Spiritual/Dimensional Reality
There are 62 pages worth on this post which is to much to read at the moment but has anyone explored the possibility that Psychosis, especially the area of hearing voices could be a spiritual matter? Check this artical out:
In my mind’s eye, I was not thinking of Avalon as a silly game using ordinary imagination or wishful thinking. I was thinking in terms of a commonly shared vision or dreamscape in which everyone literally sees the same imagery: the same clouds, the same trees, and one another just like we do in this dimension. I further thought it could be interacted on accordingly, in essence being able to step into one another’s minds in the process. Whether this mindscape is what Avalon was or not, I don’t know, but it is what I took it to mean at the time.
Taking this view, I have a few reservations regarding its authenticity because of some experiences I have had since The Family into this realm. I am familiar with the metaphysical theory involving visualization that if even one person believes something enough, it then becomes an existing reality.
I would agree: in the sense of a personal reality existing in the individual’s mind and thoughts. This “personal reality” would be one’s perception of objective or universal reality: one’s interpretation of the actual, unchanging truth in the surrounding environment. This interpretation of reality becomes the basis for one’s system of beliefs about what is true and what is not, what is important and what is not, etc. This is called a “belief-system” (also known as a “paradigm” or “world-view”).
A person’s belief-system in turn affects a person’s responses, or the way one would act and react within the surrounding environment. In other words, how one portrays oneself is directly related to what one believes about oneself and life in general. For example, if I believe that I am worthless (which would represent my belief-system), I’ll live like it. My actions will be reckless because I am trying to escape from the pain of the worthlessness I feel. (This would represent my response to my belief-system.) I am not sure how literally I take the possibility of “projected visualization” in terms of a universal or global reality, however.
For the sake of an illustration, we’ll say you are sitting in a sophisticated restaurant eating fine cuisine with a friend. At the table to your immediate right sits a stately gentleman in a white suit with an attractive woman wearing a lavender dress and stiletto heels. You and your friend (being the dignified adults that you are) are discussing, of all things, the appalling color of the waitress’ apron. It is an eye-shocking yellow, and you are debating with your friend that it’s “not so bad” while your friend is making emphatic exclamations like, “You couldn’t pay me enough money to wear that awful thing!” The lively discourse between the two of you is soon, however, to be unceremoniously shattered as the white clad gentlemen suddenly springs to his feet in a frenzy, flailing his plate with his menu so forcefully it all but flies out of his hands. All the while his eyes are practically bulging out of their sockets as his female companion sits frozen motionless, horror-struck as she witnesses this mad spectacle. By now, everyone in the restaurant has taken notice.
What you don’t know as you sit and stare is that this man had taken some medication shortly before entering the restaurant. He had been to the doctor earlier that morning because he had a bad heart condition. Unfortunately, the doctor (being of stereotypical stock) had scrawled out an illegible prescription. Because the pharmacist could not read the doctor’s writing clearly, she had filled the prescription with the wrong medication, which, as fate would have it for this poor man, reacted with some other medication he was on for a kidney infection he had developed. Add to this the fact that he was deathly afraid of spiders (arachnophobia), and when the two drugs began to react and caused him to see spiders running all over his plate, he panicked and began to flail his shellfish with the nearest object at hand, which, as it were, happened to be his menu.
You see, the man clearly saw spiders scurrying all over his seafood. They were very, very real to him, which we could call his personal reality. However, did that mean that there really were spiders running all over his food? Of course not! The truth of the matter, the objective or universal reality, was that there were no spiders there at all, that they were merely a hallucination that only this poor man could see.1
With this said, let me explore this concept further and, I believe, cover the intended meaning. If this envisioned reality exists within a person’s mind, then what if other people also believe this same personal visualization? For example, if I create a landscape in my mind’s eye of an oak forest with a road stretching through the middle of it, could I share the same landscape with you and interact with you there, in a place within our minds? Could a link be established to share this reality, thereby enabling two or more people to collectively experience this fantasy dimension within their minds? Could they all share the same mindscape telepathically?
Perhaps. But because of my post-Family experiences, I have reason to believe that such a link is an exceptionally realistic and convincing illusion—a “quasi-link” if you will—that entails more than just the human psyche. I believe that it is a collision with the spiritual realm involving the participation and aid of outside spiritual entities. Having experienced a time in which I sincerely believed that I could read other people’s thoughts however (covered elsewhere), I am not unsympathetic with those who have also shared in this bizarre phenomenon, as some of you reading these pages undoubtedly have or currently are. It is certainly a reality of sorts, but I don’t think it is all it seems to be.
For those of you who have or are, I will attempt to explain myself a little better and contrast my views with those of traditional psychiatry. The common explanation psychiatry presents is that some seeming telepathic communication is purely psychological, having to do with excessive amounts of dopamine and other neurotransmitters in the brain, creating illusionary sensory information within the mind that the brain interprets as factual sensory input.
For instance, there was an episode on Star Trek: The Next Generation® in which the Klingons captured Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge’s visor, analyzed it and altered it, newly fitted to receive video information they controlled at their own disposal. Since Geordi was blind, the visor was built to input the sensory input of sight into his mind, electronically replacing his eyeballs and optical nerves. In the hands of the Klingons, however, it became a manipulation tool. Geordi’s mind was unable to separate the real sensory information from the false input of the Klingons and processed it just exactly the same as if he were receiving real sight information.
The false Klingon information would be likened to the psychoanalysts’ explanation of excessive amounts of dopamine and other neurotransmitters spoken of earlier, which could create chemical alterations that appeared to be related to the senses, but were largely illusionary.
