Might be somewhat controversial but worth discussing. Note! I just want an honest discussion and your views and do not mean to offend anyone, i am sorry if i do.
Does everybody believe that Sz or other psycotic disorders are caused due to a brain disorder? What is your view on spirituality and the subconcious when being in a psycotic episode?
I have read different stories of ppl explaining what they have gone through when having experienced a psycotic episode. Many speak about evil enteties, evil voices, deeply and unexplainable state of being, command voices demanding one does evil things etc.
I’m an atheist but while psychotic I started to believe in god and in spiritual stuff, like angels but not demons, that satan was just the bad version of god and things like that. I believe spirituality does not have to be connected to religion, but I don’t believe in magical thinking anymore, for the good of my own sanity.
My opinion is that there is a connection between someone in a psychotic state and the collective consciousness, and that you do hear things that are connected to that other realm. But I think it is mixed, a large amount of it you make up yourself.
Having said that, I want to say that the pure medical model - it’s all due to a problem in the brain - has a lot of therapeutic benefits because it gives you a simple, solid position from which to approach voices, it takes away a lot of fears and uncertainties.
But given what I’ve seen, heard and felt, and how unlikely it is to be entirely generated by my brain, I feel there is more to it. I do hold that the soul is an independent thing and can’t be affected by voices or hallucinations, and I prefer not to connect the voices to anything supernatural.
First, I do not think that locating the causes of the experience in the brain excludes psychosis from being a spiritual experience. To me, the spirituality of the experience has to do with the content, the meaning of the experience, not with its causes. This content is not determined by these causes. I can very easily grasp the meaning of some phenomenon without knowing how it came about. I do not need to know how someone died to know what his death means to me. Similarly, I know very well what it means to experience paranoia, the hostile world you encounter, everyone seeming to plot against you etc. This I know without knowing how it all comes about, there is ofcourse correlation with neurotransmitters and maybe inflammatory stress etc. But I do not know the mechanisms through which such phenomena result in the experience of paranoia.
As for the spiritual part, like I said, this has to do with the contents of the experiences. To me, psychosis seems very much a breakdown of what was always taken for granted. Your identity, the way you experience thought as private, as yours. The reality of the external world… These are issues I normally do not even notice, but would confirm if pointed out to me - I do not experience them as put into question usually. These are tacit givens that constitute the world as I normally experience it, rather than that they are present in it as particular noticeable experiences. Normally, i do not so much notice the reality of the world, but in psychosis it becomes an issue for me. Similar to my identity. It is unusual to experience myself as being such and such, yet of course, it influences what I experience and how, like how people react to me. So what was ordinarily taken for granted, what ordinarily formed the context of experience now, in psychosis, takes centre stage. In this sense, it is metaphysical, and can be called spiritual.
I was never a very religious person during most of my life. You use the word “many” . Well I wasn’t one of them. My disease had no spiritual or religious (two similar but different concepts) aspect to it at all. 10 years after I got diagnosed I joined AA because of a drug problem. Three years after I joined I came to believe in a higher power. That higher powers role is to help to keep me clean and sober. I don’t go to church but I do pray on a semi-regular basis. I guess I’m just one of those people with schizophrenia who didn’t get caught up in all those religious delusions. And after reading all the religion related posts on here, I’m happier for it.
I believe in a spiritual body & in other planes of existence. When I start falling asleep at night, I swear that I can sometimes feel my spiritual matter resonating inside my body, especially my legs, phallic area, and lower abdomen.
I have also felt myself being magnetized to other people in the “other planes” of existence. Plus, my dreams are simply too dense, complex & vivid to chalk it all up to the brain/mind. I conclude we are part of a metaphysical matrix and will survive physical death.
So do you feel it is more like a literal encounter with the spiritual realm rather then the experiences being caused solely on the chemical inbalances of the brain?
Like, when you are OUT OF YOUR PSYCOSIS and you are in your clear and aware state of mind looking back on what happened do you acknowlege the experience as being an imaginary world and that the brain is simply just playing tricks on you OR do you feel that that world is real, the difference being that this is the “natural/tangiable” world and the latter being the “supernatural/invinsible” one?
I think we live in one dimension, one plane of existence, and then there is a higher plane, or higher dimension. Somehow we managed to touch base in the higher plane and are semi-stuck there. I don’t know how communication works, but it simply has to be real.
Mine is mainly visual and the people’s faces are unforgettable. They are real like us and fighting over who can & can’t interact with the lower dimensions.
I believe that my first known/remembered experience with my schizophrenia involved me believing in a greater world that only i connected with while listening to those in that world who were really normal and respectable. I believe i was entitled to be who i am/was and to make a change and ask anyone for help. Spirituality became my resource for correcting my ways of thinking or in other words, changed my life for the better. I support anyone who sees the identity of themselves through existence that enables different modes of belief.
It depends on what you constitute as psychosis. Does hearing voices and believing they’re real make you psychotic? Then you’re saying all the mystics and saints were psychotic and I don’t buy that.
i believe in reincarnation , i believe in Krishna i also believe that he was reincarnated in to holy men like Jesus , Mohammed,
Am new to learning about Krishna i was Catholic before but never thought that Jesus was the son of God
am learning more and more about Krishna i got a book about him and am planning on reading it when am on holiday for the week i know i will not read it all in a week as its a big book.
He been talking tome he been telling me not to be scared of people ,( i have social phobia) but am pushing myself to go to drop ins and groups )
I am going back to see the people who run the Hare Krishna group again this week
then am away for a week
A lot of the way we think and speak is from hearing other sources, etc tv, radio, newspaper, books, computer…etc. just think for yourself, and don’t corralate your thinking based off things that would make you feel worse as a being.