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Amaros -> RE: There is No God by Penn Jillette (1/16/2007 10:22:26 AM)
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A similar experience, Satori, is expressed in trancendental religions.
Going back to the comment on flashbacks, it wasn't entirely spurious - LSD-25 operates on the brain by super-oxygenating the tissues; the resulting effects are similar to schizophrenia: aural, visual and olifactory hallucinations, etc. the difference being that drug induced changes of consciousness are typically deprived of emotional context, i.e., they only simulate experience, which is a process of both rational and emotional assimilation.
The pathology of schizophrenia is that the neurons of the brain begin firing randomly (!) en masse - i.e., whereas normally synaptic activity is confined to fairly predictable patterns, a schizophrenic episode is something like a "Brainstorm" with almost all synapses firing at once in surges.
My theory is, that this lowers the limnal barrier between conscious, rational processes, and the symbolic processes of the sub and unconscious - hence, the vivid hallucinations, etc. Memory processing is largely unconscious and symbolic, and the brain has it's own ways of mapping and associating information, and these again, are not rational processes, but symbolic.
Thus, when they expressed on the rational side, they appear to make no sense - in fact they may be perfectly sensible in the context of other symbolic processes, and only irrational when taken out of context, so to speak. Naturally, the consciousness attempts to organize and control this flood of information, and the result may be paranoid fantsies, catatonia, ecstatic or otherwise, or other coping mechanisms.
Personally, I would be inclined to suggest that Yogic/Tantric spiritual practices might help some schizophrenics to channel their coping mechanisms in positive ways, and in fact, these practices constitute an entire linguistic/symbolic mode of discussing these phenomona at all that is relatively absent from Western modes of dealing with unusual psychological phenomona. Obsessive compulsive behaviour, idée fixe, etc., typical symptoms of schizophrenia could be channeled into organized mental activity through meditation, mantras, mandalas, etc., and such practices are fundamentally concerned with and ordered around psychosomatic feedback.
Just a thought, perhaps Lady Ellen has some more insights on this. And it's also worth mentioning that the simple social stress of getting so... weird can create issues that can rival and exacerbate the disease itself.
It's been said that genius is akin to madness, and it isn't uncommon for geniuses to exhibit symptoms of mental illness - it may well be that through incipent schizophrenia, or some phenomona similar to it, that they have some more direct access to these symbolic processes, i.e., the unconscious.
Like, schizophrenia, the phenomona seems to be associated with an onset sometime around the age of thirty - mathmaticians are said to peak at around the age of thirty, and it may have something to do with the maturation of the brain with respect to these symbolic processes - in schizophrenia, the process simply get out of control in some way.
And, of course in the case of highly creative/intelligent individuals with distinctly schizophrenic symptoms, in the end, madness often wins, at least for a time.
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