VIII. Insanity in the Light of Spiritual Science

When a deeply religious person becomes mentally ill, his religious ideas become distorted. Had he been steeped in materialistic ideas, then they would have become distorted. The cause of mental illness is deeply rooted in human nature where it must be sought. All the medical professions can offer in this field are hypotheses, doubt and conjecture. It is indeed difficult from a materialistic viewpoint to come to any conclusive ideas in this realm. Many illnesses that in fact belong in this category are not regarded to do so by the medical profession, for example, querulousness, religious sectarianism and fanaticism. People of the latter kind are possessed by certain hallucinary ideas which, because they have great suggestive power over weaker personalities, can result in veritable epidemics of fanaticism.