The Five Levels of Madness

Level 1. Coincidence: you start to NOTICE synchronicities around you. Around 4-6 a day. For example, you're in a chat room and listening to music at the same time. In the song you're listening to, someone says the words "Why not?" and a second later, or at exactly the same time, the words "Why Not?" appear on your screen as part of a conversation. Or else, you are thinking of onions for some reason and the radio is on and at that moment someone mentions onions on the radio. *Most* people do not notice these things. This is in the realm of AWARENESS.

Level 2: Significance: These coincidences start to happen more and more and each time they do you FEEL an eerie significance even though you can't say what the significance is. This is akin to Richard Dreyfuss saying "This is important, this means something" while pointing to a pile of mashed potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This is in the realm of FEELING

Level 3: Ideas: You start to get ideas about the 'significant coincidences'. These ideas, are actually not correct or at least not in sync with consensus reality. For example, you notice that the light outside the door of the door of your particular apartment, the light in the hallway is a LITTLE bit brighter than the other lights in the hallway. You get the IDEA that this is because someone has replaced it with a cancer-causing radiation emitter. Probably someone in the government. But you don't BELIEVE this...this is in the realm of a THOUGHT.

Level 4: Connection: If the thoughts are persistent, each of the significant coincidences that you notice and have thoughts about start to relate to each other, in a way that are meaningful to you. For example, you may hear a hum come through your apartment and get the persistent idea that it is from members of the government, that have taken up residence in an adjacent apartment, sending cancer causing rays toward you. Combined with the other idea of the light, and further ideas, more and more 'evidence' is being accumulated. These 'meaningful connections' usually have a grandiose, religious, or sinister bent to them.
In other words, each of these moments/ideas are like stars in a constellation 'forming' in your mind the outline of a giant scorpion in the sky (or a boat or a donkey or whatever else is culturally (read: personally) significant). Every time you look at the constellation you MAY BELIEVE you see a giant scorpion. This is in the realm of BELIEF.

Level 5: Disconnection: You disconnect from reality, or at least consensus reality. Not only do you see a scorpion in the sky but the scorpion comes down and talks to you. It also imports to you, possibly, knowledge that you might not have any business knowing, or otherwise not know. This is the realm of the shaman and the collective unconsciousness. Strange events occur. You can 'see into the future', have remote viewing or out of body experiences, ghosts tap the back of your chair, etc. This, debatably, at least from the Western point of view, is known as 'your mind playing major tricks on you'.
Notes: This process can be likened to a person jumping from a dock onto a boat leaving the dock. He leaves the dock because the crowd on it makes him nervous and wants to get away from them. As he has one foot on the boat, one foot on the dock, he has three choices: 1.) stay on the dock, 2.) jump on the boat (go mad), or 3.) Fall in the water. Once you have reached level 5 you are 'on the boat'.
The 'dock' is consensus reality. The 'water' down below is the realm of the mental patient in Western society. Medications and mental health interventions are analogous here to 'life preservers'.
Some countries and cultures do not have the technology or wherewithal for medications and services and so forth. For the people in the water, they either drown or are taken care of by people who jump in and buoy them. Other countries deal with this by making the 'boat riders' as holy people and revere them.
However, in Western culture, being 'on the boat' (unless you are a Hopi elder living on an Indian reservation and have people taking care of you) is not compatible with 'activities of daily living', things like going grocery shopping, paying rent and bills on time, having a social life, etc. People in the water and certainly on the boat are 'stigmatized', as weak and dangerous to the 'flock' on the 'dock'. The 'boat rider' or 'water dweller' or 'those that cannot tolerate the dock' (for reasons of the same sensitivities to irrelevant stimulus that leads to level 1) and all the rest of it requires intervention.
Again, in other cultures, going on 'boat trips' can be a valuable service to the community, as if a ship captain has gone out and brought back fish, or treasures from other lands in the form of art, messages from beyond, pognostications, etc.
Getting 'lost at sea' is also a possibility.

"Creativity is a bloody nuisance and an evil curse that will see to it that you die from stress and alcohol abuse at a very early age, that you piss off all your friends, break appointments, show up late, and have this strange bohemian urge (you know that decadent laid-back pimp-style way of life). The truly creative people I know all live lousy lives, never have time to see you, don't take care of themselves properly, have weird tastes in women and behave badly. They don't wash and they eat disgusting stuff, they are mentally unstable and are absolutely brilliant."
Toke Nygaard