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Divine insanity

Divine insanity.I see the divine as a form of connection or organization and insanity as disconnection or chaos.The universe is a product of divine insanity, chaos comming into order then falling appart and comming together once again in a constant process of evolution and expansion.

I've been in states of what I could describe as divine insanity while shrooming.I would come up with ideas of how the universe and everything in between works, where its all going and variouse other what nots.I would be so convinced of my conclusions that I would spend all my thought processes and energies on proving these theories to myself that they might well be realler than the objective reality.These ideas are completely insane in the eyes of the average folk yet somehow I can always convince a few peoples of their possibility.

Good thread, the posts on schizophrenia are very interesting.
 
Dopeamine said:
So should I characterise my experience as drug induced? I had taken nothing for at least three weeks when my altered conciousness/psychosis occured. For obvious reasons I want to hold on to the fact that it was not a drug induced episode, but you seem perfectly happy to accept that and that this does not negatively impact on the spirituality/validity of the experience?

would the experience have happened if you never took anything in the first place? psychedelics can obviously open doors... from personal experience, i haven't taken any hard trips in over 5 months, yet a few weeks ago i was meditating and my consciousness expanded outside my physical body. i believe lsd helped me to achieve that state, because one of my past experiences with it had to do with that consciousness expansion.

i agree that we should not "characterise", psychedelics are pieces of ourself that can help us understand ourself.

Could my issues stem from me having progressed too quickly and not having undertaken the necessary practice?

yes.. it is difficult taking in so much and then having to deal with the world. thats when fear comes into play and things just start going downhill. it just seems right that there should be a balance, if you use psychedelics you should do your part as well. don't just rely on the psychedelics, practise becoming more aware of yourself when sober. i know for a fact that i would be going downhill if it weren't for meditation, it just sort of connects everything, and make it feel like im advancing, not getting left behind.

so your not doomed, just start cultivating awareness and realize that fear and unawareness are the main issues here.

Take care :)
 
Medatripper Tates, what you said about taking in so much and having to deal with the ordinary world rings true for me. It reminds me of when Jesus said, 'The foxes have their holes and the birds have their nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head.' I think what he was essentially saying was that the path of the mystic, the seeker, can be a lonely one, because once you go down it, you've forgone the ready sources of comfort that most people cling to.

'Son of man' is an odd turn of phrase BTW. I'd like to know what the original Greek and Aramaic for this was. I have a feeling what he meant was something like 'the person who has become something more', 'the enlightened one'.

Thanks for the info on schizophrenia, go-ee. Fascinating disorder, and much more complicated than I had realized. Until we've come up with a treatment that's effective for most schizophrenics, the best we can do is to accept them as they are, and learn what we can from their wholly different way of seeing things.

zorn, no, that hasn't been my experience. My experience of the world beyond my home USA is mostly Asia and Eastern Europe. I can say with certainty that fundamentalist religious belief is not the norm in Russia, China, Japan, Thailand, or Taiwan. That's a good chunk of the world's population. I was young when I went to Mexico, but I've always gotten the sense that Mexican people built in-group walls based on mostly worldly factors, such as ancestral home turf and generations-old family alliances. I haven't traveled through Western Europe so I can't say much about it, but if intolerant religious belief held a lot of sway in these countries' populations, wouldn't that be reflected widely in the leaders they elected, as is the case in the US? My hunch is that fundamentalism, like fascism, is found attractive by people who feel disgruntled or disenfranchised for very secular reasons.

DEA, I've been doing a lot of reading about mysticism lately. A common thread I keep seeing in the writings of people who've had mystical experiences are conclusions that god IS this great oneness we call the universe. This is why I lean towards pantheism, and prefer names like 'the eternal Tao' to anthropomorphic ones like 'God'. In light of this, the theism / atheism debate seems kind of moot to me.
I have a basic, albeit cautious, respect for religion for the same reason I have a basic respect for the arts. Both are attempts on the part of one person to connect with other people, by trying to express and share their subjective experience in a form others can understand. How religion and art affect and motivate populations is just a function of the populations' current material needs.

Speaking of art, has anyone seen or heard any art produced by schizophrenics? It can be very powerful, or at the very least jarring. The music of Wesley Willis comes to mind. 8(
 
>>I think this really reflects just how little 'thinking' and how much 'following' goes into most people's construction of their political views. We flatter ourselves that we're thinking about issues, but in reality we're mostly just learning to ape and fit in with whichever tribe we chose when we were young (and ignorant.) Hence this disturbing regularity, where people either believe in the ca.-2006 liberal "package" of beliefs, the conservative package, the libertarian package, etc. -- when you meet someone isolated, who's formed their beliefs without the pull of a preexisting party/tribal line, it's a bit startling.>>

This is an interesting proposition, and I do think it holds a great deal of truth. However, in the case of well thought out, internally consistent political views, I would imagine that it is quite difficult to build a new system of social philosophy from the ground up. So you have Socialists who build on Marx, Anarchists who take Foucault and Kropotkin as their starting points, liberals who begin with Keyenes, right libertarians who begin with locke...or Rand (*shudders*), conservatives who begin with...er...Hobbes, maybe? (I've read Tocqueville. I don't really get how he's interpreted as a conservative thinker)...etc.,etc.

ebola
 
go-ee said:
There are at least three specific neurochemical abnormalities simultaneously at play in the schizophrenics.

