overwhelmed my reality testing function. As a drug user I've had
experiences of intense states and hallucinations. I was able to handle
them until my first hospitalisation.
The first time it happened it cracked my reality. I had the delusion
that I was being controlled telepathically, that things that were
coincidences weren't coincidences. The second time was similar but
different. I went through those same experiences of heightened
coincidence sensitivity but I was capable of holding back falling into
the delusions too much. The big problem though is my experiences did
seem too out of the ordinary. There just seemed to be too much to happen
by chance.
People who go through psychosis do experience certain similarities I
think but this is a guess. I think that they attempt to interpret and
communicate the experience affected by whatever environmental factors
(here I mean what happened to them since their birth rather than
temporary environmental factors related to the environment they limit at
this present time) they went through in their life. During the
experience the delusion feels real though. The second time I went
through it felt I could see clearer in a way but in retrospect now I
still perceive there were things going on that were more unlikely than
random chance would allow. The second time round the feeling of being
controlled by something or someone I didn't pin on any one thing. It is
why I call the controlling thing a force or an entity/ies. In the right
context and with the right culture I could have seen it as a spiritual
or religious experience and perhaps if I had the outcomes wouldn't have
been so negative
The experience made me rethink everything I know though. I'd gotten very
comfortable thinking all the thoughts in my head - my "i" - was a
singular consciousness. The change in awareness (a state which may,
perhaps, be a higher state of awareness) of consciousness and internal
reality was very painful. I'm still glad I didn't see a doctor and got
through it without someone telling me it was an illness and my brain was
malfunctioning.
With my internal experience it's something that's a belief rather than
science but it's based on the highest science for any individual's
reality: my personal experience. Seeing the improbability of coincidence
is not a science and it's why I keep this part of my conscious
experience to myself. I had the assumption that science knew everything
about reality and psychology knew everything about consciousness, but
there's a sort of quantum physics layer of reality that only people who
experience psychosis can attest to any understanding. I chose to make an
analogy of quantum physics because it has that quality of being so
complex it's beyond the conceptualisation of most people in truly
understanding beyond the pithy explanations given by popular science to
the masses. It's a layer of reality where all the old rules break down
and only fools explore.
For about two decades I was a hardened atheist but my personal
experience forced me to change my faith. And yet my experience wasn't
god and it was god at the same time. When I went through I read and
thought widely. I wouldn't accept that it was god because of my beliefs.
It took a while for me to make that leap of thought. The experiences I
had could be achieved in other ways and I'm sure other 'cranks' have
thought up other explanations:
- a race that existed before humankind on Earth and hides itself from
our existence controls us with science or ability beyond our own (their
science would like like magic to us)
=- the projections of the human race from the future can affect out
thoughts and our lives. In the future there may be technologies
developed well beyond even fringe thinking in physics (e.g. through
scalar waves, a theoretical wave form that might be possible to make
according to the work of Nikolai Tesla). They can view us from the
future, affect our thoughts and our lives but only in small ways. This
thinking came about because of the way I felt the coincidences were
constructed. When I was going through this experience I thought that it
was people who were doing it: The Illuminati or their ilk (something I
also thought during my first experience of full blown psychosis) but the
some of the 'unusual knowledge' or the coincidences that might trigger
people into paranoia could be achieved by human means because it
required some foreknowledge of the future. It was beyond the half second
delay or whatever between reality and consciousness experiencing reality
so couldn't be a fabrication of the brain alone. Frustratingly I can't
think of an example of this at the moment.
- the voices or power of our ancestors. This was an idea I got from a
Rastafarian woman and some information I read on the web. She was an
Ethiopian or Guanan borne Rasta and I spoke to her about these unusual
experiences. The website I'd read told me that Rasta's smoke the ganga
to enable them to commune with the voices of their ancestors however she
explained that for her it was just to chill out, however the internal
voices and the unshared perceptions were definitely the ancestors
communicating with the present and I should listen to it. This is all
pretty weird stuff for an atheist but I'm more interested in truth than
faith.
- or it's caused by aliens. When I say aliens though I don't mean grey
humanoids with big black eyes like on X-Files. Many people have limited
imaginations and that's how they perceive alien life might look like.
