Psychiatry vs. Spiritual Beliefs & Experiences
Hello, my name is Mark D. English (aka Arjuna D. Ghose), and I am an activist and a spiritual monk of 28 years.
I am protesting the current quality of mental health services and the lack of understanding of consciousness (as well as their propagation that they do) on the part of psychiatrists.
Consciousness is the expertise of spiritual Masters—not scientists or psychiatrists.
“Science does not deal with planes of consciousness; it deals only with the facts that it gets from the physical world. Consciousness is something which science is not approaching and cannot approach.” — Sri Chinmoy, Spiritual Master
Some of my beliefs:
- The pharmaceutical companies are misleading people so that they can make large sums of money, often at the expense of others. For example, they suppress any notion of cures.
- Psychiatrists are misleading society and posing as experts on things they know very little about. People believe them, and as a result, stunt humanity’s progress and cause stigma.
- Many people in society believe psychiatrists have some kind of special insight. This is not true. Most psychiatrists have no greater insight than random people off the street.
- Psychiatrists confuse consciousness as coming solely from physical brain chemistry or genetics. This is not a scientific fact or a spiritual fact.
“While posing as ‘authorities’ on the mind and mental health, psychiatry has no scientific basis for any of its treatments or methods.” — Citizens Commission on Human Rights
More of my beliefs:
- Psychiatry is not a science. Even if it were a science, science will never have the capacity to grasp and examine consciousness.
- In many cases, psychiatry is a backwards “solution” to societal problems. Whereas government funding and legislation should increase focus on preventative measures such as improving love and respect for the children being raised in our society, it often fails to do so, leading to unofficially sanctioned neglect and punishment. Although governmental support is not a quick-fix solution, this should not deter governments from making these investments and improvements.
- Things like Risperidone, Sertraline, Olanzapine, Clozapine, etc. should not be called medicine. They should be called prescription drugs or prescriptives or psychiatric drugs. Although they sometimes help to a limited degree, their primary purpose is to help pharmaceutical companies make money. Real medicines are things like laughter and meditation and spirituality. These are medicines because they actually cure certain mental health issues, whereas prescriptives do not cure—they alleviate or suppress, at best. And there is no limit to the amount of progress you can make with real medicine, which one must understand is a long-term process.
Some of my goals:
- Education and raising awareness
- Psychiatrists (as well as judges and members of a jury) should pray soulfully to the Supreme and meditate on the Light of the Supreme before reaching a diagnosis or verdict.
- Psychiatrists need to recognize that they don’t know what they don’t know and stop masquerading to have knowledge they don’t have.
- In order to gain a better understanding of human consciousness and how to improve mental and spiritual health, psychiatrists should study the writings and words of Spiritual Masters, including Jesus Christ, Mother Meera, Paramahansa Yogananda, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Chinmoy, Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Chinmayananda, Swami Vivekananda, or others.
- Prescribing medication (i.e., prescriptives/psychiatric drugs) should be part of a holistic approach. However, most psychiatrists just focus on prescription medication as though it were the entire solution.
In addition to being an activist, I am also a (Sri Chinmoy disciple) monk. I’ve experienced my own personalized version of Sri Chinmoy Yoga.
You can read about how I got started with my causes in a blog article I wrote here. This blog article talks about:
- A spiritual encounter during which I experienced conscious oneness with the Supreme. I was aware of His presence and intoxicated by Him, which caused some people to wrongly claim I was committing a crime, on drugs, or schizophrenic.
Blog posts such as this will soon be part of my multi-volume memoir, The Struggle Within
“In spiritual communication,
Mental telepathy
Is the beginner’s course.”
~ Sri Chinmoy
You can help by:
- Following me on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram:
- @burnedactivist
- Checking out my blog article that describes how I was burned:
- Purchasing a product from my shop page
- Telling a friend
- Or simply start with the man in the mirror by practicing daily prayer and meditation, or some sort of increased sincerity.
“Psychiatry makes unproven claims that depression, bipolar illness, anxiety, alcoholism and a host of other disorders are in fact primarily biologic and probably genetic in origin…This kind of faith in science and progress is staggering, not to mention naïve and perhaps delusional.” — Dr. David Kaiser, psychiatrist
As far as I’m concerned, psychiatry as a viable diagnoser and effective helper of mental health is one of the biggest specious arguments on the planet.
(specious [adjective] [spē-shəs]: superficially plausible but actually wrong)

Articles
- Childhood trauma causes changes in the brain
- Psychiatric diagnosis 'scientifically meaningless'
- Brain size and shape can morph in response to stress
- Sleep deprivation leads to symptoms of schizophrenia
Videos
Quotes
“One of the biggest misconceptions about the psychiatric drugs is that they are these medical remedies that only act in a particular way on this presumed disease, or abnormality, or chemical imbalance that we have. That idea is a commercial idea.”— Dr. David Cohen, an author, professor, and Associate Dean for Research and Development at Luskin School of Social Work, UCLA. [source]
“I am appalled by the rapid diagnosis & medicalization of human distress. The consequences of dumbing down human experience to a quick label & prescription have created indelible harm.”— Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP [source]
“As far as I’m concerned, psychiatry as a viable diagnoser and effective helper of mental health is one of the biggest specious arguments on the planet.”— Mark D. English (aka Arjuna), spiritual monk of 28 years, lived experience [source]
“There has been no shortage of alleged biochemical explanations for psychiatric conditions... not one has been proven. Quite the contrary. In every instance where such an imbalance was thought to have been found, it was later proven false.”— Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist [source]
“You can't disagree with a psychiatrist without getting a diagnosis.”— Gary Greenberg, an author and practicing psychotherapist [source]
“It is spirituality that has the inner wisdom to solve all our problems, and it alone can kindle our true consciousness.”— Sri Chinmoy, spiritual Master [source]
“There is an astounding lack of accountability in mental health treatment. Ask your mental health clinician how they are monitoring treatment outcomes. How successful are they in helping? Most have no idea.”— Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D., ABPP [source]
“I once heard renowned traumatologist, John Briere, quip that if Cptsd were ever given its due, the DSM [The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] used by all mental health professionals would shrink from its dictionary like size to the size of a thin pamphlet.”— Pete Walker, psychotherapist, author of Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving [source]