Of Madness and Mystic Journeys

Of Madness and Mystic Journeys

The work of anti-psychiatrists such as David Cooper and R.D.Laing has popularised the view that the complex syndrome known as schizophrenia is similar, in many ways to a mystic journey, with close links to the inner journeys undertaken by shamans and heroes in cultural myths worldwide. However,one point is very clear, that while the shaman or initiate is the active agent -the fearless one - this is rarely true of the individual in the throes of schizophrenia.

Like the descending "initiate", schizophrenics often report feelings of a loss of agency over their environment, loss of ego boundary, and a sense of somehow being "different" or set apart in some way. Many cannot, it seems, sort out what is meaningful stimuli in their environment, and report feelings of being overwhelmed by what is happening around them. There is a wide range of speculative theories regarding the "causes" of schizophrenia, ranging from a purely genetic to a purely environmentalist perspective.

From the neurological perspective, a form of therapy known as Sensory Integration has led to some interesting speculation about the nature of trancedental experience. research in the last decade has indicated that some of the problems that schizophrenics experience, relate to the process of information selection: sorting out which input is important. This is due to the abnormal functioning of a region of the brain stem known as the Vestibular Nuclei, which is again, related to the Reticular Formation. The Vestibular Nuclei integrates information from the different senses, and so if there is a problem at this level of sub-cortical processing, it will manifest as "confusion" of one sort or another at the conscious level of awareness. The neurological defecit could be due to genetic anomalies, leading to atypical brain development, or due to stress reactions.

Activity at the subcortical level, that guides the information that becomes the content of conscious experience, is thought by some neuroscientists to be the key to ASCs. Some have postulated that such experiences may be programmed at the genetic level, but that individual experiences determine whether or not the program manifests as an evolutionary experience (leading to enhanced survival capacity) or a "systems crash".

Illumination

"Illumination ... the inspiration, enlightenment and liberation resulting from success with these [Gnosis] methods."
Pete Carroll, Liber Null

Illumination is the much-desired goal for which many thousands of people worldwide, have employed different pyschotechnologies, and developed their own psychocosms. Illumination has also been linked with the use of LSD & similar drugs, and perhaps most mysteriously of all, it can occurr seemingly spontaenously, to people who have no knowledge or expectation of it.

What characterises an experience of illumination? Nona Coxhead, a researcher into "Bliss states" lists some of the prevalent factors as:

1. unity - a fading of the self-other divide
2. transcendence of space & time as barriers to experience
3. positive sensations
4. a sense of the numinous
5. a sense of certitude - the "realness" of the experience
6. paradoxical insights
7. transcience - the experience does not last
8. resultant change in attitude and behaviour.

In neurological terms, such experiences represent a reorganising of activity in the brain as a whole system. The loss of ego boundary and involvement of all senses suggests that the Reticular Formation is being influenced so that the brain processes which normally convey a sense of being rooted in spacetime are momentarily inhibited. The "floating" sensation often ssociated with astral projection and other such phenomena suggests that the Limbic system of the brain stem (which processes proprioceptive information about the body's location in space) is also acting in an unusual mode.

What are the fruits of this experience - the insights, perceptions and messages brought back down to earth by the illuminate? Evolution of consciousness, by such means, could well be an important survival program - a way of going beyond the information given - a way of learning how to modify the human biosystem via the environment. Ilya Prigognine's theory of "dissipative structures" shows how the very instability of open systems allows them to be self-transforming. The basis of this idea is that the movement of energy through a system causes fluctuations within it. These fluctuations, if they reach a critical level (i.e. a catastrophe cusp point) develop novel interactions,until a new whole is produced. The system then reorganises itself into a new "higher order" which is more integrated than the previous system, and requires a greater amount of energy to maintain itself, and is further disposed to future transformation. This can equally apply to neurological evolution, using a psychtechnology (ancient or modern) as the tool for change. The core stages of the process appear to be:

1. Change
2. Crisis
3. Transcendence
4. Transformation
5. predisposition to further change.

http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/orchaos.pdf