9 November 2002: Nonlinear Phenomena

Still a bit sick, but better.  Having a pleasant lazy day.  Got to sleep in with Dragon Lady this morning, talked to my parents on the phone, hung out with Bonkydog.  Not making a lot of art so far today, but I did end up making a piece last night, "The Khan in the Archive," a digital portrait of my brother the Khan.  It's in the Gallery now.

Spent a while today in that Moot Zoo discussion on the nature of Reality.  Opsimath didn't agree with the interpretation of schizophrenia in item number eight of the post I reprinted in yesterday's entry.  He's had some experience in dealing with schizophrenics, and commented, "I find their subjective realities to be overwhelming to them, to the point of excluding all but the most basic glimpses of objective or ultimate reality."

My reply, slightly edited:

I find that to be the case with all humans, schizophrenic or not, including myself.

Perhaps, though, you and I have very different concepts of "ultimate reality," because of the differences in our subjective experiences thus far. For instance, I believe that ultimate reality is nonlinear, and that the one-way linear/sequential unfolding time is not ultimate reality, but rather is a function of our subjective perceptions - a function which allows us to live our lives as we do, but which also limits our ability to perceive or comprehend ultimate reality.

I don't pretend to be an expert on schizophrenia. There's a good chance that my understanding of schizophrenia is only true of some schizophrenics. I suspect that there may be a number of widely differring phenomena that get labeled "schizophrenia," and that we've encountered different kinds.
What I've observed in my admittedly limited dealings with schizophrenics, in my considerably-less-limited dealings with people who have wigged out on psychedelic drugs, and in reading the works of writers with histories of borderline schizophrenia or schizophrenic episodes (like Phillip K. Dick), is that such people often experience partial breakdowns in linear time perception, and heightened sensitivity to nonlinear phenomena such as synchronicity. Shamans, sorcerers, and mystics also experience these things (having spent the greater part of my life using psychedelic drugs and doing various sorts of intensive shamanic work, I occasionally experience these things myself).

From what I've observed, the difference between a schizophrenic and a sorcerer is that a schizophrenic doesn't have whatever sort of psychic equilibrium/flexibility/mojo it takes to reconcile/juggle/integrate nonlinear information (which often manifests to the human mind as visions, surges of intense feeling, or other disconcerting phenomena) with the sort of linear consciousness necessary to continue to interact meaningfully with other humans.

Again, I'm not an expert on schizophrenia. Not only do I not claim that this is what's going on with all schizophrenics, I also don't claim that it represents a complete explanation of any case of schizophrenia. It does, however, account (accurately, I believe) for some schizophrenic symptoms. And it also accounts for nearly all mental abreactions to psychedelic drugs (maybe I shouldn't have brought schizophrenia into it at all - shoulda just stuck with my own field of expertise).

Anyway, my writing of the above clarification gave me much food for thought, and I've now come up with a rephrasing of item #8:

8. Often the distinction between spiritual advancement and insanity comes down to whether or not one's ordinary consciousness is capable of integrating experiences of extraordinary consciousness into a functional whole.

I think this phrasing actually gets the idea across much better, without coming across as an attempt to glibly explain away something as complex as schizophrenia. This version sticks to what I really know - I'm not schizophrenic, but I certainly have walked the tightrope of the spiritual advancement vs. insanity distinction. From my own perspective, it was just slightly less than two years ago that I finally got the hang of integrating it all well enough that I was decisively sane (that's just my own perspective, of course - some folks probably think I'm decisively crazy, or still on the edge, while others probably had more faith in me than I did, and knew years ago that I'd be okay... but from my own perspective, there was a specific point in my life when the balance shifted and I permanently "went sane").

By the way, the best account I've ever seen of an ongoing struggle to
integrate overwhelming experiences of extraordinary consciousness is the book Divine Invasions, a biography of Phillip K. Dick.