Others ~ Selected Correspondence

Sanity

I underwent a ‘process’ during my psychosis as well as now... a wild imagination of some ‘psychic web’.

The root drive is some kind of angst and the mind wants to get rid of the angst. I imagine(d?) all kinds of things... all that I have read... Christian theory of suffering... Buddhist... everyday man’s gripes... psychotic’s paranoia, existentialist’s absurdity/ ennui/ angst...

Rituals... OCD’s... mental illnesses… all kinds of hatreds... mindless malice... war... violence... rapes... all these flash in my mind (is this what Richard has been saying all along? The root cause of all the ills)... all these flash in my mind as a justification/ reasoning/ solution for this feeling. I feel that all the human solutions were to eradicate this ‘angst’ are ‘tried and true’ but ‘tried and failed’...

I am wondering did Richard really do what he claims to have done? Is there a solution to this root cause of suffering and malice? Has he truly found the answer? Has he lived it? Is it really doable by me? And hence by everybody, and hence has he truly discovered the path to freedom, the most wanted solution that has evaded the human kind for millennia? Then, is it true that the paradise on earth is in the horizon as a possibility at least? Isn’t that a stupendous thing if true?

Did he pick up similar psychic footprints? What about Peter and Vineeto?

Is this psychic web all in my mind and I am only traversing the potential and imagining/ theorizing the history? What is the validity of the passionate imagination I am having?

It is all interesting. No 33, 8.10.2005

Fourth possibility: As we determined earlier that No 60 is No 33, No 66 is No 33, and now ‘No 75’ has the nerve to claim No 33-ness, and No 33 is actually just a creation of one of the actualists, this is then a 3 way, fake dialogue, likely written by ‘Richard’ (and that’s not his ‘real’ name of course). Happy and harmless yet?! Ho-ha!

Fed by such suggestions by No 23 as to doubting the existence of personalities existence as it is portrayed, I experienced all kinds of things in my psychosis. I thought Richard was No 23. I mapped No 60, No 32, No 58 and the rest to some real life personalities I knew and my world of bodiless identities derived from the mailing list kept morphing its shape from one to another (anybody seen the Hollywood movie ‘identity’?). However I don’t think I have any multiple personality disorder. I think I went too much into my mind, disconnected from society completely and my only life was list life.... so those cut off bondage links attached themselves to the mailing list. And I lost touch with reality.

I promise that I have written only in the names No 33, No 75 and No 71 (R). And fwiw, No 33 is the given name for me and the other two are assumed names. I don’t want to cause any confusion.

Funny it may be, I communicated with No 60/No 23 and studied other’s mail writing characteristics closely and have ascertained to my satisfaction that most of the personalities are indeed distinct – it mattered for me because I went to extremes. at some point I thought that mailing list was some experiment setup by one personality say Richard and all the other members exist only for ‘my’ interaction and the interaction is supposed to bring out the hidden stuff in ‘me’ etc. Though things can be viewed that way, I don’t think that is how it is happening. No 33 to No 66, 29.5.2005

No 94 (R): I hope his method works for you.

Yes, it does.

Does it really?

Yes ! ! ! !

Who are you kidding? Yourself?

Nobody...

This dumb-ass method put you in the loony bin and while you were in there, singing your loony tunes and merry melodies,

Btw, the experience to the loony bin and in the loony bin were interesting (though dangerous)... I wasn’t singing loony tunes but observing people of different kinds... of course I was inflicted with strange viewpoint of the world (paranoia? ASC? ). And the method did not put me in the loony bin. My insincerity, my imagination, my wrong interpretation... if you look at my mails during Feb 2004 you will know. I was in my own world.

That maybe why integrity is highly recommended.

There was not a single inquiry on your behalf by the holy trinity that runs this virtual insane asylum.

Because they didn’t have any information from me... all they had to go by were some indirect insinuations from No 23 and No 60 and you... don’t we know that a lot of problems are due to misinformation?

