26 Quotes on Spirituality and Psychology - by Meli G

Two of my primary passions in life are spirituality and mental health. In the years following my spiritual awakening in 2017, I realized there’s such an interconnection between psychology and spirituality. And after experiencing manic psychosis, I further realized this interconnection on a soul level.

We almost never hear about this commonality in the “mainstream,” for myriad reasons which I cover in my other posts, especially “The Overlapping Realms of Spirituality and Mental Health,” and “Where's the ‘Search for the Cure’ for Psychosis? Exploring Psychosis on the Awakening Path.”

There are actually several concentric circles in the realms of spirituality and psychology that encompass:

Spiritual awakenings + mystical experiences + mental health & psychosis + psychedelic experiences + psychic gifts + altered states of consciousness + contact with the spirit world and other dimensions + transcendental or transliminal experiences

Furthermore, the prefix “psy” is of Greek origin and has been interpreted as containing these elements: soul, mind, spirit, breath, lifeforce, and mental life.

According to the website Vaia, “Psi (Ψ, ψ) is the 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet and often represents psychological phenomena in fields like psychology and parapsychology. In physics, psi functions as a symbol for the wave function in quantum mechanics, influencing how particles behave at a subatomic level.”

During my research into psychosis, mental health crises, and spiritual experiences, I discovered many fantastic quotes about these subjects. I wanted to share these quotes with you and I hope they illuminate your path - as they certainly did for me!

Quotes about Mental Health + Spirituality:

Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti famously stated: “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Joseph Campbell said in his book The Power of Myth, “The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight."

Ricky Derisz, author and host of MindThatEgo podcast pointed out: “True sanity isn’t possible in a culture that gaslights the invisible.”

Quote from William Gass, American novelist, essayist, and philosophy professor: “Freud thought that psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often true, and that madness is a fiction lived in like a rented house.”

Paul Chek, a shamanistic practitioner and founder of the CHEK Institute and Spirit Gym said: “Carl Jung learned a lot from people in psych wards. A lot. They were spewing deep wisdom. And people called them crazy.”

Also Paul Chek: “Every rock, stone, beetle, and bad guy is God. When a pickpocket sees a person - they see a pocket, when a saint sees a pickpocket - they see God.”

Czech psychiatrist Dr. Stanislav Grof, co-founder of transpersonal psychology, wrote about the concept of a spiritual emergency:

"There exist spontaneous non-ordinary states of consciousness, (NOSC) that would in the West be seen and treated as psychosis, and treated mostly by suppressive medication.

But if we use the observations from the study of non-ordinary states, and also from other spiritual traditions, they should really be treated as crises of transformation, or crises of spiritual opening. Something that should really be supported rather than suppressed. If properly understood and properly supported, they are actually conducive to healing and transformation’.”

A prominent German scholar on schizophrenia, Kurt Schneider, described psychosis this way: “The significance [of the experience] is of a special kind; it nearly always carries a great import, is urgent and somehow personal, as a sign or message from another world. It is as if the perception expresses ‘a higher reality.’”

Bestselling author Michael Crichton, who is also a Harvard-trained physician, said: “I suspect everybody has a degree of psychic ability, just as everybody has a degree of athletic or artistic ability. Some people have special gifts; other people have a particular interest that leads them to develop their abilities. But the phenomenon itself is ordinary and widespread.”

Jacques Lacan, French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, called the “French Freud” emphasized: “Far from being an 'insult' to freedom, madness is freedom's most faithful companion, following its every move like a shadow. Not only can man's being not be understood without madness, but it would not be man's being if it did not bear madness within itself...”

In her 2003 autobiography, author Fiona Jong writes, “In my psychosis I live in two worlds, the real world and an unreal world. This is very difficult, because I live more in the unreal world, where everything is immobile. Time seems to be standing still. And the days of the week don’t move, either. I don’t even know what day it is anymore, or what time it is.”

Dr. Peter Brace from Swinburne University noted: “The production and use of substances that alter perception, change consciousness, and create illusion and hallucination seems to be embedded throughout the natural world, as a thread somehow woven into the fabric of life itself."

Dr. Sue Morter, specialist on bioenergetic medicine and bestselling author who explores the connection between quantum science and spiritual awakenings, reminds us that: “Greatness is something we remember.”

Shakti Caterina Maggi, a contemporary non-dual spiritual teacher, shared: “After awakening, you face all the pain you’ve been running away from.”

Bonnie Greenwell, PhD, who has counseled hundreds of people through kundalini awakening crises, states: "The danger isn't kundalini itself, but awakening it in an unprepared nervous system or without adequate support structures. Most problems arise from forced practices, psychological fragility, or lack of proper guidance."

The great Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, revealed so much wisdom:

“There’s no coming to consciousness without pain.”

"Life calls, not for perfection, but for completeness" and "For heaven's sake do not be perfect, but by all means try to be complete."

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is… forming an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.”

He adds:

“In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if once he saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the ‘treasure hard to attain’. He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of ‘self’ and thereby has gained himself.”

Stijn Vanheule, Belgian clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and professor of psychoanalysis and clinical psychology at Ghent University noted: “I was informed by Freud and by Jung, who both articulated the point that hallucinations and delusions are survival reactions – they’re not the problem, but a way of coping with something difficult people are struggling with.”

He expounds: “I don't think of psychosis in terms of a disease. For me, it's a kind of human experience. If people are confronted with difficult challenges in our lives, in our contexts, our families, our jobs, then we tend to respond in a certain way.”

Following are quotes from the article: “The Fine Line Between Spiritual Expansion and Psychosis : When Madness Feels Like Awakening:”

“We live in a culture that glorifies ‘quantum leaps’ and ‘activations’ without acknowledging the importance of grounded integration. But true spirituality is not about escaping the body or bypassing pain. It’s about coming fully into the body, holding both expansion and safety within the same vessel.”

And: “Sometimes the soul awakens faster than the body can handle. And the gap between the two — between expanded consciousness and somatic readiness — can feel like madness. This is the moment many people are misdiagnosed, misunderstood, or left alone in their suffering.”

Hermes Trismegistus expressed: “As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul…“

Scottish psychiatrist RD Laing, who extensively studied psychosis, said that a: “Secular therapist is like the blind leading the half-blind.”

He also expressed:

“The light that illuminates the madman is an earthly light, but I do not believe it is a projection, an emanation from his mundane ego. He is irradiated by a light that is more than he. It may burn him out.”

British Clinical Psychologist Isabel Clarke posited that: “Recognition that spirituality and psychosis are closely allied can lead to a transformation in the therapeutic approach to psychosis.”

She continues:

“A reconceptualisation [of psychosis] recognises opening to the transliminal as a part of the journey of life which can be problematic but has great potential. Such openings can compromise normal functioning; they can bring the individual face-to-face with unresolved issues and be acutely frightening and distressing; however, they can also present the opportunity to break out of a mould that had become constricting and embrace a fuller way of being, through opening the self to the whole.”

Spiritual teacher and podcast host Aubrey Marcus stated: “We are the hands and hearts and senses of the divine.”

Thank you for reading and for visiting my blog! Love and blessings to you and us all! :)

Photos in order of appearance: Arndt Peter Bergfeld, Olga Shenderova, Leticia Azevedo, Gorkem Raw, Loi Fotos, Mahdiba Fande, Ben Mack, Vantik 93, Deklansor, Apasaric and Lada Rezantseva