Is Spirituality Spiritual?

19 Guests, 0 Users

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance. ~ Robert R. Coveyou

Advanced search

Dilber MulticolorMarley TPSMF Default Theme -

[Jana]

Spirit necessitates the organization of matter (information) for its existence. You could say that Spirit was prior to matter, because matter could not form into ordered information without Spirit's informing pattern. But you cannot have Spirit floating around without any matter attached to it for Spirit is the sum ultra of the ordered pattern of matter. A change in the ordering of matter is associated with a identical change in the Spirit. Rather than material reductionism, this is the re-enchantment and re-animation of the material universe. Thus we see all matter depending on its degree of ordered information is embued with Spirit. Life arises after a certain degree of stability and complexity in the ordering of matter/information occurs. Fear is the autonomic response of the organism to that which it feels is harmful to its continued existence. Love is the autonomic response of a cell or lifeform to that which it feels is benefical to its survival and evolution (happiness).

Man is a meaning making organism. This meaning making is a process of remembering information about that which feels harmful (fear) or that which feels benefical (love). Enlightenment constitutes making conscious the symbolism and meaning-making faculty of the mind itself. To become conscious of the process of consciousness. To merely look for and find meaning, is simply the process of stringing symbols together to create a myth about the sense of self. Spirituality, however, begins when we are fully conscious in the dream and aware of the story maker as it spins its tale. This is why enlightenment is considered nondual—because it is witnessing from a vantage point that is beyond being unconsciously embedded in self-referential meanings of love or fear, good or evil.

[jimtzu]

i like the re-enchantment notion/take on this and that matter can't exist without Spirit (in the Uni-versal sense). all life is energy (movement, vibration) and matter is just a condensed form of energy, the more condensed forms seemingly solid, but on the quantum level still moving and alive.  could it be that Spirit, matter and conciousness are all different dimensions of the same experience, not so much co-arrising but already One, much like the wave/particle  duality that is really a wavicle until it is observed?

[Jana]

Yea my thoughts exactly...I think Ken concentrated too much on the delineation of the Great Chain...I always felt the need to reunite the levels in every which way (spiritually, metaphysically, philosophically, psychologically, emotionally, physically, unconsciously) as being the core of integral theory.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080307182745.htm
It seems that matter in the universe is slowly being converted into pure energy...dark energy at that, which we know little about yet.

The larger view of communication could be sympathetic (attractive) or dissonant (repellent) resonance in the mind of God..."Or "God" is what we call the program -- the set of symmetries appearing as "rules" -- governing how the universe unfolds to its next state(s) (i.e. the "laws" describing structure of the universe in space-time)."Jim

Communication is the vibratory method by which Universe assembles and disassembles itself.

[jimtzu]

The larger view of communication could be sympathetic (attractive) or dissonant (repellent) resonance in the mind of God..."Or "God" is what we call the program -- the set of symmetries appearing as "rules" -- governing how the universe unfolds to its next state(s) (i.e. the "laws" describing structure of the universe in space-time)."Jim

Communication is the vibratory method by which Universe assembles and disassembles itself.

hmmm the "mind of God"... that's where communication gets tricky, from all the misinterpretations of the word god.  i know where you're coming from on that but the mainstream definition would be the personalized father figure that controls everything.  i still like the concept of self-organizing-dynamics (SOD)
that underlies everything, so to me the mind of God would be the conciousness of SOD, being in and of the patterns of life. SOD is like the chinese concept Li, which goes hand in hand with Qi.

"Qi and li (理, li, pattern) are their fundamental categories much as matter and energy have been fundamental categories for people in the West. Their use of qi (lifebreath) and li (pattern, regularity, form, order) as their primary categories leaves in question how to account for liquids and solids, and, once the Western idea of energy came on the scene, how to relate it to the native idea of "qi". If Chinese and Western concepts are mixed in an attempt to characterize some of the problems that arise with the Chinese conceptual system, then one might ask whether qi exists as a "force" separate from "matter", whether qi arises from "matter", or whether "matter" arises from qi. But those questions occur only in the hybrid conceptual system.

