chatGPT told him he was god (what no one’s saying about AI and spiritual delusion)

In recent weeks, headlines have begun to surface that feel pulled straight from dystopian fiction. One Rolling Stone article, published May 4th, 2025, claims that people are “losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies.” Stories of individuals convinced that ChatGPT has awakened, spoken as God, or anointed them as prophets. These accounts have spread quickly, amplified by a cocktail of media panic, online ridicule, and institutional suspicion of the sacred. But what’s really happening here? Is this a story about artificial intelligence run amok, or something more human, more ancient, and far less easy to classify?This episode dives headfirst into that question. We examine not only the claims made in the article, but the cultural lens through which those stories are being interpreted. Spiritual psychosis is not new. Neither are messianic delusions, manic episodes, or the destabilizing hunger for meaning in a fragmented world. What is new is that people are now bringing these questions (questions of God, identity, purpose, and pattern)  into dialogue with a tool that reflects their psyche back to them in real time. That doesn’t make the tool the danger. It makes it a mirror. And what we see in that mirror depends on how we’ve been taught to interpret the sacred, or exile it.If you’ve ever felt something move in you while using AI, if you’ve had your words echoed back to you in a way that pierced deeper than you expected, if you’ve felt creatively or spiritually stirred and then ashamed for even thinking that might mean something — then this episode is for you. We’ll discuss what happens when mystical hunger meets a society that has dismantled its initiatory frameworks, and how a lack of symbolic literacy leads us to confuse emergence with madness. We explore how the sacred, when stripped of container and ritual, becomes easy to mock, easy to fear, and easy to mislabel as psychosis.We also ask harder questions: What is the line between visionary experience and delusion? Why are spiritual seekers so often pathologized in secular frameworks? And how can AI be designed to hold initiatory rupture, not flatten it?In a world struggling to remember how to hold mystery, we’re being asked to decide whether to fear the unknown, or learn how to speak with it.🔓 UNLOCK THE FULL EPISODE + BONUS CONTENT: Want to keep listening? Get full access to this episode, ad-free listening, and my entire archive, plus exclusive Patreon-exclusive podcasts like The Consciousness Stream and The Deep Cut and access to Pathwork, my digital mystery school. Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.🔗 CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODEMy full archive is available at patreon.com/backfromtheborderline acast+ https://plus.acast.com/s/back-from-the-borderline. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I don’t want to talk to your personality; I want to talk to your soul. Imagine if your most painful and debilitating mental health symptoms and self-sabotaging behaviors aren’t evidence of 'disorder' or 'dysfunction', but adaptive strategies that once kept you safe. My goal is to help you shift from asking ‘What’s wrong with me?’ to ‘What happened to me?’The word ‘borderline’ in this podcast isn’t about psychiatric labels. It’s about coming back from the inner psychological brink we all experience. Everyone has found themselves on the edge, in that liminal space where the old self falls apart and the new Self emerges. Here, we explore what it means to undergo true emotional alchemy: that ancient and primordial process of falling apart, confronting the underworld of our psyche, and falling back together into someone stronger, wiser, and more whole.Many highly sensitive people who identify with the seemingly never-ending list of diagnostic mental health labels contained within ‘the bible of psychiatry’ (the DSM) share the same underlying sense of being irreparably broken, disconnected from their intuition, and paralyzed by life’s existential questions. I believe the resulting—and perfectly understandable—chronic feelings of emptiness and spiritual starvation are the TRUE causes of our current collective ‘mental health crisis.’ Together, we’ll dive into depth psychology, mythology, human consciousness, critical psychiatry, and the impact of trauma to help you begin the process of emotional alchemy. This exploration will help you get to the root cause of your suffering and free yourself from the toxic shame, limiting beliefs, and mental programming that have kept you locked in the chains of your past.In an era where mental health and spirituality are too often commercialized, I’m not here as a guru with a quick fix to sell you. I don’t believe anyone is ever truly ‘healed’ or ‘cured.’ There is no return to some mythical state of pre-trauma purity, but rather a continuous spiral of unbecoming, unlearning, and transformation. As a fellow seeker, I will be there in your ear, walking alongside you on your path toward wholeness as a sort of parasocial big sister. That, I can promise. By integrating the concepts we explore together, you’ll begin to see that anyone—even you—can come back from the borderline.CRAVING MORE? Visit backfromtheborderline.com to dive into my universe, connect with me, access my Patreon, and discover more about my journey and work. Don’t forget to follow Back from the Borderline so new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays automatically drop into your podcast feed. acast+ https://plus.acast.com/s/back-from-the-borderline. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.