Meditation/Epilepsy -- e-mail to Bhaskar

[FHBRADLEY]

Mysticism, Neurology, Brain Damage, and Epilepsy

Folks, here is one of the letters I sent to Bhaskar which he found of
little or no interest. It seems he thinks I can answer seemingly simple,
but very difficult (in actuality) questions regarding meditation, epilepsy,
and neurology. The letter follows below.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES CORRELATED WITH ABNORMAL BRAIN FUNCTIONING AND DAMAGE

(I) Persons Predisposed to have mystical experiences are precisely those
persons who:

(i) have brain damage,
(ii) have epilepsy,
(iii) have psychosis,
(iv) have schizophrenia,
(v) have debilitating depersonalization disorder,
(vi) cultivate sensory deprivation and depersonalization through
meditation,
(vii) take hallucinogenic drugs,
(viii) some combination of these seven.

(II) Meditative Breath Holding Techniques Can Cause Epilepsy in Susceptible
Individuals or Exacerbate Epilepsy in those who already have it -- through
the following mechanisms:

(a) *Anoxia*: The total cutting off of the oxygen supply to the brain for
a period of time. The brain is very sensitive to changes in oxygen supply.
If the oxygen supply is cut off for a period of time, the brain can be
damaged resulting in epilepsy.
(b) *Hypoxia* : Lack of sufficient oxygen to the brain, as opposed to a
total cutting off of oxygen to the brain.
(c) *Hypercarbia* : Too much carbon dioxide in blood.

(III) Meditative Attention Manipulation Techniques can Exacerbate
underlying Epileptic condition and/or precipitate Seizures:

With regard to the self-generation of epileptic seizures and Cortical
Disinhibition, it may be wondered if this is possible. The answer is "Most
certainly." One of my neurology handbooks says that not only do "Some
persons manage to develop various techniques to abort their seizures…so
that no loss of consciousness" occurs, but also that "SEIZURES CAN BE
GENERATED BY AN ACTION OF MIND, EITHER BY A DELIBERATE ACT OF WILL (USUALLY
THE MANIPULATION OF ATTENTION) or by the ongoing activity of mind, as in
the 'thinking epilepsies' which result from excitation of the seizure focus
by mental activity, such as multiplication or addition." – that is, via
sustained acts of concentration.

The above is usually referred to as Reflex Epilepsy:

Reflex Epilepsy is a curious phenomenon in which certain highly specific
physiologic or mental stimuli precipitate a seizure. The precipitating
stimuli classically al into five groups, with a sixth group recently
discovered:

(i) Visual – flashing or flicker light, specific colors, patterns, eye
closure in bright light,
(ii) Auditory – specific music, sounds, voices,
(iii) Somatosensory – either a sudden tap or prolonged touch to a specific
part of the body
(iv) Reading,
(v) Eating,
(vi) Thinking and/or CONCENTRATING and/or manipulating attention along
certain lines by performing certain mental tasks, meditating, and so forth.

(IV) A good friend of mine (who happens to be a priest), heavily involved
in meditation and Spirituality, was diagnosed with epilepsy, himself, as a
youth. Interestingly, he, too, has come across these profound internal
silences, muscular disinhibitions, and some other neurological phenomena
that I have experienced.

(V) We learn from the neuroscientist Michael Persinger that:

... Although experimental kindling of limbic seizures in human beings would
be unethical, there are multiple anecdotal cases where repeated meditation
was associated with increased indicators of complex partial seizures
(Persinger, 1984). For example, Young (1984) reported more frequent and
intense incidences of lights and movements in the upper left visual field
(indicative of right temporal lobe stimulation through Meyer's loop) as a
function of meditation trials.

... The positive association between the self-reported duration of
meditation (an inference of repeated trials) and the frequency of complex
partial epileptic-like signs (but not control experiences) suggests a
specific "dose-dependence" relationship. Obviously a third factor, that
enhanced the symptoms and encouraged continuation of meditation, could have
been present. However, a causal relationship could explain the development
of frank epileptic displays over the temporal lobe (Persinger, 1984) in
subgroups of prolonged meditators as well as the myoclonic and limbic motor
disorders that have been claimed by some experienced TM teachers who
subsequently withdrew from the organization (e.g. TM-Ex Newsletter, PO Box
7565, Arlington, VA 22207).

(VI) Letter from A California Mystical Narcissist who Induced His mystical
Experiences Through Drug Taking and Meditation

Letter from a California Mystical Narcissist

Subj: I Was A Teen-Age Sage, Well, Sort Of...
Date: 97-02-17 13:10:50 EST
From: MNCanter
To: Nonduality

Dear Friend,

Read your comment on the Shambhala web page. Whoopee!!! I wanted to share
with you an essay about my own spiritual journey.