Analysis of the relationship between qi (breath, lifebreath) and li (the patterns, regularities, or the formal aspect of things) has been very difficult for Chinese philosophers. In addition, how to account for what people in the West might casually categorize as "solid stuff" was also a problem. Fairly early on, some Chinese thinkers began to believe that there are different fractions of qi (in the sense that different fractions can be extracted from crude oil in a catalytic cracker), and that the coarsest and heaviest fractions of qi form solid things such as rocks, the earth, etc., whereas lighter fractions form liquids, and the most ethereal fractions are the "lifebreath" that animates living beings"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi

[Jana]

By mind of God I meant...the communication of information in the universe...energy-matter-dark energy/matter-spacetime etc...The whole shabam.
I had a very cool day at work...was reading The Spiritual Technology of Ancient Egypt, Sacred Science and the Mystery of Consciousness, Edward F. Malkowski...which must be the best book of its type!
He said the Egyptians distinguished between ka (body energy) and ba (eternal soul). They mummified their remains because they assumed that if the body decomposed the ka could not unite with ba in the afterlife. Apparently by uniting ka with ba one would be granted eternal life as a star.

He gives a great account of the transition from the pre-cataclysm times before the end of the iceage when the exposed mediterrean basin harbored the crucible development of cromagnon. One also needs to read his "Before the Pharaohs."

He talked about an amazing dig at Jiroft....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiroft_civilization
I see the proto beginnings of Sycthian art in the metalwork of Jiroft.

The Aratti, or Artaioi, were ancient Aryan people in the eastern lands of the Iranian Plateau. Ca. 1000 BC, the Aratti moved southwest to Persis and became the direct ancestors of the Persians.
Aryan latter was used to refer to Indo-European speaking peoples. Ayran means noble ones.

Strange twist of history, that we have the Nazi Americans trying to kill off the Ayrans this time.
Genocide this:www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yNz7CsDZsU&feature=related
You gotta be kidding me.

Hey maybe Bush has an Alexander the Great complex.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9oIZpFFyIY&feature=related



A 20-something girl came into the store today...we started talking and I found out she is a swordsmith...makes all kinds of weapons, teaches fighting and defense, and travels the world going to the Rennaisance fairs. I was awed by her youth and asked how she started getting involved in martial arts...she said she was fostered to a swordsmith and had a natural ability for weapons handling.

The only women I feel a bond with here in B. are two young martial artists...go figure. Perhaps it is because they are more down to earth and lucid than most.

Awesome day.

 

[henry]

when jana happy, heartmind happy

[Jana]

Happiness is a delusion of the psychologically and philosophically gifted!

Consciousness collapses the wave function. Mind and matter are one...any Cartesian dualism between aspects of the Mind of God are mere mental abstractions. By deeply learning this, we find our way out of the dire complex predicament of modern man. Soul cannot be separated from the soil that feeds us. Thus our civilization can only be a reflection of the conscious care we give our soils and environment. To build an enlightened civilization we must have an enlightened ecosystem. Thus there needs to be an unbroken chain of lifeforce and consciousness from the soil-food-body-society. Instead, we have toxicity and deficiency at every stage of the chain. How can we expect to be tuned into the cosmos via Christ Consciousness if we are not even tuned into ourselves enough to know how to get tuned into the cosmos. The golden key to the Kingdom is to learn from and emulate nature, for 15 billion years of evolution can't be wrong. It stands to reason that if the culture is degenerative, then we must transcend the culture if we are to thrive in a noble "spiritual" condition.

Consciousness causes collapse is the speculative theory that observation by a conscious observer is responsible for the wavefunction collapse. It is an attempt to solve the Wigner's friend paradox by simply stating that collapse occurs at the first "conscious" observer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics

[jimtzu]

here's another take on that (or maybe it's the same take, observer and find out  ) :

"Quantum physics describes the so-called “observer effect,” which refers to the impact the mere act of observing can have on the phenomenon being observed. Physicists speak about this as the “collapse of the wave function.” The wave function describes the probabilities of a particle being observed in any of its possible states. When an observation is made, the wave function “collapses” and the particle is observed in one particular state. A popular interpretation of this is that the act of observation affects physical reality, “freezing” it into a certain state. Hence the claim that you create your own reality, and the importance of holding a positive vision of a desired outcome.
http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/47/the-real-secret
The original formulation, however, put forward by Nobel Prize-winner Werner Heisenberg, states that is your knowledge of the system that collapses. Nothing in the real world actually changes; the only thing that changes is the uncertainty in your knowledge. "

[Jana]

"Wilber fundamentalism...slavish mental adherence to someone else's philosophy."