I would even go so far as to maintain that some chemicals do indeed heighten awareness, particularly of your body and its related systems. However, such awareness is usually heightened at the expense of some other part of the mind, so it would still have some kind of debilitating effect on the subject (that is, debilitating in the sense of deviating from the parameters of “acceptable” or “normal” behavioral patterns).
I agree that some of the phenomenon is not what it seems to be, but hesitate to pass it off with such simplistic physiological explanations. Humans form a unique gateway between the physical and spiritual realms because their being is a composite of both dimensions. Outwardly we are sophisticated animals, but inwardly we are spiritual beings. Though a growing number admit the possibility, many psychoanalysts never examine the aspect of a spiritual dimension, I suppose in part because it is not readily tangible or measurable.2
Spiritual Impostors
More than anything I think that those who “hear voices” or the like have heightened spiritual awareness, entailing the involvement of very real spiritual entities and beings outside the scope of humanity: beyond the physical world. They would be represented as the Klingons in the above example, intentionally inputting false (or factual, as the case might be) telepathic information.
Another factor such phenomenon always entails is an altered frame of consciousness brought about by some form of mental overload. Think of how much harder it is to concentrate when you are really tired and worn out. This kind of mental fatigue makes you more vulnerable, and this is expressed with increased irritability and inability to handle stress. Suffice it to say that drug and alcohol abuse, emotional and physical trauma, learned techniques such as mantras and self-hypnosis from the arcane arts (as in witchcraft and some forms of mysticism), and similar experiences would be much more “permanent” states of mental fatigue.3 These leave the person numbed, in a trance-like state.
These vulnerable frames of consciousness make you hypersensitive in your spiritual awareness. I have my own theory which might explain why this is true. The spiritual aspect of humanity is often referred to as the soul. Most people agree that the soul is immortal. Therefore, we can conclude that it never requires sleep, and it never dies. It would not be affected by overloading the mortal body. Knock the physical “grey matter” and body temporarily out of commission, and the soul, being immortal, is still very alive and very aware, only now it would be “sitting closer to the surface,” so to speak.4 That in turn would make interaction with the spiritual plane much easier.5 The entities that exist on such a plane are purely spiritual beings, at least in the sense that they function on a higher dimension than the standard three-dimensional, physical reality with which we are so familiar.
There is a common theory that gives a greater understanding to dimensional reality, which incidentally, if I understand correctly, is also involved in the concept6 of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. In geometry, we speak of imaginary figures to explain mathematical concepts. The theory goes that if you take a line (the imaginary figure that symbolizes one dimension, theoretically extending into infinity in either direction), and square it, you arrive at the second geometric dimension: the plane. The plane contains the line, but goes beyond it. Its surface contains, if you will, a myriad of lines, theoretically extending into infinity on all points of its flat surface. When you square the plane, you arrive at the cube, which contains both the line and the plane but goes beyond that, symbolizing three-dimensional space, or height, depth, and width. The theory does not end there, however. If you take the cube and square it again you come up with the dimension of time and as some metaphysical gurus propose, the spiritual dimension.7 This dimension contains the cube (which contains the plane, which contains the line . . .) and so the dimensions climb.
David Allen Lewis and Robert Schreckhise capture the essence of where I am taking this well in their brilliant book UFO: End-Time Delusion.8 In it they state:
“Edwin Abbot wrote Flatland in 1884. The theme of this book is an examination of how a three-dimensional being would relate to people in a two-dimensional world. If we were to step into such a world, only a small portion of our body could interact with it at any one time. As we moved in their world, our appearance to the “Flatlanders” would constantly change in shape and size. We could disappear merely by stepping out of the plane of their world. We could just as suddenly reappear. If we were to pass a ball through this world, it would appear at first as a small circle, getting larger, then smaller, then disappearing. A cube on edge or other less uniform objects would also change shape and size as they passed through.
“Using this analogy, let us suppose that spiritual beings are on another, higher dimension from humankind. They would have similar effects upon our world as we would have on Flatland. If they are able to manipulate energy, to give it a concentration, then they could cause this energy concentration to take different shapes and sizes to generate an appearance of solid objects.” [They then go on to give an analogy of a Jacob’s Ladder in a darkened room.]
It only follows that spiritual beings could manifest as purely physical beings with ease, mimicking the dead if need be. If these beings are not bound by the same rules of time and space that we, as three-dimensional human beings, are forced to observe, they would obviously be quite capable of interacting and interfering with life as we know it. They could easily plant a thought within a mortal mind. It would be nothing but a thing for them to tamper with our heads or boggle even the most scientific of minds. They would even have the perfect cover.
Who is going to believe the “crazies” who maintain they were conversing with demons or angels: or maybe dear old dead Aunt Edna? Maybe they even believe that they are Jesus, God, the devil, or some other supreme figure. Who gave them such preposterous ideas? Are they just delusions of grandeur? Did they manufacture them by themselves? Are they merely hallucinating or suffering from delusions? Are they deluded by their own self-talk, which they do not recognize as such? Then why are such similar manifestations present in virtually all cases of schizophrenia? Why the often religious overtone? Is it just because the subjects can’t find natural explanations, inventing fanciful tales to explain it all? Is that all religion is anyway, merely superstitions to explain the ignorant’s lack of knowledge? Or is it something deeper: something the doctors and psychoanalysts are overlooking, dismissing with an educated whisk of the hand the “delusional” patient’s protests?
So if it is really true that the person is talking to spiritual beings, why would such beings bother tampering with pathetic little mortal human beings? What would they have to prove? If the Christian teaching is true, a lot.