Starbuck Writes In Psychology Of Religion Comments

„When higher centres have become exhausted under the great strain of a developed illuminated life, with its accompanying periods of intense lucidity, of deep contemplation, pehaps of visionary and auditory phenomena, the swing-back into the negative state occurs almost of necessity.
This is the psychological explanation of those strange and painful episodes in the life of great saints.

It occurs after a long life passed in close contact with the transcendental order, of full and growing consciousness of the ‚presence of God‘ the whole inner experience is suddenly swept away and only a blind reliance of the past convictions saves them from unbelief.
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