1. Excessive stimulation of striatal dopamine (DA) D2 receptors

2. Deficiency in the stimulational of prefrontal DA D1 receptors

3. Alterations in prefrontal activity involving glutamate transmission

I could elaborate on these abnormalities and provide the current evidence, but expect a very long and complicated post.

I'd like to read that (if someone hasn't already said so by the time I'm finished this)
 
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Here is just a brief run down on the abnormalities I said.

Excessive stimulation of striatal dopamine D2 receptors The striatum is part of the basal ganglia found deep within the brain. These cells control movement, balance, and walking and they rely on dopamine to function. In fact, current work on Huntington's disease (which involves a deterioration of motor function) is pointing to deterioration in this area of the brain. How do we know that excessive stimulation of D2 receptors is involved in schizophrenia? One clue is that the most effective anti psychotic drugs all share dopamine D2 receptor antagonism - meaning they help block the stimulation of the D2 receptors. Using brain-imaging techniques such as single positron emission computer tomography, scientists can view the living brain of a person with schizophrenia and observe how the newer "second generation" anti psychotic medications work on these specific dopamine sites.

A second area of interest to scientists in investigating the cause of schizophrenia is the observation of a deficiency in the stimulation of prefrontal DA D1 receptors Therefore, while some dopamine sites may be overactive (like, striatal D2) a second type of dopamine site in the part of the brain that we use for thinking and reasoning (prefrontal D1 receptors) appaears to be less active and may account for other symptoms common in Schizophrenia. Schizophrenics display a a range of deficits in the prefrontal section of the brain (a condition known as hypofrontality).

Alterations in prefrontal activity involving glutamate transmission Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter that is found in all areas of the brain and is only just now being studied earnest. Glutamate has different types of receptors (like D1 and D2, etc), and the ones being studied for their role in schizophrenia are the N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors. The effects of certain drugs that affect NMDA receptors point to clues to schizophrenia. Ketamine is a prime example, and can cause psychotic (and very psychedelic distortions of the mind!) effects in non-schizophrenics. It tends to greatly exacerbate symptoms in schizophrenics. Ketamine is an NMDA antagonist, and gives support to the idea that a deficit in glutamate and/or blocking of NMDA sites may be involved in some of the symptoms.
 
I find it interesting that shamans used to eat datura when someone in the village was mentally ill, the shamans would go and fix that mentally ill person and wham bam the insane person went back to normal again! I think with insanity it starts off as a perception of extra ordinary things, like spirits ect.... and then the brains eventually starts to manifest its own hallucinations and it becomes a mix of delusional and real (in the metaphysical sense) perceptions
 
^
I'd really like to see a shaman curing someone with Schizophrenia by means of Datura. 8(

Enough with this mental illness is just "spirits", "extra sensory experiences", "baby undergoing too much pressure" crap. It is very undermining to the sciences that study this abnormal behaviour. More so, it doesn't have a shred of evidence.
 
Nothing ever really goes "out of fashion" in science. The dopamine hypothesis is still an explanation for Schizophrenia and does have reasonable support (as I showed in my posts). However, most of the research on Schizophrenia is looking at other areas of (such as; structural differences and changes in the brain, triggers in the environment that bring out a genetic susceptibility to Schizophrenia, etc) besides neurotransmitter abnormalities.
 
go-ee said:
"baby undergoing too much pressure" crap. It is very undermining to the sciences that study this abnormal behaviour. More so, it doesn't have a shred of evidence.

"Some evidence suggests that infants who experience birth trauma or complications while in the womb are at greater risk for schizophrenia. ..."

OK... so what caused these neurotransmitter abnormalties?

Trauma in the womb seems absolutely possible, what you described are only results :| :o

1. Excessive stimulation of striatal dopamine (DA) D2 receptors

2. Deficiency in the stimulational of prefrontal DA D1 receptors

3. Alterations in prefrontal activity involving glutamate transmission

can this happen to someone after they experience serious trauma? sounds similar to what happened to ME after my traumatic episode..
 
Considering monozygotic twins have around a 50% concordance rate for Schizophrenia. By this I mean if there are two identical twins and one has Schizophrenia, there is a 1/2 chance the other one does. This is a substantial increase from the 1/100 chance present in the normal population. Due to this I would say the baby trauma theory is a load of garbage. Who are you quoting anyway? Maybe there is a correlation between the two but that is all. The strong genetic basis for the disorder lends more support to the idea that there is fundamental differences in the brain between those who have Schizophrenia and those that do not. What caused those neurotransmitters abnormalities? Schizophrenia! What I was describing was the abnormalities frequently found in people with Schizophrenia. They were caused by the underlying biological dysfunction that leads them to develop the disorder and suffer from a variety of maladaptive symptoms. To your second question, a variety of neurotransmitter changes will occur (everyday..all the time) however, no you will not get the abnormalities I described from a trauma. Even if you could somehow modify your neurotransmitter levels and function so they were how I described for a Schizophrenic. Schizophrenia is not simply a disorder of neurotransmitter abnormalities. Schizophrenics have significant structural differences in their brains compared to "normal" people. It's approximately 50% genetic rate indicates that there are probably numerous genes responsible for the disorder and that there must "triggers" which cause Schizophrenia to come into play. These triggers may be environmental (or external) or internal. By internal I mean, something inside the brain triggers Schizophrenia to come into play. The fact that schizophrenia has an equal rate of occurrence in nearly every country in the world, is found in equal numbers between the sexes and runs in families seem to provide far more evidence than "baby trauma". Provide some evidence or elaborate on your claims. You seem to have misunderstood what I have said.
 
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