If they did, I am sure they would have tried to see what went amiss... in their own way... not sympathy and feel-gooders ... but see what can be done to set it right... in their power... not some hopeful short term stuff. Which I wouldn’t have been satisfied. I was getting that kind of stuff aplenty from all around.

Not an actual care in the world for you from those selfish fuckers. Not a one! What the hell you are doing here, I don’t know.

No 58 my friend, you got it all wrong. ask No 71.

Those closest to you, don’t want you here and who can blame them.

They are like you... good willed... but... they have wrong conclusions about the whole thing. Remember... this 180 opposite is not a banner... it is true.

I am not saying you shouldn’t participate in some chat room. Have your entertainment, but that’s all this is.

Actually, I don’t come here for entertainment anymore... that was before... now I don’t really have any use for this list... I check it now and then... and if something occurs to me, I just write.

It is not very often what actualists write surprise me and tell me something I cannot think myself about... still I have a tough nut to crack… I am looking for clues for that...

All those fuckers could say while you were locked up singing your songs, was to point to their disclaimer that says actualism is not for the clinically insane. They couldn’t care less for you.

It is because they cared they have that disclaimer. They mean it all.

First take care of the interested, then sensible, the ill have to be the last... in the aircraft, when the pressure drops down, it is advised that you wear the mask before you help the invalid and the child. No 33 to No 58, 30.6.2005

There is some ground for assuming that Richard indeed suffers from some form of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia n. – Any of a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations, and accompanied in varying degrees by other emotional, behavioural, or intellectual disturbances. Schizophrenia is associated with dopamine imbalances in the brain and defects of the frontal lobe and is caused by genetic, other biological, and psychosocial factors.

Being in contact with between 12-14 Schizophrenics per day, 5 days a week for 40 plus hours I find it highly disingenuous that someone would classify R so. That would only show someone’s ignorance of schizophrenia or that they have some sort of agenda. I have NEVER met a schizophrenic who does not hear voices and/or see hallucinations (and to say R is ‘not admitting’ to having these symptoms is ridiculous, since he so freely admits to a host of symptoms that fall under the category of ‘Mental Illness’).

R’s condition is exactly as he has supplied: depersonalization (by the way-basically all enlightened ones would fall into this classification), derealization (by the way-basically all enlightened ones would fall into this classification), anhedonia (many enlightened folk would score high here too), and alexithymia (some enlightened people would be here too).

I’m open minded enough to entertain that non-normative mental functioning need not necessarily by either a disease or bad for you.

I’m likewise reasonable enough to understand that it may be pathological also.

I could within about 15 seconds of meeting R know if he is schizophrenic or not as there are many nonverbal clues to one having this disorder. To suggest that Peter and Vineeto are so clueless, blind, foolish, imperceptive, insensitive simpletons to not be able to recognize the difference between someone who has lost their sense of identity and someone who is lost is a world of visual hallucination, ‘voices’ and scrambled thinking (i.e. the inability to carry on a logical conversation) is preposterous.

By the way, I have never met a truly happy schizophrenic either. A few have seemed happy when one only sees them for a few hours, but when one spends 8 hours a day, 5 days a week with them, the facade comes down. I do work with one fellow who is so pumped with anti anxiety, depressants, anti-psychotics, and other such meds that he is smiling quite a bit.

However, he is only awake about 6-8 hours a day and can barely get about within the home from being so drugged. Yet he still has found time to beat the shit out of staff and attempt a rape. Happy and harmless ... hardly.

