Ali Sina - Understanding Muhammad

Understanding Muhammad
a perception of the greatness of God” 231 Her biographers suggest that she may
well have experienced epileptic seizures. 232
LaPlante says that painters and writers like Vincent van Gogh, Gustave
Flaubert, Lewis Carroll, Marcel Proust, Tennyson and Fyodor Dostoyevsky all
had TLE. The TLE sufferers often undergo patterns of personality changes,
typically including compulsive writing or drawing and hyper-religiosity.
According to LaPlante, Muhammad also suffered from TLE. More recent
examples are Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and Ellen White, the
founder of the Seventh Day Adventist Movement, who at the age of 9 suffered a
brain injury that totally changed her personality. She also began to have
powerful religious visions.
Helen Schucman, the atheist Jewish psychologist who claimed receiving
messages from Jesus Christ in the form of “readings” that she called A Course in
Miracles, was most probably a sufferer of TLE. Reportedly, Schucman spent the
last two years of her life in a terrible, paranoid depression.
Syed Ali Muhammad Bab the founder of the Babi religion may also have
been an epileptic sufferer. Bab’s Persian Bayan (translated into English and
available online) is as classical “epileptic writing.”
Other Famous People with Epilepsy
Heidi Hansen and Leif Bork Hansen allege Søren Kierkegaard wrote in
his journal that he suffered from TLE and had kept it a secret all his life. They
quote him as saying: “Of all sufferings there is perhaps none so martyring as to
become an object of pity, nothing which so tempts one to rebel against God.
People usually regard such a person as stupid and shallow, but it would not be
difficult to show that precisely this is the hidden secret in the lives of many of
the most eminent world-historical figures." 233
The Danish philosopher was absolutely right. Far from being stupid, the
TLE sufferers are among the geniuses.
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy can well be defined as the disease of creativity.
Many famous and talented people in the history suffered from TLE and arguably
231 Theresa, Saint of Avila (1930) Interior castle. London: Thomas Baker p. 171.
232 Sackville-West 1943, The Eagle and the Dove : a Study in Contrasts - St Teresa of Avila,
St Therese of Lisieux
233 www.utas.edu.au/docs/humsoc/kierkegaard/docs/Kierkepilepsy.pdf
136