness is as well – and not only illness, also every life illness.

Let us say unfulfillment in any area is an illness too. Now, the direct relationship between the various mental disturbances such as neurosis, schizophrenia, psychosis, it is very difficult to generalize that. For I cannot say in one instant it is because this center is more closed and in another it is because that center is more closed.

It depends very much on many, many factors including the personality structure, the individuality, and the psychodynamics of the relationship between assets, liabilities and disturbances. It is not only the presence of misconceptions that creates blocks, but also – through such misconceptions – the denial of positive forces or potentials that already exist, which are even more responsible for the blockages of the centers, and therefore the illnesses.

Apart from the fact that the degree of the blockage of centers also causes the degree of mental illness – and neurosis, of course, is a lesser degree of mental illness than, say, psychosis or schizophrenia – perhaps the only thing that can somewhat be generalized – but also this has to be taken with a grain of salt – is this: that the psychotic person is often very blocked in all the upper regions, while the more neurotic person is more blocked in the lower regions.

Another thing that can possibly be generalized – again with a grain of salt, please do not take the generalization point blank all across the board – is that a schizophrenic person may have a partial opening and a partial blockage of many centers. Of course, this is true also of the relatively healthy person, but in a more crass, strong way.

In other words, there is perhaps one center that has a very strong opening that comes out very forcefully, while the rigidity of a block is very, very strong, so that there is a tremendous discrepancy, and the energy that is let out through the block shoots out.

You know, when you hold back very strongly, it shoots out then. It pushes through, and this creates then an abundance of energy and feelings that the personality is incapable of coping with. With the so-called normal or average person whose centers are all blocked, the blockage does not take exactly this kind of form.

It would be more that the centers are blocked, but the blockage is not that hardened, so that some of the energy flow filters through and does not therefore create too great a momentum, a push, that is upsetting for the entire system. It is simply that the system is not sufficiently energized or enlivened, and is therefore incapable of realizing its potentials. But that is the difference.

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