If you get a chance, check out my website at:
http://members.aol.com/retnac/skins/index.htm

Awakening to the Obvious: by Mark Canter

When I was 19 years old I was blessed with a wonderful mystical vision. I
experienced the light of God.

That is, I experienced what Buddhists call "primary clear light" and yogis
describe as a "thousand-petaled lotus of light." Hopis call it "the great
white spirit", and Moslems call it Noor, meaning "resplendence." It is also
the eternal flame that shines at the altar of Judaism; the same radiance
of which Jesus said, "If your eye is single, your whole body will be filled
with light."

The word light is not used here as a figure of speech (symbolizing a
brighter, sunnier, higher aspect of ourselves and the cosmos). All these
names and images refer to actual light: self-luminous, all-pervading
energy. It is the living force — radiant consciousness — ablaze with bliss.
Communion with this holy light, absorption in it, is unspeakably
pleasurable. Yet in my case, the event of drowning in the ocean of
brightness left a great disturbance in its wake that took decades to
resolve.

Let me tell you my story.

In 1972 I was a sophomore at Boston University, a teen-age son of
20th-century America, who listened to Led Zeppelin cranked up loud enough
to vibrate my teeth. I was not exactly preparing body and mind for a direct
encounter with the divine. My only religious training (Jewish) had
consisted of attending Sabbath services and Sunday school as a boy, which
felt like sitting for several hours a week in front of an unplugged radio.
I aggressively disbelieved in an anthropomorphic God. Natural science and
science fiction were far more inspiring, meaningful and beautiful to me
than conventional religious dogma. At age eleven, I quit attending the
synagogue.

Even so, there was a mystical streak in me that I'd noticed since
childhood. It showed itself as a keenly felt sense of the mystery of the
natural world and human life. This feeling of wonder or awe would sometimes
rise in me as a bodily thrill until I had to laugh or shout.

As a college freshman, I took a world religions course, because I intuited
something fundamental to the religious urge in people, something prior to
arguing over the different notions of God, something primitive, below the
abstract verbal mind that has created all the historical schisms of
exoteric beliefs. I wanted to find this most basic truth at the root of all
faiths. It was as if I longed to be like a lover—a naked beginner in the
embrace of Living Nature. I personally wanted to know Her, or It—God—for I
somehow understood "It" to be the depth and ground of my own heart. Thus, I
sought contact with my deepest heart, from which I was seemingly in exile.

The next year, as a sophomore, I took an excellent class on Eastern
philosophy. We read the Heart Sutra of Buddha and essays on Zen by D.T.
Suzuki; Psychotherapy East and West, by Alan Watts, and Modern Man in
Search of a Soul, by Carl Jung; the principal Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita
of the Hindus; the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tsu; the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I
began to have some grand insights into my own condition, though I
understood only a fraction of what I read.

Then some classmates invited me to their apartment for a dinner discussion
of the profound teachings we were studying. Steve had been a Theravaden
Buddhist monk in Thailand for two years, meditating seventeen hours a day;
John was an avid student of Yoga and Vedanta; and Sean had deserted the
French Army and walked through India for three years, meeting holy persons.
In contrast, I had neither meditated, nor done yoga, nor spent time in the
company of anyone who was especially wise and free.

AFTER DINNER, RIDING THE CREST OF THE MOMENT, EVERYONE BUT SEAN TOOK LSD
TOGETHER. IT WAS MY SIXTH PSYCHEDELIC TRIP. We took turns reading aloud
from the Old Testament's Genesis and from Be Here Now, a primer on Hindu
mysticism. After awhile, Steve read to us from The Psychedelic Experience,
a "trip manual" by Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner, based on the Tibetan
Book of the Great Liberation (also called Tibetan Book of the Dead).

Early on in the six-hour LSD high, I began to feel the same deep awe that
I'd enjoyed as a small boy, only stronger now than ever. The emotion seemed
to expand and fill body, mind and room as a tangible presence: a sphere of
invincible energy and happiness. I was sitting on a ratty carpet on the
living room floor of a cheap apartment in Cambridge, immersed in a force
field of great joy. I looked at Steve with drunken love and said, "The
Holy Spirit is upon us."

But I began to notice an apparent limit to the spirit, like a knot or cramp
within the otherwise boundless force. It gradually became obvious that the
knot was "me"—or everything I held onto as "myself". I saw that the whole
melodrama of "me" (as a separated or independent and limited identity) was
based on this unconscious habit of withholding (contracting, recoiling from
whole and infinite being). "Me" was only a construct, not ultimately real
(not a real entity or identity), but merely an act (like a fictional stage
character) within Free and Total Being. And mistakenly (ridiculously!), the
sense of identity had been bound to this mere role, this temporary
personality, this psycho-physical ego (as if Life and Consciousness were an
isolated self that is born to change and die). Such fake (separate)
identity was the cause of all fear—the refusal to love and shine
completely; the resistance to change and death, and thus, to all of life
and relationship.

