[NoraSpinnor]

Sanity, according to the Sage, is a moving coordinate that depends on viewpoint, context, and integration. We often label “insane” what departs from the majority’s perception. Yet the book reminds us that genuine awakening also produces a radical shift in perception: what once felt normal can later look reckless, self-blinding, even “crazy.”

That raises a question: if sanity is partly a matter of shared perception, what happens when perception legitimately widens? The Sage distinguishes between private vision and shared world without dismissing either. Private vision includes dreams, symbolic impressions, synchronicities, and even bleed-through from adjacent planes. The point is not to deny such impressions; it’s to situate them.

On parallel worlds and alternate realms, the Sage avoids the easy trap of pathologizing uncommon experiences. If reality has more layers than our five senses report, then unusual perceptions are not automatically errors; they are hypotheses that require skillful handling. The craft here is discernment. The Sage’s method is simple: coherence, compassion, consequences. Does the experience cohere over time (not just in the heat of emotion)? Does it tend to increase compassion (for self and others), rather than inflate importance or isolate you? And when you act from it, do the consequences land in the shared world in ways you can own? If an experience passes these three tests, you can treat it as provisionally trustworthy while you keep refining it.

Importantly, the Sage never equates “seeing more” with “being right.” He frames sanity as right relation: with one’s own mind, with other minds, and with the commons of shared reality. On this view, sanity isn’t unanimity and it isn’t originality; it’s the capacity to move among layers of experience.

So when unique experiences arrive, do not immediately dismiss them as “imagined” or “tricks of the eye.” In a multidimensional multiverse, incredible things can happen. At any moment, a dimensional drift can occur, giving us a glimpse of a parallel world, then snapping back to normal. If we are not careful, we are bound to miss it. If we do happen to catch it, trust your experience. Even if you were alone with no other witnesses, your experience is valid.

What are your thoughts about the sage’s take on sanity?
Could people with hallucinations actually be seeing real phenomena on alternate planes?
If you have struggled with mental health, how do you feel about this interpretation?

[joshchen]

First of all, really great novel! Second, this is a really interesting subject. For a very long time people did treat the mentally ill as if they had a spiritual sickness. They didn’t really help them though, except by trying to do exorcisms. This puts a whole new spin on it. Maybe they are seeing spiritual realms, or parallel worlds, it’s all possible. I dont like the idea of saying everything is just abnormal brain function. That relies too much on the material. Mind is so much more, and so is the universe too. Doctors think they have things figured out but we are just on the tip of the iceburg on understanding the brain. One day people will be looking back at the way we do medicine today as barbaric.

[MayaMoonHealer]

As a mental health professional, I think this is a really interesting approach. We have to have a lot of caution in what we confirm as real, though. Some patients suffer from very frightening visions. I would hate to tell someone that those were real. Instead setting up a way to distinguish between visions and label them might help dismiss some things and maybe validate beneficial insights if there are any.

[NoraSpinnor]

Hi Maya, we address this. The ideal model involves a classification system where a patient can distinguish from subconscious fears (i.e., phenomena is leak from the mental plane), or random or unknown figures (bleed through from parallel worlds or other planes). The main ideas are to classify what they are so they can be addressed and to validate the patient’s experiences. It’s not technically “unreal” just because they are alone in their experience.

Here is an excerpt from the Netism book, still in the process of being written:
“A Netist-compatible psychotherapy would classify experiences rather than dismiss them—e.g., as (1) internal, subconscious fears; (2) projections from fractured parts of the spirit; or (3) bleed-through from another timeline or plane. This framework offers comfort that the experiences are valid while giving practical tools to interpret and confront what is frightening or unknown.”

We definitely don’t want to validate fears; what we can do is describe them as mental activity, which the patient has the power to strengthen or weaken with attention (the Netist practice of thread-weaving).

Glad you are here, welcome to Netism!

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