Given the time-scales of the universe and the fact that life manages to
exist in the speck of dust we live on there's a decent change that there
are some very, very, very old civilisations. People assume that aliens
would take a physical form but there's no reason why. I can't even begin
to guess at the science of the existence of non-corporeal aliens. The
universe is very large and very old so something could have been created
by chance (a thousand monkeys with typewriters will write Shakespeare's
works eventually, that sort of thinking) or have evolved or made a
technology such that they could exist in non-physical form and unbound
by the laws of physical reality.
I think there's a few more alternative explanations in my notes.
Importantly, the experience I went through I think is the same as what
other people with religious backgrounds would call having god in their
life or finding god. Because of my faith it took me some amount of time
to understand that it might be the experience of god, just as god might
be an alien like I've described rather than a diving being as religion
describes or god could be how people explain the influence of humans
from the future with new technology beyond our ability to imagine.
I can't prove the existence of this entity except to myself and even
then I still doubt. It could be a brain disorder. It could be an
imagined hallucination. My other voice or consciousnesses could be
natural psychological entities described as the sub, un and conscious
minds but with an active awareness of the differences between I and the
other consciousnesses. Of course the sub- and unconscious may also be
how other people have described the internal experience of god, aliens
or spirits or humans from the future or the past or whatever.
To the person experiencing this unusual perception all of those
explanations and many more could fit the evidence. The experience will
change how you think about consciousness though.
Here's the thing. What if the mad were right? What if there is something
more to this universe and they touch on it, but the touch brings madness
- it brings an experience that is unwanted in 2010. What if a human
being can develop a sense of their own awareness - an awareness of who
they are within the cacophony of internal thoughts and voices. What if
this awareness is a step in evolution of consciousness rather than a
brain disease. I've used the example of the first apes to stand up
right. Admittedly this was a very long process and this is just a way to
understand something. The first apes to stand up would be freaks. They'd
not have the advantages of 'normal' apes. They'd fall over more because
they weren't used to walking on two legs. It was harder for them because
they had to learn how to do it whereas the other apes knew how to walk
or were taught how to walk. But walking upright was an important step in
the evolution of mammals to become homo sapiens.
What if psychosis is an awakening or evolutionary experience, or what if
such an experience gets diagnosed or misdiagnoses as psychosis and
pathological?
It seems taking this opinion does make for lower levels of distress. The
Hearing Voices Network, Intervoice and other organisation look to
unpathologise these unusual experiences. In the developing world these
experiences are more acceptable in local cultures and it's my guess that
this is a significant factor in why people with schizophrenia have
better outcomes in the 1970s in the developing world. Sadly as
psychiatry and Westernised ideas of mental health become prevalent in
the developing world the situation will change for the worse.
There's also a bit about psychosis that few people recognise. It can be
a positive experience in the long term for the human being. It can be a
valuable change process. Psychiatry has a pathological view of
schizophrenia and psychosis in the theory but I think many practising
psychiatrists would (I hope) be able to see the value of the experience
to some or even many of the patients they diagnose. It's not just the
fact that some people like this alternative awareness even though it can
be confusing and distressing and shatter their old life on the consensus
measures of success used by most people and psychiatry too.
Through a unique and fortuitous set of circumstances I managed to hold
down a job while my consciousness was breaking down. After remission of
the experience my boss would have seen a change from a passive,
withdrawn individual change quite dramatically. She would have
experienced something unusual. I rarely, if ever, took credit for the
work I did. For example if I helped put together a report but the person
who wrote it got the credit I wouldn't bat an eyelid. When I did a large
review of research putting vast amounts of my free time into reading and
thinking about the research I headed it as work done by the team rather
than my own. If I did something good with someone's help it would be
them who got the credit or as much credit as I could give them. I took
no ownership for my work because after my experience I know I couldn't.
It's not just the fact that everyone contributes in small and big ways
(collective fetishism applied to intellectual property!) no matter how
much work any individual does. It's the other consciousness and the
raising of my awareness that means that didn't credit my work.
I stick with the purity of that thought with this blog. I am We. I would
not be I or We as I am now without having gone through severe mental
illness, psychiatric crisis and acute psychosis.
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