Within Consciousness, the dream of "me" was suddenly released. In that
instant arose the deep heart of understanding: The totality of conscious
being is the real and living "Person", the all-inclusive Identity of
everyone and everything. As the sages have put it, "There is only God."

I fell onto my back in tears with the overwhelming relief of this
realization of transcendental (unlimited) life. I surrendered utterly to my
felt-intuition of the Great One. Rapidly, a marvelous change occurred.
Layers of subtler self-holding fell away and I melted into the heart of
God. I did not just watch this self-transcendence occur, as if from the
bleachers. Ego-"I" dissolved in the all-effacing light of
Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.

To the extent the experience can be described, it was something like this:
In the first few seconds of self-surrender, a glorious golden light filled
mind and body and all of space. Mind (or attention) was captured by the
light and drawn inward and upward toward some infinite locus above. Outer
awareness disappeared as attention, body and world were resolved into the
unity of the light-source—like an iris blossom refolding and returning to
its bud. Just at the brink of ego-death there was an instant of fear, but I
knew there was no turning back, no stopping this dissolution of all form.
So I silently prayed, "Have mercy on me," and in the next instant the light
became so supremely attractive it absorbed (dissolved) the fear along with
everything else into its dazzling singularity. As the last bit of self-hold
evaporated, the golden light increased to "white", or rather, it became
perfectly clear, pure, unqualified, original. There was no more ascent;
indeed there was no more "up" or "down", "in" or "out", but all of
existence was radically equal and whole—the same absolutely bright
fullness.

I was conscious as limitless radiant being, identical with the Self or
Source of the universe. I don't know how long I remained consumed in that
domain of ecstasy, but it was utterly familiar, not new or shocking. It was
Home, eternally. That Which IS (or the One I AM).

Of course, I came down. With a splat!

Crashed, as they say. And back again from the ego-centered point of view of
a white, middle-class American kid who had grasped only a fraction of what
he'd read from the Oriental mystics, the experience of the light was not
only incomprehensible, it was terrifying. By the following afternoon, I was
so upset, I was pale and shaky. After all, what was so attractive about the
dissolution of ego, the death of "me"? I had developed a painful case of
psychic indigestion.

At first I tried to resist the revelation of the light, the divine
intrusion on my independent, private life. I wanted to say, "Go away, I'm
not ready for this. I just want to be me. I want to stay me."

Lost and scared, I compulsively tried to secure the threatened ego,
reinforce its boundaries, make it solid and immune to change. It didn't
work. There is simply no way to go on as an isolated self after you've
tumbled into the heart of infinite life, even if only for a timeless
instant. (As Kabir says, "I saw that for one second, and it has made me a
devotee all my life.")

WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, READ THE DIRECTIONS.

I did.

I began to study the teachings of the Eastern and Western mystics in
earnest. (It is noteworthy that all of them warn not to delve into
mystical experience without proper preparation and a guide who knows the
territory.)

It took time, most of a decade, but gradually my anxiety and confusion
waned and was replaced by a growing understanding. Along the way I
discovered dozens of historical sources in which ego-loss in the radiant,
transcendental being is described. Classical yoga provides a Sanskrit term
for the experience: Nirvikalpa samadhi. Many teachers quickened my
awakening, not the least of them, my wife and my two little sons.

This does not mean I fitted the revelation of the divine to my everyday
life—like pocketing a shiny new coin and then continuing on my private way.
No. The divine is senior to self and world and will not be owned.
Therefore, I did the opposite: I submitted my life to the divine; I became
a devotee of God. Not the Almighty Absent Parent who never speaks through
the dead radio, but the same wonderful, living Source and starry Process
that a naturalist can love with awe.

Also, I began to meditate. I practiced a simple technique of focusing on
the in and out of my breath while sitting quietly. (It was a dozen years
before I learned this meditation style had a name, Vipassana, and that
Gautama Buddha himself had taught it.)

After 15 years of this practice, I experienced a "return" to the light.
While deeply in tune with the breath, my attention spontaneously became
focused in the mid-brain, between and behind the eyes. Thus my "eye" became
"single". My whole body was filled with light, as Jesus promised. I sat in
a swoon and received the golden light into all my parts. At the time, I
wrote an essay proclaiming: "Holy light is not a metaphor. Dazzlingly alive
is the eternal spirit."

But I was still afraid.

I was afraid of madness—the utter sacrifice of self and all limit. No
knowing. No controlling. No "me". I was afraid of drowning in infinity.

