All religious/spiritual experiences are just a trick of the mind?

[cesare]

I don't know. I think I have been the most well when I am on a combination of Lithium and anti-psychotics. So just after my first episode 2002, 2003 and then again since my second episode. The years 2004 to 2007 were when I was probably most unwell, anxiety, hypomanic symptoms. But that was when the docors had allowed me to come off the anti-psychotics.

I dont feel ill at the moment but I do think I suffer from poor mental health in some ways. I don't know how to define it. I just think I go off on tangents, I dont think things through. I haven't got a job. Although I am quite intelligent in some ways it doesn't shine through.

My current psychiatrist has encouraged me to take a mind/body approach to my condition and get lots of exercise for example.

I'm not a psych. I don't know anything about the ins and outs of medication and other forms of treatment. I've grown up with mental health stuff, so in a way that makes me more accepting, but in the same breath also quite demanding. I won't bore you with the detail, but the psych services at that time gave him the rough and ready painful temporary respite/s. It was him that decided that he needed to get well.

 

[the button]

But 'knowledge' as a learning and textual analysis etc is different from to KNOW god, to touch the divine through epiphanies, induced or not.
I always saw the two as seperate

True enough -- but the paradigm is still knowledge, even if there is an insistence that there are distinct modes of coming to know. (One based on reading books etc., the other based on intuition or theophany).

Maintaining that 'it's all knowledge, really,' is a perfectly consistent position. But reading back that position into what people are actually doing when they have a religious experience is a bit of a mistake, IMO. Again, entirely from my own experience (lol), the Jesuits were very suspicious of 'knowledge' and 'intuition' that resulted from prayer. In one of my annual 8-day retreats I'd made extensive notes of all this mad shit that I thought god had revealed to me in prayer. The response of my spriritual director was (in these exact words), "Put the fucking book down and tell me how you feel."

 

[durruti02]

Even when I was a Jesuit, I was perfectly aware that they were due to the power of suggestion and the fact that the Spiritual Exercises are a kind of 30-day long guided mental breakdown.

thats very honest mate .. i have often thought this is that religious experiance comes when we let the mind go .. it doesn'y make it spiritual though in any shape or form .. it is the mind that is flying not anything flying into the mind

 

[durruti02]

Had depression around year 2000 then around 2001 had a slight manic episode for which I was hospitalised. Was put on Valproate biefly then Lithium and anti psychotics like amilsulpride. Was pretty much well, worked part time in a library and living at home but looking back probably not 100%.

Then over a period of time seeing different locum psychiatrist reduced my anti psychotics to nothing. At that point around 2004 I went anorexic, then started uni, struggled to put weight back on, struggled through uni with anxiety. Around 2006 met my partner who questioned my diagnosis.

Went to see a specialist and he suggested I reduced my medication. Then had a manic episode and was hospitalised for 4 weeks. Now take my medication all the time put back on Lithium anti psychotic combo. Have seen NHS psycholgists to help me with my mental health too.

you tried MDF .. my mate is pretty keen on them .. he's on lithium but been told he could come off if MDF groups works works for him

http://www.mdf.org.uk/?o=56959

 

[cesare]

thats very honest mate .. i have often thought this is that religious experiance comes when we let the mind go .. it doesn'y make it spiritual though in any shape or form .. it is the mind that is flying not anything flying into the mind

Put the mind under extreme stress and watch what happens.

 

[Shevek]

you tried MDF .. my mate is pretty keen on them .. he's on lithium but been told he could come off if MDF groups works works for him

http://www.mdf.org.uk/?o=56959

Hi durruti, hope you are well. It is really interesting that you mention the MDF. I have been a member before. I actually have a booklet from them that describes how you can work towards living without Lithium. In fact I went further than that. In 2007 I tried to live without Lithium and had a manic episode. I am still open minded but not sure whether I can ever live without lithium.

 

[the button]

thats very honest mate .. i have often thought this is that religious experiance comes when we let the mind go .. it doesn'y make it spiritual though in any shape or form .. it is the mind that is flying not anything flying into the mind

Third Point. The third, to look at who I am, lessening myself by examples:

First, how much I am in comparison to all men;

Second, what men are in comparison to all the Angels and Saints of Paradise;

Third, what all Creation is in comparison to God: (—Then I alone, what can I be?)

Fourth, to see all my bodily corruption and foulness;

Fifth, to look at myself as a sore and ulcer, from which have sprung so many sins and so many iniquities and so very vile poison.

It's character-building.

Thing is, it looks fucking mental when you see it written down like that, but that's the 'breaking point' meditation from the first week of the 30 day Spiritual Exercises. They keep you working on and on and on and on at it til you crack. The fourth and fifth bits are particularly entertaining, if you're spending five hours a day going over and over it.

 

[Shevek]

thats very honest mate .. i have often thought this is that religious experiance comes when we let the mind go .. it doesn'y make it spiritual though in any shape or form .. it is the mind that is flying not anything flying into the mind

exactly the point of my original post

 

[cesare]

It's character-building.

Thing is, it looks fucking mental when you see it written down like that, but that's the 'breaking point' meditation from the first week of the 30 day Spiritual Exercises. They keep you working on and on and on and on at it til you crack. The fourth and fifth bits are particularly entertaining, if you're spending five hours a day going over and over it.

Thing is though, you can do all that for yourself. Anyone can have a breakdown. All that the Jesuits offer is a reconstruction and a form of safety.

 

[the button]

Thing is though, you can do all that for yourself. Anyone can have a breakdown. All that the Jesuits offer is a reconstruction and a form of safety.

Quite. No element of formal spirituality would work if it didn't already build on something we already do. Although I'm somewhat biased, Ignatius Loyola was an absolute genius at this -- for example, turning the tendency that we have to let things run around and around in our heads before we go to sleep into the Examen, which is the bedrock of Jesuit spirituality.

 

[Shevek]

Quite. No element of formal spirituality would work if it didn't already build on something we already do. Although I'm somewhat biased, Ignatius Loyola was an absolute genius at this -- for example, turning the tendency that we have to let things run around and around in our heads before we go to sleep into the Examen, which is the bedrock of Jesuit spirituality.

But isn't this just using the minds own inner workings to suggest some kind of religious meaning. I don't know much about the Jesuits (except that James Joyce was taught by them). Button how far do you believe that the religious happenings are 'out there' somewhere ie. real or just a figment of our own minds, a dimension of our own conciousness that can be manipulated.

 

[durruti02]

Hi durruti, hope you are well. It is really interesting that you mention the MDF. I have been a member before. I actually have a booklet from them that describes how you can work towards living without Lithium. In fact I went further than that. In 2007 I tried to live without Lithium and had a manic episode. I am still open minded but not sure whether I can ever live without lithium.

fair play .. and i will tell him that !!

 

[durruti02]

exactly the point of my original post

yes i should have responded first to that!

 

[DotCommunist]

Quite. No element of formal spirituality would work if it didn't already build on something we already do. Although I'm somewhat biased, Ignatius Loyola was an absolute genius at this -- for example, turning the tendency that we have to let things run around and around in our heads before we go to sleep into the Examen, which is the bedrock of Jesuit spirituality.

harumph. It'll be a cold day in hell when I look to the musings of a soldier and a papist

 

[bhamgeezer]

When I saw a giant morphing god face on some very very trippy pills afew years back which made me literally jump 3 ft in the air from a lying down position most people would describe it as a trick of the mind, but then again what am I if I am not my mind