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The Berkeley Psychic Institute (unless they have changed since the last time I was there, a number of years ago) teaches students to believe that many of the emotions and other sensations in your body and mind can be attributed to outside influences. This creates a big problem for people who tend to have psychosis. When someone with psychotic tendencies believes that what happens inside has external causes, and when this becomes a basic assumption, it can create an avalanche of delusional thoughts that, in one's mind, will be accepted and believed instantly.  

Regardless of whether you believe extrasensory perception is or isn't a real phenomenon, someone who suffers from psychosis needs to know that one's thoughts and emotions come from oneself. Furthermore, for a psychotic person to get over some of the symptoms, they need to incorporate an assumption of the likelihood of error in the thinking.  

If a person recovering from psychosis uses, as a "rule of thumb" that they should review their thoughts for error, it is a great way of clearing out delusions and remaining stabilized. This is also where "reality checking" has a place. Therapists or family members who aren't also psychotic are usually good to ask if a thought sounds realistic or not.  

When a psychotic person learns to question the thoughts, this is usually a sign of progress. On the other hand, when erroneous or unlikely thoughts are instantly incorporated into the thinking, it brings rapid deterioration into psychotic illness.  

It is not so farfetched to believe that living things have auras, energy fields that can transmit and receive to or from other living things in the environment. Science can't disprove this and may in the future be able to analyze it. We already know that an electromagnetic pulse directed at the brain can disrupt its function. This may soon lead to new treatments for psychiatric problems.  

We already know that nerve cells, in the brain and other parts of the body, operate through electrochemical impulses, with a remote resemblance to battery cells. We may one day devise technology that can transmit information directly into the brain through a type of induction. We also know that brain waves can be charted and measured through an electroencephalograph.  

Why, then, is it so impossible for people to be able to sense "energy" in their environment? However, for someone who tends toward psychosis, adopting the belief that we can know something via extrasensory perception can be psychologically poisonous.  

A person suffering from psychosis or some other psychiatric illness needs to operate under different rules than a non-afflicted person. Sometimes these rules may seem unfair. It isn't fair that we got this illness either. However, we have it, and we must make the best of it.  

Persons with mental illness must base our belief systems on things that are apparent from the five physical senses, and from things that are proven, concrete, and widely accepted. This is a form of self-discipline.  

While conventional thinking isn't perfect (far from it) people with mental illness must maintain a solid foothold in the belief systems that most people follow. You could call this an intentional form of ignorance, you could call it conformity, or you could call it a mental block. Whatever you'd like to call it, it produces much better results.  

The above doesn't mean we need to be brainwashed by television commercials or operate from the naiveté encouraged by the mental health treatment system. It simply means we must not operate from farfetched beliefs, whether or not they may have a grain of truth.