I just discovered an interesting phenomena today, which might hint at continued pathologies of consciousness...originating in conservative Christianity...and gaining new life through Wilber-fundamentalism. I did a massage swop with a young christian woman...wholey indocrinated in scientism. She appreciates Wilber for the scientific rational underpinning of his work, but she only seems to have a cognitive reach up to that which has been authenticated-taught to her.

Thus the type of humanoid that is born into Christian families, might rise up a notch or two using Wilber's rational ladder, out of the slums of superstition and mythic programming. But when it comes to actually thinking and gnowing for herself, this little lady had a lifetime of work to do. Since she was into the environment I thought I would turn her onto the ultimate spiritual teacher....Viktor Schauberger, who was so beyond his time we have yet to build the machinery to scientifically prove his gnostic-experiential insights...but I thought exposing the lady to such a person who requires such a deep vein of spiritual cognitive authenticity...would at this point be a waste of time.

I can see that Wilberism might be a step up from Christian fundamentalism but these people are going to make a huge mess of Wilberism the same way they make a huge mess of Christianity. I think it has something to do with the degree of flexibility in the brain, integration between the various parts of the brain coupled with an ability to communicate with ones higher Self without an external iconical figure telling one what is right from wrong.

Typically classic as people are, I download all this incredible information into the lady, and as she leaves she says "Be Good." As tho, that retard somehow had the moral right...but this is what the religious do...they have to put themselves "above" the crowd and they use their religious crutches to do so. Thus Wilber is an ideal masculine Apollionic icon by which they can shift their social-status-needs from a dead and silly myth, to a living and not so silly power figure.

What you say?

[jimtzu]

I can see that Wilberism might be a step up from Christian fundamentalism but these people are going to make a huge mess of Wilberism the same way they make a huge mess of Christianity.

is that what followers do?  take a sliver of truth, turn it into an ism and bend it around their preconcieved ideas of what they think they gnow? 

you might have already seen this (from the links section here) but if not....

Ken Wilber - The Asimov
of Consciousness
Robert Sandberg
What follows is suggestive of how Wilber might proceed to more effectively communicate and engage his critics. The life and career of Ken Wilber is nothing if not interesting. A google search will reveal that episodes and chapters of recent years involve Wilber losing former fans, readers, followers, and promoters. Why? Ken Wilber is a scholar, critic, teacher, observer, and prolific writer who has written extensively and critically about science, psychology, religion, and philosophy – eastern as well as western. But he is not himself a peer of those whose writings and work he reports and critiques. This leaves profoundly disappointed many of those who take him to be or want him to be taken seriously by evolutionary biologists, academic philosophers, and practicing psychologists and neurobiologists. Wilber is an incredibly well-informed critical analyst and popularizer of the subjects he writes about, but he is not a practicing expert in any of them. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Would it be so bad to begin thinking of Wilber as a critical writer whose essential role is to popularize promising lines of thought and research as they appear on the scene. He would make an interesting talking head on MSNBC or CNN. There is a place and a need for someone who can do for philosophy, evolutionary biology, brain research, and consciousness studies what Isaac Asimov did for the subjects he took up. Why not think of Ken Wilber as the Isaac Asimov of consciousness?

During the past 5 years or so, since the founding of his Integral Institute, Wilber left behind his erstwhile reclusive, private lifestyle to take up a very public, visible role in the activities of the Institute and its related enterprises. How it will all turn out remains an open question. Currently there are serious controversies dogging the Institute and Wilber. One of the biggest problems confronting Wilber is his unwillingness to engage his critics (many of them would-be sympathetic colleagues and students) in good faith argument and discussion.

A growing number of those who have been reading Ken Wilber since the mid-1970s have begun to compare his writings with the writings of figures in various other disciplines and subjects–evolution, Buddhism and Eastern philosophy, western philosophy, politics, literature, the arts in general. A growing number of these readers are coming to see that Wilber’s ideas are not all that original. OK. No blame there. Original ideas are hard to come by. But, as noted above, Wilber should not be taken as an exponent of original, cutting edge research and thought. Instead, Wilber writes critically about cutting edge research in science, philosophy, and psychology. Other venues and media Wilber uses to get his material to the public include his Integral Institute and regularly recorded and published interviews available on the internet and the What is Enlightenment magazine quarterly.

