Bob Monroe comments

[Meg]

Interesting, Frank. Thank you.

Onto a tangent...The excerpt mentions Mental Illness and Dementia. I work with Schizophrenics, so I'm curious as to what everyone thinks about this idea of Mental Illness being an altered state of consciousness.

Because, although I find it really, really important not to romanticise the disease, I don't entirely want to part with the idea that my beloved "clients" (as we're told to call them) are in touch with other things that perhaps their " sick" minds cannot interpret.

What do you think?

Meg

"...listening like the orange tree..."  - John Shaw Neilson

[Tisha]

Meg, it has been theorized (as you probably already know) that the main differences between a shaman/artist/psychic/healer/whatever and a "crazy" person have to do with the person's ability to interpret the experience, and make something of it that is considered useful by that person's society.

Look at Salvatore Dali and Gaughin, for instance.  We appreciate the symbols that they created (i.e., paintings), so we call them artists.  If we rejected their work, we would call them "nut jobs."  Folks like these are able to phase-in, and phase out, of other ways of seeing and being.  Even if Dali and Gaughin couldn't to it DELIBERATELY (?maybe they could?), they could emerge from their experiences and express them in a way that we "ordinary" human beings could somehow relate to.

(For what its worth, my best art/writing is created after emerging from deep otherworldly experiences.)

Many tribal shamans of the past exhibited psychiatric symptoms that we, in our "modern" thinking, now pathologize.  The difference between then and now is that our modern society seems to have no use for shamans.

Meg, the folks you work with DO have real problems (as you well know!!!), because they can't make sense of their experiences or control them or find any value in it at ALL.  In phasing, they "go" to some very distressing places . . . because their past life experiences were probably truly awful, the awfullness feeds upon itself.  I'd hate to be in their condition!

I really do hope "art therapy" is a part of their treatment  . . . I think it would help them a lot, to be able to abstract their experiences and "speak" to the rest of us with their created images.  Then, we could call them "artists" or "special people" or something else, and pull them back into our modern society, instead of hiding them from our sight in institutions and forgetting about them.


Tisha

"As Above, So Below"

[Meg]

Tisha, it's hard to hang onto the theories of artists and shamans when the daily reality is in your face. Particularly if they are having delusions pertaining to me, and I know that it's not true. The only way I can think to weave these two things together is to say that maybe they touch some place where their dreams reside; their fantasies and fears in tangible form. Maybe they can't tell the difference anymore. Like if you thought your dreams were happening in the physical world. Yes, that's EXACTLY what I mean! (Let my personal revalation be on record!)



"...listening like the orange tree..."  - John Shaw Neilson

[ralphm]

I think I rtemember reading that most majorwriters would be bipolar(if I remember correctly) It probably gives them a different view of life than 'normal' people.

[PeacefulWarrior]

Hey Frank,

Where did you find that info?  If there is a web address, could you post it?

-Daniel

fides quaerens intellectum

[Gandalf]

Well, I think that is what is happening with most mental illneses.
The brain's wiring is wrong so the mind isnt properly interfaced with it.
Then you get all the reality fluctuations of the astral appearing to 'invade' the phisical, like you say, they cant tell the difference between 'dream' and 'reality'.

The fear involved then goes on to provide some truly scary situations/paranoia/delusions etc.

Not good...

Douglas

[clandestino]

agree with you Gandalf.

Using Robert Monroe's similie, we are basically saying that a person with a mental illness has a "faulty radio / tv reciever".

This doesn't bring us any closer to diagnosing whether or not the "fault" is physical or mental though...

Anyway, I like Monroe's description of conciousness...but the second part of the article , "alienate", leads us into dark areas. Humanity as a whole has always held life in high regard, and this doesn't come across in Robert's views.

Anyone else got any views on this ? I'm still trying to form an opinion.

[Meg]

Thank you, folks - discussion has clarified a few things in my mind that needed it.  I've had a lot of difficulty working out where mental illness comes into my changing views of things.  It's been a major issue in my life for a few years. The argument re: artists, shamans can definately be said for Bipolar -  It's in defining Schizophrenia where I've had the problem.

It's so sad. (sorry, I am about to rant.) I can't help thinking things could be so different for many of them.  A lot of it stems from the awful system that has been in place for so long. In Melbourne, all the old mental hospitals closed down a few years back. Which is a good thing, I think, were it not motivated by economic reasons and had they been actually replaced with something else. Anyway, most of my people are so institutionalised that they have no idea how to function now that they are back in society. And barbaric treatments like ECT have left some of them physically wrecked.

I have never wanted to invalidate what are essentially their realities by by calling them "fiction". It's frightening how real their worlds are, how tangibly their delusions come out. I even had one guy (and this is a true story, no matter how much it sounds like a bad telemovie) who actually believed I was his wife and pregnant with his child. It snowballed for a good year until it got to the point where he finally physically assaulted me and they moved him to another home. It was the saddest thing - I used to get so angry with him, literally driven to yelling at him that it was NOT TRUE. I remember how his face looked. Can you imagine how it would feel to him, how heart-breaking it must have been to have his "wife" constantly rejecting him and telling him to go away? The confusion of it. Poor kid.

But it's useful to be able to look at it as his inability to differentiate between his dreamstate and reality. The edges blurring into each other. It's something that will help me in daily ways, I think.