Reasonable objections to actualism are one thing (and not that hard to come up with either), but this is a wankfest if I ever saw one. Why someone would be so desperate to fling such factually ignorant accusations could well speak volumes about such individuals.  No 66 to No 23

I do find it interesting that for many of the people I work with/for that religious/spiritual belief seems to make their condition much worse. Actually, close observation of those with ‘mental illness’ set the process of me becoming an atheist in motion. I see religious/spiritual experiences (including my own) of hearing voices, seeing visions, grandiosity, intense guilt and elation, as smaller scale versions of what the so called ‘mentally ill’ experience (well, in some scales its not a smaller scale version). I have observed that there is a bi-directional effect of religion/spirituality causing people to be more neurotic or even psychotic and neurotic/psychotic individuals being attracted to religion/spirituality.

As for myself, though it was extremely traumatic for me during the beginning of the process (as I had based 100% of my life on the pursuit of following/ serving/ becoming like/obeying God), I have become significantly less neurotic since abandoning my religious/spiritual beliefs/practices. No 66

List B, No 35: Richard, you have been diagnosed as psychotic.

Oh yes, it is official ... I find it so cute that a freedom from the human condition is classified as a severe mental disorder. It would appear that mental order (sanity) is stringently defined as having the ability to successfully keep instinctive drives, furious urges, impulsive rages, inveterate hostilities, evil dispositions – all malicious and sorrowful tendencies – under control with the aid of compensatory nurturing, sympathizing, empathizing, being compassionate, being loving, keeping hope alive, having faith, being trusting and so on, so as to produce a ‘well-adjusted personality’ ... and never, ever do something so sensible as to eliminate the entire instinctual package. And so, all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides go on for ever and a day. <snip>

List B, No 35: You may also know that one of the surest signs of severe mental illness is the inability to see and admit the serious symptoms.

Indeed ... that everybody else is mad but me is the classic indication of insanity.

Richard, would you mind answering a question for me? I am intrigued by what you said about being officially diagnosed psychotic. It also appears that you saw a psychiatrist and/or psychologist for a fairly long period of time. My question: what impelled you to seek psychiatric assessment and undergo treatment? Were you under compulsion from family members? Did you question your own sanity? These are some questions that occurred to me.

By the way, I think questioning the supposedly benevolent intentions of others under the guise of ‘concern’ and ‘sympathy’ is a sign of health, not illness.

*

Oh no, I was not and have never been ‘under compulsion’ by anyone else but my own desire to know – once and for all – what life was all about. I certainly did ‘question my own sanity’ and covered many angles in my study of what other humans have made of weird and/or wonderful experience ... psychiatry and psychology were as equally valid an avenue to explore as physics or metaphysics, palaeontology or cosmogony, archaeology or sociology, philosophy or theology and so on. But the penultimate question was: who was I – a mere boy from the farm – to set himself up to be the arbiter of human experience? How could all those ‘great’ people be in error and Richard correct? So yes, I ‘questioned my own sanity’ ... yet not only my sanity but the sanity of all human beings (both living and dead). And both psychology and psychiatry could not answer my question either ... in the final analysis it was up to me. The ‘psychiatric assessment’ was for the official record (I find it cute that an actual freedom from the human condition is classified as a severe psychotic disorder) and I wanted that fact on record. As for ‘undergoing treatment’ ... psychiatric medication and psychological counselling are designed to bring those who are suffering from any of three main psychotic categories (Bi-polar Disorder, Schizophrenia and Clinical Depression) and any neurotic sub-categories, back to a state of as near-normal functioning as possible (and ‘normal’ is categorized by Mr. Sigmund Freud as ‘common human unhappiness’). No psychiatric or psychological treatment would meet was I was wanting – I was looking to go beyond both normal and abnormal – thus I was not seeking to ‘undergo treatment’ but rather to find out, experientially (as I did in other fields) what was the extent and range of other human’s experience and solutions. Psychology and psychiatry has failed just as dismally as philosophy and spirituality.

But why were you looking to go beyond, surpass, both normal and abnormal?

Also, in my opinion, modern psychiatry and psychology are for the most part a failure because they do not help people to deal very fundamentally with what is troubling them and are often merely concerned with helping people to adjust, cope, and adapt to a sick, crumbling, and corrupt society.