Six years later, in February 1993, a turning point arrived. I stood on my
balcony in a contemplative mood, feeling into life, and I remembered a line
a friend had told me years before about "meeting God halfway." That notion
now seemed absurd, as I saw that God Is Here, already all the way present.
Nothing is hidden or withheld. I said aloud a phrase that summed this up,
"The gift is always given." It was a beautiful, religious sense of being
loved and lived and breathed by God. Suddenly, a tremendous Force pressed
down from above my head, through my brain and nervous system, with such
mighty light and bliss that I fell to my knees and was pinned, overwhelmed
bodily, by the tangible brightness, as one might be overwhelmed by a
terribly powerful orgasm. I gasped with sobs of love at the potency of the
joy. The God-pleasure—the saturating fullness and Touch of the light—became
so intense, I felt my bones might crack.

When I stood up, I had changed physically.

And my meditations changed. For several years, I'd been aware of powerful,
"electrical" surges in my nervous system during Vipassana meditation. I had
focused on the breath and mostly ignored these stirrings of the Kundalini.
But now my meditation sessions became sheer energy work-outs. Even so
simple a practice as following the breath now felt like contrived
self-effort. Vipassana was obsolete. Instead, I would sit and the Kundalini
would flame through my head and eyes and spine and toss me around like a
mad dancer. I laughed and cried. I growled. I screamed. I made spontaneous
intonations, including multi-chorded overtone chanting like the Tibetan
Gyupta monks. It was painful and blissful—indescribable. I was suffering,
but unable to budge a finger. Afraid, but unable to make a single response.
I was being meditated.

I became constantly aware of the tension around my heart, the tension of
"me"—of holding on to myself. The presence of spirit had become a great
current and my misery was my resistance to it. But I was reluctant to
sacrifice "my life" completely.

Then one day in October 1993, I had grown so exhausted with the effort of
preventing my own death, that I lay down on my bed and said, Okay, I give
up. Take me insanity, or take me God, or take me whatever you are, mighty
river. Sweep me to my destiny.

Abruptly, I began to lose "face". Panic came on strong. I cramped up in a
ball like a fetus. I became an electric buzzing cloud of ego-pain and then
everything dissolved and I entered the light and bliss and freedom of
ego-death. Beyond the golden light into the clear light of void. No self.
No thing. No bounds. The rapture only lasted a few seconds, but it was
enough to see that all was okay. I had allowed death to occur, and it was
not annihilation. It was only the loss of an imaginary limit—a phony
identity.

HO!

The next day, I spontaneously entered Nirvikalpa samadhi again, while
soaking in the bathtub. The episode lasted several minutes and was
completely free of fear from the beginning. The bright pleasure simply
increased until the separate "I"-sense was overwhelmed in light. From
October on, each time I sat to meditate, I entered the shining void (at
times remaining in samadhi for an hour or more). It is like entering deep
sleep while remaining wide awake. It is luminous clarity: dreamless
wake—pure consciousness without content other than its own uncreated bliss.

After a couple months of this, I dreamed one dawn in January 1994, that I
was on a stage before an audience. A coffin was displayed on a stand and I
was lying in it, facedown and naked. An emcee was on stage, and it was
clear that I was to perform a Houdini-like escape act; I was supposed to
free myself and emerge from the coffin.

I began to chuckle. What was the big deal? I was already free. The coffin
lid was open, and I had no chains or shackles on me in the first place. I
simply stood up.

Next, I was holding beautiful blue pearls in my hand, and the emcee told me
to string them together as fast as I could. I started slipping the blue
pearls onto a string, as a timer with TV-game show music ticked in the
background. The emcee shouted, "Hurry, get as many beads on the string as
you can!" For a few seconds I rapidly strung pearls, but then I stopped and
looked up at the emcee. Why do I need to do this? I thought. This is your
game, not mine. I gazed at the audience and all eyes were upon me. I
smiled at the people as I stepped off the stage and began handing out the
blue pearls, one to each person.

Then I woke up. It was a sunny winter morning in Tallahassee, Florida. I
went downstairs and sat to meditate . . . and . . .

There was nowhere to go.

I strolled outdoors into the woods around my home. I saw no dilemma at all,
within or without. No thing to seek. No experience to shed. No limit. I was
not a something that could travel to someplace. I could not go deeper or
higher through any means.

I burst out laughing from down in my belly. THIS IS IT. What a punchline! I
thought the moment of satori would never end. But by the afternoon, when I
went to pick up my sons from elementary school, I realized that satori is
only a state, too. It comes and goes. Nothing lasts.

And guess what? I don't care in the least. I am not dismayed when ego
appears, or when it disappears. I am no longer at war with ego or void.
They are twin aspects of consciousness itself. I don't take sides at all.