Meg




"...listening like the orange tree..."  - John Shaw Neilson

[Frank]

Came across the following useful info regarding phasing and other stuff. Thought I'd post a copy here:

___________________________________________


Consciousness Is a Continuum

In our focused wakefulness, we as Human Minds employ that part of our consciousness spectrum limited to time-space. This is made possible by the device we identify as a physical body, with its five physical senses. This physical body permits us to express externally our mind-consciousness through physical activity and communication.

When this focusing is affected for any reason, our mind begins to drift along the consciousness spectrum away from time-space perception, becoming less aware of the immediate physical world. When this happens, we become conscious in another form. The fact that we often have difficulty in remembering correctly our participation in that other part of the consciousness spectrum does not negate its reality. The problem lies in perception and translation, diffused and distorted as they are by the use of current time-space systems of analysis and measurement.

The spectrum of consciousness ranges, seemingly endlessly, beyond time-space into other energy systems. It also continues through animal and plant life, possibly into the subatomic level. Everyday human consciousness is active commonly in only a small segment of the consciousness continuum.

The Phasing Concept

The methods and techniques of the Institute can be identified as means to establish and control phases of consciousness. In the waking physical state, the untrained mind makes these phase shifts frequently each day with little or no control.

Primary Phasing is the state where the mind in fully focused on physical sensory input or activity. Any deviation from this condition can be regarded as a phase shift, where some part or percentile of consciousness is, to a certain degree, aware in another form. One example is inattention, where physical sensory input remains strong but part of the mind has "wandered". What we call daydreaming is another.

Introspection, where attention is turned away from physical awareness, is a more deliberate phase shift, as are certain meditative states. Sleep is a shift in phasing to another state of consciousness where very little awareness of physical sensory input is taking place.

Ingestion of alcohol and certain drugs evokes split phase shifts, where part of consciousness is "here" and part in another area of the continuum. In these cases, when the stimulus is removed, the phasing fades. Psychoses and dementia are inadvertent instances, and in these conditions drugs or chemicals may be employed to dim or eliminate the nonphysical area.

To understand the process clearly, we may consider the physical body as a tuning mechanism through which the human mind can operate in physical consciousness. As such, it contains circuitry that converts physical sensory patterns into forms that can be perceived by the mind, much as a radio or television receiver is tuned to a particular frequency band in the electromagnetic spectrum.

In these receivers, there is a discriminator section that filters out for the most part any distractions or distorting signals or harmonics from other parts of the spectrum. As we tune a radio receiver gradually from one station - or frequency - to another, one signal fades and another is faintly heard. The receiver is shifting out of phase with the original station to the point where another station can be heard simultaneously. As we continue returning, the original station is no longer heard and the other signal takes over.

The human mind, which also has access to a "discriminator", acts in a similar way. The mind untrained in the tuning process drifts slowly out of control from one phase of consciousness to another. As it does so, signal are received partly from the physical mechanism and partly from a different segment of the consciousness continuum. The signal input from the physical state diminishes until no such signals reach the mind, which moves into the state generally known as sleep or unconsciousness.

The Learning systems devised at the Institute offer a means to place these phase shifts under willful control of the individual. In the early stages of this learning, the mind becomes completely at ease and feels little fear or anxiety in the resulting changes. The reason for this is that these states of consciousness are familiar territory. It is the presentation in a new and organized form that makes the difference, where any changes are made deliberately by the mind itself."

Some Other Comments From Bob:

Alienate

The nineties have begun with more and more expressions of the need for freedom, which has a multitude of meanings depending on who and where you are. Generally speaking, it should mean the freedom to control one's life instead of being controlled by others.

Of course, it's an impossible ideal. Most humans can't handle freedom in a pure form. That's why the idea of laws came into being. Left to their own devices, most humans can't act responsibly, so a civilization apparently keeps adding more rules to try to force them to do so. When a new situation arises, new laws are passed to cover it, all allegedly to make us considerate of our fellow travelers. Thus we are drowning in rules and laws.

That's freedom?

Sadly, it won't and can't change until the overwhelming majority of humans conform to the basic inalterable law--which humans had nothing to do with creating--the law of Cause and Effect (Authority and Responsibility). To retrain all five billion plus now in residency has nightmarish aspects. The only way this could happen would be to start worldwide with all infants at birth. Teach them to think and be in a new way. Make it an ongoing process for generations. Eventually there would be no laws. They wouldn't be needed.

Can you conceive of any possible event or motive that would trigger this? I can't. We grandly claim and demand that the human has an inalienable right to life even at someone else's expense.

Life at any cost is the hard way, and the laws of our society force this upon us, like it or not. Up to the nineties, little has been done about the other inalienable right--the right to leave the kitchen if it gets too hot, too painful, or you've completed your assigned tour of duty. Imagine having to go to the Supreme Court (what a misnomer!) in order to let a body die. Never mind the fact that it can cost $100,000 plus per year to keep that body "alive," and can bankrupt loved ones and family.

Perhaps the whole thing might change if our culture knew--knew, not believed, hoped, or had faith--exactly what and where and how we exist upon our exit from this reality structure. With the advent of this decade, a lot of people are beginning to ask for cold-turkey answers without frills. It might happen.

Yes, that would make a change. A big one. We wouldn't be human. Not the humans we know, anyway.

Robert Monroe