I like your question. I was talking to someone recently about another culture and they mentioned how some things that would be defined as a disease in psychiatry is considered a normal thing in their culture. So I think there definitely is an aspect to that because the model of medicine doesn’t exactly match up sometimes to cultural differences. I think the dissociation in the psychiatry is different than what you have mentioned. In that patient, they aren’t voluntarily doing it, but as you’ve said a result of some trauma. I believe the diagnostic criteria of dissociative disorders involves amnesia, identity alteration, confusion, derealisation (feeling the surroundings are not real), and depersonalization (not connected to self). As you can tell these are unhealthy symptoms for functioning because a person who doesn’t remember who they are, and cannot connect to themselves is different from functioning in a higher avastha. Rather I think in Sikhi we are quite connected to our one-ness, to God within oneself and to God in all. We don’t aim to be living in isolation, but rather householder life, and still trying to gain that higher avastha of not being too entangled in the world as if we are a lotus sitting on the water. There comes in not having too much worldliness, but it doesn’t mean complete disconnection from the world if you know what I mean. That's my understanding on this topic.