Reality is not samadhi, the extinguishing of all forms. Reality is not even
satori, the natural mode of egolessness. Reality is no special state at
all; no special condition. Reality is the field of all possible states,
their origin and unqualified basis, perfectly open and unbounded; pure
capacity. Fundamentally, nothing has changed or ever will, and what I've
come to understand was already only so: just this.

From a certain perspective it can seem a big deal: I've grokked my own
essence, and it is reality (or Buddha-nature). Or, as the Persian poet,
Omar Khayam, put it: "I am, myself, Heaven and Hell."

But on the other hand, Buddha-nature and a buck will buy me a cup of
coffee. No big deal. No special status. Nothing exclusive or exceptional.

These days, I sometimes meditate for pleasure and refreshment, like
drinking a delicious tea. And I occasionally enter spontaneous mystic
states during meditation. Even so, not any of it is necessary; and none of
it is greater than simple happiness. Samadhi or no samadhi, satori or no
satori, ego or no ego—there is no limit, already.

Nothing is more than wonderful. This moment is wonderful. Nothing is more
than wholeness. This moment is complete. THIS is as God as it gets.

Truth (or happiness) is not hidden or secret; not subtle or abstract; not
elsewhere, nor different than the stream of life. Birth, change, death—all
the same one. There is no other than bright mystery.

It took 22 committed years of spiritual seeking from the moment I first
encountered the truth to finally accept the unspeakable grace of our
condition.

Friend, hear what I say: The Divine you seek is your own identity, beyond
all limit. Therefore, be already happy. Trust in happiness, luminous and
clear. Happiness IS the Wholly Spirit, the Light that is real beyond words
and beyond worlds.

(VII) Letters, and my responses to, one "LauraBee" who came by her Mystical
Experiences via her Experiences with UNTREATED LYME DISEASE:

Letters to and From LauraBee on AOL

Subj: Self Induced Epilepsy
Date: 96-10-27 23:29:40 EST
From: LauraBee
To: Emptiness

Hi--hope you won't mind my sending you email directly. I've read some of
your posts warning against intensive meditation practices and describing
some of the results of such practices.

I have had and do continue to experience many of the symptoms you have
described--brilliant pinpoint lights and flashes of light, flowing of light
through the body, spontaneous vibration throughout the body," pressure"
experiences, the "dead calm" of true silence, and the intense burning of
what I interpreted as the Godhead in a rapturous experience of overwhelming
love and fear. And many others. The difference between you and me? I don't
meditate. My experiences occur while I am praying or asleep, and they
happen
spontaneously. I have interpreted them all as spiritual (religious)
experiences, and yet have wondered why the having of these experiences
doesn't make me more enthusiastic for living. Strangely, or not, if you
consider the overwhelmingness of the rapture I once had--I spend my life
marking time. I can't wait to get back to that rapture that I experienced
as God, and yet at the same time I realize that physical death might not
get me back to that place of joy. What does it all mean? By the way, I
should tell you that I am not a scholar or particularly intellectual, so
please, if you do decide to respond to this email, be aware that I have not
read widely in the area of meditation practice or have much knowledge of
neurology. I guess I would like to know your opinion of why I spontaneously
have these experiences that you and many others have to work hard to
experience, and whether you think that there is anything I should do to try
to stop them. Have I somehow injured myself, unconsciously? And what are
the compulsions of the human mind/soul that seem to catapult certain of us
into this region of (not)knowingness, if you have to put a name on it? Any
reply is appreciated. In Christ. Laura.

Subj: Re: Epilepsy and Mysticism
Date: 96-10-28 14:25:11 EST
From: LauraBee
To: Emptiness

Dear Clay, thank you for your response to my email. I have so many
observations about this strange process of experiences, and am interested
in your story as well, although I have no right to ask. Perhaps if I just
ask a few questions, and you can decline to answer if you don't want to
pursue this conversation. Don't worry if you don't feel like answering
them--I've been alone with this thing for over four years and am getting
used to it.

A little more history on me. Four years ago, I was battling Lyme
disease--infectious arthritis. It had gone undiagnosed for two years, and
sometimes neurological complications can occur, however, the only problems
I had been experiencing were a noticeable loss of short term memory (now
cured) and a stuttering
problem (also now mostly gone.) I had lots of pain and none of the usual
pain medications worked. After two years of daily unrelieved pain, I wanted
to take a leap off a high building. Instead, I started to develop a
relationship with God, because I had no one else to turn to, my husband and
doctors all insisting that I was not ill.

