Brad Lichtenstein

        I was going to be a rabbi and I began to look at my spiritual self. In a
magical moment I stepped out of reality and felt myself above my body. It was the beginning of all things—the essence of all things.
   The spirituality grew stronger. One evening I had a spontaneous writing from God. Every 2100 years there is a being who occupies the earth and brings enlightenment. The writing said I was that being.
   Finally, I just let it all out. I said, “I am the Messiah. I need to deal with why people are starving.” I began speaking of the second coming of Christ, and I was in the hospital that afternoon. The diagnosis was schizophrenia, thought-voices.
   They began to talk to me as if I were a child. They took my clothes and I
had to put everything into a locked box. From my huge position of the Messiah, I was degraded to being less than a person.

    The medicine cut off the voices immediately. I was impressed. But I was still the Messiah. I’ve had too many profound experiences to not believe I am the Messiah.
   Our socialization says that you don’t talk on buses and you don’t say you’re the Messiah. The last time I told my doctor I still thought I was the Messiah, he said, “Take some more tranquilizers.”
   The voices are gone. I have a good job now. But if they say it is bad to think you are the Messiah then they haven’t cured me. I can’t lose God’s message that I am on the right path.