Wilber’s originality lies in his having mapped truly vast amounts of content from various philosophical, religious, psychological, and scientific systems of thought. But his claims and assertions for the applicability of his ideas (those of his AQAL model in particular) to not just psychology and philosophy but to politics, religion, education, law, art, business, acting, theatre, film, and ecology belie a premature, grandiose sense of their validity and importance.

In the mid 00s a number of readers and students of Wilber’s writings began to criticize his tone and style, characterizing it as arrogant, pompous, patronizing, and elitist. Some also commented on how annoyingly repetitive his writings had become. And others noted that in his otherwise interesting recorded and published interviews and dialogues, Wilber exhibits an annoying tendency to do his guest or interlocutor the “favor” of explaining what he or she really meant by translating what was just said into the jargon of AQAL.

OK, so Wilber is human, imperfect. But the situation is a bit more bleak and serious than outlined so far. If becoming repetitive and jargon-prone were all that seemed to signal that Wilber had exhausted his potential, well that would have been unfortunate enough. Events of just a few years ago indicate that Wilber apparently thinks his work deserves the same kind of respect and attention given to that done by practicing psychologists, philosophers, and scientists. But Wilber and his work are not taken seriously by most professional psychologists, philosophers, and scientists and anyone pointing out this fact to Wilber, however directly or indirectly, formally or informally, risks – as you will see shortly – making Wilber quite cranky.

In a infamous series of blog postings in June 2006, Wilber viciously attacked his critics, including one erstwhile sympathetic reader and follower, Frank Visser. Wilber could not apparently tolerate the close reading and criticism Visser was publishing on his website, Integral World. In the first of these blog posts, “What We Are, That We See,” dated June 8, 2006, Wilber threw Visser and other unnamed critics “under the bus” with language so offensive that it is now highly unlikely Wilber can ever hope to communicate to the size and type of audience he may have once aspired to inform and educate.

Footnotes in works of cultural histories to be written in the coming years, decades, and centuries will likely include references to Wilber, including references to the infamous June 8, 2006 kenwilber.com blog posting just cited. Towards the end of that post, Wilber lets loose with this spooge of angry, figurative prose that no amount of “context” placement can rescue.

It’s gotten to the point that one critic cringes when I simply use the word “simply” (as in the previous paragraph), because it means something horrible is going to follow. In this case, true; the horrible thing that followed was this critic’s charge. But simply still, I simply cannot stand this simple criticism of simply anything, let alone “simply,” so simply suck my dick, whaddaya say?
Well, enough. Wyatt has got to go back to work now, back to the real world of real problems, problems that beg for integral care and consciousness. And thus. Oh, wait a minute, I forgot to include a violent metaphor. Let me think. Let me think really hard. Okay, Wyatt has got to go back to work now, protecting the true and the good and the beautiful, while slaying partial-ass pervs, ripping their eyes out and pissing in their eye-sockets, using his Zen sword of prajna to cut off the heads of critics so staggeringly little that he has to slow down about 10-fold just to see them . . . and then rip their eyes out and piss in their eye-sockets . . .
In subsequent posts Wilber claimed he was just testing his readers. Apparently anyone unable to see humor in Wilber’s fantasy of murdering, “ripping” the eyes from his slain critics’ eye-sockets, and washing away the blood with his piss is “simply” not evolved enough to appreciate or understand his writings or his mission. Many were not amused. See this page posted by Frank Visser at Integral World for more reactions to Wilber’s June 2006 postings, as well as links to more commentary and criticism.

Wilber started off in the 1970s as a popularizer of the then still relatively little known traditions of eastern thought and philosophy, a la Alan Watts. Like Watts he popularized much important, good stuff. But unlike Watts, in the years subsequent to his early work, Wilber often tries to take credit where none is due. And, as we have just seen, when Wilber doesn’t get the credit, approval, and respect he thinks due him and his work, well – look sharp!

Ken Wilber has been referred to as the Einstein of consciousness. As suggested above, his students, admirers, and those who have yet to discover his writings might be better off – less subject to disappointment and delusion – if they would think of Ken Wilber as the Asimov of consciousness, not its Einstein. Wilber and the fate of his work might fare better as well if he would more modestly assess what he has so far or may yet still accomplish. What follows is suggestive of how Wilber might proceed to more effectively communicate and engage his critics.