I had been a religious skeptic my whole life (30 years) and had had no
religious training or upbringing. I did
not do "contemplative prayer," the Jesus prayer or any other. I have always
disliked meditation and so-called silent prayer. I much prefer to have long
conversations with God. However, I do have the ability to spend many hours
a day in just thinking about spirituality, God, my place in the universe,
and reading the same subjects. You could say I'm fairly obsessed. But in
the beginning, I was just lonely and in pain. One day while I was reading
the Bible, a glass exploded in my kitchen. It was not near a source of heat
or cold, and yet the glass appeared "crazed" as though it had been
subjected to heat and then cold. I checked the windows to make sure no one
had thrown a rock accidentally, but it was midnight, and no one was around
outside. It seemed to be the beginning of my manifestations. (BTW, at that
time, I was not superstitious or particularly into the paranormal, either.
Thought it a bunch of bunk.)

A few nights later, I prayed long (but not silently:-) and then fell
asleep. Around two or three am I was awakened by what felt like a sharp
blow to my left neck, and simultaneously a loud banging noise, like a door
had slammed. Immediately, I seemed to leave my body and fly up to what I
perceive as heaven, where I was greeted by a VERY beautiful and bright
light that radiated LOVE. I was literally sucked into it. I had an
experience of great joy and seeming "transfiguration," and then fear as I
began to burn. It felt like the love radiating from the light was literally
burning me to death. I didn't really care too much that I was dying, as the
LOVE pouring from the light was a better alternative to existence. I did
feel as though I was losing my sense of SELF. At some point I blacked out
and awoke in bed. Since then, I have had visions (of a religious nature),
have heard my name called (but no other words or voices, thank God:-) and
see the lights and other phenomena I have already told you about. I have
interpreted all these things in a religious way, even though I was never a
religious person before all these things started happening.

Maybe I am crazy, but I do not view the experience of flowing light and
dead calm as negative, but wonderful. However, I have not experienced any
permanent change in my "mental chatter" or capacity to feel emotion or
experience the concepts of past and future. Many religious figures would
call that sort of equanimity "enlightenment" and see it as a good thing. I
wonder why you seem to see it in such negative terms. What I mean is not
that I question your right to see it in negative terms, but that I wonder
where, for you, the concept of love fits in your world view. My own
experience has changed my life mostly for the better, in the sense that I
have gained mastery over some of my former bad habits, and now strive to
live in harmony and peace, while before, every other person was seen as a
potential source of pain in my life. I now see that I am in charge of my
own feelings, and yes, that many things just don't matter in the big view.

I am digressing severely. What I am trying (incompetently, I agree) to ask
you, is whether your intent is love? Were you looking for power over others
when you began your odyssey, or peace, or goodness? I know that you have
ended up with equanimity and a diminished ability to enjoy life. This is
what you seem to say. I, on the other hand, still enjoy all my former
interests, have gained a great love and faith in God, am
happier in my marriage, and have gained mastery (for the large part) over
bodily appetites. I feel more human, not less. BUT--I have also developed
this compulsion to KNOW more and MORE about the regions of the spirit,
which doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere. My experiences come at their
own time--I do not spend any time anymore trying to experience anything
except a sense of closeness with the Lord, which I suppose is a sort of
concentration. But it takes very little time to achieve and lately seems to
happen mostly when I am sleeping, as I mentioned before. My daily prayers
only amount to about a half hour or less. Yet I do feel this sense of
"marking time" until I get to my REAL life, so to speak, and it is what is
distressing me.

My last questions Clay: do your experiences cause you to disbelieve in
God, or were you a nonbeliever before you began? And secondly, do you see
these "manifestations" as purely biological? Do you believe that when the
body dies the "self" dies along with the brain, and that's it, finite? Or
do you perhaps believe that our spirits go to a great One that allows for
no individuality/individual personality--a sort of , but not complete
annihilation? Or something else? Thank you for any reply. And I apologize
in advance for foisting
all this on you:-) Hope to hear from you again. Laura

Subj: Epilepsy and Mysticism
Date: 96-10-28 06:28:12 EST
From: Emptiness
To: LauraBee

Dear Laura,

Many forms of epilepsy have the manifestations you describe to me in your
e-mail. One does not have to do ANYTHING at all to have them. However,
there ARE certain activities that can cause, or exacerbate, the list of
symptoms you describe. Even though you may not know this, or think so,
many forms of Christian "prayer" are really meditation. What
differentiates ordinary prayer in which one has a "conversation" with God
and Contemplative Christian Prayer is the degree of "one-pointedness" of
the mind. Put in other words, if you have been able to cultivate a
powerful focus on "the presence of God" or whatever, you are doing
meditation and ACTIVATING the very experiences that you may not want
activated. So, if you are experiencing these powerful neurological
manifestations during prayer and you wish them to stop, I suggest you STOP
praying.

With regard to the experience of the symptoms of neurological
destabilization during sleep, let me say that I, too, have frequently
experienced the same during times in bed (asleep or awake) - so this is not
so strange
or unusual.

