Personal Account: Dr. David Lukoff

My Spiritual Crisis

The future shaman sometimes takes the risk of being mistaken for a "madman"...but his "madness" fulfils a mystic function; it reveals certain aspects of reality to him that are inaccessible to other mortals, and it is only after having experienced and entered into these hidden dimensions of reality that the "madman" becomes a shaman." Mircea Eliade found that a psychotic episode has served as the initiatory crisis marking, for some shamans, a call to the healing profession. For example, the Siberian shaman Kyzalov entered a state of "madness" lasting for seven years which resulted in his initiation as a shaman. He reported that during those years he had been beaten up several times, taken to many strange places including the top of a sacred mountain, chopped into pieces and boiled in a kettle, met the spirits of sickness, and acquired the drum and garment of a dead shaman.

Being "tormented" by spirits, babbling confused words, displaying curious eating habits, singing continuously, and dancing wildly are other common elements in initiatory crises; in our society today these experiences would be considered evidence of a psychotic disorder and could possibly result in hospitalization. Yet when Kyzalov recuperated, he reported that, "the shamans declared, 'You are the sort of man who may become a shaman; you should become a shaman. You must begin to shamanize.'

All mental and physical illnesses, accidents, and other ordeals, by creating psychospiritual crises, open the door to the shamanic world of spirits and nonordinary reality. In contemporary society, psychotic states of consciousness retain their power to awaken shamanic tendencies and talents. It proved to be so in my case, and for others whom I have met, worked with as a therapist, and written about. My psychotic episode took place in a non-shamanic cultural and psychological context, but it bears a distinct relationship to a shaman's initiation: 1) it contained thematic and imagistic parallels to the initiatory crises of professional shaman; 2) it served as my calling to the mental health profession just as the shaman's crisis calls him/her to the role of healer; 3) it was integrated with the aid of traditional shamans and their practices.

Since I live in a contemporary Western society which does not recognize the social role of an ecstatic healer who cavorts with spirits, my psychotic episode did not initiate me as a shaman. I have devised the term "shamanistic initiatory crisis" to describe my experience. As anthropologist Ruth-Inge Heinz noted, "The term 'shamanistic' is used for shaman-like activities, e.g., activities which may be carried out by somebody other than a shaman, while the term 'shamanic' indicates that these activities are carried out by somebody who actually is a shaman." Therefore, shamanistic is the appropriate term.

My psychotic crisis occurred 18 years ago. After coming to the conclusion that, at 23 years of age, I was spending all of my time learning about other people, and did not know my own self, I dropped out of the doctoral program in social anthropology at Harvard University. I gave away all of my possessions, from bed to books, that would not fit into my backpack. I started travelling — hitchhiking across the country, up into Canada and down into Mexico, even to Hawaii. In Palo Alto, six months later, I awoke just after midnight. Although I had slept for only two hours, I felt rested — in fact, I was full of energy and eager to get back to writing in my journal. But first a quick trip to the bathroom.

While there, I stopped in front of the mirror and gazed at my reflection. Suddenly I noticed that my right hand was glowing, giving off a white light. My thumb was touching my forefinger in the ancient mudra position of the meditating Buddha. Immediately the meaning of this sign was clear to me: I had been Buddha in a previous life. Then another thought came: Buddha had been reincarnated as Jesus Christ. Therefore, I had also been Jesus Christ. Now, in this moment, the luminous image in the mirror was awakening me to my true purpose: to once again bring the human race out of its decline. My journal writing was actually the creation of a "new Bible", a Holy Book which would unite all people around the common tenants of a single belief system. Instead of unifying just one social group, as Buddha and Christ had, my mission was to write a book that would create a new worldwide society free of conflict and full of loving relationships...


Source: My Spiritual Crisis - David Lukoff [PDF File]