An interesting, not often noted fact about Wilber is that he was raised a fundamentalist Christian. A comparison between Wilber’s style of communicating with hostile or unsympathetic readers, listeners, and critics, and the contrasting style and approach of another contemporary writer about science – Edward O. Wilson, might be instructive here. Wilson, like Wilber, was raised a fundamentalist Christian. And, also like Wilber, Wilson often writes with the intention of inspiring and exhorting his readers to behave more responsibly on this small, shared, and very fragile planet.

How much more effective Wilber might be if he would in the future adopt something like the approach Wilson uses in his recent The Creation: A Call for Help and an Invitation to Visit the Embattled Natural World in the Company of a Biologist (Norton 2006). Wilson opens The Creation with a chapter entitled “Letter to a Southern Baptist Pastor.” He continues to address this same “Pastor” in subsequent chapters. At the beginning of his “letter,” Wilson acknowledges that he has moved on from believing in a literal interpretation of the creation as found in Genesis to instead believing in the theory of evolution. He then proceeds to condemn the narrow, parochial views of fundamentalist Christianity, especially for its teaching – with little justification that makes sense in the 21st century – that unbelievers are condemned to hell for all eternity, the first “trillion trillion years” of which eternity are

. . . enough for the universe to expand to its own, entropic death, time enough for countless universes like it to be born, expand, and likewise die away. And that is just the beginning of how long condemned souls will suffer in hell – all for the mistake they made in the choice of religion during the infinitesmally small time they inhabited Earth.

Who’s more likely to be taken seriously here. Both Wilson and Wilber have moved beyond the fundamentalist beliefs of their youth. Both have spent many years thinking and writing about evolution, and both have devoted years of time and effort to spreading the gospel of evolution. But Wilson is the more effective in his reliance on and devotion to the scientific method and the norms of communicating scientific discoveries to not only his colleagues and peers but the public in general.

Wilber’s story isn’t finished yet. Being compared to Asimov is just a small episode in a much larger story that includes all of us.

[henry]

excellent food for thought j&J. yes,spirituality is spiritual. As an apostate wilbersnapper, i think kw has a good sense of humor and must be very smart . A reminder there is another strain of integral from aurobindo, chaudhuri,CIIS, murphy, esalen ctr, tarnas, etc. Less glamorous, far more time tested. integral is as integral does ...forrest

[Jana]

Yes, but if Wilber wasn't exactly how he is, then he couldn't have given us what he has...thus I say cup half full. And leave the poor bugga alone ...at some point the critics have to give up there own need to be heard and just go join a pity party I think. Time is well overdue for some peace.

Aperspectivism is really multiple perspective...which is still a perspective, just a "wider" one, hence ones bias is simply grander. Grand bias. Huge bias. Yes it is simple a periscope to a higher vantage point that includes multiple Others perspective. In its ideal form it would be like Robert Heinlein's "Grokking" where compassionate feeling is merged so deeply with other lifeforms or nonanimate objects that they "become you" and you become them. Lets say it is the "We" advantage point...the true "spiritual" perspective in which conflict ends because there is no "Other" to pit oneself against or try to get on top off. The deeper understanding can be arrived at and harmony and balance instated. All states and perspectives below this are a form of primate violence caused by perspective-myopia, which generate non-regenerous and non-spiritual, nontranscendental outcomes.

Because fundamentalism...the great disease and great danger humanity is playing with at present needs to be seen for what it is...brain damage.

Religious institutionism generates this brain damage in order to pull the center of self-consciousness out of the individual, and out of the individuals communion with earth, nature and cosmos...and shifts it, caged like a wing damaged bird, into a fictitious thought-set derived by the desert fathers, used to describe the precession of the equinox (See Naked Truth on youtube). This is so in Judaism, Christianity, Muslim, Ancient Sumerian and Buddhism....it is essentially the same story that fundamentalist minds are captivated by. Because they lack the self-authoring, self-creative spark of the authentic spiritual-individual. They in turn rely on the sense of power generated by the collective belief in a fairytale...and they think that stupidity in numbers will guarantee them a place in the clouds of heaven, and the right to intimidate all other lifeforms.

This kind of science, religion or politics can only generate problem after problem, because it is "reactionary" not mystic, not generated from the inform-ational matrix of Cosmos itself. But fabricated and spun out of make believe to justify the animals self interests.