You mention that these rapturous experiences do not make you more
enthusiastic for living and wonder why. As a tentative suggestion I say
the following two things. First, it may simply be the CONTRAST between the
marvelous "rapture" and your more ordinary state, that is the culprit.
That is, who wants to go back to the ordinary and "non-blissed-out" states
when there is all that "wonderful" rapture instead? View it
more like the states induced by heroin as compared to non-narcotic induced
states. Second, I have often tried to tell many people that the bliss and
rapture are eventually replaced by SILENCE and UNKNOWING
for some - although most going through the marvelous rapture, "neurological
reconfiguration" and illumination find this hard to believe UNTIL they
themselves are brought "low" by the neurological unfoldment. You intimate
as much when you say "...I realize that physical death might not get me
back to that place of joy" and "What are the compulsions of the human
mind/soul that seem to catapult certain of us into this region of (not)
knowingness?"

As I see it, you have several choices. The first choice would be to study
meditation and various meditation techniques and attempt to take the
process all the way to the STABLE Unitive State. This is VERY VERY risky
since you may have epilepsy and the various meditation techniques may very
well exacerbate your condition. There is the additional bit of bad news
that FEW even make it even this far. The second choice would be to simply
STOP Praying altogether - for you have probably developed a measure of
Concentration
(powerful focus of mind) which you may be inadvertently applying during
Prayer. The third choice involves the second along with visits to a
neuropsychiatrist and/or neurologist who knows something about
the side-effects of meditation and epilepsy too. He or she could put you
on the appropriate Anticonvulsant Drugs (ACD) which MAY help you control
these experiences or symptoms. From personal experience, I now that at
least one drug, Alprazolam, WILL NOT significantly slow or halt the process
FOR ME - it only allows me to get much needed sleep. But this is an
antianxiety/sleep-inducing agent and NOT an anticonvulsant drug.

Have you injured yourself? This one is very hard to call given the facts
that (i) neurology is in its infancy, (ii) many neurologists and
neuropsychiatrists might not know what to make of your condition - really
good ones will though, and (iii) the data you have given me is very partial
and sketchy.

If the experiences are too disruptive of your life and too unpleasant,
please seek out the counsel of a good neurologist and/or neuropsychiatrist.
Some of the new Anticonvulsant Drugs these days are very powerful from all
accounts I have read.

Very Best Wishes,
Clay S.

PS: Feel free to write me ANY time. You might also consider reading
Bernadette Roberts Book "The Path
to No-Self " - it might possibly be of some help. But then again, maybe
not. I do not know.

PPS: I have sent a copy of your letter to Howie Sm - that is his screen
name on AOL - who may be able to
give you more detailed and useful advice.

Subj: In answer to your questions
Date: 96-10-28 15:53:34 EST
From: Emptiness
To: LauraBee

Dear Laura,

I will answer your questions in an "outline" fashion in the interests of
speed, so here we go:

(1) Your Point:

"Around two or three am I was awakened by what felt like a sharp blow to
my left neck, and simultaneously a loud banging noise, like a door had
slammed. Immediately, I seemed to leave my body and fly up to what I
perceive as heaven, where I was greeted by a VERY beautiful and bright
light that radiated LOVE. I was literally sucked into it. I had an
experience of great joy and seeming "transfiguration," and then fear as I
began to burn. It felt like the love radiating from the light was
literally burning me to death. I didn't really care too much that I was
dying, as the LOVE pouring from the light was
a better alternative to existence. I did feel as though I was losing my
sense of SELF."

Response:

I have seen so many lights and had so many odd bodily sensations (like you
describe + many others) that they are a proverbial "dime a dozen."
Likewise for the raptures and transfigurations - NOTHING NEW HERE for me!
Once one acclimates to these experiences, they become as ordinary as AIR.

(2)Your Point:

"I did feel as though I was losing my sense of SELF. At some point I
blacked out and awoke in bed. Since then, I have had visions (of a
religious nature), have heard my name called (but no other words or voices,
thank God) and see the lights and other phenomena I have already told you
about. I have interpreted all these things in a religious way, even though
I was never a religious person before all these things started happening"

Response:

I have lost a GREAT DEAL of what I would call my "self" -- whatever this
is. The nature of self, we are finding out, is really an empirical and
neuroscientific question and NOT a religio-philosophical one. Thus I will
leave the nature of "self" up to the luminaries in contemporary and future
neuroscience.

I used to interpret my mystical experiences in heavily religious ways.
Then I shifted the focus to interpreting them in the light of my knowledge
of philosophy. Finally, I have come to see that all these things are
simply the "play of the nervous system" and leave it at that.

