Following on from this, I would like to write about my perspective. Would you like to know how I got where I am today, in my thinking about my experiences?
Why do I believe that a lot of my 'strange' experiences are actually real and not perceptual disturbances and hallucinations, as the doctors say?
The answers to that seem at first to be too simple. You start off in another world, when you become ill, and that's your perspective. I remember telling the doctor who first diagnosed me as paranoid schizophrenic about my world. It was what seemed real to me, it reflected the beliefs that I had developed and overlaid on normal reality, as experienced by the healthy. (But still, I say there must still have been germs of the paranormal in what I was relating).
Then, as my awareness changed, cleared up and calmed down with use of suitable medicine, I found myself in a perceptual world with hallmarks of the paranormal. That's what it's like. And it's like being an amateur in that world. I educated myself, looking into crystal healing, flower essences, knowledge about the human aura, psychic protection, the afterlife, psychic empathy, etheric cords of attachment between people, near death experiences and information about those who dwell in realms of part ascension to the Light.
My experiences were not uncorroborated by schools of thought out there on planet Earth. There were many resonances, and much that informed and gave me hope.
The first big lead was reading a book by a psychologist doctor about psychic empathy [The Sensitive Person's Survival Guide by Kyra Mesich]. She had had convincing psychic experiences herself and found that flower essences remedied excessive sensitivity. (I tried them myself, with great hope - they didn't work for me, I presume because I am not very sensitive to vibrations of things, although I am very sensitive in other ways). Her book was about psychic empathic feeling, and it helped me believe that I was psychic. I rarely have empathic experiences, but telepathic experiences I have in abundance. Still the relief I felt when I identified myself as psychic was so strong I felt well for a short time - and (mistakenly) I thought I had recovered. I wrote to my parents about this, around St. George's day, to tell them about a 'miracle' that had happened - I was well again. Sadly, this was not the case. I now call it a breakthrough. I call any new surge of health, hope or understanding a breakthrough.
But, there is the sheer volume of intellectual corroboration for psychic experience out there. There is a vast community of people who seem to have open channels of spiritual communication, on many levels, and who contribute to continuing traditions of thought on the subject. Spiritual sight and hearing always were, and still are a religious fact, forming part of traditions all over the world. It's just that the dominant culture of the world passed into a 'scientific' phase of thinking that excludes the realm of spiritual belief, so much so that it became opposed to religion (in the nineteenth century) and now disregards psychic experience as a delusion.
So, if you had a religious upbringing like I did, you will have absorbed information about demonology (true!), in Christian scripture, for example. Jesus casting out spirits and demons from distressed and possessed people. That's one source of validation and corroboration.
Then, as I said there's the proposition by the spiritual communities (particularly New Age and clairvoyant communities), that mediumship, that is, the variety of 'psychic' faculties, are real. REAL!
Medical psychiatry being opposed to the existence of the sixth senses reminds me of the people who argue about the possibility of life on other planets, in our vast, vast universe.
So it's not like I was told I was deluded and then looked out and found nothing out there to convince me otherwise. I looked out suffering, looking for a way of alleviating that suffering, a way of changing (controlling) what was going on for me. I'll repeat: there is corroboration for my experience in the world. And lots of it. Lots.
Secondly, I am in this position: I have experienced profound mental illness, affecting my perception and thinking, and I claim also to have psychic experiences. If psychicness is possible, why couldn't I be psychic and ill, as it seems from my observation in psychiatric hospital, many people are. Is it so unlikely then that mentally ill people should be experiencing extra sensory perception dysfunctions as well? I mean that they may be sensing too much, for example, being bombarded by 'extra-sensory' reality?
But, after all this, even saying there is a spiritual dimension to reality, so far known beyond scientific measurement, known subjectively, and saying that incarnate beings can be sensitive to the spiritual and even communicate with beings in the spiritual but not the physical - after all this, still, how do I know that I am not hallucinating, that my extra-sensory perceptions are real?
It seems real. Occasionally there are little things. 'Hearing' an uncommon word out of the blue. Being 'given' forgotten information (being reminded of something). 'Hearing' someone's thoughts (and having what was heard confirmed as true). Feeling a spirit's touch (my departed father). Having a vision of God that removed fear. Ghosts saying and stressing "We're real".
