Mental health: beyond labels

Diagram showing the difference between the relationship in thought and the relationship through the senses. On the left, a grey circle shows division: one part “the observer” (I), one part “the observed” (You), linked by e-motions and enclosed in the arrows of time (past, present, future). On the right, two coloured circles represent the Whole, with the inscription “actual relationship: the senses – sensation.”

Thought creates division: “I” and “you,” separated by e-motions and by time.

The senses reveal another kind of relationship: direct contact with what is, without separation.


In my medical training, I studied psychiatry.

In my daily work as a family doctor, what we call mental health is at the very heart of my practice.
And yet, are we really clear about the meaning of the term “mental health”?

If we call mental illness the many diagnoses assigned by psychiatry, what we are actually describing are various forms of psychological suffering – and different distances from actuality, from what is actually happening.

Symptoms often shared by all humanity, but experienced with different intensities.

A descriptive but non-causal psychiatry

Psychiatric diagnoses describe.
They classify.
They give names.

But they say almost nothing about the cause.
(Except for trauma.)

Everything I have learned about thought has not come from medicine, but from the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti.

1) Distance from reality

If we define mental illness as a distance from reality, then it is the species Homo sapiens itself that has a problem.

The name sapiens comes from sapere – to know.
By calling ourselves “the one who knows,” we have defined a consciousness turned mainly towards the past.

Yet knowledge, which always belongs to the past, is not what is actually lived now.

Memory is only an imprinted image, often emotional.
It lacks the precision and coherence of the actual.

Thus, as a species, we have destroyed nature – the present, our present – and we continue to do so on a large scale, including our own nature.
In the same movement, we add “more” to this destroyed reality, guided by the idea that it will produce a supposedly better future.
But we are nature:
how could nature decide it would do “better” than what created it?

We are proud of knowing, but in doing so we remain trapped in what is no longer, or in what we fear or hope will come to be.

This is our distance from actuality: the past and the future in our consciousness.

2) Psychological suffering: thought and e-motions

Suffering arises from the emotions generated by thought – from the division thought creates within oneself.

Just as physical pain appears when tissues are separated – by a wound, a growth – our “inner world” also suffers when it is divided.

Thought divides.
It creates the observer, which we call “I,”
and the observed, which we call “thought.”

Between the two circulate e-motions,
pushing them closer together or pulling them apart.

This inner turmoil is lived as true, and inevitably expressed outwardly.

But our biological senses reveal another type of relationship:

  • An ear can only hear an actual vibration – hearing is the relationship.

  • An eye can only meet what is actually there – seeing is the relationship.

  • The same goes for smelling, touching, tasting.

Through the senses, there is no observer and no observed.
Only direct contact with what is.
Only unison.

As a matter of honesty

If we were just, we would say: sapere is a tool, but it is not actuality.

“Mental health” is a relationship with reality – something the species Homo sapiens does not seem to grasp, because of the importance it has given to knowledge.

The majority of us are therefore brothers and sisters in “mental illness.”
Some of us are simply more identified with thought than others.

But we are one. And this honesty is essential to repair the wound created by separation – the wound that labels make us believe is real.

Giving thought its right place, as Jiddu Krishnamurti put it, is what we are left to explore.

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