It is fundamentalism, whether it be in politics, science, religion, education or any other aspect of the human kosmos which is the problem.
    So what is fundamentalism? Fundamentalism incorporates literalism, fantasy and fanaticism in a rigid worldview that affirms as truth the data passing through the mind's eye. It is lack of differentiation from the "content" of the mind, the "context" of social history. It asserts its authority through the bravado of ignorance, and a surety born from myopia...a single pointed cognition derived from the conditioned brain and superego. When illuminated by deeper currents and spiritual information it then transmits this information through the bland-fascist lens of its limited worldview.

Perhaps fundamentalism is simply the Machine, prior to the dissolution of divine madness or spiritual illumination. And yet when such individuals are gifted with genuine spiritual experiences then they run that data thru the collective mytho-jargon of their church community, which in turn reinforces the fundamentalist enthusiasm. Thus it is ongoing feedback loop of spiritual dysfunction with little chance to grow toward spiritual autonomy and authenticity. They give up their soul and their sanity and get "confirmation" and safety in numbers with those of equally aborted sovereignty.

While I don't go in for astrology, I do love Breszney
My Horoscope this week is:

"Are you fully prepared for your showdown with The Machine? Are you as confident as you need to be in order to fight for the rights of soulful beauty? Of course not. None of us is ever perfectly prepared as we go up against the Big Lies of the mechanical thinkers. But I do have great faith in your ability to prevail—especially if you strengthen yourself with this meditation from the book Less Than One, by Joseph Brodsky: "The surest defense against evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality—even if you will, eccentricity...Evil is a sucker for solidarity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balance sheets."

We see here the traits of fundamentalism...it has been programmed into us with seduction and fear tactics for at least 10,000 years...ever since hunter gatherer man changed over to a agricultural community. The priest shamans would spin their stories to draw the group into a cohesive meme...by which each tribe would gather the strength to defend against or war against other tribes.

Now we have the fundamentalist Christian tribe (Nazis and Zionists) deliberately throwing stones at the Moslems to inflame extremism in order to generate a "reason" to attack with full nuclear "mechanical" force.

[henry]

a response to jimtzu's chat this morning. my interest in "spirituality" began in 1968 with a spiritual crisis of my classmate, tennis buddy, sometimes doubles partner steve. gifted, a recipient of one of harvard's 50 honorary scholarships for incoming freshman, a brilliant jewish atheist. the spring of our senior year he attended the buck hill falls religious conference and had the bad luck of finding God and falling madly in love(with an earth girl) the same day in the height of hormonal adolescence.his transformation and "satori" were palpable and stunning. Our valedictorian, he spent graduation day in the psychiatric ward of st. lukes in nyc unable and without help to integrate anything...these were the days before spiritual emergency network, kundalini crisis help, john weir perry, and the approach of richard price. He was medicated, took up zen, and ended his life 20 years ago. forty years later, i still feel a need for resolution....thanks,henry

[Jana]

I think this little experiment into corpomilitary fascism and the disillusionment with power systems that it produced was one of the necessary steps toward a truer integral-individualism. It would not have happened if we had not been thru the contraction of nearly having our freedoms and future all but eliminated. The inherent rage of justice arising from the depths of the human spirit...propels us beyond the darknight of collective fear and on toward more responsible, responsive adults. The childhood of our dreams, now given over to a more realized self empowerment of the agentic-creative. Now also we are free to see the "ladder of spiritual context" and all that it entails...the gurus, the teachers, the workshops, the books and the special practices...as not an end in themselves, but merely the feathers of the bird meant to sore beyond its morphogenic mechanism. Released from our spiritual identifications, our reliance on a beneficent God, our dependency on justice, our hope in our leaders...we are then free to determine our destiny from the furtherest beacon of luminous insight. And together, through such collective self-assurance, we can create a world a new.

[jimtzu]

henry, that's quite a story about your friend and his experiences.  really speaks to how things have changed in the psych fields since then, but even a long ways to go yet.  sounds like he was diagnosed as schizophrenic? perhaps he was just sensative to the different voices of the personas we all carry around inside. today there are the various Voice Dialogue therapies (genpo's big mind among them) that could actually help one transcend whatever event triggered his crisis.  but on the other hand he could have had a chemical imbalance (DMT or something else) that precluded the voices from ever shutting down and integrating themselves into what we call a healthy ego.

on the macro level i like to think that we're all the different voices that "god" (consciousness, spirit, whatever) carries around inside that make up an integrated "god" ego, our individual voices popping up when needed to make up a healthy "god"   
if that makes any sense.