But other than the occasional experiences that tend to reach out of the subjective towards situations that could be objectively convincing, it's just the realness of everything that goes on inside. The friendly chatting and joking with celestial friends-and-relations - and earthbound spirit-people (ghosts); the pain produced by mental harrassment by anonymous spirit-people of realms between earth and the classical Heavens. These are realistic. I tend not to question them. Only sometimes does the weight of opinion against the reality of it make me think, well is this a hallucination? But then I quickly revert to my ongoing assumptions.
The last time I was ill, I was lucky enough to have an ongoing drama playing out in my mind where there was someone on the roof. I could hear their voice, but looking outside, it turned out there was no one there. I was hallucinating. The voices were coming from somewhere though. I might half suggest that sometimes the voices in breakdown come from lower spirits. And I also say that they could be hallucinated, unconsciously imagined. I can tell the difference between real and unreal voices because the unreal ones come during periods of breakdown and refer to subjects that are clearly unreal (there's no one there; robots fighting over a city; rooms thought occupied that are not).
Some people consider it a proof of reality that some of my voices are friendly, cooperative, and helpful. It's not all demonising. I might see a known holy person like Swami Yogananda appear (dimly) in the corner of the room and promise to help me by "warding off evil". It's almost as if there is a struggle between the Light and hostile spirits playing out in my life (!)
So, why do I not just listen to the doctor, take the medicine and consider all my strange inner goings-on as hallucinations?
- There is corroboration for my reality in spiritual schools of thought in the world
- It seems real.
- Occasionally there are happenings that are more than subjectively convincing of their reality.
PS If I've made you afraid: It pays not to be in a panic about your spiritual well-being. Secondly, if you are not in a position where you are troubled by spirits, don't worry. Thirdly spirituality is usually safe, though in unusual circumstances people can enter into unwelcome situations through being too spiritually open and not grounded enough in physicality, and in their connection to the Earth. (I just remembered I need to ground! Ha ha. Simple solution shows its head again. I don't 'shield', I don't ground, I don't visualise closing my aura... I forget to do this, whilst advocating it! In truth visualisation feels blocked in me, it's hard. I guess you have to learn the hard way. For all my advice, I forget to do these important things. But my self-discipline is far from immaculate. I suppose what will happen is that my spiritual awareness comes under control... through being controlled!! By me! That is, I'll end up spending a little time and energy everyday looking after myself spiritually: Shield; Ground; Close Down. "Clunk, click, every trip!" Like seat belts! Like daily oral hygiene! Ah well. I feel foolish. Maybe my 'empty-handed' way has served a purpose...)
PPS Sometimes my perception is woolly, I admit it. I used to think I was experiencing massive psychic attack from earthly 'living' people. My awareness cleared up and now I know it comes from elsewhere, from an afterlife realm. Some of the telepathy stuff is hard to identify, too, like when you have the feeling you are consciously connecting to a media personage - a classic psychotic symptom, right? (I get a wave of hostility projecting out of me very forcefully towards someone, like a guaranteed bring-them-down insult/attack, and I get a feeling of connection.) Who knows, maybe there are TV or film stars reading this trying to figure out why they have a hard time in the telly!
I once sensed a film star responding to a very ungrounded young man, whose presence I sensed watching him and wandering into that star's awareness; guess I'm a witness to this - he sent back the thought to him "I know you're afraid; but I have to act now". Now more than ever, with drug use, people in the media I think must get bombarded by telepathy of friendly, unfriendly,and over-friendly kinds. (There's a flower essence for this (!), to close you off from other's mind intrusions when performing- golden yarrow). I have been sat next to people who I figure must have the same 'abilities' as me, twice, who I instantly knew where sending their friendliness/overfriendliness to the person on screen; they had a look of focused concentration, and a kind of looseness too. Unbelievable? This I'm sure about, I'm just not yet sure how it is that one person can receive a thousand signals at once, statistically speaking. Maybe it truly is that only one or two tend to get through.
I got so concerned about the attack that I was unwillingly channelling that I took the personal decision to be responsible and avoid media with faces or voices; I did this for about a year, and I can now watch some films quite safely. It used to be that I was very sensitive to voices - if I turned the sounds off a soap opera, for example, I could watch it happily, otherwise, I would tend to feel like I was connecting, even doing harm.
This is so strange! The stuff you find on the Internet...
From the convincing to the unconvincing. Like I say, I come across as a normal person (though presently also a quiet person), - just don't ask me about telepathy and evil spirits...
