Ecstasy, Epiphany and Epilepsy
Can one’s physiological state create a path to spiritual transformation? Exploring neurotheology in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
"Neurotheology" is a neologism that describes the scientific study of the neural correlates of religious or spiritual beliefs, experiences and practices. - Wikipedia
Having just returned from a weeklong retreat on The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), I couldn't help but see similar neurotheological connections. One thing to note about the author was that he had epilepsy. Dostoyevsky was a heavy drinker and seemed to suffer from severe anxiety and depression related to his health issues.
Dostoevsky’s lifestyle may have contributed to the frequency and intensity of his seizures. Typically, he slept during the day and worked from 10:30 PM to 5:00 AM, drinking large amounts of tea and several glasses of sherry during the night. Also, his seizure frequency and intensity seemed to be related to psychological stress, and his alcohol abuse may have aggravated the condition.2
Doctors had warned him not to write and he acknowledged in correspondence that over concentrating and lack of sleep had detrimental effects on his epilepsy, but he knew the therapeutic effects that writing had for him so he never took the advice.3
I wonder if Dostoyevsky’s experiences with epilepsy made him more aware of the opportunities for spiritual openness while human bodies are in a state of neurological or physical distress. Just knowing the power of severe sleep deprivation could have informed important scenes for three Karamazov brothers. Alyosha, Dmitri, and Ivan had their spiritual turning points while in various dream or delirous states.
For Alyosha, we see the transformation in Part III: Book 7, Chapter 4 when he falls into a trance-sleep state before the body of Elder Zosima. In the scene Father Paissy is reading the Gospel about the Wedding at Cana as Alyosha drifts off but seems to stay conscious.
“Fragments of thoughts flashed in his soul catching fire like little stars and dying out at once to give way to others, yet there reigned in his soul something whole, firm, assuaging, and he was conscious of it himself.
After Alyosha encounters the resurrected Zosima in his dream he experiences something akin to ecstasy,
Something burned in Alyosha’s heart, something suddenly filled him almost painfully, tears of rapture nearly burst from his soul… He stretched out his hands, gave a short cry, and woke up…
He abruptly turns and leaves the cell and does not stop until he is outside. “Filled with rapture, his soul yearned for freedom, space, vastness.” He throws himself on the ground and repeatedly kisses the earth.
Oh, in his rapture he wept even for the stars that shone on him from the abyss, and “he was not ashamed of this ecstasy.” […]
He fell to the earth a weak youth and rose up a fighter, steadfast for the rest of his life, and he knew it and felt it suddenly, in that very moment of his ecstasy. Never, nver in all his life would Alyosha forget that moment. “Someone visited my soul in that hour,” he would say afterwards, with firm belief in his words…
The word rapture captures this moment, but it was distinctly preceded by a physical sensation of trance-like sleepiness. Was this hovering sensation of semi-consciousness a necessary precursor to the ecstasy that followed?
Something similar happens to the eldest brother Dmitri in Part III: Book 9, Chapter 8. After a stressful interrogation and calling of witnesses it looks like Dmitri is being set up for his father’s murder. In this state of distress he falls asleep and dreams he is on a steppe and there is a “wee one”—a baby—who is crying at his mother’s dry breast. The selfish sensualist Dmitri is finally called outside himself to care for the helpless—in particular, for the suffering children.
[…] a tenderness such as he has never known before surging up in his heart, he wants to do something for them all, so that he wee one will no longer cry, so that the blackened, dried-up mother of the wee one will not cry either, so that there will be no more tears in anyone from that moment on, and it must be done at once, at once, without delay and despite everything, with all his Karamazov unrestraint.
He then startles awake as he is asked to listen to a transcript and then sign it. He guesses that he was asleep for an hour or more. It is obvious to the reader that an external change has accompanied the internal spiritual one,
But his whole soul was quivering with tears and he said that he’d sign whatever they liked. “I’ve had a good dream, gentlemen,” he said in a strange voice, and with a new light, as of joy, in his face.
