really real

a message to heed

I am slowly resurfacing, having been plunged over the holidays into what I keep thinking of as 'the death space.' A sickbed vigil becomes something different when the possibility of recovery fades away, as happened with my aged and infirm friend. Those final days of decline are illustrated by long periods of sleep, ragged and uneven breaths and an otherworldly focus on the approaching transition into whatever-is-not-life.

Afterwards, I felt as physically exhausted – a deep fatigue, practically nausea, felt throughout my entire body – as I had felt following my two experiences of psychosis. Being in the death space did indeed remind me of my time in the mad space, because in each case one is dwelling on the edges of business-as-usual. One touches beyond reality into a realm clotted thick with myth and mystery.

Culture often asks what the dead would tell us if they could. It wonders and wonders and puzzles and puzzles about the unique wisdom we might gain from those who have touched that beyond-realm. Yet what does it do when someone admits to an anomalous experience, be it mystical or near-death or simply mental? It stomps on them with consensual reality, racks them full of 'treatments' and burdens them with chronic stigma.

I was moved by this post by Sascha Altman DuBrul – a fellow mad activist who resides in Los Angeles, where wildfires are currently destroying large swathes of the city. He articulates so well what I too believe: that extreme states communicate to us. He writes:

A Sick Society and the Crisis of Care

Our society often labels individuals as “mentally ill” without acknowledging the sickness of the systems in which we live. Rising rates of anxiety, depression, and psychosis are clearly not just individual phenomena—they’re symptoms of a world out of balance. From the fires in LA to the global surge of authoritarian regimes, it’s clear that our collective structures are not just failing—they’re actively harming us.

For years, I’ve worked with people in extreme states—those who are often dismissed as “mad” or “psychotic.” I’ve come to see these states not as aberrations but as profound expressions of a world that makes less and less sense. These individuals are like canaries in the coal mine, warning us of a deeper systemic illness. What would it mean to take these experiences seriously—not just as symptoms to manage, but as messages to heed?

When I write about madreality, I am imploring the same: “to take these experiences seriously.” To listen to the content of mad knowledge, and to understand that it has immense value.

In order to do so, we must undertake an exercise which Dr Jeffrey Kripal calls 'thinking impossibly.' In his latest book, How to Think Impossibly, Kripal lays it out thus:

I will pull no punches.... We have to stop assuming that our most fantastic stuff is purely legendary, is only subjective, is mere metaphor, or can be fully explained in social, political or moral terms. It is more than time to make a claim on material reality itself.

It is indeed. We must stop the arrogant assumption that we understand reality to its fullest extent through our five physical senses alone and through the agreed consensus of our social arrangements (which, let's face it, are hardly consistent themselves.)

I'm reminded here again of chaos theory. A system must break down into turbulence and chaos in order to make the quantum leap into a higher state of systemic order. When we observe someone lose their grip on consensus reality, and surrender their attachment to whatever-this-is which we normally agree upon together, we are observing them in that process of breakdown. What if they are touching that higher state? Well – I was just going to say that I believe this is what is happening – but instead I will state firmly that I bear witness through my own senses, and that I testify to the truth of my personal experience - that this is what is happening. Madreality is really real. As real as death.