[peaceniq]

Wowza! MAYBE we are going crazy for a reason. I have also recently gone on this trip as well. I think it is what some religions are calling a calling. Maybe in this there is the juncture that allows us to choose the path of materialism or spirituality, what did you choose?

[drk121]

Hey, all. No one has posted here in a while, but I've had three separate experiences, similar to the one's you've all had. Like many of you, I was completely uninterested in religion before my first manic experience. One night I stayed up late and proved the existence of God, only to realize that any "proof" that I had was circular logic. I then realized that all logic, when extrapolated to it's furthest point was circular. Older philosophers believed in a dualist perspective, that there was a God or there wasn't, each offered their own circular logic, neither that really proved or disproved God's existence. Now I sit right between. I have no doubt that I have come in contact with "the other", something else, beyond our understanding, some might call it God, some might call it aliens, I just call it something we don't understand. I think it has caused a lot of really smart people a lot of pain trying to figure this thing out, especially because for some of us, it seems to call. There is a lot of interesting research being done about the pineal gland and near death experiences that suggest other states of consciousness that we have relatively little understanding about. No doubt there are other states of consciousness out there. I feel like this is what many that are "mentally ill" are trying to access. I have been diagnosed as bipolar or schizoaffective, but I have never had a about of major depression, which is supposed to accompany either of the "diseases". I've had similar delusions, that I was being watched by people on TV, that I was meant to have a child in order to save the world.

I see a therapist regularly and she has talked with me about how the delusions that we have are things that are based in reality blown up or distorted. Certainly, there is realm of consciousness between the realm that "normal" people perceive and the realm that we perceive. I think that it is interesting that most people with schizophrenia have little interest in money or personal possessions, that they are typically non-conformist and live in opposition to the status quo. Certainly, these aspects of it should not be considered a mental illness, but I stayed in a hospital for over a week because I kept insisting I was going to leave my job when I got out. (I'm sure there were reasons beyond that as well, but I knew what they wanted me to say, "I'm going to go back to work and try to get back to my life as it was." and I just couldn't say that after my experiences).

So what is to be said? We all had this weird thing happen to us, and now we have to go back to existing in their world. It is really a shame, since I want so bad for them to see my world. Personally, I believe that the human brain, or the brains that we possess are struggling to achieve a connection and the intelligence of the next dimension. I'm not really educated enough to elaborate on that, but I feel there is a reason that we grow in numbers despite the fact that new drugs are constantly being made to suppress the very state we sometimes find ourselves in. Maybe the next stage of evolution isn't in the body, but in the mind. They say that evolution occurs when a genetic mutation occurs that carries on throughout a population. Why is this genetic mutation flourishing at this exact time? Is there something about it that makes us more fit to survive than others? I can't really answer that, and I also know that manic (mystical) experiences aren't something that are new, they have been going on for as long as man has been around, it just seems now there are a lot of us.

Sometimes it makes me think of X-Men. When I showed up to the psych ward, that is what it felt like to me, a bunch of mutants that were shunned by society, but secretly saving the world. Except the mutations weren't in our bodies, they were in our minds (so I guess like Professor X and Magneto). Most never get chance to explore this part of our mind, because it is so feared and shunned. After three manic episodes, I started to be able to navigate them better, and learned how to not put myself in as much danger. That being said, I still put myself in danger and had a chance of dying, so I'd rather take some meds and listen to my doctor than have another episode, but there is certainly something to be said for them that few people have the courage to explore.

[Ryantheatheist]

I am diagnosed with bipolar disease and last year I had a major manic episode and ended up in the hospital. The strange thing is that I'm not religious at all, I've barely ever thought about religion and philosophy always frustrated me because I felt like I was going in circles. But in the weeks before I got in the hospital, I started thinking about philosophical and religious things obsessively. Some of them I know were bug nuts crazy, but some were actually kind of thought provoking. I started thinking about existance and all the different religions and started coming up with crazier and crazier theories about the world and the nature of existance and religon and stuff. Even after I recovered I was still feeling the need for religion in my life, which I never had before. This has since gone away completely.
I've heard many stories of other people who, in the process of going crazy, started thinking about religion or the nature of reality. Also, many people go crazy when they're in religion school. I was amazed when I went to support groups by how the people had similar delusions as me- for example, one girl I met felt like she was on a TV show while I thought I was a character in a book. Like we weren't real. And another one had "proven" in his head that we all didn't exist, which is eerie because I basically thought the exact same thing. I also remember thinking so much that I felt like I got to the point where everything was a paradox, that existance itself was a paradox. I don't remember what the reasoning behind that was, and now I try not to think about trippy stuff too much in the fear that I might go off the deep end again. Sometimes I feel like those thoughts caused my insanity, or at least my mental inbalance and thinking about those things fed off each other.
Does anyone have any thoughts on why this might be? I found it way too coincidental to not spark my interest.

I am a sucker for over-thinking things, and it can send you on a wild mind bender. However just remember that your brain is there to be used, I would say it is much better to think of radical answers to existence because existence itself is radical anyway! :)

Ryan