This brings us to Ivan and his meeting with the Devil in Part IV: Book 11, Chapter 9 of The Brothers Karamazov.
“I am not a doctor, but nevertheless I feel the moment has come when it is decidedly necessary for me to explain to the reader at least something of the nature of Ivan Fyodorovich’s illness. Getting ahead of myself, I will say only one thing: he was, that evening, precisely just on the verge of brain fever, which finally took complete possession of his organism, long in disorder but stubbornly refusing to succumb.”
The narrator immediately explains that Ivan is physically ill, thus suggesting that there is a corporeal explanation for the long delirious conversation that follows between Ivan and what appears to be the Devil. The nightmare seems to be a metacognitive crisis triggered by the physical distress of the persistent fever. Ivan sees the devil as both a self-projection and an adversary. Not only that but Dostoyevsky writes in such a way that the reader is also unable to determine if Ivan’s devil is real or a figment of his imagination. The reader is expertly drawn into the same epistemic conflict.
Is it significant that there is a possible neurophysical stress—the brain fever—prior to Ivan’s spiritual battle?
Dostoyevsky’s epilepsy certainly influenced a number of characters in his stories, but this illness was made most famous in the character of Smerdyakov, the fourth Karamazov brother who uses the excuse of psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (caused by psychological factors, not illness, meaning that he probably faked it all) to create his alibi for the murder of Fyodor Karamazov. Smerdyakov is the brother least like Alyosha and is the probable result of the depraved patriarch’s rape of the town’s holy fool Lizaveta. To violate a blessed, feeble person is a heinous act that Dostoyevsky likely wanted to carry grave consequences. In this patricide-suicide there is no dying in a state of grace for either man.
On April 30, 1878 Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s three-year-old son Alyosha suffered his first epileptic seizure which lasted for four minutes. On May 16 the toddler suffered from status epilepticus that lasted for twelve hours and forty minutes—and in the end, he died.4 The fact that little Alyosha likely inherited his fatal illness from his father haunted the famed Russian writer for the rest of his life. One can see this from his and his wife’s personal writings, but it is evident throughout Dostoyevsky’s last novel. He seems to take no pains to hide connections to his real life when he gives the virtuous young brother the name of his deceased son. Even more intriguing, he gives the lecherous, buffoonish father his own first name: Fyodor.
Little Alyosha died in May 1878, and the first installment of The Brothers Karamazov appeared only months later. The Russian Messenger ran the serialized novel from January 1879 to November 1880. Fyodor Dostoyevsky died less than four months after its completed publication. He was 59.
The Brothers Karamazov is known for wrestling with religious faith, belief in God, and the meaning of suffering, yet Dostoyevsky was able to portray a physical nature to these abstract concepts. Spun from his own tortured and grieving mind, he wrote a masterpiece where the most spiritual and virtuous character triumphs.
If Dostoyevsky and his son had not had epilepsy, would he have been able to write what many call one of the greatest novels ever written?
Is there any connection between neurotheology and the spirituality of Dostoyevsky’s own writing? I think there probably is, but I think someone smarter than I am should write about it.
“Hurrah for Karamazov!”
Hurrah Dostoyevsky!
Death Comes for the Archbishop is one of my favorite Lenten novels—due to the themes and length of book. Other favorites include The Power and the Glory and Laurus.
Gamble, James G. Et al. “Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, and Epilepsy” (2023)
Iniesta, Ivan. “Epilepsy in Dostoevsky” Progress in Brain Research, Volume 205, (2013), Pages 277-293
Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time, (2010). pg 786
I'm delighted to read this after our earlier exchange. Your notes about Dostoevsky's illness make me wonder if writing might be one of those proximal triggers. That is, perhaps "Old Dost," as Michael Mohr calls him, was not merely simulating his own experiences of rapture in his characters -- maybe the writing ritual actually produced those spiritual experiences for him? I'm aware that I get a similar feeling of connection and renewal from writing that other people seem to get through prayer or meditation. What a sad, yet touching paradox that writing had a therapeutic impact on D's mental health, but also compounded his illness.