(3)Your Point:

"However, I have not experienced any permanent change in my 'mental
chatter' or capacity to feel emotion or experience the concepts of past and
future. Many religious figures would call that sort of equanimity
'enlightenment' and see it as a good thing. I wonder why you seem to see it
in such negative terms. What I mean is not that I question your right to
see it in negative terms, but that I wonder where, for you, the concept of
love fits in your world view. My own experience has changed my life mostly
for the better, in the sense that I have gained mastery over some of my
former bad habits, and now strive to live in harmony and peace, while
before, every other person was seen as a potential source of pain in my
life. I now see that I am
in charge of my own feelings, and yes, that many things just don't matter
in the big view."

Response:

I have frequently said in both my posts and in IM and E-mail dialogue with
others that I DO GREATLY VALUE the enormous equanimity that my practice has
brought me - there is no denying this. My criticisms of Spirituality are
intended to counter the bizarre religio-philosophical and egoistic
delusions and excesses that Spirituality ALL TOO OFTEN RESULTS IN.
Moreover, favorable outcomes like yours, and possibly
mine, ARE THE EXCEPTION AND NOT THE RULE.

(4) Your Question:

"What I am trying (incompetently, I agree) to ask you, is whether your
intent is love? Were you looking for power over others when you began your
odyssey, or peace, or goodness? I know that you have ended up with
equanimity and a diminished ability to enjoy life. This is what you seem to
say. I, on the other hand, still enjoy all my former interests, have
gained a great love and faith in God, am happier in my marriage, and have
gained mastery (for the large part) over bodily appetites. I feel more
human, not less. BUT--I have also developed this compulsion to KNOW more
and MORE about the regions of the spirit, which doesn't seem to be getting
me anywhere. My experiences come at their own time--I do not spend any time
anymore trying to experience anything except a sense of closeness with the
Lord, which I suppose is a sort of concentration. But it takes very little
time to achieve and lately seems to happen mostly when I am sleeping, as I
mentioned before. My daily prayers only amount to about a half hour or
less. Yet I do feel this sense of "marking time" until I get to my REAL
life, so to speak, and it is what is distressing me."

Response:

Regarding loving kindness and compassion, I say that they are the most
important values in the world and I have always believed this so. A
careful reading of SOME of my posts explicitly conveys this commitment. I
DO NOT claim to be a saint or to have even remotely lived up to these
values; I only want to reaffirm, to you, that they are utterly
FOUNDATIONAL for me.

Regarding compulsions to know more about the regions of the Spirit, I say
that if you do not do this in a scientific and academically disciplined
way, you may very well be "sucked down the black hole" of religious
delusions and Superstition.

Regarding your ability to "still enjoy life" I say that I do too, to a
certain degree, still enjoy life - it's just that the capacity has been
diminished by at least 50%. Moreover, given the modular nature of the
brain AND the fact that you did not extensively cultivate meditation, only
parts of your brain were affected by your illness and "unconscious"
Contemplative Prayer. If one consciously cultivates intensive and
prolonged
meditation, ALL brain "modules" can be affected. There is the additional
point that you may NOT be far enough along in the unfoldment of these
mystical experiences to have a significant diminishment of gratification or
pleasure.

(5) Your Question:

"My last questions Clay: do your experiences cause you to disbelieve in
God, or were you a nonbeliever before you began? And secondly, do you see
these "manifestations" as purely biological? Do you believe that when the
body dies the "self" dies along with the brain, and that's it, finite? Or
do you perhaps believe that our spirits go to a great One that allows for
no individuality/individual personality--a sort of , but not complete
annihilation? Or something else?"

Response:

The categories of "believer" and "non-believer" are utterly socially,
culturally and historically conditioned. Talk to a fundamentalist adherent
of the Islamic Religion or a fundamentalist Marxist and see that this is
so. Had you grown up under different religious circumstances, you would
probably still be talking the "True Faith" language; only what constitutes
the "True Faith" might be Islam! So all this sort of talk is so RELATIVE
that I cannot take it seriously.

Regarding the question of whether or not all this mysticism stuff is
neurobiological or not, I suggest you read Susan Blackmore's book "Dying to
Live" by Prometheus Press in order that your questions might be answered in
adequate detail.

I also recommend the following really basic books on science and neurology
-- highly interesting books --that might help you better understand your
condition and the proper scientific understanding of your condition:

(I) For Science & Against Superstition

(a) Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences (Susan Blackmore, Prometheus
Press)
(b) The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Carl Sagan,
Ballantine Books)
(c) Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and
Other Confusions of our Time (Michael Shermer, W.H. Freeman and Company)
(d) The Trouble with Science (Robin Dunbar, Harvard)
(e) Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (Stewart Guthrie,
Oxford)

(II) Very Clearly Written and Compassionate Books on The Human Side of
Neurological Disorders
(a) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Oliver Sacks, Harper/Collins)
(b) An Anthropologist on Mars (Oliver Sacks, Vintage Books)