Anyone who questions the perceived subject/object split is, in effect, declaring to all and sundry that he/she is insane.

Unless they are a university physics professor, or a marginalized spiritual teacher. Gary to Richard

There are in-built hormonal and neuronal mechanisms that mediate the fight-or-flight response of the organism to danger and extreme stress. These are permanently altered when one has been the object of violence or exposed to extreme stress.

Yet there are no child-hood hurts extant in this flesh and blood body ... my experience demonstrates that nothing in the affective faculty is either ‘hard-wired’ or permanent.

Would you say your experience is exceptional, indeed, unusual? I was referring to research on PTSD that shows that there are actual hormonal and neuronal changes following exposure to extreme stress. Probably I was wrong to say that these are ‘permanent’ – that is jumping too far. But once these hormonal and neuronal mechanisms are chronically altered, it seems to me it makes interrupting the cycle of hyper-arousal and psychic numbing extremely difficult. Perhaps I should not use the word ‘interrupt’ – that implies something continuous. What I hear you saying is that there is a discontinuity. Am I correct?

When you say ‘there are no childhood hurts extant in this flesh and blood body ...’, are you saying the memories of hurt have been extinguished? Gary to Richard

Many professions or occupations have an idealistic impassioned undercurrent. I was trained as an architect and was imbued with the notion that good and pure architecture can ennoble the human spirit and thus change the world. I recently saw a comment in an architectural magazine that said ‘architecture challenges the belief that things were better in the old days’. The amazing thing is that now that I have stripped away all the emotion, passion and belief that surrounds my work it becomes the pragmatic, practical business that it is. I still do the best I can to design a building that suits the locality, the particular site, the owners needs, that is value for money and that looks good. I now do the same job, but it is totally different because there is no ‘me’ to stuff up the enjoyment of doing it or to battle others to do it ‘my’ way, as though ‘my creativity’ was of paramount importance.

I agree that there is a great deal of idealism in the professions. There was a lot of hopeful idealism and optimism for me when I went into social work. Idealism is part of the whole acculturation process of taking on the belief system, values, and ethical practices of a profession. The new recruit is expected to dress, talk, think, etc. the way other practitioners of the profession dress, talk, and think. Various professions differ in their tolerance for deviance. The social work profession seems to tolerate, within the limits of what is ethical, a great deal of deviance (after all, they’ve kept me on!). Lately, my ardour for social work has died down quite a bit. Just yesterday, I was thinking on the way home that I would like to work for the Post Office delivering mail. I have also had thoughts of quitting my job and getting a non-professional job, say, pushing carts at the local market. These musings are usually interrupted by realisations of what seem to be the practical difficulties involved and the immediate diminution of my wages, benefits and prestige. I also am concerned about the scorn, derision, and censure I may encounter from family and friends over taking a ‘lesser’ job, so I know I am dealing with an issue of ‘my’ identity here. With increasing frequency, as I put into practice what we are talking about on this list, I get the impression that I am working my way out of a job with my chosen profession. There is also the undercurrent of excitement of new possibilities opening up, a whole wondrous world of things to do, places to go, and experiences to have.

But that is just how it is for me. There are no rules, or rights and wrongs in actualism – others may find they want to change jobs or do something different. It is the same with my decision to find a companion to prove that I could live with at least one other person in peace and harmony as a starting point to test out whether the process worked or not. Others may prefer to live by themselves, others will be happy to not change their existing circumstances; others may even change partners, or whatever.

I may be getting ready for a job change or even a whole change of career. I think I am going to need some help in this. There are vocational specialists available to help people determine what they are best suited to do. There is a local Career Center with a lot of information about up and coming careers and how to train for them. I am seriously questioning whether I am best suited to do the kind of work I am presently engaged in. Perhaps something of a more detailed and technical nature, maybe having to do with computers, may be more appealing. Gary to Peter

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